Liberalism and Conservatism

It's interesting that, economically, Liberalism in the American sense is equivalent to Conservatism in the European sense; whereas, politically, Liberalism in the European sense is equivalent to Conservatism in the American sense.

Real Power

Yesterday, the 16th of April 2011, was the 48th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. It contains some of Dr. King's most memorable words:

• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
• Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
• I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. [...] There will be the old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest."
• Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?
  
  If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

But today something struck me in response to the following passage that I'd never thought about before:

• I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Here's the thought: Just as we often mistakenly ascribe to time power that it does not really possess, so we unwittingly surrender power that we really do.

The civil service

A recent visit to a government department (an embassy) reminded me that frequently the civil service is neither civil nor much of a service.

Converse Figures

Shock! Horror! The U.S. unemployment rate edged up towards 10 percent in November 2010. Sometimes a little contrast helps to keep things in perspective. Consider this: In some countries, including one or two that I've lived in, the employment rate is about 10 percent (if that).

On superfluous words in the titles of scientific books and papers

The word "On" at the beginning of a title, for instance. I've never understood why authors use it and I've never found a single case where the "On" can't be omitted to good effect.

Puzzling Plural/Pluraling Puzzle

A stray thought:

• Question: What is the correct plural of Attorney-General? Is it (a) Attorney-Generals? Or (b) Attorneys-General? Or even (c) Attorneys-Generals?
• Answer: I genuinely don't know and haven't looked it up (not yet anyway). Option (a) sounds most right to me, but I've heard (b) used on occasion. I threw in (c) just for the heck of it.

Three-Dimensional Space

The accomplishment of any task requires space in three dimensions: physical space, temporal space and psychological space. If any one of these dimensions is missing, or inadequate, the task cannot be possibly be accomplished at all or optimally.

You and Time

If you don't manage time, time will manage you.

In a Mirror Darkly

What's the opposite of an A-List Celebrity? Not a Z-List Celebrity but rather a Z-List Nonentity. Following that train of thought to it's logical conclusion: an A-List Celebrity is equivalent to a Z-List Nonentity and a Z-List Celebrity is equivalent to an A-List Nonentity. By the same token, a B-List Celebrity is equivalent to a Y-List Nonentity and a Y-List Celebrity is equivalent to a B-List Nonentity. And so on from A to Z and reflectivity from Z to A.