Supremacy, Sodomy and Slavery

I have deeply wished to avoid this.  It's too much.  I find myself driven to it.  Therefore:

Last week the Supreme Court created a new right, a new institution, a new Constitution and a new country.  Apparently we, we, were asleep.  It turns out that we are the unworthy servant, given a talent which we buried; while the other side is the more worthy, the good and faithful servant to its cause, and will receive its rich reward now, regardless of what is to come.  Rather than be bold and resolute and fearless and energetic in our cause, we retreated into civility and adherence to rules and decorum, while they were brazen, fierce and successful.

Years ago for some reason in my disparate readings in history I came upon the tale of some Sheikh or Pasha or Emir who had purchased a lovely blue-eyed slaveboy and wished as was the custom to enjoy some sodomy. A Western traveler inquired of the potentate how such an insertion might be achieved, against a determinedly resistant sphincter.  Steady pounding, was the reply -- no resolve is sufficient to resist constant pressure upon such a minor muscle, designed as it is to keep things in, not out.  Test it for yourself.

I now believe it is inevitable that, given generational time, the Left will always prevail.  Erosion is a law of nature.  Attrition is the greatest general.  Degeneration is the rule of civilizations.  Entropy is universal. Drip drip, anal leakage.

Last week issued the irrefutable affirmation of the Supreme Court's supremacy, and of course at first as is my way I felt nothing.  Profound stillness, as the Spirit upon the Deep.  But I slipped the hold I have on myself and allowed emotion and judgment in, and concluded that this was truly the end of America, the end of American exceptionalism.  We are now just another country.  This fact brought only a dull depression, nothing profound, which surprised me.  About a day later I realized that my timing was wrong. We stopped being America over forty years ago, with Roe v Wade.

Life is far more important than the institution of marriage.  We allowed the Supreme Court to well and truly assert its supremacy with that power grab, that plunge into insanity, where life itself is defined as not meaningful, given a woman's right to privacy and feelings.  As if life were not, above any other consideration, public.  Ah well, no matter.  How much less, the meaning of marriage than the meaning of life.  And conservatives are polite and will never impose, the New Testament commandment to be bold notwithstanding.  As it is the scorpion's nature to sting, it is ours to be silent and comply.

As I say, there is too much to say.  How did this perversion creep into our system?  It was inserted, like a penis, by John Marshall with his invention of Judicial Review, whereby the Court upon a merest majority may nullify any law.  Which is a good idea, in principle, but it had the effect of making the smallest, least, most inconsequential branch of our Federal system into the most powerful.  

This is undeniably a profound perversion -- a check without a balance.  What business had the court to say a law is unconstitutional?  The job was to adjudicate cases under the law, not over it.  If the court deemed a law unconstitutional, would not the proper recourse have been to refer the matter back to Congress?  Breathtaking in its audacity.

Allow me to state the obvious: the Supreme Court is supreme only over our Judicial system.  It is not supreme over the Constitution, nor the Legislative nor the Executive Branch.  The President is the supreme Executive, and the two houses of Congress are the supreme Legislators.  See how that works?  No one else ever seems to have noticed this before.  There are three Supremacies, the least of which is the Court.  

Andrew Jackson was a disaster and wrong about almost everything.  He was right about the Court, in his putative statement, that the Court had made its decision, now let it enforce it.  No government official takes the oath of office to support and uphold the Constitution as the Supreme Court asserts it to be -- rather, it is one's own conscience and intellect that must dictate conduct.  This very easy fact is made somehow impossible to grasp.

Precedent and custom have made this essential to be nugatory.  What remedy?  A movement  on our part for a constitutional amendment?  -- to repudiate the specific of gay so-called marriage? -- or to forbid the Supreme Court from making law and inventing so-called rights?  A hopeless cause.  Can't unring a bell, in any case.  Can't uncrack the Liberty Bell in a Supreme Court case.  The gays have invented a new thing, destroyed an old one.  

It hath made me mad.  We shall have no more marriage.

But here's the thing.  We cannot have judges dictating the course of our civilization.  We can't have that.  True, some three-fourths of the states had gay marriage, prior to the impositional diktat of the Supremes, but that was largely because state judges had struck down state bans on gay marriage.  See how that worked?  Now it's national.  All from judges.  So much for the fantasy of democracy.  We were fools ever to use the word.

How then shall we rein in our overlords, this Rampant Hyper-Minority, this Quintumvirate, this Gangbang of Five?  Well, simply, by each of the two now-subservient Branches of government, Executive and Legislative, asserting a right of Review over the Courts.  See the symmetry of it?  So elegant.  

Marshall invented the idea, and it was a good one.  Laws need to be checked for Constitutionality, and the Supreme Court is the correct body to provide that balance.  In the same way, the Court needs to be checked.  The President checks Congress via his power of veto.  Congress checks the Executive via its control of the budget (ahem, we must suppose it to be so). 

Where, where, where is the check on the Court?  Mere nomination and consent is an initial step, but some of us remember how stealth-candidate Soutor came to the bench -- approved as a conservative and manifesting as a liberal.  Initial steps alone are insufficient.

Impeachment is a theory, but it addresses wrongdoing, not incompetence or insanity or moral-depravity or -obtuseness.  While a justice, John Rutledge tried several times in several rivers to drown himself -- he was "much deranged" and  subject to "mad frolicks".  Henry Baldwin was confined to an asylum in his third year with "incurable lunacy".  He remained a member of the Supreme Court for another eleven years.  Nathan Clifford was described by a fellow justice as "a babbling idiot" -- not an invective, but a diagnosis; he refused to resign and died on the court.  Ward Hunt refused to resign because he wanted the pension -- he was paralyzed and could not speak; Congress voted him a pension to get him gone.  Frank Murphy bought illegal drugs from his pusher twice-daily.

Therefore, Congress must assert its power to nullify (a word fraught with history) odious decisions of the Court -- as, say, Dred Scott or Plessy v Ferguson.  There was no recourse, no remedy for such perversions, save Civil War and civil disobedience unto martyrdom.  There must be some more political answer, or we are a people not free but subservient. As indeed we are, but should not be.  Likewise, the President must assert his ethical and sworn duty to uphold the Constitution as he understands it.

There are several means of amending the Constitution, but the only one that's succeeded is where two-thirds of both the House and the Senate agree to send a proposal to the state legislatures, three-fourths of which agree to make it law.  A high standard.  John Marshall did not adhere to such rigor, and I suggest and propose that no one else need do so. We need not amend the Constitution to curb the abuse.

Congress shall assert its duty, as an element of its legislative mandate, upon a quorum vote of two-thirds (or three-fourths) of both Houses, to set aside a decision of the Supreme Court which Congress deems to be obnoxious ... to a reasonable interpretation of the historical understanding blah blah blah.

Likewise, the President, as the chief law-enforcement officer of the land, has the positive duty to enforce laws enacted by Congress, and no duty to enforce laws enacted by Judges -- which in any event is an impossibility.  Because of the deeply political nature of the office, the conduct of the President will be checked by popular opinion, party politics and imminent elections.
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Will this happen?  Yes, because my blog is a National Power and I myself am a force to be reckoned with.

And yet ... you know the swirl that goes down the drain? -- sinks or toilets?  Come on in, the water's fine.  

J

A Brief Treatise on the Meaning of Words and Other Topics

Hey. Socialist morons. I already have healthcare. It's called "caring for my health". You know, lifestyle. Maybe the Left only recognizes the word with its mandatory prefix, "alternative"? What I mean is diet and exercise.

What the Left is gay for is sicknessmedicationandsurgery. I'm sure some people, most even, need that, because they didn't do that healthcare thing, about being excellent and prudent and preventative and responsible. All their braggadocio about loving steak and beer and sugar and cigs and sodomy may have been true -- they just loved it to death. They should be forced to have government sicknessmedicationandsurgery coverage. After all, convicts and prisoners always have their health controlled by the government. It's a mandatory civil right.

I seem to have heard something about liberty being important, and despite the unbelievably vile Pelosi creature puking the lie that 'now we have the liberty of healthcare'.  May hell come to her and all traitors instantly.  Liberty must always include the idea of choice. How is it that the Left loves only the choice of baby-killing? Everything else is dictated. Where's the Black Death when you need it.

"Choice", "alternative" -- words should have meaning. They should mean what they mean. I don't understand how they do it, steal words and corrupt the meanings. They're like vampires, or child molesters. 

It cannot be a mere coincidence that Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is an anagram of Scary dead anal politician person. Yes. It definitely means what it means. It's almost Bible Code in its prophetic inerrancy.

"Liberty". It's a word properly used as a prefix to "bell". And it also acts as an adjective modifying the word "Statue". Isn't there a half-dollar or maybe a dollar coin? There was a movie character that had it as a first name. As for what it means now, well, it's like feck, or ruth, or effable, or other lost words remembered only as syllables and phoneme strings. That's what America is. Effable. We just got effed. Thanks for that, Pelosi. It felt great. A little dry maybe. Next time have Obama grease us up a bit more. He's got oil to spare.

No, wait. I do understand how they do it. Stupid cowardly weak people let them. In this instance, Americans. But people all over the world and in every era. It's the reason there will never be a Workers' Paradise, the way we were promised with unspoken assurance by The One and all his Number Twos.

Hope and Change. We got the latter at the cost of the former. Happy now, stupid?

J

Devil's Island

 Gitmo.

I could stop there, but insight isn't the only important thing. How do we deal with blood enemies? Understand their childhoods? Well, no. That's not how we deal with them. That's a small part of understanding them, but more important than understanding is what we do about the problem. If the answer is four, I don't care if I get to it by adding one and three, or two and two, or 3.27 and 0.73 -- just get to it. We're not talking about art, here, but about reality. We deal with blood enemies by stopping them. How they are stopped is an incidental.

Gitmo is exile. It's banishment, of someone who is not fit to live among civilized people. An island in the midst of the Lake of Fire is beyond the pale, for some reason. Perhaps a few moments too many passed when summary execution would stand up to the definition of summary. Exigent evidence grew stale, and bureaucracy took over. So be it. Some other, more terrene island will have to do. Gitmo, then.

Obama has come to understand this fact. The lad is teachable? So Charles Krauthammer would have it. "Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson ... offers a partial list: 'The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e. slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e. the surge) -- and now Guantanamo.' [Liberal Jack Goldsmith] adds: rendition -- turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets -- claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus..."

Obama's latest flip-flop -- always a good thing for him to do on any of his core issues, if he has core issues -- has to do with the newly recognized efficacy of military commissions and tribunals, "accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy." Again, it doesn't matter how we get to the right answer. Just get there.

Elsewhere Krauthammer says Obama has a firstclass intellect and a firstclass temperament, and perhaps a thirdclass character. Close paraphrase. K is paraphrasing something said of FDR: great temperament, intellect, not so much. 

For my part, I remain unconvinced as to Obama's intellect. I think an impressive intellect requires an ability not only to manipulate words into pleasant or portentous-sounding sentences, but to express correct ideas clearly. It's not only about communication, but uncommunicated brilliance might as well be in the dark. Verbal fireworks is fine around cracker barrels or crowds of adoring fans, but it's glib.

Character shapes intellect. It has to do with the discipline to pursue truth, even if we want to disagree with the conclusion. Character agrees that four is four. We shouldn't be convinced only after the fact -- after, say, our bridge falls down because someone thought four was 390059503. Why, there's not even a four anywhere in that number! I think it's a prime!  How wrong can you be?  It's like on purpose.

We should weigh evidence according to past experience rather than theory. That's the problem with Obama. It's not just that it's all about theory. It's that his experience is limited.

He's not used to being challenged. Because he has used his firstclass intellect to overawe second-raters, his wrong theories have never been corrected. He was a lawyer, but he wasn't a litigator. See? There was never anyone else in the room to argue him down. That's necessary, for bright guys with theories. That's me, too. The difference between Obama and myself, aside from this little presidency thing, is that my ideas are shaped by evidence. And I suppose I've been shown do be wrong often enough for me to hold onto opinions loosely. There's another difference. My ideas are not my character. Obama's character is all in his ideas.

I was kidding though about being wrong -- have you ever known me to be wrong? I just needed to say that to make a rhetorical point.

How do we decide what's right? WWJD. Jesus talks about turning the other cheek, and about ocean bottoms and millstones tied around necks. Jesus talks about Hell. You don't get an infinite number of chances to be wrong. You get the duration of your lifetime. Then you get your eternity. So how do we deal with terrorists? In a harsh and civilized way.  Effectively, and according to rules.

Gitmo? Please. Even Obama's Democrats won't close it now. Embarrassing for them? They are shameless, so embarrassment doesn't apply. They pick the strangest things to be passionate about. Obartionism. Anti-defense. Carbon. Gay and terrorist rights. Um, banana slugs? Whatever. Odd things. But the opposite of defense is not offense; the opposite of defense is defeat. Gitmo is not an offense. There is a Devils Island because there are devils.


J

Attack

 Mohammad the murdering false "prophet" worshiped Satan under the name of Allah. Allah is mostly a made-up boogyman, but any reality behind it/him is demonic. It's what Satan always does, try to set himself up as God. The Arabs were just unlucky enough to be pagans at the time the child-raping sodomite Mohammad became possessed by whichever evil spirit took control of his weak and corrupt mind. It might have happened to anyone, any race with sufficiently backwards ways. But looking at the total sum of evil, it's safe to say that Mohammad is worse than Hitler.

Now. That was a sort of hate-speech. I don't hate, here. I feel no emotion about it at all. It is very likely to arouse hatred however, in moslems. You know what we call people who cannot control their emotions about other people's opinions, right? We call them, at best, fools; beyond that, they become criminals. I mean every word of what I said. Mohammad was a monster. Allah is, if anything, Satan. That's my opinion. I believe it.

But hate? It's not about my emotion. My statements, regardless of any possible truth or falseness, are obnoxious. I have the right to have obnoxious opinions. It is not discourtesy to have dissenting views. It is discourtesy to forbid them. I do not shout. You do not have to listen, and the context may be such that it's appropriate to ask me to keep my opinion to myself. That's what civility is.

The UN recently gave its support to "a global Islamic blasphemy law." I'm conflicted. I'm not against blaspheming Islam. But I'd rather not be compelled. ... Oh. Wait. Oh, I think what they mean is "anti-blasphemy laws." Hm. Sort of an anti-truth law, then. Sort of an establishment of religion thing going on here, non? 

You know, you can only really blaspheme what is true. You can't make meaningful false statements about what is false. You can be wrong, but so what? I don't care if you say 2 plus 2 is 5, or it's 3. Not meaningful.  That was the math of Room 101 -- you surely remember ... the book, 1984?  2+2=5.  Ah well, my obsolete opinion is that feeling and truth are two different things, only sometimes intersecting.  

feeling ≠ truth.  intersects, may be included in the set.  This is, as I seem to recall, sixth grade math.

I recently had contact with a fool. After a while I found it degrading, like looking into someone else's unflushed toilet bowl. We have to learn these lessons again and again. So when dealing with the atheist, the moslem, the fanatic, the egotist, the neurotic, it's a matter of identifying the teachability of the person, speaking truth, simply, and then, if need be, leaving. 

You can't instruct a closed mind. You can't raise them up; they can drag you down. The atheist does not love truth, or rationality, or reality. They love their opinion and their judgments and their emotions, all the while denying it.

Moslems are just people who believe a false religion. But that's almost everyone. It isn't their belief that matters to me. It's conduct. Alas, their conduct -- on the public stage and in history -- is repressive. Most peoples and religions have had that same problem at one time or another, and will again. Such a shame, the way human nature and the world is. 

Problem is, moslems are outbreeding the rest of us, and at current rates will control Europe within 40 years. That's would be no big deal, except these breeders are the backward ones, and their children are the same. Even that isn't such a big deal, except that they bring, at this point, their non-meltingpot third world with them. If they believed in freedom and science and that sort of thing, well, okay then. But they don't.

Same problem with Mexico. A steady stream into the US of Mexicans is fine. We can assimilate them. A flood is a different thing altogether. See? Culture is just a word for our way of life. Video games and recreational vehicles are all very nice, but that's not our way of life. Our way of life is embodied in the freedom to both believe and to say that Mohammad was a lying or insane or evil or delusional dictator, and Allah will eventually spend eternity in a lake of fire.  We can, but can choose to not, say such things.  In freedom, without fear of terror.  

The fact that the UN doesn't understand this tells us that it does not love freedom. It loves power. It seems so strange, or at least ironic, that the Left and its lapdog liberals pretend to love freedom. There is nothing or little more oppressive than legislated speechcodes. PC. 

But because the Left dominates all mass media save talk radio and a lone visual outlet, they convince shallow thinkers that they are about freedom. They are the enemy of liberty. Like the UN. Yes, sometimes we do find it expedient to treat with the enemy. But it is the enemy, and that's another truth that must be held close. It can't come as a surprise: enemies smile.


J

islamist Jokes

 Knock knock.

Who's there?
Mohammad.
Mohammad who?
Oh, I'm sorry, I should have said "boom" instead of "knock knock."

Hey, is this an audience or an oil painting?

How many mohammads does it take to blow up a nursery school?
Just one, but he has to shave off his pubes first.

I know you're there, I can hear you breathing.

An imam, a mullah and an ayatollah go into a bar. The imam says to the bartender, "Gimme a scotch on the rocks." So the mullah takes out a sword and cuts off the imam's head. The ayatollah says, "Why did you do that?" So the mullah cuts off his head. Then he cuts off the bartender's head. Then he blows up the bar. Then he straps explosive to two mentally challenged women and detonates them by remote control as they walk through a crowded marketplace.

Heh heh, yeah, so I don't go to where you work and scrub toilets! And people don't give me any respect!


I know, these jokes are not at all funny. I have to make them up myself, and it's just not my gift. The essence of humor is surprise, and my efforts here are so very predictable. I tried to find some real moslem jokes, you know, online, but there aren't any. The most I could find were some obscure Scandinavian cartoons, many of which I failed to understand.
What. I don't get it. He has a gigantic headache? He's bombed out of his head? This racist who drew the cartoon, this hate-monger the so-called Kurt Westergaard, obviously a Nazi ... oh, well, I seem to have forgotten my point. But the racist Danes seem to have objected to our righteous holey jistring -- manifesting itself most recently in our holey righteous attempt to behead the so-called Kurt Westergaard last week, or otherwise send him to hell -- by reprinting the offending cartoons. How many embassies do we have to burn down before they get our holey massage? It makes me so mad sometimes I could blow up a Jewish daycare center. But I don't have to be mad to do that. Well, a mad bomber, maybe, but that's everyone.

Hm. I seem to have undergone an attitude shift. The Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps? It's only fitting. I am a master of themes both religious and psychological. If only I could draw. Cuz I've got some terrific ideas for some cartoons.


J

Exactly

 Robert Kaplan:

"Where democratic governance does not exist, we must work with the material at hand. We have inherited our Anglo-Saxon traditions of liberty and democracy just as other peoples, with different historical experiences and geographical circumstances, have inherited theirs. And these other peoples yearn for justice and dignity, which does not always overlap with Western democracy."

Democracy may or not be the least worst system of human governance. How would I know? I have lived only under this one particular system. Everything I understand about any of the others is just other people's ideas, seeped into my brain via books and movies and gossip. What do I know about tribes? What I know about democracy is that it voted Hitler into power, and Hugo Chavez, and a ghastly, an appalling parade of stunted Napoleons in-between. Something must be flawed with this theory too, this precious democracy of yours.

The tribal system has survived rather longer than the new-fangled institutions of our democracy. Tribes are in fact the first institutions by which God dealt with mankind as a generality. When the tongues were confused at Babel, they were divided along family lines. In this, it might be said that God created tribes. Lest one bring up Nimrod and his conquests, I'd point out that Noah's family was a tribe. Point being, by any paradigm, tribes represent the first known form of human government.

As for the contemporary Middle East, the American mind isn't really suited to understand the fundamental social dynamics of the situation. We think in terms of cities and towns. Not all that relevant a concept. Our nasty hearts sometimes may try to degrade these peoples as camel jockies and goatfarmers and date pickers. 

There's nothing degrading in using camels instead of cars, or eating dates instead of cheeze puffs. Are they rural, largely? So were my grandparents. Do they call their leaders elders instead of aldermen? There may be subtleties here that I'm missing. Cuz I'm really really comfortable with the idea that a tribal leader isn't going to be more corrupt than some councilperson on the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. The current mayor of LA is a "former" gangster. I think he's former. Corrupt? La Raza MEChA apparatchik. Pus and sewers call themselves to mind.

Tribes "don’t require Western institutions because they already have institutions of their own. What we call warlords are often, in reality, tribal elders who settle divorce cases, property disputes, and other civil conflicts for which we resort to the courts or government." How is this inferior? It offends us because it is ethnic. Exclusive. Racist. Well? So what? 

Racism is bad only when there's the expectation that we will be treated with impartiality. There are other criteria for social judgments than some theoretical and legislated 'equality'. We know this is true, and accept it, and practice it, and think it's right, when we deal with our own family. We feed our children and let other children go hungry. In other words, we are members of our tribe. It's only bad when it stops working.

So, that the benchmarks in Iraq aren't being met seems an irrelevance. They were invented months and months ago, before our wonderful SURGE got started and started making such a difference. Elections and a non-dysfunctional national government and whatever other symbols of pacific governance that we might like, are not in place. Instead we're busy bribing sheiks. So what? The sheiks, many of them, use that bribe money to promote the welfare of their people. Like aldermen and mafia dons.  They are, after all, politicians, and of a purer form.

We're buying peace? Good for us. Let it be a lasting and meaningful one. I expect it will be at least as meaningful as any we'd get from propping up some fat-bellied WOG eager to pad his expense account and salting away his bribe-money in Zurich in preparation for a lengthy London retirement.

That's the problem with Americans. We're so narrow, so provincial. Everything has to be done our way. The French have it right, and the Mexicans. They embrace their corruption, so tightly they can't tell its smell from their own. But why attack France. I'm sorry. I should have said California, a land where we love Democracy so much that our only political party is named for it.


J

Side Show

 Ali Al Massedy, who videoed Saddam’s hanging, said, “I saw fear. He was afraid.”

Do you see it?
Yes. Of course. It’s not terror, not dread. Fear is exactly what it is. And yes, fool that I am, I do feel compassion.

He is numb. He is fighting to contain his bowels. He is aware of the air passing through his nostrils. His testicals have drawn up into his body. The corners of his mouth pull down. Time is slow, but there is so little of it. The rope of the noose scrapes his ear as it passes over his head -- it is rough, and it roars like the end of the world.

The platform gives out under him.

He dies instantly. His body twitches.

When the execution was over and the witnesses had returned to the Green Zone, they were met with cheers. Massedy stated, "All Iraqis will be happy from the north to the south to the east to the west."

They have a right to rejoice. It means something to them. Saddam was responsible for the deaths of one and a half million people. Every Iraqi will have known someone who was raped or tortured or killed. Compassion for Saddam would be taken by them as a profound moral corruption. Ding dong, the witch is dead. But the east has many witches.

He was clutching a Koran. You can’t see that. Its comfort can only have been emotional. There was no spiritual relief. We know this because of his final words. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists."

A blustering fool, then. A bitter old man stupid with indignation. On December 13, 2003, when he was pulled out of the pit he was hiding in, the first thing he told his captors was: "I am Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I am willing to negotiate." Yesterday in the looming presence of the gallows he said: “Iraq without me is nothing.” Perhaps those were his last words. The reality was that Saddam, without Iraq, was nothing.

He died an unrepentant fool, too possessed by arrogance and narcissism to meet death with even a shred of real dignity. He had only the dignity of contained fear.



J

Rope

Saddam was executed today. 

I heard it on the radio. The Shiites are firing celebratory rounds into the air. The Sunnis are exploding themselves in marketplaces. The Kurds are going about their business, building a free and just society. The lefties are clucking their tongues and saying Saddam was murdered. Really. I heard it with my own ears.  The rightwing fascist bloodthirsty monster bigots, such as myself, feel no need to have an emotion. Justice is satisfying only sometimes. Frequently it is just ugly.

I take no pleasure in the destruction of human life. The pleasure that I might take can only be in the balancing of the scales. It is an abstract, but I live much more in the world of ideas than of practicalities -- despite all my usual protestations to the contrary. We cannot escape our temperaments, any more than we can escape our fate.

Saddam has gone down to the dust, and further, to Hell. Good. But that "good" is not an emotion. It is the successful outworking of an equation. As I have elsewhere said, justice is an appropriate and equal response. Take a life unjustly, lose your life. That seems like perfect justice. 

Other cases, such as rape, seem more problematic. Rape, and be raped? I expect that would involve some variation of sodomy, which is not an equal response, for all that it may be appropriate. Rape, and be castrated? Rape, and be stoned? Rape, and be forced to marry the woman? You see the problem. But the death penalty is ideal.

As for Hell, one might wonder how eternal torment is an appropriate response for finite wrongdoing. There are lots of ways to answer that. I'll keep it simple. Some people have garbage for souls, and they belong in the garbage heap. The suffering isn't environmental, it's existential. They are made for the fire. That brings into question the nature of a God who would create souls only that they might go to Hell. The short answer is that, per the biblical tradition, that is just the case, and if you don't like it, you don't like reality. 

And keep in mind that the only sense of justice that we can have, is the one that God made us to have. The longer answer is that everyone does indeed have free will, and some people use that freedom always to rebel and never to repent. Their condemnation is as complete as their rebellion. Infinite.

What does this have to do with Saddam and his execution? He's just another example of what's wrong with humanity. He had power, and he used it only to glorify himself. Whatever theology you might happen to subscribe to, you can see how wrong that is. Power is a responsibility. Whatever our complaint with God is about the corruption of this world, there is a more visible cause of pain. 

Leaders must be accountable. If they do not lead in a democratic manner, then only rougher justice can set things right. The danger to an absolute ruler is that his reign can be abbreviated only in disgrace. Once off the world stage as an actor, he must become a pathetic freak or a pitiful watchword. In this instance, disgrace was consummated in death.

Today, one of the former princes of the world has taken his final fall. It was short, with a sudden stop. The process of justice was long, but its end will have lasted the breadth of a heartbeat. Then silence.


J