I saw a phrase today that made me think--The Darwinist Cause. Now, I'm sure I've seen it or heard it before, but it's one of those taglines opponents to certain worldviews use to instigate absurd debates (which turn out not to be debates but drubbing sessions wherein they hope to…
The Founding Fathers of the United States feared the effects of a largely uninformed populous. In the 1700s, Democracy still struck many people as a dangerous proposition, reliant on the education and devotion of the masses. With an unaware voting public, the logic went, Republic could turn to tyranny. We cannot idly expect the government to afford us our basic rights; we instead must always fight to retain them. Thomas Jefferson said it succinctly: “If the nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.” Fellow Virginian James Madison explained it this way:
A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy or perhaps both. A people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
How ironic that Virginia voters have some of the worst access to candidates’ positions of any state in the nation. Public ignorance doesn’t get the blame this time, though. The majority of Virginian candidates up for election this November have neglected to fill out the nation’s foremost position survey, Project Votesmart’s National Political Awareness Test (NPAT).
Project Votesmart launched nationally in 1992. The nonpartisan organization, created by the diverse likes of George McGovern, John McCain, Bill Frist, Michael Dukakis, and Jimmy Carter, aims to create the most comprehensive database of information on candidates bidding for office. Project Votesmart’s website features background information and incumbents’ voting records, vast …
Ever since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, there has been a fairly constant refrain heard in the United States. Americans, who once thought their country invulnerable, their culture beyond reproach and their global image impeccable, are asking, “Why do they hate us?” Human emotion being what it is, there is no single or simple answer to that question. They hate us for a number of reasons, some illogical, but some very understandable. And, while hatred is never productive, never defensible, its causes should never be ignored because its consequences can be catastrophic.
One of the things I hear Americans say they hate about us is our freedom. I would have to agree. There are those in the rest of the world who are as offended by our freedoms as are we by their despotism. They hate the fact that we have freedom of religion, that we have freedom of speech, that our women are becoming increasingly free to determine their own destinies. They believe that all these freedoms are an offense against all that is decent and holy.
I believe they are wrong. It is because of our freedom that I am able to write what I write, however controversial, however offensive to some. It is because of our freedom that my family moved to the United States in 1960. We left South Africa when the white government there was stripping the people, both white and black, of their freedom to speak out against injustice, to live wherever and …
I haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda. I actually rented the movie, and my husband and I started to watch it, but we had to stop. We knew what was going to happen, and we didn’t want to see it: we would have known what was going to happen even if we hadn’t had advance knowledge of the story. He and I know all about Africa. Personally, I am too broken-hearted about what is happening there to watch it played out on a 42-inch plasma TV screen.
It’s not just happening in Rwanda. We only hear about Ruanda more often now because this particular story has given that region a voice.
The stories are endless, one more chilling than the next. In South Africa, gangs of black youths who suspect an individual of not being “one of them” inflict horrible death. And they do not reserve the torture for adults. Children are not immune. One favorite form of execution involves soaking a tire in gasoline, placing the tire around the neck of the bound victim, and setting it alight. I repeat, this is done to children as well as adults. It is done to blacks by blacks, and the rationale behind the brutality is obscure. Sometimes it is tribal – amaZulu against any black not Zulu – sometimes there is a loosely formulated political agenda. Sometimes it is simply a case of bloodlust.
This is no urban myth. We have witnessed something like it personally. On our last trip to South Africa …