politics and culture: June 2006 Archives

double standard, anyone?

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Valerie comments on a news report about religion and public schools.

It's the economy?!?

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Dave over at Improv posts a truly scary (to me at least) management decision in Job Hunt.

I wish that I could make Rerum Novarum mandatory reading for MBAs. As it is, I think that many of the textbooks in current use bear more resemblance to Machiavelli's "The Prince"

from The Clayton Tribune
Investigation Timeline

It gets a little confusing, but it looks like there was some pretty big malfeasance going on.

WRKO AM talk radio (Boston) recently had a call-in show where a father talked about the strategies that various public agencies had used to keep him away from his children. The show's phone lines were overloaded within minutes, to a degree that was apparantly unprecedented.

I guess that there is some ideology out there that assumes that dads are dangerous, simply by light of the fact that they are male. I know that there are exploitive men out there, that men can be predators of all kinds, but I also know that there are Godly and caring men - fathers and husbands - who are hurt and hurting from the attempt in our world to make them seem un-needed or even dangerous just because they have a Y chromosome.

The passion and the truth

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Pontius Pilate had a great line in the Passion of the Christ - and one that I think may be emblematic of our 'modern' culture. "Veritas - quod es veritas?" Truth, what is truth?

Ethical, moral,cultural relativism would have us believe that there is no objective truth. You have your truth, and I have mine. I have been told that the basic credo of neo-paganism/wicca/many 'new age' religious expressions is that everything is OK 'an it hurt no one'.

Never mind that it is pretty much impossible to take any action without taking the risk that some one, some where, will be hurt. It is often unintentional, that hurt, and even more often it is unforseeable. But it is real.

Those who do not believe in any grand truth are often willing to distort the small truths in pursuit of a goal, be it an altruistic goal or a selfish one. After all, if there are no absolute moral standards, no absolute truths, no objective reality, then the ends do indeed justify the means.

The agonizing decisions of moral theologians over the dilemmas can become as naught. If one's goal is lofty enough, then any sin might be justified, nay, even sanctified. I think that we can all think about the political folks who have lied, cheated, and stole their way into power. But I am actually more concerned about the everyday 'venial' types of untruths. You know, the ones we learned at our parent's knees - calling in sick to be able to watch the game, having your child tell a phone solicitor that you aren't home, claiming that the store bought cupcakes were actually home made. Petty lies. "Little white lies".

But left alone, the attitudes behind these pecadillos can come to permeate one's soul, to the point where a police officer plants or fabricates evidence in order to assure the conviction of a person "we all know is guilty anyhow". We have accountants being fired because they refuse to make the bottom line look like what the execs think it should, rather than what it really is. We have contractors adding in just a shade more sand to the concrete 'because it really doesn't make that big of a difference'. We have inflated damage claims on insurance policies. We have students who buy their essays on the internet.
I remember reading some where (maybe in Heinlein) that there are 3 ways to lie. One is to tell an outright falsehood, another is to tell the truth but only part of it, and the third and most subtle is to tell the truth, all the truth, but in such a manner that no one believes you. But in a culture such as ours where lying is an everyday and accepted part of public life, where there is no absolute standard for truth, I think that there is yet another way to lie. That way is to tell everyone what you think that the truth should be, and loudly and often enough to get buy in from a large enough group.

Look at all the recent scandals - falsified medical research. Falsified financial records. Cover-ups of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors. We all need to get back to the basics - but without a unified sense that there are indeed some non-negotiable truths, how can we even decide what is basic and what isn't?

That is part of why I believe that we all need to look towards (among other things) the 'natural law'. You don't need to be a christian or a catholic to believe that there are basic principles written into the world around us. It is obvious that we have a law of gravity. Gravity is pretty much non-negotiable. We have technologies that can counteract some of its effects (airplanes and so on) but you or I can't just jump off the cliff and expect to float to a safe landing. No human being invented the law of gravity - rather observations of the way things work led to a discovery of this law, and to further refinements. Similarly, there are other laws that may be more subtle than gravity but just as universal - laws that apply not just to the physical universe but to the ways human beings relate to each other, to our place in the universe, to a right ordering of life.
I remember seeing a poster, probably 30+ years ago that I think applies to where we are right now as a culture.
John W. Gardner:
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

gotta love google


music inspires a quasi-rant

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Tonight was the Pops concert from the Concord NH High School. We were packed into the sweltering gym to listen to kids from every performing music group in the school gave us their best.

Once again, I marvelled that these kids do so very well. I am so glad that the public schools here haven't yet pulled the plug on the music and arts programs. When we left California, it was after watching the schools being systematically gutted of all the so-called extras (except, of course, football and the like). We were able to game the system somewhat and get our kids into magnet schools where they were able to have some of those extra opportunities, but so many parents did not have the savvy or the persistence to try to get a good education for their kids from the public schools, and they also did not have the money for private school or the resources to home school. When we moved to Oregon, the process of gutting the public schools was just beginning, and we were still able to get the kids involved in music and arts and so on. But we could see the budget cuts coming.

Part of the problem is that the funding for the public schools rests basically on one tax, the property tax - and the structure of property taxes was such that with the rapid inflation in housing values, families were being taxed out of house and home. But the property tax 'reforms' had the unforseen side effect of moving the funding for schools from the local districts to the state budget. Hence no more money for 'luxuries'.

Also, there is a tendency for the childless to resent paying for the education of other people's children. It is part of our fallen human nature to be selfish. But I cannot think of a better use for my property tax than to pay for the education of the future citizens of our country. And I want there to be local control and local accountability for the content and nature of that education.

I never homeschooled, but I have great admiration for those who do. Mostly because they are practicing the ultimate in local control and local funding of their children's education. But many homeschoolers benefit from the presence of public education and use some or all of the services it provides. Much like homebirthers also benefit from the availability of hospital and clinic based services. It's a good thing, I think, when we recognize that we are not insular beings, but that God created us to live in families that live in communities that try to take care of each other.

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About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the politics and culture category from June 2006.

politics and culture: May 2006 is the previous archive.

politics and culture: December 2006 is the next archive.

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