Legality of the Mandate Question

Is it not the case that you are required to have insurance to drive a car? How is that different from requiring people to buy health insurance? I presume the answer is that auto insurance is a state matter, and the Obamacare mandate would be a federal one; and that you can, in theory, choose not to drive. I get how these might be legal responses. But I'm seeing a fair amount of talk from people who seem mostly philosophically concerned with the idea of the mandate -- not worrying about it on a strictly legal basis, but fretting about the whole notion of a government that can make you buy things. To these people, neither of the answers seem relevant (from this point of view, surely, state/federal is a moot point (if it's oppressive it's oppressive at either level, if not not), and the freedom not to be able to drive, while exercised by many people, is still a very significant life restriction in our society). So what would they say about the fact that we already do this?

For that matter, it seems like the Government requires us to buy all sorts of things. Don't public decency laws require people to buy clothes? What would you say to a nudist who objects that they own no clothes and by requiring them you're going out and forcing them to engage in commerce?

Stanislaw Lem's Solaris Finally (Somewhat) Available In Faithful, Direct-to-English Translation

The late Polish author Stanislaw Lem (1921 - 2006) is widely regarded as one of the great SF writers of the past century, author of a great many fine works, including A Perfect Vacuum and The Cyberiad. For the most part he was quite fortunate in his translator, since a great many of his more prominent works were translated by Michael Kandel, who, as I've had occasion to note before, is a very fine translator indeed.*

The great exception, however, was the novel that was often proclaimed as Lem's masterpiece: Solaris. Solaris, for some reason,** was not translated by Kandel, or any other competent Polish-English translator: rather, it was translated from an earlier translation into French. Obviously any indirect translation is going to be vastly less faithful than a direct translation, and in this case the bridging translation, in Lem's judgment, itself was poor. So those who wanted to read (possibly) Lem's greatest novel, and didn't know Polish, were more or less out of luck. (Thus I, for one, have never read it.)

This is the moment when I'll mention -- as (for some mysterious reason) seems to be treated as obligatory in discussions of this novel (such as this one or this one or this one), although it's not really relevant -- that the novel was filmed twice, the first time by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972, and the second time by Steven Soderbergh in 2002. I've seen and liked both films, although I think the Tarkovsky was better. (Apparently there was a TV movie version too.) So you could watch a movie of it... but not read a well-translated version of it in English.

Until -- as I just found out (thanks, Tristero!) -- last year.

It seems that the print rights are locked away in the second-translation-of-a-poor-translation... but not the audiobook or ebook rights. So the Lem estate commissioned a new, direct-from-the-Polish, translation, one which is faithful to the text and well-done rather than not and not. It was translated by a man named Bill Johnston, who actually, y'know, knows Polish. The audiobook came out last June (read by Alessandro Juliani (who played Gaeta on the (remade) Battlestar Galactica)); the ebook -- available for Kindle and iBook and probably other formats too -- last December.

And there was much rejoicing.

I'll admit that it's a bit disappointing not to be able to read this on paper -- I've begun, hesitantly, to buy some nonfiction as ebooks, but am still a bit uncertain about reading novels on screen.*** But at least English speakers can now read it (or, for those who prefer, listen to it). So I'll take what i can get.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an ebook to download.

(Post scriptum: Yes, as you'll note, I'm back to being James Inhofe again.)

___________________
* I met him once, very briefly (at Readercon), and rather astounded him, I think, when I quoted that brief poem to him from memory.

** My guess (and it's only a guess) is that it's because it was, due to its reputation, translated very early -- before Lem's reputation was made in the west and the expense of a new, direct-from-English translator could be justified (or simply before one could be arranged). Then, once his reputation was established by good translations of his other works, the rights were locked up and not available (as, indeed, is still somewhat the case, as I'll explain in a moment.)

*** Although a few years ago I did read one novel on my laptop -- Blindsight by Peter Watts -- and it was one of my favorite SF novels of the last decade. So I suppose it's past time to try again.

We Are All Senator Inhofe Now

There was a certain amount of justifiable mockery when Senator James Inhofe, one of the leading deniers of climate change in American politics, said in a recent dialogue with Rachel Maddow:

I was actually on your side of this issue when I was chairing that committee and I first heard about this. I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.

The reason for the mockery is obvious: the costs of dealing with a problem have absolutely no bearing on whether the problem is true or not. It's an open admission of truly idiotic denial.

Worse, it is a gaffe in the "accidental truth" sense: that really is the logic behind the conservative denial of climate change. Oh, not at the grassroots perhaps: they're just lied to by Fox News. But among those who devise the lies -- the oil shills, the oil men who pay them, the reporters who treat them seriously -- that's the basic logic. They don't like the effect that the truth of climate change would have. So they simply deny it.

It's risible -- and, given the stakes, despicable.

And more or less all of us do it.

What, after all, is the difference between liberals who recognize that climate change exists and yet are not acting in a way commensurate to the magnitude of the problem -- which is almost everyone (including, I hasten, to add, me) -- and conservatives who deny it completely? It is simply the location of the denial. Rather than deny the fact of climate change we deny the implications of climate change. Rather than deny it outright -- baldly asserting its falsity -- we say we can't think about it, that it overwhelms us, that we don't know what to do. We pay attention to other things.

And the world continues to burn.

(There's a very good discussion of the mechanisms of this mainstream denial, with a particular focus on the mass media, in this post by Dave Roberts, which more or less directly inspired this one (via.))

I'm sure that Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu, who wrote this list of Obama's 50 greatest accomplishments, would say they believe in climate change. But they don't really recognize its scope and urgency or implications, or they wouldn't write a list like this, which in the context of climate change sounds like the top fifty accomplishments of the captain of the Titanic, who I'm sure did a very good job of making all passengers feel welcome.

I'm sure that Glenn Greenwald, who spends his time doing extraordinarily righteous and important work pointing out many moral and legal flaws in America's current bipartisan regime, would say he believes in climate change. But he does not write as if the world were burning. He talks about the long-term consequences of our foreign policy. our wretched media, our corrupt and law-breaking elites, as if all these things were not taking place in a context of supreme, world-wide emergency.

And so on. I think it's fair to say that anyone who is focusing on anything else is not, really, understanding the scope or urgency or threat of climate change.

I've found this in my personal interactions too: I mention, to friends or colleagues, the true severity of the problem, and they nod, and say yes, it's terrible; or, I can't bring myself to think about it.

And they turn to something else.

And, again, yes, this very much includes me. (How much time do I spend working on writing my writing, reading other people's, worrying about causes that are not this one? Glance at this blog and you'll see well enough.) This is not my saying I'm better than thou. I'm saying we're all doing this, and we need to figure out how to stop. (And I don't know the answer to that one.)

Why are we doing this? Why aren't we recognizing the sheer enormity and urgency of the problem?

Because it costs too much.

Oh, not in money -- those of us who aren't conservatives probably aren't focused on that aspect. But it costs in other ways. To our peace of mind. To our ability to function in our daily lives. To the other causes that we (legitimately, morally, urgently) care about. To our sense of ourselves as balanced people, as not alarmists or doomsayers or crazy.

Rather than appear crazy by saying the truck is driving towards a cliff, or worry ourselves too much about what's coming, we decide to chat with those on the truck. We may die, but at least we won't seem alarmist.

If the only sane response is to be crazy with panic, we'll choose seeming sane over being sane.

All of which is just what Senator Inhofe is doing. We may pride ourselves that we accept science, and he is a crazy fool: but we, too, won't confront climate change because of what it costs. It's a different way not to confront it -- ignore, downplay, not focus, rather than outright deny its existence; and it's a different type of costs -- to our sanity, our reputations, our other priorities, not to the profits of oil companies and the maintenance of a "free-market" ideology. But in truth, we are no better than he.

We are all James Inhofe now.

__________________
Note: all the links on phrases like "magnitude of the problem" and "severity of the problem" and so forth go to a single blog post -- Dave Roberts's "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change". Partly because it captures the matter briefly and well, and seems like a good 'read one' post; partly because, following my own Senator Inhofe, I don't know much about the problem because I can't stand to look. If you read that -- and you should -- you'll want to read his follow-up posts, "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change Mitigation" and "'Brutal Logic' and Climate Communications".

"I am human: nothing human is alien to me"

Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum puto.
Vel me monere hoc vel percontari puta:
Rectum'st, ego ut faciam ; non est, te ut deterream.

-- Publius Terentius Afer, Heauton Timorumenos

I am a man: and think myself interested in everything that concerns mankind. Imagine that I wish either to advise you, or to be informed myself: If what you do, is right, I would follow your example; if wrong, I would dissuade you from persisting in it.

-- Terence, "The Self Tormentor", Anonymous (?) translation, 1777

I am a man, and feel for all mankind.
Think, I advise, or ask for information:
If right, that I may do the same; if wrong,
To turn you from it.

-- Trans. George Coleman

I'm human, so any human interest is my concern. Call it solicitude or curiosity on my part, whichever you like. If you're right I'll copy you, and if you're wrong I'll try to make you mend your ways.

-- Trans. Betty Radice, 1965

Anyone know of any particular good translations of this passage? There are several nineteenth century ones online, but I like all of them less than either of these versions. Most of the more recent ones don't have a preview function. I suppose I'll have to go into an actual library, with books on dead trees -- how quaint.

Incidentally, if Wikiquotes is to be believed, this same play is also the source of the familiar phrases "time heals all wounds" (line 421, "Diem adimere aegritudinem hominibus") and "where there's life there's hope" (line 981, "Modo liceat vivere, est spes").

I came across these lines in Kwame Anthony Appiah's article in the NY Times six years ago, "The Case for Contamination"; something recently recalled them to me, so I dug them up. Here's the passage from that article where Appiah discusses this passage:

Our guide to what is going on here might as well be a former African slave named Publius Terentius Afer, whom we know as Terence. Terence, born in Carthage, was taken to Rome in the early second century B.C., and his plays - witty, elegant works that are, with Plautus's earlier, less-cultivated works, essentially all we have of Roman comedy - were widely admired among the city's literary elite. Terence's own mode of writing - which involved freely incorporating any number of earlier Greek plays into a single Latin one - was known to Roman littérateurs as "contamination."

It's an evocative term. When people speak for an ideal of cultural purity, sustaining the authentic culture of the Asante or the American family farm, I find myself drawn to contamination as the name for a counterideal. Terence had a notably firm grasp on the range of human variety: "So many men, so many opinions" was a line of his. And it's in his comedy "The Self-Tormentor" that you'll find what may be the golden rule of cosmopolitanism - Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto; "I am human: nothing human is alien to me." The context is illuminating. A busybody farmer named Chremes is told by his neighbor to mind his own affairs; the homo sum credo is Chremes's breezy rejoinder. It isn't meant to be an ordinance from on high; it's just the case for gossip. Then again, gossip - the fascination people have for the small doings of other people - has been a powerful force for conversation among cultures.

...A tenable global ethics has to temper a respect for difference with a respect for the freedom of actual human beings to make their own choices. That's why cosmopolitans don't insist that everyone become cosmopolitan. They know they don't have all the answers. They're humble enough to think that they might learn from strangers; not too humble to think that strangers can't learn from them. Few remember what Chremes says after his "I am human" line, but it is equally suggestive: "If you're right, I'll do what you do. If you're wrong, I'll set you straight."

I like the little fragments of translation that Appiah gives -- I don't know their source (all google results for that precise wording seem to be quotes of Appiah -- perhaps he's the translator?) -- better than any of the others above:

I am human: nothing human is alien to me.
[...]
If you're right, I'll do what you do. If you're wrong, I'll set you straight.

-- Translation by K. Anthony Appiah (?)

...except, of course, for that irritating missing middle line.

Anyone feel like translating "Vel me monere hoc vel percontari puta:" in the style of Appiah? Or, again, does, anyone know of a good translation of this passage? If you have any at hand, please leave the translations of these lines (77-79) in comments.

Later Update: I just recently had occasion to read Appiah's book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers -- a terrific book, incidentally, highly recommended -- from which the above-quoted article was adapted. And in the book Appiah actually gives the entire quote, including the missing line. So here is the passage, in the full Appiah version:

I am human: nothing human is alien to me. Either I want to find out for myself or I want to advise you: think what you like. If you're right, I'll do what you do. If you're wrong, I'll set you straight.

-- Translation by K. Anthony Appiah

...and yes, judging by the notes Appiah himself is indeed the translator here (he doesn't have a note on this specific passage, but he says generally that uncited translations are his own).

So there: a translation of the entire three-line passage, in the style of Appiah -- as done by Appiah himself. Glad I found it.

Poem of the Day

Lives there a man with soul so dead
He's never to his toaster said:
“You are my friend; I see in you
An object sturdy, staunch, and true;
A fellow mettlesome and trim;
A brightness that the years can't dim.”?
Then let us praise the brave appliance
In which we place this just reliance.
And offer it with each fresh slice
Such words of friendship and advice
As “How are things with you tonight?”
Or “Not too dark but not too light.”

-- Thomas M. Disch (1940 - 2008)

What Pushes This From Perfect To 'Too-Perfect-God-Is-Writing-Lazy-Again' is the Surname

Stealing this (brief) post in its entirety from Charles P. Pierce at Esquire:

From a New York Times interview with Barry Commoner, who ran for president in 1980 on the Citizens Party ticket.

"The peak of the campaign happened in Albuquerque, where a local reporter said to me, 'Dr. Commoner, are you a serious candidate or are you just running on the issues?'"

That about sums it up, don't it?

Peter Novick, 1934 - 2012

I missed the fact that the great historian Peter Novick died a week ago. His NYT obituary focuses on his (excellent, IMO) book on the changing place of the memory of the Holocaust in the U.S., but to my mind his magnum opus is his extraordinary book That Noble Dream: the "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. I have some serious disagreements with Novick's work, but it's extraordinary, and anyone interested in objectivity, in intellectual history, or, really, in history as a subject and discipline ought to read it.

Novick's obituary at the University of Chicago (where he taught) is here. Eric Rauchway, himself a marvelous historian, notes that he rereads Novick's masterpiece once a year (!).

It's an extraordinary loss to the profession. And personally there's something half-finished on my hard drive that I'd hope to send him. But mostly I'm sad that such a sharp (in both senses) voice is gone.

Rest in peace.

Poem of the Day: Third Annual St. Patrick's Day Edition

Brief historical background: Easter, 1916 was the occasion of an Irish rebellion against British rule; it was suppressed by the British, and more than a dozen people involved were executed (including the four named in the poem -- Thomas MacDonagh, John MacBride, James Connolly and William Pearse). Ireland became an independent country in 1922.

Easter 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute to minute they live;
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

-- W. B. Yeats

If anyone wants to read the poems from the previous two years' St. Patrick's Day postings, last year's St. Patrick's Day poem, Seamus Heaney's "Requiem for the Croppies", is here, and the previous year's St. Patrick's Day poem, Paul Durcan's "Making Love outside Áras an Uachtaráin", is here.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Quote of the Day

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His laws. our passions, ambitions, avarice, love and resentment, etc., posses so much metaphysical subtlety and so much overpowering eloquence that they insinuate themselves into the understanding and the conscience and convert both to their party.

-- John Adams, writing to Thomas Jefferson
Quoted in Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, Chapter 2

Who'd Have Thought We'd Have So Much In Common?

Scarily, I seem to have something in common with the base of the Republican Party: like them, I can't decide which of the clowns that are running for the Republican nomination I dislike the least.

Actually, it's even closer than that: like them, my order preference is roughly Romney-Santorm-Gingrich, but not clearly so, and without the slightest genuine like for any of the three. (And like them, there's a small, persistent part of me that finds Ron Paul attractive, but not nearly enough to settle on him, and thus in the end find that he is basically irrelevant to this calculation.)

I guess the only thing we disagree on is whether Obama is unspeakably better or unspeakably worse than the clowns.

Yeah, that's all we disagree on. Apart, that is, from absolutely everything else.

Quote of the Day: Tom Piazza's Self-Exemplifying Sentences

Any writer will admire a good sentence. Sentences can lilt, and drift, and settle lightly down. Sentences punch. Sentences thrust, and parry. Sentences can extend out past the point at which they might reasonably have been expected to end, bending under the weight of first one dependent clause, then another, tiring the reader out, making her wonder when the line will end, but not, perhaps, without hope that the exercise will deliver some point, however small -- some perception or image that will arrive, at the very end, like, say, a caramel apple. Who would argue that the form of the sentence should not help deliver the sentence's meaning?

-- Tom Piazza, "The Devil and Gustav Flaubert"
(included in Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America, quotation at pp. 248-249)

In a way, quoting this, out of context, is desperately unfair to Mr. Piazza (who is, like myself, a sojourner at Hobart and William Smith Colleges this year, although our paths haven't crossed). I can easily image that for every reader who is utterly charmed by those sentences (the penultimate of which made me laugh out loud, literally, and mar the solemnity of the midterm exam I was proctoring) there will be another who finds the whole passage too clever by half, if not by five-sixths. But the essay itself, a brief but extremely interesting piece about Flaubert as the progenitor of the novel of style which looks down superciliously on its (excessively) flawed characters, is, precisely, a criticism of polished prose which is separated from (or disdainful of) human concerns. The point of this passage is to exemplify what it is, in fact, critiquing -- acknowledging the pleasures of it before going at it with incisors. Quoting it in isolation will lead readers to dismiss it for the very flaws it is designed to expose. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it myself -- and, of course, the passage itself is about the real pleasures in this trope, so Piazza can hardly be too resentful of my highlighting them. So I thought I'd share it with all of you.

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that the self-exemplifying sentence (in contrast to its close cousin, the self-referential sentence, which this parenthesis itself is), is under-studied. Can anyone else think of any other good ones?

Repost: Options on the Table

Since there seems to be a lot of saber-rattling about Iran these days -- from Israel, but also, sadly, from the U.S. media and even from Obama -- I thought I'd dig up this post from almost four years ago and repost it. Back then I was worried about the Bush administration attacking Iran; now I (and the world) are worried about Israel doing it, with or without U.S. backing. (And since they're far more likely to do it with U.S. backing, the latter should be unmistakably and forthrightly withheld in order to help deter such a crime.) Since an unprovoked attack would be the war crime of aggressive war (and far from being an excuse for it, fearing that your enemy is developing a new weapon or going to gain a strategic advantage is actually a common rationale for aggressive war) aiding Israel in such an attack, either beforehand or afterwards, would be a grave crime. We should remember this, and not do it.

***

(Originally posted July, 2008)

This is a simple attempt to get a new phrase, meme, talking point -- call it what you will -- out into the world. I've never seen anyone advocate it or suggest it before, although if someone has, that's great, since the point is to get people saying it and thinking it.

There's a ritual invocation now said by American politicians across the spectrum that "all options are on the table". What they mean by this, of course, is that military action is on the table -- usually that unilateral military action is on the table. After all, Bush and McCain have been pretty explicit about taking diplomatic talks between the US President and high-level Iranian leaders off the table -- which would be covered in the normal usage of "all options" (that is, when non-politicians use the phrase). (There's a good recent analysis of this phrase, this idea and this possibility here.)

"All options" is a phrase that thinly veils a threat of force -- aggressive force, force against a weaker adversary who has not attack us -- within what purports to be simple open-mindedness. Who's against keeping all options open? It sounds, in principle, so reasonable. (Of course, as I just noted, Bush and McCain are against keeping all options open: they're closing off some types of diplomacy. But that's not brought up in this context.) Which is one reason that it's said equally by people on the left as the right -- Obama (and Clinton, and everyone else) constantly say they want to "keep all options on the table" too.

It's a way to threaten that sounds like simple reasonableness, simple open-mindedness. Anyone who objects to the threat can be made to seem like they are (narrow-mindedly, dogmatically, prematurely) closing off options.

The reason that politicians of all stripes repeat it so often is because, in this framework, it works. It's effective. It's a good meme (even if it's a very bad idea).

So here's a counter-meme. One designed to work on its own, but also -- more importantly -- to try to render the currently common meme ineffective. The idea here is rhetorical counter-punching. If this doesn't work, maybe someone will suggest something better. But here's my idea.

I think we should always keep all legal options on the table. The key here is the clear but not-sufficiently-mentioned fact that an aggressive war (including its subcategory, preventative war) is illegal -- at least under international law.*

But rather than emphasizing the prudence, morality, efficacy or other virtues of not committing aggressive acts of war -- virtues that, in our current political culture, are far too often dismissed as wimpy or impractical or quaintly outmoded or whatever -- it emphasises the issue of legality, which everyone still pays at least lip service too.

It thereby removes disastrous options from the "table" in a way that's harder for war proponents to criticize. If one were to say, "we should keep all non-military options on the table", the reply would be, "you're too wimpy to use force." But if one were to say "we should keep all legal options on the table", what would the reply be? "No, I think illegal options should be on the table too?"

Actually, I suspect, if it became common enough the response would be a direct attack on the notion that aggressive wars are illegal -- at least for the United States. But I think this would be a good thing, or at least a better situation than we have now. It force out into the open the idea now assumed in our political discourse, namely, that the U.S. has the right to attack whomever it wants to, but that attacks by other countries (or at least non-authorized attacks) are illegal and immoral - are aggression.

"All legal options" underlies the criminality of aggressive war, while also removing it from the possibility set in a way that is perhaps rhetorically (and not just morally or prudentially) defensible in today's political climate.

There's more to say on this, perhaps, but let's leave it there for now. Pass it around: let's see if it can catch on.

Iran: all legal options are on the table.

And no others.

____________________________
* Do any lawyers out there know if American law rules out aggressive use of force? (In theory, I mean, regardless of how things are de facto.) My guess would be that we've signed UN conventions, treaties, etc, that outlaw it, which would make it American law too, but haven't passed any individual laws to that effect. But I don't actually know.

On Speaking Ill of the Ill-Spoken Dead

In response to the extraordinarily young and horrifically sudden death of Andrew Breitbart, some liberals have been saying nasty things (e.g.), and then justifying them (e.g.) by pointing out that Breitbart himself said quite nasty things about the recently departed.* In response to this, writer Paul Glastris suggests the rule "Don’t Speak Ill Of The Recently Departed, Unless The Recently Departed Spoke Ill Of The Recently Departed".

At first glance, this struck me as wise and correct.

At second thought, however, it raises a great many problems.

Most obviously, can one speak of the dead of those who have only spoken of the dead in accordance with the above rule?

If the answer to that is yes, then the rule creates two sub-populations: those who mutually agree (as it were) that it's fine to speak ill of the dead including themselves (it seems that Matt Yglesias, linked above, is imaging that sort of scenario.) This seems like it might work, although it does have the problem that speaking ill of the dead is not a problem primarily for the dead (i.e. the importance of it isn't limited to respect of the recently departed): it's also about their friends and families (who might not share their view, or even be old enough to have come to a view (I understand that Breitbart -- heartbreakingly -- had small children). In which case, speaking ill of the dead might not be justified even if the recently deceased themselves did so and/or thought it was generally appropriate. (Not the same thing -- I imagine that many people speak ill of the dead thinking only that certain people deserve it, and that they're not among them; others might have no problem with the practice without actually engaging in it.) Even more importantly, it's about our society and ourselves: what sort of people do we wish to be? We might have reasons to discourage speaking ill of the dead even if all involved agree it's right.

But I get the impression that Glastris is not thinking that those who follow his rule themselves are subject to it. (So that, for instance, he himself by writing his post is now fair game when the inevitable fate of mortals should befall him.) For instance, he writes:

Moral rules cannot long hold if there are no consequences for transgressing them. So I think that in the interest of protecting the rule about not badmouthing the recently departed, there should be a proviso that those who willfully and publicly break the rule do not deserve the protection of it when they die. By this standard, Yglesias gets a pass.

...which sounds like saying that this is a special sanction for those who do it, without the sense that it then makes those people themselves subject to it (which creates a free-for-all section rather than something that seems like punishment).

But who is to judge what counts? Does ostentatiously saying nothing after quoting "speak no ill of the dead" and mentioning the death count? Are there degrees here, so that you can only speak as ill of the dead as they spoke of someone else? Wouldn't this just quickly degenerate to an utter removal of the "speak no ill of the dead" rule, since people would interpret what those they disliked said about others has having been ill, beginning a quick race to the bottom?

To be clear, I'm not necessarily endorsing the "speak no ill of the dead" rule. I think there are both real, deep and important reasons -- reasons of dignity and civility and respect and decency -- to hold it. And I think there are some real, deep and important counter-arguments too -- about the way that reputations are formed, about the problems of dealing with the deaths of those who did real ill in the world and not wanting them sanitized, about sanctimoniousness, and many other things. I just don't think that the fact that someone else did it is the right standard -- whatever one thinks.

Incidentally, for a very thoughtful meditation on the problems of not speaking ill of the dead who have done ill, in our contemporary culture, go read the article linked to in the first link in this post, namely, this obituary for Breitbart by (conservative journalist) David Frum, which, it seems to me, quite thoughtfully grapples with the problem of writing about someone like Breitbart immediately after their death. Recommended even if (like myself) you have essentially no interest in Breitbart himself. (via))

(Update: On the specificity of Breitbart, in addition to Frum, I recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates's take too.)

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* Yglesias has a particularly funny retort to a piece counter-nastiness lobbed in response to the above examples here.

This Word Amen

When did "This." become the new "Amen"?

Or, since "Word." probably was the new "Amen", when did "This." become the new "Word."?

Quote of the Day: Leap Day Edition

PIRATE KING:
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February,
twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence – I shouldn’t be surprised if it were owing to the
agency of an ill-natured fairy –
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year,
on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you’ll easily discover,
That though you’ve lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays,
you’re only five and a little bit over!

[...]

FREDERIC:
How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I’ve been alive.
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!

-- W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance

Happy leap day to everyone. And in a particular happy birthday to those who share Frederic's natal day and are thus, today, precisely 1/4 of the age that they actually are.

Poem of the Day

Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit

If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,

Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato’s ghost

Or Aristotle’s skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;

As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.

It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.

It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.

If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness,

A vermilioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.

-- Wallace Stevens

I was thinking of doing this as just a quote of the day, in which case I would have highlighted just the sixth and seventh stanzas:

It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.

It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.

...which are my favorites, I think. But I decided what the heck, and am posting the whole poem. Enjoy.

Links, links, links

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Links, links, links.
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Hamlet: Timewasters, sir.

-- Exclusive, previously unpublished draft of Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2* just discovered by the literary researchers at Attempts

For your amusement, enlightenment and procrastination:

Comics:

• Marc Singer's book on Grant Morrison has been published. 'Nuff said.
• Astonishing 24-hour comic: Boulet's Darkness
• I haven't yet read Buffy Season 9, but I hope they handle the event in issue #6 half as well as this one-page fan parody/knock-off (spoilers for Buffy Season 9 #6)
• L'affaire Magneto: What if Herge had Created the X-Men?

Fred Clark Remains One of the Best Bloggers On the Net:

• The very worst thing Nathan could imagine
• When the translators of the bible made up and inserted a character into it
• The 'biblical view' that's younger than the happy meal
• An interesting argument about pro-life advocates' views that I've never heard before

Religious-Related Not By Fred Clark

• Sam Harris on the Fireplace Delusion
• Does the Bible call homosexuality an "abomination"?
• Religion in Japanese:

During the late 1800s there was considerable debate about how “religion” should be rendered in Japanese... It seemed that “religion” could be a type of education, something fundamentally un-teachable, a set of practices, a description of foreign customs, a subtype of Shinto, a near synonym for Christianity, a basic human ethical impulse, or a form of politics (among other possibilities).

Humor:

• Kripke resigns as report alleges that he faked results of thought experiments
• Monty Python's Useless Tips For Anglers
• How to win a fight against 20 children
• I Was Shitting You People - A Message From Ayn Rand
• Jonathan Chait channels the Onion:

The unpredictable Republican presidential race has taken another surprising turn as recent numbers show Mongol warlord Genghis Khan seizing the lead in national polls of likely GOP primary voters. Benefiting from widespread doubts about Mitt Romney’s authenticity and ideological commitment, Genghis has changed the shape of the race by sounding sharp populist themes that resonate with supporters of the tea party. “Mitt Romney wants to manage Washington, D.C.,” he told an enthusiastic crowd in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I want to burn it to the ground, slay its inhabitants, and stack their skulls in pyramids reaching to the sky.”

• The (actual) Onion: Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions

David Graeber's Debt: the First 5000 Years

• In case you haven't yet encountered Graeber -- for various reasons, clearly the Thinker of the Year for 2011, should Time have deigned to pick such a thing -- this interview is probably the best introduction to his ideas
• More from Graeber at Naked Capitalism
• Aaron Brady's review of Graeber's Debt
• Now underway: Crooked Timber's roundtable on David Graeber's Debt: the First 5000 Years. [Update: seminar now complete; link changed to master list linking to all entries.]
• Via the above, another interesting (critical) review of the same.

Tolkien-esque:

• The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil -- an astonishingly wonderful exercise in midrashic counter-reading. (Also worthwhile at the same site is this reinterpretation of Star Wars in light of the prequels.)
• Andrew Rilstone has self-published some of his earlier Tolkien writings, under the title Do Balrogs Have Wings? and Other Pressing Questions (and Other Pressing Questions). 'Nuff said.
• ...Except maybe not, so for those poor benighted souls who have yet to encounter Rilstone's Tolkien writings, here, via web archive, is the title piece to the above-collections, presenting the definitive answer to that question, at least.
• More recent Rilstonish Tolkien goodness: on the Silmarillion.

Other Literary

• Sixteen-year-old high school student writes (in 1963) to a series of well-known novelists, including Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer asking them questions about symbols in their work. Answers presented as given.
• John Clute on Margaret Atwood on SF.
• This interesting review of Stephen King's latest novel makes me want to read it.
• Paris Review's interview with Samuel R. Delany
• Ari Kelman reviews four books on memory and the Civil War

Social/Political

• Woody Guthrie's story of the one-eyed banker.
• Man stopped by the police for "babysitting while white"... again.
• 25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore
• "After ‘The Wire’ ended, actress Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind"
• Garry Wills on contraception and the Catholic church
• Russell Arben Fox's 11 Thesis on 2011 (on Democracy, Anarchism and OWS)
• Natalie Reed on the idea that transsexuals are "biologically" the sex they were assigned to at birth (via her own new, very interesting blog)

As usual, I've forgotten where I saw most of these links. As usual, my main sources for links are Gerry Canavan, Andrew Sullivan, 3 Quarks Daily and Making Light, so most of these were probably via one of them. (Except the Fred Clark links, which were all found in the genuine internet wild.)

_____________________________
* Shakespeare always was ahead of his time.

An Atheist Jew Reflects on the Mormon Baptism of the Dead

So Mormon baptism for the dead is back in the news. After repeatedly promising not to posthumously baptize Holocaust victims, the Mormons have -- once again! -- been caught violating that promise. Elie Wiesel has publicly called on Bishop Mitt Romney asking him, in his capacity as a person running for President who happens to be Mormon, to do something.* In short, once again People Are Upset.

Now, I grant you that, having promised to stop, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ought to carry out their promise, simply because, all things being equal, everyone ought to fulfill their promises, and there seems to be no reason that this one has been nullified.

But having said that, the entire issue raises, for me, another question: which is why the members of my tribe cared enough to extract the promise in the first place.

Why do Jews -- or anyone who is not a Mormon -- care about the Mormon's baptism of the dead? I get that they do. I get that I may be the only Jew on God's footstool who thinks that it doesn't matter. But really, I not only don't think it matters, I don't understand why anyone else does think it matters.

There are two basic possibilities. Either Mormon cosmology is basically right**, or it's not.

If Mormonism is wrong -- and really from this point of view it doesn't matter if the truth is the cosmos as described by the Jews, the Catholics, the Baptists, the Muslims, the Humanists, the Pastafarians or what have you -- then the so-called "Baptism of the Dead" does literally nothing. It is about as efficacious as children playing make-believe. At worst it does some spiritual damage to the living persons engaged in the practice; it certainly has no effect on the dead. Getting upset about the Mormons' actions is like getting upset when children at play say something like "everyone here is a cow".

If, on the other hand, Mormonism is right -- as far-fetched as that seems -- then of course the "baptism of the dead" is efficacious, and actually is doing the deceased a favor. So we should be glad they did it.

Either it's meaningless and stupid, or it's the right thing to do. Either way, how can anyone object?

I've heard only a few objections that aren't entirely answered by the above argument. But none of them strike me as particularly convincing either.

One objection is that Mormons can then claim that the dead -- from Shakespeare to Hitler to Barack Obama's Mother -- are Mormons.

And the answer is: yes, of course they can. They can also claim that Native Americans are descended from Israelites, that there were horses and wheels in pre-Columbian America, that God lives out on a planet called Kolob, that God just happened to change his mind about the essential racism of his previous doctrines in 1978 and that the social embarrassment of the doctrine in the post-Civil Rights age for the leaders getting the "revelation" had nothing to do with it. And so forth. They can claim anything they like -- and they claim a lot. So what? It doesn't make it true.

(For that matter, other religions claim that as soon as everyone's dead they recognize the truth of their particular creed -- that people are converted (if not baptized) upon death, if only to recognize the justice of their own damnation. Which is just to say: when evidence and reason aren't the standard, you can claim anything, and people will. It doesn't really affect the rest of us.)

A second objection is that in the future people will believe that the posthumously baptized were really Mormon -- that this is affecting, as it were, their reputation. (One fellow Jew said to me, a propos of this, "when you're dead, all you've got left is your name.")

And the answer to this is, well, it's conceivable --- if the future historians involved are very, very sloppy and very, very ignorant about the context and very, very stupid. It's not like the doctrine of the baptism of the dead is secret; anyone researching the life of Shakespeare or Obama's mother who concluded that they were really Mormon because they appeared on the Mormon rolls would be, basically, unqualified to research anything at all. But yes, it may happen. But then, maybe people in the future will decide all sorts of stupid things. The slight chance that stupid people years from now might misunderstand present-day actions seems like a really poor reason for not doing them.

The final objection -- and, I suppose, the nub of the matter -- is that it's disrespectful.

This, of course, is true. It is disrespectful. It embodies the fact that Mormons think (as do the adherents of most faiths) that all the rest of us are fundamentally wrong, and that, worse, we're in some sense damned*** for being wrong. It implies that, say, Jews who lived their whole life as Jews and who were systematically murdered for being Jews were, in fact, off-base and would, in the afterlife, ditch their faith for an American religion they'd probably never heard of in this world.

But you know what? The actual baptism of the dead, at most, draws attention to this belief. They believe it anyway. Just as the southern Baptists believe that the victims of the Holocaust are damned because they never recognized Jesus, the Muslims believe they're damned because they never recognized Allah, and so on, and so forth.****

Sure, I personally find these doctrines abhorrent. But you know what? Those who hold them won't care about what I think about their beliefs any more than I care what they think about mine.

To the extent that anything's disrespectful, it's not the posthumous baptism, which is a mere instantiation of a larger phenomenon, it's that Mormon doctrine is disrespectful. And not just Mormon doctrine: any non-universalist religious belief that requires adherence for salvation is basically disrespectful of the entire rest of humanity.

And sure, we might well argue against them on that basis -- although personally I think the fact that there's no actual evidence supporting them is ultimately more to the point. (But then, that's me: I'm concerned with evidence and argument and logic. Others go by their guts, or the burning in their bosoms, or what have you.) But objecting to what they think they're doing on the basis of those beliefs seems to me just silly.

One sub argument that's sometimes made here is that it's particularly disrespectful to murdered Jews because of the long history of trying to convert Jews on the pain of death, and of Jews refusing to so convert. But, without making any pretense to knowledge of the specifics, isn't the reason that Jews historically have resisted baptism is that they've resisted conversion, i.e. being forced to adhere to (profess, live by, acknowledge) a faith they don't believe? Accepting baptism is a part of conversion. But baptism of the dead doesn't actually convert anybody: you need researchers to go look through records to even find out it happened. (Would Jews have fought not to be baptized long-distance without their knowledge? (What would that even mean?))

I get, on some level, how this might seem like defiling the graves of the dead. But it's really more like setting up a stone somewhere far from where the dead in question ever were in their lives, calling it (without any basis) their grave, and defiling that.§ Yes, sure, a sign of disrespect. But it's really just a sign of an ongoing disrespect, one that is fundamental to their beliefs, rather than having anything specifically to do with the symbolic action... that we have to go out of our way to find out about if we want to be offended by it.

Roll your eyes at it? Sure. Think less of them for doing it? Ok. But make a big stink about it? Why?

In fact, if you think about it, the gravestone analogy above is precisely accurate. The Mormons aren't, after all, baptizing the dead (they're not, say, disinterring the bones and sprinkling water on them); they're baptizing young Mormon teenagers and saying that they're baptizing the dead. It's only true if they're right (in which case they're right.) From a non-Mormon point of view, they aren't baptizing the dead; they just think they are.

The point is, a non-Mormon should no more believe that the Mormon baptism of the dead does anything (save please those among the living involved in it) than I believe that my son's frequent announcement that he and I are both Buzz Lightyear does anything. Personally I think that they're pretty equivalent -- save that my son, of course, is three years old, and therefore the fact that he speaks like a child, thinks like a child and understands like a child is perfectly appropriate.

And if any Mormons in my audience -- or people of other faiths, for that matter -- find that comparison disrespectful... well, what can I say? Turn about's fair play.§§

The sole remaining argument is that, having promised to stop, it is disrespectful to continue. And here, I must admit, I think the opponents of the baptism of the dead have a good case. It's an oddly self-supporting one -- fulfill the promise, which there was no particular reason to ask for or to make in the first place, because not to would be disrespectful. But I suppose one could say that that ship has sailed. But it might help my landsmen to keep things in better perspective to remember that the underlying issue is a children's game that adults like to play, and that it means about as much (unless they're right, in which case it means everything, but it's good they're doing it.) And breaking a promise to stop doing something which is itself meaningless is, as disrespect goes, pretty small bones.

To object to the Mormon baptism of the dead is ultimately to subscribe to a small slice of Mormon doctrine, namely, that part that says the baptism of the dead actually has some effect (if only to offer souls in the afterlife an option). Those of us who are not Mormons should be able to recognize that this Mormon belief like all the others is simply false: that the baptism of the dead does nothing. Who cares what games others play?

Update: Via comments to this post linking back to this one, we have this absolutely fabulous response to the Mormon baptism of the dead:

All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay!

Awesome.

Incidentally, in addition to some substantial comments below this post (if you've read this far, check them out too), the above-linked post has some discussion of this issue (with reference to this post) in its comments too -- click through if you're interested. And thanks to Holly for linking!

Update 2: Via comments to that same post, Stephen Colbert posthumously converts all dead Mormons to Judaism.

Update 3: In a Slate roundtable, some of the Slate writers (including fellow Jews!) reach parallel conclusions to the ones I argue for in this post§§§. So I guess it's not just me, although I still think we're in the minority.

Update 4: And the "who cares?" brigade gains yet another member. In contrast, here's another in the "it's disrespectful" camp. (Both via Sullivan).

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* Even if you agree with Wiesel on the basic issue, you could make a pretty solid argument that asking someone who is prominent in a non-religious capacity to intervene in a religious matter he had nothing to do with just because it happens to be his religious group is fairly offensive in its own right. Asking the church is one thing; asking the person who happens to be running for president is another.

** Something I think is far more disprovable than most religious claims, since Mormon doctrine is less shielded from empirical and logical investigation than that of most other religions. But that's another story.

*** Although my vague sense of the matter is that the Mormon hell is a breeze compared to that of, say, the Baptists and the Muslims.

**** Actually, you could argue that the baptism of the dead is a lot more respectful than that of standard religious groups. The standard (non-universalist) line is that if you didn't happen to pick the right religion in this life, you're screwed: if you got the "Jesus or Mohammed?" question wrong, then, whoops!, a lifetime of torture for you. The Mormons at least think that, having screwed up in this life, you get a second shot. Which, after all, is more disrespectful: to think that every Jew who died in the Holocaust is burning in hell, or that only those who did not accept a posthumous baptism are?

§ Yeah, I must admit, it makes me think of a voodoo doll. (Unkind of me, perhaps.) And as one of my landsmen has said:

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll:
I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all.

§§ Once I'm dead, you can get your revenge by baptizing me by proxy. Which (I feel confident) won't do anything. But which you can do, feeling the satisfaction in the belief that you are showing me up and doing me a favor at the same time -- a rare combination of (self-congratulatory) self-styled beneficence and condescension.

It's fine. Because I won't mind. Because we're talking about after I'm dead -- and the mind dies with the body.

§§§ I'd like to say they "echo" my points here, but the truth be told I think that the chances that any of them saw this post are nil. Sadly. But at least it's clear I wasn't echoing them, since I posted mine ten days before they did.

Poem of the Day: Leonard Cohen Before the Songs

One of the intriguing things about Leonard Cohen, at least to me, is that he was a published poet and novelist before he became a singer (his music being, of course, what he is now best known for). The following poem, "The Gift" was from his second book of poems, The Spice Box of Earth (1961); it was reprinted in his 1993 collection Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs.

The Gift

You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.

-- Leonard Cohen

Words Which, Quoted in Isolation, Are Applicable to a Broad Variety of Situations

And it looks like freedom but it feels like death --
It's something in between, I guess.
It's closing time.

-- Leonard Cohen, Closing Time

(The latter link goes to the video, which is sorta eh. Just play it in a tab without watching the images -- the actual song is, to borrow a phrase, "just sublime".)