Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Unknown Church, Riverton Wyoming

Churches of the West: Unknown Church, Riverton Wyoming:

It's All Natural! Except for us.

Just a second ago, on television, there was an advertisement for a dog food that was "natural".  It had no "chicken byproducts".

I wasn't aware that chickens were, ispo facto, unnatural, although I'll concede that they are a rather weird bird, but that's besides the point.  What's so fascinating is that we live in an era, and one that stretches back quite a few decades now, that's obsessed with the natural, even while we ourselves don't apply the same logic to ourselves.  It's really odd.  Either we like nature and accept it, or we don't. You can't really have cafeteria naturalism.

Evidence on our obsession with what's natural is everywhere, and frankly, I'm not criticizing it.  There's is indeed a lot of reason to be focused on the natural. We ourselves are part of nature, and there's better and better evidence that the more we depart from nature, the worst off we are (even as we strive to continue to create a very unnatural world). 

So eating a more natural diet makes a great deal of sense, and we know what the loose parameters of a natural diet are (and it isn't, by the way, vegan or vegetarian, which are highly unnatural diets for people who are uncomfortable with nature).  And getting out in nature, we know, is not only a good idea, it might actually be necessarily for our well being.

 A fellow with an actually natural diet.

So we've developed a lot of "natural foods". Some people have become "locavores", eating only what they can acquire locally, and thereby bypassing the unnatural food distribution system.  "Grass fed" beef is in, and I'm down with that, as I've been eating grass fed beef (and antelope, and deer, etc.) for decades.  Quite a few people insist their clothes be "natural", which means not a petroleum byproduct.  People buy vegetables that are "organic", by which they mean free of unnatural chemical exposure.

The Amish must be looking around thinking; "Ach, was ist das?"

 Amish, who live pretty natural, although that's not usually what non Amish backers of "natural" mean by natural.

Some of us, many of us now, join one or more organizations devoted to natural causes.  The Sierra Club, Ducks Unlimited, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Initiative, are just a few.  Radicals look towards Green Peace or the Earth Justice League.

But we omit nature from ourselves. That is, our own selves. And the more radically natural we are, the more likely we are to do that. Why is that?

What do I mean?

Well, the most natural thing a person encounters every day is themselves.  No matter how unnatural of environment you live in, you are natural.

For most of us, that probably doesn't impact us in any particular way, but we should consider this.  We are, no matter how a person conceives of it, as certain type of animal.  We may be, and I'd argue we are, a very special animal with an immortal soul, but nonetheless, we're an animal.  More particularly, we're a mammal, and a primate, with very special attributes.

And those attributes are governed to a fairly large extent by our DNA. That is, our genes determine much of what we are.

This has been, of course, argued about for decades.  Is it nature or nurture that determines our personalities, etc.  Both, no doubt. But that our genetic makeup determines much of what we are in some very fundamental ways cannot be doubted.  Included amongst these are our genders, and what that means.

That's a hugely unpopular readily right now, in certain quarters, but it's a reality nonetheless.  There are no "men trapped insides of women's bodies", or vice versa. There are men, and women.  That's biology.

That doesn't mean that some women and some men, in fairly low statistical numbers, don't have inclinations that are contrary to their genetic makeup in terms of gender in varying degrees that cause them to think they want to be the other.  It may very well be the case that they do.  And that doesn't make them inhuman, nor should it subject them to abuse. But it also should be required that such inclinations are part of their natural animal nature.  Pretending that they are is going against nature.  And at the point where society is providing people with "therapies" to achieve a gender transformation (to the extent that can actually occur), it's doing something deeply unnatural.  If it requires chemistry or surgery to achieve (and maintain), it isn't natural.

Indeed, we know that human beings are afflicted in varying numbers with all sorts of unnatural inclinations and impulses, some harmless, and some not.  For example, some people actually seek surgery to remove a limb, seized by the belief, somehow, that they'd be happier without it.  This is a self detructive belief, and unnatural, but they have it.

Of course, it could be argued that medicine itself is unnatural, and some do, but I don't think that's really the case.  Human desires to cure maladies are a human trait, and demonstrably go back to ancient times, indeed far back into our ancient origins.  Ancient humans with knit bones demonstrate that we were setting breaks as far back as we've existed, and occasionally an ancient skeleton will show up with evidence at an attempt for fairly exotic surgery.  That people can develop, and synthesize, medicines is not unnatural.

But it does lead to some oddities in this area.  One is that there's a big business in for "natural remedies". These are all sorts of herbs and whatever that are supposedly natural.  Near my work there's a store that sells such things and some of the impacts of them that are claimed are simply amazing.  One recently claimed to do something at the "cellular" level.  I hope not, that would be scary indeed.  The point here however, is that people will buy something that's only barely less natural than the stuff they're trying to avoid at the doctor's office or the pharmacy.  Lots of medicines are, actually, fairly natural. 

Not all are in impact, however.  That's an interesting thing to.  Modern westerners (Americans and Europeans) spend a lot of money on pharmaceuticals that are designed to frustrate a certain natural cycle.  That's interesting, as that's a medicine that's actually anti-natural.  It's weird to think that there are, undoubtedly, women who eat all natural foods, wear organic cotton, maybe go the "natural remedies store", but take an anti natural pharmaceutical.  Indeed, I have to suspect that the fact such pharmaceuticals are so widely accepted now is that they were introduced in the early 1960s, when there was a huge admiration for anything chemical or medical and people didn't worry much about the impact of anything of that type.  It took Silent Spring and DDT to take us there.

In another area, we've written a lot recently about the "natural law".  Now some would maintain that there's no such thing as a natural law, but the best evidence would certainly be contrary to that. As Chief Justice John Marshall noted in The Antelope, the state can and does create statutes that contravene or stand opposed to the natural law.  But we seem not to even note that, which is interesting.

One of the big ones we live with every day is the institution of the "corporation".  Corporations are legal creatures of the state, and basically they evolve out of the partnership.  Partnerships do comport with nature, ad people combining to act in concert with partners is clearly a natural human activity. But corporations are deemed by law to be "persons" before the law.  I'm not saying that's good, or bad, but it is rather weird, and clearly not natural.

The fact that we've built such big cities that are seperated from nature is unnatural.  Indeed, this entire era in which we are so concerned about living naturally would have had a hard time coming about if this wasn't the case, as people who live more closely to nature, aren't cognizant of that in the same way or to the same extent.  That is not to say that they aren't aware of it, just differently.

It's also not to say that towns and villages aren't natural. They are, and have existed since time immemorial.  But super huge cites, such as we have now, that can only exist with the technological advances we have now, aren't really natural.  They have existed for quite some time, but that doesn't make them natural really.  And certainly the modern cubicle life isn't natural.  Indeed the separation from nature that the city life creates is one of the sources of modern depression and potentially the cause of much that we see in human stress and oddity.

So the point?

To offend everyone in the western world?

No, this is simply one of those observational posts.   I'm afflicted with an analytical mind, by nature, and therefore I'll take an analytical thread where it goes.  And this one amuses me.  We live in an era when people can be really aggressive about being "natural".  But we live in a very unnatural society.  I think it ought to be more natural, truly I do.  But in making that observation, I'm well aware that a lot of the people stomping their feet about being "natural", are hugely unnatural.  A person can be, I suppose, selectively natural.  But you have to be aware of that.  Wearing Birkenstocks while eating a free range yogurt vegan diet makes you anti natural, not natural.  And if you choose going natural, and demand that we go natural as far as possible, you have to separate your politics from your nature, and go where that leads you.  Otherwise, what you have to do is to admit that you feel that accommodations against nature should be made, which is fine, but you should admit that you're doing it so that you are clear and honest about what you are doing, at least to yourself.

Tufts Magazine / fall 2013. "American nations"

Tufts Magazine / fall 2013

Interesting view.  Is it correct?

Feebleness in war; muddled thinking in the face of domestic terrorism

The Republic of Vietnam feared its population for most of the war, but following the defeat of the Communist forces in the Tet Offensive of 1968, it realized that, militarily, the tide had turned and started to plan to issue military weapons to the population out in the countryside, much like Switzerland does with its own population.  It didn't get around to it, but it planned to do it, as it realized at that point, with the war effectively won, as long as the United States continued to supply air power in the event of a North Vietnamese assault, it could trust its population to repel local aggression.  The fact that South Vietnam fell in the face of a massive North Vietnamese assault in 1975, when the United States failed to supply air power, doesn't moot the point, but actually tends to support it.

Switzerland has, of course, done just that for eons.  Israel does something similar, allowing the issuance of military type arms to some of its population in hostile areas, leading to some fairly incongruous photographs of that occurring in some areas, on occasion.  The same policy was pretty effectively followed, no matter what you think of its cause or government, by South Africa before apartheid was thankfully ended, when it faced a domestic terrorism problem in the countryside.

Which leads me to the bonehead comment of the New York Daily News today that today's domestic terrorist attack in Tennessee should lead to tighter gun control.

Baloney.

Terrorism isn't the same as conventional crime, no matter how violent.  It's not even the same as organized crime.  It may be criminal, but it's character is entirely different.

Terrorism is a type of guerrilla war.  Just because it's vile doesn't make it any less so. That's what it is.  Crime is a violation of the law.  War is the extension of politics by other means.  While a terrorist act may be criminal, they're done in the furtherance of political goals.  That's why they occur.  Moreover, no matter how loosely organized, they're done in the furtherance of political goals by some sort of organized entity.  The terrorist acts we've seen recently have been organized, at least in terms of influence, by the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant.  They don't need to have a central command to be responsible for them.  Their goal and means are clear, and the people who sign up as soldiers in their cause can enlist at any time, any where, without ISIL ever knowing it.  And they're not irrational or insane when they do so.

Gun control as a means of controlling violence is of highly dubious utility no matter what so many New Yorkers like to imagine. But as a means of controlling terrorism, it's insane.

The proof is more than ample.  Terrorist have never had any problem obtaining arms. The examples are too numerous to dispute.  The first example of modern terrorism is provided by the Irish Republican Army, with Michael Collins being the architect of a modern terrorist war.   The IRA had no trouble at any point in obtaining small arms, nor did its successor the Provisional IRA.  Nor did the Red Brigades or the Bader Meinhoff Gang.  Nor did the Viet Cong.  Nor did the Front de Libération Nationale.  Nor did the Irgun, Nor has ISIL in France.  Nor will ISIL, and ISIL inspired groups, here.  Such laws may, at best, require a terrorist to undergo more effort, but what they mostly do in this context is disarm the population that that terrorists propose to attack.

And why would they.  Unlike conventional criminals, terrorist share with dedicated volunteer soldiers a willingness to die for their cause, no matter what their cause might be. That's a distinction that's quite different from conventional criminals, which to seek to perpetuate their crimes for personal gain.  Terrorist do not, and often don't expect to live to see the victory they hope for.

With that being their mindset, no obstacle to obtaining arms will be effective. So, in contrast, society has to be prepared to suffer without recourse, surrender, or effectively resist.  We're doing the first right now.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that American have the right to keep and bear arms, a right that eastern states in particular like to attack.  It's sometimes snarkily noted that "we don't live on the Frontier anymore, and people don't have to protect themselves against Indian attacks".

Well, perhaps we do.

Average people in Paris found themselves effectively in that situation recently, with no ability to act.  In France, the average citizen can't carry a handgun for protection.  France was ideally set up for an ISIL inspired attack.  Its not that easy in a lot of the United States. And in at least Massachusetts the recent terrorist attack by two individuals had the impact of shutting the city down, something that may have been contributed to by an effectively disarmed population.

Such events are, of course, rare.  Even when they do occur, they actually impact very few people. But they will become more common. This won't be the last domestic terrorist attack that ISIL or ISIL inspired people launch in the United States, or in Europe.  For Americans, those who want to blame everything on the easy availablity of guns should realize that this is a situation that no police force can protect us from, and the military cannot either.  We have to do it ourselves, or be prepared to do it. For European nations that have so effectively disarmed the population, this is even more the case.

Most people, given the option of carrying something, would not.  Indeed, the overwhelming majority of people will not, or even cannot due to occupations that make it impractical.  Even people who might be totally qualified to do so by training, etc., generally will not. But calls to ban things are naive in the extreme.  Mao said that in the guerilla war, the geurilla swam amongst the population like fish.  They do, and even though most of us will never encounter one of the fish, some undoubtedly will in the future.  If even a tiny percentage of the population was capable of defending itself, it would make a difference for everyone.  Not might, it would.  At some point, an armed population is just hard to attack.  That doesn't mean such attacks would stop, but they might be stopped more quickly, or even deterred in some instances.  Day long spectacles like we had in Boston or Paris would likely be rarer.

Or at a bare minimum, government offices, and particularly recruiting stations, ought to have armed men. Why it hasn't become a policy, during a time of terrorist war, to require recruiters to have sidearms in their stations is beyond me.  That's crazy.  Members of the military are now targets everywhere, but they're also amongst the least likely to be armed while in the US.  That policy should end.

Random Snippets: The most dreaded domestic question a lawyer can be asked.

I have matters scheduled out for years, and in a typical day I have things from beginning of the day to the end. And not just the workday, the day.

None the less, like every other lawyer, I get this question at home:  "What's your schedule like today?"

The atomic bomb of interrupting questions.  The day's been planned out time wise like a Swiss watch, and somebody who had something planned is. . . .attempting to pass it on to you at the lat moment.

Uff.

I suppose it was always so.

Is anyone going to read Go Set A Watchman?

I really like the book To Kill A Mockingbird.

I'm not as keen on the film. The movie has achieved iconic status, but frankly it isn't as good as its reputation.  It's not horrible, but frankly it cheapens the book.  All the characters in it, except for Scout, as played by Mary Badham, and Boo Radley, played by Robert Duval, just aren't played that well.  The set, except for the courtroom interiors, aren't done that well either.  Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch practically lacks a human dimension, he's so noble, which isn't the case for Atticus Finch in the novel.  I'd be tempted to say that he's too saintly in the movie, but that's not right either, as an examination of the lives of the saints shows them to be pretty human as well (St. Jerome had a problem with his temper and kept a pet lion, St. Augustine of Hippo had to judge civil matters all day long and then wrote at night, St. Bernadette came from an extremely poor family and struggled with a secret ailment that caused severe pain, St. Peter was married and according to some had a daughter who had a crippling condition, St. Peter and St. Paul had a big falling out and then came back together after reconciling).  Atticus Finch is all noble in a seersucker suit in the movie, but in the book he's a middle class widower who is a lawyer who takes in food items for pay and doesn't always do very well in court.  He's a real lawyer in the book.

And I do like the book.

Which is why I'm not going to read Go Set A Watchman.

Anyone who has been following this story knows that Go Set A Watchman features the same father and daughter that To Kill A Mockingbird does.  Set in the late 1950s, this book, however, we are told, portrays the father differently.  It portrays him as a racist.

Some are arguing that this changes their view of the portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, but they're missing the point entirely.  The real point is that this book, Go Set A Watchman, isn't a sequel (it was written first).  It's a rejected novel using a character with the same name. But that doesn't make it the same character.

Anyone who has ever written knows that an author rejects some of his own work.  Editors reject more, and when they do that, qutie frankly, they're usually right.  In this case, Harper Lee's editors rejected the novel, and sent her back with suggestions to write a new one.  That new one became To Kill A Mockingbird. This book was intended to be published, and in this form it shouldn't have been.

It's not that a later book by Lee, often wished for, or an earlier book by Lee, isn't worth publishing.  But a rejected work that uses the same names, but not the same characters, is damaging to the better work.  Lee, in writing her second, published, novel apparently rethought her topics and it is widely believed that she based the character of Atticus Finch, in that novel, on her father.  There's no suggestion that the Finch character in the second book was intended to do that, and to do so, would suggest she had a very complicated relationship with her father.

Indeed, one of the things known, but not often really appreciated, is that almost all of the characters in To Kill A Mockingbird are very closely based on real people.  Finch was based on her father.  Scout was based on Lee herself.  Scout's young friend was based on Truman Capote (who based a character in one of his books on her).  Boo Radley, according to Capote, was  based on a young man who in fact lived in their neighborhood.  Lee was a very good writer, but a lot of the effectiveness of her writing in To Kill A Mockingbird was based on the fact that she was writing about people who were extremely familiar to her.  I'd question whether that's true of Go Set A Watchman, which in contrast was written about near contemporary events that I suspect Lee hadn't personally observed to the same extent, and in the same way, that her first published work did.

One of the things about great artists is that not everything they produce is great, but because they are great, we wish to relate everything they do to their greatness.  The best artists of any kind, writers, painters, etc., destroy their failed or inferior works.  There's a reason for that.  This novel, Go Set A Watchman, was written first, and it wasn't worth publishing, according to the original publisher.  She used the same names, but basically new characters, in a new setting, for her new, and now classic, novel.  Go Set A Watchman was intended to be, by the publisher, nothing more than a writing exercise never to see publication.  Lee's later greatness doesn't overcome that fact, and this novel should have been left unpublished.

Railhead: The Coal Train

Railhead: The Coal Train

 

Something we'll be seeing less of in the future? 

Law Student Rebate

From the New York Times:

Beginning with students entering this year — whether in two-, three- or four-year programs — Brooklyn Law School is offering to repay 15 percent of total tuition costs to those who have not found full-time jobs nine months after graduating. That, according to school officials, is how long it typically takes graduates to get such jobs and, if necessary, to obtain the requisite licenses.

“Knowing you have a little extra security is very comforting and helpful,” said Ms. Friedman, who is from Fair Lawn, N.J.

The introduction of the program, called Bridge to Success, comes as law school graduates across the country face increasing competition in a depressed job market that is only slowly recovering from the economic downturn.

I've read some commentary that the slow down in legal employment is over, but this sure wouldn't seem to support that.

Of course, she can also take comfort that New York has gone to the UBE, so now if she passes the bar she can practice in the over 14 states that have adopted it, more or less, no matter how little she may know about the the law of those states, thereby helping to keep the state of legal employment depressed everywhere, and aiding in the process of spreading less informed legal practice through out the country.

Mid Week At Work: Free classes: Trade and technical

But is it a Power Wagon?

The Legacy Power Wagon was written up in Auto Week.

But is it a real Power Wagon?

I have my doubts.  Indeed, as much as I hate to say it, as it looks so nice, I don't think it is.  Indeed, I think this defines it:

And power? Oh man. On most conversions, the original engine is swapped out for a 585-hp, 550-lb-ft supercharged 6.2-liter Chevy LSA V8 retuned for mid-range torque.
“From 2,000 to 4,500 rpm, it pulls like an animal,” said Bent.  

There are other engines available, too. For instance, there are those who claim putting a Chevy engine in a Dodge Power Wagon is sacrilege.

“So for them we offer a stroked small-block Chrysler. It’s available, but not one customer of the 60 we’ve delivered has asked for the Chrysler.”

You can also order a 6.2-liter, 430-hp, 420-lb-ft Chevrolet LS3; a 7.0-liter, 430-hp, 500-lb-ft Chrysler 426; or a 170-hp, 480-lb-ft 3.9-liter Cummins turbo-diesel. The Chevies get a four-speed automatic, while the Chrysler and Cummins get five-speed manuals. But most people get the LSA Chevy V8.

“The LSA engine, transmission and computers come straight from Chevy Performance,” Bent said. “They’re simple, they have a ‘connect-and-cruise’ package that makes them easy and simple to install and they come with a two-year, 50,000-mile warranty that they actually stand behind.”

If the engine and transmission come from Chevy Performance, well, isn't it a Chevrolet?  It would seem to be just a Power Wagon body and set of axles.  Same with the other conversions, it seems to go to far.

Perhaps that's because I like the original trucks. They were slow, with flathead 6 cylinder engines as a rule, but they were low geared and had piles of torque. They weren't fast as they didn't need to be.

I feel like these miss the point.

And then there's Will: Lex Anteinternet: The Natural Law

Interestingly, on the same morning that this appeared here on our blog; Lex Anteinternet: The Natural Law: (which appears immediately below this), George F. Will actually argued a similar position in his column.  Unfortunately, I'm not paid by the Washington Post for the opinions expressed here.

I was just going to note this as a comment to the just published item, but because Will's position comes from a different angle, I'll just make a brief post here instead.  Will's column focuses on a line in Justice Robert's Obegefell dissent  in which he criticizes the majority for taking a position he related to the Lochner v. New York decision of 1905.  That case came to the Supreme Court when Lochner, a small baker, challenged a New York working hours law.   The Court struck down the law as unconstitutional but in 1936 came back and overturned Lochner.

Will doesn't like that Lochner was overturned and has written on that before, his concept being that its a trampling on individual rights without constitutional authority.  As a true Conservative, that position on Will's part makes sense, although I frankly think his reasoning is weak here.  At any rate, he notes in his current article that Robert's fails to appreciate that Lochner, which Roberts doesn't like and has cited in a negative fashion before, is based on "natural rights", i.e., Natural Law.

I disagree with Will that the type of law reflected in Lochner is unconstitutional, or that its necessarily against the Natural Law.  But it's interesting to see somebody else citing Natural Law in the public venue.  Will would even go so far as to ask any future Supreme Court nominees if they agree with the natural rights concept expressed in Lochner.

The Natural Law

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence, which specifically cited Natural Law as a basis for declaring the colonies to be independent from the United Kingdom.

One of the things that has become pretty evident due to the Obegefell decision, but which was really evident before (this draft started about a month ago, before the recent Supreme Court decisions came out) is how anemic American legal education and thinking has become.  Law Schools are pretty much trade schools nowadays, and they're producing technicians.  I suppose that's why law schools are generally enthusiastic about the UBE, as a school that educated machinists or mechanics, fine occupations I'd note, would want their graduates to have "transportable" degrees.  The law is pretty much viewed that way as a profession now.  Not a "learned profession", as it once was, but a technical skill without a philosophic origin or inclination.

But law is supposed to be different.  The degree purports to be a "doctorate" after all, and the old theory was that lawyers were educated not only in the law, but also in the philosophy and theory of law.  Oh, most or at least a lot of, law schools probably have a class on jurisprudence (UW did not when I was there), but as jurisprudence doesn't make it to the UBE, I doubt very many people take it.  It's really a gaping hole in our legal education.

In contrast, there was a time when lawyers actually pondered such things.  Justice Bloom, a long ago Wyoming Supreme Court justice, left his diaries to UW and they're filled with his pondering on Roman Law.  Now, I'm not advocating adopting the Code Justinian (the Corpus Juris Civilis), but I am advocating knowing the history and origin of law, and its theories.  If a person doesn't understand the concept of Roman Law, the concept of Common Law, and their origins, they ought to, assuming they are lawyers, and particularly if they are judges.

And I'm also advocating that lawyers at a bare minimum be taught and required to learn, and understand, the theory of law.  If they don't, then there is really no law at all. And right now, that pretty much seems to be the case.  Recent opinions by the United States Supreme Court are disappointing in these regards, and seem to suggest that the Court has no concept of the law beyond vague grasping of trying to do, what it thinks is the right thing, or the next thing, or what people would want to do if they knew what they should want.

So, I think they should learn about Natural Law.

Natural Law is an ancient concept, and frankly probably goes back as far as man.  In writings, however, we can see it referred to at least as early as Plato, and we also see it at work amongst the Romans.  It's famously associated with St. Thomas Aquinas, but contrary to what some sneering commenters, who hold a "progressive" authoritarian concept of the law, it vastly predates him as a concept.

There are entire treatises on Natural Law, and this isn't intended to be one, but the basic concept is simple enough. We observe, by merely existing, that there is a nature and that nature has a natural order.  That natural order is the Natural Law.  Things sometimes within that order depart from it, but those exceptions, unless widespread enough to constitute part of nature themselves, do not redefine it. Indeed, as this is a legal concept, we accept that there things which are disordered as they depart from the Natural Law.

This applies to the affairs of man in the context of observed behavior.  All men, in all societies, everywhere, have a concept that unrestricted homicide is wrong.  They also all have the concept that homicide in defense of themselves or their family (tribe) is not.  All have a concept of property ownership, and that taking a person's property is generally wrong, but all also have a concept that certain property belongs to nobody, or rather everybody.  All societies have a concept of a male/female union that's inviolate under normal circumstances, and which trespassing upon can result in severe consequences. 

This isn't all, by any means, but it provides a common assortment. Whether a person is a cafe crawler in France, or a jungle dweller in the Philippines, this basic set of laws is recognized.  Where not written into the law, it's strongly written into social custom to the point of being the law.  Indeed, from time to time here I've mentioned "the old law", which is an aspect of this.

The origin of the Natural Law, in modern times, has been what has upset social liberals and caused the Natural Law to be forgotten.  In Thomistic Theology, or theology in general, the Natural Law is divine in origin and inscribed on the hearts of every human being.  The signors of the Declaration of Independence, and the drafters of the Constitution, understood it in that context, although loosely as they were not all of the same religion, and living during the Enlightenment, as they did, some were not Christians at all. Starting with Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, social liberals have been at war with that concept and have, indeed, sanctioned huge departures from the Natural Law.  But that's confusing the thesis.  Philosophers who predated St. Thomas, and indeed who predated Christ, wrote on the Natural Law, and indeed there really isn't any ancient philosophy anywhere that didn't recognize it.  A principal difference, in fact, of European philosophy and Oriental philosophy is that Europeans held that the Natural Law could be observed, and hence discerned, while Orientals held that the Natural Law could be observed, and need not be further discerned.

Natural Law was universally understood to exist and form a citable form of law by the early philosophers, and perhaps more importantly for our discussion here, the Courts and lawyers of the United States early in its history.  Frequent citation to the Natural Law can be found in the briefs submitted for argument in front of the United States Supreme Court in the 19th Century and there was no real effort to describe what it was, as it was widely understood to both exist and have a common meaning.

Citations to natural law at that point in time cited three types as clearly existing, only one of which tends to be still cited by the Court now, that being physical laws (as in water flows down hill).  The Courts, outside of physical laws, spoke frequently of "the natural law of nations" and "natural law", with the latter being what we are speaking about here, and the former of which was a common law of nations which also included natural law elements.

Interestingly the Court felt just the opposite of today's court.  It not only recognized Natural Law, but it also recognized that a nation's law could violate Natural Law, and where the United State's laws violated Natural Law, no matter how repugnant the violation, the Court had no choice but to uphold the written law of the United States.  For example, in a case called The Antelope, which involved a slave ship of that name, the Court held:

The question, whether the slave trade is prohibited by the law of nations has been seriously propounded, and both the affirmative and negative of the proposition have been maintained with equal earnestness. 

That it is contrary to the law of nature will scarcely be denied. That every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labour, is generally admitted; and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits, and appropriate them against his will, seems to be the necessary result of this admission. But from the earliest times war has existed, and war confers rights in which all have acquiesced. Among the most enlightened nations of antiquity, one of these was, that the victor might enslave the vanquished. This, which was the usage of all, could not be pronounced repugnant to the law of nations, which is certainly to be tried by the test of neral usage. That which has received the assent of all, must be the law of all. 

Slavery, then, has its origin in force; but as the world has agreed that it is a legitimate result of force, the state of things which is thus produced by general consent, cannot be pronounced unlawful. 

Throughout Christendom, this harsh rule has been exploded, and war is no longer considered as giving a right to enslave captives. But this triumph of humanity has not been universal. The parties to the modern law of nations do not propagate their principles by force; and Africa has not yet adopted them. Throughout the whole extent of that immense continent, so far as we know its history, it is still the law of nations that prisoners are slaves. Can those who have themselves renounced this law, be permitted to participate in its effects by purchasing the beings who are its victims? 

Whatever might be the answer of a moralist to this question, a jurist must search for its legal solution, in those principles of action which are sanctioned by the usages, the national acts, and the general assent, of that portion of the world of which he considers himself as a part, and to whose law the appeal is made.

The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66 (1825), John Marshall, holding, amongst other things, that slavery was contrary to the natural law, but not the statutory law of the United States.  

That's a remarkable opinion.  Marshall clearly knew natural law, and without citing any religious text at all, he held that slavery was contrary to it.  He also didn't feel shy about noting the expansion of the phenomenon of the written law evolving to comport with the natural law, but he didn't feel the Court could take that into account.  Therefore, not only did Marshall recognize a natural law, but he also rejected the "evolution" of the law theory recently espoused by Justice Kennedy in the Obegefell decision.  The decision here was not unique in early US  Supreme Court opinions.

Thus, it may happen, that the occupant, who may have enriched himself to any amount, by the natural, as well as the industrial products of land, to which he had no legal title, (as by the sale of timber, coal, ore, or the like,) is accountable for no part of those profits but such as accrued after suit brought; and, on the other hand, may demand full remuneration for all the improvements made upon the land, although they were placed there by means of those very profits, in violation of that maxim of equity, and of natural law, nemo debet locupletari aliena jactura.

Green v. Biddle, 23 US 1 (1823).

The positive law of nations has ordained the rule; the natural law of nations has assigned the reasons on which it is founded; and Rutherforth, in his Institutes, explains those reasons, which arise from the amenability of governments to each other. A cruiser is amenable only to the government by whom he is commissioned; that government is amenable to the power whose subjects are injured by him; and after the ordinary prize judicature is exhausted, they are to apply to their own sovereign for redress. The principal object of that judicature is the examination into the conduct of the captors. The question of property is merely incidental

L'Invincible, 14 US 238 (1816).

After the turn of the Century, citations to Natural Law really start to drop off. I'm not sure of why, but two notable features of this era was the rise of efforts to regularize legal education, lead by the American Bar Association, and the onset of the Progressive Era.  The latter probably had more to do with it than the former.

Progressivism had its origins prior to the Civil War with the abolitionist movement, and perhaps ultimately ironically, it found much of its philosophic base in both Natural Law and religion.  After Emancipation the movement split, however, with the core of the group remaining focused on the plight of freed slaves, but with the more radical elements taking up other causes.  By the late 19th Century it was achieving results and it really came into full flower when Theodore Roosevelt became President.

In my mind, TR was a great President, but he's poorly understood in many ways and he never had a great respect for the law.  Indeed, when he was a law student, which he was only briefly, he was notorious for interrupting discussions on the law with inquiries about what should be regarded as justice.  TR skirted the Constitution in many instances and did not feel retrained or guilty in doing so.  Following him, the Supreme Court began to be more of an active institution itself, although it would take decades for that to really come fully into effect.  However, by mid 20th Century the Court was rejecting appeals to Natural Law and seemingly basing its decisions on other things, with that other thing being its concept of what the law ought to be.

Ironically, at the same time that the Natural Law has been retreating from the Court and forgotten by the law, it's been adopted to some degree by the population.  Citations to Natural Law in some quarters are common.  Aldo Leopold's The Land Ethic is a citation to Natural Law, in nature and human affairs.  Conservation organizations, like The Sierra Club, or The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Initiative, or The Land Conservatory, are based on a concept of Natural Law.  Indeed, some radical ones, such as Greenpeace, are entirely based on that concept to a very radical degree, adopting the thesis that Natural Law trumps human law where the two do not agree.  Philosophers like Michael Pollin basically argue for a concept of the Natural Law.  Very loosely, some statutory law, like The Clean Water Act or The Endangered Species Act, exist with a concept of Natural Law in the background.  People who were debating same gender marriage, up until the Court attempted to end the debate, often argued based on concepts of the Natural Law.

The Court, however, oddly can't seem to find it.

Most recently, of course, we've seen this in Obegefell, which is pretty much based on theory that concepts of fairness and marriage have evolved, even if the electorate in a large number of states has expressly rejected that idea, and therefore the Court will force it.  The opinion comes very close to suggesting that the opinions of the right thinking people have evolved, and the Court therefore is going to do for the country what the country would do for itself, and would do soon anyway, if the country knew what was good for it.  In essence, the Court here acts in the role of Plato's ideal king against the rude mob, for the rude mob's benefit.  A pretty scary proposition.  In essence it adopts the thesis that there is no law, save the law the Court says exists. 

But how does that hold up under natural law?

Not well at all.

The ultimate problem with this is that our entire system of laws is based on a concept of Natural Law, and if we take that out, the law lacks a foundation.  At that point, attempts to substitute one such as the Court has done rely, at best, on a heavily weakened Social Contract theory of law.  While that theory is at least some sort of a theory, it's a weak one at best.  Social Contract advocates argue that the law is one vast contract between all of us human beings, or at least all of us human beings in the country, and the law ought to be determined from that.  The problem with that theory, besides that the Court doesn't begin to apply that evenly, is that the Court only uses "evolving concept" type logic when it wants to alter the state of the law from what a majority of people in some places want to do. It would actually make much more sense to argue Natural Law at that point, as Marshall did in The Antelope, but do what Marshall didn't do and over ride the statutory law, than it does to rely on some sort of social contract theory.  

Some may ask why any of this matters, of course.  But law is somewhat like currency.  It has to be based on something in order to be worth anything.  I know that this is a poor argument in terms of our current currency, which is based only on a promise that it's worth something, but it is nonetheless true.  Natural Law provides a basis for the law, and its something that almost everyone concedes existing at some level.  If it doesn't exist, all law is actually wholly meaningless, and based only on who can punish us and who cannot, which is the pure application of both the Economic Theory of Law and the Marxist Theory of Law.  Might makes right, in other words.  That's the antithesis of the American concept of law and stands squarely against what we think we stand for.  The Social Contract Theory of Law, while less vile, basically is an argument for Athenian democracy, which the Constitution actually was drafted in part to restrain.

All of this goes to argue that the current state of legal knowledge is a bit sad, and in need of reform if law is to be a "learned profession", rather than a mere economic based trade.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Salt Lake Cit...

St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Salt Lake City Utah

The Lonely Bull

The Best Posts of the Week of July 5, 2015

Travelling through (on) time.

Friday Farming: The Oat Field

Travelling through (on) time.

I recently had the occasion to ride in a Ford Trimotor airplane.

Ford Trimotor at the Natrona County International Airport.

Even better than that, my son, who is close to having his private pilot's license, got to fly the plane the next day.

I don't like flying much.  I do a lot of it, and it's not like I'm fearful of doing it, but I get tired of being cramped in planes and I generally do not enjoy riding in them.  I've flown too much to like riding in passenger planes which is in part as I've had too many rides that were pretty rough, so I don't have the comfort of the illusion that rough skies are an abnormality.

I like airplanes a lot, however, and I couldn't have passed up on the opportunity to ride such a classic aircraft.  My son in particular finds it odd that I like aircraft, which I do a great deal, but I don't like flying at all, and personally have no desire to learn how to fly, or to even ride as a passenger, normally.  I couldn't pass up on a Trimotor however.  The Ford was one of the really classic early airliners, maybe the earliest really substantial ones along with the Fokker Trimotor.  The Ford, however, being built by the automobile company, was really innovative and was the first such airplane to have all metal construction. The Fokker, which saw a fair amount of use in the United States, did not.  It had a wood laminate frame, which is what failed in the crash that resulted in the death of Knute Rockne.

Ford Trimotors served Casper in the early days of air travel, flying out of Wardwell Field, which is now the town of Bar Nunn. The old runways are streets. So it occurred to me after riding in the plane, and taking photographs of Casper as we flew over it, that we were truly riding on history, and in a way riding through history.  The plane offers an interesting comparison and contrast.

Former railroad bridge across the North Platte River which is now a foot bridge. This bridge entered the former Standard Oil Refinery, which is now a golf course.  The refinery closed down in the 1980s, a closure that was economical devastating to an already suffering Casper.

Above is  the area of Mills and Casper where a former railroad bridge now serves as a footbridge into the Three Crowns Golf Course. This is a scene that has definitely changed since the late 20s and early 30s.  Three Crowns is where the former Standard Oil Refinery was, which was once so large it was on both sides of the North Platte River.  It wouldn't have surprised me if a Ford Trimotor serving Casper would have flown over this in its day, but the passengers wouldn't have seen the same thing here at that time, when there were three refineries operating in Casper.  Now there's just one.

Former railroad bridge across the North Platte linking the footpath on the Platte River Parkway between Casper and Mills. The Parkway runs for miles along the North Platte, and here it runs on part of the old rail line.  On the other side of the Platte River Parkway, in Casper, a footpath resumes on what had been the same rail line.

The former Standard Oil Refiner was huge.  I'm not certain how the rail service for the refinery worked, but I do think that in this view, we're basically looking at what had been a Great Northwestern line.  That line was abandoned quite some time ago, and now most of it, in Casper, is a footpath, including this railroad bridge. So, if we'd been looking down in, say, 1930, we'd be seeing a rail line that we no longer can.  The Burlington Northern must have served the refinery as well, but I'm not sure how.  In its heyday, the refinery was on both sides of the river, so perhaps that's how.

Casper, east of Three Crowns, and what was east of the Standard Oil Refinery.  Much of this would have looked the same in the 1920s and 30s.

Natrona County High School, where I, my wife, and my father, all went to high school.  My kids go there now.  The houses in the surrounding neighborhood are as old as, or older than, the school.

The flight also went over the area of residential Casper that is where many older houses, and Natrona County High School, are located. The school itself is particularly interesting in this context, as it was built in 1923 so it predates the Ford Trimotor by a few years.  A person flying over Casper at any time after 1923 may very well have seen the school.  However, the grounds haven't remained exactly the same over that time.  A road that originally went directly in front of the school was wisely removed.  The parking lots have expanded significantly over time, as more and more students started driving to school (I walked to school when I went t here in the late 1970s and early 1980s).  And now a huge addition to the school is being built, which is visible in this photograph. An enormous field house has already been built.  However, in one way this view of NC is more like that of 1923 than at any time up until last year, as the swimming pool, which was added a few years after it was built, has been sadly torn down for the new addition.  Voters turned down a bond to include a new pool in the huge new field house that's been built, although it could easily have housed it.  Ironically, the original indoor pool was completely funded by taxes passed by the voters of that era.

Washington Park

The flight also went over Washington Park, one of the largest parks in Casper and one of the town's oldest.  The park includes, as can be seen, a swimming pool, a band shell, tennis courts, and a baseball field.

I know that he features of this park are old, in the context of Casper, but I"m not quite sure how old. The band shell was a WPA project as was a wall with battlements, so perhaps most of the features of this park date from the 1930s.  I suspect so.  If so, then this view is one that a passenger in a plane of this type might have seen as well.  The residential neighborhood is also old, so this view hasn't changed much.

Here we start to see a really old section of Casper, including the Burlington Northern Railway Depot, which was built in 1916 during a construction boom in Casper caused by the First World War. This scene depicts a fair number of buildings that dated back to that time, but quite a few have also come down, to make room for parking lots, and some new ones have been built over time.  One of the buildings in this photographs is hte Casper Creamery, which my family once owned.

Part of the Burlington rail yard, including a bridge over the North Platte.

The scene immediately above shows a fair amount of Casper's lower downtown, including the BN depot.  It also shows a number of "high rise" buildings that date back to the teens, although some have been substantially reworked and one is a newer building, the Federal building, that was built in the 1970s.  A fountain on the City of Casper's lot, at the city hall built in the 1970s, is visible.  The green area in the middle of the photograph is Pioneer Park, which dates back quite some time and existed well before the teens. The courthouse looking building across from it is the old Natrona County Courthouse built by the WPA in the 1930s, and a five story brick building to its upper left is the current courthouse, which ironically was built in 1923, and so it predates this airplane.  Another five or so story building across from it was originally a hotel of the same general vintage.  At least one really old three story building appears that was built in the 1890s.  Of course, many other older buildings have been torn down, and new ones have been built up.

Here too we see the old Natrona County Courthouse, but we also see immediately behind it the Hall of Justice, which was built in the 1970s for the county courts and the jail.  The jail is no longer there, and county court has yielded to circuit court, which is not in this building but rather in the Townsend.  To the right, the "Sandbar" district of Casper is visible, which is now business and housing, but in its heyday was a really seedy and infamous area of Casper. Even when I was a kid, it was dicey until it was generally torn down in the 1970s for housing projects.

Sandbar district, but all new construction except for the rail line.

But some things haven't changed much, as in the shot above of the prairie just outside of Casper.

Cattle grazing just outside of town.

Lex Anteinternet: Random Snippets: The stuff in the cellar

Lex Anteinternet: Random Snippets: The stuff in the cellar: The BBC reports that German police have removed a Panther tank from some fellow's cellar:   Police in northern Germany have seized a Wo...

For those who seek to take up this collecting challenge and not let the North Germans win. . :

Sherman Tank For Sale.

Mid Week At Work: Free Classes for Adults

Random Snippets: The stuff in the cellar

The BBC reports that German police have removed a Panther tank from some fellow's cellar:  
Police in northern Germany have seized a World War Two tank which was being kept in a pensioner's cellar.

The Panther tank was removed from the 78-year-old's house in the town of Heikendorf, along with a variety of other military equipment, including a torpedo and an anti-aircraft gun, Der Tagesspiegel website reports. It wasn't an easy job to get it all out - the army had to be called in with modern-day tanks to haul the Panther from its cellar. It took about 20 soldiers almost nine hours to extract the tank - which was without its tracks - and push it onto a low-loader, the report says. As the surreal scene unfolded, local residents gathered at the end of the driveway to watch.
Prosecutors in the nearby city of Kiel are investigating whether the man's military collection violates Germany's War Weapons Control Act. But his lawyer says the weapons are no longer functional, therefore shouldn't be restricted.

He also had a 88 on an anti aircraft gun mount. 

Man, what a bunch of spoil sports. If you have a Panther in your basement, I think they ought to let you keep it. He'd apparently fired it up and driven it around town about 30 years ago in heavy snow fall.