Blue Notes from a Red Zone

On the other hand...

To my mind, one of the most distressing trends in how we currently frame political debate is the way we have allowed the right wing to define the word liberal. It has become a term of vilification, somewhat the way “pinko Communist” was in the 50s and 60s. My fellow travelers (this is a joke, for those of you who don’t know me) have conceded the point. Liberals call themselves progressives now, and allow the word "liberal" to be used as a pejorative, thus driving the national conversation further to the right.

I like the term liberal. According to American Heritage Children’s dictionary (which is all I can ever find around my house, since I have high school students who are constantly appropriating my real dictionary), it has a lot of positive definitions. Synonyms include generosity, open-mindedness, and tolerance as demonstrated by respect toward different people and ideas.

This is a long way to go about introducing concepts submitted by a conservative who would like to respond to some of my ideas, but who is currently on the other side of the world and can’t enter them directly into the comments portion. I was going to tease him a bit, and call his remarks as being contributions from the dark side, but I find I can’t. For one thing, he is too civil when talking about me. For instance, he characterizes my commentary as “sensitive and caring.” I’ll be darned if I’ll let him be more liberal (i.e., respectful toward different people and ideas) than I am.

So, although it never occurred to me that I would be serving as a forum for opposing views as well as my own, here is a sampling of his version of what I can only term compassionate conservatism, from someone who actually understands both compassion and conservatism (in the interests of space, I have edited out a great deal that speaks to compassion – you’ll just have to trust me on this). In the interest of fair play, I’ll publish my rebuttals separately. In the interest of my health, I’ll add that one of the first topics will be taxation, Social Security and Medicare (otherwise known as FICA).

On welfare:
Lenore, you are right [about the causes of poverty]. I know how impossible housing and transportation are for our poor, and those are the two arguments I can't defeat with any of my arguments It was easier to be poor when I was a kid. I did not have to pay first and last month rent on the $60.00 shack I rented as a GI in Sacramento in 1960. $60.00 got me in. No deposits on utilities. But for those who can overcome the hurdles of housing and transportation, the permanent solutions lie in the accumulation of private wealth, not government checks. Learning to live within our means, no matter how meager they are, is what brings real social security.

The Fair Tax [sales tax as opposed to income tax] will be a big help. The rich will pay their fair share, as they have the most to spend. The Fair Tax (H.R. 25) will eliminate all Federal Tax but the special excise taxes. No more FICA, no more income tax. And all will receive a rebate credit for National Sales Tax that would be paid by individuals and families at the poverty level. A person making e.g. $12,000 annually (if that were the poverty level for a single person) would take home $12,000!

FICA is a crime, both in the amount taken, and the amount wasted. It is forbidden for me to accept a non-Medicare procedure or treatment since I turned 65! How about that for government interference in my health care? I have read the Constitution a number of times, and too much has been inferred from the preamble (which stated the purpose of the document, not any specific application.) We are better served when we control our own resources, and make our own decisions.

And, no more tax breaks bought with bribes (campaign contributions)--the perfidious and insidious destroyer of our republican form of government!

On faith:
Again, I find a lot of agreement here. My Jewish forebears and relatives perished in the camps (save three who survived and have since died.) There is not a Piowaty left in Europe. As a Catholic in a small Ohio town, I was told my faith was wrong. I went with another child to his church instead of my catechism class one afternoon. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was going to hell. Heavy stuff for a first-grader!!

On praying for or against temporal and physical occurrences, I'm reminded of Patton's prayer for good weather so he could make it into Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. Were the Germans praying at the same time for the weather to remain overcast as protection from American air power?

Finally, something I wrote in 1962 when I was in pilot training and had a premonition that I would become witness to more and continuing horror in our world.

LOOK AT US
Sing us our praises, mighty man.
Look what we've done--
How well we make things dead!

Who is to look on us?
The animals know naught
And God must shake His head.


On education:
On your first paragraph--I put together this sentence probably 3 or 4 decades ago: "I never learned anything from people I agreed with." I may have gained some pleasant reinforcement, but no real learning, no new ideas, and no practice in articulating my position that I might gain in a discussion with a person of different opinion.

On money for education: We DO need to pay our GOOD teachers more. But our egalitarian, pc society won't allow us to scale, let alone pay, excellence.

Our students know full well who the good and effective teachers are. They surely know better than do the principals and administrators and superintendents. I have probably 3 academic years as a sub in Okaloosa County schools and at St. Mary. No principal ever observed my work! At least at Brent School in Baguio, Philippines I did have two visits from one Headmaster and one from the other.

It is frightening to realize how much does (or does not) go on in our public (and private) schools. Who knows, and how can they know, whether we're getting our money's worth. Of course, my position is that we are not getting anywhere near our money's worth.

Paying our good teachers what they are worth is not the entire solution. We need to raise the bar on our average teachers. The average teacher who scores 15 points below the average of ALL who take the SAT? The average teacher (actually "better" than average--as these are those going for a master's) who, along with those with degrees in social science, scores the lowest on the GRE!!

And, we put our children's minds in the care of these?

posted by Lenore Wilson @ 11:02 PM