Have been away a couple of days, flying and driving and sitting and thinking.
As well as taking a pilgrimage to a shrine:
It all reminded me of something I wrote after Andrew Breitbart died:
Since my wife called this morning to let me know of Andrew’s death, it has been hard to focus on anything else. In her words, we don’t have that many bright media lights, and to lose him hurts.
Andrew lived in a world without restraints. He could be who he wanted to be, a luxury few bloggers have, particularly those who blog under their own name and work for others.
I live in a world of restraints, and I envied Andrew’s freedom more than you can know.
Andrew is irreplaceable, but we would serve his memory well to aspire to more freedom of thought and more freedom of action.
I’ve often wondered where to go with this blog. I now know.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
The monks at The Shrine answered some questions, and raised even more.
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Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits…
That was the original title to the post 🙂
For me, this post of yours is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Either I’m just too stupid (within the bounds of my imagination) or just too…
Oh, I don’t know…
Free to think. Free to act.
Be blessed.
That is a Rockford, IL landmark, the Clock Tower Resort (http://www.clocktowerresort.com/) which I recognize as the place where the Wisconsin Democrat legislators absconded to during the battle over the WI budget and public union bargaining rules.
LOL!
Good for you, Professor. Something tells me you have your sights on bigger game; bully for you!
Are you suggesting I would travel to Rockford, Illinois for a purpose other than visiting the shrine? Hah!
Mystic monks of Wyoming or Benedictine monks of Wisconsin?
Professor, I which I could read your thoughts, but it brings something to my mind about a quote from “Into The Fire” by Dakota Meyer and Bing West:
“For a man to charge into fire once requires grit that is instinctive in few men; to do so a second time, now knowing what awaits you, requires inner resolve beyond instinct; to repeat a third time is courage above and beyond any call of duty; to go in a fourth time is to know you will die; to go in a fifth time is beyond comprehension.
Myer’s performance was the greatest act of courage in the war, because he repeated it, and repeated it, and repeated it.”
If anyone has ever had the honor and privilege to soldier alongside other men under dangerous, trying circumstances, he understands the well from whence incomprehensible courage comes. That courage is forged in the refiners fire of perfect friendship and a love that approaches what the Greeks called agapeo. Such love is why men die fighting, rather than fail their comrades or themselves. That these events change us from that moment onward is no accident. It is the stark realization that there are things worse than dying, and one of those – perhaps foremost of all – is the fear of failing ones comrades in times of grave danger. Fear stands no chance against such love.
Dakota Meyer knows this, too.
“As well as taking a pilgrimage to a shrine.”
Holy Shinto! He’s become a Buddhist!
LukeHandCool (who, speaking of Shinto, after the worst week at work he can remember, is ready to go off to some forgotten, sparsely populated corner of Japan and become a fisherman … never having to deal with people or office politics or PC bosses again … if only he knew how to fish)
Luke: Japan is just too far to go to learn to fish. Join us and the Professor in State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Great great fishing. Lousy lousy politics but when you see the coastline and catch a few bass and sup on a fresh lobster, you forget the lousy politics. Kinda. Maybe. Not really, but the fishing IS good.
http://earthoceanskyredux.com/2012/06/06/desperate-times-desperate-measures/
That’s a sweet invitation, eosredux.
But I go dormant when it goes below 70 degrees. (And the color I turn is not a beautiful fall color … I just fall to the ground.)
LukeHandCool (who, when he lived in the dorm the semester he attended the University of Hawaii, was always amused when, after someone invariably pulled the fire alarm Saturday morning about 4 a.m. and the dorm residents had to get out of bed, throw on a t-shirt and shorts, and march down the stairs of the 13-story building and exit into the crisp 70-degree morning air, he would watch the locals all shivering and cursing the “cold.” Bigger babies than Luke they were, the lot of them)
A world without Freedom, is a world without life. Thus Freedom and Liberty in our Representative Democracy / our Republic are Conservative American Patriots #1 priority.
Our jobs/careers, our homes, our cars are all material, and except for our families and friends, are intransient and or inanimate objects that are superficial restraints for the moment.
Even at the cost of our families, which is not just the sole responsibility of our US men and women in the Military, we must ensure Freedom and Liberty are resolute and must never perish from this earth.
For if it- Individual Freedom and Liberty, where the govt will not, shall not infringe upon the sanctity of the Individual, truly disappears from America, then it is truly gone from the earth, for if America’s gone as a refuge of Freedom and Liberty, where and who else would the world’s people turn to.. thus forever will we all be enslaved and at the mercy of tyrannical govt regimes not just here at home, but around the world as is now being realized via the rise of anti-Americanism / Socialist Marxism / Islamism.
As we could staved this off, if we choose to allow superficial restraints to stop us, then we the people would live in existence only as cowards in our own failures to rise to the occasion, as so many of our forebearers have done for us.
This is what Andrew Breitbart understood, that evil from whomever, wherever, however it is embodied, which threatens We the People’s very Freedom and existence, must be defeated at all costs, from wherever, however, and as long as it takes.
Unlike Liberals, We the People do not use and justify “the means justify’s the ends” tactic and strategy, but we justify the very cause and truth of our existence with our unrelenting defense of individual Freedom and Liberty in the pursuit of our own happiness, by never surrendering of own free will.
This above all else must be the parameters by which we fight, for if we are to be only part time patriots, in a full time cause, then we will surely be defeated.
I hope Mr Jacobsen has better health than Andrew Breitbart.
This stuff is stressful & fitness & stamina plus a good diet really do work . I wish for you to drop a few kilos .
Get a personal trainer . The sheer fright of the next session forces you to exercise in between.
On to a meaner leaner man!
“I wish for you to drop a few kilos.” I thought I had kept those photos off the internet.
An impassioned person is capable of anything. Especially if they are a Cornell associate clinical professor of law.
That’s a very active political shrine. If there is a political conference in Illinois that isn’t in Chicago or Springfield it’s a pretty good bet it is being held at the Clock Tower Resort in Rockford.
cite: Professor Jacobson
aspire to more freedom of thought and more freedom of action
Bingo. Andrew proved what can be done, not what cannot be done.
I’ve had to think all day about a proper response to this. Professor, I don’t think you give yourself enough credit for truly seeing Andrew’s vision. Truly seeing. Some do, some don’t. But I think you do, and what that means to this blog’s future, I will wholeheartedly support.
#ApologizeForWhat?
I’m amazed that I miss Andrew so much, because I never met him in person.