Can you name the two most-performed American operas? What if I give you the hint that Porgy & Bess is number one? In second place, but much less-known, is Susannah, by Carlisle Floyd. Last week, the University of Colorado produced a solid performance of Susannah, as part of CU Opera’s all-American schedule this season.

Susannah is based on a story from the Bible’s Book of Daniel. Two elders falsely accuse a pair of young people, Susanna and Joakim, of premarital sex, and the pair are sentenced to death. But Daniel saves the day, by separately cross-examining the two alleged witnesses about where they claim the assignation took place. One says “Under a mastic tree,” and the other says “Under an evergreen oak.” Perjury proven, the two elders are executed, while Susanna and Joakim are freed.

The Susanna story is part of the Apocryphal, or Deuterocanonical (second canon), books that were written in the intertestmental period, between the close of the Old Testament and the first books of the New Testament. Jews and Protestants do not consider these books canonical, but Susanna (which is appended to the canonical Book of Daniel as chapter 13), is included in the Catholic, Greek, and Slavonic Bibles.

Carlisle Floyd transplants the story to a small town in a rural Tennessee valley. At a town dance, Susannah’s high spirits annoy the wives of the church elders. With a new preacher arriving in town, the church elders head down to the river to find a good spot for baptisms, and find Susannah bathing naked. Scandalized, they coerce her slightly retarded male friend, Little Bat, into “admitting” that Susannah seduced him. Things do no turn out nearly so well for the operatic Susannah as they did for the biblical Susanna.

The lyrics are in the idiom of the early-mid 20th century rural South: “I danced and danced ‘till I was plumb wore out.” Vocally, Susannah is a difficult opera. The cast of college students met the challenge, although one could see that it wasn’t easy. Emily Martin as Susannah sparkled, taking the audience on a journey from naïve happiness to exhausted despair to nihilistic revenge.

As Susannah’s good-hearted but irresponsibly drunken brother Sam, John Robert Lindsey and his powerful voice were never overwhelmed by the gorgeous music from the orchestra—a problem sometimes not surmounted by other singers. Lindsey also has the most impressively sculpted biceps that one may ever see on an opera stage, which almost forces one to construct a back story of Sam doing pushups all day when he’s not out hunting or drinking.

Susannah’s male friend Little Bat (James Baumgardner) matched his voice to his demeanor, believably remaining loyal to Susannah even after his false accusation. Wei Wu, as minister Olin Blitch, did not fully embody the emotional energy of revival preaching, but his later scenes at Susannah’s cabin—where he seduces her and then repents—were poignant.

Fortunately, CU Opera chose to perform Susannah in the period and costumes for which it was written, rather than following the trend of some companies to get their costume ideas from Lady Gaga and their set design from Tron. Peter Dean Beck’s set and lighting supplemented the performances without being intrusive; the twinkling stars and Sam’s cabin were especially good. 

Susannah is entirely negative in its portrayal of the townfolk, and in that sense, unrealistic. But dystopian visions of American small towns are a tradition among American artists, as in Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 collection of short stories, Winesburg, Ohio.

Written in 1954, Susannah evokes its period’s fear of McCarthyism and false charges, as both Stage Director Leigh Holman and Music Director Nicholas Carthy wrote in the program notes.

Joe McCarthy and his reckless, unsubstantiated charges certainly gave anti-Communism a bad name in the history books. Which is too bad, because there really were American Communists working to turn the United States into a Soviet-style tyranny. Among them was Dalton Trumbo, who attended the University of Colorado for two years before becoming a Hollywood screenwriter, and writing novels and screenplays that always followed Joe Stalin’s political line (anti-war until Hitler attacked Stalin, then militantly pro-war).

As a Communist Party member, Trumbo was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and eventually spent 11 months in jail. Bizarrely, CU’s School of Journalism built a “Dalton Trumbo Free Speech Fountain,” at CU, dedicated to a man who devoted his life to a cause which would eliminate freedom of speech and the press.

False accusations though, are as old as the Bible, and as modern as the selectively edited video of Shirley Sherrod. So kudos to CU Opera for a fine presentation of a great American opera on a timeless theme.

Some background sources for the principle in our Declaration of Independence that tyrannical “governments” are merely a large-scale form of organized crime, rather than real governments:

In the views of the American Founders: Don B. Kates, The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self-Protection, 9 Cconstitutional Commentary 87 (1992) (Founders saw no fundamental distinction between individual self-defense against criminals and collective self-defense against criminal governments).

Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, ed., Thomas G. West  (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1996), ch. 3, sect. 46, p. 574 (To be subject to a tyrant is little different from being under the power of a pirate). Sidney, who was executed for treason in 1683 by the wicked Stuart regime, was venerated by the English and Americans as one of the greatest martyrs of liberty. Thomas Jefferson listed Sidney (along with Aristotle, Cicero, and John Locke) as one of the four major sources of the American consensus on rights and liberties which was expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Philo of Alexandria (approx. 20 B.C. – 50 A.D.). One of the greatest Jewish legal scholars of antiquity, Philo wrote about the Jewish law in Alexandria, Egypt, during the period when Egypt and Israel were both under Roman rule. Much of Philo’s treatise aimed to show that Jewish law from the Bible was consistent with Roman law. Erwin R. Goodenough, The Jurisprudence of the Jewish Courts in Egypt: Legal Adminsitration by the Jews Under the Early Roman Empire as Describes by Philo Judeaus 230–31 (The Lawbook Exchange 2002; reprint of 1929 translation) (A petty thief is no different in principle from a tyrant who steals the resources of his nation, or nation which plunders another nation. In other words, all forms of theft are merely variations on a single type of attack on society: an assault on the right of ownership of private property.)

Mencius (approx. about 371–289 B.C.), the most influential developer of Confucian thought: “Now the way feudal lords take from the people is no different from robbery.” Mencius, transl. D.C. Lau (N.Y.: Penguin, 1970), book 5, part B. Accordingly, killing a tyrant is very different from killing a legitimate king, which would be immoral: “A man who mutilates benevolence is a mutilator, while one who cripples rightness is a crippler. He who is both a mutilator and a crippler is an ‘outcast.’ I have heard of the punishment of the ‘outcast Tchou’ [an emperor who was overthrown], but I have not heard of any regicide.” Ibid., book 1, part B, item 8. Unlike the other authors cited in this post, the philosophy of Mencius was not known to the American Founders directly, nor was it known indirectly through other philosophers. Mencius did, however, express the same principles of Natural Law which the Founders believed to be universal. (More by Kopel on Mencius here.)

John of Salisbury. Author of Policraticus (approx. 1159), the most influential Western book written between the sixth century and the thirteenth. To rule tyrannically is necessarily to perpetrate treason, and therefore a tyrant may be slain:

[I]t is not only permitted, but it is also equitable and just to slay tyrants.  For he who receives the sword deserves to perish by the sword.
 But ‘receives’ is to be understood to pertain to he who has rashly usurped that which is not his, not to he who receives what he uses from the power of God.  He who receives power from God serves the laws and is the slave of justice and right.  He who usurps power suppresses justice and places the laws beneath his will.  Therefore, justice is deservedly armed against those who disarm the law, and the public power treats harshly those who endeavour to put aside the public hand.  And, although there are many forms of high treason, none of them is so serious as that which is executed against the body of justice itself.  Tyranny is, therefore, not only a public crime, but if this can happen, it is more than public.  For if all prosecutors may be allowed in the case of high treason, how much more are they allowed when there is oppression of laws which should themselves command emperors?  Surely no one will avenge a public enemy, and whoever does not prosecute him transgresses against himself and against the whole body of the earthly republic.

Jofhn of Salisbury, Policraticus 25 (Cary J. Nederman ed. and trans., Cambridge Univ. Press 1990) (approx. 1159). (My essay on the book is here.)

Augustine of Hippo. The most influential Christian philosopher since the closing of the canon: “If justice be taken away...what are governments but great bands of robbers?” Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans 139 (Henry Bettenson trans., Penguin, book 4, 1984) (translation from 1467 manuscript; originally written in early 5th century ). To illustrate the point, Augustine used a story attributed to Cicero:

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

“All tyrants reach a miserable end,” wrote John of Salisbury. He was not universally right, at least in the sense that he meant, listing various tyrants who died violently; Stalin, Lenin, and Mao died of natural causes. But his words are coming true in Libya. How long will Gaddafi’s mercenaries from Chad, Niger, and Syria be willing to endanger their own lives in attempting to resist the overwhelming might of air forces and navies which are better-armed, and superior in every respect?

The New York Times on-line “Room for Debate” feature poses this question today: “In Arizona, the shootings have led some citizens to call for more guns, not more gun control. Why is that?” Diverse answers are supplied by John Donohue (Stanford), John Lott (U. Maryland), James Alan Fox (Northeastern), Daniel Webster (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), and me.

I’ve pointed out before that one way to understand how far left the mainstream media are is to see how they classify politicians on the political spectrum. It tells you a lot more about the media than about the politicians.

Many stories (see, for example, here) are now classifying the tragically-wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as a “centrist” or “fiscally conservative” Democrat, despite her support for both heavy “stimulus” spending and the health care takeover.

Yet two major rating services — one conservative, one liberal — provide a more objective view. Both services identify her as well to the left of center. She has a lifetime rating of 14.67% from the American Conservative Union, indicating that she voted liberal more than 85% of the time. I could not find her lifetime ratings from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, but the ADA gives her a 2009 liberal rating of 95%.

If this is a centrist, what is a leftist?

Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post article, “A bank that proudly does business in Iran,” explains it all. As a result, I just called HSBC to cancel my credit card.

1. The facial challenge is allowed. See Lopez, Morrison. Salerno distinguished. pp. 7–9.

2. Rejection of the theory that the decision not to purchase federally-mandated is an “economic activity” since the individual will almost certainly purchase health services at some time in the future. “Of course the same reasoning could apply to housing, transportation, and nutritional decisions. This broad definition of economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation and is unsupported by Commerce Clause jurisprudence.” Since Wickard and Raich involved the decision to initiate the activity of cultivating plants. p. 23.

3. Necessary & Proper “must be tethered to the lawful exercise of an enumerated power.” “The Minimum Essential Coverage provision is neither within the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution.” Therefore N&P can’t be used to rescue the mandate. p. 24.

4. Is the penalty defensible under the tax power? No. First, it is a penalty, not a tax. The distinction between penalties and taxes is still viable. Kahriger. Congress chose to characterize the penalty as a “penalty,” and changed earlier drafts which had called it a “tax.” pp. 32–36. Sunshine Anthracite Coal, Butler, and the Child Labor Tax Case remain good law. “Notwithstanding criticism by the pen of some constitutional scholars, the constraining principles articulated in this line of cases, while perhaps dormant, remains viable, and applicable to the immediate dispute. Although they have not been frequently employed in recent years, this absence appears to be more the product of the unprecedented nature of the legislation under review than an abandonment of established princples.” “If allowed to stand as a tax, the Minimum Essential Coverage provision would be the only tax in U.S. history to be levied directly on individuals for their failure to affirmitively engage in activity mandated by the government not specifically delineated in the Constitution.” pp. 32–36.

5. There are “no reported decisions from any federal appellate courts extending the Commerce Clause or General Welfare Clause to encompass regulation of a persons’s decision not to purchase a product....The unchecked expansion of congressional power to the limits suggested by the Minimum Essential Coverage provision would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers.” p. 37.

6. The manate and related provisions are severed. The rest of the bill is allowed to stand. (pp. 39–40).

7. No injunction at this point because no irreperable harm pending appellate review. However, it is presumed that the executive branch will obey judicial decisions, so a declaratory judgement has the same effect as an injunction. pp. 40–41.

Now that all congressional races have been decided, here the final tallies for how the election affected Second Amendment support in Congress, according to the NRA’s top federal lobbyist Chuck Cunningham:

19 of 25 U.S. Senate candidates endorsed by the NRA-Political Victory Fund won their races. The net gain is +7 votes (Ark., N.H., N.D., Oh., Penn., W.V., Wisc.) with no offsetting losses. 

After the 2008 elections, there were 43 Senators with an A rating from NRA, 2 with a B, 9 with a C, 12 with a D, and 34 with an F. The changes in the new Senate will be +7 A, +1 C, –7 D, and –1 F.

The 12 pro-gun Senate freshmen are:  John Boozman (Ark.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Rob Portman (Oh.), Pat Toomey (Penn.), Mike Lee (Utah), Joe Manchin (W.V.) and Ron Johnson (Wisc.).

In the U.S. House, 227 of the 283 endorsed by NRA-PVF won. 

After the 2008 elections, there were 226 Representatives with an A rating, 18 B, 14 C, 22 D-rated, 151 F, and 4 ? (had refused to answer questionaire). The new House will be +36 A, –7 B, - 1 C, –9 D, –16 F, — 3 ?.

There were 29 districts where the grade improved: AZ-1, AZ-5, AR-2, FL-8, FL-22, FL-24, ID-1, IL-8,IL-10, IL-14, IL-17, KS-3, MI-7, NV-3, NH-1, NJ-3, NY-13, NY-19, NY-24, NY-25, NY-29, NC-2, OH-1, OH-15, PA-3, PA-7, PA-8, SC-5 and WA-3. In 3 districts the grade declined: AL-7, HI-1 and LA-2.

The NRA identifies 86 pro-gun House freshmen:  Martha Roby (AL-2), Mo Brooks, (AL-5), Paul Gosar (AZ-1), Ben Quayle (AZ-3), David Schweikert (AZ-5), Rick Crawford (AR-1), Tim Griffin (AR-2), Steve Womack (AR-3), Jeff Denham (CA-19), Scott Tipton (CO-3), Cory Gardner (CO-4), Steve Southerland (FL-2), Rich Nugent (FL-5), Daniel Webster (FL-8), Dennis Ross (FL-12), Allen West (FL-22), Sandy Adams (FL-24), David Rivera (FL-25), Rob Woodall (GA-7), Austin Scott (GA-8), Raul Labrador (ID-1), Joe Walsh (IL-8), Adam Kinzinger (IL-11), Randy Hultgren (IL-14), Bobby Schilling (IL-17), Marlin Stutzman (IN-3), Todd Rokita (IN-4), Larry Bucshon (IN-8), Todd Young (IN-9), Tim Huelskamp (KS-1), Kevin Yoder (KS-3), Mike Pompeo (KS-4), Jeff Landry (LA-3), Andy Harris (MD-1), Dan Benishek (MI-1), Bill Huizenga (MI-2), Justin Amash (MI-3), Tim Walberg (MI-7), Chip Cravaack (MN-8), Alan Nunnelee (MS-1), Steven Palazzo (MS-4), Vicky Hartzler (MO-4), Billy Long (MO-7), Joe Heck (NV-3), Frank Guinta (NH-1), Charlie Bass (NH-2), Jon Runyan (NJ-3), Steve Pearce (NM-2), Michael Grimm (NY-13), Nan Hayworth (NY-19), Chris Gibson (NY-20), Richard Hanna (NY-24), Ann Marie Buerkle (NY-25), Tom Reed (NY-29), Renee Ellmers (NC-2), Rick Berg (ND-AL), Steve Chabot (OH-1), Bill Johnson (OH-6), Steve Stivers (OH-15), Jim Renacci (OH-16), Bob Gibbs (OH-18), James Lankford (OK-5), Mike Kelly (PA-3), Pat Meehan (PA-7), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8), Tom Marino (PA-10), Lou Barletta (PA-11), Tim Scott (SC-1), Jeff Duncan (SC-3), Trey Gowdy (SC-4), Mick Mulvaney (SC-5), Kristi Noem (SD-AL), Chuck Fleischmann (TN-3), Scott DesJarlais (TN-4), Diane Black (TN-6), Steve Fincher (TN-8), Bill Flores (TX-17), Quico Canseco (TX-23), Blake Farenthold (TX-27), Scott Rigell (VA-2), Rob Hurt (VA-5), Morgan Griffith (VA-9), Jaime Herrera (WA-3), David McKinley (WV-1), Sean Duffy (WI-7) and Reid Ribble (WI-8).

International Adoption: The Human Rights Position is an article in Global Policy by Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet. A response article from Paulo Barrozo of Boston College Law School amplifies some of her points.

In brief: UNICEF has been at the forefront of pressuring national governments to set up so many hurdles as to make international adoption rare and extremely time-consuming. The result is that children languish in miserable, hellish orphanages for years. During the critical early months and years in which interaction with loving parents is essential to a child’s normal brain development, the children are neglected and left in squalor.

According to Bartholet, all this is a violation of international treaties about the rights of children, which one might expect UNICEF, of all entities, to be especially scrupulous about obeying. Besides, you don’t need to be an international lawyer to see the flaws of policy that leaves children in terrible orphanages, or as menial servants and de facto slaves in “the community,” rather than in loving homes.

In a 2007 article, I discussed UNICEF’s record in propagandizing for Palestinian terrorism, and its collaboration with the North Korean dictatorship and with the Saddam Hussein regime.

So in short, if you want to give to a charity which does not spend any money on harming children, UNICEF is a poor choice. Unfortunately, UNICEF has a ready supply of funds from good-hearted, uninformed people. American schoolchildren “trick or treat for UNICEF” without realizing that some of the money they raise will be spent on terrorist training camps, or on lobbying to keep children trapped in horrible orphanages. If you followed David Post’s advice to watch the outstanding soccer game between Madrid and Barcelona, you saw that the Barcelona players had “UNICEF” on their jerseys. Some transatlantic airlines, including Aer Lingus, subject passangers to long commercials (broadcast on the airplane’s public address system) urging people to put their leftover foreign change into special envelopes for UNICEF. Instead, I wrote a note on the special envelope explaining why I was not donating.

It’s great for children, sports teams, or airplane passengers to raise money to help poor children in the Third World. But when you donate to UNICEF, some of your money is  helping to keep neglected and helpless children separated from parents who would give them the love and the care that they need.

In Spanish, there are many nouns which end in a “o” if referring to a male, and “a” if referring to a female. For example: chico/chica (child), maestro/maestra (teacher), hijo/hija (son/daughter). The nouns are pluralized with an “s”. So a group of boys is “chicos”; and a group of girls is “chicas”. In  a mixed group, the male version is always used. So when we are talking about 99 girls and 1 boy, it’s “chicos”. To some people, the masculinization of mixed plurals seems unfair.

While in Spain last month, I found that some Spaniards have invented a new plural form. When writing about a mixed group of boys and girls, they write chic@s.   Pretty clever, in my estimation. Except for the problem of auto-correct trying to convert the word into an e-mail address. The new letter “@” is not yet part of formal usage. I read a variety of newspapers, and never saw the @ used as a letter. But on the Madrid subway, some cars have slim TV monitors attached to the center poles, and those televisions show short news items and commercials, along with captioning. On one news report, I did see the “@” used in the captioning for a mixed-gender plural.

In other Spanish alphabet news: The Spanish Royal Academy has voted to remove “ch” and “ll” from the official Spanish alphabet. Further, the names of two other letters have been changed. “V” is now prounounced (in Spanish) “uve” rather than “ve”. Further, “Y”, which is traditionally called “i-griega” (“Greek i”) may now also be called “ye”.

UPDATE: Although the use of “@” as a letter is new to me, some commenters point out that it’s been around at least since the 1990s.

The Independence Institute’s Future Leaders Program. As a law student, you would work directly for me or for Rob Natelson (retired U. Montana constitutional law professor, and perhaps the most knowledgeable person in the world about American legal thought and practice in the Founding Era).

The Independence Institute is a think tank, not a public interest law firm. However, we do sometimes get involved in important constitutional cases, and my recent interns have worked on cases such as McDonald v. Chicago. We are involved in the constitutional challenges to ObamaCare, and plan to stay involved all the way to the Supreme Court. That said, your work at Independence Institute would probably involve more time helping with Issue Papers, op-eds, law review articles, and other publications than it would with brief-writing.