In the Roman Coliseum the crowd voted thumbs up, or thumbs down based on the performance they had just witnessed. Life or death depended on the fancy of a mob who had come out to view blood sport. I wonder how different we are today.
There is no dispute of fact about what caused the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. He was shot to death by George Zimmerman. Whether the shooting was justified is what stirs passions. Virtual mobs were quick to form: Prosecute Zimmerman, we are told. This white man shot a black boy for the crime of "walking while black." The failure of Florida...
March 26, 2012
"The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation," wrote Albert Jay Nock in Our Enemy, The State. His words haunted me as I researched just who owns New Haven’s Green today. The records of New Haven Colony and Plantation in the mid-17th century are a story of confiscation and conquest.
Colonists trickled into the area now known as New Haven in 1638. Within months of their arrival, they had purchased vast tracts of land from local Indians in exchange for coats, axes, knives and other kitchenware. It turns out that the Dutch...
March 25, 2012
Regular readers of this column – all three of you, but I exaggerate – have no doubt intuited the manner in which topics are selected each week. It goes something like this: "Oh, [expletive deleted], it’s Thursday. I better come up with something." I generally have no larger purpose than engagement of some sort with the issues of the day. These are decidedly ad hoc ruminations.
So this week, I write about my most vivid recent experience.
Pain.
I have been a very lucky man thus far. No medical history to speak of. I’ve only twice found myself dependent...
March 22, 2012
How strangers acquire not just the power but the right to make rules others must obey is a central preoccupation of political philosophers. Grand theories of legitimacy spring from the brows of such giants as Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke and Hegel. It is rare that we get a ground’s eye view of the how these institutions take root.
But we have such a view in New Haven, where colonists first purchased a vast tract of land in a deal that rivals the Dutch purchase of Manhattan, and thereafter set about to create a government. The record is scant, but real enough. It comes in the...
March 19, 2012
March 18, 2012
By the time my parents arrived in North America, all the land was taken. There wasn’t any left to claim. The continent, from one end to the...
March 15, 2012
I am profoundly ambivalent about American history. We tell ourselves that ours is a history of inclusion, yet we gloss over the acts of theft and...
March 13, 2012
If you are not from New England, odds are you don’t understand the significance of a town green. It is a city’s center, a haven, if you...
March 12, 2012
Everyone, it seems, wants to be a pundit. That includes J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, a federal appellate judge and one-time contender for a seat on the...
March 11, 2012
Michelle Alexander writes in this morning’s New York Times about mass incarceration and plea bargaining. She wonders what would happen if...
March 8, 2012
Lawyers who tell war stories are tedious bores. I mean, we all have stories to tell, right? What makes your story so special that I should stop what...