What happened to the U.S. Constitution?

I live in a society that tortures people. I do not mean only that people in secret prisons are tortured -- and it is becoming increasingly clear that this secret torture must be a matter of policy at some level -- but also that ordinary persons in the United States (or at least in New Jersey) are routinely subjected to horrible physical and psychological tortures in prisons and jails, even in their own homes. (See "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "An Open Letter to My Torturers, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")

Worse, persons are secretly subjected to questioning under hypnosis and in a drugged condition -- something which is clearly illegal under existing U.S. law -- and the information obtained in this manner is then used against them by state governments, even in civil proceedings, provided that government officials can later claim to have obtained the information from some "other" source. This activity may be accompanied by daily destruction and defacements of written or dreative work of victims, interference with any prospective advantage for victims, "anonymous" slanders and other behind-the-back attacks against victims. (See my essay on the jailing of Chomsky's Turkish publisher and also http://www.phrusa.org/research/torture/i/psych_torture.jpg .)

Many victims of psychological torture will not be told the truth concerning what has been done to them or by whom. Eventually, they can be made to "do" something (the legal equivalent of not wearing a seatbelt perhaps) that can then be used against them to justify the torture's producing the sanctioned conduct. The reality of the harm done to victims and their loved-ones -- for life -- will be ignored, so long as "plausible denial" (a believable lie) can be maintained by the very authorities, who then judge the ethics and legality of their victims. All requests for information will be ignored. "Let's pretend that nothing happened." I don't think so. "Maybe it was for your own good." I doubt it. What is for my own good is not for some state bureaucrat to decide.

A person experiencing such surrealistic torments and crimes -- even falling apart as a result of torture or the after-effects of trauma -- is expected to find some way to reconcile long held political and legal ideals with the reality of daily and cynical betrayals of those ideals by politicians and judges, who will criticize him for failing to live up to those ideals.

It will be necessary for victims to find a way to keep from throwing up when contemplating the overfed types sporting judicial robes along with shaky and insincere smiles for newspaper cameras in the ultimate example of cognitive dissonance that is now, much too often, the truth concerning America's judges, even as they comment (with a satisfied belch) on the need for ethics on the part of others in government and law. (See "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

Are these the best people we can find to put on the judicial bench? They can't be.

If you become an attorney hoping to find Brennan, Brandeis, Holmes, Cardozo, Douglas, Bazelon, Marshall or any of the other great jurists associated with U.S. legal decisions that you studied in school, then you are in for a major surprise and disappointment when you finally get into a law practice. Most of the time, you will encounter political hacks and former "C" students in law school, who are now wearing judicial robes and pompous smiles in county courthouses. It is your job to pretend that each of them is Oliver Wendell Holmes, something which they secretly (or not-so-secretly) believe anyway. Most of them are provided with a small office for themselves and another, much larger, office for their egos.

These disgusting realities are KNOWN to state appellate tribunals producing legal opinions that are ostensibly concerned to protect Constitutional rights of citizens -- rights which those same tribunals ignore every day. Much of American law has become an elaborate FRAUD, seemingly designed to deceive or persuade a population, in Orwellian terms, that "slavery is freedom." This is accomplished with the assistance of persons calling themselves "therapists," who are all-too often sadistic torturers. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are events that have a history in the shadow-world of "control" of domestic dissent in the United States. You may be the next victim.

For those of us who continue to believe that the U.S. Constitution is the best document of its kind in the world and that much of the case law interpreting that text is magnificent, the only possible conclusion is that we live in a dual reality: a pretense at compliance with Constitutional provisions is often given lip service publicly; even as a private and well-known reality of torture and secrecy, denials of access to information and exploitation, is winked at by powerful officials growing rich on the people's money, while wielding disproportionate power.

Why do we put up with this situation?

Much of this cruelty and exploitation is only made possible by a stupefied and apathetic population which feels no need to keep faith with the men and women who have died to preserve our Constitutional guarantees. So long as the Constitution exists as a hope, if nothing else, this is not a situation which should be tolerated. It is time to hit the streets again with a little protest, sixties-style. It must be possible for Americans to recognize the horror and obscenity of this grim reality.

As July 4th approaches, the idea that torture is O.K., if it is done secretly (which I call the "Tuchin/Riccioli" doctrine, at least in New Jersey), must not be allowed to succeed, not even in that unfortunate state:

... Should we create a professional cadre of torturers, of interrogators who have been trained in the techniques and who have learned to overcome their instinctive revulsion against causing pain? Medical executioners were [traditionally] schooled in the arts of agony. ...

Should there be a medical sub-specialty of torture doctors, [they're called "behaviorist psychologists"] who ensure that gasping captives don't die before they talk? Recall the chilling words of Sgt Ivan Fredericks, one of the abusers at Abu Ghraib, who saw the body of a detainee after the interrogation went awry: "They stressed the man out so much he passed away." He was referring to Manadel Jamadi, whose ice-packed body was photographed at Abu Ghraib before the CIA spirited it away. ... Who should teach torture doctoring in medical school? [How about Terry and Diana?]

Professor David Luban asks:

Do we really want to create a torture culture and the kind of people who inhabit it? The ticking bomb distracts us from the real issue, which is not about emergencies, but about the normalization of torture. Some might argue that keeping the practice of torture secret avoids the moral corruption that might arise from creating a public culture of torture. But concealment does not reject the normalization of torture. It accepts it, but layers on top of it the normalization of state secrecy. The result [is] a shadow culture of torturers and those who train and support them, operating outside the public eye and accountable only to other insiders of the torture culture.


Remind politicians and judges that they work for you. (I use the word "work" to refer to most politicians' and judges' lucrative activities with some irony intended.) Tell them, as fans of the movie Network will recall, that after a disastrous war and occupation in Iraq, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, Katrina, widespread corruption in state governments, rising oil prices and diminished expectations: "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more!"

Walter Benjamin's Aesthetics of Redemption.

It is still not possible to post images, since they continue to be blocked. I hope someday to be able to do so again. Meanwhile, I like this movie image (a link appears below) from an eighties' romantic comedy. I'll let the reader make the necessary associations between that image and this text. I regret that obstructions and efforts to frustrate my communications, make it impossible for me to share these images and thoughts in the form that I would like. Someday, we'll have real freedom of expression on-line. According to my security system, my most frequent attacker is 217.160.255.99, since 6-21-06 there have been 24 intrusion attempts on my system. Perhaps this is only a coincidence.

http://www.gagarinreport.com/images/lloyd.jpg (If the link is blocked from this page, simply Google it on your own.)

Picture a hunchback, wandering through the old streets of Paris, looking into antique shops and flea markets. He comes upon a display containing many old broaches and pieces of jewelry, and finds a dusty old cameo. He cleans the antique artifact, discovering a portrait of an eighteenth century woman. She is beautiful. With a little cleaning, the colors suddenly come to life in this miniature work of art. The hunchback is entranced. He researches this work in order to discover the identity of the sitter, so beautifully "seen" by the painter. Who was the painter? What did he feel for this woman? Who was the woman in the portrait?

Eventually -- through painstaking research -- an identification is possible. A romance is suspected between the painter (maybe Fragonard? Watteau?) and this mysterious woman. Their story is kept alive by the hunchback. They are returned to us, somehow, as a result of this rediscovery and retelling. They are seen again. For them to be "seen" is to be placed within the evolving narrative of an artistic and political tradition.

Miniatures were meant to be carried by loved-ones, usually men, to war. Perhaps the dreamy quality in her eyes, the love in those eyes, was meant for this man in her life, who may have perished in those wars. Who carried this portrait? What happened to him? What were their names? Shall we give them new names? Do we have the power or right to name them? Do we have their permission to do so, now that they are gone?

Walter Benjamin is an enigmatic figure in twentieth century philosophy. He is a Marxist and a mystic, a proponent of mass culture and its critic, writing of hashish and revolution as well as Talmudic interpretation. Like Ernst Bloch, he may be thought of as a "theologian of revolution." His life was brief and tragic. Dying in 1940, as he fled the Nazis, he felt that his work was incomplete. His books are curiously enigmatic and resonate for readers today, even for readers whose enthusiasm for all forms of Marxism has now waned or disappeared entirely.

For Benjamin, the world is a city of ruins bearing witness to a meaning which has fled and must be reconstructed. Each of us is like that forgotten artifact found by the hunchback. We are immersed in the half-forgotten history and abandoned intellectual tradition in which we find ourselves -- and perhaps in something more, call it an ancient cosmic narrative that we make or discover? -- which alone can provide us with meaning and truth. There are obvious associations with the work of contemporary philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, especially his arguments in After Virtue.

To find the "truth" about that miniature work of art is to place it within a history, an artistic tradition, a trajectory in time and culture, an artistic vocabulary, perhaps, even a spiritual tradition, most of all within a narrative of reconstruction. Does the work suggest an association with Christian iconography? Is the woman in the painting hinting at an identification with, say, Mary Magdalene? There is no possible meaning for such objects -- or the persons associated with them -- outside of an aesthetic community and a shared journey in time. Taken from its context, removed to another planet, the art work is literally meaningless. To know what the object is, it is necessary to rebuild its world, so as to place it in a community.

Each piece of rubble or ruin in Benjamin's imaginary city is, therefore, a clue to a lost and not yet rediscovered paradise. For Benjamin, "everything present testifies to an absent truth and offers itself to the critical eye as a sign to be interpreted." Richard Kearney comments:

... everything real points to a surreal level of meaning beyond itself. "Allegory displaces authenticity in all things," writes Benjamin, in characteristically cryptic fashion. The world can no longer be taken for granted as a universal given; it is now exposed as an allegory with a complex of meanings open to a wide range of implicitly related readings. Benjamin never forgot the cabalistic teaching that there are at least forty-nine levels of meaning to everything!

Benjamin sees himself as the hunchback living in the "interstices" (see the work of Miami philosopher and artist, Alfredo Triff) of his imaginary city. See Alfredo Triff, Art and The Interstice (Florida; Saeta ed./Nosti Press, 1991), pp. 71-74. He often signed his letters "the hunchback." Professor Arendt says: "In his writings and also in conversation he used to speak about the 'little hunchback,' ... a German fairy tale figure out of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the famous collection of German folk poetry." Benjamin is the collector, the hunchback, who redeems objects from utilitarian routine.

How much more necessary is this act of redemption when it comes to persons in our world? The receptionist who longs to be seen as a person, in her uniqueness and pain at being stared at every day; the mailcarrier who is not seen but only sought for what he brings, whose conversation interests us for a moment and in whom we express human concern -- both of these persons become friends in exchange for our concern. So many people in large cities stare at strangers and scream, silently, that they wish to be seen.

In a similar way, the woman you see as a sexual object -- a thing to be used and discarded -- I see as a person. Her beauty is more powerful and true, as it fades -- fades only physically -- with the passage of time, becoming something more private, spiritual and more truly ours, becoming a much greater (because it is non-physical) beauty for me, because I love her. Loving someone is the ultimate act of redemption, of "seeing" that person, in all of her complexity and contradictions. "I see the beauty inside and that makes you beautiful on the outside."

Hannah Arendt summarizes Benjamin's stance in her introduction to Illuminations: "Collecting is the redemption of things which is to complement the redemption of man." The hunchback, thus, also becomes an object of redemption, a person who is in turn "collected" or seen aesthetically and morally, in something akin to a dream state. In the first Surrealist Manifesto, Andre Breton writes: "Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought." In Benjamin's mutual process of redemption, the "power to name" is highly significant:

Things have no proper name, writes Benjamin, except in God. For in his creative word, God called them into being, calling them by their proper names. In the language of men, however, they are overnamed. There is in the relation of human languages to that of things, something that can be approximately described as overnaming: overnaming as the deepest linguistic reason for all melancholy ... It is certain that the language of art can be understood only in the deepest relationship to the language of signs.

Recall my discussion of the constitutive power of naming. To provide you with a name, is to constitute you as a subject. Hence, the power of epithets, but also of titles. Naming is the ultimate freedom in construction by way of language, so that a name that we are forced to impose upon another is also an imposition on us. No one knows my name, except the person who loves me.

Choice is everything with language use, as with morals and love. You must choose my name and I must choose to accept it. A distinction is drawn, then, between symbol and allegory: "For symbolism the divine is imminent; for allegory it is radically transcendent, a perpetual absence, [maybe a refusal to presume to name what cannot be named?] a Deus Absconditus."

For Benjamin, redemption is possible only with a turning of the modernist and Capitalist conception of time inside out: no longer linear, time becomes a spiral or mandala, making all times present, all moments now. Think of Borges in El Aleph or William Blake's "infinity in one hour."

Benjamin counsels a messianic form of Marxism or socialism that fights to redeem the forgotten past. Those ghostly values are all round us, implied in our art and religions, in the aspirations and struggles of our fathers and mothers. Redemption is a restoration of what was broken and lost in other lives, in our own individual lives too. In the film Amistad, the African hero calls upon his ancestors at a moment of crisis and refuses a "slave name." Similarly, by acquiring an entry into the philosophical project of humanity, we call upon our ancestors in our daily struggle with these questions of meaning, purpose and tragedy. This brings Benjamin to an engagement with memory and Jung's "collective subconscious."

This act of naming and constructing is a rescuing of what has always been sought or yearned for, of what is found in our practices and institutions, the gold at the bottom of the well. Think again of American Constitutional hermeneutics. What is it that we are always trying to get right in Constitutional interpretation? It is at this point that Benjamin's project may be brought into a useful relation with Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics of freedom. Richard Wolin writes:

In all of these respects, it is clear that the vitalist fascination with archaic images, the unconscious, dreams, shocks, collective forms of experience, and states of ecstasy in which the unity of the self dissolves, represented for Benjamin an important complement to what he found of value in the profane illuminations of the surrealists. Reactionary thought, too, contained "energies of intoxication" that needed to be won over for the revolution. But in this case, it would not be a ... (a revolution from the right).

Benjamin's answer is a theory of dream consciousness:

His theory of dream consciousness has much in common with Bloch's notion of "dreaming towards the future." It is precisely in this sense that he employs Michelet's saying, "Every epoch dreams its successor," as a motto to introduce his central statement of method[.] The allegory-laden, commodity utopias of the nineteenth century engendered a proliferation of dream- and wish-images, a phantasmagoria, that humanity would be able to possess in reality only if it becomes conscious of it." Benjamin associated the act of "becoming conscious" with the moment of awakening from the dream; [by understanding its meaning?] it was an act that at the same time, entailed a realization of the utopian potential contained in the dream.

We look around us and see what our obscene collection of objects and commodities are hinting at, as the "dream" of our time and place: an idealized or fantasy image of community and perfection. These trinkets bearing price tags are all about the hope for love and community that is displaced into a single act in our society, which is economic consumption. We will never be satisfied or fulfilled by consuming. Our human relations are mediated by money, including sexual relations, which become the simulacra of intimacy. We get to buy things and people, when what we really want is to find love and meaning in relationships that are freely chosen. For Benjamin, the objects themselves -- even the humblest of them -- can be redeemed for this true human project, and thereby made meaningful through the rediscovery of their beauty.

This project cannot be separated from the religious aspirations of humanity. Its dual aspect may be suggested by the frequent self-identification of Jesus, for example, as both "the son of man" and "the son of God," a realization of our spiritual natures in this material world, here and now. This is a cabalistic (we are "pierced vessels") and gnostic ambition, connecting Judaism and Christianity, but even more it is at the center of the universal mythical imagination of humanity. This achievement of full humanity is what Joseph Campbell describes as the purpose of the "hero's journey."

This is not simply a utopian aspiration, since as Karl Marx said: "Humanity only sets itself tasks that it can solve." It is only made to seem impossible by the logic of a system that wishes to program us into roles as docile consumers. We are hampsters on the running wheel of endless commercial activity in our consumer society. Accordingly, hope becomes dangerous and those who create or seek beauty, those who dare to "imagine," must be ostracized and dismissed as fools or dreamers. This imagining is a very American activity, where commercial rewards are really incidental to achievement, though they are often mistaken for achievement itself.

Benjamin anticipated all of this, insisting that we must continue to hope, however desperate our situation may be, since "hope was only created for those without hope."

Eduardo Galeano Against Censorship.

A number of readers request further attacks on New Jersey's Supreme Court and politicians, including, I guess, quite a few New Jersey lawyers who wish to remain anonymous. I will do my best to comply later in the week. Meanwhile, I am suddenly popular in the UK. Lawyers are big on anonymity. http://www.ypster.co.uk/g/1772102.html http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/141160413X/203-4393889-3959920?v=glance&n=266239 ; and in Germany: "Mein Warenkorb auf einen Blick" http://www.bol.de . (Whatever that means.)


Edwardo Galeano responds to efforts to silence Noam Chomsky:

"The big media in the United States [in my case, the censors are probably organized crime figures and/or New Jersey's political hacks, or the hired help] aren't as omnipotent as they think they are. According to them, Noam Chomsky doesn't exist. But if so, ... his voice -- his countervoice -- manages to reach the young people of his own country, despite the censors who would like to silence him."

All of the obstacles I encounter, on a daily basis, to writing these blog entries -- hours of obstacles and frustrations -- only make me more determined to make my statements. They tell me that I must be hitting a nerve. Of course, I don't presume to compare myself with Noam Chomsky or Eduardo Galeano in terms of the intelligence and wisdom of what I have to say, only in my need to say it.

Censors -- official or unofficial -- will never win in America because what they fear is truth and reason, which are things that cannot be stopped or denied. My inspiration today is Malcolm X and Noam Chomsky. I cannot post images, so I will provide links for them; my writing is sometimes obstructed, along with my access to this blog, so I will try again. I will retype the essays, as many times as necessary, even re-posting them elsewhere, if all else fails. My texts may be defaced by hackers, so I will revise them as often as necessary.

I sense that it is these would-be hackers and censors -- and not me -- who are frightened by what I say and, even more, of the consequences of a closer look at their illicit activities. So let's hope the FBI is taking that closer look. My feeling is that the feds are doing just that and have been for some time. Efforts to silence me (or any critic) are the equivalent of a red flag for them.
Why is free expression frightening to gangsters and Fascists?

Well, even they know that their "ideas" or arguments are incoherent and indefensible. They fear dialectics because they are bound to lose all arguments, even against a moderately articulate interlocutor, like me. People who endorse stupidity, who hate and burn books, tend not to do well in debates or in any rational discussions. They tend to commit their crimes -- censors are always criminals, even when they are called "judges" in a society -- getting away with their actions only because of the silence of an apathetic and distracted population. Don't be apathetic and silent.

Programs like "Democracy Now" and alternative media are vitally necessary for you to be fully informed concerning what is going on in the world. I am always loyal to The New York Times, since the sheer abundance of information compensates for any single journalist's slant. You may wish to avoid Fox News and CBS News, unless you want to know the official positions of Republicans and Democrats. Remember that censorship begins with the lone voice, then leads to newspapers and television channels, eventually to those four minutes of hate described by Orwell and a ban on all books, except for those of a select few.

Apathy and distraction are enemies of democracy, so is ignorance and stupidity. Nothing pleases Fascists more than an ineffective system of education, which is guaranteed to prevent people from realizing that their pockets are being picked. It is even better when the ineffective public education system can be reserved (mostly) for the "lower orders" in society. Hence, the obligation to be as intelligent and well-informed as we can be. Our freedom may well depend on knowledge and intelligence to develop strategies of resistance to unjust power.

Conservatives I respect have the courage of their convictions, like Bill Buckley or William Bennett. They have the decency to engage their adversaries in face-to-face debates, rather than slithering around in the shadows hoping to plunge a rhetorical dagger in someone's back. I doubt that conservatives are responsible for the obstruction efforts directed at this blog and at my work. By the way, whatever they may call themselves, people who seek to censor others are not exactly adhering to the policies of the Democratic party. Read Gore Vidal and other liberals. You will find them censored just as often (or more often) than their counterparts on the Right.

This leads me to Antonio Gramsci's concept of "hegemony." In the absence of alternatives, people are lulled into complacency by big media's pacifying "chewing gum for the mind." A study I once read indicated that brain patterns in multihour television viewers, who do not read, resemble the cerebral patterns of persons in a light sleep or trance. What is in their minds must remain a mystery, my guess is that it isn't much. Unfortunately, being asleep is highly dangerous when politicians and crooks (overlapping categories among my would-be censors in New Jersey) are in the house. So wake up America and smell the decaffinated coffee and eat your tofu sandwich. You need your strength to fight against all this conditioning.

Many of us feel that most of the vital information about big events in the world is not a part of "mainstream" television coverage -- yet t.v. is where a majority of people learn about the world -- and network news is show business. Each of the major political parties has "friends" in "the" big media, who will deliver their messages, putting their "spin" on things. True, there are also honest journalists -- fewer of them every day -- trying to tell controversial stories. They are an endangered species.

"It's an aspect of all our lives," Duncan Kennedy writes, "that we feel ourselves ... trapped within systems of ideas that we feel are false, but [that we] can't break out of. We deal constantly, all of us, with others who seem to be turned against themselves by things they believe, things that we think are in some sense wrong -- constrictingly distorted."

Psychobabblers -- usually behaviorists -- coopted intellectuals and show business types are among the intellectual storm troopers of an establishment that is well aware of living in the Age of Media. "Simulacra" (Baudrillard), including the artificial semblance of democracy we often live with, may allow for an avoidance of true democracy or accountability by our politicians to the governed masses, masses they exploit in an ever-more brazen manner. "And now a word from our sponsor ..." may have become the most ominous words in the English language.

To live in a plastic and malleable cultural reality, consisting mostly of a system of media signs and symbol-structures, is to become a slave of the sign-makers and readers, especially when persons are denied the tools to do either of those things for themselves, that is, to make or read the important media signs. God forbid that you should raise the issue of "false consciousness" since you will then be dismissed as an elitist. Power likes it that way.

Power loves the semi-radical morons spouting banalities ("it's all relative!"), unaware that they are serving their oppressors, particularly when they can be enlisted to censor or silence others. Perhaps by disrupting Internet blogs and other populist media or communicative efforts. If you are cooperating with efforts to destroy this blog, ask yourself: "Why are you helping people to silence anyone?" Money? How can you believe people who would have you silence others? You can't. Next week it may be your blog that is under attack.

"One reason why it is hard [to enlighten people,] and why people don't want to talk about it, is that it sounds incredibly elitist to engage in a discussion in which the premise is that someone you want to help is misguided, or wrong, or has had their mind confused by a norm: that you must never talk about false consciousness, there are no absolutes [-- if I only had a nickel for every time I have heard a person make that self-refuting statement, I'd be a wealthy man! --] no one knows the truth, and therefore you can't use as a complicated explanatory hypothesis, and you shouldn't think about, the idea that one of the things that may be going on is a gigantic brain wash."

I must now pause to make it clear that I do not claim to "enlighten" people, since anyone of my particular ethnicity is deemed arrogant or presumptuous if he or she claims to enlighten another person about anything. Such a claim is called "elitism" by the true elitists and biggots. I am supposed to allow the trendy and emaciated fashionistas dressed in black to inform me about matters they know less well than I do. I keep forgetting to play that passive role. Next thing you know, I'll want to get "on top" when having sex. Yes, I know. I'm a bitch.

I do favor a genuinely free conversation between political adversaries. I am confident that I will do well in such a discussion. I am pretty sure that I can defend my views. This is less arrogance about my skills as an advocate than respect for the merits of these views, views like freedom of speech and the RIGHT to express any idea, regardless of who doesn't like that idea. I am an American Constitutionalist. My radical suggestion is that we actually live the ideas that we claim to accept, applying them to everyone for once.

Don't torture people for their own good or suppress speech by "little people" (like me) because you resent the fact that I may be more intelligent or articulate than you are, which is probably not saying much about me. How's that for a radical suggestion? Finally, Eduardo Galeano speaks of Chomsky's use of language as a golden key to open "prisons of the mind":

"I suspect Chomsky is familiar with the key that opens forbidden doors. As a renowned scholar of linguistics, he ought to be. 'Abracadabra,' the magic word used by people everywhere, comes from the Hebrew abreq ad habra and it means, 'Keep spreading your fire until the end.' ..."

"The space between a handshake ...": More smoke-filled rooms in New Jersey.

It has taken a lot of work and (possibly) the intervention of the Holy Spirit, but it appears that the image-posting feature of this blog is back on track, at least for today. I expect more harassment and obstructions in the days and weeks ahead. The top portion of my screen seems to have been taken over (June 19) by a browser theft or other problem, so I do not know whether I will be able to post here again. I will keep trying.



David W. Chen & Matt Richtel, "New Jersey Demands Data on Phone Call Surveillance and Is Sued by U.S.," The New York Times, June 16, 2006, at p. B1.
"Tom's River: Water Managers Indicted Over Tests," The New York Times, June 16, 2006, at p. B7.
"Attorney General Opposes Anti-Corruption Bill," The New York Times, June 16, 2006, at p. B7.



In a highly unusual move, New Jersey's Attorney General (Zulima Farber) issued subpoenas to phone companies doing business in New Jersey to determine whether any of them complied with requests for information from the National Security Agency (NSA), so as to decide whether New Jersey consumer protection laws -- which (allegedly) guarantee privacy rights to citizens of the Garden State -- were violated.

In a counter-move the feds filed a law suit "to block the subpoenas, setting up a legal showdown pitting the state's authority to protect consumer rights against the federal government's national security powers." This is what is known in legal circles as a "pissing contest." My prediction is that New Jersey's subpoenas will soon be quashed by a federal judge.

When it comes to U.S. Constitutional Law, this contest is a "no brainer." Under the preemption and supremacy doctrines, the President's unique responsibility for national security concerns -- especially in war time -- to ensure the health and safety of citizens is almost always deemed "primary and fundamental." It should be.

States cannot presume to rewrite federal executive decisions governing intelligence strategy, so as to satisfy domestic or political agendas (which is surely part of what is going on here), and embarass an Administration from a rival political party. National security will take priority over civil privacy and election year politics, since persons killed by terrorists are unlikely to be worried about their privacy when chatting on the phone with friends. (And we don't care if they are.) My guess is that there is a subtext here that we simply do not know, possibly a political deal that fell apart, which explains these bizarre actions by the Attorney General.

The president's actions will be struck down only when they exceed the boundaries of separation of powers established under the Constitution. Thus, when the executive goes beyond his or her national war time authority to act in the national defense in order to limit Congressional statutory definitions and limitations on spending in executing policy or "enforcing the law," then there will be a Constitutional crisis where the president loses. Also, when individuals are violated in their exercise of fundamental privacy and free speech or worship rights -- outside of any theater of war, domestically -- then presidential directives must fall.

"Clifford Fishman, a professor [of Constitutional Law] at Catholic University Law School[,] who is an expert on electronic surveillance law, also said the actions by both state and federal governments were laden with political overtones." (An "error" was inserted in this essay since my last reading of it.)

You're not kidding, Cliff.

"Professor Fishman said New Jersey's subpoenas -- issued by a Democratic Administration -- 'appeared to be a political move to try to embarrass the Bush Administration as well as the phone companies.' But he added that the Bush Administration responded with a howitzer instead of a sniper.' ..."

New Jersey has never before been very concerned about the privacy or any other rights of its citizens, since these rights, allegedly, are routinely violated by its own law enforcement agencies and courts. Standing? One incidental result of this NSA-obtained information may be to learn how often New Jersey citizens' privacy rights have been violated by their own state government, which then covered-up those violations. My guess is that this sort of criminal disregard for persons by New Jersey's government Mafiosos is common.

Politicians in Trenton are terrified, allegedly, that some of those telephone records are going to turn up inconvenient conversations between themselves and organized crime figures (maybe that's what the A.G. wanted!) -- or other shady characters -- along with questionable telephone activities on the taxpayers' dime. A few officials have probably been involved in "phone porn" (Neil M. Cohen?) or, perhaps, setting up dates with escort services (Jim McGreevey likes the Boys). Use of escorts is what is known in New Jersey politics as "fact finding" missions.

In the most corrupt state government in the nation (100+ convictions so far and counting!), phone conversations are bound to be tainted in any number of ways. State officials may not want the feds to see that. "I have reason to believe" that federal officials will not be surprised by such discoveries. (See "Is New Jersey Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz unethical or only incompetent?," "Da Jersey Code," and "Cement is Gold," at Philosopher's Quest http://www.PhilosophersQuest@blogspot.com/ also at http://www.Critique@groups.msn.com/ .)

If links to my blogs or MSN group happen to be blocked, mysteriously, then simply Google them. Attacks on my writings will be constant in order to prevent you from learning these facts.

As for New Jersey government officials being "cleared" for receipt of security information, the U.S. Attorney is probably concerned that -- whatever you tell government officials in New Jersey, with a few exceptions -- you may also be telling organized crime, since (allegedly) the same people are usually found in both "organizations." (See "Same Old, Same Old," at Philosopher's Quest http://www.PhilosophersQuest@blogspot.com/ .)

When was the last time you saw an Attorney General oppose anti-corruption legislation. Weird. New Jersey public officials sent to jail for corruption will, evidently, be able to collect on pension payments provided by taxpayers. This way they can still feed on the public treasury, like Dracula nibbling at your neck. These decisions by the Corzine Administration are highly disappointing in light of declarations that corruption and machine politics would finally end with the election of Mr. Corzine. Let's not be too hasty, there may be a method to this madness. Maybe it's just madness.

Meanwhile, "two former top managers at a Tom's River water company were indicted yesterday by a state" -- did they fail to make their pay offs? -- "grand jury on charges that they manipulated tests to hide high levels of radium in the drinking water in Tom's River, where environmental officials have linked contaminated water to childhood cancer. ..."

I wonder how it is that the radium levels are so high? Despite all of the legislative protections, why is there so much pollution and medical waste in New Jersey waters? Where is it coming from? How come polluters seem to get away with their activities? Where are the state inspectors? Hey, maybe they're on the phone? Residents of the nation's "cancer alley" in northern New Jersey want to know? You want to know. Don't you? I sure do.

As they say on Fox News (except that I actually mean it), "we report, you decide."

Antonio Gramsci on Hegemony and Praxis Consciousness.

The image feature for this post has been disabled by New Jersey hackers, so if you wish to enjoy an image to accompany this post, see http://www.insinet.it/rifondazione/gramsc.JPG

I also have no way of knowing how many people read these essays, view my profile, or read my book. Suggest to your friends that they view these sites, making it clear to one and all that the numbers being shown are unreflective of the true number of readers visiting these sites.


Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 322-377 ("The Study of Philosophy").
Michael Walzer, "Antonio Gramsci," in The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 80-101.
Richard Kearney, "Antonio Gramsci," in Modern Movements in European Philosophy: Phenomenology, Critical Theory, Structuralism (New York: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 169-189.
Duncan Kennedy, "Antonio Gramsci and the Legal System," Vol. VI, ALSA Forum No. 1 (1979), also available at: http://duncankennedy.net
Duncan Kennedy, Sexy Dressing etc.: Essays on the Power and Politics of Cultural Identity (Cambrige: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 1-34.
Noam Chomsky, "The Manufacture of Consent," in The Chomsky Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1987), pp. 121-137.
Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 93-125.


One of my frustrations in political discussions is the lack of reading on the part of conversational partners, who are often very bright, but whose thinking and range of references as products of the American educational system is (to put it mildly) much too narrow. The range of acceptable opinions or what is deemed a "rational," "appropriate," or "educated" response to controversial issues -- especially in law school -- is homogenized to an extent that these young people cannot imagine. Hence, the standard complaint from the global community that Americans are all "stupid or shallow" becomes understandable. Young people are too often taught to be "narrow" and stupid by the educational system.

What if learning and scholarship are a kind of child-like playing? Suppose that it is best to encourage free thinking and creativity while providing structure, for young people? Are we confident that the American educational system is encouraging creativity and original thought?

Film producer Ishmael Merchant explained to an interviewer that Americans "are mindless at the movies. They want explosions, there is only a tiny number who come to our beautiful movies." James Ivory, his American partner and a director of many fine films, smiled and added: "We hope the number of Americans attracted to our films will not be tiny."

Meanwhile, these "stupid and shallow Americans" (like me?), are also accused of sinister plots to run the world. So make up your minds. We cannot be morons and evil geniuses at the same time, unless we've had a few drinks and have been taken to dinner. (I'll have the Diet Coke and grilled steak, also a single red rose please, then I am all yours.)

Problems associated with failures in the educational system produce unfortunate tendencies in popular culture.

Gore Vidal explains that "both teachers and taught" in American universities do their thinking within an ideology that excludes much of the most important contemporary scholarship in politics and humanities because it takes place outside the American context.

Noam Chomsky complains about government "manufacturing consent" in a media-saturated environment, where truth often cannot emerge amidst the hue and cry of our 24-hour televised carnival.

The philosopher who can help you to get a grasp on this predicament is Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). Gramsci was born in Sardinia. He was an Italian Marxist, whose brave opposition to Fascist rule led to his arrest in 1926. Gramsci spent the final ten years of his life in prison, writing influential works that made him much more of a global influence than he would have been by placing bombs in post offices. His work is more applicable today than ever before.

Marxist theory, especially "Scientific Marxism" -- with its pretensions to deterministic readings of history and rigid dichotomy between base and superstructure in the analysis of culture and law -- is unacceptable to many readers, especially in the aftermath of the absurdities of our times. Materialistic Marxism is discredited and often associated with Marx's later works, especially Das Kapital.

"Humanistic" or "Critical" Marxism, on the other hand, is an idealistic and more fascinating theoretical tradition for many persons looking to make use of social theory to "comprehend our time in thought" (Hegel), while still struggling for greater social justice with individual freedom.

"The goal," as Engels should have said, if he didn't -- "is the unity of theory and praxis."

My suggestion is that you read Gramsci and Lukacs. But in the American context, you will also need Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, Angela Davis and Cornel West. Here is my ultimate academic sin: You may wish to put those radical Leftist thinkers together with defenders of freedom in the Conservative American political tradition. You may be surprised how much philosophers from opposite ends of the political spectrum have in common and seem to agree about, once a slight change in terminology is made. Read Bloom, Buckley, Arkes -- even the much-dreaded Leo Strauss -- and take what you can use from them. Their books are meant to be used by YOU. So is everything that I (or anyone else) writes for publication. Take what you need. Help yourself to the ideas that you find attractive.

Also, some of the best political thinking in America is found among philosophers of law. Absence of legal training hinders European scholars seeking to grasp American political philosophy. You need to read Learned Hand, Brennan, Warren Court opinions, Fuller, Dworkin, Posner and Kennedy. Social theologians also come in handy: Thomas Merton and Paul Tillich (who taught in America), and Europeans on the edge of philosophy and theology like Simone Weil and Edith Stein.

For Gramsci, philosophy is a matter of right. It is a vital human need because it creates social reality in every time period or "historical bloc." (See "Why philosophy is for everybody.")

Gramsci was drawing on Hegel, by way of Benedetto Croce, without realizing to what extent the young Marx would have agreed with him and provided helpful materials. Marx's early writings were lost and were not widely available in the teens and twenties of the last century. Gramsci understands the importance of civil society in defining political possibilities, what he calls "hegemony." Gramsci defines "ideological hegemony" as ...

... a phenomenon whereby a dominant class contrives to retain political power by manipulating popular opinion (or what Gramsci refers to as "the popular consensus") in civil society rather than simply by the crude military intervention of the state. Gramsci argued that ideological hegemony is often most effectively sustained through the clever exploitation of religion, education, or popular national cultures. (Richard Kearney quoting Gramsci)

From another angle:

The real bastion of bourgeois power is ordinary life. It is in everyday actions and relations, and even more importantly in the ideas and attitudes that lie behind these, that the hegemony of a social class is revealed. The state cannot be seized until that hegemony has been decisively overcome. (Michael Walzer)

Finally,

Hegemony is very close to our concept of ideology. It is the notion of the exercise of dominion through political legitimacy, rather than through force. Hegemony is the notion of the acquisition [or theft?] of the consent of the governed. (Duncan Kennedy)

This leads to the realization that culture must become a locus of struggle, that is, if we are to have any hope of building a better society. It is not enough to storm the Bastille or toss the first brick at the Winter Palace. The oppression that you struggle against is inside you, not just externalized in some building or courtroom that you can storm. Thank you, Michel Foucault.

Fight to be heard in the public square, also in the classroom, at the dinner table, or at the next party that you attend.

You have already internalized many forms of oppression and control as, say, an African-American woman -- or any woman in U.S. society -- so that your body and self-perception also become places of struggle. A woman's body is an all-too literal "battleground," since efforts are underway to define what a woman may "do" with that body and how it must appear. I mean not just sexually, through cultural or religious pressures -- which would be nothing new -- but also through revisions in law that seek to turn back (or destroy!) the clock on abortion rights. Real women have curves and should not be shamed into life-threatening dieting.

Media images associating Latino masculinity with Desi Arnaz (puffy sleeves, conga drums) or lovers (Valentino to Banderas), reduce you -- as a Latino man -- to something not to be taken seriously. A Latino is someone to laugh at or dismiss as non-intellectual, unimportant, "too stupid to be a philosopher or even a student." Those words are still inside me. Aside from the charge that we are "great lovers" (when they're right, they're right!), there is an important political meaning to these demeaning images and classifications of persons like me.

Dehumanizing or stereotyping is a way of trivializing and marginalizing protests and opposition, a dismissal of people's anger or rage that will only produce pathologies. It is a way of not seeing us. Lurking under the surface of these offensive attitudes is a sexism that never sleeps. An attack on the masculinity of Latino men -- a masculinity which is feared, by the way, as is African-American masculinity, though for very different reasons -- is also an attack on Latina women's self-defined roles as lovers/females.

By being considerate lovers, on the occasions when they are, Latino men who value romance over wealth or power are somehow regarded as "crazy," "unfair," or "fools" by men from other ethnic groups. (See Don Juan De Marco.)

By the same token, African-Americans are traditionally attentive lovers and romantic or powerfully sexual persons, because sexuality is a form of liberation (including spiritual liberation) in sexist/racist society. (See "All You Need is Love.")

Sexual love is a great equalizer. Hence, it is feared. This is especially true when it comes to the sexuality of women. Latinos and African-Americans -- for very different reasons -- are deemed threats to white masculine domination in sexual competition. The solution is to deny masculinity or "feminize" Latinos or (worse) to Lynch African-Americans. Lynching is something which can be accomplished in many ways. African-Americans are still "Lynched" every day in the U.S., in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, in courtrooms and offices throughout the nation. ("America's Holocaust.")

The system promises the man with the most money and status (the whitest, richest male) the greatest sexual success (best looking women).

Annoying minority group members who frustrate or interfere with "delivery" on that promise must be dealt with severely. And they are.

Identity becomes a site of revolutionary struggle, then, because if you accept what the culture tells you that you are -- by not publishing your work, by dismissing you as stupid, by attacking your masculinity, by trivializing and dismissing your arguments in courts or legislatures, by (in the worst scenarios, in the most terrible places) torturing and humiliating you, as a Latino man, then you will destroy yourself.

If you destroy yourself, you solve the problems of the power-structure. Power wins if you accept its version of reality ("Your work is shit and you are shit," a torturer once said to me) and interpretation of your identity. Millions do, usually from sheer exhaustion, ending by destroying themselves through addictions or other pathological behavior reflective of what they are told they must be in American society.

The system of cultural hegemony is designed to produce the self-destruction of millions of human beings who do not fit the reigning social norms or who pose a potential threat to myths of normality and happiness essential to the power-structure's control of private life. ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")

"Therapists" and other social scientists are part -- sometimes unknowingly, usually knowingly -- of the mechanisms of control or creation of "false consciousness," so is media imagery. "Join a gym and adjust," says your coopted therapist. (That's you, "Terry Tuchin" of Ridgewood, N.J.)

What is called "therapy" in America is often sugar-coated, pleasant (or not-so-pleasant) and subtle social control. But it is still control. It is always brutality with a smile.

Dr. Phil or John Gray's banalities will keep you away from people like Gramsci or Chomsky. Pointless action movies and mindless t.v. will distract you (as distinct from genuine art, like the Matrix films), as corporations pick your pockets and government taps your phone.

You are expected to be frustrated, like a child given ice cream as his toys and family members are taken away. ("'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")

Oppressed people must generate organic intellectuals (people like Malcolm X and Cesar Chavez, Noam Chomsky or Angela Davis) to resist domination, thus creating alternative narratives of self-definition (Ricoeur), which is another term for "permanent cultural revolution." (See The Prison Notebooks, pp. 241-243.)

As the father of a daughter, I see what sexism and the commodification of feminine sexuality does to young women. This is different from the enjoyment by adults of frank sexual material that celebrates human erotic appetite, often created by women, which is not the state's business. I fight against sexism in my daughter's life. These evils -- all forms of sexism -- have damaged women that I love, for different reasons and in different ways. I think sexism also hurts men.

I try to think of how to use demeaning sexist images for purposes of ridicule and dismantling in order to get as free of them as possible. Reversal is a good technique. The challenge seems overwhelming if one forgets that one is never alone in resisting these means of control. ("Let's Hear it For the Boys" and "Thoughts of a Domestic Revolutionary.")

I cannot post images in this blog today, for example, yet I hope that people will go out of their way to read these posts anyway. I hope readers will find images for themselves -- since I am prevented from doing so -- to accompany the readings and help me to make these points accessible to young people, who are now accustomed to thinking primarily in images. I have also created an MSN group to provide images for these posts. http://www.Critique@groups.MSN.com (MSN Groups and, I am told, MSN have "closed.")

The weapons of class war [revolution] today are not just military and mechanical but perhaps more significantly cultural. ... We must begin with a program of counter-hegemonic consciousness transformation [so as to achieve Sartre's "praxis-consciousness"].

Moral and intellectual reform begins with inner hegemonic struggle, and the new culture is never [entirely] new; it is in large part a rearrangement of ideas already present in the old. Think, for example, of the place of equality in bourgeois and oppositional thought. Equality is a real but distinctly limited value in the hegemonic culture, but it also has larger "Utopian" meanings at least occasionally invoked by ruling intellectuals, if only as a concession to subordinate groups. So it is more generally available, a contested or contestable value -- and the war of position is the name of the contest. Why shouldn't Marxist intellectuals participate in this war as real comrades, democratic philosophers, identifying simultaneously with ideas that are "secondary and subordinate" in the cultural system and with men and women who are "secondary and subordinate" in the social structure? (Gramsci, Michael Sandel and compare Angela Davis.)

"Things to Do in New Jersey After You're Indicted."

The image accompanying this post and the image feature has been blocked again, for some reason, so I suggest you see this image of me today: http://img23.photobucket.com/albums/v68/geo175/Wallpaper%201/coolhand.jpg and ask the authorities: "Why?" http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/images/por.jpg

I wonder why it is that I seem to experience so many difficulties with image-posting sometimes, also obstructions and spyware problems? I have created a discussion group at MSN called "Critique." http://www.Critique@groups.msn.com/

Any posts which are obstructed here, I will attempt to post at that site. MSN is now blocked, so I am back at blogger -- Face Book and My Space are next.

Laura Masnerus, "Witness Recovers From Overdose to Describe New Jersey Graft," The New York Times, June 7, 2006, at p. B1.
Peter Applebome, "Side Effects to a Remedy for Housing," The New York Times, June 7, 2006, at p. B1.
David Kocieniewski, "Audit Disputes $52 Million In School Medicaid Claims," in The New York Times, June 8, 2006, at p. B6.

"The case of Raymond J. O'Grady is the culmination of years of work by federal investigators, a tale opening a window on small-town graft that brought down more than a dozen public officials in a New Jersey county run by old-fashioned patronage politics." That's exactly like most New Jersey counties.

Political bosses in New Jersey's urban counties, especially, usually claiming an affiliation with the Democrats, "sell their souls" -- if they have any -- for votes delivered on election day. They use local government as well as connections to state and/or federal government funds and influence to create fiefdoms of power and privilege. A refrain from local bosses is: "This is my territory." Political and judicial hacks "misappropriate" funds and accumulate power for themselves and their friends, by controlling police (look up the history of the "old" and not-so-old West New York police department) and "clubhouse" appointments to the judicial bench.

The Times reports that "school districts in New Jersey improperly billed Medicaid more than $51 million for special education programs, according to a federal audit, filing claims for thousands of speech and physical therapy treatments that they could not prove were necessary, were provided by qualified practioners or were ever actually delivered."

What happened to the kids who really needed the service or the teachers trained to provide it? They got screwed. If you live in New Jersey, you got screwed -- and got to pay for it.

A few months down the road, I expect that we will be told that much of this money went to install a new pool in a politician's home or to pay for a fact-finding mission by some Jersey politicians in Las Vegas. Much of the money probably came back (under the table) to public officials. I would not be surprised if some of the money found its way also into the pockets of persons who, eventually, became judges. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Jaynee LaVecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

"You got a problem, go see Nicky or Joey. When you get to court, it'll be taken care of." This advice whispered in a young lawyer's ear is usually followed by a baritone's chuckle and a puff on a cigar that looks like a missile. "No, thanks. I'll take my chances." There are Municipal Courts in New Jersey where a little group of friends gathers out of earshot, right before sessions begin, seemingly working things out very nicely. This is always long before anything is said on the record and has nothing to do with legitimate plea bargaining. How are things at North Bergen Municipal Court? Union City? ("Jay Romano and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Any attorney who is outside "the club" will not receive such favorable deals from prosecutors. Any attorney on the local boss's "shit list" will be routinely sanctioned for behavior that gets a nod when it comes from others, his or her clients will be treated more severely, whatever may be the merits of their cases. The reasons for getting on the secret "shit list" will never be explained and cannot be appealed. An unwillingness to bow down to these local potentates may be sufficient to earn their hostility or even disbarment. Think of the goons' hostility as a badge of honor. Nothing in any rule book provides for this. It is just how things work. "That's how it's always been done."

These sordid realities and unwritten exceptions in New Jersey's corrupt legal world should be explained in law school. Maybe on the bar exam there should be a question about the proper way to pay your respects to the local unelected official who really runs the court system in Trenton.

"Mr. O'Grady, 56, a former committee man in Middletown Township, N.J., is charged with taking $8,000 in cash to help steer municipal work to contractors" -- this sort of thing is a daily occurence in most counties in the Garden State -- "including two men who turned out to be agents of the F.B.I."

The F.B.I. has an annoying tendency to spoil everybody's fun. These corrupt "public servants" are involved in "getting" people appointed as judges and in "getting" a few "big time lawyers" on the big time bar committees. These are the sort of local "public servants" who (not being encumbered with ethical concerns themselves) evaluate the ethics of others or have an influence on who gets to do so. The opinions of such people concerning one's ethics should not be all that troubling. Neil M. Cohen?

I am always far more critical of myself than any such person could ever be, and more entitled to make such judgments, about myself and the unelected political hacks who govern New Jersey, allegedly, on behalf of organized crime. No wonder citizens have little respect for the legal system there, while many Jersey attorneys are utterly cynical about law and what they do. They should be. The state's legal system is a hideous farce. Those whose lives have been damaged beyond repair by judicial incompetence or the unpunished criminality of "connected" political operatives have every right to protest. (See "Maurice J. Gallipoli and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

"Mr. O'Grady was among 15 local officials arrested in February and March 2005 in a continuing investigation called Operation Bid Rig" -- one of several unfolding in New Jersey right now, by my estimate, and the best is yet to come! -- "which started in 1998." A key witness against him is a veteran of Jersey politics, "Anthony J. Palughi," who "recently retired as Monmouth County superintendent of bridges, and agreed to tape conversations with Mr. O'Grady, among other officials, when he [Palughi] was arrested in December 2004. [Palughi] pleaded guilty in August 2005 to setting up bribes for other officials and pocketing money for himself."

Mayor Healy of Jersey City was arrested recently in Monmouth County. He is alleged to have assaulted a police officer. Mr. Healy served as a Prosecutor in Hudson County and was a Superior Court judge before becoming Mayor. He is not someone I claim to know well, but I always saw him as fair and reasonable. One of the few political figures in Hudson County I regard as honorable. I would be shocked if the allegations against him are true. And I am not often shocked. I don't believe these accusations against Healy, which may be more "behind-the-back" character assassination from the Jersey Boys.

The best proof that the allegations against Healy are false will be a smear campaign directed against him in the media ("we have friends in the newspapers"), which may have begun already. Attempts to attribute mutual smears to the two U.S. Senate candidates will result in heated responses from each of them, thus preventing the political parties from cooperating, allowing organized crime to thrive. Like Milton's Lucifer, Jersey Boys flourish on chaos, delighting when politicians are at each other's throats, so they can abscond with the goodies while no one's looking, and without fear of being prosecuted.

One theory is that the south Jersey political bosses and machine are in a war with the rest of the state and everybody else, so they wanted to send a message by these "allegations" against Mr. Healy. They'll probably be leaking dirt about both Senate candidates and attributing the leaks to the candidates' respective camps. Nothing surprises me about the behind the scenes machinations in New Jersey.

Somehow New Jersey state authorities missed this criminal organization and activity in Monmouth County for forty years or so. They were too busy arranging for judges to have their portraits painted. "Along with other recordings that the jury heard when the trial opened last week, the tapes track the two men discussing their 'deals,' all in dialogue that could have been lifted from a 'Sopranos' script -- accents and expletives included."

Lawyers in New Jersey have been known to utter these immortal words: "Hey, what do you know? I don't know about this? You know about this? ... I don't know from nothin' ..." So much was left out of my law school experience. As they say in the vicinity of Bayone: "Geez, we gotta go to the matresses again?"

"Mr. Palughi admitted that he had no qualification for the county jobs that he held for more than 20 years. In his $92,000-a-year job as superintendent of bridges, he said, he worked mostly as a chauffer for freeholder Director Harry W. Larrison Jr., one of the two elected officials who died." You won't see him no more. Take the canolis. And here is the "bottom line" in New Jersey:

"That's how the system worked for years and years, [Mr. Palughi said,] no matter what party was in," [Palughi repeated,] "It's a sin [and a crime!] that it had to work that way, but it did." You said it, Anthony. How come we never put you on the Supreme Court? You are a man of wisdom. Badda-bing, badda-boom. Gee, whiz ...

Meanwhile, back at the Supreme Court building in Trenton: there are continuing problems of incompetence surrounding the New Jersey Supreme Court's -- well-intentioned -- "Mount Laurel" decision. That decision requires "developers" ("Hey, Fat Tony Montana, isn't your brother-in-law a 'developer'?") to provide specific amounts of moderate to low income housing in some new housing construction projects. New Jersey's Supreme Court is the national example of judicial incompetence in usurping legislative functions. You want to buy a group portrait of the justices for your office? They're pretty cheap right now. The portraits are cheap, that is, the cost of the justices votes (if any) is not disclosed publicly.

It is one thing when judges are fearless in upholding individual rights, at the level of Constitutional principle. It is quite another when they decide to "fix" society by dictating social policy in areas where they lack economic or other technical expertise even to understand what the difficulties are, let alone to prescribe solutions. Republicans and advocates of judicial restraint -- when it comes to courts formulating public policy -- have a point in advocating caution; liberals are right, however, to insist that courts must not shirk their responsiblity to defend persons' rights, even when they are unpopular for doing so.

When a state Supreme Court ignores "crimes against humanity" committed by state agents, then it may no longer deserve to be regarded as a court of law. New Jersey's Supreme Court fails on both counts. It caters to majority prejudice on the death penalty and other "get tough" issues, even as it deigns to instruct others concerning construction and engineering matters -- not to mention sewage treatment options -- about which the justices know nothing. Much worse, the justices have failed to protect basic human rights by choosing to look the other way when they know -- or should know -- of widespread psychological and physical torture by government officials and their "friends." As Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."

In the midst of allegations and irrefutable evidence that New Jersey is the most corrupt and inept jurisdiction in the nation, that the state legal system is a grotesque caricature of what a legal system should be, the justices remain silent, frozen by indecision. Perhaps this is fortunate. If they act, they may only make things worse. Thank goodness for the feds.

Mayor Cassella of East Rutherford -- that's not far from the big stadium -- was quoted as saying: "I think the obsession [is] to look like you're doing something for the unhoused poor, to use the judge's phrase, [but] there's a lack of common sense, a total lack of looking at the real world."

Sometimes judges don't want to look at the real world, Mr. Mayor. As I said, people are tortured secretly by persons affiliated with the government -- or maybe at the courts' secret instruction -- so as to get information from them, illegally, that is to be used against them. Sometimes judges can't really do much because there are behind the scenes "bosses" who really call the shots. Thievery seems to be a major preoccupation of New Jersey's Supreme Court. Right, Jaynee? David Kocieniewski, "No Title and No Elected Office But Influence Accross New Jersey," The New York Times, January 7, 2006, at p. B1.

Who is running the N.J. court system again? Is it George E. Norcross, III?

This may come as a shock to citizens of New Jersey, who never elected such figures and may not even have heard of them. I bet those big "bosses" like it that way.

How do people put up with this for years? Ideology. Yes, I plan to get into Antonio Gramsci soon. They simply cannot conceive of any other way of life. Government is the province of organized crime and there is nothing that you can do about it. Maybe you can get along with them, the hoods, so they'll toss you some crumbs now and then. Also, fear. People are scared and do not trust either courts or police in New Jersey. I don't blame them. Both courts and police are contaminated by the mob. You wanna talk to me about "ethics," Big Stu?

Street wisdom says that, if you oppose those "bosses," the police will pick you up one night and you'll be framed for something or nobody sees you again. Judges may be aware of these crimes, but (if so) they'll pretend not to know what you're talking about when you raise the issue, since they're hoping not to make waves. "That's how it works in America." I was told this by people who understood local government much better than I did, without the benefit of a law school education.

Well, it is not how it works -- and certainly not how it should work -- in America. There is a little something called the Constitution. Sometimes you can actually get the powers that be to abide by it. There is also the FBI (Scully, is that you?) and U.S. Supreme Court. Maybe by preventing efforts to obstruct and silence critics in the "blogosphere," like me, the system can demonstrate its legitimacy. I will not allow hoods and political leeches to define the society in which I raise my child.

I will not surrender my faith and trust in the U.S. Constitution because too many men and women have paid the ultimate price for that document to be something more than an exhibit under glass. Violations of a person's rights can never be for his own good. We must not break faith with those who have defended the Constitution -- including those who do so in our streets, every day -- by being afraid to stand up for its principles at home or anywhere in the world. No wonder they want to destroy these writings. Still blocking my access to MSN?

You want to know what is essential to America? Remember the Revolutionary War slogan that said: "Don't tread on me"? I promise you that spirit of independence and freedom in ordinary people is still very much alive and is at the heart of what the United States of America is all about. Remember that on July 4th.

That independence and freedom is one aspect of U.S. politics and culture which people everywhere in the world still admire and respect. It is not an aspect of contemporary American values that is seen much these days. It should be. Rich and poor, white and black -- all fought, and are still fighting in wars (not all of which are military) to preserve freedoms that will not be given up.

Most people in America do not run major corporations and are just as shocked about some of the things done in their name -- like torture -- as are others around the world. This unwillingness to surrender freedom is an attitude that cuts across the political map, an attitude which (I insist) is alive and well. Anybody seen Howard Zinn? Al Sharpton? Noam Chomsky? Bill Buckley? Bill Bennett? Jon Stewart? Sarah Vowell?

No one is going to agree with all of these people, who do not agree with each other. What they have in common -- that I agree with -- is a fearlessness about expressing controversial opinions and a disposition to go against majorities on matters of principle, also an unwillingness to be impressed or intimidated by the powerful. Laughing at the powerful is always good. The system shows weakness, not strength when it goes after controversial criminal defense lawyers and civil rights' advocates, like Ms. Lynne Stewart. Society needs those gadflies. Now more than ever.

Let's fight to put those Jersey boys away for a long time and leave a better society to our children. No justice, no peace.

Thomas Merton's "Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichman."

The image feature for this post is, apparently, disabled. Please see http://www.holycross.edu/departments/crec/website/images/cover.gif Feel free to complain to Goggle or blogger. Hackers may continue to tamper with the texts. Also, I am in receipt of an e-mail informing me that a person claims not to have received an item purchased from me on E-bay. I do not sell items on line and do not have an E-bay account, so that I have never received money from anyone for an Internet sale. I understand (or hope) that E-bay is "looking into it." What a strange experience. I wonder why it happened just now? There are also days when I am prevented entirely from gaining access to my blogs. I wonder why that is?

Thomas Merton, "A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichman," and "Auschwitz: A Family Camp," in The Non-Violent Alternative (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971).
R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Pantheon, 1967).
Soren Kierkegaard, "Conversation with a Hegelian Walking Stick," in Roger Poole & Henrik Stangerup, eds., The Laughter is on My Side: An Imaginative Introduction to Kierkegaard (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 183.
Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening (Princeton: princeton University Press, 1980).
Professor Rick Roderick, "Lecture on Kierkegaard," in Philosophy and Human Values (Teaching Company Letures and http://www.TheTeachingCompany.com )

We speak of sanity distinctly from spiritual and ethical values. We think of the concept of sanity as a scientific one, which can be divorced from all "subjective" value-concerns. Of course, when it comes to human beings, inner-awareness cannot be eliminated from considerations of sanity or health, since what is essential to human beings is the capacity for subjective experience, especially love. Human beings are persons; and persons are beings capable of subjectivity, subjects. We tend to forget that scientists are also human beings, so that they can never step outside of the human realm in order to examine it. Sanity is a forensic and moral concept, not a biological one since it is a value judgment.

The would-be scientific "observer" of a person -- who happens to be a person also, since even scientists are alleged to be persons -- is, thus, necessarily involved in what he or she observes. There is no non-human "space" to which a scientist removes his human lab specimen (like a cat with a mouse in its jaws), so as to avoid contaminating that specimen by the very process of observation in relationship. (See "B.F. Skinner's Behaviorism and Evil" and "R.D. Laing and Evil.")

I often find myself speaking of spiritual poverty or deformation. This condition is the Sartrean "bad faith" of falling into the status of, say, a computer performing calculations in discharging a human task. (See Albert Camus, The Fall.) Are judges getting this? This condition and form of despair is an epidemic in today's world. It is a condition that explains the lives and pains of millions of lawyers, engineers, managers and others in society who -- in Camus's terms -- by "failing to heed the call of the Other," lose themselves. Laing's clinical term for this condition is "petrifaction" in The Divided Self.

Such a loss of self may be conducive to material success and favorable job-evaluations in a society which has become highly technological, celebrating instrumental values (often assuming that there are no other values) and mistaking such dispassionate meticulousness about "means" for rationality or intelligence itself, apart from "ends." In law this tendency expresses itself in an obsessive concern with procedure, disregard for substantive purposes, impersonality, efficiency at the cost of justice. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "What is Law?")

All of this becomes clear when examining the life and trial of Adolf Eichman. It is important to remember, however, that there are Eichmans all around us. They are among the clerks in government offices, judges, lawyers and bank personnel, even physicians and pharmacists with whom we interact during the course of our days. Worse, this means that each of us is in danger -- especially in our most official ways of "being-in-the-world" -- of becoming Eichman at any time, for a long or short while, possibly without realizing it.

"The greatest danger," Kierkegaard tells us, "is that we will lose our souls. Any other loss, a wallet, five dollars, we are sure to notice, but not the loss of our souls." (See "Is New Jersey Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz unethical or only incompetent?" and "Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

In seeking to come to terms with this phenomenon of self-loss in the person of Eichman, Thomas Merton notes:

If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, "well-balanced," unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well.

It is this "sanity" which finally baffles Merton:

The sanity of Eichman is disturbing. ... It begins to dawn on us that it is the sane ones who are the most dangerous. ... The whole concept of sanity in a society that has lost its spiritual values it itself meaningless.

R.D. Laing reminds us:

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man.

Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.

Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.

Our behavior is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things.

IF OUR EXPERIENCE IS DESTROYED, OUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE DESTRUCTIVE.

IF OUR EXPERIENCE IS DESTROYED, [for example, through violence or rape of a child, whether male or female, or torture] WE HAVE LOST OUR OWN SELVES.

We see Eichman sitting at his desk, coping with the annoying difficulties of getting all those Jews to the camps, promptly and efficiently, on trains that "run on time." We see his pride in complying with all of the administrative regulations and rules, keeping copies of all documents neatly filed and indexed. Eichman even made a visit to the camps to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of "procedures" that he had put in place, finding the experience "unpleasant." One must not allow personal feelings to get in the way of responsibilities and professionalism, of course, so Eichman carried on. Curiously, this was also Himmler's reaction:

See http://www.towerdistrictnews.com/JudgmentLogo.jpg and then ask the powerful, why? http://www.law.upenn.edu/alumni/alumnijournal/Spring2005/feature1/images/poritz.jpg (Nina Bernstein, "9/11 Detainees Describe Abuse Involving Dogs," The New York Times, April 3, 2006, at pp. B1-B2; and May 6, 2006 "Unethical? Corrupt? Human Rights Violations? All of the Above." )

We find an Eichman-like spirit in those decisions by U.S. courts upholding the death penalty and turning to the instrumental or administrative challenge of designing procedures to ensure "fairness" and mechanisms for the neutral and objective application of "guidelines" to impose death sentences with maximum speed, efficiency and fairness, without allowing bias or other subjective factors (like a concern for justice?), to interfere with the application of the ultimate penalty.

Torture in our jails or in information-gathering is unfortunate, of course, but it is said to be "necessary and effective," especially when "plausible denial" is an option for judges secretly authorizing torture. Those same judges, who are capable of such intellectual dishonesty, will then swear-in witnesses required by law to speak the truth when testifying. Wisely, judges and lawyers make no such promise. Hence, their acceptance -- at least in New Jersey -- of cover ups of "crimes against humanity," together with a blissful unawareness of their hypocrisy. (See "Psychological Torture in the American legal system.")

This concern for impersonality explains the legal fondness for circumlocution and hideous jargon:

Officialese, Merton writes, has a talent for discussing reality while denying it and calling truth itself into question. This [legal] doubletalk is by its very nature invested with a curious metaphysical leer. The language of Auschwitz [-- and of Apartheid, American racism, Abu Ghraib, or U.S. death penalty jurisprudence --] is one of the vulnerable spots through which we get a clear view of the demonic.

Here is what the demonic looks like:

Outside the gas chamber and crematories where mothers and children were sent immediately upon arrival. The mothers sometimes tried to hide the children under piles of clothing. "Sometimes the voice of a little child who had been forgotten would emerge from beneath a pile of clothing. ... They would put a bullet through its head."

Sometimes children were not sent at once for "special treatment." They might be kept handy for medical experiments. In the interests of science! ... And finally this from a witness: "Early in the morning I saw a little girl standing all by herself in the yard ... wearing a claret-colored dress and [she had] a little pigtail. She held her hands at her side like a soldier. Once she looked down, wiped the dust off her shoes and again stood very still. Then I saw Boger [an administrative or supervising guard] come into the yard. He took the child by her hand -- she went along very obediently -- and stood with her face to the Back Wall. Once she turned around, Boger again turned her head to the wall, walked back and shot ..."

That child shot in the back of the head was Christ. The Christian or any religious judge must bear in mind the uncomfortable thought that a human being executed by the State, at his or her instruction, is just as much a child of God as is the victim of crime. The same is true of the tortured person, of family members cruelly separated by pointless rules and regulations, and of those whose legal rights are violated at the "secret" request of courts. And yes, religion is a symbolic language of love and redemption that allows us to speak of such things without falling apart.

What sort of symbolic statement do we make by killing a killer? Do we not legitimate violence and murder? Do we not teach the lesson that killing is a legitimate way of expressing outrage or anger? I think the death penalty is just the opposite of progress. In fact, in some ways, it is WORSE for the State to kill a human being in cold blood than for a desperate person to do so in rage.

When a person sentenced to be executed happens to be innocent of the underlying offense -- which is the case with Mumia Abu-Jamal -- what will we say? Mr. Justice Thurgood Marshall posed this question in opposing the death penalty and offered this ironic response: "Ooops, sorry about that." You can help in Mr. Jamal's legal struggle, see http://www.FREEMumia.com Merton adds:

At this point there swims into view a picture taken at another investigation, (hardly a trial) in the state of Mississippi. We see the smiling, contempuous, brutal faces of the police deputies and their colleagues who are allegedly the murderers of three civil rights workers in the summer of 1964. Whatever may have been the facts of the case, one feels that in Mississippi and Auschwitz, [or New Jersey and Abu Ghraib?] the basic assumptions are not very different.

Mary Warnock and Women Philosophers.

Numerous attempts to prevent posting of this essay and to obstruct it continue to take place. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents government (or anyone) acting -- whether secretly or not -- on behalf of government officials from censoring speech or individual speakers critical of those public officials, including judges. In a state which is now proven to be the most corrupt in the nation, whose judiciary is tarnished by the blatant illegalities characterizing its operations on a daily basis, whose courts are a joke, criticisms must be expected. (See "Same Old, Same Old," at Philosopher's Quest and "Crimes Against Humanity in New Jersey," at Critical Vision.)

I doubt that these experiences of obstruction, hackers and annoying e-mails, will prevent me from expressing my opinions. They only confirm the validity of my accusations. I cannot post an image to accompany this essay, so here is one that may do. http://www.didacticaeditora.pt/arte_de_pensar/images/warnock.jpg

Mary Warnock, Women Philosophers (London: J.M. Dent, 1996).
Mary Whiton Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy (London: MacMillan & Co., 1917).

Nearly every history of philosophy or Western thought that I have read is exclusively concerned with the writings of a small group of distinguished White European Men (WEM), who have shaped the thinking of our civilization over millennia. This alone is off-putting to many minority persons and women, who often have unsuspected talents for philosophy. (A new "error" was just inserted and corrected in this essay.)

This uninviting aspect of popularizations is not only unfortunate for their authors, but also for philosophy and for all of us who might benefit from unexpected contributions to longstanding discussions of great issues.

I speak from personal experience, since I also felt some of these misgivings when I discovered an interest in the subject. I sensed the importance of the ideas being debated. At the same time, I felt excluded from conversations by not being "like" the participants in them. I surmise that many women and minority group members have felt the same. Unfortunately, philosophy -- as an academic discipline or "profession" -- has not always been as welcoming or as open to different voices as it might be.

My suggestion is that you try Richard Tarnas and Mathew Stewart for accessible and non-sexist general histories of Western thought. Susan Neiman's recent book on evil is a kind of journey through modern philosophy. The traditional understanding of what constitutes a rational or "rigorous" approach to philosophical issues or how one should go about "doing" philosophy may well be at fault or in need of reconsideration. Is this a cause or effect of sexism? A little of both?

This concentration on "great men" in philosophy, with supplemental considerations of historical and other factors giving rise to their speculations is probably appropriate, in light of the influence these men have wielded on events and on the mentality of their epochs. I call this the "heroic interpretation" of philosophy -- to coincide with the "heroic interpretation" of history that became popular in the nineteenth century -- both are now subject, deservedly, to much criticism. This is not to deny that some great philosophers were also great persons (Spinoza, Wollstonecraft) nor to dispute that all of the usual suspects from Socrates to Wittgenstein (or Weil) should be regarded as geniuses. I am aware that the thinkers I have just named are rarely mentioned in the same breath. Why not?

"I have always admired the heroic interpretation of history and favored hero worship," George Santayana writes, "unfortunately, I have found no heros to worship." If I were writing a history of women philosophers in the twentieth century, I might include Santayana not only to annoy "insane radical feminists and man-haters" (redundancy?), but because Santayana worried about these excessively masculine notions of rationality long before other philosophers doubted the "canon." "It is wisdom," Santayana reminds us, "to listen to the heart." Incidentally, I have been called an "insane radical feminist" myself, on a good day. I always settle for "insane." Maybe it's PMS?

Mary Warnock's collection brings together the writings of important women philosophers from the seventeenth to the late twentieth centuries. Women's contributions to discussions were often ignored -- until recently, women were prevented from publishing their writings or creating lasting artistic images -- today, especially today, I can really relate to that. Obstructions to my written work and harassing e-mails are a daily feature of my life. My computer's cable signal is periodically interrupted and work is lost or destroyed. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

Women still do not receive the consideration that one might expect when it comes to the discussions of these pressing intellectual issues. Yet much of the best philosophical work today is being done by women. Among the most important contemporary American thinkers, I include Martha Nussbaum, Angela Davis, Rebecca Goldstein (writing those novels must get in the way of professional success for Ms. Goldstein), Judith Butler and many others.

During recent years it has been recognized that women, along with others previously excluded from philosophical conversations or (more grandly) the "intellectual project of the West," have important things to say -- often by way of correctives to this "heroic" interpretation of the past -- and they, or we, should be heard. No one should be censored. Censorship is always a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. It is only the ignorant bully or Fascist who feels a need to silence critics, as distinct from people who wish to waste your time with pointless insults.

Baroness Mary Warnock is a distinguished philosopher and an important public figure in Britain, in a way that philosophers rarely are in the United States -- Cornel West is an exception -- whose work on a number of British government commissions dealing with bioethics has received international attention. Warnock's introduction to these readings is important and should be read by students. Warnock raises the question "Who gets to count as a philosopher?" ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance" and "William Godwyn and Mary Wollstonecraft.")

Until recently, there were no women teaching philosophy in universities in the English-speaking world for the very good reason that women could not attend universities or receive degrees. Yet women in the great salons of the Age of Reason and in diplomatic settings were always among the most educated and polished members of their societies. Teaching university students is not a requirement for philosophers. Any number of distinguished philosophers have not held regular positions in universities -- Jean Paul Sartre, for example -- and others have only taught for a short time or at irregular intervals. ("Master and Commander.")

C.S. Peirce had a checkered academic career and spent his final years getting by on free-lance writing assignments. Santayana retired early from Harvard and spent the second half of his life wandering around European capitals. If academic affiliation is not the essential criterion for membership in the philosophical guild, then what is the essential quality of a philosopher?

"First, I think a writer must be concerned with matters of a high degree of generality, but must be at home among abstract ideas." Professor Warnock comments: "It is not enough to seek the truth, for truth can be established with regard to particular facts; it can be the aim of historians, or of novelists, who seek imaginatively to tell things, in some sense, as they are. A philosopher would doubtless also claim to be seeking the truth, but would be interested in whatever lies behind the particular facts of experience, the details of history; a philosopher is concerned with the underlying meaning of the language that we habitually and unthinkingly use, the categories in which we unthinkingly sort our experience. Thus, he or she would claim not only to seek the truth, or theory, that will explain the particular and the detailed and the everyday."

This is because:

"The truths that philosophers seek must aim to be not merely generally, but objectively, even universally true. Essentially, they must be gender-indifferent. Those who deny that any such truth is possible -- who argue, as postmodernists, that there is an infinite variety of points of view, no one to be preferred to any other; that there is no common shared world, but that we each constitute our own world and use what metaphors we choose to explain that construction -- are engaged, it seems to me, not in philosophy but [-- notice the Oxbridge high table put down! --] in a species of anthropology."

The key word in that very British expression of disdain by Professor Warnock is "species."

"This relativism, generally known as postmodernism, has had an obfuscating effect not only on epistemology but, more notoriously, on history, theology and, above all, literary criticism. But there are signs that, at least among philosophers, there is a growing tendency to fight back, and women played an important part in this renaissance ... "

Professor Warnock excludes feminist and religious writings from her anthology because, she says, they are "not essentially philosophical in their concerns."

I am not sure whether I agree with this claim. This policy results in the unfortunate exclusion of Simone Weil, one of the greatest philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century, because Professor Warnock is concerned to demonstrate women's philosophical "professionalism." Angela Davis is not mentioned nor is any other woman of color.

Professor Warnock wants us to see that women can slug it out with the men not only when discussing moral philosophy (traditionally an "easy area," deemed "appropriate for women"), but also in logic (check out Susan Haack), or in metaphysics and epistemology (Hannah Arendt, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Onora O'Neil and others are also found in this collection).

I have no doubt that, say, Angela Davis could easily spend her professional life churning out highly technical papers dealing with minute interpretive questions in the works of Hegel or Marx. She is an expert on those two difficult philosophers. She is not interested in doing that. For Professor Davis, philosophy is the dangerous business of coming to terms with life and freedom -- in community or as a revolutionary -- in America's bloody streets. I agree with her on this definition. Philosophy is not a parlor game. None of the philosophers in this anthology are interested in philosophy as a sort of game and nothing more. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

I wish Professor Warnock had felt free to include thinkers in the Continental tradition working in the English-speaking world, for example, Professors Drucilla Cornell and Angela Davis, or Judith Butler. To exclude writings on feminism by women philosophers (including political philosophers), to my mind, is like asking great chefs to write essays, yet not to mention their preferred dishes or cooking methods. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")

I hoped to concentrate on Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930), a student of Josiah Royce who may well have surpassed her teacher (she certainly did outshine him as a scholar) and whose work is not as well known as it should be. Ms. Calkins developed her own conceptual divisions that are helpful to students of rationalism and idealism. Sadly, her work is mostly unknown at this point.

I have no doubt that, if she had been born a man, Professor Calkins would have been asked to join the Harvard faculty during its "golden age." I also believe that her work should receive as much attention or more today than Royce's writings, especially if she is seen as the original thinker that she was, whose message is more relevant and powerful for us than for her contemporaries. I discovered Calkins as an undergraduate and knew that this person was an important philosopher. I have been expecting a revival of interest in the life and works of Mary Whiton Calkins generated by feminist scholars. Nothing yet. Weird.

All of the obstacles to posting today -- this is about the tenth time that I have tried to post these words in an unimpaired form -- make it difficult to write. I am used to the daily harassment efforts by now. However, it is unfair to the memory of Professor Calkins and to her work for me to do so -- to write about her -- under these circumstances. I should say something about her writings, however, since I may lead others to discover her philosophy.

Professor Calkins completed studies for her doctorate at Harvard. She dazzled both James and Royce with her philosophical abilities. These "male philosophers" united in asking that she be awarded a doctorate by Harvard University. The university refused since it did not grant degrees to women at the time. Although Ms. Calkins was offered a doctorate from Radcliffe, she refused it on principle. I would have done the same. Perhaps my reasons for refusing to "accept" efforts to destroy my blog or discourage my writing results from a similar stubborn refusal to be defined by powerful interests or any others. Self-definition is the only kind that matters. Any resistance is better than none. I plan to keep resisting.

Professor Calkins taught for many years at Wellsley College, both psychology and philosophy. She remained an idealist, long after the appearance of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein is dismissed by Mary Warnock as "dotty" which he no doubt was. Professor Calkins is still among the finest writers that I have read on the tragic nature of philosophical effort, especially in the rationalist-idealist tradition. Santayana comes to mind again. Calkins's work is best characterized as a Kantian form of Hegelianism. Any sexism that excludes -- or once excluded -- such thinkers as Professor Calkins from the ranks of great American philosophers may be described as "dotty," among other things. ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")

Notice that to speak of truth as indifferent to gender -- and to much else, including our wishes, as death will teach you (death is one of our greatest teachers) -- is not to suggest that how we EXPRESS or understand truth is indifferent to gender or power. For one thing, we need a concept of truth to criticize the tainted notions of gender-based philosophical efforts or understandings. Such absolute neutrality in perception and expression may not be possible. And yes, truth, understanding and expression can be distinguished.

"Philosophy," said Novalis, "can bake no bread, but she can give us God, freedom and immortality."

Professor Calkins ponders this statement and responds:

"But though one agrees with Novalis's disclaimer of any narrowly utilitarian end for philosophy, one must oppose with equal vigor his assertion that philosophy gives God, freedom and immortality. Philosophy, in the first place, gives us nothing; we wrest from her all that we gain; and it is furthermore, impossible at the outset to prophesy with certainty what will be the result of our philosophical questioning, our rigorously honest search for the irreducible and complete reality."

Notice the assumptions made concerning the "manly" nature of rationality, even by a thinker like Ms. Calkins, and she has earned the "Ms.":

"Let us face the worst. Let us suppose that our metaphysical quest is an endless one, that we never reach a satisfying conclusion of thought, that no results withstand the blasting force of our own criticism; even so, the true lover of philosophy will claim that there is at least a satisfaction in the bare pursuit of the ultimate reality, a keen exhiliration in the chase, an exceeding joy in even a fleeting vision of the truth. In less figurative terms: if philosophy is no more than a questioning, at least it formulates our questions, makes them consistent with each other; in a word makes us capable of asking intelligent questions. It is good to know; but even to know why we do not know may be a gain."

As I ponder these words, again, I am struck by the similarity to the writings of F.H. Bradley. I wish that it had been possible for Professor Calkins to communicate with Bradley. A dialogue between those two philosophers would have been helpful to their respective philosophical projects. I know that Ms. Calkins pondered such a correspondence, but even she would have been intimidated and/or regarded as beyond the pale for intruding upon Professor Bradley's famous solitude. William James, of course, did not hesitate to write to Bradley -- and their "Anglo-American" debate is now legendary. (Bradley by a TKO.)