Category Archives: Random Blogging

Res Ipsa Loquitor

There is a legal term, “res ipsa loquitor,” meaning “the thing speaks for itself.” Today’s example? The Texas Republican Party Platform. 

Texas Republicans call for abolishing the 16th Amendment, which authorized the Income Tax. It calls for repeal of the tax on capital gains, and the abolition of the state’s property tax. It opposes the imposition of ANY tax other than a (regressive) sales tax. And it demands a return to the gold standard. (There was no call for abolition of public services, and the document appears silent on how, exactly, those services are to be paid for.) The platform also supports privatization of Social Security.

By far the most telling provisions of the GOP platform, however, are those addressing education.

The party goes on record opposing “multicultural” education, and supporting the use of corporal punishment by school officials. It demands that “both sides” be taught when “controversial” theories like evolution and climate change are addressed.

Given these positions, it should come as no surprise that the platform also opposes the teaching of critical thinking skills–since those “undermine parental authority.” Such skills probably DO undermine the parental authority of the authors of this platform–which speaks for itself.

I don’t know what happened, exactly, to turn the Republican Party I used to belong to into whatever it is today–but I am pretty  sure it wasn’t critical thinking.

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Politics at the Bed and Breakfast

We took our grandchildren to Williamsburg and Jamestown (where they were fascinated by the muskets), then came to Washington, D.C. so that they could experience the nation’s capital. Yesterday was the Museum of the American Indian (pricey buffalo-burgers in the cafeteria!) and the Air and Space Museum with a planetarium show narrated by Whoopie Goldberg.

We are staying in a Bed and Breakfast, the Aaron Shipman house, located in the Logan Circle area. It’s a lovely residential neighborhood,with excellent public transportation. (I’ve been VERY  jealous of the transportation on this trip! It makes any place more livable and civilized. Too bad the Indiana legislature doesn’t consider livability important…)

There are seven bedrooms rooms in this house, and we met the other travelers at breakfast yesterday. We went around the table making introductions. Five were traveling together from Alabama, and after the (wonderful!) breakfast, we were making small talk. One woman, a retired second-grade teacher, said “You teach law. How can Roy Moore be considered eligible to run again for the Alabama Supreme Court? Didn’t his previous behavior and contempt for Separation of Church and State disqualify him?” Roy Moore, you may recall, was the zealot who had the Ten Commandments carved on a five-ton stone and placed at the entrance to the Alabama Supreme Court. Apparently, his opponent is genuinely mentally ill, so voters have no reasonable choice in this election, and she was agitated.

“Everyone will look at Alabama and think we actually wanted this creep! We don’t!”

That led to a more general discussion of the political environment and the extremism of today’s GOP. The owner of the B and B opined that Republican Senators and Representatives who had opted to put politics before the national interest and simply say NO to anything and everything that might make Obama look good should be expelled from office. The rest of the short discussion was similar. (And for the record, I didn’t start it!)

I’m hesitant to draw large conclusions from this anecdote: I remember a friend from law school who was absolutely certain McGovern was going to win the election that year because everyone in his neighborhood was a McGovern supporter. He lived in Greenwich Village. But it was interesting to see a group from Huntsville, Alabama–hardly a “blue” location–so utterly disgusted with the radicalism that characterizes today’s GOP.

I believe the acronym young people use these days is FWIW–for what it’s worth.

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Today’s Coffee House?

I’ve been reading a book called Abundance, which details the multiple breakthroughs that promise to eliminate poverty in the world–if we humans deploy them wisely. There’s a lot of interesting information, and stories of human ingenuity are encouraging.

An interesting observation was that the Enlightenment was a product of the coffee house. According to the author, the practice of gathering in coffee houses and exchanging points of view–debating, discussing, considering alternatives–sparked the development of new philosophies, new ways of engaging reality. That diversity of perspective is also what makes cities important generators of new ideas, new inventions–as the author points out, the density of urban life also requires that we encounter people with different ideas, backgrounds and points of view, and it is that “bubbling cauldron” that incubates progress.

Then, however, the author made a comparison that may be too optimistic. He sees the internet as an extension of the city–a vast coffee house where even the most rural or isolated individuals can encounter the diversity of ideas and opinions that characterize the human family. And theoretically, that’s true. Those who actually seek out new and different points of view can certainly find them on line, along with information (and disinformation) about virtually anything. But as Eli Pariser pointed out in The Filter Bubble, the internet is increasingly being used not to explore new ways of seeing, but to reinforce existing prejudices.

If we use our new, marvelous technologies to construct “bubbles”–comfortable realities within which we encounter only those who agree with us–we might just as well be back on the farm.

We live in a time when we have access to marvelous tools. The question is: will we use them to encounter and engage with each other, or to construct comfortable silos that wall off those who are different, those who make us uncomfortable?

Progress is rarely comfortable.

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See a Site, Drag Grandpa

There’s an old joke about the golfers who were on the 12th hole when one of their foursome suddenly died. One of the survivors was recounting the experience later to a friend who said sympathetically, “that must have been terrible.” “It was,” replied the golfer. “For the next six holes, it was awful–play a hole, drag Charlie, play a hole, drag Charlie…”

My husband and I are in Williamsburg, Virginia, with our two youngest grandchildren. We’re seeing the historical sites here, then going to Washington, D.C., where we’ll tour the White House and Capitol (thanks to Congressman Carson’s office!), and see still more history. Those of you who read this blog regularly will understand when I say that one of my goals is to ensure that my own grandchildren, at least, know there are three branches of government.

We aren’t as young as we used to be, however, and Grandpa has been limping. Hence the reference to Charlie and his foursome. We see a site, drag Grandpa…

Today, we took the grandkids to a short film about the days/events leading up to the American Revolution. I don’t know how much of the story line they really understood, but my ten-year-old grandson picked up on the slaves who were among the show’s background elements, and asked a question: How could people ever believe it was okay to own other people?

A pretty good question.

As I told him, sometimes we fail to see that things we take for granted are wrong. Sometimes, we’ve done something wrong for so long, we no longer question it. That’s why it is so important to think about the everyday things we do, to consider whether they are right or wrong.

When I get discouraged, I look at my grandchildren. Their friends are multi-colored and multi-cultural. Their friends’ parents are gay and straight, married and single. The children see people as nice or not nice–not as representatives of this or that (artificial) category of human.

And they can’t imagine thinking it was ever okay to own other people.

I think it’s been worth dragging Grandpa.

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