Educated Americans believe, for the most part, that revenge–even when it can be excused or mitigated–is always wrong. In legal terms, right—by which I mean the principle of rightness in good behavior—almost always involves the assertion and protection of rights, which are something like the 10 Commandments or Plato’s Ideas or the Natural Law of the Stoics:
Hoping to find him in a sympathetic rather than critical mood, today I offer the gentle reader an English version of what is arguably the most important poem written in Russia in the last century.
Then what does an American citizen do when he discovers that his civil rights are not protected by governments who prefer to protect the universal human rights of illegal alines and criminals? Consider the situation in which the hero of a country song (Hank Williams, Jr.’s, “I Got Rights”) finds himself.
Instinctive qualms aside, I should like to say a few words about the role of pornography in modern life. Not from the ethical point of view, as this, on the face of it, is straightforward and makes no distinction between private and public, between a bedroom in Manhattan and a film studio in San Fernando Valley. The moral case is that unless activity of the kind pornography parodies has conception as its specific aim, it is beyond the pale. Once that activity is generalized and the aim obscured, it is no different from theft or fraud.
Since a decisive duel is about to be arranged, Iris–the messenger/rainbow of the gods–flies to Troy to prepare Helen. The face that launched a thousand ships is engaged in the entirely domestic task of weaving, but the design is of the Trojans and Greeks fightin
Yet another good reason to live in poverty, I reckon, is that paying a cool quarter of a million to get squashed inside a tin can at the bottom of the ocean should be well out of one’s reach. I have always regarded the appetite for adventure as at least as attendant on wealth as on feeblemindedness, and I must admit that the much-reviled comment by a leftist politician in England – to the effect that if millionaires can blow their fortunes on subaqueous deathtraps, it means they are not taxed enough – chimes in with my own macabre postmortem.
Conservatives and libertarians still like to celebrate Independence Day, while grousing about how today’s U.S. government is multiples larger than that of King George III, tyrant. But liberals nowadays, despite controlling most of the levers of power, especially the presidency, use the occasion to condemn the Declaration of Independence and everything that followed. Here’s George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times, columnist there for five decades:
As I write this, on Rumble I’m watching Trump’s South Carolina rally for Independence Day weekend. A choir just sang “America the Beautiful.” Now Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is speaking, describing the House investigations into President Biden, which revealed $5 million in bribes; and 15 calls by Hunter Biden, as well as two with the Big Guy, with Ukrainian oligarchs, which she said made a mockery of Trump’s impeachment and his ongoing persecution by the Biden-Garland Justice Department.
