Category Archives: government

Hope

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About twenty-five years ago Dr. Harrison Schmidt traveled from his Albuquerque home to speak to a group in Jefferson City.  I do not recall everything he said although I recall the general topic.  But one sentence from his remarks is vivid in my memory and it is worth thinking about today.

We are living through troubling times, particularly in the last two calendar years, times of uncertainty and fear caused by a pandemic, times of uncertainty in our political system and campaign-induced fears, warranted or not, of our national future followed by the frightful events of January 6 and their lingering impacts on our political mentality.

There are major differences of opinion about the greatness of our nation.  Have we been made greater or has our greatness been dimmed by events of the past half-decade?  Do we dare think, regardless of how we answer that question, that we truly can be great or greater still?

We cannot be either if we wallow in self-pity, if we focus on our unresolved shortcomings as a people, if we accept that we as a people are limited in what we can achieve, what we should achieve, what we must achieve.  We cannot be if we worry more about false differences that divide us—and those who would stoke fears of those differences—than in the common interests we have within our diversity.

And so we come to Dr. Schmidt, world-famous geologist best known for finding one rock and finding some orange soil.  The rock is known as Troctolite 76535.  The soil is a mix of orange and black volcanic glass formed in a process we known as a “fire explosion.”

One rock and some dirt.

From the Moon.

Harrison Schmidt was the last person (for the last 48 years and counting) to set foot on the Moon.  The rock has been called by NASA “without a doubt the most interesting sample returned from the Moon!”  Note the exclamation point. Mission objectives do not often feature them.  Troctolite 76535 is at least 4.2 Billion years old and is significant beyond its age. It shows that the Moon once had a magnetic field “generated by a dynamo at its core” as our Earth has.

And the dirt shows that the Moon once was volcanically active, explosively so.

Dr. Schmitt, who reached 86 in July, is one of the four Moonwalkers still alive (Buzz Aldrin turned 91 on January 20; Dave Scott turned 88 in June and Charlie Duke will hit 86 in October).  Schmitt was 37 when I watched from the press site at Cape Kennedy as he, Gene Cernan, and Ronald Evans thundered into the night sky in December, 1972.

More than two decades later, when he talked in Jefferson City about space, his mission, the discoveries made in the Apollo program and the opportunities that waited for a nation unafraid to reach for the stars, he reminded us:

“Apollo is often forgotten as having been a program where 20-year old men and women were managed by a few 30-year olds, none of whom believed anything was impossible.”

Think of that last clause: “None of whom believed anything was impossible.”

That’s the path to national greatness.  It’s not just for 20 and 30-year olds.

Whether it’s finding rocks on the Moon, finding a vaccine against a worldwide plague within months or even finding middle political ground, we know that nothing is impossible.  But we have to look beyond ourselves. We have to look up for hope rather than down on others.

This entry can be dismissed as saccharine babble. And it might be by those to whom tomorrow is to be feared and to whom uncertainty precludes discovery. But they will not seek exclamation points in life and might limit opportunities for others to find them.

Greatness is not created by cultivating fear and uncertainty personally or on a broader stage.

Greatness is achieved by those who go beyond those issues, none of whom believe anything is impossible. Political leaders might say it.  But it is you and I who must live it and lift up others to join us.

It’s time for more exclamation points!

CRT

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A legislative committee has started holding hearings on Critical Race Theory, a 50-year old academic and legal-studies concept that has been weaponized for political advantage in the last few years.  Among the strongest criticism is that it rewrites history, changing the narrative from a nation founded on Christian values to a narrative that makes white people ashamed of their race (even, some critics say, brainwashing kindergartners into being ashamed of being white).

CRT has become so pervasive in our civic discussion that my Sunday School class talked about it a Sunday or two ago.  More accurately, I talked about it to the Sunday School class.

Faith is a personal thing and while I was comfortable discussing it with that class, I am not one who is comfortable publicly waving it about. But I often find myself in these divisive times turning to Paul’s letter to the Galatians (people living in modern Turkey) that admonishes, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” There are slight differences in the wording depending on the version of the Bible you prefer but the sentiment is the same.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where even many professing Christians of all races still seem to miss Paul’s point. Among its virtues, Critical Race Theory points to the many times when the concept of “you are all one” has been violently meaningless.

As for re-writing history: history needs some rewriting so that it is more history than myth.

To pretend that race has not been a major force in the history of the United States is deception, a willingness to accept myth rather than recognize a historical record that should compel us to be better than we are—regardless of our race. To suggest that it does not still influence attitudes and standards is to disrespect those who have walked a different path than yours for generations.

We should not fear raising the issue of ongoing racism in America.  Although I wish it were not true, it is hard for me to dismiss accusations that there remains a current of it in our country—especially after my experience in discussing removal of Jefferson City’s “Confederate Rock” and listening to an African-American woman who favored its removal read an unsigned letter she received that referred to her thirteen time as a “Nigger” and suggest that she is the kind of woman the Ku Klux Klan was created for.

There, I’ve used the word. I refuse to remove its ugliness by turning it into the linguistic pablum that is “N-word.”  We do no service to ourselves as a people by avoiding the issues behind it and barely beneath society’s surface.

I live in a part of Missouri sometimes referred to as “Little Dixie” because of the high percentage of enslaved people before the Civil War—the 1860 census showing almost ten percent of Missouri’s population in 1860 was enslaved.  Cole County, where I live, was at 10.3% and, perhaps because of the heavy anti-slavery German population, was one of the lowest counties in this region.  Across the river, the census showed almost 26% of the population of Boone County was slaves. Callaway County was at 25. A little ways upstream, 37% of the population of Howard County was slaves. One-third of the population of Saline County was enslaved.  More than one-in-five residents of Cooper County were slaves.

Within my lifetime, I remember the day a black couple moved into an upper-middle class white neighborhood in Columbia and in the newsroom where I worked, we listened to the police monitors for any signs of trouble. There was none.

I was ten feet away from Jefferson City’s leading realtor the night he urged the city council to defeat an ordinance saying people of color could live anywhere in town they could afford to live because of what it would mean for property values.

I have seen history and I have read historical myth—-do any of you remember from your elementary or even high school history lessons when slavery was ever discussed except in the context of the Civil War?

Here’s an interesting little piece of information that underlines the history-as-myth proposition:

Massachusetts—where the righteous Pilgrims and Puritans supposedly founded a nation based on Christian values and religious freedom (a myth of its own)—became the first British colony to legalize slavery, in 1641. Did anybody ever hear that in the Pilgrim stories we were taught as children?  Or even the stories we relate each Thanksgiving as adults?

Missouri law has long held that it is a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to…be defiled.”  Our present statutes use different language but that’s the way the law was in 1855 when a Callaway County slave named Celia, purchased by farmer Robert Newsom at age 14 was raped by Newsom on the way to his home. She had three children, at least one by Newsom, When she was 19 or 20, she killed Newsom in self-defense when he tried to rape her again.  She was hanged because the law against defilement of an unwilling woman did not apply to slaves.

Along the way we might have heard something about the Dred Scott Case but we’ve forgotten that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case that slaves—as well as free persons of color—could never be U.S. citizens.

Is it useful to know that the Missouri House of Representatives was completely white for a century before Walthall Moore of St. Louis became the first African-American member of our legislature?  Or that, in 1939, the University of Missouri—under a Missouri Supreme Court order to admit Lloyd Gaines, an African-American, to its law school in Columbia used an “out” in the order to establish the Lincoln University law school in St. Louis for black students?

Is it useful to know that no black person served as the foreman of a Missouri jury until 1945? Or that we didn’t have a state Human Rights Commission until 1957 (and, unfortunately, still have to have it today)? Or that we did not have a black member of the Missouri Senate until 1960? Or that there were no black Highway Patrol troopers until 1965?  That we didn’t send an African-American to Congress until 1968?  Or we didn’t have any person of color on our State Supreme Court until 1995?

Or that Missouri did not elect a black woman to Congress until LAST YEAR?

And that, to this day, outstate Missouri is generally not a place where a person of color stands much of a chance of serving in the Missouri General Assembly?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing these seldom-mentioned parts of our past or of our contemporary lives. There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning, at whatever age, what our society has been and, knowing that, understanding what our society still can be.

And, to the discomfort of many who are comfortable with the status quo, what it eventually WILL be.

Critical Race Theory makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it challenges us to understand that we live in a complex human society of colliding political, legal, and social interests that are affected by long-standing and often subtle social and institutional norms.

History, not myth, recognizes that we have painfully slowly grown more equal despite ongoing reluctance to do so and demographics and other studies of our evolving society that indicate the trend will continue. Some feel threatened by that slow growth and have taken to flame-throwing attacks that CRT (as former Vice-President Pence put it recently) is “a state-sanctioned racism, pure and simple.”

“America is not a racist country. America is the most just, noble and inclusive nation ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said.

He needs to read more history and believe less myth.

What is happening here?  This largely academic concept has been around for decades. Why is it suddenly “state sanctioned racism?”

The answer is obvious.  Donald Trump discovered that this largely-academic topic has become something he can exploit for his personal political purposes and there are those who think their political futures or their grasp on political power can be enhanced by agreeing with his ongoing mendacity and his fear-stoking rhetoric.

How deep is racism in our country today?  I can’t quantify it but I know from watching and listening that we have some distance to go before we are the “most just, noble and inclusive nation” that Pence prematurely proclaims. I do not fear CRT’s reminders that we can be better than we are.

I also lack the perspective of being part of another culture—black, brown, yellow, or red—and comparing my culture’s history to my perceptions of the dominant culture.  I do not descend from slaves and sharecroppers, migrant field hands, people imprisoned during wartime because of their national origin, or people living on reservations—but I have been to those places and I have spoken with those only a generation or two or three removed from the times people were herded into camps because of their Asian heritage or whose not-distant ancestors were taken from their Native families to be “Americanized” at schools..

So I do not resent nor do I fear Critical Race Theory because it demands examination of parts of our history that have been glossed over in the story of our nation as a “shining city on a hill,” as President Reagan called us in misquoting Puritan minister John Winthrop. His 1630 sermon aboard the Arbella before it landed at Massachusetts Bay, although delivered in a different time and for a different purpose, gives us a recipe for national greatness that starkly differs fromfrom what is sometimes heard in criticism of CRT:

“…The only way to…provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

If we want to be the “city on a hill,” it is clear that divisiveness perpetuated by self-serving narrow attitudes and political rhetoric, is not the face we claim is an example to the world.  Winthrop’s sermon delivered 391 years ago tells us what we yet need to be.

If we are honest, we must not fear confronting our past and dealing with the lamentable vestiges of it that remain. CRT should not be seen as a sudden contemporary push to “shame” the white race.  To the contrary, it should be seen seen as a fifty-year-old challenge to be a better people—of all races—than we have been.

Much of the focus on CRT is on white-black relationships. But be aware that it is much more than that. There are branches to examine structural discrimination against Latinos, Jews, women, the disabled, Native Americans, and white immigrants.

There is no limit to the study of our inequalities, for knowing our inequalities gives us the understanding we need to end them. To paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is ourselves.”   What he said after the actual phrase, however, is valid on this issue—his definition of fear as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” after which he noted, “In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

That’s a hope that will stand us in good stead in a time when some see currying distrust and division as the key to their success, whatever the price might be to the nation.

It is better to remember:

We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Or as the Gospel tells us: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Given a choice of following the words of Paul or believing the words of Pence, I shall always take Paul.

 

The period

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Independence Day is upon us.  July 4th. We’re going to spend the whole long weekend celebrating July 4th. Not many people will thinking of “Independence Day,” though.

We think they should, especially at this time in our national history.

It is a day, or a weekend, to examine the most quoted—and greatly misunderstood—section of the Declaration of Independence. We misunderstand it because someone, apparently in the 1820s, inserted a period in a crucial sentence

Have you read the Declaration? All of it?   Have you read it SLOWLY enough to understand what it is about?  Even if you have read it, have you THOUGHT about it?

From numerous platforms in numerous towns someone will perform a public reading of the Declaration of Independence.  It will be more performance than reading, more ceremonial than meaningful.

Princeton Professor Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality is a line-by-line exploration of what the document means and how carefully-worded it was by its creators.  She argues that while Thomas Jefferson is considered the hero-author of the Declaration, he was only one of dozens who molded it into the living document it should be today—rather than the misunderstood symbol it is in the minds of many people.

She points to the best-known (and, she maintains, misunderstood) sentence. The National Archives, which has the original engrossed document, transcribes it this way on its webpage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Allen argues that the insertion of a period after “pursuit of Happiness” is wrong and has led generations of readers to misunderstand the intent the authors intended.

How does she know the period doesn’t belong? “Jefferson’s first draft did not have this period, nor did any of the copies that he and Adams produced…In every draft that Jefferson copied out and in the draft that Adams copied out, each of the five truths is separated equally from the others with the same punctuation mark. The manuscript in the ‘corrected’ journal, as Congress’s official record of its work was called, does not have the period. Nor does the Dunlap broadside, the first printed text of the Declaration…Those who etched these phrases on the Jefferson monument also did so without a period. All agree: this well-formed syllogism is a single sentence.”

She asserts the period makes the Declaration a celebration of individual rights. But she contends the drafters intended the phrase “to lead us directly, and without interruption, in this single sentence through ‘consent of the Governed,’ and to the phrase ‘most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.’  The sentence laying out the self-evident truths leads us from the individual to the community—from our separate and equal rights to what we can achieve only together.”

Or, as she puts it earlier in her book, “All people have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…Properly constituted government is necessary to their securing these rights (and) all people have a right to a properly constituted government.”

Harvard Public Policy Professor Robert D. Putnam addresses that question in his new book, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and how WE Can Do It Again.  He looks back to the assessment of our still-young country by Alexis deToqueville who studied democracy in America in the 1830s and, as Putnam puts it, “Rightly noted, in order for the American experiment to succeed, personal liberty must be fiercely protected, but also carefully balanced with a commitment to the common good. Individuals’ freedom to pursue their own interests holds great promise, but relentlessly exercising that freedom at the expense of others has the power to unravel the very foundations of the society that guarantees it.”

His study looks at times when this country “experienced a storm of unbridled individualism in our culture, our communities, our politics, and our economics, and it produced then, as it has today, a national situation that few Americans found appealing.”

But, he says, “We successfully weathered that storm once, and we can do it again.”

Putnam argues that The Gilded Age of the late 19th Century, a time when individual liberties were placed above the common good, gave way to the Progressive Era of the early to mid-20th Century in which the common miseries and challenges of The Great Depression, World War II, and the Civil Rights movement made us a nation seeking a mutual good, a nation in which “we” confronted and reconciled individual liberties and universal freedoms.. But since then we have retreated to an “I” period, when the idea of achieving liberty as a community has given way to another period of “unbridled individualism in our culture, our communities, our politics and our economics.”

On this Independence Day weekend, let’s read the Declaration—slowly—and without that period and understand that ALL of us have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  But with rights come responsibilities.  And it is the responsibility of ALL of us to make sure that “a properly constituted government” is in place to secure those rights.

—rights that belong to all of US.

As Professor Allen notes, “If we abandon equality, we lose the single bond that makes us a community, that makes us a people with the capacity to be free collectively and individually in the first place.”

—and lessens the chances for all of us to enjoy our shared desires for  life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

Patriots

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The time between the first Juneteenth National Independence Day and the traditional Independence Day on July 4th provides an opportunity to think about patriots and patriotism. It’s an important discussion to be having this year, as we approach the six-month anniversary of the attack on the national Capitol by many people who think they are patriots.

Their definition of patriotism is repugnant, we hope, to the huge majority of Americans.  We shall not explore that matter specifically today.

Instead, we are going to turn to a study announced the other day by WalletHub, a personal finance website that attracts attention to itself with surveys of public attitudes on this and that. It’s a good gimmick because Americans love two things in particular: surveys and lists.  And WalletHub provides them.

The self-serving nature of the surveys aside, they do often provide food for thought.  So it is with the recent one that ranks Missouri in the top 20 most patriotic states, thanks largely to a number 1 ranking in required civic education.  Otherwise we’re about where we are in so many ratings—middling.  That ranking for civic education boosts us to 18th.

The five most patriotic states according to the WalletHub system of rankings are Montana, Alaska, Maryland, Vermont, and New Hampshire.  The five least patriotic states in this survey are California, Michigan, Connecticut, Florida and New York.

One thing the survey does is debunk any feelings of superiority by Red States.  The survey shows there is little difference between them. The average rank of red, or Republican, states is 25.68.  The average rank of blue, or Democratic, state is 25.32.

It appears the red and blue states, however, are cumulatively much less patriotic than individual states.  Montana, number one, has a rating of 61.91.  New York, at number 50, has a rating of 21.64.  The cumulative ratings of red and blue states as blocs would rank them 49th among the individual states.

How do you measure patriotism?  Patriotism is an abstract term, a personal term, and trying to measure what is in one’s heart is difficult.  But WalletHub tries to use external factors.

While we are first in civic education requirements and 18th in the average number of military enlistees per 100,000 population, we are 23rd in percentage of voters who took part in the 2020 presidential election; 24th in percentage of veterans among adult citizens; 26th in Peace Corps volunteers per capita and volunteer hours per resident; 27th in volunteer rate and AmeriCorps volunteers per capita; 28th in active military personnel per 100,000 people.

WalletHub has a “panel of experts” that define patriotism apart from the statistics. It provided their comments in a news release accompanying the survey:

What are the characteristics of a good patriot? 
“Patriotism is about loyalty – an attachment to a particular place and/or way of life. A good patriot exhibits dedication to that way of life, sacrificing one’s private time and even resources to work on behalf of one’s community. The patriot, however, does not seek to impose that way of life upon others nor to blindly follow without questioning. Like any good relationship, a patriot is committed and generally trusting but also preserves the right to question and exercise healthy skepticism.”
Christie L. Maloyed, Ph.D. – Associate Professor, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

“While some may argue that a good patriot is blindly loyal to their country, in fact, a key characteristic of the good patriot is the willingness to hold their country accountable in terms of living up to the high ideals it professes, or upon which it was founded.”
Sheila Croucher – Distinguished Professor, Miami University

Is there a link between socioeconomic class and level of patriotism?
“Studies suggest schools in places with higher socioeconomic characteristics engage in more critical approaches to history and civics than schools with lower socioeconomic characteristics. These schools are more likely to give students experiences in debate, dialogue, and critique—these concepts are important for healthy patriotism. On the other hand, studies also suggest military recruiters are more likely to seek students from schools in communities with lower socioeconomic characteristics. Having limited economic access to higher education, students in these communities are more likely to serve in the military.”
Benjamin R. Wellenreiter, Ed.D. – Assistant Professor, Illinois State University
“There can be. When there are fewer economic resources in a community, there are often fewer chances to engage in community building as many individuals need to focus on meeting their basic needs, working long hours or multiple jobs, caretaking, and other commitments. Moreover, many areas experience civic deserts, areas where there are fewer opportunities to participate. In these communities, there are fewer organizations to join. This can happen due to depopulation or economic hardship.”
Christie L. Maloyed, Ph.D. – Associate Professor, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

What measures should schools, and local authorities undertake in order to promote patriotism among citizens?
“I would love to see civic education become a larger priority around the country. Most American students learn the history of our founding, but citizenship requires more than historical knowledge: it requires a commitment to active participation in the community and politics (with voting as a minimum), and a willingness to work with fellow citizens to address our shared problems and to advance a common good, along with the media and information literacy to stay informed about one’s community and nation. Civic education requirements vary greatly from state to state, but few have gone far enough.”
Libby Newman – Associate Professor, Rider University
“The measures should come from individual citizens more than schools and authorities. Patriotism is a grass-roots concept. We need citizens to engage in dialogue with one another, work to experience and understand multiple perspectives, volunteer when the need arises—both military and civilian— and be continually committed to societal improvement. Schools and local authorities should be transparent in their work and take stewardship approaches to their responsibilities. Patriotism is taught through action as much as it is through the word.”
Benjamin R. Wellenreiter, Ed.D. – Assistant Professor, Illinois State University.

What makes you a patriot?  Or do you even consider yourself to be one?

What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism—and which poses the greater danger?

These two weeks between the Independence Days are time to weigh those questions.

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Our contentious era

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(Twenty years ago or more, when party control of the Missouri legislature changed, one of the leaders of the new minority theorized that his party could reclaim its former position if it just made the new majority look bad enough.  Pretty obviously, that was a wrong-headed idea.  But it pervades the thinking of our state and national politics today worse than ever and a public tired of the many who would rather fight than to work for the people’s best interests might utter, as Shakespeare’s Mercutio did, “A plague on both your houses.”   Dr. Frank Crane could have been speaking of our contentious times a century ago when he wrote about—-)

THE ETHICS OF CONTROVERSY

Everything is disputable. I am willing to entertain arguments in support of any proposition whatsoever.

If you want to defend theft, mayhem, adultery, or murder, state your case, bring on your reasons; for in endeavoring to prove an indefensible thing you discover for yourself how foolish is your thesis.

But it is essential to any controversy, if it is to be of any use, first, that the issue be clearly understood by both sides.

Most contentions amount merely to a difference of definition. Agree, therefore, exactly upon what it is you are discussing. If possible, set down your statements in writing.

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Most argument is a wandering from the subject, a confusion of the question, an increasing divergence from the point. Stick to the matter in hand.

When your adversary brings in subjects not relevant, do not attempt to answer them. Ignore them, lest you both go astray and drift into empty vituperation.

For instance, President Wilson, in the “Lusitania” incident, called Germany’s attention to the fact that her submarines had destroyed a merchant ship upon the high seas, the whole point being that this had been done without challenge or search and without giving non-combatant citizens of a neutral country a chance for their lives. Germany’s reply discussed points that had no bearing upon this issue, such as various acts of England. Mr. Wilson, in his reply, wisely refused to discuss these irrelevant 128things, an example of intelligent controversy.

Keep cool. The worse your case, the louder your voice.

Be courteous. Avoid epithets. Do not use language calculated to anger or offend your opponent. Such terms weaken the strength of your position.

A controversy is a conflict of reasons, not of passions. The more heat the less sense.

Keep down your ego. Do not boast. Do not emphasize what you think, what you believe, and what you feel; but try to put forth such statements as will induce your opponent to think, believe, and feel rationally.

Wait. Give your adversary all the time he wants to vent his views. Let him talk himself out. Wait your turn, and begin only when he is through.

Agree with him as far as you can. Give 129due weight, and a little more, to his opinions. It was the art of Socrates, the greatest of controversialists, to let a man run the length of his rope, that is, to talk until he had himself seen the absurdity of his contention.

Most men argue simply to air their convictions. Give them room. Often when they have fully exhausted their notions they will come gently back to where you want them. They are best convinced when they convince themselves.

Avoid tricks, catches, and the like. Do not take advantage of your opponent’s slip of the tongue. Let him have the impression that you are treating him fairly.

Do not get into any discussion unless you can make it a sincere effort to discover the truth, and not to overcome, out-talk, or humiliate your opponent.

Do not discuss at all with one who has his 130mind made up beforehand. It is usually profitless to argue upon religion, because as a rule men’s opinions here are reached not by reason but by feeling or by custom. Nothing is more interesting and profitable, however, than to discuss religion with an open-minded person, yet such a one is a very rare bird.

If you meet a man full of egotism or prejudices, do not argue with him. Let him have his say, agree with him as you can, and for the rest—smile.

Controversy may be made a most friendly and helpful exercise, if it be undertaken by two well-tempered and courteous minds.

Vain contention, on the contrary, is of no use except to deepen enmity.

Controversy is a game for strong minds; contention is a game for the weak and undisciplined.

 

To a friend thinking of public office;

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It’s been a while since we’ve talked about this topic with you.  Or perhaps we never have. This note is addressed to no one in particular in this season of domino-candidacies triggered by the pending retirement of Senator Roy Blunt.

You’ve thought about running for public office someday.  Your business has been successful enough that you can step away from the fulltime obligations. You are motivated to help other people.  You see problems that you think you can help solve.  You’ve been discussed by people in the political party with which you seem to be identified.

Your member of Congress has decided not to seek re-election next year, perhaps to run for Blunt’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Perhaps your state representative or state senator has decided to run for Congress. This is the perfect time to become a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and you have the name recognition and would have party identification on your side to compete, too.  And once you’re in the House, there might be doors to greater opportunities.

If you don’t go now, you’ll have to challenge the new incumbent or wait several years for that person to step aside.

You will be courted, cajoled, urged, and begged to get into a race.  But it won’t be because of what you might bring to the House; it’s because you’re well-known, can attract campaign donations, can pass the litmus test(s) of the party.  Your ideas are secondary.

Be wary of becoming a figurehead, and an empty one, because your party thinks your name is all it needs in its search for power.  Consider if the party’s quest for power is more important than your desire for service.  If service is secondary, have the integrity to say, “No.”

And what are your ideas?  Are they yours or are they ideas—-and you are intelligent enough to know the ones that are flawed and sometimes dishonest ideas—advocated by a figure who seems to have—or claims to have—life or death power over potential candidates?

Do you really know the issues you will face or are you just willing to go with the party flow?

Frankly, we don’t need people like you if that’s the kind of candidate and Congress-person you will be.

What we need in these troubled times is candidates who know themselves, who trust themselves, and who have the courage to BE themselves in working through the problems of our state and nation.  Cookie-cutter candidates incapable of seeing beyond party orthodoxy, dictates, and dogma cannot be servants to the public—the general public rather than the narrower public that you hope will cast the most votes for you.

Are you ready to think your own thoughts? Have you studied issues from a variety of viewpoints so you understand that answers to major problems are seldom simple because problems affect people and people come in more varieties than you can count?  Will you have backbone enough to reject the narrow, the prejudicial, the inhumane solutions you will be asked by party and well-oiled interests to support.

Remember you are not alone if you undertake this candidacy.  Remember your family because your family comes with you, spiritually if not in person.  Remember that anything you stand for, anything you say, anything you do can bring questions to your school-age children from classmates, or comments to your spouse from some stranger standing in line at a check-out counter.

What makes you think you can go from private citizen to Congress is one big leap?  Or from private citizen to the state legislature in one smaller leap?

What do you know about representing large numbers of people, each person with his or her own morals, ethics, social and economic needs, hopes, dreams, and fears?  What do you know about high-stakes discussions with others that result in policies you and all of those other people will have to follow?  How can you interact with them, take their pulse, act in their best interests if you’ve never held a public position of any kind?

I’m not saying, ‘Stay out of it.”  But I am saying, “Know what your responsibilities will be and know to whom you REALLY are responsible and respect them.  There will be dozens, maybe hundreds of people between you and your constituents if you are elected.  How prepared are you to deal with those in-between people while keeping in mind the people at home?”

What do you really know about the Constitution?  If you think reading it and doing what it says is the answer to the nation’s problems, you are woefully ignorant.  If you think the Bill of Rights is absolute, you don’t know your own rights.

Study. Study. Study.  Read and talk to people outside your partisan circle.  You are allowed to agree with them.  Not on everything, but it’s not a sin (despite the apparent political climate) to understand the other side and see that sometimes it has a better ideas.

Know history.  Not just the cleansed history this or that segment finds most beneficial to itself.  Understand that our history has warts.  Recognize them but do not tolerate them no matter how they are disguised. Think of George Santayana’s comment, “We respect the past; it was all that was humanly possible.” But that past might not be “humanly possible” or “humanly human” today. You will not erase the past by correcting its flaws that remain with us. Your public service must be focused on a future that abandons those flaws.

Congress?   The Missouri General Assembly?  The U. S. Senate?  Give serious thought to whether it’s right for you, your neighbors, and your family to go from zero to 100 mph all at once.

Maybe at your age you don’t think you can afford to wait. But there is virtue in patience and in learning.  There is a reason many of those in the offices being dangled in front of you started as members of a city council, a school board, a county commission.  They learned whether they liked to campaign.  They learned how to relate to constituents not just during the campaign but later while service those constituents in elective office.  They learned how to support and oppose ideas on their merits, how to argue with an opponent today who they need as an ally tomorrow, how to support something that is for a greater good rather than carry out the wishes of their particular constituency.  They felt the pressures of those who expected favorable votes, sometimes on unfavorable issues. They learned that personal community visibility has nothing to do with the gritty business of establishing broad community policy.

For some, the city council is satisfaction enough. For others, it just whets their desire to greater service—because they have learned how a system can work and how to make it work well.

If you have a young family, think of local office before you think of something higher.  You’ll learn politics and public service and you’ll spend you nights with your family in your own home. As you grow in understanding how things work, your family will grow in understanding them too, and will grow in understanding how your public service affects their daily lives.

Jump into the shark tank if you wish. Just don’t kid yourself or let others flatter you into thinking the jump is easy or can be painless.

Perhaps you might refresh your memory with the first eight verses of the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes, one of the Old Testament’s “Wisdom Books,” which it says, in part:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven… 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…

Be wise in making your decision.  Better yet, should you win, be wise in your actions—

—-for wisdom, now so profoundly lacking in our national dialogue, is critical to our future.

 

I beg your pardon

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Ming the Merciless came to mind the other day.  The villain in countless Flash Gordon comics, movie serials, motion pictures, television shows and series programs, Ming presided over the Kingdom of Mongo and Flash was his nemesis.

Ming and Mike Parson have nothing in common. But word association kicked in when I noticed the latest word that Governor Parson issued 36 more pardons to imprisoned Missourians a few days ago.  By our count, that raises his total to 105 pardons in the last six months along with four reductions in sentences—commutations.  And I thought, “Mike the Merciful.”  And that led to the next thought, Ming. Odd how the mind works sometimes.

We haven’t combed the records of all of our previous governors but we suspect Governor Parson might already have set a record for pardons. Certainly he will have a chance to set one if he has not set it by now.

But it is unlikely that any previous governor has had the chance Mike Parson has had to take these actions.  It seems that his predecessors, we don’t know how many, did not act on about 3,700 clemency petitions.  His office says he has made a slight dent in that total by dispensing with about 500 of them.  Obviously, he’s not in the mood to rubber-stamp anything.

These circumstances might surprise some people.  He’s a conservative for one thing and conservatives are sometimes stereotyped as “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” people.  He sure isn’t a liberal who stereotypically would open prison doors to release all kinds of bad folks.

He’s a former sheriff and we’ve heard some law enforcement people complain that they work hard to put people away only to see some stereotypically soft-hearted judge let them go.

And here we have conservative Mike Parson, former sheriff, letting more than 100 people (so far) out of prison early.

If we were still an active reporter at the Capitol, we’d want to interview him about this issue. It’s one of the things we miss about not being an active reporter anymore—access to explore issues such as this with people such as Governor Parson.  So we’ve suggested to some colleagues they do it.

Just think of it as an old fire horse who thinks he hears the fire bell ringing again every now and then.

Without trying to read the governor’s mind, might we suggest a couple of things?

First, because he’s a former sheriff, maybe he understands that the justice system isn’t always fair to the people law enforcement officers spend a lot of time arresting.  Mandatory sentencing isn’t particularly fair all the time.  And not all of those going to prison are by nature bad people who deserve the stiff penalties they’re given whether under mandatory standards or otherwise.

Second, people change.  They earn a second chance and no good results from denying it to them.

Third, the accumulation of clemency requests not acted upon by predecessors is just plain wrong.  Justice delayed is Justice denied, we’re told.  Justice can be served in a lot of ways, and continuing to hold a redeemed soul behind bars isn’t justice. Or, at least, it hasn’t been for more than 100 people in the last six months.

From what we’ve seen, the bar is pretty high to merit a Parson pardon or a commutation. The folks to whom he’s giving clemency have not earned it by just doing time; they’ve earned it by what they have done with their time.

Last December, when he announced his first batch of pardons, he said he chose those who have “demonstrated a changed lifestyle and desire to move on from past behaviors.”

“If we are to be a society that believes in forgiveness and second chances, then it is the next chapter in these individuals’ lives that will matter the most. We are encouraged and hopeful these individuals will take full advantage of this opportunity.” 

He has told his legal team—less than a handful of people if we read the latest Blue Book staff list correctly—-to keep reviewing the files.  That’s a lot of reading and follow-up questioning for that small number of people to do. But they’re chipping away at it.

He said in December that he wants it clearly known that he’s not “soft” on lawbreakers. “There must be serious consequences for criminal behavior,” he said. “But when individuals demonstrate a changed lifestyle and a commitment to abandoning the ways of their past, they should be able to redeem themselves in the eyes of the law.”

It’s a clear message—-Lock ‘em up.

But remember where the key is.

And WHAT it is.   And what it is, is the inmate.

 

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The Forty-Something State, Again, Still

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Let’s have a show of hands.

How many of you, when you think of people who have had the most influence on your lives put at least one teacher in your top ten?   I have at least three.

A lot of people in a lot of roles in our society do not deserve our praise; they deserve our awe.  As schools begin classes in whatever form, teachers join first responders of all stripes and health and mental health workers of all kinds, public safety employees, and men and women in uniform who “provide for the common defense” on the platform of heroes.

When it comes to recognizing all of these folks at the most basic level, however, we talk a good game but we don’t play a good game. We saw a recent survey by Business Insider that should bother all of us.  A lot.

Since then we’ve seen a report from the state auditor that buttresses what BI told us.

Business Insider is a German-owned website that focuses on business and economic issues.

The folks at BI have looked at figures from the U. S. Department of Education and the census bureau for the school year 2018-19, the most recent year for which data is available. It finds the average Missouri teacher was paid $50,064 that year.

The national average was $61,730.

Missouri ranked 44th.  The lowest-ranking went to Mississippi, which paid its teachers $45,574. West Virginia is 49th at $47,681.

The only thing that keeps Missouri from being West Virginia in the rankings is that our average teacher salary is a whole $46 a week more than the teachers there.

$46.

What’s worse is that when our average teacher salary is measured against inflation, our teachers have lost more than six percent of their purchasing power because of inflation in the last twenty years.

This isn’t news to our much-praised but barely-raised teachers.   But it should be disturbing to those who expect so much of them.

Spare me the excuse that you can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it.  The problem is the money. We need to throw $11,000 a year at our teachers just to get them to the national average.

This is a matter of recognizing the important role people play in building or maintaining our society. And in times like these when we are asking—and when some are DEMANDING—that these good people face the possibility that they are stepping into harm’s way every day they open their classroom door, recognizing how far below the national average they are in pay and doing nothing about it is demeaning.

Then when their school district doesn’t have enough money to provide their classrooms with enough basic things such as paper and pencils, we expect them to guy their own.

Now we have a virus threatening their well-being and the well-being of their students that has led to terrible cuts in state funding for education in this fiscal year. Legislation is being introduced in the General Assembly this year that will undermine state support for our schools and our teachers even more.

What is an appropriate salary for our teachers?  Don’t look to this otherwise all-knowing oracle for an answer.  We had two children in our house for about eighteen years. We can’t imagine having twenty or thirty children in one room for six or eight hours every day of the week—children who bring multitudinous health and personal issues with them from home.

We pat our hometown public servants on the head and tell them they’re doing good.  But we don’t appreciate them enough to pay them salaries that at least keeps up with inflation.

Such is the lot for anyone who sees public service—teachers, police and firemen, healthcare workers, sewage plant operators, government employees—you name it.  “What’s in it for them?” you might ask.  If you have to ask you’ll never understand the answer.

Sometimes being a low-tax state is nothing to brag about.

If you want to see how the states stack up in the teacher salary study, go to:

https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-state-2018-4#38-indiana-14

A month or so ago, State Auditor Nicole Galloway announced a study by her staff confirmed Missouri’s abysmal standing in education funding. She confirms Missouri ranks 49th in state support of elementary and secondary education. The report comes just two years after the auditor’s staff found more than two-thirds of local school districts have put increased financial burdens on local taxpayers in the last decade because the state (i.e., the governors and legislatures) budget for education has not kept pace with education’s costs.

We’ve cited before one of the favorite jokes of long-dead comedian Myron Cohen about the man who found a naked man in his wife’s closet one day and asked him, “What are you doing in there?’  And the man said, “Well, everybody has to be somewhere.”

Missouri is somewhere when it comes to funding for education, one of the things that is often spoken of as a key to the state’s economic health.  But Misouri’s “somewhere” in this case, as in so many others, is nothing to be proud of.

Crisis

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If this is the best we can get, the best we can hope for, God help us.

“America is in crisis. Our country is at a critical point in its history.”

“The Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists. Our Republican leaders don’t stand up for truth and …they don’t put the good of our country over their own political ambitions.”

“(The Democratic Party) is endangering our security, bankrupting our nation, killing our jobs, fueling inflation, harming our children, defunding our police, shredding our freedoms, and rewriting our history.  (The Republican Party is promoting) dangerous conspiracy theories and attempts to overturn the election helped lead to a deadly insurrection, and (party leaders are) too weak to speak out.”

“They are destroying the country you and I love, and they must be stopped. (We need people) who promote truth, not conspiracy theories. And equality, not hate.”

I’ve come across some campaign statements from people on both sides who want to replace Roy Blunt.  Each of the above paragraphs takes statements from the Republican Party side and from the Democrat Party side.

There is no doubt our country is in trouble.  On any number of matters.

But neither side seems to have anything useful to say.  As an old joke says, it’s just BS, MS, and PhD.

We pray for candidates who will offer us more, who can do more than mouth standard partisan verbiage. It would be such a relief to hear people on both sides of the aisle discuss our crisis, our critical point, with a degree of intelligence that doesn’t degenerate into hackneyed descriptions of the other party.

Unfortunately, gut politics seems to appeal to a public whose expectations have been lowered so far that thinkers cannot be heard above the rumblings of political bowels.

With more than a year to go before voting, does anyone feel good about what is likely to be before us?

 

 

Notes From a Quiet Street

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Lewis Carroll wrote a poem called The Walrus and the Carpenter that seems to fit these occasional reflections on life:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

And whether pigs have wings.”

We discussed “cabbages” separately recently. Today we want to start with some ruminations about shoes:

I have concluded that shoestrings are an endangered species.

I bought some new dress shoes recently and I can’t keep the blasted shoestrings tied.  The left shoe, especially.  I believe the shoe and its string are in cahoots, planning to make a break for freedom at some particularly embarrassing moment—perhaps when I am walking down the governor’s staircase at the capitol or when I am leaving the church chancel, carrying the communion trays, or perhaps on a wet or snowy day when I am rushing to warm and/or dry place.   The right show and its string are a little less bold but it, too, shows signs of rebellion.

The strings are round, thin, and perhaps a bit on the short side. Maybe it is a reflection of the aging of my fingers that are not so supple as they once were and thin-ish round shoe strings cannot be handled with the dexterity and the firmness of my younger days.  Or maybe its just the design of the shoestrings.

Solving this problem reveals an important cultural collapse.

Shoe stores are disappearing.

First, shoe repair shops disappeared, probably as shoe sole technology improved and longer-wearing non-leather soles became popular and shoes became more disposable and informal.

Now it’s shoe stores.

I went to a shoe store to get replacement laces—flatter ones that I could tie tighter.  The lady went to the back of the store and rooted around for several minutes before producing strings that were supposed to be of the proper length for four-eyelet dress shoes.

They weren’t.

There was enough string to get through the four eyelets but not enough left over to tie a bow knot.  I tied the two strings together and the cats have been playing with them since.  At least somebody is getting some use from them.

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If a new Profiles in Courage is ever written for our times, there will be many cowards and few heroes.  Liz Cheney will have one of the chapters.

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Took a look at a new cell phone of a friend the other day.  Holy cats!  These things keep getting bigger!  Clothing-makers need to be planning larger butt pockets.  I’m seeing commercials for cell phones that open up so they’re twice as big.

Good Lord!  They’re turning into half a tablet.  Is there a size line that won’t be crossed or will this trend continue until they have handles and wheels so we can pull them along behind us?

And when will it be impractical to call them cell phones anymore?

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Been watching quite a bit of the local news on the teevee lately.  Actually, I’ve been watching quite a bit of local weather.

With a little bit of news and sports thrown in here and there.

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Got a little political education when President Biden spoke to a joint session of Congress on April 28th.   It sounded like a State of the Union Address.  It looked like one except for social distancing.  One ingredient (thankfully) missing was the irritating introduction of common folks in the galleries who are examples of noble events or noble presidential proposals.

But it was NOT a State of the Union address.

Jordan Mendoza, writing in USA Today explained that the Constitution does require a President to “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”  But there’s no set time for such an address.

Ronald Reagan started a new tradition in 1981, the year he was inaugurated.  Since then neither new  Presidents nor outgoing Presidents have given a State of the Union Address coming in or going out of office.  Mendoza reported that is “primarily because a president can’t really speak about the state of the country (after) just a few weeks into office.”

Although Mendoza didn’t report it, it seems logical to suggest that no such speech is given by an outgoing president because his recommendations for action will have no weight of authority behind them—and because Congress has better things to do than listen to one more presidential address that would be mostly self-congratulatory.

Since then the new President’s speech has been “An Address Before a Joint Session of Congress.”