The 6 billion people on our planet share at least one cross in common: Daily unpredictability. From the most powerful of leaders to the weakest of losers, we all travel this same Via Delarossa wearing this same crown of thorns. Frankly, it can bleed the very confidence out of us. So we may sometimes ask ourselves, are there no predictables left in life...?
Take heart fellow traveler. My research found seven. Seven you can count on every single step of the way --
1. Health: Count on every new report on eggs, coffee and red meat to be reversed within exactly 26 weeks by new reports on eggs, coffee and red meat. Evidence suggests this will have less to do with lab tests, and more to do with who in the labs like eggs, coffee and red meat. Either way, the absolute regularity of these reports is like the much needed port in a storm
2. Hollywood: Count on the same career choreography for every new child star. A cutesy movie; a shot on Leno or Letterman; a nationwide tour; a benediction on Oprah; a scandal in "The Enquirer;" child out of wedlock, month in rehab, apology on "Larry King." It's a crazy world out there, but it's guarantees like these which make it all make sense
3: Heroes: Count on a minimum of two heroes a year to go down in flames right before your eyes. Sports, government, clergy; makes no difference. There's always a secret drug bust, nanny fraud or abuse case to reassure you that it's really true -- there's nothing new under the sun. Especially a California or DC sun
4. Hierarchies: Count on one or more of our institutional hierarchies to make hypocrites of themselves. Take for example Major League Baseball buying ads calling baseball "everyone's game" the same season they double the price of grandstand seats and halve the cheese on the pizzas. Consistent hypocrisy, my friends, isn't as easy as it looks. But bank on it, these guys come through every time
5. Harbingers: Count on a whole bunch of these every year. Wild-eyed harbingers of doom from amateurs carrying signs on the streets to televangelists wearing tears on the closeups to the occasional guru who moves his message from cave to PBS. Just when everything seems to be falling apart in your life, take comfort. You can always count on these Cassandras to give your fears a name right along with a mailing address for your tax-free donations
6. Has-Beens: Count on these former celebrities to show up with a kind of cosmic dependability. This sub-set can usually be found in summer stock theatres, singing songs from the Sixties on that same PBS, doing periodic gigs on the Food Network, and of course smiling on the front cover of AARP Magazine. Gives you renewed confidence when you realize -- gee they're not dead after all
7. Historians: Count on these guys to understand that history isn't written, its re-written. Re-written according to what we'd like the past to be. When my parents suffered in the Depression and World War II, they never realized they were "the greatest generation" until Tom Brokaw decided they were. And when I was struggling for a career in the fifties, I didn't realize these were "the happy days" until the television show said they were. Well, you get the idea. Undependable lives need something they can depend on, and very often that's our dependable best-selling pop historians
See, and you thought life was undependable. It's really not, and you can depend on that....!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
LOVE -- POETRY OR GENETICS?
Well, I think your long run is over, fellows! All you poets of either pen or piano who have for generations been waxing eloquent about human love! I don't care if it's a Shakespeare sonnet or a Mozart minuet, you've had it all wrong all along!
Now I hesitate to report this in this the lyrical season of spring, love and marriage, but scientific facts are facts my dear outdated friends. Today's breakthrough hypotheses by our neuro-scientists and evolutionary-biologists have once and for all stuck the finger of irrefutable fact into the eye of this love stuff. You and I fall in love because we have to.
All you Hallmark and red-roses devotees must now and forevermore understand that the reason we love -- our date, our mate, our parent, our god -- is largely because evolution has hard-wired us to do so. What we have traditionally felt was our heart skipping a beat has in fact been our brain lobes and gene pools skipping to the pre-ordained rhythms of evolution. A blind planetary compulsion for every form of life to mate, breed, and re-produce itself.
I've often wondered what these researchers say at the end of the day to their spouses and children. Maybe something like, "OK, time for a DNA assessment to see how well our love-drives are performing today." And does this mean that old fashioned miracles like the loaves-and-fishes now have competition from new miracles like the lobes-and-genes?
I'm not being disrespectful to the legitimate discoveries of modern science. The dogged pursuit of truth is what science is all about, and many of us wouldn't be here today without its discoveries and cures. However, the problem some of us have is not with the laws-of-science. It's with the laws-of-unintended-consequences. The unintended conclusions many lay people reading these reports may arrive at.
This comes into especially sharp relief when you hear defense attorneys arguing their case according the compulsion of some brains to "kill for love." Or kids caught in the act saying something like "Gee, mom, my genes made me do it!"
I asked my therapist if I'm carrying my concerns too far. His answer concerned me: "Re-read your Darwin, take two serotonin tablets, then call me in the morning...."
Now I hesitate to report this in this the lyrical season of spring, love and marriage, but scientific facts are facts my dear outdated friends. Today's breakthrough hypotheses by our neuro-scientists and evolutionary-biologists have once and for all stuck the finger of irrefutable fact into the eye of this love stuff. You and I fall in love because we have to.
All you Hallmark and red-roses devotees must now and forevermore understand that the reason we love -- our date, our mate, our parent, our god -- is largely because evolution has hard-wired us to do so. What we have traditionally felt was our heart skipping a beat has in fact been our brain lobes and gene pools skipping to the pre-ordained rhythms of evolution. A blind planetary compulsion for every form of life to mate, breed, and re-produce itself.
I've often wondered what these researchers say at the end of the day to their spouses and children. Maybe something like, "OK, time for a DNA assessment to see how well our love-drives are performing today." And does this mean that old fashioned miracles like the loaves-and-fishes now have competition from new miracles like the lobes-and-genes?
I'm not being disrespectful to the legitimate discoveries of modern science. The dogged pursuit of truth is what science is all about, and many of us wouldn't be here today without its discoveries and cures. However, the problem some of us have is not with the laws-of-science. It's with the laws-of-unintended-consequences. The unintended conclusions many lay people reading these reports may arrive at.
This comes into especially sharp relief when you hear defense attorneys arguing their case according the compulsion of some brains to "kill for love." Or kids caught in the act saying something like "Gee, mom, my genes made me do it!"
I asked my therapist if I'm carrying my concerns too far. His answer concerned me: "Re-read your Darwin, take two serotonin tablets, then call me in the morning...."
Monday, May 4, 2009
THE SECRET TO WHY WE'RE NOT MOVING
The US Census Bureau just reported another record. This time a half-century record low in the number of Americans who are moving. Only 35 million of us changed residences last year, the lowest tally since 1962....!
Now I happen to remember 1962. It was a lovely year, before the tragedy of Dallas, the quagmire of Vietnam, and the street protests. Doris Day movies still sold, and music by Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee still had trans-generational appeal. And, on a personal note, the students in my US History classes were still proud to be Americans and America was still proud of them.
With that sort of easy national ethos, why move? Things generally seemed to be perfectly nice right where we were!
But of course nothing -- nice or nasty -- ever stays the same. The sixties soon changed. Crises mounted, angers flared, even the nice kids in my classes began asking angry questions about their country. Anger, of course, is a secondary emotion so you have to ask what's triggering it? For those of us who were there trying to mollify it, the best explanation is: Doubt. Something I assume Chicago's new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan understands very well.
There's a striking parallel between American then and America now .Youth in both periods begin doubting many of those things they once took (or were taught to take) for granted. The government, police and military. Churches, parents, oh yes and US History teachers. Suddenly it wasn't -- and isn't now -- as easy to pitch America to your high school students. Students who are watching their parents lose their jobs and their pensions, banks and stockbrokers lose their credibility, leaders and heroes lose their shine. Doubts like these make anyone angry. And should.
Now I have no way of testing my modest hypothesis. After all, people aren't moving as much today for many many different reasons. However, there is something running through classrooms today very symptomatic of the sixties: Doubts-driven angers that must surely suck up some of the air of confidence that usually motivates families to move around.
US History teachers who've been around for both these decades-of-doubt have an institutional instinct for this sort of thing. We can feel the dangers that doubt and anger can mean for our classrooms. And for Secretary Duncan 's reform agenda. However, we can't fundamentally alter this dynamic. Neither can Duncan. The one man best equipped for this is the President himself.
His steady, pragmatic confidence in our country can help ease the doubts and thereby ease the angers. So far he strikes most US History teachers as beginning to do that. If so, I predict it will be a lot easier for us to start teaching upbeat American history again, and for our kids' families to start moving up and on again.
Now I happen to remember 1962. It was a lovely year, before the tragedy of Dallas, the quagmire of Vietnam, and the street protests. Doris Day movies still sold, and music by Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee still had trans-generational appeal. And, on a personal note, the students in my US History classes were still proud to be Americans and America was still proud of them.
With that sort of easy national ethos, why move? Things generally seemed to be perfectly nice right where we were!
But of course nothing -- nice or nasty -- ever stays the same. The sixties soon changed. Crises mounted, angers flared, even the nice kids in my classes began asking angry questions about their country. Anger, of course, is a secondary emotion so you have to ask what's triggering it? For those of us who were there trying to mollify it, the best explanation is: Doubt. Something I assume Chicago's new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan understands very well.
There's a striking parallel between American then and America now .Youth in both periods begin doubting many of those things they once took (or were taught to take) for granted. The government, police and military. Churches, parents, oh yes and US History teachers. Suddenly it wasn't -- and isn't now -- as easy to pitch America to your high school students. Students who are watching their parents lose their jobs and their pensions, banks and stockbrokers lose their credibility, leaders and heroes lose their shine. Doubts like these make anyone angry. And should.
Now I have no way of testing my modest hypothesis. After all, people aren't moving as much today for many many different reasons. However, there is something running through classrooms today very symptomatic of the sixties: Doubts-driven angers that must surely suck up some of the air of confidence that usually motivates families to move around.
US History teachers who've been around for both these decades-of-doubt have an institutional instinct for this sort of thing. We can feel the dangers that doubt and anger can mean for our classrooms. And for Secretary Duncan 's reform agenda. However, we can't fundamentally alter this dynamic. Neither can Duncan. The one man best equipped for this is the President himself.
His steady, pragmatic confidence in our country can help ease the doubts and thereby ease the angers. So far he strikes most US History teachers as beginning to do that. If so, I predict it will be a lot easier for us to start teaching upbeat American history again, and for our kids' families to start moving up and on again.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
WHO NEEDS SARAH, WE'VE GOT JOE!
For those culture warriors who miss Sarah Palin, not to worry. We've got Joe Biden. A more down-home, press-the-flesh natural you won't find this side of the Alaskan reef...!
I say that with non-ideological conviction, because Joe personifies those solid, old-time family values that you gotta like no matter what your party. (Well maybe that doesn't include the Paris Hilton brand of post-moderns, but then that's their loss). Joe -- just like Sarah but with brains -- embraces those basic, blue collar virtues like hard work, strong fidelity, and deep faith. The ideal vice-president. Where Obama is cool, Joe is hot...while the president appeals to our heads, Joe touches our hearts....and if Barack rarely stumbles, we can feel right at home when Joe does.
In music, they call this counter-point. The ancient Chinese speak of yin and the yang. In Hollywood they talk about the buddy-movie formula. Whatever the descriptor, this kind of delicate balance exists all throughout our lives. Frankly, without it, our lives would be far less rich. Consider....
Today we have the instant power of email. Fortunately counter-balancing that is the old through-rain-and-snow post office.I call it fortunate, because while email is faster, snail-mail has a face. And a smile. And a steadiness plodding down my block every morning that makes we feel human communication is still human.
Today we also have the Internet. Super powerful, super fast, super everything. Luckily, though, we still have the counter-balance of the daily newspaper. Unlike the Niagara of instantaneous but unedited information on my screen, my newspaper has a local address, a local staff and a local mission that makes it feel like a good neighbor.
Today we have researchers and statisticians. They have this habit of advising us what we think, how we do our thinking, and what it all means to our lives. Fortunately we still have the counter-balance of our churches and temples where a very different breed of wise ones speak to us. Less in terms of antiseptic hypotheses, more in terms of divine hopes. While I admire the researchers and statisticians, when life suddenly blows apart they really don't have what it takes for me to put the pieces back together.
Today we have a booming young generation, and youth is terrific. I know, because I was once. And yet would it betray my gray to say it is always fortunate that youth has with its sails the rudders of age. Each generation needs the other if that desired delicate balance is to be realized.
Oh and one more counter-point. Science and nature. Both are indispensable to our lives, the first providing us with answers, the second with questions. Science comes from people, nature from God; and while answers are always essential, questions are always more thrilling. I reflect on this every time night I look at the moon and realize how the work of science helped us reach it, but how the inspiration of nature is what asked us to try....
I say that with non-ideological conviction, because Joe personifies those solid, old-time family values that you gotta like no matter what your party. (Well maybe that doesn't include the Paris Hilton brand of post-moderns, but then that's their loss). Joe -- just like Sarah but with brains -- embraces those basic, blue collar virtues like hard work, strong fidelity, and deep faith. The ideal vice-president. Where Obama is cool, Joe is hot...while the president appeals to our heads, Joe touches our hearts....and if Barack rarely stumbles, we can feel right at home when Joe does.
In music, they call this counter-point. The ancient Chinese speak of yin and the yang. In Hollywood they talk about the buddy-movie formula. Whatever the descriptor, this kind of delicate balance exists all throughout our lives. Frankly, without it, our lives would be far less rich. Consider....
Today we have the instant power of email. Fortunately counter-balancing that is the old through-rain-and-snow post office.I call it fortunate, because while email is faster, snail-mail has a face. And a smile. And a steadiness plodding down my block every morning that makes we feel human communication is still human.
Today we also have the Internet. Super powerful, super fast, super everything. Luckily, though, we still have the counter-balance of the daily newspaper. Unlike the Niagara of instantaneous but unedited information on my screen, my newspaper has a local address, a local staff and a local mission that makes it feel like a good neighbor.
Today we have researchers and statisticians. They have this habit of advising us what we think, how we do our thinking, and what it all means to our lives. Fortunately we still have the counter-balance of our churches and temples where a very different breed of wise ones speak to us. Less in terms of antiseptic hypotheses, more in terms of divine hopes. While I admire the researchers and statisticians, when life suddenly blows apart they really don't have what it takes for me to put the pieces back together.
Today we have a booming young generation, and youth is terrific. I know, because I was once. And yet would it betray my gray to say it is always fortunate that youth has with its sails the rudders of age. Each generation needs the other if that desired delicate balance is to be realized.
Oh and one more counter-point. Science and nature. Both are indispensable to our lives, the first providing us with answers, the second with questions. Science comes from people, nature from God; and while answers are always essential, questions are always more thrilling. I reflect on this every time night I look at the moon and realize how the work of science helped us reach it, but how the inspiration of nature is what asked us to try....
Saturday, May 2, 2009
THE THEOLOGY OF HIGH SCHOOL REUNIONS
One of our cosmic burdens in life is attending high school. No, really. Except for the few star athletes, chirpy cheerleaders, and straight-A kids, most of us slog though these four years with various combinations of acne and angst, disappointing grades and disappointed dates. Then, adding insult to injury, we get invited back to our reunion to live it all over again....!
But here's a story out of Los Angeles where the injured got the last insult. Andrea Wachner knew she was considered a shy geek at school, so she hired a slinky-dressed, fishnet-stockinged stripper to attend in her place. With long-repressed cunning, Andrea equipped her alter-ego with a hidden earpiece. This way she could coach her about what to say and to whom. In all this world, two hours of revenge may never have been so sweet.
The Bible teaches: Revenge is God's alone. How many times, though, have we asked for an occasional exemption to the rule? Right after insidious bosses and credit card companies, old hurts loom large on our list. The real problem comes when we carry this instinct to the level of nations. History has been spattered with the blood of revenge-wars ever since Cain slew Abel.
No need to know your history, though, because all you have to do is close your eyes in front of world globe and plant your palm. Presto -- you've just identified at least three or four neighboring nations that resent one another. And, most likely, have had wars with one another.
When wars were with clubs, losses were modest. Now with missiles, wars are apocalyptic. We can always escape our school reunion, but we can no longer escape one another on a shrinking energy-depleted planet. Who, then, do we turn to when it comes to managing this revenge syndrome...?
Science has been busy isolating and identifying various gene pools in our species. Among these are inherited pre- dispositions to envy, aggression and violence. Genetic engineering has long been the dream of many. To what purpose is, of course, the critical question (see Nazi science for ugly results).
The fine arts have always been busy "soothing the breast of the savage beast." Without music, sculpture, painting, cinema and literature, there is less to distinguish us from the other evolved beasts on the planet. But to what purpose is, again, the critical question (see Hollywood for mixed results).
Religion has always been busy sublimating our specie's vilest instincts to higher and more worthy purposes. To one theological degree or another, religions have sought to build bridges between the human and the divine. Gods and after-lifes help shape the nature of our behaviors. However, in the hands of zealots, to what purpose is, yet again, the critical question (see monastics to suicide-bombers for confusing results).
I'll be thinking about these perplexing matters at my next reunion. Fortunately, at my advanced age, I'll probably forget all about them after my first drink! Then again, maybe not....
But here's a story out of Los Angeles where the injured got the last insult. Andrea Wachner knew she was considered a shy geek at school, so she hired a slinky-dressed, fishnet-stockinged stripper to attend in her place. With long-repressed cunning, Andrea equipped her alter-ego with a hidden earpiece. This way she could coach her about what to say and to whom. In all this world, two hours of revenge may never have been so sweet.
The Bible teaches: Revenge is God's alone. How many times, though, have we asked for an occasional exemption to the rule? Right after insidious bosses and credit card companies, old hurts loom large on our list. The real problem comes when we carry this instinct to the level of nations. History has been spattered with the blood of revenge-wars ever since Cain slew Abel.
No need to know your history, though, because all you have to do is close your eyes in front of world globe and plant your palm. Presto -- you've just identified at least three or four neighboring nations that resent one another. And, most likely, have had wars with one another.
When wars were with clubs, losses were modest. Now with missiles, wars are apocalyptic. We can always escape our school reunion, but we can no longer escape one another on a shrinking energy-depleted planet. Who, then, do we turn to when it comes to managing this revenge syndrome...?
Science has been busy isolating and identifying various gene pools in our species. Among these are inherited pre- dispositions to envy, aggression and violence. Genetic engineering has long been the dream of many. To what purpose is, of course, the critical question (see Nazi science for ugly results).
The fine arts have always been busy "soothing the breast of the savage beast." Without music, sculpture, painting, cinema and literature, there is less to distinguish us from the other evolved beasts on the planet. But to what purpose is, again, the critical question (see Hollywood for mixed results).
Religion has always been busy sublimating our specie's vilest instincts to higher and more worthy purposes. To one theological degree or another, religions have sought to build bridges between the human and the divine. Gods and after-lifes help shape the nature of our behaviors. However, in the hands of zealots, to what purpose is, yet again, the critical question (see monastics to suicide-bombers for confusing results).
I'll be thinking about these perplexing matters at my next reunion. Fortunately, at my advanced age, I'll probably forget all about them after my first drink! Then again, maybe not....
Friday, May 1, 2009
CHRYSLER TESTING THE AMERICAN DREAM
This month's dramatic Chrysler bankruptcy and deal with Fiat isn't the first time Chrysler and the Italians have worked together. My Italian-born father knew Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli's American-born father long before this latest chapter. Only back then, Americans were in the business of saving Italians, not the other way round....!
The causes and consequences of the current crisis are many and complex. But I imagine our dads would have boiled them down this way. As two 20th century Americans, we've been born with a silver dream in our mouth. The American Dream, which means we have everything we need to succeed any honest way we can.
My father, a proud 30-year-long Chrysler dealer in Chicago, would have agreed with his friend's son today when Nardelli said, "It's not the fate I would have chosen, but it has allowed us to save the company." All three of these men would consider this an honest way left to succeed. And, if only the rapacious Wall Street debt-holders will stop bleating over the shortfall this deal will cost them, it will succeed. Chrysler is likely to emerge as strong an American institution as our dads once knew.
What's at stake, though, is more than a company. More than an industry. Even more than a presidential agenda. The stakes here include this challenge to the same American Dream which galvanized our fathers. Can the growling appetite that serves America's taste for free-enterprise capitalism be tempered by the even more intrinsic appetite that serves our taste for the general welfare?
The causes and consequences of the current crisis are many and complex. But I imagine our dads would have boiled them down this way. As two 20th century Americans, we've been born with a silver dream in our mouth. The American Dream, which means we have everything we need to succeed any honest way we can.
My father, a proud 30-year-long Chrysler dealer in Chicago, would have agreed with his friend's son today when Nardelli said, "It's not the fate I would have chosen, but it has allowed us to save the company." All three of these men would consider this an honest way left to succeed. And, if only the rapacious Wall Street debt-holders will stop bleating over the shortfall this deal will cost them, it will succeed. Chrysler is likely to emerge as strong an American institution as our dads once knew.
What's at stake, though, is more than a company. More than an industry. Even more than a presidential agenda. The stakes here include this challenge to the same American Dream which galvanized our fathers. Can the growling appetite that serves America's taste for free-enterprise capitalism be tempered by the even more intrinsic appetite that serves our taste for the general welfare?
AT LAST GIVING THE DEVIL A NAME
As the proverb would have it, the devil is in the details. And yet, most people never give these details a name. Here's one that works every time -- people!
Think of it this way. How many mechanical inventions, architectural wonders, bank bailouts and football plays have worked perfectly on the drawing board. Only to flop terribly once they were turned over to people? If you start counting, the numbers are staggering. Two examples will do: Christianity and Democracy.
Like most religious founders, Jesus today would very likely not join his own church. Surely not because of the ideas he left it, but because of what his followers have done with some of those ideas. Like Gandhi observed: "Christianity might be worth joining if anyone were really practicing it." Instead, Gandhi found what Jesus might. A claptrap collection of hundreds of denominations each more Pharisaical than the next. And lets remember, it was the Pharisee's obsession with rules the Messiah wailed against.
Consider now the bird-witted array of man-made rules that never dropped from the master's mouth. Two currently ripping some denominations apart are homosexuality and celibacy. The first draws from isolated passages in Ezekiel, Leviticus and Corinthians. But never from Jesus of Nazareth. Likewise celibacy which, though praised by Paul, was only made a rule in the 11th century. Then largely because of the expenses from the clergy's offspring. Another popular man-made rule was meatless Fridays, which comedian George Carlin famously asked after it was dropped: "I wonder how many folks are in still hell on a meat rap!"
I write this as a serious Catholic, but one who hears the current call from some frustrated laity: "Keep the faith, change the church." If for example we were to do so, then President Obama will speak at Notre Dame this month without any embarrassing incidents from rule-bound protesters.
Democracy is another sterling idea whose shine has been muddied by the people practicing it. Among its enduring principles drawn from John Locke through Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln is the "will of the people." In making this social contract with the people, the government obligates itself to rule for the good of the general welfare. In turn, the people obligate themselves to be informed and responsible citizens. It's the very reason for America's free public education for everyone.
I write this as a serious member of this educational system, but who has watched the cause of good citizenship slip and slide in the hands of the very people the system has tried to educate. After graduation, how many close their books and minds foreverafter? Listening instead to mostly the loudest voices what we envisioned a marketplace of ideas. Talk-radio hosts, cable shouters, angry bloggers, bar-stool buddies, whispered prejudices at the water cooler, and those whose understanding of democracy is not so much speech that educates, as it is speech that sells.
Christianity and Democracy -- it doesn't get much better than that. Until, that is, we the people get hold of the details.
Think of it this way. How many mechanical inventions, architectural wonders, bank bailouts and football plays have worked perfectly on the drawing board. Only to flop terribly once they were turned over to people? If you start counting, the numbers are staggering. Two examples will do: Christianity and Democracy.
Like most religious founders, Jesus today would very likely not join his own church. Surely not because of the ideas he left it, but because of what his followers have done with some of those ideas. Like Gandhi observed: "Christianity might be worth joining if anyone were really practicing it." Instead, Gandhi found what Jesus might. A claptrap collection of hundreds of denominations each more Pharisaical than the next. And lets remember, it was the Pharisee's obsession with rules the Messiah wailed against.
Consider now the bird-witted array of man-made rules that never dropped from the master's mouth. Two currently ripping some denominations apart are homosexuality and celibacy. The first draws from isolated passages in Ezekiel, Leviticus and Corinthians. But never from Jesus of Nazareth. Likewise celibacy which, though praised by Paul, was only made a rule in the 11th century. Then largely because of the expenses from the clergy's offspring. Another popular man-made rule was meatless Fridays, which comedian George Carlin famously asked after it was dropped: "I wonder how many folks are in still hell on a meat rap!"
I write this as a serious Catholic, but one who hears the current call from some frustrated laity: "Keep the faith, change the church." If for example we were to do so, then President Obama will speak at Notre Dame this month without any embarrassing incidents from rule-bound protesters.
Democracy is another sterling idea whose shine has been muddied by the people practicing it. Among its enduring principles drawn from John Locke through Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln is the "will of the people." In making this social contract with the people, the government obligates itself to rule for the good of the general welfare. In turn, the people obligate themselves to be informed and responsible citizens. It's the very reason for America's free public education for everyone.
I write this as a serious member of this educational system, but who has watched the cause of good citizenship slip and slide in the hands of the very people the system has tried to educate. After graduation, how many close their books and minds foreverafter? Listening instead to mostly the loudest voices what we envisioned a marketplace of ideas. Talk-radio hosts, cable shouters, angry bloggers, bar-stool buddies, whispered prejudices at the water cooler, and those whose understanding of democracy is not so much speech that educates, as it is speech that sells.
Christianity and Democracy -- it doesn't get much better than that. Until, that is, we the people get hold of the details.
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