Boom We Boomers Went

Tags

boomers, editorial, sociology

It’s been a question I’ve pondered for some time, and noted here once or twice (way too lazy too look that up for ya). The question you ask?

Why did my peers from grade school to high school turn out so very differently on how we view the world? I’ve thought a lot about it, and read one book that shed some light on the subject. Not a light that made me very happy I might add.

I posited that to some degree, it had to do with those who ventured from the home base (Genesee County) and those who did not. But that is superficial at best. I know a strong liberal from Ann Arbor and a reactionary teabaggin’ fundamentalist from Traverse City, and a reactionary from the Phoenix area. So go figure.

No attempt to define the divide is perfect for quite obvious reasons, people are individualized too much for such neat and precise division. There will always be not just a significant outlier, but lots and lots of softer outliers. One is always operating on a bell curve and before you start providing me with examples to disprove the theory, it’s best you get that first. Those with some education in statistics assume it but for others, it is not so obvious.

I’m reading a book called Generations, written in the early 90’s by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who posit that it is helpful to examine American history based on generational attributes (strengths and weaknesses) and their reactions to big turning points, like revolution, depression, war, spiritual awakenings and so forth. For Boomers (born 1942-1960), the GI generation (most of our parents) is a prime example.

Fighting the big one was a seminal turning point. The GI generation became the can do generation, taking upon itself to build and build, institutions, infrastructure, and one of the biggest booming economies the world had every seen. They saw failure as not an option. They were also the generation that from start to finish saw the greatest growth in government all designed around them. From child labor laws in their youth to Medicare in their old age, government was their provider against the big bad realities of the world.

Boomers were a nurtured, and largely indulged generation, raised on Dr. Spock, offered everything, the apple of everyone’s eye. We were encouraged to seek the moon, and we became the most self-confident in our own righteousness of any generation in a long time. Fifty-eight percent of us went on to college, the largest percentage before or since by a long shot.

That I think is the key. Education.

Because we are perhaps one of the most fractured of all the generations as well. We may well be the beginning of the great divide between “red” and “blue” in this nation. We gave the biggest votes to Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson in their respective runs for President. If that isn’t a divide I don’t know what it.

While something like only 10-15% of us were “hippies” or like travelers–civil rights workers, feminists, environmentalists, anti-war activists, campus radicals,  we controlled how this generation was perceived and responded to. We adored our mothers, and argued with our dads. We, were not interested in emulating our father’s drive to build things, but we examined the ethical underpinnings of the world and found them largely missing.

The Silent generation which sandwiched between the GI and the Boomer (1925-42), flipped between trying desperately to match the GI productivity with “something big” themselves, and trying to be “young” during the 60’s in their late 30’s and 40’s.

Boomers gave George Wallace more votes than any other generation. Those from Michigan can surely relate where Wallace gained  his third highest greatest electoral count, behind Maryland and Texas outside the South. Surely boomer activists were not voting for Wallace!

Contrary to what right wingers suggest (that all colleges and universities brainwash youngsters into liberal malarkey), education, by exposing youth to the underbelly of a largely white-washed and prim history presented in high school, opens eyes not to some liberal Marxist ideology, but teaches a basic distrust of “traditional” answers to traditional questions.

I learned, (and I have no reason to think I am different than most)  that everything should be questioned, and that books and experts provided the window to an expanded perch from which to reach a conclusion about what was true and what not, or at least what was not quite so true as offered.

This was coupled by the very real truth that people who are college educated simply make more money, live an easier life-style and have less quarrel as a result, with helping others through taxes.

Those from my generation who sought to follow their fathers plan, i.e, get a job, work hard, marry, have children, buy a house, and live contentedly until retirement with a nice pension and social security, ended up in a very different place. For my classmates who took that route, GM, long the “job for a lifetime” turned into plant closings, layoffs, and ultimate blame placed not at the corporate doorstep (where it so perfectly belonged) but rather at the feet of the unions. Unions became some bizarre “bad parent” who fed the unable to think for themselves babies too much cake until they got sick, and corporations threw up their hands in disgust and moved to Bangladesh or similar cheap labor environs.

These folks did work hard, harder certainly than the rest of us and what they got was “barely making it” and instead of what I got (doing better than my parents but by a slimmer margin).  They regressed.

Somebody has to be to blame for that, and of course their were just tons of slimy politicians all pointing the finger at minorities, immigrants, and other lazy-shiftless individuals all the while receiving yet another check from corporate coffers to deflect the blame away from them.

All those classmates who paid next to no attention to politics for 30 years, suddenly woke up in a world that definitely was not what they expected, and listened of course to those who gave them somebody tangible to blame. Business can’t be the problem because “business” built America for God’s sake. But people who don’t have a job? Well, why don’t they? Is it because they are LAZY? Easy answers for people accustomed to being given answers by their betters.

The educated half of us is more liberal because we don’t accept standard answers, we distrust simple, and know that truth is often buried deep in self-serving rhetoric and grey fringes. We are not without blame in all this either. We are the part of a generation that thumbed our noses in our 30’s at our brothers and sisters who were working in factories and raising children as the “not with it” folks. They were the one’s inhibited the transformation we saw as imminent in the Age of Aquarius. We berated the stay-at-home-moms for being part of the problem, by living out all we stood against–being “somebodies wife or mother”.

If Lennon’s Imagine was our utopia, we surely went about it the wrong way. We alienated our own. If there was a resurgence of “spirituality” for our generation, at least half of it went not to “new Age” but rather to fundamentalism. If we brought before the eyes of American the horrors of war in our marching, the largest segment of people supporting the war were from our own as well. Similarly the war over abortion is largely led by the divided boomers, divided not so much by education here, but by birth placement. The early boomers are pro-choice the late boomers like the next generation (13’ers) are decidedly less willing to compromise on the issue.

Our legacy in the end is one fraught by victories on a social scale and disastrous set backs on that same scale. We set out to change the world. And we did, but good God, we never meant for it to go this way.

That’s the way I see it today.

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I Feel So Loved

Tags

best arguments for abortion?, sharing the stupid, the loons, white men speak, white people in danger

I mean seriously people, I (we) are the subject of so much warfare these days. There is a war against America (of which I am a card-carrying member), a war on women (yep, got the requisite lady parts), and now a war on whites (even with a tan uhuh, still basically bleached out fish-belly colorless blah hued).

I don’t know whether to order my AK-47 or start hoarding canned peaches. Do you think fatigues look good on pale-face?

It’s not everybody who can be worth being a subject of abject hatred rising to the level of open war ya know.

I was sitting in my front yard just watching the sun rise, when I heard it blurted on the TV–“GOP warns of growing war on white people”. Well I gotta tell ya, I immediately ducked inside and took cover. While drones may not be smart enough to tell civilians from combatants, I figure it can sure recognize  colors. MY SKIN BETRAYS ME–doncha know that tanning is but a stealth move?

That black guy in the WHITE house (WTF with that?) is all to blame. And the Democrats of course, who have (the white ones at least) been brainstrained of their senses into complicity.

See? Doesn’t the picture here make you feel all nostalgic?

I mean unlock the doors and throw up the shades, this is AMERICA for goodness sake, home of the white people, with just a few of them variously colored folks mixed in as ya know, gardeners, maids, and bus drivers, to make it look pretty. After all, it would be pretty bland if the whole country were non-stop WHITE. Boring! Just an accent of color here and there, just enough, not too much to make people nervous.  Like this:

See the difference?

Wholesome?

and then,

Scary!!!!

And it’s not just black folk, it’s brown too.

Hey, I know from personal experience. Virtually every one I hire to do work around my house, speaks NOT ENGLISH.

I just know they are plotting how to murder me in my bed! Or at least how to take over my whiteness and make it brown-ness. Even some of my neighbors (actually most of them) are ya know, shall we say, overly tanned.

That can’t be good. Heaven knows, New Mexico has been white for well, as long as I can remember anyway, and things are not looking good these days. Between the blacks, the browns, the reds (anybody wanna explain where that designation came from) and the yeller’s, I’m feeling damned uncomfortable most all the time. I mean how DARE these NON-WHITE persons act like it’s theirs. Seriously, cheeky to the max!

And don’t think it’s just me.

Here’s a smattering of brilliant rhetoric from those erudite thinkers who comment at Breitbart.

Dennis pointed out:

White Guilt. Whites have been subtly conditioned to believe they are the root of all problems. They have; however, been the force behind all modern advances in medicine, sanitation, food, comfort, etc. I don’ see the african, mexican, middle-eastern nations making big advances in civilization, do you?

You got me there fella. Oh, damn, using the alphabet aren’t we? Ever been to the pyramids? Machu Picchu? Birthplace of humanity?

Nedarc warns:

Yes I know, and some would call it a ‘stretch’ but I think this is one reason Liberals want an unarmed population which gives the Criminal a situation like “shooting fish in a barrel” syndrome, and then if the Perp. is a Black and the Vicim White (which is the most common) the MSM Never mentions the race unless it is a White Perpetrator… THIS ALONE SHOULD PROMPT EVERY WHITE ADULT TO GET A GUN !!!

Would that be liberal whites or liberal blacks? I’m stuck on “shooting fish in a barrel” being a “syndrome” Is that in the DSM? That stupid MSM, always a black thing, but hey anything to support your local gun seller!

Marbran reminded us:

The left will not stop until they have destroyed this nation and instituted full socialism/communism. They crave to be at the top, away from those smelly unwashed masses that they have brought into this country. UFB.

Which is it, socialism or communism? You guys gotta choose one or the other, it can’t be both. Why does “poor” always mean “smelly”?  Did the left bring “them” into this country? Or perchance was it WHITE plantation owners? Pesky facts.

momsense preaches to her kids that:

White Libs are the ones instituting the anti-white racism. They think that if the savages go native they and their perks, property and privileges will still be safe, and life will still be good. Unfortunately, as always, the working class will be the ones exterminated– just as they always have been the ones to bear the brunt of all the integration fiasco.

Gotta be impressed with Breitbart. Plain unadulterated, in-your-face racism is gladly accepted to their pages. Integration was a fiasco, and no doubt utterly to blame for your ugly self.

However Dan Poole thinks beauty is just skin deep:

From 1776-1965, America’s population was 85% White:15% non-white. Some years it reached as high as 89%. As such, it was us Whites who built this country, sustained it, and made it a nice place to live. We are being cleansed from our own home as a direct result of the 1965 immigration act, and in 20 years time, we will become a minority. The country will become like Honduras, Venezuela, etc. as the White population continues to shrink.

The war on Whites is a war on who we are. It is not an attack on “beliefs” or “principles.” It is an attack on an entire race – our race. It is an attack derived from fanatical hatred and jealousy. What they are really against is the existence of White people like us.

One last thing: While there are individual exceptions to this rule of nature (wolves in sheeps clothing, so to speak), the truth is that on the whole, our “skin color,” as it’s derisively called, is a reflection and an expression of who we are inside. It is not some random, irrelevant coating. The rich, beautiful history of Europe is not the result of “ideas” or “systems,” it is the result of the people who inhabit the continent – and those people are all of the same race and all share the same general phenotype. That is no coincidence.

Now that’s a celebration of stupid! But oh, it feels so good to be a mechanic and still know that you are better than the anyone of color who is curing cancer, defending your country, ruling their country, entertaining millions worldwide, or going into space. Yeah, living in a dream is pretty darn nice. You must feel sooooo special.

snapperman belched:

Without the white man, the US would be Liberia or Venezuela.

Aww, who let the dog out?

tobytylersf pointed out how WHITE MEN suffer:

Obviously you don’t work in an American office, where over 64 percent of all managers nowadays are women.

I personally haven’t had a white male boss since 1993. How about you?

to which M Smith noted:

I personally have had nothing but males since 1999, except for a brief stint with a bimbo in 2007. She giggled a lot and tried to pretend she was under 50, flirting with all the married guys. Didn’t know squat.

Does this mean you won’t defend me in the war boys?

See? I’m not alone. All these find simians recognize as I do that white folks are in grave jeopardy. The question is, from what are they in jeopardy? Methinks atrophied brain cells.

And life somehow trudges on.

Well, You Can Always Think About Sex Instead

Tags

critical thinking, democracy, economic systems, opinions, political systems, reading

See? I’m learning. Wanna get somebody’s attention? Mention sex in the title. Works every time. Just what does that crazy lady have to say about sex? Let’s see.

Nothing.

This is not about sex.

It’s about dumbing down the conversation in the hopes that a certain bunch of yahoos might actually recognize that that thing attached to their shoulders actually can be used for deciding more than whether to have the spaghetti Lean Cuisine for dinner or the Salisbury steak.

Okay, so I said that wrong, and all the knuckledraggers I got to read at the mention of sex, now vaguely think they’ve been insulted and have clicked this off.

No matter, what follows is way over their comprehension level anyway. Only the bright bulbs will continue.

There’s a conversation that seem to be in the offing here, yet it’s not a good idea to say it too loud. The conversation revolves around the question: Is democracy the best choice in a modern world?

It’s a hard question, since there is pretty good evidence that we don’t have anything remotely like democracy, have never had anything remotely like it, and probably won’t have anything like it, so how to compare? Let’s not forget that at the beginning of this great adventure, the real argument was between state’s rights and the central government, and that in most places religion was state ordained, and the people who voted were property holders. Women? They voted only by the power of persuasion.

Basically power in a democracy is wielded by the “eligible” voter (who is eligible becomes rather significant wouldn’t you say?), either directly or through elected representatives who enact laws that are applicable to everyone in a just, fair, and equal way. Greece started the whole thing in Athens, but of course women and slaves were not part of that “eligibility” requirement there either.

So how democratic one is starts with who gets to be part of “the people”. Thus my statement that we have never remotely been  a democracy from the start.

People of course, (mostly the one’s who have already dropped out of this conversation) get democracy all confused with socialism, and all confused on top of that with communism, and theocratic states, and oligarchies, and monarchies, to name the most prominent of the “forms of government”. But not all these are actually forms of government. Socialism and communism are more properly economic systems, akin to capitalism or free market economies.

That’s the problem in a nutshell. We claim that communism is “bad”, but communism as practiced by Lenin and Stalin the late ungreat Soviet Union had little to do with Marx and Engel’s ideal which was a marriage of a communist economic system married to a democratic political system. Similarly, American Democracy joins capitalism with a representative “democracy”. For a good while France and England and others married a theocratic/monarchical political system to a feudal system of economics.

Today, in the US we have an acknowledged mess. Our economic system seems to have led us to a new animal called a corptocracy for want of a better word. An increasingly smaller and smaller number of corporations “owned” by a very few men and even fewer women, control larger and larger portions of the national and increasingly international economies. They “buy” politicians and direct them as to what legislation they wish, and how to vote. They often, through groups like ALEC, even write the legislation themselves. By controlling economies they effectively control politics, and thus are the heads of the political system.

Although the trappings of “democracy” remain, through elections, more and more those votes don’t really count. The corporate interests choose the candidates, and fund their campaigns. As studies show, they have the greatest of influence on the introduction and passage of laws.

Perhaps it is time to at least begin the conversation as to whether or not capitalism or free markets are at all compatible with democracy as we might wish it to be? This is the question asked in This is Not What Democracy Looks Like: The Long Slow Death of Jefferson’s Dream.

The problem with posing the problem, is that it presupposes that the average American can (1) recognize the importance of the question, and (2) critically discern the arguments to be made and choose one that is both logical and right.

And there is much that suggests that this is not possible. In an seemingly endless list of studies done at different universities by respected scholars, the answer remains the same:  If your belief is a necessary part of the your world view, then NO evidence no matter how stellar, no matter how obvious, no matter how unchallenged by any contrary fact, is going to change your mind. You will continue to believe as you always have, because it’s necessary to your psychological well-being. Actual facts to the contrary become merely “conspiratorial” insertions. You don’t have to prove them to be a lie, (because of course you could not), but you can dismiss them out of hand.

This is sad news indeed. It means that much of what I do, is wasted. The people I can convince are already convinced more than likely. Those I need to convince will never be, no matter what proofs I bring to the table.

It seems the new studies need to focus on how one convinces a stone that is about to get crushed by the boulder, that it should roll on down out of the way.

Which all leads to another piece of sad news I’ve come across lately.

I’m reading a book entitled “How to Read a Book“. Now before you laugh and say, oh, for starters, take the cover and bend it to the left, and then look for words, continue to move pages to the left until you find some, then read them. Before you do that, listen a bit.

This book was written by a college professor in the early 1940’s and he updated it in the early mid-70’s, and he now dead. I heard about it in another very modern book I read, whose author suggested that it had impacted him like no other he has read since. It changed how he read. On that note, I purchased it.

So far it’s proving to be both provocative and enlightening. It’s could well be titled today, “How to Read a Book Critically” for that’s what it mostly is designed to do. The author, Mortimer Adler announces that there are four levels of reading. The first, is what passes for competence upon finishing high school. It is akin to being able to read the words and get a basic understanding from the sentences in fairly simple things, like a job application, or reading traffic signs.

Yes folks, that is the level of reading you acquired in high school. You were not taught to read anything beyond the level of basic comprehension. You were not taught to understand the deeper meaning of an author’s arguments, see their flaws or their merits. You were not taught anything about judging the value of what you have read. You read simply for information and not for understanding.

And the sad thing, is that the levels 2 and 3 and 4 are not mastered simply by attending college. Adler posits that some graduate students are still struggling after two years with mastering level four reading, the ability to properly analyze and compare works on the same topic with each other.

Critical thinking is still by and large not taught anywhere.

But you can learn.

If you buy the book and read it.

And it is hopeless to conclude that much will ever change in America until enough of our people can read and think critically. Certainly they cannot now, for if they could, there would not be a Tea Party, there would be no creationists, and there would be no climate deniers. Such people as these would remain hidden in their closets with their goofy ideas. They would certainly not have media access to spew their garbled thoughts across America.

So, you might as well think about sex instead.

 

 

I Kinnah Unnerstan Thees Pepal

Tags

Extreme right-wing, History, revolution, tea party

God knows I try.

But it seems an impossibility. It’s like Jesus is said to have said, to gain your life you gotta lose it.

To understand the Tea Party People, ya gotta lose your mind.

It’s not that I’m such a great student of history, though I know my fair share. Not so much the dates and stuff, but the general threads of causation. I get the big picture.

The Tea Party is filled with deliberately false history. I mean that. It’s “history” designed to support the meme of the party, however that might be defined.

Let’s start with the “tea party” label. Who is a tea party person?  Well, the Koch’s envisioned a “populist” groundswell of people who hated government. Why would they do that? Oh because they are struggling economically and paying taxes has never been popular. So the Koch’s lassoed that common feeling, and then fed the flames that most of the taxes were going to the wrong places: i.e. poor “takers” who were not pulling their weight because the Democrats had found an endless supply of voters by giving them “stuff”–like food.

The Koch’s were willing to accept that a lot of these angry folks brought a lot of ideas of their own about how things should be run, and since the Koch’s vision doesn’t include them every running anything, they allowed for their anti-gay, anti-free choice, anti-immigrant, anti-not-white, pro-fundamentalism stuff to play in the mix. The Koch’s themselves? Who knows what they think beyond accumulating all the money in the world.

So basically the Tea Party contains a collection of economic super conservatives and/or social super conservatives. They can be all one or the other, or some mix of both. A bunch of grifters always rise to the occasion when they smell a mark. And the folks like David Barton step up and decide they will now call themselves “historians” and rewrite it to suit their new audience of gullible angry people.

We all know from a lot of studies that have been done, that to a degree, one is kinda born conservative or liberal. The latest entries in this growing body of work are Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us, and Predisposed: Liberals and Conservatives and the Biology of Political Differences. No doubt these predilections are not written in stone, and environment probably has much to do with it as well. However, it does mean that we enter the world with a certain “world view”. If we get the “liberal” gene we are predisposed to be curious about the world, open to new things, willing to explore changing our minds and our way of doing things. If we get the conservative gene, we are more frightened of the world, see it as dangerous, think it’s best to stay with what has proven good in the past, and stick with our “own kind”.

When the extreme Right decided on adopting a logo and meme to describe who they were and are, it was no doubt comforting to align themselves with the history of the country. Yes, it made sense to see themselves as much like those brave souls who gambled everything to stand against the Mother country and strike for independence. They became Tea Party Patriots, self-described. They took to wearing three-corner hats dripping with tea bags as their costume.

Although studies do show that overall, those who identify as Republicans are a bit more educated than Democrats, this has little to do with intelligence if anything. It merely suggests that to a slightly greater degree, Republicans in general have more education. They also tend to be grossly more white, and older.

Clearly it seems to education has not served them well as regards the history of their own nation. One has but to remember Sarah Palin’s famous explanation of Paul Revere’s ride:

“He who warned uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh by ringing those bells, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

While Palin was sorta right about warning the British (Revere was actually stopped by the British, and had his horse taken from him, and he did tell the British that they would make a mistake if they marched on Lexington, he this was not the purpose of his “ride”.), she added in ringing bells and warning shots, which have nothing to do with the story.

Similarly, Michele Bachmann helped us understand our founding by explaining our “founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery” and that our “founding father John Quincy Adams would not rest until he had eradicated it.”

Of course this was not true. Slavery was written into the Constitution, several of the Founding Fathers owned slaves themselves, and John Quincy Adams was a mere child at the time of the revolution, was not a founding father, and died well before slavery was abolished.

No matter that this sort of thing is common with the Tea Party, they also as we have said, claim to be of the same genre as those patriots. And this is odd indeed.

For if one were to conclude anything from studying that period of our history, one would conclude that the men who pursued independence for this country were anything but conservatives. They were men who were well read in the new theories sweeping Europe based on the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu,  and Voltaire, and scientists such as Isaac Newton who brought us to a new way of understanding the world around us. These men were not conservatives, but just the opposite, they were men of the Enlightenment, that amazing time when there was a burst of new ideas and new thinking.

One of those new ways of thinking was a serious questioning of theocratic and monarchical forms of government. Britain represented both, and those soon-to-be Americans who supported the conservative position were holding with the Brits were called “loyalists” or “Tories”. They were the conservatives of the day, while Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Franklin and those who declared for independence were liberals.

Our Tea Party adherents are not in any way aligned with the kinds of thinking that motivated the Founding Fathers. To claim such a joining is simply intellectually indefensible. Frankly I suspect the average Tea Bibber of today has no clue, has never thought seriously about any of this, and would be shocked if you tried to explain it. They seem to be satisfied that their willingness to argue against taxation automatically puts them in league with the Founders.

That might work if we didn’t have pages of subsequent history to prove otherwise. Those who decided to bring armed rebellion against the new country in the form of the Whiskey Rebellion soon found that the 2nd Amendment was used, not to insure their private right to bear arms against the government, but for the government to put them down as an illegal rebellion against a duly passed law.

I suspect this is all too confusing for the average Tea Bagger. It’s just feels better to wave “Don’t tread on me” flags and feel that you are in the tradition of such great men. Alas, that ship won’t float.

 

Amid All the Eulogies, a Sobering History

Tags

GOP, History, Mandela, racism, South Africa

Nelson Mandela, died a couple of days ago, and the airways have been filled with tributes and analysis of his impact on the political landscape. Indeed Mandela stands forth with a handful of others of the 20th century whom we can look up to as real fighters for freedom and justice. His name is equal to that of Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Caesar Chavez, Lech Waleza in the pantheon of people we adjudge as heroes.

Mandela started as a peaceful revolutionary and democratic socialist in South Africa. The massacre at Sharpeville was said to have radicalized him and led to a more militant Mandela and a upturn violent activities. He co-founded the MK in 1961, becoming ultimately the ANC’s armed wing. He sought help from Casto and other Communist states in his struggle to help his people. After his conviction in 1964 for treason and his incarceration, he developed the present philosophy for which he is noted, and upon his release from prison in 1990.

He went on to become the president of the country in 1994, and today South Africa stands as a model of reconciliation between black and white citizens. Of course that doesn’t mean that all is well there by any means, but Mandela set the tone of forgiveness which allowed the country to move forward instead of devolving into a bloody war.

But most all of this is common knowledge. Today, the US, like countries around the world, are paying tribute to this freedom fighter. Yet it was not so very long ago that things were quite different here as regards this individual.

It is clear that there was no real desire in this country to come to Mandela and Black Africans in general initially. As was true in the 60’s as regards the Vietnam war, the impetus for change came from university campuses across the nation, as students challenged their schools financial investment in the rich industries of South Africa. Local governments in some cases followed suit.

Finally a coalition of Democrats and liberal and moderate Republicans passed a comprehensive bill called the Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986. The near-god of the Right, Ronald Reagan, promptly vetoed it. Back it went to the Congress, where people like Jessie Helms claimed that Mandela was nothing more than an ungodly communist aligned with the Soviet Union. In fact old Jessie led a filibuster against the law.

Other well-known Republicans who voted no to over-riding the presidential veto. Among them were: Phil Gramm, Joe Barton, Dick Cheney, Ralph Hall and Howard Coble and Hal Rodgers. Rodgers, Barton, and Coble  had the gall to commemorate Mandela after his death, making no mention of the fact that they had tried to stop the imposition of sanctions against South Africa to end apartheid and his very imprisonment. Present members of the senate who voted against the bill are: Thad Cochran, Orrin Hatch, and Chuck Grassley.

For the first and only time in the 20th century, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans over-rode the President’s veto and the bill became law. The rest is history.

No doubt before long, the tea party will “adopt” Mandela as one of their own, much as they have laughingly tried to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.

But we remember that the Republicans again, in very large numbers were on the wrong side of history back in 1986. Cheney of course says his vote was proper and that Mandela has “mellowed” since then.

Indeed, some Democrats were as well. Mandela was not taken off the “terrorist watch list” until 2008.

Some “modern” wannabe leaders are finding the going a bit tough in praising Nelson Mandela. Ted Cruz gave the obligatory tribute and was vilified for it by his cadre of insanely crazy followers.   It’s best we don’t forget that either.

 

The Social Compact Revisited

Tags

democracy, federalism, founding fathers, rights and duties of citizens, social compact

It occurs to me that I may have too much time on my hands, or on the other hand, this is what retirement should be all about–unfettered hours to wonder about “things”.

Preferring the latter conclusion, I wonder forward.

Once upon a time in a land far from here, or not, men (let’s be honest that women were seldom asked their opinion and mores the pity for that undoubtedly) gathered to discuss an important topic. Was it fruitful to continue in an “every man for themselves” mode or was their value in grouping together in mutual associations. Such associations of course presupposed that some individual freedom would be lost for the common good of all.

Thus the concept of government was conceived.

At first the common good was no doubt safety from marauding bands of bad guys from other tribes, but it soon led to giving up all kinds of individual rights for all kinds of common ends. If Babor’s extra production of wheat was needed to feed more than just his family, than Manduk’s herds of sheep need be fenced from trampling those fields.

Things went along in that fashion with different systems being tried out, eventually that led to strong men and rule by might rather than agreement. Rebellions and re-formations resulted in a myriad of different systems by which human beings organized themselves into larger and larger entities.

Lo and behold, a bunch of folks made their way to a “new world” which was quite old to the people who already lived there, but new enough to them. After pushing indigenous folks out of the way, they then threw off the yoke of king and Parliament, and found themselves with a country to set up.

Our illustrious fore-fathers, mindful of the social compact ideas of Locke and Rousseau and Montesquieu, set down in Philadelphia and over some months of wrangling and persuasion, arrived at what we call a Constitution, a document that sets out with some generality the rights and duties of citizen and government.

Ask about anyone and they would say, that this phenomenal document has served us well since 1789 or so. That seems to be based on the fact that we are still here as a country. Any cursory look at the document itself suggests that a good deal of the language is antiquated and now unclear. Do we really think in terms of militias any more? What is cruel and unusual?

The world has changed a lot since those days. We are increasingly a global society. We are a people who has grown in size from something in the area of 3 millions to over 300 millions. Our land has tripled or quadrupled since 1789. Our demographics are vastly different. Our ability to travel has increased exponentially. Our ability to get news on almost any subject has as well. Our technologies threaten to out pace our understanding of them or how they will impact on our daily lives.

Government systems are always a compromise of sorts. When we talk about “free” governments, or “elected governments” we speak of the ever-present tension that exists between the individual and the common good. Our political parties seem to split along those lines and have now hardened into an extreme on one side, and a “common good” leaning at least on the other.

Is it not time to rethink who we are, what we want and what we are willing to give up to continue in this great experiment?

It seems we should be having this dialogue (whatever that means). Does this constitution any longer adequately deal with the problems that confront us? Are we beginning (or have we for some decades now?) tortured the language to achieve the outcomes we believe right. Of course the next Court then sees things very differently and they torture it in other ways to achieve quite different outcomes.

Here are some questions I have thought about:

1. Is our current federal government divided into an executive, congressional, and judicial branch with serious checks and balances, a useful system today, given the complexities of our global world? Would a parliamentary system work better, given our intense polarization?
2. Do we really want an unfettered right of individuals to own and carry firearms? Is the ability of people to “redress” government by arms a viable option in this day and age?
3. Given our capabilities in technology, what is the meaning of “search and seizure” for the individual today? Where do we draw the line in terms of our ability to spy on each other? Given the threats of terrorism, should we give police more or less ability to fetter out criminal behavior. Does the ability of some to hack into sensitive systems change our opinions? Does the ability of terrorist elements to get ahold of nuclear material change the equation?
4. If we respect the right of people to believe in God in the fashion they choose, does it make sense to grant tax benefits to religious organizations? What constitutes religious objections to a law? Does one have a concomitant right to be free from religion?
5. What are the duties of citizens? Should all be required to vote or pay a tax? Should we have a federal holiday on election day? How should we limit the influx of money from exceedingly wealthy individual toward either controlling who is the candidate or which party wins? Should we limit the time of electioneering? Should there be only federal registration of voters, and only federal requirements for eligibility?
6. Should everyone be called to some time of “public service”, either through the military or other “public corp” work? What constitutes a “conscientious objector”?
7. Does the government have the right to require education to a certain level, and are certain basics required? Are they reading, writing, and arithmetic, or might they be parenting, basic civics, conflict resolution, critical thinking skills? Should every person have the right to as much education as they desire, and free of charge?
8. Do people have a natural right to life? When? Can or should the state take it away under any circumstances? Which ones?
9. Do people have a natural right to food, IF the state at large can provide sufficient quantities?
10. Do people have a natural right to medical care regardless of their ability to pay if we have the technology to treat them? If not, then what limits attach?
11. Given the costs of incarceration, mental health treatment, and various other costs incurred, does the state have the right to set standards of who can be a parent? Is being able to be a parent the right of being human? Why? Does the state have the obligation to clean up the messes created by those who are not suited to parent properly? What standards would you suggest? Who would set them?
12. Should we allow “professional” politicians? Should citizens be required to “serve” in government for a specified time?
13. Do we wish to set limits on the growth of private business? How big is too big? Should corporations be people? Should they be allowed to control multiple divergent areas and thus virtually control a market?
14. Do individual states serve a purpose in the world today? If so, what? What things should be left to local “governments”?
15. What constitutes free speech? What constitutes speech?
16. Given the technology that is close to approaching an ability to monitor the brain and determine “truthful” statements, do we still wish to maintain a right to remain silent? What constitutes “being a witness against oneself”? Are bodily fluids private? Are brains waves private?
17. Are our bodies ours to do with as we wish? Does the state have a right to deny the use of drugs or other substances? Abortion? euthanasia? How can it, if it can, regulate such things? How does this impact personal privacy?
18. Should there be limits on individual wealth? What kind of tax system do we envision that is fair to all?

It seems to me that these are just a very small number of questions we might ask. Many would argue that some of these are so well established that they should bear no discussion. Is  this true or right? What things would you want to add? What opinions do you have on one or more of the above?

Is it time to rethink this social compact?

Meet the Original Libtards!

Tags

American History, Enlightenment, founding fathers, History, reason, religion

Our friendly Tea Party “Patriots” often tell us that they love the constitution. In fact it takes second place only to that timeless book, the Bible–the one God wrote to tell us how to behave. Probing, (as I am always wont to do), I discover that it’s not only the constitution that is revered, but of course the “founding fathers” who, as you know, among other things, brought us the constitution.

That always amuses me ever so much.

Sadly, it seems common to the PayTREEots not to dig too deeply into the mantras they are taught by Fox and people like pseudo-historian David Barton. If they did dig a bit they would find that their adulation is ironic to say the least. Barton of course would have them believe that the FFs were all deeply religious men and that they basically made the Declaration and Constitution tracts which God hopefully would  approve of wholeheartedly. The truth of course lies quite a ways left of Mr. Barton’s imaginative ramblings.

We all know that many of the founders of our fair republic were anything but religious in their leanings. Jefferson is notable for his refusal to believe in the truth of any of the bible’s miracle stories, actually editing them out of his personal bible. (You can see his bible with all the little cut-outs somewhere, probably at Monticello). The other giant, Franklin might be defined as a deist at best.

This should not be surprising since all the FF were the rich elites of their day, and were well read. And what they read and what inspired them (oh you must remember this from high school) were the likes of Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire. All were “men of the enlightenment”. You could easily add Isaac Newton and Spinoza to the mix as well. They were men who started to see that the world could be explained through normal observation and reasonable deductive conclusion. Some, like Newton, were men of science, who were uncovering the physical laws that governed the universe.

In all cases, they were the heretics of their day as well, rejecting the church’s claims that the bible was the only resource needed to explain the world. Some professed a belief in God, but not in the traditional sense of their day.

The explosion of new thought spread across Europe and Britain, and eventually to America where it inspired Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and others to reject the “god-given” circumstances of both colonialism and monarchy. They were “enlightened” to perceive the world differently and their place within it differently. They could finally conceive of themselves as in control of their own destinies.

They formed a government based on enlightenment principles of freedom, democracy, and most of all reason as the basis for rule. They ushered in the concepts of capitalism, markets, the scientific method, religious tolerance (read tolerance to practice what YOU believed, or be free to believe nothing). It was a movement based on equality and commonality and shared responsibility.

In effect, they were the liberals of their day. They were the heretics to the religious right with all their talk of reason and science. They brought forth a new type of government.

The conservatives of their day? They were Tories.

It thus is so very ironic to think of Tea Party adherents touting their love and admiration for our Founding Fathers, today. In the time of our founding, such people would have been sending their sons to stand with King George III.

But of course Tea People never think that deeply.

I can see why.

It is just too embarrassing.