In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, there is a character named Dill who is a “summer friend” to Atticus Finch’s children, Jem and Scout (Jean Louise). Every summer Dill comes to a relative’s house and has various adventures with Jem and Scout.

Harper Lee had such a “summer friend” but for more than a summer. That friend was Truman Capote who was pretty much banished to his aunt’s house in Alabama as a result of his parents’ divorce. Lee, though 2 years younger, protected the small, sensitive Capote from the local bullies and they bonded from a shared love of reading.

In 1960, Capote begin work on what would become his most famous book, In Cold Blood. It detailed the murder of the Clutter family in their home in Holcomb, Kansas. The citizens of Holcomb and law enforcement were put off by Capote’s personality but they were enamored of Harper Lee’s Southern graciousness as she had journeyed to Holcomb to help Capote with the book and, because of her, the people of Holcomb opened up to this unlikely pair.

A year later, in 1961, Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird which not only won her a Pulitzer Prize but went on to sell over 30 million copies and be made into an extremely popular movie. It was also the beginning of the end of her friendship with Capote who was overcome by jealousy at her recognition and financial success. His own book, In Cold Blood, was finally published in 1966. It was widely recognized as a fine work and was a commercial success but it did not hold a candle to To Kill a Mockingbird.

My summer friend is Tilly which is not her baptized name. More on that later. Unlike Capote, Tilly will never be jealous nor is disloyal because Tilly belongs to a species in which loyalty is inbred. Tilly is a sweet tempered, medium sized yellow Labrador retriever.

In most cases, people seem to be either “dog” people or “cat” people although, to be sure, some people can be both, which I suppose means that a person can be “non-binary” when it comes to pets. As a complete and unrelated aside, the current “non-binary” sex discussion is a deep dive down the rabbit hole. Currently, there is a play in London (“I, Joan”) where Joan of Arc declares “I am not a girl.” True. Really? Yes.

My late friend Mike Busch (see previous blog titled “My Best Friend Died on Sunday” dated May 27, 2019) was Tilly’s stepfather. He bought Tilly for his daughters Erin (age 14) and Megan (age 12). The girls then asked “Daddy, what are we going to name her?” Mike, who was never at a loss for a good response, proclaimed Tilly’s baptized name: “Her name is Matilda Erin Megan Busch, III and we’re going to call her Tilly.”

Tilly is now 12 years old and she has been spending most of this summer at our home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Tilly has been a visitor for the last seven or eight years. At first, we just helped Mike avoid kennel boarding fees while on his family beach vacation. One week became two, then a month, then most of the summer.

I was always told that 1 dog year equaled 7 human years which would make Tilly 84. However, current thinking (pets.webmd.com) indicates that Tilly is 69. Whether her age is 84 or 69 is really of no moment since Tilly has not gotten either memo. She has the energy of an average 12-year-old kid and, while she has lost a step or two over the years, from the very beginning she was high-octane. If Tilly were a 12-year-old child, a child psychologist might diagnose her as having a hyperactivity disorder and prescribe Xanax or a similar medicine. I think that the truth is that Tilly is just high on life.

Does Tilly have any peculiarities? Not really unless you count a preternatural fixation on tennis balls. There is not a tennis ball that Tilly will not try to retrieve and you can throw it once, twice, 10 or 20 times and the ball will come back to you. Often, the ball is caught in mid-air. But the best time is when the Ball is retrieved from the swimming pool which looks like this:

Now that summer is “officially” over, Tilly will eventually return to Cindy, Erin and Megan Busch although I’m pretty sure that Tilly will contest the end of summer until such time as the pool cover is applied.

A few years ago Pope Francis upset the theological mandarins in the Vatican by consoling a young boy and implying that he would meet his just deceased dog in heaven.

I am with the Pope on this.

My only question is whether Tilly will give out just a single bark to tell Saint Peter to open the gate as she does to tell us to open our door.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas missed his true calling. He should have been a matador, dressed in his signature black, waving a red cape at 1 or 10 million bulls, all quite happy to gore him to death. In his concurring opinion in the just decided Dobbs abortion case (which reversed the 1973 Roe case), Thomas suggested that other precedents should be reversed including the 1965 Griswold case which struck down a Connecticut law forbidding the sale of contraceptives and the 2015 Obergefell case which declared a constitutional right to same sex marriage.

Some of the leading “bulls” in this case were the Democratic members of the House of Representatives who just passed legislation known as the Right to Contraception Act. That bill not only protects the right to purchase contraceptives, which was the issue in the Griswold case, but goes considerably further and is virtually certain to die in the Senate.

So what to say about both Clarence Thomas and the Democratic members of the House of Representatives? Borrowing from Shakespeare, it might be written: “This is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” There is no chance that the contraceptive debate is any longer viable so efforts to take away or guarantee access is frivolous and just a useful ploy for the midterm elections.

The contraceptive genie is out of the bottle, never to return. One can buy the “morning after” pill on Amazon for less than $10, no prescription needed with packages of 6 available. Condoms are available at every drugstore and in dispensing machines in bars and gas stations. For gentlemen who are very active sexually, Amazon will sell you 100 condoms for less than $19, in a dizzying variety of styles with guaranteed performance.

The majority opinion, which reversed Roe, took considerable pains to note that the decision applied only to abortion and the rest of the majority had no interest in going down the road where Thomas was headed.

Why the reversal of Roe? It is more than Republican versus Democratic appointees. It really has to do with how “conservatives” view the role of the Court as opposed to “liberals.” The “conservative” view is that the Court exists to explicate rights and powers mentioned in the constitution and its various amendments. It does not exist to create new rights which is the job of legislative bodies. The “liberal” view is that the explicit and implicit values of the Constitution must be applied to present day circumstances. In the “liberal” view, the Constitution implicitly recognized a “right to privacy” leading to the Roe decision.

Both points of views are reasonable and defensible but neither view is conclusive. One of the most interesting things about the Obergefell case is that – at the time it was decided – 36 states and the District of Columbia had already legalized same sex marriage. Hence, the net effect was to create a constitutional right to same sex marriage and force the issue in the remaining 14 states. The “conservative” view was that rules governing marriage had always been a matter of state law and 37 jurisdictions had already approved same sex marriage and the 14 remaining could well do the same without the creation of a new constitutional right nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.

As should be obvious, I am more in tune with the “conservative” view regarding the role of the Supreme Court because I trust the legislative process to be more reliable than the votes of 5 unelected judges with lifetime appointments.

One of the more unfortunate developments regarding the Supreme Court has been the partisan nature of confirmation votes of prospective Justices (51 votes needed if all voting). The last 4 nominees: Justice Neil Gorsuch received 54 votes, Justice Brett Kavanaugh 50 votes, Justice Amy Coney Barrett 52 votes and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson 51 votes. The controversy surrounding Justice Kavanaugh notwithstanding, it is crystal clear that Justices Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson were eminently qualified by virtue of their schooling and legal careers and should have received virtually unanimous approval.

Compare their treatment to the 98 votes for Justice Antonin Scalia in 1987 (nominated by a Republican President), the 97 votes for Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988 (Republican President), and the 96 votes for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 (Democratic President). Today, confirmation hearings are more like bull fights where the opponents try to seriously wound the nominee and, when the television lights are off, opposing Senators take to their Twitter accounts to boast of their efforts. We are the poorer for it.

So who is responsible for the present mess? Currently, a lot of the blame is placed on Senator Mitch McConnell who, as Senate Majority Leader, insured the appointment of then President Trump’s 3 nominees. The truth, however, is that the current mess started when the Democrats were in the majority and then Majority Leader Harry Reid removed the filibuster from the appointment of lower court judges even though he was warned not to do so. The Republicans ‒ when it became their turn ‒ extended that policy to Supreme Court nominees. The value of the “filibuster” (60 votes) in an evenly divided Senate is that a candidate would have to attract a significant number of votes from the minority party and, hence, the nominee would be more acceptable to a wider group of Senators.

They say that it is always darkest before the dawn. If that is the case, we are in for a brilliant sunrise. Unfortunately, given the present hyper-partisan behavior, it is hard to imagine that the sun will ever appear. In fairness, both parties are to blame, but a far greater portion must be assigned to the Republicans where the Trump cancer has metastasized.

Eventually, sooner or later (probably later), the Republican Party will return to the party it once was with a positive and coherent set of positions instead of a party built on resentment and the notion that one is required to oppose what the other fellow is proposing rather than engaging in a discussion about changes.

In the meantime, we can only hope for the brilliant sunrise to come.

On March 6, 1981, Walter Cronkite ended his career as the anchorman for the CBS Evening News with his trademark closing: “And that’s the way it is: March 6, 1981.”

Many younger people will not remember him. Older people certainly remember him. He was the anchorman on the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s he was often cited in polls as the “most trusted man in America.” The CBS Evening News was usually the most watched news show in the 1960s and 1970s.

He started his career as a reporter in World War II. He was, before that word became current, “embedded” with the American forces. He flew bombing missions over Germany, landed on a glider in France and later covered the Nuremberg trials.

On February 27, 1968, he did not end his broadcast with his trademark verbal signature. Instead, just having returned from Vietnam, he ended an hour broadcast with these words: “We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.… But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

These words, coming from Cronkite, may have been the beginning of the end to the Vietnam War which would take another four years and tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives. According to his Press Secretary George Christian, President Johnson is reported to have said: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the American people.”

In fact, Johnson had lost the American people well before the broadcast. As early as January 1967, critics of the Vietnam War outnumbered supporters. By August of that year, Johnson’s approval rating on Vietnam had fallen to just 32% in part because “doves” wanted no war “hawks” wanted more war.

On March 12, 1968, two weeks after Cronkite’s broadcast, anti-war candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy shocked the political establishment by winning almost 43% of the vote in the New Hampshire presidential primary. While President Johnson “won” by receiving 48%, it went down as a loss. The pre-election prognostication had placed McCarthy in the 10 to 20% range.

On March 31, just a month after the Cronkite broadcast, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

There are some who will say that Cronkite’s influence was because America was then a simpler place without the tribal jealousies that now exist. But 1968 was not a simple year. In April 1968, Martin Luther King was murdered setting off riots, arson and looting in most of America’s inner cities. In June of 1968, Robert Kennedy was murdered after winning the California primary. In August of 1968, the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago and the Chicago police waded in to beat thousands of anti-war protesters gathered in Grant Park. An independent Commission later called this a “police riot” and 17 minutes of it was broadcast on national TV with the protesters chanting “the whole world is watching.”

What is true, however, is that Cronkite had a number of advantages which are not currently present. He was the lead anchor on America’s most watched evening show when there were only three shows (CBS, NBC and ABC). There were no cable shows; Twitter did not exist; the poison on the Internet did not exist. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram were not around. If one wanted to know the news, you tuned to one of the three networks or read your local paper which, in those years, had a following. There was a general consensus that “truth” could be found.

So where are we now? We have a lot of “news” being reported by regular and cable TV and designed to appeal to like-minded listeners. If you want to hear from the “right,” tune in to Fox; from the “left,” tune into MSNBC. If you want to know “the way it is,” good luck.

William Cullen Bryant said that “truth crushed to earth shall rise again.” Today, in many ways, truth has exited the stage. The best example of this is Donald Trump’s continued campaign to claim that the election was stolen from him. Many think that politicians always lie. But, as it turns out, that is not always true.

Former President Bush was giving a talk at his Presidential Library in Houston in the last few weeks. As Maureen Dowd reported in the New York Times he made the “mother of all Freudian slips.” He denounced “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” He quickly corrected himself to say that he was referring to Putin and the Ukraine. But, then, he shook his head and said “Iraq too.” Dowd wrote: “It was a display of conscience and a swerve into the truth in a time when truth seems lost in the mist.”

P. T. Barnum was the 19th Century showman who started what is now known as the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. The saying ‒ “a sucker is born every minute” ‒ is attributed to him although he may not have said it. Today’s showman is Donald Trump who clearly believes that “suckers” are everywhere and he has proven that he can make a great many of them believe in his fantastic lies.

So thinking about this probably accounts for my latest dream. Trump is the ringmaster of the Circus and he is in the center ring wearing a red, not a black, top hat with gold MAGA letters across the front. He is orchestrating all the acts in the Grand Finale when the clown car careens into the main ring and Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Dr. Oz and a gaggle of other sycophants spill out and are chanting that the election was stolen. Half asleep and restless, I worry that lies, not truth, will prevail until the dream ends perfectly.

Three hungry man eating tigers enter the tent.

The recently leaked opinion of the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade (1973) has created a firestorm. For those who like the Roe rule, it is the latest indication that Republican judges do not value women’s opinions and proof that the Supreme Court is a political body and not a judicial body. For those who don’t like the Roe rule, it is a blessing 50 years in the making.

Almost all women I know like the Roe rule and think men should butt out. I have one woman friend who is no fan of abortion but, as a high school teacher, saw too many “babies having babies” and those babies were pretty much slated to repeat their mother’s cycle or worse. For her, abortion stopped the bleeding.

This blog is not about the Roe rule. It appears that a majority agree with some form of this rule.  Rather, this blog is about what happens when the wrong group creates the rule and the unintended, but nevertheless, bad effects when that occurs. 

The politics of abortion are, to say the least, complicated. Abortion has become a litmus test for advancement to the Supreme Court where Republican nominees routinely answer questions from Democratic Senators that Roe v. Wade is settled law. No one would dare to say that Roe is a bad decision even though it clearly is. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a defender of Roe, was clearly correct when she said that it would’ve been better if the state legislatures had enacted abortion protection rather than have the Supreme Court make the decision.

Why a bad decision? The Roe opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee and a former General Counsel to the Mayo Clinic. He decided that the Constitution required a trimester analysis of abortion. Abortion on demand was fine in the first trimester; in the second trimester it would be up to the doctor and the woman; in the third trimester it would be discouraged unless the life of the mother was in peril. One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to understand that the Constitution didn’t dictate such an analysis.

The scholarly analysis of Roe was blistering. The American legal scholar John Hart Ely wrote in a highly cited article in the Yale Law Review the following: “[Roe] is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

American constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe of Harvard had similar thoughts. “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” Liberal law professors Alan Dershowitz, Cass Sunstein and Kermit Roosevelt agreed.

Edward Lazarus, a former Blackmun clerk, who loved Blackmun like a “grandfather” wrote: “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible…and, in almost 30 years since Roe’s announcement, no one has ever produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.”

In layman’s terms, the constitutional basis for Roe was as substantial as, say, cotton candy.  If Roe was legal dross, it would soon become a driver of political realignment. There never was another Supreme Court decision which occasioned an annual protest march numbering recently a half million people. Single issue anti-abortion Democrats became Republicans and the Democratic Party became the abortion party and the Republican Party became the anti-abortion party.

Joe Biden entered the Senate the same year that Roe was decided. He was decidedly anti-abortion and voted repeatedly on the anti-abortion side including voting for a constitutional amendment to overrule Roe. However, he would never have been the Democratic nominee for President if he had maintained that stance and so he changed. His position became that, while he was opposed to abortion, he did not think it right to impose his personal views on his fellow citizens. He was not alone.

So what to make of all of this?

First, many will say that they don’t care whether Roe was a good decision or not because they are pleased with the result. The real problem is that a substantive law dictated by nine unelected judges can also be undone by nine future unelected judges. If, however, the same law is made by a legislature, it is extremely unlikely that it will be repealed.

Second, it would have been a far better result if the decision had been made by a legislative body rather than an unelected court. Suppose California, New York, Illinois and Maryland had enacted laws protecting abortion. Those objecting to those laws would have a remedy: vote the rascals out. There was no such remedy with respect to the Supreme Court whose nine members have a lifetime appointment.

Third, some will say that is not a good solution because there would be no single federal rule. Welcome to the United States. For example, I am an opponent of the death penalty. I think that the Supreme Court, if so disposed, could have figured out a way to declare the death penalty unconstitutional as violating the “cruel and unusual” punishment provision of the Eighth Amendment. Indeed, unlike Roe, there was a specific provision of the Constitution on which the Court could rely.

One year before Roe, the Supreme Court decided the case of Furman v. Georgia and rejected the claim that the death penalty was “cruel and unusual” (2 Justices arguing for that result) but instead determined that it was being applied in an inappropriate manner. So what happened? Legislatures in the various states “corrected” their death penalty statutes but, a number of years later, efforts began to repeal the death penalty.

The net result today is this: 22 states and the District of Columbia have repealed the death penalty and three others have imposed a moratorium (a total of 26). The remainder (25) have the death penalty. This is the way that the Constitution intended for things to work. In the words of Justice Brandeis written in 1932, the states are described as “laboratories for democracy” and their decisions can pave the way for a national policy. It certainly appears that could be the case with the death penalty as DNA proves that mistakes repeatedly occur.

Fourth, the new decision – if finalized ‒ may not have a profound effect. The reason is that well over half of current abortions are effected by use of the abortion pill. That pill has been approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration and, in this case, the FDA has the whip hand and the Internet and existing networks of helpers will provide a way for someone to get the pill by mail and remain anonymous.

Finally, I think that Roe was a seriously wrong decision and has had profound negative impacts on American life. It has gone a long way to making our courts “political” bodies instead of judicial bodies, but, even more importantly, it was the waystation leading to today’s toxic tribal politics. However, I am not sure that a reversal is in the best interest of the country.

So today’s Supreme Court, in getting it “right,” may actually undermine the country’s confidence in fair and impartial justice not only with respect to abortion but with respect to all other divisive issues. As much as I would like a shot across the bow of the abortion industry (yes, an industry that, like all industries, has annual national conferences with vendor booths and take home trinkets like mouse pads), it is not worth it. We need peace in this country now not more rancor and bitterness.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is accept the past and move on. As Bret Stephens wrote in his New York Times column a few days ago: “The word ‘conservative’ encompasses many ideas and habits, none more important than prudence. Justices: be prudent.”

For the last number of weeks, I’ve been working on a blog entitled “Meditations on Abortion.” That blog is now on the shelf because both of my editors, one female and one male with different views, have given the draft a decided thumbs down.

And while Easter is now behind us, I received an unexpected gift on Easter Sunday from my college friend, Don Hynes. In the late 1960s, everyone understood the word “hippie.” It is now going out of style but, if you had looked up the word in a picture dictionary, it would’ve been a younger Don.

His career was absolutely unexpected as he became a sought after construction manager for huge building projects. But the “hippie” sensibility was never lost and so he began publishing poetry usually to be sent out on Sunday of each week. Most of the poetry was seasonal in nature, aligning human emotions with the death of winter, the birth of spring, the glory of summer and the slow dying of autumn. I thought him as pantheistic.

But then came, “The Irish Girl” a book length poem that as one reviewer said: “This is magical lyricism of the highest order, not a comma out of place. It doesn’t get better than this.”

And then last Easter Sunday, Don Hynes, sent this poem and, I think, even my non-Christian friends will appreciate it. 

We May Rise

The tree that grew on the hills above Jerusalem
was cousin to the juniper growing here
on this rock shelf above the Salish Sea.
Stately furrows, roots like cable,
branches bearing delicate spindles
to capture the rain and light of this spring day.
We cut and shape these trees
as we did that one on Golgotha
those centuries ago,
forming it to a cross
to bear the weight of love.
It is a heavy burden
and one many choose to reject.
I remember that terrible day,
the punishment of the Via Dolorosa.
Here and now there is only
water, light and stone
and the body of forgiveness
taken down from the cross,
placed in the earth
and from the earth risen,
as we may rise
into the sunlit presence
speaking to us softly
in the murmuring voice
of the endless sea.

In the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most well attended liturgies occurs on Ash Wednesday when observant and semi-observant Catholics get “ashes” in the shape of a cross on their foreheads with the priest saying to each “Remember that thou are dust and to dust thou shall return.” It is a genius sentence as believers will understand that the “dust” at the end is the prelude to eternal life while “non-believers” will acknowledge that there is only dust at the end.

Ash Wednesday begins the 40 days of Lent where believers are encouraged to practice what they preach, to fast and perform other ascetic practices to bring them closer to God, all leading to Easter Sunday and the belief in the resurrection.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which is closely aligned with the Roman Catholic Church and is the predominant church in Ukraine, does not distribute ashes but requires even stricter fasting rules during its Lent which occurs at a slightly different time than that observed in the Western church because it follows the Julian, not the Gregorian, calendar. Nevertheless, the concept of Lent is identical.

On February 24, 2022, four days before Ash Wednesday, Russia invaded Ukraine and the “ashes” it brought arose from the rubble of buildings being bombed, including a maternity hospital. This invasion proved that the past is often the prelude. In 2014, Russia invaded the Crimea which was then, but is no longer, a part of Ukraine. The American response under President Obama and that of the rest of the West to the invasion of the Crimea could only have emboldened Vladimir Putin as it was the equivalent of “Hey, you shouldn’t have done that.”

This time it was different. President Biden has been called “Sleepy Joe.” Unlike Obama, however, he was not asleep at the switch. Indeed, he orchestrated a free world response to this invasion which was both dramatic and unprecedented. The Russian economy is in freefall because of the Western sanctions and its oligarchs are trying to sail their super yachts to safe harbors but are finding none in Europe. Putin’s miscalculation has effectively organized the “free” world in ways he never expected. Putin wanted Ukraine to back off from NATO but now has both Finland and Sweden talking about joining. 

But there are always dissenters. A small minority of the American left, fixated on American misdeeds, has actually justified the Putin invasion by stating that it is the end result of America encouraging Ukraine to be a part of the West which is an affront to Putin.

If one scores those on the left for their comments, they do not hold a candle to the drivel on the right. Former President Trump said: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘this is genius.’  Putin declared a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent.  Oh, that’s wonderful.” Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson is in the truly embarrassing position of having his comments replayed on Putin-controlled Russian TV. Republicans in Congress have not been silent. Representative Madison Cawthorn referred to President Zelensky as a “thug” while many people are comparing him to Winston Churchill rallying the British people during the Blitz.  Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who many say is the queen of “crazies,” said that the war was created by President Biden because he is “weak.”

John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago.  He belongs to the realist school of thought and has been described as the most influential realist of his generation. He predicted that the encouragement of Ukraine to join the EU and apply to NATO would result in the current mess as Russia would be forced to protect its flanks. In Mearsheimer’s view, “great” powers will always lord it over the lesser ones which they deem to be in their orbit. Hence, China and Taiwan, the United States and South America, Russia and Ukraine. In a phrase, “might makes right.” That is the way it is, always has been and always will be.

The essential problem with this view is that it equates power with proper behavior as if there were no difference. While Russia may not like a pro-western Ukraine, who says that Russia has any right to say anything about it? Russia may not like a free Hungary or a free Czechoslovakia or a free Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia but those countries surely don’t cotton to Russia either. The Hungarians saw Russian tanks in Budapest in 1956. The Czechs saw Russian tanks in Prague in 1968. The Baltic republics are only 30 years away from when the Soviet Union controlled their lives. These countries all joined NATO as soon as they could and the reason was this:  they had suffered plenty and they wanted to keep the Russians from returning.

The whole notion of “great” powers assumes that there are one or two or three “great” powers and the surrounding states are like pawns on a chessboard. However, as students of chess know, a pawn can sometimes checkmate a king. That is the story of Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Union movement in Poland. Started in 1980 at the Vladimir Lenin shipyard at Gdańsk, it led to semi-free elections in 1989 and Walesa was elected President of a now free Poland in 1990. This time around, the Russians did not send tanks but depended on their government allies in Warsaw. Between 1980 and 1989, Solidarity was outlawed under martial law, Walesa was imprisoned but nothing made a difference. Solidarity survived with the explicit help of a Polish Pope and the clandestine help of western intelligence agencies and was the first to sound the death knell of the Soviet Union.

So how will Ukraine end? Presumably, the vastly superior Russian army will “win” and President Zelensky may be executed. But if he is executed, the fight will have only just begun as he has become the Winston Churchill/Lech Walesa of his country. The Russians can say all they want about how Ukraine is part of Russia but Ukraine has always resisted. Stalin detested the Ukrainian farmers who did not reach their quota of crops when his 5 Year Plan, depending on collective farms, proved a bust. Solution: order grain out of Ukraine and let at least 4,000,000 Ukrainians starve to death. The Ukrainians call this genocide Holodomor (Death By Hunger) and it is commemorated on Holodomor Memorial Day, the 4th Saturday of November, with a minute of silence at 4 PM with flags at half-mast. Ukrainians have never forgotten.

Hopefully, we have learned a few things out of this debacle. First, there is a great danger if we only believe that “might makes right.” Second, while any country has to be prudent in responding to such actions as are now occurring in Ukraine, there are any number of actions in our financially interconnected world that can make an important difference. And, in this case, they already have. Third, freedom is an aphrodisiac for the human soul. Once loosed, it cannot be contained.

Ukraine knows freedom and how to fight for it.  In 2014, months of popular protests swept pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from office when he reneged on his promise to sign long anticipated association and trade agreements with the European Union. Instead he decided to expand ties with Russia. In the end, Yanukovych scurried home to Moscow in order to avoid a slew of criminal charges. This is known as the Maidan Revolution (Revolution of Dignity) and is featured in a documentary entitled Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom now streaming on Netflix.

There is a reason that the “free world” will always triumph over the authoritarian world. Neither Russia nor China has an immigration problem since people are not trying to get in but, rather, trying to get out.

Russia has given the world majestic music and wonderful literature and poetry. Putin’s Russia has given the world nothing but war (Syria, now Ukraine) and has allowed him to enrich himself and his oligarch buddies. The “great” power, Russia, is, in the late John McCain’s words, “A gas station run by a mafia that is masquerading as a country.”

So, in this season of Lent, we can only pray that the present mess ends well and that Ukraine survives without mounds of ashes.

In college I came to appreciate a few things. First, to have a profound respect for the life of the mind; second, try to live a meaningful life; third, to love college football. Since I went to Notre Dame, football was in the DNA of the place and it was great fun to watch with the dueling mascots, colorful team uniforms, cheerleaders, marching bands, tailgate parties, the fight songs after every score and beer fueled student sections willing a home team victory. The NFL, try as it may, can never replicate the pageantry of a college football game.

Joan Didion once wrote: “time passes, memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.” While this is often the case, I have one football memory that has never “faded,” “adjusted” or “conformed” because it really happened.

My classmate and friend Dave Martin was a starting linebacker on the 1966 Notre Dame National Championship team. The Southern California game, Notre Dame’s most heated rivalry, was being played on Thanksgiving weekend in the Los Angeles Coliseum. I was listening to the radio report of the game (the game was not on TV because, the week before, #1 Notre Dame had played #2 Michigan State to a nationally televised 10-10 tie in East Lansing, Michigan and, in those days, a team only appeared on national TV once a year during the regular season). Then, I heard the announcer say that the ball has been intercepted by Dave Martin and that he has returned it for a touchdown. And when I heard that, I started screaming at the radio, to myself and to an empty room: “I know that guy!” Indescribable joy, as if I, not Dave, had scored the touchdown.

So what happens when a game that you love is turned upside down?  Because that is exactly what has happened.

William F. Tate, IV was hired in 2021 to be President of Louisiana State University (LSU). He received an employment contract of $725,000 a year plus a housing and car allowance totaling $50,000. He is responsible for multiple campuses (total of 8), a law school, a medical school, a veterinary school and the flagship campus in Baton Rouge. LSU faculty and staff number almost 5,000 and the student population is over 34,000.

Also in 2021, Brian Kelly was hired as head football coach at LSU and he is receiving a base salary of $9 million plus “bonuses” of at least $1 million per year (a “longevity” bonus of $500,000 each July and another $500,000 if LSU plays in a bowl game, a near certainty). He is also receiving car allowances ($24K a year) and an interest free housing loan up to $1.2 million.

The president of Michigan State University makes $720,000 a year. He is responsible for 13,000 faculty and staff employees and 50,000 students.

Mel Tucker, the successful second year coach of the Michigan State football team, was just rewarded with a $9.5 million a year contract for the next 10 years. Like the coach at LSU, he is probably responsible for the supervision of about 100 student athletes and maybe 200 support staff.

The 10th highest paid college football coach in 2021 was Kirby Smart of Georgia who made slightly more than $7 million with a bonus of not less than $850,000, which he undoubtedly collected when his team won the national title a few weeks ago. It’s almost a sure thing that Kirby’s salary next year will approach the $10 million level.  The president of the University of Georgia which educates 30,000 students makes less than 10% of Coach Smart’s salary.

The University of Southern California just awarded a $10 million a year contract to its new football coach, Lincoln Riley who, until a few weeks ago, was the football coach at the University of Oklahoma. Riley’s “package,” according to published articles, includes a $6 million home in Los Angeles and a private jet for his family’s use. The Southern California Athletic Department tweeted “we got our man” but it surely seems that their “man” also got them.

The top 10 college coaches make more money than all but three of the NFL coaches and the highest paid college coaches when all “perks” and “bonuses” are counted (Nike, Under Armor, Aflac commercials) likely make more than any NFL coach.  You have to give it to the lawyer who coined the term “longevity bonus” to award someone $500K per year when he actually honors his 10 year contract.

How do we get to the state of affairs where the football team is more important than the university’s mission? It was a long time coming but may have been jump started in 1991 when NBC entered into a contract with Notre Dame to broadcast all of the Fighting Irish home games. The college football world was stunned by this contract which has now been extended until 2025. And then the arms race began. Now we have a Big 10 television network, the SEC television network, and repeated reconfigurations of teams and conferences in order to enhance television coverage. As the money rolled in, the first pig at the trough was the football coach who argued that his enterprise was reaping untold dollars for the school. In most cases, the school acquiesced. Oddly enough, Notre Dame ‒ which may have started it all ‒ was “only” paying Coach Kelly a little less than $2 million a year which he parlayed into $10 million a year at LSU.

In 1996, teams played a 10 game regular season schedule and there were a total of 8 bowl games in Division 1 football.  In 2021, teams played 12 games in the regular season and there were 43 bowl games.

So is this just an old man reminiscing about the good old days?  Maybe so but I think football has become the tail wagging the university dog and that’s not right.

There is one other thing I know.  On one magical Saturday in November of 1966, Dave Martin and I scored a touchdown against Southern Cal.

In the beginning, the COVID-19 variants were described by their country of origin. There was the Chinese flu, the British variant, the South African variant and the Indian Variant. The World Health Organization (WHO) decided that the use of country names to describe the variants encouraged discrimination particularly against Asian people so it decreed that the variance should follow letters of the Greek alphabet. Apparently, WHO was not concerned that some looney tune would then target Greeks.

Now that the pandemic has become endemic and the variants have been pretty much conquered by the developed vaccines and the world is returning to normal, it’s time to retire the Greek alphabet.

There are 32 letters in the Greek alphabet but, before they are retired, we should use most of them. That job has been pretty much completed by Nate Odenkirk and Bob Odenkirk (of Better Call Saul fame) who published the following article in the January 21, 2022 edition of The New Yorker. The article was entitled “COVID’s Lesser Variants” and appears below.

Enjoy!

COVID’s Lesser Variants

There are ten Greek letters between delta and omicron—and ten corresponding Covid variants we’ve not heard much about. That’s because they spread less easily; in fact, after much study, scientists have determined that they are transmitted only in what might be characterized as very rare scenarios.

Between the Delta and Omicron variants, there is . . .

Epsilon: Transmissible through podcasts. Sound scary? It’s not. Take into account that you have to listen to an entire podcast, beginning to end, in one go, including commercials, paying attention the whole time. Very rare.

Zeta: Spread through the sharing of a McRib sandwich. Only the Filet-O-Fish sub-variant is of less concern. The C.D.C. has partnered with dedicated contact tracers at mcriblocator.com to ceaselessly flag the isolated outbreaks via pressed-pork sandwiches. Cannot be spread through fries. Relax.

Eta: Passed via the sharing of an iPhone charger, but only when the owner of the charger has less battery power than the borrower. Epidemiologists have not recorded a single instance of such selflessness in the United States.

Theta: Quite unique, the theta variant spreads via quicksand. Spreads slowly, though the sand is quick! If you have to have two people in quicksand, one with covid, neither with a mask, and both sinking, together . . . it’s hard to say who gave it to whom. But then again they have a bigger problem to worry about.

Iota: Kazoo. Specifically, the sharing of a kazoo. Friends are advised not to share one or play one in front of each other if they want to remain “Iota safe,” or simply remain “friends.”

Kappa: A truly odd evolutionary mutation, Kappa spreads through the re-dipping of a strawberry in a chocolate fountain, followed by the reusing of the toothpick, and then the licking of one’s fingers, and then, finally, the licking of the fingers of the Kappa-infected subject. Nobody does this. Well, not adults, not if they have boundaries.

Lambda: Contracted only by attending a “Chris Christie for President” rally. This variant has never been found and will never be found. Sorry, champ.

Mu: Spread via the burping of the entire national anthem by an infected individual. Outbreaks linked to tailgating events and frat hazings. Keep one hand over your heart, and two masks over your mouth.

Nu: Transmissible only by the shared wearing of a bald cap in an evening of light comic sketches. Improvisers beware!

Xi: Spread by the sharing of pertinent knowledge gained from a liberal-arts degree. The key word is “pertinent.” Rarest variant by far—practically inconceivable. ♦

The population of the City of Baltimore has been in decline for the last 70 years. In 1950, over 975,000 people lived in the city limits. Now the city population is 575, 000. Currently, the per capita murder rate is twice that of the City of Chicago. The city population is poor and getting poorer and over 20% live below the poverty level.

In 1950, Bethlehem Steel employed over 40,000 people at its Sparrows Point plant and many of the 40,000 were Baltimore city residents earning steel worker union pay. Today there is no Sparrows Point Steel plant and, indeed, there is no longer a company known as Bethlehem Steel. Union wages are mostly a fond memory.

Murders have now exceeded 300 in each of the last seven years. Fewer people are coming into the city because of the crime. The property tax rate in Baltimore is twice that of the surrounding counties and the local school system ‒ with the exception of a few excellent elementary and high schools ‒ is pretty much a mess despite record funding levels. The public schools are avoided by anybody with any means which translates into a student body that is poor and poorer, making the job of teachers hard and harder.

Baltimore, however, is not without considerable attractions. Its once industrial waterfront is now occupied by expensive and attractive housing. The newest waterfront entry is called Port Covington where the Under Armor headquarters will be located along with extensive housing and retail locations.

Its port is bustling as it is the East Coast port which is closest to the Midwest markets. And the port jobs are high paying union jobs although certainly not as many as Bethlehem Steel once provided.

It has world-class health facilities including Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland.

For a small city (31st largest in the United States), it has exceptional cultural and museum facilities and a breathtakingly good Symphony.

Its professional sports teams (Orioles and Ravens) play in downtown state of the art facilities located within a stone’s throw of the dazzling Inner Harbor. It hosts the Preakness, the second jewel of the Triple Crown, and the aging Pimlico track is undergoing a major redevelopment which should rival the finest tracks in the country and promises to stabilize and, hopefully improve, the surrounding area. All these sports facilities have been almost entirely paid for by the State of Maryland in recognition of the importance of the city.

And, if you are a foodie, Baltimore is your kind of town. 

But the everyday story is about the number of murders. In April 2015, a man named Freddie Gray was arrested and placed in a paddy wagon and upon arrival at its destination, Gray was dead. Riots ensued and State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby calmed the waters by indicting six policemen as being responsible for Gray’s death. 

Mosby was lionized for her decision which she played to the hilt but, in fact, it was one awful decision. All six policemen were acquitted or the charges against them were dropped. In 2014, there were 40,000 arrests but that number plummeted to about 18,000 in 2017. And the murders took off from 211 in 2014 to well over 300 for the last 7 years.

As David Simon, the creator of the acclaimed TV show, The Wire, a former police reporter and city resident observed:  “So officers figured it out: ‘I can go to jail for making the wrong arrest, so I’m not getting out of my car to clear a corner’ and that’s exactly what happened post-Freddie Gray.”

Bad decisions are in Mosby’s DNA. In 2020, she decided not to prosecute low level offenses such as drug possession, prostitution, and public defecation. She has since bragged that violent crimes decreased because of this decision (except, oops, the increases in homicides, carjackings, bank robberies and assaults) and defended it as being the “progressive” position. This should be of small solace to the poor black neighborhoods where drug possession and drug sales are an everyday occurrence and where moms keep their children safe inside and to local shopkeepers who have to put up with the mess. Drug overdose deaths have spiked so sharply under her new policies that a specific Federal initiative was announced in October 2021 to address Baltimore’s “overdose” problem.

So what to make of Baltimore? The braying voices of talk radio claim that it is a “hellhole.” The most “pro-city” columnist in The Baltimore Sun weakly replies that it is not really a “hellhole” but it’s also not a “model city.” My friend Lorna Collins may have hit the nail on the head when she said that the city was “rudderless.” The last mayor is still in prison; the current mayor is a deer in the headlights. Competent political leadership has been AWOL for the last 10 years.

It seems clear that the current political leadership is not up to the task. Besides Marilyn Mosby, the President of the City Council is her husband and their political ally is the current mayor who has just announced his “five-year plan” to reduce the violence which, like all “five year” plans, is very likely to amount to a whole lot of nothing. At this point, one has to look to other places for relief.

But, then, amidst all the gloom and doom, there are points of light. The first President Bush was pretty roundly mocked when he called for a “Thousand Points of Light” to address problems in the country. The criticism was that “volunteer” and charitable activities were not a realistic substitute for government programs. Whatever the value of that criticism, the American experience has shown that volunteer and charitable activities are extremely important. Each of these activities can be a light shining in the darkness.

One of the first places to start is education. Public education has not fulfilled its promise in many large metropolitan areas with an impoverished population, including Baltimore. Experimentation is necessary. So, for example, Michael Bloomberg has just pledged $750 million for the charter school movement.

The intersection of 22nd St. and Greenmount Ave. is not the most desirable place to live in Baltimore. However, it is the site of Mother Seton Academy, a tuition free coed middle school for grades 6 through 8. It is supported by private donations, the most significant having been made by Renee and Steve Biscotti, the owner of the Baltimore Ravens. Students wear uniforms with the boys wearing ties, all under the watchful eye of Principal Sr. Peggy Juskelis, SSND. They are taught to look at adults directly, to extend their hands for handshakes and introduce themselves. They are successful academically and are admitted to excellent high schools.

So you say “that’s great, but it’s really a drop in the bucket” and, indeed, it is. But it is also a point of light in a dark place and for the students at Mother Seton Academy, a chance at a rewarding and purposeful life.

And Mother Seton is not the only point of light. A remarkable priest, Father William “Bill” Watters, S.J., started a middle school for boys known as Loyola Academy, founded Cristo Rey Jesuit High School and started a pre-school known as the Loyola Early Learning Center, all three in the city limits.

Last Sunday’s paper announced a $75 million program from Catholic Charities to assist the city. Those efforts will include:

• An inter-generational center in West Baltimore to support children, adults and seniors, and help 3 to 5 year olds to become ready for school and provide workforce development and behavioral health support.

• Programs for intellectually and developmentally disabled people.

• The redevelopment of the Cherry Hill Town Center in South Baltimore with a full 4,400 square-foot facility to include the first full service bank in the area, a hub for local entrepreneurs and for fresh food purveyors.

In the northern hemisphere, we are fast approaching the time when the days are darkest and there is little light. A Leonard Cohen lyric reads “there is a crack in everything and that’s how the light gets in.” In Baltimore and in many other places, we need to celebrate the lights amongst us, for “[t]he light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

The movie “Goodbye, Columbus” was released in 1969 starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw. Its name was derived from Ali MacGraw’s film brother who was disconsolate because his glory days as a basketball star at Ohio State were over.

While the title “Goodbye, Columbus” referred to the brother’s time at Ohio State located in Columbus Ohio, many now want to say “Goodbye” to Christopher Columbus because of the treatment of indigenous people he encountered.

In the United States, at least 25 counties, cities and towns have the name Columbus or Columbia. Columbus is the capital of Ohio; Columbia is the capital of South Carolina; and the capital of the nation is Washington, District of Columbia. Since 1968, Columbus Day has been a federal holiday, celebrated on the second Monday in October which also happens to be Canadian Thanksgiving Day. 

The first Columbus Day celebration took place on October 12, 1792 when the Columbian Order of New York held an event to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Columbus’ Landing. If the Declaration of Columbus Day as a federal holiday in 1968 was the high water mark for honoring Christopher Columbus, his reputation has taken a nosedive in the last 20 years because of his treatment of indigenous people.

150 years ago, the opposition to Columbus Day came from anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic nativists, including the Ku Klux Klan, who sought to eliminate the celebration because of its association with immigrants from Catholic countries and with the American Catholic fraternal organization, the Knights of Columbus.

The present objection to Columbus Day may be more effective than the earlier objection.  Just this month, President Biden proclaimed that October 11^th would be recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day by the federal government.  In many parts of the country Columbus Day has been refashioned into Indigenous People Day. Even Columbus, Ohio now celebrates Columbus Day not as a tribute to Columbus but as a tribute to veterans. Columbus’ encounters with indigenous people is more nuanced than is currently depicted. The Taino tribe was friendly and non-threatening but the Carib tribe was threatening and aggressive and, according to the Tainos, practiced cannibalism against their enemies, a position that Columbus came to believe. Nevertheless, both were enslaved by the Spanish under Columbus.

In July 2020, during the George Floyd protests, the statue of Christopher Columbus in the Little Italy section of Baltimore was pulled down and rolled into the harbor. That statue had been dedicated in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan. The most “woke” member of the Baltimore City Council, Ryan Dorsey, tweeted “Bye.” The Baltimore Sun, a pale shadow of a once fine newspaper, opined that Columbus did not really discover America since he did not land on the mainland. The Sun has now been taken over by Alden Capital which will likely result in layoffs and, hopefully, one of the first to go is the moron who wrote that sentence.

Five of the first seven presidents of the United States owned slaves during their presidency and that was 300 years after Columbus had enslaved indigenous people. Most of these presidents were opposed to slavery but not so opposed that they gave up their slaves. Indeed, Jefferson, who had 600 slaves, bedded Sally Hemmings who produced a number of children who did not have his surname.

So what to make of the slave makers and slave owners? In large part, they were a product of their times where slavery was normal. At the same time, most instinctively knew that slavery was wrong.

The real issue is how do we treat historical figures who engaged in lamentable behavior but, at the same time, made significant contributions.

Columbus’ voyages were remarkable as were the voyages of another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the newly discovered continents were named. Imagine the fortitude necessary to sail 3,000 miles over open ocean without nautical charts, much less GPS, in the hope of finding land. Thomas Jefferson not only gave us the Declaration of Independence but founded the University of Virginia and, as President, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase which expanded the new nation westward and included approximately a third of the present country.

There is no reason that we cannot celebrate both Columbus and Indigenous People. Recently, the town of Franklin, Tennessee erected a “March to Freedom” memorial honoring the black enslaved men who joined The United States Colored Troops, a segregated unit of the Union Army, which fought with the Union in the Civil War. The town already had a memorial to Confederate soldiers which could not be taken down because of ownership issues and provisions of state law. Hence, those who objected to the Confederate soldier monument found a provocative way to even the playing field with a monument directly across the street from the Confederate monument.

There is no question that the indigenous people in the New Continent got the short end of the stick, time after time.  The American Indians were either eradicated or forced into reservations which always contained the least desirable land.  At the same time hundreds of thousands of European immigrants – “yearning to be free” – passed the Statue of Liberty and populated the country.

If you are a descendant of an American Indian you will never believe that what happened was “right” because it wasn’t. If, however, you are a descendant of immigrants you are probably grateful for the life you’ve been given. That doesn’t mean that you cannot recognize injustice but it does mean that you are not personally responsible and feeling guilt helps no one. Trying to eradicate the present day consequences of the injustices is more important than anything.

Unfortunately, the demand to admit “guilt” – even when you are not guilty ‒ occurs too often. Condolezza Rice, the first black female Secretary of State, was recently a guest on The View. She was asked about the critical race theory debate and she said: “One of the worries that I have about the way we’re talking about race…[is that somehow] white people have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past.” In order for black kids to be empowered, you “don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white.”

The criticism of Rice’s comments was fierce and she was accused of being a “soldier for white supremacy.” This should be news to Ms. Rice who herself was a victim of segregated schools as a child. The current “progressive” position seems to be that whites have to feel guilty even if they are not guilty because, somewhere in the distant past, some ancestor may have been guilty. This is nonsense of the highest order. Implied guilt is not productive as argued by John McWhorter in his column in the New York Times entitled “The Former Secretary of State is Right About the Inutility of White Guilt” (see reprinted article below).

This country’s founding document, The Constitution, began by stating that its goal was to form a “more perfect union.” That is still a work in progress. So as we go forward, we ‒ each in our own way ‒ need to work for the future while cognizant of the past. The future, however, is more important than assigning blame for the past.

Columbus and Jefferson – warts and all ‒ achieved remarkable things. Their sins should not be a cause for a failure to recognize their achievements.

Jefferson deserves the Jefferson Memorial overlooking the Tidal Basin in the nation’s capital and Columbus deserves his day.

October 29, 2021 by: John McWhorter

The Former Secretary of State is Right About the Inutility of White Guilt