\t\t\t\tFor some reason I was thinking about my Dad. About the same time I came across a quote from Jimmy Carter\u2019s book about his life entitled \u201cAn Hour Before Daylight\u201d. He wrote: \u201cI thought about my father often after I left home. It was not easy for me to put into words, even to my wife Rosalynn how my early years with Dad had affected my life. I had strongly mixed feelings about him: of love, admiration, and pride, but also at least retrospective concern about his aloofness from me. I never remembered him saying \u2018Good Job, Hut\u2019 or thanking me when I had done the best to fulfill one of his quiet suggestions that had the impact of orders. I used to hunger for one of his all rare demonstrations of affection\u201d(p.258)<\/p>\n
My first reaction to the comments was agreement. It fitted my thinking on my relationship with my dad, \u201cRichard, the Martinet\u201d.\u00a0 My Dad was in his fifties when I was just becoming a teenager. He was working hard to keep up the house and his children\u2019s higher education. I remember specifically his aid to me, as I was about to enter law school. I had been granted a \u2018proctorship\u2019 to Georgetown Law School. This entailed my living in the college dorm and controlling a floor of college students. In return for which I received a scholarship to Georgetown Law School. But my father said \u2018No\u2019. He rightly thought it better that I attend Penn Law School, since I would be practicing law in Philadelphia. So he paid my tuition, as he had paid for the last two years of my college education at Saint Joseph\u2019s College. So in that department, finances and education \u2013 he was superb – but being a \u2018buddy-buddy\u2019 dad never happened. Incidentally it turns out that now I have a grandson, Tom McSorley, attending Georgetown Law School. So Georgetown Law finally got a \u2018McSorley\u2019 student!<\/p>\n
My Dad was a disciplinarian, a martinet. We had to rise each morning around 6 A.M. and attend Mass with him.\u00a0 I was reminded of this routine when reading a novel by Umberto Eco entitled \u201cThe Name of the Rose\u201d. The story takes place in monastery. It went like this: \u201c..so that night we were waked by those who would go through the dormitory and pilgrim\u2019s house ringing bells, as one monk went from cell to cell shouting \u201cBenedicamus Domino\u201d to which we answered\u00a0 \u201cDeo Gratias\u201d. The quote brought back memories of my Dad saying \u201cBenedicamus Domino\u201d to awaken us.\u00a0 We were expected to answer, \u201cDeo Gratias\u201d. The phrases in English mean \u201cLet us bless the Lord\u201d and \u201cThanks be to God\u201d In another reading, Thomas Jefferson\u2019s letters, there was one written to his daughter Pat saying, \u201cDetermine never to be idle. No person will ever have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any\u201d. This too was an admonition Dad administered often to me. \u201cDon\u2019t waste time!\u201d<\/p>\n
All of these reminders of my Dad naturally led me to consider how well did I do as a Dad? It is always easier to judge someone else conduct than your own. But I will try to be objective.<\/p>\n
I must admit Mother handled most of any disciplinary problems. We had seven children: Two girls, the first and the seventh, and five boys. I do recall watching my sons play at sports and also having games of touch football on our side street (Chandler Street). I was the quarterback for each team. Every time I think of those games I am reminded of Bill Cosby\u2019s routine using the same idea, i.e., he was the quarterback. My son Tom could repeat, I am sure even today, everything Cosby said. What I remember is he would instruct the pass receiver to go \u201cdown by that blue Ford and cut in\u201d..or words to that effect. But I really have been blessed with these children, now most of them parents themselves, who haven\u2019t given me any reason to feel their Dad didn\u2019t do a fair job. One of the things my Dad taught me was the need for higher education. It was one of the principles I tried to carry out with my children. Most of them did so and are receiving the benefits with better positions, etc. Even those who chose minimums of higher education have managed to make a good living for which I am grateful. Of course admittedly I was supported by a present culture, which has seen the need for such education, but I still feel that my Dad\u2019s influence in this area played an important part in my supporting it.<\/p>\n
One of the incidents regarding education that my Dad revealed was how he ended up in Law School. In those days a college degree was not required to enter a Law School. Dad had graduated from a still famous high school in Philadelphia, namely Central High. I think in 1904. He went into Penn Law School in September but he failed his first year. (Something he never told me when I was about to do the same thing but got a break) As a result he went to work. He worked in Wanamaker\u2019s, a retail store located on Market Street just across by City Hall. One day he was told to go out and help empty a truck parked across the street from City Hall at a Wanamaker entrance. He refused. Apparently because he might be seen by some of his neighbors doing this \u201cmenial\u201d task. Some how he believed that they would think less of him for doing so. So he was fired. He told his dad he quit. His father wisely noted that his son had difficulty working for someone, so he suggested he go back to law school so he could be his own boss. So he did and graduated. The rest as they say \u201cis history\u201d.<\/p>\n
Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution reads: \u201cThe Congress shall have the power\u2026to declare war..\u201d Congress hasn\u2019t declared war since World War II , yet we have gone to war in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Afghanistan and now Iraq. A good friend of mine, Dick Nummi, and I have discussed this apparent ignoring of the Constitution on several occasions with no answer. Now two books have been published on the same subject. One is \u201cCrisis of Command\u201d by John Yoo and the other \u201cBomb Power\u201d by Garry Wills. Both agree that National Security crises and the Atomic bomb have led to this concentration of power in the President.<\/p>\n
Yoo praises this result as a necessary but Wills finds it appalling and Constitutional travesty.<\/p>\n
As the reviewer Walter Isaacson notes each comes to their conclusions \u2018naturally\u2019. Yoo was in the Office of Legal Counsel during George W. Bush\u2019s first term and asserted the President had the power to \u201c\u2026authorize the use of interrogation techniques like waterboarding, instigate a program of warrantless wiretapping and detain certain enemy combatants without applying the Geneva Convention.\u201d While Wills, the author of some 40 books argues that Congress was meant to be the dominant branch of government and that presidents have used the pretext of national security to usurp that power. I have read several of Wills books including one on St. Augustine and another on the Popes extravagant use of power in \u201cPapal Sin: Structures of Deceit\u201d. Wills is a Catholic and as a result of that book wrote, after many critics could not believe he continued to be so, \u201cWhy I Am A Catholic\u201d. Yoo is now a law professor at Berkeley\u2019s law school.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome may read this book (\u201cCrisis and Command\u201d) as a brief for the Bush administration\u2019s exercise of executive authority in the war on terrorism\u201d, Yoo writes. \u201cIt is not!\u201d But the reviewer says \u201cBut it most certainly is precisely that\u2026\u201d Wills near the end of\u00a0 his book recounts the arguments made by Yoo and his Bush administration colleagues, \u201c..like the one memo calling the Geneva Convention \u2018quaint\u2019 and obsolete\u201d. Perhaps in the nuclear era, the Constitution has become \u2018quaint\u2019 and \u2018obsolete\u2019 Wills notes. The bottom line it seems to me is Congress. They have not made any attempt that I know of to assert their authority under the Constitution to declare war. I think there was recently an attempt by Congressman Ron Paul of Texas to get some people acting on it but it all went by without any one taking any action.<\/p>\n
Until next time Pax Tecum!\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For some reason I was thinking about my Dad. About the same time I came across a quote from Jimmy Carter\u2019s book about his life entitled \u201cAn Hour Before Daylight\u201d. He wrote: \u201cI thought about my father often after I left home. It was not easy for me to put into words, even to my … <\/p>\n