DIETRICH BONHOEFFER grew up after World War One as part of Germany’s wealth and elite. At fourteen, he declared his intent to become a Theologian. It offered an acceptable and respected career in the State Church and afforded a good education with a satisfactory income as a pastor and scholar.
Young, Bonhoeffer joined a Bible Study group. In one of these meetings he describes meeting Jesus. This personal confrontation became his Damascus Road experience. It challenged him so much that he spent the rest of his life, as he described it, “living Jesus” before his troubled countrymen.
Dietrich was a high achiever, and as sometimes happens, he came into conflict with another high achiever. One came from aristocratic Germany, the other from the lower economic levels. Being high achievers, they eventually conflicted with each other; their lives diametrically opposed each other politically and religiously.
Dietrich’s counterpart was Adolph Hitler, the socialist paperhanger. Hitler was busy building political power and conquering the world. He convinced the church he meant well--no harm. The Church compromised and submitted, but with time Hitler became the head of the brown-shirted Nazi storm troopers. As the political head of Germany, the Fuehrer was en route to conquering his world.
The young Scholar, now Dr. Bonhoeffer, came to America to lecture. Friends begged him to stay, the war made it difficult to go home. In what was probably the second most important decision of his life, he determined he must return to Germany; otherwise he would lack the integrity to lead the Church and save them from destruction. He did return, and established an underground educational network to insure the future life of the Lutheran Church.
Teaching and rallying the church, he modeled life “in Christ” for the people. Eventually, the Nazi’s found and imprisoned him at Buchenwald; later they took him to Flossenberg for extermination. On his last day, the guards came as he conducted a service for his fellow prisoners, meditating on “With his stripes we are healed.”
Guards took him from the service to prepare for hanging the following morning. With General Patton’s cannons within hearing distance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer died at the end of a hangman’s noose--thirty-nine years of age.
His last recorded word went to his English friend, Bishop Bell: “This is the end--for me, the beginning of life.” The doctor who watched him die, concluded, “I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” His word to the world was: “We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s largehearted-ness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes. . .”
I see parallels between Hitler’s advance to power and the abuses foisted upon America today by the Political Right. Erwin Chemerinsky details a full chapter of evidence of expanding presidential powers beyond what our founding fathers specifically designed. Contrary to the practice of Cheney and Bush, I found agreement with James Madison (The Federalist Papers) interesting: “No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that …[t]he accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” (The Conservative Assault on the Constitution/81).
As Chemerinsky pointed out, “arrests and especially detentions are initiated by the executive and are required by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to be approved by the judiciary. Searches … must be approved by the courts under the Fourth Amendment” etc. They had enough of King George and wrote the Constitution so that at least “two branches of government should be involved in all major government actions” (contrary to Bush imperialism). Senator Robert Byrd long criticized this practice by his president.
An endless list of examples illustrate the political right usurping powers, and limiting civilian powers. I give the following examples, not as examples of my moral code, but of the inconsistencies of the political right. Thus, telling students in recent years that condoms prevent STDs is sin, but the Administration lying about WMD is a political win. It became okay for Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff to play with each other’s clubs but for two men to marry was a sin.
A gun bill shielded gun dealers and gun makers from lawsuits and background checks, and protected the abundance of assault weapons, while 1% of gun dealers supplied 57% of the criminal guns (leaving very unsafe communities for the rest of us.. It was okay for the Religious Right to snoop in women’s medical records (anti-abortion) but John Ashcraft refused to allow an FBI background check on suspected terrorists.
Again and again, the religious right has made a case for connecting our faith and displaying the TEN COMMANDMENTS (which they do not obey), but they reject the social justice of the Prophets, Jesus, and the Gospels (only abortion and same-sex become sin). Glen Beck calls social justice a code word for socialism … how unbiblical!!
While they make their case for the Bible, which teaches truth telling (John 8:32), President Bush claimed the “Born Again” experience yet lied blatantly about the Iraq War and other issues. He defends torture with a “Damn right!” Republicans telling voters a vote for a democrat was a vote for Osama bin ladin was also a lie!
Referring to the Huckabee phenomenon, Steve Benon wrote tongue in cheek on Talking Points Memo: “The Republican party’s religious base is supposed to be seen not heard. Candidates are supposed to pander to this crowd, not actually come from this crowd” (Huffington,Right Is Wrong/313). Huckabee was an excellent specimen of the political religious right, but they rejected him.
Huffington noted that it took less than two weeks to investigate the exposure of Janet Jackson’s “boob” at the Super Bowl, but it took fourteen months for President Bush to form the 9/11 Commission. As she suggests, Janet Jackson’s exposure was sin, but exposing Valarie Plume was a White House win (315). What kind of thinking is this?
I do not favor abortion but I do not want a religious Pharisee legislating the issue for me. When I support a President whose political platform takes a different political approach, I do not expect to be called a “baby killer.” I have been and I am not!
Simply stated, the Right is wrong about civil liberties because in the name of keeping us safe it has abused executive power, by passed laws and treaties, quashed dissent, and withheld information from both the public and the Congress. They are wrong about American values, which they fundamentally reduce to guns, gays, and abortion (another story).
While doing this, they ignore both the moral imperative of fighting poverty and the biblical injunction that “we shall be judged by what we do for the least among us.”
Many Germans thought Bonhoeffer was politically incorrect for opposing Hitler and rallying the church back to the orthodox faith. With issues as the political right continues to promote inconsistently, I can see American Christians fighting the same uphill battle against the political powers that be, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisted with his life.
From Warner’s World,
this is an issue more people need to think through more seriously, walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
THE BUSH DYNASTY
I am doing lots of paper shuffling these days. I am finishing up old manuscripts, re-visiting my card and manuscript files and finding all kinds of jewels that I share on my blog, or on Yahoo, or Face Book, or wherever I think it might help.
One recent commentator disapproved of my support of our current president. He tried to turn it into a moral issue, because his view of a certain issue allows him to view the current president as a bad and unpatriotic person.He concluded that my support of the President made me--well,"pretty BAD."
In that same discussion, he further faulted me for referring back to former President Bush on whom I put much of the blame for many of the issues we currently face. I do refer back to President Bush frequently. Fact is, I read many books about the Bush Dynasty and about the family’s political and economic grab for power.
Since I was in Midland, TX at the same time George H. W. Bush was a smalltime wildcatter in West Texas, I did a lot of reading on the Bush family (pro and con)during the Bush years in the White House. I know just a little of how he used his “up East” fortunes to re-position himself as a Texas Patriot and know what West Texas Wildcatters thought of this established Easterner.
The Bush Dynasty has an illustrious, sometimes notorious, reputation (not always patriotic but always personally profitable, in political power grabbing, selling of wartime armaments, investing in the energy industry, et al.One of the books I read was The Book On Bush by Eric Alterman & Mark Green (Viking Press, 2004).
In some notes I took at the time of that reading, I found this interesting quote from when VP Cheney sat for “Face the Nation” on CBS. “Virtually all of the recommendations” claimed Mr. Cheney over the airwaves, “for financial incentives and assistance Tax credits and so forth are for conservation and increased efficiency and renewables. There are no new financial subsidies of any kind for the oil and gas industry” (bold added).
That is an interesting statement in light of the fact that it conflicts with the actual results published by TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE, the US Public Interest Research Group, and FRIENDS OF THE EARTH. Alterman and Green noted three conflicts in particular (p.19):
1) $28 billion in subsidies and tax breaks on oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries.
2) $3 billion investment credits to develop “clean coal” technology.
3) $500 million in relief to oil and gas from royalties owed the government.
The $28 billion, when added to $33 billion in already scheduled subsidies total $61 billion, or $220 from every American.
I find such irregularities consistent with the code of silence in the White House during Bush-43’s terms and the lack of ethical integrity regarding what is true and false. Thus, the findings on the Iraq War that have since come to light remain quite consistent with the ethics, or lack thereof, that I find in the Political Right that is currently battling to recapture the political stage.
“And so it goes with the issues we face,” wrote George McGovern, that paragon of Protestant liberalism, according to most all far right Christian fundamentalists. Never mind that Mr. McGovern has much to commend him out of his Christian heritage and clergy background. The fact is that Mr. McGovern is a “political liberal” and is so designated by ALL CONSERVATIVES who disagree with him.
I draw these distinctions deliberately because many of my Right Side friends feel very deeply about certain moral, spiritual, ethical issues, as do I. But as for these “issues” we face, Mr. McGovern went on to point out, “Everyone of them has a crucial moral component. It is immoral to pollute the air, water , and soil of God’s creation. It is immoral to permit a fifth of America’s children to grow up in poverty … It is immoral for 800 million of the world’s people to be hungry from birth to death” - or for that matter the $50 million to advirtize during the closing weeks of the 2004 campaign - (McGovern/The Essential America/120, emphasis added).
I believe it is immoral for Mr. Cheney to slant the truth as he did in the opening quote of this article. I believe it was immoral for the Bush Administration to lie about the Iraq War as they did, not to mention treasonous, unpatriotic, and wrong. I believe the recent corporate expenditures in the 2010 Election were obscene and immoral, for a variety of reasons.
I do not believe the Political Right has the right to pick and choose what is ethical and moral, and what is not. We must be consistent in our ethics across a wide spectrum of issues, and our lives must support that consistency. However, I will commend the Political Right for its persistence. One of my favorite ball-players was Mickey Mantle, the slugger from Commerce, OK. Mickey persisted in striking out 1710 times. He topped The Babe’s record of 1330 strikeouts. In the process, he became a peer of Babe Ruth as a homerun hitter. Persistence paid off for Mantle.
Persistence seemingly paid off for those political pundits perpetuating the Right Side irregularities of the 2010 Election. To say the least,they garnered some political victories with their persistence.
THE ONLY THING IS, I do not believe American Democracy can survive those 1710 strikeouts of the Babe, not if they are anything like the eight years of the recent Bush administration.
Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
One recent commentator disapproved of my support of our current president. He tried to turn it into a moral issue, because his view of a certain issue allows him to view the current president as a bad and unpatriotic person.He concluded that my support of the President made me--well,"pretty BAD."
In that same discussion, he further faulted me for referring back to former President Bush on whom I put much of the blame for many of the issues we currently face. I do refer back to President Bush frequently. Fact is, I read many books about the Bush Dynasty and about the family’s political and economic grab for power.
Since I was in Midland, TX at the same time George H. W. Bush was a smalltime wildcatter in West Texas, I did a lot of reading on the Bush family (pro and con)during the Bush years in the White House. I know just a little of how he used his “up East” fortunes to re-position himself as a Texas Patriot and know what West Texas Wildcatters thought of this established Easterner.
The Bush Dynasty has an illustrious, sometimes notorious, reputation (not always patriotic but always personally profitable, in political power grabbing, selling of wartime armaments, investing in the energy industry, et al.One of the books I read was The Book On Bush by Eric Alterman & Mark Green (Viking Press, 2004).
In some notes I took at the time of that reading, I found this interesting quote from when VP Cheney sat for “Face the Nation” on CBS. “Virtually all of the recommendations” claimed Mr. Cheney over the airwaves, “for financial incentives and assistance Tax credits and so forth are for conservation and increased efficiency and renewables. There are no new financial subsidies of any kind for the oil and gas industry” (bold added).
That is an interesting statement in light of the fact that it conflicts with the actual results published by TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE, the US Public Interest Research Group, and FRIENDS OF THE EARTH. Alterman and Green noted three conflicts in particular (p.19):
1) $28 billion in subsidies and tax breaks on oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries.
2) $3 billion investment credits to develop “clean coal” technology.
3) $500 million in relief to oil and gas from royalties owed the government.
The $28 billion, when added to $33 billion in already scheduled subsidies total $61 billion, or $220 from every American.
I find such irregularities consistent with the code of silence in the White House during Bush-43’s terms and the lack of ethical integrity regarding what is true and false. Thus, the findings on the Iraq War that have since come to light remain quite consistent with the ethics, or lack thereof, that I find in the Political Right that is currently battling to recapture the political stage.
“And so it goes with the issues we face,” wrote George McGovern, that paragon of Protestant liberalism, according to most all far right Christian fundamentalists. Never mind that Mr. McGovern has much to commend him out of his Christian heritage and clergy background. The fact is that Mr. McGovern is a “political liberal” and is so designated by ALL CONSERVATIVES who disagree with him.
I draw these distinctions deliberately because many of my Right Side friends feel very deeply about certain moral, spiritual, ethical issues, as do I. But as for these “issues” we face, Mr. McGovern went on to point out, “Everyone of them has a crucial moral component. It is immoral to pollute the air, water , and soil of God’s creation. It is immoral to permit a fifth of America’s children to grow up in poverty … It is immoral for 800 million of the world’s people to be hungry from birth to death” - or for that matter the $50 million to advirtize during the closing weeks of the 2004 campaign - (McGovern/The Essential America/120, emphasis added).
I believe it is immoral for Mr. Cheney to slant the truth as he did in the opening quote of this article. I believe it was immoral for the Bush Administration to lie about the Iraq War as they did, not to mention treasonous, unpatriotic, and wrong. I believe the recent corporate expenditures in the 2010 Election were obscene and immoral, for a variety of reasons.
I do not believe the Political Right has the right to pick and choose what is ethical and moral, and what is not. We must be consistent in our ethics across a wide spectrum of issues, and our lives must support that consistency. However, I will commend the Political Right for its persistence. One of my favorite ball-players was Mickey Mantle, the slugger from Commerce, OK. Mickey persisted in striking out 1710 times. He topped The Babe’s record of 1330 strikeouts. In the process, he became a peer of Babe Ruth as a homerun hitter. Persistence paid off for Mantle.
Persistence seemingly paid off for those political pundits perpetuating the Right Side irregularities of the 2010 Election. To say the least,they garnered some political victories with their persistence.
THE ONLY THING IS, I do not believe American Democracy can survive those 1710 strikeouts of the Babe, not if they are anything like the eight years of the recent Bush administration.
Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
WE HAVE A DRUG PROBLEM!
I was one of those people forced to change my Health Insurance because Medicare C & D were eliminated. That among other reasons makes the following quotation of great interest to me. I quote it from a published source reliable for the basic facts, but I do not reference it so either Left or Right can yell prejudice or propaganda, (Quote in italics):
Although Medicare is a model for the sort of public health plan that could be extended to cover all Americans, thanks to the Bush administration’s reform of so-called Part D, it is forbidden by law from bargaining with drug manufacturers to lower prices and is unable to get the best deal for the millions of senior citizens who use its drug plans. On average, the prices for the most commonly prescribed drugs are 58 percent higher when obtained through Medicare than through the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is allowed to negotiate prices with drug companies (the reason my bro in law goes to VA for drugs). That gaping hole through which millions of Americans now fall thanks to Part D could easily be plugged if Medicare were allowed to bargain. But the free market is worshipped by the Right, it seems only when it doesn’t interfere with the mega profits of the monopolies that fund it.
It’s not terribly surprising that Big Pharma would prefer to be shielded from the enormous buying power of Medicare. The artificially high prices goose their profit margins. In the campaign to preserve their windfall profits, the drug companies have enlisted the Right. And to justify its egregiously laissez-unfaire position, the Right does a little rhetorical yoga. Here’s how Ron Pollock of Families USA explains it: ‘Opponents of Medicare bargaining make two contradictory claims. First, they claim that private market competition under Part D is more effective in reducing prices than Medicare bargaining; and second, they claim that Medicare bargaining would reduce prices so significantly it would harm research and development [much of which is already paid for by research grants]. These arguments cannot both be true--and, indeed, neither is true” (bold added).
Compound this with the fact that top drug companies spend two to three times as much on marketing as they do on research. Add to this the fact that they spend huge amounts hawking cures for once unheard of medical conditions like Restless Leg Syndrome, or some illogical need for Viagra or its substitute (You can‘t watch a baseball game without seeing that Viagra sign on the right field fence). Then, note that President Bush used another of his rare vetoes to block a bill that would have allocated $30 (b)illion for the National Institutes of Health, where cutting-edge research is done, and an additional $6.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This remains one more example of the assault on American Values and the general populace that is slowly being reduced to less than affluent levels while the upper echelons of wealth receive increased protection via tax cuts, tax havens, S&L scandals, Wall Street meltdowns, Housing Industry calamities, et cetera, ad infinitum … ad nauseum ...
This is …
Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
Although Medicare is a model for the sort of public health plan that could be extended to cover all Americans, thanks to the Bush administration’s reform of so-called Part D, it is forbidden by law from bargaining with drug manufacturers to lower prices and is unable to get the best deal for the millions of senior citizens who use its drug plans. On average, the prices for the most commonly prescribed drugs are 58 percent higher when obtained through Medicare than through the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is allowed to negotiate prices with drug companies (the reason my bro in law goes to VA for drugs). That gaping hole through which millions of Americans now fall thanks to Part D could easily be plugged if Medicare were allowed to bargain. But the free market is worshipped by the Right, it seems only when it doesn’t interfere with the mega profits of the monopolies that fund it.
It’s not terribly surprising that Big Pharma would prefer to be shielded from the enormous buying power of Medicare. The artificially high prices goose their profit margins. In the campaign to preserve their windfall profits, the drug companies have enlisted the Right. And to justify its egregiously laissez-unfaire position, the Right does a little rhetorical yoga. Here’s how Ron Pollock of Families USA explains it: ‘Opponents of Medicare bargaining make two contradictory claims. First, they claim that private market competition under Part D is more effective in reducing prices than Medicare bargaining; and second, they claim that Medicare bargaining would reduce prices so significantly it would harm research and development [much of which is already paid for by research grants]. These arguments cannot both be true--and, indeed, neither is true” (bold added).
Compound this with the fact that top drug companies spend two to three times as much on marketing as they do on research. Add to this the fact that they spend huge amounts hawking cures for once unheard of medical conditions like Restless Leg Syndrome, or some illogical need for Viagra or its substitute (You can‘t watch a baseball game without seeing that Viagra sign on the right field fence). Then, note that President Bush used another of his rare vetoes to block a bill that would have allocated $30 (b)illion for the National Institutes of Health, where cutting-edge research is done, and an additional $6.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This remains one more example of the assault on American Values and the general populace that is slowly being reduced to less than affluent levels while the upper echelons of wealth receive increased protection via tax cuts, tax havens, S&L scandals, Wall Street meltdowns, Housing Industry calamities, et cetera, ad infinitum … ad nauseum ...
This is …
Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Do We Have Any Educational Rights?
Shoplifters should be punished, but LIFE for a $153 theft? “No one in the history of the United Stastes ever had been sentenced to life in prison,” writes Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding dean at UC Irvine School of Law and author of The Conservative Assault on the Constitution, (Simon & Schuster, NY, 2010). That, claims this distinguished Professor of Law, is what California’s “three-strikes law” did for Leandro Andrade, now residing in prison for life, although he never in his life committed a felony.
The Constitution touches all of us, as this distinguished professor of Constitutional Law reveals in this newest volume. He shows how the constitution affects us in several key areas of our lives, including education, the office of the President, and personal liberties.
Chapter two details the progress of a public system of “separate and unequal schools.” Quoting cases in Texas and Alabama, the author details the erosion of our rights to public education. Quoting the 1973 case of “San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, “the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that such disparities in school funding to not violate the U.S. Constitution” and that “there is no constitutional right to education and thus that differentials in spending between wealthy and poor school districts . . .are constitutionally permissible” (p.35).
Although disparity of funding between school districts does violate some state constitutions, Alabama is not one of them. In fact, “Alabama … amended its state constitution by voter initiative in 1956 to declare that there was no right to public education in the state … This was done to allow Alabama public schools to close rather than desegregate” (p36).
Chemerinsky reviews “Brown v. Board of Education (1954 desegregation) and ranges widely in referencing educational cases involving our individual interests. He documents extensively, coming forward from the Nixon Administration to the present, with an increasingly conservative court. He shows (1) how Affirmative Action has been effectively eroded, (2) how a new system of public school education has become segregated between wealthy white suburban school districts and impoverished ethnic Metropolitan school systems, and (3) how the swing to the political right began with the Nixon Administration and continues to the present.
This well documented chapter concludes with this statement: “Nowhere has the conservative assault on the Constitution and the effect of the conservatives justices on the Supreme Court been more apparent or more important than in its re-creation of separate and unequal schools” (p. 65). Liberal versus conservative is not the problem, it is when we allow our politics to influence our behavior in ways that deny fundamental rights of individuals created in the image of God.
I had read of this problem before and wanted to believe it NOT so, just a reconfiguring of our metro demographics. On the other hand, Jonathan Kozol, Shame of the Nation, exposed this problem, as he related his personal experiences in public education. I would have to be blind and dishonest if I did not admit I have seen my share of disingenuous racial and ethnic disparities. Experience teaches me that we all profit when we can learn from each other.
Yet, here is Nixon appointee Justice Lewis Powell, writing for the majority in the case of San Antonio ISD v. Rodriguez (1973), saying: “Education, of course, is not among the rights afforded explicit protection under our Federal Constitution. Nor do we find any basis for saying it is implicitly so protected“ (Chemerinsky/52/emphasis added”
That Court rejected the claim that education is a fundamental right, saying, “It is not the province of this Court to create substantive constitutional rights in the name of guaranteeing equal protection of the laws” (Ibid, emphasis added).
This all comes as quite a revelation to me, a Caucasian American who grew up with the understanding that under God we all deserved an equal opportunity, be we Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, or otherwise … and that wealth and poverty were non-determinents.
Now, I am learning differently, although our founding fathers prepared their document so we could find equality of opportunity when we came on the scene. John Adams saw the necessity of this when he declared: “…The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national case and expense for the formation of the many” (John Adams/David McCullough/2001/364).
On the other hand, that self-taught Abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, also discovered that “Education unfit’s a man to be a slave.”
Here is how John Adams summarized it: “Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant” (McCullough/105).
While the political right claims the high moral ground of politics and faith as their basis, I find them wading in sinking sand,falling short in their practice. They remind me of the biblical Pharisees, standing on the street corner praying all the right words, but again and again falling far short of the simplest words of Jesus to love their neighbors as themselves.
Ultimately, they destroyed Jesus on a cross rather than share the equal opportunity they thought belonged only to them.
From Warner's World, I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
The Constitution touches all of us, as this distinguished professor of Constitutional Law reveals in this newest volume. He shows how the constitution affects us in several key areas of our lives, including education, the office of the President, and personal liberties.
Chapter two details the progress of a public system of “separate and unequal schools.” Quoting cases in Texas and Alabama, the author details the erosion of our rights to public education. Quoting the 1973 case of “San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, “the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that such disparities in school funding to not violate the U.S. Constitution” and that “there is no constitutional right to education and thus that differentials in spending between wealthy and poor school districts . . .are constitutionally permissible” (p.35).
Although disparity of funding between school districts does violate some state constitutions, Alabama is not one of them. In fact, “Alabama … amended its state constitution by voter initiative in 1956 to declare that there was no right to public education in the state … This was done to allow Alabama public schools to close rather than desegregate” (p36).
Chemerinsky reviews “Brown v. Board of Education (1954 desegregation) and ranges widely in referencing educational cases involving our individual interests. He documents extensively, coming forward from the Nixon Administration to the present, with an increasingly conservative court. He shows (1) how Affirmative Action has been effectively eroded, (2) how a new system of public school education has become segregated between wealthy white suburban school districts and impoverished ethnic Metropolitan school systems, and (3) how the swing to the political right began with the Nixon Administration and continues to the present.
This well documented chapter concludes with this statement: “Nowhere has the conservative assault on the Constitution and the effect of the conservatives justices on the Supreme Court been more apparent or more important than in its re-creation of separate and unequal schools” (p. 65). Liberal versus conservative is not the problem, it is when we allow our politics to influence our behavior in ways that deny fundamental rights of individuals created in the image of God.
I had read of this problem before and wanted to believe it NOT so, just a reconfiguring of our metro demographics. On the other hand, Jonathan Kozol, Shame of the Nation, exposed this problem, as he related his personal experiences in public education. I would have to be blind and dishonest if I did not admit I have seen my share of disingenuous racial and ethnic disparities. Experience teaches me that we all profit when we can learn from each other.
Yet, here is Nixon appointee Justice Lewis Powell, writing for the majority in the case of San Antonio ISD v. Rodriguez (1973), saying: “Education, of course, is not among the rights afforded explicit protection under our Federal Constitution. Nor do we find any basis for saying it is implicitly so protected“ (Chemerinsky/52/emphasis added”
That Court rejected the claim that education is a fundamental right, saying, “It is not the province of this Court to create substantive constitutional rights in the name of guaranteeing equal protection of the laws” (Ibid, emphasis added).
This all comes as quite a revelation to me, a Caucasian American who grew up with the understanding that under God we all deserved an equal opportunity, be we Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, or otherwise … and that wealth and poverty were non-determinents.
Now, I am learning differently, although our founding fathers prepared their document so we could find equality of opportunity when we came on the scene. John Adams saw the necessity of this when he declared: “…The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national case and expense for the formation of the many” (John Adams/David McCullough/2001/364).
On the other hand, that self-taught Abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, also discovered that “Education unfit’s a man to be a slave.”
Here is how John Adams summarized it: “Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant” (McCullough/105).
While the political right claims the high moral ground of politics and faith as their basis, I find them wading in sinking sand,falling short in their practice. They remind me of the biblical Pharisees, standing on the street corner praying all the right words, but again and again falling far short of the simplest words of Jesus to love their neighbors as themselves.
Ultimately, they destroyed Jesus on a cross rather than share the equal opportunity they thought belonged only to them.
From Warner's World, I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
NATIONAL DIALOGUE NEEDED
In 2005, Nancy Pelosi called on President Bush to produce a report detailing his strategy for success in Iraq, then offered a stinging indictment of the war: “This war in Iraq is a grotesque mistake; it is not making America safer, and the American people know it” Majority Leader DeLay, Majority Whip Blunt, and Speaker Hastert all condemned Pelosi. DeLay demanded an apology for reckless comments, Blunt charged she “emboldened” the enemy, and Hastert played the “support our troops” card, saying “I think that our military is the finest military on the face of the earth” (Huffington/Right Is Wrong/2008/165-168).
Reading that, what I want to know is, “what does our “finest fighting machine” have to do with the fact of Bush-Cheney dragging us into an unnecessary war by using false and manipulated evidence?” What is the relationship between our “finest military” with the fact that President Bush used the Iraq War in recording a record national debt?
What has the quality of our troops to do with the fact that the Right (and the war) was wrong, in that the war did not have to be fought, more than 4,000 American dead need not have died and more than 150,000 Iraqi civilians need not have died. The Right (and the war) was wrong because Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not a state sponsor of international terrorism (We punished Suddam Hussein for such behavior, but the Bush Cabinet remains free today and we make an ogre out of Barak Obama).
The Right was wrong because democracy did not spread in the Middle East, nor did Iraq ever greet us as the Liberators Cheney pictured. The Military was a Right Wing pawn in a war that was neither cheap nor easy, which President Bush photo-opted as “Mission Completed” but which we are still fighting and for which we are still paying--dearly (at home and abroad).
George Bush imperialized the presidency, which our founders established as a three-way sharing of powers between Congress, the Courts, and the Office of President. As it stands today, the American people never had a vote in Desert Storm-1990 or in the Iraq War under Bush-43, but we pay for it today with a constitution slowly being eroded by the Political Right.
Now that the 2010 Election is history, the Pelosi Problem has been relegated to a back burner and we face Boehner's Boner. The Political Right wants to reject Health Care for America and maintain military operations that consume 57% of our national expenditures. I am not at all surprised when I learn that suicide in the military is the 3rd leading cause of death or that suicide kills more soldiers than enemy fire kills in Afghanistan.
I have enough problems with issues of war(s) as a civilian; I’m not sure how I would handle it if I were in the military and saw how my patriotism had been abused, and then I had to come back to the kind of country the war is creating.
There are better and more honest ways to deal with these issues, and we have not yet begun to have the dialogue we need regarding them, especially when the public wakes up to the ways it has been duped and its freedoms lost. Fact is, I doubt we will ever be allowed to dialogue these issues!
AND, we have not yet begun to deal with the problems of Islam we have allowed into our midst. They are proving beyond doubt that Islam disapproves of President Bush’s “cherished democracy,” as they staunchly resist democritization of Iraq - Iran - Saudi Arabia et al.
America needs further conversation … Warner’s World … walkingwithwarner.blogspot
Reading that, what I want to know is, “what does our “finest fighting machine” have to do with the fact of Bush-Cheney dragging us into an unnecessary war by using false and manipulated evidence?” What is the relationship between our “finest military” with the fact that President Bush used the Iraq War in recording a record national debt?
What has the quality of our troops to do with the fact that the Right (and the war) was wrong, in that the war did not have to be fought, more than 4,000 American dead need not have died and more than 150,000 Iraqi civilians need not have died. The Right (and the war) was wrong because Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not a state sponsor of international terrorism (We punished Suddam Hussein for such behavior, but the Bush Cabinet remains free today and we make an ogre out of Barak Obama).
The Right was wrong because democracy did not spread in the Middle East, nor did Iraq ever greet us as the Liberators Cheney pictured. The Military was a Right Wing pawn in a war that was neither cheap nor easy, which President Bush photo-opted as “Mission Completed” but which we are still fighting and for which we are still paying--dearly (at home and abroad).
George Bush imperialized the presidency, which our founders established as a three-way sharing of powers between Congress, the Courts, and the Office of President. As it stands today, the American people never had a vote in Desert Storm-1990 or in the Iraq War under Bush-43, but we pay for it today with a constitution slowly being eroded by the Political Right.
Now that the 2010 Election is history, the Pelosi Problem has been relegated to a back burner and we face Boehner's Boner. The Political Right wants to reject Health Care for America and maintain military operations that consume 57% of our national expenditures. I am not at all surprised when I learn that suicide in the military is the 3rd leading cause of death or that suicide kills more soldiers than enemy fire kills in Afghanistan.
I have enough problems with issues of war(s) as a civilian; I’m not sure how I would handle it if I were in the military and saw how my patriotism had been abused, and then I had to come back to the kind of country the war is creating.
There are better and more honest ways to deal with these issues, and we have not yet begun to have the dialogue we need regarding them, especially when the public wakes up to the ways it has been duped and its freedoms lost. Fact is, I doubt we will ever be allowed to dialogue these issues!
AND, we have not yet begun to deal with the problems of Islam we have allowed into our midst. They are proving beyond doubt that Islam disapproves of President Bush’s “cherished democracy,” as they staunchly resist democritization of Iraq - Iran - Saudi Arabia et al.
America needs further conversation … Warner’s World … walkingwithwarner.blogspot
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
ELECTION DAY 2010
Christmas Day 2006 I was in Lexington, Kentucky listening to the news when WKYT announced the Kentucky Legislature tightened safety regulations in response to the 16miners’ deaths in Kentucky during that year.
Thinking afterward about what I had heard, I became aware of two issues:
1) The company contributed to 13 of 16 deaths by failure to comply with safety regulations, and
2) the Legislature responded by adjusting how reporting was done.
The Legislature did nothing whatsoever to further protect miner’s safety and prevent further deaths. That Legislature protected corporate owners by glossing over the issues involving real safety prevention. It represented a legislature that protected profits more than the people producing the profits. Politically, it was a Republican dominated legislature of elected officials that cared more about protecting the status quo of that special business interest rather than legislating for the common good.
This instance offers one classic example of the philosophical differences between Democratic and Republican philosophy of government. A democratic philosophy of government would have utilized government to provide safer working conditions for the miners, whereas the Republican insists on smaller government (fewer regulations), believing free market justifies whatever brings profit.
On this Election Day of 2010, we are fighting a frightening political war in Washington. Two deeply entrenched political institutions fight each other. The turf battle is so intense that everybody is bent on “winning the vote.” Philosophically, everyone says the end justifies the means, which amounts to the survival of the fittest, win at any cost.
Meantime, like the 06-KY Legislature, well-heeled corporate interests protect their financial interests at all costs. If you don’t believe it, examine the Texas oil & energy giants opposing cleaning up California public air pollution.
People have been stirred up about emotional issues but a highly-emotional non-thinking public has lost track of who is keeping the home fires burning.
No one is really protecting the rights of the people expected to do the voting. From Warner’s World, we are
walkingwithwarner.blogspot
Thinking afterward about what I had heard, I became aware of two issues:
1) The company contributed to 13 of 16 deaths by failure to comply with safety regulations, and
2) the Legislature responded by adjusting how reporting was done.
The Legislature did nothing whatsoever to further protect miner’s safety and prevent further deaths. That Legislature protected corporate owners by glossing over the issues involving real safety prevention. It represented a legislature that protected profits more than the people producing the profits. Politically, it was a Republican dominated legislature of elected officials that cared more about protecting the status quo of that special business interest rather than legislating for the common good.
This instance offers one classic example of the philosophical differences between Democratic and Republican philosophy of government. A democratic philosophy of government would have utilized government to provide safer working conditions for the miners, whereas the Republican insists on smaller government (fewer regulations), believing free market justifies whatever brings profit.
On this Election Day of 2010, we are fighting a frightening political war in Washington. Two deeply entrenched political institutions fight each other. The turf battle is so intense that everybody is bent on “winning the vote.” Philosophically, everyone says the end justifies the means, which amounts to the survival of the fittest, win at any cost.
Meantime, like the 06-KY Legislature, well-heeled corporate interests protect their financial interests at all costs. If you don’t believe it, examine the Texas oil & energy giants opposing cleaning up California public air pollution.
People have been stirred up about emotional issues but a highly-emotional non-thinking public has lost track of who is keeping the home fires burning.
No one is really protecting the rights of the people expected to do the voting. From Warner’s World, we are
walkingwithwarner.blogspot
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