"NOW, THEN," SAID THE PSYCHIATRIST, . . . "WHEN DID YOU DISCOVER THAT YOU WERE DEAD?" *

* From "Blood Brothers," reprinted in Charles Beaumont, Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories, foreward by Ray Bradbury, afterword by William Shatner (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2015), at 130, 130.

Algernon Blackwood, Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories, edited with an introduction and notes by S. T. Joshi (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2002) (From "Sand": "Lady Statham! At first the name had disappointed him. So many folk wear titles, as syllables in certain tongues wear accents--without them being mute, unnoticed, unpronounced. Nonentities, born to names, so often claim attention for their insignificance in this way." Id. at 273, 296.).

Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, foreward by Jeff Vandermeer (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2015).

Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories, edited with an introduction and notes by S. T. Joshi, foreword by Guillermo Del Toro (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Press, 2011).

Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror (New York: The Mysterious Press, 2016).

Ray Russell, The Case Against Satan, foreward by Laird Barron (New York: Penguin Classics/ Penguin Books, 2015) ( "It was never as if he lacked faith or doubted the existence of God. The idea of God sustained him. It is not difficult to believe in God. God is goodness, for which all men yearn; He is the fountainhead of life; He is Our Father Who Art in Heaven, a great concept, and there is nothing loftier, nothing nobler, nothing more dignified, nothing more awesome. 'God is not mocked,' for such a figure is beyond mockery; but the Devil is and has been mocked down through the centuries--he has been a sideshow puppet, a mustache-twirling city slicker, a costume for stage magicians, a trademark for a laxative water. No, it is not difficult to believe in God--the very flesh reaches out for such belief--but for an intelligent man of the twentieth century to wipe from his mind the centuries of ridicule that have been heaped upon the Devil, for him to take the Devil seriously, as seriously as he takes God; that is difficult. And yet to fail is heresy." Am I a heretic? . . ." Id. at 44.).

William Sloane, The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror, introduction by Stephen King (New York: New York Review Books, 2015) (includes To Walk the Night and The Edge of Running Water).

REVISITING THE POETRY OF JORIE GRAHAM

Jorie Graham, From the New World: Poems 1976-2014  (New York: Ecco, 2015) (Yes!).

VOTER RATIONALITY AND RATIONALIZATION

Christopher H. Achen & Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2016) (This book may help explain why, regardless of who you are voting for or against in November, and no matter who ends up winning/losing, you will probably have buyers' remorse. Why? Because you were not being realistic about the democratic process. "Our view is that conventional thinking about democracy has collapsed in the face of modern social-scientific research." Id. at 12. "In chapter 3 we turn our attention form electoral representation to 'direct democracy,' a medley of institutional reforms intended to enhance the role of ordinary citizens (and minimize the role of professional politicians) in processes of democratic decision-making. Reforms of this sort have been a common response to the perceived failings of existing democratic procedures in the United States and elsewhere--a simplistic reflection of the Progressive faith that 'the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.' However, in light of our portrait of ordinary citizens in chapter 2, it should not be surprising that naive efforts to let them directly manage the machinery of democracy often go badly astray. People are just too busy with there own lives to measure up to the standards that conventional democratic theory sets for them." Id. at 14. VOTER RATIONALITY AND RATIONALIZATION:  "In interviews, citizens often sound more ideological and conventionally 'rational' than our description of them suggest. The fact has led some scholars, particularly those who do field work with extensive personal interviews, to suppose that somehow all the other scientific evidence is misleading. People make good sense: just listen to them!" "Alas, as we showed . . . , the apparent rationality is itself often misleading--a byproduct rather than the foundation of group politics. Citizens tend to adopt the views of the parties and group they favor. If they are usually highly engaged in politics, they may even develop ideological frameworks rationalizing their group loyalties and denigrating those of their political opponents. Sometimes they even construct 'facts' to help support their group loyalties. The reasoned explanations they provide for their own beliefs and behavior are often just post hoc justifications of their social or partisan loyalties. Well-informed citizens are likely to have more elaborate and internally consistent worldview than inattentive people do  but that just reflects the fact that their rationalizations are better rehearsed. For example, a we saw in the case of budget deficits, the political belies of more attentive, knowledgeable citizens are often more subject to partisan bias than those of their less attentive neighbors. For most people most of the time, social identities and partisan loyalties color political perceptions as will as political opinions." "The role of political 'sophistication' in analyses of this sort underlines the fact that the task of being a good citizens by the standards of conventional democratic theory is too hard for everyone. Attentive readers will already have surmised our view of intellectuals in politics, but for clarity, we spell it out here. The historical record leave little doubt that the educated, including the highly educated, have gone astray in their moral and political judgments as often as anyone else. In the antebellum era, prominent southern professors and university administrators often defended slavery. Brilliant 19th-century German professors helped give shape to German nationalism and the racial identity theories that led to Nazism, and German university students in the 1930s were often enthusiastic supporters of Hitler. Protestant and secular professors backed Otto von Bismarck's campaign to suppress the civil liberties of Catholics in 19th-century Germany. Crude prejudice against Catholics, Jews, and others was common among American intellectuals until recent decades, too." "More recently, 20th-century communism attracted many highly educated people around the world. Numerous French intellectuals supported Russian communism all after its crimes had been exposed. Radical Chinese intellectuals backed Mao Zedong's campaign to establish his regime and keep it in power--a regime that vitally became, not just a relentless oppressor of intellectuals, but the most murderous government in the history of the world. in the United States, prominent political science professors became advisers to the American government during the disastrous Vietnam War, while other naively favored Ho Chi Minh in his ultimately successful effort to establish a repressive communist state in that country." 'Of course, a great many other people in each of these countries made the same or other equally appealing judgments. The point is simply that, as Gustave Le Bon put it more than a century ago, 'It does not follow that because an individual knows Greek or mathematics, is an architect, a veterinary surgeon, a doctor, or a barrister, that he is endowed with a special intelligence of social questions. . . . Were the electorate solely composed of person stuffed with sciences their votes would be no better than those emitted at present.' Gifted in their own spheres, artists, and intellectuals have no special expertise in politics, In our political judgment and actions,we all make mistakes, someone even morally indefensible errors, Thus, when we say that voters routinely err, we mean all voters. This is not a book about the political misjudgments of people with modest educations. It is a book about the conceptual limitations of human beings--including the authors of this book and its readers." Id. at 309-311 (citations omitted). By the way, why do so many voters believe that business people will do a good job of managing political matter and the country? There is no hard evidence to support such a belief.).

"BEAT THEIR BRAINS OUT"

Mezz Mezzrow & Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, introduction by Ben Ratiff (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2016) ("I guess the moral is that if you want to entertain an American audience good, just beat their brains out and they'll always come back for more." Id. at 92.).

POLITICAL REPRESSION IN THE NEW CHINA

Liao Yiwu, For A Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey Through a Chinese Prison, translated from the Chinese by Wenguang Huang (Boston & New York: New Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

THE DEMISE OF COMMUNISM

Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich (New York: Random House, 2016) (an oral history).

WHAT DO WOMEN NEED TO KNOW?

Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985 (New York & London: Norton, 1986) (From "What Does a Woman Need to Know? (1979): "Suppose we were to ask ourselves simply: What does a women need to know to become a self-conscious, self-defining human being? Doesn't she need knowledge of her own history, of her much-politicized female body, of the creative genius of women of the past--the skills and crafts and techniques and visions possessed by women in other times and cultures, and how they have been rendered anonymous, censored, interrupted, devalued? Doesn't she, as one of that majority who are still denied equal rights as citizens, enslaved as sexual prey, unpaid or underpaid as workers, withheld form her own power--doesn't she need an analysis of her condition, a knowledge of the women thinkers of the past who have reflected on it, a knowledge, too, of women's world-wide individual rebellions and organized movements against economic and social injustice, and how these have been fragmented and silenced?" "Doesn't she need to know how seemingly natural states of being, like heterosexuality, like motherhood, have been enforced and institutionalized to deprive her of power? Without such education, women have lived and continue to live in ignorance or our collective context, vulnerable to the projections of men's fantasies about us as they appear in art, in literature, in the sciences, in the media, in the so-called humanistic studies. I suggest that not anatomy but enforced ignorance, has been a crucial key to our powerlessness." Id. 1-2. "President Conway tells me that ever-increasing numbers of you are going on from Smith to medical and law schools. The news, on the face of it, is good: that, thanks to the feminist struggle of the past decade, more door into these two powerful professions are open to women. I would like to believe that any profession would be better for having more women practicing it, and that any woman practicing law or medicine would use her knowledge and skill to work to transform the ream of health care and the interpretation of the law, to make them responsive to the needs of a those--women, people of color, children, the aged, the disposed--for whom they function today as repressive controls. I would like to believe this, but it will not happen even if 50 percent of the members of these professions are women unless those women refuse to be made into token insiders, unless they zealously preserve the outsider's view and the outsider's consciousness." Id. at 7. [Note: I am in the process of rereading some Adrienne Rich prose and poetry, and was struck by the cited essay. It raised for me questions surrounding how much, or how little, has changed substantively in the nearly four decades since this essay was first written. Certainly law school enrollments hover around 50 percent nationally; a little more, a little less, from year-to-year. Yet, I suspect an overwhelming majority of women law students do not have an outsider's view or an outsider's consciousness. Why? Because most want the same perks and rewards as the guy. They don't want o transform law, but rather just get a greater slice of the pie. Gender diversity in law is a very good thing, but what lasting impact can it have when a majority of women lawyers have bought into the same rigged game? If women lawyers are just like the old, white guys, or if women take the "I-have-got-mine, you-get-your-own" attitude, where is the substantive change? I say this in the context of me asking these questions of myself; not just in terms of gender issues, but also of race, class, etc. In short, am I just another brick in the wall? Are you? Food for thought!]).

AGAINST LINGUISTIC RACIAL ACCOMODATION

Noel A. Cazenave, Conceptualizing Racism: Breaking the Chains of Racially Accommodative Language (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) (From the back cover: "Conceptualizing Racism is a provocative book that confronts the language we use to discuss and understand racism. Author Noel A. Cazenave argues that American social science [including law?] has, since its inception, practiced linguistic racial accommodation that blurs our understanding of systemic racism and makes it difficult to effect meaningful change. Conceptualizing Racism highlights how words matter in racism studies. The author traces the history of linguistic racial accommodation through the development of sociology as a discipline and illustrates how it is at play today, not only within the discipline but in public life.").

UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEX ECONOMICS OF RACE IN THE UNITED STATES

Brendan O'Flaherty, The Economics of Race in the United States (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "Brendan O'Flaherty brings the tools of economic analysis--incentives, equilibrium, optimization, and more--to bear on counties issues of race in the United States. In areas ranging form quality of health care and education, to employment opportunities and housing, to levels of wealth and crime, he shows how racial differences among blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans remains a powerful determinant in the lives of twenty-first-century Americans. ore capacious than standard texts, The Economics of Race in the United States discusses important aspects of history and culture and explores race as a social and biological construct to make a compelling argument why race must play a major role uneconomic and public policy. People are not color-blind, and so policies cannot be color-blind either. "Because his book addresses many topics, not just a single area such as labor or housing, surprising threads of connection emerge in the course of O'Flaherty's analysis. For example, eliminating discrimination in the workplace will not equalize earnings as long as educational achievement will vary by race, No single engine of racial equality in one area of social and economic life is strong enough to pull the entire train by itself. Progress in one place is often constrained by demising marginal returns in another. Good policies can make a difference and only careful analysis can figure out which policies those are." From the text: "What do scientists now believe about racial essentialism? Bottom line: they believe it's wrong." Id. at 27. "What is race? Races are labels that come from history. Races create a partition of people based (to a great extent) on ancestry, with some genetic correlation, and that partition affects how people think about themselves and how others think about them. Race is part of a person's identity. It is both individual and social. People base their actions on their race and on the races of the people they encounter." Id. at 45. "In The Souls of Black Folks in 1903, W. E. B. DuBois wrote that 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.' A century later, the color line looks a lot different than it looked then, but it hasn't gone away. To understand U.S. society and the U.S. economy in the twenty-first century (whether or not you are an American), you still have to understand race. If you are an American, to understand yourself in the twenty-first century you have to understand race. I hope this book has helped you do that." Id. at 432. Personally, it has been quite a long time since I have encountered anyone I considered "good on race." Perhaps reading this book will assist people to be, if not good on race, at least better on race.).

Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race ing a Modern American City (Ithaca & London: Cornell U. Press, 2001) (From the book jacket: "America's urbanites have engaged in many tumultuous struggles for civil and workers rights since the Second World War. Heather Ann Thompson focuses in detail on the struggles of Motor City residents during the 1960s and early 1970s and find that conflict continued to plague the inner city and its workplaces even after Great Society liberals committed themselves to improving conditions." "Using the contested urban center of Detroit as a model, Thompson assesses the role of such upheaval in shaping the future of America's cities. She argues that the glaring persistence of injustice and inequality led directly to explosions of unrest in this period. Thompson finds that unrest as dramatic as that witnessed during Detroit's infamous riot of 1967 by no means doomed the inner city, nor in any way sealed its fate. The politics of liberalism, continued to serve as a catalyst for both polarization and radical new possibilities and Detroit remained a contested, and thus politically vibrant, urban center." ).

TWO ENDLESS WARS: THE AMERICAN WAR IN IRAQ and THE AMERICAN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

J. Kael Weston, The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: Knopf, 2016) ("For those fortunate enough to survive war . . . medical doctors in military burn care units who treat wounded veterans describe a key part in the recovery process. They call it 'the mirror test.' In this defining moment, morphine is no longer necessary as treatment has progressed. IVs and catheters are removed. Bandages are peeled back. The disfigured patients must then contempt a first look into a mirror at his or her new self, The most familiar image that once greeted them morning and night over a toothbrush or under a razor--their own face--is gone. Doctors pay close attention to this critical juncture. Will the patient's gaze into the mirror signal one of recognition--horror, sadness, pity, surprise, resolve--or will the patient instead turn away? Will he or she begin to accept the same, but different, person now inhabiting the glass? "Medical staff let patients decode on their own when the time is right, as skin can be grafted but acceptance cannot, Days, weeks, months can pass." Id. at xviii. When, if ever, America and Americans gaze into their collective and individual mirrors after over a decade of continuous war, will they recognize themselves? Will they be horrified as to what they have become? Food for thought. "The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in more than 1,100 major burn victims and 1,700 amputees among the 50,000-plus combat causalities--the total killed or injured among U.S. troops. In December 2014 the Congressional Budget Office reported 3,482 hostile deaths, pus 20,000 wounded in Afghanistan. An Additional estimated 400,000 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, mild traumatic brain injury, or both. These numbers continue to rise for those with visible and invisible wounds, not to mention the cumulative toll on veterans' families." "Iraqi and Afghan civilians have suffered on an even greater scale, Hundreds of thousands left dead and wounded, along with untold cases of psychological damage form unending warfare. Towns turned into battle zones and family compounds made of mud raided in darkness. Unlike U.S. troops and me, they could not redeploy. As we returned home, Iraqis and Afghans had no option but to remain amid persistent violence, caught in a truly forever war." Id. at xvi. "This was tough, historic terrain. Just over the border in Montana the brash and theatrical George Armstrong Custer had been killed in June 1876 atop a green hill, surrounded by a joint fighting force of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapahoe. Newspaper headlines at the time exclaimed 'Terrible Butchery by the Indians!' and "Poor Custer' while avoiding his real epitaph: the inveterate gambler and Civil War hero, no less by age twenty-three at Gettysburg, had gone to America's frontier for gold, glory, and gore, In other words, Lieutenant Colonel Custer had ventured west as a veteran of one war seeking more war--and sure got it. "I myself learned in Iraq and Afghanistan that invasions and insurgencies--who did what, why, first, and to whom--differed in their historical details and settings But the outcomes were the same. Revenge recycled, with no storybook ever-after endings. "No mythical last stands." Id. at 7. From the book jacket: "John Kael Weston represented the United States for more than a decade as a State Department official. Washington acknowledged his multi-year work in Fallujah with Marines by awarding him one of its highest honors, the Secretary of State's medal of heroism.").

I, FOR ONE, STILL BELIEVE IN SELF-HELP JUSTICE . . . EXCEPT THAT MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT WORTH THE EFFORT.

Martha C. Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (New York: Oxford U. Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "In this wide-ranging book, Martha C. Nussbaum . . . argues that anger is conceptually confused and normatively pernicious. It assumes that the suffering of the wrongdoer restores the thing that was damaged [Note: No, it does not make that assumption.], and it betrays as all-too-lively interest in relative status and humiliation. Studying anger in intimate relationships, casual daily interactions, the workplace, the criminal justice system, and movements for social transformation, Nussbaum shows that anger's core ideas are both infantile and harmful." Interesting and worthwhile read. Yet, I remain unconvinced. Someone, I cannot remember who, wrote that revenge was the poor man's justice. In other words, revenge is justice for those for whom society's institutions fail to protect or provide justice.).

LIFE IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE (AND THE WAR AGAINST THE PALESTINIANS).

Ben Ehrenreich, The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine (New York: Penguin Press, 2016) (From the book cover: "We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want . . . . Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers, who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy, and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away." From the text: "With this work I hope to correct, or to begin to correct, an imbalance of long standing, one that has already exacted far too great a cost in lives. The world--the human part of it anyway--is made not only of earth and flesh and fire, but of the stories that we tell. It is through narrative, stories woven into other stories, that we conjure up the universe and determine together its present contours, the shape of the past, and our future. The exclusion of discomforting and inconvenient narratives, the near exclusive favoring of certain privileged perspectives and the tales that affirm them, this sets the world off balance. It makes it false. It is the task of the writer, and my task here, to battle untruth and the distortions it wreaks on our lives. All of our lives, on all available sides." Id. at 2.).

RESPONSIVE STATE GOVERNMENT?

Calvin Trillin, Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America (New York: Random House, 2016) (From "Jackson, 1964": "No sophisticated study of public opinion is needed to establish the fact that in the United States, North or South, a white life is considered to be of more value than an Negro life." Id. at 27. And, for those thinking that state government cannot be responsive to the needs of its citizens. From "State Secrets": "[A]s I went through the files in the W. D. McCain Library and Archives of USM one day not long ago, I found that the [Sovereignty] Commission always seemed to have time for missions of the baby-inspection variety. In 1965, for instance, Governor Johnson received a letter, written in longhand, from a couple in Biloxi. 'Dear Governor Johnson,' it began. 'We regret to say that for the first time in our lives we need your help very badly. We are native Mississippians and are presently living in Biloxi. Our only daughter is a freshman at the University of Southern Miss. She has never before caused us any worry. However, she is in love with a Biloxi boy who looks and is said to be part Negro . . .'  'Your recent letter and your situation fills me with great apprehension,' the Governor wrote back at once. 'I am having this matter investigated to the fullest.' Tom Scarborough had already been dispatched to the Gulf Coast to investigate the lineage of the suitor--presumably under orders to exercise a level of discretion that would have made a close inspection of fingernail out of the question. In a three-thousand-word report, Scarborough concluded that the young man was from a group of people in Vancleave, Mississippi, who were sometimes called 'red-bones' or 'Vanleave Indians'--people who had always gone to white schools and churches but had always been suspected by their neighbors of being part black. The possibility of arranging to have the suitor drafted--a solution hinted at in the letter from his girlfriend's distraught parents--was looked into and dropped when it became apparent that he was too young for the draft. I couldn't find any indication in the McCain Library files that the Sovereignty Commission was able to break up the romance, but what other state in what other period of American history could parents of no great influence write to the Governor about a suitor they considered inappropriate and have the Governor get right on the case?" Id. at 251, 260-262.).

MANDATE TO GREEN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Robert Pollin, Greening the Global Economy (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: A Boston Review Book/ The MIT Press, 2015) (From the book jacket: "All too frequently inaction in climate change is blamed on its potential harm to the economy. Pollin shows that greening the economy is not only possible but necessary: global economic growth depends on it.").

THE CONSEQUENCE OF WHITE RAGE: BEING WORSE OFF AS A NATION

Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016) ("White rage is not about visible violence, but rather it works its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly, almost imperceptibly. Too imperceptibly, certainly, for a nation consistently drawn to the spectacular--to what it can see. [] Working the halls of power, it can achieve its end far more effectively, far more destructively. [] The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspiration, and with demands for full and equal citizenship. It is blackness that refuses to accept subjugation, to give up. A formidable array of policy assaults and legal contortions has consistently punished black resilience, black resolve." Id. at 3-4.  From the book jacket: "Anderson makes clear that since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances toward full participation in our democracy, white reaction--usually in the courts and legislatures--has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow. The Great Migration north was physically opposed in many Southern states, and blacks often found conditions in the North to be no better. The Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response--the so-called Southern Strategy that the War on Drugs that disenfranchised and imprisoned millions of African Americans. The election of Barack Obama, and the promise it heralded of healing the racial divide, perpetuated instead a rash of voter suppression laws in Southern and swing states, while the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act." "Carefully linking these and other historical flash points when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted white opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered punitive actions allegedly made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud. From the text: "Imagine the educational prowess our population might now boast had Brown actually been implemented. What a very different nation we would have been if all the enormous legal and political efforts that went into subverting and undermining the right to education had actually been used to uphold and ensure that right. If all those hundreds of millions of federal dollars poured into science education had actually rained down  on those hungry for education, regardless of race, ethnicity, or income. Think about what a different national conversation we might be having, even as the economy turns ever more surely to knowledge-based, rather than watching our share of the world's scientists and engineers dwindle." Id. at 163.).

CONTEMPORARY BUDDHIST WRITING AND/OR TRANSLATIONS

Taisen Deshimaru, Mushotoku Mind: The Heart of the Heart Sutra, revised and reedited by Richard Collins (Chino Valley, AZ: HOHM Press, 2012) ("Giving, in the deepest sense of the word, is a fundamental requirement of the religious mind. Giving that is practiced very simply, very modestly, is no less praiseworthy. To refuse food you desire is a fuse for the whole world. Simple actions like this are the hardest to do. These trivial desires prop up our ego, perpetuating indulgence and self-satisfaction. We have to train ourselves to resist them for them to disappear naturally. This action will them be of infinite assistance to all beings. Nowadays, though, we are moving in the opposite direction. Greed is the engine of our materialistic society. Spiritual values are enfeebled and can no longer resist the dominant current. From lack of wisdom, our civilization finds itself at a dead end." Id. at 124. "Civilization now finds itself on a narrow ledge with an abyss on either side. On one side lie the evils of social disintegration and environmental collapse, the result of development pushed to absurdity, of rationalist materialism and self-seeking greed. On the other hand lies the darkness of the antirational: fundamentalist fervor, dogmatism, and hatred of the Other. The effects of both are already creating devastation and great suffering. But if, even from this desperate place, we can reconsider the world from a global perspective, with the necessary balance we can bring harmony back to a civilization in crisis. For this, we must pause, give nature time to regenerate, repair the disasters that we have caused on our path and equitably share nature's healthy fruits. We must understand deeply that we as individuals are not separate from the whole of humanity, nor from the whole of nature, the whole of the universe." Id. at 143.).

Rebecca Redwood French & Mark A. Nathan, eds., Buddhism and Law: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge U. Press,  2014). 

Han-shan, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, translated by Bill Porter (aka Red Pine) revised and expanded; with an introduction by John Blofeld (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2000).

Lex Hixon, Mother of the Buddhas: Meditation on the Prajnaparamita Sutra, foreword by Robert A. F. Thurman (Wheaton, Il: Quest Books, 1993) ("Although the Prajnaparamita Sutra provides essentially a religious rather than a philosophical, psychological or literary experience, I believe it will attract not only students of religion, meditation and esoteric knowledge but also thinkers who are secular or nontraditional, who practice humanism through art, science and social action. Mahayana teachings present important guidance to every seeker of truth, to every honest investigator of the nature of the universe and the mind. Mahayana Buddhism also proposes a model for any society or institution which purports to be truly human." Id at 6.).

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Tell Me Something About Buddhism: Questions and Answers for the Curious Beginner (Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Books, 2011).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2004 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004) (From Tsoknyo Rinpoche, "Buddhism Is Not Self-Help": "Dharma practice is not meant merely to make oneself feel better. The whole point of spiritual practice is to liberate oneself through realization and also to liberate others through compassionate capacity. To practice in order to feel better only brings one back up to that same level--one never makes any real progress. At the end of one's life, one just happens to feel good till the end of one's last session and then that's it--nothing happens beyond that. With this attitude of merely feeling good becoming the type of Buddhism that spreads in the West, we may see a huge scarcity of enlightened masters in the future. They will become an endanger species." "Please understand that the pursuit of 'feeling good' is a samsaric goal. It is a totally mundane pursuit that borrows from the dharma, and uses all its special methods in order to fine-tune the ego into a fit and workable entity. The definition of a worldly aim is to try to achieve something for oneself with a goal-oriented frame of mind--'so that I feel good.' We may use spiritual practice to achieve this, one good reason being that it works much better than other methods. If we're on this path, we do a little spiritual practice and pretend to be doing it sincerely. This kind of deception, hiding the ego-oriented materialistic aim under the tablecloth might include something like 'I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, so I must be pure.' Gradually, as we become more astute at spiritual practice, we may bring our materialistic aim out into the open. This is quite possible: people definitely do it. But if this is how you practice, you won't get anywhere in the end. How could one ever become liberated through selfishness?" Id. at 335, 340-341.).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2005 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2005) (From The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, "The Infinite Dot Called Mind": "To the extent that we live in the memory of thoughts, we are not experiencing the freedom of space. To the extent that we live in the memory of understanding, even though we may have good memories or a good understanding, it's like we are decorating our prison. Our prison may look a little better and more refreshing, but we still are living within a limited space. We haven't freed ourselves from the prison of dwelling in the past and anticipating the future. Mindfulness of mind is being there in the tiny spot, that infinite space, and that only comes through totally letting go of our expectations. When we totally let go of our thoughts, we totally free our thoughts." "In a way, our thoughts are imprisoning us. On the other hand, we are imprisoning them. We imprison our thoughts in the same way they imprison us. We're not letting thought be thought. We're not letting these thoughts be thoughts in their own state. We are coloring them. We are clothing them. We're painting the face of our thoughts. We're putting hats and boots on them." Id. at 227, 238.).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2006 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2006) (From Dzigar Kongtrul, "It's Up to You": "When we look in the mirror, the one thing we don't want to see is an ordinary human being. [] The conflict between what we see and what we want to see causes tremendous pain. [] We are imprisoned in this pain by a sense of specialness, or self-importance. Self-importance is the underlying clinging we  have to 'I, I, I, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine,' which colors all of our experience. If we look closely, we find a strong element of self-importance in everything we think, say, and do. 'How can I feel good? What will others think? What will I gain? What will I lose?' These questions are all rooted in our self-importance. Even out feeling of not measuring up to who we think we should be is a form of self-importance. [] It takes courage to go beyond self-importance and see who we really are--but this is our path." Id. at 1, 1-2. From Carolyn Rose Gimian, "The Three Lords of Materialism": "We often avoid authentic spiritual engagement that involves humbling ourselves or giving in. A pernicious form of spiritual materialism . . . is to imitate or ape spiritual experiences, rat than to actually engage them, We get high, we get absorbed in nothingness or the godhead, we have a cathartic religious experience, but all on our own terms. God loves us, the universe loves us, we love ourselves." "Genuine spirituality offers various paths to investigate what we might call the real mysteries of life. It offers the opportunity both to look more deeply into life and to open our further into the world, It offers exploration, it offers communication, it offers investigation, It offers us genuine question Spiritual materialism, n the other hand, says: You don't have to question, Do tis and you'll be fine, believe this and you'll be fine, When you die, you'll be fine." Id. at 149, 153.).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2007 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2007) (From Alice Walker, "Suffering Too Insignificant for the Majority to See": "Sometimes, as African Americans, African Indians, African Amerindians, people of color, it appears we are being removed from the planet. Fascism and Nazism, visibly on the rise in the world, have always been our experience of white supremacy in America, and this has barely let up. Plague such as AIDS seem incredibly convenient for the forces that have enslaved and abused us over the centuries and that today are as blatant in their attempts to seize our native homelands and their resources as Columbus was five hundred years ago. Following the suffering and exhilaration of the sixties, a pharmacopeia  of drugs suddenly appeared just as we were beaconing used to enjoying our minds. Citizen Television,' which keeps relentless watch over each and every home, claims the uniqueness and individuality of the majority of our children from birth. After the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and so many other defenders of humanity, known and unknown, around the globe, we find ourselves with an unelected president who came to office by disenfranchising black voters, just as was done, routinely, before Martin Luther King, Jr., and the rest of us were born. This is major suffering for black people and must not be overlooked. I myself, on realizing what had happened, felt a soul sickness I have not experienced in decades. Those who wanted power beyond anything else--oil an money to be made from oil (which is the Earth Mother's blood)--were contemptuous of the sacrifices generations of our ancestors made. The suffering of our people, especially of our children, with their bright, hopeful eyes, is of no significance to them" Id. at 243, 251-252.').

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2008 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2008).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2009 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2009) (From Christina Feldman, "Long Journey to a Bow": "The conceit of self (mana in Pali) is said to be the last of the great obstacles to full awakening. Conceit is an ingenious creature, at times masquerading as humility, empathy, or virtue. Conceit manifests in the feelings of better than, worse than, and equal to another. Within these three dimensions of conceit are held the whole tormented world of comparing, evaluating, and judging that afflicts our hearts. Jealousy, resentment, fear, and low self-esteem spring from this deeply embedded pattern. Conceit perpetuates the dualities of 'self' and 'other'--the schisms that are the root of the enormous alienation and suffering in our world. Our commitment to awakening asks us to honestly explore the ways in which conceit manifests in our lives and to find the way to its end. The cessation of conceit allows the fruition of empathy, kindness, compassion, and awakening. The Buddha taught that 'one who has truly penetrated this threefold conceit of superiority, inferiority, and equality is said to have put an end to suffering." Id. at 196, 197.).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2010).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2011 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2011) (From Rodney Smith, "Undivided Mind": "Over the last half-century, Buddhist practices in the West have grown in popularity. Mindfulness has become associated with stress reduction, enhanced immunological protection, psychological well-being, and profound states of happiness. In many cases, mindfulness has been uncoupled from the Buddha's teaching altogether and is a stand-alone cognitive therapy for the treatment of various mental difficulties, from depression to obsessive-compulsive disorder." "The term anatta, which means 'no [permanently abiding] self or soul,' is at the heart of Buddha's teaching. but with our Western emphasis on psychological health it is perhaps inevitable that this essential aspect of the teaching is downplayed or even avoided. Emptiness, after all, stands in opposition to many of our most important values, such as self-reliance, individual initiative, and pursuit of pleasure. We want the contentment and happiness promised by the Buddha but with 'me' fully stabilized and intact." Id. at 246, 246-247.).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2012 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2012).

Melvin McLeod & The Editors of the Shambhala Sun, eds., The Best Buddhist Writing 2013 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2013).

Shohaku Okumura, Living By Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts, edited by Dave Ellison (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2012) ("Many religions originate in our weaknesses and fears. Before civilization conditions of life were very severe. There were many dangers and people needed something to pray to. In many primal religions people worshiped natural phenomena: the ocean, mountains, thunder, or ancient trees. They worshiped things larger, more powerful, and longer lasting than themselves. Gradually civilization developed and human beings became better at survival. We then became each others' enemies. We started to fight, and at the time of Shakyamuri about the fifth century BCE, people had enough wealth to fight over territory. They fought each other to establish countries and kingdoms. Stronger nations conquered weaker ones. We needed some principle to live together in harmony. This is the second reason for religion: to teach us to live together with people. I think this is the point of all religions and philosophies in the history of humanity. We live in civilizations that have developed over twenty centuries in America, Japan, and Europe, and yet we are still spiritually sick. We still don't know how to live in peace with people from different national, racial, religious, or cultural backgrounds. The Buddha's teaching is a prescription for curing this sickness." Id. at 74-75.).

Bill Porter (aka Red Pine), The Lankavatara Sutra: A Zen Text, translation and commentary by Red Pine (Berkeley: Counterpoint,  2012).

Gerry Shishin Wick, The Book of Equanimity: Illuminating Classic Zen Koans, foreword by Bernie Gassman (Boston: Wisdom Publishing, 2005).

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Into the Heart of Life (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2011).

Koun Yamada, The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans, translated with commentary by Koun Yamada, with a foreword by Ruben L. F. Habito (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004) ("Truly, if you are forever attached to ideas and philosophies, you will never attain enlightenment." Id. at 34.).

ESSAYS ON INSTITUTIONS

Jeremy Waldron, Political Political Theory: Essays on Institutions (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2016) ("Even if our main preoccupation remains with justice, liberty, security, and equality, we still need to complement that work with an understanding of the mechanisms through which these ideals--these ends of life--will be pursued. This is what I mean by political political theory--theory addressing itself to politics and to the way our political institutions house and frame our disagreements about social ideals and orchestrate what is done about whatever aims we can settle on." Id. at 6. "But first, what do I mean by Enlightenment constitutionalism? I mean a body of thought that emerged in the eighteenth century, but originated in England in the later decades of the seventeenth century, about a form of government and the structuring of the institutions of government to promote the common good, secure liberty, restrain monarchs, uphold the rule of law, and to make the attempt to establish popular government--representative, if not direct democracy--safe and practicable for a large modern republic." Id. at 275. "We need to get over whatever snobbery leads us to separate the work of the American framers form the boarder trends of the Enlightenment. Gordon Wood is right when he says in his essay, 'The American Enlightenment' that 'America was the first nation in the world to base its nationhood solely on Enlightenment values.' The Americans based their constitutional structures on Enlightenment principles, they thought of themselves as contributing to the constitutional thought of the Enlightenment, and those on the eastern shores, of the Atlantic whom we unhesitatingly categorize as Enlightenment philosophes thought so too." Id. at 276 (citations omitted). Most unfortunately and sadly, I think, late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century America (and Americans) has strayed from Enlightenment principles and values, embracing both anti-intellectualism and anti-Enlightenment.).

A RELIGIOUSLY PLURAL AMERICA IS BENEFICAL AND JUST!

Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (New York: Knopf, 2013) ("Resistance to the idea of Muslim citizenship was predictable in the eighteenth century. Americans had inherited from Europe almost a millennium of negative distortions of the faith's theological and political character. Given the dominance and popularity of the anti-Islamic representations, is was startling that a few notable American not only refused to exclude Muslims, but even imagined a day when they would be citizens of the United States, with full and equal rights. This surprising, uniquely egalitarian defense of Muslim rights was the logical extension of European precedents . . .  . Still, on both sides of the Atlantic, such ideas were marginal at best. How, then did the idea of the Muslim as a citizen with rights survive despite powerful opposition from the outset? And what is the fate of that ideal in the twenty-first century?" 'This book provides a new history of the founding era, one that explains how and why Thomas Jefferson and a handful of others adopted and then moved beyond European ideas about the toleration of Muslims. It should be said at the outset that these exceptional men were not motivated by any inherent appreciations for Islam as a religion. Muslims, for most American Protestants, remained beyond the outer limits of those possessing acceptable beliefs, but they nevertheless became emblems of two competing conceptions of the nation's identity: one essentially preserving the Protestant status quo, and the other fully realizing the pluralism implied in the revolutionary rhetoric of inalienable and universal rights. Thus while some fought to exclude a group whose inclusion they feared would ultimately portend the undoing of the nation's Protestant character, a pivotal minority, also protestants. perceiving the ultimate benefit and justice of a religiously plural America, set about defending the rights of future Muslim citizens." Id. at 4-5. Query: Is a twenty-first "pivotal minority" able to maintain and (re)invigorate America's principles surrounding religious plurality and nondiscrimination in immigration and citizenship on the basis of religious belief and national origin? Or will the fearful majority prevail though hate? America is not a "Christian Nation." It is a religious plural nation, and out to remain such!.).

INDIAN ENSLAVEMENT IN AMERICA

Andres Resendez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet . . . it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of Natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the 'mouth of hell' of eighteenth-century sliver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos." "Resendez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery--more than epidemics--that decimated Indian populations across North America. New evidence . . . sheds light too on Indian enslavement of other Indians--as what started as a European business passed into the hands of indigenous operators and spread like wildfire across a vast tracts of the American Southwest." "The Other Slavery reveal nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed to truly see.").

NEIGHBORLINESS?? CAN IT SAVE DEMOCRACY?

Nancy L. Rosenblum, Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "Nancy Rosenblum explores how encounters among neighbors creates a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture. During disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, the democracy of everyday life is a resource for neighbors who improvise rescue and care. Degraded, this framework can give way to betrayal by neighbors, as faced by the Japanese Americans interned during World War II, or to terrible violence such as the lynching of African Americans. Under extreme conditions the barest act of neighborliness is a bulwark against total ethical breakdown. The elements of the democracy of everyday life--reciprocity, speaking out, and 'live and let live'--comprise a democratic ideal not reducible to public principles of justice or civic virtue, but it is no less important. The democracy of everyday life, Rosenbaum argues, is the deep substrate of democracy in America and can be its saving remnant.").

THE FALSENESS OF THE HAPPY HOMEOWNER NARRATIVE

Brian J. McCabe, No Place Like Home: Wealth, Community and the Politics of Homeownership  (New York: Oxford U. Press, 2016) ("This book's story leads to a counterintuitive conclusion about the place of homeownership in American life. Although we often laud homeownership as a tool for strengthening citizenship and integrating people into their communities, I have shown that the impact of homeownership on community life is not as clear-cut--and often, not as positive--as proponents claim. Rather than transforming citizens into better neighbors and engaged citizens, owning a home often leads them to participate in the politics of exclusion. Concerned about the value of their homes, they elevate concerns about property values above other issues in their communities. As a result, when they do engage in civic activity, or participate in local politics, they often do so as a way of protecting their financial interests. This type of civic involvement can lead to fractured, segregated neighborhoods, with homeowners working to exclude particular practices and people from their communities." "This complicated story of citizen-homeowners cuts against a widely held narrative in the United States that portrays homeowners as more responsible, engaged citizens and neighbors. Legal scholar Mechelle Dickerson refers to this as the Happy Homeowner Narrative--the uncritical belief that homeownership transforms citizens into happier, wealthier, more stable and involved citizens. [] But in this book, I have worked to set the record straight." Id. at 139.).

THE CHANGING AND CONTESTED POLITICAL ECONOMICS OF THE U.S. ARMY.

Jennifer Mittelstadt, The Rise of the Military Welfare State (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) ("This book examines how military service intertwined with citizenship and entitlement through the history of welfare provision in the late twentieth-century U.S. Army. While all branches of the U.S. military expanded their benefits and social programs for soldiers and families, the army operated as the vanguard as well as the largest and costliest element of military social welfare." Id. at 5-6. Free market. Military service as job. Christian family values. Outsourcing. Race, class, women. Education.).

RICHARD SLOTKIN ON AMERICAN FRONTIER MYTHS: PART THREE

Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press, 1992, 1998) ("[T]he symbol of 'savage war' . . .  was both a mythic trope and an operative category of military doctrine. The premise of 'savage war' is that inevitable political and social differences--rooted in some combination of 'blood' and culture--make coexistence between primitive natives and civilized Europeans impossible on any basis other than that of subjugation. [Query: Is this not the premise underlying White Supremacism, White Separatism, or White Tribalism even now in twenty-first-century America? Minorities are the savage natives--though the model minorities have been sufficiently surrogated or domesticated--, while many white Americans view themselves as, just that, civilized Europeans.] Native resistance to European settlement therefore takes the form of a fight for survival; and because of the 'savage' and bloodthirsty propensity of the natives, such struggles inevitably become 'wars of extermination' in which one side or the other attempts to destroy its enemy root and branch." Id. at 12. "By the terms of the Frontier Myth, once imperial war was conflated with savage war both sides become subject to the logic of massacre. The savage enemy  [i.e., the Other] kills and terrorizes without limit or discrimination in order to exterminate or drive out the civilized race [i.e., the Us, or rather the White Us]. The civilized race learns to respond in kind, partly from outrage at the atrocities it has suffered, partly form a recognition that imitation and mastery of the savages' methods are the best way to defeat them. A cycle of massacre and revenue is thus inaugurated that drives both sides toward a war of extermination, Only an American victory can prevent actual genocide [because, of course, the Americans view themselves as the 'civilization' under siege by the 'savages,' e.g., illegal immigrants, islamic terrorists, criminals, minorities, and so forth and so on]: the savage enemy would indeed exterminate all of the civilized race, but the civilized carry massacre only as far a necessary to subjugate the savage. To achieve victory in such a war, Americans are entitled and indeed required to use any and all means, including massacre, terrorism, and torture." Id. at 112. Of course, the savage enemy does not view itself as 'savage', and it may not view the its enemy as 'civilized.' There the rub of savage war. Each side view the other as a barbarian, knowing and respecting no constrains to war. Here's a flashback: "[P]olls taken in 1990-91 indicate that most Americans have not recovered their faith in the most fundamental principles of national ideology: the belief that American democracy offers effective means for expressing the will of the people through political action, and the belief in national and personal progress--the idea that each generation will do better and produce more than the one before. There is widespread public skepticism about the ability of the political leadership, Republican or Democrat, to provide an accurate assessment of our problems, a useful set of predictions and policies, or even an honest set of account books. There is a growing awareness that the real bases of American political and industrial strength have been weakened and our culture undermined by the waste and abuse of our human resources in the last fifteen years, in particular our failure to invest in public health and education, in the restructuring of our displaced industrial workforce, in the improvement of our cities, and in measures of reducing the size and permanency of the 'underclass.'  These failures have undermined our capacity to compete with other industrialized nations and have prolonged the crisis of demoralization that has affected our political culture since the end of the 1960s." Id. at 653-654. That was written in 1992 and now, a quarter of a century later, the same holds true . . . only more so!).

RICHARD SLOTKIN ON AMERICAN FRONTIER MYTHS: PART TWO

Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization (Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press, 1985, 1994) ("Thus, it is myth, as much as any other aspect of reality, that creates the 'fatal environment' of expectations and imperatives in which a Custer or a war correspondent, or a whole political culture, can be entrapped. [] The present forms  in which our myths appear embody not only the solutions to past problems and conflicts, they contain the questions as well, as they reflect the conflicts of thought and feeling and action that were the mythmakers' original concern." Id. at 20. "If we can understand where and how in history the rules of the game originated, what real human concerns and social relationships the rules conceal or distort, and what the historical consequences of playing the game have been, we may be able to respond more intelligently the next time an infantry captain or a senator or a president invokes it." Id. at 20.
The analogy of war with crime deserves further attention. The war/crime distinction is crucial first of all for registering the level of perceived threat associated with a particular group. But it has practical significance as well when applied to the making of policy. The consequences of the difference are suggested by the responses of a popular newspaper like the New York Herald to the phenomena of actual KKK violence against blacks and the threat of a new uprising by Plains Indians in 1874. The Herald placed the Klan's lynching of blacks under the rubric of 'crime': in the first instance, the 'crime' was that a black man against a white man or woman, and in the second, the summary murder of the black accused by a mob was in the nature of a crime of passion or temporary insanity. The Herald would not entirely exculpate the lynchers, but would take a liberal view of their motives and offer a general pardon, ;telling them to "go and sine no more." ' At the same time it urged the doctrine that acts of pillage and murder committed by individual Indians should be punished by attacking the tribe as a whole: 'there should be but one policy [in such a case]--Extermination.'" Id. at 322. Query: One the one hand, black men shot and killed by police are often characterized by their alleged or actual criminal history (regardless of how minor).  While, on the other hand, the police are often, then, characterized as, at worse, being under a great deal of pressure, needing to make quick decisions, being in fear for their safety, etc. And, therefore, if their actions are not totally acceptable are not condemned (i.e., not held liable). Terrorists (or at least those now being called "Radical Islamic Extremists) are to be exterminated, or so it is advocated. Of course, since contemporary American policymakers speak in terms of the "war on crime" (or, in the case of Trump, "the war on the police), the crime/war distinction is less meaningful. It is all war. It is all just extermination. Exterminate the criminals, the terrorists, and whoever is next. Moreover, on December 15, 2015, Trump "was asked by the hosts of Fox News' "Fox and Friends" how to fight ISIS but also minimize civilian causalities when terrorists often use human shields." He said: "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families." He went on to say that he would "knock the hell out of" ISIS, and criticized the U.S. for "fighting a very politically correct war." (Citations omitted.) I am not sure Americans will get behind target killing women and children even if a family member is a terrorist. Then again, Americans are weird and inconsistent when it comes to family values.).

RICHARD SLOTKIN ON AMERICAN FRONTIER MYTHS: PART ONE

Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press, 1973, 1999) ("In a democracy based on the social equality of the upwardly mobile, perpetual motion is as important a sign of social importance as the possession of an established fortune. Indeed, the former is of more value, since stagnant or inherited wealth is, by the hunter's standards, a sign of lost vigor. The myth of the hunter, as seen by the Indians and by writers . . . , is one of self-renewal or self-creation through acts of violence. What becomes of the new self, onve the initiatory hunt is over? If the good life is defined in terms of the hunter myth, there is only another hunt succeeding the first. Thus [Daniel] Boone ultimately departs form Boonesborough, the cycles of departure and return, continuing beyond the conclusion of the first, Wilsonian hunts. [Davey] Crockett, having failed in Tennessee, hunts for new animals, new enemies, new voters, and a new fortune in Texas, only to die at the Alamo. The consequences are those suggested in the European myths of the accursed hunter: the abbott and his dogs, like the Greek Orion and Melville's Ahab, are doomed to pursue an ultimately unassimilable, unhuntable prey on the periphery of the cosmic round till the end of time. They do not escape the European heritage to achieve an Indian world in which the hunt completes the hoop of the world and joins man forever to the good of nature." :Believing in the myth of regeneration though violence of the hunt, the American hunters eventually destroyed the natural conditions that had made possible their economic and social freedom their democracy of social mobility. Yet the mythology and the value system it supported remained even after the objective conditions that had justified it had vanished. We have, I think, continued to associate democracy and progress with perpetual social mobility (both horizontal and vertical) and with the continual expansion of our power into new fields or new levels of exploitation. Under the aspect of this myth, our economic, social, and spiritual life is taken to be a series if initiations, of stages in a movement outward and upward toward some transcendent goal. We have traditionally associated this form of aspiring invitation with the self-transcendence achieved by hunters though acts of predation. The forces of the environment and the hidden or dark sources of our personal and collective past--factors which limit our power to aspire and transcend--become the things which, as hunters, we triumph over, control, and transcend, They become, under the aspect of the myth, enemies and opponents, who captivate and victimize us and against whom we must be revenged." Id. at 556-557. Moreover, aren't "perpetual growth," ''perpetual mobility," etc., themselves myth? "Believing in the myth of regeneration through the violence of the hunt, the American hunters eventually destroyed the natural conditions that had made possible their economic and social freedom, their democracy of social mobility. Yet the mythology and the value system it supported remained even after the objective conditions that had justified it had vanished." Id. at 557. ).

ON MASS EDUCATION AND HERETIC BREED OF INTELLECTUALS

Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848-1945, Volume Two; Intellectual, Taste and Anxiety (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford U. Press, 1973) ("Do you know the Arab proverb: If you cannot kill your enemy, give him your daughter in marriage'" Id. at 1106. "Mass education had results which were of three difference kinds. First, it altered the character of politics. It made it possible for democracy and universal suffrage to function with greater reality; it vastly increased the possibilities of communication between the government and the people; it enabled the masses to watch over those whom they appointed to administer the country. But it also made them even more subject to propaganda and to brainwashing, and to persuasion that they should sacrifice their immediate interests and desires to supposedly more important national causes--such as glory or war--which their teachers had the task of enlightening them about. It increased their articulacy, but it also increased the power of the press, which simultaneously told them what to think and spoke in their name. It was in principle egalitarian, but in practice the very opposite, because there were so many different gradations in education that the possession simply of 'primary' education came to be held as a mark of inadequacy. The kind of education that was dispensed was in any case not necessarily democratic, for though the paternalist reformers who universalized it claimed they were doing so in order to educate the electorate--their new masters--the values preached by the teachers were not on the whole values inspired by the masses. Rather, mass education could be seen as an attempt by the elite to avoid a mass civilisation, and to impose aristocratic values on the people. The political significance of the Age of Education is thus ambiguous in the extreme and needs careful analysis." Id. at140-141. "A heretic breed of intellectual developed in the form of technocrats and technicians. These men relegated principle to a secondary place and raised the efficient management of society into a sufficient activity. By concentrating on action they won a directing  position in both the political and economic spheres. The distinction between intellectuals and technocrats was a subtle one; the two were not always mutually exclusive." Id. at 1128.).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT ON LAWYERS IN POLITICS

Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848-1945, Volume One: Ambition, Love and Politics (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford U. Press, 1973) ("Republicanism also attracted many doctors and barristers, partly because theirs were were professions in which political independence was possible. . . . A normal liberal education in the mid nineteenth century ended with the study of law. The legal profession was therefore vastly overcrowded. You barristers with clients, living form hand to mouth by private tutoring or literary hack work, were a principal ingredient of the intellectual proletariat of most towns. They were the natural champions of the underdog, Rhetoric was the common language of the Bar and of politics. Barristers were another of the intermediaries between the centre of power and the masses. It was no accident that when the republic was at last established, they should have occupied so prominent a role in it In 1881 41 per cent of the members of the chamber of deputies were lawyers, or 25 per cent if one includes those with a legal training who had not practiced. In 1906 the figure was still 37 per cent (or 40 per cent), 52 per cent of all minister between 1873 and 1920 had legal degrees. But a legal education, of course, was no stimulus to innovation or imagination. The skill of these lawyers was in effecting compromises, in acting as interpreters between classes an powers which could not understand each other in anarchic situations. That is why they were so highly valued in the early years if the Third Republic. They helped to consolidate it, But by winning leadership of it, they also prevented it for becoming genuinely radical. It was no accident that the proportion of lawyers in parliament fell after 1920: they were of less use when new challenges demanded change. A republic of lawyers was even less of a threat to established values and traditional ways of thought than a republic of professors. But their oratory and their youth made it difficult to see just what they were aiming for." Id. 483-484.).

IS THIS WHAT "WHITE POWER" WILL LOOK LIKE IN PARTS OF AMERICA?

Patrick Phillips, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (New York: Norton, 2016) (See Carol Anderson, "American Apartheid," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 10/2/2016.).

STUCK IN A BRING-BACK-THE-GOOD-OLD-DAYS MENTALITY

Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism (New York: Basic Books, 2016) ("We have spent the beginning of this century drenched in nostalgia. And while we might sometimes be nostalgic because we find today's circumstances frustrating, the opposite is also frequently the case, especially in our politics: we are frustrated because we are so nostalgic. And the particular form that our nostalgia has taken renders us incompetent, or at least badly confused." Id. at 15. From the book jacket: "Yuval Levin argues that this politics of nostalgia is failing twenty-first-century Americans. Both parties are blind to how mercer has changed over the past half century--as the large, consolidated institutions that once dominated our economy, politics, and culture have fragmented and become smaller, more diverse, and personalized. Individualism, dynamism, and liberalization have come at the cost of dwindling solidarity, cohesion, and social order. This has left us with more choices in every realm of life but less security, stability, and national unity." "Both our strengths and our weaknesses are consequences of these changes. And the dysfunctions of our fragmented national life will need to be answered by the strength of our decentralized, diverse, dynamic nation." Levin argues that this calls for a modernizing politics that avoids both radical individualism and a centralizing statism and instead revives the middle layers of society--families and communities, schools and churches, charities and associations, local governments and markets, Through them, we can achieve not a single solution to the problems of our age, but multiple tailored answers fitted to the daunting range of challenges we face and suited to enable an American revival." This short book, an essay really, is well worth the read.).

Jacob Golomb & Robert S. Wistrich, eds., Nietzsche, Godfather or Fascism?: On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2002) (From David Ohana, "Nietzsche and the Fascist Dimension: The Case of Ernst Junger": "Half a century after the vanquishing of European fascism, as we gained an increasing clear insight into the causes of fascism's rise and success, we can identify that nihilism is hidden at the core of fascism--in its essence, its nature, its genes. The roots of the fascist mentality lie in its utopian view of the 'community of experience' and the quest for the new man. As a cultural phenomenon, fascism accords pride of place to action rather than it thinking, to experience rather than awareness, to style rather than to content. Its political acts are performed for the sake of the action itself, divorced from the social context. Fascism is not interested in social change, but in a perpetual mobile that creates the  illusion of change on the road to some utopian destination." Id. at 263, 268.).