HOW THE SMALL 'g' GODS BECAME ONE SMALL 'g' GOD, AND THEM MORPHED INTO THE BIG 'G' GOD

Thomas Romer, The Invention of God, translated from the French by Raymond Geuss (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) ("An examination . . . allows us to retrace the path of a god who probably had his origin somewhere in the 'South,' between the Negev and Egypt. Originally he was a god of the wilderness, of war and storms, but gradually through a series of small steps he became the god of Israel and Jerusalem. Then eventually, after a major catastrophe--the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah--he established himself as the one god, creator of heaven and earth, invisible and transcendent, who nevertheless loudly proclaimed his special relationship with Judaism. How did one god among others become God? This is the basic, and theologically fundamental, enigma that this book attempts to illuminate. Despite what certain theologians continue to assert, it is now beyond doubt that the god of the Bible was not always 'unique,' the one-and-only God." Id. at 2. Or, as I would put it, why one should read the bible as foundation myths, and not history, let alone as the word of God.).

NEGRO SLAVERY: ITS SUPPORTERS AND ITS CRITICS

Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) ("The explosive sectional controversy over the expansion of slavery into newly conquered territories, which tore at the heart of mid-nineteenth century America and paved the way for the Civil War, presented a golden opportunity for Carolinian planter politicians to impart to their section the political ideology of slavery, with its ideal of an independent southern nation. . . . It is in this context that South Carolina's exceptionalism became pertinent and influential. Not bound by party allegiance or democratic practice, Carolinian planter politicians championed the cause of their class and section, Calhoun's notion of state sovereignty became the basis of the southern position on slavery in the territories and on the right to secession. Not just formal constitutional and political arguments, but the vindication of slavery as a superior way of ordering society and of a separate southern identity based on slavery would constitute the discourse of  southern nationalism. During nullification, Carolinian politicos had developed a systematic defense of slavery and the slaveholding minority in a democratic republic. The slavery expansion conflict fostered southern nationalism, which pointed to the inescapable conclusion that slavery was a higher good than the American republic." Id. at 63-64. Query. To what extent would an updated version of the following 1861 statement, by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, find favorable sentiment in early twenty-first century America? "The prevailing ideas entertained by . . . most of the leading statement at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation, of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. . . . Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great turn that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. . . . [O]ur new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." Id. at 254. Or, to put it another way, to what extent do Americans (or, at least, the so-called 'Silent Majority") believe that people of colors, notably Blacks and Hispanics, should have second-class status? "Historians, like contemporaries, have long noted that an overwhelming majority of South Carolinians were for secession. But a majority of South Carolinians had noting to do with secession or the glorification of human bondage. A majority of South Carolinians in 1860 were slaves." Id. at 258.).

Manisha Sinha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2016) ("The conflict over the contours and nature of American democracy has often centered on debates over black freedom and rights. The origins of that momentous and ongoing political struggle lie in the movement to abolish slavery. This book tells the story of abolition. . . . Abolition was a radical, interracial movement, one which addressed the entrenched problems of exploitation and disenfranchisement in a liberal democracy and anticipated debates over race, labor and empire." Id. at 1. "The abolition legacy for American democracy lies hidden in plain sight.  . . . The age of Obama, like the age of Lincoln, has its critics and its admirers, but neither would have been possible without the abolition movement." "The enduring heritage of the abolition movement is even broader: its unyielding commitment to human rights and a call to action, however much abolitionists disagreed on tactics and ideas until the end. Demonstrating the potential of democratic radicalism is no mean achievement. Their wide-ranging activism was, as Du Bois put it, 'the finest thing in American history'." Id. at 591.).

EDITH STEIN

Edith Stein, Essays on Woman, 2d ed., rev'd (Collected Works of Edith Stein, volume 2), translated from the German by Freda Mary Oben (Washington, D. C.: ICS Publications/Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1996).

Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family 1891-1916 (Collected Works of Edith Stein, volume 1), translated from the German by Josephine Koeppel (Washington, D. C.: ICS Publications/Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1986).

Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy (Collected Works of Edith Stein, volume 3), translated from the German by Waltraut Stein (Washington, D. C.: ICS Publications, 1989).

THE IDEA OF THE BLACK FEMALE FIGURE

Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (New York: Knopf, 2016) (From the book cover: "Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems considering the role of desire and race play in the construction of self. The central panel is the title poem, 'Voyage of the Sable Venus,' a riveting narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient to present times--titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western Art. Bracketed by Lewis's autobiographical poems, 'Voyage' is a tender and shocking study of the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, as it juxtaposes our names for things with what we actually see and know. Offering a new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin--five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role has art played in this ancient, often heinous story? . . . [T]his poet adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to he nuances of race and desire and how they define us all, including herself, as she explores her own sometimes painful history. Lewis's book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race--a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.").

AMERICA'S UNCIVIL WAR

Brooks D. Simpson, ed., The Civil War: The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It (New York: Library of America, 2013).

Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed., The Civil War: The Final Year Told By Those Who Lived It (New York: Library of America, 2014) ("On May 26 General Edmund Kirby Smith surrounded all Confederate forces west of the Mississippi. Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston on June 18 and issued General Order No. 3 the following day. His order enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation brought freedom to about 250,000 slaves in Texas and became the basis for the African American holiday of Juneteenth." Id. at 735.).

W. S. MERWIN

W. S. Merwin, Collected Poems 1952-1993, edited by J. D. McClatchy (New York: Library of America, 2013) ("Poems are written in moments of history, and their circumstances bear upon their language and tone and subject and feeling whether the authors are conscious of that happening or not, but it is hard to conceive of a poem being written only out of historic occasions. Somebody who was not a product of history alone had to be there and feel the need for words, hear them, summon them together." Id. at 193.).

W. S. Merwin, Collected Poems 1996-2011, edited by J. D. McClatchy (New York: Library of America, 2013).

THE WAR OF 1812

Donald R. Hickey, ed., The War of 1812: Writings from America's Second War of Independence (New York: Library of America, 2013)(As with America's First War of Independence, America did not win the War of 1812. Great Britain lost it; or, to be more precise, began no longer willing to pursue it. As with the First, in the Second the American's again unsuccessfully invaded Canada. The result, binding Canada ever closer to Great Britain. And, one sees White Americans viewing Native Americans (even those allied and fighting on America's side) as "internal enemies," to be exterminated or removed.).

SOME SUGGESTED SUMMER READING FOR LAW STUDENTS

Andrew J. Bacevich, America's War For the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House, 2016) ("America's War For the Greater Middle East began with failure in the desert. . . . During Operation Eagle Claw, which began and ended on the night of April 24-25, 1980, U.S. fatalities numbered in the single digits. Even before U.S. troops closed with the enemy, Eagle Claw unraveled--the equivalent of a football team succumbing to defeat even before taking the field." Id. at xix. Pages xiv-xv displays a map, "America's War for the Greater Middle East: Selected Campaigns and Operations, 1980-present." I cannot reproduce the map here, but here is a list of those "selected campaigns." Bosnia: Deny Flight, 1993-1995; Deliberate Force, 1994; Joint Endeavor, 1995-1996. Kosovo: Determined Force, 1998; Allied Force, 1999; Joint Guardian, 1999-2005. Lebanon: Multinational Force, 1982-1984. Libya: El Dorado Canyon, 1986; Odyssey Dawn, 2011. Egypt: Bright Star, 1980-2009. Sudan: Infinite Reach, 1998. North/West Africa: Enduring Freedom--Trans Sahara, 2007-. Turkey: Provide Comfort, 1991. Syria: Inherent Resolve, 2014-. Iraq: Desert Storm, 1991; Southern Watch, 1991-2003; Desert Strike, 1996; Northern Watch, 1997-2003; Desert Fox, 1998; Iraqi Freedom, 2003-2010; New Dawn, 2010-2011; Inherent Resolve, 2014-. Iran: Eagle Claw, 1980; Olympic Games, 2007-2010. Afghanistan: Cyclone, 1980-1989; Infinite Reach, 1998; Enduring Freedom, 2001-2015; Freedom's sentinel, 2015-. Pakistan: Neptune Spear, 2011. Saudi Arabia: Desert Shield, 1980; Desert Focus, 1986. Persian Gulf: Earnest Will, 1987-1988; Nimble Archer, 1987; Praying Mantis, 1988. Yemen: Determined Response, 2000. Somalia: Restored Hope, 1992-1993; Gothic Serpent, 1993;. East Africa: Enduring Freedom--Horn of Africa, 2002-. "As the action that initiated that war, Operation Eagle Claw proved an apt harbinger. Here was a portent of things to come: campaigns launched with high hopes but inexplicably going awry. In retrospect, we might see the events at Desert One as a warning from the gods or from God: Do not delude yourself. Do not indulge in fantasies of American arms somehow resolving the contradictions besetting U.S. policy in the Greater Middle East." "At the time, Americans were blind to any such warnings. Or perhaps out of laziness or irresponsibility, they chose not to heed them. We're lived with the consequences ever since." Id. at xii. When in elementary school I first read about The Hundred Year War. It googled may mind then, and for many years to come, that a war could last 100 years. Now I get it! America is in its forth decade of what Bracevich calls "America's War for the Greater Middle East." America may well still be there 60 years from now: America's Hundred Year War?).

David Cole, Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law (New York: Basic Books, 2016).

Bernard Crick, In Defense of Politics, 4th ed., (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1993) ("The man who treats everything a a matter of principle can't be happy with politics. The man who says 'we cannot compromise until we have gained "x" or "y"', or that '"a" and "b" must never be given up' is acting unpolitically, even though he may be playing a part in a political system. Whoever says 'we must never compromise our ideals' is either dooming himself to frustration or pleading himself to authoritarianism. Ideals are valuable as ideals and not as plans for a new order of immediate things. And ideals should not be confused with the means to their attainment. By all means let us never compromise a genuine idea--'true equality' or 'social justice' indeed. But let us not then say that 'more nationalization' or 'democracy' are first principles which can never be abandoned or modified. For these things are only relative means to what we may take to be absolute ends (there is no need . . . for the defenders of politics to take sides on whether such absolute ends or ideals are meaningful or not); their applicability must vary with time and place. The man who speaks the language of absolute demands--say 'a guaranteed living wage' or 'the right of property' (or of compensation for property taken)--should at least be expected to realize that these things are gainable or relinquishable in a multitude of different forms. They are, in a word, negotiable--political, not total, commitments. To entertain politics at all is inevitably to enter into a world of morality in which one is aware of sacrifice as much as of aspirations (and at times 'absolute principles' may have to be sacrificed as much as material goods and personal measures--for some worth-while purpose); and in which one is aware of public responsibility as well as of private conscience. It is said that someone asked Lincoln once why he looked 'so sad and so wise'. He replied: 'because I know I can't  get everything I want.'" Id. at 135-137.).

Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2016) ("I believe the rhetoric of meritocracy has caused enamors harm." Id. at xii. "In societies that celebrate meritocratic individualism, saying that top earners may have enjoyed a bit of luck apparently verges on telling them that they don't really belong on top, that they aren't who they think they are. The rhetoric of meritocracy appears to have camouflaged the extent to which success and failure often hinge decisively on events completely beyond any individual's control." Id. at xii. "Almost 70 percent of the faculty surveyed at one university believed themselves to be in the top 25 percent of their colleagues with respect to teaching ability. And another survey found that 87 percent of students in an elite MBA program believed their academic performance placed them in the top half of their class." Id. at 71. "False beliefs about luck are also common. [] Another disconnect between evidence and belief is people's tendency to underestimate good fortune's role in success, while being too quick to embrace bad luck as an explanation of failure. [] Some have attributed it to so-called motivated cognition: People want to feel good about themselves, and they're more likely to enjoy the warm glow of a positive self-image. If they think of themselves as highly competent and attribute their failures to events beyond their control." Id. 72-73. Note: Here is the one area of life where I am truly exceptional: I know that anything and everything good that has happened in my life ("my successes") is due to luck, and anything and everything that has gone wrong in my life ("my failures") is due solely to my being a fuck-up. There is great comfort in being the village idiot (as I hum the tune to Van Morrison's song, "Village Idiot.").

Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2016) ("Let me confess here a nostalgia for the managerial professionalism that I have just described. It was, after all, the system that administered the country's great corporations, its news media, its regulatory agencies, and its welfare state in the more benevolent years of the American Century. Here and there, in certain corners of our national life, this older organizational form still survives, keeping our passenger jet from exploding and our highway bridges from collapsing." "But generally speaking, that system of professionalism was long ago subverted and transformed into something different and more rapacious. Today we live in a world of predatory bankers, predatory educators, even predatory health care providers, all of them out for themselves." Id. at 26-27. "For successful professionals, meritocracy is a beautifully self-serving doctrine, entitling them to all manner of rewards and status, because they are smarter than other people. For people on the receiving end of inequality--for those who have just lost their home, for example, or who are having trouble surviving on the minimum wage, the implications of meritocracy are equally unambiguous. To them this ideology says: forget it, You have no one to blame for your problems but yourself." "There is no solidarity in a meritocracy." Id. at 32. The doctrine of meritocracy is Social Darwinism updated. "The answer is that I've got the wrong liberalism. The kind of liberalism that has dominated Massachusetts for the last few decades isn't the stuff of Franklin Roosevelt or the United Auto Workers; it's the Route 128/suburban-professionals variety. Professional-class liberals aren't really alarmed by oversized rewards for society's winners; on the contrary, this seems natural tho them--because they are society's winners. The liberalism of professionals just does not extend to matters of inequality; this is the area where soft hearts abruptly turn hard." Id. at 195.).

Pamela Haag, The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2016) From the book jacket: "American have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of the exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation." "Or so we're told." "In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional, but precisely because it was not: guns proliferated in America because throughout most of the nation's history, they were perceived as an unexceptional commodity, no different than buttons or typewriters." From the text: "Nineteenth-century America left to the twentieth a diffusion of guns. It also left the beginning of a gun mystique that had been forged on a changeling frontier, annealed with a rifle, and machined into a cultural idiom. That mystique may have been incubated in the nineteenth century, but it flourish in the twentieth, when it acquired the obduracy of fact through repetition in the medium of advertisement, story, television, radio, history, and film. At midcentury, the gun prevailed on the American myth market." "Its legacy is a simple but profound one for twenty-first-century gun culture and a striking contrast to the gun's reality: the legend conjures a country, and a frontier, imagined as more gun-violent than it was, not less, and a world of gun violence between good guys and bad guys. This Manichean conceptualization--of Hickok facing down a villain on a dusty town plaza--has proven to be almost a cultural narcotic. It is a conceptualization that construes gun violence as a story of crime versus the abstract, cool metaphysics of justice, with the latter achieved by a paramilitary citizen-soldier, when it is more often the story of a suicidal self-destruction and intimate, angry, intoxicated impulse. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 31,672 gun deaths in the United States in 2010, and 33, 636 in 2013. The majority in both 2010 and 2013 (61 and 63 percent, respectively) were suicides. Thirty-six percent in 2010 were homicides, and the rest were accidental. Of the homicides, the majority did not occur between strangers, or by criminal. A study of 400 homicides victims from three cities found that in the 83 percent of cases where the perpetrator was identified, he or she was known to the victim in almost all--95 percent--of these cases (although statistics on homicides committed by known or unknown perpetrators is unavoidably and inherently skewed, because it is based on solved homicides--and it is easier to solve a homicide that involves an intimate or known assailant). The majority of women murdered are killed at home by a family member or an intimate partner--a spouse, lover, boyfriend, or intimate acquaintance (64 percent in 2007, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics: 24 percent by a spouse or ex-spouse, 21 percent by a boyfriend or girlfriend, and 19 percent by 'another family member'). More than half of all female 'handgun' homicide victims (57 percent) were killed by an intimate acquaintance. Guns were used in 71.5 percent of spousal murders. Although in theory a gun should equalize and protect woman against violence, case control studies have found that having a gun in the home increases a woman's risk for homicide and has 'no protective effect.'" Id. at 388-367.).

Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, American Amnesia: How the War On Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016) ("This book is about an uncomfortable truth: It takes government--a lot of government--for advanced societies to flourish." "The truth is uncomfortable because Americans cherish freedom. Government is effective in part because it limits freedom--because, in the language of political philosophy, it exercises legitimate coercion. Government can tell people they must send their children to school rather than the fields, that they cab't dump toxins into the water or air, and they thy must contribute to meet expenses that benefit the entire community. To be sure, government also secures our freedom. Without its ability to compel behavior, it would not just be powerless to protect our liberties; it would cease to be a vehicle for achieving many of our most important shared ends. But there's no getting around it; Government works because it can for people to do things." [] "But Americans have never been good at acknowledging government's necessary ole in supporting both freedom and prosperity. And we have become much less so over the last generation, We live in an era of profound skepticism about government. Contemporary political discourse portrays liberty and coercion as locked in ceaseless conflict. . . . We are told that the United States got rich in spite of government, when the truth is closer to the opposite: The United States got rich because it got government more or less right." Id. at 1-2. "A government that effectively promotes human flourishing is a government worth fighting for. More than ever, the problems we face demand a sustained and principled defense of a vital proposition: The government that covers best needs to govern white a bit. Americans must remember what has made America prosper." Id. at 369. This books does not say anything you should not already know if you have stepped back and taken a serious, and objective, long-term view of American politics. Unfortunately, few of us step back and take the serious, objective  and long-term view.).

John W. Schiemann, Does Torture Work? (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2016) ("There are many decent and reasonable people who do not like the idea of torture but think it is necessary to protect America and Americans from terrorism. If this describes you, then I hope I can convince you that it is worth that it is worth examining through reason and logic the assumption that torture works. If you are someone who already opposes torture, I hope I am able to convince you why it is necessary not to treat proponents as 'moral monsters' but instead to examine the effectiveness claims of torture proponents. Either way, I hope you will agree that this isa question important enough to take seriously and pursue seriously. Torture is no game." Id. at xii. "In short, we have seen the failure of detainees to provide ay information at all, to provide false and misleading information, and to provide some corroborative information, including information that confirms what the same detainee had already provided without torture. . . . And while the CIA and Republican responses are able to point to some minor and corroborative information provided under torture, there is no instance anything near to the sort of information supporting the pragmatic model's claim of reliably generating reliable (valuable) information on imminent threats. Thus, the Bush program failed to meet the Information Reliability benchmark--the only possible justification for interrogational torture." Id. at 250-251.).

LIBRARY OF ARABIC LITERATURE 5

Al-Qadi al-Nu'man, Disagreements of the Jurists: A Manual of Islamic Legal Theory (Library of Arabic Literature), edited and translated from the Arabic by Devin J. Stewart (New York & London: New York U. Press, 2015).

REVOLUTION AND ART: DEBAUCHERY MUST GIVE BIRTH TO VIRTUE

Jean Starobinski, 1789: The Emblems of Reason, translated from the French by Barbara Bray (Charlottesville: U. of Virginia, 1982) ("The year 1789 is a watershed in the political history of Europe. Is it also a turning point in the evolution of style? At first sight it does not seem to have produced any major event or significant development in the history of art. [] What the Revolution can be credited with is its fervent stress on the Roman and republican rather than the Alexandrian elements in neoclassicism; its widespread dissemination of imagery through propaganda and counterpropaganda; and its introduction of public ceremonial. [] Art is probably better at expressing states of civilization than moments of violent change. More recent examples have shown that revolutions do not immediately discover an artistic language corresponding to the new political order. Inherited forms continued to be used even though people want to proclaim the old world a thing of the past." Id. at 5-8. "The first act of freedom clears the way and opens up a limited field of possibility. But no one can remain forever on this momentary crest, when darkness rolls away and the light of the future present all faces because it as yet has none. The new space has o be filled, the god who will be at the center has to be named, the power that is to rule It has to be recognized or created. The fact of having darkly overthrown the reign of darkness determines only a possibility of beginning and not the nature of what is going to begin. All that emerges at first is the fact that the field is open to universal principles, For a principle is the word of beginning, the founding utterance that tries to contain and fix in itself beginning's bright authority. The nothing in which debauchery ends must give birth to resolute virtue."Id. at 55.).

WHY THE INTERNET HAS TURN OUT TO BE BAD FOR SOCIETY . . .

AND WHY MOST OF US ARE ARE GETTING WHAT WE  DID NOT WANT BUT CERTAINLY DESERVE. IN SHORT, SCREWED!

Jared Kobek, I Hate the Internet: A Useful Novel (Los Angles: We Heard You Like Books, 2016)("The Internet was a heaping mass of ideologies, spoken and unspoken, that reflected the social values of its many creators. Some of these men believed in freedom of expression. [] The system was designed with the sole purpose of maximizing the amount of bullshit that people typed into their computers and telephones. The greater the interconnectivity, the greater the profits. It was feudalism in the service of brands, and it rested on inducing human being to indulge in their worst behavior. [] A place where complex systems gave the mentally ill the same platforms of expression as sane members of society, with no regard to the damage they caused to themselves or others. A place where complex systems induced the destruction of human beings . . . with no purpose other than making money for Google and Facebook. [I]t turned out that an open forum of ideas was impossible when the vast majority of vocal users were no more than babbling shit-asses." Id. at 151.).

WOOD ENGRAVNGS BY BARRY MOSER

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by Barry Moser, preface and notes gy James R. Kincaid, text edited by Selwyn H. Goodarce (North Hatfield, MA: Pennyroyal Pres, 2010).

Barry Moser, Ashen Sky: The Letters of Pliny the Younger on the Eruption of Vesuvius, written and translated by Benedicte Gilman; woodblock illustrations by Barry Moser (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007).

Ethel Pochocki, The Mushroom Man, illustrated by Barry Moser (New York: Green Tiger Press, 1993).

Nancy Willard, Beauty and the Beast, wood engravings by Barry Moser (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992).