April 16, 1926.

The news from Lebanon arrives like a cold weight in the stomach. Ninety-one medics killed. The report calls it a ‘quadruple tap’ - a term of such chilling, surgical precision that it makes the blood run cold. They speak of a “total disregard for international law.” And my mind, trained as it is to hunt for the practical consequence of an idea, immediately seizes upon that phrase. What is the cash value of “international law” in this bloody theatre? What does it do? If it is a set of rules that can be so flagrantly disregarded without any practical consequence for the disregarder, then what is it but a pious fiction, a verbal construct that fails the most basic pragmatic test? Its truth is not in its inscription on paper, but in its power to shape action. Here, it has failed. It does not work.

The real, live option here is not a choice between competing legal interpretations. The live option is a choice of belief about human nature itself. One can believe that such acts are monstrous aberrations, that the fabric of civilization will eventually reassert itself. Or one can believe that this reveals a more terrible truth: that when the stakes are perceived as ultimate, the thin veneer of agreed-upon rules evaporates, and we are left with the raw will to power. The first belief asks me to wait for a correction from the system. The second forces me to confront the awful, pragmatic fact that the only restraint on such violence is a countervailing force - moral, political, or physical - that makes the cost of the action too high. It is a bleak conclusion, but pragmatism demands I follow the belief into the world of action. If I believe the veneer is real, I write a letter. If I believe it is a veneer, I must ask what, if anything, can be built beneath it that is more solid. The chair test: which belief allows me to get up and act without the paralyzing shock of the next headline? Today, I am not sure. The news has pinned me to my seat.