In the early 1970s, I was mugged while driving cab in Rochester, New York. (Ironically, my assailants flagged me down in front of Nick Tahoe's Restaurant, the only place my Grampa Noll warned me not to go.)
One malefactor sat behind me - a knife to my throat - and, with his "free hand," squirted blinding caustic in my eyes.
His partner - in the passenger seat - held a gun to my head, and bouncing manically up and down, shouted "Shoot the muthafucka! Shoot the muthafucka!"
Within an hour, a policeman was interviewing me at Rochester's now-defunct Genesee Hospital.
Later that night, at my Manitou Road home, I was awakened by a call from the Rochester Police Department requesting I come downtown to view a lineup.
At headquarters, Chief Detective Fantagrossi stood next to me while I examined half a dozen men - all standing in bright light against a white wall etched with lines to indicate their height.
After careful inspection, I told Fantagrossi that one of the fellows looked familiar but that I would not be able to make positive identification under oath.
Immediately, Fantagrossi leaned his body into mine, murmuring unctuously: "I'm sure you can make a positive identification Mr. Archibald. Just try a little harder."
At once, I realized how many crime victims less willing to "question authority" -- victims correspondingly eager to please "the Alpha male" -- would succumb toFantagrossi's seduction.
Clearly, Fantagrossi had apprehended "the usual suspects," assuming -- with good reason -- that they were all "guilty of something" and that "society would be better off if every last one of them were locked away."
Lost in Fantagrossi's "equation" was any concern that "fingered" suspects might be innocent of alleged crimes.
Another vignette...
Years later, my best friend Steve Gibson (a registered nurse) was accused of armed robbery when the car in which he was traveling got "pulled over" for a traffic infraction.
Steve had been hitchhiking through Chicago, and at the police roadblock the driver of the car was found to have a gun that traced to the scene of the crime.
(Years later, I myself was hitch-hiking through Chicago and -- while transiting a south-side "skyway" en route to Gary, Indiana -- I asked my benefactor how he spent his time. "Until recently," he replied, "I was in the joint." When I asked the nature of his crime, he answered, "Murder.")
But back to Steve...
If Steve's Dad -- a physician who headed The American Red Cross blood banking program --were not wealthy enough to hire a "fancy" lawyer who could "re-enact the crime scene" complete with a screen door backlit by "the blinding sun," Steve would have done "hard time" for a major felony.
God knows how conviction might have haunted the rest of this gentle man's life.
I suppose it is true that "all" people experience a primordial urge to believe in the Absolute Validity of Designated Authority.
In my experience of the world, this submissive urge is particularly true of modern, materially-sated Americans. By my lights, a hugely disproportionate amount of "religious" devotion distills to such slavish submission.
People are so eager to submit that they ignore a commonplace truth - that many (if not most) "authorities" have risen "to the top" by a convergence of sad-sack factors like "staying in the box," "just showing up," "lickspittle collusion with feigned normalcy" and being the accidental recipients of unusually large doses of "luck."
Fortunately, those who value Truth on its own terms are heirs to a rich cultural and intellectual tradition "crowned" by Lord Acton's "Dictum": "I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton (I encourage you to read Lord Acton's entire Wikipedia entry. In brief span, it recapitulates the ongoing struggle between presumptions of "infallibility" and the frequently antithetical nature of Truth.)
Love
Daddy man
PS Here's an email I recently sent to Lonnie.
Dear Lonnie,
This caliber of intellectual rigor needs to be more widespread if only to save the republic.
Absent such rigor, the yahoos will lay waste to it all.
In the presence of such rigor, even they may finally "repent."
Ironically, the "dumbing down of American education" is now so complete that the current generation of Know-Nothings thinks it's "on the side of Truth."
"Human history becomes more a race between education and catastrophe." H. G. Wells
I'll phone you later this afternoon to discuss the "Berry issue" and am looking forward to seeing you tonight.
Pax on both houses
Alan
If you can't get the audio file by clicking within the pasted article, go to the website listed below and access the audio from there.
Thursday, July 29 2010
Frank Stasio
Under the Racial Justice Act, August 10, 2010 is the filing deadline for inmates on death row who want their cases reconsidered because of what they consider to be an unfair racial basis during the punishment phase of their trials.
University of North Carolina Law School Professor Robert Mosteller and UNC historian Seth Kotch have taken a close look at the history of the role race has played in the implementation of the death penalty in North Carolina.
They wrote an article for the North Carolina Law Review examining the pivotal cases in the state and the changes they brought about in the law.
They confront the question: Have we changed the law enough to eliminate race from the death penalty?
Mosteller and Kotch join host Frank Stasio to discuss the powerful history of capital punishment leading up to the Racial Justice Act in North Carolina.
Click
here to view the full article by Seth Kotch and Robert Mostellar.
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