I’ve been on record in the past regarding the fact that I don’t consider myself to be either a conservative or a liberal - and that I have rather disliked those people I have met who identify themselves with such labels. I think that I’ve also said before that I mean this to apply not only in a political sense, but also in the religious sense as those terms are applied to Catholics. I don’t know when “liberal” or “conservative” became valid labels for a system of belief which demands nothing more or less than orthodoxy, but as much as I eschew them in the political arena, I find them even more odious as religious designations; and I look forward to the day when their usage passes.

Sometimes I actually long for the days when to be Catholic was to be a Democrat. Certainly I find elements of their platform to be more in line with the Church’s social teachings than the social Darwinism of the capitalism conservatives prize so highly. However, their general mode of implementation (viz., the centralization of power at the national level) goes both against the doctrine of subsidiarity also found in the social teachings and against the dual federalism of the U.S. constitution.

Yes, there’s idiocy on both sides. From the partial embrace of what I like to think of as irrational, radical environmentalism on the right, to the sort of modern cult of Moloch on the left, to which I alluded in my previous post. There are some things that I think should be, de facto and utterly, seen for what they are: depraved.

The point of all this is that I have been weighing two hopes. The first is that there is still the possibility of renewal, that the society in which I live may yet be redeemed. That option, however, seems ever more to be slipping away. Which leaves me with the second hope: a Vichian ricorso, an end to this barbarism tarted up to look like true civilization. Come, fall, come.

Not just “angry.” Mad.

There’s a difference, you know. The word anger is laden with emotional significance, it is true, but it does not exclude the rational faculties. I can be angry about the lack of human dignity in the third world; I can be angry at a sibling for antagonizing a significant other; I can be angry at Octavian when he tries to gracelessly remove all the books from all the bookshelves ever. The word mad, however, was originally synonymous with insane or crazy. One is “driven mad”; an animal is “maddened” by the sight of blood; Backstreet Boys fans are…well, no, ‘dems just be crazy. But you get my point.

I don’t know at what point in the history of the word that mad became a synonym for angry, but as with all synonyms it means something slightly different from the word to which it is similar. In this case, to say that someone is “mad” in the sense of being angry means (to me, at least, and I think not subjectively so at that) that such a person is literally “beside oneself,” as it were transported by rage that excludes and overpowers the rational faculties. It is something more akin to the sentiment of a bear when it is poked with a stick; or alternatively a sibling when he is poked in the ear with a moistened fingertip.

This subtle-yet-fundamental difference between angry and mad has caused me to choose my words carefully when describing my emotional condition. I generally get angry. I am seldom mad. This is a good thing, because I have a rather severe problem in that area. If you were to see me over the course of a whole year, you probably wouldn’t realize that - and with good reason. For me to get angry is a gateway for me to get mad. And when I get mad I have been known to wander into wooded lands and fell trees for no good reason. I imagine that if there were a sort of folk-legend basis for the anger problems of Dr. Banner, then I might qualify as a contributor.

At this point you might be asking what sort of thing might make me truly mad. Well, I will tell you, because there’s one running for president now.

I’ve decided that, due to the as-yet-unexplained problems that I’ll be having with doing my regular, longer posts this week, I shall be doing a series of shorter posts. I say “shorter” rather than “longer,” not so much to imply that there was ever a consistency in length before now - rather, to lower expectations.

Today, for example, you will be getting two clips from YouTube. I really can’t introduce them more effectively than that except by saying that the first one in particular contains an item that I very much wish to possess.

I know, I know, I totally and utterly missed Friday’s post.  I also barely got to posting today.  I crave the collective indulgence of my readership for that, but it’s been…let’s just say it’s been a zany sort of weekend that has involved existential resolution, almost a fifth of Glenlivet, an ostrich, and other more mundane pieces and events.

The difficulty going forward is that this current week is also, shall we say, a little bit crazy.  It would have been normally, but for a variety of reasons both within and beyond my control it has become just that much more surreal.  Please don’t worry, the causal chain is not what I would call “bad.”  In fact, if I had to use a word to describe things in totality, I would reach for one of those terms that Nietzsche places himself beyond - in a word, I would say that things are “good.”

The reason I bring all this up is that you may be hearing from me in shorter bursts in the next couple of weeks; moreover, those bursts may be short to the point of vanishing unto a singularity.  Just trust, dear readers.  I shall be here.

There’s just something about the ways things have been going around here lately that makes it next to impossible to sit down and bang out a decent post of any kind.

First of all, there’s the simple fact that my time management skills are not in the least bit what they should be. Of course - and not to make excuses, but - it would be one heck of a lot easier if I had a reasonable and consistent schedule. Unfortunately, instead of finding that tidy little Aristotelian mean, I swing between the vicious extremes of either not having enough time, or having entirely too much.

Second, I’ve been trying to cram as much time with my fiancée (hereinafter and forever to be known as “La Principessa”) as possible. I am pretty much without remorse on this point because in a week and a half she will be graduated and a continent away for a fair chunk of the next year and a half. I’m going to assume that I don’t need to explain myself any further on that point.

Oh, and a close third, I got home late last night with every intention of writing a post magnificent…until I realized that Octavian (my cat) had in essence tried to use my desk as a massive climbing toy, pulling down all sorts of miscellany in my absence. I was too tired to be really angry at him, so I just cleaned up and went to sleep. It’s not really his fault, either; I’ve been out a lot and the apartment isn’t exactly designed to entertain a 10-month-old kitten. I’ve just made a note of the fact that I really need to get him a piece of real furniture - read: climbing tower - to exercise on. Hopefully that will keep the destruction to a minimum.

The cat antics didn’t stop there, though. I managed to clean up the desk, but then I started hearing a sloshing noise coming from a location roughly synonymous with the inside of the cat. This I knew could not bode well (I’ve seen it before when he inexplicably drinks so much water that he pukes). As is his wont, he started in the living room, leaving me a lovely gift of brownish, chunky liquid. He then proceeded into the hallway. I followed, more to make sure he didn’t try to do anything to my shoes than to prevent nature taking its course - which it did, in the form of a green (yes, like pea-soup green) sausage of hair and what I can only assume were digestive fluids. He then proceeded to do the same thing in the dining room.

All three messes were a relatively easy cleanup. However, I find myself wondering whether this is exactly how hairballs are supposed to make themselves known. Being the first time I’ve ever seen him bring one up - if one it indeed was - I have no idea what to expect. Part of me is tempted to just call up the vet to ask. I really don’t need him exploding (or puking on anything in my absence).

So that would be why there was no customary middle-of-the-week post. In the way of a consolation, I give you what follows, courtesy of The Shrine of the Holy Whapping:

Well, finals are now over.

Iron Man is a giant shiny piece of awesome, and apparently I’m not alone in thinking that because it grossed $100 million this weekend, beating all but Spider Man in the most-obnoxious-amount-of-money-on-an-opening-weekend category. Well deserved.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to return my brain to the charging cradle for a few days.

I’ve pretty much gotten used to the idea that I live in a budding corporate police state. I’m not necessarily okay with that, but all things being equal, there’s also not much I can do about it. From ISPs to email services to usage tracking to satellites and wiretaps - and now the story, corroborated elsewhere, that Microsoft has effectively deputized itself into a law-enforcement role - I feel like it’s easier to just assume that privacy is primarily an illusion unless I totally unplug and don’t leave the house.

But apparently that’s not going to be good enough for long. At least, not unless the military wises up and starts listening to James Cameron. Or does nobody remember SkyNet? To recap:

Cameras, ‘bots, and prying eyes I can avoid with only a little bit of inconvenience. Terminators are another story entirely.

From G. D. Davidson over at The Sci Fi Catholic:

I would pay money to see this. …Or, you know, the feature-length version.

Just as an example of what I meant in the end of the last post…

While I am very sad that Simcha’s blog is on an indefinite hiatus, I’m not going to try to do anything to force her to post further. It just wouldn’t be right.

Final exams looming near in law school land - nay, they are already here! - invariably leads me to wax contemplative upon the themes of man, justice, and the πόλις. And since the examination most lately dispatched was one for a class on the history of American jurisprudence, there’s actually some pragmatic value for me in these musings. Of course, the speculative side of my nature will, through force of habit, charge off in a direction that totally negates whatever slivers of practicality might have existed at the start. Nevertheless, I persist - it entertains me to do so. And it gives me things to write about, so everybody wins.

Something that bothered me back in my first year of law school was tort law. In spite of the best efforts of my professor and the textbook to establish some boundaries and reasonability to the matter, it seems to me that the evolution of tort law has been a process of gradually inverting the common-sense notions of personal responsibility.

First let me explain what is getting inverted. Say that I own a parcel of land, upon which I build an expensive house. Say further that I fill this house with expensive and luxurious amenities. Would I not be justified in wanting to protect this mass of material wealth? So say I build a fence, hidden amongst hedges so that it isn’t aesthetically unpleasant; and say that I post regularly and often on the perimeter of my property that trespassing is not allowed, and that I keep guard dogs to discourage such trespass. Dogs? Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the half-dozen large Dobermans that roam the grounds.

Okay, so my stuff is now secure, right?

Well, as it turns out, some moron decides to ignore the signs, jump the fence, and try to make it to my house. Predictably, my canine security force corrals him - albeit roughly - and the police take him away to be charged with attempted robbery. Just another dumb criminal who underestimated the seriousness of my security precautions, right?

Oh, yeah, and he’s suing me.

What, you ask? He broke onto my property…what on earth is he entitled to sue about? The fact of the matter is that I’m not actually allowed to use deadly or potentially deadly force to protect my personal assets by default. Realistically, I’m not allowed to use deadly force unless I or another person are at risk.

Why is this, exactly? Because living in a society requires as a matter of course a certain amount of limitations on free will. I may want to eviscerate anyone who tries to break into my home, but society prevents me from doing this because uncontrolled killing is not perceived to be a general good. I can hardly fault the judgment, either.

But there are other sacrifices that autonomy must make in order for the individual to participate in society - and these are regulated far more subtly. Specifically, you as an autonomous individual must respect me as an autonomous individual when I make choices that you disagree with. There are limits to this rule created by overarching moral considerations, but for the general, day-to-day decisions of one’s life, it holds. For example, if you are friends with someone whom I find grating and unequivocally unpleasant, then you may be friends with him and I will choose not to be. You have absolutely no right to try to force me to be friends with him. You might tell me that you think I’m unreasonable, you might tell your friend you think I’m unreasonable, but that’s it. You can’t try to undermine me. It just won’t work - and even if it did, by placing your will over mine you are committing a moral infraction.

Like I said before, this rule has its limits. But that would require a whole new post…and it will come eventually.