Justice Must Be Served Quotes

But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation. Now, it's long been understood very well that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it's possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited: that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage-can. At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole and, by now, that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass-communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely, to impose necessary illusions, manipulate and deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena. The question, in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

A NATION'S GREATNESS DEPENDS ON ITS LEADER To vastly improve your country and truly make it great again, start by choosing a better leader. Do not let the media or the establishment make you pick from the people they choose, but instead choose from those they do not pick. Pick a leader from among the people who is heart-driven, one who identifies with the common man on the street and understands what the country needs on every level. Do not pick a leader who is only money-driven and does not understand or identify with the common man, but only what corporations need on every level. Pick a peacemaker. One who unites, not divides. A cultured leader who supports the arts and true freedom of speech, not censorship. Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist. Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies. Most importantly, a great leader must serve the best interests of the people first, not those of multinational corporations. Human life should never be sacrificed for monetary profit. There are no exceptions. In addition, a leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader. And lastly, pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Our children will be counted, and justice will be served. Our babies deserve a fair chance at life. We are our children’s groundbreakers; therefore, we cannot give up. We might run out of breath but we must have the willpower when moving forward to fight for our children’s voices to be heard. Bullying is not accepted

It is hard to face this. But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

When the law fails to serve us, we must serve as the law.

Inside each of us resides the truth,” I began, “the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion. As I listen to this trial, I am reminded of the climactic scene of a James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun. James Bond escaped his hall of mirrors by breaking the glass, shattering the illusions, until only the true villain stood before him. We, too, must shatter the mirrors. We must look into ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, stands before us. Only then will justice be served.

Funnily enough, “self-criticism” is an idea much in vogue in Marxist countries, but there it is subordinated to ideological considerations and must serve the State, and not truth and justice in men’s dealing with one another. The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa.

Why is it deemed justifiable and appropriate for cops/police officers to kill other cops (friendly–fire) and citizens? Why do cops kill? Are they not taught to maim or slow down someone running or reaching for a weapon? If not, why not? Why do cops kill first and ask questions last? Why are police officers being military trained? What can we as citizens, taxpayers, and voters do to stop these killings and beatings of unarmed people? Why do we let this continue? How many more must die or get beat up before we realize something is wrong and needs to be changed? Will you, a friend, or a family member have to be killed or beaten by a cop before we realize that things have to change? Who's here to protect us from the cops when they decide to use excessive force, shoot multiple shells, and/or murder us?

Inside each of us resides the truth, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the read thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion...We too, must shatter the mirrors. We must look into ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, stands before us. Only then will justice be served.

Even if everyone knows her story, no one really knows how she feels. It pours out now: her rage, her shame, her guilt-- it still lingers. But with the telling comes a sense of empowerment. She has no culpability in the Brijee matter. None, other than being naive and being a woman. During the inquiry she had tapped into the righteousness that was her due; she slapped down the least suggestion that she might be a fault. She had learned a lesson: to show weakness, to be tearful or shattered didn't serve her. One shouldn't just hope to be treated well: one must insist on it.

Hollow Horn Bear knew that to be leader and adviser of his people he must be honest and reliable, and that his word once given in promise must never be taken back. He knew that he must be a man of will-power, standing for the right no matter what happened to him personally; that he must have strength of purpose, allowing no influence to turn him from doing what was best for the tribe. He must be willing to serve his people without thought of pay. He must be utterly unselfish and kind-hearted to the old and poor and stand ready to give to those in need. Above all, he must be unafraid to deal equal justice to all.

Killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction. The catalogue of notorious barbarities – wars and massacres, acts of terrorism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the chopping off of thieves’ hands, the slicing off of clitorises and labia majora, the use of gang rape as punishment, and manifold other savageries committed in the name of one faith or another — attests to religion’s longstanding propensity to induce barbarity, or at the very least to give it free rein. The Bible and the Quran have served to justify these atrocities and more, with women and gay people suffering disproportionately. There is a reason the Middle Ages in Europe were long referred to as the Dark Ages; the millennium of theocratic rule that ended only with the Renaissance (that is, with Europe’s turn away from God toward humankind) was a violent time. Morality arises out of our innate desire for safety, stability and order, without which no society can function; basic moral precepts (that murder and theft are wrong, for example) antedated religion. Those who abstain from crime solely because they fear divine wrath, and not because they recognize the difference between right and wrong, are not to be lauded, much less trusted. Just which practices are moral at a given time must be a matter of rational debate. The 'master-slave' ethos – obligatory obeisance to a deity — pervading the revealed religions is inimical to such debate. We need to chart our moral course as equals, or there can be no justice.

[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love. When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action. She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.

When there is injustice someone should speak. When there is unfairness someone should act. We cannot have liberty and justice for all if we only want it only for ourselves. We must serve God in humble righteousness.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils. To this must be added the violent fanaticism which came into play once the struggle had broken out. Leaders of parties in the cities had programmes which appeared admirable – on one side political equality for the masses, on the other the safe and sound government of the aristocracy – but in professing to serve the public interest they were seeking to win the prizes for themselves. In their struggles for ascendancy nothing was barred; terrible indeed were the actions to which they committed themselves, and in taking revenge they went farther still. Here they were deterred neither by the claims of justice nor by the interests of the state; their one standard was the pleasure of their own party at that particular moment, and so, either by means of condemning their enemies on an illegal vote or by violently usurping power over them, they were always ready to satisfy the hatreds of the hour. Thus neither side had any use for conscientious motives; more interest was shown in those who could produce attractive arguments to justify some disgraceful action. As for the citizens who held moderate views, they were destroyed by both the extreme parties, either for not taking part in the struggle or in envy at the possibility that they might survive.

There is no such thing as social justice. Only God can balance things out, and we are not God. But honest and decent men can fight for and establish equal justice. There is no such thing as collective salvation. We, however, are going to be judged on how we treat our fellow brothers and sisters. Thus we must serve them, help them with charity toward all. “Malice toward none,” Lincoln said. God said it slightly differently – vengeance is mine.

What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion. You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice; I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches.

But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this.

We must look into ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, and stands before us. Only then will justice be served.

I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the Law. Lower the Law and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt; this is a very serious loss to the sinner rather than a gain; for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary [its most powerful weapon] when you have set aside the Law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ. they will never accept grace till they tremble before a just and holy Law. Therefore, the Law serves a most necessary purpose, and it must not be removed from its place. The Law cuts into the core of evil, it reveals the seat of the malady and informs us that the leprosy lies deep within. They must be slain by the Law before they can be made alive by the gospel.

If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil."[11]

There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by judgement (i.e., social justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible. Blessed are we when persecuted, but we may avoid persecution by flying city to city, and may pray to be spared it as. Our Lord prayed in Gethsemane. But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads. In the fallen and partially redeemed universe, we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good out of simple evil does not excuse - though by mercy it may save -- those who do simple evil. And this distinction is central. Offences must come, but woe to those whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that excuse for continuing to sin. The crucifixion itself is the best, as well as the worst, of all historical events, but the role of Judas remains simply evil... For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.

Take women’s suffrage. If being a woman denies you the right to vote, you ipso facto cannot grant it to yourself. And you certainly cannot vote for your right to vote. If men control all the mechanisms that exclude women from voting as well as the mechanisms that can reverse that exclusion, women must call on men for justice. You could not have had a conversation about women’s right to vote and men’s need to grant it without naming women and men. Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those who already have access; the assumption is that the access enjoyed by the controlling group is universal. For example, although we are taught that women were granted suffrage in 1920, we ignore the fact that it was white women who received full access or that it was white men who granted it. Not until the 1960s, through the Voting Rights Act, were all women—regardless of race—granted full access to suffrage. Naming who has access and who doesn’t guides our efforts in challenging injustice.

the surplice and alb signify innocence; the cord that serves as a girdle is an emblem of chastity and modesty; the amice, of purity of heart and body—the helmet of salvation mentioned by Saint Paul. The maniple, of good works, vigilance, and the tears and sweat poured out by the priest to win and save souls; the stole, of obedience, the clothing on of immortality given to us in baptism; the dalmatic, of justice, of which we must give proof in our ministrations; the chasuble, of the unity of the faith, and also of the yoke of Christ

Right before Jesus went to the cross, He prayed that all believers, past, present, and future "may be one, as You, Father are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me" (John 17:21 NKJV). This was Jesus's prayer for us all, yet more often than not, I fear we have not lived up to it. Instead, we fight for our own way, for our selfish desires, for our right to be superior. We build churches centered on our own cultural ideas of God, rather than on seeking to bring us back to Him. And then we fight with other churches and religions about who is serving their personal culture god the best. Come dream with me. Dream of a fight for something bigger, something more important and worthwhile. We need to fight for justice and peace, for the walls between us to come crashing down.

It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map. My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-maker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual. Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker's technical interest is obvious ("This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation-for short-range, you'd better use a different projection"). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations. To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly. The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.

We can either keep rising numbers of prisoners in humane prisons that serve a purpose beyond warehousing, for which the Exchequer – ultimately you, the taxpayer – must pay through higher taxation; or we can shift paradigms and explore evidence-based policy from abroad that would see the use of prison radically reduced, and non-custodial, restorative and rehabilitative alternatives envisaged not as a ‘get-out’ but as meaningful components of a working justice system.

And yet, if the aim is not merely to punish male sexual domination but to end it, feminism must address questions that many feminists would rather avoid: whether a carceral approach that systemically harms poor people and people of color can serve sexual justice; whether the notion of due process—and perhaps too the presumption of innocence—should apply to social media and public accusations; whether punishment produces social change. What does it really take to alter the mind of patriarchy?

Police Sonnet Police is not a profession, But a promise of protection. So long as you carry the badge, You must discard self-preservation. The thin blue line of service, Is not for self-serving narcissists. When your sole concern is society, Only then can you uphold justice. You mustn't become manikins of politics, Nor of bureaucratic brutality. Your allegiance is only to the people, Their welfare will rescue your humanity. In the sea of selfishness be the selfless drop, Taking care of people you become a real cop.

Even if everyone knows her story, no one really knows how she feels. It pours out now: her rage, her shame, her guilt-- it still lingers. But with the telling comes a sense of empowerment. She has no culpability in the Brijee matter. None, other than being naive and being a woman. During the inquiry she had tapped into the righteousness that was her due; she slapped down the least suggestion that she might be at fault. She had learned a lesson: to show weakness, to be tearful or shattered didn't serve her. One shouldn't just hope to be treated well: one must insist on it.

It is the punisher’s mind-set where everything must be changed. The difficulty of this is explored in the superb book The Punisher’s Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (2014) by Morris Hoffman, a practicing judge and legal scholar.31 He reviews the reasons for punishment: As we see from game theory studies, because punishment fosters cooperation. Because it is in the fabric of the evolution of sociality. And most important, because it can feel good to punish, to be part of a righteous and self-righteous crowd at a public hanging, knowing that justice is being served. This is a deep, atavistic pleasure. Put people in brain scanners, give them scenarios of norm violations. Decision making about culpability for the violation correlates with activity in the cognitive dlPFC. But decision making about appropriate punishment activates the emotional vmPFC, along with the amygdala and insula; the more activation, the more punishment.32 The decision to punish, the passionate motivation to do so, is a frothy limbic state. As are the consequences of punishing—when subjects punish someone for making a lousy offer in an economic game, there’s activation of dopaminergic reward systems. Punishment that feels just feels good.

Ultimately, these stop-and-frisk operations amount to much more than humiliating, demeaning rituals for young men of color, who must raise their arms and spread their legs, always careful not to make a sudden move or gesture that could provide an excuse for brutal—even lethal—force. Like the days when black men were expected to step off the sidewalk and cast their eyes downward when a white woman passed, young black men know the drill when they see the police crossing the street toward them; it is a ritual of dominance and submission played out hundreds of thousands of times each year. But it is more than that. These routine encounters often serve as the gateway into the criminal justice system.

How are we going to bring about these transformations? Politics as usual—debate and argument, even voting—are no longer sufficient. Our system of representative democracy, created by a great revolution, must now itself become the target of revolutionary change. For too many years counting, vast numbers of people stopped going to the polls, either because they did not care what happened to the country or the world or because they did not believe that voting would make a difference on the profound and interconnected issues that really matter. Now, with a surge of new political interest having give rise to the Obama presidency, we need to inject new meaning into the concept of the “will of the people.” The will of too many Americans has been to pursue private happiness and take as little responsibility as possible for governing our country. As a result, we have left the job of governing to our elected representatives, even though we know that they serve corporate interests and therefore make decisions that threaten our biosphere and widen the gulf between the rich and poor both in our country and throughout the world. In other words, even though it is readily apparent that our lifestyle choices and the decisions of our representatives are increasing social injustice and endangering our planet, too many of us have wanted to continue going our merry and not-so-merry ways, periodically voting politicians in and out of office but leaving the responsibility for policy decisions to them. Our will has been to act like consumers, not like responsible citizens. Historians may one day look back at the 2000 election, marked by the Supreme Court’s decision to award the presidency to George W. Bush, as a decisive turning point in the death of representative democracy in the United States. National Public Radio analyst Daniel Schorr called it “a junta.” Jack Lessenberry, columnist for the MetroTimes in Detroit, called it “a right-wing judicial coup.” Although more restrained, the language of dissenting justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Souter, and Stevens was equally clear. They said that there was no legal or moral justification for deciding the presidency in this way.3 That’s why Al Gore didn’t speak for me in his concession speech. You don’t just “strongly disagree” with a right-wing coup or a junta. You expose it as illegal, immoral, and illegitimate, and you start building a movement to challenge and change the system that created it. The crisis brought on by the fraud of 2000 and aggravated by the Bush administration’s constant and callous disregard for the Constitution exposed so many defects that we now have an unprecedented opportunity not only to improve voting procedures but to turn U.S. democracy into “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” instead of government of, by, and for corporate power.

I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy.

But you are not mine,” she said, and at that she opened the door. I could see stairs and the upper portion of a banister. “You are not a slave. Not to your father. Not to me. Not to anyone. You asked what this was. It is freedom.” These words did not fill me with delight. The questions now overran me. Where had I been? Why was I left in a hole? How long had I been under? What happened to the ordinary man? And more than anything, what had become of Sophia? Corrine returned to her seat. “But freedom, true freedom, is a master too, you see—one more dogged, more constant, than any ragged slave-driver,” she said. “What you must now accept is that all of us are bound to something. Some will bind themselves to property in man and all that comes forthwith. And others shall bind themselves to justice. All must name a master to serve. All must choose.

Divine transcendence, up to 1789, served to justify the arbitrary actions of the king. After the French Revolution, the transcendence of the formal principles of reason or justice serves to justify a rule that is neither just nor reasonable. This transcendence is therefore a mask that must be torn off. God is dead, but as Stirner predicted, the morality of principles in which the memory of God is still preserved must also be killed. The hatred of formal virtue—degraded witness to divinity and false witness in the service of injustice— has remained one of the principal themes of history today. Nothing is pure: that is the cry which convulses our period. Impurity, the equivalent of history, is going to become the rule, and the abandoned earth will be delivered to naked force, which will decide whether or not man is divine. Thus lies and violence are adopted in the same spirit in which a religion is adopted and on the same heartrending impulse.

Given the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of the French Revolution. Few dispute that it was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial, and populist. It produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre and Napoleon, and worked on the premise that the nation had to be ruled by an enlightened avant-garde who would serve as the authentic, organic voice of the “general will.” The paranoid Jacobin mentality made the revolutionaries more savage and cruel than the king they replaced. Some fifty thousand people ultimately died in the Terror, many in political show trials that Simon Schama describes as the “founding charter of totalitarian justice.” Robespierre summed up the totalitarian logic of the Revolution: “There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man…[W]e must exterminate all our enemies.

Support on the home front for the soldier, regardless of ethical and political disagreements over the war itself. is essential. This is never easy in the emotionally polarized climate of a war. However, when facing individual soldiers, we must remember that all modern soldiers serve under constraint. The justice of overall war aims and of operational theories -- "strate-gic" bombing of civilians to weaken the industrial capacity to wage war is an example of such theory -- is not within the individual soldier's scope of moral choice, unless he or she is willing to face imprisonment or death by refusing to fight. I cannot hold soldiers to an ethical standard that requires martyrdom in order simply to be blameless. I am not arguing against the Nuremberg principles, which say that no person is absolved of responsibility for horrible acts by the fact that he or she was legally ordered to do them. I am speaking from the pain that I feel when I witness in our veterans the ruin of moral life by the overwhelming coercive social power of military institutions and of war itself.

For black youth, the experience of being “made black” often begins with the first police stop, interrogation, search, or arrest. The experience carries social meaning—this is what it means to be black. The story of one’s “first time” may be repeated to family or friends, but for ghetto youth, almost no one imagines that the first time will be the last. The experience is understood to define the terms of one’s relationship not only to the state but to society at large. This reality can be frustrating for those who strive to help ghetto youth “turn their lives around.” James Forman Jr., the cofounder of the See Forever charter school for juvenile offenders in Washington, D.C., made this point when describing how random and degrading stops and searches of ghetto youth “tell kids that they are pariahs, that no matter how hard they study, they will remain potential suspects.” One student complained to him, “We can be perfect, perfect, doing everything right and still they treat us like dogs. No, worse than dogs, because criminals are treated worse than dogs.” Another student asked him pointedly, “How can you tell us we can be anything when they treat us like we’re nothing?”56 The process of marking black youth as black criminals is essential to the functioning of mass incarceration as a racial caste system. For the system to succeed—that is, for it to achieve the political goals described in chapter 1—black people must be labeled criminals before they are formally subject to control. The criminal label is essential, for forms of explicit racial exclusion are not only prohibited but widely condemned. Thus black youth must be made—labeled—criminals. This process of being made a criminal is, to a large extent, the process of “becoming” black. As Wideman explains, when “to be a man of color of a certain economic class and milieu is equivalent in the public eye to being a criminal,” being processed by the criminal justice system is tantamount to being made black, and “doing time” behind bars is at the same time “marking race.”57 At its core, then, mass incarceration, like Jim Crow, is a “race-making institution.” It serves to define the meaning and significance of race in America.

What franticke fit (quoth he) hath thus distraught Thee, foolish man, so rash a doome to give? What justice ever other judgement taught, But he should die, who merites not to live? None else to death this man despayring drive, But his owne guiltie mind deserving death. Is then unjust to each his due to give? Or let him die, that loatheth living breath? Or let him die at ease, that liveth here uneath? Who travels by the wearie wandring way, To come unto his wished home in haste, And meetes a flood, that doth his passage stay, Is not great grace to helpe him over past, Or free his feet, that in the myre sticke fast? Most envious man, that grieves at neighbours good, And fond, that joyest in the woe thou hast, Why wilt not let him passe, that long hath stood Upon the banke, yet wilt thy selfe not passe the flood? He there does now enjoy eternall rest And happie ease, which thou doest want and crave, And further from it daily wanderest: What if some litle paine the passage have, That makes fraile flesh to feare the bitter wave? Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease, And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave? Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please. [...] Is not his deed, what ever thing is donne, In heaven and earth? did not he all create To die againe? all ends that was begonne. Their times in his eternall booke of fate Are written sure, and have their certaine date. Who then can strive with strong necessitie, That holds the world in his still chaunging state, Or shunne the death ordaynd by destinie? When houre of death is come, let none aske whence, nor why. The lenger life, I wote the greater sin, The greater sin, the greater punishment: All those great battels, which thou boasts to win, Through strife, and bloud-shed, and avengement, Now praysd, hereafter deare thou shalt repent: For life must life, and bloud must bloud repay. Is not enough thy evill life forespent? For he, that once hath missed the right way, The further he doth goe, the further he doth stray. Then do no further goe, no further stray, But here lie downe, and to thy rest betake, Th'ill to prevent, that life ensewen may. For what hath life, that may it loved make, And gives not rather cause it to forsake? Feare, sicknesse, age, losse, labour, sorrow, strife, Paine, hunger, cold, that makes the hart to quake; And ever fickle fortune rageth rife, All which, and thousands mo do make a loathsome life. Thou wretched man, of death hast greatest need, If in true ballance thou wilt weigh thy state: For never knight, that dared warlike deede, More lucklesse disaventures did amate: Witnesse the dongeon deepe, wherein of late Thy life shut up, for death so oft did call; And though good lucke prolonged hath thy date, Yet death then, would the like mishaps forestall, Into the which hereafter thou maiest happen fall. Why then doest thou, O man of sin, desire To draw thy dayes forth to their last degree? Is not the measure of thy sinfull hire High heaped up with huge iniquitie, Against the day of wrath, to burden thee? Is not enough, that to this Ladie milde Thou falsed hast thy faith with perjurie, And sold thy selfe to serve Duessa vilde, With whom in all abuse thou hast thy selfe defilde? Is not he just, that all this doth behold From highest heaven, and beares an equall eye? Shall he thy sins up in his knowledge fold, And guiltie be of thine impietie? Is not his law, Let every sinner die: Die shall all flesh? what then must needs be donne, Is it not better to doe willinglie, Then linger, till the glasse be all out ronne? Death is the end of woes: die soone, O faeries sonne.

The ethic of autonomy is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, autonomous individuals with wants, needs, and preferences. People should be free to satisfy these wants, needs, and preferences as they see fit, and so societies develop moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice, which allow people to coexist peacefully without interfering too much in each other’s projects. This is the dominant ethic in individualistic societies. You find it in the writings of utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer11 (who value justice and rights only to the extent that they increase human welfare), and you find it in the writings of deontologists such as Kant and Kohlberg (who prize justice and rights even in cases where doing so may reduce overall welfare). But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages. The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous—a sure way to weaken the social fabric and destroy the institutions and collective entities upon which everyone depends. The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted.12 People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly. The body is a temple, not a playground. Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights when a man has sex with a chicken carcass, he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.13

The importance of project secrecy Propaganda can never reveal its true projects and plans or divulge government secrets. That would be to submit the project to public discussion, to the scrutiny of public opinion, and thus prevent their success. More serious, it would make the project vulnerable to enemy action by forewarning him so that he could take all the proper precautions to make them fail. Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such project, masking true intentions. It must be in effect a smokescreen. Maneuvers take place behind protective screens of words on which public atten­tion is fixed. Propaganda is necessarily a declaration of one's intentions. It is a declaration of purity that will never be realized, a declaration of peace, of truth, of social justice. Of course, one must not be too precise at the top level, or promise short-term reforms, for it would be risky to invite a comparison between what was promised and what was done. Such comparison would be possible if propaganda operated in the realm of future fact. Therefore, it should be confined to intentions, to the moral realm, to values, to generalities. And if some angry man were to point out the contradictions, in the end his argument would cany no weight with the public.

But Nietzsche’s tragedy is found here once again. The aims, the prophecies are generous and universal, but the doctrine is restrictive, and the reduction of every value to historical terms leads to the direst consequences. Marx thought that the ends of history, at least, would prove to be moral and rational. That was his Utopia. But Utopia, at least in the form he knew it, is destined to serve cynicism, of which he wanted no part. Marx destroys all transcendence, then carries out, by himself, the transition from fact to duty. But his concept of duty has no other origin but fact. The demand for justice ends in injustice if it is not primarily based on an ethical justification of justice; without this, crime itself one day becomes a duty. When good and evil are reintegrated in time and confused with events, nothing is any longer good or bad, but only either premature or out of date. Who will decide on the opportunity, if not the opportunist? Later, say the disciples, you shall judge. But the victims will not be there to judge. For the victim, the present is the only value, rebellion the only action. Messianism, in order to exist, must construct a defense against the victims. It is possible that Marx did not want this, but in this lies his responsibility which must be examined, that he incurred by justifying, in the name of the revolution, the henceforth bloody struggle against all forms of rebellion.

If you fail, as men have failed, in their quest for a vision that should have been possible, yet has remained forever beyond their reach - if, like them, you come to think that one's highest values are not to be attained and one's greatest vision is not to be made real - don't damn this earth, as they did, don't damn existence. You have seen the Atlantis they were seeking, it is here, it exists - but one must enter it naked and alone, with no rags from the falsehoods of centuries, with the purest clarity of mind - not an innocent heart, but that which is much rarer: an intransigent mind as ones only possession and key. You will not enter it until you learn that you do not need to convince or to conquer the world. When you learn it, you will see that through all the years of struggle, nothing had barred you from Atlantis and that there were no chains to hold you, except the chains you were willing to wear. Through all those years, that which you most wished to win was waiting for you - waiting, as unremittingly as you were fighting, as passionately, as desperately - but with a greater certainty than yours. Go out to continue you struggle. Go on carrying unchosen burdens, taking undeserved punishment and believe that justice can be served by the offer of your own spirit to the most unjust of tortures. But in your worst and darkest moments - remember, that you have seen another kind of world. Remember that you can reach it whenever you choose to see. Remember that it will be waiting and that it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence, of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year, will not purchase its protection, security, and defence, for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions; churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production.

I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities. Round each of them too the world turns, and each one for himself is the centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion (that is Mrs. Grundy). You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice: I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches.

The shift in focus served to align the goals of the Civil Rights Movement with key political goals of poor and working-class whites, who were also demanding economic reforms. As the Civil Rights Movement began to evolve into a “Poor People’s Movement,” it promised to address not only black poverty, but white poverty as well—thus raising the specter of a poor and working-class movement that cut across racial lines. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders made it clear that they viewed the eradication of economic inequality as the next front in the “human rights movement” and made great efforts to build multiracial coalitions that sought economic justice for all. Genuine equality for black people, King reasoned, demanded a radical restructuring of society, one that would address the needs of the black and white poor throughout the country. Shortly before his assassination, he envisioned bringing to Washington, D.C., thousands of the nation’s disadvantaged in an interracial alliance that embraced rural and ghetto blacks, Appalachian whites, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans to demand jobs and income—the right to live. In a speech delivered in 1968, King acknowledged there had been some progress for blacks since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but insisted that the current challenges required even greater resolve and that the entire nation must be transformed for economic justice to be more than a dream for poor people of all colors. As historian Gerald McKnight observes, “King was proposing nothing less than a radical transformation of the Civil Rights Movement into a populist crusade calling for redistribution of economic and political power. America’s only civil rights leader was now focusing on class issues and was planning to descend on Washington with an army of poor to shake the foundations of the power structure and force the government to respond to the needs of the ignored underclass.”36

Thy Justice seems; yet to say truth, too late, I thus contest; then should have been refusd Those terms whatever, when they were propos’d: Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? and though God Made thee without thy leave, what if thy Son Prove disobedient, and reprov’d, retort, Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not: Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? yet him not thy election, But Natural necessity begot. God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him, thy reward was of his grace, Thy punishment then justly is at his Will. Be it so, for I submit, his doom is fair, That dust I am, and shall to dust returne: O welcom hour whenever! why delayes His hand to execute what his Decree Fixd on this day? why do I overlive, Why am I mockt with death, and length’nd out To deathless pain? how gladly would I meet Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth Insensible, how glad would lay me down As in my Mothers lap? there I should rest And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more Would Thunder in my ears, no fear of worse To mee and to my ofspring would torment me With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt Pursues me still, least all I cannot die, Least that pure breath of Life, the Spirit of Man Which God inspir’d, cannot together perish With this corporeal Clod; then in the Grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living Death? O thought Horrid, if true! yet why? it was but breath Of Life that sinn’d; what dies but what had life And sin? the Bodie properly hath neither. All of me then shall die: let this appease The doubt, since humane reach no further knows. For though the Lord of all be infinite, Is his wrauth also? be it, man is not so, But mortal doom’d. How can he exercise Wrath without end on Man whom Death must end? Can he make deathless Death? that were to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself Impossible is held, as Argument Of weakness, not of Power. Will he, draw out, For angers sake, finite to infinite In punisht man, to satisfie his rigour Satisfi’d never; that were to extend His Sentence beyond dust and Natures Law, By which all Causes else according still To the reception of thir matter act, Not

I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while de-emphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I've said this earlier but it's worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, 'I hope you will let it go,' about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to be almost darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay. Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president so brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check...without these checks on our leaders, without those institutions vigorously standing against abuses of power, our country cannot sustain itself as a functioning democracy. I know there are men and women of good conscience in the United States Congress on both sides of the aisle who understand this. But not enough of them are speaking out. They must ask themselves to what, or to whom, they hold a higher loyalty: to partisan interests or to the pillars of democracy? Their silence is complicity - it is a choice - and somewhere deep down they must know that. Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington - to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth. If that slides away from us, only a fool would be consoled by a tax cut or different immigration policy.

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. . . . At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed. There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government--the Government of the greatest Nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. . . . But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome." -Lyndon B. Johnson, 15 March 1965

As a child, Callum never sympathized much with storybook villains, who were always clinging to some sort of broad, unspecified drive. It wasn’t the depravity that unnerved him, but the desperation of it all; the need, the compulsion, which always destroyed them in the end. That was the distasteful thing about villains, really. Not the manner in which they went about their business, which was certainly gruesome and morally corrupt, but the fact that they desired things so intensely. The heroes were always reluctant, always pushed into their roles, martyring themselves. Callum didn’t like that, either, but at least it made sense. Villains were far too proactive. Must they participate in the drudgery of it all for some interminable cause? Taking over the world was a mostly nonsensical agenda. Have control of these puppets, with their empty heads and their pitchforked mobs? Why? Wanting anything—beauty, love, omnipotence, absolution—was the natural flaw in being human, but the choice to waste away for anything made the whole indigestible. A waste. Simple choices were what registered to Callum as most honestly, the truest truths: fairy-tale peasants need money for dying child, accepts whatever consequence follow. The rest of the story—about rewards of choosing good or the ill-fated outcomes of desperation and vice—we’re always too lofty, a pretty but undeniable lie. Cosmic justice wasn’t real. Betrayal was all too common. For better or worse, people did not get what they deserved. Callum had always tended toward the assassins in the stories, the dutiful soldiers, those driven by personal reaction rather than on some larger moral cause. Perhaps it was a small role to serve on the whole, but at least it was rational, comprehensible beyond fatalistic. Take the huntsman who failed to kill Snow White, for example. An assassin acting on his own internal compass. Whether humanity as a whole won or lost as a result of his choice? Unimportant. He didn’t raise an army, didn’t fight for good, didn’t interfere much with the queen’s other evils. It wasn’t the whole world at stake; it was never about destiny. Callum admired that, the ability to take a moral stance and hold it. It was only about whether the huntsman could live with his decision—because however miserable or dull or uninspired, life was the only thing that mattered in the end. The truest truths: Mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In terms of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself.

The object of the mediating function, therefore, according to Schiller, is “living form,” for this would be precisely a symbol in which the opposites are united; “a concept that serves to denote all aesthetic qualities of phenomena and, in a word, what we call Beauty in the widest sense of the term.”75 But the symbol presupposes a function that creates symbols, and in addition a function that understands them. This latter function takes no part in the creation of the symbol, it is a function in its own right, which one could call symbolic thinking or symbolic understanding. The essence of the symbol consists in the fact that it represents in itself something that is not wholly understandable, and that it hints only intuitively at its possible meaning. The creation of a symbol is not a rational process, for a rational process could never produce an image that represents a content which is at bottom incomprehensible. To understand a symbol we need a certain amount of intuition which apprehends, if only approximately, the meaning of the symbol that has been created, and then incorporates it into consciousness. Schiller calls the symbol-creating function a third instinct, the play instinct; it bears no resemblance to the two opposing functions, but stands between them and does justice to both their natures—always provided (a point Schiller does not mention) that sensation and thinking are serious functions. But there are many people for whom neither function is altogether serious, and for them seriousness must occupy the middle place instead of play. Although elsewhere Schiller denies the existence of a third, mediating, basic instinct,76 we will nevertheless assume, though his conclusion is somewhat at fault, his intuition to be all the more accurate. For, as a matter of fact, something does stand between the opposites, but in the pure differentiated type it has become invisible. In the introvert it is what I have called feeling-sensation. On account of its relative repression, the inferior function is only partly attached to consciousness; its other part is attached to the unconscious. The differentiated function is the most fully adapted to external reality; it is essentially the reality-function; hence it is as much as possible shut off from any admixture of fantastic elements. These elements, therefore, become associated with the inferior functions, which are similarly repressed. For this reason the sensation of the introvert, which is usually sentimental, has a very strong tinge of unconscious fantasy. The third element, in which the opposites merge, is fantasy activity, which is creative and receptive at once. This is the function Schiller calls the play instinct, by which he means more than he actually says. He exclaims: “For, to declare it once and for all, man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly man when he is playing.” For him the object of the play instinct is beauty. “Man shall only play with Beauty, and only with Beauty shall he play.”77

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1965 My fellow countrymen, on this occasion, the oath I have taken before you and before God is not mine alone, but ours together. We are one nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens. This is the majesty and the meaning of this moment. For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own. Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves m a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours is a time of change-- rapid and fantastic change bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations, placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old values, and uprooting old ways. Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith. THE AMERICAN COVENANT They came here--the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened-- to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish. JUSTICE AND CHANGE First, justice was the promise that all who made the journey would share in the fruits of the land. In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write. For the more than 30 years that I have served this Nation, I have believed that this injustice to our people, this waste of our resources, was our real enemy. For 30 years or more, with the resources I have had, I have vigilantly fought against it. I have learned, and I know, that it will not surrender easily. But change has given us new weapons. Before this generation of Americans is finished, this enemy will not only retreat--it will be conquered. Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, "His color is not mine," or "His beliefs are strange and different," in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this Nation. LIBERTY AND CHANGE Liberty was the second article of our covenant. It was self- government. It was our Bill of Rights. But it was more. America would be a place where each man could be proud to be himself: stretching his talents, rejoicing in his work, important in the life of his neighbors and his nation. This has become more difficult in a world where change and growth seem to tower beyond the control and even the judgment of men. We must work to provide the knowledge and the surroundings which can enlarge the possibilities of every citizen. The American covenant called on us to help show the way for the liberation of man. And that is today our goal. Thus, if as a nation there is much outside our control, as a people no stranger is outside our hope.

But that's fatalism." "The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted that I am ready to accept it. I act as though I were a free agent. But when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the universe from all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can claim no merit; if it was bad I can accept no censure." "My brain reels," said Philip. "Have some whiskey," returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle. "There's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer." Philip shook his head, and Cronshaw proceeded: "You're not a bad fellow, but you won't drink. Sobriety disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and bad..." Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, "I speak conventionally. I attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The terms vice and virtue have no signification for me. I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world." "But there are one or two other people in the world," objected Philip. "I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities. Round each of them too the world turns, and each one for himself is the centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion (that is Mrs. Grundy). You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice: I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches." "But if everyone thought like you things would go to pieces at once." "I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience." "It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things," said Philip. "But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for selfish reasons?" (324)

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods really are what their sound instinct had always told them but what before they had only dimly seen. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed. The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word “liberty.” It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said—and it should serve as a warning to us to be on our guard against all the tempters who promise us New Liberties for Old 5 —that wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have “planners for freedom” who promise us a “collective freedom for the group,” the nature of which may be gathered from the fact that its advocate finds it necessary to assure us that “naturally the advent of planned freedom does not mean that all [sic] earlier forms of freedom must be abolished.” Dr. Karl Mannheim, from whose work6 these sentences are taken, at least warns us that “a conception of freedom modelled on the preceding age is an obstacle to any real understanding of the problem.” But his use of the word “freedom” is as misleading as it is in the mouth of totalitarian politicians. Like their freedom, the “collective freedom” he offers us is not the freedom of the members of society but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases.7 It is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme. In this particular case the perversion of the meaning of the word has, of course, been well prepared by a long line of German philosophers and, not least, by many of the theoreticians of socialism. But “freedom” or “liberty” are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to “justice” and “law,” “right” and “equality.” The list could be extended until it includes almost all moral and political terms in general use. If one has not one’s self experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of the meaning of words, the confusion which it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates. It has to be seen to be understood how, if one of two brothers embraces the new faith, after a short while he appears to speak a different language which makes any real communication between them impossible. And the confusion becomes worse because this change of meaning of the words describing political ideals is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct the people. Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them.

Who will have their strength renewed? “Those who wait upon the Lord”. Waiting could signify passivity: being still. Waiting could also indicate action: serving. Waiting — either kind — can be nearly impossible while we are being run by our emotions. In learning to balance your emotions with wisdom, learning to wait upon the Lord in both senses of the word, you will find that your strength is renewed every day in every situation. On the other hand, operating out of emotions can be exhausting. In your Christian walk, the ability to discern seasons is vital. There are times in your life where immediate action is not only unnecessary, it can be damaging. There are situations in which your best course of action is to “be still and know that He is God” (Psalm 46:10). Allowing Him to speak to you in the midst of your storm, finding your peace in Christ when your life seems upside down may be exactly what is needed. There are times when patience is the order of the day, and waiting on the Lord to move or instruct you in the way you are to move is exactly what is needed. Sometimes the most difficult course to take is to wait and allow the Lord to direct your heart “into the love of God and the patience of Christ” (2 Thessalonians3:5). However difficult it may be, practicing waiting will serve you well. “Waiting” can also signify an action. A waitress will wait on you in your favorite restaurant. You may wait on, or serve, your family. In being able to discern the seasons of waiting passively, we must also be able to discern the seasons of waiting actively. Even in times when you might feel unsure of the next step, there are continually ways for you to serve the Lord: prayer, study, service to others being a few examples. In times when everything is going along smoothly, waiting actively on the Lord is always in order. Paul encourages young Timothy to “be diligent to show yourself approved” (2 Timothy 2:15). In learning to wait actively on the Lord, it is good advice for us as well. Applying ourselves to faithful service to the Lord (active waiting) will sustain us through times when the waiting requires patience and stillness. In our Christian walk, both kinds of “waiting” are needed: an active waiting on or serving the Lord, and likewise a passive waiting for the Lord to move on your behalf. As everything in our relationship with the Lord is a partnership or covenant, this waiting is a “two way street”. As we serve the Lord, He is moved to action on our behalf. Psalm 37:3-7 speaks to both kinds of waiting (parentheses mine): “Trust in the LORD (passive), and do good (active); Dwell in the land (passive), and feed on His faithfulness (active). Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD (active), Trust also in Him (passive), And He shall bring it to pass (the Lord’s action). He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday (the Lord’s action). Rest in the LORD (passive), and wait patiently for Him (passive)”. Tremendous and amazing results can come from this kind of waiting. Of course, the Lord in His generous and kind manner will send you opportunities to practice if you want to learn to wait! In His providence, those opportunities are already provided — it is for you to take advantage of them. Will you? Unfortunately, patience is not one of Ahasuerus’ virtues. He is motivated by his emotions, and seems to rush right into whatever comes into his mind without much forethought. Let’s return to Persia, and find out what Ahasuerus is rushing into today. After these things, when the wrath of King Ahasuerus subsided, he remembered... Esther 2:1 “After these things”…. By the beginning of chapter two, four years have passed since King Ahasuerus dethroned Queen Vashti. God was working through this Persian chronicler as he wrote this history

allegations involve fiddling with the books of his failed 2012 election campaign, crooked financial dealing in connection with a Pakistani arms contract and assorted other transgressions. Mr. Sarkozy has repeatedly dismissed the accusations as unfounded, and prosecutors last year dropped a formal investigation into whether he had taken advantage of an octogenarian heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, to extract campaign financing. Mr. Sarkozy’s former prime minister, François Fillon, said justice must be allowed to run its course, but demanded more dignified treatment for a man who had served as France’s head of state. “As a former president of the republic,” Mr. Fillon said, “he has the right to respect.” Maïa de la Baume contributed reporting. When

allegations involve fiddling with the books of his failed 2012 election campaign, crooked financial dealing in connection with a Pakistani arms contract and assorted other transgressions. Mr. Sarkozy has repeatedly dismissed the accusations as unfounded, and prosecutors last year dropped a formal investigation into whether he had taken advantage of an octogenarian heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, to extract campaign financing. Mr. Sarkozy’s former prime minister, François Fillon, said justice must be allowed to run its course, but demanded more dignified treatment for a man who had served as France’s head of state. “As a former president of the republic,” Mr. Fillon said, “he has the right to respect.” Maïa de la Baume contributed

In a pastoral letter in 1976, Archbishop Kabanga of Lubumbashi issued a devastating critique of the system that Mobutu ran. The thirst for money . . . transforms men into assassins. Many poor unemployed are condemned to misery along with their families because they are unable to pay off the person who hires. How many children and adults die without medical care because they are unable to bribe the medical personnel who are supposed to care for them? Why are there no medical supplies in the hospitals, while they are found in the marketplace? How did they get there? Why is it that in our courts justice can only be obtained by fat bribes to the judge? Why are prisoners forgotten in jail? They have no one to pay off the judge who sits on the dossier. Why do our government offices force people to come back day after day to obtain services to which they are entitled? If the clerks are not paid off, they will not be served. Why, at the opening of school, must parents go into debt to bribe the school principal? Children who are unable to pay will have no school . . . Whoever holds a morsel of authority, or means of pressure, profits from it to impose on people, especially in rural areas. All means are good to obtain money, or humiliate the human being.

Modern debates were over truth and reality, reason and experience, liberty and equality, justice and peace, beauty and progress. In the postmodern framework, those concepts always appear in quotation marks. Our most strident voices tell us that “Truth” is a myth. “Reason” is a white male Eurocentric construct. “Equality” is a mask for oppressions. “Peace” and “Progress” are met with cynical and weary reminders of power—or explicit ad hominem attacks. Postmodern debates thus display a paradoxical nature. Across the board, we hear, on the one hand, abstract themes of relativism and egalitarianism. Those themes come in both epistemological and ethical forms. Objectivity is a myth; there is no Truth, no Right Way to read nature or a text. All interpretations are equally valid. Values are socially subjective products. Culturally, therefore, no group’s values have special standing. All ways of life from Afghani to Zulu are legitimate. Coexisting with these relativistic and egalitarian themes, we hear, on the other hand, deep chords of cynicism. Principles of civility and procedural justice simply serve as masks for hypocrisy and oppression born of asymmetrical power relations, masks that must be ripped off by crude verbal and physical weapons: ad hominem argument, in-your-face shock tactics, and equally cynical power plays. Disagreements are met—not with argument, the benefit of the doubt, and the expectation that reason can prevail—but with assertion, animosity, and a willingness to resort to force.

I give a call today to the civil servants around the world - yours is to serve, not the government, not the politicians, not even the constitution, but the people. You are the first servants of the society. On your shoulders, lies the responsibility of humanity's present and future. If the armed forces are our last line of defense in any corner of the world, then you are our first line of defense in every corner of the world. Injustice must ask your permission before entering the lives of the people. You, civil servants are the first vanguards of the society.

If the gospel lacks correspondence to reality, why is it that the majority of believers never comes to terms with this? As I expressed in my opening chapter, I am convinced it is not due to a lack of intelligence. Nor is it due to a lack of goodness or noble intentions on the part of most believers. Rather, from the perspective of one who has escaped the finely tuned clutches of the Christian machinery designed to keep me in the fold, I see it primarily as a lack of courage, at least for those who have encountered good reasons for doubting. I, like most believers, experienced serious doubts as a young Christian, but I lacked the courage to pit my reservations against the authority of the church and against its fallible, humanly authored scriptures, finding it safer to submit to the supremely well-crafted, guilt-inducing tactics of apologists who assured me that all the fault lay with me and not with the divinely inspired Bible. I capitulated and managed to hold my doubts at bay for over a decade longer while serving God on the mission field. Many if not most of you have faced similar questions and misgivings about the Bible and the Christian faith, even if not to the same extent. You might be like me during my initial short-lived crises of faith: I could not bring myself to face with courage the possibility that life might not have any cosmic Meaning; that there might be no higher power to guide, protect, and provide for me; that justice might not prevail in the long run; that I might no longer be able to hold sinners accountable with the words, "Thus says the Lord"; that life ends at the grave; or that I might have followed and lead others to follow a grand mistake. I lacked the courage to face my church, family, and friends whom I feared would look upon me as a reprobate. I lacked the courage to think for myself—to accept that the virtues of humility and meekness must not be used as an excuse for failing to challenge entrenched ideas that lack sufficient evidence. In short, I preferred to squelch the seed of doubt and label it as sin rather than as healthy, critical thinking, lest it flower and make life unbearable. That I viewed my incipient doubt and disbelief as sin was no accident: the church has a powerful vested interest in keeping believers in the fold, and it will not let them go without a fight. My courage-squelching guilt or angst was the result of a concerted effort developed over the centuries to make me feel like a depraved worm, a proud and willful rebel, a traitor, a God-hater, and an enemy of all that is good. I was programmed to consider that I would be better off if I were to commit adultery or murder than if I were to abandon the one who created me and redeemed me. Without Christ I would be worse than a good-for-nothing, and, like the traitor Judas, it would have been better for me had I never been born. No wonder most believers never muster the courage to break free from this cage!

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said: “By enforcing the [Religion] Clauses, we have kept religion a matter for the individual conscience, not for the prosecutor or bureaucrat. At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. . . . Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?

A spirituality of justice includes solidarity with those who are poor and a willingness to accompany people living at the margins, bearing witness to their suffering. Many of us who serve the poor and marginalized take time to truly listen to their stories, allowing ourselves to be moved and disturbed by the widespread and systematic disregard for life in these times. For any faith to do justice it must be active out in the world, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and healing the bruised world. The “breaking of the bread” performed by Jesus, for example, shows us how we are to offer our lives to others, especially those most in need, in forming true communion and solidarity with the world. Authentic spiritualities embrace the suffering of the world, and upon deep contemplation, respond to the call to heal and care by taking action.

Justice can be attributed to ability or what an individual deserves. True equality must go beyond capabilities and serve all citizens equally, regardless of background, gender and colour.

Losing oneself in prayer won't do, losing oneself in meditation won’t do, if we must be lost, let us lose ourselves in resuscitating this dying world of ours with our sweat and blood. People think meditation will solve everything. And to some extent, even I thought this way when I was a teenager. But the fact of the matter is, it won't. It’s not bad mark you, but contrary to popular belief, it’s not the key to all the problems of society. We need ten percent meditation, ninety percent revolution. Better yet, we need a life where meditation is revolution, revolution is meditation. It is this simple. Make justice your meditation, make equity your meditation, make love your meditation, and you won't need any of the traditional meditation. The greatest meditation is revolution for assimilation. La mayor meditación es la revolución para la asimilación. Justicia es mi meditación - igualdad es mi meditación - humanidad es mi meditación. Society needs your active involvement, not your pretend involvement. I'll say it to you plainly. If you don’t wanna get involved, that's perfectly fine, but don't pretend that you are doing great service to the world by praying and meditating isolated from the actual troubles of society. Prayer as means of self-sustenance is okay, but it mustn't be glorified beyond that point. Worse than non-involvement is pretend involvement. Either get involved or don't, there's no praying. Either serve or don't, there's no praying. Either lift or don't, there's no praying.

There are signs, however, that a good time was had all last night. Jo might have found herself caught in the middle of a love triangle, but she clearly didn't mind staying around when she thought that one of the angles had been dispensed with. The remains of dinner still grace the table---dirty dishes, rumpled napkins, a champagne flute bearing a lipstick mark. There's even one of the Chocolate Heaven goodies left in the box---which is absolute sacrilege in my book, so I pop it in my mouth and enjoy the brief lift it gives me. I huff unhappily to myself. If they left chocolate uneaten, that must be because they couldn't wait to get down to it. Two of the red cushions from the sofa are on the floor, which shows a certain carelessness that Marcus doesn't normally exhibit. They're scattered on the white, fluffy sheepskin rug, which should immediately make me suspicious---and it does. I walk through to the bedroom and, of course, it isn't looking quite as pristine as it did yesterday. Both sides of the bed are disheveled and I think that tells me just one thing. But, if I needed confirmation, there's a bottle of champagne and two more flutes by the side of the bed. It seems that Marcus didn't sleep alone. Heavy of heart and footstep, I trail back through to the kitchen. More devastation faces me. Marcus had made no attempt to clear up. The dishes haven't been put into the dishwasher and the congealed remnants of last night's Moroccan chicken with olives and saffron-scented mash still stand in their respective saucepans on the cooker. Tipping the contents of one pan into the other, I then pick up a serving spoon and carry them both through the bedroom. I slide open the wardrobe doors and the sight of Marcus's neatly organized rows of shirts and shoes greet me. Balancing the pan rather precariously on my hip, I dip the serving spoon into the chicken and mashed potatoes and scoop up as much as I can. Opening the pocket of Marcus's favorite Hugo Boss suit, I deposit the cold mash into it. To give the man credit where credit is due, his mash is very light and fluffy. I move along the row, garnishing each of his suits with some of his gourmet dish, and when I've done all of them, find that I still have some food remaining. Seems as if the lovers didn't have much of an appetite, after all. I move onto Marcus's shoes---rows and rows of lovely designer footwear---casual at one end, smart at the other. He has a shoe collection that far surpasses mine. Ted Baker, Paul Smith, Prada, Miu Miu, Tod's... I slot a full spoon delicately into each one, pressing it down into the toe area for maximum impact. I take the saucepan back into the kitchen and return it to the hob. With the way I'm feeling, Marcus is very lucky that I don't just burn his flat down. Instead, I open the freezer. My boyfriend---ex-boyfriend---has a love of seafood. (And other women, of course.) I take out a bag of frozen tiger prawns and rip it open. In the living room, I remove the cushions from the sofa and gently but firmly push a couple of handfuls of the prawns down the back. Through to the bedroom and I lift the mattress on Marcus's lovely leather bed and slip the remaining prawns beneath it, pressing them as flat as I can. In a couple of days, they should smell quite interesting. As my pièce de résistance, I go back to the kitchen and take the half-finished bottle of red wine---the one that I didn't even get a sniff at---and pour it all over Marcus's white, fluffy rug. I place my key in the middle of the spreading stain. Then I take out my lipstick, a nice red one called Bitter Scarlet---which is quite appropriate, if you ask me---and I write on his white leather sofa, in my best possible script: MARCUS CANNING, YOU ARE A CHEATING BASTARD.

The promise of anyone seeking to be on the federal bench, the Supreme Court in particular, must again be—not to serve as Chief Justice Roberts's “referee” but to do what is necessary to serve that one great overarching value of American democracy: to serve as a constraint on the otherwise overarching tyranny of the majority (and their political allies) for us and future generations.

It is the biblical stories of dissent and disobedience, then, that give us the courage to wrestle with man and with God where we must.149 Such a posture is the only guarantee that the Mosaic law itself, whose interpretation is in the hands of men, will continue to serve as an expression of justice and of God’s will.

Since the rule of law requires the keeping of peace, America’s government is also an experiment in law enforcement and peacekeeping. It is an experiment in whether policing can promote security and serve liberty for the sake of what Madison identified as the ultimate purpose of government: Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It has ever been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.4 The drafters of the Constitution were actively concerned about immoderation by both government and individuals. Alexander Hamilton cautioned in 1781 that government must have “a proper degree of authority to make and execute the laws with vigour,” for “too little leads to anarchy.”5 Too much, he believed, leads to tyranny.

justice. At least he will serve some time and live with the guilt forever.” “That’s

Revenge is an ugly thing. "He who seeks revenge digs two graves" I only say this because there are circumstances of life where JUSTICE IS NOT ENOUGH OR JUSTICE CAN'T BE HANDED DOWN. Those circumstances require to be AVENGED. This is when you MUST INFLICT PENALTY OR PUNISHMENT for that pain or harm done to you or another. To avenge a wrong is to seek vengeance or revenge. To make right that which was done wrong especially if that wrong caused grievous harm to you or another. This is a situation where vengeance or to avenge or to seek revenge is RIGHT AND JUST!. My explanation also should put some clarity on the old saying "Revenge is a dish best served COLD!

It is necessary to recognize the difference between punishment and discipline. Punishment and discipline may seem the same when measured by the suffering one endures. The suffering in this life may be no more for the person who is punished for his guilt, as the Christian who is only being disciplined by his Parent. The type of punishment may not seem any different, but there is a difference in the mind of the punisher. In one case, God punishes the sinner because he is angry with the sinner. Justice must be served, God’s law must be honored, and respect for him maintained. In the other, God does not punish the believer to satisfy his justice, but for the training of his child. He afflicts him to benefit him. His goal is to improve his child.

My Dear Fellow Subjects, I have recently learned a Truth that I wish to share with you: A man can be powerful, wealthy, privileged, even arrogant, yet still bend himself down to the level of the lowliest child to act with kindness, compassion, and heroism. I have witnessed it. I have been wrong my friends. In the past, cynicism and old hurt threaded through my disparagements of great men. Some men of position and wealth do serve England for their own gain. But some do so because they wish to help others and to make the world a better place. Whether it is always apparent to observers, the fact that they serve from a place of both Honor and Love – love of their families, their lands, and England. The People of this great nation and its Rulers have much to teach other. Both sides should listen. In this same manner, a wife and her husband must coexist. In sharing and celebrating their partnership, they must trust each other; depend upon each other, support each other, and raise each other up – in equal measure. For where there is Love there must always be Respect. For Respect to flourish, however, Equality must first exist. I ask you: How can a man with a single slice of bread look upon a rich man’s feast day after day, yet not come to resent him for that bounty? And how can a feasting lord look upon a pauper’s crust and not feel contempt, even judge that pauper deficient in some manner? Is not a well-fed man a happier man and a better contributor to Society? Is not an equal sharing of resources a pathway toward equal respect? In much the same way, to withhold from wives the same rights and privileges in marriage as their husbands is to sow Anger, Resentment, Fear, and Weakness into the fertile soil of this most blessed union. Instead of allowing wives equal rights and privileged as their husbands is to empower women to love and serve with Strength, Vigor, and Honesty. Dear fellow subjects, I have witnessed the intimate bond between Love and Respect: I have seen it in my parents’ marriage and in the marriages of my dearest friends. Now I have also felt it in my heart. And I have learned that without the one, the other cannot survive. Entwined together, however, they can conquer the worst of life’s challenges. In learning this lesson, I have come to understand that I can no longer hide in anonymity. In doing so, I only contribute to mistrust between the People of this kingdom and its Rulers, who should instead be united, bonded, as spouses are bonded, in Love and Respect. In remaining anonymous, I am also a hypocrite. For how can I claim that women’s voices are worthy of being heard when I have hidden my own so effectively behind this crusade that even those who I love most dearly do not know me? Therefore, today I sign off sincerely, -- Emily Vale, “Lady Justice

To understand Plato, we have to break free of the lazy assumption that everything real must have some location in time and space; indeed, his whole point is that the Theory of Forms, if correct, proves that there is more to reality than the world of time and space. We also have to break free of the lazy habit (as Plato sees it) of assuming that our senses are our only sources of knowledge of reality. For the highest level of reality is not knowable through the senses, but only via the intellect. The world of the senses – of particular geometrical objects, particular human beings, particular just or unjust actions, and the like – might serve at most as kind of a pointer to something beyond itself, to a realm that includes the Form of Triangularity, the Form of Humanness, and the Form of Justice. We can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell the former world, but not the latter, which we know instead through pure thought or unaided reason.

For any faith to do justice it must be active out in the world, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and healing the bruised world. The “breaking of the bread” performed by Jesus, for example, shows us how we are to offer our lives to others, especially those most in need, in forming true communion and solidarity with the world. Authentic spiritualities embrace the suffering of the world, and upon deep contemplation, respond to the call to heal and care by taking action.

That’s why “reforming” the police will only get us so far. We need a holistic approach to repair the entire criminal justice system and address inequities across the board. We must improve training and resources with respect to mental health, incarceration, recidivism, legal representation, and the crushing administrative court fees for defendants. We also need more elected officials who understand what it means to serve something other than themselves.

In sum, making an idol out of the self is just plain mean. We were never designed to bear the God-sized weight of creating and sustaining our own identities. It puts an unbearable weight on people’s shoulders, especially children, when they are indoctrinated to follow their hearts, be true to themselves, and dream up their own identities. It deprives them of the unspeakable joy and meaning that go with being authored by Someone far more brilliant, strong, and loving than we are. Our churches must serve as trauma recovery centers for those crushed by the mainstream credo of self-creation.

Most fundamental to social harmony is harmony between the social classes, and the key to harmony between the classes is social justice. That's why a society with a power market economy will never be harmonious. Fairness requires a new system that provides checks and balances on power and controls capital. Power must be caged by a constitution and operate within the confines of law. Capital needs to be controlled though a system that gives free rein to its positive aspects while controlling the danger its rapaciousness poses to society. The experience of humanity over the past two centuries has shown us that constitutional democracy is an effective system for applying checks and balances on power and controlling capital. That requires breaking through the modern version of 'Soviet learning as the base, Western learning for application' that serves as the guiding ideology of reform, carrying out political systemic reform, and enacting fundamental change to the bureaucratic system. Of course, this will take time and cannot happen overnight. Sudden change is dangerous, and peaceful evolution is more appropriate.

Soon before retiring from the Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said: “By enforcing the [Religion] Clauses, we have kept religion a matter for the individual conscience, not for the prosecutor or bureaucrat. At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. . . . Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”11

Rebellion! I do not know when that Rebellion will come, it might be in a week or in a hundred years, but I know, as surely as I see this straw beneath my feet, that sooner or later justice will be done. Fix your eyes on that, comrades, throughout the short remainder of your lives! And above all, pass on this message of mine to those who come after you, so that future generations shall carry on the struggle until it is victorious. ‘And remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the others. It is all lies. Man serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us animals let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.

We might presume that a social contract should be a lengthy legal document with many provisions and clauses. But the real authority of a social contract does not derive from a piece of parchment, but from a few simple truths that we all abide by, truths that implicitly structure the relationship between individuals and the institutions we create to serve us. At its heart, a social contract defines what we owe one another. Recall the terms of the Standardization Covenant: Society is obligated to reward you with opportunity if and only if you abandon the pursuit of personal fulfillment for the pursuit of standardized excellence. If we want a democratic meritocracy for ourselves and our children, then we must each choose to ratify a new social contract: Society is obligated to provide you with the opportunity to pursue fulfillment, and you are accountable for your own fulfillment. The supreme institutional obligation under the Dark Horse Covenant is to provide Equal Fit. The supreme individual obligation under the Dark Horse Covenant is Personal Accountability.

But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. . . . You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. . . . You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body. —Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

As a nation, we must remember that the principles upon which we stand are always superior to the politics that we can’t stand.

The economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy. All economic life should be shaped by moral principles. Economic choices and institutions must be judged by how they protect or undermine the life and dignity of the human person, support the family and serve the common good. A fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring. All people have a right to life and to secure the basic necessities of life (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, safe environment, economic security.) All people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions as well as to organize and join unions or other associations. All people, to the extent they are able, have a corresponding duty to work, a responsibility to provide the needs of their families and an obligation to contribute to the broader society. In economic life, free markets have both clear advantages and limits; government has essential responsibilities and limitations; voluntary groups have irreplaceable roles, but cannot substitute for the proper working of the market and the just policies of the state. Society has a moral obligation, including governmental action where necessary, to assure opportunity, meet basic human needs, and pursue justice in economic life. Workers, owners, managers, stockholders and consumers are moral agents in economic life. By our choices, initiative, creativity and investment, we enhance or diminish economic opportunity, community life and social justice. The global economy has moral dimensions and human consequences. Decisions on investment, trade, aid and development should protect human life and promote human rights, especially for those most in need wherever they might live on this globe.33

To understand the gospel correctly, we must see the cross as a means to the end of restored relationship with God. To take it in isolation is to miss the point it served. To put it another way, if we say the gospel centers on the cross, we overemphasize the forgiveness of sins while underemphasizing the relationship that forgiveness restores. Once again, just as in Isaiah chapter 59, we see righteousness, justice and salvation all woven together into a unity and aiming at reconciliation, which is justice language.

Yet both Romanism and Arminian Protestantism leave the root assumption of the modern man untouched. And they leave this root assumption unchallenged because the root assumption of their own theology partakes in a measure of the root assumption of the foes of the Christian religion. Romanism, and in a lesser degree Arminianism, cannot challenge the heresy of those who worship and serve the creature more than the Creator because they themselves are not willing to serve the Creator exclusively. Only in the Reformed Faith is full justice done to the idea that man is the creature of God and that he must therefore live exclusively by the revelation of God.

The argument against affirmative action that holds the most water for me is that when affirmative action is viewed as 'enough' it can be detrimental to the fight for racial justice. We must never forget that without systemic change and without efforts to battle the myriad of ways in which systemic racism impacts people of color of all classes, backgrounds, and abilities, our efforts at ending systemic racial oppression will fail. We must refuse to be placated by measures that only serve a select few - and affirmative action does only serve a select few. We must never forget that people of color who will never want to go to college, who will never be able to go to college, who cannot work, who choose not to work, who choose to work in the public sector - they all deserve to be treated as human beings free from racial bigotry and persecution.

Many parts of Europe are in open disorder. In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political world. . . . In such a state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in them, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice, and tender of property.

Scene 1: "So you must have a lot of dates with lots of men around the country," said Will somewhat indelicately. Fiona hesitated for a moment. "No, I find my life very busy doing what the Lord has called me to do. I have a lot of friends who I love very much. And to answer your real question, I am single-as in not married. I am single by choice. I believe that God may have called me to singleness. And if that is that way I can best serve him, I am happy with that." Scene 2: "I guess when I received that package from you with that very thoughtful gift, I thought we ought to talk" Somehow, Will knew what she was going to tell him. "Remember our dinner together? You asked whether I was going out on dates. I told you I was single by choice. Like I said, I feel that it is probably God's choice for me. But even if I felt that God had prepared someone for me, it would have to be someone who knew Jesus personally and loves him with all his heart....." Will could hear her draw in a shaky breath. "You are a wonderful guy......But I can't see how you can be God's choice for me. I hope you don't think I am being to harsh in saying this-this is not easy for me. You have a precious place in my heart. But I just don't want you to have any expectations." He could hear Fiona crying softly. "Please forgive me." she said trying to compose herself.

Our struggle for justice demands much more than any single indictment. It cannot be litigated, legislated or bought into existence. And there is no amount of money that could make up for the lives and human dignity lost to police and state violence against our communities. Instead, if we are to truly honor the magnitude of the injustice, we must commit ourselves to nothing less than the complete transformation of society.

The future of our democracy may depend on other racial and ethnic groups learning to see that our fates are, in fact, inseparably intertwined. If we, as a nation, are ever to free ourselves from the logic and politics of white supremacy, we must not allow ourselves to imagine that progress is made if the system causes greater harm to 'them' than 'us.' Nor can we be seduced into believing that ending racially hostile rhetoric is the same thing as ending systems of racial and social control, or that simply electing a different president or a different political party will necessarily free us from the history and cycle of creating caste-like systems in America. More is required of us in these times. We must learn to care for one another across all boundaries and borders and build a movement of movements rooted in a love so fierce that when a Mexican child is ripped from the arms of his mother at the border, and when a black child is ripped from the arms of her mother as she's arrested on the streets of New York, and when a white child is ripped from the arms of her mother in a courtroom in Oklahoma, we feel the same pain, the same agony, as though it were our own children. For many of us, it is our own children whose lives are at stake. More than a century after W.E.B. Du Bois declared that 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,' our political landscape remains riven by race and corrupted by greed. Yet there is reason for hope. New movements, led by new generations and those most impacted by injustice, are rising to face the challenges this moment in our history presents. The struggle to birth a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy-a nation in which every voice and every life truly matters-did not begin with us and will not end with us. This struggle is as old as the nation itself and the birth process has been painful, to say the least. My greatest hope and prayer is that we will serve as faithful midwives and do what we can in our lifetimes to make America, finally, what it must become.

There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. It is hard to face this. But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

that if we are to serve others, for Christ’s sake, we need to be very human ... We have to understand everyone; we must live peaceably with everyone; we must forgive everyone.[376] On the other hand, we shall not call injustice, justice; we shall not say that an offence against God is not an offence against God, or that evil is good. When confronted by evil we shall not reply with another evil, but rather with sound doctrine and good actions: drowning evil in an abundance of good (cf Rom 12:21). That’s how Christ will reign in our souls and in the souls of the people around us.[377]

Destruction, especially in spiritual circles, is often perceived as a negative thing. In the mystery traditions, it is an often-necessary means in order to transmute into finer states of being. This is the crux of the experience of the Sephirah of Geburah, which means “severity.” It is at this stage in pathworking, also, when sacrifice is necessary. In the curanderismo traditions, swords are often used to battle and cut away aspects of a person’s lower self that no longer serve their highest good. The cut must be clean, precise, and exact. The recipient must be ready to be rid of that aspect forever. Generally known in esoteric circles as the Path of Karmic Adjustment, this is where the lords of karma operate upon us like surgeons in order to restore cosmic balance within our soul. This path is connected to Geburah, and while that Sephirah specifically calls us to banish our dross, this path is also connected to Tiphareth and so beseeches redemption. This means we must face ourselves—our entire life circumstance—as it really is and be ready and willing to change what is necessary in order keep our devotion intact. This requires brutal honesty, discernment, and a lot of courage. We also see the obvious connection to the astrological sign Libra (the scales) as well as the symbology of the tarot trump Justice.

I asked Dancer why the Sons streamed my wife’s death to the mines. Why not instead show the lowReds the wealth of the surface? That would sow anger. “Because a rebellion now would be crushed in days,” Dancer explained. “We must take a different path. An empire cannot be destroyed from without till it is destroyed from within. Remember that. We’re empire-breakers, not terrorists.” When Dancer told me what I am to do, I laughed. I do not know if I can do it. I am a speck. A thousand cities span the face of Mars. Metal behemoths sail between the planets in fleets carrying weapons that can crack the mantle of a moon. On distant Luna, buildings rise seven miles high; there the Sovereign Consul, Octavia au Lune, rules with her Imperators and Praetors. The Ash Lord, who made the world of Rhea cinders, is her minion. She controls the twelve Olympic Knights, legions of Peerless Scarred, and Obsidians as innumerable as the stars. And those Obsidians are only the elite. The Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring order, ensuring obedience to the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice and push their philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in highColor homes. Silvers count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the medicines and sciences. Greens develop

A murder case is like a tree. A tall tree. An oak tree. It has been carefully planted and cared for by the state. Watered and trimmed when needed, examined for disease and parasites of any kind. Its root system is constantly monitored as it flourishes underground and clings tightly to the earth. No money is spared in guarding the tree. Its caretakers are granted immense powers to protect and serve it. The tree’s branches eventually grow and spread wide in splendor. They provide deep shade for those who seek true justice. The branches spring from a thick and sturdy trunk. Direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, forensic science, motive and opportunity. The tree must stand strong against the winds that challenge it. And that’s where I come in. I’m the man with the ax. My job is to cut the tree down to the ground and burn its wood to ashes.