Prepare to Come About

Tacking! the helmsman on a racing yacht shouts to inform the crew that he has begun to change course. As the bow passes through the wind, the sails must be reset on the opposite side of the boat. It is one of the more complex and sensitive operations undertaken during a race. It must be done smoothly and quickly to avoid losing precious momentum. The nautical term for bringing a sailboat onto a new tack is to come about.

I haven't heard the warning cry from the White House, but I'm pretty sure the Obama ship is preparing to come about. Many pundits referred to Bill Clinton's 1994 course change as "tacking to the center." It appears as if the Obama team has finally sensed the true direction of the political wind and is responding in similar fashion. There is not now (nor I suggest, never was) a vast majority who wanted the radical left course change Obama proposed. The hope and change mantra that swept Obama into office was heard by many as the answer to their frustration with the Washington establishment.

The early "successes"of the Obama agenda, economic stimulus and health care, were rammed down the throats of former supporters and opponents alike. The tide of "throw the bums out" which floated unprecedented one-party control for the Democrats turned to such a dramatic ebb that nearly all support has drained from under their keel. To keep his ship from running hard aground, the captain has discovered he must alter course; it's time to come about.

The thing that is most cloying about Obama's recent statements is how narcissistic and self-serving they are. He claims that he was so concerned about principle that he failed to pay attention to the political consequences of his policies. He apparently was not counting on the violent backlash his arrogance elicited. Many Washington watchers declare him to be more of an ideologue than any President in recent memory. Perhaps he does have such narrow vision that he can only imagine a future his fulfilled plans would presage. Perhaps his ecstatic arrival in the White House caused him to forget he is President of all the people, not just those (few) who agree with his radical agenda for change.

Whatever the reason for Obama's decision to tack, I cannot say I am disappointed. I wrote some time ago that I was praying for a tsunami of voter backlash; all signs appear to point to just that this November. The question now becomes whether the President and his progressive fellows can maintain enough clout to do any damage in his last two years. And I do mean his last two years. It seems unlikely that he will have any chance at a second term. Unless he executes such a stunning tack to the center politically that he rivals the political savvy of Bill Clinton, I think his ship will sail unceremoniously out of port (Washington) in 2012.

Reform School

If you have any interest in the US education system, whether as a parent, student, teacher, policymaker or innocent bystander, Valerie Strauss' September 27, 2010 blog article in the Washington Post is a must read. She correctly identifies student economic status as a significant factor in student achievement. Poverty has physical, sociological and psychological consequences in the classroom; to disregard this irrefutably documented fact is to ignore the elephant in the room, says Strauss. Sadly, this is precisely what most current education policy does.

This head-in-the-sand attitude was evident in the Bush era "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) legislation perpetrated on schools. NCLB was a creation of Ted Kennedy and the Democrats, pursuant to George W. Bush's effort to share the power, though it is generally credited to Bush. The centerpiece of NCLB was so-called "high stakes testing," a concept which sounds good on the surface. Testing student progress to determine achievement is a valid concept, however, the one-size-fits-all nature of the NCLB mandate falls prey to the popular habit of ignoring how elemental poverty is in elementary schools.

In Michigan, we use the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) to measure student achievement. The state standards and procedures are very strict, almost draconian. This year, for example, each school is allowed to exempt from taking the MEAP only a very small percentage of its population as special education students. The problem here is that in a high poverty area, such as many of our inner cities, a majority of students often qualify for the designation, although they may or may not be in special education programs. (In some schools, the word "majority" is an understatement.)

The result of this failure to exempt students who are not capable of performing anywhere near grade level is obvious. Schools in these areas chronically fail to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP.) The additional ramifications of this situation are serious. State funding can be jeopardized. Federal programs tied to AYP will be withdrawn. New initiatives like "Race to the Top" use test scores or AYP measures. Some pay-for-performance programs also use the scores from these standardized tests. As Strauss implies in her blog, the best teachers in the world can not always work miracles if large numbers of their students have learning difficulties which are endemic to their neighborhood.

We must devise a more sensible, caring approach to school reform. The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, says more about our responsibility to the poor among us than just about any other subject. Education is a key element in the effort to reduce poverty; better educated people tend to make better money than those less well trained. The Chinese proverb says, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." The "War on Poverty" has given away a ton of fish. It's about time we started focusing on more effective ways to train fisherman.

Plain and Simple

The other night my wife and I watched a movie called The 19th Wife, a tale based on events which occurred in a Mormon sect which still practices polygamy. It was broadcast on Lifetime (yes, I sometimes watch chic-flicks,) so the theme was the degrading of women trapped in polygamist societies. I was fascinated by the twisted theology, but really struck by the representation of the close-knit family structures (common among all Mormons) and the modest dress of the women.

Living in the Midwest, I am used to seeing the Amish in their buggies or on the streets, men in plain shirts with black trousers and women in pale blue or grey full-length dresses with long sleeves and high collars. These women stand out in modern western society, as do some Mormons, as fashion iconoclasts. More radically, Arab women, regulars on the nightly news these days, appear almost alien in their burkas. I am not a sartorial historian, but it seems that women in “civilized” societies have always appeared in public dressed in what I would call modest attire. ( I am consciously ignoring bare-breasted Polynesians and naked African bushwomen.)

The evolution of epidermal exposure in women took place quite rapidly. In less than one generation, roughly thirty years, they went from mostly covered to nearly naked. On the beaches and at poolside from the late 1960’s onward, women brazenly dress in small patches of cloth that would have brought about an arrest for indecent exposure scant decades ago. In modern media we get treated to displays of feminine flesh everywhere from the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to the Victoria Secret runway exhibitions. The early TV censors must be rolling in their graves.

Having raised two daughters and lived with one wife through the worst of the feminist unleashing, I continue to be troubled by what we Christians accept in women’s attire. I am a typical male (I think) in that I admit to finding the female form a pleasure to look at. I also know enough phychopathology to understand that erotic exposure is like an addictive drug: what starts with a little peek must ultimately descend into leering at complete display. Frequently pornography leads to criminal acts against women by frustrated men. No, not every Playboy subscriber ends up a rapist, but nearly every rapist has a history of pornographic dalliance. Sadly, the “community standards” measure of what is obscene no longer works in my opinion. Community standards have sunk to obscene levels.

Our terrorist enemies are despicable in their tactics, but not so far off in their opinion that modern society has fallen prey to the greater enemy of our souls. I am not lobbying for a return to Amish style dress or burkas for all women. I respect the Amish and Mormons (if not the Arabs) for holding the line on modesty. The Amish and their nineteenth century ways are not going to catch on anytime soon (unless our economy fails completely.) But those of us who hold more traditional beliefs could learn something from the radical fringes of our religions. The Apostle Paul cautioned against using freedom as license. How did we so casually cross that line?

Can’t We All Just Get Along

As Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas meet in Washington to forge the outlines of yet another Middle East peace process, I marvel at the strength of hope within the human spirit. Even if I could forget the fact that the roots of their feud trace back to the time of Ishmael, some four thousand years ago, I can’t ignore the reality that for the last sixty years or so they have been fighting for control of a certain piece of real estate.
When the Jews were given the opportunity to settle in Palestine in 1948, they were overjoyed not because of its sandy beaches and warm Mediterranean breezes. There were no lush valleys bursting forth with generous produce to lure them. Unlike the surrounding deserts, there was no black gold bubbling just below the surface, waiting to be sold to an oil-hungry world. The one thing that drew them back like moths to a flame was a (then) modest little city on a hill called Jerusalem.
To the victors go the spoils, history teaches, so those who won the conflagration known as WWII decided among themselves to grant the Jews their fondest desire in reparation for the atrocities visited upon them by those who lost the war. The Palestinians didn’t exactly lose the war, but they were occupying territory controlled by the losers, so they lost by default, apparently. The indigenous Arab population, largely Muslim, fractionally Christian, had been minding their own business, doing whatever it is people do who live in mostly barren desert since the time of the last Crusade.

The Arabs probably would still be doing their own thing, unnoticed by the rest of the world, except that the Allied powers (the victors,) started shipping boatloads of displaced Jews to the Palestinian beaches. Those Jews had been saying for centuries at their annual Seder feast, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Suddenly, it was “next year.” So, led by men with biblical names like Sharon, Ben-Gurion and Mayer, they stormed the little city on a hill and made it their own – almost. Like their biblical predecessors in Joshua’s day, they never quite took complete control, and like that earlier time in history, the seeds were planted for ongoing conflict. The Jews long to rebuild their one and only temple on the second most sacred spot in the Islamic faith, a spot they have yet to wrest from Arab hands.
Hence the magnitude of the problem Obama faces. Since he can’t fix the economy, end the war, or convince the country that nationalized health care is a good thing, he’s decided to join the fraternity of Presidents who want Middle East peace recorded as their legacy. If he succeeds at all, the result will doubtless resemble his health care reform: forcefully imposed and generally unsatisfying. The little mountain where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac and where the Judeo-Roman conspiracy thought they solved their problem with one Jesus of Nazareth remains a focal point of historic significance. On a personal level in dusty Palestine or dirty Dearborn, Muslims and Christians can get along. But to bring these two peoples together as nations, as religions is a Gordian knot which outmatches even Barak Obama’s considerable cleverness.

And Freedom for All

At the risk of offending some of my friends and conservative followers, I am going to ask what seems to be an obvious question: what legal basis exists for opposing the Muslim construction plans in New York City? If you have been on vacation from the news for the last few weeks, you may not be aware that plans are underway to build a mosque and cultural center around the corner from "ground zero," as the former World Trade Center site is called. The sentimental motivation to oppose such a thing is crystal clear; New Yorkers have a justifiably raw nerve regarding the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. Many of us who live far from the fallen towers are nearly as sensitive as those who felt the vibrations on that horrific day.

Sentiment aside, how does one justify opposition to a religious building in the land of the free. It seems to me the First Amendment freedom of religion clause must apply to Muslims. I am aware that the spiritual leader at the forefront of this fracas, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf made some incendiary remarks soon after 9/11. Yet are not even these protected speech under our Constitution? I understand that Sharif El-Gamal, the developer, has a mysterious source of capital, allowing him to pay millions in cash for the building. Again, this is not illegal, as Soho Properties, is not a publicly traded company. The financials are no one's business until tax time; then the IRS will have a private audience. If I remember correctly, the Japanese used to own a good share of Manhattan (now I think it has transferred to the UAE,) and the Chinese were recently making offers on a large chunk of California real estate.

My point is that it is not illegal for foreign concerns to openly invest in US properties. If we oppose the development of this particular site for religious reasons only, the charge of discrimination seems appropriate. On the other hand, if the forces behind this project are proven to be enemies of the US, another door opens. National security concerns would dictate that we not knowingly allow North Korea or Iran, for example, to construct an airbase or bio-chemical facility on our soil. Our own citizens (think Michigan Militia, for example) can not plot murder and mayhem without incurring the wrath of the government they oppose. The problem with the NYC mosque is that to date no state sponsored terrorist organization has surfaced as a contributor (unless you count the rumors about Saudi Arabia.)

What appears to me to be happening among pundits of every persuasion is naked religious discrimination. Commentators I generally admire have made virulent statements denouncing the project for no other reason than its affront to Americans' sensibilities. "I don't like your kind, so you can't live here," sounds like the reasoning of bigot. Yet isn't this so sadly American. First the "Indians," then the blacks, Irish, Poles, Vietnamese, and countless others have had the door slammed in their faces. Our track record ain't so great.

Lest my true sentiments be misconstrued, I must say that I think the construction of an Islamic center near ground zero is about the dumbest move I can imagine. My advice to whoever is pushing this thing is to drop back and punt. Worse than thumbing their nose at the opposition, these people are tweaking the New Yorkers' noses. From what I have gathered about those hearty islanders, it doesn't take much to start a fight. While I am not recommending nor condoning violence, I predict that there will be hell to pay if this project gets much farther off the ground. And it is not only New Yorkers who have been itching for a fight since 9/11. Toby Keith echoed the feelings of a large part of America when he suggested that it is unwise to mess with the US of A. People are still looking for a target for that boot in the a** Toby sang about.

Bottom line, Christians can't afford to let religious bigots stop the mosque, any mosque from being built. Martin Niemoller is credited with saying that when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something--but then it was too late. We must protect the religious freedom of everyone, or there will be freedom for no one.

The Loyal Opposition

After the widely popular US Representative Pete Hoekstra lost his primary bid for governor, Danielle Leek of Grand Valley State University suggested that one of the explanations for Snyder's victory over Hoekstra might be the "crossover effect." She postulated that a number of Democrats might be certain enough of a Republican gubernatorial win in November that they would cross over to vote in the Republican primary for the candidate they would most like to see win. This is not a positive endorsement for Rick Snyder. Hey, I'm the guy most Democrats would like to see running Michigan (if a Republican has to do it.) That is the downside of an open primary.

This apparently less than ideal situation may have its advantages in other areas. What if it resulted in officials being elected who best represented the middle of the road? What if it eliminated the pressure from the fringes which presently warp many politicians? What if it brought about the coalition building like that required in a parliamentary system such as that of Great Britain? Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. Which leads me to another radical idea. Why not have all the issues decided on the basis of what the "other side" has to say?

Gore's scientific "consensus" on the human role in global warming is widely reported in the media as fact. The truth is that while approximately 2,500 scientists worked on the United Nations report on global warming, only about 25 wrote the consensus paper which expresses certainty about the human causation of climate change. Many of the remaining scientists asked to have their names removed from the summary when they read it. They adamantly disagreed with the summary committee's position. Let's give them a "vote" when considering whether to spend trillions of dollars to fight what just may be a chimera.

Or what about Obama's economists believing we can spend our way to prosperity (aka the stimulus package.) Franklin D. Roosevelt tried that and many historians agree that his policies did not end the Depression, rather they turned a serious recession into the longest economic downtime in our history. In other words, the opposition which might have stopped FDR may have been right and decade long economic disaster might have been averted. Perhaps our thrill ride to insolvency could be stopped by such thinking today.

Or what about the wisdom of raising taxes to increase government revenue versus lowering them and encouraging growth which then builds the tax base. Confiscatory tax rates simply cause people to hide their money or move it out of the reach of the IRS. There is no proof from history that higher taxes increase revenue. On the other hand, lowering the tax burden, allowing people and corporations to keep more of their own money has always caused a spurt in economic growth and a resulting boom in tax collections. It worked for JFK; it worked for Reagan; it should work again.

Of course, I realize this strategy of letting the naysayers have more say could backfire on me. Not long ago there were many who were opposed to the surge in troops to Iraq which President George W. Bush hoped would end the war. It did. If Sen. Harry Reid, then Sen. Barak Obama and the rest of the opposition had kept Bush from executing his strategy, we might not have had the result we see today in that country. If we had followed the opposition's lead, we would have left the country to the insurgents instead of pulling out as we are now with some hope that the freedom our presence (and blood) bought will survive.

Maybe what I am really hungry for is a return to the good old days when issues were honestly debated. US politics today seems to be a winner take all kind of game where the loyal opposition is regarded as not just different, but wrong, even unpatriotic. This is unfortunate, because as Baron Acton observed correctly in the nineteenth century, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Bible also commends the practice accepting "many counselors" to reach wise decisions. What I pine for is what used to be called civility. I don't imagine that we'll ever agree on everything, but I dare to hope that we might learn how to disagree less disagreeably, and more honestly.

Election Night Ruminations

It is well after midnight on Primary Tuesday. Neither of "my guys" looks to be in the running anymore, so what can I say. I did not hear Pete Hoekstra's concession speech, but I'll wager it was gracious and grateful -- that's the kind of man he is. I did speak to Bill Cooper a few hours ago (when things were not looking too pretty for his bid.) I can only paraphrase, but I think he said he could handle the emotions if he loses better than if he wins. His reasoning was that everything he has ever achieved has been by his own sweat and tears; a political win would rest on the efforts of others than himself (I assume he meant staffers, volunteers, voters, etc.)

This seems to me to be a refreshing dash of humility in a field where such is seldom present. I missed my chance to tell Bill that in effect, a victory would still have been based on his own personality, policy choices and preferences, in other words, on who he is. He went on to say that he was glad he could do all the politicking the race required without having to become something he was not. Again, a win would have represented a personal accomplishment, in the sense that Bill Cooper (the real Bill Cooper) would have won the day.

It may be ironic that the man who appears to have taken the Republican primary for the 2nd District US House of Representatives seat is so much like Bill Cooper that a wolverine hair might stick if dragged between their positions. The only thing Bill Huizenga can say to differentiate himself is that he has political experience. I was in Cooper's camp precisely because he doesn't have political experience. This is not just throw-the-bums-out vitriol; I hate that both Huizenga and Kuipers voted for the Michigan Business Tax when in the legislature. Granted, Huizenga voted against the second version of the MBT (the only one that saw the light of day,) and he was stalwartly in favor of demolishing the Small Business Tax. Still, I would have preferred a man who could have said no to any business tax in the environment we currently suffer under.

Now if Riemersma slips past Huizenga in the wee hours, I will wonder what happened to common sense among West Michigan Republicans. Again, the same wolverine hair test would prove sticky; all three candidates make pretty much the same claims. I can support everything the man says he stands for, and I appreciate the professional way he promotes his cause, but Jay Riemersma was a football player and a non-profit runner, neither of which is exactly a resume rocket booster. A victory for Jay might just prove that you can still buy an election in this district.

So what do "my guys" do tomorrow? Pete can probably retire, although I suspect he still has too much energy and political inertia to slip completely off the grid. Bill Cooper will just go back to being Bill Cooper which is not a bad thing for anybody, as far as I know. The other losers will have stacks of receipts (and maybe bills) for ad space and yard signs, whereas Cooper, since a large share of the campaign time and energy went to Thanks a Million food distribution, will have thousands of people in the 2nd who can be truly grateful that he made the effort. That's not such a bad way to lose.