Backing Bode

Watching the Torino Olympics has reinforced a belief that I've had for quit some time. I hate sports where the sole component to winning is judging. I've been an athlete all my life and subject to all manner of bad referees or tenuous judgment calls. For that reason, I've always been drawn to sports where there exists a decisive element to victory. I've always looked for sports where I could, as a coach told me so many years ago, "take the power out of the judges hands."

I've competed at a professional, World-Class level in 3 separate sports. What they were is unimportant but I'll say that two were different in degree while the other was in kind. Every one of these sports allowed me the ability to control my destiny. If I lost, and I did lose, I could not blame the umpire or other circumstances. I simply failed to find a way to win. And I think that attitude is really important for any young person growing up because it is too easy to blame other people or extenuating circumstances. Even now, I am continually stunned by how easy it is to "pass the buck" or for how so many people, doing so has become such second nature that they don't even realize they're doing it. For most, the desire to avoid accountability has been habitualized to the point of invisibility. And how difficult is it to fix what we cannot see.

Once, when I was young and brash, I had a man approach me and say after watching me train, "I wish I could do that." I looked at him coldly and glared, "No you don't. You couldn't handle the life." Completely uncalled for on mypart- treating a fan in that manner- but in my defense, I was sore, injured and fighting a cold. I couldn't remember the last time I felt somewhat human. I know what he meant. He admired my skill. But I don't know if he knew what I meant. Sure he saw the fancy uniform and the high-priced equipment. What he didn't see were the injuries that ensured old age would be painful. He didn't see a stress level so high that I often puked blood before a competition. He didn't see the willingness- no desire- to push my body past its limits for that 1% increase in performance. One cannot become a world-class athlete and not do permanent damange to his body. If you think you have, you've only let yourself off the hook. How can you know where edge truly is unless for forcibly exceed it and get cuffed in the process?

For all those reasons, I'm inclined to cut Bode Miller slack. The guy's a world class athlete that just peaked at the wrong time. And there is a part of me that admires his willingness to shun the safe, easy route. True, what he said at the end of the Olympics after his 5th failed attempt to get a medal was in poor taste. But that's just because he's young and inexperienced. I'm quite sure Bode didn't live up to his own expectations. He'll suffer on his own and in silence for the rest of his life for the words he spoke out of pride. So Bode, fuck everybody else. I'm on your side, brother. And if you choose to subject yourself to this spectacle again, I'll root for you still.

When you make excellence its own reward, no one can punish you as cruelly as you can. The mediocre never get it and they never will.

4th Generation Billiards

I've noticed a very interesting similarity between 'smart' folks and 'dumb' folks. Both groups of people are completely unsure of the limits of their intelligence. For different reasons, of course, but the end result is the same. There's something about these folks that makes them cling beyond all sense and comprehension to 'certainty' though it is abundantly clear that true certainty is terribly difficult to come by. It seems that by declaring that they are 'certain' about a specific issue, they rid themselves of fear. And that often seems to be their only goal.

The problem with this type of thinking is that eventually you're going to run into a situation that makes you confront an unfounded certainty. Do you then reassess your certainty to account for the new information or do you simply regard that new input as false. Sadly, too many people declare the new information invalid. The dumb people because thier intellect simply doesn't allow for new information. That is not a character flaw. It is an unfortunate circumstance of genetics. The the smart people know better. It is just too often that they have spent too much time and energy and have too much of their indentity wrapped up in being smart or being right. For this reason, I hesistate to get involved when people start throwing certainties around. Most of the time, the proclaimer of Truths has spent very little time working out the implications of any given certainty. This is particularly true of socialism and its ilk. There is hardly a theory or practice that hasn't been attempted. Changing the cosmetics of a falied idea doesn't give it any of a better chance at success.

In another blog, I read a writer comment on how Al Qaida was no longer a threat and really never was based on the fact that the raw number of lives lost in NYC was infinitesimal compared to other battles or war. Well, by the raw number argument, we could also say that people are safer during times of war then they are during times of peace. As one of my professors liked to say, wars are often fought so that the real killing can begin. Take Stalin and the Soviet Machine. Or the Chinese under Mao. In fact, more lives have been lost in time of 'peace' in the 20th century then in all the wars of man put together since the beginning of history. But I don't like this argument. It seems too clever to me.

Let's try this one. Lives lost in a terror attack are very different then those lost in a war or even a natural disaster. After Katrina, people lashed out in anger against the Government (rightly so) because they wasn't a continuing threat. After 9/11, people supported the USGOV because they were scared and didn't know what would come next. NYC made it through 9/11 because of munipal services that better many nations' ability to respond to anything. Also, the threat was continuous (we didn't know who did it) but not pervasive as it would have been in a WMD attack. People can understand a conventional detonation but a nuclear one, with fallout? Or a bio attack? The results would be very different.

There the equation changes again. It is not the loss of lives that cause destruction but the monkey panic that is sure to ensue afterwards. Let's say there was a bioweapons attack on NYC and the USGOV decides that it has to quarantine the whole island. Do anyone realistically think that there be order in Manhattan? What about when folks try to swim to New Jersey and the Coast Guard is forced to gun down unarmed civilians in the Hudson? The civil unrest that will result from this will result in the wholesale revocation of most of our Rights and the Left wing with be the ones screaming for blood the loudest.

Don't like that one? Okay let's keep going. If Al Qaida detonates a nuclear weapon on American soil, we will be forced to retaliate. The people will demand it regardless how shaky the evidence chance. One nuclear exchange in the Middle East and our international oil trade grinds to a halt. No big deal you say? It will be for Japan and Europe and China whose economies will collapse and take ours with them. Think I'm overeacting? Take a look at Bretton Woods 2.

Initiating any one of these scenarios is in Al Qaida's ability. Their belief structure actively works to bring the End of the World. The only reason they haven't been able to act with any efficacy is because their operational ability has been severely degraded by our direct action. But we have to continue. Just like an infection, it will come back stronger if we don't eradicate it fully.

In a lot of ways, the IR game is like pool. Most folks are just trying to get the right color ball into the hole. Some good players will set up 2nd and amaybe 3rd shot. But the pros see the table in its entirety, not taking the first shot until they have some idea of how the game will play out. And yet sometimes, you just have to minimize your losses. But when it comes right down to it, giving up the entire game to make on near term shot is the mark of the rookie. And the IR game is too dangerous to be run by rookies.

The Conservative Clearinghouse

Slowly, organically and imperceptibly, The Dumb Ox has become my clearinghouse of information of a conservative nature. Now everytime I go to my computer for news, I go through this workflow:

1. The Dumb Ox
2. The New York Times
3. The National Review
4. TCS Daily
5. Thomas Barnett's personal blog
6. Washington Post
7. Wall Street Journal

I probably go through this entire flow at least 2 times a day, usually even more. I also occasionally go through the Economist. This little flow has been part of my life for a long time and very quickly, the blog, The Dumb Ox, has reached the pole position. You can link to it from the links on the right, no pun intended. I also look through every one of those links once a day at least.

The point being, the Dumb Ox, is an outstanding one stop location for interesting information. For my non-Christian friends, don't be put off by the tone. The commentary is clear and incisive and you'll get access to materials that it would be difficult to find anywhere else. Also, Mr. Ox is a very responsive administrator who will take the time to answer any question in the same tone and manner it was intended.

It's definitely worth a look. JPD and I are on there all the time.

"Face" and Honor

I don't like to judge a man by his motives because it is simply beyond me to look at what is truly in his heart. This sometimes makes it difficult to navigate the world because intentions, in many cases, are a better indicator than the action itself. At the same time, it is the mark of the immature to believe that intentions, even pure ones, can redeem irresponsible action or the often terrible results of such intentions. But I also believe what Tacitus said- that t know the character of any people, you have only to observe what they love. I guess the trick here is to divine what they really love as opposed to what they say they love.

I grow increasingly appalled the the liberal and left wing elemnt of our Country and their POWER-AT-ALL-COSTS agenda. The transgressions are either too numerous for me to name for you or they don't exist at all so I'll not bother to list them here. I only wish to make this broad unscientific generalization. While it is true that the Republican party and the Right wing portion of our Country has behaved in a similar fashion, and they, as a group, by no means shun power, it feels to me that the Right wing perhaps occassionally overzealously pursues a course of action in defense of an ideal whereas the Left seems to pursue power for its own sake. The actions may look the same but the intentions are very different. Why does this matter? Well, slapping a woman in this day and age is pretty unexcusable. But spanking her? That usually just leads to better things. That's why intentions matter.

Further generalizations: I think there is a very logical reason for this. Right wing people tend to be people of Faith. It takes a certain type of individual to place ethics- God-given or man-dervied- above his hown well being. Much of the problem with people in general is that they tend to view everyone around them as extras in their own little movie. To my mind, the act of maturing involves actively moving one's focus inward to outward. People are never good at judging their own actions in reference to tohers. The people who often speak the loudest in a movie theatre are often the first to complain if someone else does it. In martial arts, the novice never believes he is hitting as hard as he is yet is almost always convinced that his training partners mean to do him harm. Try to wait out exactly half and hour or measure exactly a foot with some empirical device and you'll see how an unbiased judgment call is impossible.

Faith and Religion counter this looseness with strict guidelines. For people who have no Faith, such as myself, we have a Code which for us is our Faith. These things tell us what to do when it would be so easy to justify an easier course of action. My dear friend OSO once said to me that without religion as a standard, people only have to live up to money and power. And that not a good thing. The Left is full of very smart people whose only goal is one they have set for temselves. Whose only standard is the achievement of that goal. Whose only Judgment blows in the direction of the prevailing wind.

I have friends on both sides of the political fence and I value all of their friendships and counsel dearly. But there is a key difference to the nature of their friendships. My left wing friends often try to shame me for disagreeing with them on a particular position. My Right wing friends, even if they disagree, would never do that but they would do me 10 times the shame if I dishonored my Code or my personal ethics. With one, I could lose face. With the other, I could lose the only thing that is really truly mine, my integrity.

The Erudite Lee Smith

I hope this isn't breaking any laws but I'm reprinting Lee's piece from the Weekly Standard. Lee has been a good friend of mine for several years and is one of the clearest-thinking journalists I have ever even heard of. A man of great insight and impeccable integrity, I've been a fan and follower of his work for years. Give it a read and you'll be one too.

Denmark, Damascus, and Beirut
Are the Muslims in Lebanon and Syria angrier than others in the Middle East?
by Lee Smith
02/07/2006 12:00:00 AM

MUSLIMS all over the world are so angry about a series of cartoons poking fun at the Messenger of God that by now pretty much every Danish and Norwegian flag in the Muslim world has met its fiery end. And yet only in Damascus and Beirut have institutions--embassies or consulates--representing Denmark and Norway been attacked. Are Lebanese and Syrian Muslims angrier than other Muslims? Or, what's going on here?

First of all, it's important to remember that Syria is an authoritarian state where nothing happens on the street unless the regime permits it to happen. Actually, that's something of an understatement--the government almost always determines and drives public actions. So, many of the Damascus protestors venting their pious outrage likely either work for Syrian security services or are rent-a-mobs being paid to riot.

In Lebanon, it is only slightly different. It appears that the Internal Security Forces were incapable or unwilling to protect the Danish consulate from protestors, many of whom were apparently shipped in from Syria and Lebanese Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (where Syrian influence and arms are extensive). Indeed, Damascus' Lebanese intelligence networks are still active, even after Syrian troops left the country last April in compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. And of course Syria has lots of Lebanese allies, including Islamist groups such as the Al-Ahbash and Hezbollah, whose General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah asked--maybe not so rhetorically--if someone blowing themselves up in the middle of Denmark constituted "an expression of freedom."

IT WOULD BE INTERESTING to know


precisely the level of involvement of the Syrian mukhabarat, but President Bashar al-Asad does not want to be held accountable for what is practically an act of war. For that matter, neither Denmark nor Norway would want to know the answer and then be forced with having to respond as such. Americans might enjoy some schadenfreude in watching flags other than theirs getting torched, but why is Syria so hostile to a Europe that is by comparison much more accommodating? There are at least three possible reasons: (1) To prevent the international community from bringing down Syria's ruling regime; (2) To raise money for Hamas; (3) To warn against interfering with the Iranian nuclear program.

(1) Syria has been under the international spotlight now for nearly a year, following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. In a remarkable show of multilateral concord, the United States and European Union have been working together to put pressure on the regime in Damascus. In fact, it is France that has led the way.

Even before the murder of Hariri, Jacques Chirac suggested to George Bush at the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion that this was a project they might work on together. The White House was cross with Syria for supporting the insurgency in Iraq and Chirac was angry because, among many other reasons, Syria had handed out oil contracts to non-French firms and squandered money the French president had raised at the Paris II talks in November 2002 earmarked for political and economic reform in Lebanon.


Bush and Chirac used Lebanon as a platform to fight Syria, and the regime in Damascus has been fighting back in every way possible, including the continued destabilization of Lebanon and attempts to block the U.N. investigation into the Hariri murder. The Muhammad cartoons provided yet another opportunity for Syria to scare away meddlers. After the Danish consulate was burned, protestors started to stone a Maronite church, a gesture that comports nicely with a series of bombings in Christian areas and assassinations of Christian figures designed to incite sectarian violence in Lebanon.

(2) For years, Syria has served as center of operations for a number of Palestinian rejectionist groups, including Hamas. For instance, Hamas political and military chief Khaled Mashaal makes his home just a quick cab ride away from the presidential palace in Damascus. The United States and the European Union have explained that they are not going to give any more money to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority until it recognizes Israel's right to exist and disowns violence. However, like many political bodies in the Arab world, Hamas only knows how to express itself through violence. But Hamas has a problem: the battleground that they typically availed themselves of in the past is much less accessible now that Israel has built a fence and has stopped an overwhelming percentage of suicide bombers. So, what are Hamas' options?

In the '70s and '80s Yasser Arafat's PLO found an especially attractive venue in Europe. The continent was light on security and fat in the

wallet. Recall the most spectacular act of Palestinian terrorism, commemorated now in Steven Spielberg's Munich, when the Black September group kidnapped and killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympiad? Arafat said he had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with radicals such as Black September. But, he said, the only way for him to gain control in the political arena was to build his prestige. The best way to do that, he argued, was by helping him enhance his patronage networks, i.e. by giving him more money so he could put more armed gunmen on salary who would, of course, eventually run operations, like those in Europe, which Arafat disclaimed.

Europeans would be wise to remember what Arafat's shell game cost them because right now, leaders all over Europe are being reminded of what can happen when you try to de-fund Palestinian terrorists. The argument will look something like this: The "moderate" and responsible wing of Hamas that wants to "fix potholes" needs to be empowered to take on its radical members who only want to kill nice Europeans. It's a protection racket. Damascus and Beirut are serving as rehearsal spaces for what might happen if the European Union stops signing checks.

(3) Iran is Syria's only ally in the world, but Tehran has a price for siding with a virtual pariah state. They want a nuclear program and Syria can help. The United States was frustrated when Europe decided it wanted to negotiate with Iran: After all, the good-cop bad-cop routine only goes so far when what's really called for is joint action. The United States initially believed that even after the Europeans had failed at negotiations their pride would never allow them to admit they were wrong. In fact, the opposite happened. It was only once the Europeans started to deal with the Iranians in depth that they really saw how bad the Iranians were. Now, the Europeans and the United States see eye to eye: It is doubtful that anyone in the international community, except Syria and Hezbollah, is willing to accept an Iranian nuclear bomb. Syria is lobbying for the program and, again, making its case to Europe. Remember that Damascus burned the very same day Iran was reported to the U.N. Security Council.

The Muhammad cartoon conflict, as silly as it sounds, is about our war for freedom and liberty and our way of life. Unlike the peoples who live under authoritarian regimes, the citizens of liberal democracies don't have to observe redlines, subjects that are too controversial to touch, whether they're about the state or religion. We can talk about anything, pursue ideas anywhere they take us, even into blasphemy. But the response to the cartoons is also about the real war, the one that involves, among others, Syria, Iran and Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute and based in Beirut.

The Rough Stone's Defense

I do not have the words to express my gratitude at The Rough Stone's words. I do not think he chose his handle lightly. As stone sharpens steel, one man sharpens the countenence of another. I forgot who wrote that but it applies here.

Sir, you have gifted me with an incredible piece of writing. I am beyond honored that you chose to share your thoughts with me. I've been thinking for days as to how to give you a response worthy of what you have written. As of yet, I cannot. So I will reproduce what you wrote to me for my readers to enjoy and ponder. Though you wrote the following in response to my post "The Distinctions of Inoocence" I feel it deserves a place by itself. It is brilliant and I hope to have a response for you sometime soon.

In Defense of Innocence

And all must love the human form
in heathen turk or jew
Where Mercy Love and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too


This verse by William Blake could, I suppose, be dismissed by the knowing and experienced as a kind of fantasy or namby pamby religious sentiment about the divine origin and essential goodness of man. Indeed it is hard not to read something satiric in something so nakedly “innocent.” Nevertheless, there is a powerful directness in the imperative that “all must love the human form,” which none of us can deny without shaming ourselves; just as there is something terribly lucid in the idea that God dwells in the human form, where the triple virtues of Mercy, Love, and Pity are embodied. Blake's project was among other things to remind us of and restore us to Eden, where God made man in his image. That image may have since been badly damaged or eclipsed. But it is Blake's contention that the image of God survives in us, though it takes an innocent eye to discern it. With that as a starting point permit me a few words in defense of innocence.

Innocence is not mere lack of experience, or worse, a childish refusal to confront reality squarely. Innocence is purity of seeing, unencumbered by learning, convention, or prejudice. It is a quality essential to all great art and poetry. It is also central to religious thought. Good men recognize it as something infinitely precious and will sacrifice themselves to protect it. Evil men envy it and attempt to simulate its appearance--thus the wolf in sheep’s clothing--or else simply fear and hate it and so work to corrupt and thus destroy it. Why? Because it is only the innocent that see truly.

Innocence, as I hope to show, is not just a beautiful idea conceived in the minds of the Romantic poets and later parodied by flower children and new age spiritualist. These cults of innocence may actually do more harm than good, as you contend, which is ironic since innocence in its root sense--”in and “nocere”--means not harmful. But I don't think it is right to confound innocence and naiveté, at least in the negative sense of that word--that of being culpably ignorant, easily exploited, or merely helpless. Innocence--if it is more than just lack of experience, if it is a positive quality that embodies the good--points to something beyond the world, something transcendent. As Christ taught, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Innocence is difficult to describe, especially as a positive quality. Most attempts to define it begin and end by saying what it is not. So let’s start where everyone agrees innocence is to be found, within the deeply wondering eyes of children. Lock eyes with an infant and instantly you will feel the terrible intensity of its innocent gaze. Grown ups--even hardened ones who habitually stare others down--will almost always blink or avert their eyes long before an infant will stop looking at them, blankly and sweetly. An infant simply does not know or care about what all adults are all too mindful of. That it isn't polite to stare. And that's what makes an infant's eyes so deadly earnest and so piercing.

Children always stare, and the nervous grownups around them are constantly having to tell them not to. Why the anxiety? Why indeed unless grown-ups are trying to hide or avoid something that a child’s shameless gaze lays open to view. To a greater or lesser extent, all grown-ups are complicit in a sort of polite conspiracy to keep up appearances, that subtle dance of evasions which allows them to hide their sins or avoid the obvious. A child's impolite stare threatens that world of appearances, which is at its heart shame hardened into indifference. The innocent gaze burns through to the truth grownups have learned not to see. "Mommy, look at that man. He has only one leg!"

Looking at an infant looking at you is an experience that produces in most of us a twinge of self-consciousness that after a few seconds forces us to look away, ashamed. It’s really quite funny to see how ridiculous adults make themselves trying to distract an infant--shaking keys or making funny faces--all in an attempt to divert its searing gaze. “Love me,” says the infant, as it looks searchingly into our eyes. And we, looking back, feel ashamed because our love comes up short. We never feel the imperative that “All must love the human form” more strongly than when looking at an infant, for an infant demands total love. Adoration, said the poet Wallace Stevens, is always face to face, which is perhaps why only a mother can look steadily--that is to say adoringly--into the eyes of her child.

But there is something else in an infants clear shining eyes that makes us look away in shame. Because the gaze of the innocent takes in all of us without regard for appearances, we intuitively feel that we are being seen for what we are rather than how we choose to present ourselves to the world. Innocence, because it doesn't know better, burns away pretense and humbles all posturing, leaving us with the plain realization that we are what we are. Great poets have always revered the piercing clarity of the innocent eye. Chaucer’s pilgrim and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn are both innocent seers who lay bare the truth because they don’t know any better. They are nonjudgmental in the sense that they see without prejudice or preconception. More important, lacking self-consciousness, they gaze with deeply wondering eyes and so miss nothing. It is the strange magic of innocence that more of a thing is revealed when it is marveled at than when it is scrutinized.

We could put all this talk about innocence yet another way. When an infant recoils from our arms or a child refuses to give a goodbye kiss, we somehow feel that a judgment has fallen upon us, and one that is more terrible than any verdict spoken by the lips of the most righteous of judges. A righteous judge sees with wisdom, a wisdom that tempers his human prejudice and enlarges the limits of his experience. Because he strives to be impartial, we feel his judgments to be fair and just and so submit accordingly. But a child sees innocently, which is as much above that virtue of impartiality as love is above tolerance. Because he has no prejudice or experience to speak of, the child sees without encumbrance. And so his judgments are both truer and harsher than a judges, for the plain truth of what we are is often more terrible than any body evidence that can be brought up to convict us. “Mommy, I don’t like that man” is somehow just as damning as any jury’s verdict of “guilty.” I often think that the day of judgment will be something like the experience of having a babe placed in our arms and waiting to see if that babe will coo or cry.

While we talk of experience in terms of gain, we speak of innocence in terms of loss. We are born innocent. But then, as King Lear said, we “wawl and cry, because we have come to this stage of fools." When we speak of lost innocence--of someone who is sadder but wiser--their is a wishfulness of tone in that phrase that is not just sentimental. Something good has been sacrificed for the sake of getting on or just surviving in the world. Necessarily, perhaps. But something good in us regrets that necessity.

Experience of course helps us to navigate the world, because the world is full of detours and blind alleys, not to mention snares, pits, and mines. Wisdom is also necessary because there are evil men whose purpose is to deceive. Thus, Christ admonished his disciples “ to be wise as serpents.” But then he quickly added “and harmless as doves." (Note that the word “harmless” here recalls the word innocent in its root sense of "in" and "nocere"--not harmful.) Innocence-- or harmlessness--is a quality that a disciple must retain, even in the face of evil, if he is to remain capable of saving the world from itself. A disciple must be in the world but not of it. He must experience all things and yet remain innocent.

If Christ was right to teach his disciples to be harmless as doves, it’s certain that being innocent or harmless is not quite the same thing as being powerless, or clumsy, or naive. True, children are helpless in the sense that they cannot feed or cloth or defend themselves. But children do have a terrible power--it is the power of the innocent to disarm and stupefy. Says the psalmist, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger." That world "still" used here as a verb is exactly right. It is one of the most endearingly comic scenes in domestic life to watch family members tip toe around a sleeping babe, as if it were a kind of god. The slumbering child literally stills the household to a palpable hush. The naive may be exploited by the worldly wise, but a child will often confound the learned with its most casual observations or bend the stubborn and the hardened to its least significant whims. That power is akin to the magical force possessed by the maiden of fairy tales who, innocently seeing no malice in the beast, tames the beast.

It should also be said that innocence is the tonic of experience; it refreshes those who have grown weary of the world. Far from something that is to be outgrown, innocence is necessary to life because experience breeds cynicism and cynicism teeters on the ledge of despair. After roaming the world and discovering that there is nothing new under the sun, the wise preacher of ecclesiastes resignedly concludes that "all is vanity." Meanwhile, the psalmist, watching the very same sun shine light on the same world joyously exclaims, "This is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad therein."

To elaborate somewhat, experience teaches that the same sun rises on the same world, and so on and so on. The world is old. Innocence sees the same sun and the same world, but too ignorant to conclude anything, simply ventures forth as if the new day really made the world brand new. The “been there, done that” philosophical pessimism of the ecclesiast needs the exuberant innocence of the psalmist. Otherwise, why bother. This quality of innocence to see the world new is vividly alive in another attribute that all children share--their love of repetition. As my friend’s grandson recently said to me after I had tossed him in the air a half dozen times "Again, Uncle, make me fly again!"

Innocence, wonderfully, enables the child to enjoy the same experience over and over without it growing stale. Repetition never becomes redundancy. Innocence somehow makes the experience new. But this very quality also makes the child, paradoxically, profoundly unconventional. Although the child loves repetition and its close cousin, imitation, he is no mere mimic. Listen to the invented phrases of a child and you will hear a freshness of perception that is both accurate and arresting. I once heard a child say to his grandmother after she had just washed her hair, "Nana, what happened? your hair fell down!" Now this grandmother always had her hair teased and meticulously styled, so the observation that her hair fell down was as vivid as it was truthful. But perhaps more significant was the fact that to the child the grandmother’s wet hair was somehow momentous, something that had the weight of an event. "Nana what happened?" It takes a child to see poetry in something as pedestrian and uninspiring as his Nana’s flat hairdo.

William Blake wrote Songs of Innocence and then composed his Songs of Experience as a kind of sophisticated worldly counterpoint to that pure melody. In doing so he also postulated a higher innocence that was able to organize the chaos and general messiness of life to achieve a perspective that incredibly would make everything make sense. “All things work for the good of them that believe.” That is the apostle Paul, who knew something about persecution and hardship, and perhaps saw more bad days than good. Yet he had faith that everything would work out in the end--and not just for the good, but his good. That fearless optimism catches the accent of the higher innocence Blake points to in his poetry. It is plainly not the rosy idealism of the wishful thinker, but the hard earned perspective of the man of faith. I think it is also what Christ meant when he said that unless we become as little children--after having negotiated through the world as grown ups--we cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Kahuna, you say you may have never been innocent because you see and know too much. But I think it’s closer to the truth to say that you see so much because you have never been corrupted (at least not fully, ha! ha!) by experience. There is something innocent about someone who keeps searching for truth and trying to improve himself and the world even when experience teaches him to know better. For all your knowledge of the world and the reality of evil, you are perhaps more innocent than you think.

The Rough Stone


P.S. Please don’t feel you need to respond to this long ramble. I wrote it to clarify my own thinking on the subject as much as I did to respond to your comment that “their might be something to be said about the innocence of children.

Threats- Implied and Actual

A few years back, I was riding the subway in NYC. It was the middle of the day- I don't remember exactly what time but the train was full enough that all the seats were taken but empty enough to leave no one standing. I don't recall what I was doing or where I was going but I do remember that at one of the stops, a rather large black man dressed in street garb got on the train. I'm a local boy from Hawaii so I didn't really grow up with any preconceived notions of black people. When I first moved to California, one of my best friends was black and I spent a tremendous amount of time with his family because it was so much more stable than my own. In NYC, I began to notice a subtle racism that created an interesting dynamic between white people and black people. For example, the bouncers at most of the clubs, big or not, skilled or not, were usually black. I noticed that the white people in NYC were more prone to wisecrack at a large white bouncer than a smaller black one. Like it or not, the impications of this became quickly apparent to anyone paying attention or anyone used to trying to get a psychological edge like you must on the Street.

Anyway, this big guy waits for the doors to close then announces to the car that he could be out robbing, raping and mugging folks for their money. Instead, he was kindly and peacefully standing in the train asking for charity. You should have seen everybody digging into their wallets and purses to give this guy money. It was brilliant and diabolical what he tapped into. But I recognized a shakedown when I saw one and said aloud to no one in particular. "Please. This isn't charity. This is a shakedown." The gentleman heard me and tried to give me a hard look. I just smiled back. He went up and down the train and once he collected everybody's money, he stood over me and said with a crazy gangsta face, "You have any money for me, boy?" I looked at him very sweetly and replied, "Yeah. I have a thousand dollars cash in my wallet. But I'm not going to give it to you. You have to take it." We stared at each other for a few seconds and he broke contact and got off at the next stop.

I didn't think anything of this. Where I'm from, you don't put up with shit like that. But what I wasn't prepared for was the vicious stares I got from my fellow passengers on the train who viewed this incident. I didn't expect a parade but what I got was ill will and under the breath sneering comments. I'm not sure what happened but there is this tendency in the affluent West to put the appearance of physical security above all. It's the idea that currency can provide for greater safety than character. And when someone does stand up to a threat, that action is villified as uncivilized and such, once again proving that in so many cases, a good education does nothing but provide valid reasons for why you should NOT do the proper thing.

The Dannish cartoon thing is a no brainer. You don't get to use riots and physical intimidation to get your way. If you choose to go that route, you should not complain when the same tools of violence are being used on you. The West's combined cowardice and reluctance to act with any clear standards allow the rioters to continue in the mistaken idea that their's is the proper way to do business. We cannot tolerate such silliness. Fundamentalist muslims simply must grow up. Continued escalation will only result in a great loss of their lives. They cannot win. Eventually they will provoke our ire past our ability to control it. And I'm afraid that when that occurs, our ability to mend fences will becompletely irrelevant.

The Return of Oso

My friend Oso has decided to continue with her blog and I for one am very stoked. She's the one who inspired me to do this. Her blog is very cool so check it out. You can link to it from the sidebar.

Glad you're back Oso! Missed your web presence.

My Stunning Lack of Consistency...

Friends- Let me apologize for falling off the net once again. My health issues sometimes suck the life out of me and I find myself unable to write anything worthwhile. Knowing your time is valuable, I want to write something that is worthy of your click. If you find that I have not updated this blog for an extended period of time, rest assured that I will be back at it as soon as I am able. I endeavor to bring you nothing less than my A game.

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.
-Thoreau

A Flower in the Wild

I must have been 12 or 13 when I first saw him walk into the dojo. I assumed he was someone's father or grandfather until he made his way over to the changing area and walked out in a very old dogi. Most of the judoka in my age group didn't bother to pay any attention to him. We were highly competitive and rough, priding ourselves on sending visiting judoka and teammates alike to the emergency room. He didn't seem very impressed by us either. He wore a white belt and made no eye contact with anybody but the senior instructor. Most of us (the competitors) thought he was beneath us. But I was intrigued. His dogi looked very worn. And his white belt wasn't the same white belt you see on the fresh meat entering the dojo. It was so worn that parts of it were held on by threads. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He took his falls smoothly and lightly. His technique, while nothing fancy, was textbook perfect. Slowly, I made my way over to him and got his attention. I bowed to him and asked to train with him very politely. He gave me a very grim look and curtly nodded, "Hai." Over the next 30 minutes, he proceeded to beat me more severely but with more love than I had ever experienced in my life.

That's a concept tough for many westerners to understand but he explained himself years later to someone else which I then heard about through the grapevine. Sensei often used me as a demonstration partner for seminars especially when he wanted to show a technique at combat speed. Fortunately for me, I have always been very durable so this lucky honor became mine by default. During a particular demonstration, he blooded my lip pretty severely and fractured my collarbone by my sternum. I said nothing about it and left for the hospital on my own at the end of training. Sensei went to the post-seminar party and he and I never spoke for a second about my injury.

It was at this party that one of the local judoka had her emotions overcome her good sense and she verbally attacked Sensei for injuring me and letting me go to the hospital on my own. Quite upset, she reportedly stuck her finger in his face and said, "If you hate him so much, why do you use him?" A friend of mine told me later that the look on Sensei's face was bewilderment. (He would never tell me these things himself) He said quite calmly, "Hate him? I love him." He then proceeded to explain his philosophy towards training me.

There are flowers which are raised in a hothouse. They are nurtured and protected from the elements and become very beautiful. But if the hothouse is ever destroyed, then chances are the flower will perish. Then there are flowers that are forced to endure the elements. The weather the heat and the cold and survive the the frost and various natural predators. Those flowers, if they survived, would be beautiful and strong. He hoped I would survive but he wasn't sure yet. But it was his responsibility to make sure I was prepared. Lastly he said that he let me go to the hospital myself because he wished to cause me no greater shame and that he expected everybody at the party to be silent about my condition whatever it was. By Western standards, that's some tough love, but you know what, I couldn't have been more honored by his actions. It was the first time he said to me- without the words- you're a man now. A warrior. A member of the tribe.

I am grateful to him in ways I can't begin to mention. Every success I've had in my life has come from the tenacity that I learned from this stoic Japanese man. Before he passed, his wife told me that it was because of my initial courtesy to him that he taught me with the zeal that he saved for me and a few others. He had told her that my courtesy in approaching him showed him that I was able to see beyond the surface. I didn't have the heart to tell her that nothing was further from the truth. I just lucked into it because I thought training with him that day so many years ago would be a welcome break from the bone crushing intensity of my teammates. I was wrong. Happily and luckily so.