Remarks at the Deliberative Session

There is a technique of public speaking which holds you should tell the folks what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you've told them.

That can get tedious, but I'll at least engage the first two, if for no other reason than it will help you know when I'm about done, and you won't have to keep looking at your watch, wondering when I'm going to finish.

So the three points I'm going to make with respect to this warrant article which grants public, taxpayer money to the Sacred Heart School of the Church of the Miraculous Medal are these:

1. Nullification

2. Money

3. Separation of church and state: Is it good for Catholics or bad?

1. With respect to nullification:  

I visit New York City, Manhattan, now and then and I come to a crosswalk and see that sign flashing in red letters: DON'T WALK. I look down the grid in both directions and I see no car approaching, and I cross the street. Often, I'm accompanied by a policeman or a dozen other citizens. What we have done, of course, is against the law, but if we do not obey the law and if there is no enforcement, we have nullified that law. 

There are other examples: The governor of Alabama, George Wallace, stood in a schoolhouse door and said no Negro child would ever cross that threshold into a public, all White school. He did not care what the Constitution or the Supreme Court said. Nullification.  

And then there is judicial nullification, in which judges nullify a law. The state of Maine refused to use public funds to pay tuition for students to a religious school and Justices Thomas and Alito ruled the state had to pay. They said to discriminate against a religious school simply because it was religious was discrimination.  Justice Sotomayor noted that this ruling at its heart said that separation of church and state is unconstitutional.

This is a peculiar finding, of course, to say that the First Amendment, a part of the Constitution, is itself unconstitutional. 

Some say separation of church and state is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. The First Amendment clearly says government shall not establish a state religion. And the Constitution was not written for lawyers; it was written for the common man, and when it was written every common man knew what state establishment of a church meant, because they already had an established church: The Church of England. And they knew there were only two ways to establish a religion:  if you state this is the state church, or if you used taxpayer money to support a church, that was state establishment of a church. Apparently, Justices Alito and Thomas have forgotten all that. 

But they won't serve forever.

The question we have before us today is whether the nullification of the United States Constitution, the First Amendment, as we do it every year through this warrant article is more like crossing against the light, or more like the more pernicious forms of nullification of the Governor of Alabama or the US Supreme Court.

2.Then there is the money argument: 

For years it was argued that it was simply cheaper to pay for Hampton kids to go to Sacred Heart, which was less expensive than the oh so expensive public schools. That may have been true once, but now there have been empty seats in Hampton schools for years; we have already paid for those Sacred Heart students once and now we pay again.

The corollary to this is "I am a Hampton taxpayer, and my taxes should go to pay for my kid's education and I want my kid going to Sacred Heart." But the fact is only 25% of the kids at Sacred Heart live in Hampton. 75% of the student body is from out of town, so what we are really paying for this a Catholic school education for anyone who wants one, no matter where they live. 

There is simply no money argument for spending Hampton taxpayer money on Sacred Heart--for paying for computers for Sacred Heart, especially when it has always been promised that the funds were spent for only "non religious" things like computers, but when pressed  on the subject, officials admitted they have no idea whether those computers are used to stream religious services.

3. Separation of Church and State: Good for Catholics or an Insult?

You will say to me, "You have no right to tell Catholics what is good for them as Catholics. You are not even Catholic."

This is true: I am not a Catholic.

But I am old.

And I remember, before most of the people in this room were even born, a man named John F. Kennedy, who said, "Because I am not a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, it is apparently necessary for me to state that I believe in the absolute separation of church and state, that no public funds should ever be granted to any church, or to any church school." 

Then he went on to explain why he felt he had to discuss this, but even at age 13, when I heard him, I already knew why: My neighbors said, "Oh, you can't vote for Kennedy, he is a Catholic. That would be like putting the Pope into the White House. He would be a puppet on a string."

Of course, Kennedy did keep that promise, and it was not always easy, but because he kept that promise that finger of suspicion was never pointed at a Catholic candidate again and Catholics have been elected at every level of government, including the Presidency, since Kennedy.

So separation of church and state is good for Catholics, I would submit.

I'll close with my favorite story about separation of church and state, and it involves a past governor of Texas, Ann Richards. 

One day, Governor Richards looked up from her desk and found herself confronted by four very morose looking staffers who told her they had some bad news.

"What is it?" she asked

"Well, you see that nativity scene out there on the lawn outside your office, just a few feet from the entrance to the Capitol? The Supreme Court has ruled we have to take that down, because it violates separation of church and state!"

Governor Richards turned and stared wistfully out her window at the manger scene, and said, "Oh! I do so hate to do that. It's a such damn shame! This is the one and only time, every year, when we are ever able to gather three wise men together in one place at the Capitol!"

A Shot To Save the World

 

As Mad Dog has gotten older, he finds he needs to return to books and articles to really appreciate them. The first time through, no matter how carefully he reads them, it just doesn't stick, but upon the return things come into focus.

Penn Ad in the New Yorker: Stealing the Glory

Re-reading Gregory Zuckerman's "A Shot to Save the World," about the scores of scientists who over a thirty year slog coalesced around the science that produced a remarkably effective vaccine against COVID 19 in just a year, Mad Dog is once again smitten by the story.

Some of this is simply delicious because of the story of one of the central figures who played a key role in providing the essential platform for the vaccine, mRNA, Katalin Kariko, and how she was ostracized at the University of Pennsylvania, ultimately given the choice of being fired or taking a demotion to a new university rank devised just for her as a "senior researcher" not even a faculty member, how when she finally managed to convince another faculty member of the potential value of mRNA, and once the two of them started a company to pursue it, Penn refused to invest in it, but ultimately made $1.2 billion from the patent it provided which was used to make the vaccine.

And then, in the ultimate in chutzpah, in an act which must win the grand prize for hypocrisy, when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for her work, Penn took out a full page ad in the New Yorker claiming credit for nurturing her great work.

Penn outdid Cinderella's wicked step mother, claiming it didn't just nurture the princess, but delivered her glass slipper and the prince to go with it.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Luckily, in the 21st century there is Google, and it takes precious little time on Google to see how nasty Penn was to Kariko--not an unusual story in medical research--but it's the claim that we knew all along how she was destined for greatness that sets off the rockets.

There will be, likely already are many other books about the way in which the COVID 19 mRNA vaccines were developed, but a good place to start is with Zuckerman's tale. He is a Wall Street Journal reporter, and his interests are unavoidably connected to the financial aspects of vaccine development, but he's clearly talked to enough scientists-- and the right scientists--who schooled him on how to ask the right questions, and once you get past the inevitable grab-you-by-the-lapel style, the determination to describe the personalities of the scientists for "human interest," the story is a page turner.

Banting & Best Discoverers of Insulin

So many people were involved, so many people taking risks, so many falling flat on their faces, so many people in positions of power who simply were too dim witted to pull the right levers, but enough smart, determined people simply dodged around the nincompoops, the deed got done.

Most vaccines take 10 years to bring successfully to market, the shortest big one before the COVID vaccine took 4 years, and they did COVID in one year.

Dr. Offit

When Paul Offit gave credit to President Trump for getting the vaccine done, he laughed. He said bringing that vaccine to fruition was the greatest scientific achievement of his lifetime and that was on Trump's watch. The reason he laughed is evident in Zuckerman's tale. The way science and the way this vaccine happens cannot ever be one man's credit--a decades long, tedious, ants on the march scenario is required. The guys at the top of political and academic institutions just hold the news conferences and take the credit.

Any fan of "The Wire" knows what I'm talking about: It's the "drugs on the table" charade. 

We see people working on HIV, like Henry Masur and later Tony Fauci, and we see people working on using genes to fight cancer, and we see people working on stem cell technologies and all these people weaving a thick mat upon which the next line of performers can jump and then the next.

It's an inspiring story, and an instructive one.

It also suggests that while government must occasionally play an essential role, government alone cannot do this kind of thing.  The Manhattan Project was a children's tea party compared to this one.

It reveals the centrality of universities, but it also shows how obtuse and arrogant faculties in academia can be and often are.

Child with Type 1 Diabetes

But mostly, it suggests that the Napoleon's, the Stalin's, the Ghengis Khan's of history are not much more than people who hit other people over the head with bigger and bigger clubs, while the folks like Jonas Salk and Katalin Kariko are the people who change life on earth for every little guy just trying to survive.