THIRD WORLD?

 The world was divided into three groups after WWII.

The USA, the UK, the NATO countries, and their allies were termed First World. The Eastern Bloc, Russia, the Warsaw Pact, China, and their allies were deemed to be Second World, and the Third World was comprised of the Non-Aligned Movement[i] and their allies. Of course, it was the first-world nations that decided who was in second and third place!

At the same time, the third world is referred to as countries with extreme poverty. When you come of age, which school you attended, or whom you talk to on a regular basis may determine how you configure the world.

And Today - Definitions do not change overnight but they do evolve. What seemed appropriate eighty years ago, politically, or economically, is now thought to be insulting to those in the “lower” classes. So, now we refer to nations as developed and developing.

Developing - Mark Silver, in an op-ed piece for NPR last year, suggested that today, developing countries are those that need better healthcare systems, better schools, and better ways to bring water and electricity to their people. I would add the need to build more democratic systems of government to the mix. One can think of Nigeria, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Yemen, or Laos among the developing countries. But, who else?

Us - It is hard to conceive of the USA as anything but the most advanced of nations. We think of ourselves as the best, blessed to live in an exceptional place.

Yet too many of us have not left the state in which we were born or traveled outside our national boundaries, except to fenced-in island resorts, or on cruise ships to make that judgment. Much of the world has caught up to us or surpassed us in some ways.

What if someone told us we have lost our luster and are now part of the developing world? How would we react?

Developing- We are impressive compared to a lot of spots on the globe, no doubt about it. And yet, we do have some developing to do, don’t we?

·       We are a divided nation that needs to unify to remain a democratic republic. We are generally rated as the 15^th to 25^th most democratic country.

o   Many states are trying to take away people’s right to vote, making it harder to vote, while some candidates this year will not even commit to accepting the vote of the people in the coming elections

o   Nearly a million people are armed and ready to overthrow the government if their side does not win

·       We have a healthcare system often ranked 11^th in the world or 33^rd among wealthy countries.[ii] Our child mortality is rated at least 15^th in the world, or higher, depending on the source. Insurance companies do not want to cover pre-existing conditions, and serious sickness can result in financial bankruptcy. That doesn’t happen in other developed countries

·       We allocate healthcare based on a person’s employment or wealth. We need to change that.

·       Political hacks are trying to convince school boards to reform curriculum to their political views.

o   Teachers are afraid to teach the truth about our country’s history because it is against the law in some states to teach anything that would make white students uncomfortable

·       Over a million people in California do not have clean drinking water in their homes because the state is unwilling to spend the money to upgrade the infrastructure. Flint Michigan went years without safe water, Jackson Mississippi went weeks without clean water and people are afraid to drink it

·       Puerto Rico lost power nationwide in a recent hurricane because the electric grid and power plants were not brought up to standards after a hurricane five years ago.

 Slippery slope – For the most part, we were better once. The U.S. is still the most vibrant economy in the world. We invent technology that changes the world; we can do anything we set our minds to. But that is economics and technology, not democracy. Our democracy is on a slippery slope.

Bottom of the hill - No, we are not a third-world nation, but we have, in many areas, slipped into the developing nation status.

We need to fix our infrastructure, improve our educational system in many parts of the country, get college and university costs under control, and bring ourselves out of a 1776-bound country and into the world of the 21^st century.

We must convince people that our democracy is in peril and needs to be shored up. We could use some development here and there.

 Bottom line – Let us get out the vote in the next election. Let us vote against those who want to take away our rights. Let us vote against any new law that would make it harder to vote, or limit who can vote. Instead of voting for a party, let us vote for democracy.

 

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The Non-Aligned Movement consisted of 120 countries, including Yugoslavia, India, and Cuba who were not part of another bloc of countries.

[ii] OECD ranking. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development comprises 37 democracies that regularly shared economic and other data for decades. They rank U.S. healthcare 33^rd of the 37 countries. Our child mortality rate is 33^rd as well.

ELITES!

 

In the News

Education was all over the front page of my phone in the last few weeks. Forbes listed its rankings of the best universities in the country. Cal was happy, Harvard not so much. President Biden signed an executive order reducing student loan debt for most middle-class families. Both the far-right and the far-left were unhappy, so it must be a good thing.

A gaggle of state governors and legislatures called for changes in how history is taught and what can be taught. The papers and the airwaves bemoaned the lack of teachers; so many have left the profession and so few joined. Peter Coy wrote an op-ed in the NYT the other day. It was about how grammar was not particularly important. His readers gave him a B-minus. I would be harsher.

I do not believe that the way it was is always better; at least I try to hide the thought from time to time. But up-to-date education news, in general, raises questions about education in general.

A National View

Don’t we want our citizens to be well educated? Don’t we want citizens who can problem solve, tell truth from fiction, and vote wisely? Why is education a “local” issue and not a national issue? It is, and it should be a national imperative. No politician, however, is willing to call for a national set of standards. We should want our students to meet national standards in basic subjects like math, science, languages, literature, and the social sciences. A student in Alabama should have the same math course as a student in Wisconsin. No matter where one lives, two plus two always equals four. The teaching of the history of our country, including warts, needs to be the same. We cannot have the kids up North studying the Civil War while the kids down South fret over the War of Northern Aggression. Why can’t we have one set of educational standards?

Several governors and legislatures have enacted policies that forbid teaching anything about our history that might create negative feelings among students: read White students. Policymakers do not want students to learn about the forced marches of native people from Florida, and the Trail of Tears. They do not want students to know about the horrors of slavery, and the taking of land called Manifest Destiny. They do not want students to know that some people are not treated equally. A democracy can only survive when most of the people are well educated.

Why not Elites?

Generalities are often, well, generalities, but my observation is that it is the well-educated that move society forward with innovative products, increased manufacturing productivity, and superiority in the digital world. India and China educate over eighty-five million high school students each year compared to only fifteen million high school students in the U.S. Consider that the top ten percent of students in China and India, nine million of them, compete with our one and a half million top percenters. China and India are our major economic competitors. To win the economic battles, we need highly educated citizens which makes education a national strategic issue. We need well-educated elites.

The educated elite has become a pejorative when it should not be. Even well-educated elites in the House and Senate, think Harvard undergraduate and Yale Law School, try to convince their constituents that they are only regular folks trying to protect constituents from elites. The lower their state’s education level, the more successful the elites screaming against elitism seem to be.

I do not remember much use of the word elite back when. People were encouraged to get the best education they could; some might argue that was truer for men than for women. The better students went off to the Ivies and highly rated state universities. Those with a science bent often matriculated at Poly’s, MIT, or RPI. Others made other choices, but the aim was to get a good education because the nation needed well-educated people who could reason, invent, manage, implement, and deal with ideas and ideals. There was an understanding that the well-educated and well-trained tradespersons would lead us to a better place, a better life, and a more perfect union.

How did that change? Do we want the uneducated leading us?

Lower Standards?

Peter Coy’s feedback included comments about good grammar being a left-over of the privileged class. But privileged class is another discussion. No matter your station in life, however, you cannot communicate well using lousy grammar. You cannot encourage, discourage, build up, conceptualize, criticize, or hook your reader or your audience with words poorly chosen or connected. OK, rappers can do it, but … So yes, let us build up our supply of well-educated elites. We need them to move the country forward instead of backward. I wish I had studied harder.

What can we do?

How do we get this large contingent of highly educated elite leaders? We might consider, again, national standards for basic educational levels. We might consider making university, college, and trade school an affordable experience for anyone who qualifies and wants to attend. The average college graduate is saddled with about $39,000 in student loan debt. Why should it be that expensive to go to college? Trade schools are expensive as well. Most industrial countries provide university education and trade schools for nearly nothing. Oxford, the Sorbonne, and other prestige schools have incredibly low fees. Most state colleges and universities were once nearly free. We can do it again. We could stop denigrating those who are well educated in our political discourse. We might pay our teachers salaries that compete with the business world or government agencies. 

We might … We might consider education for education’s sake, not just for job training. 

Mirror, Mirror ...

 We either fix our democracy or we will lose it.

 

There is much that the U.S. can learn from countries that are more democratic than we are. They can teach us how to become what and who we thought we were.

 

The bright and shining face I see in the mirror each morning, hiding that fun-loving personality that never stresses over petty things, living life to the fullest, has been told more than once that he does not know his real self. The very notion is always stunning.

 

America also looks at herself in the mirror every morning, confident of what hides behind the image. When told the image might not reflect reality she is stunned. Is it possible that she is not who she thinks she is? Is it possible that she has much to learn and much to save?

 

The U.S. is going through a torturous time and the world watches with glee, dismay, fear, or a combination of each. Daniel Horan, a professor at Saint Mary’s College in Indiana travels the world in his job. He makes a point of spending time with the locals. He has learned that much of the world no longer views us as exceptional or very democratic.[i] Stunning!

 

The events of January 6^th showed the world that we are as vulnerable to political violence and corruption as any other nation. Last week’s CPAC conference in Texas granted Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, a standing ovation when he called for the U.S. to follow Hungary’s example of wanting to exclude people of mixed races and called for his and our troops to unite in efforts to take over Washington and Brussels. All of that is un-American to the core but highly desired by a fringe group of right-wing zealots.

 

Richard Haass, the highly respected President of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Affairs tells us in his upcoming book that “The most urgent and significant threat to American security and stability stems not from abroad but from within.” The threat, he writes, is “from political divisions that for only the second time in U.S. history have raised questions about the future of American democracy and even the United States itself.”[ii]

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We are in a battle for our soul. We need the help of our better angels. Will we be a democracy or an autocracy? Both camps believe their viewpoint will save the country from itself. The division, however, is rupturing the long-held view that we are the paragon of democracy, that we can show the rest of the world how it is done. The world wonders!

 

A recent Pew survey indicated that fifty-three percent of Americans believe the nation is too divided to solve its problems. That is an increase of 13% compared to the 2020 survey. Over half of the Republican voters believe that the last presidential election was rigged and that Trump won, despite evidence to the contrary. Current mid-term election candidates are running on platforms that call for politicizing the voting process, taking away people’s right to vote, making it harder to vote, and even suggesting that the legislature could decide who won. That is not America.

 

 

We are quickly becoming less and less of a democratic country in the eyes of much of the world.

 

What?

 

How could that be?

 

Curiosity sent me into a Googling frenzy. After ignoring the personal musings of people like me, three credible sources stood out: The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and The Economist. Each organization ranks countries based on how democratic their governments, institutions, and economies are. They have a history that stands under scrutiny. They use different criteria, but their analysis is well grounded.

 

The Cato Institute publishes The Human Freedom Index. It ranks countries in two major categories: Personal Freedom and Economic Freedom.[iii] It lists Switzerland as the most democratic country in the world and the U.S. the fifteenth most democratic, behind Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and others. 

 

The Heritage Foundation places more emphasis on economics. They rate the U.S the twenty-fifth most democratic country, behind Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Taiwan, Estonia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and others. 

 

The Economist looks at countries based on how pluralistic they are, how well their government runs, how engaged their citizens are in the political process, their emphasis on preserving civil liberties, and their media freedom. They rank the U.S twenty-fifth, behind the usual suspects.

 

One can argue the finer points of each ranking and move the needle one or two-tenths of a percent in either direction, but the overwhelming conclusion is that we, the epitome of democracy are not particularly democratic anymore. I was stunned and wanted other opinions. I asked a small group of men to scan a list of forty-seven countries, identify the ten most democratic, and rank them 1-10 based on their own opinion, knowledge, or experience. Of the twelve men who responded, only three identified the U.S. as the most democratic. I wish I were stunned.

 

In a speech to the House of Commons in 1947 Winston Churchill announced his view that “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” So, what does democracy demand of us that makes it so much better? what many of us still value to this day and which so many others want to take away. Democracy demands government by the people, not the political party. It demands that we go to the polls, vote, and accept the results. It demands that every adult has the right to vote no matter their race, ethnicity, religion, worth, or education level. It demands that we respect our institutions. It demands that elected officials do what is best for the country. It demands that each citizen contributes to the common good. Simple notions that we seem to have lost in the last few years. It demands too that we believe in the rule of law, equally applied. A simple idea.

 

Does it matter what think tanks and international news magazines opine about our democracy? Does it matter what folks in other countries think about us? Yes! It matters a lot. We are supposed to be the shining city on the hill, the beacon that others search for. If we are not that bright idea, how can we expect other people and nations to want to be democratic?

 

If we the people who started this great experiment cannot sustain a democratic way of life, why should Kenya try, or Yemen, or Hungary, or, well … name a country that would like to be free? Can we go out and tell them to have a free press when ours is on a ventilator? Can we teach them how to develop a non-political judiciary when ours takes away basic rights? Can we teach them how to conduct free elections when so many of us are trying to take away the franchise and refuse to accept election results and the peaceful transfer of power, after January 6^th? Can we teach them about the rule of law when so many are willing to overturn the very idea?

 

When democracy falters, it provides an opening for autocracy.

 

So yes, we can fix our democracy or lose it. We can learn from the more democratic countries around the world. They can teach us how to become what we once were. 

 

 

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[i] Daniel Horan, OFM – National Catholic Record – July 2022

[ii] Reported in Axios August 10, 2022 – Richard Haass, The Bill of Obligations, January 24, 2023, Penguin Random House

[iii] Cato rankings are measures of the rule of law, security and safety, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, freedom of association, assembly, civil society, expression and information, and relationships. On the economic side, it considers the size of government, legal systems, soundness of money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor, and business. 

 

Abject!

 It was one of that a-month-that-was kind of month!

The Supreme Court’s rulings changed America. The long-accepted myth that the Supreme Court was a non-political entity was shattered. It is now store-window political for all to see, shards everywhere.

The Court, you see, overturned a century-old New York law that forbids carrying loaded guns on the street. It overturned its own half-century-old ruling that allowed abortions until the fetus was viable. It ruled that public money could be used to pay tuition for religious schools. It ruled that football coaches could lead students in prayer on the 50-yard line after games: they did not specify which god the students would be forced to pray to.

The Supremes tore down one of America’s primary institutions. People no longer can believe that justice is blind. People no longer can believe candidates for the courts when they pledge their undying support of stare decisis. The last three appointees lied to the senators during private meetings and public hearings.

Justices are appointed for life. One gets the feeling most try to meet that goal. Gorsuch is 55, Kavanaugh is 57, Barrett is 50, Roberts is 67, and Alito is 72 years old. The end of life is a long way off. We are in for another twenty-plus years of conservative rulings.

The Roe decision[i], its reversal, brought people to the streets. Protests were large, they were widespread across the country, and they continue. But it may be a case of too little, too late, and for naught.

The court voted 6 to 3 to overturn Roe, while polls showed that 67% of the population favored a woman’s right to choose an abortion or not. That is apples and cumquats, but many people think a relationship should exist. In the end, it does not matter which side of the abortion argument one favors. The ruling changes the country today and for many tomorrows to come.

Those who favored Roe heap lots of blame on the six conservative justices of the court, on the Republicans in the Senate that consented to their appointment, and on the former president who nominated them. I blame the nabobs of the Democratic Party and their followers.

The fault rests with the abject failure of the Democratic Party to be an effective antagonist to the well-disciplined far-right movement that was willing to take on a fifty-year fight to overturn Roe.  The takeover of the cultural and political winds continues Roe v. Wade unabated. Roe may be just the beginning of the fight.

Since the day the Supreme Court announced in 1973, there has been a deliberate, consistent, and effective effort to overturn it. There have been annual March for Life demonstrations in the streets of cities across the nation. The Democrats ignored them. There have been sermons from the pulpits that galvanized the small town and rural voters who could not imagine voting for the “left”. The Democrats ignored the non-urban areas and their people. Local and state elections were won and lost on the issue of abortion. The Democrats ignored them. Every national election in the last fifty years has, to a significant degree, been about abortion. The Democrats ignored the trends.

The Republican Party, however, saw Roe as an effective wedge issue at the local, county, and state levels; a way to win elections and control State Houses, and governor’s mansions, and send representatives and senators to Washington. It worked because of their arduous efforts, and their consistency in a political battle. Give them that.

The Democrats, on the other hand, assumed Roe signaled the end of the battle, rather than the beginning. The Democrats’ strategy focused on the large population centers with large numbers of the highly educated elite. The Democrats forgot that we are a republic and not a democracy.

When it comes to national politics, and especially senatorial and presidential elections, winning a majority of the votes is irrelevant. The Republicans hold fifty seats in the Senate, yet they stand for forty-two million fewer citizens than the fifty senators on the other side of the aisle.

The result of their failed strategy is that only twenty-two states have Democratic governors and 62 of 99 state legislative chambers are controlled by Republicans. States draw election districts and write the election rules. Counties and city governments enact their own rules, decide local voting precincts, and conduct elections. If one party wants to control Congress or the White House, they need to win elections in local precincts, county elections, and state houses. In thirty-nine states the Supreme Court is elected in some form or another or their term of office is decided by popular vote. You can never forget that we are a republic. The states elect the president. The people only choose the electors.

To win in rural areas, small towns, and suburbs, a party must appeal to the needs of the people in those areas. It should be obvious that the Democratic Party is so out of touch with people in those areas, that voters are willing to elect the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, or Louie Gohmert of Texas, all certified off the chart extreme right-wingers, conspiracy believers, election deniers, and seemingly not too bright, but still considered better candidates than any Democrat running against them.

The marches come too late. Those who are most affected by the Roe decision should have voted in elections for the last fifty years. They should have voted for candidates who supported their beliefs. Yet when a candidate ran for President telling everyone in plain sight that he would only nominate judges who opposed Roe and promised to overturn it, the young voters stayed home and 70-plus million people voted for him. The marches come too late

The fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars but at the feet of Democratic Party leadership. The party needs new leaders who are willing to slog it out over the next twenty or thirty years to change the makeup of those state legislatures, the local school boards, and the state courts. Abject failure requires new leadership!

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[i] Dobbs v. Jackson

 

SPONSORSHIPS!

 I’m not a huge fan of watching loud cars drive around an oval track until they dive into a retaining wall, igniting the fuel and causing general mayhem. But, on Memorial Day weekend it’s patriotic to watch at least one lap of the Indy 500. After that, it is just a variation of zoom, zoom, and more zoom.  

 

The race cars are small, powerful, and held together by decals of sponsoring companies and associations. The drivers’ uniforms likewise are sewn together with the logos of the sponsors. Both are an exhibit of high-stakes advertising. 

 

Wait, wait. Here comes the cliché! 

 

Why don’t members of Congress do the same thing? Imagine if their suits and ties made them walking billboards for their sponsors. You know, here comes Senator Highcost sponsored by Standard Oil, Coal Manufacturers of Wheeling, the Chamber of Commerce, Eggland Eggs, Tyson Chicken, and the NRA. 

 

Well, it seems that paying a member of Congress, or the state legislature, or the city council person to vote one way or another is not a crime if you do it correctly. The movies often showed a senator meeting in some hotel room with undercover FBI agents who offered him (it was always a him back then) a bribe to vote for a bill that favored the purported sponsor. The senator takes the money, the badge comes out, the cuffs come out, and they are off to booking at the nearest police station.  

 

It didn’t have to be that way. The senator could have said no to the bribe, directed the agents to a Super-Pac, or to his campaign war chest and all would have been legal, the agents out of the money and the senator’s campaign a little richer. 

 

This week there is a bipartisan group of senators trying to hammer out a reasonable compromise that will make it harder for folks to get guns and use them to kill school children … or others. Sounds reasonable. Shouldn’t be hard to accomplish. Look at the corporate logos on the senators’ suits. Not there, you say! Well then, maybe they are not being bribed, legally or illegally. Not likely.  

 

A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which four or more people are killed by guns, not including the shooter. In 2022 alone, there have been 220 mass shootings. Gun killings represent 79% of all homicides in the U.S. compared to 37% in Canada, 13% in Australia, and 4% in the UK. 

 

In spite of the problem, at least 50% of the senators refuse to vote for gun ownership regulations. For some, it is a cultural issue in their states. For most, we could assume that they have been bought off by the gun lobby. The NRA alone has made major contributions to a host of Republican senators: Romney $13.6 million, Burr $7 million, Blunt $4.5 million, Tillis $4.5 million, Rubio $3.3 million, Ernst $3.1 million, Portman $3.0 million, Cotton $2.0 million, Toomey $1.5 million, McConnell $1.3 million, and it goes on, as reported by the BBC.  

 

Senator Cruz expressed the need for fewer doors in schools and armed guards at the entrances, and he agrees that teachers should carry weapons as well. Is that the way we want for our schools? 

 

Representative Scalise, Minority Whip in the House, who was shot at a congressional ball game, said this weekend that he opposed any efforts to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. That is another way of saying that he will not support any effort to ensure that only law-abiding citizens can carry guns, that dangerous people can’t carry guns, or that assault rifles be limited to law-enforcement officers and the military. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NRA. 

 

In 1992 I spent some time in Shanghai teaching in an MBA program for middle-level managers who would come to the U.S. to work in Bay Area companies for six months, and then return to China to help manage the trade with our country. Forget, for a minute, the Chinese political system. We can agree that it was not what we would call free. The greatest fear that these thirty-year-old managers had about coming to the U.S. was the violence. Many of these students had been to Europe, some had been to the U.S., and they were afraid for their safety if they came over here. We do not like to admit that we are a very violent country, but we are. We say that violent is not who we are, but it is. We have more guns than people, yet only 44% of Americans live in homes with a gun. 

 

Why can’t we have rules and regulations that ensure that only law-abiding citizens own guns, that people with mental issues can’t own them, and that assault weapons are banned since their only purpose is to kill people? Why? How long must we put up with the insanity? 

 

Brooks Brothers went bankrupt, but maybe Oxford or Hart Schaffner and Marx can design new suits with lots of logos for our solons.

 

 

June 6, 2022 

 

 

So, We Have a Second Amendment!

 How many more times?

Another mass shooting!

Another mass shooting of school kids, fourth grade!

What if it was your child, the one you sent off to school today, the one you expected to come home this afternoon.

What if it were your grandchild?

What if were your great-grandchild?

Are two days of talking about it enough? Is a Congress that can’t even muster enough votes to bring the issue to the floor acceptable to us? Is that what you want for a government response?

 

We must ask the questions. Yes, we have to wonder if this is the country we want it to be. We must ask, “why us?”

We have a Second Amendment. It is written in plain English for all who read it to understand it: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not the infringed.

We have all been in this discussion before. The Supreme Court has been down this road as well. In District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 the court ruled that Heller could keep a handgun in his home for safety reasons. In 2010 in McDonald v. City of Chicago the Court ruled 5-4 that the Second Amendment applied to state and local governments as well as the federal system. But, hear the words written in those cases.

In Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” It ruled that some laws are “presumptively lawful” including prohibiting possession by dangerous people, possession in sensitive places like schools and government buildings, and imposing conditions on the commercial sale of firearms. In McDonald, the court again wrote that while Heller struck down a law prohibiting handguns in the home “it recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever, and for whatever purpose.”

The Second Amendment does not prevent the prohibition of gun ownership for everyone for any reason or the prohibition of regulations related to the manufacturing and importation of weapons.

Laws governing the purchase and ownership of guns in the U.S. are laughable at best. There is no way that a federal agency can do a thorough background check on a person in a matter of seconds. It should take weeks and it should occur before the purchase, not during the sale.

But, they say, we are different. Well, we aren’t different, but our laws are. Let’s look for distinctions.

Too many people in the U.S. are said to have mental problems which cause them to do untoward things. If we have lots of mental problems, wouldn’t you expect people in other countries to have mental problems as well? If they have mental issues but don’t have mass shootings on a nearly weekly basis, what is the distinction? What makes them different or unique? Oh, they don’t let every Tom, Dick, and Jane have guns without deep background checks, and they don’t have a lot of guns in the first place.

They say too many students in the U.S. are under pressure at school. It causes overwhelming stress that makes them do bad things. If that is the case, wouldn’t you expect students in other countries to do the same thing? But they don’t. What is the distinction between them and us? Every Janice and Jimmy don’t have access to military class guns at the tender age of 18.

Many people in the U.S. like to hunt. So do people in other countries. If you hunt you likely own a rifle, no matter the country. What is the distinction? For deer hunting you need a gun meant to shoot a deer, maybe a 30-30, you don’t need a military weapon designed to kill people. In the U.S. the military-style long gun is marketed as a hunting rifle.

Yes, we have mental illnesses that need to be addressed, and Congress refuses to do that. Yes, we need background checks to make sure that crazy people and dangerous people can’t buy guns. Congress refuses to allow that. Yes, we need to control the types of guns, and weapons, that are manufactured in the U.S., or imported from abroad. Congress refuses to do that. Yes, we need to better manage the sale of guns, and make all sales reportable. Congress refuses to do that.

When a Member of the House, a Senator, or a state legislator tells you they support the Second Amendment, but won’t vote for reasonable gun ownership regulations, they are lying to you. The Supreme Court has ruled that reasonable laws are OK. The Court has ruled that the Second Amendment rights are not unlimited. Anyone who refuses to enforce the Second Amendment as the Court has said may reasonably be assumed to be a recipient of money from the NRA, gun manufacturers, or similar groups. It’s a power thing.

So, what about the rancher who needs guns to protect the herd or the hunter who needs a rifle or shotgun? Let them have their guns as long as they can pass a real background check and don’t buy military weapons or take the handguns out of the home they say want to protect.

After the mass shooting in Texas this week, starting that evening, there was a call for more armed guards at the schools. That was the solution of choice that night to prevent more slaughters of our children. Think about that!

 

Governors and Senators want to arm guards and teachers in case a nut job wants to get into the school to kill young children. Not one of them talked about how to prevent someone from having a military-style rifle at age 18 and then selling them clips that hold 30 rounds of ammunition or upselling three or four more clips and the extra ammunition. Nobody wondered why the store owner didn’t notify the police of the unusual sale. Because it is no longer unusual? Is this the country we want to be in? Do we want to be an armed camp?

A young man goes to the store a few days after his 18^th birthday, buys two guns designed to kill people, and walks into a school. He enters a fourth-grade class, locks the door, and shoots 19 young children and their two teachers. The President makes a heartfelt speech, denounced by extremists on the right. The Governor of Texas tells us how horrible the shooting was and then goes off to a gala fundraising event that evening. Politicians orate shooting and how awful they are. The nation takes a long gaping yawn! Nothing happens. Nothing changes.

Then we wait for the next shooting by someone with mental issues and long guns.

This is who we are. We say we aren’t, but we are.

Is this who we want to be?

It wasn’t always like this!

We can be better.

Let us find our better angels!

 

 

 

Hearing?

 

Do you always hear what you heard? I don’t.

More than once, someone has said that I didn’t hear what I heard. Hearing isn’t just sound, it’s understanding.

There is a lot going on at the legislative level in a lot of states. The message of the month seems to be that parents don’t have enough control over the content of their kids’ education and that some textbooks need to be rooted out of the system. I’ve heard it on the news and read about it in newspaper blogs, but I simply scoffed, as one would if they hadn’t heard.

Sometimes, more often than I like, someone has to hit me upside the head and chisel my brain open, before I hear what I heard.

Charles Blow, a highly respected opinion writer for the NYT, opened my eyes, opened my head, the other night on one of the talk shows. I read his opinion piece in the paper the day before and moved on.  When I heard him talk, it bothered me that what he had written hadn’t sunk in. Hearing him was a better way to hear him than reading him.

Much of the brouhaha at fractious school board meetings around the country is much ado about nothing, except the coming elections. It’s a full-on attempt to scare voters and create a further divide in the country.

Parents, governors, and legislators are concerned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is taught in public schools. It isn’t. They are concerned that if anything but white history is taught in the schools it will make children uncomfortable. But, which children?

Most of the bills introduced in state legislatures around the country are designed to prevent white children from discomfort with the racial history of our country. Isn’t that a form of racism? What about the Black and brown kids, the Asians, the Native Americans, don’t they deserve to hear about the history of their country and about the way their ancestors were treated? Charles Blow suggested that most, if not all of these new laws are just Trojan horses. I agree.

I taught junior and senior high school U.S. history and other social studies courses for several years many years ago. Hindsight shows that I taught a white euro-centric version of our history. That is what the textbooks contained at the time. Winners write history. Large influential groups write history. School is where we teach culture, where it is practiced, and where it is inculcated. The content of the history books is the country of the future. Mao taught us that if you want to change a country, first take over the schools.

Our early history was replete with immigrants from northern Europe. The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, formed our experiment at the intersection of what was and what was dreamed of. Jefferson believed all men are created equal while he owned hundreds of slaves. White history didn’t teach that. Grant owned a slave while he commanded the Union forces in their effort to stamp out the original sin of our nation. But, White history didn’t teach that, either. If one lives in a culture that is predominantly white and believes that we are a country for white people or only a certain type of Christian, then the true history of our country can be scary to those who don’t know it. What if we aren’t what we always said we were?

 I googled Big Ideas Learning, a math textbook for second graders.  The Florida Education Board rejected it recently, along with scores of others, because . . . Well, they didn’t really say why except that too many of the math books contained CRT and other unspecified content. Somehow, teaching a second grader to add and subtract numbers equates to CRT if the illustrations depict other than white figures.  Go figure.

The mantra of the month is parental rights to control what is taught in the schools. Forget that it has always been that way. We elect school boards that hire teachers that are professionals and whose suggestions we should trust. No, this isn’t about the content of math books.

This is about scaring white suburban housewives and getting them to the polls in November. I wonder what the mantra will be next month.

I am waiting to hear it when I hear it.