Vox Lucens

While last year’s Wisconsin Alumni Association meeting was held in amazingly beautiful fall weather.  It seems highly ironic that this year’s, in Nevada, was covered in a wonderful snow.

There was at least one similarity, though - the same guy was elected President both times.  I appreciated the vote of confidence and the many kind words.

Being re-elected also gives me the chance to look backwards and forwards at the Alumni Association.  In doing so, I discovered that the Alumni Association is at the same point that I am in my own life: We are at the spot where we need to turn vision into reality.  It’s a hard place to be, in many ways, but it’s sure an exciting one.  The foundation is laid, the vision is there, and now it’s time to make something out of it all.

Here are my thoughts for the Alumni Association blog - which manage to be similar to introspective musings in re: yours truly.

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Every organization starts with a vision of something great. For the Alumni Association, that was a vision of expanding, promoting, and growing OBCL’s unique calling. Even as a student, I could see the vision of those that worked to establish this organization. It was apparent, and it trickled all the way down to my study-swamped self. In the intervening years, the vision has been clarified and built.

And in every organization’s life comes a time in which the established vision must be put into practical reality by dint of hard work. And as I looked back on the last year’s work done by the Alumni Association Board and numerous volunteers, I can’t help but realize that we are at that point in the Alumni Association’s life. The vision is there, and it is clear - and now comes the time in which we must turn that vision into practical reality.

This past year, the Board worked to lay the foundation to build this reality on. So many “small” components go into effective communication, effective promotion, and effective fundraising…and this list of essentials could go on. Beyond those normal challenges, the Alumni Association faces unique challenges simply because we are scattered all across this nation! One thing that I have greatly appreciated about the Board of Directors of this association is their willingness to do things the right way. We’ve never taken an idea and gone off half-cocked; we’ve taken good ideas and made them better - those ideas and that work is the foundation.

But right now we have this chance to turn vision into reality, if we are willing to put our noses to their respective grindstones and do the work. It’s time to take the foundation and build on it, taking those ideas into reality. And that is our goal for this year.

It was terrific to see the excitement of the alumni at the annual meeting last week. Indeed, I found it impossible not to get excited myself! We have the skills and the desire to do the building - and we have the foundation to build on.

It is going to be a great year.

Every year, the Woodward Shakespeare Festival puts on two shows for free just north of where I work.  I thoroughly enjoyed the recent production of Richard III.

And I took the opportunity to try my hand at low-light photography.

I can hardly look at a map of San Diego without the childhood memories flooding back.  There’s Lake Murray, for instance, where Grandpa and I used to go feed the ducks - with an obligatory grocery store stop for bread (for the ducks) and M&Ms (for us).

But this I will say, nothing brings back the childhood memories like being able see the Padres play at home.

I have been married for a little over three months now, and have found marriage to be wonderful in about a zillion different ways.  The wonderful woman who is now my wife is a joy to be around, all the time.  But last night, I found out there may be more to the story… *queue ominous music*

Last night, after I got home from work, I answered a call on my wife’s cell phone. There was a woman’s voice on the other end, asking for my wife, and indicating that she was calling in regards to Azure Standard.

I thought about that for a second, and gave the most brilliant, well-reasoned response my brain could come up with: “You’re calling about what?”

The reply came back, indicating I had heard correctly the first time - Azure Standard.  A bit perplexed at this bit of indecipherable code, I turned the phone over to the owner of said cell phone.  As I handed it over, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was Code Azure Standard, or Mission Azure Standard, or Operation Azure Standard, or what on earth I was dealing with here.

That line of thinking was magnified when my wife’s first question was “Can you tell me about the Fresno drop point?”

And was that just a hint of a Russian accent I was hearing?????

Well, as it turns out, I didn’t marry a spy.  I married a baker, and bakers need this thing called “wheat.”  Apparently it’s cheaper in bulk - enter Azure Standard.

…I can at least pray, and ask you to do the same.

Remember has a team leaving for the Middle East this month - pray for them!

There have been many things that have scared me in the last few months about the way out government is going.  I could give you a laundry list, because my mind cannot cease to be boggled about how many things we Americans have taken for granted that can no longer be assumed.  When government owns and controls industry, when government can pick and choose what organizations live and what organizations die by who they give money to, and when the knee-jerk reaction to financial instability is to look to the government for a solution, there are countless indices of freedom running in the red.

But I want to talk about the one that scares me the most, my friends.   This is not meant to be a partisan rant, nor is it meant to be directed at the current Supreme Court nominee - what you see here is the thoughts of a genuinely worried common citizen.

This idea is the one that our judges should be governed primarily by “empathy.”  Merriam-Webster tells me that this word comes from the Greek for passion, feelings, and emotion.  The part of the definition that we are most familiar with says that empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another…”  If  judge is to be ruled by empathy, it is to say that this judge, when faced with a case, looks not to the law, but looks to his or her own emotions and discerns which party makes them say “awwwww…” louder.  That’s why I’m calling this the “rule of awwww” - and it can be easily distinguished from the rule of law.

But one cannot be bound by both the law and one’s emotion.  One or the other must reign supreme.  And if a judge feels that he or she must choose based on empathy, that judge must literally disown the rule of law.

I don’t claim to be an expert in the rule of law.  There are many who could expound the theory of the rule of law much better than I.  And yet, that’s the point.  You don’t need to be an expert to know why the rule of law is so vital to any sort of justice and freedom.  Our society is based on law.  The rule of law provides us with stability and expectability, giving us a cause-and-effect in societal interaction.  It serves as the great leveller, subjecting every person, great and small, to its universal principles.  Laws can be changed, certainly, and adapted, but not on a whim of some self-seeking person, and not only in subjective application to targeted individuals.  You don’t have to be an expert to understand the value of the rule of law - and you don’t have to look any further than wherever you’re sitting to see how valuable it is in everyday life.

And that is why judges unbound from the rule of law have been hallmarks of despotism for time immemorial.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mean to automatically equate an “empathetic” judge with the judges that executed “the people’s” whim in revolutionary France, Hitler’s whim in Germany, or Stalin’s whim in Russia, or Pol Pot’s whim in Cambodia (or countless other examples).  But once one looses a judge from the rule of law, you leave yourself open to that possibility.

A politician is necessarily bound by the will of the people, because he can be voted out.  But a judge is bound only to the law, and if you remove that mooring a judge becomes at very best a miniature dictator.  Perhaps that judge will use his dictatorial power for good, but that’s not a risk I am willing to take - and it is not a risk our Constitution was willing to subject us to.

And that is why the “Rule of Awwww” scares me to death.