Exceptions

 Exceptions are so inevitable that no rule is without them—except the one just stated.

— Eugene Rhodes

Among Ralph Waldo Emerson's many contributions to Philosophy Americana is the oft-cited "Law of Compensation."

You get what you give, it states in a nutshell.

"Nature hates monopolies and exceptions," Emerson says. 

"There is always some leveling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others."

If only this were true.

It's not.

Nature may hate exceptions, but exceptions—the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate—always win the day.

Always.

Consider these injustices:

• Pretty people are paid 15% more than plain-looking people.
  
  
• Blonde women are paid 7% more than brunettes and redheads.
  
  
• Educated workers of color are paid $10,000 less than their white colleagues.
  
  
• Rich people enjoy lower income tax rates than other earners.  
  
  
• Poor people die in wars; rich people do not.

Try all you might to level the playing field, exceptions will always emerge to take the lead. 

And so rich parents cheat to get their kids into Ivy League schools; advantaged whites fabricate degrees and credentials; and the super-rich lie to the IRS about their income.

Emerson notwithstanding, the Law of Compensation applies to schmucks only.

Exceptions are exempt.

No one has better depicted this truth than Woody Allen in his 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors, a rich ophthalmologist (played by Martin Landau) arranges the contract-killing of his mistress, only to escape any consequence, while a smart, devoted documentary filmmaker (played by Allen) must kowtow to a slick, fast-talking TV producer, only to lose his love to him.

The exceptions win. 

The nobodies lose.

C'est la vie.

Trust Fund Babies

 He had a lifelong desire to earn a living,
which helped keep him grounded.

— Julian Baggini

"Let me tell you about the very rich," F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. 

"They are different from you and me. 

"They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. 

"They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are."

Outside of trust fund babies, who doesn't loathe trust fund babies?

They're loathsome because they're born with immunity to all quotidian hardships.

While the rest of us worry what the boss really thinks, how much longer the car will last, and whether to pay the whole credit card bill this month, they worry about the currents next week off Barbados, whether to hang the Basquiat alongside the Beeple, and what to wear to Saturday's steeplechase.

They're not immune, of course, to overdoses, cirrhosis, cancers, or car accidents.

That, at least, is satisfying.

Numerically, trust fund babies are small in number.

Almost 75% of the super-rich 1% have earned their wealth; and only 16% have inherited "old money" (earned two, three or four generations ago).

Nonetheless, that 16% represents 527,000 people to loathe.

These loathsome people have inherited, on average, $2.7 million, according to the Federal Reserve. 

That's $447 for every $1 inherited by the poor.

And not all trust fund babies are, of course, airheaded wastrels. 

History is rife with trust fund babies who worked hard and changed the world.

Buddha. St. Francis. Lafayette. Cézanne. Tolstoy. Bertrand Russell. Edith Wharton. FDR. JFK. William S. Burroughs. Gloria Vanderbilt. Anderson Cooper.

The list is long.

But we tend to stereotype trust fund babies.

Unfairly advantaged in almost every stage and walk of life, they're spoiled and lazy; vain and vapid; aloof and self-righteous; petty and paranoid.

Bolstered by wealth, they are directionless, and know nothing of failure and hardship.

Perpetual child actors, "their life is a series of highlight reels," says writer Tim Denning.

But the trust fund baby would tell us we're guilty of envy, and that envy's a sin.

"Envy rots the bones," Proverbs says.

Envy is insecurity masquerading as resentment: it invites you to compare yourself to others who, by dint of good luck, enjoy status you lack—and to cultivate hatred for them.

"Envy is a mind game with our sinful nature," says Christian writer Quinn Jackson.

"At its core, envy comes from the lack of belief that God is all powerful, cares about you deeply and has wonderful plans for your life."

Envy is in fact so sinful, Jackson says, it's practically inadmissible. 

To admit to being envious is to admit you're "ungenerous, mean, and small-hearted."

Hogwash.

At its core, envy seeks justice.

Envy resides within the heart of democracy.

Envy isn't hate; it's contempt, targeted, in this case, at unearned moneyed privilege—and the power it wields over us, even if only potentially.

As a member of the trust fundless, that contempt is my right.

You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Illth

Americans—Republican voters, especially—romanticize the rich. 

They're held up as titans, when in fact they're just lucky.

The Victorian critic John Ruskin felt that Englishmen of his day were equally guilty of romanticizing the rich—and were wrong to do so.

Rich people hoard, Ruskin argued, taking their wealth out of circulation.

But wealth is only useful in circulation.

"If a thing is to be useful," Ruskin said, "it must be not only of an availing nature, but in availing hands. 

"Usefulness is value in the hands of the valiant."

Ruskin, leaning on his Classics education, defined the "valiant" as the "valuable;" as those who "avail towards life." 

In a word, workers.

Ruskin thought the rich were worse than just idle: the rich are like "dams in a river" and "pools of dead water which, so long as the stream flows, are useless, or serve only to drown people."

Ruskin wondered why English didn't have a word for the harm caused by wealth. 

He suggested illth. 

Illth, Ruskin said, is the "devastation caused by delay." 

By hoarding their wealth, the rich postpone its use until after their deaths. 

In this sense, Ruskin believed, the rich act as "impediments" to the flow of wealth.

From their great country houses, nothing ever "trickles down."

Ruskin published these thoughts in 1860, 12 years after Karl Marx published The Communist Manifesto. 

But whereas Marx's essay, published by a small society of fellow travelers, was largely ignored, Ruskin's, published in a popular magazine, created a firestorm.

The English critics despised it.

Ruskin's essay was declared "one of the most melancholy spectacles we have ever witnessed."

"Absolute nonsense," "utter imbecility," and "intolerable twaddle," the critics wrote.

One critic called the author himself "repulsive," adding that Ruskin was the "perfect paragon of blubbering; his whines and snivels are contemptible."

But was he contemptible in condemning the rich for fostering illth?

I don't think so. 

Illth, you could say, is the underbelly of wealth.

Wealth is a 13th-century word meaning "prosperity." It derived from another Old English word, weal, meaning "health."

Ill, also a 13th-century word, came centuries later to mean "unhealthy;" but its original 13th-century meaning was "wicked." 

Illth, therefore, means "wickedness." 

Ruskin's point was clear: when you look at their underbellies, the rich are wicked.

They block our way to prosperity; they don't create it.

Will Republicans ever get it?

HAT TIP: Thanks to copywriter Nancy Friedman for introducing me to illth.

Exile on Main Street

The artist has no more actual place in the American culture of today than he has in the American economy of today.

— William Faulkner

I'm flattered so many friends and acquaintances have taken well to my choice of an "encore" career.

At the same time, I'm saddened that I can only pursue painting as a career because I don't depend on it for the lion's share of my income.

My hat's off to those painters—successful or not—who found the cajones to try in their youth to paint for a living.

Faulkner was right to say the artist "has no place in the mosaic of the American dream as it exists today."

The average American artist, according to the Labor Department, earns $50,300 a year. That's $10,000 less than a clerk at the post office (a job Faulkner held as a young man, until he was fired for throwing away mail).

Of course remorse isn't good for the soul; and calling America materialistic is trite.

But as Wassily Kandinsky observed, "The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip."

Ukraine

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Putin is the richest man in the world.

His cronies are among the richest.

Why they are compelled to crush Ukraine culminates from their unfathomable wealth.

It also culminates from their remoteness from 99.99% of humanity.  

"Love of money is blind," says artist Erik Pevernagie. 

"Greed and money make people forfeit the quiddity of life, banish them from what is essential and alienate them from themselves. They lose their identity and become drifting exiles."

Above: A tank rolls through Kherson, Ukraine. Photographer unknown.

UPDATE: Early this morning, Ukraine announced its forces have launched a counter-offensive outside Kyiv, according to The Wall Street Journal.

America the Beautiful

In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil, each has its place.

— Nelson Algren

It's February 1947.

Chicago novelist Nelson Algren takes the El to Monroe and walks a block to the Palmer House, where he meets fellow novelist Simone de Beauvoir in a cocktail lounge named Le Petit Café. 

He buys her a drink and they try to hold a conversation, but it's tough: he speaks no French and her English is limited.

"I’m the only serious writer in this city," Algren boasts, and offers to show de Beauvoir, visiting from Paris, the "real" town.

He takes the famous Existentialist to a tiny dance club filled with down-and-out customers; old winos, ruined whores, and a crazy spastic misfit who dances alone on the empty stage. Algren used to be a hobo, himself, a member of Chicago's lowlife.

"He’s here every day," Algren says, pointing to the spastic man. 

"He's beautiful," Beauvoir replied. "They're all beautiful."

"In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil—each has its place" Algren says. "We don't like to think these extremes can mingle.”

We still don't.

Toxic Masculinity

I have a bad feeling about this.

— Han Solo

"Toxic masculinity."

I overhear this phrase in coffee shops, cafés, and restaurants more than any other single phrase.

I don't know why it's on the top of women's minds right now—at least the minds of the women who frequent coffee shops, cafés, and restaurants—but it definitely is.

I don't know what's happening to women; but—whatever it is—I have a bad feeling about this.

Perhaps you can blame their wrath on Andrew Cuomo, Jeffery Epstein, or Texas's Republicans.

But, whatever the cause, I think men are soon up for a collective asswhuppin' (defined by Urban Dictionary as an "intense physical retribution involving heavy bruising, put upon a person in need of a life-lesson in civility, politeness, and manners"). 

The phrase "toxic masculinity" was coined 36 years ago by farmer and writer Shepherd Bliss. He thought it described the authoritarian streak displayed by his absent, career-military father.

Over the decades since, however, the phrase has come to denote practically all the attitudes and actions of men, who by dint of gender are not only vulgar and sloppy, but aggressive, competitive, homophobic, sexist, and misogynistic.

That's seems awfully harsh; but I'm not most men's target.

Novelist Norman Mailer, fairly macho himself, believed that contemporary American males were toxic because they were without honor.

"Masculinity is not something given to you, something you’re born with, but something you gain," he wrote in 1962. "And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. 

"Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men."

I think Mailer was onto something.

Somewhere on the journey to manhood, American men forgot about honor.

The Lonely Sailor

Privilege implies exclusion from privilege.

— Robert Anton Wilson

Call me a libtard: I don't care much for unbridled privilege.

My closest encounter with it came in the National Gallery of Art on on a March evening in 1998, when I spotted a frantic Bill Gates.

It was Sunday, around 7 pm, and the building was officially closed to the art-viewing public. All the galleries were dark and cordoned off.

I was standing with a friend in the hallway in a long line for an after-hours chamber recital when Gates and his wife walked up alongside us.

They paused at the door of one of the galleries and Gates said, "That's it," pointing at a huge Winslow Homer seascape inside the darkened room. Without thought, he unhitched the velvet rope that blocked the door and shooed his wife in.

A young Black security guard appeared suddenly and said, "Sir, sir, the gallery's closed." "We just want to look at the painting," Gates snapped and stepped into the gallery. The guard repeated his warning to no avail, shrugged his shoulders, and wandered off for reinforcements. Gates and his wife spent five minutes inside the room examining the Homer, then left. The reinforcements never arrived.

The following morning, Gates' DC visit made the headlines of The Washington Post. He was in town to testify on Capitol Hill about Microsoft's monopoly over Internet access.

Two months later, Gates made the headlines again, this time for buying a Winslow Homer seascape for $36 million—in 1998, the greatest price ever paid for an American artist's painting.

Lost on the Grand Banks, the last major Homer seascape in private hands, was believed at the time to be destined for the National Gallery's permanent collection. But Gates got his hands on it first. (He still owns it today.)

I realized why he'd been so keen to examine Homer's seascape in the National Gallery that Sunday evening in March. 

He was planning to buy one of his own.

The thing that galled me (and still does) wasn't Gates' ability to buy a $36 million Winslow Homer, but the notion that he was entitled to let himself into an art gallery—the National Art Gallery—after hours, as if it were his living room.

But, to his mind, it is. After all, he's a man of privilege.

Privilege entered English in the 12th century, derived from the Latin privilegium.

According to the Laws of the Twelve Tables—the source of Ancient Roman law—a privilegium was a right conferred by the emperor on one man, a "law for an individual."

The Romans called the privilegium precisely for what it was: favoritism.

To have privilege today is to be favored, entitled, endowed, advantaged, exempt, immune, or just plain special.

You know, like Bill Gates.

Gates grew up in a privileged household, so his sense of entitlement was strong to begin with. But his runaway success in business no doubt supersized it.

Business success often goes to people's heads, you've probably noticed. Successful business leaders frequently feel they're superior—distinguished from others in their ability and willingness to do endless battle against chill winds and harsh seas. They, the lonely sailors, have singlehandedly brought the boats home. Everyone else is just ballast.

And so we like to say, "It's lonely at the top." One art critic, in fact, has suggested that Bill Gates had to acquire Lost on the Grand Banks because he feels so alone.

"In his bunkered isolation from the rest of us," the critic writes, "the image of the solo sailor is paramount."  

Above: Lost on the Grand Banks by Winslow Homer. 1885. Oil on canvas. 32 x 50 inches. Collection of Bill Gates.

City of Brotherly Love

 

I'm glad I'm living in the land of the free, where the rich just get richer and the poor you don't ever have to see.

— Randy Newman

Two worlds were on view outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center, host this week to Expo Expo, the tradeshow for tradeshow organizers.

One was the world of wealth and conspicuous consumption; the other, the world of poverty and homelessness.

Perhaps because we're aware of the coming holidays—an occasion to reflect on good fortune—more than one attendee mentioned to me that they found Philadelphia's efforts to hide the homeless from visitors' view wanting.

The homeless hovered in doorways and alleys around the convention center, and the streets were squalid, littered with their debris.

Meantime, the caviar and cocktails flowed at the Jean-Georges SkyHigh, atop the nearby Four Seasons Hotel.

This kind of dichotomous display isn't what you'd expect in the US, where we're adept at hiding poverty from visitors' view. In the Philippines, yes. In Indonesia, yes. In the US, no. 

But Philadelphia has bigger problems to worry about.

Visitors' discomfort be damned.

What Happened to Leaning In?

The ambition and focus that propel you to success
can also be your downfall. 

— Judy Smith

Schadenfreude is unhealthy, but I nonetheless relish watching the once high and mighty humbled.

This month's fallen angel is Elizabeth Holmes, wunderkind and Steve Jobs wannabe.

Once the the world's youngest female self-made billionaire, Holmes now stands trial for defrauding investors of $400 million and faces 20 years in prison if convicted.

In 2013—the same year she reached the top of the world by selling her company's fake blood tests to millions of unsuspecting consumers—Holmes' Silicon Valley neighbor Sheryl Sandberg popularized the phrase leaning in.

Facing a prison cell, it appears Holmes is no longer leaning in, but weaseling out.

While the Northern California DA alleges she committed fraud, Holmes is trying to walk between raindrops, claiming she was only following Silicon Valley's "playbook," and that an "emotionally abusive" boyfriend led her into temptation (he will also go on trial for fraud next year).

Hogwash.

Hey, Liz, now that you've been caught with your hand in the till, how about leaning into the truth a little?

Why dodge your actions and blame others—and why blame a boyfriend?

An op-ed in The New York Times insists Holmes is the innocent victim of the "male-dominated world of tech start-ups" and the "boys’ club that is the tech industry." No man would be put on trial for swindling investors.

More hogwash.

If you want to lean in, lean in. There's no in betweenin'.

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 30, 2021: Holmes testified yesterday that her boyfriend drove her to commit her crimes.

UPDATE, JANUARY 3, 2022: Holmes was found guilty of fraud. "The Svengali Defense didn’t work," said journalist John Carreyou.

Just Dessert

I don't know what is to set this world right, 

it is so awfully wrong everywhere.

— Mary Merrick Brooks

"The most beautiful young lady in town," one bewitched bachelor said of her.

Mary Merrick of Concord, Mass., spent her youth waving away suitors, until, at 22, she finally chose one, marrying Nathan Brooks, Esq., a wealthy estate lawyer, in 1823.

Harvard-educated, Nathan was a polished and devoutly political animal. And Mary was his perfect match.

But they were different people.

Nathan, unwilling to risk his lawyer's reputation, elected to keep mum on the big issue of the day—slavery.

Mary did anything but.

She spoke out, and led the town's charge against the institution, founding the radical Concord Ladies' Antislavery Society, and organizing stops on the Underground Railroad.

Although divisive, slavery was flourishing in the 1820s, legal in half of the 24 states and the District of Columbia.

Slave-owning infuriated Mary (her own father had been a slaver in South Carolina before moving to Concord, so she knew the practice first hand).

She channeled her indignation into fundraising for the cause of Abolition—more accurately, for the cause of "Immediatism," which insisted that Black slaves everywhere be freed immediately, without national debate or compromise, or reparations to their owners.

The money Mary raised was used to pay for speaking visits to Concord by rabble-rousers like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown, and for subscriptions to radical newspapers like William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator.

A hands-on fire-eater, the clever Mary searched for a fool-proof recipe for fundraising, hitting at last on sales of a tasty confection she named the "Brooks Cake."

The Brooks Cake comprised one pound of flour, one pound of sugar, half a pound of butter, four eggs, a cup of milk, a teaspoon of soda, a half-teaspoon of cream of tartar, and a half pound of currants.

Concord's society women ate it up. 

For decades, none would dare hold a lunch or afternoon tea without serving a fresh Brooks Cake—no matter her stand on slavery.

How Could They?

Have not other nations found great benefit from the use of slaves in repairing high roads, making rivers navigable, draining bogs, and erecting public buildings, bridges, and manufactures?

— George Berkeley

Happy Juneteenth! 

What better day than today to ask, how could White Christians have enslaved Blacks and still believe they were practicing Christians?

I think it's smart to look for answers in the writings of the most thoughtful Christians of the period.

One was the Irish philosopher George Berkeley.

A brilliant and outspoken Anglican bishop (and a slave-owner, as well), Berkeley shared the belief with many of his White contemporaries that obedience to God demanded you support slavery, because it was good for the slaves.

Berkeley was as conservative as they come, and not much different from today's conservatives in believing some people are bums. 

Skin color didn't much matter to Berkeley: bums in the 18th century were all the same. God made them that way.

Berkeley worried a lot about poverty and unrest in his native Ireland and in 1735 wrote The Querist, a book in which he asked, who's to blame for the fact that Ireland is poor?

His answer was clear: the bums are to blame.

Bums represented to Berkeley a dissolute, drunken, cynical, lazy and antisocial form of life. 

Forcing bums to participate in infrastructure projects was better than leaving them at liberty to wallow in their own filth. 

Forcing them to work would, in fact, give them dignity and guarantee their personal development.

If compulsory labor made them slaves, so be it. Slaves, as the Bible made clear, are just servants. Turning bums into servants served the public good, stimulated the economy, and was the "best cure for idleness and beggary." Forced labor, in fact, was a bum's way of demonstrating his or her "Christian charity."

Berkeley could justify an institution we find repugnant, because he valued an orderly Christian society—one that curbed some individuals' liberty, when that liberty hampered self-improvement.

We might call it charity under the lash, or self-help at the barrel of a gun. Whatever you call it, you know Berkeley's argument is weird and deeply flawed.

But it sounds hauntingly familiar.

Defying Gravity

If a bridge collapses, a Mercedes drops as fast as a Hyundai.

— Al Franken

Republican dogma notwithstanding, wealth never trickles down. 

Never.

Yet, despite the fact William Jennings Bryan exposed trickle down's fallaciousness 125 years ago, Republicans insist it does.

Wearing wearisome disguises, this idiotic article of faith resurfaces every time a Republican opens his or her fatuous mouth.

But money isn't subject to the law of gravity.

When it goes up, it never comes down. 

Unless forced to.

Last week we learned the super-rich pay no taxes, reconfirming the fact that wealth never trickles down; at least, not through our tax system.

Republicans' reaction to the news: good for them! They're smart cookies!

Why anyone but a trust-fund baby would vote Republican escapes me. 

They must be brainwashed by their betters. 

As Lenin observed, "The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."

The good news is: we're on the brink of another New Deal, courtesy President Biden.

Naturally, Republicans are incensed. 

It puts the Trump tax cut at risk.

"Republicans say tax cuts pay for themselves," writes Al Franken in Rolling Stone. "They never do. How about we try something that actually does work?"

Franken, like Biden, proposes taxing the rich to pay for Biden's new deal.

"Perhaps you’ve noticed that the rich have been getting a lot richer for quite a few decades now," Franken writes. "And as the rich get richer, our country seems to be falling apart."

Which, if you've been outdoors lately, you know is true.

Since Reagan's presidency, the federal government has neglected the country's infrastructure, targeting tax dollars instead to weapons and Wall Street bailouts.

As a result, dynasties—a source of power never foreseen by our Founders—have blossomed.

Biden's new deal would tax those dynasties in order to update our dilapidated bridges, roads, water mains, power plants, parks, schools, railways, and seaports—a diabolical plan, if there ever was one.

Pure socialism! scream brain-dead Republicans.

Maybe it is. But the fact remains, wealth never trickles down. 

Never.

Like gold, wealth has to be extracted.

And why not?

"The fact is that every bit of what President Biden proposes is in everyone’s best interest," Franken writes.

"If a bridge collapses, a Mercedes drops as fast as a Hyundai."

A Bum's Wages

Show me a man with very little money and I will show you a bum.

— Joe E. Lewis

You can't get good help these days.

I know. 

I've been trying for almost a month to find someone to turn on my sprinkler system (it's controlled by a bunch of servo-motors and above my pay-grade). 

Two different companies have already broken two appointments each; a third is now on deck to come to my home and do the 20-minute job three weeks from now—for five times the price asked by the other two oufits.

I won't hold my breath anyone shows up.

The proprietors are quick to point out to me the source of the trouble: bums.

While business owners are working 17-hour days, bums are sitting on their couches, collecting juicy federal payments. 

Never mind their companies collected juicy federal payments, too, last summer—in fact, three rounds of them.

The unspoken message: socialism breeds bums.

Or not so unspoken.

Today's Delaware Business Times features an editorial by the publisher headlined, "Delaware’s leaders need to rethink federal benefits." 

He calls for the state's governor (a Democrat) to follow the lead of the nation's Republican governors and withhold all federal unemployment payments.

The payments, he says, represent a "body blow for small businesses."

The metaphor makes clear the publisher believes business owners and elected officials are engaged in a boxing match.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in the red corner, 'Punching' Pete Proprietor... and in the blue corner, Patrick 'The Pickpocket' Politico. Let's get ready to rumble!"

Business owners make a simple argument. 

It goes like this:

There are tons of jobs available. But bums just want to sit at home and spend the $300 federal unemployment checks they get every week to finance their Commie lifestyles. They're not grateful for the bum's wages we so graciously offer—because they're bums. And the bums are being abetted in their ambitionless bumhood by the bleeding-hearts who want their votes. They should all be kicked off the gravy train and go to work—for us. Pronto. Profits are at stake. 

I, for one, don't care to admit our normal economy functions because of the millions of working poor who are paid a bum's wages.

I just want my sprinklers turned on. Now. Cheaply.

But you can't get good help these days.

UPDATE: As it happened, I had to call a fourth company to turn on my sprinklers.

From Béarnaise Sauce to Socialism

In France this day, celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Commune de Paris are wrapping up.

The Commune, a brief but world-historical uprising of Paris's working class, still rankles conservatives today.

That's because—from start to finish—it was a socialist uprising: a time of class warfare and revenge; of workers' rights, women's rights, and immigrants' rights; of living wages, debt forgiveness, rent control, cheap mass transit, and plentiful food.

Karl Marx loved (and inspired) it.

The two-month Commune didn't rise from nowhere.

It was triggered by the trauma of the four-month Siege of Paris, Bismarck's campaign to cripple the city, throughout which the working class had been corralled into a single arrondissement to starve to death. 

As Parisians' food dwindled, "siege cuisine" became popular.

Working-class people ate rats, cats, and dogs to survive, while the wealthy ate horses and mules and animals they took from the zoo—including camels, zebras, antelopes, and ostriches.

To make the wealthy's meat palatable, Parisian chefs experimented with fancy dishes like pâté de rat; stuffed donkey’s head with sardines; broth of elephant; and kangaroo stew. 

Sauces—first popularized by Chef Carême—came into particular use. 

Paris's chefs served meat cooked in burgundy, tomato puree, pepper sauce, truffle sauce, béarnaise sauce, and sauce chasseur (hunter’s sauce).

Without money for bistros, the working class had to settle for boiled, fried or baked rat, cat, and dog. No wonder they rebelled, once Bismarck's siege ended.

Like all of Paris's poodles, the Commune came to a terrible end. 

After a two-month reign over Paris, the Commune was crushed by soldiers rushed from Versaillais. 

They killed over 70,000 workers in the streets, executed another 30,000, and burned down a third of the city.

So much for socialism. 

But at least we have béarnaise sauce.

POSTSCRIPT: Learn how artists depicted the Paris Commune here. 

HAT TIP: Thanks to historian and gourmand Ann Ramsey for inspiring this post.

Who Owns the Earth?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs,
but not every man's greed.

― Mahatma Gandhi

Republicans are often called "idealess," but that's unfair.

They have an idea: they want to own the earth.

But is it even possible? Can a party of people own the earth?

Our Founders' favorite philosopher, John Locke, answered the question in 1690 in his Second Treatise of Government, arguing "no."

While reason would suggest no one can own the earth, Locke says, the Bible proves that fact: "God has given the earth to mankind in common." 

But if that's true, why do we believe in ownership at all? How can anyone say he owns any piece of property? How can he say he owns something which "God gave to mankind in common?"

Locke answers the second question by examining an age-old farming practice: fencing.

Although nobody "originally" owns the earth's natural resources, Locke says, we can't make use of those resources until we "fence" them, as it were. 

"There must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man," Locke says. 

That means of appropriation is fencing.

And when someone fences—"removing" a resource from access by others—he adds value to it—the value of his labor. 

"The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, are properly his," Locke says. "Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." 

A man's labor "annexes" and "encloses" a property, Locke says, excluding it from "the common right of other men.' 

In a phrase, workers keepers. "The condition of human life, which requires labor and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions," Locke says.

Work, in effect, infuses any resource worked on with property rights, which allow that resource to be owned by the worker.

Appropriating resources you haven't worked on, on the other hand, Locke calls robbery—in his eyes, a sin.

"God has given us all things richly, but how far has he given it to us?" he asks.

"As much as any one can make use of life before it spoils, so much he may, by his labor, fix a property: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil."

So no one can own the earth, but any man can have his own little acre—provided he works to improve it, Locke says. 

If he does not improve what he grabs, he's letting it spoil. That's Locke's definition of robbery.

You can't defend robbery by claiming, "Well, all of us own the earth, as God commands," because God also commands that all men should labor. Those who don't have no "title," no right to "benefit of another's pains." Those who don't labor are—literally—robber barons. There's no place in the world for them.

There's also no place for their greed, Locke says. 

Greed urges you to take more than you can improve—or ever use. 

If the barley inside your fence goes to seed, the vegetables die, the fruits rot, and the sheep and goats get sick, it signals you have grabbed more than you can care for, more than you can use; and therefore that you're greedy. 

It's "useless" and "dishonest," Locke says, to grab more than you can tend to or consume.

Although he's been dead for three centuries, Locke would be the first to say the modern Republican Party is the party of despoilers, robber barons, and greedy sinners.

But you knew that.