Osler's Razor

As long as the universities teach that what is best in life is to crush your enemies, to drive them before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

Which is sad, really, because Robert E. Howard (my own hero of writing and fellow West Texan) had this to say of Conan's true philosophy:

"I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

Sigh. For the Conan that could have been, I salute you, Robert.

Now, what were we talking about?
 

More substantive reply: incarcerating a lot of people means that they'll just commit criminal acts against each other in prison, which isn't really the same thing as less crime.

And I too am skeptical of our ability, at least without violating due process, to put the key offenders away in prison. Most of them are too well insulated and too well-connected to ever go down. Then I thought: do we really want to take down massive crime organizations?

Crime is a nearly-inevitable consequence of our society, or any society. As long as there is inequity in a society, there will be those who use dishonest and illegal means to secure their own position and to advance themselves. Criminal organizations provide a civilizing influence on crime. If crime is business, then a certain equalization must be reached between authority and criminality, between order and chaos. A little structured crime is actually a benefit to that kind of a society.

So, the "key men," so to speak, represent a force that we cannot do away with any more than we can banish shadows by lighting more lamps. However, since education is good in and of itself, spending more money on education cannot be a bad thing, and I'm all for that.
 

I read "incarcerating" as "incinerating." That makes this post about a significantly different moral issue.
 

The first paragraph of Lane's first post is one of my favorite Razor posts of all time.
 

Existential quandaries aside, Arnold's got the right idea that as a society we should probably place more emphasis on education than incarceration. But a constitutional amendment to codify a budgeting principle? Seems kind of drastic, shortsighted, and quixotic.

First, the state legislatures will unanimously reject such a huge federal infringement on issues patently reserved to the states--education, state criminal justice, and state budgeting. But also, imagine that a smaller state with a relatively low crime rate, maybe Nebraska, spends much more on it's universities than it's prisons like Arnold says they should. But then maybe they hit a budget crunch like many states have recently and they cut back some on their already well-funded school budgets. Maybe the leg cuts research grants and other more "expendable" expenses. But they can't cut back their prison budgets in the same way, because prison systems are already run on a shoestring. Suddenly prisons and universities are funded at nearly the same levels, and all it takes is a few dollars one way or the other to send Nebraska into an unconstitutional tailspin.

And another thing--maybe this is just the proto-lawyer in me talking, but who in the world is going to have standing to challenge a violation of the proposed amendment? Taxpayer suits have been shutdown pretty effectively, and I don't see the Supreme Court resurrecting them for challenges to state budgets. Could students sue the state? Maybe, but they'd have to find individualized harm in the state budget cuts, not just vague assertions of a drop in educational quality.
 

Can we have a tangent here on the best Arnold movie? I think it is definitely the first Terminator film he was in.
 

Best Arnold movie? Kindergarten Cop, hands down. "Dominic, get the ferret! It's a fire drill!"
 

Predator! One movie, two future governors!
 

"Come on, Cohaagen! You got what you want. Give those people air!"
 

My name is Detective John Kimball. I'm a cop you idiot!

Kindergarten Cop, no question. Or possibly Jingle All The Way.
 

I'm a fan of 'True Lies' and 'Kindergarden Cop'. A kinder, gentler Aa-nold...

How about some schools in the prisons?
 

My high school basically was a prison-- designed to keep people in and contraband out.
 

Favorite Arnold film?
Don't have one.

But I do have a few favorite folk songs about prisons. This is one of them:

Billy Rose was a low rider. Billy Rose was a night fighter. Billy Rose knew trouble like the sound of his own name.

Busted on a drunken charge, driving someone else's car, the local midnight sheriff's claim to fame.

In an Arizona jail there are some who tell the tale how Billy fought the sergeant for some milk that he demanded. Knowing they'd remain the boss, knowing he would pay the cost, they saw he was severely reprimanded.

In the blackest cell on "A" Block, he hanged himself at dawn. With a note stuck to the bunk head, "don't mess with me, just take me home."

Come and lay, help us lay young Billy down.

Luna was a Mexican the law called an alien for coming across the border with a baby and a wife.
Though the clothes upon his back were wet, still he thought that he could get some money and things to start a life.

It hadn't been too very long when it seemed like everything went wrong. They didn't even have the time to find themselves a home. This foreigner, a brown-skin male, thrown into a Texas jail; it left the wife and baby quite alone.

He eased the pain inside him with a needle in his arm. But the dope just crucified him. He died to no one's great alarm.

Come and lay, help us lay Young Luna down. And we're gonna raze, raze the prisons to the ground.

Kilowatt was an aging con of 65 who stood a chance to stay alive and leave the joint and walk the streets again. As the time he was to leave drew near, he suffered all the joy and fear of leaving 35 years in the pen.

And on the day of his release he was approached by the police, who took him to the warden walking slowly by his side. The warden said "You won't remain here, but it seems a state retainer claims another 10 years of your life."

He stepped out in the Texas sunlight. The cops all stood around. Old Kilowatt ran 50 yards, then threw himself down on the ground.

They might as well just have laid the old man down. And we're gonna raze, raze the prisons to the ground. Help us raze, raze the prisons to the ground
 

I agree with Jesse's assessment of what ARnold's trying to do: it's a great sentiment, but the 10% vs 7.5% numbers seem arbitrary. Does that mean that if the universities (or the prisons) ever need MORE money, it will be impossible to give it to them? It just seems like a blunt instrument of an idea . . . although it's a really interesting one.

And yeah, Christine, I'm all for schools in the prisons.

And the end of the newspaper article said that Arnold refused to comply with the federal order to reduce the prison population by 40,000. So he's ducking that unpopular responsibility and passing it on to the next governor. He could reduce spending on prisons by doing what he was ordered to do.
 

My favorite was Kindergarten Cop, too. I remember some line about "Hey, kid, you've got a tooo-mor" (i.e. tumor). hee hee