What would it take to create a desire in the general population of America to become more educated?  We’ve had all kinds of warnings and hand wringing over the past 40 years about the dumbing down of America, did we believe it?  Did we think it might not be the best thing that our cultural literacy is at an all time low?  Or did we think ‘as long as we were rich, fat, and happy who cares whether or not our kids know what Socratic method is’? 

Are you interested in challenging your mind?  Do you want to hear new ideas?  Or even old ideas that you may not have considered before?  Or do you think that’s just stuff from “dead white men” with no relevance to the real world of here and now?

I watched Barack Obama’s 60 minutes interview when I got home from work tonight.  I confess, I missed it last night because it was Sunday evening, I had on my pajamas and was curled up on the couch under a warm blanket watching DVD’s of NCIS, and I forgot that he was going to be on.  But I digress.  In the interview, he was asked what he’s reading.  He kind of laughed and said, “A lot of briefs” but then went on to talk about actual books he’s reading. 

I like that in a President.  I’d like to see a little more of that going on in my life.  (Don’t misunderstand me, I have every intention of spending my next Sunday night hogging the remote and watching more DVD’s).  But, I’ve also been looking at some books that I think it’s time I dusted off and got better acquainted with. 

PLutarch, Virgil, Tacitus, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Karl Marx – Pascal, Goethe, Freud …

Whether you agree with the ideas they, and a hundred other like them, have proposed, these are the authors of the Great Conversation about what it means to be human.  To be alive, to be effective, to be successful, to be ethical, to be healthy and whole.  And there is a really exciting contemporary contribution to this conversation being made, but in order to understand and participate, don’t we need to know what’s been said before?  Seems to me like we’ve had a generation’s worth of people who came in at the tail end of a sentence they didn’t understand and instead of trying to learn the context and meaning of it, they jumped all over and denounced. 

A couple of weeks ago, I read Peggy Noonan’s new book, “Patriotic Grace”.  It’s a wonderful little book and I recommend it.  I picked it up precisely because Peggy Noonan usually argues for the perspective of the “other side” and she argues it very well.  I realized when I was reading it that I’ve not been feeding the part of my self that thirsts for deep and challenging thoughts.  I don’t want to drift through life like a cartoon character, shallow, living from cheap laugh to cheap laugh. 

I love to tease my bff about having narrow horizons which have been shaped by living the same city for 47 years.  When I tease, I’m aware that narrowness can also come from living in the same thoughts.  It’s comfortable.  It’s safe.  Every now and then, I just crave having my boat rocked. 

And btw, that book about Bullshit is some serious kind of fun.  Turns out there’s a lot more to bullshit than I’d previously considered. 

I’m reading a new book.  I love to read philosophy, and although this book is in the popular philosophy genre, it’s a couple notches above the poetical sentimentality that usually passes for popular philosophy.

In “Bullshit and Philosophy” – and yes, my boys have given me grief for reading a book with a word on the cover that they would get in trouble for using – Gary Hardcastle and George Reisch have compiled and edited a series of essays that examine the bullshitter’s practice of “not caring whether or not what he says is true.”

What’s important to this person is that speech is clever, memorable, persuasive.  Not that it’s true. 

We’re surrounded by it.  We expect a certain amount of it in advertising.  We expect a certain amount of it from politicians, scientists, educators … from any group which has a viewpoint they are espousing. 

In the midst of all this bullshit, though, it seems that Americans have no idea how to judge the merits of an argument.  What makes a position logically defensible?  When we are fed nothing but manure, how do we develop a taste for the real thing?  Would we even know the real thing if it came along?

Just saying …

I’ve been thinking about this question for a while now.  I’ve read blogs, heard commentators, and been told by people at my work what a Liberal is.  Frankly most of what they have said bears little or no resemblance to what Liberalism means to me.

Yesterday, my bff showed me a website which defined it this way: “A liberal is a person whose views reject traditional and biblical standards in favour of subjective or relative standards.”

What do you think?  What does it mean to be a Liberal? 

In an economic world where eight years of “Conservative” administration ends with record budget deficits, national debt and nationalization of banks, what does it mean to be a conservative? 

When “liberal” states vote down gay marriage and “conservative” states reject bills on abortion limitation, what implications can we draw for the future and what does this say about our labels? 

There are two cats who live in my house.  They’ve been elected to important offices which give them the opportunity to serve the Verrette People. 

They are as different in their perspective as Karl Rove and David Plouff.  Joe is the Republican Cat, he’s the one who comes out to meet new people and offers them the opportunity to love him.  He’ll climb on your lap, read your mail, listen to your phone calls and stalk you to find out what you’re up to.  Joe is also the Attack Cat.  He hides in dark corners, under beds, and on top of furniture.  When Gladys walks by he’s fond of pouncing on her and biting her neck. 

Gladys on the other hand is a more live-and-let-live, Liberal kind of cat.  She’s not one to impose her affections upon you.  She believes in a more “small government” approach wanting just enough to make sure that none of the People are suffering.  She’s around and she’ll curl up at the foot of my bed to keep my feet warm, but she isn’t going to be doing any lap sitting, thank you very much.  She’s pretty sure that the People deserve the right to privacy.  She’ll fight if backed into a corner, but she’s completely rejected the “preemptive strike strategy.”

On Tuesday, Joe was heartbroken.  He felt that his entire ideology had been repudiated by the election.

Gladys isn’t perfect.  She has a tiny little part of her personality that was tempted to gloat.  But the truth is that the People whom these two cats serve, love them both.  We need Joe for the way he keeps Tucker entertained.  We need Gladys for her quiet comfort. 

So Gladys reached out to Joe.  They know that there isn’t going to be anyway they are going to agree on approach, but they both agree there is a job to be done.  There are clothes which NEED to be fluffed with cat hair before the People leave the house.  There is a silk plant in the corner and by golly SOMEBODY needs to knock that puppy over every day to keep it in its place.  There’s a lot of work to be done.  Too much for one cat to handle.

  

So even though they are polar opposites, we are hoping very much that they will try hard to work together.  We know it’s fun to make speeches implying or stating outright that the other side is the dark side of the force while our side is sugar and light and fairy dust.  But really, haven’t we had enough of that fun?  Sooner or later we need some work to be done. 

Why there were two days in a ROW during the campaign when I was forced to leave the house with NO cat hair at ALL on the seat of my pants.  It was tragic. 

And for those of you who are still here but have had enough of Joe and Gladys, I want to suggest that for a picture of what the new America might look like, you take a glance at the Meet the Press segment with Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla, and Rep, James Clyburn D-SC – If I’ve got it right, you’ll find that clip HERE. 

Tom Brokaw threw out several invitations to bicker, but though there was some difference in perspective, the two spoke as leaders and statesmen. They outlined the seriousness of issues and also demonstrated that when it comes to doing what is right for America, the situation we are in points rather dramatically to solutions which are neither Democratic nor Republican but are the right thing to do.  Both men passed on the opportunity to support the extreme views of their party.  At the end they shook hands with smiles and made me believe that they really can and will work together. 

What a good feeling to realize that men of this caliber are serving us. 

Over the past several weeks there have been a lot of newcomers to my blog.  (Thank you Xanga Featured)  I really don’t know how many because I’ve stopped looking to see how many subscribers I have, except I looked this morning and there are about 100 more than the last time I checked.

So, many of you don’t know about my quilting habits. 

I work with a group of other women, headed up by Miss Eva, who call themselves the B.A.G. ladies.  We make child-sized quilts and then with matching fabric we make a bag, about the size of a carry-on bag or a backpack.  The quilt gets rolled up and placed inside the bag.  In the outside pocket we put toys, books, crayons … whatever fits with the bag’s fabric. 

The bags are then distributed to children in foster care through different non-profit agencies.  We just delivered our 4th quarter bags, 48 total this time.  I was privileged on Thursday to deliver 24 of them to the Peanut Butter and Jelly agency in Albuquerque’s South Valley. 

If I ever do manage to scrape together enough savings to make a down payment on a house, my prayer is that I will be able to afford one with a bedroom that I can use to house a foster child or two, but until then, this is what I do.  I’m passionate about it because I’ve seen what the lives of kids in foster care can be.  It’s a brutal system.  Kids get yanked in and out of homes until they develop the kind of walls that prevent them forming attachments or having healthy relationships for the whole rest of their lives.  And when they get yanked, often their meager belongings and gathered into a trash bag. 

I’m convinced that “the medium is the message” and I think the message we are sending when we reach for the Hefty bag is “you and everything about you is trash”.  That’s a huge hurdle to overcome. 

The bag that the B.A.G. ladies make isn’t big enough to hold all that the child might have.  But it’s new, it’s bright, and it comes with a tag that says, “I made this for you because you are special.”  The child can store his or her treasures in the bag, and when its time to move, that’s the bag that never gets left behind. 

One of the B.A.G. ladies attended a meeting with a woman who works as a child advocate in the courts here.  This woman was describing her work and then after telling stories that would chill your blood, segued into, “There is one thing I see that I have to mention though,  I don’t know who is doing this, but some of the kids who come through the court have these bags … They are beautifully made, and obviously the kids’ most precious possession.  Someone has to be distributing them to these kids, but I don’t know who it is or where to get them.  I wish all the kids could have something like that.”

Of course, our member was able to tell her exactly where the bags come from and something of the story of the (mostly) women who constitute our group.  I say mostly because although I don’t think we have any men actually sewing, we have men who contribute money, they cut the sheets of stuff we use to make a “base” for the bags to give them sturdiness, and they buy and donate quantities of toys and books.

The one question I had when I made the delivery to PB&J on Thursday was “are you getting a stockpile?  Is is hard for you to dispense these bags?  Do you have demand for them?”  The director said, “Oh, we are far from a stockpile.  The last batch went quickly, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing the new ones.”

Before I took the bags to PB&J, I took a few in to my office to show off to some of my co-workers.  I wasn’t showing them off to brag about what *I* was doing, I was showing them what had been done with their contributions.  Some had given me fabric, others had given me toys, and one had given me a check to help buy quilt batting.  None of them had ever heard of the B.A.G. project before I started working there last July.  But when I made that delivery on Thursday, six more people had been stitched into the fabric of our group.  That’s the kind of quilt that can only be made of qualities like hope, compassion, and sacrifice.  That’s a quilt I’m really proud to have helped stitch.

If you’d like to contribute to this project, your donation would be more than welcome.  We always have need of fabrics, toys, quilt batting and the like.  You could contact me if you’d like to give to these children who have so little and need so much.

I would encourage you though to think about what you can do where you are.  If you aren’t interested in starting something as ambitious as the B.A.G. project, call your local United Way and ask questions about what agencies are doing in your area and see what need you can fill. 

You are needed to bring HOPE into the life of someone who has less than their share. 

Way back in time, when days were getting longer, and we were getting out our light weight clothes, my best friend said, “I’m really impressed with this Obama guy.  He’s getting a lot of money from small donors.”

Still entrenched in my hope that Hilary would get the nomination, I didn’t want to hear it.  But as the days rolled by and it became more and more clear the direction this thing was headed, I started to listen.  And I heard something that inspired me more than anything I can ever remember in American politics.  I heard the sound of average people.  Small people.  People who would never be invited to pay $1000 for tough chicken at a campaign dinner.  I heard the whisper of their wallets opening. 

I heard the sound of single moms slipping a $20 into the coffers with a “bless you”.  I heard the sound of teachers’ keyboards clicking like so many cicadas out of season, sending off $50 to the candidate who embodied the hopes they cherished for their brightest students.  I heard the quiet breath of a million people who didn’t argue, attend rallies, or shout slogans.  But they made a statement that can be measured today.

I have been cynical about money and elections.  I remember being depressed in 1999 when I read about George Bush’s “war chest” of money.  Gold gathered from oil interests and Wall Street tycoons.  I knew he would have resources to put his face in front of us non-stop until so many would vote for him just to make it all go away.  I despaired of “the people” ever being relevant to a Presidential campaign. 

But as I listened to what was happening, I started to hope.  That’s the danger of being a cynic you know.  Cynics are hopeful people trying not to be hurt again by the cut of disappointment.  And with hope, I did something I haven’t done in twenty years.  I made a donation to a political campaign.  And I bought a tee shirt, and a bumper sticker, and then my bff got in on the act and gave me a gift of three Obama buttons. 

So it was with a laugh that I read the little banner at Newsweek.com a minute ago.  “Did Barack Obama buy this election?” 

No.  I can tell you who bought it.  I did.  I did along with everyone who realized that for the first time in our lifetime, we mattered in the political process.  

You know why I believe “bottom up” works?

Because the American people just proved it. 

From the bottom up, we bought ourselves a campaign.  We elected ourselves a President.  We got a guy who isn’t beholden to special interests or big money.  We got a guy who ran the most expensive campaign in history because we gave it to him and said, “Run, Run, Run – carry the baton for us.”

There’s not much chance that I could call the White House next year and say, “Hey, I donated $50 to your campaign, can you meet with me?”

And that’s the way it should be. 

Oh, yes.  We can. 

So what’s next?

Those of us at the bottom need to look around at what we did.  Because we can do it again and again and again.  We live in a nation where Ayn Rand’s rosy ideal of the industrialist has been tested.  Alan Greenspan was so enamored of her vision of the hero who carries everyone on his back, who makes products better, and cheaper, not because it makes him wealthy but because that’s what industry giants do – that he spent 18 years guiding our economy more and more in the favor of his mythical hero.  Well, it was an ideal.  But we don’t live in an ideal world.  The people at the top don’t take care of the people at the bottom.  Its the other way around and always has been. 

We have a nation to rebuild.  We, the people at the bottom.  Those of us who are close enough to the poverty line that we can see it from our front porch will be the hands, the ideas, and the action that rebuilds our economy.  We’ll do it little by little.  No one is going to hand it to us.  No one is going to buy us a shiny new economy to replace the one that got broken. 

We don’t need them to.

…

Simply Amazing. 

I’m glad that I’ll be going off to work in a short while to an office where things are very quiet most of the time. 

There are so many significant things happening, I want to pay attention.

I have a friend – in Ohio – (waves to friend) – who is a lapidary.  We had a conversation not long ago about flaws and he told me about inclusions.  Inclusions are “imperfections” in stones.  The skilled lapidary works around them and with them.  In the end, because of the inclusions, cut stones are more interesting, more beautiful because of the inclusions.

He also sent me a beautiful cabochon of Ohio flint.  I thought at first that I would use it to make a piece of jewelry, a brooch or something. 

Instead, I carry it in my pocket.  I touch its smoothness.  I take it out and look at it. 

I remember that what looks like a fault to me, could be the very thing that makes life beautiful.

Tonight feels very solemn and weighted.  If I were fanciful, I would say that I could almost feel the held breath of a billion people around the globe praying that Americans will make the best choice for us all.  Praying in many languages. 

The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. . . 

Screwtape to Wormwood
Letter #14

One of the things I’ve considered is pursuit of a degree in philosophy.  One of the reasons I like philosophy is the branch of philosophy that helps you understand whether an argument is valid or bullshit.  When one side argues in a way that demonstrates that they have little regard for truth or fairness, they may win the moment, but they will lose the war, every time. 

I’ve made clear my preference in the Presidential election, and I believe I’ve made clear my reasons for my choice.  My TOP THREE are: 

The economic policies Barack Obama proposes and supports are the ones that I believe we need in order to navigate our way out of this economic mess we’re in.  We have a very clear distinction between the two candidates in that Barack Obama’s policies are “bottom up” and John McCain’s are “trickle down.”  Bottom up policies have been demonstrated to work.  When people in entry and lower level positions earn living wages they buy education for themselves and their children, health insurance, and homes.  They start small businesses and become employers.  When economic policy is geared to support the “producers” at the top, time and again what we have seen is that the money doesn’t trickle down, it lines the coffers of the producers creating a “redistribution of wealth” from the middle class to the very few at the top.

Foreign policy in this country has taken a hard turn away from the path Western Civilization has adopted ever since the Christian theologian Augustine outlined the requirements for Just War almost 1700 years ago.  (The only other time we left this path we had the Crusades which have left a black eye on Christianity and Western Civilization that 1,000 years hasn’t healed.)  Barack Obama is proposing a return to the Just War doctrine and a repudiation of the Bush Doctrine.  At the bottom of this blog I will provide a brief outline of both Just War and the Bush Doctrine. 

Limited Government – in this case I’m looking at the Republican Party and saying, No matter how loudly you may say it, I am more convinced by what you’ve done than what you’ve said.  Under the Republicans between 2001 and 2007 we have suffered the greatest assault on individual liberties perpetrated in our entire national history.  We’ve seen the Bill of Rights assualted time and again with illegal search and seizure, wiretapping, and government intrusion.  On this side, I am with Benjamin Franklin who said, “A people who would trade freedom for security will have neither.”  Barack Obama has articulated a determination to restore rights and freedoms to the people of the United States of America who are not terrorists and do not deserve to be treated as though guilty until proven innocent.

What is not on my list:

Social Policy

This is a difficult one for me.  I have in the past voted for candidates based upon their positions with regard to social issues such as abortion.  I no longer do this for three reasons.  First, they don’t follow through.  We have voted in politicians all over this country who believe in right to life, but the only thing they do is draft legislation which they know will never build a consensus and never be enacted.  In this country we have a Constitution which limits government from interfering in the lives of private citizens and most of the laws that have been attempted in the abortion arena are not compatible with that Constitutional Principle, guaranteeing that they will be struck down when they reach the Supreme Court.

Second, if politicians really wanted to impact the rates of abortion, they would enact policies that support families, and especially they would enact policies and fully fund programs and mandates that benefit children such as the Child Health Insurance Program, Head Start, WIC, IDEA, and NCLB.  There would be tax incentives for companies with family friendly policies.  We can argue all day long about whether the current versions of these programs are efficient or effective, but I can’t imagine that anyone would argue that we should close them down. 

I have concluded that between the politicians on the Right who have claimed social policy as their plank and the politicians on the Left who have been demonized for their support of individual rights but have actually proposed legislation that is within the proper sphere of governement under our constitution and does impact families in a positive way, the people on the Left are the ones who are more likely to create conditions that would be favorable to real families.

My final reason is where my religious faith comes in.  It has to do with what I believe to be the proper sphere of the church and what I see as the proper sphere of government.  Within Christian tradition there is a long and wonderful movement called the Social Gospel which has brought about societal and cultural change on such a grand scale as the abolition of slavery.  Some of those grand initiatives have been impacted through legislation, but cultural changes like economic ones do not occur top down, they happen bottom up.  If you want to change the way that people think, you have to show them one person at a time why the other way is better. 

I like to use Alcoholics Anonymous versus Prohibition as my example of this principle.  Prohibition didn’t do anything to impact rates of alcoholism.  Alcoholics found illegal alternatives and carried on through Prohibition.  But when AA began to work one individual at a time telling them that with the help of a Higher Power they could be recovered from alcoholism, lives began to change.  Compare the radio and television bits in their treatment of alcohol from the 40′s 50′s and 60′s to the way it has been portrayed in the 80′s 90′s and 00′s.  There is a profound shift in the way we view it.  In the 50′s sitcoms a person who refused a drink was a churlish boor.  Now, it is the person who would proffer alcohol to someone who has refused who is the churlish boor. 

 And for my last comment on the Social Gospel, I want to point to a phenomenon that has been reported on major networks and written of in newspapers for weeks.  People who are voting Democratic have a deep distrust of the American voting system.  Well documented cases of voter disenfranchisement have created a sense that people on the Right are willing to Lie, Cheat, and Steal in order to have their way.  In other words, the behavior of some of the people on the Right has shouted to the world that Christians cannot be trusted.  The advance of the gospel has been harmed and it’s been harmed precisely because some Christians have been willing to sacrifice truth and mercy in their pursuit of justice.

*************

Just War Doctrine

Bush Doctrine

Unilateralism
         The United States has the right to act unilaterally to carry out foreign policy decisions, no consensus of nations sought or required.
Attacking Countries that Harbor Terrorists
         Whether or not those countries have committed acts of aggression against the US.
Preventive Strikes
         The United States has the right to pre-emptively wage war against countries who might one day threaten the security of the United States.
Democratic Regime Change
          Exporting Democracy to nations whether or not they have any tradition, foundation or basis for Democratic governance in their culture.

I know that most of us are not accountants and that frankly most of us would run screaming if we were forced to account for anything because that’s really not the “fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants” – “go-with-our-gut” – “I can’t be out of money I still have checks” way of doing things.

But if I hear one more person expressing consternation over Obama’s plan to roll back tax cuts on businesses that make more than $250k per year, I’m going to slap them to the ground, tie them up and force them to memorize the process of business tax accounting. 

If you’d like to get in on my little action it goes like this:

The top part of the form which consists of the “Income” section has about 5 lines.

GROSS SALES – lets say you sold hamsters last year, a lot of hamsters, like $1,500,000 worth of hamsters.  This is not the amount you pay taxes on.  This isn’t even the starting point because line 2 is:
COST OF GOODS SOLD which you deduct from your gross sales – see you first had to aquire the hamsters which you sold.  Lets assume you got a really good deal on the hamsters and you paid $750,000.  That leaves $750,000.

You might also have had some INTEREST INCOME if you have money in an interest bearing account or you might have had OTHER INCOME which you don’t have to explain to anyone, just add it on in there.  But most businesses have negligible amounts of either of these.  So for convenience lets just stick with the $750,000 and say that’s what you made.  Is that the amount you pay taxes on?  Oh, my no, not even close.  From that amount you deduct everything in the EXPENSE section:

Personnel Expense
Officers Compensation (If you own the company, that means you deduct wahtever you paid to yourself)
Employee Benefits
Interest you paid on the mortgage for your place of business
Repairs and Maintenance
Equipment
Depreciation
Insurance
Taxes and Licenses
Hamster Food
Shrinkage (Hamsters who escaped before making it out the door in the paper box clutched close to little Jimmy’s heart – Hamsters are clever, they do sometimes escape) 
Transportation Costs
Advertising Expense
and a little line called General and Administrative
where you deduct everything else you can think of including the kitchen sink (office supplies, travel and entertainment expenses, accounting fees, charitable donations you made through your business) – for some companies the G & A line equals all the other deductions put together.

I’ve seen companies that started with $10 million in Gross Receipts end with taxable income of less than $50,000. 

Companies that are taxed on more than $250,000 a year are either REALLY BIG COMPANIES or they have REALLY BAD ACCOUNTANTS.

Really. 

So the next time you’re in a conversation with someone who spouts that utter stupidity about raising taxes on poor little struggling small businesses.  Take out your frustrations the way I plan to by educating an idiot who richly deserves it.