In Praise of Public Schooling

 Posted by  Education, Issues  3 Responses »
Jun 222005
 

Public Schools are America’s great melting pot. Whether you are rich, poor, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, motivated, restless, liberal, conservative, or anything else, everyone goes to public school. And yeah, cliques are formed, honors and special-ed kids go to different class rooms, and substantial divisions exist. And too many schools are forced into homogeneity merely by the communities in which they are located. But, all that being said, I went to high school in a place where I could sit between a missionary kid and a flower child, listen to a presentation from a girl who was given a brand-new car for her sixteenth birthday, and then go off to football practice with a guy who who worked forty hours a week, on top of school, in order to support his two children. There are always classes and activities that force people to cross those clique-lines and interact with “the other”.

And that’s a beautiful thing. Private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling are necessary for some kids. But one of the best gifts that we can give our children is the chance to interact with different kinds of people; that’s how you learn empathy and love for your fellow man. And by virtue of being self-selecting institutions, none of these offer the same chances for a diversity of interrelationships that Public Schools can offer.

So, it disturbs me greatly when politicians bash the public schools, and encourage any parents who can to tryout other schooling options. We should be be supporting the public schools, finding ways of educating all children better, and ensuring that they have proper funding, rather than encouraging distinct classes of children to leave them behind. That’s my problem with voucher and charter school programs; it necessarily decreases the diversity and increases the stratification of our society.

And then, a good friend of mine shows me this article, encouraging Southern Baptists to come up with an “exit strategy” from “government schools”. (You can read more about it here.) Such attitudes are based on fear and selfishness that have no business in a Christian Institution, and such a move would only serve to further weaken our schools and our children and their ability to deal with people of different faiths, beliefs, and values.

But, it will be argued, our schools are teaching our kids un-Christian ideas about evolution, homosexuality, and sex! And look, the vast majority of our children who go to Public Schools are falling away from the faith before graduation! Guess what? Children fall away from and then rediscover their faith. It’s a natural process of making your parent’s faith your own, and most people of real faith go through a similar experience in their late teens. And yet most of them will come back to their parents faith by the time they have their own children. It happens. Besides, there are 168 hours in a week; of which the average child spends 56 sleeping and 30 getting classroom instruction. In other words, even during the school year, one half of a child’s time is available for the parents to counteract any “immoral teaching” that their children receive at school. If your kids are falling away from God, don’t blame school, blame yourself.

In short, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Resolution on The Crisis in Education of 1979 had it right: “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That we hereby commit ourselves to help achieve quality education for every child in this nation.”

Exaggerated Threats

 Posted by  East and S.E. Asia, Foreign Policy, Movies, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, The Media, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Jun 202005
 

The darkest chapters in American history always start with an exaggeration. Indians are threatening to over-run our frontier. Carpet-baggers are destroying the South. Japanese spies have infiltrated the West Coast. Soviet sympathizers are working in the State Department. None of these statements were out-right false at their time. There were Native American raids on frontier settlements, Northerners who moved south after the Civil War to make a fortune, Japanese spies in California, and Soviet spies in the State Department. But in all cases the problems, and the dangers that they posed, were overstated.

In many cases simple facts of life were stated as growing threats to Americans or their way of life. For instance, in the 1930s, many young, liberal Americans joined the Communist Party because it was one of the most prominent political groups in the country fighting for Civil Rights. And like many young, active, liberal intellectuals, they took government service jobs after college. So, it was not surprising to find that by the late 1940s, a surprising number of mid-level and senior bureaucrats had some affiliation with the United States Communist Party; it probably would have been common knowledge in Washington at the time. However, it is not hard to take the statement that many bureaucrats had joined the Communist Party in college and make it sound like an internal threat to the American way of life.

So, eventually the exaggeration grows and becomes something that “everyone knows”. If you have never seen the original Manchurian Candidate, I strongly recommend that you do so. A Senator in that film has been railing against Communists in government service, but he is afraid that he sounds like a fool because he has never really defined the scope of the problem that he discusses. His wife comforts him, saying something to the affect of “Let them make fun of you. But notice that they are not asking if Communists have infiltrated the government, but how many Communists have infiltrated the government.” And of course, by simply asking the question at all they presuppose that we should care about the answer. The media becomes the unwitting tool of the exaggerations, because so many of them ask the wrong questions. So eventually, we all come “to know” that Indian incursions pose a serious threat to the American frontier, that Northern Carpet-Baggers have taken over the South, that Japanese and later Communist spies are sending back vital information.

That is, of course, when bad things begin to happen. Exaggeration becomes knowledge, which turns into paranoia, outrage, and ultimately preemptive action against the threat. And so, we end up with the Trail of Tears, Jim Crow laws, Japanese interment camps, and Blacklisting. We allow ourselves to forget that we are a nation of Rights and Laws, first and foremost. We forget that our way of life is more dependent upon the protection of those Rights and Laws than it is on the threat posed by any particular set of individuals who might pose a threat to us.

Of course, there are many, many examples of these exaggerations becoming common knowledge; they happen everywhere, constantly. Some of them lead to more terrible things than I have mentioned here; Hitler’s wild claims about Jews come to mind. Others are incredibly benign, create a brief panic, maybe get someone elected or someone else thrown out of office, and quietly fade into history. And of course they continue till this day: Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, the threat of Islamic Terrorism, or the preaching of homosexuality in our schools, just to name a few.

And if you ever hear someone say that “we all know” something, keep this in mind: we probably shouldn’t.

Arrogance and Stupidity

 Posted by  The Media, U.S. Politics  3 Responses »
Jun 142005
 

The absurdity of our media and our politicians is sometimes overwhelming.

FOX News just reported that, while the FBI had offered their assistance to the Aruban government in the case of the Alabama girl who has disappeared, the Aruban police have been reportedly slow to take up the offer. FOX presented this as possible evidence that Aruba was not taking the investigation seriously. After all, isn’t it obvious that the FBI is the only institution in the world that is qualified to investigate a missing persons report, at least when the missing person is an American? The audacity that Aruba would insist on investigating crimes that happen in Aruba!

Of course, it also makes me wonder how many Americans go missing overseas each year who are not pretty, young, blonde Alabamans on vacation, but that is neither here nor there.

Speaking of American arrogance, I also love when we insist that US commanders be put in change of US soldiers, even when part of an international coalition; many of them coalitions that we put together. What is the message here? Come, join us in this great multinational endeavor, where we don’t trust you enough to actually place our troops under your command! But, we do expect you to trust us, and trust each other. This is even a plank in the Republican Party platform; that US soldiers will not serve under the leadership of foreign commanders. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world resents us?

And on a slightly different note, the Watergate/Mark Felt coverage has amused me greatly. I am not the first one to point this out, by any means, but I love seeing G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan, and Chuck Colson talking about how Mark Felt was a traitor for not taking his concerns to the White House. I heard Colson say that if Felt had simply taken his evidence and his concerns to either himself or to the Oval Office, that he knows for a fact that they would have gotten to the bottom of this. If you are a moderator in this discussion, this is when you are supposed to interject and say “but Mr. Colson, didn’t you spend time in jail because you were convicted of conspiracy because of the Watergate break-in and Deep Throat’s evidence? Were you really that trustworthy?”. I have yet to hear anyone actually say that though. Instead, they turn to some liberal commentator, who is so taken back by the previous statement, he simply stammers in disbelief.

Is that an example of Fair or Balanced coverage?

Looking Ahead to 2008

 Posted by  2008 Election, U.S. Politics  3 Responses »
Jun 132005
 

Because its never too early, lets talk a little about the next presidential election. And, there are no logical choices for either party’s candidate, for the first time in a very long time. It seems as if Clinton vs McCain is the most likely matchup. The Republicans are going to have a very difficult time running a nominee who can mobilize the Religious Right and yet still have a hope of winning the general election. The Democrats have the problem of either replaying previous elections (many of which they lost), or running governors no one has ever heard of. Still, as far as I can tell, here are the contenders:

Democrats:
Hillary Clinton, Senator from New York
Pros: Name recognition; reasonably moderate and yet still could draw out the minority and women’s vote; Can tap into the positive association that many Democrats and independents have of the Clinton years; she’s young and vibrant, well-spoken, and extremely politically savvy.

Cons: She’s a Clinton, and a Yankee, and a woman. The trio means she will have no way of competing in any of the traditional red states, whatsoever. Her presence on the ballot could will guarantee a high turnout of Clinton-haters, even if the Republicans run a moderate candidate.

Conclusion: Has to be the Democratic front-runner, and is also the one that Republicans are wishing for–but be careful what you wish for, cause you just might get it.

John Edwards, Former Senator from North Carolina
Pros: Name recognition; a moderate, good looking family man who is well-spoken, and with just enough of a drawl to sound like a Southerner without being labeled dumb by Northerners; was the candidate that many Democrats, in retrospect, wish they had run in 2004; puts the Carolinas and Virginia into play.

Cons: He is out of the spot-light, and has no definite way back into it; his wife was diagnosed with cancer after the last election, which will divert his attention and resources (or make him look callous if he does not).

Conclusion: If he can maneuver himself into national prominence within the next year, he could be a force to be reckoned with. Otherwise, expect him to fade into history.

Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico
Pros: Popular, Hispanic governor, reasonably moderate, reasonably young; almost guarantees the Democrats New Mexico, and gives them a better than normal shot in Arizona, and possibly Florida as well.

Cons: The average resident of Ohio probably has difficulty picking New Mexico out on a map. No name recognition, and he’s never been vetted at a national level (i.e. no one knows what skeletons may lurk).

Conclusions: Could do very well in the primaries, but unknown governors from small states are always a crap shoot. An Hispanic presidential nominee could be very intriguing.

John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts
Pros: Name recognition; if the second Bush term goes poorly, he can carry the banner of “what might have been”.

Cons: He just lost in what should have been a winnable election, meaning that many Democrats will be bitter at him, and many Republicans and Independents will have already made up their minds. Not clear that he can win any more electoral votes the second time around. He never clearly established a theme in his last campaign (other than not-Bush), and therefore it is hard for voters to imagine what the road not taken might have looked like.

Conclusions: Not gonna happen.

Joe Lieberman, Senator from Connecticut
Pros: Name recognition; he’s a well-known, moderate Senator who it is difficult for anyone to hate; reputation for being a maverick in the Senate which can play well.

Cons: No one really loves him either; he makes Gore seem emotive, many liberal groups are indifferent towards him (at best), and he’s from a blue-state and doesn’t bring anything to the table their either.

Conclusions: Could never win the Democratic Primary, but if he did would make for an intriguing candidate and some dull televised debates.

Mark Warner, Governor of Virginia
Pros: Young, popular, moderate Senator from a populous Southern State. Similar to Edwards, but he also has a current political job.

Cons: Zero name recognition, never been nationally vetted.

Conclusions: If Edwards does not run, look for Warner to fill that spot as the token young Southerner, and a potential dark-horse if Clinton and Richardson stumble.

Al Gore, former Vice President
Pros: Name recognition; association with the Clinton presidency; beat Bush in 2000 by some measures; has done a better job since leaving public office of appearing less wooden (if you haven’t seen his appearance on SNL a couple years ago, it is one of the funniest things you’ll ever watch).

Cons: Lost to Bush by the one measure that matters most; Democrats accuse him of running a poor campaign in 2000; he’s been out of the public eye for a couple years; and he will inspire the anti-Clinton fanaticism among Conservative Republicans.

Conclusions: Probably not going to happen, but if he did run I think he could make a very strong showing. He played the role of “Nixon, 1960″ in the 2000 campaign, if he wanted to he could very well play the role of “Nixon, 1968″ in the 2008 campaign.

Republicans:
John McCain
Pros: Moderate, well known, nationally popular, strong foreign-policy credentials, solid reputation for being a maverick, from a Southwest battle-ground state.

Cons: Will have a very hard time getting the support of the Religious Right, especially after his participation in the recent judicial compromise, which means he will have a real problem winning the primaries. His nomination would make possible a third-party candidacy of a Pat Robertson or Pat Buchanan type.

Conclusion: Could be a very interesting election if he runs; his nomination would put virtually every state into play, both red and blue, unless he makes some very strong overtures towards Southern, religious conservatives over the next couple years.

Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader from Tennessee
Pros: Name recognition; reasonably moderate on fiscal issues and strongly conservative on social issues; reasonably young, good-looking, and articulate.

Cons: He walks a very fine line trying to maneuver compromises through the Senate on the President’s not especially popular programs, and still maintaining his loyalty to the Administration. It makes it very difficult to stake out strong, individual positions upon which to build a presidential campaign. His overtures towards the Religious Right recently have been a little clumsy (his support for justice Sunday, and some of the comments on Terri Schiavo, for instance), which does not bode well for his ability to please both independents and social conservatives simultaneously.

Conclusions: If he runs, he could easily win the Republican primary, but there is a reason that no Senate Majority Leader has ever been elected directly to the Presidency.

Rick Santorum, Senator from Pennsylvania
Pros: Young, good-looking, conservative fire-brand. He’s the darling of the Religious Right, and would get conservative Christian turn-out in droves, both for the primary and the general election.

Cons: He is way too conservative to win many independents; many of his comments have verged on (and been interpreted as) homophobia, and he inspires as much hatred on the left as he does loyalty on the right.

Conclusions: He could win the primary, but not the general. Look for him to talk up a run for President to scare the Republican moderates a bit and then to run for Senate majority leader when Frist retires.

Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida
Pros: Name recognition; reasonably moderate governor of a populous battleground state; could inherent the Bush election team, if he wanted to.

Cons: Carries the baggage of the Bush name without being as skilled a political operator as his older brother; his fortunes will ride heavily on his brother’s legacy, which is not looking particularly good at the moment. He was the big loser, politically speaking, in the Terri Schiavo case, which hurt his credibility with both moderates and conservatives. He has not been nationally vetted.

Conclusions: He is exactly the type of person that the Republicans would love to nominate; except the fact that he’s a Bush makes him a problematic candidate, and he needs to do something to win back the support of the Religious Right. Given all that, I doubt he will run.

Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State
Pros: Name recognition; she’s a conservative, well-spoken African American woman; very strong foreign policy credentials, and she has not taken many strong stances on social issues which allows her to define herself on those issues. Carries the Bush Administration seal of approval.

Cons: Her popularity is intrinsically tied to the fate of the Bush presidency, in general, and the fate of Iraq, in particular, which is problematic. Being an African-American woman will not play well with many white conservative men, who make up the vast majority of the Republican party (note, I am not accusing all Republicans of being racist, but many old segregationists still do make their home in the Republican Party, and will have a hard time getting enthusiastic about a black woman for President).

Conclusions: If she decided to run, her fate depends on the Iraq war. If the war goes well and Iraq stabilizes, she is extremely difficult to beat. If Iraq remains a quagmire, she’s in serious trouble in the general election.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California
Pros: Name recognition; moderate and popular (at least outside of California); puts California into play (at least if he can stabilize this tailspin he is in right now).

Cons: He cannot Constitutionally run; has some serious skeletons in his closet, when it comes to groping women and possible affairs; is on the record as pro-choice.

Conclusions: If the Constitution were ever amended, he would make an interesting general election candidate, but I cannot see the Republican Party nominating a pro-choice candidate. I could see him trying to go the route of his buddy Ventura, however, and running as an independent, especially if the Republicans nominate Santorum (or someone like him).

George Pataki, Governor of New York
Pros: Benefits from the 9/11 aura; reasonably moderate governor of a Democratic state, and would put New York into play.

Cons: He is pretty unpopular in New York right now, and his post-9/11 handling of that situation has gotten very low marks. He does not have strong pro-life credentials.

Conclusions: If he runs, he loses, but he probably won’t last long enough in New York to run.

Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City
Pros: Benefits from the 9/11 aura; extremely moderate and puts New York into play; very popular in a lot of places that have only vaguely heard about him.

Cons: Some serious skeletons–he left his wife and married his mistress while Mayor of New York; he’s pro-choice.

Conclusions: People like to talk about Giuliani as an interesting nomination, but I just cannot see it happening.

Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts
Pros: Moderate, well-spoken, and a good administrator.

Cons: Name recognition is a problem; being from Massachusetts will play very poorly in the primaries; he’s not taken a strong pro-life position; he has associations with the Massachusetts gay marriage decision.

Conclusions: Would never, ever, be nominated, and would lose if her were. But, look for him to run anyway.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House
Pros: Name recognition; intelligent, well-spoken, thought-provoking and controversial. To many fiscal conservatives, he represents the best of the Republican Party from the mid-late 1990s. Good, but not great, foreign policy credentials. Has done a good job of maintaining a reasonably high profile since his retirement from public life.

Cons: Divorced his wife in favor of his mistress; was forced out of his position as Speaker because of his inability to reign-in his own tongue; will definitely draw liberals to the polls en masse.

Conclusions: He seems to want to run for President, but I doubt he could last through the primary.

America’s Acceptable Extremism

 Posted by  Foreign Policy, Issues, Latin America, The Media  6 Responses »
Jun 092005
 

I was planning on writing a rant against Lou Dobbs today. For those who don’t know, Lou Dobbs is one of CNN’s prime time talk-show hosts, and his big issue is how globalization, free-trade, immigration, and really any dealings at all that we have with the rest of the world, are the root of all of America’s evils. As a person who doesn’t understand why an American job should be worth more than a Vietnamese one, I of course take issue with Mr. Dobbs and everything that he stands for. And yesterday I thought that he crossed a line. I tuned in just to see what he was discussing (hey, no one can ever accuse me of only listening to liberal media outlets), and saw an interview with Dr. Madeleine Cosman, medical attorney (note that she has a Ph.D. in law, not an M.D.). In this interview, Dr. Cosman claimed that illegal immigration was causing a public health crisis in this country, and she proposed five solutions to this crisis. Two of these solutions were incredibly non-controversial: Closing the border to illegal immigration, criminally prosecuting those who hire illegal aliens, and not granting amnesty to current illegal aliens. I don’t necessarily agree with these solutions, and she offered no ideas for how to close the borders, but they are not extreme viewpoints. It was the other two ideas that I found absolutely offensive: rescinding citizenship from so-called “anchor babies”, and elimination of EMTALA with regards to illegal immigrants.

“Anchor babies” are children born in the United States to illegal immigrants, and are citizens by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants citizenship to all persons born in the United States and explains the benefits of citizenship. It is the amendment which officially freed all remaining slaves in the United States. EMTALA is the law that requires emergency rooms to treat all persons who enter them, without regard to status or ability to pay. It means that if you are dying, the doctor in front of you is required by law to treat you, and then they get to figure out your insurance situation and your immigration status afterwards. To alter either of these things with regards to illegal immigrants is to treat them as less than human; to say that they are not worthy of the same basic rights to life and humanity as the rest of us. There are practical reasons too, but this alone should be enough. And of course, Lou Dobbs just sits there, bobbing his head, agreeing with everything that she says.

I was outraged. What right do Lou Dobbs and CNN have, I asked myself, to give credibility to a nut-job like that? So, I started investigating who this Dr. Cosman was. You want to know the most disturbing thing about her? She is not a extremist at all. She works for the CATO Institute, a prominent and influential libertarian think-tank. She publishes op-eds in major magazines and articles in second-tier medical journals. She was even nominated for a Pulitzer. Yeah, Lou Dobbs should have asker her the tough questions instead of simply singing her praises, and yeah CNN shouldn’t be giving such a prominent position to such a bad show (although I will admit that they are simply driven by ratings, not by content). But having this lady on their show is not giving air-time to an extremist; it is expressing a view that is only slightly out of the mainstream. What kind of society do we live in?

So, let me remind you all that we are a nation of immigrants. Our relatives came to this country seeking a better, more prosperous, kinder, gentler place to raise their children, to raise us, and they were welcomed. So who are we to close the door to someone else’s children? Besides, it is absolutely terrible for our foreign relations. It is in our best interests in this increasingly small world to be that beacon on the hill; to be the country that the rest of the world wants to emulate. And that means welcoming those who come to our borders, and giving them and their children a chance at life, liberty, and prosperity.

Finally, it is flat-out un-Christian. Every time that some conservative, who claims in the name of God to oppose abortion, wants to deny rights to immigrants (legal or illegal) in the name of “proper incentives” or “saving money”, remind them of that. Quote to them anyone of these Bible passages so that they understand: Exodus 22:21; Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 19:33-34; Dueteronomy 10:18-19; Dueteronomy 24:17-22; Matthew 7:7-12

Let’s stop giving credibility to hatred.

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