More Problems for Menendez -- Tapes!

Ray Rivera, "Tape About Hiring Puts Menendez Camp on the Defensive," The New York Times, September 29, 2006, at p. B3:

"Senator Menendez, who is being challenged by State Senator Thomas H. Kean, Jr. in a fierce race for his Senate seat, is on the defensive again, over a tape-recorded conversation in which a longtime friend and political confidant is overhead asking a psychiatrist with $1 MILLION in Hudson County contracts to hire one of Mr. Menendez's political patrons [Dr. Vicente Ruiz] or risk losing the contracts."

"A Menendez campaign spokesperson" -- who is an attorney, perhaps, and duty-bound to speak the truth? -- "denied that the senator had any involvement in exerting any influence on the psychiatrist. He moved quickly to disassociate the campaign from the man accused of applying the pressure, [New Jersey Attorney] Donald J. Scarinci, after excerpts of the conversation, which took place in 1999, appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer [by way of the Camden Democratic Machine?] and other newspapers yesterday."

Mr. Scarinci is long known to be close to the Hudson County power-structure, from which he derives a great deal of business, and to Mr. Menendez, since he is (allegedly) a friend of the Senator "from the old neighborhood," as the saying goes. Another Hudson County saying is: "You take care of me, I take care of you."

"In an interview yesterday, Dr. Sandoval" -- hereafter known as "the cautious shrink" -- "said that the tape was ONE OF DOZENS OF CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN HIMSELF AND MR. SCARINCI THAT HE SECRETLY RECORDED, AND THAT MR. MENENDEZ WAS PRESENT on several occasions when the issue was being discussed. Dr. Sandoval declined to release any other tapes yesterday."

There is more coming boys and girls.

" ... 'It's an insult to the intelligence of the New Jersey public to ask them to believe that Scarinci, who has millions of dollars in business in more than 20 municipalities because of Bob Menendez's influence, did this without Menendez's involvement,' Dr. Sandoval said."

At one point in the transcript of only one recording "Mr. Scarinci is quoted as saying that from his point of view, 'it makes sense for you, because this gives you protection.' ..."

An old friend of the Hudson County "dominations and powers," Dr. Ruiz -- the recipient of this mysterious largesse -- may well have shared some of his bounty. It is too soon, at this point, to know such a thing, but it is certainly a plausible speculation. One wonders with whom Dr. Ruiz might have shared his bounty, if he did share it, better than with those who helped him to get that bounty in the first place. And I don't mean paper towels. I was told that in Jersey politics, "one hand washes the other." For some reason, however, the hands are always filthy.

Is there a pattern here? $30 MILLION in federal money for the Bayonne waterfront project and lucrative employment for Bob's friends, including Scarinsci and Li Causi, all of whom happen to be campaign contributors; $300,000 in rent for Bob, just as Bob's tenants get millions in federal funds. What a coincidence!

"A 1998 form submitted to the Internal Revenue Service showed that Dr. Ruiz was one of the highest paid employees of the North Hudson Community Action Corporation -- the non-profit agency that leased property from Menendez -- earning $125,192. Dr. Ruiz remained an employee of the agency until he resigned in January 2000, an agency spokesman said yesterday."

How much of that money paid to Ruiz was coming back to Senator Bob, one way or the other? Inquiring minds and grand juries want to know.

Czeslaw Milosz and George Santayana on Culture and Memory.

According to my security system, I was "last attacked on 9/29/2006 at 8:07 A.M.," 59 intrusion attempts have been made so far this week from: "24.192.121.242." I will continue to write -- for as long as I can -- from this computer. I will write from a public computer, if necessary.


Czeslaw Milosz was born June 30, 1911 in Seteiniai, Lithuania. He attended schools in the ancient city of Wilno, then part of Poland. A co-founder of the literary group "Zagary" ( think of Michel Foucault's comparable early association with the "Tel-Quel" group in Paris). Milosz began publishing in 1930, and also worked for Polish radio. During the war he joined the Polish resistance, writing for the underground press.

An early opponent of Nazism and all forms of fascism, the poet was haunted by the horrors of the Holocaust, especially by the deep wounds inflicted on the Polish national psyche with the creation of death camps and mass murders. Even more loathsome and painful, for Milosz, was the willing complicity of so many fellow citizens in the destruction of their Jewish neighbors.

There is something so disproportional and massive about those events, the so-called "War Against the Jews," that some persons -- myself among them -- will always be haunted by them, even as students of history. An image that occurs often in my imagination is the black and white film of children asked to raise their sleeves to show the numbers tattooed on their arms. One can feel the numbers being written with flames on one's flesh in staring at the surrender and fear in the eyes of those children, some no more than five years-old, yet no longer innocent.

In that single image of scarred children, one senses all that was taken from those young lives -- and from Western civilization -- by the darkness that fell upon the earth during those years. It is still a dark time for humanity because we cannot come to terms with this horror. (See "R.D. Laing and Evil.")

Milosz worked as a diplomat after 1945, until breaking with the Polish "Marxist" government in 1951. Settling in France, where he wrote several books in prose, Milosz earned an international reputation as a scholar and artist. After 1960, he lectured at the University of California at Berkeley, as Professor of Slavic Languages. Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

In his Nobel lecture, Milosz touched on themes which are very important in this twilight time, when efforts to understand the twentieth century's overwhelming legacy of evil -- death camps and gulags -- has not been fully successful. Czeslaw Milosz died on August 14, 2004.

As I write, genocide is taking place in Darfur. This grim reality gets only mild media attention. At a recent rally against these atrocities in New York's Central Park, one United States congressman appeared, Chris Smith (D) of New Jersey, who serves on the relevant sub-committee in the House of Representatives. Despite this being an election year, no other U.S. elected officials, state or federal, spoke to the 22,000 persons present. Fortunately, many artists such as Susan Vega and Mia Sorvino, did speak. Ms. Sorvino was especially eloquent. The event received a minute-and-a-half of network news time that evening. Sports coverage received over seven minutes.

Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic proliferation of mass media, is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterized by a refusal to remember. Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion. Moliere becomes a contemprary of Napoleon, Voltaire a contemporary of Lenin.

The sadness comes from the cowardly surrender of memory and responsibility by an entire civilization. We have seen several generations of intellectuals wallowing in a self-chosen stupidity. To prefer not to know is to accept the reality of injustice, allowing the guilty to go free and to repeat their crimes, also damaging the moral and aesthetic capacities of civilization. (See "There comes a time when silence is betrayal.")

Greatness in art, according to some, is no longer possible for post-Holocaust survivors. We are a people who accept a diminished identity, as ape-like beasts, slithering through darkness and nothing more. We hear the recorded voice of T.S. Eliot reciting his haunting lines and issuing a warning, even as he embodied the contradictions that he both detected and opposed. "April is the cruelest month ..."

We no longer reach out to touch God, as in Michelangelo's vision. We now hide in darkness, covered in feces. Hence, Tracy Emin supplies a soiled bedsheet as her vision of humanity in its totality -- and this vision is accepted by museums and universities as "important art" that is somehow "accurate" and true to the human condition.

Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? If humans are indistinguishable from rats or apes in any significant sense, then what does that make you?

The [poet] feels anxiety, for he senses in this [abandonment of memory] a foreboding of a not distant future when history will be reduced to what appears on television, while the truth, because it is too complicated, will be buried in the archives, if not totally annihilated.

In sadness and humility, then, a poet may still reach for his or her pen to keep alive memory and discharge that solemn duty owed, as Virginia Woolf also urged, to all who have written and painted, made music and sculpted or danced, creating -- even for one brief and eternal moment -- a fragile beauty in defiance of all makers of pain and death:

Memory thus is our force; it protects us against a speech entwining upon itself like the ivy when it does not find support on a tree or a wall.

A few minutes ago I expressed my longing for the end of a contradiction which opposes the poet's need of distance to his feeling of solidarity with his fellow men. And yet, if we take a flight above the Earth, as a metaphor of the poet's vocation, it is not difficult to notice that a kind of contradiction is implied, even in those epochs when the poet is relatively free from the snares of history. For how to be above and simultaneously see the Earth in every detail? ... "to see" means not only to have before one's eyes. It may mean also to preserve in memory. "To see and to describe" may mean also to reconstruct in imagination. A distance achieved thanks to the mystery of time must not change events, landscapes, human figures into a tangle of shadows growing paler and paler.

Culture is shared memory. It is a return to life for all that has been killed, taken from us in the youth of our civilization -- hopefulness about the possibilities of man and woman, confidence in the reality of goodness and of achieving justice, together with the preservation of these hopes and ideals in our artistic creations as our gift to children and young people everywhere.

We give our fallen ancestors life again by reading their books and seeing their works of art, understanding what they tell us of mortality, longing and loss. We join hands with them in the aesthetic meeting which always takes place in an eternal "now." (See "Why philosophy is for everybody" and "Schopenhauer's Metaphysics of Art.")

I will not let someone I love -- who has been deeply hurt and blighted in her once infinite life-prospects be forgotten -- and so I will sing a song for her, for those I love, even in my broken and pain-filled voice. We raise our sleeves together, she and I, so you can see our numbers and scars. They are also your scars.

The works of art we create and preserve are being taken from us, forgotten, abandoned, so as to condemn us to silence. Efforts will be made to destroy these words. Knowing that the effort is tragic, ordinary men and women (like us) must continue to fight for memory, suffering and beauty. It is with love and because of love that life's prospects become infinite again. Mozart will be playing in my apartment later, as I write my book, I will remember and repeat Santayana's words to Frederick Prokosch that will now conclude my essay:

"One must always, without necessarily being a pessimist, be prepared for the worst. For the end of what we call our Western civilization -- I include the Athenian -- and all that grandeur of Christian romanticism." His head sagged a little. His [aged] eyes began to water. His voice rose imperceptibly, as though for a final effort. "We are sailing ever deeper into the dark, uncharted waters. The lights in the lighthouses are beginning to go out. Is there anything to guide us? Is there anyone worth listening to? I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm cold with terror ..."

The words died away. The eyelids fell wearily. He nodded his head and was suddenly fast asleep.

I whispered, "Goodbye, Mr. Santayana. And thank you."

For an instant the eyes peeped out from under their lids and in their blackness and weariness, so sad and aristocratic, I caught a glimpse of all that it meant to be alive, to be human. ...

Menendez Haunted by Party's Ghosts.

As of September 28, 2006 at 7:39 A.M., an additional 55 intrusion attempts on my computer were detected by Norton Security. Most frequent attacker is 24.192.121.242. I have experienced great difficulties in gaining access to the blog today, also in writing at my MSN group, but I am deternined to continue writing.
Steve Kornacki, "Menendez Haunted by Party's Ghosts," in The New York Observer, September 25, 2006, at p. 5.

"... If Robert Menendez, New Jersey's appointed Democratic incumbent, fails to hold off Republican Tom Kean, Jr., Euclid himself couldn't devise a majority-producing formula for the Democrats."

"For now, the Menendez-Kean race is essentially a tie, something of an achievement in its own right for New Jersey's GOP, which typically enjoys all the September success of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. What's more, the most recent polls haven't even measured the impact of a recently revealed federal criminal investigation of Mr. Menendez, the consequences of which Democrats privately describe with words ranging from 'pretty bad' to 'fatal.' "

Mr. Menendez is a member of the New Jersey Bar Association, so that (as I understand it) the Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE) is duty-bound to look into these allegations in order to determine whether legal ethics rules have been violated. The same is true for Senator Wayne Bryant. I wonder whether the OAE is investigating the allegations against both of these gentlemen? I doubt it. Who is investigating the OAE's corruption and incompetence, John? ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

"... Just consider what else is in the news these days."

"There's Jim McGreevey, some 22 months after skipping town with federal investigations into his gubernatorial administration swirling, who barged back into our lives last week to let us know that the sexual affair with the unqualified Israeli sailor he appointed as his state's homeland security advisor actually began while Mrs. McGreevey lay in a hospital bed clutching the couple's new-born daughter. If that's not enough, Golan Cipel, Mr. McGreevey's supposed romantic partner, has himself re-emerged -- to declare that the governor had actually liquored him up ... and tried to rape him."

"There's also John Lynch, the onetime New Jersey Senate President (and Mr. McGreevey's political godfather), whose plea agreement on federal corruption charges landed on the front page of last Friday's Star Ledger -- right next to the news that Mr. McGreevey had been smitten with Mr. Cipel from the 'first kiss.' ... "

"And then there is this week's report from a federal monitor essentially charging Wayne Bryant, a powerful state senator and loyal cog in the feared Camden County Democratic Committee, with shaking down administrators at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey to secure a no-show job for himself."

Sucking on the tit, Wayne?

"... Mr. Menendez was always playing a risky game, betting that he -- and, more importantly New Jersey's voters -- had heard the last from some of the uglier chapters from his days as Hudson County's Democratic Boss."

Josh Benson, "The Second Time Around, It doesn't Seem So Brave," in The New York Observer, September 25, 2006, at p. 8:

"[McGreevey's] state budget was hopelessly out of balance. His political and ideological allies, frustrated by three years of vascillation on environmental issues, ethics legislation and spending priorities, had turned on him."

"And most seriously his administration was starting to give off the distinct whiff of ethical rot."

"The governor had only shortly before been caught on tape uttering the word 'Machiavelli' to a constituent. (He professes philosophical leanings towards Kant and the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in his new book, but in this context Machiavelli was considered -- at least by federal prosecutors -- to be a code word in an illicit fund-raising scheme.)"

"And, most spectacularly, at least until the famous 'Gay American' speech, Mr. McGreevey's chief fund-raiser and financial patron, real-estate magnate Charles Kushner, had just been charged with interfering in a federal investigation into campaign finance violations."

David W. Chen, "Senator Leaves Budget Post in Ethics Inquiry," in The New York Times, September 26, 2006, at p. B7:

"Responding to pressure from colleagues as well as the governor, State Senator Wayne R. Bryant, one of New Jersey's most powerful legislators, agreed on Monday to step down temporarily as the chairman of the influential Senate Budget Appropriations Committee."

"... According to the monitor's report, the university paid [Bryant] $35,000 a year to do little more than show up perhaps one day a week and read newspapers. At the same time, the university received a substantial increase in state funds. ... the school's financing climbed to more than $4 million annually from $2.8 million."

Many speculate about whether some of that loot was spread among New Jersey's Supreme Court members and/or other prominent politicians in Trenton. In a state with New Jersey's history, courts and government have lost all credibility with the people. It is widely assumed -- probably accurately -- that real decisions are still made behind the scenes, having nothing to do with the laws on the books in New Jersey, by the various "Godfathers" in the state.

It is a mystery to me how some people in New Jersey have the nerve to wear those black robes or are hypocritical enough to judge others. (See "Is New Jersey Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz unethical or only incompetent?"

http://www.alumni.rutgers.edu/alumnews/2001/summer/features/images/hda2-7912.tif.JPG (New Jersey's Supreme Court Justices having a little meal on your tab, who will probably block this image so you won't see them doing it.)

"Trenton: Senate Confirms Attorney General," in The New York Times, September 26, 2006, at p. B6:

"Stuart Rabner, a former federal prosecutor who tackled political corruption and international terrorism cases, was confirmed yesterday as New Jersey's new attorney general."

Stuart Rabner has never been known to "tackle" anything that might blow back in his direction. Mr. Rabner is a disgrace to the office he has tainted through lethargy and cowardice. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Hackers Continue to Alter Texts.

A comparison between print versions of the essays I have posted and subsequent alterations in these texts indicates that hackers have taken to changing the spelling of words or to taking words out of what I have written. Changes appear overnight in essays that I have not revised. I can only conclude that this is about destroying these works. I will do my best to make revisions on a daily basis. I doubt that these efforts to frustrate me or to destroy my work will lead me to stop writing. As of 9/22/2006 there were 27 intrusion attempts on my computer, numerous viruses and spyware problems are removed from my system with DAILY scans. My most frequent attacker (this week!) was identified by Norton Security Systems as: 24.192.121.242. I have replaced my monitor and made several expensive repairs. I will keep writing, from public computers, if necessary.

All of the above remains true despite the awareness of the authorities and America's media silence is still inexplicable. November 1, 2010 at 5:57 P.M.

Agnes Heller and the Homecoming of Philosophy.

This is the first essay that I have written from an Internet Cafe in Manhattan (on 9/21, at 6:00 P.M.), as I observe the street traffic outside this window. I wonder what sort of music Puccini would write today for the denizens of New York's "Bohemia"?

This blog has been mentioned at: "CNN's Nancy Grace Under Fire Online, Did Legal Analyst Go Too Far ..." http://www.cbs.news.com/stories/2006/09/18/blogophile/main2020277.shtml-86k-

There have been 27 intrusion attempts directed against my computer in the last few days. My most frequent attacker is: 24.192.121.242. (NJ, OAE?) Images still cannot be posted.

Agnes Heller, Radical Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), pp. 1-51, pp. 134-187.
Agnes Heller, Beyond Justice (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 1-110, pp. 273-320.
Agnes Heller, "Hannah Arendt on Tradition and New Beginnings," in Steven E. Ascheim, ed., Hannah Arendt in Jersusalem (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 19.

Agnes Heller is a Hungarian-born philosopher who teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York. The New School has become an internationally recognized center for the study of Continental thought in the United States. This university flourishes in a city that Colin McGinn describes as the "primary location" for the study of philosophy in the English-speaking world, thanks to all of the great universities within a small geographical area. If you love philosophy and you happen to live in New York, then thank your lucky stars. I do.

Professor Heller was a student of Georg Lukacs (whose great essay "History and Class Consciousness" should be read by Marxists and non-Marxists). I discovered that essay as a law student, after reading Duncan Kennedy's articles. Heller is often described as a "Hungarian dissident." Philosophers are always dissidents. She is the recipient of the Szechenyi National Prize and the Hannah Arendt prize. She has received several honorary degrees and is the author of dozens of books, including one that I do not have that seems especially interesting. The Time is Out of Joint: Shakespeare as Philosopher of History (2000). (See my essay on Shakespeare's Hamlet.) Colin McGinn's book on Shakespeare as a philosopher is my brithday gift to myself.

I wish to limit my focus to a few comments on key sections of Radical Philosophy, a book which is very accessible and a good place to begin to read Continental thought. The issues that I find especially interesting concern the relation between philosophy and science, reason and myth in intellectual methods, together with the idea of philosophy's "homecoming" and "wonder" or "astonishment" (taumadzein).

Professor Heller begins by suggesting that: "In the same way as art can no longer 'sing as the birds sing,' so philosophy has to wake from its 'dogmatic dream.'" (p. 1.) This awakening has to do with establishing philosophy's autonomy from and rejection of "myth" or religion" and its return of the "borrowed clothes" of science. Platonic pretensions to a metaphysical realm of abstract truths and scientific jargon are unacceptable. Professor Heller insists on the urgent human "need for philosophy." (p. 5.)

"It is ... difficult to deny that there exists a need for philosophy -- a need which is even growing and deepening. Today the social sciences are confronted with questions which are slowly making clear to them that they need philosophy. The scientists do not need philosophy to confirm their methods, since they can achieve these without any philosophy" -- scientists merely assume philosophical foundations which they do not defend explicitly -- "the activists do not need philosophers ... they can fight by themselves without philosophers. However, what is needed is a unitary [emphasis added] answer to questions of how one should think, how one should act, how one should live at all, and indeed an answer that is genuinely philosophical." (p. 5.)

Philosophy must stop trying to be a minor science or an assistant to the sciences, returning to itself ("coming home"), deploying "practical" reason as the questioner of the human world for ethical and political purposes. Here we see the influence of Marx. Heller is classified as a "Critical Marxist," with phenomenological leanings. I am not sure exactly what that means, but it's O.K. as a label, for now. T.L.S. Sprigge's creative reworking of idealism and pragmatism may be brought into dialogue with Heller's philosophy, allowing opposite ends of the theoretical spectrum to meet. A recent discovery (for me) is the work of Nicholas Rescher, some of whose writings I plan to study. Two points in Heller's essay seem especially interesting and controversial: I agree with the first; the second, I do not accept. First, I agree with the ethical nature of philosophy as truth-seeking:

"Philosophy seeks in all truth the true, in all good the good, and in all of them the unity of both. If it is said that the true and the good are unachievable, or that they do not exist, this does not matter. Even in these cases the conceptual scheme is the same: if the claim is that neither the good nor the true exist, or that still less there exists any unity between them -- to confess that the quest is pointless is still philosophy." (p. 8.)

Second, I can not accept that it is either possible or desirable to exclude mythic imagination or aiming at scientific rigor -- the two are related -- from philosophy's contemporary efforts. We soon find Professor Heller resorting to mythological language and images, then shifting to the objectivity of the laboratory or the faculty lounge:

"However, if one wants to consider what characterises all philosophies, then one must abstract from the differences between them in the criteria and the hierarchies and start from the criterion that is common to them all -- namely that they themselves constitute the true and the good they seek. To this extent, it is not quite true to say that philosophy does not know what form its Sleeping Beauty takes. Since every philosophy has its own Sleeping Beauty, it knows quite clearly what sort it is." (p. 9.)

"Sleeping Beauty"? So much for the effort to abandon "myth." But Professor Heller insists:

"[Myth] is the language of religion, of revelation. To wake the good and the true to life, every rational being through its own reason and its own autonomous thought, with the help of arguments and counterarguments, must reach the same truth." (p. 10.)

Philosophy must provide objectivity and universality. I agree with that much. I do not agree with Professor Heller's assumptions about where objectivity may best be found. For me, it is just the opposite of what Heller suggests. The objectivity and rationality that she seeks is located in that which "gives birth" (notice the metaphor) to both science and art, philosophy and religion. (See my essay on science and memory.)

"Philosophical objectification" requires that we make use of universals and concepts, of entities existing only in Plato's heaven or in our language schemes in the Lebenswelt. We immediately -- necessarily and unavoidably -- find ourselves mythologizing, whether the subject matter is philosophical constructs or scientific ones, even if we make use of those "legal fictions" having a tendency to escape courtrooms and universities, thus becoming "real" entities in society, like corporations that "sponsor" PBS programs or "express opinions." Think of what a corporation is, legally and politically, then explain what is meant by "corporate friends" or "corporate political campaigns."

The slippery and dream-like nature of language, Derrida reminds us, makes our daily social realities a kind of myth-like thing, a creative fiction. This is because we live "in" languages. (See my story "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author.")

Moreover, values and valuing are found to inhere in languages, as part of what we mean by "rationality," as essential to thinking and philosophy. To live in language is to establish a relationship to (or with) goodness. There is no choice about this need for such a relationship because ethical reasoning is built into human languages. ("Why I am Not an Ethical Relativist.")

What is most real in philosophy and the purpose of doing philosophy happen to be linked to what is most mythical and fundamental in human reasoning, the search for truth and goodness:

"What ought to be is no illusion or fantasy, no mere dream only present in our subjective wishes, but rather the 'Ought-to-be' is precisely what matters, the measure, 'the true' or 'the most real reality.' ..." (p. 11.)

This leads to Heller's wised-up, postmodernist, Romanticism:

"The 'utopian spirit' is the spirit of philosophy." Compare Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, also Ernst Cassirer and John MacMurray:

"Every philosophy is utopian -- how else could one describe a construction in which what ought to be counts as the most real of all that exists, where whatever is counts as unreal in the light of ultimate reality, [the ideal?] and yet the former is deduced from the latter? ... philosophy is not merely a utopia but a rational utopia." (p. 13.)

Professor Heller's difficulties result from her use of the words "myth" and "rational" in constructing her argument. Does it occur to Heller that the mythic imagination is essential even to what she is calling "rationality"? Rational and mythical are not opposed concepts. In fact, they are inseparable. In an effort to separate rationality from the religious or mythical, she may be throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.

This rigid distinction between myth/rationality is the detritus of Heller's outdated Marxist vocabulary of material rationality and "scientific spirit," which she can now do without. Something in Heller's philosophical nature is attracted to the radical egalitarianism in the Marxist theoretical project. Everybody is. Something else in Heller's nature is just as attracted to freedom in philosophical imagination, which leads to an individualism that is opposed to Marxism. Aren't we all?

Why was it necessary to escape Hungary? Why be a dissident? How do we live between these alternatives? Can we have have both freedom and equality? The U.S. Constitution promises both. Do we still believe in that promise? It is increasingly difficult to believe that the U.S. Constitution is anything other than a hope or fantasy. Have any letters been deleted from these words again? ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

Only if we are "childish," I guess, like John Lennon -- or "crazy," like me, can we believe in our rights. Heller undermines any Marxist division -- including her own -- between describing the world and changing it by challenging the fact/value distinction that is taken for granted by many Marxists and others. To describe the world is to change it because we live our global descriptions:

"Whoever claims that the rationality of philosophy is mere appearance (since what ought to be cannot be deduced from what is, and anyway philosophy only deduces what it already knows), measures philosophy by a non-philosophical criterion. This overlooks that the real function of deduction is the 'leading upwards.' Doubtless for philosophy the leading upwards to the unity of what is and ought [to be] appears as primary ..." (p. 14.)

It follows that the purpose of philosophy is to make us child-like:

"Astonishment ('taumadzein') does not exhaust the philosophical attitude. Philosophy possesses the wonderful ability and courage to pose childish questions: 'What is that?' 'What is that for?' 'Why must that be done like that?' 'Why cannot one act like that?' ..." (p. 17.)

Philosophical rationality is a kind of very smart child's perspective on life. I just saw "The United States versus John Lennon." Lennon seems to embody (for me) the child-like philosophical and political genius described by Heller. I am reminded of Salinger's classic "For Esme, With Love and Squalor." Philosophical genius is a "Leave it to Beaver"-like prankishness about the world. "Who are those people?" "What is good?" "Why am I here and not there?" "Am I awake now?" "When is now?"

You can see why this sort of questioning and questioner is annoying to dictators. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon could not stand a universe that contains simple joy and delight in love, such as Lennon embodied. They had to try to detroy Lennon, so as to make what they had become in pursuing power more acceptable to themselves. Senator "Bob"? Mr. Ginarte? Gilberto Garcia? Does this ring any bells?

This questioning of shibboleths always makes philosophers "dissidents," in Hungary or elsewhere, and it threatens their survival in every society. Philosophers are always disatisfied with the status quo. As a result, they often find themselves asked to drink some hemlock by those who profit from things as they are and who have no reason to want them changed. Stuart Rabner? ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")

Professor Heller tells us: "Every philosophy has autobiographical traits." (p. 23.) I concur. Heller also realizes that this philosophical attitude is endangered as never before, so she is drawn to protect the philosophical child in all of us. Agnes Heller is one of the women walking with her arms around a child into a concentration camp: "What today has become difficult is the philosophical attitude, and in different ways." (p. 21.) This gentle scholar is as strong as steel in protecting the right to think and speak freely for all of us.

Heller is advocating a return to a kind of play in interpretation as a mode of philosophical reception. This is how philosophers (and artists) find their Sleeping Beauty. A combination of play and astonishment at the wonder that we and the world are is the secret of great philosophy which always borders on a kind of madness or mysticism. It is the madness of the wounded child who sees a world of strangers and mysterious entities that hurt him or her, but who wishes to understand why?

What is the advantage for Hackers in altering the spelling of words in these essays? Or in blocking my access to this site? Why destroy someone's art or creative intellectual work? How do you "benefit" by doing so? Was it Carl Sandburg who said: "There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem?" Or a poet?

The philosopher-child looks in one direction and sees what "is" (science), then in another to see what "ought to be" -- and even more, what ought not to be (philosophy and theology) -- and then realizes, sadly, that he or she is staring at only one reality. Worse, if he or she is a very great philosopher (Kant), the insight dawns on him or her that this one reality is only consciousness -- whether as language and/or thought yet infinitely and mysteriously also "Other" -- since it must be shared. Science becomes philosophy, which is also art and theology, but then philosophy becomes literature.

We see ourselves in all that is because we understand -- and not only intellectually -- that we are part of all that "is." The conclusion is inescapable that the freedom that we cherish implies the evil that we detest and must struggle against. You can't get the bonus without the onus. William James Booth, Interpreting the World: Kant's Philosophy and History of Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), pp. 55-163.

"Philosophy is homesickness said Novalis. All sentimental philosophy is homesickness, the longing for a world in which philosophy is at home." (p. 134.)

All philosophy is sentimental philosophy. All human learning is sentimental. To be human is to think and speak, for these are always hopeful acts. Even the Hitlers of this world will be desctroyed by the power of thought and speech, eventually, since what they say is examined rationally and soon shown to be what it is. What lasts in philosophy and literature, as in science, is only truth. When we think and speak, freely, we find our way home to truth and love, both of which must also be shared. We might use another word for what we come home to, it is a short word. ("Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")

So that's what he's got under his fingernails!

If I should have an unfortunate accident or find myself charged with an obscure offense, where all witnesses happen to work for the state court system of New Jersey, please see "Is New Jersey Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz unethical or only incompetent?"

David Kocieniewski, "University Gave No-Show Job To Legislator, U.S. Reports," in The New York Times, September 19, 2006, at p. B1.

"One of New Jersey's most powerful legislators had a no-show job at the state's medical and dental school that paid him $35,000 a year 'to lobby himself,' according to a report by a federal monitor, an accusation that could lead to a possible criminal investigation on corruption charges."
"The legislator, State Senator Wayne R. Bryant -- a Democrat from Camden who is the Chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee -- worked at the School of Osteopathic Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey from 2003 to 2006. During that time, the school's financing from the Legislature rose to more than $4 million annually from $2.8 million."

"Mr. Bryant, 58, has for many years been unapologetic about the fact that he has held as many as four government jobs simultaneously -- in addition, family members, including his wife, sister-in-law, two brothers and a son, who died this year, were on the public payroll at various times -- but he resigned from the medical school this year after federal investigators began examining his role at the university."

Allegedly, Mr. Bryant's deceased son continues to draw a salary from the state. Mr. Bryant is a New Jersey attorney. Yet the Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE) either did not know or care that Mr. Bryant was receiving funds -- probably public money -- for a job as a lobbyist, while he was a state legislator. This is what is known in legal circles as a tiny "conflict of interest." But what the hell. It's only our old buddy, Wayne. ("Let's see what he's got under his finger nails" at Philosopher's Quest.)

Presumably (and allegedly), Mr. Bryant would show up at his own office wearing two hats: first, as a lobbyist, he wore a bowler hat. He would then take off this bowler, run around to the other side of his own desk, put on a top hat and tails, as a legislator. This way he would get two wallets. One wallet to go with each outfit. Each of these wallets happened to be filled with your cash. That's what I call "sweet and low down."

Such a conflict of interest is similar to a physician who, in violation of his oath, serves not a victim's interest but a secret and illegal information-gathering role for the state or others, while billing for services unsought by his victim that are then imposed on this incapacitated person, who is further exploited and violated by having his Constitutional rights ignored, by being denied his own records or the truth concerning the tortures to which he has been subjected. Ideally, sexual exploitation or humiliation of this victim, for which the "therapist" can also bill the state, will be added to the experience. A little theft doesn't hurt, right Terry Tuchin? ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

Does the family in Ridgewood know what you're up to, Terry? How about Diana's victims? Does Diana fill them in on the sexual thrills she plans to get out of them? Is Diana still claiming to be a Lesbian? Or has she changed her mind about that again? Is your daughter in on the scams, Terry?

Inquiring minds want to know. The public moneys that were received for his non-job, evidently, do not concern the OAE which is focused, like a laser beam, on whether solo practioners charging $1,500.00 for a small claims matter, where expenses exceed $500.00 and two court appearances are required, charge too much. OAE attorneys actually chuckle when they say, "we have to protect the public." Yeah, right.

What does New Jersey's impressive Supreme Court have to say about this? http://www.law.upenn.edu/alumni/alumnijournal/spring2005/feature1/images/poritz.jpg

Nothing. Nada. They are too busy gleefully opting in favor of the death penalty for urban minority males, who they know will be its only victims. What better way to get rid of the "little people"? Hey, take a look at this picture and ask yourself whether they played the slot machines after they spoke at this little chit-chat club at Bally's in Atlantic City. Got enough quarters?http://www.njsba.com/calendar_events/slideshow/60.jpg

Wait, boys and girls. There is much more to come. The legislature finally got rid of the death penalty. This was a disappointment to Debbie Poritz and Sybil R. Moses.

Mr. Bryant performed zero work for this no show job, for which he received mucho compensation, public money (probably). This is (allegedly) what is known as a "criminal fraud." This is a little, tiny, itsy-bit "unethical" under the Rules of Ethics for New Jersey Attorneys. Don't you think so? I do.

Guess what? Nobody saw a thing at the OAE. I wonder why? Are they (OAE) being greased? Where is New Jersey's new Attorney General? He has not been confirmed yet. They will get around to doing that sometime before Christmas. Maybe. When asked about all this, will Mr. Rabner respond: "On the one hand, but then on the other hand ..." Stuart Rabner did not a give a shit about this scam until the feds popped this guy.

It is too soon to tell how good a "prosecutor" Stuart Rabner will be. Can imagine a worse judge than this Stuart Rabner guy? I can't. You wear a price tag, Stuart? ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

"The harshly worded report about Mr. Bryant's involvement with the troubled medical school comes just three days after former State Senate president John A. Lynch, Jr., once the most influential Democratic Party boss in the state, pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Mr. Bryant is one in a long line of New Jersey officials accused of using a public position to enrich himself."

In the words of Hoboken's own Frank Sinatra, "the best is yet to come." I can hardly wait.

"It is also the most striking example yet of the role politics played in the financial irregularities at the medical school. After federal officials threatened to prosecute the university for Medicaid fraud, officials there agreed to let a federal monitor investigate its finances. That inquiry, led by Mr. Stern, a former federal judge and United States attorney [sic.], has found evidence of tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid fraud, wasteful spending and no-bid contracts awarded to vendors with ties to elected officials or former trustees."

At the same time, former Governor James "Jim" McGreevey is doing a book tour to promote a memoir entitled Confession. Mr. McGreevey hopes to be ranked with St. Augustine and Rousseau, but seems to be falling into the category of memoirists like Donna Rice and Monica Lewinsky, fallen from grace by passion. What a miniseries this might be. What is the Irish Catholic equivalent of schlock?

David Kocieniewski, "Ex-Governor is Back in Public, This Time as an Author," in The New York Times, September 20, 2006, at p. B5:

"Although Mr. McGreevey's administration was marred by an assortment of corruption scandals, his book offers only vague acknowledgment" -- Confession? -- "that some of his staff members and associates -- whom he refuses to identify -- delivered favors to campaign contributors in exchange for donations."

No way, not in New Jersey!

"In an interview on Tuesday morning at his home here, he declined to provide specifics about the political favors done for fund-raisers, and would not say whether he was surprised that the man who was once his mentor, former Senate President John A. Lynch, Jr., pleaded guilty to corruption charges last week in federal court."

Mr. McGreevey lives in a nineteen room house, with gardens designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and a circular driveway, according to the Times, which leads me to wonder: How much is the Governor of New Jersey paid? Mr. McGreevey is also an attorney in New Jersey.

Students at state colleges and universities in New Jersey will not be able to afford new tuition rates required in response to post-McGreevey budget "short-falls," medical services for the poor will suffer, teachers' salaries will remain low or even inadequate by comparison with other professionals, the courts will continue to render incompetent and ill-informed decisions, hacks and political whores will litter the judicial bench, politics will control the corrupt attorney disciplinary process, which will be incompetent at least 50% of the time, thus producing further richly-deserved embarassments and humiliations to the state's higest court.

New Jersey -- Come and See for Yourself!

Another One Bites the Dust.

If more than two days pass and I am unable to change the picture in my profile or to post something new, then you can be sure that my silence is not voluntary.

David Kocieniewski & Andrew Jacobs, "McGreevey Finds Revising An Image is Not So Easy," in The New York Times, September 15, 2006, at p. B5.
Laura Masnerus, "New Jersey Opposition Leads to Utility Merger's Collapse," in The New York Times, September 15, 2006, at p. B5.
David Kocieniewski, "Guilty Plea Expected From Former Senate Leader in Trenton," in The New York Times, September 15, 2006, at p. B1.
David Kocieniewski, "Ex-Leader of New Jersey Senate Is Guilty of Corruption," in The New York Times, September 16, 2006, at p. B2.
David W. Chen, "A Legal and Political Force: U.S. Attorney Emerges as Factor in Campaign for the Senate," in The New York Times, September 16, 2006, at p. B2.
David W. Chen, "A Push for $3 Billion for New Jersey School Projects," in The New York Times, September 15, 2006, at p. B5.
Andrew W. Jacobs, "Aide McGreevey Cited Says They Never Had an Affair," in The New York Times, September 18, 2006, at p. B3.

New Jersey is a place that should serve as a warning to other states. It is the example of what can happen when some of the worst tendencies in American political culture are allowed to get out of control and to metastasize, becoming an enormous tumor that devours the political body. Drug money, legally protected prostitution syndicates that exploit young women and men, illegal gambling operations that hurt tax paying Atlantic City casinos -- all have excellent representation in Trenton. Residents of New Jersey often have no such representation.

For decades a partnership developed between New Jersey's organized crime "families" and local politics, where all mechanisms of the state -- including courts, police, public educational institutions and medical facilities, social scientists and other "experts" on the public's tab -- were regarded as a treasure chest to be emptied of contents, looted, by a cabal of political operatives or "made men" of the organization, playing musical chairs with appointed positions in government and judgeships, even as their buddies arranged to get themselves "elected" to office. A sign on the New Jersey Turnpike should read: "Everybody's on the government tit in this state." ("New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "Cement is Gold.")

Voters are given few options. Many are pressured to vote "a certain way" in order to keep their public jobs or to make extra money to support their families. Others -- usually minority group members, who do not know any better -- are used, as front persons, to convey a false impression of "diversity" and (conveniently) to take the fall when the feds get a little unhappy. Corrupt politics and incompetent courts are a way of life in New Jersey.

There is no Xanadu mall, but Bergen County politicians are debating whether -- "if and when" such a mall exists -- blue laws should be suspended. The Garden State is the Mafia's version of Wonderland.

Public education budgets, including the gimmicks surrounding school construction projects, are seen as sources of revenue by politicians on the take. Out of the $3 BILLION to be allocated for construction of schools at least one billion will "disappear," in one way or another, probably in consulting "fees" that are likely to be shared with politicians and judges in under the table payments. The money will not reach those who need it. (See "New Jersey's Mafia Culture in Law and Politics.")

Political ideologues or persons committed to specific policy issues are duped into serving power-brokers by being told that struggles are about contested policy issues. Machinations and political wars in New Jersey are never about anything but political power for the "Jersey Boys," who have no beliefs or political ideals other than a firm commitment to their own enrichment -- preferably at the expense of the taxpayers, better known as the "chumps."

A case in point is the trajectory of former Senator John A. Lynch, Jr. and his one-time "apprentice" and side-kick, former Governor James McGreevey. Lynch was Batman; McGreevey was Robin. These two were made for each other. Their counterparts are still out there, in the aromatic marshlands where political bosses and operatives, along with their media friends, are still found "scheming" about how to steal more public money. Right, Debbie?

If you get past the cigar smoke (though never in public places), you will find these hacks plotting to put "Joey in there" or to take "Richie" out of there. "There" is New Jersey government. These are the soldiers and crews selecting cadidates for judgeships, representative office, public committees, zoning boards and all other "spots" where money flows -- flows right into their pockets.

The recent collapse of a proposed utility merger that might well have resulted in much cheaper and more efficient energy for suburban communities -- communities now losing power every time there is a rain storm -- was said to have been derailed by so-called "connected" officials, following orders from "bosses" to flex their muscles.

The idea, allegedly, is to let Governor Corzine and others know that the "Machine" can control such matters. The public and the corporate interests who might have benefitted from this transaction -- including those in states who approved the deal -- will be "screwed," as it were, unless the Syndicate gets what it wants, which is absolute power in New Jersey and a license to steal. Actually, they already steal without a license.

I don't care if McGreevey or anyone else wants to have sex with a moose or an advark. I don't care about anyone's sexual preference. I am in favor of same sex unions receiving due recognition from the legal system. People's sexual lives are not the state's business. Putting your "main squeeze" on the public payroll for a six figure salary, so you can have little "afternoon delight" whenever you want it, that's not so cool.

"Golan Cipel, the man with whom Mr. McGreevey says he had a two-year affair, said in an interview from Israel yesterday that he wanted to set the record straight and dispute Mr. McGreevey's memoir, 'The Confession,' which is to be released tomorrow. He said the book was simply an attempt to rehabilitate Mr. McGreevey's public image."

"He was the victim of unwanted advances, 'I was not his lover,' said Mr. Cipel, 37, an Israeli citizen who was New Jersey's homeland security adviser. 'I've never met a liar like Jim McGreevey.'" The New York Times, September 18, 2006, at p. B3.

Let's all chip in and get McGreevey a copy of Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray.

I fully expect a barrage of viruses and other difficulties in posting immediately after I write this essay. Hackers may alter this text. They like to take words or letters out of what I have written in an effort (I guess) to frustrate me. I don't know why. Maybe they're upset about something. I wonder what it could be? McGreevey's patron and (allegedly) one of the traditional "five bosses" running state politics, offered a ...

"... public apology for adding another chapter to New Jersey's storied history of political corruption, [none other than] the former Senate president, John A. Lynch, Jr. -- once the most influential power broker in the state -- pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of official misconduct and tax evasion." Ex-Leader of New Jersey Senate is Guilty of Corruption, p. B2.

In addition to a tax evasion charge,

"Mr. Lynch, whose political machine once gave him the power to appoint judges, shape legislation and pave James E. McGreevey's path to the governor's office, admitted that in 1998 and 1999 he used his public office to help win permit approvals for a mining company that eventually funneled more than $25,000 to him as a 'success fee.' ..."

It was a "success" all right. Is this unusual? No. I bet Lynch was a lawyer and the OAE didn't see a thing, until after the feds caught up with him. Lynch is probably better than most of the goons in New Jersey politics, some of whom probably work for the OAE. What does a Superior Court fix go for now, $15,000 in a criminal case?

"Although the plea involved only one deal in a career that spanned nearly three decades, lawyers familiar with the case said that after scouring Mr. Lynch's business and political records for more than four years, investigators were preparing to push for indictments on a wide range of charges involving at least six different transactions."

The typical response by the Machine to the daily reality of corruption charges against their own is to destroy honest prosecutors or judges in the media, so as to intimidate people. Media people are always on the payroll. Hence, all the "happy news" in New Jersey's "free" community newspapers. Legal ethics committees are often staffed by "politically active" members of the bar who can be used -- sometimes unknowingly -- to hurt political radicals or others not "playing ball" with the powers that be. None of this is on the bar exam. What is on the bar exam is mostly bullshit.

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie is an equal opportunity corruption buster. He doesn't care if you're a Republican or Democrat. He objects to theft or "misuse" of public funds by anybody, even during election season. Hence, the recent subpoenas served on Menendez in connection with $300, 000 in rents received by Menendez over ten years from a public interest group that happened to receive federal funds. Coincidence? There's more coming on this.

The U.S. Attorney's Office is no joke. You don't "make a phone call" to fix things with them. This makes the office incomprehensible to people in New Jersey. "What's with this guy? Who do we gotta talk to about about this trouble maker? Geez. Nothing's easy no more."

Suggestions that Mr. Christie is politically motivated are nonsense. I sure hope that Christie becomes and remains governor. Christie is hoping to destroy or damage a system of political corruption that has destroyed lives for decades, that threatens the legitimate political system of that jurisdiction, the U.S. Constitution, together with your rights, if you live anywhere near the "old Raritan." Attempts to smear or threaten Mr. Christie are a final indication of both desperation -- among the machine's "players" -- and their utter lack of scruples.

It is said that additional resources will now be directed to New Jersey because U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is a tad "miffed" that U.S. Attorneys doing their job are getting indirect smears in the media from corrupt politicians. The United States Justice Department is not subject to intimidation or political pressure. I hope.

"... two former federal prosecutors in New Jersey [Democrats] said in interviews on Friday that investigations and subpoenas are driven from the ground up by career prosecutors, not from the top down. 'If Chris Christie went into a section chief's office and said,' 'I saw this in the paper and I want you to drop subpoenas,' the guy [or gal] would resign,' said one former prosecutor, a Democrat who deals regularly with Mr. Christie's office. 'In my experience with the U.S. attorney's office, timing is not something that they care about.' ..."

Finding himself described as "the one-eyed man who is king," will not deter Mr. Christie from going after the bosses telling judges and justices as well as other legal players what to do in New Jersey. Christie's "one eye" seems to work pretty well at spotting corruption.

Corruption is costing the people of New Jersey BILLIONS of dollars, reducing the quality of public services, destroying the professional reputations and lives of many honest people in government (take a look at my writings concerning Ms. Farber), intimidating law enforcement and turning New Jersey into an Orwellian nightmare. Political hacks are using public information and power for nefarious purposes at the behest of unelected "big shots." It also makes New Jersey's Supreme Court look incompetent and ridiculous, which it is. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

They have finally shown Deborah T. Poritz to the door, but only to be replaced (for the time being) by former Attorney General and now "Chief Justice" Zazzali, allegedly, an architect of the racial profiling by New Jersey's state police. I hope not for long. No wonder there are hackers altering and destroying my essays here. My opinions are not welcome. "Forget the Constitution," say the Trenton boys.

I am not willing to forget the Constitution or to stop writing. If a fraction of the $3 billion for school construction were spent on paying teachers a salary comparable to what judges are paid ($141,000. 00 per year), you would see even more intense commitment by teachers putting in extra hours, retention of good professionals, and more excellent teachers attracted to the system. What teachers do is worth as much as what judges do, compensation is a lot less. Many teachers are far better educated than the judges I knew. Teachers are grotesquely underpaid by comparison with other professionals in New Jersey. And the same is true elsewhere, including New York. Eventually, the state's fiscal troubles may produce a crisis in the education system, as many lawyers and educators have warned. You can't keep stealing forever, fellas.

It is time to recognize this need for thrift and to pay people what they deserve for teaching in public schools or any schools. Supplements to parochial school teachers, doing tutoring or earning advanced degrees and education certificates, has been discussed in state legislatures and school settings. Good teaching can take place in old buildings, if people are paid adequately.

It is those "big shots" who are finding it difficult to sleep easily these days, since the bells that toll in Trenton are tolling for them. There will be a day of reckoning. Soon.

Jose Marti Attends a Lecture by Oscar Wilde.

An effort has been made to destroy this essay by altering paragraph spacing, by obstructing access to the writing of it and by blocking efforts to post it. I still cannot post images. I will do my best to complete and publish the essay. However, some damage may be seen in the final product.

Jose Marti, On Art and Literature: Critical Writings (New York & London: Monthly Review Press, 1982), Philip S. Foner, ed. & trans., with chronology of Marti's life.

"What is art? [Only] the shortest way of achieving the triumph of truth, [through fictions,] and placing it at the same time, so that it will endure and shine in hearts and minds? Art is not a venal adornment of kings and pontiffs, where the face of genius is barely seen, but a divine accumulation of souls, where men [and women] of all the ages meet and congregate."

Jose Marti

Jose Marti (1835-1895) is a wonderful poet and literary artist, both Romantic and modernist, the great unifying figure in the early history of Cuba's struggle for (and partial achievement of) an elusive independence. He was fluent in French, Italian and English, writing in each of those languages for periodicals, struggling to make a living while residing in what is now the "Chelsea" section of Manhattan. Marti was a nineteenth century version of a West Village intellectual-hipster. If Marti had chosen to live in Paris, he might have been a character -- "Rudolfo," the poet -- in Puccini's La Boheme.

Marti was both man of action and poet, also an international symbol of the Latin American struggle for recognition of independence, cultural accomplishment and equality. His doctoral work was in literature and philosophy, though he also studied law -- together with everything else -- in Havana as well as the University of Madrid. He completed studies for a doctorate in philosophy and humanities in 1874. In addition to his modern languages, he was a classicist and knew much Roman literature from memory, especially the great Roman poets Horace and Terence, also the historians Tacitus and Livy. Incidentally, Marti was as great an admirer of Milton -- and even more of Shakespeare -- as I am.

Marti was even a respected critic of the visual arts, commenting on Russian and other European painters and artists for a Latin American audience. (See his moving essay on "The Munkascy Christ" which appeared in December, 1886.) He played a role in the Cuban independence movement comparable to Garibaldi's or Verdi's in Italy's Risorgimento.

In reading his literary criticisms, one is astonished at the sheer volume of his cultural activity in a busy and politically active life. Marti attended concerts and theater performances, relishing lectures by visiting writers and artists or travellers. He loved New York, feeling its energy and enthusiasm, surprising Latin Americans by recognizing the explosion of U.S. literature, judging it to be a "new great literature" for a new great nation.

At the same time, he was fearful and critical of the commercial spirit and burgeoning imperialism that threatened to overwhelm the nascent high culture of the United States. Like Oscar Wilde in Britain, Marti warned of the perils of "hyperindustrialism" and commercialism.

Marti was deeply impressed by both Emerson and Whitman, being inspired to read a great deal of American literature. One scholarly student of Marti's work notes that the Cuban writer's literary journalism included: "... seven articles or essays that deal at length with a single United States author Ralph Waldo Emerson, [but also] Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Amos Bronson Alcott" -- and unusually for ANY critic at the time -- Marti recognized the greatness of "Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain." (p. 18.)

Marti was an early advocate of the right to equal education for women. According to Philip S. Foner, "Marti observed that in superior men extreme virility and feminine tenderness are found united." (p. 22.) This was before Carl Jung and twentieth century scholarship on the complexity of our conceptions of gender. For Marti, "the true artist had to be inspired by all that elevated mankind." (p. 16.) (See "Do we still celebrate humanity?")

Marti read a great deal of philosophy, was sympathetic to British culture and politics, admiring French, German and British philosophers, especially the idealists. Marti's praise for Gladstone and the struggle for Irish home rule was passionate. He was a humanist, with idealist and highly romantic, modernist and even pragmatist sympathies in his more "pure" philosophical comments. Politically, he was an advocate of independence from colonial powers and social compassion. He was "anticlerical," even as he was deeply religious. Marti was an advocate of an "ethics of feeling" or compassion, sympathetic to much in the Christian tradition. Describing the Hungarian painter's controversial depiction of Christ, Marti writes:

"[Munkacsy] sees Jesus as the most perfect incarnation of the invisible power of the idea. The idea consecrates, inflames, attentuates, exalts, purifies; it gives a stature that is invisible but can be felt; it cleanses the spirit of dross the way fire consumes the underbrush; it spreads a clear and secure beauty which reaches the soul and is felt in it. Munkacy's Jesus is the power of the pure idea." (p. 129.)

Marti's own view of Christ (while appreciative of this Platonic notion, derived from Walter Pater perhaps) was closer to Wilde's in De Profundis:

"I see this continual assertion of the imagination as the basis of all spiritual and material life, I see also that to Christ imagination was simply a form of Love, and to him Love was Lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase." (All quotations are from the full text of De Profundis by Vyvyan Holland, published by Avon, in 1962.)

Attempts by Miami's Cubanoids to appropriate Marti's poetry to their racist and greedy politics is an insult to the memory of a great man whose politics was really an expression of respect as well as solidarity for the poor and suffering masses of the world. Time for more vandalism and defacements of my writings from Cubanazos and Cubanazas promising "free speech" to Cubans. (A little financial contribution to Bob Menendez makes everything O.K.?)

Long before Wilde's trial and prison sentence, the young Irish poet toured the United States on behalf of the pre-Raphaelite painters and "aesthetes" of the British isles, becoming a notorious and controversial figure, appearing in silk britches holding a lilly, in that macho and very sexist era. Marti attended the young controversial poet's New York lecture and defended his work and concerns, long before Wilde was famous as the literary star of London.

Marti begins his account of the evening with a defense of reading the "Slavic, German or English literature whose poetry contains white swans, castle ruins, lusty young girls upon flower strewn balconies, and the calm mystical light of the aurora borealis, all at once." (p. 294.) Who could ask for more? Not me. (See "Summer Books.")

"Knowing various literatures is the best way to free us from being oppressed by some, just as there is no way to avoid blindly following a single philosophical system unless we feed upon them all." (p. 294.)

Marti notes the hostility of some members of the public to the young poet who calls for them to be mindful of those unbreakable and yet fragile things "poetry" and "feeling," together with those men and women who are driven to create both. He suggests the need for men like Wilde and the importance of their contributions to society as well as the danger of noncomprehension and destruction to which they are always exposed. In words that are still highly apt for Cubans and Cuban-Americans -- maybe for all of us -- Marti warns:

"... the poet ... strengthens his living faith in the neglected and disregarded things of the spirit. To hate tyranny one has only to live under it, and nothing so kindles the poetic fire than to live among those in whom it is missing. But poets suffocate unless they have kindred souls into whom they can pour out their overflowing spirit." (p. 295.)

Marti was a kindred spirit to Wilde, anticipating the Irish poet's mature insights in De Profundis. Each man might have written the other's stories for children. Marti's prose conjures thoughts of both Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche ("self-becoming"), but there are also passages in Marti's essays that might have been written by Coleridge or Pater, Ruskin or Santayana.

Oscar Wilde appears at "Chickering Hall where the New York public goes to hear lectures." (p. 295.) Marti comments with a smile of the young man's attire, that it is meant to shock and delight (think of the Beatles a century later). It detracts or distracts audience members from his beautiful words. There is a danger that Wilde's aestheticism will become a trendy fashion or "attitude" and nothing more.

"The carriages crowd about the wide doors of the imposing lecture hall. A lady is carrying a lilly, emblem of the reformers. Everybody has taken great pains to dress with elaborate elegance. Like the aesthetes who are renovating art in England, they strive for perfect harmony in the combination of colors in both dress and accessories." (p. 296.)

Marti rejects the trivialization of Wilde's message, which is to defend the need for beauty in our lives and the yearning for spiritual fulfillment in a materialistic age:

"[Wilde] says that beauty needs no definition after Goethe's, that the great English renaissance of this century combines a love for Grecian beauty with a passion for the Italian renaissance and with the desire to avail itself of all the beauty put into its works of art by the modern spirit. He says that the new school has sprung up like a harmony of love in Faust and in Helen of Troy, from the close bond between the spirit of Greece, where all was beautiful, and the burning, inquiring and rebellious individualism of the modern romantics." (p. 297.)

Agreeing with Wilde, Marti echoes Shakespeare's proud boast in the sonnets:

"Beauty is the only thing that time cannot kill. Philosophies die, religious creeds vanish, but the beautiful lives forever. It is the gift of all the ages, the sustenance of all peoples everywhere, and an eternal treasure. Wars will be of little account when all men love the same things with equal intensity, when a common intellectual climate unites them." (p. 301.)

Marti could not have anticipated a world united by McDonald's and a fascination (shared by me) with "Star Trek" episodes. Here is a warning for us today:

"England is still a powerful sovereign by virtue of her military might; and our renaissance would give her a sovereignty to endure long after her yellow leopards tire of the roar of battle, and the rose upon her shield is no longer tinged with the blood of combat. And you also, Americans, by planting the heart of this great nation [emphasis added] with the aesthetic spirit that makes life better and alleviates its hardships, will amass such riches for yourselves that they will make you forget for being so trivial, those you now enjoy from having made your land a network of railroads and your harbors a haven for all the ships that sail the seas known to man." (p. 301.)

More than a hundred years after Marti wrote those words, in the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet, public art in New York is a bunch of plastic cows placed at different locations and painted in bizarre colors. I think we can do better than that.

"Love of art purifies the soul and inspires it." (p. 302.) Marti asks in response to the scoffers: "Is this bold young man to be respected or ridiculed?" He answers his own question: "He is to be respected!" (p. 302.) Yet Marti does more, expressing admiration for the courage and achievement of Oscar Wilde, who (like Keats) "... fights as if against an invisible army to awaken a love for impalpable beauty and pleasing spiritual intangibles. Where can a poet turn in that land except to his inner self? What is he to do but fold up within his soul like a violet trampled by a horse's hoof?" (p. 304.)

Marti closes with a hope and prayer for Wilde and England, for Emerson and the United States of America, maybe for himself and Cuba:

"May [Oscar Wilde] whose defiance of the critics gives proof of great integrity, and whose noble poetry bids his soul abandon the marketplace of virtues and cultivate itself in tragic silence -- quicken his scornful and busy nation's love for art, the source of all true happiness and the consolation that heals the spirit crushed by life's sorows!" (p. 304.)

Is anybody NOT corrupt in New Jersey?

Ronald Smothers, "City Officials in New Jersey Plead Guilty to Corruption," The New York Times, August 31, 2006, p. B5.
"Trenton: Guilty Plea in Prostitution Ring," The New York Times, August 31, 2006, p. B6.
Haifa Zangana, "The Right to Rule Ourselves," in Not One More Death (London: Verso, 2006), p. 50.

A federal invasion of south Jersey is already leading to arrests of more crooked politicians: "The powerful president of Atlantic City's City Council and former Camden Councilman pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal corruption and bribery charges."

The arrest was the result of a sting operation which is said to be one part of an on-going undercover offensive by the FBI and other federal agencies. There is more to come.

"Craig Calloway, 47, the president of Atlantic City City Council since 2003 and part of a family that has long been involved in politics in the city, pleaded guilty to a single bribery count." (emphasis added)

"In a hearing before Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez of Federal District Court, he said he had taken $36,000 from the contractor over a two-year period. As part of his plea agreement, he said he had accepted the money with the understanding that he would help get the contractor work on one of the city's development projects in the north east section of Atlantic City."

This arrest comes as "federal corruption investigations" -- which are continuing -- "have resulted in indictments of more than two dozen elected and appointed officials in Monmouth and Hudson Counties to the north."

Mr. Calloway has lots of company. Soon he will have more.

"Also pleading guilty was Ali Sloan El, 52, a longtime veteran of Camden politics who resigned his city council post last month ..."

The Camden Machine is feeling the heat, which is increasing daily. As a result, it is likely that the "Machine" (through its friends in the media) will dish out whatever dirt it can find about Senator Menendez or Governor Corzine, hoping that the feds will have to act on it, so as to get rid of potential rivals within the Democratic party. While it is true that Hudson County politicians are far from altruistic humanists, the "guys" from Camden are worse, much worse. New Jersey Democrats may have achieved the impossible: Making Republicans look good.

"No political figures associated with the [Camden] County Democratic machine, led by GEORGE E. NORCROSS III, have [yet] been charged in any federal corruption cases. However, the chairman of [New Jersey's] Senate Budget Committee WAYNE BRYANT, also from Camden County, has been the subject of subpoenas and search warrants in connection with an 'unrelated' federal investigation of his real estate transactions."

"The United States Attorney for New Jersey Christopher J. Christie, speaking of the guilty pleas by Mr. Calloway and Mr. Sloan El, said: 'Unfortunately, this is just more of the same of what we see all over New Jersey, north and south. Public officials sell their offices' " -- I believe the same may be said of the judiciary in New Jersey, since it is the only explanation that I can imagine for the lethargy of judges in response to theft, torture and rape -- " 'lining their pockets and making a mockery of their service to the public.' ..." See http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/peopletowatch/ptw0103.gif (Christopher J. Christie, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey).

Where is the new Attorney General for New Jersey, STUART RABNER? Lobbying for a seat on the Supreme Court? Still not confirmed? Out to lunch with potential future colleagues, ideally, at taxpayers' expense? ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

In the very same issue of the newspaper, it is reported that: "DEMETRIUS LEMOS is the 6th person to admit to a role in a multistate prostitution ring that included "transporting minors to engage in prostitution" and operated in "Atlantic City, Boston, Las Vegas, Miami and New York." (emphasis added) Juveniles are often sexually assaulted, allegedly, while under hypnosis or otherwise impaired. Therapist-torturers lend themselves to such exploitation of persons.

Many young women, especially, are tormented for life by such experiences, then judged harshly by society for the lives they are forced to lead, while those who make it possible for such suffering to occur in the lives of men and women (so-called "therapists") are often, seemingly, "pillars of the community." The feds have decided to fry a few fancy fish and bring down some of those pillars of the community. Keep your eyes open and stay tuned to this channel in the weeks and months ahead. There is a lot more coming. There will be a day of reckoning. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

It is alleged by many observers that New Jersey officials might have been "greased" with a few dollar bills to look the other way as these crimes were committed. Lawyers must have been involved in developing those public deals featuring bribery of politicians, for example, but where is the Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE) of New Jersey? Did no "files come across their desks" pertaining to these disgusting transactions? Are such crimes not "unethical"? I wonder how much cash was paid under the table to New Jersey's distinguished and much painted judges and politicians? Where are they? (See "Even in New Jersey there comes a time when silence is betrayal.")

I cannot post images, but I can provide a link so that you may view and come to your own conclusions about the piercing intellects of New Jersey's judges. http://www.law.upenn.edu/alumni/alumnijournal/spring2005/feature1/images/poritz.jpg

Let us ask New Jersey's Chief Justice DEBORAH T. PORITZ, the person presiding over and responsible for the dismal legal system of that morally and otherwise polluted jurisdiction, which still leads the country in corruption and incompetence among judges and other members of the state bar: Should all sexual assaults -- including those occuring while victims are under hypnosis -- be punished? Are persons not entitled to the truth concerning what has been done to them and by whom it was done? I wonder if Terry and Diana were in on this caper? Did they help with the hypnosis? Is it all "in the family"? How do you live with yourself, Terry? Do you explain to your kids that you're a state torturer? Still go to Synagogue?

Give 'em a call. Communicate your sense of outrage to the folks in Trenton. If you have any information that can help the feds, please call them and join in this effort to eradicate the evil that is destroying New Jersey. ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

No justice, no peace. Any more "errors" you want to insert in this essay?