Crazy-ass Federalism

Michael S. Greve at LibertyLaw.com has some thoughts about how political polarization among the States within these United States of America is a good thing.  He describes the system as "competitive federalism" -- which basically boils down to "if you don't like it, you can always move to Texas" or some other "free" State:

"Competitive federalism satisfies preferences. A thoroughly blue or red United States would leave one half of the country very unhappy. That’s not true under federalism—not when preferences are heterogeneous across states and (relatively) homogeneous within states. As, increasingly, now. "

What kind of crazy-ass federalism is that?  Is that some kind of Libertarian crazy-ass federalism? 

If the government of the United States does anything, it is supposed to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity".  Does it do that by allowing any kind of penny-ante tyrant to control any of the individual States?  Why is there a Bill of Rights if States have rights?  Dude:  individual persons have rights.  States don't have rights.  States have power.  Because the States have power, we needed the Bill of [Individual Personal] Rights.

If I had faith the size of a mustard seed, I realize, I would be able to say to my family dwelling, "Be uprooted, and transported to Texas!"  And it would be the same thing to say it and for it to be.

Unfortunately I have neither the spiritual nor the financial power to be able to engage in Mr. Greve's version of "competition".  I doubt most people could.  Is he saying that freedom is only for the rich?  Is freedom really only for those well-to-do enough to buy that home (in many cases a second home or retirement home) in Oregon or Wyoming or Texas or some other State more free than California? 


We shouldn't be talking about the benefits of live-and-let-live among the states and if you don't like it lump it or move to Texas.  There should be real questioning about the extent to which individual states can go with their systemic tyranny before the constituted government of the United States must step in to secure the blessings of liberty.  I know that isn't going to happen under the present Congress or Supreme Court any more than liberty is spontaneously going to break out in deeply "Blue State" California. 

You can laugh at California.  Yeah, we're so screwed.  (Unless rich enough to uproot and be planted anew elsewhere.)  But Californification is creeping sleeplessly into everything.  It is already in the Federal Government.  It shows how far we are from Constitutional rule.  Friend, wherever you may move to, we're all  so screwed.

For now there may be places that are "more free" -- less infected by Left/Liberal/Progressive craziness.  But no place is immune to the infection.  And the infection only spreads. 

Does that mean there is no hope?  No.  There is hope. 

In the end we win, they lose.  (I keep telling myself that.)  But there will be a time when it will be very rough.  Everywhere.  Thanks a lot, you crazy-ass federalist Libertarian asshole that moved to Oregon or wherever.  All you did was postpone the date the infection goes critical, and help insure that the bump at the bottom of the fall will be harder. 

Great signs from heaven

In the gospel of St. Luke, chapter 21, Jesus is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world  (Luke 21:11).  Most of the scriptural "signs in the heavens" have more to do with guiding along the way than with recognizing the end. 

The Shekinah glory led the people of Israel in the desert, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21).  The star led the magi to the Christ child at the time of His birth (Matthew 2:2).  The Glory of the Lord shone round about the shepherds as the angels announced His birth (Luke 2:9).  "The heavens were opened" when Jesus was baptized by John (Matthew 3:13-17).

I believe the beauty and wonder in the created world are also signs of the Creator's presence in the world.  Or can be -- for those who have eyes to see. 

Or it is mere sense-perception.  Optics.  Atmospheric phenomena. 

I would rather live in a world where there is beauty, truth, goodness.  I would rather live in a world where there is meaning in such terms.  I would much rather live in a world where, when I see something wonderful, I can echo the words of St. Peter (Mark 9:5), "Lord it is good that I am here."

Even when it is something as simple as a sunset seen behind the grocery store.  

The love endures

I'm old.  I'm way beyond the Sears Christmas Wish Book and its pages of expectations. 

Maybe I'm not so much old as I am of very low expectations.

I would miss the lighted tree if we couldn't have it.  I would miss the lighted garlands.  And I am so, so grateful that, for the most part, I don't have to put them up any more.  Number Two Son did most of the heavy lifting this year.  As last year. 

I would miss the cup of extra-strong coffee after Mass on Christmas Day, if I couldn't have it.  I suppose I would.  I would miss having a warm room in which to drink it while the presents are unwrapped. 

What's the best part of Christmas?  We go out of our way to give pleasant signs of our regard for each other, and sometimes those signs are "Christmas presents".  Life is hard, and it is good to be able to make a little happiness for each other.

I read an article once by a bible scholar who claimed  the birth of Jesus had to have been either around the winter solstice or around the spring equinox.  I forget the reasoning.  I think the scholar came down on the side of the vernal-birthers.  Today of course "experts say" there is no reason to believe the Virgin bore the Child "in the bleak midwinter".   Experts say. 

There is the best reason to believe the Child has a December birthday:  He knows we need it now.  He gave us the grace of a time of light.  (Sorry, southern-hemisphreaks, we Nordic types tend to be rather exclusive, I'm afraid.) 

On this the third day of Christmas, the presents have been unwrapped; they are joyful or humorous or useful; they are pleasant signs; they are memories.

The light remains.  The love remains.

Gifts from years ago, gifts perhaps from those now dead.  Gifts that illuminate and guide us by the power of the love by which they were given. 

The light remains.  The love remains.  Believe it. 

Love endures.  

They tried to ban Christmas. How did that work out?

Christmas might be a minor holy day for English speaking Christians, if a group of Puritans hadn't tried to squash it in the 17th century.

Oliver Cromwell & Co., circa 1644, banned celebration of Christmas by act of Parliament.  The result, of course, was spontaneous attention on the part of the general populace to what might otherwise have fizzled out.  Who knows?

The active enforcement of the Christmas ban only lasted till shortly after Cromwell's death in 1658.

The monarchy was restored, and Christmas returned.  Loudly and drunkenly and accompanied by bingo, I suspect.

Of course, in 1840 Queen Victoria married a German named Albert, who had this thing about cutting down a fir tree and dragging it into the house at Christmas ("O Tannenbaum", remember?).  By the time Dickens indie-published his A Christmas Carol in Prose, the first Christmas cards had been printed, and the holiday was secure. 

The twelve days of Christmas need a revival.  For the materialist (neo-Puritan?) populace, the holiday is pretty much done by noon on the 25th.  At casa Crowndot, we like to stretch it out all the way to Twelfth Night on 5 January, the traditional eve of Epiphany. 

Temporal elasticity

Some year I should take a week off in February.  And make no plans.  Then it might actually seem like a week away from work.  A nice lo-o-ong week.  But do I do that?  No.

I decide to take This Week off.  And it turns out that, so close to solstice and all, the astronomical and gravitational vectors are all pulling the time axis of our dimensionality out of whack.  There are severe time-compression forces acting right now.

Sometimes the atmospheric pressure changes so quickly my ears just about explode.  It's like that, but this week it's time that's coming down like crashing surf.  At this writing, it is Tuesday, 24 December.  Christmas Eve.  I am not sure I remember how I got here from Sunday afternoon.  Yes my memory is that poor, but also:  time compression.

In the long run, scientists are able to go on treating time as if it were a perfectly even number line.  That is because it all evens out.  You see, once I get back to work, time will be stre-e-etched out again.

It all evens out.  Just not the way you would wish.

Oh, merry Christmas. 

Comfort Food

Seventeen years in schools.

It could have been worse.  I almost talked myself into grad school.  Halfway through taking the GRE, the clouds parted and a beam of light smote my desk.  A voice from heaven spoke inside my consciousness, clearly and distinctly: "You don't have to do this.  Just get a job and marry the girl."  After some bumps, I did.  And it's a good thing, too. 

Kindergarten wasn't so bad.  Half a day.  Baby boom, so the school was overcrowded, so they had half of us go in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.  We morning kids liked to think that the morning group were the smart ones.

First grade was the start of Gone All Day.

Even though the first day of first grade was a half day, Mom packed me a snack.  Just in case.  In a little brown paper bag was a banana and a Hershey's milk chocolate bar.  Eating that snack during morning break, I received a valuable blood-sugar adjustment, and felt a little more connected to Mom and home. 

Tastes, like aromas, can be powerfully evocative of memories.  

Banana and chocolate.  The most powerful comfort food in my comfort food arsenal.

Banana and dark chocolate, with coffee in my penguin mug.

Mom was born on Christmas Eve.  Christmas Eve dinner was always Chinese take-out so she wouldn't have to cook, and the kitchen was incongruously decorated with Japanese parasols after the paper lanterns disintegrated.

That's why I am thinking about banana and chocolate today.

My mother died suddenly during the summer of the year 2000.

This year in reading

One of the decisions I took as 2011 drew to a close was to do some non-internet reading every day. Little did I know that Christmas of 2011 would bring to me the gift of a Kindle e-reader! My Amazon Kindle Keyboard has made it easier for me to read without fatigue.  The ability to read narrow columns of large text takes me past the disability of my binocular dysfunction. As a result I might justly be accused of spending too much time with my nose buried in an e-book. (Witness the countless number of "home improvements" left undone.)

Be that as it may. 

Here's what happened in 2013.  The books are in reverse chronological order.  I'm not going to bother to put the titles in italics.

In progress and due to be done by end of year:
The Wouldbegoods - E. Nesbit
Soldiers Three Part Two - Rudyard Kipling
A Christmas Carol (with historical annotations) - Charles Dickens (Kathleen Helal)

These are done:
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
The Story of the Treasure Seekers - E. Nesbit
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll
Darkness Rising: Book One of the Catmage Chronicles - Meryl Yourish
Soldiers Three - Rudyard Kipling
Draw One In The Dark - Sarah Hoyt
Actions and Reactions - Rudyard Kipling
Christian Science - Mark Twain
Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens
Home Economics: The Consequences of Changing Family Stucture - Nick Schulz
Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles - Larry Correia
Cricket Learns to Sing - Michael A. Hooten
The Buffalo Runners A Tale of the Red River Plains - R. M. Ballantyne
The Scent of Metal - Sabrina Chase
The Gorilla Hunters - R. M. Ballantyne
Terms of Enlistment - Marko Kloos
The North Pole, Its Discovery in 1909 Under the Auspices of the Peary Arctic Club - Robert E. Peary
A Few Good Men - Sarah Hoyt
Norsemen in the West - R. M. Ballantyne
Five Children and It - E. Nesbit
Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - R. M. Ballantyne
Darkship Renegades - Sarah Hoyt
The Categories - Aristotle
Darkship Thieves - Sarah Hoyt
St. Winifred's (or, The World of School) - Frederic Farrar*
Hukata - Mike Weatherford
Puck of Pook's Hill - Rudyard Kipling
Heroes of Asgard / Tales from Scandinavian Mythology - A. & E. Keary
Erling the Bold - R. M. Ballantyne





Yes, there are a lot of "young reader" books in the list.  So? 

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*WARNING:  Do not read St. Winifred's except as a penitential or academic endeavor! What a dreadful "improving" book.  In my case, the undertaking was academic, as it is mentioned in Stalky & Co.
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What is in store for 2014?  War and Peace, Plato's Republic, Mao's little treatise On Guerrilla Warfare, and more Kipling and more Kipling!  And probably Erling again.  And I'm hoping Sabrina Chase will finish another book!