Tag Archives: ethics

Progressives, Terrorists, and Civility

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Brett Kimberlin, the Speedway Bomber, was convicted in 1981 of a week-long bombing spree in Indianapolis, IN, a serial bombing sequence in which eight separate bombs caused extensive property damage, destroyed a police cruiser, and severely maimed a man, which eventually led to the man’s suicide.  Kimberlin spent 17 years in prison for his crimes, including having his parole revoked when, after losing a $1.6 million judgment in favor of the widow of the suicide victim, he refused to pay—not couldn’t pay, refused to pay.

Of course, there is the possibility of redemption and of correcting old ways, of making amends.  But not all are repentant.  Consider that Kimberlin still hasn’t paid the judgment.  Consider the $200 thousand bounty that Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution put on the Chamber of Commerce’s Tom Donohue.  Consider the attacks on Patterico (also via Memorandum, if that link doesn’t work), and on Stacy McCain, and on Michelle Malkin.  While the attacks on Malkin may not have been perpetrated by Kimberlin and his…colleagues…they are of a type.

But, aside from these cowardly attacks from the Left against people whose only crime is that they are conservative and both act and write like it, I also am interested in the Progressive leadership condoning such bullying and potentially criminal behaviors.  Where is the hue and cry about Brett Kimberlin’s activities and those of his ilk?

To be sure, nor conservatives nor Progressives need decry every little wrong, every smearing speech such as Arizona State Senator Linda Lopez’ (D) attempt to lay the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords off on conservatives, that this or that extremist makes.  But surely these ongoing and dangerous attacks, not only against the conservatives, but their families also, warrant an outcry from an honest left.  But the President, his campaign advisors, the DNC leadership, the Progressive leadership in Congress all are silent.  And by their passive silence about these events of which they surely are aware, they actively condone them.

But it’s of a piece with Progressive civility.  This is the civility that has Congressman John Lewis (D, GA) claiming—without substantiation even today—that conservative Tea Partiers called him a nigger, that has Congressman Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) dismissing those who protested against Obamacare as not American and Astroturfers, that has DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D, FL), at her protest gathering outside then-candidate Allen West’s campaign headquarters, saying about conservatives and conservative protesters

I don’t see any swastikas or any pictures of the President in black face or burned in effigy here.  The difference between the way we express our First Amendment rights and the way I’ve seen Tea Party extremists—Republican Tea Party extremists—express their right is dramatically different.

And President Obama saying

Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care?

All they haven’t done, yet, is to send out their own SWAT teams.

Some Thoughts on Freedom

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The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan; the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl; the University of Notre Dame; and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.  The problem, as described on the DC Archdiocese’s new Web site PreserveReligiousFreedom.org, is this:

It is not about whether people have access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services which violate their religious beliefs.

President Obama’s Health and Human Service’s mandate, which is intended to facilitate his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and is the proximate object of the suit, forces religious organizations, against their most fundamental beliefs, to provide access to, or to make access available through their insurance programs, contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization procedures.

These drugs and services, and many of the behaviors that “need” these drugs and services, are held by a host of religions (Catholicism and Baptist congregations are only the most well-known) to be sinful.  It is, then, not only morally wrong for a religious entity holding these beliefs to provide these things, it is impossible for that entity that is true to its beliefs to do so, or to wink at their insurance programs that do so.

Take careful note: this problem is not about whether such things are, in fact, sinful.  This problem is not about whether Catholic women, by regularly going to Mass and then to their neighborhood pharmacy for contraceptives, seemingly give the lie to Catholicism’s position.  (Indeed, the existence of sin is a raison d’être for churches of all types—to help those sinners.)  This problem is not about “free” access to these services. (In fact, they are not free: by the government’s mandate, if the recipient isn’t paying for them, you and I are—whether it violates our religious teachings or not—through higher prices to us to pay for the subsidy.)

No, this problem is about whether government can define for religious entities what is sin.  It is about whether government can dictate to a religious entity what its religious tenets are.  It is about whether government can dictate to a religious entity what its practices in furtherance of its fundamental tenets are.  It is about whether government can dictate to us individually what our beliefs, what our private decisions, must be, and whether we must sin at government’s behest.

As a practical matter, which patients are being “protected” under the Act of that name?  Plainly only those of whom Obama approves.  Certainly not those with beliefs with which he disagrees.

As a matter of freedom, what is being protected by this government diktat?  Certainly not the fundamental freedom of conscience that Christian religions teach.  Certainly not the fundamental freedom of religion—a part of our Creator’s endowment—that is codified in our Constitution.

YGTBSM

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The answer, it seems, to a poor showing on a test is to lower the test’s passing threshold, and not to lower the teachers who did such a poor job of teaching.  How does this help our children learn?  How does this help our society raise children into capable adults who can help our nation compete in the world?

I do not understand how a fourth-grader comes to be ignorant about camels.  Don’t we teach our children anything, anymore, about the Middle East—a region that has a role in civilization’s beginnings, a role in the evolution of Western civilization, and a very significant role in today’s events?

The matter comes up because only 27% of Florida’s fourth-graders scored a four or better (four is passing), on a one to six scale, on this year’s Florida Department of Education fourth-grader standardized writing exam.

The test question (which, in an idiotic example of today’s substitution of jargon evolution for actual teaching development, is called a “prompt”) at the center of the failure rate  was this:

Suppose you or someone else had a chance to ride a camel.  Imagine what happens on this camel ride.  Write a story about what happens on this camel ride.

How hard is that?

Ann Egitto, a Longwood, FL, Rock Lake Middle School language arts teacher (they taught English in my middle school, and French and Spanish.  “Language Arts” teaches all of these together?  Painting with words?  Is this more cutesy naming in place of actual teaching?), says this about the question [I’m assuming the grammar error is Ms Bisram’s transcription error and not Ms Egitto’s]:

It was just a very poor prompt, when do we see camels in Central Florida….  I couldn’t even write about the camel prompt and I’ve been writing for 40 plus years[.]

Really?  You don’t feel constrained to teach the children entrusted to you for an actual education something about the wider world beyond Central Florida?  Say, Jacksonville, or the Everglades, or Alabama or Georgia?  Perhaps Europe, or Asia?  Maybe the Middle East?

Does this say more about the question’s difficulty, or about teaching skills—and initiative?  And by extension, since I hardly believe she’s unique in this regard, about Florida’s union teachers generally?

Lisa Wright, an Idyllwilde Elementary School teacher, added [again, I’m assuming the grammar error is Ms Bisram’s transcription error]:

A lot fourth graders in my school probably don’t even know what a camel really is[.]

Whose fault is that, Madam?

Ms Egitto continued [sigh]:

I’m teaching my kids about punctuation and grammar every day and the state is just failing us miserably.

Yeah.  It’s somebody else’s fault.  That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Never mind that the Florida DoE says that the question was extensively reviewed and well-received by about 1,500 students who were selected to take it during a field-testing period.

The point is not whether a fourth-grader is able to write about Middle Eastern transportation.  The point is what we are (not) teaching our children that they’re unable to pick up this sort of useful detail (including, perhaps, sheep, or Mediterranean Grass, or…) in the course of teaching our children about the Middle East.  Or, again I ask, are we not teaching the Middle East?  teaching nothing about Capt Thomas Edward Lawrence helping the Arabs attempt to throw off Turkish, German, and English yokes during WWI (oh, by the way, they used camels on their way across the desert to attack the Germans at Aqaba…).

Some Government Health Mandate Fallout

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President Obama  insists, in response to religious organizations’ concerns, that the costs of birth control coverage can simply be shifted to insurance companies for those organizations with religious objections. This, though, simply demonstrates Obama’s cynicism.  The costs are far more than those of mere money.  The costs are moral, and shifting pecuniary costs to others (itself an egregious immorality) has no impact on this.

Some organizations recognize this moral cynicism and are demonstrating the courage of their convictions.  Vice President of Advancement at Franciscan University in Steubensville, OH, Mike Hernon told Fox News

We couldn’t believe the price (increase).  We had [their insurance company] go back and reconfirm it.  They said it was dictated by coverage limits that were released by the Obama administration.

The university had been excluding contraceptive services and related medications from its health insurance programs for its students.  The price increase that so shocked Hernon was a tripling: from $600 per year per student to $1200 for the fall semester and to $1800 the following year.  A large part of this increase was driven by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s mandate that the coverage available be increased to $100,000 for the students—for coverages that students don’t need.

As a result of the cost and of the moral violation the PPACA mandates demand, Franciscan University will be dropping its student health insurance coverage altogether.  This school cannot take part in a plan that

requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.

Hernon added that

This is putting people in a position where they are having to choose between their faith and their morality, and now an unjust cost.  These sorts of regulations from the government are forcing our hand in a way that’s really wrong. … At the end of the day, it’s the students who are hurt by this[.]

Franciscan University’s complete statement on the matter can be found here.

They’re not alone.  Ava Maria University, a private university in Florida is considering taking the same step for the same reasons.  University President James Towey says

My own sense is, I don’t see…how it makes sense for us to stay in this.

Towey noted that Ava Maria is looking at a cost increase of 65% – 85% from their current insurer.  He tried shopping the coverage, but other major insurers “wouldn’t even give us a quote.”

Do it my way, insists Obama.  Your moral objections don’t matter.  And never mind the cost, just pony up.  But this just demonstrates the failures: Obama not only is terrified of a free market in goods and services—dependency on government isn’t needed in such an economy.  But he’s also terrified of a free market in ideas.

Update: On Monday, Ave Maria University decided to go through with discontinuing its student health insurance plan.  University President James Towey said in a written statement

It is a sad day when Ave Maria’s students are forced to choose between enrolling in a health insurance plan that is both costly and offers morally objectionable benefits, and having no coverage at all.

The Berlin Wall

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…comes to the United States, courtesy of the Progressives.

Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Bob Casey (PA) are proposing an Ex-PATRIOT Act, which would impose a mandatory 30% tax on American investments for those who renounce their citizenship, and it would prohibit their re-entry into the US.  Moreover, this Progressive law would apply to individuals with a net worth of over $2 million or an average income tax liability of at least $148,000.

Thus it would apply to ordinary small business owners—middle class Americans.  This is a barrier intended solely to prevent Americans from leaving.

A fiscal Berlin Wall.

And they intend to make it retroactive to 10 years ago.  Never mind constitutional injunctions against laws that impact people before they were passed.  That also doesn’t matter to Progressives, because, after all, the Constitution is more than 100 years old, hard to understand, and not binding on anything, anyway.

This is the government Progressives want us to live under for the next four years to forever.