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Weather: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 3pm. Increasing clouds, with a high near 88. Heat index values as high as 102. Southwest wind 5 to 9 mph. Tonight: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 73. South wind around 8 mph becoming southwest after midnight. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.
See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here. See the drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?). Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here. Check tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here. –>
Today at a Glance:
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Wickline Park, 315 South 7th Street, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts his weekly informal town hall with coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. at his law office at 301 South Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. All subjects, all interested residents or non-residents welcome. The gatherings occasionally feature a special guest, as it does today: City Manager Dale Martin.
Free Housing Fair and Financial Wellness Clinic, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway. Attendees can expect vendors representing insurance companies, home inspection companies, and title companies, as well as builders and realtors. The fair caters to everyone: Home Buyers, Homeowners, and Renters alike. Free credit reports will be available for all attendees. Throughout the day, mini workshops will cover topics such as Financial Literacy, Home Buying, and Heir Property Issues. Industry professionals will be on hand to provide insights into the home-buying process, offer free credit reports, consult with HUD Housing Counselors, and discuss new mortgage loan products, down payment assistance programs, affordable housing initiatives, and rehab programs and loan options for homeowners.
Democratic Women’s Club of Flagler County meeting at 6 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
Live From the Waterworks: Gamble Rogers Folk Festival’s Monthly Concert Series every third Saturday at The Waterworks, 184 San Marco Avenue St. Augustine. Doors open at 6 p.m., music starts at 7. The annual event celebrating the life and music of folk legend Gamble Rogers. Through June 2024. Check performers and book tickets here. Read more details about the festival here.
‘Sense and Sensibility,’ at Daytona Playhouse: All shows at 7:30 p.m. except on Sundays, at 2 p.m. Daytona Playhouse, 100 Jessamine Blvd., Daytona Beach. Adults $20, Seniors $19, Youth $10. A playful new adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved novel follows the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Dashwood sisters—sensible Elinor and hypersensitive Marianne—after their father’s sudden death leaves them financially destitute and socially vulnerable. When reputation is everything, how do you follow your heart?
Random Acts of Insanity’s Roundup of Standups from Around Central Florida, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every third Saturday RAI hosts Live Standup Comedy with comics from all over Central Florida.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Notably: Mortimer Adler published his Six Great Ideas in 1981. The book is a philosophical exploration of truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality and justice. It has the charm of endless inquiry about some of the most important make-up of our intellectual and aesthetic DNA, about which we don’t take the pleasure to think enough–because it is primarily a pleasure, not a difficulty, to think about those ideas and how they apply to our lives. In some cases–justice, equality, liberty, truth, it goes beyond aesthetics to moral, civic and political responsibility, probably in that order. In 1982 Bill Moyers produced a six-part series on Adler, the book, and seminar Adler hosted at the Aspen Institute, with his book as the centerpiece. It aired on PBS at a time when we could watch that sort of thing on a national network. (Book TV on C-Span comes close these days, but I’m not sure we have the equivalent of a Bill Moyers-type universalist on the air.) The series was entirely absorbing, as were the people who attended Adler’s seminar–the same crew of maybe a dozen people collected from all walks of life, including academics, politicians, artists. I was particularly struck by the episode on justice, and even more particularly so by the way Adler kicked off the discussion about the ring of Gyges. As he put it: “You’re walking up Fifth Avenue on a bright sunny morning, and you pass Tiffany’s at 57th Street, and in one of those little windows with a little black case is a nice gold ring, and it says under it, “ring of Gyges, moderately priced, inquire within.” Now I have-there are three questions I want all of you to answer -all three questions. One, would you go in and inquire–would you inquire about the price of the ring? Two, if it was within your power to buy it, reasonably priced, would you buy it? Three, if you bought it, how would you use it?” I’ve put that question to a couple of hundred people since. The frequent response has to do with self-trust with such an awesome power. It’s curious how often we fear the power and see it as eliciting the worst of our impulses, rather than the best. How often, or how quickly, even our best impulses will slouch toward our worst. We can be good for a while. But eventually, the worst in us will have its say. Anyway: I have found the entire six-part series archived and available to watch entirely. Might as well start. The seminarists’ answers to Adler’s questions are worth the time.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
What is worse is that despotism is defended by political philosophers, by philosophers of law, by jurists and lawyers. They often do so, it must be conceded, without realizing that the position they take with regard to the relation of law and justice leads to this dire consequence. Still, it is difficult to understand how they can be so blind to the conclusions that inexorably flow from what appears to be the basic error they make in the beginning- not only basic, but also egregious. That basic error consists in giving law precedence and primacy over justice, rather than the other way around. Instead of regarding natural justice as the fountainhead from which man-made law springs, the source of its authority and the measure of its legitimacy, the view here being criticized turns things upside down. It regards positive law, the man-made law of the state, as the sole source of justice, the only determination of what it is right and wrong for individuals to do in relation to one another and to the community itself.
–From Mortimer Adler’s Six Great Ideas (1981)
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Jim says
It just continues to amaze and disappoint me that the Republican party has turned into the Trump sycophant party. I have absolutely no respect for any of these minions who spout Trump’s garbage and act like they are taking the high road. Look at these people: Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, Rick Scott and Mike Johnson, among others. I can not respect these people because they deserve no respect. They are all out for themselves and not for the American people. Just look at the Republican “lead” House of Representatives. The only thing they get done is when the Democrats join in a bipartisan vote. At one point, this was considered “governing” but now the MAGA crowd screams when bipartisanship happens. Don’t tell me these morons don’t want a dictatorship – that’s exactly what they want. If you don’t agree with them on something, then your opinion is wrong and you should just shut up and stand there while they run over you and your rights! How can anyone vote for idiots who say that if they win, it’s a free and fair election but if they lose, it’s rigged? And that is said before the election even takes place. These are not “statemen” nor are they supporters of American democracy. Everyone needs to turn to history and review what was happening in Germany in the 30’s prior to WWII. We’re seeing it now. These people are enemies of democracy and unless we all recognize that and vote accordingly, we’ll get our own Hitler in November.
Laurel says
Don’t forget Bobo, I heard she was there! Was she wearing a white shirt and red tie too? Unbelievable!
Sorry, but if I don’t laugh, I’ll puke.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
Jim, You missed Mike Waltz, remember him ? Our 6th Congressional District Representative that does nothing for his constituents was there also. Sure he Votes for a Veterans Bill every now and then to garner Votes for himself yet look at his track record, when a Bill comes up that benefits all of his constituents and Democracy he looks the other way and Votes No. Smart people in his District will Vote Blue this time around to replace him for good.
Deborah Coffey says
Good cartoon. But, it’s what happens when some of those puppets are not quickly put in prison for conspiracy to overthrow the American government. They come right out in public and try to overthrow the entire Judicial system…for starters. They’ll be leading the crowd for the next insurrection. Call their clown show whatever you want; I call it sedition.
Ray W. says
I have been waiting for some time for just the right quote. Mortimer Adlers Six Great Ideas quote hits the mark. Thank you, Mr. Tristam.
Who knows how many times I have commented on Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which I call the three plays of Agamemnon.
Some 2500 years ago, Aeschylus won awards for his three plays that have withstood the many tests of time. What I mean by that is that for almost three millennia, people have thought the plays important enough to save them, to preserve the documents, to copy the plays, to translate them out of the original Greek into Arabic, then Latin.
According to the plays, the death toll from existing Greek laws of blood vengeance recoiled a people into conducting the world’s first recorded description of a jury trial, where Orestes stood trial not for murdering his cousin out of an act of blood vengeance, which was lawful under the Law of Blood Vengeance, but for the vengeful murder of his mother (matricide). The trial interposed for the first time a group of people between a victim and his previously lawful prey. His mother and cousin had murdered his father, Agamemnon. Greek law, not matter how bloody, could not stand for matricide, so the Greeks had to find a new way. Prosecuted by the Furies, and defended by Zeus, himself, Orestes was judged by 12 Athenian jurors. When they deadlocked, Athena cast the tie-breaking vote of not guilty, introducing the concept of mercy into the law. Social historians consider this the first instance of an honor-based society shifting into a respect-based society. Justice had displaced retribution. Honor demands vengeance. Respect commands justice.
Yes, they were plays, but their impact on Western thoughts of justice is incalculable. Did they directly lead to the Magna Carta (Great Charter)? Did they directly lead to the Acts of Abjuration (Dutch Declaration of Independence)? Did they directly lead to our own Declaration of Independence? Some argue they did. I accept this argument.
In Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, he describes four pre-Revolutionary War immigration patterns out of four ethnically distinct regions of Great Brittain: The Puritans, the Virginia Cavaliers, the Quakers, and the northerners. Each fled en masse from their ancestral homes due to a period of short intense mass discrimination. For example, for about a dozen years after the beheading of Charles I, the Cavaliers fled England and settled in Virginia. The last of those four colonial inflows involved “borderers”, who came from northern English counties, lowland Scots, and northern Scots Irish. They shared many social customs described by the author as “folkways.”
One of the borderer folkways involved their perception of law as “lex talionis.”
The author writes of this idea:
“The mother of Andrew Jackson prepared her son for this world (backcountry America from western Pennsylvania down the mountains into north Georgia and northwestern South Carolina) with some strong advice. ‘Andrew’, said she, ‘never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself.’
“That folk saying was a classical representation of backcountry attitudes toward order, which differed very much from other regions of British America. In the absence of any strong sense of order as unity, hierarchy, or social peace, backsettlers shared an idea of order as retributive justice (a current presidential candidate openly claims to his followers that he will be their “retribution.”) The prevailing principle was lex talionis, the rule of retaliation. It held that a good man must seek to do right in the world, but when wrong was done to him he must punish the wrongdoer himself by an act of retribution that restored order and justice to the world. (When a FlaglerLive commenter inferred that Mr. Depa deserved life in prison by claiming that anyone who argued for mercy must house him whenever he wasn’t imprisoned, she provided a great example of lex talionis, or retribution to anyone who disagrees with her personal form of “justice”, which of course was nothing more than vengeance disguised in the name of justice.)
“This backcountry idea of order rested upon an exceptionally strong sense of self-sovereignty. … A North Carolina proverb declared that ‘every man should be sheriff of his own hearth.’ … This idea implied not only individual autonomy, but autarchy. Further, it narrowly circumscribed the role of government, for if every man were sheriff on his own hearth, then there was not much work for a county sheriff to do, except patrol the roads that lay in between.
The same ideas also appeared in the ordering institutions of the backcountry. There were official sheriffs and constables, but the heaviest work of order-keeping was done by ad hoc groups of self-appointed agents who called themselves regulators in the eighteenth century, vigilantes in the nineteenth, and nightriders in the twentieth. … It rose from a tradition of retributive folk justice which had been carried from the British borderlands to the American backcountry.
“Vigilante movements began in the southern backcountry during the 1760’s. Their legitimacy rested upon a doctrine call ‘Lynch’s Law,’ which probably took its name from Captain William Lynch (1742-1820), of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and later Pendleton District, South Carolina. Captain Lynch was a backcountry settler of border descent. ‘Lynch’s Law’ began as a formal agreement among his neighbors:
‘Whereas many of the inhabitants of Pittsylvania have sustained great and intolerable losses by a set of lawless men … we will inflict such corporal punishment on him or them, as to us shall seem adequate to the crime committed or the damage sustained.’
“Lynch’s Law was swift and violent. Its victims were often flogged and sometimes killed without much attention to due process, or even to the evidence. One backcountry gravestone read: ‘George Johnson, Hanged by Mistake.'”
Retributive justice, lex talionis, these are just other phrases for the Greek laws of blood vengeance. Wrong me and I am obligated by personal law to kill you.
Can this explanation of lex talionis offer insights into why so many southern states have relatively high murder rates?
I hope that many FlaglerLive readers better understand now why I oppose the vengeful commenter among us all. Why I see hatred and violence in the words of several FlaglerLive commenters. Why I see a political movement sustained by the descendants of our backcountry settlers who have spread all over the nation, for whom retribution is the only law they accept? Why I oppose and condemn both Hamas and the murderous Israeli Jewish settler and the commenters who support either movement without condemning the vengeful of their own side?
Laurel says
Ray W.: Very interesting! Thanks. You might enjoy the movie “Winter’s Bone.”
Pogo says
@P.T.
Thousands of days I’ve come to this page, and never for the cartoon, and never for other’s comments; I’ve come here for your thoughts and remarks: to agree, disagree, receive, share, learn, teach, etc. Today is one of the best. Thank you.
Pierre Tristam says
I am never so grateful as when I see that the Briefing hits the mark once in a while: it’s the site’s usually undiscovered country for most. Thank you Pogo and Ray.
Laurel says
PT: My first thought, being a cynic, is that it’s a fake. My second thought would be is how did the shop get it; it must be a fake. No, I would not inquire. If somehow I was convinced it was real, I would not want it , but would be totally disturbed that it was for sale. But there are those who dress in blue suits, white shirts and red ties to just be close to it.
Laurel says
I am not educated in philosophy, so forgive me if I’m off track.
As I see it, Samwise did not want the power, but he supported Frodo. Frodo almost succumbed to the power, and it almost killed him on multiple occasions, yet, he managed to resist. So, does the wearer of the ring have the power, or is it the ring itself? Frodo and Sam did manage to throw the ring into the fire; very admirable of them. A selfless act.
Gollum craved the ring, as many did, and would do anything he could to get it even though his desire made him a shell of a Hobbit. I see several, hairy, naked (save the red ties) demons craving the power, lining up and posturing for the pleasure and acceptance of the devil. The one who claims to be our retribution. Meanwhile, those who clutch their symbols of their claimed savior, will, I believe, be the first to nail him back on the cross.
No one wants to be powerless, but…
Mark says
Did see a couple dozen puppets waving signs around today at Palm Coast Parkway and 95, pawns on parade.
Pogo says
@And then came Trump (and his allies, i.e., Florida, Texas, et al., Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, etc.)