{"id":7391,"date":"2023-06-16T14:33:47","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T18:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7391"},"modified":"2023-06-16T14:42:22","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T18:42:22","slug":"a-quick-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7391","title":{"rendered":"A Quick Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Quick Recap<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey, Nathan here. I\u2019m the guy who writes and draws this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other day, my mother made a gentle comment about my comic that astonished me. It astonished me because I’ve always been under the impression that she’s never read the thing. (So far as I can tell, my own wife and kids don\u2019t read it. And that\u2019s fine.) But apparently my dear sweet mother had<\/em> read some of it recently, and she\u2019d read enough to comment on it. Her comment was something along the lines of \u201cwhat the heck is going on? I\u2019m lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fair enough. We are, after all, in the middle of a digression on a digression. Sometimes you have to tell one story before you can tell the main one. I remember a supervisor back in my Special Narcotics days, Bobby Re, who\u2019d call me \u201cA Story Goes With It\u201d Burney, after a Damon Runyon character who- \u2026but I digress. Anyway, it occurs to me that some readers might appreciate a little recap of where we are, where we\u2019ve been, and where we\u2019re going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here you go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the moment, we\u2019re wrapping up a quick lesson on how the ancient Hebrews accidentally invented \u201claw as we know it\u201d while accidentally inventing monotheism. This lesson begins at p=7014<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, this lesson has covered such things as the Code of Hammurabi\u2026 Bronze Age Canaanite religion\u2026 how a neighboring storm god named Yahweh got adopted into the pantheon, and eventually became its main god\u2026 how Jerusalem became a kingdom, then made Yahweh its only state god, then got erased by Babylon\u2026 how returning exiles made Yahweh their political sovereign\u2026 how they wrote themselves a new cultural identity with holy scriptures, filled with rules and regulations\u2026 and how rhetoric promoting this new system became the reality of monotheism and of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s just a little more to cover here, and that will take us to the next lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Recap:<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n


The current lesson is only one part of a much larger History of Government in Six Revolutions, which started at p=6267<\/a>. This history is covering the major innovations in human social organization, from the dawn of time through the Constitutional Convention of 1789.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


The first of these innovations was the \u201cCognitive Revolution,\u201d in which modern Homo sapiens <\/em>evolved a brain specifically wired for language, narrative, and an intensely social \u201cstate of nature.\u201d p=5278<\/a>. This section describes the basic cognitive and emotional drives at the root of all social order, which remain at the heart of everything to come.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


The second was the \u201cAgricultural<\/span> Junk Food Revolution,\u201d starting at p=5997<\/a>. In this section, people settled down to farm, and invented new narratives of family, lineage, kinship, and ancestor veneration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We saw how these narratives enabled people to cooperate in much larger groups than is possible in our natural state, particularly with the segmentary bodies of tribe and clan, and in settlements like villages and towns.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


We are now in the third section, the \u201cInstitution Revolution,\u201d beginning at p=6267<\/a>. The Institution Revolution is all about how people invented gods and government, and the institutions of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the current lesson, this section covered the rise of religion\u2026 institutional social organization\u2026 specialization, hierarchies, and elites\u2026 human sacrifice\u2026 pristine city-state formation in Mesopotamia\u2026 and pristine territorial-state formation in Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This entire history of government is a digression, to give us the necessary background to understand the competing forces at play in the United States Constitution, and in all the hot-button social issues which form the body of Constitutional Law. These include historical forces from the colonies, England, and the European tradition. They also involve cultural differences\u2026 competing conceptions of what government is, what it\u2019s for, and how it works\u2026 and yes, even tribal sensibilities, social emotions, and cognitive wiring.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Also, this history is the final part of a chapter on what the Framers were thinking when they came up with the United States Constitution.  That chapter began here: p=4870<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat Were They Thinking?\u201d is the second chapter in a course on U.S. Constitutional Law (what the government<\/em> can and cannot do), which begins at p=4751<\/a>. The first, introductory chapter defined what is meant by a \u201cconstitution,\u201d what Con Law is all about, and included a complete text of the U.S. Constitution with annotations.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Before Con Law, we had a course on Criminal Procedure (what law enforcement<\/em> can and cannot do), covering all the details and nuances of search and seizure, self-incrimination, and eyewitness identification. It runs from p=1373<\/a> to p=4743<\/a>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And at the very beginning, we studied Criminal Law (what you<\/em> can and cannot do). It started with the basics of what we even mean by \u201ccrime,\u201d and why punishment is a thing\u2026 dove into specific categories of crime like murder, terrorism, hate crimes, rape\u2026 and thoroughly explored all the ways to think about whether and to what extent someone might be liable for an offense. It starts at p=18<\/a> and runs through p=1356<\/a>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recap:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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All caught up? Great!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s get back to Yahweh and his chosen faithful. I want to see what happens next!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Quick Recap Hey, Nathan here. I\u2019m the guy who writes and draws this thing. The other day, my mother made a gentle comment about my comic that astonished me. It astonished me because I’ve always been under the impression … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,35,63,60,1,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-brief-history-of-government","category-constitutional-law","category-inventing-the-law","category-the-institution-revolution","category-uncategorized","category-what-were-they-thinking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}