Opinions mean nothing

The late Robert Hutchins was Dean of the Yale University Law School at age 28. He was appointed chancellor of the University of Chicago at age 32. He was obviously brilliant. He often said that my good friend, the late William O. Douglas was the most brilliant member of his law faculty at Yale.

One of the most important events of Hutchins life, and one he never forgot, took place when he was a teenager. His father was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin College in Ohio. The young Hutchins went to his father one day and began to give him his “opinion” about a subject, when his father stopped him with these words: “Son, let me remind you before you proceed, that you do not know enough about the subject to even have an opinion.”

I wish to God that every Tom, Dick and Thelma and Louise going around giving their “opinions” about issues, religion, politics, economics, the bible, or what have you, would take that advice to heart. You hear some make the ludicrous statement that “one opinion is just as good and valid as another opinion.” Nothing could be more comical.
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The disease of religion

The language of religion evokes fear and trembling among the vast majority of the world’s population. It is the mind of the “true believer” whether Islamic or Christian, that spews forth hatred, violence and the corruption of the human species, individually and collectively. As this has been true historically, so it is still true and highly visible today in the world of 2004.
Historically, the breeding ground for cruelty and violence has been religion. “Men never do evil so completely as when they do it from religious convictions.” wrote Blaise Pascal. “How many evils have flowed from religion?” asked the Roman poet Lucretius. And 1600 years later our own Thomas Jefferson, at the birth of this nation, wrote: “Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”

Today, the devout “true believer” bombs airplanes out of the sky for the “glory of God” and threatens and dynamites women’s care and abortion clinics, all in the obscene name of their God.

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Living in normal times

The majority of us , I am sure, feel that we living in abnormal times. Are we really? The historian and the anthropologist would say that we living in perfectly NORMAL times. When you look at past civilizations and the crimes…wars…conflicts…trial…collapse…violence and instability have been the rule rather than the exception.

My life for instance has been perfectly normal, as has yours. I was born right after WW One…endured with my parents the depression…saw the dustbowl days of Oklahoma…lived with the exploits of Pretty Boy Floyd…John Dillenger and Bonnie and Clyde…spent summer with my grandparents in West Texas living on parched soil and praying for rain to fill the rain barrels and cisterns…my children were born during WW Two when Hitler was marching…I was a father during the days of the Berlin airlift…the Korean war…the cold war…and Viet Nam…and as a US Marine Corps pilot I helped my country in WW Two and Korea…and counseled my own son as his time came for Viet Nam…so do you see what I am saying…? ALL OF MY LIFE I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR NORMAL TIMES WHEN ALL OF MY LIFE I HAVE BEEN LIVING IN NORMAL TIMES…

So, I ask…”what can I depend on in these normal times?” Where can I find solid ground beneath my feet? I found my answer in Emerson. “Nothing is secure…but transition and the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love…and no truth so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow in the light of new thoughts.”
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