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In what may be the most wide-ranging episode of the 3WHH yet, the troika ranges from the implications of the Fox News settlement with Dominion for the defective NY Times v. Sullivan doctrine (and the old article that prompted Steve’s story of being threatened once with a libel suit is here), to an extended discussion of the natural law arguments on abortion—the topic aborted last week for lack of time—and lastly to a look at notable political movies with the unlikely offering from Lucretia that an underrated moral-political movie worthy of note is . . . The Devil in Miss Jones??!!
Needless to say John and Steve didn’t see that coming, and didn’t know quite what to say. And this doesn’t include our new segment, “Lucretia’s Featured Rant of the Week,” which debuted with a much deserved blast at the Department of Justice.
Steve gets his revenge at the very end, with exit music drawn from his favorite recent political movie that John and Lucretia have embargoed from further mention on the 3WHH (but if you’re curious you can read about it here and here.)
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For John on abortion: If you believe that there is a specific date or time when natural rights apply, then what about individuals born with conditions such as Down syndrome or any other physical or intellectual disability? Natural law would suggest that rights apply regardless of immutable characteristics, such as gender, skin color, or number of chromosomes. For example, would someone born without arms be denied the protections of the Bill of Rights because their arms did not fully develop? Would John say to this person, “Sorry, but because your arms didn’t develop passed week 2, you are not considered a person, at most 3/5th”?
If one believes that there is a point when natural law applies, it opens up the possibility of questioning to whom it applies, including groups such as black people, women, or disabled individuals. This position becomes arbitrary and goes against the principles of natural law. Designating the moment of conception as the point of granting protections is the only rational approach.
It is a cheeky position to argue that if one believes abortion is acceptable up to a certain point, it would be challenging to fundamentally argue with someone who advocates for slavery.
One can’t help but remember how Rachel Maddow got OAN’s libel suit dropped by a judge who ruled that her comment saying the rival news network “really literally is paid Russian propaganda” was “an obvious exaggeration.” The law as pure sophistry. . . . As the Founders and other early nineteenth-century thinkers knew well, without a virtuous citizenry there can be no checks and balances however well thought out and constructed the framework. Following historian Mercy Otis Warren, “True liberty can only result from a virtuous citizenry and cannot be managed or maintained by purely institutional manipulation,” I think the Founders would see their great experiment as a huge disappointment and, following Jefferson, question whether revolution might be needed (clearly an exaggeration, no?).
For Lucretia, since it’s already in my media library.
GASLIGHT, Angela Lansbury, 1944
I taught Liberty Valance as well. To my film classes. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Did not teach The Devil in Miss Jones. However, Lucretia is once again correct in that it does seem to have attained a certain level of legitimacy not usually given to that particular genre. It was even reviewed (quite favorably) by Roger Ebert.
John asserted that juries can protect people against biased civil service people in the JD. What do you do in the situation of D.C. juries which are far from impartial and aren’t protecting J6 defendants.
“A certain level of legitimacy” is a lovely way to phrase it. When I would teach American Government to a class of 300 to 400 students, civil rights and liberties came near the end of the course when young people’s attention span was really starting to wane. I would have to become quite creative to keep them engaged.
I once told the old joke in class about the homeless guy on trial for eating a California condor (which at the time was on the endangered species list). The homeless man’s defense was that he was hungry and that he found the condor already dead. The judge lets him off, but asks him what it tasted like. The homeless man’s answer: “Something like a cross between a spotted own and a bald eagle.” That joke got me “censored” by some Native American group on campus for insulting a sacred talisman or something. But it did get a laugh from the students, so…worth it!
Ha. Good one. When the first condors started getting chewed up by the new gigantic California wind turbines the enviros love so much, the newspaper at which I worked at the time dubbed the windmill: “Condor Cuisinart”
The “Civil Servants” at the IRS who abused their power against tea party and the “Civil Servants” at the FBI who pushed “Russian Collusion” and the garbage in the Steele Dossier never paid a price.
The problem is the bureaucracy got more power than congress.
Steve’s county supervisor friend must have been a teacher at Cuesta…otherwise I would have said Allan Hancock, but that’s in Santa Barbara county. And I can’t wait for the sequel when Lucretia goes ballistic over Ryan’s hand in getting Tucker axed from Faux News.
That protection isn’t enough. To get competent legal defense you have to bankrupt yourself.
I watched Patton the movie when it was released, and finally made it to my town, which in those days was probably a year.
I was 15 years old, and I didn’t know who he was, or for that matter any of the significant World War II generals with the exception of Eisenhower. The beginning of the movie where he does his monologue to his troops really surprised me. Like any kid during those times, I had been growing up on World War II movies which were mostly patriotic and pretty straight. Perhaps Kelly’s Heroes released the year before would have been the first World War II movie that had a cynical take on that war, which was starting to creep into movies as the Vietnam War dragged on.
According to the credits, Patton was based on two books, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago, and A Soldier’s Story by Omar Bradley, which were his memoirs.
I’ve watched the movie quite a few times, and at least once after I read Ladislas Farago’s biography. Farago not only wrote about Patton’s relationship with British general Bernard Montgomery, Bradley, but Eisenhower too, who is not portrayed in the film, but is often referred to. I could tell, by then, that the movie was very generous towards Bradley.
I’ve since read one other Patton biography, Patton, A Genius for War by Carlo D’Este published in 1996. D’Este is very critical of Bradley, and he said a couple of things that stood out. First, given Patton’s reputation, that maybe he was hard on his subordinate generals. It turns out that Bradley fired more subordinate generals than Patton did, and he less tolerant of mistakes than Patton was.
Further Bradley came out of the war with a reputation as a soldier’s general, with Patton being the martinet. It turns out, according to D’Este, that Bradley was actually very aloof towards his soldiers. Patton didn’t limit his interaction with his soldiers to those speeches he did. He did a lot of management by wandering around.
D’Este also makes reference to the World War II press, who didn’t like him, specifically Ernie Pyle, Bill Mauldin (a popular cartoonist with Stars and Stripes), and Andy Rooney, who often had unflattering things to say about Patton decades later during his 60 Minutes spots.
D’Este states that he did a lot of interviews of soldiers who served in Patton’s Third Army, and most of them bristled at the sniping by those journalists.
Anyway, regarding Patton as a conservative movie, I agree with Lucretia that it was meant to denigrate Patton, and extol Bradley, sort of like All in the Family did with Archie Bunker.
It mostly did not work with either character.
Oh, and by the way, Carol O’Conner who played Archie Bunker, also played Patton in Kelly’s Heroes. That portrayal shows Patton as a kind of dunce.
@alsparks — “Anyway, regarding Patton as a conservative movie, I agree with Lucretia that it was meant to denigrate Patton, and extol Bradley …”
That’s not the movie I saw (several times). Bradley is nothing more than a supporting character, the plodding Salieri to Patton’s Mozart touched by genius.
In their most important scene together, Bradley tells Patton, “I didn’t pick you. Ike picked you!” (For command after Normandy.)
As the movie continues, it becomes obvious that Ike was right, and Bradley was wrong: Patton brilliantly foresees the German counterattack, and swiftly sends his army to the relief of Bastogne.
Human life begins at conception. From the moment an egg is fertilized, we have a new individual thing. That thing is an organism. A human organism. That makes it a human being.
You can get all philosophical and say “Not all humans are persons!” or something like that. (And it might be lousy philosophy. Some good Thomistic philosophy should have no trouble saying “All humans are persons.”) But at any rate there’s no point denying the science–human beings begin at conception.
Well, to be precise, a new human genome appears at conception. Obviously, the sperm and egg were both alive before that.
Whether we consider a fertilized egg a person is shakier. It has no brain or nervous system, after all; so it might fall into the same category as someone who is brain dead.
Comparing a fetus with Joe Biden is unfair to the fetus.
Patton. Victim of historians. Victim of reporters. Victim of the NKVD?
Ok, sure. And it’s an organism from that moment, and wasn’t before.
Yeah. That’s where you can do philosophy if you want to.