A Philosophical Question for Ye.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a moral philosophy question for you all.

Let us say that you want to donate money to a worthy charity. Let us further postulate that you can donate this money in one of the following ways: 1) You can hand a duly authorized representative of the charity cash, or; 2) You can use your bank to transfer the money to the charity (electronically, or by check, or wire service), or; 3) You can go on the charity’s web site and use a credit card to make the donation. Now, posit further, that you decide to use a credit card and choose to use a credit card that awards you “points” that you can use for yourself (or others frankly but let us assume that you use your points for your own wants/needs and don’t share them).

Here is the question: is the “good” of giving to a charity diminished in any way by choosing to use the credit card that rewards you for its use?

That is it. That is the post. Just a question.

And yes, your Maximum Leader made two donations recently using a card that awards him points for their use. He pondered this very question over a very potent margarita last night after making the donations.

Carry on.

UPDATED on May 13, 2020: You might go over and check out Kevin’s post on this subject.

NB: Poor Kevin can’t comment here because of some problem with the back-end of this blog. Your Maximum Leader has actually looked at trying to fix the problem, but it is beyond his abilities. He will have to get a real programmer to help him out on this one…

That being said… You should read the comments below as well. Broadly speaking, your Maximum Leader agrees with Kevin that the act of charity is diminished when there is a reward to the giver. It may not be diminished by much in your Maximum Leader’s view, but it is diminished. Which is why your Maximum Leader is annoyed by “gifts” to donors during PBS fundraisers. If you love PBS so much, just give your friggin money to them. The reward of giving is that you can continue to watch friggin PBS!!!!! You don’t need another damned tote bag!!!!

Safe, Legal, and Rare

Greetings, loyal minions. We seem to have come a long way from the days when Democrats wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Haven’t we? I have contemplated writing a post on abortion for a while now. But I haven’t. It seems like this might be the time to do so in light of recently passed laws in Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, and Kansas.

For those of you who might be reading, this post will have the following form: I’ll discuss my own personal views on abortion, then I’ll discuss what my views are about abortion in America. These views are in conflict with one another, and are the cause of some intellectual distress within my own conscience.

To begin. Simply put, my own view is that abortion is the willful killing of an innocent human life and is wrong. There isn’t much subtlety to that position. It is as starkly absolute as it looks in the words on your screen right now. It is a clearly stated and forceful statement.

I wasn’t always as clear on this personally. Though raised Catholic, I went through long portions of time away from the Church. Certainly my Catholic upbringing has always influenced my thoughts on abortion, it would be an overstatement to say that my views were always in line with Catholic teachings. (Or are now…) There was a time in and around college, where my views on the subject were better described as “well, it seems wrong to me, but I just don’t really care that much.” I feel a certain amount of shame in that supreme ambivalence given the words I just typed a few short sentences ago. But that was where I was. I didn’t think about abortion much and deliberately avoided thinking about it for quite a while. But I was forced to think about it one afternoon while walking in a park with a girl.

We were friends in college. We never dated each other. It frankly never occurred to either of us that we should date each other. It was a plain old friendship in which sex rarely came up as a subject. I was dating others. She was dating others. And everyone seemed pretty cool about it. We didn’t talk much about sex at all. A rude joke here and there. Perhaps some clumsy innuendo once and a while. Innuendo that was always a little forced between us.

One day, shortly after we graduated, we were walking in a park near my house. We chatted about all the normal things we talked about. Then she stopped at a small playground in the park and sat on a swing. I sat in the swing next to her and there was silence. She didn’t look at me when she plainly stated, “I’m pregnant.” I wasn’t sure how to react. I looked at her and I’m positive my confusion in how to respond was plain on my face. She looked at me, and with tears welling up in her eyes she said, “I don’t want to be.”

The circumstances that lead her to that point are as unimportant as they are common. Not paying attention. Messing around. Accident. Knowledge of what was happening. Realization that the boyfriend is all wrong. Their relationship is all wrong. She isn’t ready. She doesn’t want to be ready. She doesn’t know exactly what to do.

So she tells me.

I was the only person she had told. That sort of surprised me. I would have figured I was down the list of people she would confide in. But I was at the top of the list. I didn’t know what to say. So she did the talking. She thought she was going to abort the baby. She wasn’t 100 percent yet, but she was 85 percent. She was telling me because she wanted me to take her and be with her and if needed stay with me a day or two after.

I admit that I am told by my friends that I am a pretty loyal friend and will do what I can to help a friend in need. My first reaction to being “asked” to help my friend get an abortion was that I would take her, and be with her, and let her stay with me after if she wanted. She seemed greatly relieved by my answer. We sat for a while, then continued on our walk in silence. We parted with kisses on the cheek, but few words. She said she would let me know.

I didn’t sleep much for the next few days. Her boyfriend didn’t know. Should he? Should he be given some say in the matter? How would he react? Shouldn’t he help her out? What about my friend’s brother with whom she was especially close? Wouldn’t he be more appropriate? After going through all the others in my mind I started to reflect on my role in all this. What was I doing? Should I counsel her to seek another choice, or at least investigate another choice? If she wanted my help and I gave it what would I be responsible for doing?

In that moment I realized I was against abortion. Why would I worry about the moral consequences of an abortion to which I was tangentially a part if the whole act wasn’t wrong? Is driving a hitman to a hit and letting them stay in your house to lay low for a few days after not morally wrong? In that moment I had terrible misgivings. I was conflicted because now I realized I didn’t want to do what I’d agreed to do. I was a wreck. And if I was a wreck, I could only imagine how my friend felt.

I don’t recall praying, or asking advice of others, or doing anything to work through my impending moral dilemma. And then the weirdest thing happened. My friend and I never spoke of it again. About a week later she gave me a call and suggested we meet for a quick dinner and a walk. I agreed. I had decided to play it by ear not bring up the subject and see what she wanted to do. We had dinner. We walked. We got ice cream. We parted company. About two weeks later she told me she was accepting a new job in Pittsburgh. She asked if I would help pack up her truck. I said yes. I helped pack her up. Her brother was there too. She told me that the boyfriend wasn’t in the picture any more. She went to Pittsburgh. We talked for a few months after, then we truly parted company. We haven’t spoken since. I heard about her for a few years through mutual friends. There was no single parenting talk. I don’t know what she did or how she did it. I don’t know if she sensed my misgivings and decided not to ask me afterall.

And that is the story of how I came to have the views on abortion that I hold. As you can read, my view crystalized pretty sharply back then. It hasn’t changed too much over time. I still think abortion is wrong because it is the killing of an innocent, defenseless, person who deserves a chance at life.

In light of this, one would think that I would applaud the recent changes to the laws of Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, and Kansas. Well… That is where I run into problems.

I realize that we live in a constitutional republic. I also want the maximum amount of liberty possible under that government. I am suspicious of government and am often suspicious of the motives of others. I also realize that though I believe what I believe about abortion strongly, I can’t help but also believe that others don’t share my beliefs in this matter.

One would think that I wouldn’t have a problem with abortion in the public sphere. If I believe in liberty, and the sacrosanct nature of the individual as an individual entitled to the protection of and from the state, then I should support abortion rights. I get hung up on the fact that there are two people in this equation and how should they be treated. How, in fact, should they be treated? Does a woman have the same, more, or equal rights as a baby within her?

At this point I find myself falling into a legalist mindset, or perhaps it is a type of etymological/verbal sophistry. I want to find terms from which the argument can flow. This is likely some sort of latent attempt at Socratic reasoning or just some sort of self-justification to assuage a guilty conscience.

I can tell you where this mindset on the issue of abortion started in my brain. College, some time in early 1988. I went to a fascinating (and horrifying) debate. The debate was between a Philosophy professor at my school and a visiting Philosophy professor. It was a dispassionate and intellectual exchange. No heated words. No protesting. No finger pointing. It was just two smart people exchanging thoughtful arguments on a hotly debated issue. The professor from my school set out the “Pro-life” position. It was the visiting professor that was most memorable to me however. She set out her “Pro-choice” position. I was young and dull-witted and didn’t see where she was going when she started off. She started with cognitive abilities of various apes. Then got into human language and reason. Then proceeded into conscious thought and ability to express complex abstract ideas. Before I realized it, she had set up an argument in which she had gotten many of us to accept the position that in order to be fully human one had to have some apprehension of language and reason in order to be fully human. Then next thing you know, she is arguing that one should be able to commit infanticide of children up to about 6 months old because prior to that point they weren’t fully human and thus not entitled to full protection of the state.

In retrospect, it is interesting that back in 1988 a rational, and horrifying, intellectual debate suggesting infanticide could be viewed as an academic exercise that was dismissed by everyone who heard it as “going too far to make a point.” Now in 2019 there were bills being introduced in my state legislature that wanted to codify roughly the same point. And the Governor of my Commonwealth went on radio and seemed to advocate for the very position that was seen as “too much” 30 years before.

So people have differing opinions on abortion and it seems to be advantageous to find some consensus under which we can all live. But the problem is in the definition of terms that no one can agree upon. If that fertilized egg has become a human, then it is entitled to the protection of the state. If that fertilized egg is just a “fetus,” or an “organism,” or a “parasite,” or a “clump of cells,” then it seems pretty clear that it isn’t a person entitled to the protection of the state.

For many years, I (and others) wanted to try and define “viability.” If we could decide when that “pre-human” became viable outside the womb then we could establish a point at which one could say “A-ha! The pre-human is now fully human and shouldn’t be aborted as it is a person with rights and entitled to the protection of the state.” Viability was a thing I really tried to figure out with an earnestness that amuses my more cynical self today. Do you want to know what I came up with? I figured out that with technology and medical advances “viability” doesn’t mean anything. I would almost be willing to wager that in my lifetime (I’m 50 now) we will have artificial wombs into which we can put fertilized eggs and have them develop until they are grown into babies ready to be born in the traditionally understood sense. I am certainly willing to say that the point during a pregnancy that a baby becomes viable outside the womb keeps getting pushed closer and closer to the time of conception. So viability is a moving, and thus meaningless, target.

The current fashion of law seems to be the “heartbeat” standard. When the “pre-human” has a heartbeat it changes into a human and is entitled to the protection of the state. A fetal heartbeat can start after about 4 weeks. As is often said in the news, the fetal heartbeat can begin before most women know they are even pregnant. The upstart of this argument is that a woman needs time to learn she is pregnant so that she can decide if she wants an abortion. There is something in me that wants to see both sides of this argument. If you want to allow abortions, you need to allow a woman sufficient time to realize she is pregnant. But if you want to make sure you are protecting innocent life, then the heartbeat seems like an objective and observable milestone at which one can set a benchmark. I am not sure if the heartbeat is the benchmark I would set, but I fully recognize that any benchmark at all is arbitrary.

Do I support the “heartbeat” laws? I’m not sure. I certainly don’t support unlimited abortion on demand. I am left wondering where did “safe, legal, and rare” go? I also would like to know where the rape, incest, and life of the mother exceptions went.

So that I am clear, I realize that, intellectually, how a baby was conceived shouldn’t affect the baby’s legal status as a person with rights. But I freely admit I have a real problem making a woman (or young girl) carry a child to term that was conceived by rape or incest. I can’t do it. It seems wrong to even consider it in fact. Forcing a woman to bear a child that will end up killing her also seems too far to go for me. So removing the exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother seems to be going too far for me in our society. (NB: Another dear college friend of mine, Ashley, was faced with the choice of having a baby or taking cancer treatments. She chose to have the baby and delay cancer treatments. She died shortly after delivering her son. I don’t know how I would have dealt with my wife having to make that choice. I’m glad I never had to. But I do know that I pray for Ashley, and her surviving family, all the time.)

I don’t pretend to have answers for society at large in this. I know that there is a point after which abortion should be prohibited. I just can’t articulate in a meaningful way where that point is that doesn’t seem completely arbitrary and thus irrational.

Broadly speaking, I would like to prevent pregnancy so that abortion isn’t the primary focus of our arguing. To that end, I wouldn’t mind if birth control became more widely available. I know some of you out there are saying to yourselves, “What? As if it isn’t already widely available.” I know what you are saying, but making some birth control pills over-the-counter wouldn’t upset me in the least. So many places give condoms away it amazes me that people buy them. And “day after” pills exist in this morally gray area that I don’t contemplate much. Mostly out of a selfish desire to leave a morally gray area for me to hide my conscience within like an ashamed shadow.

I wish that we, as a society, on this issue could get a commission together of intelligent and rational people on both sides and lock them in a comfortable, isolated, hotel somewhere and have them come up with a compromise that everyone hates but agrees to live with for the sake of civility towards one another. Sadly, civility isn’t valued and both sides prefer becoming more intractable in the hopes of “winning” the argument once and for all. But this is one of those issues for which there is no real winning at all.

Carry on.

Musings on Thomas Hobbes 431st Birthday.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader raised a glass of whisky this past Friday (April 5th) and toasted Thomas Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes is on a very short list of political philosophers that your Maximum Leader greatly admires. Thomas Hobbes. Michael Oakeshott. Edmund Burke. Those are the big three…

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader wrote recently about how to classify Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He was using old Cold War Soviet terms for his classification. So he had the Soviet Union on his mind. Bringing the Soviet Union more to the forefront of his mind was his watching (probably for the 100th time) “The Death of Stalin.” It happened to be on cable on Friday night. He caught it about 15 minutes in…

NB: Your Maximum Leader loves (LURVES!) “The Death of Stalin.” It is funny. It is intelligent. It is so well acted and well written and well directed. He rented it to watch on a flight to California last year. He saw it and knew he had to own it. He bought it upon landing and watched it three more times that weekend. He’s watched it a bunch since. In the past five years there have been two films that your Maximum Leader has found rewatchable over and over again. They are “Stalin” and “Deadpool.”

So, moving along…

Your Maximum Leader had been thinking about nomenklatura. Then he had been watching the comic antics of the Soviet Politburo jockeying for power in 1953. Then his mind wandered in a bourbon infused fog. At that point he had something of a revelation. And Hobbes has something to do with it too…

The revelation was that many liberals of today genuinely believe that a Soviet/Socialist/Communist political system is a good thing. Now you are saying to yourself, “Self, how it is that my Maximum Leader is just realising this? Is he stupid?” Well, not exactly. You see, intellectually speaking your Maximum Leader has known that many liberals think this way. But there was something of a series of subtle connections that were made in that fog that made things clearer.

You see, your Maximum Leader, in his heart shares a belief espoused by ole Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes famously wrote that in a state of nature life was a war of all against all. His famous sound bite was that life in such a condition was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Now, Hobbes’s view of humanity is more nuanced than this. You can pick up his writings and read a few hundred pages and figure this out for yourself. But here is the rub. Ultimately Hobbes, and your Maximum Leader, believed that human nature is inherently egoistic. We want what we want. We want to do what we want to do. If we think we can get away with something to our advantage, without fear of reprisal, we will do it. To use religious terminology (because in this the religious and political are closely intertwined), man’s nature is fallen. As a being with a fallen nature, we need to be constrained. Constrained, in Hobbes’ mind, by an autocratic state. (At least this the the broad theme of Leviathan.) Please keep this in your mind…

Of course, on the other side of this equation (as it were) are those who prefer the state of nature described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Man was a perfectible, noble, creature. The nature of man was not fallen, or sinful, or bad. Mankind was corrupted by society, but society could be reformed and likewise man will be reformed as a result. Of course, your Maximum Leader is oversimplifying here, but bear with him.

So, broadly speaking, Your Maximum Leader thinks we can all agree that the best (theoretical) type of government to live under would be an autocracy ruled over by a wise, just, and benevolent autocrat. The Philosopher-King of Plato’s musings as it were. A good, wise, just, and benevolent autocrat has the power to “get things done” as well as the restraint to “keep from going too far.” Just laws, just taxes, and justice in general would flow quickly and efficiently from the Philosopher-King at the head of such a state. Things would be good…

Of course, the problem with autocracies is that you aren’t always guaranteed a good autocrat. The odds of a bad one are better than the odds of a good one. This is especially true if you believe, as your Maximum Leader and Hobbes do, in the not-so-good nature of man. But let’s say, you fall more under the Rousseauian theory of mankind. Well, even then you know that you are bound to get a bad egg from time to time. No matter how well you educate and train an autocrat, sometimes you are going to get a bad one. But if you give autocratic power to a bunch of perfectible people. People who are well-trained, well-experienced, and well-educated. Well then, that is a different story…

This is the root of the liberal’s love of technocracy. If mankind is perfectible and generally good, if you give power to right group of technocrats you will get a good outcome. If it doesn’t work out, it is because the “true formula” hasn’t really been tried. Ah… The ole “true socialism has never been tried trope!” Yes. Of course it all comes back to a fervent starting principal. If man is good it is all bound to work out! We just have had the wrong people in place…

Your Maximum Leader, in thinking all this, was musing on a column that Paul Krugman wrote some years ago (and he can’t find on the Google with ease and has given up with trying to link it) in which Krugman waxed admiration on the Chinese Communist government. In his musings, your Maximum Leader thought to himself that if you could look past the human rights abuses, the lack of personal freedoms, the rampant corruption, and the cronyism, there is a lot to like with the style of Chinese Communist rule from Deng Ziaoping through Hu Jintao. The Chinese Communist Politburo was populated by well-educated, experienced technocrats. These technocrats had well-constructed plans for moving their country ahead. They executed those plans (without any hindrance to their power). And presto-chango! China is the second greatest power in the world (and some could argue they are tied for the greatest power in the world). The Chinese Communist leaders are like half a loaf of bread in the argument about Socialism. They get so much right that they are admired, but there is that unsightly side. (All that lack of human rights, corruption, etc. etc.) It is like they are a beta version that just needs some more work.

You see, your Maximum Leader never really “saw” this aspect of how many liberals choose to look at socialism. He couldn’t get past his starting point, namely that humanity is not inherently good or truly perfectible. If you can’t get past that point, you’ll never get to where they are… Of course, your Maximum Leader likes freedom and liberty. He likes republican (truly little “r” republican) government. He likes restraint on government power. He likes it all because he doesn’t fully trust other people’s nature. We (humanity/mankind if you like) constrain our nature within society. We set up institutions and rules to constrain ourselves and others. It makes life better when we have boundaries and constrains, but also have the liberty to act as our own free-will agents.

It is possible that, at some point in the growing ever more distant past, he had this revelation before. But it seemed pretty enlightening the other night. It is possible that he’s never really tried to understand the whole “true Socialism” or “true Communism” hasn’t been tried argument. It’s never been tried, because it isn’t possible for it to be tried. If the nature of man is not predisposed towards it working, true Socialism/Communism just can’t ever work. Of course, many people don’t think as I do. So there is that.

Your Maximum Leader isn’t going to round them up and send them out for re-education or anything…

Carry on.

Is this a post I see before me?

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader makes two posts in two days. Think of it. It is like we are back to the halcyon days of 2004 or something…

Okay. That was a big buildup for very little payout. Your Maximum Leader apologizes in advance. (If anyone out there is reading this…)

So, your Maximum Leader forgot to note the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Hobbes last weekend. The man labeled on the right side link bar of this site as “Our Philosopher” would have turned 426 on April 5. Your Maximum Leader has not, until the very moment that he typed these words, bothered to think about the accuracy of the birthday given that it was prior to the New Style Act of 1750. Regardless… April 5th it shall be for your Maximum Leader.

Speaking of ole Thomas Hobbes… Your Maximum Leader has begun over the past years to feel he is getting more stupid. He is forgetting things he used to know. What is worse, he has a lingering knowledge that he USED to know something that he’s now unable to recall. Contemplating Hobbes’ birthday reminded your Maximum Leader that other than the “common” things that any student of history and government would recall; he’s forgotten much of the detail he used to know about Hobbes’ works. This could likely be remedied by a re-reading of Leviathan and other works. But there is some inertia or laziness that keeps him from getting motivated to do so…

This inertia has also manifested itself in your Maximum Leader’s Lenten observances. Your Maximum Leader has tried not to make a big deal of it, but he’s been doing much better at being an observant Catholic over the past years. Without trying to sound hypocritical, he’s been very outwardly observant. But there is a lot to be desired in his inner spiritual life. This Lent has been one of disappointment. Unlike many Catholics, your Maximum Leader doesn’t try to “give up” something for Lent; but rather (and the suggestion of a priest many many years ago) “DO” something that will improve and grow your faith and well-being. This year your Maximum Leader resolved to read & contemplate some of the writings of his name saint, Augustine of Hippo. The plan was to read from Augustine’s writings, then take a nice long walk to contemplate what he’d just read. Well, how many times has that pairing happened? Exactly zero times. He’s walked. He’s read (though very lightly). But the pairing has not occurred. This is a Lenten resolution that will likely have to outlive Lent in order to give your Maximum Leader a feeling of accomplishing something.

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader is exceedingly pleased at how his Washington Nationals are performing out of the starting blocks of this 2014 baseball season. They have done well against the Mets and Marlins. They took 1 of 3 against the Braves with another series against the Braves (in Atlanta) coming up. He hopes they continue to be strong and get a nice cushion of wins under their proverbial belts before the middle of the season. These early wins are very valuable over 162 games.

If your Maximum Leader can find the motivation and time, he hopes to write a short essay on independence movements in Europe. It is something he’s been thinking about off and on with all the news out of Scotland, Catalonia, Venice and Ukraine…

That is all for now…

Carry on.

Follow your Maximum Leader on Twitter @maximumleader

A Mess. A gooey, sticky, runny delicious mess.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is embroiled in a debate. A hot debate. A gooey debate. A melty-cheesey debate.

You see, yesterday, your Maximum Leader’s buddy Kevin posted a photo of what he purported was a “grilled cheese” sandwich. You can see the image by clicking on this linky. You will not that the first image shows bread, cheese and meat after a light grilling. Your Maximum Leader tweeted in a Darth Vader-eqsue way “Nooooooooooooooooo!” In your Maximum Leader’s opinion, this image shows a grilled sandwich to be sure, but the addition of meat precluded it from being a true “grilled cheese” sandwich.

Thus the debate was joined.

Kevin posted a fine reply to the various tweets your Maximum Leader had been broadcasting on the subject. That post is here: The Great Grilled-cheese Debate.

The sides break down thusly: Kevin believes that we should be flexible in our definition of what constitutes a “grilled cheese” sandwich. The inclusion of meat does not preclude the sandwich from still being a “grilled cheese” sandwich. Your Maximum Leader believes the “bemeated” sandwich ceases to be a “grilled cheese” sandwich and starts to be some other sort of sandwich. Your Maximum Leader would posit that the sandwich that started the debate could be a “grilled ciabatta” sandwich.

You should take a moment and read the comments to this post. Indeed, you should weigh in on the subject yourself. Comment here or over there. (It matters not to your Maximum Leader - although it might make it easier to manage if you commented there.)

Let us continue the suffering on both sides caused by this debate! Should we find a middle way and except a broad definition of “grilled cheese?” Should we stand up and support the Platonic ideal of “grilled cheese-ness” that precludes “bemeating” a grilled cheese?

Make your opinions known! Shout out from the rooftops (or at least in the comments) what is a grilled cheese sandwich.

The world will be a better place if we can put this argument to rest once and for all.

Remember - you can’t “bemeat” a grilled cheese!

Carry on.

The truth about a new word

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had a wonderful day (last Sunday) with his good buddy the Minister of Propaganda. While shooting the breeze over drinks and victuals, the Minister introduced your Maximum Leader to a word that he’d invented (with another friend of his). Your Maximum Leader likes this word and will share it with you:

Circumwongle = to arrive pleasantly at the results you want by an unexpected route.

Your Maximum Leader has given his approval to this word and hopes you all can find a way to work it into conversation.

In other news…

Your Maximum Leader was speaking with some other friends last night and one of them threw out a nice line that he’ll have to remember: “The truth is a powerful tool and should be used sparingly.” Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know if this a quotation from someone else, but he’ll have to remember this one too…

Carry on.

Canine Karma

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is going to have to “drop out of character” for this post. (He thought it “sounded” weird doing it in his normal third person style…)

So, I’ve got a dog. She is a mutt. Part Whippet and part Lab. We got her at the pound. She was six months old, had a bad rash that made some of her fur fall out, and was pretty pathetic overall.

Did I mention that she was also named “Tequila” at the time?

We took her home and changed her name and proceeded to love on her. That was 2001.

She has been one of the best dogs ever. She is smart enough to learn and obey a number of commands. She is dumb enough to remain cute and never give you pause to think that she’s trying to outsmart you in anything. She has survived three kids who have tried to ride her, pull her tail and otherwise molest her. Her temperament is everything one could ever want from a dog.

Two years ago she was running through the woods and got a cut on her right hind leg. We treated it topically and wrapped it up. It seemed to heal pretty well.

Then she started to lick her healing wound.

Before too long it became a large, swollen, infected mess. We took her to the Vet. She got a steroid shot and some antibiotics. Everything cleared up. But after a few months she started licking again and got the leg into a swollen, infected mess. So it was back to the Vet. More steroids. More drugs. Recovery! Then the licking started again… Eventually in addition to drugs and steroids she got “doggie downers.” This cocktail of drugs worked for a while. Eight months or so. But it hasn’t stopped…

Basically… My dog is OCD and licks herself to infection and great pain.

We keep treating her, but my wife and I lament that she is just dumb to keep hurting herself like this. Then again… She’s a dog.

The other day I was sitting in my chair reading and rubbing the dog with my feet. I stopped reading and thought about karma. I am not a Buddhist, or Hindu, or new-agey person so I don’t “believe” (in a religious sense) in karma. Sometimes “believing” in karma makes me feel better about myself or things happening in the outside world.

But I was thinking about my dog’s karma. I thought that if you consider karma and reincarnation together what would explain my dog? If she was a person in a past life, what could she have done wrong to deserve to come back as a dog? Then again, life with my family is a pretty good gig for a dog. She is fed, groomed, loved on and well-treated. That is a pretty good life all in all. Then I considered the leg. Was she being karmically punished for a past life? Had the wheel of fate placed her (even as a dog) in too good a position in life and was karma “fixing” the problem by making her OCD and inflicting suffering on herself where none had to exist?

Then I considered something else. Perhaps it was my karma to inflict suffering in her. Perhaps I am the problem in this equation.

Then I figured that considering this was too much for someone who doesn’t really believe in karma anyway.

So I got up and poured myself a Makers and ginger ale and went back to my book.

Carry on.

Monday Stuff

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will probably be doing very little posting between now and after Labor Day. Lots of back-to-school stuff going on which requires his attention. (So Mrs Villain tells him.) Of course, every time your Maximum Leader warns you all that posting will be light, he winds up posting a lot. Then when he posts nothing… Well… He posts nothing…

What to write about now?

Your Maximum Leader had some people over to the house for dinner yesterday night. He anticipated preparing some fancy appetizers. He’d thought of serrano ham and marchengo cheese and proscuitto with melon as two ham-based dishes. (With a mix of olives stuffed with feta, almonds, sun-dried tomatos, and garlic. To be clear, each olive was not stuffed with all of those items. There was a variety of 4 different olives each stuffed with a different item.)

Well… What did the great Muse of Scotland once say about the best laid plans? The ham based appetizers never made it to the table.

Gosh… Your Maximum Leader is so (SO!) torn up inside thinking that he might have Serrano ham and proscuitto just laying about in the icebox. What ever will he do with that wonderful, tasty, succulent cured pork goodness just sitting around? Sadly he is too busy to invite people with whom he’d share the ham.

He’ll just have to eat it himself…

The horror… Oh the horror…

In other news…

Your Maximum Leader is sad to admit that he watches “True Blood” on HBO. He has come very close to giving up on the show on a number of occasions starting last season. This season has a bunch of storylines going on. Most of the storylines don’t do a damn thing for him. While enduring the storylines he doesn’t care for he keeps thinking that he’ll just stop watching. But then the vampire characters just draw him back in. Specifically he is speaking about Denis O’Hare’s performance as Russell Edgington. Damn that man can work magic in that role. If it weren’t for the Russell story-line your Maximum Leader would have just stopped watching earlier this season.

Moving along…

Hey! Is it too early to shill for Christmas (or back to school)? You know that you are looking for a new t-shirt in which to knock about the house or wear on a quick trip to the mall. Have you considered a Naked Villainy T-shirt? If you are particularly stunning woman have you considered a Naked Villainy Tank-top and Thong combo? Your Maximum Leader will keep shilling this particular combination until he gets photos in his mailbox one day of some sultry lass clad only in the tank and thong combo. If that day ever comes your Maximum Leader let you all know. If you want to check out the store the link is here. Your Maximum Leader is probably going to update the store soon with a new t-shirt or two. (Not like lots of people are knocking down the doors to buy the old stuff…)

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader has been re-reading books he’s got on the shelf. He realizes that he’s looking at the books on the shelf and not remembering their contents any more. So he’ll both conserve money and do a little re-education for himself. Like FLG, your Maximum Leader might revisit Hume’s “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.”

That is about all from the Villainschloss now…

Carry on.

Without context…

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader gives you this paragraph to mull over without any explaination of context:

If Leibniz is right, then natural disasters aren’t the result of divine punishment for sin. They are the foreseen but unintended consequences of a well-regulated and overall good system of natural laws. So religious believers can explain the causes of earthquakes in purely natural terms (Leibniz was an avid scientist himself), while still maintaining belief in a divine, nonpunitive purpose for allowing such events. The harmonization of natural and theological explanations, reason and faith, is Leibniz’s true legacy.

If you would like full context, you can click here for the piece by Samuel Newlands at the WSJ.

Carry on.

Intellectual discourse

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader finds that his blog is quite moribund when it comes to seriously argued discussion. Most of the time your Maximum Leader just sits here at his computer and spouts off Kornheiseresque rants.* Indeed, most of you must come here out of habit more than seeking intellectual stimulation, ’cause your Maximum Leader hasn’t been putting up the thoughtful stuff recently.

Happily for all of us out here, Fear and Loathing in Georgetown is not affected by the intellectual moribundity that rules here at Naked Villainy.

To wit: the very thoughtful discussion of what your Maximum Leader will summarize as the “slippery-slope” possibilities in the gay marriage debate. The first post (with very important comments) is here. Then FLG restates the issue in the post available here.

FYI… Your Maximum Leader and Smallholder went around and around on this issue a few years ago. Some of the posts that you might be interested in revisiting… Here is a 2003 post in which your Maximum Leader throws out some of his thoughts about the gay marriage debate in terms of lawmakers vs judges. Here is a link to a Volokh Conspiracy post about why polygamy would be hard to implement. There are many more… But he’ll hit just those two.

For the sake of full disclosure, here is a link to another 2003 essay in which your Maximum Leader discusses gay marriage, equality and the state. His views on gay marriage have changed some over the intervening years; but the larger point about equality and the state is still valid.

After looking through the archives a little for some of those past post your Maximum Leader thought to himself, “Self, we really did write some decent stuff here once upon a time…”

* - In case you care, your Maximum Leader is a huge Kornheiser fan. He didn’t find the remarks about Hannah Storm particularly offensive; but he was also unaware of ESPN’s strict policy about ESPN personalities commenting on other ESPN personalities. In light of this, how exactly does PTI get away with treating Dan LeBatard the way they do? Also, as far as female ESPN personalities go, your Maximum Leader likes Hannah Storm. The one he can’t get used to is Cindy Brunson. Brunson’s eyes weird out your Maximum Leader.

Carry on.

Quick links and interesting fact

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is preparing for the State of the Union address tonight. For the first time in many years he will watch the address live. He hasn’t watched a State of the Union since the one in January 2002. He didn’t watch Bush’s speeches because he couldn’t stand to listen to Bush’s delivery. He always read Bush speeches. Your Maximum Leader has generally avoided President Obama’s speeches because they are lofty and sound magnificent, but are essentially lots of sound and fury signifying nothing. That said, your Maximum Leader is interested to hear what the President will say tonight…

Speaking of Congress (sort of)… Did you know that on this date in 1791 Congress passed the Excise Whiskey Tax. Passage of the act lead to the Whiskey Rebellion. Your Maximum Leader will have to thank a tweet from the Capitol Historical Society for that little tidbit…

Did you catch the post over on the Volokh Conspiracy about the changing Kibbutzim of Israel? No? You should. Your Maximum Leader was, in a debate on socialism, always willing to concede the point that the Kibbutzim of Israel appeared to be a successful implementation of the socialist idea. While he would quibble with anyone as to how the model would work on a wider scale, he was always willing to say that they seemed to work. (Lucky for your Maximum Leader, none of the socialists he knew - or knows - seem to care much for Kibbutzim and the subject rarely came up in a wider context of socalism.) Apparently now your Maximum Leader will no longer have to concede the point of a successful socialist experiment.

Speaking of Kibbutzim, your Maximum Leader’s mother had a good friend who’s sister married a Kibbutznik and was loving her life there. This friend’s sister came to visit in the US and brought along one of here friends from the Kibbutz. The friend was single and looking for a man. She was also up there on the list of the hottest babes your Maximum Leader has ever spent time with. If your Maximum Leader had been slightly older (he was about 17 at the time - she was about 22) and Jewish he might have tried to pitch a little woo in her direction. He would have failed of course, but he would have probably tried.

Your Maximum Leader, although he doesn’t have the money for it, was shopping around for a laptop computer for himself. The computing needs of the Villainous offspring are increasing and he would like to get a nice laptop for himself. He has been looking at a Mac. But he keeps coming back to an Alienware machine. Yesterday he was sorely tempted to make a purchase he couldn’t afford. Yesterday there was a one day sale on select Alienware machines. They had a M15X that was pretty hopped up for $360 off regular price (total cost $1500). He didn’t bite, but feels like it was a good deal. He’ll likely wait until the M11X comes out and sees how that compares in price to other models.

Apparently much hay is being made about this fellow O’Keefe. You may have heard of him a few months ago when he posed as a pimp and went to various ACORN offices and got advise from the friendly ACORN people on how to avoid taxes and such on his prostitution ring. Well now he has been (rightfully) arrested for attempting to bug a phone in an office of Senator Mary Landrieu. Talk about stupid. One would have hoped that after gaining so much acclaim he might have gotten himself an advisor who might have told him that bugging a phone is a bad idea. An illegal idea in fact. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much sympathy for people being stupid. James O’Keefe appears to be stupid.

That is about it…

Carry on.

An ethical dilemma.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been feeling rather funky for the past few days. He’s got a lot on his plate at the Villainschloss. Major repairs in the dungeon are costing more than anticipated. And now your Maximum Leader is facing a serious ethical/financial dilemma.

You see… Your Maximum Leader’s trusted hound got a cut on her left rear leg about two years ago. It was slow to heal, but it healed. We thought she was fine. Then she started licking the leg way more than she should. It got sorta nasty looking. But she stopped and it healed up again. Then at the end of last year she started the licking again. A wound developed. We took her to the vet. The vet prescribed some serious drugs for her. Our dog spent the next 8 weeks on various drugs recouperating. It looked like she was all healed up. Total cost of Vet and drugs: $800. About two weeks ago she started licking the leg again. We went back to the vet. The infection in her leg had returned. We got more drugs, but this time there doesn’t seem to be as much of a positive response to them. The Vet has now recommended we take her to a veterinary surgeon who could cut out the infection and see if there is something else in there causing the problems. Approximate cost: $2500. There is no guarantee of a favorable or final result from surgery.

Now your Maximum Leader is facing the massive amount of spending going on at the house, and the prospect of a massive amount of spending on the health of our dog. He has to admit that he has more than once wondered if he should even seriously consider spending the money on our dog. But every time he starts down that path of reasoning he feels like a heartless ass. At what point is a dog a dog and not a four-legged loving member of the family? Your Maximum Leader could probably swing the various home repairs and one surgery. It would require a bit of creative budgeting; but it could happen. If anything happened after that…

Carry on.

Dirty soap

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wonders how one can feel good about washing one’s hands when the soap dish (in which the soap bar is located) is dirty - or if the pump on the bottle soap is dirty and crusty?

Is your Maximum Leader the only one who keeps dispensers of cleaning materials clean?

Carry on.

Lesser Known Greek Philosophers

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader received this little bit of You Tube humour from the Air Marshal. It made him laugh. Your Maximum Leader presents it for your viewing pleasure.

Book One:

Book Two:

Carry on.

Pseudo-deep question

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was in the mood for a lamb stew yesterday. Normally, this would be a craving that would require a trip to a butcher and some cooking. But, since his Monday visit to the good Smallholder, he now has a freezer full of lamb. So, your Maximum Leader had to decide an important question… To get a larger cut of lamb and roast it, thereby getting the requisite cooked lamb for the stew, or get some of the smaller “stew-sized” chunks (separately packaged by the Smallholder’s butcher) and slow cook them in the crock pot to get the required cooked lamb. Your Maximum Leader opted for the latter course. This course also gave him a broth from which he could make a gravy.

So, your Maximum Leader cooked his lamb, made gravy out of the broth, then prepared his very simple lamb stew. While his lamb stew was coming together, he boiled and mashed some potatoes and steamed up some broccoli.

When all was prepared, your Maximum Leader, Mrs Villain, and the Wee Villain settled down for dinner. (The Villainettes are out of town for their annual trip to Mrs Villain’s parents.)

After dinner your Maximum Leader was cleaning up. He had a few scraps from the Wee Villain’s plate and Mrs Villain’s plate. He put them together, added just a touch of the gravy from the stew to the mix and gave them to his faithful hound, Maia. She devoured the treat and the sat politely — yet gazing longingly at the leftovers, until your Maximum Leader informed her there would be no more for her tonight.

Then the pseudo-deep question struck him… Would Maia be able to recognize a live lamb as the meat she just ate? For example, if your Maximum Leader brought his faithful hound with him to Smallholder’s farm would the dog be able to see/smell the sheep/lambs and know that if you cook up that beastie for a little while and then cook it in some gravy you have a very tasty meal? Would a dog recognize any taste in common between a serving of lamb that was cooked and fed to it by humans and a lamb it might have killed and eaten raw in the wild?

Of course the answers to all these questions is of course the dog wouldn’t know… But it made your Maximum Leader wonder for a minute.

Carry on.

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