Minor Wisdom

Quotation of the day

JFK, 1961:

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Athenae, just yesterday:

You do not lose people because you ask too much of them. You lose people because you ask for too little.... [I]t’s not too hard and you can in fact beat back the inevitable with your bare hands and it can happen, and all you need is the example of someone telling you, instead of sit down, shut up, stand up, start yelling. Fight, for the love of your immortal souls. Fight.

In the aftermath of 9/11 they could have asked us for anything. Anything. Enlistment en masse. National service. Financial sacrifice. Put your pantyhose in a drawer and draw a line down the back of your legs with an eyeliner pencil; they could have asked us to build 100,000 airplanes and we would have done it, because we can. But they asked us to go shopping, they told us to take off our shoes in the airport, they lied to us about Iraq. They asked us to be angry and they asked us to be scared and they asked us to turn on each other, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what happened. They asked us for nothing and that’s exactly what they got.

And the irony is that in our whole life as a country we were never stronger than when we reached out and held on to one another. When we have been weak, when we have failed, it is only because then we let go, turned our backs, hated and feared and strung up garlic and picked up stakes. It is only because then we forgot ourselves, as we have now.

Hat tip to Suspect Device.

A suggestion for legislative pay raises

State Senator Ann Duplessis has caught a lot of flack lately for proposing a substantial pay raise for state legislators. Whatever you think of her proposal, two things should be universally accepted:

1. If legislators are going to be paid at all, then from time to time, a pay raise will be appropriate.
2. The legislators' vote in favor of a pay raise for themselves will always be unpopular with voters.

My own 2¢ on this issue: We should have a provision in the Louisiana Constitution similar to the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

No Law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Under the 27th Amendment, a Congress can never enact a pay raise for itself; any pay raise is for the benefit of the next Congress. This has two benefits. First, it reduces the conflict of interests in the Congress voting on the pay raise, as 100% of the representatives and 33% of the senators have no guarantee of being part of the next Congress. Second, it promotes the perception (maybe even the reality) that any vote in this area is motivated by genuine economic concerns rather than self-interest or fear of unwarranted voter backlash.

The nutcracker sweet

This picture, spotted on Library Chronicles, is too funny not to share.

You can buy one of these gems here.

God speed, Mildred Loving

Every student of constitutional law knows about Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision striking down laws against interracial marriage. Well, Mildred Loving, the petitioner in Loving v. Va., died last Friday. We should commemorate her as we commemorated Rosa Parks.

(Hat tip to Greg Peters.)

What was that about the price of gasoline?

While we in the U.S. bellyache about the price of gasoline, millions worldwide are starting to go hungry, because food has become unaffordable. See these stories in the Washington Post and the Guardian. (Hat tip: God’s Politics.)

Global warmings

My sister Gabrielle sent me this video. The kid is lip-syncing Will Ferrell; still he does a good job of it. Gives me hope for the future of our great nation.

Speaking of George Bush, let’s give him credit for one thing. Some mooks out there thought that New Orleans was not ready to host a presidential debate. But Mr. Bush decided that we are ready to host the North American Leaders’ Summit.

Do you think you know Mike Huckabee?

Below is a video of Mike Huckabee on MSNBC, responding to the controversy over comments made by Barack Obama’s pastor. He has many good things to say. For instance:

As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, “That’s a terrible statement,” I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I’m going to be probably the only conservative in America who’s going to say something like this, but I’m just telling you: We’ve got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, “You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus.” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had ... more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Hat tip: SojoMail.

The first

The UN’s World Food Program is facing a $500 million shortfall. The reason: rising food prices. This is bad news for the 73 million people fed by the WFP. So what does that have to do with us?

The United States is the largest single contributor to the WFP, accounting for about 40% of the agency’s food and money donations, followed by the European Union. U.S. officials have already warned that it is likely they will be cutting donations to global humanitarian organizations because of higher costs.

Source: the L.A. Times. See also the Guardian. (Hat tip: God’s Politics.)

Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land

In Your Mumia sweatshirt won’t get you into heaven anymore, TBogg explains why Ralph Nader devotees should bite their collective lips (or whatever) and vote for the Democratic nominee. (Hat tip to Suspect Device.)

The real meaning of the Second Amendment

The meaning of the Second Amendment is fiercely debated between NRA-types and gun-control types. The wording and punctuation of the amendment don’t do much to resolve the debate:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Gun-control types, stressing the first 13 words, argue that the amendment protects the state’s right to have an armed militia. But this argument disregards the phrase “the right of the people.” The NRA-types, meanwhile, argue that the amendment protects the individual’s right to bear arms, but this argument disregards the amendment’s first 13 words and the third comma.

Both sides are wrong. According to law professor Peter Junger,

the right to bear arms is the right to display armorial bearings—coats of arms—and the original plain meaning of the Amendment is that the government shall not infringe upon one’s right to be a lady or a gentleman.

Unfortunately, Prof. Junger died before finishing his thesis. But he did leave behind a draft, which you can find here.