Category Archives: Random Blogging

And Now, a Word About the Good Guys

It’s easy to get discouraged about what is happening to America, easy to forget how many really wonderful people are working in every community to make a positive difference and fulfill America’s promise.

 

I have been working on a small research project. Most recently, that research has involved interviewing the directors of community and human development organizations. These people head up all kinds of projects, from all parts of the country—there’s a Mission on an Arizona reservation, several neighborhood organizers in Chicago and Indianapolis, a youth leadership program in Witchita, and many others.

 

These were very different people, with very different organizational missions. But all were dedicated, street-smart, and utterly without self-importance. Their offices were often difficult to find (admittedly, I’m direction-impaired), and always what real estate types would classify as “Type C” or worse. They had computers, but no gee-whiz technologies. No self-respecting CEO would work an hour for what they were being paid.

 

What they did have were compelling stories: of this refugee helped to create a new life, of that worker still able to get to his job thanks to a campaign that kept the neighborhood’s bus service, of the garbage collector given the encouragement (and tutoring) that allowed him to address a state senate committee and ultimately change public policy, of the middle manager who had been a welfare mother the organization taught to read while providing child care.

 

Not earth-shattering victories, to be sure. But the people I interviewed were nothing if not realists. They relished their victories, small as those might seem to our political pontificators. Every single one used the phrase “one on one” to describe their work with clients and volunteers. Every single one cited “patience” as a necessary quality for the changes they were trying to effect. Every single one stressed the importance of listening—to their volunteers, to their clients, and to their communities. There wasn’t an ideologue among them.  

 

Coincidentally, I’d just gotten home from a round of these interviews when I picked up the Indianapolis Star and saw that Karl Schneider had died. Karl was vice-Principal at Arsenal Tech when I first moved downtown with three teenage boys still in school. I’d heard about how “dangerous” Tech was, and that was the image I took to my first conversation with Karl. He looked at me over his glasses, and asked “have your sons had fights at their other schools?” When I said no, he said “Then they probably won’t here. If kids want to find trouble, they can find it at Tech; if they don’t, they won’t.”

 

He was right. My kids had a fabulous experience at Tech. Karl was one of Tech’s many dedicated, gifted teachers who believed in young people, and in the power of education.

 

On this 4th of July, I celebrated the Americans like Karl Schneider and the people I had interviewed. Their unsung, unrelenting, and often unrewarded efforts to achieve America’s promise of “equality and justice for all,” may save us yet.  

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Going Beyond the B.S. (Bumper Stickers)

It’s primary election time. Soon, the 2006 political season will descend on us—and with it, the inevitable assortment of exaggerated claims, pious moral pronouncements and impractical, unconstitutional and ludicrous policy proposals. Since hiding in a cave somewhere until it’s all over is generally not an option, when Congressional candidate A unveils his “Major Initiative to Solve the Boll Weevil Problem,” I am offering the following four easy questions to help you evaluate the candidates and their proposals:

 Question One: Is there general agreement that Boll Weevils are a problem?

Many of our fellow citizens believe that “dirty” books, gay parenting or retailers who substitute “Seasons Greetings” for “Merry Christmas” are among our most pressing social problems. Many of the rest of us don’t—in fact, some of us think our biggest problem is the jerks who insist on screaming about these “threats to morality and American culture.” Maybe some farmers welcome Boll Weevils.

 Question Two: Is there agreement on how to solve that problem?

Assuming that there is some level of agreement that a particular element of our common lives presents us with challenges—immigration and the outsourcing of American jobs come to mind; there are many others—is there any consensus on how that particular problem should be solved? (If Tom Friedman is right and the world is really “flat,” the measures we employ to deal with outsourcing probably ought to take its inevitability into account.) What does the evidence tell us about the Boll Weevils?

 Question Three: Is this a problem only government can solve?

Just because Uncle Beauregard was injured when he fell out of his golf cart, does it really make sense to pass a law requiring all golf cart manufacturers to install seat belts? Aren’t some problems best left to individuals, parents, or nonprofit organizations? Or—in the case of Boll Weevils—to farmers?

Question Four: Does the proposed solution pass the ‘smell test’?

 Does our earnest candidate demonstrate knowledge of available evidence on this issue? There are, for example, numerous studies showing that children raised by gay parents do just as well as those raised by straight ones—is Moral Paragon Candidate X aware of that research?  Is Fearless Candidate Y using “wedge issues” to appeal to a particular constituency—say the Wingnut Right—at the expense of other citizens? Is she simplifying complex issues? Substituting slogans for proposals, and labels for analysis? Is willingness to get serious about Boll Weevils really an indicator of her opponent’s fidelity to American Values?

 Can we really solve the nation’s problems with bumper sticker policies? Can we reduce criminal justice to Officer Friendly, Dirty Harry and Smoky the Bear? Or save American values by censoring Hollywood, outlawing abortion and disenfranchising gays?    

Or will 2006 be the year America comes to its senses?

 

 

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Good Night and Good Luck

I hate to get cranky, but I think a lot of us are forgetting what America is all about.

 

Repeat after me: our constitution wasn’t designed for cowards. The Founders didn’t protect our right to say what we think because they believed we would all mouth non-offensive proprieties. They didn’t insist on our right to pray (or not) as we choose because they were confident we would all agree about the nature of Ultimate Truth. And they didn’t insist that government show a darn good reason to search or detain us because they were sure we wouldn’t ever have anything to hide.

 

They protected liberty because they valued it for its own sake—not because it was safe.

 

In fact, they were well aware that liberty isn’t safe. Freedom is dangerous, and those who drafted the Bill of Rights knew that. They just believed that a government with the power to decide what ideas may be expressed, or what prayers must be said (and to whose gods) is much more dangerous. They were willing to risk political, scientific and religious debate—just as they were willing to take the risks of a market economy. No risk, no reward.

 

We’ve come a long way, baby—to weenie land, apparently. Recent headlines paint a depressing picture of a society increasingly afraid to entertain different ideas or consider evidence inconsistent with our preferred realities.

 

In New Mexico, a nurse with the Veterans Administration is being investigated for sedition—sedition!—because she wrote a letter to the editor criticizing George W. Bush and advocating withdrawal from Iraq. The letter was signed in her private capacity as a citizen, written on her own time, on her own stationery. She has been a VA clinical nurse specialist for sixteen years; she is now refusing to give interviews and is reportedly terrified that she will lose her job.

 

In Washington, a thirty-six-year veteran of the Congressional Research Agency who is widely considered the most eminent living scholar of Separation of Powers has been told to “apologize” and threatened with loss of his position in the wake of a research report disputing Presidential authority to ignore Congress and engage in unchecked surveillance of Americans’ communications. This is an individual who has served with distinction under Republican and Democratic Administrations alike.

 

At NASA, in one widely reported incident, an expert on global warming was ordered to modify a scientific paper posted to the agency’s website. In another, five researchers from CalTech who published a report on “Potential Environmental Impact of a Hydrogen Economy” abruptly had a planned NASA conference cancelled, reportedly by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and further funding for this research has been cut off.

 

Perhaps—before we make too many self-righteous comparisons between our own devotion to “liberty” and the Islamists violent reaction to Danish cartoons—we should take a good hard look in the mirror. That isn’t James Madison looking back. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to Joe McCarthy.

 

 

 

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Best Case, Worst Case

I am usually a very optimistic person, but I think only the willfully blind could be optimistic about America’s prospects right now. And no, I haven’t been drinking; I’ve just been reading the news. So if you are looking for a “happy talk” blog entry, be warned. This isn’t it.
Here’s what I see as the best and worst case scenarios.
In the best case, the theocrats who control the GOP will self-destruct, and even the carefully engineered gerrymandering that has allowed them to maintain a stranglehold on Congress won’t be enough to save them. The Democrats—despite their fecklessness—will retake one house or both in 2008. The political pendulum will gradually return to the center, and we will begin to repair the incredible damage to our democratic institutions, our economic health, our relations with other countries and our social fabric. Old farts like me will die off, and younger Americans who grew up with Will and Grace and gay friends who were out, and who poll pro-equality by large majorities, will take over. This will take a very long time, but eventually there will once again be an America we would all recognize.
In the worst case, which keeps looking both worse and more likely, George W. Bush will complete his presidency presiding over a Republican-controlled Congress with the endorsement of a reactionary Supreme Court. His “legacy” will be a presidency so powerful that it will, in reality, be an elected monarchy. Citizens will still be able to vote, but they’ll be voting for an elected emperor; Congress will be an “advisory” body (which is the way Bush treats it now.) Americans won’t have rights that government must respect, they’ll have privileges—so long as the President doesn’t feel those privileges “threaten our security.” The 4th Amendment will be a forgotten phrase from a forgotten document called the Bill of Rights.
The war in Iraq will have done more than simply de-stabilize what is already the most volatile part of the world—it will have impoverished us in too many ways to count: financially, in the eyes of the world community, and—ironically—in our ability to fight terrorism. If Iran or any other country proves to be an actual threat, we will not have the resources or manpower to do anything about it.
Our shortsighted energy policies will hasten the day—already imminent—when there is no longer enough oil to satisfy world demand. Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility, and the huge national debt he bequeathed us, will make it impossible to withstand the economic shock of dramatically escalating energy costs, and depression will not be too strong a word to describe the results. (We are already up to our eyeballs in hock to China; if that country calls the loan, we’re fiscal toast. Can we spell “banana republic”?)
Our arrogant refusal to believe in global warming will further hasten the melting of the polar icecap, which is already disappearing at a frightening rate, and will precipitate natural disasters that will make Katrina look like a pleasant rain shower. Our contempt for science, which has already caused stem-cell researchers to leave for more enlightened countries, will continue to erode our leadership in medicine, technology and communications, among many other fields. (Maybe the Intelligent Designer will save us.)
Okay. I could go on, but you get the picture.
None of this is to suggest that George W. Bush isn’t “sincere.” Whether he is doing the best he can (a terrifying thought, but certainly possible) is not the point. This isn’t about personality or character; it is about breathtaking incompetence and policies based exclusively on religion and ideology, created by people for whom evidence and logic are at best irrelevant and at worse threatening.
I’ve lived a lot of years—through the civil rights movement, McCarthyism, Watergate and many other difficult times. I’ve been angry, sorrowful, even embarrassed for our country in the past. But I’ve never before gotten to the point where I didn’t believe we’d get over it. I never got to the point where I worried about the world my grandchildren will inhabit.
I’ve never before thought we were losing America.

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Living Through the Culture Wars

I know that sociologist pooh-pooh the “culture war” thesis. They insist that Americans have more in common than the prominence of wing-nuts of all varieties would suggest. I sure hope they are right, because it sometimes seems that reason and logic have been banished from the horizon.

 

A couple of recent examples (if we held a contest, there would be too many contestants to review!) include the following:

 

·        In the ongoing effort to pretend that “Intelligent Design” is science, and thus introduce a religious philosophy into public school science classes, there are a number of pseudo-scientific websites where “research” by “credible scientists” is posted. My absolute favorite—and I am not making this up, honest—was a post a couple of days ago that purported to “explain” why human males, alone among mammals (I don’t know if this is true, by the way), do not have bones in their penises. According to the post, all other male mammals have such a bone (no sick jokes about “boners” please), but the human must rely upon “hydraulics” to achieve an erection. The scientific paper examining this phenomenon found the reason for the disparity: we have misread Genesis all along. When God removed a rib from Adam in order to make Eve, it wasn’t the rib at all—it was the bone from the penis. And the evidence is there for all to see, because the scrotum is the scar left from the surgery. (The post did not address why an operation by an all-powerful God would have left a scar. Oh well…details.)

 

·        The ongoing mental case named Bill O’Reilly continues his vendetta against the hordes of Satanists who make War on Christmas. Of late, his hysterical accusations have taken a dangerously anti-Semitic tone; he recently accused George Soros (Jewish) of wholly funding the ACLU (not even predominantly Jewish—last numbers I saw suggested the ACLU is about 5% Jewish—but frequently portrayed that way) in order to wage war on Christianity. And boy, have they been successful! I guess we just don’t see that success as we listen to the most Christian President in history, pass Ten Commandment monuments erected in courthouses and city halls, and pass constitutional amendments based upon specifically Christian doctrines.

 

I could, unfortunately, go on and on and on. Tolerance seems quaint—indeed, the wing-nuts claim that failure to privilege their beliefs is intolerant.

 

In Indiana a few days ago, a federal judge—following unambiguous precedent—told the Speaker of the Indiana House that he could continue to begin sessions with prayer, but the prayer had to be genuinely inclusive—not just inclusive of different Christian denominations (arguably, it hadn’t even been that—the plaintiffs were all Christians. One was a retired Methodist minister.) The outcry was immediate. The Speaker, who knows a wedge issue when he sees it, called it outrageous, part of the plot to eradicate Christianity, and a violation of freedom of speech.  This from a man who went to law school, and presumably would not have graduated had he not known the difference between government speech and private expression.

 

On the national level, we are quite likely to place Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. This is a man committed to expanding government power, overturning a woman’s right to choose, and dismissive (at best) of civil rights for women and African-Americans.

 

I keep telling myself this will all pass, that we are just having a bad couple of decades. But if something doesn’t re-establish sanity soon, I may have to abandon that increasingly forlorn hope.

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