A Dose of Reality

Honey Boo Boo. We've seen pictures of her (how can you not, seeing as they're all over the Internet) but not a single episode of the reality show which features her and her family. Further, we have no intention of seeing one. We don't need to. We know all we need to know about it. And what we know about it tells a tale about an American society which appears to be increasingly dysfunctional, to say the least.

Why are we so excited about reality shows, and particularly ones which appeal to our baser instincts? Why do we want to see people who are so out of whack that, in earlier years, they would have never come close to starring in TV shows? What is the actual appeal of bridezillas and families who speak so poorly that captions are needed as we watch each episode? Does seeing them make us feel superior? It's an arrogant type of superiority if it does. Do we enjoy the fact that those folks are being played for patsies? To be sure, they are patsies who are well compensated. Yet that hardly seems the point.

We have seen recently where a teen in West Branch, Michigan, was a target of a horrible scheme to have her terribly embarrassed which was made into something good. That makes sense; that's the kind of realty which ought to be promoted. Yet how far removed is that situation from what we see and cheer on in reality shows? Not very. We enjoy embarrassing them through the simple fact that we encourage their behavior. And we do nothing to, perhaps, put them in a positive light.

Surely the first defense will be that the reality stars are in the spotlight by choice. There's little doubting that. But is it the point? At the end of the day we are effectively telling them that what they do is okay. Indeed, aren't we hoping and expecting that they will become all the more outrageous in their behavior in order to keep the money flowing and increase their air time? That speaks volumes about them, yet it speaks volumes about us as well.

Or does it? Maybe we are so simple minded, prurient, and devilish that that's all we need for entertainment. If so, then the United States deserves the back water status towards which it is headed. Ah well; we had a good run.

Science and Goodness

One of the great debates between the Christian and the scientist is the degree to which we are animal or spiritual. Many scientists wish us to be wholly scientific in our approach to humanity and understanding of ourselves. It is really a rather shallow outlook on human nature or, even, the necessary consequences of a purely scientific view of who we are.

Science has apparently discovered the part of our brain which helps us to recognize justice. It asserts, at least in some quarters, that goodness is innate within us physically. Yet it ignores the very real point that whether good occurs in us naturally is an entirely different question from the judgment of 'what is good?' or the expectation that people will do good.

How do we know what is good except to be able to judge it in our individual and societal actions? Or are our scientifically minded friends suggesting that we just 'do things' and they happen to be good? Either way, any judgment about good, any assertion that 'this is good' cannot come wholly or entirely from within ourselves; there are too many of us with too many of our own nuanced ideas of good and bad.

Or are you saying that everyone from childhood, without guidance of any kind (parental, societal, or spiritual) will necessarily elect to do good? No Lord of the Flies scenarios possible? It begs the question of why people (and it should be obvious that all people do bad things sometimes regardless of physical construction) do bad things. Why does the thief steal, if he knows in his heart and head that it's wrong? Further, what's free will, if we are born with, say, no choice but to do good?

It should surprise no one that we are hard wired to recognize justice; we are, at the end of the day, physical as well as spiritual creatures. It should not be shocking news that a just and all knowing God in the very act of creation would make our physical selves able to recognize spiritual, eternal, and absolute truths, truths outside our own will, thus enabling us to see (so to speak) justice. That science has discovered as much enhances rather than detracts from our knowledge of God. It strengthens, not weakens, our relationship with Him. It makes our spiritual side and our physical side properly complimentary. It raises us from the mere animal into a higher plane of existence.

Science does not tell us who we are in our entirety. It only sets us on that road. How far we trail along that path is ultimately up to us. And the questions we discover along that way will not be empirical.

Replacement Refs and World Hunger

At one time we would have bristled at the accusation that we Yanks were decadent. We no longer do, chiefly because, in too many ways, we are.

In these rough economic times that may appear an odd lament, yet we stand by it. What type of luxuries have we demanded in recent years? Things such as seat warmers in our cars. Seat warmers? The seat is the first thing that warms up when you get in your car, in a span of maybe five seconds. This is before we even get to remote starters; how much money do you have that you can burn gasoline simply so that your car is toasty warm the instant you get in it? This at a time when, we'll say it even at the risk of appearing liberal, there are too many people in the world without enough to eat, and even too many in our country without proper access to housing and medical care.

We find ourselves paying six bucks for one single hot dog at a sporting event when that same six dollars would buy a whole pack of them, buns and all, outside the park. We twitter incessantly over the results of the game we just watched, as though it were the end all be all of human endeavor. It's just a game, folks. To be sure, there's nothing wrong with recreation or personal comfort. Yet that doesn't mean that a better perspective isn't a good thing as well.

This is not naive. We realize that there is no direct correlation between add-ons to cars, or millionaires playing games while thousandaires overpay for the privilege of watching them, and someone in Haiti lacking good food. We will even readily concede that these luxuries do have the positive side benefit of keeping people in jobs. Further, we recognize that the problems elsewhere are not, as a rule, our fault. As P. J. O'Rourke for example explains so very well in his funny and enlightening book All the Trouble in the World, many of those problems are caused by the local government in question and not American selfishness. Still, we have to ask whether this sort of consumerism is what we ought to be promoting when there are folks who lack basic necessities. On their own merit, we have to wonder whether they are worthwhile uses of our time, effort, and cash.

In short, that something is doable doesn't mean that it's worth doing. That we can buy something doesn't mean it's worth the purchase. What we consider basic creature comforts may be little more than modern forms of let them eat cake. We believe it would do our souls well to mull that over when we make certain purchases or demands on our productive forces.

Who knows? We may actually find that what we want isn't what we need.

The Ballot Proposals which Failed

We know that there are 6 ballot proposals facing Michigan voters this November. Yet how many people realize that there were 9 more that were, for one reason or another, not included on the upcoming ballot? We don't necessarily know why each was rejected, but that really doesn't matter right now. What is interesting is that sometimes the things which don't make it are more interesting than the ones which do.

An initiative on expanding casino gaming was scrapped by a ruling of the Michigan Supreme Court. But that was one of two which dealt with new casinos; this demonstrates that gambling has become a big business around here. Yet it ignores the issue of how much is too much, and we're probably just as well without having to consider the question ourselves.

Two other rejected ideas involved the structure of government: one would have abolished the State Senate, while the other would have enshrined the right of the people to alter or abolish government. Interesting ideas, both. Yet both are better off off the ballot. There's nothing particularly wrong with a two house legislature, and don't we have the right to 'alter or abolish' government as it is?

Another proposed amendment would have made horizontal hydraulic fracturing for oil illegal. Come now, why would we want to do that? We need oil, and fracking is safe. This is just a liberal scare mongering tale which has no business as part of our State's highest law. We must be very, very slow about having a Constitution dictating how and why to get energy. It would have only tied the hands of our legislature in an area where it ought to be making decisions.

One proposal would have banned union dues as a condition of employment. We would have liked for that one to have approved. There's always been something underhanded about a group of people claiming to represent your best interests but, as is often the case, against your will. With your money and my brains, we can change the world; how can that not sound suspect? Yet it didn't make the ballot, and that's too bad. It's one we would really have liked to see voted upon.

Any way you slice it, for all the complaining about this November's initiatives clogging up the state Constitution, it could have been worse. We might have had another 9 to consider. Seeing that, perhaps we are lucky to have only what we have.

A Conservative Movie?

Picture, if you will, a man who tries to control others through the everyday behavior and wants of the people in an area. Under his influence, the local government bans innocuous actions. The people can't do what they want; their most offhand actions are deemed immoral by a higher power. They must walk about the town unable to do what they would like. The town becomes a walking dirge, watching in trepidation its every step trying to avoid the evil eye of its leadership, to avoid its condemnation. Fear, fear of the slightest error, rules the populace, because even the smallest errant action, however slight, and indeed however unimportant, may lead them to ridicule and sin. Imagine that; then imagine that you were talking about the social conservatives and the Reverend Shaw Moore from the movie Footloose.

Imagine that, and you're wrong. We are talking about the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who says you can't buy soft drinks in larger than 16 ounce sizes. We are talking about Verenice Gutierrez, who believes that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, good old PBJs, are racist. We are talking about all the folks who do not want others to sell their farmland to developers, who do not want people to take anything but public transportation to and fro, who want us to live according to their own autocratic and despotic rules. We are talking about liberals.

Conservatives are supposed to be the ones who want to control you. Conservatives are the ones who want you parading around in goose step fashion. Conservatives are the ones who believe that anyone who doesn't look like them, think like them, talk like them, and act like them are evil. Conservatives are the control freaks who measure everything with a harsh and certain ruler.

They aren't. The left wants to control you. Liberals want you to do their bidding. Liberals are the ones whop want you to dance to the rhythm of their drum. Liberals, not conservatives.

The Reverend Mr. Moore from Footloose may well be a conservative. Indeed, we think he is. He overreacts, sees the error of his ways, and repents. Will the left?

No. They aren't wrong, and they know it. They tell us all the time. And what better assurance can we have?

To be a Professional

It is fascinating where certain interesting ideas may be found. The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is must reading for any baseball wonk, almost entirely (surprise, surprise) for its in depth analysis of the game and its players. Still, that doesn't mean that every scrap of value found within it is restricted to interpretations of the true American National Pastime.

Mr. James at one point laments the rise of professionalism in our nation over the last fifty years or so, indeed comparing it to the many other -isms which have infected our body politic. Sportswriters and reporters have become journalists, whereas at one time they had the simpler jobs of reporting the news or sports, with someone to answer to if they didn't stick to those specific jobs. But James takes it further: teachers have become educators who teach to tests rather than teach the subject at hand. Cops have become police officers, garbage collectors sanitation workers, and so on.

The result is that we now have self aggrandized professionals in all fields, but to what point? James opines rather well that legal professionals delivered us the O. J. Simpson verdict, but not justice. On other fronts, he says, journalism has made reporting on news and athletic events adversarial rather than benign. Doctors evolving into physicians and nurses into health care professionals have driven the cost of an aspirin in a hospital to $35 while doctors used to make house calls. You get the point.

While we cannot agree with him on every particular (health care costs have went up for reasons beyond and better than a simple change of attitude, even if you believe they have gone father than reason might allow, and reporters are almost naturally adversarial) his general point is well founded. Why do we see teachers so differently lately? At one point, they had the rather straightforward job of making kids sit down, shut up, and pay attention, while expecting and getting the general support of the community. Now, we demand results from them, codified and quantified based on all kinds of data which the general public doesn't understand yet supports in the cause of education. Why can't we be happy that the kids end up with a high school diploma? Surely most of those earned over the course of American history have been reasonably granted?

Why can't cops catch the bad guys and lawyers by turn prosecute or defend them? What are we really seeking when we make things into more than they are? The net result seems to be displayed through that incident with Barbara Boxer awhile back. You know, the one where she asked to be called "Senator" rather than "Ma'am" because she earned it? Instead of becoming the professionals we claim we are, we instead begin to be arrogant about what we in fact perceive ourselves to be.

We do not mean herein to pick on Senator Boxer in particular. Really, we don't; nor do we wish to disparage the jobs which are done every day and well by all the good teachers and cops and doctors and nurses out there in our land. But the sanctification of what, in the final analysis, we as individuals do for a living cannot help us to truly appreciate the necessary jobs being done for us and by us each and every day. It seems that we've lost something of our innocence, indeed of our humility, when we demand a certain grovelling before us as we earn our daily bread.

We hate to say that all a teacher is is a teacher, or that all a doctor is is a doctor. Yet we cannot escape the feeling that a real teacher or a real doctor should feel that way. It is one thing for the general society to venerate any given individual's very good and very much needed work, indeed up to and including that of, say, trash collector. Would you do that? Pick up others' garbage? Then respect the ones who do. But for the professional to demand that treatment, quite frankly, reeks of a lack of professionalism.

By and large, true professionals command the respect they deserve. They command it precisely because they stick to their jobs rather than trumpet about them. They tend to know their place, and to know that they are not irreplaceable. They know their jobs are bigger than they ever will be. They do them in that light: as best they can without ever thinking they are better than anyone else because of it.

Be appreciative of all the things others done for you. Be humble about what you do for them. If there is a better prescription for a better world, a better description of true professionalism, we do not know what it is.

Act Locally

One of the most basic axioms a conservative should have in his arsenal is known as the Principle of Subsidiarity. Plainly stated, it says that things should be done on the most local level possible. Why? Because that it the surest way to get necessary things accomplished in the most efficient manner.

The closer we are to a problem the better we ought to be able to understand it. We will see it more clearly, and indeed, particularly with issues and events nearby, we will likely have a greater interest in it. Schools, for example, should by and large be run within the local community because it is the locals who have the greatest interest in the education of their kids. Their kids are the ones who are generally going to hang around and run things when the current generation cannot anymore.

As a rule, the closer to a problem the less money which must be spend alleviating it. This is in part due to localized control, again as issues should be seen more clearly but also as there would be no added layers of bureaucracy which would otherwise have to be paid for by the electorate. Perhaps this is why, try as she might, Washington cannot get a grip on poverty: too much money which is supposed to help the poor in fact keeps bureaucrats at a desk.

There are of course many factors to consider when deciding what job should be done where in a national scheme. A nation as a whole must take up the defense of its people: could Detroit reasonably be expected to ward off an attack by a large foreign power on its own? If we were to leave Detroit to its own devices (a prospect many folks out there may not mind, but let's set aside jokes right now) we would hardly be a nation in the best sense of the word.

As a rule, conservatives would argue that few powers would be nationwide in scope. Military protection, the necessary and proper federal judicial arrangements, coinage, and issues of commerce (to varying degrees) come first to mind. State power would be wider than that of municipalities, perhaps, while communities would see to the bulk of day in and day out tasks: police and fire protection, trash pickup, and to the schools, among other chores.

We could go on all day discussing particulars, but you get the point. Local control is the best remedy for most ills. It is a point which should be discussed, if you'll excuse the irony, on a wider scale.