A speculative mind

  I was listening to Benjamin Netanyahu on the radio. He was justifying his change in the law that removed power from the Israeli Supreme Court, saying that it was the will of the people. Majority rules. This made me think of “Tyranny of the masses,” a concept that notes: just because a majority of people are for something, that doesn’t make it right. I am sure you can think of historical examples where the people of a country supported a policy that was demonstrably wrong. When everything is completely governed by majority rule, the rights of the minority can be subverted by the majority. The framers of our American Constitution knew this, and tried to put in some checks and balances into our system of government. This was to guard against all forms of tyranny whether from a dictator, or from tyranny of the masses. One of those checks is that we have a representative government. The people themselves don’t pass laws, but instead elect representatives at the federal and local lev...

  My wife got me started watching reruns of Station 19 , a show about Seattle firefighters, a spinoff of Grey’s Anatomy . Like Grey’s Anatomy , it is a typical Hollywood take on an important job, meaning: cue the soap opera subplots. But it does have some realistic portrayals of the kinds of things that a firefighter might encounter, even if some aspects are exaggerated. Anyway, it got me reminiscing about when I was a firefighter. I was a volunteer firefighter in a small coastal town. My situation was different than that of a professional firefighter working in a large city. In my 10-year career as a fireman, I responded to something more than 500 calls. That might seem like a lot in the abstract, but a firefighter in a big city department might do that many in a few months. In station 19 , much is made of the danger firefighters face and their stress it puts on their loved ones (of course they have to ramp up the drama). Firefighters do face dangers. Some of them are injured ...

                                                                                                                  Artwork by Gerd Altmann One time, my wife and I were out to eat at a nice restaurant. It was busy and we had to wait a bit to be seated. I noticed another couple, also waiting, who had decided to sit at the bar until their turn came. It was a young man and woman, probably both in their twenties talking and laughing. It was obvious that the young woman had been in a terrible fire at some point in her life. Her face was a mask of fire scarring that no amount of plastic surgery would ever put completely right. When you see the effects of such a tragedy, there is a natural feeling of sympathy. And w...