Razing Babel: Two Sonnets For Too Xenophobic Times

In these Xenophobic times, we should recognize that Razing Babel was a blessing not a curse.   The punishment of imprisonment within a single, narrow tongue proves much, much worse than the inconvenience of dealing with others who don’t speak our native language.  Here’s why:

Sewing & Sowing Words

 

We’re artisans who sew and sow words.  We sew and sow words for, among other things, organizing, molding, and embellishing the world in which we’re thrust and thrust ourselves.  Words are powerful tools that must be handled with care.  And, yet, too often when sewing and sowing language:

Beyond Rawls’ Fiction: The Veil of Ignorance Is Real

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 3/2/2016 in The Huffinton Post

Justice Scalia, Queen Anne, and the Pragmatics of Interpretation

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 2/18/2016 in The Huffinton Post

Kennings: I've Made a Little List

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 2/9/2016 in The Huffinton Post

Poets and Lawyers: Birds of a Feather

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 12/15/2015 in The Huffinton Post

Biting the Hand That Feeds: Entitlements and the Fundamental Attribution Error

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 5/12/14 in The Huffinton Post

Letter to the Class of 2014

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 4/29/14 in The Huffinton Post

From Days of Auld Langdell: Crisis and Reform in Modern Legal Education

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 4/25/14 in The Huffinton Post

Obamacare and the Self-Made Man

Archive of blog originally posted 3/26/2014 in The Huffington Post

A friend left me a note last night: “My life has been crazy—But with God’s help it will get better.” I’ll come back to my friend. Let me first turn to another quote that drives many Americans crazy and as a result is endangering the life of my friend:

“Every American regardless of his means must have access to reasonable health care. In the absence of a single-payer system, every American regardless of his means must purchase health insurance in the marketplace to guarantee such access.”

What in these words (and their equivalents) raises such ire in decent folk? Americans on the whole are decent folk and selfishness or other immoral motives therefore do not likely underly their anger. Instead, I believe much of their anger turns on the myth of the self-made man. Let me explain.

Americans are proud of their country as a land of opportunity where all can succeed if they just work hard enough. We all know stories of those who rose from rags to riches. We also of course know our own “hardship” stories of pinching pennies to make it through law school or medical school so that we could be the lawyers or doctors that we are today. We pat ourselves on our backs for our hard work and our sacrifices.

By running such gauntlets, we believe that we’ve proved our self-sufficiency. We are self-made men. It’s of course nonsensical to tell self-made men (and those who are on their way to such status) that they must buy insurance. Such persons have already proved that they need no such patronizing. Furthermore, by our example we believe that we’ve proved that others can be self-made men, too, if they will just work as hard as we did. We shouldn’t therefore just “hand” out insurance to those who could have worked for a better status in life. Such “handouts” would encourage laziness. Like self-made men, all other Americans should strive to be self-made men (or the lucky children of self-made men).

Self-made men. What, though, does that phrase really mean? At first blush, it seems a straightforward reference to those of us who relied on ourselves alone, who didn’t whine when we were down, who worked as hard as we needed to work to achieve our goals, as a result achieved them, and thus became self-made men.

However, this “straightforward” definition doesn’t withstand even a sliver of real scrutiny. We are all subject to natural and social forces beyond our control. Despite our best efforts, we get sick and we suffer setbacks. If we made it through law school or medical school by pinching pennies and by hard work, those of course aren’t the only reasons that we made it through law school or medical school (or whatever other school or task you might wish to substitute). The pinched pennies and hard work numerically pale in comparison to the endless number of other factors involved. In addition to all the things beyond our control that could have gone wrong before we even stepped through the doors of law or medical school, we were lucky enough to keep our health throughout the process. We were lucky enough to have the teachers, parents, and other supporters that we had. We were lucky enough to have the fellow students from whom we also learned. We were lucky enough to have the police, military forces, and fire departments that kept us safe as we studied and whose expenses we therefore did not generally mind paying in the form of taxes. (Isn’t it interesting that we generally don’t question taxes to protect the health of our structures but go into a tizzy over taxes to protect the health of the persons inside?) We were lucky enough to have the roads that let us get to school and to have the safe food to eat (however cheap) that allowed us to survive. I could go on but the reader should get the drift by now: no one can be a self-made man in this contingent and interrelated world.

In fact, the more we try to speak of ourselves as self-made men, the more we contradict ourselves. Virtuous “self-made men” are understandably proud of their property which they hopefully charitably share with others. Yet property cannot exist without society — if there are no other people around it makes no sense to speak of property. If there is no one you can ask to get off your land, what could it possibly mean to say that the land is yours? To be a self-made landowner, you therefore require others. But then how can you be a self-made man? As John Dewey puts it, “...[T]he more we emphasize the free right of an individual to his property, the more we emphasize what society has done for him: the avenues it has opened to him for acquiring; the safeguards it has put about him for keeping...” To claim to be a self-made man is thus to renounce the claim.

Once we finally take the myth of the self-made man for what it is, we can begin to be sensible about health care not only for others but for the sake of “self-made men” as well. That’s right, I did say for the sake of “self-made men” as well. The “self-made man” also benefits from universal health care. He, too, could lose all his wealth and actually need his health insurance for necessary care. He, too, should not then simply go to the emergency room and stick the rest of us with his bill. He, too, could catch diseases universal health care could have prevented. His stock portfolio, too, is harmed by the lowered productivity of ill workers and by the lowered productivity of those with pre-existing conditions stuck in jobs that do not maximize their potential. Things that hurt our GDP hurt all of us including the “self-made man.”

Though the “self-made man” should also embrace universal health care, more humble persons concern me as well. This brings me back to my friend I quoted above. She is a woman who has worked hard all her life and who is under no illusion that she is a “self-made woman.” The Republicans who recently took control of North Carolina’s state government have refused to join the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. This hard-working woman is now ineligible for state Medicaid assistance and she does not make enough to qualify for subsidies under Obamacare. The March 31 Obamacare enrollment deadline is looming and in the meantime she has no health care coverage. Though not a “self-made woman” of means, she has done nothing wrong. She goes to church, works hard, takes care of her elderly father, is helping put her daughter through college, and is a blessing to this earth. As the minutes tick down to the end of the month, legal aid workers and kind law students at Wake Forest Law School are trying to provide this hard-working American with access to medical care. They understand that we (including “self-made men”) are all in this together. The rest of us should be as clear-headed.

Religious Hypocrites and Their Timeless Tactics: McCrory, Tartuffe, and HB 2

Pat McCrory’s HB 2 reminds me of Molière’s Tartuffe. In both cases unwitting victims are fleeced by people pretending to be virtuous. Tartuffe fleeces a wealthy man named Orgon. With HB 2, Pat McCrory fleeces every worker of employment protections including the right to sue in state court for discrimination based on “race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap.” (Those still doubting that please click here.) In both cases, the same ancient three-part strategy is used against unwitting victims who can admire (at least at first) the very man that fleeces them. Using Molière’s classic tale to explore this ancient strategy not only arms us against the McCrorys of the world. It also reminds us how classics not only entertain but teach and prepare us as well. Please follow me—this won’t take long.  Click here.

My Thoughts in the Washington Post on HB 2

“This is really a devious bill that harms workers under the guise of regulating bathrooms,” said Harold Lloyd, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Law. See the full article here in the Washington Post.  Katie Zezima did an excellent and thorough job with this piece.

Real Crimes Against Nature: N.C. Republicans Target Renewable Energy

Pat McCrory and Republicans in the North Carolina legislature claim to abhor the unnatural. Thus, they passed HB 2 ostensibly to prevent a crisis that they fabricated about straight men putting on dresses to peep at women in restrooms. (However, as I have noted elsewhere, this bill is really more about taking away workers' rights. See here.) But when it comes to real crimes against nature, at least some of these Republicans take a different tune. As more particularly described here, Two North Carolina Republicans have introduced legislation taking on renewable energy in the state. This is not only mind boggling in light of the common-sense future choices we must make about energy consumption and availability. It is bizarre coming from people who claim to know and defend the "natural." Where is the defense of the natural here? The sun rises in its natural place and freely and cleanly offers up it natural energy. The wind blows naturally, too, and also freely and cleanly offers up its natural energy. By contrast, coal, petroleum, and uranium are unnaturally ripped or fracked from beneath the ground or waters leaving the environment in a mutilated and unnatural state. Let's call out the true "perverts" here.

Running Tally of Billions in Federal Medicaid Money That Pat McCrory Has Thrown Away

Click here for up-to-the moment tally.

McCrory’s House Bill 2: A Brief Outline of Its Five “Parts”

When non-lawyers hear Pat McCrory’s claim that North Carolina’s House Bill 2 is just common sense while at the same time they hear the Department of Justice attacking part of it as illegal, I can understand how easy it is for such non-lawyers just to take the word of the political party they prefer. They probably aren’t sure where to look for the Bill and even if they lack this doubt they understandably might imagine the Bill has much too much legalese for them to tackle.

For remainder of blog, click here.

McCrory's Munchausen by Proxy

Pat McCrory has been dissembling on his Facebook page tonight:

Three Sonnets in Paint

Of course pigment and its forms cannot translate to word.  Paintings must be seen not heard.  Though we cannot speak paintings, we can, speak about paintings.  Thus, I share three sonnets where I try to speak about three paintings.  I picked these three paintings because they themselves seemed to try the reverse impossibility I note.  They try to be sonnets in paint.

The Old Testament & Same-Sex Separation Anxiety

The Old Testament contains powerful examples of deep affection between those of the same sex.  David tells Jonathan: “very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26).  Ruth tells Naomi: “whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” (Ruth 1:16).  As the halves of each pair would enter Heaven at different times, I wondered how they might address the separation and the fear that one or both might not be admitted.  Of course, these sonnets are my words, not theirs.  As such, and being a Wildcat, I couldn’t avoid language suggesting joinder of #DavidsonCollege and light.  Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas!

Cicero and Classical Rhetoric: A Good Man Is Still Fluent Dead

Much needless suffering (including physical carnage) flows from our inability to persuade with words rather than force.  Much of that verbal inability comes from a lack of basic instruction in the rhetorical arts that the Greeks and Romans perfected long ago.  Their manuals (such as the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Artistotle's Rhetoric) lie too often untouched  though freely available online and in libraries all around us.  Ignoring such works makes no sense, and I hope one day the vast majority of us will rediscover and value what the ancient rhetoricians have given us.  I wonder how Cicero might speak to us now about the power of word over sword (of dropping the "s" from "sword" and using the resulting "word"), and about the need to read, ponder, and perfect the teachings his earlier generations have kindly left us.  I've written the following sonnet hoping to capture some wisdom from that man of words who was murdered by men of swords and whose hands and head were cut off and nailed up for public view.

Cincinnatus: The Other Political Archetype

As we watch today's political nastiness, we should remember there is a better political archetype.  There is the Cincinnatus figure who serves out of duty when he'd rather be doing something else. In the legendary case of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (who died ca. 438 B.C.) that something else was farming which he twice abandoned out of duty to serve.  Can we not find such persons today to serve?  Perhaps wanting a political office should in itself be disqualifying.  Perhaps at Judgment Day all good politicians will speak as I imagine Cincinnatus speaking at his Judgment Day in this sonnet I have written:

Verse Translation: A Call for Harder Work and Greater Care

Too much verse translation is too free and loose.  We must take the time and effort to preserve both meaning AND form (including meter and rhyme where they exist) without sacrificing one for the other.  Though we can never fully translate verse from one language to another, we can come close if we’re willing to work hard enough.  To illustrate this, I want to give some French to English examples of my own.  I don’t claim they are perfect by any means but I think they make my point.  I ask the reader to pull the original French texts and compare them with what I have done.  I break my examples into seven parts (I-VII).

Overview of Wake Forest Law Review Legal Education Reform Symposium

Wake Forest Law Review Symposium Overview:

“Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform and the Lawyer’s Craft”

By: Steven Verez

On October 23^rd 2015, The Wake Forest Law Review held a symposium entitled:  “Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform and the Lawyer’s Craft.”  Over 200 persons attended the event.  The symposium was hosted by Wake Forest University School of Law Professors Harold Lloyd, Associate Professor of Legal Analysis and Writing and Christine Coughlin, Director of Legal Analysis, Research & Writing.  A symposium edition published by the Wake Forest Law Review containing articles by most of the speakers will be available soon.  A brief overview of some of the speakers’ topics and discussions is set out below.