Let's not be ghoulish.

There is something unhealthy in our politics when we skip over the death of a public figure (side note: Cancer is evil) and immediately start engaging in political machinations. I have done this since Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed and I keep doing it even though I have told myself every hour that I should not. There will be time to discuss that later.

Two great reads on Ginsburg: One is from Nina Totenberg from NPR and it details her friendship with RBG (this piece should not be confused with her obituary of RBG, which is also excellent).

The other piece is from David Post of the Volokh Conspiracy, a libertarian(ish) blog that has floated around but is currently settled at Reason. An incredible find from Post is an essay that Ginsburg wrote when she was 13:

Bulletin of the East Midwood Jewish Center, Brooklyn NY (June 1, 1946)

The war has left a bloody trail and many deep wounds not too easily healed. Many people have been left with scars that take a long time to pass away. We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps. Then, too, we must try hard to understand that for righteous people hate and prejudice are neither good occupations nor fit companions. As Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim once said: "Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking."

In our beloved land families were not scattered, communities not erased nor our nation destroyed by the ravages of the World War. Yet, dare we be at ease? We are part of a world whose unity has been almost completely shattered. No one can feel free from danger and destruction until the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again. We cannot feel safe until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association.  There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men and women create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance.

Then and only then shall we have a world whose structure is the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of men and women.

I am embarrassed by things I wrote last year and this is what RBG produced when she was thirteen. RIP.