I should think that Omarosa Manigault Newman must be weeping bitter tears and sticking little pins into a voodoo doll of John Brennan all this weekend, for he has stolen just about all of her publicity thunder in the end-of-week headlines and newscast coverage. A good few things are now obvious about her to that apparently small portion of the public (including myself) who didn’t watch reality TV series. One of those things is that she is a back-biting, vicious witch who blithely assumed that playing one for the cameras on a TV reality show would of course translate perfectly into a job at the White House, and another that taping conversations right and left to produce a tell-all inside book on the Trump administration would be just like secretly taping conversations for a tell-all book on the behind the scenes maneuvering on The Apprentice. Why on earth was she hired in the first place?
Crime and Punishment
On Public Display of MAGA
San Antonio, the town that I am pleased to say is my place of residence, made the national and international news this week – and not in a good way. My particular quadrant of suburban San Antonio was the scene of the now-notorious MAGA-hat-stealing-and-drink-throwing-incident. (A good selection of the resulting headlines are here )
The Whattaburger outlet where this took place is about two and a half miles from my house, adjacent to a brand-new Walmart, and the bank branch I used to do business with, and around the corner from the bank branch that I now do business with. The arrested-and-released-on-bail Kino Jimenez lives in another outlaying suburb – apparently with his mother. He also seems to have committed a series of prior offenses; not exactly an upright citizen, it appears, and one with extraordinarily poor impulse control. Looking at the video of this incident – and keeping in mind that nothing good happens at 2 AM – I see a rather thuggish Hispanic guy getting his jollies picking on a couple of weedy Anglo teenagers in an all-but-empty-restaurant in the wee hours. I’d venture a guess that if it hadn’t been the MAGA hat, it would likely have been something else. Bullies always find an easy target, and a ready justification for their thuggish impulses.
Crimesongs
There are a lot of good songs about the criminal way of life…
Emmylou Harris, Ain’t Living Long Like This
Tom Russell, Doin’ Hard Time in Texas
Ian Tyson, Claude Dallas
Emmylou Harris, Pancho and Lefty
Roy Drusky, Down in the Valley (Birmingham Jail)
Jimmie Rodgers, another version of the above, called Moonlight and Skies
Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues
Sam Cooke, Frankie and Johnny
Mississippi John Hurt, Stagger Lee
Wilson Pickett, another version of Stagger Lee
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (with Tom Russell), The Sky Above, The Mud Below
Two other great Tom Russell songs, Hong Kong Boy and He Wasn’t a Bad Kid When He Was Sober
What else?
Seth Barrett Tillman: The Tale of the Swedish Prosecutor, the Citizen, and the Human Being
See: The Case Against Deporting Immigrants Convicted of Crimes
Then see:
The prosecutor made a recommendation against deportation.
The prosecutor reasoned that the defendant was unlikely to be rehabilitated by confinement, and therefore, the defendant was likely to commit the same crime again. The prosecutor’s position was that whether the defendant goes on to rape a Swede (or a non-Swede in Sweden) or someone in the defendant’s own home country should not be considered because the health, safety, and lives of all potential future victims should be valued equally. And equality is a value upon which we all do or should agree.
Did the prosecutor act rightly or wrongly?
Memorial Day and the Deprecation of Freedom
On Memorial Day, we pause to reflect on those who died to protect our freedom. But today I have to wonder: In this year 2018, what proportion of Americans seriously value freedom?
Recently I encountered a meme on Facebook that went something like this:
Keep telling yourself that America is the land of the free while the rest of the developed world enjoys universal healthcare, free college, paid maternity leave, and a ton more vacation time than any of us get.
Nothing there about free speech, freedom of religion, or even freedom to pursue one’s chosen career. How many people think this way? I’m afraid it’s a nontrivial number and a growing one.
I don’t think I even need to post a lot of links in order to demonstrate that individual freedom is being devalued by many in America today: the evidence is too well known. There are surveys showing that large numbers of college students view ‘avoiding offense’ as more important than free speech. There are on-line mob attacks, and sometimes physical-world mob attacks, against those with dissident views. College students who do hold such dissident views often feel they must keep those views to themselves, and this is increasingly true in the business world as well. Americans have become tolerant of bullying bureaucrats and of virtually unlimited discretion on the part of prosecutors. There is surprisingly little concern about the shadow thrown on free speech by the murderous threats (and sometimes actions) of radical Islamists: draw a cartoon that offends them, and you may have to go into hiding.
So my question for today is: What factors are driving the devaluation of freedom in America today, and what can be done about it?