Month: February 2010

Weekend Viewing – Justice Thomas Q and A

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Ann Althouse links to a great video if you have an extra hour and a half this weekend. Justice Thomas does a very interesting Q and A with students from the U of Florida Law School. It isn’t all about law, and the law they talk about is easy to understand for non lawyers like myself.

I was struck by some of the things that Thomas said. He says the word “honesty” quite often. Also, he mentions “doing things right” a lot. I can really identify with both of those concepts.

One other thing that struck me was a concept he brought up of “things aren’t always as they seem”. I don’t want to spoil the whole video so I will leave it to you to see in what context he uses it in. It was a real eye opener and hit home with me.

I have ordered Justice Thomas’s book from Amazon (only $11 for hardcover) and look forward to posting a review here in a few weeks.

In general, I am always impressed when I hear the Supreme Court Justices speak and write. They seem to be the only ones above the fray as far as our governmental structure goes. Even though I disagree with the viewpoints of some of the justices, I really do respect them for the job they do.

“In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian gun owners are coming out of the shadows for the first time to mobilize, U.S.-style, against proposed new curbs on bearing arms.”

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“When gunmen attacked 10 sites in Mumbai in November 2008, including two five-star hotels and a train station, Mumbai resident Kumar Verma sat at home glued to the television, feeling outraged and unsafe.” – Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post

I have no idea if the above is an oddity reported as a trend, or, in fact, is a trend. Interesting story either way. (Link thanks to commenter “elf”)

Update: Belated thanks for the link, Instapundit!

McDougall On Tocqueville

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Walter McDougall introduces us to young Alexis de Tocqueville in his book Throes of Democracy:

Alexis de TocquevilleAs late as 1997 a historian with some pretensions to veracity wrote (albeit tongue in cheek) that “complete objectivity about America is a characteristic only of God and Alexis de Tocqueville”. In truth, the young Frenchman’s methods were highly subjective. He was an aristocrat whose parents narrowly escaped the guillotine during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. So he came to America inclined to believe that government in the hands of the envious masses was far more dangerous than rule by disinterested aristocrats. Tocqueville was raised a Catholic, but exposure to Enlightenment philosophy hobbled his faith: “I believe, but I cannot practice”. So he came to America with little appreciation of what made religious people tick, especially Protestants of British stock. His classical education and training for a French legal career biased his mind toward deduction rather than empirical, historical thought. So he came to America with little sense of the profound experience that inspired the thirteen colonies to found the United States.

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Quote of the Day

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Quoted here:

“This isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception,” Mr. Blair said. “It’s a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam’s history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program or is that a risk it is responsible to take?”

(See also.)