We all have our burdens in life

I must say that all of this yelling about Miranda rights and the fact that it's now being referred to as "the Miranda debate" consistently leaves me very confused. This on top of years of people making jokes about how I should read them their rights upon being told my name.

Little did my parents know what they were burdening me with.

Thank goodness for footnotes

"Civil right is personal freedom; political right is a right over others as well as oneself." --Alfred Fouillée, cited in Robert Michels' "Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy."

Damn, apparently I need to read some Fouillée. This remark opens a lot of doors, potentially, particularly when you consider the struggles over "social issues" that tend to dominate contemporary American politics.

Meditation 17

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."
--John Donne, Meditation 17


George Tiller is dead.

I am heartbroken, angry and sick at heart, all at once.I feel as though I've been punched in the stomach.

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5107 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

"It's a terrible loss. I'm just really sad about the whole thing," said a former employee of the clinic who asked not to be identified. "He was a great guy. I understand people were against a lot of what he did, but for those who he helped, they'll never forget the kind of person he was."

He went through a lot to help those people:

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993. Tiller was wounded in both arms, and Shannon remains in prison for the shooting.

The clinic was bombed in June 1986, and was severely vandalized earlier this month. According to the Associated Press, his lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings' downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.

I read about him somewhere years ago and I remember being shocked that anyone would have done such things to such a man and deeply grateful for his service. His story stuck with me ever since. As soon as I read the headline I was hoping that name was ringing the wrong bell, but to my deep sadness, I was right.

(The epigram, I know, is cliche and overused, but it encapsulates the way I feel connected to him and to this.)

As Digby said,

If you think that women should have to endanger their lives in order to give birth to a fetus with no brain, then you probably think this man was a murderer. For the women who went to him, and for whom he put up with a horrifying amount of harrassment and violence before they finally managed to kill him, he was a Godsend.

May he rest in peace.

An interesting snippet

For those of us interested in political rights and institutions, anyway. David Schraub discusses Jews' security in the U.S. over at Alas, A Blog.

There is a difference between a legal right and a legislative privilege, and it isn’t just that the former is more difficult to dislodge. I’ve already written about why I think rights are important beyond the technical protections they do and do not provide. There is considerable expressive power in being seen as a rights-holder. A person who is protected from unequal treatment merely because they currently hold the favor of the sovereign and her sword exists on a qualitatively different plane from the person whose protection stems from the fact that society — as per the strong moral norms expressed through the language of rights — considers such discrimination to be a grave normative wrong.

[...]

The fact that rights often are a formalist facade does not, to my mind, mean they always are, or that they are meaningless. I think that possessing rights is a powerful social signal of full inclusion into the community. A protection by right is one that is normalized, a protection by special legislation is exceptional. I would much prefer to be in a position where I am protected because it is seen as wrong to hurt me, than to be protected simply because those who wish to hurt me are (currently) in no position to do so. The cynics would tell you that the former case does not exist. I refuse to believe that is true.