Most of us believe ourselves to be normal, by which I mean that we believe our sensibilities to be reasonable and those that differ to be unreasonable, if not totally wrong. And most of us believe that the majority of people agree with us, because we’re, well, normal. For those who believe themselves to be exceptional, this isn’t about you.

Much has been said about cultural appropriation of late, here and elsewhere, largely because of its absurdity and untenability, and this has created a dilemma for those who passionately believe that it exists and is wrong, since they’re constrained to rationalize why they believe something so logically flawed while being smack in the middle of that reasonable majority.

This conflict of feelings and reason took hold at the Guardian, where the problem confronting novelists became a platform for the battle to be fought.

Clearly, if writers were barred from creating characters with attributes that we do not “own” (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on), fiction would be impossible. Stories would be peopled by clones of the author. Since trespassing into otherness is a foundation of the novelist’s work, should we restrict ourselves in some way, so as to avoid doing violence to those who identify with our characters? The injunction to refrain from “cultural appropriation” sounds like a call for censorship, or at best a warning to self-censor, an infringement of the creative liberty to which so many surprising people profess themselves attached.

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Feelings are understandably very raw in Portland at the moment. With good reason. For very pragmatic reasons, Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, has called for the suspension of constitutional rights.

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2) I have confirmed that the City of Portland has NOT and will not issue any permits for the alt right events scheduled on June 4th or June 10th. The Federal government controls permitting for Shrunk Plaza, and it is my understanding that they have issued a permit for the event on June 4th.

3) I am calling on the federal government to IMMEDIATELY REVOKE the permit(s) they have issued for the June 4th event and to not issue a permit for June 10th. Our City is in mourning, our community’s anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation.

4) I am appealing to the organizers of the alt-right demonstrations to CANCEL the events they have scheduled on June 4th and June 10th. I urge them to ask their supporters to stay away from Portland. There is never a place for bigotry or hatred in our community, and especially not now.

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The other day, a young lawyer twitted at me about my generation “spitting at vets” when they returned home from Vietnam. This came in response to my twit about students walking out of their graduation ceremony to protest the vice president. While it was unduly defensive, the more important problem was that it was factually wrong.

There were many of us who disagreed vehemently with the Vietnam war. There were a few who spit on returning vets, the “baby killers” to the most radical. This was not, however, a stereotype of my generation, but an anomaly*, which is why a baby lawyer today is aware it happened. So smart and so wrong at the same time.

I was far closer to World War II than a Millennial is to Vietnam. Our fathers fought, and some died, fighting literally Hitler. We were weaned on their suffering and sacrifice. Spare me the presentism of Yippies spitting on returning vets. My generation recognized the sacrifices suffered for this nation. This is one of the many reasons we fight for our rights while others believe them no longer applicable today. Continue reading →

There is a nobility in Cervantes’ Don Quixote’s quest to tilt at windmills despite the fact that we know he’s nuts and won’t win. It’s romantic to fight for a lost cause in the name of morality.

For the rest of his life, Unamuno urged his fellow Spaniards to practice quixotism, which meant adopting the moral courage necessary to fight for lost causes without caring what the world thinks. Today, when much of society and politics — both in and outside the United States — looks like a lost cause to a great number of people, we might do well to consider Quixote’s brand of lunacy.

There is an obvious flaw to the exhortation: morality is a highly subjective goal. Both sides of the same fight believe in the morality of their cause, and both may be right. They just don’t agree. That’s why claims of morality may be heartwarming, “without caring what the world thinks,” but unavailing as a metric for policymaking.

Following the outrage at Evergreen State College over whether Professor Bret Weinstein wasn’t social justice-y enough, the kids met with their dean. It produced some heated words that made the confrontation with Weinstein seem remarkably less delusional. Continue reading →

The use of Jeralyn Merritt’s “life plus cancer” as the rhetorical means of making the point that our notion of punishment has run out of room to inflict harm has an analogy in the health care debate. It’s hard to see at first, but reared its ugly head in the final paragraph of Elisabeth Rosenthal’s op-ed:

Today, Mr. Albert, 52, is not happy with the price of his family’s high-deductible Obamacare policy: $2,000 a month. Even so, he said: “The A.C.A. was a lifesaver for us. Everyone in my family has something that could be defined as a pre-existing condition.”

For the lawyers reading this, let me do the math: that’s a deductible under the ACA of $24,000 per year.* It’s unclear where that comes from, or whether that’s all deductible and co-pay is on top of it. There’s no mention of how much Albert pays for his family’s health insurance premiums, But if you add up all the numbers, it’s a lot of money.

“It’s expensive but I don’t have to worry about being excluded from insurance or about bankruptcy anymore.”

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The word “heroes” has become as loaded and meaningless as so many others used to bolster politics. Cops love the word, pinning medals on their chests to prove it, even if the medals prove nothing more than they need trinkets in addition to paychecks to feel worthy.

Three men in Portland, however, did what heroes do. A racist nutjob yelled at a couple of women for not being as white as his delusion demanded, and they stood up to stop him.

Taliesin Namkai-Meche, 23

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Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College, is no racist. Not only is he not a racist, but he is clearly a believer in social justice. Just not quite enough to be on the cutting edge. For that, he is now in fear for his safety.

“I have been told by the Chief of Police it’s not safe for me to be on campus,” said Weinstein, who held his Thursday class in a downtown Olympia park.

An administrator confirmed the police department advised Weinstein it “might be best to stay off campus for a day or so.”

What did he do to deserve such hatred? He objected to racism, but not enough. Continue reading →

Life after graduation is unsettled, and unsettling. Something as banal as a juror questionnaire brings the point home. My son hasn’t lived with me since that fateful day in August, 2012 when I tried to say good-bye to him in front of G-entry at MacGregor Hall. I couldn’t eke the words out, and he laughed at his old man. He’s my boy.

Since graduation, there has been a nagging question. Where does he live? Sure, home is where the record collection is, but that doesn’t suffice for the questions posed by official people. Where does he vote? What address goes on his tax return? Does he keep his New York driver’s license? Simple questions, and yet, the answers were problematic.

He took off for the left coast after college to work with a start-up of dubious merit. Neither we nor he was sufficiently certain that it would be a long-term proposition, no less permanent. From the outset, the promise was only a few months, pending demo day’s outcome. Continue reading →

In a less-than-bipartisan showing, Texas Senator John Cornyn has introduced a bill to warm the cockles of every law-and-order conservative’s heart. Radley Balko explains:

The bill would create new federal crimes, impose federal police over the will of local officials and voters and shield police officers from virtually any civil liability, even in cases of egregious misconduct.

Remember how the prosecution of individuals at both state and federal levels for violations of civil rights under the dual sovereignty exception to the Double Jeopardy Clause was the right thing to do because nobody should get away with a crime when you didn’t like it? Well, why shouldn’t police enjoy the same benefit? What, you didn’t see how the tables could be turned on you? Continue reading →

There are two things that can exist simultaneously: You can think that Trump’s Muslim Ban Executive Order was terrible policy and think the Fourth Circuit’s en banc affirmance of its injunction astoundingly wrong. Then again, two things would have to happen in order for this to be true.

1. You need to be capable of distinguishing principle from emotion.
2. You need to believe that the ends do not justify the means.

Can you do these two things? The opening paragraphs of the opinion are forceful and emotionally appealing. Continue reading →