"The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, and our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States." SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, bowing out of the presidential race.
There are many people who might have voted for Senator Clinton for president but who are reluctant to vote for Barack OBama because of his race. White Blue-collar workers, and even White liberals, are turned-off by the failure of inner-city blacks to make progress beyond poverty, crime, and a ghetto mentality. They hear the diatribes of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and it confirms for them that there is a vast chasm between the beliefs of Whites and the resentments of Blacks. Many white people are angry at black people.
What these white voters fail to think about is that there are millions of poor Whites stagnating in underprivileged, crime-ridden sections of large cities, starving in destitute rural communities, and unemployed in poverty-ravaged hills all over America. No president in our history has ever had deeper empathy for these fellow citizens than Barack Obama.
Now is the time to turn that anger against African Americans into exaltation. Now is the time to rid ourselves of the bitterness of sour race relations and to glory in the new thing that has been accomplished by a great nation. Now is the time to look beyond the petty hatreds of the past and seize this moment to project America into a new and better future.
Millions of African Americans all over America have risen out of the dark heritage of slavery and segregation to become leaders in business, science, medicine, law, and politics. Look at Clarence Otis, CEO of Darden Restaurants, parent company of Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and 1,325 other restaurants. Look at Kenneth Chennault, CEO of American Express. Think of Stanley O’Neal, who until recently was CEO of Merrill Lynch, and Richard Parsons, who was CEO of Time Warner. There are many other Black CEOs of major American companies.
Television watchers have only to tune into PBS to see Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who is Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and frequent host of NOVA. Then there is Ted Wells, one of the country’s top attorneys who recently represented Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Wells is a partner in the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison, one of the nation’s biggest and most prestigious law firms (disclosure-I once worked there). Look at Vernon E. Jordan, one of the top attorneys in America, a power in Washington D.C. politics, and friend of Bill Clinton. Look at Oprah Winfrey!
America can take great pride in the achievements of African Americans like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, and thousands of congressman, state legislators, mayors, councilmen, and other politicians. I could go on for many pages listing the accomplishments of outstanding African Americans who overcame prejudice, and often poverty, to help lead this nation.
Now, above and beyond all of these great Americans, has come a man who could lead all of us into a better world. Barack Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was President of the Harvard Law Review. As a lawyer, I can appreciate what an extraordinary accomplishment that is. Obama worked as a community organizer, university professor, political activist, and lawyer before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Along with all of the great African American leaders, he has given the lie to the quietly whispered calumny of Black inferiority.
I feel that this nation has been wandering in the darkness for a long time. We have a chance to overcome the evils of our past and march into a better future. Barack Obama could be the president who brings back the prestige, respect, and appreciation of America around the world. He could be the president who unifies the people of this nation and solves the problems we now face. He could be the president who improves our economy, ends the Iraqi war, brings health insurance to all, begins the fight against global warming, and puts the nightmare of racism behind us.
When the time comes, don’t vote with bitterness and anger. Vote with hope and trust and optimism. If you can, like me, vote with a crescendo of joy and gratitude that you were born in this wonderful country.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Global Warming and the Republican Filibuster
The oil companies and other big businesses that have virtual control of our government must be dismayed now that the government’s own agencies have reported about the existence, causes, and danger of global warming. On May 30, 2008, after deliberately delaying publication for three years, and only after he was ordered to do so by the court, President Bush grudgingly released a report by the Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).
The NSTC report states that there is growing danger from global warming and that human-driven climate change will damage ecosystems and pose challenges to key sectors of the U.S. economy, including agriculture and energy. The report adds that because of greenhouse gas emissions, the “evidence suggests a substantial human contribution to recent hurricane activity.”
On May 27, 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report demonstrating that global warming has already had dire consequences for farming, forestry, and water. The report points to future serious consequences of global warming due to Bush’s inactivity over the past eight years, saying: “Much of this change will be caused by greenhouse gas emissions that have already happened.”
By law, the Bush Administration was required to publish a national assessment on climate change every four years. Until this year, the Administration has refused to do so. The reason is obvious. The reports contradict the Administration’s position that there was no such thing as global warming, or that even if there was global warming, it was not caused by the release of greenhouse gasses.
This is not the only instance in which the Bush Administration has tried to block release of scientific evidence of global warming. Recently, the Inspector General of NASA criticized the activities of Bush Administration appointees for distorting and suppressing NASA’s climate science findings.
The evidence that there is global warming and that it is being caused by human emissions of greenhouse gasses is no longer in any doubt. Exxon Mobile has financed studies relied upon by the Republicans in Congress to argue against climate change science, but it is no longer acceptable or honorable for politicians to rely on these dubious reports by paid flunkies of the oil industry.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN sponsored organization made up of leading scientists from all over the world, issued a report stating that: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea levels.” The report found that the increase in global warming was most likely caused by human emission of greenhouse gasses.
In May, 2008, 1,700 of America’s most prominent scientists and economists, including six Nobel Prize winners, issued a joint statement calling on policymakers to require immediate reductions of at least 80 percent in the heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming. The statement warns of the growing risks of continued global warming, including: rising sea levels, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, snowmelt, floods, disease, and extinctions of plant and animal species.
The opposition to this enormous array of scientific evidence is not other scientific evidence, but a campaign of lying and misinformation by oil companies and other fossil fuel producers. Their motivation is obvious. The cost of reducing greenhouse gasses would cut into their profits.
This past week the Senate debated S. 3036, a bill that would require the reduction of carbon emissions by 70 percent by mid-century. On June 6, 2008, Senate Republicans blocked the bill. Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to invoke cloture and end a Republican filibuster against the bill.
President Bush and the Republican leaders opposed the bill ostensibly on the grounds that it would harm the economy. What are they thinking? Can’t they read? Don’t they realize, as the NSTC and the USDA reports demonstrate, that continued global warming will crush our economy? They are subordinating the future of our economy, our environment, and our planet to transient political considerations. We are on a train thundering toward disaster. The warning sirens are ringing. It’s time to wake up!
Friday, May 30, 2008
Scott McClellan and President Bush
When Scott McClellan was press secretary for President Bush, his daily briefings to reporters were frustrating and annoying. McClellan would respond to questions in a monotonous voice, often repeating the same answer over and over again when the journalists tried to rephrase questions in an effort to get at the truth.
Now, long after he should have spoken up about what was really going on, comes a book by McClellan entitled: "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." McClellan was a long-time Bush loyalist who worked for Bush in Texas. As Press Secretary he stood by Bush and adhered to the Bush line. For this reason, despite whatever criticisms there may be about McClellan’s character, motivation, and tardiness in coming forth, we should pay attention to what he has to say.
McClellan says that at a time when the nation was on the brink of the war in Iraq, the Bush White House made "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed." He says that that President Bush relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade Iraq pushed Bush's presidency "terribly off course.” McClellan calls the Iraqi war a "serious strategic blunder," adding that "the Iraq war was not necessary."
McClellan says that Bush was focused on “accomplish[ing] what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office,” and adopted a “permanent campaign approach,” which included “never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned.”
The book by McClellan claims that the President based his misjudgments on the bad advice of men like Dick Chaney and Karl Rove. I have long realized that this president has been a weak pawn in the hands of powerful personalities like Chaney and Rove.
McClellan repeats an accusation that we have heard before about George W. Bush—that he is “uninquisitive.” That is another way of saying that he is unintelligent. Others, including security advisor Richard A. Clarke, and former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, have described Bush as “uninquisitive,” “unquestioning,” “uncurious,” and “anti-intellectual.” That would be okay in an ordinary person. In the President of the United States, it is scary.
This president, who sent our soldiers to die needlessly in Iraq, has opposed pay raises for the military, a $40-a-month increase in benefits for military widows, and expanded educational benefits for veterans. Bush has sought to impose on veterans new fees ranging up to $750 for care at veterans’ health-care facilities. In addition, Bush sought to significantly reduce federal support for state-operated veterans’ homes and to impose new limitations on who can be admitted. He has set himself up as a money-saver despite the fact that he never vetoed a single pork-engorged, earmark-stuffed spending bill while the Republicans were in control of Congress.
Recent polls have shown that President Bush has approval ratings averaging about 28 percent. I’m not surprised, but I wonder what kind of people still approve of this dreadful chief executive. There are surely many die-hard conservatives who care more about social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage than about Iraq. But how do you explain John McCain? Surely he ought to know better! McCain went on supporting Bush’s escapade in Iraq long after it became clear to a majority of the American people that we had been badly mislead.
It reminds one of Vietnam. When there were no more lies to tell and no more justifications to offer for the sacrifices and the blood of our youth, Johnson, Nixon, and their apologists made the argument that we could not pull out of Vietnam because our prestige was at stake. They argued that if we left, there would be a blood-bath. Those arguments were false then and they are false now.
McCain has made it a basic part of his campaign to say that pulling out of Iraq now would lead to catastrophe and that Barack Obama wants to surrender in Iraq. No doubt McCain is being advised to pursue this dubious rout by Republican strategists who think that it will be an effective campaign tactic. The answer to it is that we got into the war through lying and deception. Let’s stop the lying and deception and get out now.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The Closing of Antioch College
The decline and fall of Antioch College in Yellow Springs Ohio has been attributed to many causes. The college was a focal point of a humane belief in social activism. Its students went around the world trying to improve the lives of others. But a rigid adherence to political correctness and left-liberal orthodoxy were certainly contributing factors in its demise. The whole basis of liberal thought is the open mind. It is fundamental to a college environment that there be an atmosphere of free inquiry and open discussion. Antioch appears to have sometimes stifled these goals in the interest of ideology.
When a visiting high school senior was asked if he was going to apply for admission to Antioch, he said: “No way. There is no football and no cool chicks.” I’m sure that some prospective students were turned-off by things like the bizarre rule that a person had to obtain permission for each stage of sexual seduction (e.g. “may I kiss you”). Some parents were probably disturbed by things like the invitation to a cop-killer to speak at commencement. No doubt, the growing identification of the college as a refuge for students with alternate sexual and gender identification led to lower enrollments. But I suspect there may have been other factors leading to the downfall.
Antioch College was a “Liberal Arts” College. It combined different academic disciplines in a method of teaching called the “Connected Curriculum.” To my knowledge, however, it did not have a business school. (Since I wrote this article I have learned that there were some business classes, but I do not know if there was any business major.) In this day and age, the lack of a business school probably accounted more for lowering enrollment than lack of a gridiron powerhouse with delectable cheerleaders.
When I was in college, business courses were considered by liberal arts students to be “gut” courses, something you took if you were not smart enough to master the liberal arts. Today, it is the reverse. The business schools are the hardest to get into. A college education is looked upon as a ticket to success, and a major in classical languages is about as useful as a ticket to Tierra del Fuego.
Paul Neely, publisher of The Chattanooga Times and a trustee of Williams College, recently wrote about today’s higher education, saying: “Students and their families have defined undergraduate education in starkly utilitarian terms. Young people do not go to college to become fuller persons, better citizens, or more lively intellects. In postwar America, college education is justified by the additional lifetime income it will produce.”
Victor E. Ferrall, Jr., former president of Beloit College, said in a recent article in the publication, Inside Higher Education: “The 95 ‘true’ liberal arts colleges, the pure practitioners of liberal education, are in trouble.…. A career-directed education has become the goal of many, if not most, young people eager to get ahead. A purely materialistic motivation for getting an education is now the norm, not the exception. There is economic pressure on liberal arts colleges to add career-directed courses and programs to attract students.”
Why should students study the liberal arts or humanities? Stanley Fish, a college professor, literary critic, and columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column on the question of whether the humanities do anything to help humanity. His conclusion was—No, they don’t. He said: “To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’ the only honest answer is none whatsoever…. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said ….diminishes the object of its supposed praise.”
The humanities enrich your life, enlarge your mind, and make you more human. When you immerse yourself in literature, philosophy, theology, history, music, art, and other liberal arts subjects, you go through a door into a different world. They not only give a kind of pleasure, they give a kind of life; a life of the mind. They will not earn you any money or confer any power, but they can give you joy and make you a whole person.
Antioch College may open again someday, but as America becomes more and more a marketplace in which the only ideas exchanged are the ideas of commerce, demand for education in the liberal arts will diminish and, perhaps, disappear. The tragedy is that Twenty-First Century America may no longer have any use for Antioch College or for the cultivated, educated people produced by liberal arts colleges.
When a visiting high school senior was asked if he was going to apply for admission to Antioch, he said: “No way. There is no football and no cool chicks.” I’m sure that some prospective students were turned-off by things like the bizarre rule that a person had to obtain permission for each stage of sexual seduction (e.g. “may I kiss you”). Some parents were probably disturbed by things like the invitation to a cop-killer to speak at commencement. No doubt, the growing identification of the college as a refuge for students with alternate sexual and gender identification led to lower enrollments. But I suspect there may have been other factors leading to the downfall.
Antioch College was a “Liberal Arts” College. It combined different academic disciplines in a method of teaching called the “Connected Curriculum.” To my knowledge, however, it did not have a business school. (Since I wrote this article I have learned that there were some business classes, but I do not know if there was any business major.) In this day and age, the lack of a business school probably accounted more for lowering enrollment than lack of a gridiron powerhouse with delectable cheerleaders.
When I was in college, business courses were considered by liberal arts students to be “gut” courses, something you took if you were not smart enough to master the liberal arts. Today, it is the reverse. The business schools are the hardest to get into. A college education is looked upon as a ticket to success, and a major in classical languages is about as useful as a ticket to Tierra del Fuego.
Paul Neely, publisher of The Chattanooga Times and a trustee of Williams College, recently wrote about today’s higher education, saying: “Students and their families have defined undergraduate education in starkly utilitarian terms. Young people do not go to college to become fuller persons, better citizens, or more lively intellects. In postwar America, college education is justified by the additional lifetime income it will produce.”
Victor E. Ferrall, Jr., former president of Beloit College, said in a recent article in the publication, Inside Higher Education: “The 95 ‘true’ liberal arts colleges, the pure practitioners of liberal education, are in trouble.…. A career-directed education has become the goal of many, if not most, young people eager to get ahead. A purely materialistic motivation for getting an education is now the norm, not the exception. There is economic pressure on liberal arts colleges to add career-directed courses and programs to attract students.”
Why should students study the liberal arts or humanities? Stanley Fish, a college professor, literary critic, and columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column on the question of whether the humanities do anything to help humanity. His conclusion was—No, they don’t. He said: “To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’ the only honest answer is none whatsoever…. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said ….diminishes the object of its supposed praise.”
The humanities enrich your life, enlarge your mind, and make you more human. When you immerse yourself in literature, philosophy, theology, history, music, art, and other liberal arts subjects, you go through a door into a different world. They not only give a kind of pleasure, they give a kind of life; a life of the mind. They will not earn you any money or confer any power, but they can give you joy and make you a whole person.
Antioch College may open again someday, but as America becomes more and more a marketplace in which the only ideas exchanged are the ideas of commerce, demand for education in the liberal arts will diminish and, perhaps, disappear. The tragedy is that Twenty-First Century America may no longer have any use for Antioch College or for the cultivated, educated people produced by liberal arts colleges.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Dirty Politics
Someone forwarded to me an e-mail about Barack Obama entitled: “A man will come from the east.” It starts out in capital letters saying: “LETS ALL PRAY FOR WISDOM AND DISCERNMENT AND PRAY FOR EACH OTHER.” Then it says: “GOD BE WITH US ALL! God help us if this man is elected!! But it is all stated in the Bible and it will happen sooner or later.” It then goes on to say: “I believe the Bible has warned us that ‘A man will come from the East that will be charismatic in nature and have proposed solutions for all our problems and his rhetoric will attract many supporters!’ When will our pathetic Nation quit turning their back on God and understand that this man is A Muslim….First, Last and always…. And we are AT WAR with the Muslim Nation, whether our bleeding-heart, secular, Liberal friends believe it or not. This man fits every description from the Bible of the ‘Anti-Christ’.”
The piece then presents its puny evidence that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that it is the plan of the Muslims to destroy the United States by electing one of their own to the presidency. The e-mail postures itself as a Christian reaction to the candidacy of Barack Obama and ends with the words: “WITHOUT GOD, WE ARE NOTHING!!!” It is a loathsome, despicable piece of right-wing slander.
It was supposedly written by Darlene Millican, wife of the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Sun City Florida. The church, however, denies that she wrote it, saying: “Mrs. Millican has absolutely no idea how this horrible e-mail was started AND named her as the originator of such slander. Darlene has spent her life teaching others to be and do their best for Christ . . .which includes not slandering others!”
The e-mail asks people to forward it to others, and I have no doubt that many thousands of people have forwarded it on just as one person did to me. If you have received it, I suggest that unless you are trying to refute it, you not forward it to anybody. It is pure falsehood. It is pure libel. It is pure excrement.
Why is it that people who claim to be “Christian” are so often right-wing hate-mongers? When I was raised as a Christian we were taught to love others and never to spread slander. The purveyors of this odious e-mail stoop to the bottom level of political discourse in order to malign a man whom they hate because of his color, his background, and his politics.
It is self-evident that Barack Obama is not a Muslim or anything like one. Even if he were a Muslim, that would not be grounds for such hate. We are not, as the e-mail contends, “AT WAR with the Muslim Nation.” We are not at war with any Muslim nation. We are at war with the same kind of extremist fanatics as those who wrote the e-mail.
The e-mail claims that “Barack Heussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.” Are the morons who wrote this nonsense ignorant of the fact that Obama joined that church over 20 years ago and has attended services there regularly? Obama was married in the church and had his children baptized in the church. Does it take very much education to realize that such actions would be profoundly sacrilegious to a genuine Muslim?
I do not believe that this junk was issued by the campaigns of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I doubt that the Republican Party had anything to do with it. I am sure that this was the work of a lunatic fringe of the religious right, a group that stokes the embers of bygone racism and thinks America should be a strictly “Christian Nation.”
The Democratic primaries are still going on, and the main presidential election campaign is yet to be officially started. Nevertheless, this is an example of the kind of dirty politics we can expect in the future—not from the McCain campaign, but from the disaffected zealots of the religious right.
The piece then presents its puny evidence that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that it is the plan of the Muslims to destroy the United States by electing one of their own to the presidency. The e-mail postures itself as a Christian reaction to the candidacy of Barack Obama and ends with the words: “WITHOUT GOD, WE ARE NOTHING!!!” It is a loathsome, despicable piece of right-wing slander.
It was supposedly written by Darlene Millican, wife of the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Sun City Florida. The church, however, denies that she wrote it, saying: “Mrs. Millican has absolutely no idea how this horrible e-mail was started AND named her as the originator of such slander. Darlene has spent her life teaching others to be and do their best for Christ . . .which includes not slandering others!”
The e-mail asks people to forward it to others, and I have no doubt that many thousands of people have forwarded it on just as one person did to me. If you have received it, I suggest that unless you are trying to refute it, you not forward it to anybody. It is pure falsehood. It is pure libel. It is pure excrement.
Why is it that people who claim to be “Christian” are so often right-wing hate-mongers? When I was raised as a Christian we were taught to love others and never to spread slander. The purveyors of this odious e-mail stoop to the bottom level of political discourse in order to malign a man whom they hate because of his color, his background, and his politics.
It is self-evident that Barack Obama is not a Muslim or anything like one. Even if he were a Muslim, that would not be grounds for such hate. We are not, as the e-mail contends, “AT WAR with the Muslim Nation.” We are not at war with any Muslim nation. We are at war with the same kind of extremist fanatics as those who wrote the e-mail.
The e-mail claims that “Barack Heussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.” Are the morons who wrote this nonsense ignorant of the fact that Obama joined that church over 20 years ago and has attended services there regularly? Obama was married in the church and had his children baptized in the church. Does it take very much education to realize that such actions would be profoundly sacrilegious to a genuine Muslim?
I do not believe that this junk was issued by the campaigns of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I doubt that the Republican Party had anything to do with it. I am sure that this was the work of a lunatic fringe of the religious right, a group that stokes the embers of bygone racism and thinks America should be a strictly “Christian Nation.”
The Democratic primaries are still going on, and the main presidential election campaign is yet to be officially started. Nevertheless, this is an example of the kind of dirty politics we can expect in the future—not from the McCain campaign, but from the disaffected zealots of the religious right.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Sportsmanship
It was an uplifting moment--literally. In a softball game between two women’s teams, Central Washington College and Western Oregon University, a tiny batter for Western Oregon hit a three-run homer and started around the bases. She missed first base, and as she turned back to touch it her knee gave-out and she fell to the ground in pain. Because she could not run, and her teammates could not help her, two members of the Central Washington team carried her around the bases, gently lowering her to touch each base. The people in the stands wept. The home run won the game. The opposing players won something greater.
We live in a very harsh world. Each day’s papers bring stories of horrors and atrocities. We read about professional athletes using performance enhancing drugs, abusing animals, or engaging in crude and violent behavior. We are inundated with the win-at-any-cost philosophy of owners, coaches, and players. A losing season often results in the firing of a coach, manager, or general manager. But every once in a while we hear about something fine and heroic, and it renews our faith in ourselves.
Coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers is quoted as saying that “Winning isn’t everything. It is the only thing.” Lombardi was, of course, wrong. He was too stupid to understand what sports are all about. He was too uneducated to realize that the whole reason behind sports is participation, not outcome. There are evolutionary reasons why we participate. Winning is just the icing on the cake.
The Nobel-Prize-winning ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, taught that as a result of evolution, there has developed in animals, including the human animal, a means by which aggression can be avoided. He noted that wolves offer their throats to opponents as a way of deflecting an attack. Most animals, including fish, have evolved rituals in order to turn away from conflict. According to Lorenz, humans have also evolved such rituals, which we call sports. Humans use athletics as a means of channeling those aggressive instincts which might otherwise lead to violence.
It is self-evident that we are not fully evolved. Our leaders still try to resolve disputes through a form of insanity called war. The instinctive blood-lust that lurks in our hearts is not always fully satisfied by a touchdown pass. Sports fans can become rowdy and sometimes downright nasty in the stands. Soccer fans in Europe and South America look upon the game as war by other means and will erupt in combat before, during, and after the matches.
One indication of our evolutionary backwardness is the sound of fans booing their own teams and players. Often, the only reason for the booing is that the players have not played up to the standard demanded by the fans. The players are probably doing the best that they can, but the ignorant boo-birds are dissatisfied. I can understand booing the umpires and referees. That is what they are there for. I can understand booing players who use performance-enhancing drugs, make outrageous statements to the press, or take bribes. But booing your own team simply because they are not winning shows not only a lack of class but also the mentality of an imbecile.
There is, however, something inside most of us that is deeply moved by heroic sportsmanship. Julie Reed says that only women would do what the players of Central Washington College did. That may be. I have never seen anything like it in men’s sports. The most notable acts of sportsmanship by men seems to be found in the more genteel sports like tennis and golf.
I think we yearn for a better world in which heroic acts of sportsmanship and selflessness are commonplace. Somehow, within the process of cultural evolution, we are evolving behaviors which go contrary to our instincts for competition and destruction. Whereas evolution might dictate that we let the sick and starving people in Africa die so that the fittest might survive, our human nature tells to feed those people and heal their children.
Perhaps we will get better as a species. Perhaps we will replace conflict with cooperation. Perhaps we will someday abolish war. Perhaps the young women on a softball team in Washington can show us how to touch the bases.
We live in a very harsh world. Each day’s papers bring stories of horrors and atrocities. We read about professional athletes using performance enhancing drugs, abusing animals, or engaging in crude and violent behavior. We are inundated with the win-at-any-cost philosophy of owners, coaches, and players. A losing season often results in the firing of a coach, manager, or general manager. But every once in a while we hear about something fine and heroic, and it renews our faith in ourselves.
Coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers is quoted as saying that “Winning isn’t everything. It is the only thing.” Lombardi was, of course, wrong. He was too stupid to understand what sports are all about. He was too uneducated to realize that the whole reason behind sports is participation, not outcome. There are evolutionary reasons why we participate. Winning is just the icing on the cake.
The Nobel-Prize-winning ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, taught that as a result of evolution, there has developed in animals, including the human animal, a means by which aggression can be avoided. He noted that wolves offer their throats to opponents as a way of deflecting an attack. Most animals, including fish, have evolved rituals in order to turn away from conflict. According to Lorenz, humans have also evolved such rituals, which we call sports. Humans use athletics as a means of channeling those aggressive instincts which might otherwise lead to violence.
It is self-evident that we are not fully evolved. Our leaders still try to resolve disputes through a form of insanity called war. The instinctive blood-lust that lurks in our hearts is not always fully satisfied by a touchdown pass. Sports fans can become rowdy and sometimes downright nasty in the stands. Soccer fans in Europe and South America look upon the game as war by other means and will erupt in combat before, during, and after the matches.
One indication of our evolutionary backwardness is the sound of fans booing their own teams and players. Often, the only reason for the booing is that the players have not played up to the standard demanded by the fans. The players are probably doing the best that they can, but the ignorant boo-birds are dissatisfied. I can understand booing the umpires and referees. That is what they are there for. I can understand booing players who use performance-enhancing drugs, make outrageous statements to the press, or take bribes. But booing your own team simply because they are not winning shows not only a lack of class but also the mentality of an imbecile.
There is, however, something inside most of us that is deeply moved by heroic sportsmanship. Julie Reed says that only women would do what the players of Central Washington College did. That may be. I have never seen anything like it in men’s sports. The most notable acts of sportsmanship by men seems to be found in the more genteel sports like tennis and golf.
I think we yearn for a better world in which heroic acts of sportsmanship and selflessness are commonplace. Somehow, within the process of cultural evolution, we are evolving behaviors which go contrary to our instincts for competition and destruction. Whereas evolution might dictate that we let the sick and starving people in Africa die so that the fittest might survive, our human nature tells to feed those people and heal their children.
Perhaps we will get better as a species. Perhaps we will replace conflict with cooperation. Perhaps we will someday abolish war. Perhaps the young women on a softball team in Washington can show us how to touch the bases.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A Community of Pimps
The newspapers recently reported on a woman who, with the help of her boyfriend, used her 17-year-old daughter as a prostitute in order to get money for drugs. Such abhorrent behavior deserves the maximum penalty our system of justice is capable of imposing. So we should ask, what is the big difference between the actions of that mother and the actions of the male and female members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints who groom their 13 and 14-year-old daughters for marriage to 45 and 55-year-old-men?
If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.
But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape.
I have nothing against these nitwits practicing polygamy if that is what they want to do. There should be no laws against polygamy. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.
It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than parental pimping. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.
You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and complain in robotic voices about the loss of their children. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 14-year-old daughter marry an older man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.
It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.
We should not be moved by the fact that the children express the wish to return to their homes. I’m sure that most children of sexually abusive parents would say the same thing. These children need to be taken away from the primitive environment where men wield absolute power over women. But taking the children away is not enough. These abusive parents should be prosecuted for child abuse, child endangerment, and statutory rape.
If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.
But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape.
I have nothing against these nitwits practicing polygamy if that is what they want to do. There should be no laws against polygamy. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.
It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than parental pimping. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.
You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and complain in robotic voices about the loss of their children. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 14-year-old daughter marry an older man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.
It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.
We should not be moved by the fact that the children express the wish to return to their homes. I’m sure that most children of sexually abusive parents would say the same thing. These children need to be taken away from the primitive environment where men wield absolute power over women. But taking the children away is not enough. These abusive parents should be prosecuted for child abuse, child endangerment, and statutory rape.
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