Yesterday, I was talking with a fellow who asked "What does it mean to be a 'moderate' Republican. In answer, I started describing my Grandfather, who urged fiscal responsibility and strong defense but who, at the age of 96, was aghast that the U.S. had started a needless war in…
I wrote this originally in 2004, upon the passage of an antigay measure in Missouri. With the passage of Prop 8 in California, I thought it would be worth reposting here.
You may have heard. Missouri has become the first state in the union to establish a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. More will follow, of course, but it’s something to be the first.
I live here. This is my state.
Shame on us.
This was not, however, unexpected. Did anyone actually believe Americans, especially in the middle of the country, are ready, en masse, to embrace such a substantial change in attitude toward an institution that extends back to the murkiness of prehistory?
Prehistory. Genesis notwithstanding, I make that claim based on the fact that we have no documentary evidence that at a given moment Marriage was invented. It’s something homo sapiens brought with it into the historical period, which is really only that part of time in which we have had writing. Writing that survived, to be more specific. For all we know there may be a cache of stone tablets or whatever yet undiscovered extending that time backward reliably by a century or millennia or more. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the historical era has lasted (reliably) for ten thousand years. We can quibble over certain dates, but we’ve got evidence suggesting that humans have lived in organized social groups for at least that long, which suggests that we’ve been doing so for a …
It's interesting what kind of man we have elected President. He is so knowledgeable about so many things, even the topic of dog allergies. And he is so incredibly comfortable talking about race. Consider this comment from today's press conference: We have two criteria that need to be reconciled," said…
Information swirls about that it disorients us and even paralyzes us, and not just during elections. Those of us who systematically try to stay well-informed are especially vulnerable. Media outlets are always working hard to steal our attention with all of those new products and stories and they do a great job of it. Television is especially good at hypnotizing us with constant scene changes, including a nonstop parade of bright shiny shallow-minded things. Because of this special power of television to mindlessly consume us, I’ve warned that it is critically important to pull the plug on television. “Just say “no” to TV. Do it for your country.”
Even those of us who are able to pull ourselves away from television are subjected to a constant stream of distractions ranging from work pressures, home repairs social obligations and numerous flavors of interruptions. These distractions often yank me away from things I consider important, things (including my children) that are often right in front of my nose. In fact, if I had to sum up my biggest frustration in life, it’s that I end up doing far too many things I don’t really enjoy in order to do the things I treasure.
Quite often, though, we are contributors to our problem. For instance, we end up choosing to do non-important urgent-seeming things instead of spending time on things we truly consider important. How could that be? This issue was well-described by Steven Covey, who illustrated the problem with a 2 by 2 matrix of the types of tasks we face. The two variables are importance and urgency. All of us readily attend to those things that are both important and urgent and all of us ignore those things that are not important and not urgent. We struggle, though, when it comes to prioritizing the two remaining types of tasks
Many of us all-too-willingly attend to those tasks that are urgent but not important, ignoring those things that are important but not urgent. Recognizing this problem is the first step toward solving it.
I did not stay up for the speeches. I waited. I just now watched Obama’s acceptance speech. Not a victory speech. An acceptance speech. There is a difference. He hasn’t really won anything. Yet. I cannot remember the last time I felt a tingle run through me at the words…