My grumbling wife -
if only she were here!
This moon tonight...

- Issa

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have…a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, and I mean the characters and conduct of their leaders.

 - John Adams, 

articulating the most eloquent summary of America’s ideals

and the importance and necessity of having an informed public.

Six More Weeks . . .

P. Phil.

Politics Over Promises

Would the real Susan G. Komen be satisfied that the legacy of her sister's promise? Would she want access to breast cancer treatment to be dependent on a woman's income? Or would she hope that "curing cancer" meant espousing an ideology that sought to heal and help rather than divide and deny? That sounds a lot more "pro-life" to me.

How the Susan G. Komen Foundation Lost Its Way.

 PRIOR STORIES:

Susan G. Komen Foundation Bows to Anti-Choice Bullying; Stops Contributing to Planned Parenthood.

Susan G. Komen Foundation Begins Backpedaling for the Cure.

No Time . . .

QUOTEs OF THE DAY

from: To name the unnameable,

Kenan Malik .

"A poet's work. To name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep." 

 - the satirical poet, Baal.

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties"

- John Milton, Areopagitica.

It is this idea of speech as intrinsically good that has been transformed. 

Today, free speech is as likely to be seen as a threat to liberty as its shield. By its very nature, many argue, speech damages basic freedoms. It is not intrinsically a good but inherently a problem because speech inevitably offends and harms. Speech, therefore, has to be restrained, not in exceptional circumstances, but all the time and everywhere, especially in diverse societies with a variety of deeply held views and beliefs. Censorship (and self-censorship) has to become the norm. "Self-censorship", as the Muslim philosopher and spokesman for the Bradford Council of Mosques Shabbir Akhtar put it at the height of the Rushdie affair, "is a meaningful demand in a world of varied and passionately held convictions. What Rushdie publishes about Islam is not just his business. It is everyone's – not least every Muslim's – business."

Increasingly politicians and policy makers, publishers and festival organizers, liberals and conservatives, in the East and in the West, have come to agree. Whatever may be right in principle, many now argue, in practice one must appease religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt. 

We live in a world, so the argument runs, in which there are deep-seated conflicts between cultures embodying different values. For such diverse societies to function and to be fair, we need to show respect for other peoples, cultures, and viewpoints. Social justice requires not just that individuals are treated as political equals, but also that their cultural beliefs are given equal recognition and respect. The avoidance of cultural pain has, therefore, come to be regarded as more important than the abstract right to freedom of expression. As the British sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, "If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others' fundamental beliefs to criticism." What the anti-Baals of today most fear is starting arguments. What they most want is for the world to go to sleep.

The consequence of all this has been the creation not of a less conflicted world, but of one that is more sectarian, fragmented and tribal. 

As the novelist Monica Ali has put it, "If you set up a marketplace of outrage you have to expect everyone to enter it. Everyone now wants to say, 'My feelings are more hurt than yours'."  

The more that policy makers give license for people to be offended, the more that people will seize the opportunity to feel offended. 

It leads to the encouragement of interest groups and the growth of sectarian conflict.

(all emphasis mine)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

[E]volution actually provides a powerful antidote to racism. From an evolutionary point of view, we’re all African and our differences really are insignificant.

- Quinn O'Neill,
Creationism in the Classroom: A Tragic State of Affairs.

Reverse: A Lynching

- Ansel Elkins

Return the tree, the moon, the naked man
Hanging from the indifferent branch
Return blood to his brain, breath to his heart
Reunite the neck with the bridge of his body
Untie the knot, undo the noose
Return the kicking feet to ground
Unwhisper the word jesus
Rejoin his penis with his loins
Resheathe the knife Regird the calfskin belt through trouser loops
Refasten the brass buckle
Untangle the spitting men from the mob
Unsay the word nigger
Release the firer’s finger from its trigger
Return the revolver to its quiet holster
Return the man to his home
Unwidow his wife
Unbreak the window
Unkiss the crucifix of her necklace
Unsay Hide the children in the back, his last words
Repeal the wild bell of his heart
Reseat his family at the table over supper
Relace their fingers in prayer, unbless the bread
Rescind the savagery of men
Return them from animal to human, reborn in the long run
Backward to the purring pickup
Reignite the Ford’s engine, its burning headlights
Retreat down the dirt road, tires speeding
Backward into rising dust
Backward past cornfields, past the night floating moths
Rescind the whiskey from the guts
Unswallowed, unswigged, the tongue unstung
Rehouse the flask in the field coat’s interior pocket
Unbare the teeth, unwhet the appetite
Return the howl to its wolf
Return the shovel to the barn, the rope to the horse’s stable
Resurrect the dark from its heart housed in terror

Reenter the night through its door of mercy

This poem was one of the winners of the 2011 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.

1920 Duluth lynchings.

A public memorial in Duluth, Minn.,

commemorates the 1920 lynching of three men.