My opinion has been that it is largely unnecessary to trade civil liberties for security, and that the best security measures — reinforcing the airplane cockpit door, putting barricades and guards around important buildings, improving authentication for telephone and Internet banking — have no effect on civil liberties. Broad surveillance is a mark of bad security.
. . . I’ve decided not to weigh in on any of the issues, and instead to write about why I’m not.
. . .
Really, this boils down to a matter of courtesy. I’m long since tired of ignorant rants about . . . matters of importance to me. So I’m doing my part to help beautify America by keeping my trap shut when I can’t say something whose factual foundations I’m sure of as well as which I feel passionately about. Ire is not sufficient justification for any remark beyond “I’m angry”.
Return to Sender is a surreal strip with a sense of humor. I’ve no idea yet where it’s going.
Got paid yesterday. Was tempted to buy a quarter-gigabyte memory card, but resisted, reminding myself that only once have I put a serious strain on my box’s existing memory: in running an experimental search program without any intelligent memory-management at all.
Dan Kohn writes: “It is shocking that there is not more of an outcry over the unlawful detainment of radioactive ‘dirty bomb’ suspect Jose Padilla.” The old bleat that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” is brought up, and that’s the hook for my comment.
Lincoln may have said it first; it fits Lincoln’s pattern – a plausible homily which, if examined closely in the light of real history rather than fairytales, proves (if anything) the opposite of the proposition in support of which it was invoked.
( . . more . . )
Vin Suprynowicz often complains about decay in the separation of state powers, particularly about public school teachers (and other employees of the executive branch) holding part-time legislative office; today’s column is on that subject, and the link ought to be up any minute now.
Various Anglosphere constitutions specify a threefold division, legislative – judicial – executive; I wonder whether other cultures have a similar concept but a different notion of the natural cleavage. Dan Goodman, though he has since forgotten it, once imagined a culture where institutions are classified by the length of their time-horizon.
A newspaper headline caught my eye: Search ends in tragedy. What, did the search somehow cause the death of the missing child, or of one of the searchers? No, it’s simply that the child was found dead.
Classically, a tragedy is a drama in which the hero dies (or fails) because of a flaw in his own character. A tragedy ought to carry a moral lesson. What do we learn from a random murder? Did little Alex die because of his hubris? Of course not. Same goes for the victims of a natural disaster.
I mean no disrespect, of course, to the sorrow of the victim’s family. (Search ends in sorrow would be a more accurate headline.) My contempt is for writers careless of their tools.
Next time: theatre vs amphitheatre.