H.I. McDonough, patriot
“There’s what’s right,” H.I. McDonough notes in Raising Arizona, “and there’s what’s right, and never the twain shall meet.” He was explaining why it’s okay to kidnap a baby, but it also applies to contemporary politics. Regular readers know that I support virtually every sort of transgression you can think of. It’s a paradox, because I’m also a big fan of individual conscience. Life is like a game of Monopoly, in that A) children have a hard time finishing it and B) the written rules are not enough. You can set forth laws governing every aspect of human behavior, experienced and projected, and still they will not hold your society together in the absence of individual conscience. Just as a decent person will be good even when no one is supervising, a crappy person will invariably find ways to suck in accordance with the law. Today’s link roundup features conflicts between what’s right and what is (mostly) legal, and they remind us that a ship steered only by whistles and the lash is bound to sink. It’s kind of a bummer, actually, which is why it will be interspersed with movie clips. Because I care about my readers, and not so much about copyright law.
