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I’m not a fan of litmus tests, mostly because the world is a complicated place, and a person’s position on a single issue is unlikely to shed much light on that individual’s overall philosophical approach or analytical depth.

But I think reactions to the death of Nelson Mandela come pretty close to giving us a window into a person’s worldview, if not his soul.

in the late 1980’s, even prominent Republicans like Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich were acknowledging the injustice and brutality of Apartheid. Dick Cheney, however, continued to characterize the ANC as a terrorist organization and to insist that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist leader who belonged in jail.

It’s one thing to be wrong about a contemporaneous situation; another to maintain a clearly erroneous position after everyone else in the world has recognized how wrong it is.

The problem with people like Dick Cheney isn’t that they make dangerously bad judgment calls. It’s that they stubbornly cling to their initial opinions no matter how much evidence emerges to rebut them. They are incapable of admitting that they were wrong, and thus incapable of evolving and learning–the very capacity that makes us human.

History will treat Nelson Mandela as the extraordinary human he was.

History will not be kind to the self-important, self-serving, delusional and very small man named Dick Cheney.

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I’ve spent the last semester grousing about the various deficiencies of my current undergraduate class–they’re disinterested in the world around them, they can’t write a coherent or grammatical sentence and they clearly have no idea how research differs from stream-of-consciousness-essay.

Fairness, however, impels me to note that my graduate students continue to teach me a lot.

What prompted this post were statistics contained in a student’s paper. She chose to analyze Indiana’s aggressive school privatization efforts. (For clarity’s sake, I should note here that charter schools are public schools, and thus not the focus of her analysis.)

Opponents of school privatization have emphasized the financial benefits to private contractors, and the connections of those contractors to officials in positions to enrich them. Tony Bennett and Mitch Daniels worked tirelessly for policies that–surprise!–benefitted donors and cronies; several large corporations that actively lobby for school privatization have an obvious financial interest in that outcome.  That being the case, it isn’t unreasonable to conclude that corporate profit motives are helping to drive this particular policy approach, and many observers have leveled that claim.

My student’s paper suggested a different set of motivations. She noted that the rhetoric of school choice in Indiana focuses heavily on the right of parents to send their children to a private, religious school. (She reports that public arguments elsewhere have revolved far more around educational quality.) She then goes on to share some illuminating numbers.

The Indiana Department of Education publishes enrollment data of accredited non-public schools (only accredited non-public schools are eligible to receive the Choice Scholarship funds), and according to the list of accredited non-public schools for the year 2013, 95.01% of these schools are religiously affiliated, or 310 schools out of 326 (IDOE, 2013). Of the sixteen schools that are not religiously affiliated, two are military high schools, five are alternative high schools for at-risk and troubled youth, and four are for children with special needs or disabilities (IDOE, 2013). Of the 310 religiously affiliated accredited schools in Indiana in 2013, only five are not affiliated with some denomination of Christianity (three are Islamic private schools and two are Hebrew private schools) (IDOE, 2003). For parents looking to pull their children out of public schools in favor of private schools, these eleven schools are likely too specialized to be considered a choice for any child who does not fit into the mission of those schools. The five remaining non-religious private schools are college preparatory schools, three of which are located in the Indianapolis metropolitan area and the other two in Evansville.

Apparently, the real “choice” parents are being given is between a private religious education and a public secular one (provided by a school system increasingly starved for funds).

Whether that is the “choice” privatization proponents really want to offer is an open–and interesting– question.

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It’s “War on Christmas” time again, so let me suggest a tactic that might make those who don’t appreciate the insulting nature of wishing someone “Happy Holidays” take the Christian Warriors more seriously.

Listen, guys, if you really want to make the case that everyone needs to acknowledge the sanctity of Christmas and implicitly, the cultural and moral superiority of your belief system, here’s a great way to do that: start acting like Christians. Not just in December, either, but all year.

It’s really hard for Jews, Muslins, Pagans, et al to respect your demands for obeisance when you blithely and consistently ignore the rules upon which your claims of Christian superiority are based.

When people see you refusing to pay your employees a living wage, when they see you get all pissy about the very idea of giving poor folks access to health insurance, that doesn’t look very Christian to them.

When elected officials like Mike Pence publicly parade their piety but then screw over  400,000 Hoosiers by refusing to use federal dollars to expand Medicaid–all the while pontificating about the need for poor people to take “personal responsibility”–you can’t blame other folks for wondering whether they missed that place in your bible where Jesus refused to share loaves and fishes with the irresponsible masses.

When you make shit up in order to bolster your political arguments, when you get oh-so-offended because someone wished you well without including the magic words, when you wrap yourself in a blanket of victimization whenever a court doesn’t allow you to impose your beliefs on people who don’t share them….well, it gets really hard to see the light of Christian charity in your behavior.

Maybe you’d have better luck–and earn more respect– if you lived in accordance with the religion you want to cram down everyone else’s throat.

Just a thought.

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I have a theory about why people are so agitated these days. I think it is because our daily lives have become too complicated–because it is increasingly impossible for any one person to truly understand–let alone master– the various social and scientific systems on which we increasingly rely.

Let’s be honest: how many of us really understand how the financial sector works? How government policy affects the Internet? The intricacies of tax or regulatory policies? Reading the current punditry about the Affordable Care Act leads inexorably to one conclusion–no one knows very much about medical practice, the healthcare industry or the ACA. Not to mention the construction of a website.

Technology is an increasingly important part of our everyday lives, but I know I’m not the only person who can’t fix my own car, and whose first and only response to a computer malfunction is to reboot.  Very few of us have the background or expertise to independently evaluate claims about climate change or the loss of biodiversity.

My programmable thermostat says its 69 degrees in my house. It feels colder, but who am I to argue with that sophisticated new piece of technology?

As the world around us gets more complicated, our discomfort over losing personal control of our lives increases. Different people react differently to this perception that we are at the mercy of systems beyond our ken or control: some simply “opt out,” become disengaged. (“My vote/participation makes no difference, so why bother?”) Others retreat into simplification and ideology. (“If government would just get out of the way/ if we lived by biblical principles/if parents would ban video games everything would be better.”)

As we lose control (or the illusion of control) over ever greater portions of our lives, we need to recognize what may be the most pressing issue posed by an ever-more complex modern society: the need to know who to trust.  How do we identify those who are truly expert and honest, those who are not spinning or denying or manufacturing evidence, those who are reliable interpreters of their particular disciplines?

It’s hard enough to find a trustworthy auto mechanic when you don’t really know how your car functions.

Right now, Americans don’t trust anyone. Not the media, not the government, not academics, not businesspeople. As a result, we can’t even agree on what our problems are, let alone agree on solutions.

When you don’t trust anyone, when you don’t know whose description of the world you inhabit is correct, that world becomes a very scary place.

We won’t regain a sense of control until we collectively decide who we can trust. I have no idea how we do that.

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