Let’s imagine the conflict known as the Civil War. It had been brewing since before the Constitution was ratified. The issues were marrow deep in American society, so much so that any attempt to address the issue of slavery was, in effect, a deal breaker for the new nation. The South made it abundantly clear that any action on the part of the North to write into the new guiding document the idea that black slaves were somehow deserving of the liberty being claimed for their white owners—and thereby signaling the end of slavery among the Thirteen Colonies—would be met with absolute refusal to play. Had the reformers, exemplified by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, tried to assert any kind of racial equality at the time, the United States would have been stillborn.
Instead, they put a time limit into the document—20 years—which forbade the topic from even being discussed in Congress until that later year, at which time, presumably, the issue would come to the floor for some kind of resolution. History shows that every such attempt was met with denunciations by southern members of Congress and often with threats of secession—which by then were illegal.
Make no mistake, as some revisionists might have you believe, secession was not an option and everyone who voted to ratify the Constitution knew it. Contrary to popular mythology, the original 13 states locked themselves together permanently.
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Yesterday, my son shared the video below - Neil deGrasse Tyson's "We Stopped Dreaming (Episode 1)". It took me back to childhood memories when I was inspired to be a scientist. I remember watching the Apollo launches. I think I remember listening to the Gemini 4 space walk – I was four, and my father recorded it on reel-to-reel, but I don’t remember him ever replaying it. I remember staying up late and falling asleep…thankfully to be awoken by my mother just before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. ...Skylab, ...the test flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise.
Years later, I left behind aspirations of a science career (practicalities…how much money does the average physicist make anyway?) for one of engineering, but the love of space, cosmology, NASA…all still with me…which is why what Neil deGrasse Tyson is saying in this video saddens me all the more.
I worry that decisions Congress makes doesn't [sic] factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow.
Apart from the applicability of that to just about any of the current Congress's decisions, he’s dead right in this specific instance. We are not funding science. We are not encouraging and developing engineers. We are failing in educating our young people, not only in the technical fields, but in general.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) compares 15 year olds in 65 industrial countries. From the 2009 report:
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a collaborative effort among OECD member countries to measure how well 15-year-old students approaching the end of compulsory schooling are prepared to meet the challenges of today’s knowledge societies. The assessment is forward-looking: rather than focusing on the extent to which these students have mastered a specific school curriculum, it looks at their ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in curricular goals and objectives, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school.
“…to meet real-life challenges.” Care to guess how the U.S.A. fared in the latest, 2009, assessment? You can see here for yourself, but I’ll spoil it:
Reading – 17th (out of 65)
Mathematics –31st (significantly below the average)
They [American students] are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs – not $40 to $50 an hour.”
I don’t know what the answer is. I admit a selfish cop out - we home educate our children – so I don’t think often on what can or should be done; we've taken responsibility for preparing our children ourselves. Still, one simple solution seems to be to promote science, math and engineering.
And we start doing that by not cutting NASA’s budget.
Fat chance. How much would YOU pay for the universe?
Rep. Dennis Kucinich recently lost his race to return as a Congressional representative of Ohio. The blame for his loss sits largely at the door of the cowardly news media, which would rather make a cartoon of Kucinich than give serious heed to his well-formulated arguments.
At Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald also laments the way the establishment media has treated Dennis Kucinich. Greenwald argues that the media blithely painted him as wacky because of Kucinich's friendship with Shirley McLaine (who believes in reincarnation). The media loves to report that (according to McLaine) Kucinich once "claimed to have an encounter with a UFO."
For these "sins," the establishment media advises that we are not to take any of Kucinich's political positions seriously. Greenwald dismantles this insanity in two stages. First, he compares the alleged beliefs of Kucinich with the purported beliefs of most politicians, which the news media gives a free ride:
[Are any of Kucinich's beliefs] any more strange than the litany of beliefs which the world’s major religions require? Is Barack Obama “wacky” because he claims to believe that Jesus turned water into wine, rose from the dead and will soon welcome him to heaven? Is Chuck Schumer bizarre because he seems to believe that there’s some big fatherly figure sitting in the sky who spewed fire and brimstone at those who broke the laws he sent down on some stones and now hovers over him judging his every move? Is Harry Reid a weirdo because he apparently venerates as divine the “visions” of a man who had dozens of wives, including some already married to other men? Neither the Prospect nor the Post would ever dare mock as “wacky” the belief in invisible judgmental father-figures in the sky or that rendition of life-after-death gospel because those belief systems have been deemed acceptable by establishment circles.
Step two of the analysis is to step back to see the political views of Kucinich that have been ridiculed by the mainstream media:
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An American soldier opened fire on villagers near his base in southern Afghanistan Sunday and killed 16 civilians, according to President Hamid Karzai, who called it an "assassination" and furiously demanded an explanation from Washington. Nine children and three women were among the dead.
Perhaps you're considering going to Washington D.C. to protest this abominable behavior, especially since it has been reported that this massacre was done in your name (in that you are an American) and since the American soldiers doing the shooting were drunk, and because your government has no reason for this ten-year occupation of Afghanistan.
Better watch your step if you decide to protest anywhere near the White House, near a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will
be temporarily visiting; or near a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance.
You see, according to a newly passed federal law [H.R. 347], you could be thrown in federal prison for up to a year, even if you aren't carrying a weapon and even if no one is injured as a result of your protest. If someone is injured as a result of the protest, you could (even though your own intentions were peaceful and you didn't cause any injuries) be thrown in federal prison for up to ten years. This law was signed by President Obama on March 8, 2012.
Imagine the following law school exam question asked in a property law class in 1994, prior to securitization, when the laws of Missouri were substantially the same as they are today regarding real estate transaction recording, foreclosures and unlawful detainer proceedings: Joe buys a house from Bank A. Bank A…
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