Our guest this week is Paul Martin Foss, who's one of the top anti-fed voices operating inside the Beltway. He was a longtime banking committee staffer for Congressman Ron Paul and a former colleague of mine, and now he heads the Karl Manger Center for the Study of Money and Banking in Arlington, Virginia. Paul Martin and I have a great conversation about Ron Paul's years fighting the Fed, about how and why Manger still matters, and why the Beltway types are wrong when they want to tinker with rather than end the Fed. Stay tuned. Paul Martin Foss, thanks so much for joining us. How are you today? I'm doing very well. Thanks. How are you? I notice that the name of the center is for the study of money and banking, not monetary policy. Right. And I love this because so many otherwise free market types will accept this loaded term. They would object to the terminology of housing policy or energy policy, et cetera. Paul Martin, what is about money that causes such a breakdown and rational thought that people even think we need a government policy for it in the first place? Well, I think part of it is because people have been, I mean, for the past 100 years or 150 years in this country, government has had such a monopoly on the issuance of money that people just don't give it a second thought. They don't understand the history of how in this country the market used to provide money in the early colonial era and then the early part of the United States after the Constitution was first ratified and enacted, we didn't have the United States Mint operating for several years. We had freely competing currencies, the Spanish pieces of eight, coins from Britain, Germany, France, et cetera, all circulating at private mint. I mean, it was a great monetary smorgasbord, but the government has gradually taken over and monopolized the issuance of money. And so for the past 100 years, the public in general and the economics profession particularly has just kind of taken it as a given that oh, a sovereign nation has the right to monopolize the issue of money. Is the focus of your center more narrowly on money and banking or is it more broadly on the Austrian school in general? It's basically going to be focused mostly on money and banking. Calling at the Karl Manger Center, we wanted to make people realize and be aware that we are coming from an Austrian perspective. But Manger's insights into money, he had his little pamphlet on the origins of money. He was involved in the Austro-Hungarian monetary reform and particularly his insight on the origins of money that had become about as a market institution, not the original created by government. It was originally something that was created by the market to facilitate the trade among people. Those kind of insights are what we want people to realize. So we're basically focusing on the monetary aspects and banking aspects of Austrian economics and trying to educate the American people on those issues. Paul Martin, his Manger underappreciated, even among Austrians, his name is not as well known obviously as some of his younger cohorts. Right. He's very much underappreciated. I think that partially it was a function of his career. I think he really stopped writing after about the, I want to say 1905 or something like that. I don't think he was in good health the last decades of his life. And then his archives went mostly to Tokyo. So there's just not a lot of access to his original material. And he has been eclipsed, obviously Mises was a big name here in the United States. So he and Rothbard influenced obviously a lot of the American Austrians. Hayek was a professor at LSE during the 1930s. And so he influenced a lot of folks in Europe and on the continent. So Manger just kind of had the misfortune of being the founder. Obviously, one of the three most important economists behind the marginal revolution. But because he published in German, as opposed to the others, was forgotten by history. Of course, the marginal revolution, he makes this enormous contribution. Roughly or almost exactly the same time as Walrus and Jevons, as you mentioned, it almost seemed like this hurt his legacy. It obscured him because there were other names or perhaps bigger names coming up with the same thing at the same time. That definitely is true. And I mean, when people, when you start to read Manger's principles and you start to read more about Manger's economic thought, you start to realize just how much of what he wrote, it was taken up in the mainstream economics. And most mainstream economists wouldn't even recognize that it's what they learned in Econ 101. They had no idea that it originally came from Manger's ideas. Well, explain for us what the marginal revolution meant for classical economics at the time and how it affects our modern understanding of how goods and services derive value. It did finally get around a labor theory of value, the water diamond paradox that people were always trying to solve. Unfortunately, you still find a lot of people who subscribe to a labor theory of value outside of the economics profession. You know, it's unfortunate that those ideas haven't gotten a greater hold outside of economics. I'm not really sure how necessarily to continue teaching people. They haven't learned them already. I guess part of it is they just have to be willing to learn those ideas. Well, maybe we need to go back and read Manger's principles of economics, which you mentioned earlier. Where do you think this book ranks among the great Austrian books? Obviously, there's several translations and it's not the easiest read, but most translations aren't. The principle of economics is one of the things that was assigned in my economics courses when I studied economics.  I think it's definitely one of the most important works, but I wouldn't necessarily find it as the first work. I'd find something like economics in one lesson from Henry Haslitt at kind of the introductory work and then maybe have principles of economics falling on from there. Once somebody reads something that's a little easier to understand, it's written in layman's terms like Haslitt, then to kind of segue into Manger. Because he does, in some of his terminology, at least in translation that I've read, it's not terminology that's used in the economics profession that might come across as archaic or strange. But once somebody has kind of a little bit of foundation, then Manger becomes a lot easier to read. If we look at the thread between individuals, Manger, obviously a huge influence on Mises himself. And then fast forward with many, many, many years to the 1970s. Mises is at that point, an old man dies a couple of years later, but he influences a young medical doctor at a conference in Houston, Texas. Ron Paul goes to see Lydon Mises speak on socialism at the time. Of course, you were an integral part of Ron Paul's efforts to bring an understanding of the Federal Reserve to average Americans. So looking back now, give us some of your thoughts on Ron's revolution since 2008 as it pertains to the Fed. It's amazing. I mean, and he's always said to that when he went to college campuses and you could get 5,000 students chanting and the Fed and burning their Federal Reserve notes, it's a message that kind of resonates with people. The Fed, obviously, since the financial crisis has taken on a much more activist role in essentially centrally planning the economy. I mean, they decide, well, we want stock prices to go up or housing prices to go up, and they have these determined aims and they adjust their monetary policy accordingly. I think a lot of people are starting to realize, you know, there was the report that came out the other day from Swiss Rea saying that savers have been cost $470 billion due to the Fed's monetary policy. You have people who are pensioners on fixed incomes to see their cost of living rising, even though the official inflation rate is still fairly low, they still see food prices and cost of living continues to increase. And that all has its roots in the Fed's monetary policy. So I think he really, he was the right person at the right time, really struck a chord. And one of the things I'd like to do is continue my work in Ron's office to educate people about the reserve and what it does. Well, of course, Ron deserves tremendous acclaim for what he's done. And I think a lot of intelligent laypeople really appreciate him bringing this issue to them. But does Ron get the credit he deserves among Beltway types for this? In other words, he took this wonkish back burner issue, even among economists, and he turned it into a political football. And I'm not certain that he always gets the credit he deserves for this. No, he definitely doesn't get the credit inside the Beltway. What he did essentially is he moved the goalposts before he came along, before he really made the Federal Reserve the issue that it was. You couldn't mention ending the Fed in D.C. and be taken serious.  But the idea has taken a lot more seriously today because of Ron, because of his movement. But you know, the Beltway types are still going to try to pander to power. They're going to talk about monetary policy rules and, oh, can we have a better or more efficient monetary policy than what we have right now? But the movers and shakers at the upper echelons are very much set in their ways. I've got a little bit of hope for some of the younger people that maybe, and who knows, in 20 or 30 years, you know, maybe we'll have some folks who are, you know, have a little bit of a founder outlook on the Fed. You really had a front row seat over the years when Ron served on the banking committee and house and also later when he finally got the subcommittee chairmanship that he deserved on monetary policy. So tell me, what are some of your memories that stand out from Dr. Paul's questioning of Bernanke in the banking committee over the years? One was when he asked Bernanke, do you do your own grocery shopping? And Bernanke said, yes, yes, I do. And he said, well, then you obviously should know that prices are rising and a lot higher than the CPI is. So that was one great comment. And there was another one where he held up a one ounce silver round, I think it was, and talked about how back in the 1950s, this used to buy so much and now it buys hardly anything, basically the dollar value. And I think he did that during the campaign, too, where he held up a silver diamond that he used to buy a gallon of gasoline back in the 1950s. Now a diamond won't buy that anymore. So, you know, talking about the evaluation of the dollar and of the Fed's purview. Well, it was great theater, though, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, it was. The image you bring up or Bernanke doing is grocery shopping. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that Mr. Bernanke's neighborhood features a whole foods rather than a piggly wiggly or a Kroger. It's also interesting how the GOP has tried to co-op the anti-fed sentiment that Ron created. Of course, they want to tinker with the Fed, not end it. Can you talk a little bit about this phenomenon of them using Ron for political gain? In my opinion, it really kind of came to a head when Audit the Fed, they brought it up for a vote in 2012, and they gave us no advance warning whatsoever. I remember it was an email that said, here's going to be voting on July.  And then I saw, wait a minute, Audit the Fed's up there. They gave us no advance warning. And it was basically, I thought it was a very cynical ploy to try to get Ron supporters on the side of the GOP for the upcoming Republican Convention. That's why they waited until July right before an election. They knew, even if it passes the House, there's no way it's going to get through the Senate. No way it's going to become law. It was a very cynical move, in my opinion. They did the same thing last year, you know, waited until just before the election. I wouldn't be surprised if they're going to do the same thing this time around in 2016. If Rand Paul ends up getting a little bit of traction, if they'll try to use Audit the Fed as a political football again. They are trying to take this idea because they realized, hmm, Ron had something going and he was able to raise a lot of funds and he was able to get a lot of popular support by talking about the Federal Reserve. So they think, well, if we can just take a little bit of that language and sprinkle it in here and there, then maybe we can get that kind of same support. And obviously it's not going to work, but it is very definite cynical political ploy. When you mentioned Audit the Fed, tell us what, in your view, a real or true audit of the Fed would look like as opposed to what we get, which is the Fed presenting its balance sheet at the end of the year as a fate accompli. I think what a real audit would show us is where exactly all this money is going. I mean, they've got two trillion dollars of Treasury securities, a trillion and a half of mortgage-backed securities, a real audit would show a lot sooner than what we're able to find out right now. Who's getting that money? I mean, who are they buying this from? When is it occurring? I mean, you hear the rumors of the primary dealers by the treasuries at the Treasury auction and immediately sell them to the Fed. Those are the kind of things we'd like to find out because it's basically backdoor monetization of the debt. So those types of things, you know, who's getting bailed out? I remember there was a very small partial audit back in, I think as a result of that frank, and then there was some of the data that we got from the New York Fed FOIA lawsuit that they lost, where they had to disclose some of this transactional data. And then that's when we found out the two wives of J.P. Morgan executives had formed a financial services company and got a few hundred million from the Fed through a bailout facility to help start their business. So it's those types of crony operations that an audit would shed some light on. That's why the Fed doesn't want an audit. Perhaps in the early 2000s, when Ron was in office, we used to talk about wanting more information on the interest rate setting function, the de facto interest rate setting function of the Fed. You know, now, Paul Martin, we've got the situation where since 2008, the monetary base has been expanded considerably. So you've got all these Fed bank member banks sitting there with huge reserves on their balance sheets, not lending them out, but availing themselves of the quarter percent interest that the Fed itself will pay them. So Bernaki and Janet Yellen have both talked about the limits of monetary policy that I guess the popular term is pushing on a string. If we now reach the point where the Fed's ability to affect interest rates is being diminished because banks have tons of reserves and rather than lend it out and apparently what they see is still an uneasy economy, they'd rather content themselves with this small amount of interest from the Fed. I think we may very well be reaching that point. I'm not sure if we're quite there in the U.S., but you see what's happening in Japan with Abenomics, where they're doing their own quantitative easing and it's not really having any effect. Europe, the ECB has dropped some of their overnight rates to negative territory in the hopes that it would force banks to lend and the banks set up. Nope, we're going to keep holding these huge amounts of reserves. I think we're rapidly reaching that point here in the States. It'll be interesting to see what happens over the summer. I don't think the Fed is going to raise interest rates in June. I think September is very earliest, but they may very well end up deciding to continue keeping them low for quite a long time. But like you said, we're very rapidly reaching the point where it's not really going to have much of an effect. We've had so much quantitative easing already, the marginal effect of any additional easing, unless you're talking trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of additional easing, which of course would just completely ruin the economy. Paul Martin, as we wrap this up, I'd like to get a few of your thoughts about tactics. As you know, so many professional and academic economists are effectively bought and paid for by the Fed. So I'm curious as to whether you see the goal of the Manger Center and organizations like the Mises Institute as trying to appeal to and influence academics and the economics mainstream, or do you see our goal more as one of doing an end run around the economics profession to reach ordinary people? I think you can do both. My goal obviously is not to affect the economic profession or to try to affect academics. I saw what happened when all of the Fed first got some traction back in 2009, where because we were going to the American people who were then contacting the congressman saying cosponsor all of the Fed, I had staffers come to me saying, make the phone call stop, we'll sign on, we'll cosponsor it, we'll vote for it, just make the phone call stop. So if you get enough people who are educated, who understand the issues, who then start to put some pressure on their congressman or who start to talk to other people, talk to their friends and family, you can have kind of a snowballing effect. And that's what the goal of the Manger Center is to educate people. And those people then can go out and start talking about those issues to other people because you never know when that one person is going to affect a whole bunch of other people. I mean, when I studied economics, my professor probably didn't realize it. One day I would end up working for Ron Paul and doing Federal Reserve and monetary policies, issues for Ron Paul and the stuff that I helped Dr. Paul with, obviously, affected a lot of other people in the United States. So that's an example of just one person who, through some accident, you never know when it's going to happen. I mean, it's very easy, it was very easy to get discouraged and say, well, is anything we're doing actually helping anything? Is anybody reading what we're writing? Is anybody taking this to heart? Sometimes you get a little bit of feedback where people say, I loved this column or I love this article or I love this speech that Dr. Paul gave, you begin to realize these things do have an effect. You just have to reach the grassroots and kind of get that critical mass of people going and understanding these issues. Paul Martin Faust, thanks so much for a fascinating interview. Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Martin's organization is called the Carl Manger Center for the Study of Money and Banking. You can Google it. Paul Martin does a great feed about the latest money and banking news that you should subscribe to if you're interested in these issues. Twitter is Manger Center, twitter.com slash Manger Center, M-E-N-G-E-R Center. Thanks again for your time. And ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend.


Hey what's up guys welcome to the training reviews so I'm pretty excited about this one I have just received the Zephon micro 2 now what this is this is a 13 inch micro rail slider so it's very compact it's like a camera dolly to give you some very smooth footage if you wanted to get a desk shot of particular items when you're doing macro shooting for example it does a really great job if you're outdoors and you want to get some really smooth footage of people of architecture of objects of nature then this does a great job with that as well I will be showing you some sample clips shortly so keep an eye out for that in this video so just starting off with the design this is a metal and plastic rail slider in length it's 53 centimeters which is about 21 inches from end to end so you get a very good length of your shots when you're doing some smooth recording and it does give you eight kilograms of payload on top of it which is actually very good some gimbals I've seen that do this type of stuff only have a max payload of about three kilograms so a massive heavy-duty camera dolly for you to record some very smooth footage now inside the box you get the screw adapters for the screws here on the top and bottom depending on where you're going to mount this you can adjust that accordingly it comes with the user guide and it also has an allen key if you want to get in there depending on where you're going to mount it you might have some tricky situations where you need to use that now the micro 2 actually achieves quite an extended length by the dual slide design which basically means the belt in the center pulls the camera plus the metal rails move in the same direction but at a slower pace so as you can see here the metal rails are going a little bit slower than the belt in the middle so I'm just sliding it across now as you can see it doesn't really cause any issues when you're moving it and it doesn't cause any jerkiness in the video and it's very solid so you have to put a little bit of force to make it move but if you're holding it very still and it's sturdy then you'll have the best footage possible now it does come with fluid damping friction technology which basically means it ensures very smooth and consistent manual movement some of the other cheaper dollies out there like I have one which is about 50 inches is quite long but because it's so manual there's no really any technology in there it's not electronic or anything like that some of the manual footage I'm doing when I'm pushing the camera along the dolly is sometimes faster in some situations and sometimes slower in another situation and depending on how my hand movement is manually moving it it's not so smooth I mean it's obviously great for getting a horizontal footage for whatever purpose you're doing it for but because there's no technology to actually keep it controlled and secure it sometimes goes fast and it slows down goes fast and it slows down based on my hand movements this is the same movement no matter how much pressure you're putting on it it's going to move at the same pace and it just makes things so much easier and not to mention that it's so compact and it's pretty light you can just take this anywhere with you the other thing that it also comes with is a carry case so you can just slip it in there put it in your backpack your camera bag and just take it wherever you need to if you are doing some filming in the middle of the device it has a locking mechanism so you have to keep it in the middle of the actual rail and it will clip it into place so it doesn't move so if you do put it in your backpack then it wouldn't move up and down in various different places and it wouldn't start causing problems so that keeps it secure there and finally at the top you have the quarter mounting screw which is basically for your cameras at the bottom you have the three eighth screw which is for your tripods and you're mounting them on that but like I mentioned it does come with a screw adapter in the box so if you want to use this for any other mounting situation then you'll be covered in that part as well now to complement this it comes with another device called the easy lock 2 which is basically a mounting platform for you to put this onto tripods and flat surfaces or even uneven surfaces just to make this a little bit more sturdy and a bit more secure so if you're filming outdoors this is the perfect thing you need to go with this and you wouldn't want to damage this itself by putting this flat onto a ground it's good for maybe using it on a table doing some close-up macro shooting in the house but if you're going to take it for real life use then you definitely need the easy lock 2 so this is how it looks it's a completely metal like I mentioned with the micro 2 it actually has the quarter screw at the top and it also comes with this ball head which you can actually screw on there for your cameras as well so it's very tiny but also it's very strong and it's going to keep your camera very still so when you're recording elsewhere then this is the perfect thing you need underneath the easy lock 2 it has four legs so as you can see you can pull them out and you can put them into any direction likewise they also have these feet so you can put the feet out and have it flat on a surface and it just makes it more secure now at the bottom you have this quick release plate and that is perfect for your tripods so if you set this up for your tripod and you're ready to go for shooting then all you do on the side you just unscrew the gray hinge there and it basically just comes out but you'll obviously have to make sure the legs are open before you can pull it out just like that and it clips back in you close the legs like so and then you just screw it back tight and then you're pretty much ready to go now this is very heavy duty the payload on this itself is almost double that of the micro 2 which is 15 kilograms because not only do you have to mount maybe a camera on there but you have to take in consideration that you have to mount the micro 2 on top of this and also you have to put the ball head on top of the micro 2 and then you put a camera on top of the ball head so that's a lot of extra weight on this and it does make it very strong so let me go ahead and quickly clip this into place like so now I've got the ball head screwed on top the last thing left to do is put the camera on top of the ball head I can adjust the size of the angle of the ball head as well and then put it into whatever position I want and then I'm ready to go so I'll unclip this just quickly show you I'm putting a little bit of force on it I'm holding the leg it's going very smooth at the same speed throughout the whole movement and then when you reach the end you stop and then you come all the way back obviously the harder you push it will go slightly faster but it's not crazy fast like in very manual dollies that you can buy so you put it back to the middle very easily clips into place and you can't push it anymore so that's everything I wanted to show you about this setup so let me go ahead and show you some sample clips of how this looks with some footage and let me know what you guys think okay guys so I hope you enjoyed that very smooth footage you can see in some of the clips how I was manually capturing all of these different angles with the rail slider and easy lock 2 on my tripod so you can tilt it just make sure you have a heavy-duty tripod so it doesn't tilt over but it depends on the payload of your camera and your lens as well so this comes in at just under 250 pounds at the time of recording this video I'll leave a link in the description below on where you can purchase this whole set that's the micro 2 and the easy lock 2 as well you definitely need to have a combination of both when you are going to use this so I recommend getting both and not just one and if you have any questions if you'd like me to try anything else then do let me know otherwise this was an amazing product I'm going to be using this on all my videos going forward for some very good b-roll footage close-up shots and macro shooting and hopefully you guys will catch that as well so I hope you subscribe I hope you like this video and I'll catch you guys at the next one take care


So I'm going to try to go after and understand the property if I have a long chain that could either be random or if I take this chain and have some segments of the chain that are turning up into alpha helix. This is a famous example and we're talking about helix-coil mixing or helix-coil equilibrium and the book goes into a lot of detail there. In principle this is some sort of transition. We don't know what type of transition is this yet and I'm interested in how much can these coexist? Do they mix and what are the average length of these segments going to be? That relates intimately to other mixtures. You can imagine having say let's say we have a large lake or system of water and then we have a piece of ice in the system so that water and then ice but here is where things start to deviate a bit. So in general for a three-dimensional system you will always have separation of phases. Remember that hydrophobic effect. The reason why we get the separation of phases is Leve Landau is the one who has derived this. It's not that hard at least if we hand wave about it. This is going to depend on the surface here right? In general there is some sort of surface energy here and the surface energy is first going to depend on some sort of energy that is depends on the interaction and then the number of atoms or molecules that I put on that surface. If that energy is negative it would always be good and then things would mix perfectly so that's not the case here. We do know that they want to separate. The question then is how expensive is it? Well the expense there is going to be proportional to the surface. On the other hand the number of residues I have in a particular phase here is proportional to the volume. So here I would argue that the delta G surf the surface energy is roughly proportional to the number of residues raised to the power of two-third. It's exactly the same argument as hydrophobic effect and what this means is that the larger the system is this is going to go up fairly quickly. So even if n raised to the powers of two-thirds is not that gigantic it's certainly something that goes much faster than the logarithm of n and the remaining components here which the book goes into some detail is you can place these eyes in many different places right but that's always going to be entropy related and that means that there are logarithms of n showing up there. So because of this surface tension here and the dimensionality whether it's two or three dimensions doesn't matter where it's always going to be expensive to mix faces. Now you might say that if it's bring or fall you occasionally see a sheet of ice floating in water that's true but it's never going to be stable there. So if you froze the temperature at that specific moment eventually everything will turn into either pure ice or pure water. So what we're seeing there is just an effect of the kinetics it will not happen instantly but that's in three dimensions. In two dimensions the world's or even one dimension the world behaves very differently. How large is the interaction surface here? So I have one point there one point there one point there one point there one point there and one point there and this is really constant or at least just proportion to the number of helical elements I have here. So there is no obvious factor here that will mean that it's better to separate them than having a large piece of helix. So there won't really be an effect here that is proportional to a surface. So one in a system that is one-dimensional faces can coexist it's a very deep result in physics that Lev Landau has proposed. My point here is not going to be to rehash all of Lev Landau's writing and awesome as it is but the point is that for a helix coil transition we will not have a proper phase transition. The phases can coexist and we will see some mixing and we're going to try to calculate a little bit and use that to derive some delta g values.


Part two of the articles on the responsibility of states for internationally wrongful act is entitled content of the international responsibility of a state. It deals with the new obligations that are owed by the state responsible for an internationally wrongful act and also as we shall see later with certain obligations imposed on the other states following serious violations of international law. As stated in article 29 of Arsiois those new obligations are without prejudice to the duty of the responsible state to continue to perform the primary obligation, the obligation breached. If that obligation of course is still binding on the state. Article 30a of Arsiois deals with the secondary obligation of cessation which is owed by the responsible state if its wrongful act is continuing. Cessation is probably the most immediate and important obligation stemming from any ongoing internationally wrongful act. The obligation that diplomats will want to see achieved as soon as possible and on which they will concentrate all their efforts. Cessation of the ongoing wrongful act seems to be pretty close to simply resuming the obligation of the primary obligation breached. Cessation of the breach and performance of the breach obligation seem to be two sides of the same coin. However, cessation has been identified in practice as a new secondary obligation distinct from the duty to perform the primary obligation and which allows addressing the wrongful act as such. For instance, in the advisory opinion about the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory, the International Court of Justice said that Israel was under a duty to seize the construction of the wall and also on the basis of cessation to dismantle the parts of the wall that had already been built. Dismantling the wall is owed by Israel as a matter of cessation because the sheer presence of the wall, not only its ongoing construction. The sheer presence of the wall is a continuing violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Respecting that right would however require much more than dismantling the wall. And if Israel were to dismantle the wall it built, this would of course be favorable to the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, but it would be far from equating with full respect for that right. Hence, while Israel must in general respect the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, it must more specifically seize its wrongful act consisting in building and managing the wall. Cessation as a new obligation stems from the internationally wrongful act and it is owed by the responsible state when that act is continuing, when it is ongoing. There is no exception to the duty to seize ongoing violations. Article 30b of Arsiois adds that the responsible state is under the obligation, I quote, to offer appropriate assurances and guarantees of non-repetition if circumstances so require, that obligation may exist even when the violation has ceased to exist, but it is far from being automatically owed. Knowing when the circumstances require that such assurances and guarantees of non-repetition must be offered is a matter of concrete assessment, the practice being rather scarce in that regard. Assurances and guarantees of non-repetition are often claimed but rarely awarded because international courts and tribunals presume that states will act in good faith in the future and will comply with their obligations. Let us turn now to the obligation to make reparation.


And arguably here we are 40 years later with no one getting served well by the criminal justice system, whether it's the offender or the victim. And so the first thing I would do is to get rid of all of our mandatory minimums, the way we did in New York State by eliminating our archaic, uh, rocket-pulled drug laws.


All right. Welcome, everyone. My name is Nate Sims. I'm very happy to be here to give this presentation introduction to the Irma or Chiang language. So, kind of a roadmap of what I'd like to cover in this presentation is to give a introduction to the speakers of this language. This is a discussion of the sociolinguistic situation for the people who speak it, and then the rest of the time to talk a little bit about the structure of the language itself. So we'll discuss a bit of the phonology, the sound system of the language, covering briefly the consonants, the vowels, what is the nature of the syllable in the language and also the role of tone in the language. And after that, to talk a little bit about the larger structures, some of the more interesting structures of the language are the verbs and the verbal morphology. So we'll talk a bit about the spatial prefixes, a little bit about this idea of associated motion, and to give you not a full account of the verbs but just an appreciation for this kind of intricate and complicated part of the language. That's what I wanted to say about the nouns, and so we'll talk a bit about the verbs. Okay, so Irma, the Irma language is also called Chiang, I'll talk about that here in a minute, but it's part of the trans Himalayan language family, meaning that it is related to Chinese to Tibetan, and also to Burmese. Those are probably the major languages that maybe some of you all are familiar with. Within that family tree is probably closest related to Burmese. I think it's not definitive yet. There's still some work being done in the history of the language, but probably fair to say that of those three major languages is closest related to Burmese. So it's spoken within what is now Sichuan province and the People's Republic of China, principally along the Min River. So we see this arrow here on the screen. Let's see if I can do this. Yeah, yeah, so up along the Min River in between, kind of wedged in between the Sichuan basin and the Tibetan Plateau. So I'll talk a little bit more about the situation for the language. There are probably about 100,000 speakers of the language it's hard to gauge exactly but I think that's a fair estimate. So it's a, you know, relatively large number of speakers. And there's some issues we're discussing about who the people are that speak this language. So there's a Chinese term, Qiang, spelled Q-I-A-N-G, with this character here to the left. And this is a very old term. So even in some of the earliest Chinese writings, this ethnonym occurs, and it probably meant anyone to the west of Chinese territorial control at that time. So another term is the Western Qiang. And this term is very old. It probably was more broadly used for different peoples in the western regions. And with the founding of the People's Republic of China, there came to be a classification of all the peoples within China, and it was fixed at 56 different ethnicities. And so Qiang is one of these 56 different ethnicities. Ermah is the term that Qiang people call themselves, or a variant of this word. Sometimes it's ma, sometimes mer, sometimes ermah or zhme. There are many different dialectal variants, but ermah is kind of used to encompass all of these different terms that people call themselves. Traditionally, they were agriculturalists who lived in these kind of deep valleys along the Min River, so they're not pastoralists, although some people kept yaks and goats and still do today, but mostly subsistence agriculturalists. And there's a kind of split within the people who speak the ermah language between those that are classified by the Chinese government as Qiang and those that are classified by the Chinese government as Tibetan. And this is primarily has to do with religion. So the people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, closer to the Tibetan plateau in the northwest have been designated Tibetans. And the people who are non-Buddhists or animists or shamanists in the southeast are the Qiang nationality. So it's something of a kind of India-Pakistan situation for this split. So, you know, people have different ideas. Some people who are Tibetan ethnicity, they recognize that we speak the same language as the Qiang people next door to us. And some people say actually, no, that's a separate language. So there's it's a very kind of contentious issue that you can find varying opinions on all sides of this, but primarily a split between about half of the speakers who are considered Tibetan, half of them are considered Qiang. In any case, there's the language is endangered because of increasing influence of mainly Mandarin. So there's extensive bilingualism with Mandarin. I have not really I've been, you know, going to this area for some time and been involved with Qiang language and ermah language documentation since about 2006 and most everyone I've met speaks some level of Chinese. So Chinese is really gaining in popularity and Qiang or ermah is on the decline generally. There's some writings for people who are interested by an anthropologist named Wang Mingke, who was written about the history of this kind of contentious designation of people as either Tibetan or Qiang ethnicity. So here on the map on the screen we see Sichuan province outlined and then in the yellow region, this is the Aba prefecture of Sichuan province in the northwest. The red area here is Mao County. That's where the majority of Qiang ethnicity or mass speakers live. It's kind of the most condensed place where people live that speak Qiang. So today we'll be talking about one dialect within Mao County, which is the Yonghe Township dialect. So I have kind of the structure of Yonghe Township within Mao County within the prefecture in Sichuan province here at the bottom. This is kind of just to give an idea of what is around this area. It's a very nice graphic from Gongxun, a person who's worked on the Jiarongic languages in Sichuan. And so you see Qiang here towards the southeast, neighboring the Jiarong languages and also Amdo Tibetan to the north and then Chinese to the south. So this graph is also nice because it illustrates that there's been a lot of work done on the neighboring languages in terms of their internal structure and subgrouping, but not so much on Qiang. So there's really not as much that we can say for certain about the dialect situation, but here's a rough introduction to the dialects of Erma. So we have in this red circle, what is typically typically called Northern Erma. And within this circle, the dialects are pretty homogenous people can understand each other. If they're well intentioned within this area generally maybe at the borders, the stream extreme edges maybe not so much, but it's thought to be kind of a later expansion. Historically because it's more internally homogenous. You see the blue circles or what is called Southern Erma, and they're less internally homogenous so people from these different areas within the blue circles may or may not be able to communicate effectively with each other in Erma. And most of the time they would use Chinese as a language to communicate with each other. This yellow line here shows the division between where people to the Northwest are considered Tibetan, and to the southeast of that yellow line considered Qiang. And so we see that the ethnic boundary is is one that corresponds with the county line, but not necessarily with the dialectal division. So today we'll be talking about the Yonghe dialect, which is the dialect I've done. The most research on and have been friends with speakers of this dialect for some time now. It's the eastern most dialect of Erma so it's interesting in that respect, and hasn't really been studied as much as some of the the West Northwestern dialects. So this is just a picture of my friend's grandmother whose family has taught me about Chiang I went to Chinese public school and in middle school became friends with my friend whose family spoke Yonghe Chiang or Yonghe Erma. And this is the traditional attire for women in this area. It's unique to this valley so we might imagine in another political context that it would be considered maybe it's its own language, or that the these people would be considered a separate ethnicity. You know they only really identify with other people from the valley, and not so much with the other or my speaking people so it's a it's a unique kind of subculture within Mal county is this Yonghe Valley. To give an idea just about a little bit more about the socio linguistic situation I have this map here with the help of Google. So the red dots here represents villages within the Yonghe Valley, where Erma is no longer spoken by either old people or young people just people speak Chinese exclusively. The yellow or orange circles here represent villages where Erma is still spoken, but not by children so only in these kind of far north of more remote villages represented with the orange triangles. Do you see places where Erma is still spoken by children is still being acquired and been used more in daily life so you see this is kind of a microcosm for the whole area. In that Chiang or Erma language uses on the decline and being replaced with Chinese. It's also the case that the more remote villages are more economically challenged. And so there's a negative connotation or a stereotype sometimes with people who speak. Erma as being, you know, let the having less access to education and being backwards in some way so that's it also contributes to the decline of the language in that situation is rather unfortunate but that's that's the case for the Yonghe Valley in any ways. All right. Let's talk about the structure of this particular dialect all I'm going to say is, you know, restricted to just this one dialect, although there's some similarities with others. So we'll start with looking at the consonants for this dialect to see their large number of consonants with different consonants at many places of articulation. Bilebial, alveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar and glottal. A large number of fricatives, which is somewhat typologically unusual, but not necessarily for for this region. So we'll just talk a little bit about this, this three way distinction for the, for the obstruents so that the distinction here between. Ba pa ba, da ta da, and for the velars ga ka ga. For the Africans, you have a parallel distinction, za za za, ja cha ja, and ja cha ja. So this is a this three way distinction that's found in most Erma dialects. So here is actually the absence of uvular sounds, uvular sounds like ka and ka are found in a lot of the neighboring dialects but not not in this dialect so my suspicion is that that's a kind of influence of Chinese and that this is a loss in this dialect so you see a fairly robust consonant inventory with these three way of voicing distinctions. For the vowels, you have a somewhat asymmetrical vowel system, eight different vowels with the primary vowel distinction being between the front vowels and the back vowels, the front four vowels and the back four vowels. And we see this kind of pattern happen where vowels will change depending on their environment called vowel harmony. So we might see for this front back vowel assimilation for the vowels, where we have a in the first form here the verb is, yeah, to be good. If someone were to say still good, there's a continuity of aspect prefix, which marks continuation of that state so da yeah, still good. If we say need jih, da jih, still needs or ye to live, da ye, and then chü to pick, da chü. So these all have this front vowel ah, for the back vowels for verbs that start with a back vowel like na, lo di, wu and la de, we have the back vowel on the prefix so da na, da lo di, da wu and da la de. So this is an area of interest in the language that the vowels change, especially for the prefixes, depending on the vowel of the verb stem. So this is the continuity of aspect prefix we'll talk a little bit more about the verbs here in a minute. Back to the sound structure. This is the layout for the syllable structures that we find in the language. It's relatively simple and straightforward. We have five different types of syllables. The first type consonant vowel. So this verb ha to be free or to be leisurely. Number two, you can have a consonant, a glide, and then a vowel, so hua to sell. We can have some instances where we have closed syllables, but only in rare instances that are actually, in all cases, borrowing from Chinese where you can have a nasal code to the syllable, ha ta to call someone, and then huan ta to change. So these are borrowing from Chinese han and huan. You can also have a consonant coda, which is a glide, and only in some derived cases. So this verb hua to sell. If there's a certain evidential marking that comes at the end of the verb, then you would say huai. It's something like, it's, it's Mark's degree of certainty, but it's the same verb with a glide coda so this is actually simple consonant invent or syllable template, compared to language like Tibetan, or some of the gyarongic languages which have very large inventories of possible So what's the reason for this? Mostly simplification. So we see, if we compare Yonghe with other or Ma dialects, we see that they've lost the complex onset. So we have the shpe type onsets from Ronghong, which is more conservative. Those correlate with the fricative onset in Yonghe. So shpe, fa, shpe, fa, shpa, fa, and so on. And then the voiced complex onsets in Ronghong correspond with the voiced counterpart in Yonghe. So zhba corresponds with rh, zhbu corresponds with rh. So there's a reduction in complexity that's led to this kind of simple syllable template. We see all the also with the loss of codas so there's there's only open syllables in the language if we compare it with a language like Tibetan, which preserves the consonant codas of earlier stages. We see that these have been lost in Yonghe in a predictable way. So for these, the last four words on this in this table, the Tibetan forms and the pre Tibetan forms have K as the Koda, and this has been lost in Yonghe. And with the reflex of a rising tone, so certain syllable types that were complex have become more simple, but there's been a compensatory development of a tonal contrast. So we see a high tone for these first four words in Yonghe that have no obstructive codas in Tibetan. And then for the last four words, we have the Koda in Tibetan. And this corresponds with a rising tone in Yonghe. So I think there's more work to be done on this to say for certain but there's kind of promising line of inquiries see okay where have the codas been lost and what is the influence of those on the syllables. Okay. All right, so we still have some time to talk about the verb. And it's typologically in a glutinative language. So you find strings of affixes, both prefixes and suffixes that come on either side of the verb stem, which add meaning to the verb. So we have the stem here is would be this core part of the verb. We can have up to three prefixes, an orientational or spatial marking prefix, a negative prefix, the continuity of aspect prefix which we've already seen. And a set of suffixes as well which I probably won't have time to talk about so we'll talk mostly about the prefixes here. Although there's the causative marking suffix and associated motion suffix so adds an element of motion come and come or go essentially to the verb. There's an applicative marking suffix, which adds an arguments to the to the verb. So instead of, you know, to do something versus to do something for someone. So that would be the difference of the applicative, and then there's person marking and evidential marking which we won't discuss today. Okay, so let's take the first category of the verb, which are these orientational prefixes. And within that category there are eight different markers so we have upwards, downwards, upriver, downriver, in, inwards, upwards, towards and away. So we're going to organize into four different axes, having to do with up down, up or downriver containment and then towards and away. So some verbs that the prefixes again we see this issue of vowel harmony so the prefix form will change depending on the verb as well so that was the case for the continuity aspect prefixes, and also for these. So this is just the inwards prefix, when it occurs with different verbs there's up to five different vowel qualities that the verb can have. And so one of the interesting things about this use of the orientational prefixes is that it's similar to in English we have phrasal verbs like listen, listen up or quiet down. The analogy here would be it's as if you know the language has that kind of tendency to use direction with the verbs, but then it kind of went totally bananas and just became totally obligatory where every verb has a specific direction that it occurs with in different aspects so it's something that has to be learned when you learn the language. Okay, to listen or to hear that takes the inwards prefix. So some of them are intuitive, and some of them are not so intuitive and just have to be learned. Okay, so with some verbs, they can take all eight different directions. So this motion verb like fly in the past tense. So effectively the past tense, it has to take a prefix and it has to take one of these eight so flew up flew down, or so on. And then for some verbs, the verb can't take all of the prefixes, but can take a subset of those. So we see these cases are somewhat interesting. So they need to be learned. They need to be learned. So you have a pair like top, which is the upwards prefix. It means to bloom of a flower. The downwards prefix means for the stars to come out at night. So there's some connection there. But the difference in prefix actually gives a different meaning to the verb, somewhat like English, listen in versus listen up, you might think of it that way. So we have a verb like who when when it's used with the upwards prefix means to win. And with the downwards prefix means to lose. So there's some metaphorical import of these prefixes. And then something like to say with the upwards prefix does that to tell someone as the downwards prefix to explain so there's kind of a top to bottom metaphor there as well to talk down to someone or to explain to them. So this is a very kind of complex element of the language, not only because you have to learn which prefix goes with which verb, but also what the pattern is for changing the vowel of the prefix depending on the verb. So it's, that's kind of the key issue, if you were to set out to learn to speak or mile would be figuring out these prefixes. Let's see so I have some time here to talk about some of the more complex of verbs now that we have some idea of what the different components of them are, we can talk about some of these maximally complex verbs, which would correspond to kind of sentences in English. So we have in number one.  And this would be, I'm going to be when you saw. Okay, this is from a text. And so is the downwards directional prefix. My is the negative prefix da is the yet contributes the yet meaning my day is the stem, meaning to wipe. So this is a verbal suffix which means go to do something for someone so you haven't gone to wipe it down for them yet. And then me is the second person marker. So, all of this meeting condensed into one verb, there's a particle at the end, which is kind of more of an particle so I have so you haven't done it yet.  So here we see this prefixes string what I wanted to point out. In this example, we have the same set of prefixes. Direction marker down negative marker, continued of aspect, and then the verb stem bring, but the entire string of prefixes and that and all my dog from the first ones. They all vary, because of the verb, because of the vowel of the verb stem, the first vowel of the verb stem. In the first example is a, and so all of the prefixes harmonize with that. And then for the second example, we see all the prefixes and met that harmonizing with this front vowel, due, or this front value. There's a split in the verb of the language where the prefixes behave one way and the suffixes behave another way so there's no vowel harmony for the suffixes we see this key occurs after the front vowel. Here I guess this is also a front vowel but there's the suffix need to go never undergoes any alternation, neither do any of the other suffixes so it's kind of the prefixes go together with the stem. And the suffixes are kind of tacked on to that. Oftentimes, the stem will have the first high tone in the word so it's kind of demarcated in that way where all the prefixes will be low up until the stem. And then the suffixes are actually more variable so sometimes the suffixes can have high tone or low tone, but the prefixes tend to operate as a unit so I'm with our mother and with that. One other thing to mention here is the relationship between the orientational prefixes and the suffix go right so in the example of the pig foot.  And in this example is from a story in Chang traditional households, a pig feet and other cured meats are stored on the top level of the house and hung from the rafters.  So there's scope of the orientational markers doesn't really apply beyond the stem so there's kind of a, what I'm getting as a clear demarcation of the stems and the prefixes go together, and then the suffixes behave differently so in this case she would have gone up to go bring down the pig foot. And so the, the downwards marker here refers to the action of bringing, bringing it down but not the going. Okay. So, yes, this is, these are some, you know, the more complicated verb examples from the language, and not all verbs are this complex but this is, this is kind of the maximal complexity so very different from Chinese. Different from Tibetan, which has some agglutinative tendencies but not not as much as as our mom. So, hopefully I've given people an overview of the people who speak the language and some of the structure of the language so I think that is all I have prepared for today, and would like to thank you all for your time and express my gratitude to my friends for sharing their language and your time with me over the years. It's been a great privilege to be able to study this language. So I think that's all I'll say for now.


This trustee August is hotter than ever at Appalachian Wireless, as they are slashing all normal contract pricing on all smartphones by 50% when you sign up for service. Better service, bigger saving, serving you for the last 25 years at Appalachian Wireless. By a majority vote, the Pikeville City Commission approved an updated ordinance for dilapidated housing and nuisance property. The new ordinance brings the city in line with guidelines approved this year by the state legislature for those types of properties. The new ordinance also establishes a code enforcement board in the position of a hearings officer. Assistant city manager Sean Cochran said the new ordinance will make it easier for citizens to deal with citations for environmental violations. And that's what the new ordinance really does is it creates that process and streamlines it in such a way to where it's not cumbersome on someone if they feel like they want to make an appeal on a citation. So it'll make it much easier on those people who would want to appeal a citation and also it makes it as far as record keeping and things go on our side and it makes things a lot more efficient. Cochran also said the new ordinance will give additional time for city residents to remedy violations before a fine is assessed, now seven days where they previously only had three days. No, as far as enforcement goes, this is actually this new ordinance is going to help both the citizens and the city makes the process far more efficient for not only the enforcement but also then for the citizens as far as appeals processes and things like that go. This just makes everything flow much smoother, much more efficient both ways. The new ordinance was approved by the commission with only city commissioner Josh Huffman voting against the measure. After being published in the Appalachian News Express, the new ordinance will become law in the city. Reporting in Pikeville for EKB News, I'm Chris Anderson.


This study examined the antioxidant and antibacterial properties of four Western Australian, W.A., honeys and their corresponding topical formulations. The results indicated that the antioxidant activity of the honeys and their formulations remained intact despite being incorporated into the topical formulations. Furthermore, the antibacterial activity of the honeys and their formulations was comparable or even higher than that of the New Zealand manuka honey, which was used as a comparative honey. These findings suggest that W.A. honeys and their topical formulations may have potential applications for use in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. This article was authored by N.D. Lachman Hossain, Leone Lim, Catherine Hammer, and others.


For many years my father woke up as early as 4am to get ready for work. He left the house before 4.30am and would return most times, a few minutes past midnight. We lived on the mainland. He worked on the island. What this meant is that to beat the constant traffic, he had to leave the house very early so that he could commute to his workplace that was miles away. And because traffic was often hectic at night as well, he returned very late. Each time I would watch him eat his almost cold meal, which mom had prepared hours earlier. Afterwards, he would watch a few minutes of TV, then go to bed some minutes past midnight, to wake up again by 4am. He did this for years and I was constantly shocked each time I thought about it. When he finally left the job years after I had graduated from college, he got a pension of about $1,500. We were happy. We thought that would be the end of poverty for us and we would walk straight into paradise. Weeks later, I heard my parents shouting and brawling at each other. It would be the first of many more shouting and brawling. What were they shouting about?  And so, the poor man had begun to have the best pleasures he couldn't have in a very long time. All too sudden, in a matter of days, the $1,500 pension had dwindled to almost nothing. When my mom had seen the possibility of us crawling out of poverty with such amount of money, my dad had seen a chance to have the fun he'd never had in all his life. Years later, he would complain and continually mourn about why he was so poor, even though he grew up working so hard, much more than most of his mates. I had worried about this too for a long while. But after that $1,500 incident, I began to understand why my dad was poor and would remain poor even though he always worked hard. This is my own story. You would think I learned from my dad's horrible mistake. Well, I choose to believe I acted like a chip after the old block once. At one time, when I had just left the university, I was dead broke and yet determined never to get a job. I was going to build a business from scratch and succeed at it. First, you have to know I had never started any business before now, and so had never known success or failure in business. Secondly, I was proud and sure about my ability to succeed in business that I never bothered to read too much of business books. I was convinced I was above most of the mistakes and pitfalls those few business books described. So I got lucky. My first business picked up and fast. I was earning so much money, I didn't know what to do with it. I figured since I had so much money, and there was plenty where the money was coming from, I could do lots of giveaways. So I became Santa Claus, giving money away as much as I could. If I saw a need, even if it wasn't my business, I gave money for it.  Just kidding, but you understand. I thought I would continue to have money because jobs were coming, but look, the snowstorm hit hard when all of a sudden, clients stopped coming, jobs stopped coming, money stopped rolling in, I was dead broke. I was so dead broke, I saw the lowest denomination of my country's currency six months later, and wondered why they still made this note. I was so broke I hadn't seen or touched money in a long while. Don't ask me how I ate, okay. I fed off of people. Years later, after experiencing a bit of fresh air in my finances, I wondered why I worked so hard and still became broke for a long time. I also considered a lot of people who were in my shoes. It didn't take me long to know why I was working so hard, but still remained poor. I wanted so much money, yet I knew so little about how money works. So when money comes to me, I mismanage it, and since money mismanaged does not grow, I stay poor. The discovery that set me free, an angel investor once said to me, when you had so much money, you spent all you had, not knowing you were eating your seeds as well as your produce. I didn't understand that until recently. You are broke not because you aren't working hard.   You are broke because you do not understand money and how it works, and so you will spend most of your life working hard and still stay broke. You are as broke or as rich as your mindset about money. Here's what I mean. Three years ago, I joined a religious organization who believed in the fact that money is evil. We were taught never to pursue money but to wait for God to handle food on a golden platter. The whole time, I was confused. We believed in working so hard, and so we did, but the bulk of us in that religious group were always hungry. We never had enough to eat, and truthfully, we always begged from each other. For a long time, it got me wondering, if money is evil and we shouldn't be longing for it, why are our lives so messed up because we don't have enough money? I kept thinking about that question, while I suffered needlessly for more than three years. Soon, I had a breakthrough. I realized that God never stopped his children from making money. God never planned that his children would be holding out plates begging for their next meals. Religious folks just took the money issue overboard. I found out we were broke, poor, always hungry, and constantly begging because we had a mindset that repelled money. You are as broke or as rich as your mindset about money. Wealth is a mindset.  Your wealth is entitled to how hard you work. If hard labor was what determines how rich you would be, most people in prisons would be richer than most of us. Wealth is a mindset. No matter how long you teach a fish, you can never make it fly. No matter how much you spend training a rat, it will never be able to talk. No matter how hard you kick a hyena on the butt, it can never stop laughing. It is his nature. In the same way, no matter how much money you give to a man with a poor money mindset, give him some time. He will soon become poor. Author of The Secret of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harf Eka wrote, If you want to change the fruits, you will first know to change the roots. If you want to change the invincible, you must first change the visible. Your belief about money becomes your reality. What you hold about money becomes true in your life. As long as you believe money is evil, you will never have money. As long as you believe money should always be spent, you will never have money. As long as you believe you should only save money, you will never have money. As long as you believe money is everything and your only means to true happiness, you will never have enough money to make you happy. As long as you believe the money you have will never be enough for you, you will always need money. As long as you believe in going the easy route, you will never have money. As long as you do not believe in sacrifice, in giving before you can take, You will always be broke because what you have will never be enough for you. If you must be rich, you must understand how money works. If you must have so much money, you don't have to bother your head about money. You must know so much about money that your mates are unwilling to know. You must read books on money, watch videos on money, attend seminars on money, etc. Do what the rich do and you will always have money. Think like the rich and you will become rich. Think like the lowlife and you will end in the gutters.  You will realize then that hard work is not often a guarantee for wealth. Sound knowledge about money and having a rich mindset is If this video inspired you, like this video. We love you.


It's been a long, long day, I got a lot to say. It feels like I'm carrying a two-ton weight, I go see a friend. Hello, I'm Monsignor Patrick Winslow. And I am Father Matthew Cout. And we are speaking from the Rooftop. A podcast brought to you by 10 Books, in which we invite you to join our conversation out here in the open air. Where we look out upon the world around us from the rooftop of the church and share with you what we see. You know what I was thinking about? Do tell. Well, you know, we're ramping up to a midterm election. And everyone gets pretty edgy, given the state of our political climate. And we certainly are not primarily interested as one who proclaims the gospel and represents the church of being perceived as political in our orientation or in our first purposes. But we're oftentimes caught as priests because we have to address certain topics and issues. And they then get translated by the faithful, rightly speaking, into policy and how it sorts out a given political system, depending on which country you're in.  And they want you to be the one using the pulpit because everyone gets politically charged and we're trying to drag people to the polls and they want certain outcomes and it gets really kind of crazy. And everyone gets very nervy. So in the past, I've always thought to myself, we should talk about the role of politics in the life of the faithful outside of a political climate, outside of a political season where everyone's gearing up to the ballot box. Now, I feel like we're still far away from the November midterm elections. That we can touch this thing without... We can kind of touch the topic and not be accused of anything. I'm trying to sway anyone's particular votes or their practical wisdom with respect to social policy. But I'm going to kind of offer you one thing, one scenario or one situation that happened with me in this last presidential cycle. And I'll share it with you and share it with the people who are listening. I had just to kind of give you a sense of some of the problems, I think we were faced with as believers. I would say that just for the listening audience there, I don't really watch any politics. And all of my politics is filtered through Father Winslow. Yeah, it's kind of been that way. He is my go-to. So he distills it all for me and gives it to me in a very quick 30-second sound bite. What do I need to know? I do my best, but how well have I done it? He does a great job. Absolutely. Because you can always measure it against how things unfold. Absolutely. Right? So there is a way to check it. No, there's... I wouldn't say there's prophecy involved. No. There's some sound prudential outcomes that he's predicted. Or I've accurately characterized the moment. Yeah. There you go. I'm a believer. I'm a believer. No, I handle politics and level of theory. So I'm happy to talk about that after. All right. So it was prior to the last presidential election. Again, everyone who's lived in the country knows how tense that year of COVID was and the political season. So people were very queued up on all sorts of issues, especially the life issues and other related matters. And I was covering at a parish summit because you know I don't have a regular congregation because I'm not assigned to a parish in my current role. And I decided that I wanted to speak to people about an appropriate way to deal with the political realm within our Christian souls. And caution them on perceiving the political landscape as the only landscape for a Christian victory. In fact, caution them all together in having a sort of a worldly view of the kingdom of God. That this has to play out here and that the Christian mission is succeeding or failing based upon the degree and the extent of the political realm is reflecting it. And the degree and the extent in which the right people are getting elected to advance the right policies that are in accord with the gospel. You know, I think I mentioned a little bit about in the time of Christ and the Zalatry movement and how there were a number of movements in the Jews at the time that were looking for what you might call a political messiah, but certainly one who would reunify the kingdom relative to a temporal kingdom, not merely or whether not really or specifically looking for the eternal kingdom, but they were thinking in terms of the temple. Of course they would, right? I mean, that's the kingdom. That's what it was. I mean, David was the king. I mean, it was a temporal kingdom. And so there was a concern for a messiah to come and to to reunify and bring the kingdom back together. And it can get to a point of thinking that everything ultimately is about success and failure within the political or geopolitical sphere. And I was trying to caution people about that. In which case we'd all be very depressed. Well, yes. And I didn't know what the political, I didn't know what the election outcome would be one way or the other. And there were certainly a lot of people who were pro-life motivated in this particular congregation, rightfully so. And as I stood at the door of the church, I had a number of people thank me, because I, my sense was that they wanted some guidance and perspective. They were not looking specifically for someone to tell them how to vote or what to do, or to take on what issue and prioritize any given issue. They just wanted some perspective. And I think I was able to deliver.  And I was, I didn't know you had that kind of capacity. I didn't know that I had that sort of influence. You never even made me cry. And I said, I said, what are you talking? I was so dumbfounded. Her point was that I should have been, you know, stomping for certain political candidates, and whether they be on the state level or a national level, or whether it was the national level, i.e. the president, that I was supposed to advance certain individual people. And I probably gave them some reason not to be as animated as they should be. And that I clearly was part of the problem in the American political culture, because I wasn't animating to the degree and extent that I should have or could have these people to go out and get other people to vote for a certain outcome. And I thought to myself, she totally missed my point. I mean, she's also proving it, right? In the sense that you see your religion as being successful or unsuccessful within the geopolitical theater. Right, right. What about the kingdom of God? Right. Jesus didn't see it that way. He was very clear about that. All right, I've said enough. Well, I'm sorry that my mom said that to you. Well, I didn't want to say it, but boy, boy, sometimes she just misses the mark, Calvin. I didn't know how you do it. Well, I mean, this is it. And I have had so many, so many occasions in many years of priesthood to realize that persons oftentimes invert the order of things, such that they're not concerned particularly about the kingdom of God that is of the soul, or the kingdom of God that is the common good of the church, but rather the political party can use the church, which is the primary religion in some sense, the political party, to advance various doctrines. Such that when we have an occasion in which the seated president, as we have now, is a Catholic, but may not align with any of the principles of the faith or something to someone's satisfaction, et cetera, they would want to abandon not just the candidate, but also sometimes the church, because the church hasn't done something to make sure that he's allowing them to compel them to align with what have you. Now, that is a case in which, of course, we have inverted the entire system, that there is only one king and all authority is by necessity borrowed. But what's interesting to me about politics, more on a theoretical level, that of course gets very practical fast, is that I was always fascinated by the medieval insistence of its nobility, because we don't have that anymore. We don't have respect for politics. If you say politics, you assume that old proverb that's the last refuge of the scoundrel, right? You assume that it's the entire thing is massively corrupt from top to bottom. We talk about it as a swamp in the last presidency, right? And I'm not saying that it's not, but the Medieval's held such an indefatigable love for those in politics, not because they were good. They certainly weren't, and they had no delusions about that, but because of the noble activity itself. In other words, someone who is concerned, not just with his private good, but someone who's concerned with the common good is something that's closer to the divine activity, because the Lord is always concerned with the common good, which isn't contrary to someone's individual good. It's just not private. And so one of the things that anyone realizes the moment they begin to take any sort of position of leadership is how incredibly hard it is, because you can no longer think about your private good. I think I might have mentioned in a different episode, or maybe we were just talking, I can't recall, because it's just episodes are just sometimes we actually hit the record button. Right, exactly. That's where I'm in the conversation anyway. We're trying to capture them for everybody. Every now and then we have our own private conversations. You said not long ago when we were watching one of the seminarians skateboard down the road with a frisbee in his hand going off to play frisbee. And you said to me, do you remember days in which the only good we had to be concerned about was our own? Yeah. And it struck me because it gets to the heart of what is the common good. A common good isn't something principle that's divisible. It's a good that diffuses its goodness to the many and you can actually only have a common good by having it shared. But you can't divide it. It's a whole. Twisting time is called a virtual whole or the kind of a whole of order. But someone has to do the ordering for everyone to enjoy. So someone's school is a common good. The seminary is a common good. The diocesan family is a common good that we all share in and we get to participate in it. But it's not divided whereas like a pizza or something like that, right?  Even when we say we share a pizza. Right. So for the Medieval, it was so clear that the most noble thing you could do was to be like God was to order things for the common good. So getting back to this position of contention that we sometimes have relative to having to be in positions of leadership, how hard it is when someone comes up to us and asks a question because they're just thinking about their private good. And it might be a good for them. But you have to take into account every single ramification, you much more than I do. I run a seminary, you help to run a diocese. And so every particular request that you get, especially if someone's asking you as you're walking down the hallway, it's hard because you think, how does this affect the whole?  And one that certainly is not something we should be shying away from, but something we should be jumping into. If you're doing it right, it should be hard. If it's only about navigating your own success, then the whole thing is self-centered. But if you are truly having as your object and goal, the common good, which of course comports to objective reality, in our case, sound reason and divine revelation, then it's really hard. And it is a type of service. And it certainly tracks to the type of service that our Lord had described about being the last, you know, about being the one who is a servant of all, that it really should feel that way and if you're doing it properly because you're thinking about literally everyone else and not yourself. And I found myself in situations, and now we're talking about Ecclesiastical Governance, where I'm just looking for somebody who's willing to set their own consideration aside. And I find myself, because I'm in the position of having to guide or to lead, that I'm very quick to say, I'll set aside mine, my own desired outcome. Because I feel the weight of trying to get at the right answer or the best answer for the common good. And it becomes challenging because often people approach everything as an adversarial system that if you don't advocate for your cause, then no one will be advocating for your cause, and therefore your cause will be run right over, run rough shot. Where it's not supposed to be that way in a servant leadership role. It's really meant to be that the one who's in the servant leadership role is supposed to be looking out for those who have strong advocacy and those who have no advocacy. Those who have no advocacy. And yet oftentimes people in the life of the church, they don't assume that. They don't seem the best. There may be reasons in historical reasons and bad examples that have been set in the past where there hasn't been an appropriate amount of vigilance with respect to all people and all the individuals, including those who have no advocates. But it certainly shouldn't be the norm. And we ought to be able to kind of reset the presumption. Now, getting back to the civil political side, I think that most people want to know first and foremost how this fits into a Christian life. How does the whole geopolitical dynamic of our life here in this world play our factor into our own personal lives? And on the one hand, I think it's important to say, I think it's right to say that it's important. And I think the church speaks to that and models that. But on the other hand, it is not the ultimate importance that our religious faith is not being successfully lived only when we have certain geopolitical outcomes. That is not the case. In fact, we can look to these moments in the life of the church where you see extraordinary beautiful things happen, whether it's Saint Francis rising up in the life of the church or whether it's Ignatius Eliola or Saint Dominic.  But the most amazing and beautiful things were occurring that would ultimately be such a power and force in the shaping of society. Right, right. But it wasn't born in the political realm. Even looking even more recently, of course, with Pope John Paul II and Saint John Paul, incredible amounts of influence that he wielded by virtue of the word and the faith that eventually assisted in, of course, in the toppling of communism in Poland. You know, I think that one of the ways in which Catholics could consider themselves parts of a whole, we have to remember that, that we don't mean that in terms of being used by the whole in some sort of totalitarian system. You know, a person is a substantial whole, but we want to be part of something. I mean, everyone wants to be part of something, but now it's the difficult thing to do because everyone's so hypersensitive to their individual good. And you see this play out when we actually go to vote. I mean, what are the issues upon which people typically vote? When you ask them, you know, are you thinking about the common good when you vote? Or are you thinking of the thing that best benefits you, you know, whether it's drug prescription prices or this, that or the other that aren't high level things that are important for your pocketbook and things of that nature. But what's the best outcome for not just me, but the guy who lives down the street? And that takes a fair amount of, as you say, laying aside some wishes you might have, because we're so concerned all the time with our private goods and making sure that I get, I have to get as much of those as I can. Like there's only so many jelly beans in the jar. And I'm going to vote in such a way that I get the most jelly beans.  But that's treating everything as a private good. And everyone's scraping to get as much as they can as opposed to thinking about the movement of the body as a whole. And then as you said, kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. Our Lord was very clear about how these things would happen in the course of history. And one of the first instances of a major event that happened where you realized that, wait a minute, the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of the church do not ever really coincide in the same way at the same time. You have, sometimes you have a very happy marriage for a short period of time. But ultimately you have this, this synagogue dealing with this problem in the city of God, right? Because Rome was gone. And no one believed that could happen. It was such a seemed like such a perfect marriage. How could this not work? Now we have the ripe time after the Pax Romana and here comes, here comes salvation. And now we have a means of distributing it to the ends of the known world. And all of a sudden it falls. Yeah. Well I think it's a practical matter for people kind of sorting this stuff out and as they approach a November election or election in two years, an election four years from now and then six years from now and so on and so forth. I think I would say put it in perspective that our faith informs us, forms our mind, is in concert with sound reason and right thinking. And that the way which church sees it is that the clergy of the church form and shape the faithful with respect to matters of faith and morals. And it is really the purview of the lay faithful and the people who are living their Christian lives by assuming certain roles in society but also being active agents in society that they're meant to be the ones who sort through the real considerations of practical wisdom and and various functions to creatively put forward policy laws in accord with right thinking, sound reason but also instructed by the truths of our faith, certainly never contrary to them. And that in that realm they're supposed to do some hard work. I think oftentimes what happens is people want the priests and the clergy of the church, bishops, to connect all the dots for them or if they come up with a plan that they think works they want all of the clergy, the bishops to support those programs and endorse. And that's where we're kind of caught because we're not interested in the first and foremost and a certain political outcome. We do have a general interest with respect to the common good and we need to shape the minds and the souls of the faithful such that they can rise to assume that responsibility in a right way in accord with their Christian faith. And so oftentimes we can be accused of not going far enough but we all know that it does sound kind of strange. It hits our ears and our souls wrong when a priest goes too far. It's not what the pulpits for. You're supposed to allow for the faithful to be able to appropriate and assume their responsibility to the degree in the extent in which you have a very well-formed group of faithful and the parish, then they're going to do great things in society. They're going to be the light in the leaven and they're going to be amped up and they're going to fulfill their roles not just in the parish but in the larger geopolitical world and landscape and they'll do wonderful things. But you can't really shortcut it. You can't go from all right well the bishops and or the priests of the church sort it all out and give marching orders to the faithful and they go out and do it. It's not really meant to be that way. We're not really supposed to do it that way. It's not certainly not how the church sees it. I got to be honest. I also find it really disheartening to see our political climate and culture so toxic and what I mean by that is you know for years I noticed when I was first ordained that I would get a flurry of phone calls from people who want to talk about problems in their families and they typically followed Christmas and Easter. Right because you end up talking about politics. Yes well people are getting together that time of year but they normally don't and then when they do they're engaging in politics and religion tends to be another one and things get tense and dicey. Well you know my advice then a preemptive set of advice you probably saved before. This is the humble this is the post closing prayer speech after before Thanksgiving. It was Thanksgiving not Easter it wasn't Easter so much. We've always done that. It was pre Thanksgiving and pre Christmas those were the two.  You haven't seen them in a while. They believe lots of different things in you politically and religiously at least have one day where you can enjoy each other set all those things aside. If something comes up naturally providentially of course but otherwise don't take the bait.  Just don't take it to say please. No thank you but just pass the potatoes and move on right. Let's just move on don't take the bait.  Why would you you know inject things that are going to create tension and conflict. Take that time to enjoy right. So then I discovered in the past few years that there are actually political groups who send out talking points for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Are you kidding. No they are attempting to radicalize family members to go and to have these talking points ready for these. As if we don't have sufficient amounts of polarization. Exactly. These are the times in years you should actually set aside some of these differences come together and really just appreciate one another and to think about how healthy our political culture could be would become if we could do that on occasion. But we're at a point now where it's almost not allowed. You know where if you're on a different if you're on a different political side of something you are considered to be enemies. Right. And that is toxic. It is just toxic. Yeah I mean this is the problem with identity politics right. You're no longer you know. And this is part it's interesting and ironic right that we have a society that doesn't want to be considered a part of a whole. And yet we're desperately joining a party. A party. Right. We're desperately joining something about which we can be a part and identify such with it without even even necessarily knowing the policy that it has. And I think that one way to diffuse the situation. It whether it's Thanksgiving or any other event is to the back just back up back up back away from the party back away from the the argument as it as it rages in the political sphere and begin to talk about purposes like what what is it that you think is good for the human person. Yeah. What do you think is good for the human person. Why. How do you think we should organize this and why. I mean get people again to think about how we're going to organize ourselves for flourishing. I mean it does take some of the bite out of it and I find it it sort of releases the tension and the pressure but more than anything you're actually just for a second listen to someone else's story. Right. Which everyone loves right. Everyone's in some level to be listened to. And why do you hold what you hold. I know this only because as a priest I'm sure you experience this too. I do have some members in my family that will want me to police every other member in my family and make sure that they're on board with everything. And and and I feel that when I walk into the room like they're waiting for me to do it because that's my job to make sure that everyone's on the same on the same page. And I typically don't take that route on the country which I'm a I'm a collar I don't mind taking that route but don't find it effective at all. No it's not. And in fact you have it easy because my father is usually lining up a list wherever we travel say it's on a cruise ship of all the people that he thinks I need to talk to. You know I know I cannot possibly I mean there were one time we were sat with all these various people you know because where the dining worked and we were on a cruise and you know he was certainly lining up all the conversations that needed to happen and you know it was full oh oh boy no I get it. So actually you notice thinking about it's kind of ironic that our American society has it has come to have a great distaste for proselytizing for religious proselytizing. However it has wholeheartedly embraced political proselytizing. It's a religion. It's but it's the same thing. It's just a different arena but political proselytizing is somehow not only considered permissible but actively engaged and embraced. Oh and when you don't hold the creeds you're supposed to hold. Yeah I mean ultimately you are there is an inquisition that takes place. Yeah it's a different type of proselytizing and so you know I'd like to think that we don't proselytize rather we evangelize and we do so according to the manner in which our Lord instructs us through the gospel is in the ways in which we ought and inspired by the Holy Spirit and the idea of proselytizing of getting in people's face I think we kind of be able to that's been set aside and rightfully so but the political sphere they saw that tool and ran with it and that's one which you know again we're talking about our American context you know that's that's happening you know that's true well before we go I have to say that I am wildly interested in making proper focaccio as of yesterday. You have to explain to people what that is. Yeah so focaccio is one of those words. Yeah it's just it's an Italian thing the Italians also have a thing called cecina which I love which is basically just pizza dough with olive oil flaky salt and rosemary cooked on a stone cooked on a stone right same thing you can make in as a focaccio it's slightly different dough but there's we were just talking earlier and what made me think about this is that we think that our Lord chose bread for his little sublime thing that we have on this earth of course his own body and blood because a carb is really the most sublime thing it really is that is edible it's I love car behind me they were my favorite thing and I was thinking about that relative to focaccio because a proper focaccio is so chewy and wonderful and good so I found a recipe the sisters found a recipe that you don't have to have a starter and it's probably not quite as good but man it's easy and it's fantastic so that's kind of what I'm thinking about right now that's what I was sorry so you brought up the food thing so all right my latest food thing is homemade lemonade really so yeah so you know you can buy bags of lemons pretty cheaply my years ago my brother Rich he got me one of those squeezers yeah the first time squeezer so it's really easy a juicer that's it it's amazing how few lemons are needed to make a pitcher of lemonade that that's pretty that's pretty strong just let me straight up lemon juice but then you know you add you don't add sugar if you add sugar if you want but I you know I like to add equally or you know somewhat one of these sugar substitutes and it's delicious I mean it really is it's just nice a good summer time yeah you're not getting lots of chemicals from mixing you know from pretty fab stuff you're buying the store and it's it's it's fresh it's delicious did you ever let have lemonade stand as a kid you know I don't think I did really I probably thought in my head that I should but I don't think I ever executed we never really had a like a neighborhood where you'd have people passerbys I did right we just didn't have that like sort of the sidewalk I was big on the lemonade stand did it work yeah not to my not to my satisfaction though which is the reason to this day that if ever I see a lemonade stand which is fairly rare but if I do I always stop and get some from kids and I always give them way too much money it's probably horrible for them I'm ruining their sense of what actual labor and and economic justice is you're encouraging panhandling I really do the very reason why people stand at the corners of these red lights because you started it I did it's my fault evokes sympathy and hold out a can well hopefully when you had your lemonade stands you declared your income and pay taxes on it great to see you all I talk to you have a great week and we'll talk to you guys soon all right job less thanks for listening to this episode of from the rooftop for updates about new episodes special guests and exclusive deals for from the rooftop listeners sign up at rooftop podcast dot com and remember for more great ways to deepen your faith check out all the spiritual resources available at 10 books dot com and we'll see you again next time from the rooftop