Category: culture

Depths of Public Discourse

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The current voucher mess illustrates a sad low point in public discourse. The course of events reads like the script of a soap opera. Our legislature passed two laws to implement a voucher system with the expressed intent of giving citizens a choice in educating our children. One of the two bills is now up for a ballot referendum in November which casts a cloud on the whole situation. The second bill stipulates that the State Board of Education should implement vouchers this summer but the chairman of the Board of Education, an outspoken critic of vouchers, has refused even after the Attorney General has told the board to comply with the law as written. Of course the whole thing has gone to the courts for “clarification” but no matter what the courts say we will still have dedicated people on both sides of the debate who will push their respective agendas. Now we have the Attorney General revoking the status as “special assistant to the Attorney General” of two attorneys working for the Board of Education.

It boils down to the fact that the Board of Education is refusing to comply with the law when they are not elected either to make law or to interpret it. On the other hand, the legislature managed to pass two bills that are largely redundant and forcefully opposed. They have done this in such a way that neither the ruling of the courts nor the ballot referendum will necessarily settle the issue. This sounds more like the work of a handful of powerful partisans than the result of honest efforts by 104 people (the combined size of the House and Senate) trying to represent their constituencies and bring about the best resolution to a high-profile issue.

People on both sides of the issue have called for a special session as the means of clearing up the two existing bills and paving the way for the issue to be resolved. Those who advocate for this approach are likely the most intent on finding a solution rather than just pushing an agenda.

Whatever the outcome of the whole thing, I fear that the final effect on education will be to provide a striking example of how our system of government can be manipulated and hobbled by any minority that is determined enough about what they are trying to accomplish or prevent.

UPDATE: The state Supreme Court ruled that if the citizens voted against vouchers on the referendum in November it would be binding on both bills.

Tags discourse, learning, State

culture

Information Processing

Thanks to Joshua for pointing to this quote from Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural skepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back â€“ like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust â€“ of course you can’t, it’s just people talking â€“ but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV â€“ a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make.

This goes hand in hand with an argument that some people have heard me make about our “information society” as we call it. In a society so full of information sources the great challenge and skill is to be able to identify which sources are accurate or trustworthy. That is the skill that we need to have and that we need to pass on to our children. If Adams was right about humans being naturally hard-wired for this then we should do just fine.

The whole piece was published in 1999 which has given us 8 years to prove that he was right on target. Go read it.

Tags connections, insights, technology

culture National

Right Thinking

Townhall is not a place I have linked to before because much of what I see there is more partisan than I would care to pass along. Surprisingly today there are two articles there that give me hope that there are still active Republicans who stand for something besides being not Democrats (there are also Democrats who are more than not Republican, but I discovered that a while back).

In the first column, the author rejects the most famous sound bite of the second Republican Presidential debate where the media latched on to the sound bite from Rudy Giuliani and allowed him to twist the words of Ron Paul about terrorism and 9/11 to the detriment of this less popular candidate. Ron Paul gave an insightful answer about the situation we are in but the media covered the sound bite response. Typical.

In the second column, the author reminds us what the Republican party used to be known for and what they claim to represent. By the time I was done with that I wanted to ask the current Republican party which is worse for our economy and our future generations – a spend and don’t tax leadership or a tax and spend leadership? The answer should be obvious. We need to be talking less about funding welfare and saving social security and more about helping people get off of welfare and helping them not be dependent on social security. More importantly we should be doing things to reduce the perceived need for such programs.

So my point is, it’s no wonder that things aren’t looking good for the GOP right now – their words (especially historically) and their actions are inconsistent. That is bound to inhibit people from trusting them even if they like their rhetoric. When people don’t trust them they are less likely to make an effort to vote for them.

Tags government, media, parties, Republican

culture life

Commercial Zones

I was pleased to see my view on city planning represented in yesterdays Transportation Watch. That view being the need to make space for commercial areas in order to lessen the need for commuting – that is the number one way to reduce traffic in the long term. That article also mentioned a good example of such planning in the land that is being developed by Kennecott. They call it the “poster child for doing it right.” Today I found an article on the groundbreaking of the first commercial areas in the Kennecott development.

The thing that really interests me about this is that it is a rare thing when an existing city has the chance to implement this kind of strategic planning after the city has been well established. Luckily, I think that Lehi has that opportunity. Especially in conjunction with Saratoga Springs, we have enough land still undeveloped, and enough land which is ready for some revitalization, that we can still make a pretty god mix of commercial with our residential within Lehi specifically and the northwest part of Utah County in general. The key will be to start planning and acting now before this already small window of opportunity closes due to haphazard development.

Tags community, development, planning, transportation

culture technology

Looking to Europe

I do not look favorably on many of the traits common among many European countries (higher taxes to fund broader social programs, shorter workweeks, that kind of thing). However a brief mention of Europe in Transportation Watch reminded me that there is one area where we could learn from Europe. They have learned to make use of transit systems so much that many people have no need of cars. Admittedly their population density almost demands this, but our population density is not decreasing so we should be planning ahead.

California is looking at a high-speed rail line that would make lots of short-distance air travel obsolete between San Diego and Sacramento. Here in the States we love to fly everywhere. It’s so bad that Amtrack is almost useless because we are not willing to take the extra time to ride the train that is slightly cheaper. If California actually puts in the funding to build this high-speed rail line they will have a train that is cheaper than the planes and faster than airport security. If that could be done in a number of other travel corridors as well we would have fewer planes in the sky, less fuel being used, and faster travel through airports due to lower volumes of travelers when most air travel is for longer distances.

Similar benefits could be realized on a smaller scale by implementing good transit options in population centers so that we would not be so reliant on cars for all our local travel. At least on those we can look to some examples of good transit systems here in the States rather than wondering what the rest of the world knows that we have not figured out yet.

UPDATE 5/14/97: I stand corrected – as Hyrum points out, Amtrack is not slightly cheaper than the airlines on cross-country trips.

Tags international, planning, transportation

culture

Heroes and Idols

Laura and I were having a fascinating conversation with good friends which rolled around to the topic of teaching children about their future roles as adults. We got to talking about the types of role models that children have and the messages that they are being fed from our society about those adult roles. Out of that conversation came the following gem – speaking about a person being sensitive to the needs of those around them and responding to the needs of others rather than being focused on their own needs and their own image:

“That’s the difference between being a hero and being an idol.” Denise Black

The meaning being that an idol is someone who we might look up to who is more concerned with their image than their substance while a hero is more concerned with being worthy of emulation than they are with their level of popularity. In case anyone is wondering, there are those among the ranks of our social idols (musicians, athletes, actors) who qualify as heroes under this definition. The key is to help our children understand the difference between the idols and the real heroes.

Tags friends, insights, learning

culture

Mob Intelligence

I love reading Terry Pratchett, for the humor, but I just discovered an extremely useful mathematical equation in Maskerade to calculate the intelligence of any mob.

“The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters.”

Now if only we had an accurate definition of what a mob is – a definition that catches mobs even when they are not wielding clubs and other weapons.

Tags insights, quotes, Terry Pratchett

culture life

Non-Binding Resolutions

While listening to NPR today I heard a senator talking about many agreements we have made with the Iraqi government where the Iraqi’s failed to do what they promised. He attributed that failure to the fact that "the agreements [had] no teeth." That got me thinking. We don’t have to look outside our country to see ineffective government posturing related to agreements without teeth. Just look at any non-binding resolution ever passed by a legislative body. For that matter we can look at any legislation that gets passed without funds to carry it out. In case anyone is wondering – legal teeth start like this "$" and end like this ".00" and each digit that comes between that beginning and that end constitutes a tooth. For private citizens three teeth is generally enough to encourage compliance, but once we start dealing with governments and corporations it takes a lot more teeth to be convincing.

I think that wherever government passes any measure to redistribute wealth there must be teeth to ensure compliance with the law, and great care that the law be written to discourage abuse of any such program. I believe that government should generally avoid such laws because bureaucratic programs tend to be magnets for abuse, especially where money can be gained, but when they do legislate those things they need to put teeth into the law.

That lead my train of though onto a new track – we have our share of non-binding resolutions at home with the kids. As I think about it there are times (at least times in the home) when laws without teeth are a good thing. The children should learn to obey because it is the right thing, or because they trust us, not merely because they will lose some privilege.

So my question is, when do you think teeth are necessary? When do you think that they are unnecessary? I ask this not just with regard to government, but also to home and community situations.

Tags family, international, NPR, theory

culture

Massive Do-Over

I have been thinking and reading about political issues like congressional seats for Utah and Washington DC, where America currently stands on abortion, and the complexity and complaints about unfairness in our tax system. I’d love to write a post about almost all of these topics, but then I got to thinking – what if we just started over.

Pretend that we put a freeze on federal law and started a constitutional convention to rewrite our government from the ground up. We would rewrite the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. All federal agencies would be scrapped although the military and others employed by the current agencies could probably expect that many of them would have similar opportunities under the new system. We would appoint a fresh slate of leaders – no consideration of when their terms would have ended under the current system because we might not even have the same positions available in the new system.

Now I’m not saying that we should do this, I’m asking what might happen if we did.

My own suspicion is that we would keep the structure of a bicameral legislative branch as well as an executive branch and a judicial branch. Beyond that, what would be said of issues like abortion or who has what kind of representation? What new balance of power would emerge between federal and state governments? At least two Constitutional amendments would disappear (because they cancel each other out) but would more go? WhatÂ social issues might show up as new amendments?

Help me out here – what do you think this would produce? Does it differ from what you think it should produce?

Tags Constitution, issues, theory

culture

Uncivil War

Today is the anniversary of the official surrender at Appomatox that ended the Civil War in 1865. That random tidbit struck home to me as I was reading The Passing of the Armies by Joshua Chamberlain (who officially received the arms and flags of the Confederate army in surrender). I had not realized until I was getting to that climax of the book that I was reading of the events on the day 142 years after this all happened. When I realized that, it really made me think about the results of that war and the example of humanity displayed during that surrender.

Now, a century and a half later, we are engaged in a war that is, in many ways less civil than that one. I am not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan – I am talking about America. Our political and social ideologies are every bit as divided as they were in the 1860’s. We have seen the same rancor and the same intensity of rhetoric for the last 13 years (or more) and it signals a deep rift in our nation. Like the war that brought about a rebirth in our nation, most of the citizens are able to live rather amicably with their neighbors, but our public discourse on ideas rages hotter and hotter when we feel free to express ourselves.

I ask myself, where is our Gettysburg, where the tide turns and we stop winding up our division and start winding down our conflict? Is it past? Or is it (more likely) yet to come? When we finally come to a resolution will we act with the dignity and honor displayed by the Union and Confederate soldiers? They honored each other with displays of respect and valued the courage displayed by their former enemies and forged again the bonds of national brotherhood even when they did not see eye to eye on some of the (semi)concluded issues.

Like the Civil War, I am confident that a resolution will come to the issues we face today which cause so much division among us. Will we be able to effect a better reconciliation than they did? We had to fight a second campaign after 100 years to bring further resolution to the questions of how all people should be treated and we still feel the effects of that divisive war.

Where is our President Lincoln or our General Lee who could fight so passionately and so honorably for the ideas they believed in and yet they held no malice for their opponent, only for the ideas they opposed?

What lies ahead for us? Is it possible that we can be passionate without being scurrilous?

Tags discourse, history, ideal, reactions, war