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Condé Nast Traveler visits Poland

A few excerpts from Polish Renaissance

This was the country that set to rebuilding its churches and palaces and ancient cities. I ask Marek Kwiatkowski how this was possible. “We had to rebuild because we were poor!” he insists with great animation, as if annoyed that I had missed such an obvious point. “England didn’t have to rebuild Coventry Cathedral because it was a rich country.” Warsaw was the first city in Europe to decide to rebuild, because, he says once more, “we had to.”

Gdańsk may be the most successful reconstruction in the country. With its high-gabled houses, its golden fountains, and its face toward the sea, the Baltic port feels closer to Amsterdam or Stockholm than to Warsaw or Kraków—”or it did, until I decided to walk over to the National Museum to see the famous Memling brought here in 1473, after pirates snatched it off the English coast.

It is easy to imagine what such a beautiful museum might have meant to the people living toilet-paper-less in those dingy apartments: a hope of dignity, for themselves and their nation. “My generation had only one goal: the independence of our country,” Kwiatkowski tells me. But with the Red Army occupying Poland, there could be no question of political or economic independence. A degree of cultural independence was the best the Poles could hope for, and as it happened the very existence of Polish culture was controversial enough to make its manifestations far more powerful than they would have been elsewhere.

This was because something about Poland so irritated its neighbors that they went to great lengths to wipe it out. In the nineteenth century, Russians seeking justification of their conquest settled on the excuse that the Catholic Poles threatened the unity of the Orthodox Slavs. In the human taxonomy devised by the Nazis, only Jews ranked lower than the Poles: Hitler did not want to exterminate them entirely, but, unlike other occupied peoples, they were to be reduced to slavery, their culture eradicated.

The occupiers devoted a startling amount of effort to destroying all symbols of Polish culture, from statues of Chopin and Copernicus to professors at Kraków’s Jagiellonian University. Thirty percent of Poland’s university teachers were killed, along with twenty-one percent of its judges, forty percent of its physicians, and fifty-seven percent of its lawyers. All told, a third of Poland’s population was displaced or murdered in the war.

But preserving the culture their enemies tried to annihilate was the one way the Poles could show the world that they were not a race of slaves.

…

Not much had changed since the days of King Stanisław, who could transmit a barbed political message by having a god petulantly stare at a nymph across a Baroque ceiling. Under communism, art and culture were the most powerful weapons the Poles had; and in his final book, Travels with Herodotus, the great Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński recalled why even that ancient Greek historian couldn’t be published in Stalinist Poland.

“All our thinking,” he wrote, “our looking and reading, was governed during those years by an obsession with allusion. Each word brought another one to mind; each had a double meaning, a false bottom, a hidden significance; each contained something secretly encoded, cunningly concealed.”Architecture was all the more eloquent in such an environment, and after Stalin died, in 1953, its expressive potential was unleashed.

A people under foreign occupation, whose intellectuals had been massacred and whose economy had trouble keeping up with the demand for toilet paper, had to piece together the accumulated artistic legacy of centuries—”in a country nearly as large as France.

…

The Polish language, spread across a giant area, has almost no dialects—”a situation unique in Europe, where even different neighborhoods in the same city can have starkly different dialects. And Poland’s ethnic and religious homogeneity is also unique: The population is almost entirely Polish and Catholic, although historically Poland was one of Europe’s most diverse and tolerant nations. Untroubled by the Reformation, which tore apart societies across Europe, Poland became known as a Paradisus Hereticorum, and those heretics included the Jews, so welcomed in Poland that the community soon became the world’s largest.

Christian Witness, Perspective, , ,

From Communist to Priest

A Greek Catholic priest, Fr. Yurko Kolasa, reflects on his journey from communism to a vocation as a married man and a priest. He speaks of the martyrs of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, his personal journey, his marriage, vocation, pastoral work, and a program he developed to support married life.

From ZENIT: From Communism To Catholicism To Priest: An Interview With Father Yurko Kolasa of the Ukraine

Raised in the communist Soviet Union, Yurko Kolasa knew nothing of the Catholic faith until he was well into his teens. Once the Greek-Catholic Church went from an underground following to being an openly practiced and respected religion in Ukraine, this future priest’s whole world opened up.

Today, Father Kolasa is the prefect of the training program for priests, seminarians and religious, at the International Theological Institute in Vienna. He is also a married priest of the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and a father of four.

He also tells of the marriage preparation program he developed, how it has positively impacted the marriage success rate in Ukraine and is quickly becoming the proto-type for marriage preparation programs throughout various dioceses in Eastern Europe.

ZENIT: You have said that you accepted the ideas of Communism until you were 15. What happened that made you turn away from that ideology and turn toward the truths of the Catholic faith?

Father Kolasa: Most of my relatives were very active in communist party. As a boy I did not know anything about the persecution of the Greek-Catholic Church in the Soviet Union. It was only in 1989, when the Greek Church was legalized that I began to learn about thousands and thousands of martyrs of this Church — Greek Catholic bishops, clergy, monastics, and laity.

It was the authenticity of their faith that radically changed my life. I was crushed by the fact that there were so many people who have resisted compromise with the oppressive regime of that time and overcame the greatest moral challenges of the 20th century: the suppression of God-given freedom and human dignity by ideological totalitarianism. They gave the strongest testimony of their faith — their blood.

ZENIT: Despite the government’s effort to stamp out Christianity, the people’s faith prevailed. Can you describe how people continued to practice, or at least hold on to, their faith in such conditions?

Father Kolasa: By the end of 1947, male and female religious, lay faithful and hundreds of priests who refused to “convert” to orthodoxy, often with their wives and children, were arrested and sent to labor camps, where they endured horrific hardships. Parishes where the pastor had been arrested were to become the backbone of the underground. The faithful sang outside closed churches or worshiped at churches not registered with the regime. Priests who had avoided arrest tried to make pastoral visits to these underground communities. Nuns maintained contact between the priests and the laity, arranging secret religious services and catechizing children.

With Stalin’s death in March 1953, many priests who survived the camps were allowed to return home where they often resumed their pastoral activities. Priests celebrated the sacraments in forests or in private apartments, late at night or early in the morning, in addition to their legal jobs. Sometimes they were caught and again sentenced.

Until it emerged from the underground in 1989, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was the world’s largest illegal church. It was also the most extensive network of civil opposition in the Soviet Union. Despite relentless persecution, church life continued through an elaborate system of clandestine seminaries, monasteries, ministries, parishes and youth groups until the church was legalized on Dec. 1, 1989.

ZENIT: You are a Greek-Catholic priest, you are married, and you have four children. For those not familiar with the tradition of married clergy in the Eastern Catholic rites, could you explain how this difference in tradition came about?

Father Kolasa: The tradition of married clergy comes from the apostolic times. In the early years of the Church some married men were even consecrated bishops. The Eastern Church has always allowed the possibility of married men being ordained to the priesthood.

Please note that not a single practicing priest in the Church has ever married; there have only been instances of married men who later became ordained. The Western Church has cherished the discipline of only unmarried men being ordained, except for some Protestants who have entered the Church in recent years.

I always have a great respect and high esteem for unmarried priests and always try to encourage them to treasure and to protect the gift they have received. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:7 said; “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.”

ZENIT: You were ordained in 2001. As you approach your 10th anniversary as a priest, could you share with us some reflections on your vocation, and how your life has changed since your ordination?

Father Kolasa: One of the most powerful experiences of being a priest is to be an eyewitness of the tremendous power of the holy sacraments, and to know that as unworthy as I am, God is using me to be a channel of his infinite divine love.

I will never forget this one moment in my life when, after a long, exhausting day of fulfilling different tasks at the parish, I was called to give the anointing of the sick to a very sick man. When I came, the poor man was in terrible pain. His whole body was caught in convulsion. I tried to communicate with him, but he would not respond. I do not know if he even heard or saw me. I began to pray the prayers of the rite of anointing of the sick. All this time the convulsions would only increase. The moment I finished with the word Amen, his body suddenly rested. His eyes were closed. He was still breathing.

I said to his sister that stood next to me, let us pray together and thank God for his mercy. As we began to recite the Our Father, the man gently opened his eyes; he looked at his sister then at me and then he smiled at me with the most blissful and peaceful smile, then he closed his eyes and breathed his last. At this moment I could not stop thanking God for saving his soul and for the gift of the priesthood…

He gets it and lives it.

Art, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia,

Historic Moments

The Cosmopolitan Review discusses the Year of Chopin in Poland, marking the 200th anniversary of Frederyk Chopin’s birth, and what he might think of life in today’s free Poland:

There’s much to celebrate, starting with the 200th birthday of Poland’s most famous exile, Frederic Chopin, born in Żelazowa Wola, just outside of Warsaw. We join the festivities bearing gifts of poetry, prose and a guide to Chopin events worldwide. In CR’s first fiction, Eva Stachniak transforms her readers into aristocratic guests at a salon in Paris in the company of Polish exiles, among them, Chopin himself.

Were the composer alive today, would he accept an invitation to give a concert at Warsaw’s Soviet-built Palace of Culture and Science? Would he dance in the Palace’s hip club Kafe Kulturalna? Or would he side with Minister of Foreign Affairs Radek Sikorski, who is suggesting Poland “demolish its own symbol of communist misrule”?

This year also marks the rehabilitation and reburial of Copernicus, labeled a heretic long before Galileo was ever hit with that charge. From the AP via Yahoo! News: Astronomer Copernicus reburied as hero in Poland

Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in a remote part of northern Poland, far from Europe’s centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

His revolutionary model was based on complex mathematical calculations and his naked-eye observations of the heavens because the telescope had not yet been invented.

After his death, his remains rested in an unmarked grave beneath the floor of the cathedral in Frombork, on Poland’s Baltic coast, the exact location unknown.

On Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland’s highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried his coffin through the imposing red brick cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005.

A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory, but also a church canon, a cleric ranking below a priest. The tombstone is decorated with a model of the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six of the planets…

I had visited his home in Toruń, Poland, and the church in which he was baptized. I found the juxtaposition with the on-going closings and desecration of historic churches throughout the United States to be amazing. The R.C. Church was wiping out churches 100 to 150 years old, and here I stood in a church that predated 1473. I will never be able to show my children the churches their grandparents were baptized in. They have all closed.

Christian Witness, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

With deepest sadness…

I was informed of the passing into eternal life of friend, mentor, guide, an personal hero, Ś+P Mr. Walter Lasinski, yesterday evening.

Ś.P. Mr. Lasinski was a prominent PNCC historian, contributor to PNCC Studies, author, researcher, member of the Polish American Historical Association and recipient of its 1991 Distinguished Service Award, as well as a member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. He was also an avid lover of music and contributed to the work of the Polish Music Reference Center at the University of Southern California.

The first time I met Ś.P. Mr. Lasinski, and his wife Florence, was at PolishFest when I was assigned to the Blessed Virgin Mary of Częstochowa Parish in Latham, New York. He walked in, resolute, and told me that he had made the trip to meet me. Needless to say, I didn’t get it.

He went on to explain that he was a big advocate of this blog and of what I was doing to advance knowledge of the PNCC. The next thing he told me was that he was proud to reply, when asked, Kto jesteś? “Narodowiec!” Who are you? “[A] National!” With a few words he captivated me, helping me to understand what I was a part of. It was not just church, but Church in its fullest sense, a community of believers joined in every aspect of their lives, and joined with history.

Beyond his work in the PNCC, Ś.P. Mr. Lasinski contributed greatly to Polonia. He understood our ethnic community as only a historian could. He saw the deep connection the PNCC holds with the Orthodox, being a subscriber to the events and activities at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, New York, frequently encouraging me to “go there.” His research led him down many interesting paths, particularly to the out of the ordinary threads in Polonian history – the Polish Methodists of Greenpoint, Polish Baptists in Buffalo, the lesser known closed parishes of the PNCC, the kind of things lost to history but for fine researchers like himself.

I am deeply saddened by this loss, but with faith know that Ś.P. Walter is now standing with Ś.P. Bishop Hodur, looking down over the children of the PNCC, as we continue to work and struggle always in truth. The victory is now his.

A wake will be held at Fryczynski & Sons Funeral Home, 32-34 22nd Street, Bayonne, NJ 07002 on Tuesday, June 1st from 2-4 pm & 7-9 pm

A Funeral Holy Mass will be held at Sacred Heart of Jesus PNCC, 290 Avenue E, Bayonne, NJ 07002 on Wednesday, June 2nd at 10am. Internment at Heart of Jesus Cemetery immediately following Holy Mass.

I beg of you, my readers, your prayers for Ś.P. Walter’s eternal rest, and for comfort for his wife, sons, larger family, friends, and colleagues.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon him.
Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon him.
Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.

Wieczne odpoczynek racz mu dać Panie, a światłość wiekuista niechaj mu świeci.
Wieczne odpoczynek racz mu dać Panie, a światłość wiekuista niechaj mu świeci.
Wieczne odpoczynek racz mu dać Panie, a światłość wiekuista niechaj mu świeci.
Niech odpoczywa w pokoju, Amen.

[audio:https://www.konicki.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/07-tyle-lat.mp3]
Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, ,

Celebrating the Polish Constitution of 1791

A copy of the Constitution in Polish and English.

The Constitution of May 3, 1791 is generally regarded as Europe’s first and the world’s second modern codified national constitution, following the 1788 ratification of the United States Constitution. The May 3, 1791, Constitution was adopted as a “Government Act” on that date by the Sejm (parliament) of the Polish—“Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The May 3 Constitution was designed to redress long-standing political defects of the Polish—“Lithuanian Commonwealth and its traditional system of “Golden Liberty” conveying disproportionate rights and privileges to the nobility. The Constitution introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom.

The adoption of the May 3 Constitution provoked the active hostility of the Commonwealth’s neighbors. Despite the Commonwealth’s defeat in the War in Defense of the Constitution against Russia and her allies, and the consequent Second Partition of the Polish—“Lithuanian Commonwealth, the May 3 Constitution influenced later democratic movements across Europe and elsewhere. It remained a beacon in the struggle to restore Polish sovereignty.Adapted from Wikipedia: Constitution of May 3, 1791

Christian Witness, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Irena Sendler – In The Name Of Their Mothers at the JCC of San Francisco

—In the Name of Their Mothers— tells the remarkable story of Irena Sendler and a group of young Polish women who risked their lives to save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II.

In 1943 Irena Sendler was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. The 33-year-old social worker was sentenced to death. On the day she was to be executed, she escaped. All the 2,500 hidden children survived the war and many were later reunited with their Jewish families. But for decades those who lived in Poland could not tell their stories. Silenced by Communist authorities, many endured Soviet prisons or were forced into exile. This film features the last long interviews Irena Sendler gave before she died at the age of 98, and include interviews with several of her liaisons and the children they saved.

Presented in partnership with the Honorary Consuls for the Republic of Poland in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Taube-Koret Center for Jewish Peoplehood at the JCCSF.

7:00 pm Tuesday, May 4th. Advance Reservation Required. Please call the JCCSF Box Office at 415.292.1233 or contact the Box Office by E-mail.

Media, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Station wins Murrow Award for Polish Legacy Project reporting

From WBFO: WBFO receives two regional Edward R. Murrow Awards

The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) honored WBFO Wednesday with two regional Edward R. Murrow Awards.

WBFO’s coverage of the crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence was honored in the breaking news category. Reporters who contributed to our first day coverage were News Director Mark Scott, Assistant News Director Eileen Buckley, Arts Editor Joyce Kryszak, Morning Edition hosts Bert Gambini and Howard Riedel and intern Avery Schneider.

Joyce Kryszak’s piece on the Polish Legacy Project received the Murrow Award for feature reporting.

The RTDNA has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Murrow’s pursuit of excellence in journalism embodies the spirit of the awards that carry his name. Murrow Award recipients demonstrate the spirit of excellence that Edward R. Murrow made a standard for the broadcast news profession…

Christian Witness, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Workers Memorial Day

Today is Workers Memorial Day. Take a moment to remember and honor those workers killed and injured on the job. Just this month, 29 miners lost their lives in the West Virginia mining disaster. On average, 16 workers die each day from workplace injuries, 134 are estimated to die from work-related diseases, and thousands more are injured on the job. No one should die from making a living.

Today, I invite you to pray IWJ’s Litany for Workers Memorial Day.

When workers are killed, families are torn apart. When workers are injured, families suffer. On Workers Memorial Day, let us honor not only the workers but also the families they left behind. May the memory of fallen workers inspire us to continue and strengthen the fight for workplace safety.

This year it should also be called to mind that one of those killed in the tragic plane crash that killed many of Poland’s political and civic leaders was Anna Walentynowicz. Ms. Walentynowicz was the labor activist who spoke out for worker rights in communist controlled Poland. For her efforts at organizing workers, and advocating for just and equitable treatment of workers, she was fired from her job. Her firing led to the founding of the free Solidarity Trade Union. Keep her memory in mind today as well.

From The Guardian:

A welder and then a crane operator at the yard, in her youth Walentynowicz was a member of Poland’s Communist party. Appalled, however, by the corruption that she encountered and the suppression of free speech, she became involved in producing and distributing Robotnik Wybrzeza (Coastal Worker), a newspaper which she handed out in the shipyard, even to her Communist bosses.

The trigger for her disaffection with the party was said to be her discovery that one of her bosses had stolen money from her fellow employees and used it to participate in a lottery.

It was not only corruption that incensed her but the gradual realisation that far from helping to make Poland a better place for the people, workers’ rights and freedom of speech were being trampled on.

Despised by the shipyard’s management, later in her working life she would be segregated from other employees for her actions. The crisis would come, however, when the management finally moved against her in August 1980, firing her a few months before she was due to retire.

It was this clumsy action that led to the strike, which occurred in the midst of a period of profound political and economic problems for the Communist regime. The consequence of that action, led by then electrician Lech Walesa, was the emergence of Solidarity and also the Gdansk Agreement, which saw the government give in to the workers’ demands for a new social contract. Within two years the union would have 10 million members.

Also, from New York State’s Labor Department: Rochester Workers Memorial Day Ceremony and Capital District Workers Memorial Day Commemoration.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , , , ,

Arizona’s Immigration Bill is a Social and Racial Sin

From Jim Wallis via Sojourners.

For the first time, all law enforcement officers in the state will be enlisted to hunt down undocumented people, which will clearly distract them from going after truly violent criminals, and will focus them on mostly harmless families whose work supports the economy and who contribute to their communities. And do you think undocumented parents will now go to the police if their daughter is raped or their family becomes a victim of violent crime? Maybe that’s why the state association of police chiefs is against SB 1070.

This proposed law is not only mean-spirited —” it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.

Before the rally and press event, I visited some immigrant families who work at Neighborhood Ministries, an impressive community organization affiliated with Sojourners’ friends at the Christian Community Development Association. I met a group of women who were frightened by the raids that have been occurring, in which armed men invade their homes and neighborhoods with guns and helicopters. When the rumors of massive raids spread, many of these people flee both their homes and their workplaces, and head for The Church at The Neighborhood Center as the only place they feel safe and secure. But will police invade the churches if they are suspected of —harboring— undocumented people, because it is the law? Will the nurse practitioner I met at their medical clinic serving only uninsured people be arrested for being —with— the children of families who are here illegally as she treats them?

At the rally, I started with the words of Jesus (which drew cheers from the crowd gathered at the state Capitol), who instructed his disciples to —welcome the stranger,— and said that whatever we do to —the least of these, who are members of my family— we do to him. I think that means that to obey Jesus and his gospel will mean to disobey SB 1070 in Arizona. I looked at the governor’s Executive Tower and promised that many Christians in Arizona won’t comply with this law because the people they will target will be members of our —family— in the body of Christ. And any attack against them is an attack against us, and the One we follow.

Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles just called this Arizona measure —the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless immigration law.— On CNN, I defended the Cardinal’s comments, which likened the requirement of people always carrying their —papers— to the most oppressive regimes of Nazism and Communism. I wonder whether the tea party movement that rails against government intrusion will rail against this law, or whether those who resist the forced government registration of their guns will resist the forced government requirement that immigrants must always carry their documentation. Will the true conservatives please stand up here? We are all waiting.

Arizona’s SB 1070 must be named as a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. This is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It’s time to stand up to this new strategy of —deportation by attrition,— which I heard for the first time today in Arizona. It is a policy of deliberate political cruelty, and it should be remembered that —attrition— is a term of war. Arizona is deciding whether to wage war on the body of Christ. We should say that if you come after one part of the body, you come after all of us.

Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street —” A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and is CEO of Sojourners.

I was also interested in the events over in Congress today. The people who run Facebook got a dressing down, with members of Congress telling them how they should run their company. You must use opt-in rather than opt-out or some such nonsense. The sorry truth is that government uses its legislative powers to do what appears to be good at the time (in their minds), and in the process wrecks everything. Facebook has a bad security/privacy model — the market will decide. I want to have a cervezas with José and Maria after church on Sunday, — do not associate with them or we will arrest you (Constitution, free association and free exercise be damned). Don’t pack your chips or pretzels with salt — because we assume Americans and the free market are too stupid, lazy, and overweight to know better. We need a nanny. Don’t eat Foie gras, don’t use trans fats, but go ahead corporate America, pour in as much high fructose corn syrup as possible… no problem there.

Actually, good on Arizona. When their restaurants have to pay fair, or at least minimum wages and overtime to white boys and girls for cutting vegetables and running the dishwasher, when uncle Henry and aunt Jane have to trim their own cactus, when Union carpenters move in to do the framing work on all those senior housing developments, then they’ll get it. Following laws will be a 100% full time job for Arizonans. Just follow the law, and your dinner out will double in price, and your buy-in for a place at Sun City (assessment fees, capital contribution costs, original housing cost) will double; all because José and Maria aren’t doing it for next to nothing anymore. You’ll be paying Brandy and Todd instead, and they won’t take your crap, they’ll walk out or strike. Oh, and don’t forget about the sales and property tax increases, because a big segment of your society isn’t earning or spending in Arizona anymore. At least you won’t have to look at those odd Catholic foreigners, those scary people and their scary brown children (they’re all the same aren’t they???).

But, you want it both ways don’t you?

Unfortunately, the worst laws are those quickly enacted to make a point. They create a country where we are free to be fat, lazy, cheap, and protected because someone had an idea and made a point. Whatever happened to building things with our ideas? Now we just write laws for the sake of laws. We use ideas as fodder for the word-processing programs that enshrine law over and above all else, and most particularly over the Law that tells us we are free.

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