Choking on Bullets

I've been meaning to write about this for some time, since the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v Heller, but I haven't really had the time (or I've had better things to do). Now, however, since I am sitting in the airport a full five hours before my flight leaves for Archimedes' wedding, I'd say I have time.

For those of you who don't know or never cared to, Heller was a case involving a DC police officer who desired the right to own a handgun to be kept loaded in his home in such a manner as to allow him to fire it on a moment's notice (e.g., no mandatory trigger locks). DC law at the time forbade:

1). The ownership of unregistered firearms.
2). The keeping of any firearm in the home not disassembled or disabled by means such as a trigger lock.
3). The registration of any handgun by a person who is not a retired police officer.

Put 1-3 together in their various combinations and permutations and you can see that Heller was out of luck. If he had been a retired police officer he could have lawfully owned a handgun, but as an active duty police officer he couldn't (this seems singularly poorly thought out to me, but that was the law). And in any case his weapon would have had to have been trigger locked or kept disassembled, which were contrary to his desire to keep a ready self-defense weapon.

Long story short, the Supreme Court struck down the district laws as violative of the Second Amendment. Heller (and by extension every citizen of the District of Columbia, and probably every citizen of the United States) must be permitted to register a handgun, and must be permitted to keep it in a "functional" state; i.e., ready to be picked up and fired at a moment's notice.

A blow-by-blow analysis of the opinions on both sides will have to wait for another time (which is to say, if people are interested, which I doubt). But I would like to discuss a few aspects of the majority and dissenting opinions.

Both the majority and dissenting justices agreed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to "keep and bear Arms." This is, not to insult [too much] those who have traditionally held the opposite view, patently obvious for a number of reasons.

The weird thing about the majority opinion is that it discusses the nature of militia at length, and then reads the Second Amendment as protecting a right to self defense. If you have trouble seeing the connection between those two dots, I'm right there with you (although I will discuss a possibility later). The other weird thing about the majority opinion is the standard of review that it [fails to] articulate, on which point, personally, I think Justice Breyer's dissent skewers the majority.

The weird thing about Justice Stevens' dissent is that it too discusses the nature of the militia, and its regulation, at length, and then proceeds to conclude the opposite of the majority opinion. The trouble with this dissent, I think, is that it never seems to get what the militia really is.

Stevens' confusion on this point, which I think mirrors the confusion of a lot of the populace, seems to be rooted in a misunderstanding of what the militia was in ages and cultures where it was a meaningful part of public discourse, particularly but not limited to 18th century colonial Britain. Confusion on this point has led people to say that the militia is the National Guard, or that the militia doesn't exist anymore.

Both points are wrong, both on legal and historical grounds. A militia is, and always has been, the entire populace less those judged to be unfit for military service. In the poleis of ancient Greece, for example, the militia was generally the entire populace minus free women, slaves of any gender, males under the age of 18 and males over the age of 60. In 21st century America, the militia is (according to law, 10 U.S.C. ss 311-313) the entire populace minus those who are not citizens and have made no declaration of intent to become citizens, women not in the National Guard or Naval Militia, males under the age of 17, males over the age of 45, active duty members of the armed forces, those who object to militia service on religious grounds so long as they do according to regulations prescribed by the President, and certain other not-very-important classes of people such as the Vice President and customhouse clerks.

You will note that neither of those definitions has anything to do with whether or not the individuals in the militia are armed. This is one of those nuances of military history that can surprise people, but it is true: citizens are not in the militia because they are armed. They are armed because they are in the militia. In other words, the militia is not and never has been the people under arms (as has sometimes been articulated). The militia is the people who could be under arms.

In other words, the militia is less than a bunch of guys with guns. It's really just a bunch of guys, not all of whom have guns - much less any kind of military training.

That last is another one of those nuances of military history that can surprise people, but it too is true: militia, as a rule, suck as soldiers. This is because they traditionally receive very little training - three or four times a year, say, for perhaps a weekend at a time. There can and have been militia who met more regularly and hence were trained to something resembling a competent standard (the "minute" companies of colonial America are one example; the legions of the Roman Republic prior to Marius and Sulla are another), but even then militia are generally second-class soldiers at best. The American myth that militiamen (all of whom were Minutemen, according to the myth we learn as schoolchildren) won the Revolutionary War for us through their virtue, patriotism, and grit is just that - a myth. Against professional soldiers (be they Redcoats or Spartans) militia can not be expected to prevail, and the times they have done so without transforming themselves into professional soldiers first are very rare.

But back to DC v Heller. Both the majority and the two dissents agree that at least one of the primary purposes of the Second Amendment was to preserve the effectiveness of the militia as against the federal government. They wanted, in other words, an American populace who could resist the depredations of a professional federal army. It doesn't take a genius, or a background in military history, to recognize that this is a tall order. It would require an exceptionally well armed and exceptionally well trained citizenry. At a minimum it would require that all the people in the militia had guns.

What kind of guns? This is a question that neither the gun lobby nor the gun control lobby cares to think about very much, because the answer is one that neither camp likes. But the fact of the matter is that militia, when they bother to arm themselves at all, have traditionally armed themselves to the standards of professional soldiers. American colonists tended to carry the same British Land Pattern Muskets ("Brown Bess") carried by the British Army when they could get them - and they used them for hunting and self defense as well as militia duty. Militia hoplites carried the same shield and spear as Spartan hoplites (and if you think that's because there was no such thing as a "civilian" shield or "civilian" spear, you don't know enough about shields or spears). Militia may be lazy but they aren't stupid, and generally realize that the professionals carry the things they carry for a reason. The difference between an armed militiaman and a professional soldier has never been the quality of his weapons; it has been the quantity of his weapons (sometimes - not all professional armies have been fully equipped) and his skill in the soldierly arts. Think about that for a moment.

Yes, 18th century colonial militia had cannon.

Cannon, in fact, were among the items the British were attempting to seize in the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The Second Militia Act, passed in 1792, provided for militia cavalrymen (who were expected to provide their own warhorses as well as their personal weapons and gear!) and militia artillerymen. The militia of the time was (or at least, was legally supposed to be) very heavily armed. As all militia have been, or at least, have legally been allowed to be.

This is a point that the Stevens dissent completely misses and the majority opinion sidesteps very awkwardly, and with no justification. But the fact is that militia have always had the right to be as heavily armed as they could afford, and indeed the very purpose of the militia, as the Court recognizes - to resist a professional federal army - requires that the American militia be very heavily armed.

This means not just striking down assault weapon bans (which ban semiautomatic weapons with certain form factor characteristics, such as pistol grips or carrying too much ammunition), but also bans on automatic weapons (banned since 1934 under the National Firearms Act), as well as bans on armored fighting vehicles, helicopter gunships, cannon and rocket artillery - in short, if the U.S. Army has a class of weapon, the militia has a right to own that class of weapon as well (sorry, males over 45). This is a point implied in United States v Miller, a 1939 case that held that only weapons bearing a reasonable relationship to militia service were "Arms" for Second Amendment purposes. The actual weapon in Miller was a sawed-off double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun, a weapon which the Court held had no reasonable relationship to militia service because it wasn't a weapon that a soldier of the time would have used (debatable, but whatever). But an automatic rifle certainly is a weapon that a soldier of the time (and of our time) would use. So why aren't they legal?

I'm pretty sure the answer is political. I'm pretty sure that most pro-gun citizens don't really care about whether they can own a main battle tank, or an attack helicopter, or even weapons as mundane as infantry fighting vehicles or anti-tank rockets. Most of them probably don't even want to own automatic weapons. They want to hunt and defend their homes, and that's about it. Most of them have no particular interest in fighting the United States Army. As for the gun control lobby, if they're uncomfortable with privately owned pistols, you can bet they're uncomfortable with privately owned cannon.

Whether or not they should be is debatable, I think. Big weapons are not particularly useful for criminals, as they are difficult to conceal, difficult to wield in close quarters, and tend to be expensive (both the weapon themselves and the ammunition; if the point of crime is to gain money, it's kind of counterproductive to shoot dollar bills out of your weapon). Personally I tend to agree with Xenophon that privately owned battle tanks are highly unlikely to be used in crime (at present actually they're highly unlikely to be used at all; people can barely afford to drive their SUVs). But never mind that.

So, a well-regulated militia is, among other things, a heavily armed militia. But what about self defense, which is an issue much nearer and dearer to the gun lobby than privately ownership of automatic rifles?

The right to own a weapon does not mean the right to carry it all the time or fire it whenever you want without consequence. It seems obvious to me that the Second Amendment protected Heller's right to own a handgun. But what about his right to keep it in his home without a trigger lock?

If you read the Second Amendment as protecting a right to self defense with a firearm (a right the Founding generation undoubtedly thought it had), then there's no real question in my mind that trigger lock requirements are unconstitutional. But, while the Founding generation undoubtedly thought it had a right to self defense with a firearm, the Second Amendment doesn't actually talk about self defense. It talks about preserving the right of the militia to arm itself. And approaching the topic of self defense from the well-regulated militia argument is much more difficult.

It's useful at this point to recall that the Tudors had used gun control regulations to terrorize Protestant Englishmen in the seventeenth century, and that George III used gun control regulations to try to prevent colonial uprising (look up the Powder Alarms). The Founders seem to have assumed that if the militia was going to resist the government, such resistance would be preceded by a lengthy period of tension during which gun control regulations could well be used to neuter the militia before any shooting actually broke out.

With that (pessimistic, but realistic) scenario in mind, it's hard for me to say whether preserving the militia outlaws trigger locks and similar precautions that prevent a weapon from being fired on a moment's notice. On the one hand, many militia scenarios would give ample time for militiamen to unlock their guns and proceed to the point of conflict. On the other hand, plenty of other scenarios don't - suppose for instance that British soldiers were ordered to break into the homes of agitating militia leaders in the dead of night and arrest them. Tactically the situation is little different from a robbery, and in such a situation our hypothetical militia leaders would find that a trigger lock effectively disarmed them. Of course, if they kept their weapons unlocked they would provide a perfectly legal reason for them to be arrested anyway. It's one thing if that situation occurs in a time of open rebellion. But it very well might occur before such a time, as happened with our own Revolution. The only way to prevent that is to make trigger lock requirements themselves illegal. But on the other hand, as Stevens points out, plenty of colonial and immediately post-colonial laws required storing weapons and powder in different locations for safety reasons, which would have the same disarming effect as a trigger lock in a dead-of-night scenario. There is a difference between wanting the populace to be able to oppose the government by force of arms and being paranoid, after all.

So for this reason, I conclude that the militia argument pretty clearly points to guaranteeing the right to legal private ownership of main battle tanks, but only arguably points to being guaranteed the right to keep "functional" firearms for self defense. And in fact, my personal opinion is that the militia argument probably doesn't guarantee the right to keep functional firearms. And I'm wary of reading in a separate self defense right into the Second Amendment.

In other words, I would have ruled for Heller in part and for the District in part. If I were running the District of Columbia I well might not have imposed a trigger lock requirement, but I think DC is allowed to do so if it wishes. (EDIT: see explanatory note in comments.)

Now, mind you, I'm not sure it really is such a hot idea to have an American militia. I think Iraq demonstrates plenty just how much evil can come from having a heavily armed populace in turbulent times (which, after all, is the main time you want a heavily armed populace). The Framers were generally wrong about the military effectiveness of militia (a point which Alexander Hamilton recognized); they well may have been wrong about the stabilizing political effect of a militia as well. I read one reaction to the majority opinion that basically went, "Doesn't [Scalia] get it? Kids are going to die!"

Well, let's say that they are. Frankly, when it comes to the Constitution, Scalia shouldn't care. A judge's job is not to ensure that the Constitution says rational things; his job is to say what the Constitution says, even if what the Constitution says is a bad idea. His job is (dare I say it?) to cram the people's decision down the people's throats to see if they choke.

This is a point that I feel modern jurisprudence has moved away from, and I welcome the efforts of "conservative" justices to return to it. Maybe if justices were a little more courageous in just saying what the Second Amendment says in all of its idealistic eighteenth century glory (something I think even Scalia shied away from in Heller) it would let us have a genuine public debate about whether or not the Second Amendment is a good idea, instead of dancing around the issue because everybody's afraid to say that the Framers were not gods.

Favorite Christian Misconceptions

This thread was mentally prompted by a couple different things, and by none of them in particular. I always think it's fascinating (and sometimes think it's depressing) to read/see/hear "outsider" views of Christianity (I don't mean that in a pejorative way - just to encompass the wide range of attitudes from "actively hostile" to "academically neutral" to "not a Christian, but find things to admire").

I think it's valuable to offer critiques of Christianity (or any religion), both from within and without the church. I feel like there are a few misconceptions that seem to repeat themselves when people do, though. I'm not sure if this is because the proponents of these critiques are unaware of their deficiencies with respect to Christian philosophy, or if they find those deficiencies unpersuasive (perhaps because Christians keep reinforcing these critiques by our actions?). At any rate, here are my favorite things that a lot of people seem to think about Christianity that shouldn't be (but maybe are too often) true:

Misconception 1: Position X Violates a Higher Principle of the Religion, Like Universal Love. I ran into this most recently in comments at Kaylee's livejournal. This argument goes something like this: Christians believe that behavior X is wrong. As someone who engages in behavior X, or sympathizes with those who do, this makes me feel hated. How can Christians hate on me when they and their god are supposed to love everyone?
Why I Think It's a Misconception: I think this probably stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the implications of universal love. The distinction I would draw in Christian theology is that between loving someone and being pleased with them. Jesus loves everyone. That doesn't mean he loves everything they do. One of Esther Selene's favorite quotes used to be, "God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way." For the parents out there: if you found out your child was the biggest bully in school, would that stop you from loving your kid? Would you be okay with their behavior? Would you love your kid any less even if they couldn't see why bullying was wrong?
Why I Think It's Still Persuasive: Sometimes people use this one deliberately. They don't want to be loved so much as to have their choices validated. I think this tends to happen most often when the choices in question are closely entwined with a person's self-identification. Other times I think it's a genuine misconception. The refusal of this theme to fall out of public discourse despite the leaps of logic it requires makes me think that we must be reinforcing it. Sometimes we really are hating on people, no matter how much we insist that we love the person but hate the sin. Love of person does not imply love of behavior, as a logical matter. But it does imply it as a people matter. The ability to love somebody and not have that love be diminished because you disagree with the choices they make is hard, especially when you don't have the hormonal assistance of a parent-child relationship. But it's also critical that we learn to do this. Conversely, it's critical that we understand that "Jesus loves me" is not a blank check to do whatever we want.

Misconception 2: It's All Too Much To Live Up To. I saw this one most recently in Saved (which I liked quite a bit). This misconception has two stages. The first stage is to realize that Christianity requires people to live up to certain moral standards, which nobody can live up to all the time. The second stage is to reason that, therefore, the moral standards must be invalid or relaxed.
Why I Think It's A Misconception: From its earliest days Christianity has been premised on the fact that "it's all too much to live up to." It is precisely because it's all too much to live up, we have always argued, that people need Jesus. We have always said that realizing that "it's all too much to live up to" is a vital part of developing a mature, adult Christianity. Anything less is a boy's version of the religion, ungallant and deficient. Critiquing the religion on a problem posed by the religion itself without also critiquing the answer the religion offers to that problem is grossly unfair and argumentatively inadequate.
Why I Think It's Still Persuasive: To some extent I think this critique is essentially arguing that it shouldn't be too much to live up to. People don't want morals that they can't live up to; they want morals that they can live up to. This may be because they think that's the only way to get morally right with the universe (i.e., they understand the Christian position but reject the idea that Jesus can make good their moral deficiencies). Or perhaps it's because they think that's just how the universe is, or should be (i.e., they understand the Christian picture of the moral state of the universe but reject it as an untrue picture of the state of the universe). And some people, I think (particularly those who grew up Christian and are having to reconcile the faith of a child with the faith of an adult), are just shell-shocked to realize that all their good deeds and good intentions and good efforts don't measure up, because they thought that It's All Too Much To Live Up To only for, you know, bad people. Not for them.

These shell-shocked people, I should point out, are not necessarily massively arrogant jerks. A lot of them are just confused as to why have morals that nobody can live up to all the time, especially if they come from a church background where morals are heavily emphasized (sometimes too heavily emphasized). The shell-shock can be particularly bad if they hit this realization and simultaneously with growing out of the first misconception and realize that Jesus loves them even if they're morally deficient. If Jesus loves you anyway, why bother with morals at all? What possible point could there be to morals, if they aren't a path to getting right with the universe? And if your religion has nothing but morals, well ...

This confusion is another one of my favorite misconceptions about Christianity. I think it stems from a fundamental difference about what the point of morals is. You might say that morals are there to point people the way. The way to what? The way to what I'll call getting right with the universe. To being a good person. To harmonizing with the universe. Whatever you want to call it.

Christians think morals serve an entirely different purpose. Christians say it's okay that It's All Too Much To Live Up To because Jesus' grace makes up for our inevitable deficiencies. We say that we try to live up to those impossible standards anyway because ... well, there are lots of reasons we give, no one of which is really a complete answer. Because they're good standards, yes. Because it's not such a bad thing to have something to shoot for, lest we get morally complacent. Because it's important to reflect by our actions the nature of our god, since (rightly or wrongly) people judge our god not by what we say or what he does but by what we do. But my favorite reason is this: because God likes it.

In re Marriage Cases

I've read the opinion in In re Marriage Cases, which I kind of felt like it was my responsibility as a lawyer to do. And now, like Kaylee (provisionally so named), I'm going to comment on it. Even though, like Kaylee, I don't really need to.

Except that I do need to, because I feel like this is one of those issues that besmirches the honor of my religion, and I hate it when people besmirch my honor.

So what do I have to say about it?

First, for people (like me) who haven't bothered to keep up with this, it's important to understand that for purposes of California law there is no difference between the rights of married people and the rights of registered domestic partners. That's right, none. You get into the relationships differently (though not substantially so), but the actual rights, privileges, and responsibilities are identical in California. This has been true in this state for five years, ever since the passage of the Domestic Partnership Act. We are not one of those states where domestic partnership confers only some of the benefits and burdens of marriage.

Nevertheless, as a result of Proposition 22, passed in 2000 by 61.4% of California voters, marriage was defined in California as between persons of opposite gender.

I mention this because it's important to understand that In re Marriage Cases was not dealing with the the issue of gay marriage as a question of rights. For purposes of California law there is no question of rights; there hasn't been since 2003. The question was, instead, one of names. Simply put, the question was this: given two essentially identical institutions, does the California Constitution permit them to be called by two different names?

The answer our supreme court has given us is no. Strictly speaking, the court has only ruled that they have to be called the same thing, whatever that may be. Of course, they're both going to be called marriage, but please note the technical detail.

Much of the majority's "analysis" is, I think, either deeply flawed or simply superfluous. The majority opinion reads to me like the justices were trying to make a statement in anticipation of the fallout. I understand the necessity of that but it's distasteful, and I'm glad the dissenting justices called them on it.

Nevertheless, I think the majority has a solid core argument. Stripped down, the majority opinion boils down to two points. The first is, given that the California Constitution guarantees Californians the right to marry, does the Prop 22 scheme violate that right? The second is, given that the California Constitution guarantees Californians equal protection under the laws, does the Prop 22 scheme violate that right? The California Supreme Court has answered yes to both questions.

It's the right to marry that's the thorniest problem, I think, because the analysis of the equal protection claim really depends on the definition of marriage for technical reasons that I won't bore you with here unless you ask. If the two-name scheme reminds you of "separate but equal," it probably should; it clearly reminded the majority justices of that as well. The majority tackles the question of the right to marry by analogy to interracial marriage cases. The dissent tackles it by analogy to tradition.

The essential question is this: what does it mean to marry? Leave aside Prop. 22. Does marry mean, as the majority would have it, to establish with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life an officially recognized and protected family? Or does the word inherently carry the concept of opposite gender, as the dissent argues?

To understand the legal difficulty here you have to understand that this is not a question of rights, policy, equality, or justice. This is a question about language. The dissent argues that the word marry means an opposite-gender union. That is, after all, what it's traditionally meant in California. I point this out because it's easy to see words like "tradition" in the gay marriage context and dismiss it as homophobia or merely being hidebound, and I don't think that's what's going on in this case. How else are we to understand the meanings of words, if not by tradition?

The majority argues by analogy from interracial marriage cases, from which they infer that the California right to marry is not the right to marry an opposite gender person of your choice, but rather the right to marry a person of your choice. That is, certainly, the way those opinions were phrased. Of course, opposite gender was understood.

Which side has the better argument? To be honest I don't think it's clear. I go back and forth myself. I am in favor of legalizing gay marriage as a matter of policy, but that doesn't tell me what the Constitution says, and what the Constitution says - not what it should say, not what is just, not even what is right - is the question in this case. On balance, I find the majority's argument slightly more persuasive than the dissent's, but only by a hair. And of course, I am biased towards the majority's result.

The reason I discuss all of this (besides the hope that some of you might find it interesting) is because I've seen some sentiments reported in the media about this case that just infuriate me. In re Marriage Cases is not, in my strongly held opinion, a case of judicial activism. Yes, ultimately, I think the justices had to make a judgment call about what they thought the right to marry means. But that is what justices do; you can't get more judicial than deciding what the Constitution says. If the decisions of justices change the law of the land, that isn't a result of judicial activism. It's a result of having a common law regime. Judicial decisions change the law in this country by virtue of their very existence. That's a bedrock principle of American law.

As for overturning the "will of the people" ... so what? In the first place, justices are not bound by the "will of the people." They are solemnly charged with ignoring the "will of the people" in favor of impartial application of established legal principles. In the second place, as the majority rightly points out, the Constitution is the will of the people. If the will of the people contravenes the Constitutional limits they have placed on themselves, there are but two recourses: change the Constitution, or leave the state. Prop 22 was neither.

I should be clear: I am not the guy you want at your gay pride rally. My views of homosexual sex are strictly "conservative" and, I hope, strictly textual. That's an uncomfortable fact, and I admit that, but I'm not Christian because it's comfortable.

But what, I wonder, do the opponents of gay marriage fear? I can only conclude that it's one of two things: they can't bring themselves to willingly grant rights to something they think is morally wrong, or they fear that the dignity of their own marriages will be impugned by giving rights to something that they think is morally wrong.

The latter is, I think, just bigotry, and suffers as well from a serious defect of understanding as to whence comes the dignity of marriage. That topic needs no more discussion.

The former possibility I think is not bigoted so much as narrow-minded. The fact of the matter is that we already grant affirmative rights to things I (they, we) think are morally wrong. That is precisely what American religious toleration is - and frankly I think a person's religion is a far larger moral issue than a person's sex life. And yet here I am (here, presumably, we are), holding simultaneously to our views that Christ is the one and only savior of mankind and supporting freedom of religion. Why? How?

This is a question I wish America's politically active (and inactive) conservative Christians would give considerably more thought to before they speak another word against the cause of gay marriage. For me, I can hold the views that I do about religious toleration because I don't think establishing Christianity as the state religion of the USA would advance the Kingdom of God. In fact, I'm convinced that doing so would be extraordinarily counter-productive to that goal. People do not fall in love with Jesus Christ because his church has more rights than other churches.

Similarly, I am at a complete loss to describe how prohibiting gay marriage is going to cause people of any sexual orientation to fall in love with Jesus Christ. Given that, I am in favor of the option which grants the most dignity* to the most people, which in this case means being in favor of gay marriage as a legal institution (I'm also, in case you're interested, in favor of gay marriage for a variety of social policy reasons, but all of those are secondary to the Christ issue).

As I said, I'm not the guy you want speaking at your gay pride rallies. But I hope I am, as The DM said, an important demographic - a conservative Christian who may disagree with the content of gay marriage but is nevertheless ideologically wedded to the idea that it must be allowed. If my co-religionists want to oppose legalizing gay marriage, well, that's fine by me - so long as they can tell me how doing so causes people to fall in love with Jesus Christ.

* It is, of course, people falling in love with Jesus that is my primary concern here. It isn't people's dignity, or even the gender of people's sexual partners. Pastor Jack used to say that his advice to legislators was simply, "Get to know Jesus, read the Bible, and make your own decision." I feel similarly about the issue of gay sex, and particularly the people who wrestle with being Christian and what the Bible seems to say about gay sex. I don't want to tell anybody who they can and can't sleep with. I want them to get to know Jesus, read the Bible, and make their own decision. And I wish my co-religionists would focus more on helping people fall in love with the God we fell in love with than trying to tell them what to do.

Actions, Consequences, Free Will, and Disneyland

Shanah posted a comment to the last post that I started to reply to, and my reply started to get larger than the comment box as I was composing it, and then it started to dovetail with some other thoughts I'd been thinking of posting about, and the next thing you knew, I was writing this.

Here's as far as I got in my reply to my Sweatshirt Girl:

Shanah: I think you will believe again. I'm pretty sure you believed it when plenty of terrible things had happened already. Terrible things happen because the whole world isn't full of kindness and courtesy and joy and self-confidence. The world isn't that way, and no part of it can be made that way just by believing or wanting it to be so, or even by the mere practice of kindness and courtesy and joy and self-confidence. But I still believe

What do I believe? That it can be done? How?

My family has at various times by various people been criticized for being out of touch with reality, or raising me or my sister out of touch with reality. I grew up "sheltered," which some people see as cause for censure.

It is and it isn't, because sheltered can have two meanings. One is that I don't know about all the bad things in the world, which most people would consider sweet but impractical. The other is that I do know about all the bad things in the world, and I have a retreat (a shelter, if you will) where those things are not.

It is this second kind of shelter that my family has always strived to create. We operate (or we try to) in the real world, which is full of divers terrible things. We experience those things, we're hurt by them, we deal with it. And then there's this metaphorical family space we have, called the Cove, where those things simply are not permitted. Take a trivial example: sibling rivalry. My sister and I did not fight. Ever. This is not because siblings don't fight, or because we happen to have personalities that just would not produce fights. It's because siblings fighting is bullshit, dear readers, and my parents decided that we would not have it in the Cove. And there was an enormous amount of effort expended to ensure that that kind of bullshit, and many others, were not present in the Cove. An enormous amount of effort was necessary because these kinds of enclaves are (the world being full as it is of divers terrible things) under constant attack or threat of erosion.

Of course, lots of parents decide that. People decide similar sorts of things with similar amounts of conviction all the time. Lots of them try with all their might to make it happen. And yet, it ain't always so. So what made it so in my family? Was it just luck? I doubt that. Twenty-four years is a pretty long streak. Was it conviction? I doubt that too; the idea that human decisions can just make things happen strikes me as pretty laughable. Maybe it was just great parenting skill? That's even more laughable than conviction, as all parents know. What gave effect to my parents conviction and all the effort that went with it?

What gives effect to any conviction, or any effort?

In certain Christian circles it's popular to talk about "free will," and to lots of people it's hugely important to believe (or not believe) in "free will." What exactly people mean by that can vary wildly. Permit me briefly to state what I think, with one example, which is necessary to finish the discussion above.

I think that God is potentially in total control of every aspect of existence. Since I am convinced by my own observation that I have a will, it follows that God could completely manipulate my will without my ever suspecting it if he chose to do so. I am of the opinion that, in the main, he does not so choose. Instead I think his normal MO is to take his hand off the stick to a greater or lesser degree and let me operate my will under local control, so to speak. More or less, I think I get to decide what I get to decide.

So I decide something: then what happens? I imagine the decision (my actions and the intent behind them) leaving the little anomalous bubble of local control that surrounds all people most of the time and entering the rest of existence, which God generally keeps under his direct control. It has to pass through this great medium of God-controlled "space" before the decision can reach or affect another person. In short, I think that I decide what I decide, and God decides (or at least gets the option to interfere with) what effects my decisions have.

This isn't to try to remove personal responsibility; I think it's plain that God likes the laws of cause and effect even if the world works the way I think it does and he could override them willy-nilly should he so choose (and even if, on occasion, he does). Let me give an example that's been much on my mind lately.

David is facing Goliath. His opponent a giant of a man, fully armed and armored in a hundred pounds or more of a semi-mythical metal from a bygone age (remember this is the height of the Dark Ages, and the Bronze Age ended in cataclysm two hundred years ago). David has answered the challenge and decides not to use unfamiliar war gear, declining even the loan of a sword. He sticks with what he has and what he knows: a sling, a weapon he is a proficient with, the deadliest missile weapon of the ancient world. He takes five stones.

Why not more? Not because five was all he could find; the army would have had plenty of sling shot. Rather, because if he hadn't downed the Philistine in five shots, he'd be dead. I imagine he picked the five himself rather than accepting another slinger's bag because he wanted to make sure those five were as good as possible. This is a picture of an experienced slinger at work.

So why not only one? Because he was expecting to miss.

David is plainly trusting in God to save him. Anybody facing a fully armored man with nothing but a missile weapon would have to, but he says as much in stirring fashion. And yet he is also trusting in his skill, and his choice of ammunition suggests that he has a fully realistic view of his chances: he knows he can win this fight if he can land a stone in the right spot, and he knows he's a damn good shot, but he also knows that the odds of actually making the critical hit in time against a man armored from head to shin in bronze are quite low, even for him. He trusts in God, but he also takes more than one shot.

There is a chance in this scenario that any crack slinger could win the duel - not a good chance, but a chance. And David is clearly doing his best to maximize his chances. That is what makes his statement noteworthy: that God will bring about David's victory. This would be wishful thinking if David hadn't accurately appraised the situation. But he had; he knew exactly what he was facing, and he was doing his best to skew the odds in his favor. He picked a good stone, he slung it (we may presume) as accurately as he could - expecting to miss, remember, as well he might.

But the stone hits home on the first shot, and does exactly what you would expect a sling shot to do at short range against an unarmored portion of the human body. David shoots, God hits.

David probably wasn't the best slinger in the army. For that matter, a man used to fighting in armor probably would have had better odds, even against a man as well-equipped and experienced as Goliath, than the best slinger in the army. So why didn't they fight the duel? Just because David was the king's shieldbearer? Well, maybe. But if it was so all-fired important that the king's shieldbearer fight the duel, presumably Saul would have either recalled David himself or picked a new shieldbearer for the occasion.

What really sets David apart is that, despite doing his damndest to win that duel the old-fashioned way, he was trusting in God to make his actions and his intentions mean something. This is basically how I think the universe operates.

(I don't mean to say that God helps them that helps themselves. God might not have caused that shot to hit. The response of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is always to be kept in mind. What I mean to stress is that for David, doing your damndest was not incompatible with believing that God is the one who makes your damndest accomplish anything at all, and that is the way people best can expect their decisions to bring about what they desire.)

And this is basically why I think it is possible to create a world full of kindness, courtesy, joy, and self-confidence. Notice I don't say where those things reign (which would have been my natural construction). They don't reign; God reigns, because I don't think such enclaves are really possible other than in the context of the Kingdom of God.

The whole Kingdom is not like that, or at any rate the whole of Christendom is not. But despite all the terrible things in the world it can be done. I've seen it.

And Then There Was Disneyland ...

Check out the last post if you haven't already, wherein I share some thoughts about the wedding and being married in general. In this post, I discuss the honeymoon.

Specifically I'm going to discuss Disneyland, because while San Diego was great, and we'd love to go back for vacation in the future, I don't have anything particularly within the purview of this blog to say about it. But Disneyland, now, Disneyland is a different story.

As I've grown older I've realized that there's a trick to Disneyland that some people get and some people don't, and for the most part it predicts whether a person considers Disneyland the closest thing to Eden on God's green Earth or a hackneyed money trap for the naive (the Golden Fleece, my family joked when we visited Disneyworld).

There is, to be sure, lots about Disneyland to be cynical about. As far as I can tell Walt Disney himself was kind of a terrible man, and it is expensive, and they are looking to squeeze every last penny they can out of you. There are more exciting rides to be found. And yes, it's all fake.

Or is it? That is the trick - what do we mean by "it?" What is Disneyland? If Disneyland is a collection of rides, fake buildings and stores, all the vision of an egotistical genius, then it's nothing to write home to Mom about and quite skippable.

Five years ago I put it this way:

Disneyland is not an amusement park in the conventional sense; it's a purveyor of magical lifestyles. Disneyland is about the total package experience of being wide-eyed and child-like and transported to a magical place where everything is good and sparkly and wonderful. Every love story that has ever been told, every prince charming that has ever loved, every beautiful princess that has ever loved, and every child that has ever hoped to wear shining armor on a white steed or a beautiful ballgown on a marble dance floor - this is what Disneyland is about.

If that is the "it" by which we mean Disneyland, then it is quite certainly not skippable. And certainly not skippable by me and Thayet on our honeymoon, of all times.

There were the rides (Finding Nemo is, in fact, worth the wait - so long as that wait is no more than about 60 minutes). There was the food (yum!). There was the atmosphere (swing dancing before dinner!). There was the new Pirate's Lair (yay!). There were the people - the folks who work at Disneyland who really believe in what their park stands for.

And there were, surprisingly, the shows. Not Fantasmic, although I saw that on Rivers of America for the first time and I'm glad I did. I'm talking about the kids shows: the Jedi Academy and the Disney Princess Faire. It's actually the latter that I'm most excited about morally, although the sheer coolness of Disney's new voice conversion technology and their Darth Vader are ... I mean ... DARTH VADER! Why will I never get to fight DARTH VADER in the flesh??!

Because I'm older than the age of eight, of course, which is more or less cutoff for audience participation in these shows. Let me back up. Disney has these audience participation shows for kids, wherein children from the ages of about four to eight are a) given Jedi robes and lightsabers, taught an attack combination, and given the opportunity to fight Darth Vader or Darth Maul (in the one case) or b) taught basic courtly etiquette and a dance suitable for princesses or knights (in the other).

What got me about the latter show was the way it was presented. I forget the exact phrase, but at some point the teaching princess makes the connection to these impressionable young minds that being a princess (or a knight) is about about being kind, courteous, joyful, and believing in yourself. There's a similar message in the Jedi Academy show about what it means to be a real Jedi, but this one struck me more (Lady Lillian also says that dancing is a wonderful way to express the joy in your heart, which is so true).

What got me about this show is that it so perfectly encapsulated the wonder and essential goodness of what Disneyland stands for. What makes the Disney Princess concept (and franchise) so powerful is that it stands for this basic idea, that there really is a world where kindness, courtesy, and joy (and if you think that courtesy and joy are incompatible you don't understand what manners really are) reign, where self-doubt is banished, and all is right. What made this show so touching is that it was basically telling these kids that it's all true, and you can carve out in your life an enclave of kindness, courtesy, joy, and belief in yourself if you are determined to make these things - being a princess, being a knight - your watchword.

Maybe that's a terrible message to give little boys and girls, because maybe it isn't true. But I don't think so.

I Got Married in the Morning

Well, the afternoon. And now ... I'm married. I'll talk about the honeymoon another time (Disneyland! I really need to come up with a blogname for ... er, that person I don't have a blogname for). For the moment, the wedding.

For the most part it went as I expected, which is to say that it rocked. There were a few surprises, though. I didn't expect to get to worship with my dad. But we did, which was really excellent, because nobody worships like my dad. I didn't expect the girls to have to fix my waistcoat's buttonholes with scissors and a hot glue gun. But that's okay. I got lots of compliments on it anyway, which made me happy for Thayet, and now it matches my tails even better. I certainly didn't expect everybody to forget about putting the communion elements out. But that's okay too. I value communion as something more than a mere symbol, but the body and blood of Christ are not grain and the fruit of the vine. We partook - we partake - of them anyway, because we are his.

And in the end, it was probably for the best. I would have been honored to have Vonsus perform our wedding, and I would have been honored to have the Cardinal do it too. But the actual solution worked out specially. To explain why I'll have to digress:

Not quite three years ago, The River (that's my church) had a message series on prayer, and one of the sermons challenged us to ask God for something really, really big - the sort of thing for which you hardly dare hope. They gave a little glass bead to everyone at the service, and put up a big glass hurricane jar at the front of the sanctuary, where it still stands. They challenged us to pray for our big thing until we felt God had answered, and when he did, to just put our little bead in that jar.

Those of you who remember that time will remember that Thayet and I were ... well, not going well. Pretty much everybody was of the opinion that we were bad for each other. And, just to keep the record straight, in a lot of ways we were bad for each other then (this is a useful lesson in interpreting the advice of friends, even when they speak with the voice of the Lord. Just because the prophet ties himself up doesn't mean you don't go to Jerusalem). So what did I pray for? I prayed for one day, someone to say that they saw God in our relationship.

And I prayed. And I prayed. And I kept that little glass bead in my special bronze box that my sister brought back from Rome. Maybe people saw it. Maybe they didn't. But the first person who said it was David Alvarez, who wouldn't have been there but for the communion mix-up, and he hadn't planned to say it. David's the kind of guy who knows how to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit even when he doesn't understand.

That's when I started crying.

I could give a blow-by-blow of the wedding and reception but I'm not sure I have anything to say about them other than squealing, so I think I'll hold off on that unless there's some kind of popular outcry. If you're reading this you were almost certainly there anyway. I will say, though, that the reception was an awesome party. Lots of people have said so, anyway, and I am of the same opinion. Everybody said you don't get to dance at your own reception. Well you do, so there. And ohhhhh, it was good. I didn't get to dance with everybody I wanted to, but if you dance, and you were there, you were invited at least in part to be part of the dance party. Because dancing gives form to the joy in my heart (more on that, hopefully, in the following post re: honeymoon). Because I understand the heart of David better when I dance. Your dancing helped me worship. Your dancing helped seal my marriage vows.

A co-worker asked me the other day if it felt different to be married. The correct answer, it seems, must surely be no. After all, if one has come this far, and if one has been sure, how much different can it be?

It feels different.

It's difficult to express why, or how. I have a sense of finally tipping over a threshold, and settling onto a foundation. I fit better into the world. As we sang at the marriage, here - here - I raise my ebenezer. This is where I belong.

But it's more than the feeling of finally arriving on station. I've felt that before. There is a sense of becoming that is different from other times in my life. Prior to now I have been able to look at myself and say, "I am this or that" or look back on a season of my life and say, "Ah yes, the Lord has been making me such and such." But I have never before felt these identity shifts in the way I do now, like I'd grown a ... not a new limb, that's too small. More like a new person.

Speaking Natalie that's now how I'd put it, but it describes how I feel. Let me attempt a more precise formulation. There is me, there is her, there is God, and there is a fourth entity in the room that is us, our family. The entity I refer to as "me" has expanded in a way I have no analogue for except for the Godhead; I am not just pledged to but am actually part of a real, suprapersonal entity. A living thing, not just a level of organization. It didn't exist before. Maybe it was growing - maybe in the instant before God joined us in the heavenlies it was substantially the same as the instant after. I imagine the same is true of babies being born - and that they feel the difference as strongly all the same.

I'm Getting Married in the Morning ...

Anybody else remember that song? Anybody else feel like I should be singing that right now at the top of my lungs, with a group of guys around me laughing and swinging their beer mugs (or Mountain Dew cans)?

Okay, I know what you're actually thinking: it's 0200 the morning I'm going to get married, and I ought to be in bed. Well, yeah. But there's laundry to wash, and it ain't washing itself, and none of you are gonna wash it for me. Besides, by the time you all read this it'll be too late, so there.

At any rate, there's no singing, no guys, and certainly no Mountain Dew (I do want to go to bed tonight!). Just me, and the sound of my keyboard clicking away, and the hum of the washer and dryer. I have my headphones on, but I'm not listening to any music. Just me and God, alone in the dark and the quiet.

I'm getting married in the morning.

Let me stop here and say that I am really excited about getting married. I cannot wait. I am ready to rock - this is my wife we're talking about, my perfect companion. I want to get this party started; I want to do this; I want to be about it, because this, gentlemen, this is the moment you officially become ... well, you know the rest.

So if the tone of this post is solemn, don't think that I'm sitting around over here moping. I just needed some time to draw out the quieter thoughts in my heart right now. I hope the effect is poignant rather than sad.

I will get married wearing exactly what I wanted to be wearing. Most of it will not be new. I will be wearing my old trusty socks, and my old trusty shoes, in my old trusty tux pants and the tailcoat which has seen me through so many evenings. Most of it is neither fancy nor of the best quality - my lapel will still have the old familiar tear (which nobody will see, because nobody ever does). My trousers are not tailored. My socks will be comfortable, and I've either misplaced my shoe polish or it's been packed away already. The shirt will be new, and the waistcoat will be hand-sewn by my love. That's as it should be. The waistcoat should be new, and special. But the rest is and should be old and worn and familiar. Not shabby, mind. But not perfect. My trusty old tailcoat has its problems. But this is my tailcoat. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Did I mention I'm getting married in the morning? Well, the afternoon?

Tomorrow there will be guys and laughing and noise and allusions, and I will fuss over my guys' clothing. And when I put on own clothes probably nobody will know that I am being thankful for the woman who will walk down the aisle to stand beside me. But I will be. And I will know.

The last momentous event in my life kind of overtook me before I was ready. I did better this time - I hope she did too - but it rather overtook me all the same. After all, I'm doing laundry right now instead of sleeping. The programs probably got done (if they're done) only just recently. There has been no time to reflect, to be quiet, to absorb what is coming before it comes. There probably never will be again. It's sad, in a way. That's how I used to live - absorbing and digesting the future in the present.

People sometimes like to joke with grooms that all they have to do is stand up there and say, "I do." I know those people mean well but I find such well-wishing offensive. That is not all I have to do. Weddings exist to solemnize our promises, because the truth is that promises carry more weight when they're solemnized. We dress in our finest, we invite our friends, we decorate, we choreograph ... why? To throw a party? For shame. We do it (or we should) to add weight and gravity to what we're doing. To make our promises more real. To sink them deeper into our bones. That's where they ought to live always, whatever the circumstances. But they don't.

Part of that solemnization, for me, is absorbing what's to come. Oh no, I most certainly do not just have to stand up there and say, "I do." There ought to be a good deal more to it than that.

Most of the ways I would have solemnized this event for myself did not get to happen. I didn't get to go down to the stone river to pray. I didn't get to sit in the cold at the feet of the Fallen Caryatid and mourn my mistakes and sink into God's grace. I played no Descent. I ate no dinner at my special table at Dave and Buster's. I did not get to worship while my father played the piano. There have been no long talks, no walks in the moonlight singing softly. I have not looked at the stars in the wide domed sky.

Instead there has been dull, paper-pushing work, and late nights staying up until 3:00 working on the wedding. Losing sleep. Being stressed. Not having enough time.

Which would you rather have? Now that they're both behind me, I choose the second.

It isn't idyllic, but it has one thing that the first option doesn't have: Thayet. We stayed up late together. We lost sleep together. We stressed together. We ran out of time together. And tonight, although we are in separate places, we are even doing laundry together.

This is the woman I first fell in love with, this warrior woman, this Lucy the Valiant. The one who loses sleep just so I won't have to stay up working alone. The one I can wade into problems with. The one who fights beside me - not before, not behind. Do you remember when I decided to propose to her, the song in a created language that I struggled to master that night? One of the lines goes Jorsoran kando a tome: we shall bear its weight together.

It isn't perfect. We'd both have liked to have been done by now - by this whole week, in fact. I wish I had done more - a lot more - in doing this together. But we did do it together, at the end of the day; we stuck with each other and acted like knights. Jorsoran kando a tome ib'tuur. I suppose to some people it looks like we've just been running around too distracted by planning to focus on the wedding. But we did a tome, and I can feel that sinking into my bones. I'll take weeks of losing sleep with my beloved over getting to perform all of my rituals alone any day. This is my wedding. There are many like it, but this one is ... ours.

Tomorrow I will arm in my tails one more time. I wouldn't want a new coat, I think. This one has carried me this far, and it deserves to carry me at least one step farther.

Turning the Other Cheek and the Two Swords

I was going to post my thoughts about Harry Potter now that I've finished the series, but that will have to wait for another post.

Xenophon got me Bioshock for Christmas, and given my new workingman's game playing schedule I haven't gotten very far into it. But one of my very early fights was worth relating, because it got me thinking:

I was coming out of an elevator in the abandoned underwater art-deco city of Rapture, whose inhabitants (as far as I could tell) had been mutated and deformed by something (some of which I suspected I had just foolishly injected into my own body, altering my own genetic code) and were none too happy to see me. Well, as the elevator opened I could hear a mother sobbing hysterically off to my right. From the sound of it her baby daughter was dead, and she was standing over the corpse, asking it why it wouldn't get up and come to mommy. I cautiously poked my head out of the elevator and sure enough, there was a young woman with her back to me, pleading with something in a stroller. There was a revolver on the ground behind her, which I quietly picked up (I had been attacked several times, after all). It turned out to be loaded. The woman still hadn't heard me.

Now, of course I knew perfectly well that the woman was 98 3/4% likely to attack me the moment I revealed my presence. The prudent thing to do would have been to blow the back of her head off before she realized I was even there. But of course there was the slightest chance that she wasn't a mutant. What if her baby was the homicidal one? At any rate I just couldn't bring myself to execute this poor distraught young mother, who might just have been trapped like me in this nightmare of an enigma. I stepped forward and tapped her on the back.

Of course she turned out to be crazed and mutated, and she blamed me for her baby's death, and proceeded to try and bash my skull in with a pipe wrench, so I zapped her with a fistful of lightning (genetic code altered, remember?) and beat her head in with a pipe wrench (didn't want to expend a bullet).

Well, what would you have done?

The point was that even as I rifled through her pockets (hey, I'm not stupid! Mysterious underwater city full of homicidal maniacs!), I felt bad about what I had done. I mean, poor woman was probably so driven out of her mind from genetic modification that she didn't really know what she was doing. Maybe she really did believe that I had killed her baby. And now I was searching her hideously deformed corpse as it lay in a pool of blood. Not that I had a choice, of course; it was her or me. But I still felt bad.

This is the best kind of video game violence, the kind that strikes a balance between the three extremes of "violence is always bad," "violence is good," and "violence has no consequences." Here was the sort of situation a philosopher might posit: if you were trapped in an undersea city with a woman who believed you had killed her daughter, whom it was impossible to sneak by but whom you must get past, who could not be incapacitated, and who would kill you if you did not kill her ... what would you do? Oh, and toss in the fact that you're in short-wave radio contact with a man who is begging you to save his wife and kids, and who is the only person down here who has not manifested a desire to kill you upon your first acquaintance.

To me, at least, it's a thorny and disturbing problem, and therein lies the value. Here is simulated violence that is actually saying something quite valuable, and quite nuanced: this encounter says, "Violence is messy, violence is gross, violence is bad, but violence was also your only option." Well, unless you count letting my skull get bashed in by a pipe wrench an "option."

I mean, it's not.

Is it?

Today while researching the topic of communion during weddings (what's your opinion?) I stumbled on a passage of Scripture that I had read many times but never really noticed. Everybody is familiar with Matthew 5:39:

But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.

And plenty of people know of Matthew 26:52:

Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.

But listen to what Jesus said to his disciples before uttering that famous line later that evening (Luke 22:35-38):

Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?"

"Nothing," they answered.

He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment."

The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords."

"That is enough," he replied.

I have heard it preached that by "that is enough" Jesus was saying, "That's enough of that;" i.e., that he was telling them not to resort to violence. But plainly that is not true. Jesus is telling his followers to arm themselves. And then when the moment comes to defend him, and Peter actually uses one of the two swords, Jesus tells him to stop.

What's going on?

Here's what I think is happening. Jesus anticipates the possibility of violence that evening. He is perfectly ready to be arrested, but he foresees the possibility of things getting out of hand, and he doesn't want his arrestors to get the idea of butchering his disciples just for good measure. So he tells them, essentially, "Uncertain times are coming. I am telling you to prepare." He obviously didn't intend them to defend him with those swords, but it also seems unlikely he didn't intend for them to be used ever. And he obviously didn't intend for the group to be heavily armed, if he was content with two swords out of twelve men.

To me, this smacks of telling his men to arm themselves in case they need to defend themselves as a last resort. And that's what's interesting - it's as if Jesus is saying, "Yes, there are times when you will need to use deadly force." And what about turning the other cheek? Well, it occurs to me that Jesus said to turn your cheek to a slap, and perhaps he chose his words with care. Maybe he didn't say, "Whoever stabs you through the chest, turn your back to him also" for a reason.

Which leaves the age old question of when it's okay for an individual to use deadly force as an individual. Which I think is a question we need to explore ourselves, and with our youth. And any exploration of that must begin with the simple acknowledgment that violence is a terrible thing.

Most people say that video games desensitize you to violence, but I've never believed that. There are basically four ways that violence can be presented in a videogame. You can present it as good, hopefully with your tongue in cheek (e.g., Syndicate). You can present it as always bad, which basically nobody does (except for the news media) due to technological and literary limitations. You can present it as having no consequences, which in my opinion is the worst of all (e.g., games where you kill people but there is no blood, no gore, and no attempt to present the dead as real people). All of these three options I think are bad, unless you choose them for satirical effect. Whether they desensitize people to violence is another matter, but they're certainly bad.

And then you can present violence in a fourth way: that violence is not good, but neither is it always bad, and it does have consequences. A game like that looks violence straight in the eye and says, "This is a terrible thing, but there are times when it is appropriate." Which in my opinion is a heck of a lot better than pretending that there is never an appropriate time to deploy deadly force. In a world where most people never experience violence and those who do often experience it used inappropriately, I've long felt that video games are one tool we can use to sensitize ourselves to violence.

Just one tool, mind you. I'm certainly not claiming that video game violence lets you know what the real thing is like, and you'd be a great fool if you thought otherwise (either as a hypothetical superpredator or as a ratings-seeking news anchor, mind). But no single tool, not even personal real-life experience, can teach you everything you need to know about the morality of violence, and I do think that video games are one tool that can be useful. They can help.

I'm pretty confident I did the morally right thing by bashing that woman's skull in (I could just say "killing that woman," but the whole point of this exercise is not to ignore what violence really means, remember?). But I still feel like it was a terrible thing to do.

Which is probably the way it should be.

RE: The Word of God

I've recently had cause to reflect upon what exactly I think the Bible is. Here's a working definition: a collection of writings from antiquity that happen to be true, and whose truth God intends to control when in conflict with other purported truths. Parse:

That the Bible is a collection of writings from antiquity is, I think, noncontroversial. I don't think I know anybody who doubts that the entire thing was written in the window of 1500 BC - 200 AD (to give a century's or so margin for error on both ends). It's worth remembering, though, that these are really quite ordinary documents - or, at any rate, more ordinary than the name Holy Scripture tends to conjure. The documents are extraordinary in that they existed at all (in the case of the narrative histories, for example, which were pretty clearly written at least a hundred years before Greek historiography really took off) and in that they are extant and in their content, but the actual form of the documents is relatively mundane. Narrative histories, records of prophecy, lyric sheets, poetry, and semi-personal correspondence - none of those types of documents are especially weird, with the possible exception of records of prophecy, and even those aren't weird in the context of antiquity. "Holy Scripture" is not a form of document I am very familiar with, and I don't have the intellectual tools to deal with it. But I know more or less what to do with historical narrative, lyric sheets, and letters.

Next, I believe that the Bible "happens to be true." I don't mean to say that it is true by accident, of course; I think it's true because God spoke true things and so orchestrated the course of human events that those true things remain extant. By "happens" I mean to convey that I think the Bible is true because I think it is true, and not because it is Holy Scripture, or The Bible.* That is to say, I think the Bible is true because it is true, and not because it is the sort of thing that must be true. Granted it was, I think, spoken by an entity that only speaks truths - but that makes the Bible exactly as true as if God were to speak the Pythagorean Theorem, at least as far as I can work out.

And then we get to the question of "true." The common question here seems to be whether one believes that the Bible is "literally" true or not. I don't think that's a particularly sophisticated question, and I dislike the way it seems to have become a political codeword. One gets the distinct impression when listening to somebody ask whether one believes that the Bible is "literally" true that nobody in their right mind could possibly believe that anything is "literally" true. Here are examples of things that I believe in quite wholeheartedly but probably less than what seems to be meant by "literally:" my own existence as a contiguous individual, my family's love for me, the existence of George Washington, the course of the Battle of Gettysburg, the fact that I know how to dance, and the evidence of my senses that I am presently wearing a blue shirt.

I hope that will dispose of the "literally" label. To continue in the same vein, I would say this: I tend to believe the Bible more the more important the statement in question is to the author's purpose. For instance, I quite doubt that the Philistines had three thousand chariots when they faced Saul at Micmash (1 Sam. 13:4-6). I just don't see how the logistics of that would work, and it's wildly outside of military historical precedent. And because the author does not seem to be noting the size of the Philistine chariot arm as miraculous I am inclined to believe that somebody, at some time, made an error.

Contrast that with an episode where the author is plainly attempting to relate a purported miracle, such as the consumption by fire from heaven of a waterlogged bull upon waterlogged wood upon a waterlogged pile of rocks surrounded by a moat filled with water (1 Kings 18:30-38). That sort of thing strains credulity, to be sure. But in this case, the author is plainly aware that what he relates seems impossible, and is writing it down precisely because he is aware that it is an extraordinary event outside of normal human experience. Or at any rate that seems to me to be his perfectly obvious intent. It does me no good, in that case, to say that such an event is so outside of normal human experience that I will not believe it happened.

Now of course I might say that the author's obvious intent is to be allegorical, and many people do. In the face of reasoned and reasonable literary analysis to that effect, I'm perfectly willing to believe that a given passage of Scripture is allegorical. It is, after all, simply an ancient document. But it seems incredible to me to believe that the default for ancient writers was to be allegorical when they discussed miracles, as if the majority of the ancient world shared the modern skeptic's assumption that such things Simply Don't Happen, or have to have happened a hundred times before they can happen once.

And of course when I discuss "truth" in this context I mean something more than a recitation of historical facts. I think it is pretty plain that the Bible teaches that there is no entity equal to God, that the Holy Spirit is a person, that men and the natural world are not as they should be, or that neither men nor the natural world can be as they should be except through Jesus Christ, or that not being as they should be is pretty much the most terrible thing in existence. Those are factual assertions, but not of the historical kind, and they are the sort of assertions that I think the Bible is really much more concerned about than whether Elijah was "literally" taken into heaven by a chariot of fire or whether Mary was "literally" a "virgin."

Which brings us to that truth being controlling. I think Lewis had it right when he put it this way rather than some of the other, more common formulations. The Bible does not really make any factual assertions at all about chemistry, for instance (or at least, I don't think it does). Consequently I have no trouble at all believing what my chemistry professors tell me about the behavior of atoms and molecules (subject to the usual skepticism anybody should bring to academic assertions). On the other hand the Bible does quite clearly assert as fact that there is no entity equal to God. Consequently I have a good deal of trouble believing anybody, or any part of any religion, who tells me differently.

In addition, I think that the Bible is set above other assertions which may be "true" in the ordinary sense (this sense, combined with the previous sense of the Bible being controlling, comprise the greater part of what I mean when I say that the Bible is "holy"). For instance, the Bible does not explicitly teach me to be gentlemanly. It asserts as true fact that I ought to be kind, and good, and compassionate, and loving. But as for whether I should afford women more social rights than men, or treat them with separate but equal courtesy, or uphold my personal honor or that of my family name ... well, all of those are (I assert) good ideas which will profit me and those around me. But they aren't Biblical. They aren't the same level of true, if you will, as that I should be kind and good and compassionate.

* Precisely why I think the documents are true is outside the scope of this post.

Veterans Day

This post comes quite late, but I didn't want Veterans Day to pass without some kind of reflection. I'm reading Republic Commando: True Colors (by the truly excellent Karen Traviss) and recently finished reading the Iliad all the way through (success at last!), both of which have touched me quite deeply, so it seemed like an appropriate time in my emotional life to deal with the subject of Veterans Day.

It's common on or around Veterans Day to hear people expressing thanks (to God or otherwise) for the men and women who have served to secure our liberties and our way of life. I recently read a number of DAR essays expressing such sentiments.

This kind of talk always makes me uncomfortable. Undoubtedly there have been a great many of American veterans who served and died with the result that our liberties and way of life were secured from direct attack. The veterans of the Revolutionary War come most immediately to mind. But even they ... I mean, how many of those men went to war for the purpose of securing the birth of the nascent nation? Certainly not the vast majority of the veterans of 1776. And what about the veterans of our other wars? Did the Spanish American War really threaten our liberties? Did even World War II (our way of life, perhaps. Our liberties? Who really thinks an Axis victory would have resulted in the conquest of America and not a peace treaty?)? Does the current war in Iraq really defend our liberties or our way of life?

I am thankful that for most of its history this nation has had the good sense to have a War Department rather than a Department of Defense. Not that I oppose the bureaucratic unification of the DoD, but the name ... I mean, really, come on. Whenever people talk about our wars as defensive in nature, I cringe. I suppose it's the classicist in me. In roughly two hundred years of history the Republic of Rome was at peace for twelve. All of those wars were, officially, to defend Roman liberties and the Roman way of life. Did you know that? And in the end? Rome had conquered, quite by accident, the whole of the Mediterranean. Oh, and the republican way of life was lost forever despite the efforts of some very talented well-meaning patriots.

I don't want that for America. I don't want us to go on making defensive war until our nation crashes down around our ears. I want us to call our wars what they are - defensive, aggressive, opportunistic, preemptive, vengeful, whatever. I doubt politicians will do so within my lifetime. But the American citizenry might.

And what about the soldiers? I'll tell you why I celebrate Veterans Day (in my quiet, internal, Natalian way). It's not because the millions of American veterans have secured my liberties (I won't even get into securing my way of life. Does it deserve to be secured?). Some of them have, and some of them haven't. Very few of those who have secured my liberties fought and died, when the chips were down, to secure the liberties of a stranger who would live decades or even centuries after they were dust and gone. Some of the veterans I would like to honor on Veterans Day didn't serve in any conflicts at all.

But they were all soldiers.

What is a soldier? In Knights of the Old Republic a soldier of the Old Republic, Carth Onasi, debates with a Mandalorian warrior the difference between a soldier and a warrior. Here's a definition of "warrior" that fits for the warriors of Mandalore and with the warriors of Homer:

A warrior fights for his good and the good of all his people.

Sarpedon was a warrior. Achilles was a warrior. And a soldier? Here's a definition of "soldier" that fits for the soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic and for the United States of America:

A soldier fights for the good of his people and surrenders that good for himself.

Achilles was the greatest warrior of his age but not a soldier until the last year of his life. Rodger Young, now ... Rodger Young was a soldier.

Not all American soldiers have secured my liberties. All of them surrendered theirs when they signed up. An American soldier does not, like Achilles, reap the reward of his efforts. An American soldier might or might not do something that secures my liberty during his career, but one thing is sure: for the duration of that career he gives up most of the liberties that make America what she is. He gives up what he has for the chance to give to his people a spoil of war that he himself may never see.

Until, that is, he puts away his uniform, hangs up his weapon, and becomes a veteran.

I'm aware that it's more complicated than that. I'm aware that many citizens become soldiers with patriotism way down on the list of their motivations, and that some become soldiers with no patriotic motivations whatsoever. I'm aware, I think as much as a civilian can be, of why fighting men actually fight. But I also think that what I have written, even though it's only part of the story, is true. And that's why I celebrate Veterans Day.

Seussical Review

Okay, it's time for an art post. Actually, since I don't have a lot of time, I'm basically going to repost this from an e-mail I sent to my family. I have not edited this much for prettiness, but hopefully the excess of excitement will come through to cover that deficiency.

Caveat: I am not a professional theatre critic. Actually, technically, as of this very moment I'm not a professional anything. But I do know a thing or two about theatre, and in any case, you don't have to be a professional critic for people to find your thoughts valuable. So hopefully some people will find this valuable.

This post is to review Seussical, Berkeley Playhouse's first production, which is showing at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley now through December 2. Short version, for those who trust me enough to do what I say: go see it. Now. Don't wait for Thursday. Don't accept any excuses like "there's no show scheduled for today" or "the cast and crew aren't here today." You go there, take whoever's in the building by the throat, and demand that they get the cast and crew there so you can see this show.

Longer version, for those who trust me enough to read my walls of text: I got to attend opening night, and that was a really good show. I've been wanting to review it since I saw it. So I am.

Seussical's plot is based on Horton Hears a Who, the story of our favorite faithful and honest elephant who discovers a tiny world atop a dust speck that only he (by virtue of his keen elephant ears) can hear, and his attempts to save the dust speck from disbelieving bullies in the Jungle of Nool. It also weaves in (and reimagines) elements from Horton Hatches the Egg, "Gertrude McFuzz," The Butter Battle Book, I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sallew, The Cat in the Hat, and a number of other Seuss stories.

The show flopped on Broadway, and if you listen to the soundtrack and look up some pictures online I think you can see why. The material is good (the songs are quite catchy, there's plenty of wit in the book, etc.) but schizophrenic. It doesn't know what it wants to be. Musically it bounces around from torch songs to rock to swing to gospel to Broadway. Thematically, it wavers between being a celebration of Seuss' works and being a celebration of childhood imagination. Material like this needs a firm hand to bring it line, which is just what director Kimberly Dooley and her team have brought to the show (side note: this will be the only full name in this post. Thayet pointed out that there might be Actors' Equity Association rules relating to reviews or something, and we'd hate to get anybody in trouble. If you're reading this out of professional interest, it shouldn't be hard to Google any of the names involved, or pick up a program from the show. Personally I don't see what the AEA can do to me, who isn't in privity with it, or to any of these actors, none of whom have a relationship with me. But just to be safe, first names only from now on. Oh, and fie on unions who think their members work for them).

I am fairly certain that the Broadway version erred too much thematically on the side of being about Seuss. The trouble with that is that Seuss' books are basically all moralizing fables told by a man with a pronounced leftist bent, which is hardly the stuff of a Broadway smash hit. And, as the Mike Myers Cat in the Hat demonstrates (and as the Jim Carrey How the Grinch Stole Christmas demonstrated before it), Seuss' worlds just don't translate that well to live action. Trying to translate the work of a cartoonist into actors in cat suits just makes the show feel like it's trying to translate Seuss for the sake of trying to translate Seuss, which is also hardly the stuff of universally appealing theatre.

This production of Seussical avoids all those mistakes by focusing essentially on what Seuss means to people, especially kids. The books themselves may be moralizing fables, but to a kid they represent imagination, the fantastic, the wonder of "possible." Kimberly's show is actually the story of JoJo, a regular little boy, who imagines the entire story of Horton with the help of the Cat in the Hat, whom he also imagines, and then imagines himself into the story as a little Who boy on Horton's dust speck whose overactive imagination gets him in trouble but ultimately saves the day. I have no idea how much of this frame story is in the original material or not, but it's just what the production needs to take it from catchy but schizophrenic (ho-hum) to fabulous.

For instance, none of the characters are in animal suits. Horton the Elephant is really JoJo's real-life buddy the neighborhood recycling man, and his baggy coveralls inspire JoJo to imagine him as an elephant. The Cat in the Hat is really a fast-talking businessman JoJo has seen somewhere, who turns into the fun-loving prankster that runs the show. And so on and so forth. The only costumes that are actually trying to mimic animals are the fish costumes in "McEligott's Pool," which is appropriate because that song is sung by JoJo the Boy imagining himself as JoJo the Who, imagining that he is fishing in his bathtub, which is connected via underground river with the sea.

The set also does not try to recreate Seuss' worlds, although it takes some heavy inspiration from the books in certain elements. Apart from some dressing (e.g., you can't have Horton hatching the egg if there's no tree for him to climb up) it's really just a series of platforms. I was most impressed by the way Kimberly directed this show. The set is split between the planet of Who (the dust speck) on stage left and the Jungle of Nool on stage right, with the lower area center used for various effects. The Jungle of Nool is really quite simple in design but the actors use it most adroitly as a kind of a jungle gym. The levels on the Who side of the stage, which is really not that different architecturally from the Nool side of the stage, are used in quite a different fashion in order to create the impression that there's more space over there than there really is (in fact the actors are quite confined, but Kimberly manages to use her levels in a way that conveys the impression not only of all of Whoville but all of their dust speck as well. Really, her staging is most impressive).

The Cat in the Hat is played a gentleman named Bill, who is a real gem of a find. The Cat's role in this show actually bears fairly little resemblance to the role he plays in his titular books (in fact, they excised the one number that recreates The Cat in the Hat, which in my opinion was a good choice because compared to the rest of his material it simply feels tacked on). He's essentially the embodiment of JoJo's imagination, and runs the show, even sometimes getting JoJo in trouble - a clever motif in a show about childhood imagination (who really runs the mind of an overimaginative child? The kid? Or does his imagination have a mind of its own?). He pops up throughout the show as if by magic, making things happen and playing about a dozen cameo roles. All of this requires the genius of a really mercurial character actor, and Bill is just that. He has a masterful command of his body and his voice that lets him morph between the Cat's various characters with startling abruptness.

Horton, our hero, is probably the most like his namesake character of any in the show. He is faithful and honest and plain, and what others mistake as simpleness is really just an abundance of kindness. Horton simply doesn't have a selfish bone in his body, and he's hurt by the bullies' torment not so much (I think) because he's being tormented as because it distresses him deeply to see people being mean. Brian, who plays Horton, has all of this down to a T. Brian manages to make Horton lovable without making the mistake of turning him into an adorable caricature. Brian's Horton is lovable by sheer dint of goodness rather than cuteness (which is an important distinction, because that's precisely what motivates Gertrude McFuzz's romantic interest in him). He also manages to convey the impression not of an elephant but of a recycling man whom a kid has imagined into an elephant, which I must tell you is some trick. And his ability to relate to inanimate objects (i.e., his dust speck) is the closest thing I've seen to computer animation on stage since ... well, ever.

The character of Gertrude McFuzz has been transformed from the vain, image-conscious bird in her eponymous short story to Horton's plain, overlooked next-door neighbor (in fact JoJo's family's cleaning woman, who, we may presume, has had a crush on the recycling man for some time). She is played to hilarious effect and with perfect comic timing by Rebecca. Gertrude is an important character thematically, and Rebecca's Gertrude is a goofy, klutzy, desperate-to-be-noticed joy to watch.

Gertrude's "friend" Mayzie, the mother of Horton's egg, is played by a woman named Julie. I think it's clear that Mayzie and Gertrude are friends, but they don't exactly have a healthy friendship of equals. Julie's singing was a bit too free at times (disconnecting her from the orchestra), but she has arguably the best physical performance in the show. She's sexy and showoffish and blithely ignorant of how offensive her self-centeredness can be, and she manages to do all of this while moving like a bird, right down to the attitude of her head and the focus of her eyes.

The role of the chorus is filled by three bird girls and the three Wickersham brothers, who are monkeys. The bird girls alternate between narrators and Mayzie's back-up followers/singers and get the most interesting harmonies in the show. Some of these are quite tricky, and the bird girls managed to navigate them with only one or two slip-ups, which I thought was impressive. They also have an abandon to their ridiculous physicality (both as birds and, in one song, as fish) that manages to sell it out of the realm of the ridiculous altogether. The Wickershams are among Horton's primary tormentors, and the guys playing them have really excellent movement. There's nothing especially monkey-like about their costumes taken by themselves, but when you pair the costumes with the guys' movements the monkey aspect snaps quite startlingly into focus in a way that is sharper than either the costumes or the physical performance could create on its own. The role of chorus lead (and the leader of the bully gang) is filled by the Sour Kangaroo, played by a Japanese woman named Anna channeling Angry Black Woman. You wouldn't think that would work, but it really does. At the performance I went to I felt like Anna's balance was low (she might have just been singing too softly, but the intensity of her Angry Black Woman physicality suggests otherwise), which was unfortunate, but she makes a great villain for the piece - mean enough to inject some conflict into the show, but sassy enough to be really fun to watch.

One character who is not a villain but could be (mistakenly) turned into one is General Genghis Khan Schmitz (aka the crazy homeless guy on the corner), to whose military academy JoJo is sent by his desperate parents. Thomas, the actor who plays Schmitz, definitely has the crazy homeless guy aspects of Schmitz down pat. Personally I would have translated more of that into his military persona; the material seems to me to ask for Schmitz to be kind of a caricature (because he's slightly unstable and based on a crazy guy) of an 1880s British colonial officer who thinks of the military as primarily a kind of rough-and-tumble character school for young boys alternating with a Parris Island drill instructor, all without realizing that the military life involves, you know, people shooting at you. I don't know if Kimberly disagrees with that vision, or Thomas does, or both, but Thomas is still a lot of fun to watch. In an excellent example of the subtext at which this show excels, he manages to give the character a real arc. There's a moment when he realizes JoJo isn't playing his game where his genuine concern for the boy really comes through, and I found that moment especially touching.

The adult cast is rounded out by JoJo's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mayor, played by Phil and Tara. When we meet the parents they are in the awkward position of living the lives of (and being) strait-laced, Stepford-like Whos who love their son very much but don't know how to stop him from being so abnormally imaginative (or even if they should stop him from being so abnormal, which is a nice touch). The parents actually have comparatively little stage time, and little enough of that is devoted to their relationship with each other or with JoJo. It's a testament to the actors (and to the fantastic chemistry between them) that they manage to convey a whole familial dynamic primarily with subtext. A lot of aspects of this show are clearly better than Broadway, but Mr. and Mrs. Mayor especially stand out for mining the richness of their roles in ways that the Broadway cast pretty clearly did not.

Singing-wise, at this level of professional theatre I generally expect casts to be some combination of strong individual singers who can't do ensemble singing, strong individual singers who can't act and sing at the same time, or strong actors who are weak individual singers. Seussical's ensemble numbers were strong in terms of the individual singers' projection, tonality, and blend (though the bass part occasionally suffers in the projection department, perhaps because they seem to have only a single Wickersham brother on that line), and also exhibited a number of nice touches that one doesn't see consistently even at the higher levels of professional theatre. Chief among these "extras" in my book was the fact that the ensemble can actually sing in unison even in the more vocally complicated songs. This combined with their diction (I believe their assistant director Phil, who is a conductor by training, really hammered the lyrical parts of these songs) meant that I could actually understand all but one line in the show, and that one line is pretty much incomprehensible just because it's written badly ("Then over the desert, the desert of Dreze / and into the forest with thousands of trees, / past sneetches on beaches" - the bolded words are basically impossible to distinguish without looking them up, and the meter of the entire line is all off as well in a deliberate effort to preserve the integrity of the words, which are lifted directly from Seuss).

Another really impressive "extra" on display in both the ensemble numbers and the solos was that all of these actors can act while they sing (Horton and Gertrude especially impressed me along these lines). One of the things that I thought made this especially noticeable is that many of the songs are not written especially in character (i.e., there are either a number of different ways you could legitimately take the song, or the song is written in a genre that actually works against convincing characterization, such as the gospel numbers with the Sour Kangaroo, the Wickersham brothers, and the bird girls) and they're all sung as the characters would sing them. In other words, the vocal direction and stage direction are working unusually closely together in this show, and the cast has the combination of acting and singing chops to really take that direction.

This integration is overall, I think, the show's most unusual "extra." Everything about this show - the overall vision, the costumes, the set design, the stage direction, the vocal direction, the singing, the physical performances, the delivery of lines - it all works together far more tightly than is usual. The individual pieces are all really quite good, but the way the entire production erases the seams between its different pieces is what makes it a truly extraordinary product. In my experience this kind of integration is unusual even at the very highest tiers of professional theatre.

Seussical runs through December 2. If you're in the Bay Area, it's really well worth making the effort to see. It's the best piece of theatre I've seen in a long time.