The Football Mentality Speaks Ill of America

Baltimore Ravens middle linebacker Ray Lewis is being fawned over by football fans, as his presence in tomorrow's Super Bowl (insert your favorite Roman Numeral here) marks the end of his career. But does he deserve the accolades?

We have before us a man who found himself in the middle of a murder investigation in 2000 but was allowed a plea bargain in order for testimony against others. He is a self proclaimed Christian who lives with a partner, and has fathered six children with four different women. Now he stands accused of using steroids in order to return more quickly from an injury.

And we are supposed to look up to him.

This is not to single out Ray Lewis. But it is to illustrate that there exists, among football players perhaps more than any other sport, the idea that winning is everything, the individual is a demigod if he produces on the field, and that the football mentality is to be seen separate from personal morals and sportsmanship.

Can we separate who we are on the field from who we are in daily life? Can we with any real legitimacy excuse actions on the field, or actions designed to stay on the field, without a consideration of what those actions say about us or our gamesmanship? Al Kaline and Alan Trammell seem the same guys on and of the diamond, and are praised for it. Ty Cobb is similarly condemned. Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are now shunned in the baseball world for actions which call into question their integrity, both personal and athletic. Whither football?

Do we, at the altar of football, sacrifice our integrity for the sake of a mere game? Because this isn't all about Ray Lewis. It's about his coach defending a hit so brutal that it was fined by the league as, basically, 'that's football'. It's about the New Orleans Saints, ironically, given the team name, putting out bounties on opposing players. It's about a game, and nothing more than a game, where fathers who played it won't encourage their sons to follow in their footsteps due to the sheer barbarity involved. It's about a sport where thousands of former players are going through traumatic experiences due to its effect on them. True, they weren't forced to play. Yet they were surely encouraged by a mentality which preyed upon them, and told them to do whatever they had to to be stronger, faster, and more savage.

This is what football brings to the table. Play the game, do what you must to yourself to win, and all other offenses will be forgiven. Because you are a football player. What applies to the general public does not apply to you. Sportsmanship? We'll slap you on the wrist with a little fine if you hurt someone, because we really want you to do that. We want you to hurt someone. All the charity work in the world will not and cannot excuse the Colosseum mentality which pervades the NFL. Win there, and you're a hero. The fallout is irrelevant.

That's football, Americans. It's high time we began to question its legitimacy.

Euthnasia Insults Human Dignity

A set of twins in Belgium, where euthanasia is legal, were allowed to be euthanized on the grounds that their lives were destined to be intolerable. They had been deaf since birth and were going blind but were not terminally ill or suffering physically. They simply could not stand the thought that they would lose further communication with the world and each other.

To have a basic human sympathy for their plight is understandable. Yet to think it all right for them to die merely because they feared the future says something even more about their outlook on life, and of the real value of human life that societies which allow euthanasia actually hold. It says that a human life can be judged not worth living for any reason at all, even such a one as inconvenience.

Yet all lives have their inconveniences, don't they? All lives have pain and suffering, or, at least, ample opportunities for horrible conditions. If someone at some time can end their life simply because conditions grieve them, then shouldn't we all end our lives as they will all at times and invariably be hurtful? Are not all of our lives, strictly in terms of suffering, not worth living? What point is there to suffering anyway, again strictly in terms of suffering?

Did anyone say Helen Keller to these guys? Why do you have to have full command of all your senses in order for your life to have value? Does it show a defect in American society and the broader world that we (generally) do not allow euthanasia? Or does show a defect in those who want to be euthanized? It's a fair question to ask, no matter how many folks may think it crudely put. Is it okay to kill someone, even yourself, merely because you don't like your life for any reason?

We euthanize animals, don't we? Yes, but essentially because they are not sentient, they are not self aware. They do not have the obvious gifts which human beings do. They are below us. Their lives do not and cannot have the meaning ours can and do. They react; we reflect. We have an idea of the value of life; they do not. Equating people with the lower animals only goes to prove our point further: too many in modern times simply do not believe that human life has a dignity which badgers and beavers do not.

Did you have a choice in being born? No? Then why should you think you have a say in when you die?

We are not talking here about people taking actions, soldiers, for example, which might result in their death. They are not willing themselves to die but are rather willing to risk death for a cause greater than themselves. We are not mere animals; we are sentient, thinking beings on a much higher level. The voluntary risk of death by some is in fact a recognition that there are things about human society which must be preserved. Why? Because of our right to life, and our responsibility to live well and rightly.

In the end, our lives are not ours anyway. If so, we would have willed our births and not simply have had them foisted upon us. As it is, it is below the dignity of human life, even a willing human life, to kill itself merely to avoid anything, even suffering. Our lives are not so shallow as to be ended as with the dumb animals. Assisted suicide as such is not justice. Further, it is respect for the dignity of human life in any way, shape or form. It is killing a human being. Killing one. Society dresses the issue in prettier language simply because to state in in plain English might cause people to actually realize the evil inherent in such acts.

It is evil to pretty up death by suicide. Especially selfish ones which are below our intellect.

Faith and Good Health

Metro Detroit doctor Earlexia Norwood prays. She prays for guidance while diagnosing illnesses, and sometimes prays with her patients. It's because she believes that faith helps the healing process, and that medicine can't do everything.

There has been much research on the connection between faith and healing. Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of Duke University's Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, says that there have been many studies into the issue of religious belief and curing the sick, and that around two-thirds of them find a healthy correlation between the two.

It is fascinating to hear Detroit physicians and surgeons so accepting of the role faith plays when treating their patients. True doctors, those open to the fact that they can't do it all medically, are more than willing to give the higher powers of religion their due. After all, they became doctors to help people. The desire to help is naturally unselfish and welcomes any aid which it may get. It makes you wonder how much healing we might receive in any and all walks of life if we were self effacing enough to put faith at the center of curing all societal ills and not only the physical.

The Truth Will Rise

Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the candidate for Vice President on Mitt Romney's ticket during the 2012 Presidential election in the United States, gave a speech yesterday in which he encouraged the GOP to pick its battles in the coming four years against President Barack Obama. Basically, he said that the Republicans need to oppose the President outright at times, compromise at times, and make the President's proposals (alliteration can be cool) more conservative when they can be so made. It is good advice.

What else can be done save to work with what we've got? And what we've got is four more years of President Barack Obama. He can, if he has the spine, and evidence shows he has more than that, veto what he does not like. And his vetoes will hold. Despite the control the Republican Party has on the House of Representatives, the Democrats hold the Senate. No veto will be, can be, overridden until at least 2015.

What does this say of the obvious majority? The majority which exists, obviously, in the fact that Republicans control most state houses and governorships. The United States is a conservative nation; it was founded on what today would be called conservative principles. We are a conservative nation. What do we do?

We wait. In the meantime, we do what we can, and we wait. We delay what seems inevitable (only seems, remember) and do what we can with what we've got to hold at bay the true evils which infect our country.

Such is not surrender; such is not an admission of defeat. Reality imposes certain restrictions; yet they are nothing more than restrictions of the moment. A 'tactical readjustment of the lines' may be necessary from time to time, from point to point. We are still winning the battle of the spirit.

It is a battle we will win. We will win it because human beings in their hearts see and understand it. It is a battle we will win because everyone, every man, woman, and child, sees it and fights towards it.

We will win it because it is in our nature. We will win it because it is what we believe. We will win it because it is right, and we know it.

We know it. That is our strength and our comfort. We know it.

Cut Teachers a Break

It is the issue which won't go away; indeed, we have here spoken of it several times ourselves. We are talking about, again, the way in which we measure teacher performance.

There was a while back a voluntary survey conducted by the Detroit Free Press which has concluded that 30%, or just about 1 in 3, Michigan teachers have felt pressure to cheat. A few have even admitted altering grades.

No one condones cheating. Yet that does not mean that we ought not have a certain sympathy for those of us caught in difficult, if not dire, situations. This is specially true when the rational argument can be made that they are being judged under circumstances over which they have little, if any, control. Educators have little control over who ends up in their classrooms. They have even less say, if any at all, in the home and personal lives of their students.

Claiming that a good teacher can teach anybody is nothing more than a flippancy. It simply ignores reality. Not everyone can learn nor is everyone willing to learn, and such obstacles are not easily overcome. Pressuring teachers, who have their particular lives and pressures to worry over, is bound to invite bending rules among the less stout of heart. Yet with our insistence on finding or developing some sort of almost scientific manner upon which to grade our instructors, methods which basically ignore the obviously non-scientific factors listed here and elsewhere, there seems no leeway except to call teachers on the carpet over matters they cannot affect. That is simply absurd.

There seems two ways ultimately to approach the problem. One is to back off the teachers who work in the tougher areas which will, no offense intended but said only to reflect reality, produce a talent pool of lower ability. The other, and this will seem ironic, reduce the amount of public support for education. Yes, we mean cut funding. Even further, perhaps, than it has been. Those who can learn will learn with less cash being spent on them. Those who can't or won't learn won't be helped either way.

But the trouble with each approach lies in that fact that conservatives, rightly enough, so far as it goes, want an idea about return on investment. They want to measure, as quantifiably as they can, whether the money spent is well spent. This ignores that there are areas where the ROI simply isn't going to be good no matter what. Liberals, being liberal, simply want to throw more money at the schools. They forget that continuing to do what doesn't work will not make it work, and the amount of money spent means nothing in that light.

Neither of these ideas will come to life. And the only ones who will be hurt in the meantime are the ones caught in the middle of the game: the teachers.

Monday Holidays

Today is Martin Luther King Day! Of course, today really would have mattered little to him, as it isn't his birthday or anniversary or anything important to him or his life. But thanks to the Monday Holiday Law, most holidays are celebrated on the Monday after a truly important day, if it falls on a Sunday, or on the nearest Monday if it happens to fall at a different time of the week. Why do we do it? So that workers may enjoy an extended weekend several times a year. Perhaps too so that it may make the work week easier to plan if we simply get the day off at the start of the week rather than as an interruption to the flow of things on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

But have we ever considered that such a practice is immeasurably insulting to the people and the events and the causes which we celebrate? We are speaking about people who gave their lives so that we could be here today to grill or watch ballgames or what have you, causes which speak to the soul, and events so important to our history as a nation that without whose remembrance we commit a great affront to our collective memory. And what do we do?

Shove them around the calendar for our convenience.

Wow. That Dr. Martin Luther King was such a great guy, let's make his birthday a holiday. Only let's make it on the nearest Monday if January 15th inconveniently falls on a Tuesday this year, so that we can enjoy a prolonged vacation. Whatever we do, we better remember our heroes in the way which suits us best: by us taking time off to do as we please. That's what matters: our convenience.

That's simply wrong.

There is good, and evil, in the world

Perhaps the most vexing problem in the world today is the idea of evil. It is so vexing that most of the world, the vaunted Western world anyway, attempts to ignore it. There are no evil people, it says. There are only people trying to get along the best they can with the resources they've got.

Such is certainly true so far as it goes. We have to work with what we've got, intellectually and incidentally, according to our position in life. But how far does that go, really? What can it say of innovation and drive, indeed, of free will? What can it say of the chance that we may recruit allies and make things better? What can it say about what our opposition may do, to thwart our plans?

Not very much. If we are all simply stuck with what we've got, with what we are born with, shall we say, what hope is there of improvement? On the other side of the coin, what prospect exists of doing real harm to the world and its peoples either? If we are born only what we are, how can we progress or regress? Truly said, if there are no evil people, can there be good people? And if we cannot know that we are doing is good, what is the point of doing it?

Yet we know by experience that we, as individuals and societies, both progress and regress, daily and through history, individually and collectively. But by what right can we even call progress progress, or regress regress, without a knowledge that we may be progressing or regressing? And if we are really progressing, really making the world a better place for persons and nations, wouldn't that be called good? Similarly, if we are actually regressing, would that not be called evil?

This becomes dangerously close to calling some people evil, which is really what the world wishes to avoid. Wouldn't it be better if we all saw each other as moral equals doing only what we can with what we've got? Wouldn't it?

No, it would not. For in so doing we would only give mission to those who would do wrong. We would only be sanctifying their will. If there is no good and evil, if there is no right and wrong, then our actions do not matter. If our actions do not matter, then it does not matter what we do. And that, by itself, is evil, because it allows those with power to do with the rest of us whatever they want, despite our protests. It allows the individual as well to do as he sees fit without regard to what effect that might have on those around him. And we cannot protest, if there are no angels and devils, no good and evil, within us. How may we claim our own rights, if the devils among us are as apt to be as right and good as the supposed angels?

If good does not believe that it is good, then evil has won. If good will not call itself good, then evil has won. Still, calling the good good and the evil evil does not necessarily mean that the people involved are good or evil. But it must mean that their causes are one or the other. Which means that we must choose whether we are with the one or the other. We must choose whether we are trying to be good and do good, or trying to be evil and do evil.

So make your choice. But spare us the platitudes which only assert that our choices do not matter. Such platitudes only serve the cause of evil. Do you want to feed or starve that cause?