Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Internet and the Ignorant
Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. —Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution
The Internet and talk radio are like magic. They can turn nothing into something. Not all who use it are magicians, however. Some are simply hucksters hoping to beguile the gullible into parting with their money while others are part of a mindless multitude willing to give voice to anything that comports with their beliefs, even though the fictions they create or are helping to perpetuate are made up out of whole cloth.
Examples of the former abound. On September 7th I received an e-mail notifying me that I had “emerged” a winner of $2,500,000 on something called “online draws” that were “played on the year 2009.” My good fortune did not end there. Three days later I was notified that my e-mail address had itself enjoyed success in some “computer Balloting.” Since I own the e-mail address I assume the benefit ultimately inures to me. It won the relatively paltry sum of 750,000 Euros but if my e-mail’s winnings and my winnings are combined the two of us are relatively well off for at least the next several months.
My lottery winnings are outpaced in frequency and amount only by the number of friends I have in Africa who need my assistance in transferring funds that have been accumulated over the years by their ancestors-employers-politicians and the like. For my efforts, which are not terribly taxing, I am rewarded by sharing handsomely in the transferred funds when the transfer is completed. These good luck strokes are, of course, illusory and but for the Internet, could never have been dreamt of. None of us ever received letters in the mail from Africa asking for our assistance in transferring money nor, except for the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes, did we receive notice of winnings in lotteries we did not know we had entered. The intellectually infirm are, however, a greater threat to our democracy than the hucksters.
The most conspicuous example of recent time is the host of wholly mindless bloggers and talk radio people who insist that the president was not born in the United States. Before the advent of talk radio or the Internet such nonsense would not have escaped from the prison of the narrow minds in which it took refuge. Thanks to the intercession of the Internet and talk radio, crazy ideas are reported, adopted and promulgated the world over. They have worked their magic in the debate over health care.
Although not part of any proposal, the health care proposals have been portrayed as sanctioning “death panels” that would, as Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York said in a radio interview, require people in Medicare to “have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.” The proposals provide for the kind of counseling about advance directives that many thoughtful individuals consider when contemplating the possibility of incapacity. Thanks to the Internet and talk radio, however, the fiction of a death panel is now firmly established as being part of health care reform.
A group supporting health care reform known as “Organizing for America” has as its logo a symbol about which Rush http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/23/betsy-mccaughey/mccaughey-claims-end-life-counseling-will-be-requi/ (whose facility with words easily outstrips his facility with thought) says: “Obama’s got a health-care logo that’s right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook.”
A chain e-mail that fell into the hands of Fact Check.org has conducted an analysis of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill that Fact Check says shows “evidence of a reading comprehension problem on the part of the author.” According to Fact Check, the author’s examination of the first half of the bill makes 48 claims about the health care bill of which 26 are false, 18 partly true and only 4 accurate. That has not affected the distribution of the e-mail. According to a report in the Denver Post the author has sent his analysis to more than 6000 people and they in turn have forwarded it to thousands more. His analysis, flawed though it is, became the stuff of town hall meetings and cheat sheets that were waved about at meetings in order for the participant to express his or her displeasure with the idea of health care reform. It is the magic of the Internet that enables a careless or deliberately deceptive commentator to influence the health care debate now taking place.
If readers are intent on being deceived by one kind of magician or another I’d suggest they put their faith in the lottery folks or the Africans. They harm only the gullible. The others harm the country and its 46 million citizens who lack health insurance.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Guarding the Classroom
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school . . . .
— Wm. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Act IV
Vigilance. Without it who knows what sorts of insidious messages would slip into the curriculum of public schools throughout the country.
The prospect of President Obama encouraging students to study and stay in school terrified many on the right who believed that if their children learn to think for themselves they may eschew the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk and even, in some cases, their parents. They feared that the president, being both articulate and intelligent would, in the brief time allotted, emulate the Pied Piper and lead children from the classroom into the muddy waters of socialism or fascism, depending on which commentator was believed.
Florida’s Republican Party chairman, Jim Greer, gave voice to the terrified parents. “As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power. . . . The address scheduled for September 8, 2009, does not allow for healthy debate on the President’s agenda, but rather obligates the youngest children in our public school system to agree with our President’s initiatives or be ostracized by their teachers and classmates. . . .The Democrats have clearly lost the battle to maintain control of the message this summer, so now that school is back in session, President Obama has turned to American’s children to spread his liberal lies, indoctrinating American’s youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves.” (In fairness to Mr. Greer it must be pointed out that he made his comments when he didn’t know what he was talking about. When he got around to reading the speech he said he planned to watch it.)
Mark Steyn of Canada, a political commentator and classroom defender, told Rush Limbaugh that in wanting to speak to children in school Mr. Obama was like North Korean leader Kim Jong-il or Saddam Hussein in that he was creating a cult of personality albeit on a smaller scale than those two men had done. In case the Greer and Steyn messages failed to resonate with those concerned with protecting the classroom from the President, Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota joined the defenders.
According to Politico the governor told the Minneapolis Star Tribune the speech could be disruptive. He worried not only about content, which was adequately addressed by Mr. Greer, but motive. The lesson plan sent to schools encouraged the students to write to the president. It first suggested that students write letters saying how they could help the president but reacting to criticism, the plan was amended to suggest the students write letters about what the President’s goals should be. Either is a subtle form of indoctrination and, as Mr. Steyn told Mr. Limbaugh, “slightly unhealthy”. The Governor told a radio show that: “There are going to be questions about-well, what are they going to do with those names and is that for the purpose of a mailing list?” The governor has put his finger on a very significant point. Although it was possible that in 18 minutes Mr. Obama would not cover all the topics anticipated by Mr. Greer, if the students write the President, Mr. Pawlenty believes the government will compile a list of names of students that it can later contact to further propagandize them. The president’s speech was not the only perceived threat to the classroom to rear its head in September.
In California Governor Schwarzenegger has been given a piece of legislation to sign that would create a “day of recognition” for former San Francisco Board of Supervisors member, Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1977. Under California law a “day of recognition” means that schools “conduct suitable commemorative exercises.” Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, described all the problems inherent in allowing such a bill to become law saying that: “The bill is so broad it could encompass all kinds of things. Remembering the life of Harvey Milk could allow for gay pride parades on campus or mock gay weddings or cross-dressing. There is no prohibition of what the bill calls ‘suitable commemorative exercises.’ The sky’s the limit.”
Public education has been seriously threatened with the start of the new school year. We can only be grateful for the likes of Messrs. Greer, Pawlenty and Thomasson who are attempting to ensure that ideas won’t find their ways into our classrooms.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Archbishop Chaput- Catholicism Kaput
They (Americans) equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.
The Letters of Junius (1769)
It could have been a teaching experience for Chuck, or Archbishop Charles Chaput, as he prefers to be called. It probably wasn’t. His teachers would have been Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington D.C. and Pope Benedict XVI of Rome.
During the 2004 presidential election, Chuck, the highest ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Colorado, let it be known that anyone who voted for John Kerry, had committed a sin that had to be confessed, before the voter/supplicant would be permitted to receive communion. It is not altogether clear how that was to be enforced. Hundreds of thousands of people in Colorado voted for John Kerry and among them, it is almost certain, more than a handful were Roman Catholic. Had they all decided to confess, hundreds of priests would have had to be ordained in order to receive their confessions. Absent that, however, the church would have had to put up with thousands of sinners receiving communion, something that would certainly offend Chuck, if not God. According to Chuck, the reason for this ecclesiastical pronouncement, was that John Kerry supported a woman’s right to choose. (Voting for someone who supports the death penalty, a procedure that, like abortion, involves human life, is not a sin and does not require a pre-communion confession.)Creating an hostile environment for those who voted for John Kerry is not the only group for which Chuck has created an hostile environment. Another is the 46 million Americans who lack health insurance and the estimated 22,000 adults among them who, studies estimate, die as a result. Unlike the Senator, Chuck’s compassion for the weak is carefully measured if they also lack health insurance. He has recently joined a group of primates in the same line of work as he, who are willing to sacrifice the health and lives of the uninsured unless the legislation protects the lives of those not yet born. They are led by Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities. They believe if part of the reform of health insurance includes any plans that would permit some insurance companies to pay for abortions, the legislation should be opposed. It was most explicitly stated by one of Chuck’s ecclesiastical colleagues, Bishop R. Walker Nickless, of Sioux City, Iowa. Demonstrating a lack of compassion for the already-born uninsured (who will be the main losers if health care reform does not take place) Walker sent out a pastoral letter telling his followers that: “No health reform is better than the wrong sort of health care reform.” Chuck enthusiastically supported the Nickless approach. In a diocesan newspaper column he said: “The whole meaning of ‘health care’ would be subverted by any plan that involves mandated abortion access or abortion funding. Killing or funding the killing of unborn children has nothing to do with promoting human health and including these things in any ‘health care’ proposal, no matter how shrewdly hidden, would simply be a form of lying.” The 46 million uninsured will almost certainly take comfort in the fact that by remaining uninsured and occasionally dying as a result, they are helping to protect the unborn. That will comfort all but those with family members who died for want of medical treatment. But I digress
Senator Kennedy’s funeral mass was in the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Not only was the Senator a long time supporter of Roe vs. Wade, but he was divorced and remarried in a civil ceremony to his present wife. Had he died in Chuck’s jurisdiction it is unlikely Chuck would have attended. Not so in Boston. Senator Kennedy’s funeral mass was attended by the highest Prelate in Massachusetts, Cardinal Sean O’Malley who spoke with feeling and compassion of the Senator’s life. At graveside Theodore McCarrick, the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington read a letter sent by the Pope which said in part: “His Holiness prays that in the days ahead, you may be sustained in faith and hope, and granted the precious grace of joyful surrender to the will of God, our merciful Father. He invokes upon you the consolation and peace promised by the Risen Savior to all who share in His sufferings, and trust in His promise of eternal life.” The Pontiff forgot to mention, as Chuck almost certainly would have, that without acknowledging the error of his ways in supporting Roe v. Wade, there was no way the Senator would enjoy eternal life.By their presence and their words, the prelates made it plain that they held Senator Kennedy in great esteem. It is unlikely that they would sacrifice on the alter of ideology the health care reform he so ardently supported because of perceived imperfections in the proposed plans. Colorado Catholics should be so fortunate as to have such enlightened leaders.