April 27, 1997
The President's reading tutor "volunteer" program will cost $2.5 billion, according to a bill he is sending to the Congress. Gracious, that should certainly buy a lot of "volunteers." I've got a wild idea, but it might just save a ton of money: let's not volunteer to be reading tutors, let's defeat the reading tutor funding bill, and let's demand that public schools teach children how to read, which is what they are charged with doing anyway.
Radical, I know.
Whoever suffers from the malady of being unable to endure any injustice, must never look out of the window, but stay in his room with the door shut. He would also do well, perhaps, to throw away his mirror.
... J. G. Seume
If we would only stop lying, if we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out at once that there are hundreds, thousands -- even millions of men just as we are, who see the truth as we do, who are afraid as we are of seeming to be singular by confessing it, and who are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it.
... Lyof N. Tolstoy
Otis Croft walked up to his door that fateful night, blissfully unaware of the significance of having dropped a book at the gateway. An impoverished college student who lived in University housing near Lake Travis, he was also blind to the Austin city policeman who had approached the gate immediately behind him. The policemen stooped to pick up the book, a temporary loan from the fabled University of Texas Library.
"Sir," he said, "you dropped your book."
Otis, his key already in the door, turned his head around and looked into the facemask of the officer, who was dressed in full riot gear and armed with a large automatic weapon. The officer, whose name was Kenneth K. Kimble, slowly approached him, book in hand. As he came within the dome of light around the porch, the officer's neatly stenciled "KKK" on his helmet came into full view, and Otis, not for the first time, wished he were not so clearly and obviously black.
"Thank you," Otis said, as they fumbled the exchange of the book between their hands, opening the cover, revealing the due date.
"Hey, wait a minute! That's overdue!" said the policeman, as he swiftly took two paces back and moved to bring his weapon to bear on Otis.
The doorkey had done its work, and Otis swept the book and himself inside the door of his apartment, slamming it and bolting it in a single action. Now breathing heavily, he called out to his wife and kids to take cover. A thud on the door indicated that the policeman was already attempting to enter in pursuit.
After repeatedly trying to enter, Officer Kimble withdrew and called for backup. The Austin Police Department Tactical Squad was on the scene in under three minutes, Commander Fitz-Aryan Whitefellow in charge.
"OK, what have we got here?" Commander Whitefellow demanded.
"Barricaded suspect," shouted Officer Kimble over the noise and confusion of sirens and the tramping of feet as the Tactical Squad trooped into position. "Overdue property loan."
"I see," replied Commander Whitefellow. "Armed?"
"Don't know, sir."
"Did you see a weapon?"
"I saw a ball-point pen, sir."
"Good enough for me. Snipers, take positions!" at which four men leaped to do his bidding, ranging out over the parking lot and apartment complex.
At this moment, though, and even more piercing sound penetrated the cacophony, sirens from a panel truck bearing the label "Lower Colorado River Authority." As the truck screeched to a halt, six officers in combat gear leaped from the back and took positions around the truck. The leader, Colonel "Tiny" Bumpers swaggered toward Commander Whitefellow.
"Bumpers, Colonel, LCRA. What do we have here?" Colonel Bumpers growled through her mustache into a burnt-out cigar stub, her six-foot, six-inch frame towering over the other two officers.
"Armed suspect barricaded inside. Overdue library loan. We'll take it from here, ma'am" said Commander Whitefellow.
"No, you don't, Commander," announced Colonel Bumpers in her stentorian, command voice. "We're less than 75 yards from the lake here. This is our jurisdiction."
"Now just a minute here, ma'am. We have the right to this bust, because our man here," pointing to Officer Kimble, "was in hot pursuit."
"That may be true, Commander, and you will get your share of the credit, but once he goes to ground, he's ours. Read the regs."
Colonel Bumpers paid no more attention to the Tactical Unit, and began directing her men into position. But moments later, the air was split by the squeal of a chopper, a big one, hovering over the site, slowly lowering a large cargo platform into the parking lot. The familiar orange longhorn head of the logo of the University of Texas slowly came into view, as the descending cargo platform slowly revealed the silhouette of a massive armored personnel carrier. Ignoring the phalanx of men already lined up in front of the apartment, it rolled off the platform and into position directly in front of the apartment door.
Men piled out of the rear of the APC as it stopped, taking up flanking position in the thin cover of bushes and fence posts. The leader strutted over to Colonel Bumpers and Commander Whitefellow, the single gold star gleaming in the front of his helmet, his legendary dog, Reno, in tow.
"Buck Trubble, here. You in charge?" addressing the Colonel.
"Yes, sir, General Trubble," she said, taking the cigar butt out of her mouth, the end of it covered with a mixture of saliva and lipstick, her only concession to gender. "I'm Colonel 'Tiny' Bumpers of the LCRA SWAT Team."
"Glad t' meecha, Tiny. What's the situation?" asked the general, his diminutive stature radiating danger.
"Well, sir, it seems that there is an armed suspect barricaded inside," reported Colonel Bumpers, eyeing the general with suspicion and trepidation, much the way that the huge Danton must have felt about the puny but dangerous Robespierre. "Austin police force chased him in there on a suspected overdue library book."
"Was it a UT book?" demanded General Trubble. Colonel Bumpers shrugged and turned to the Austin officer.
"Y-y-yessir, I believe it was, sir," said Officer Kimble, trembling before the famous general.
"That's what I thought. We've had this guy under surveillance for quite a while now. Never thought he would do something stupid before we could set up a sting operation for him. Well, step aside now. This is University property."
"Wait a minute," said the LCRA woman. "We have jurisdiction."
"Our turf, our book, our bust. Read the regs." He turned to shout to his men, "Move in."
The troops moved into position for the assault on the apartment. As the engines on the APC revved up, and the battering ram slowly moved into position, the smoke and dust kicked up, obscuring the name on the side of the vehicle: The University of Texas Library Rapid Response Force.
Notes:
- Texas Legislature considers a library bill -- Under a bill sponsored by Mr. Goolsby, book borrowers could be charged with a Class C misdemeanor -- punishable by up to a $500 fine -- if they don't return materials by 10 days after the due date. In some cases, depending on the value of the material, a person could be charged with a felony.
... Dallas Morning News, 4/22/97 - Smith County sheriff unveils armored unit -- The sheriff threw a hamburger cookout last week to show off his department's latest acquisitions -- two 13-ton, military surplus armored personnel carriers. Smith County's largest city is Tyler, Texas.
"At first, we were just laughing about it, but the more we thought about it, the more sense it made," Sheriff Smith (of Smith county) said of the carriers. "We've had more than one situation in the last two years alone that we could've used them."
... Dallas Morning News, 4/20/97
It happened to me again, just the other day: someone said in my hearing, "All rights are relative. There is no such thing as an absolute right."
Let's get one point straight, before we go on. When a college student or some other unreflective thinker says this kind of thing, they usually mean that rights have restrictions, which is both true and obvious: my right to swing my arm ends at your nose; shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not a legitimate exercise of free speech; etc. So, the critique of that position is trivial, a mere confusion of terms, and we can dispose of it.
However, when an adult, reflective thinker says that rights are not absolute, what he is really suggesting is that the occasional collision of rights presents proof that rights are relative to some societal standard of order, and are therefore mutable. This is a far different and more dangerous attitude, harking back, as it does, to a feudal model of citizens' rights. The king had all the rights, everyone else had none except to the extent to which the crown was disposed to grant them. In modern times, read "state" for "king."
But, rights are absolute: that is what we mean by rights. Rights may have limits in their application, but within those limits, they are indeed absolute, not subject to the whims of popular culture or the winds of technological change. This is why the nation has erected the rigid and intensely rigorous standards of constitutional law, as though the system were divinely administered. The metaphysical foundations of constitutional law are visible at every turn, made apparent through the notion of legitimacy. The law must, at least in theory, vindicate the one deprived of rights every time that those rights are violated. When it fails to do so, it is correctly termed a miscarriage of justice.
The word that Jefferson used about rights was "inalienable," meaning, incapable of being surrendered or transferred. This is strong language. If he had meant otherwise, if he thought there were exceptions or qualifications, he was well equipped to say so. But he did not, nor did any of the other founding fathers. Of course, there has been considerable erosion in our rights since the Bill of Rights first enumerated those rights that were to be specifically protected by government, against government infringement. But that does not change the fundamental character of rights. They existed before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; their existence is independent of the Bill of Rights; and they will continue to be the measure of the legitimacy of government long after our own government has trampled them into the dust, which it seems dead set upon doing.
Do not be fooled by the argument that seeks to overturn the absolutism of rights in our society. If even one right is vitiated is even one case, irrespective of general or even unanimous consent, we open the door to the ascendancy of government over a population of serfs and begin subscribing to the philosophy of chaos.
All my life I have heard this talk about the power of art to bring people nearer to each other, that world peace will come only if more music is circulated and exchanged. Yet I have seen people deeply moved -- as deeply moved and affected by music as is possible -- and the next morning they would go into activities which you would call criminal and inhumane.
... Artur Schnabel
All contents © Copyright 1995, 1996 by Redmon Barbry ¶ 8:41 PM
