Talk About Tolerance, This Is Tolerance

Back in the latter part of the 1970s a group of American Nazis announced plans to hold a political demonstration in Chicago. The city required a large insurance bond be paid to cover the possible damages that would result from such a provocative demonstration. The amount of the bond effectively terminated the Nazi plans to go forward, but they then decided to organize a march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, an area where not only a substantial part of the community was Jewish, but in those days a large number of Jewish immigrants were survivors of Nazi atrocities and concentration camps in Europe. In an effort to tone down the Nazi march, a local court said the Nazis could not display swastikas, nor wear Nazi Party uniforms, as these things were essentially equivalent to provoking violence.* The whole issue garnered national and even international attention, even more so when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the court ruling as a violation of the First Amendment (specifically the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble). The main attorney for the ACLU was Burton Joseph, who was Jewish and a partner in a Chicago law firm. While it's been so many years ago, my recollection is, a number of other Jewish ACLU attorneys openly supported Joseph's view. After a number of hearings, including by the U.S. Supreme Court, and much coverage by the international media, the march was allowed to go forward, along with the display of swastikas and the wearing of Nazi uniforms. Anti-Nazi demonstrations were organized by many Americans across the country, and the Nazis then asked to change the march back to Chicago, which was granted.

While such actions by the ACLU have not always been popular over the years, and this one was not popular with many Americans, as veterans' groups, among others, also protested, as I recall, such legal challenges bring focus to various decisions, along with the accompanying discussions, sometimes very heated discussions. Democracy is not easy, and I suppose all of us at one time or another would like to stop someone with whom we disagree from expressing contrary opinions. The question is always, "how much freedom do we want?" There are limits to freedom, as for example, we don't have the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, just for the hell of it. Ah, that's not a direct quote.

For Jewish attorneys to defend the right of Nazis to march tells you just how much these attorneys appreciate the law. It certainly doesn't mean they liked Nazis, but they loved the law. To be quite honest, I'm not sure I could do such a thing, but this is how you defeat the crazies and the anti-democracy elements. We can't be so insecure that we are afraid of differing viewpoints. Talk about tolerance, this is tolerance and a respect for law which should earn respect from all of us; of course, there are those racists and haters out there ...

* These are my words, not the court's words, but this was essentially the argument.

WORD HISTORY:
Hate-This word goes back to Indo European "khedo," which had the notion of "strong emotional feeling." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "hatojan(an)," which became the more specific "to hate," in Germanic. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "hatian," which then became "haten," before the modern version. The noun was derived from the Old Germanic form "hatiz," which then gave Old English "hete." Other Germanic languages have (noun then verb): German "Hass" and "hassen," Low German and Dutch "haat" and "haten," West Frisian "hate" and "haatsje," Danish "had" and "hade," Icelandic "hata" (same for noun and verb), Norwegian and Swedish "hate" (same for both noun and verb, with the ending "e" pronounced like "ah").

Greed For The Moment

Throughout our lives we hear about the need to think ahead, but I'm not sure we can really do that, most of us anyway, at least not enough of us or far enough into the future. When I was in school in the 1960s, there was talk of computers being the way of the future and that students needed to choose training for that future. Some heeded that advice from those with the foresight into the developing computer advances, but too few, in my opinion, including myself, took the advice. It's a tough sell telling people, especially when we're young, that we need to do such and such for the future. For young people the future is the next school dance, the next school sporting event or the next legal holiday when school will be closed. With the wealthiest of Americans, some people ask, "Can't they see where their greed is leading?" So will greed for the moment threaten to later bring down dog-eat-dog capitalism? No question about it, the money is going to the top of the income ladder, but is there a point where that top rung of the ladder collapses from the weight of all the wealth up there?

Technology and the sending of sectors of the economy out the country for cheap labor and ways to get around workplace and environmental regulation can only go so far, as the resulting consequences of stagnant or declining wages for so many Americans come home to roost. It's a vicious cycle, with lower wages requiring cheaper goods for lower paid workers to be able to afford to buy them, but with the increased profits going to the top, where few seemingly can see, or want to see, from that lofty perch, that the Titanic is heading for an iceberg.

The growing income gap is not just about technology and the decline in manufacturing, but also about the  financial sector, which has expanded as a part of the economy for the last several decades. As finance expanded, it began to need more income to sustain the big and increasing salaries in the industry, as well as its growing workforce. The financial sector makes money a number of ways, two of which obviously are through fees for various services and commissions on transactions. How do you collect more commissions? By selling more stocks and bonds. How do you get people to invest more in stocks and bonds? You show them profits. How do you show them more profits? By selling more of something and by cutting costs to increase margins. As you can see, it's not a big leap to "cutting wages and benefits by shipping jobs and production to places where costs are low, thus increasing profits." If true wealth is measured by tangible items; that is, things we can actually touch and which usually have some endurance, what does the financial sector produce for Americans? Not a hell of a lot, although it can be involved in helping produce wealth and it IS important. We've seen a similar situation with the growth in lawyers, as a number of Americans poured into law schools to be trained in legal matters, a profession that typically pays well above average income. What happened? Lawsuits went wild, as the expanding legal profession needed more business to pay for all of the added lawyers and incomes. The action of the financial and legal sectors is not a terribly tough one to figure out folks, as at its heart, it is about self interest.  

Hm, I don't know about you, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the need for more income brought about risky ventures in the financial sector, especially after protections against nonsense were removed in the 1999/2000 era.  If such risky ventures pay off, those involved can make big money, but when they fail or are so misguided, as was the mortgage fiasco, LOOK OUT, but it was greed for the moment, "we want money NOW!" Few, if any, at the top paid no real penalty and they certainly did not spend any time in prison, although their schemes almost brought down the entire world economy. In the end, to halt a potential collapse of world finance, governments, including the U.S., first under George W. Bush and then under Barack Obama, stepped in with money; that is, taxpayer money, to bolster the teetering financial system. So the rewards up to that point went to millionaires and billionaires, but the losses were covered by that dreaded entity ... GOVERNMENT; that is, society. Amazingly, many in the upper class speak against socialism, but I guess that only counts when they aren't the ones getting "socialized." (In fairness here, a good deal of the "bailout money" has been paid back.)

Most Americans can't save the necessary amount, if anything, for retirement. It's easy for the wealthy to talk about people needing to save money for retirement, they have money ANY TIME.* There is a high proportion of Americans living essentially paycheck to paycheck, a very dangerous situation (some say 3/4 of all Americans, but even if that's a bit high, and it's "only" 2/3, that's still not great either). Lack of savings makes Social Security mandatory, as it's the only thing to keep many older Americans from being totally destitute, and Medicare and Medicaid, both targets of the superegos and their right wing allies, provides needed medial care to the elderly, the poor and the disabled. Many Americans fiddle while their own personal Rome burns, oblivious to the scheming of the rightists and fascists who can't stand the fact that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are shared national programs. They want control and their cut of the action. Don't be fooled by "privatization" talk, meant only to open the door to the treasure chest for the wealthy interests. They always seek to make matters about money with the euphemism "free markets," because then they can control it; "free markets"=control by the wealthy, not anything else, there's no other definition. To the wealthy, Social Security just can't be right because it is in part financed by lower interest rate securities. To wealthy and financial people who love to talk about "yields" on stocks and bonds, that's almost criminal, because their own personal sense of business, driven by human greed (we all have it to some extent) just can't accept that. They lack the ability to grasp anything that isn't solely about making money.** They have to be regulated by us, because they can't self regulate; many lack the perspective necessary to do so. It often tends to be "greed for the moment." In one episode of "Gilligan's Island," the castaways are threatened by an active volcano. When the Professor needs a timing device for a bomb to act as a counter to the volcano, super millionaire Mr. Thurston Howell III SELLS him a clock. Even in the face of danger or death, he just couldn't give up that business idea of making a profit on something. It may only have been a television comedy, but there's an underlying truth there. All well and good to talk about the future, but people live in the present.

* America really took off as a "consumer" driven nation in the 1920s. Mass production of various goods needed a market to sell those goods, which brought investment in mass marketing to "encourage" Americans to buy products. Consumer credit (often called "charge accounts" back then) expanded tremendously to allow Americans to buy products on credit and pay for them in installments. The increasing spread of electricity and the invention of several electrical devices, like refrigerators, radios and mixers, saw sales skyrocket, and profits for companies soared too, but wages did not soar so much. After an intense run-up, the whole thing took a major nosedive in a little event termed the Great Depression. So when I say Americans cannot always save for retirement, what I mean is, many people make bad choices, buying things to "keep up with the Joneses," but then again, there are pulls and tugs at us going on all of the time. Self esteem is certainly in play, as some folks try hard to be seen as "cool" and part of "what's happnin'." On the other hand, those preaching for Americans to save are trying to have it both ways; that is, they want us to spend, spend, spend to buy their products and services, but then they preach about too much credit and too little savings. What the right balance is, I don't know, but I believe I'm safe in saying, "we aren't in balance, nor have we been, for quite some time."

** To add some balance, the opposites can't understand about human greed, let alone big money greed, and they seem to think things get financed from thin air. There is balance here somewhere, folks, but finding it is often difficult, especially in the last several decades of  the "greed is good" mentality.  

WORD HISTORY:
Wight-This ultimate origin of this now generally archaic word is unknown, and "apparently," besides forms in the Germanic languages, it has some connection with Slavic (Russian "vesc" and Old Church Slavonic "vesti," both meaning "thing, matter"), but it is related to English "whit," (small object, particle).^ Old Germanic had "wihktiz," which seems to have meant "substance, matter." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "wiht," with the meaning "person, being, creature." Other forms in Germanic are: German "Wicht" (small child, rascal, imp, little creature); Low German "Wicht" (young girl); Dutch "wicht" (child, small creature); Swedish "vätte" (imp, gnome). I did not find a form in Frisian, but sources on this close relative of English are not exactly abundant, so such a form may well exist, or like English, it could now be archaic. Further I could not find forms in Danish, Icelandic or Norwegian.  

^ Now more commonly used in an expression like, "I don't even care one whit about it."   

^^ For the use of "wight" as part of the word that became modern "not," see:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/08/success-not-excess.html

Our Contentious System, Part One

You might think people in other parts of the world don't understand some of the aspects of our "American system" (other countries are similar, but not quite the same in all aspects). Actually, the people who often don't understand it are AMERICANS! We have a very contentious system. The point of some of this contentiousness isn't that a "winner," be it a person or an idea, is "right," but that the winner has prevailed after each, or all, sides have had their chance to present its case. I know some of this gets on our nerves at times, but the question becomes, how would you replace it? The other thing to remember is, our system is NOT perfect, in spite of the claims by super patriots, who seem so insecure as to never want to admit to the slightest flaw; but, no system yet put in place anywhere IS perfect. That doesn't mean we should throw in the towel and stop trying.

Look at the legal system. As the saying goes, "We all hate lawyers.....until WE need one!" One of the greatest television shows EVER, the original "Law and Order," showed the workings of the criminal justice system, with all its ah ... flaws? discrepancies? shortcomings? Give me a word here, PLEASE! In one of my favorite episodes, a woman is found dead in her apartment, but some blood from a relative is found there too. After much investigation, the police find out the blood belongs to a woman bank teller. She tells them the dead woman was her mother and that she spent time tracing who her mother was, after spending years in an orphanage. The mother, of very modest means, then told her the father had been a multimillionaire who recently passed away, leaving a fortune "to his children," the names of "his children" not being specified. The police arrest the teller for murder, and they bring in a bank officer who is the teller's boyfriend. Bank cameras showed the teller handing the bank officer a purse upon return from the mother's apartment. Police suspect the purse, not with the teller when she left the bank, contains a blouse covered with blood, as the teller had on a different blouse upon her return to the bank, a blouse several sizes too large for her, but the same size as her mother. After some tough questioning, the bank officer admits that he looked into the purse and that he did indeed see it had such a blouse in it. Meanwhile, down the hall, the police are questioning the woman who has her story down pat. After some tough questioning, she tells them she wants her lawyer. When they ask for a phone number, she tells them they have him down the hall. The boyfriend then tells the police he is the woman's attorney.

The show then shifted to the legal wrangling. The teller hires a criminal defense attorney who goes before a judge arguing that anything the boyfriend bank officer/lawyer told the police was protected by attorney client privilege. The guy had not paid his annual dues to the Bar Association for a few years, but the new attorney loans him the money to bring his dues up to date. The judge rules that as long as the accused woman believed the boyfriend to be her lawyer, that is what counts, and all of his admissions cannot be used against her. It turned out, the boyfriend had been representing the teller in pursuing a claim for part of the dead millionaire's estate.

Okay, what do we have here? "Attorney-client privilege" is an important part of our judicial system. We have a right to consult with an attorney, privately, and to keep those consultations private, under most circumstances.* An attorney of any type, not just a defense attorney, is supposed to defend their client's interest to the utmost. In criminal cases, the prosecution tries to their utmost to convict the person charged with a particular crime. In the television episode covered above, the judge knows the woman is likely guilty from the boyfriend's admissions, but because he had been representing the teller and because the client saw him as her attorney, the judge threw out the evidence. You may not like that evidence against an apparently guilty person is tossed, but that's how it works. We have protections and those protections were put into law to guard against the "state" from being able to do anything and everything to send someone to prison. Remember, there are still countries where whatever the "state" says, goes! Innocent though a person may be, they go to prison. Our system isn't perfect, and innocent people do get convicted, but it is fairly rare. The basic idea of our system is it is better to let a guilty person get off, than to convict an innocent person.

There is always public opinion in high profile cases, but even more importantly there are the feelings of the victim's survivors. In the above television case, what if you were the murdered woman's relative? Would you shout "Yippee! The Constitution works?" My guess is, no, you would likely be furious with the judge for tossing evidence against the apparent killer of your relative. That's just human nature. Depending upon the ultimate outcome of the trial, you "might" see the constitutional issue involved as time passed. In the above case, there is strong evidence to believe the woman is guilty, but let's say evidence tossed by a judge in another case were not as damning. Relatives of the victim are still likely to scream "Foul!" What if, in such a case, the person were truly not guilty? As victims, or relatives/friends of victims, we usually want revenge, and again, like it, not like it, that's a part of human nature. We want someone to pay for the crime. The judicial system is not supposed to be swayed by such things, but it is only supposed to be concerned with the law, no matter who it helps or hurts, but we all have feelings, and enforcement of our laws is certainly subject to those feelings. So under our system, some guilty people go free; probably far more than we'd like, while some innocent people pay a price; probably not many, but how about if YOU were going to prison for something you did not do? Would you be singing the praises of the law?

* There are exceptions, such as if someone else is present during consultations, or if the attorney is in any way connected to the crime being charged, or if the person charged waives his/her right to the privilege. What do these mean? As is always the case, these may seem simple, and they probably usually are, but they can become complex, as in the case I cited above from "Law and Order." These are just some simple examples: first, if I am present when you talk with your attorney, it is NOT private. I'm NOT your attorney; thus, I can repeat whatever was communicated during the conversation. Then again, how much do you want me to keep quiet? (Wink, wink) Second, if I were your attorney and you and I robbed the neighborhood bank, I'm part of the criminal act, communication is not privileged. Lastly, I get in front of a TV camera and tell all or part of what I talked about with my attorney in connection to the charges against me, then I forfeit my attorney-client privilege.

WORD HISTORY:
Client-The ultimate origins of this word are uncertain, although some believe the origins to be Indo European. It traces back to Latin "cluere," which meant "listen, hear, obey." From this came "cliens," which meant "a person who obeyed or followed someone." This gave the sense, "follow advice." The word was borrowed by English in the 1300s, but seems to have come into more common usage in the 1500s as "a patron/customer of an attorney," but that sense broadened shortly thereafter to "a customer, a patron, in general."