Precedent's Day

Madame M,

Urgent message? Perhaps. But the books he puts out tend to have the same theme, and come with rapid regularity.

I agree with you that the global warming “crowd” did a poor job of framing the debate. No one should fear questions; they should welcome them. And things have certainly been too politicized, and hypocrites there have been aplenty. Catastrophic imagery has become a distraction, especially as future prediction (especially as to timing) is an inexact science in the best of circumstances. But if we have lost any sense of delayed gratification, of continued focus, or willingness to confront reality (having just got back from Washington, that unwillingness is all too fresh to me), that bodes ill.

And yes, if we could reframe the issue, it would serve us all much better. Ray Bradbury once wrote a story called “The Toynbee Convector” which makes this point well. The certainties or uncertainties of climate change have never been central for me: what we are now doing is unsustainable regardless, and we need to change that humanely, or ecological and economic realities will change it harshly.

Moving on to “Baggage,” yes, other than Beck and Paul, few in the large public eye are willing to say America can fail. Like those trapped in a faerie court, we have become willing prisoners of our own illusions and delusions. Yet I do so hope Beck truly and passionately loves this country and wants to help rescue it from its path of doom.

If he thinks that “everyone” has been taught/brainwashed by a media and liberal educators, well, even if that was the case, they certainly haven’t been taught very well, because they “know” very little and they act even less in line with it.

My father once told me: “Never fear the intelligentsia; they really think. Fear the near-intelligentsia, those who think they think.” I do hope GB is not one of the latter; my mind’s still open on the subject!

Your daughter’s experience in sociology class: the decline of so much is wrapped up in that. How ironic that we have so many opportunities and yet we do little.

And you subversive you! My son would be so thrilled to know that someone of our superior ages [good term? ;)] would “fight the man” in some fashion. Being the little rebel can be fun!

I agree with you on your ideas about education, and this educator is willing to let yours be the last word for now from us on the subject! :)

Yes, I agree (mostly) about including the original Common Sense, although I again agree with a fellow teacher that Beck has ironically conflated or misconstrued a great deal about its author. For example, Thomas Paine was one of the earliest advocates of progressive taxation, even drawing up tables and rates. He was also the first published proponent of the estate tax in America. He didn’t like poverty and extreme financial inequality (he supported a federally directed minimum wage, for example). In Agrarian Justice he sought to remedy those by taxing the wealthy to give jobs and “grants” to young people (he also vaguely alludes to this in Common Sense). Both he and Jefferson strongly favored tax-supported public education, passionately feeling it a necessity in achieving an educated voting population and eventually eliminating the poor as a class. Paine also supported the establishment of, and US participation in (back then, we weren’t “leading” much of anything), global organizations to help solve international problems and avoid wars.

Beck might be criticized by some as being able to crank out frequent (and monetarily rewarding) books only by referencing or incorporating the words and thoughts (and even works such as Paine’s) of others. That is of smaller concern to me. I am indebted to Beck for helping me to remember, by his including Paine’s Common Sense inside Beck’s own book, the keen insight, historical knowledge, and eminent sense of Thomas Paine. Paine reminds us that frequent elections can help assure that the people’s representatives do not get far from their fellow electors. Of course, our modern politics has subverted that quite a bit, with the revolving door of representative to corporation (or lobbyist) being far too frequent, but the idea is valid.

I must point out that Paine had his own biases that sometimes diminished his great vision a little. He didn’t like that the House of Commons and King each checked each other a bit, and yet our Framers took this kernel of an idea when creating our own legislative and executive systems.

“The state of a king shuts him off from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly” in Paine’s words. Every president of the modern era has remarked on this phenomenon.

Paine, in Common Sense: “Should a thought so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies in the present contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered by future generations with detestation.” Would that this thought would and could drive us now.

In Paine’s words, the proud and foolish glory in their little distinctions while the wise lament the lack of union. “From the errors of other nations let us learn wisdom.” We have seen that a king’s rule and hereditary successors open the doors to foolish, wicked, and improper decisions, and plutocracies of inherited wealth are the same. But we aren’t paying enough attention, are we?

Some other good Paine-isms:
“Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.”

“Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.”

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”

We must guard against the time when we have “eaten out the virtue.”

Until we make the hard choices and begin the painful work, we will feel, in Paine’s words, “like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity.”

No really, Obama up soon! :)