"And on his head, where a swooping red beret has sat almost every day of his adult life, there was only a cap-shaped tan line and balding pate...."

"In a city rich with sartorial symbols, few have been more memorable than [Curtis] Sliwa’s ruby red headpiece. It helped the Guardian Angels, his subway patrol group, gain notoriety in the 1970s; was his uniform for a career in television and radio and provided an unofficial motif for his unsuccessful first run for mayor in 2021. Yet as he takes a second, seemingly more viable run at City Hall, Mr. Sliwa, 71, is beginning to show up without it... 'For some people, the beret is a defining issue,' Mr. Sliwa said, volunteering that it could evoke a certain Che Guevara-style revolutionary look. 'Guys and gals, I get it. If taking my red beret off will help you just to listen to me, no problem.'... Mr. Sliwa makes a point of wearing his beret underground — he tries to campaign in the subway two hours a day ('It’s the only way') — and on the streets. It makes him more visible.... Mr. Sliwa said he has six berets in rotation. On hot summer days, the wool can create its own small heat dome. 'I don’t mind shvitzing, but my wife does,' he said. 'She says, "oofa, this beret, it can walk on its own by the end of the day."' He is also hearing from friends who think it is worth more on than off.... 'First, I was all for taking his red hat off,' Mr. Dietl said. 'But now I think when Superman came to save everyone, he didn't take his cape off.'"

From "Curtis Sliwa Wants to Be Mayor. He’s Taking Off His Beret to Prove It. The Guardian Angels founder and Republican nominee for mayor has long been a New York curiosity. Can he become a serious contender?" (NYT).

You know who wore a hat? Lincoln. As Trump likes to say, responding to critics who call him insufficiently presidential: "I would say I can be more presidential than any president in history except for possibly Abe Lincoln with the big hat." And by the way, Trump has a damned distinctive hat and it worked for him. 

If the question is how can you be serious in a hat I think we have the answer, and Sliwa made that beret so much a part of his persona that it's the only thing recognizable about him. Without the hat, he's a generic old guy. It's too late to de-hat. He has to convince people he's serious, without de-hatting.

 

Should Curtis Sliwa prove his worth by going without the hat?

No, it's too late now.

No, the hat is good.

Yes, it's a barrier to being taken seriously. Crucial to de-hat.

Yes, but don't concede that it wasn't serious. Take control of the expression.

Who cares? This clown can't win. Move on to Cuomo or Adams.

 

pollcode.com free polls

We're told law professors are saying we're in a "constitutional crisis," but at what point would they switch to the term "constitutional moment."

One could avoid either term. Even though both terms include the word "constitutional," neither term appears in the Constitution, and I cannot imagine how a real case could hinge on the perception that we are in a "constitutional crisis" or a "constitutional moment." 

But I'm thinking about these 2 terms together because I just listened to today's NYT "Daily" podcast: "A Constitutional Crisis." The phrase was used 23 times, as if we could be convinced by repetition. But convinced of what? 

Michael Barbaro: The phrase du jour, Adam, right now, in Washington, is "Constitutional Crisis." And we come to you as our resident scholar of the law and the courts to understand what A Constitutional Crisis actually is and how you know when you are in the middle of one....

Adam Liptak: I've been talking to a lot of law professors and what emerges from those conversations is that there's no fixed, agreed-upon definition of A Constitutional Crisis. It has characteristics, notably, when one of the three branches tries to get out of its lane, asserts too much power. It often involves a president flouting statutes, flouting the constitution, flouting judicial orders. And it can be a single instance, but it's more typically cumulative. But it's not a binary thing, it's not a switch.

Liptak's been "talking to a lot of law professors," but apparently not to Alan Dershowitz. I highly recommend his "Trump versus the courts: who will win? My legal analysis" (from February 10th):

Alan Dershowitz: I want to be very clear the New York Times had a front page story major story.... All the law professors in the world the entire academy,  all the law professors think there's a horrible constitutional crisis going on. Of course, they interviewed 3 or 4 left-wing anti-Trump law professors. They didn't introduce anybody who would have a neutral view of the Constitution, and they didn't give their readers an honest assessment of the issue. There is no constitutional crisis! Take it from me! I've been study studying the Constitution for close to 70 years now. I know a thing about the Constitution. The United States has a system of checks and balances. That system is designed to prevent constitutional crisis. The Democrats are crying wolf. Schumer screaming out there like a like a mad person about about the Constitutional crisis. People talking about going to the streets and war. No no no no.....

The NYT article he was talking about, published February 10th, was written by Adam Liptak — "Trump’s Actions Have Created a Constitutional Crisis, Scholars Say."

Joe Rogan talks to Donald Trump for 3 hours.

I'm one hour into it, and the 2 men have great rapport.

The NYT headline is designed to make people think that nothing worthwhile happened and it's all a stupid distraction for young guys: "6 Takeaways From Donald Trump’s 3-Hour Podcast With Joe Rogan/The former president repeated his debunked claims of election fraud and speculated that there could be life on Mars in an interview aimed at young male voters."

He courted the show’s young male audience by floating the idea of eliminating the income tax, talking about mixed martial arts fighters, praising the military skills of Gen. Robert E. Lee and speculating that there was “no reason not to think” there could be life on Mars and other planets....

Why not say he "courted" the old women (like me) by talking about the length of the bed in the Lincoln bedroom and how badly depressed Mary Todd Lincoln was after her son Tad died?

Mr. Rogan seemed to back Mr. Trump’s questioning of election processes, at one point likening those who raised concerns over elections to those who questioned coronavirus vaccines.

“You get labeled an election denier,” Mr. Rogan said. “It’s like being labeled an anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the Covid-19 shots.”...

What I thought was so interesting was the first topic: how Trump felt when he found himself suddenly President. If that's not a topic for women, I don't know what is, especially when Trump centered the description on his interest in seeing the Lincoln bedroom and imagining the feelings of Abe and Mary. I loved Trump's (seeming) openness, as he repeatedly described his subjective experience as "surreal."

The saddest, loneliest Althouse blog tag: "Biden the healer."

I created this tag on November 8, 2020, and I don't create a new tag unless I think there will be a good number of other posts that will support that tag. I imagined Biden stepping up to the role of healer. I went back today, looking for "Biden the healer" in my archive, because I've been thinking how much better Biden might be doing — and, more importantly, how much better this country might be doing — if Biden had followed the path of healing — of bringing us together. But Biden was and is a divider. Maybe January 6th was too much of a temptation, such great raw material for tearing us apart. He could have said — like Lincoln — "with malice toward none, with charity for all" and forgiven everyone involved and called upon all of us — on his side and the other side — to "bind up the nation's wounds." But he didn't do it. And now it's too late.

Here's my November 8, 2020 post. Read it and weep. It's title is an eloquent quote from someone who has gone on to distinguish herself for her comical lack of eloquence:

"Joe is a healer, a uniter, a tested and steady hand, a person whose own experience of loss gives him a sense of purpose that will help us as a nation reclaim our own sense of purpose, and a man with a big heart who loves with abandon."

In that one crowded sentence, Kamala Harris — in her victory speech last night — stated the theme for Biden's presidency. 

I see the laying-on-of-hands concept that we were talking about yesterday.

Well, it's obvious why but I doubt if David Frum comes out and says it.

I was halfway through the headline when I wrote the post title.

I'm reading "Why Biden Should Not Debate Trump/The networks want their show, but to give the challenger equal status on a TV stage would be a dire normalization of his attempted coup" by David Frum (in The Atlantic).

The second half of the headline confirms my suspicion.

We're not supposed to read Biden's refusal to debate to mean that he lacks the mental capacity to debate. Frum and others will instruct us, repeatedly, in articles repeating the talking point.

"Biden, always a little taller than you expect, wore a navy suit and a bright-blue tie."

"He passed a study off the Oval, where he keeps a rack of extra shirts, an array of notes sent in by the public, and a portrait of John F. Kennedy in a contemplative pose.... He continued to the Oval Office dining room, a small, elegant space where, in Biden’s eight years as Vice-President, he often visited Barack Obama for lunch. One wall is graced by 'The Peacemakers,' a famous painting of Lincoln and his military commanders, on the cusp of winning the Civil War. Another is dominated by a large television set, installed by Donald Trump."

From "Joe Biden’s Last Campaign/Trailing Trump in polls and facing doubts about his age, the President voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reëlection" by Evan Osnos (The New Yorker).

I paused over "always a little taller than you expect." It had a bit of a large-boulder-the-size-of-a-small-boulder feeling about it. It gets my favorite tag: big and small. I love these conundrums of size. Osnos is using "you" to refer to himself. He's talking about his subjective experience, and he — unlike, probably, you — has been in the vicinity of the President on multiple occasions. But what is this taller and taller effect? It must be that when he's around Biden, he's struck that Biden is a little tall, and, afterwards, Biden shrinks in Osnos's memory, setting him up to be struck once again, at the next encounter, by the slight tallness of Biden.

Biden was showing Osnos — as Biden put it — "where Trump sat and watched the revolution."

"He claimed magnets don’t work underwater.... He bragged about his ability to put on pants.... He said the Civil War could have been 'negotiated.'..."

I'm reading "8 Awful Things Trump Said in Iowa, Ranked" (NY Magazine).

Is it not a good thing to believe wars can be avoided? Is it an article of faith that American slavery could only have been ended through warfare? Why is it "awful" to say that, as President, Trump would have tried to end it peacefully?

"Petitioners visiting the Executive Office learned to keep talking, because the President usually had an open book on his desk, and was quite capable of snatching it up when the conversation flagged."

I'm reading page 108 of "Theodore Rex (Theodore Roosevelt Series Book 2)," by Edmund Morris (Amazon link, commission earned).

Also, on page 126:

"[T]raveling from town to town and asking for votes was considered undignified for a presidential candidate."

"Abraham Lincoln had not given a single speech on his own behalf during either of his campaigns, and Rutherford B. Hayes advised [James A.] Garfield to do the same. 'Sit crosslegged,' he said, 'and look wise.' Happily left to his own devices, Garfield poured his time and energy into his farm. He worked in the fields, planting, hoeing, and harvesting crops, and swung a scythe with the confidence and steady hand he had developed as a boy. In July, he oversaw the threshing of his oats. 'Result 475 bushels,' he noted. 'No[t] so good a yield as last year.'"

I'm reading "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" by Candice Millard. (Commission earned if you use that link.)

Sit crosslegged and look wise.

Mystic chords/mystical cord.

I'm reading "The Not-So-Secret Weapon in the Special Relationship/Queen Elizabeth offered a mystical cord to the past that held together the U.S.-UK alliance" in Politico. 

Why would you write "mystical cord," when Abraham Lincoln famously said in his first inaugural speech, "mystic chords":

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Note the "of"s: bonds of affection... chords of memory... chorus of the Union... better angels of our nature.

"In The Broken Constitution, Noah Feldman argues that the Confederate states had a constitutional right to secede and that Lincoln violated the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves."

Here's the NYRB review of Feldman's new book "The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America." 

From the review, by James Oakes:

"Seeing a troubled life as a drama, a series of conflicts that, with luck, lead to resolution is one of the ways we reach a state of hard-won grace as we age. "

"Countries invent stories and myth in order to make sense of trauma, too. One reason the scars of the Civil War have never fully healed is that we’ve never, as a nation, agreed on a single narrative about what it was all for. Now we are engaged in a great debate about the lessons and meaning of the Trump era. To progressives like me, the past four years have been a period of mendacity, incompetence, racism and — in the end — insurrection. The wounds are fresh.... [T]he scars of the Trump years are likely to endure.... How can we ever get past Donald Trump, when so many people seem unwilling to let him go? What do we learn from our scars? Are they just a reminder of the traumas we’ve experienced, things that remind us how easily wounded we really are? Or are we to look upon our dents and marks with wisdom, and understand these wounds really did heal with time — that the pain that once defined our lives will not last forever?"

From "My Country Suddenly Turned on Me/Recovering from the trauma of the Trump era will depend on how its story is told" by Jennifer Finney Boylan (NYT).

This column — which also includes a story about a physical scar Boylan has from childhood — is more equivocal than I thought it would be. The title made me think that it would demand that we prioritize the way people feel by telling the story that has the most power to heal those who were traumatized. That is, forget the search for truth, we need to get together as quickly as possible embrace the story that works best to lift the spirits and relieve the suffering of the downtrodden. 

But Boylan doesn't quite say that. Not clearly. She does speak of "a single narrative" about the Civil War without which we "have never fully healed."

She doesn't quite say that if only we'd all got together on a single narrative we'd be healed by now. And she probably would concede that she's mixing up cause and effect. Once you're in the condition to agree on a single narrative, you are healed. How can you make a single narrative happen without a self-defeating sacrifice of freedom of thought and expression? And if it's just force-fed single-narrative propaganda, it is not "agreed on." 

Boylan equates the Trump years with the Civil War. She uses Lincoln's language — "Now we are engaged in a great" — and, for "Civil War," substitutes "debate about the lessons and meaning of the Trump era." I favor debate over agreeing on a single narrative, and maybe Boylan does too. She never makes the strong move I thought I saw coming and insist that we must now agree to a single narrative. I can see that her narrative would be a story of "mendacity, incompetence, racism and — in the end — insurrection." But she keeps it open-ended. That's the story she would tell, and we're in a big debate about what just happened. There is no single narrative.

And what of the wish for a single narrative and the faith in its power to heal and healing as a priority over the search for truth? (This question makes me think of "The 1619 Project."  It's not history as truth, it's history as medicine. But if you want history as medicine, you'll still have plenty of trouble getting to a single narrative. Everyone touting "The1619 Project" medicine is counterbalanced by somebody offering the restorative power of the "City on a Hill.")

"Do not nod along when you hear the following: That Abraham Lincoln’s name on a public school or his likeness on a statue is white supremacy."

"(It is not; he is a hero.) That separating people into racial affinity groups is progressive. (It is a form of segregation.) That looting has no victims (untrue) and that small-business owners can cope anyway because they have insurance (nonsense). That any disparity of outcome is evidence of systemic oppression (false). That America is evil. (It is the last hope on Earth.)" 

From "10 ways to fight back against woke culture" by Bari Weiss (NY Post). 

You can read the list for yourself. It's not as exciting as Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules," but you might like it. Much of it reads as advice to a particular sort of person, approximately the sort of person I picture reading the New York Times, a middle-aged, affluent women in New York City:  "Become more self-reliant. If you can learn to use a power drill, do it.... Learn to... shoot a gun.... Worship God more than Yale.... Getting your child into an elite preschool is not essential....."

If you can learn to use a power drill...? Who can't learn to use a power drill?

Looking for a link for Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules," I ran across this snappy digest of the book that's not at all friendly to Peterson but really brings out how much more exciting Peterson's list is than Weiss's. Here's how the digester — John Crace in The Guardian — summarized Peterson's Rule 10, "Be precise in your speech": "Confront the chaos of Being. Don’t try to beat about the bush. Things are going to be terrible. Oedipus killed his Dad. You may well kill yours. Get over it. Face up to the real horrors of the world."

"Until the San Francisco Unified School District board stripped Dianne Feinstein’s name from one of its public schools, we were unaware of the Senator’s service to the Confederacy."

"While the city’s mayor, she had replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a historical display outside City Hall. So now it’s goodbye to Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Feinstein purge is among the banishments the board took Tuesday night when it voted 6-1 to rename 44 schools. The most absurd target is Abraham Lincoln, who waged the war that ended slavery...." 

From "Cancelling Dianne Feinstein In San Francisco, the Senator now ranks with Confederate generals" by The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. 

"Also canceled were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Webster and Paul Revere. The criteria used to come up with the list of villains is whether they had promoted slavery, genocide, the oppression of women or 'otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"  

Maybe stop naming schools after human beings. These folks are flawed, and it's going to come around and bite you in the ass sooner or later. Here in Madison, where we live on the west side of town, my kids went to a high school called West High School. Keep it geographical. Although if I had to argue that "West" was a politically incorrect name, I could do it. In defense of West, I note that over on the east side of town, the high school is called East High School. 

It was especially bad to name a school after Dianne Feinstein, a living politician. You never know what these creatures who still walk the face of the earth might do to complicate your effort at honor. If you must name schools after human beings, choose dead ones who've proven their status as heroes. But that's a bad idea too. Schools should teach critical thinking and a deep understanding of history, and that's inconsistent with having one person's name hanging over the kids' head all the time. 

And what's absurd about pursuing inquiry into the shortcomings of Abraham Lincoln? It's a great idea, if it involves teaching the kids to learn the methodologies of history. It's supposed to be education, not religion.

"The statue by Thomas Ball depicts a Black man, shirtless and on his knees, in front of a clothed and standing Abraham Lincoln."

"In one hand, Lincoln holds a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, while the other is stretched out over the Black man. Ball intended it to look as though the man were rising to freedom, but to many, it looks like he is bowing down or supplicating to Lincoln. Boston artist Tory Bullock, who started the petition, described it this way: 'I’ve been watching this man on his knees since I was a kid. It’s supposed to represent freedom but instead represents us still beneath someone else. I would always ask myself, "If he’s free, why is he still on his knees?"'"

From "Controversial Lincoln statue is removed in Boston, but remains in D.C." (WaP). There are 2 identical statues, the original in Washington and a replica that was in Boston. 

The original statue "was commissioned and paid for by a group of Black Americans, many of whom were formerly enslaved," but they "did not have a say in the design of the statue; that distinction went to an all-White committee and the artist, Ball, who was White." 

Frederick Douglass was present at the unveiling in 1876, and he criticized the statue in writing a few days later: "What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man." 

The question "If he’s free, why is he still on his knees?" is interesting. Whenever stationary art depicts an action, we see a stage of the action. We're in the middle of things. How do you make a statue of a person rising up? If you show him already fully standing, you might lose the expression of the action...

... you don't need to show this figure that close to the ground. And Lincoln looks still and lordly. It is a strange artifact. It's artwork from the past, never the greatest art, but carrying the weight of history, history that includes Frederick Douglass wanting to see a better image of a black man before he died.

***

I looked to see what year Douglass died. It was 1895. I clicked through on the name of his first wife, Anna Murray Douglass:

"A group of protesters toppled statues of former presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and shattered the entrance to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland’s South Park Blocks..."

"... late Sunday before moving into other areas of downtown, smashing storefronts and engaging in other acts of destruction. Police declared the event a riot and ordered people rampaging through the city’s streets to disperse but did not directly intervene until nearly an hour after the first statue fell. The crowd scattered when police cruisers flooded the area, and officers in tactical gear appeared to make several arrests. Protest organizers had promoted the event on social media as an 'Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage.'...  The organizers had signaled their aggressive stance for the night, calling for 'direct action' and demanding that the video live-streamers and photographers who had become staples of such events stay away.... The group, about 200 strong, marched through downtown Portland, at one point occupying all four lanes of West Burnside Street. Most dressed head-to-toe in black. Many wore body armor, carried shields or wielded night sticks and other weapons. As the crowd reached the South Park Blocks, some threw chains on ropes on the Roosevelt statue, a bronze sculpture officially titled 'Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider,' as others took a blowtorch to its base and splattered it with red paint. They began to pull until the statue rocked from side to side before falling down at 8:51 p.m. The crowd erupted in cheers as dance music played on a large portable speaker....  The group then turned to the nearby Abraham Lincoln statue, pulling it to the ground at 8:59 p.m.... After toppling the statues, some protesters began smashing windows at the Oregon Historical Society, unfurling a banner that read, 'Stop honoring racist colonizer murderers.' A mural on the attached Sovereign Hotel building depicting the Lewis & Clark expedition was splattered with red paint...."

From "Portland protesters topple statues of Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln in ‘Day of Rage’; police declare riot" (The Oregonian).

Trump's Mount Rushmore speech came on too late for me, but...

... I've got the transcript, and I'm going to live-blog my reading of it. I'm fixing punctuation as I go and adding boldface:

There could be no better place to celebrate America’s independence than beneath this magnificent, incredible, majestic mountain and monument to the greatest Americans who have ever lived.

Somebody went heavy on the alliteration, but "incredible" sneaked in there. He's on the side of the monuments, not the destroyers of monuments.

The superlative — "the greatest Americans who have ever lived" — is a provocation. Not only is he defending these 4 men against the recent attacks, he's saying they are greater than every other American in history — greater than Frederick Douglass, greater than Harriet Tubman, greater than all of them. He didn't have to say the greatest. He could have said "among the greatest."

It would mean something just to call them "great" at all and not to qualify it with something like, though they did not escape the moral failings characteristic of their time. But he went big. He put the 4 above everyone else, which is the message of the mountain.

Today we pay tribute to the exceptional lives and extraordinary legacies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.

He's got the great men on his side, not like those people who want to tear down statues of all of them.

I am here as your president to proclaim before the country and before the world, this monument will never be desecrated, these heroes will never be defamed, their legacy will never ever be destroyed, their achievements will never be forgotten, and Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom.

That's big! Very grand. Very much a stand against the protesters and rioters... without mentioning them.  This is hyperbole, because Trump cannot protect the monument forever, and indeed, an understanding of geology would tell you that it's impossible for the monument to stand forever as an eternal tribute.

But he's not promising. He's proclaiming. I think of the proclamation on the plinth of Ozymandias. You can proclaim it is eternal, but that doesn't make it eternal. I'm going to live forever! I'm going to learn how to fly! Sing it joyously, but you're still going to die some day.

"Why are you fighting me?"

“Why are you protecting it?!”

BLM activist gets into a verbal exchange with an older black guy who was speaking up against tearing the statue down.#emancipationstatue pic.twitter.com/4crUOJhDFP

— Sagnik Basu (@_sagnikbasu) June 27, 2020

"Just because he was anti-slavery doesn’t mean he was pro-Black" — UW-Madison students demanding the beloved Lincoln statue be extracted from its place of honor in the center of campus.

I'm reading the news report at Channel 3000 with near disbelief. This is not like the Lincoln statue in Washington D.C. that's been deemed problematic because he's looming over the figure of a slave like he's such a big shot "Emancipator."

This is a lone, seated figure that has presided over Bascom Mall for decades and is inscribed on the hearts of those who have spent time — as I did for more than 30 years — at Wisconsin's beautiful university. I've taken many photographs of the statue, but I'll give you Lincoln in winter:



The Channel 3000 article quotes Nalah McWhorter, the president of the Wisconsin Black Student Union:

“He was also very publicly anti-Black. Just because he was anti-slavery doesn’t mean he was pro-Black. He said a lot in his presidential campaigns. His fourth presidential campaign speech, he said that he believes there should be an inferior and superior, and he believes white people should be the superior race.”

UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank responded, saying that "Lincoln’s legacy is complex and contains actions which, 150 years later, appear flawed," but that "Lincoln is widely acknowledged as one of our greatest presidents," because he issued the "Emancipation Proclamation, persuaded Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment ending slavery and preserved the Union during the Civil War."

McWhorter rejects that response: "For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus."

Who can balance the caring for the statue against the caring for students? These things — assuming we could assign weights to them — are not on opposite sides of a balance. We can leave the statue where it is — do nothing about it — and concentrate our efforts on helping students as much as possible. Why put these things in conflict, as if to leave the statue alone is to express callous disregard for students? Because demands need to be made — made about tangible objects that can be acted upon?

It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students. But giving in to a demand like this will not help. It will only set the stage for the creation of another demand to do something that can be done right now. Acquiring a real education cannot happen instantaneously, nor is it something that occurs in a theatrical way before the eyes of an assembled crowd. It's complex and subtle and never truly accomplished. But if the university doesn't dedicate itself to real education, what does any of this matter?

"Federal judge lambastes amendment to rename confederate bases as 'madness'/Gets thoroughly bodied by clerk."

Headline at The Intercept.

The judge is Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit.

Silberman [wrote]... that his great-grandfather had fought for the Union as part of Ulysses S. Grant’s army and was badly wounded at Shiloh, Tennessee. His great-grandfather’s brother, meanwhile, joined the Confederate States Army and was captured at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. “It’s important to remember that Lincoln did not fight the war to free the Slaves Indeed he was willing to put up with slavery if the Confederate States Returned,” he wrote (lack of punctuation and errant capitalization in the original, and throughout). “My great great grandfather Never owned slaves as best I can tell.”

From the clerk's pushback:

[M]y maternal ancestors were enslaved in Mississippi.... [M]y ancestors would not have been involved in the philosophical and political debates about Lincoln’s true intentions, or his view on racial equality.... [Y]ou talked about your ancestors, one that fought for the confederacy and one that fought for the Union.... [N]o matter how bravely your uncle fought for the Confederacy, the foundation of his fight was a decision that he agreed more with the ideals of the Confederacy, than he did with those of the Union.

Silberman, a Reagan appointee, is 84 years old. Giving him the Medal of Freedom in 2008, President George W. Bush said: