Why haven’t we finished our novel? (An infographic from The Onion) Blogging about writing is not on this list, probably because it’s too realistic to be funny.
A deficit of pity
I’m not qualified to judge the legal merits of the Supreme Court’s decision in the matter of Albert Snyder vs. Westboro Baptist Church today, but that won’t stop me from expressing my moral horror at what seems to me a deeply perverse and dangerous ruling.
World Magazine reports:
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, concluding that under the First Amendment, even despicable speech is protected if it concerns a public matter. “A group of parishioners standing at the very spot where Westboro stood, holding signs that said ‘God Bless America’ and ‘God Loves You,’ would not have been subjected to liability,” he wrote. “It was what Westboro said that exposed it to tort damages.” But Roberts acknowledged that the speech itself was odious: “Westboro believes America is morally flawed; many Americans might feel the same about Westboro.”
The opinion noted that the case was decided based on the specific circumstances of Matthew Snyder’s funeral, and shouldn’t be construed as a broad ruling. Westboro protestors stood on a public sidewalk more than 1,000 feet from the funeral, complying with local laws. Albert Snyder reportedly only saw the tops of the signs at the funeral, and didn’t see what they said until afterward, meaning he wasn’t a “captive audience,” Roberts wrote, a condition for the court to restrict speech.
As a non-lawyer, what I see here is a symptom of a larger problem in American life. There seems to be a greater concern with satisfying “jot and tittle” legal points, than with doing justice. Jesus said, “You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.” (Matthew 23:23)
In order for society to work, the people need to believe, a) that the laws are for their protection, and b) that the people who administer the law are morally sane.
It seems to me this decision calls both principles into question.
I could find a bright side in this decision, if I wanted to. I could say, “Well, if the detestable expressions of Westboro Baptist Church are legally protected, my own politically incorrect speech is probably pretty safe.”
But I cannot feel that way.
I will not feel that way.
In any case, the protection of an insane legal system is not be relied on.
I wrote about “zero tolerance” rules a few days ago, how authorities are more and more enforcing rules without thought or sympathy, regardless of the harm it may do.
This decision looks to me like an instance of the same thing. They upheld the letter of the statute. They missed (I would contend) its purpose entirely.
Our judicial system, to all appearances, has utterly abandoned its mandate (which I consider a divine mandate) to restrain evil. It’s possible to nurture discussion and debate about the most radical and controversial issues, while still preventing people from purposely causing children to cry.
One of my favorite moments of drama in Scripture comes from the story of David. The prophet Nathan comes to the king, to confront him over his sins of adultery and murder. He engages the king’s emotions by telling a story about a rich man who, instead of killing one of the sheep out of his own vast flocks to feed a guest, steals a poor man’s only sheep, a family pet.
David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:5-7)
The members of Westboro Baptist Church have no pity. More and more in our culture, I fear, we are at the mercy of people who have no pity.
The One From the Other, by Philip Kerr
I was looking for an excuse to buy more of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther books. The acquisition of a Kindle provided it. Glad I did, though The One from the Other
The Bernie Gunther novels, in case you’re not familiar with them, are classic Hardboiled mysteries in the Raymond Chandler tradition, except that they’re set in Germany, beginning in the 1930s. Bernie, the hero, is a sometime policeman and sometime private detective, a decent man living a life of quiet desperation, trying to retain both his pulse and his integrity in an increasingly Kafkaesque environment. His success at the latter has been mixed, at best.
After a flashback prologue, The One From the Other opens in 1949. Bernie is attempting, with no success, to run a hotel in Dachau. After a strange encounter with an American CIA agent, he admits he’s in the wrong business and moves to Munich, to set up shop as a detective again. He moves his wife, who is institutionalized with clinical depression, to that city as well, where she soon dies.
He is hired by a beautiful woman to look for her husband, a fugitive war criminal. A Catholic, she wants to remarry and needs proof of his death. This sets Bernie on a convoluted trail that leads him to discover dead bodies, get beaten up and shot at, and lose a finger. Gradually a complex conspiracy is revealed, involving a secret organization of ex-Nazis, the CIA, and the Catholic Church.
Frankly, I thought Kerr leaned too much on plot clichés this time out. Sinister CIA and Roman Catholic conspiracies have been done to death, and have (frankly) gotten offensive. He might have tried to surprise us a little.
But all that is redeemed, for me, by the interesting character of Bernie Gunther and the remarkable hard-boiled prose, such as this:
Starnberg itself was a smallish town built in terraces at the north end of the Würmsee…. The sapphire blue water was studded with yachts that shone like diamonds in the morning sunlight. It was overlooked by the ancient castle of the dukes of Bavaria. “Scenic” hardly covered it. After only a minute of looking at Starnberg, I wanted to lift the lid and eat the strawberry crème.
As I said, not the best Bernie, but an entertaining read nevertheless. Cautions for language and adult themes.
The Saga of Bjørn
First, thanks to Ian Barrs, whose blog I linked to a few days ago, for his flattering review of The Year Of the Warrior today, at Man Of the West.
Below, behold the Saga of Bjørn. It’s well-done and funny, and even relatively authentic, considering the sort of thing it is. But the theology is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
Gave me a chuckle, though.
The Saga Of Biorn from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.
Tip: Eric at Grim’s Hall.
Meadowland, by Thomas Holt
The Thomas Holt who wrote Meadowland is the same person as the Tom Holt whose humorous mythical books, like Who’s Afraid of Beowulf and Expecting Someone Taller, I’ve praised before in this space.
The same wit is in evidence in Meadowland, his 2005 novel about the Viking discovery of America, but all in all it’s a very different kind of book.
The narrator is John Stetathus, a eunuch and accountant in the service of the emperor of Constantinople in the year 1036. He is commanded to accompany a shipment of gold through Greece to Sicily, along with three members of the emperor’s personal army, the famous Varangian Guard, made up mostly of Norsemen. One of the guards is a large and rather dull young man called Harald Sigurdson, whom Viking buffs will immediately recognize as the future King Harald Hardrada of Norway. The other two are Kari and Eyvind, a pair of elderly Icelanders. Continue reading Meadowland, by Thomas Holt
"The role of a compassionate friend"
Always nice to hear news from the old home town. This story from Fox News is entitled, “Minnesota Man Allegedly ‘Hunted’ Suicidal Victims.”
William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of aiding suicide in the deaths of an English man and a Canadian woman. Attorneys for both sides presented oral arguments Thursday to Rice County District Court Judge Thomas Neuville, who has up to 20 days to decide whether Melchert-Dinkel is guilty.
Prosecutors say Melchert-Dinkel, an ex-nurse from Faribault, was obsessed with suicide and hanging and that he sought out potential victims on the Internet. When he found them, prosecutors say, he posed in chat rooms and in e-mails as a woman, played the role of a compassionate friend and offered step-by-step instructions on how they could take their lives.
Melchert-Dinkel is identified as a resident of Faribault, which is my secondary home town. It’s only fifteen miles from my actual home town, and my mother’s parents lived there. Both my folks eventually took jobs there. Since Mom was a nurse, she might even have known this guy.
I note the hyphenated name, “Melchert-Dinkel.” Although it’s not always true, such hyphenization often indicates (in America) a “progressive,” non-traditional attitude to the world. Which sets me thinking.
If you’re a modernist, a moral relativist, what exactly would you say this guy did wrong? Would you say he did anything wrong at all?
A relativist would never concede that suicide is wrong in itself. Nothing is essentially wrong, for the relativist. If someone wants to commit suicide, certainly that’s their own choice, isn’t it? It might be unkind to their loved ones, but we often encourage people to do things their loved ones don’t like, like marrying people their parents reject, or going into careers they don’t approve of. Why should dying be any different?
You could say he did wrong in deceiving these people, but the relativist can’t say that deception is necessarily bad either. Melchert-Dinkel could argue that these people felt they had the company of a caring friend at the end of their lives, and were never disabused of that belief. He could maintain that he’d actually done them a great favor. And if he got a sexual charge out of the experience, well, who does that hurt? Everybody wins.
I often harken back to the words of Wisdom (depicted as a woman) in Proverbs 8:36: “But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death.”
The Bible in English, #309
The King James Bible, published in 1611, was the 309th edition of the Bible in English at that time. For reference, the first hand-written manuscripts of the Bible in English were composed by John Wycliffe in the 1380s.
Oh, Henry! What Is Man That God Should Think of Him?
Let’s give it up for the fabulous new duo, The Civil Wars.
Height of the absurd, Man Of the West
Just to put your mind at ease—so you can sleep tonight—I’m happy to report that I picked up a new microwave oven today. It’s smaller and more powerful than my old one. Also much cheaper than I expected. What an amazing world of scientific marvels we do live in!
Mitch Berg at Shot In the Dark is upset—rightly—by this appalling story from KDVR TV, Denver Colorado:
ARVADA, Colo. — Arvada Police are defending the way they handled the arrest of an 11-year-old boy. The Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs from his home for drawing stick figures in school – something his therapist told him to do.
His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents did not want their real names used.
They say “Tim” is being treated for Attention Deficit Disorder and his therapist told him to draw pictures when he got upset, rather than disrupt the class. So that’s what he did.
Do you think a charter school, responsible to a board elected by the school’s parents and stakeholders, just might have come up with a solution that wouldn’t have embarassed a Soviet komissar?
It’s time to bring back public humiliation – stocks and pillories – for public officials who so utterly transgress the boundaries of sanity, decency and morality itself.
And if the Arvada, Colorado school board doesn’t fire every single party involved, and the voters don’t in turn erase every single member of that school board from any contact with children forever, and the people can stand for that sort of priggish idiocy from their police department, they deserve what they get.
I’m pretty sure “Tim” does not.
You know, I’m getting kind of sick of hearing from educational experts who warn us constantly that if a Muslim child or a “gay” child hears a single word that could possibly be offensive to them, they have probably suffered irrevocable harm, and will have to be put on suicide watch.
But handcuffing an already troubled kid and dragging him off to jail—that’s just part of the process of growing up. Good for ’em. Makes ’em tough.
The whole point of the Zero Tolerance movement is that common sense is inadequate. We need rigid rules, enforced in a draconian manner.
Well, common sense has certainly left the building.
On a more pleasant note, I recommend this new blog: Man Of the West.
It’s written by my friend Ian Barrs, an English transplant to the U.S.
You may possibly recall that I mentioned having a splendid discussion with an expatriate Englishman last spring at the Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa.
That Englishman was Ian Barrs. Not long ago we became Facebook friends, and I discovered to my amazement that we have a mutual friend, a guy who’s involved with the U.S. L’Abri Center in Rochester, Minnesota (and sometimes comments on this blog).
Phil will be happy to learn that Ian is a Presbyterian.
Video Game Critics Debate
Here’s an interesting set of letters between two critics of video games, one prioritizes personal experience and story, the other views the games in the context of all games since the beginning of civilization.
Tom Bissell writes about his approach: “I do, however, like to write about how games cross over into affecting, enriching, or profoundly messing with one’s life outside of game-playing.”
By contrast, Simon Ferrari explains: “It’s my contention that games are systems of rules and artificial spaces before they’re stories. And if we want to foster creativity, depth, and breadth in the design of future games, then we need to begin by teaching the reading, writing, and critique of rule systems at an early age.”