In Support of Government Balanced with Individual Prosperity

Finally, to my relief, someone has expressed an appreciation for government. In Paul Begala's article, "I (heart) Government," (Newsweek, September 19, 2011. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/11/paul-begala-why-now-is-the-time-to-defend-big-government.html) he reminds us of how much good government has done for the country. However, it has been a continually popular stand in this country to think of our federal government as a force of ill, a contemporary "bogeyman."

I was first aware of the negative view of government during the Vietnam War and the "Communist or 'Red' Scare," when we as Americans were terrified with the idea that Communism, or the Communist form of Socialism would destroy the world. Completely ironically, the Soviet Union was in no shape to annihilate the United States or anyone else because the country was imploding, self-destructing. In more recent years, and currently, the fear of Socialism has been transferred from the Soviet Union (primarily because it no longer exists) to any domestic issue that is proposed for assistance by our own federal government. 

The reasons are several. First, some equate the Socialism of the Soviet Union and its failure as a strong example of how a centralized government can become autocratic and totalitarian under the posture of providing for the welfare of its citizens. Second, there is a steadfast belief in Capitalism, our form of government, that the only vehicle for true and deserved success is through individual hard work and financial gain. And third, there is a ugly mindset that feels that the poorest citizens deserve their lot in life because they brought poverty on themselves from a lack of exactly the initiative of the aforementioned hard work. The author Ayn Rand and Senator Paul Ryan (an outspoken disciple of Rand) were and are proponents of this view, respectively.

What they forget, however, is that not only is a country only as strong as its weakest citizenry, but that no individual is solely responsible for their own success with anything. To be successful one needs opportunity, and one only has opportunity in a country that is financially stable enough to have opportunities in which to participate. To take the stance that one's hard earned money should be left alone by their government is to completely forget that it was a stable government that allowed the individual to make the money in the first place. If one succeeds financially in a country that is stable enough to offer that success, one is obligated to pay a proper percentage of that gain back in taxes to the very government that allowed them to make the gain. This should be simple common sense and ethics. So the idea that the federal government would tax its wealthiest citizens more than its poorest is not only fair and equitable, it's practical, ethical, and makes complete financial sense. It would all but eliminate the problem of any serious national debt. Yes, there will always be some citizens who are lazy, indifferent, dependent financially and emotionally, and will always remain poor. But that is not the vast majority of people. Therefore, for any wealthy person to look upon a poor person with disdain or disgust and argue against being taxed fairly because of the few who are lazy, is a greater abomination in attitude than the attitude of the few who remain lethargic. It is simply inhumane and un-American.

Finally, Begala mentions several enormous accomplishments that would not have been possible without financial support from the federal government: the abolition of slavery, putting men on the moon, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden to name a few. The only thing I see that the detractors of government involvement in domestic issues are motivated by is self-centeredness and greed. It is greed in the guise of a warning against a possible dictatorship like the former Soviet Union. The remarkable and ironic thing is that many of these same detractors of government are the same that elected George W. Bush as president twice which put us on the brink of financial ruin and in the current recession. It was not too much governmental regulation, but too little (of the banks and Wall Street) that eliminated our balanced budget (achieved by the Clinton administration) and nearly turned a recession into another depression or worse. Government by itself is, of course, not the answer to all the problems facing a country. But neither is no government at all. How to skillfully balance government involvement with individual freedom is a delicate dance. However, contrary to how many of the voices in the Republican and Tea Parties continue to express themselves, government is also not the enemy. 

Texting DUZ Risk Making U Stoopid :)

I mean this post in both a serious and a humorous sense. I know it will hit home (and maybe feel offensive) to many readers because most of us send and receive text messages to some degree and are not particularly concerned with how well we write when we do text. I think that many of us successfully separate our casual writing in texting from the care we take with our writing when it's important to do so. But I also think it's important that we occasionally stop to think about the habits we can fall into and both their value and their potential damage.

That said, while this is not a political post, I want to give a hearty thanks to Niall Ferguson for his article, 

"Texting Makes U Stupid" (Newsweek, September 19, 2011 http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/11/how-will-today-s-texting-teenagers-compete.html). In my opinion, he is right on the money. The longer I live the more I'm convinced that the most important of the three "Rs," just like we all learned, is reading. Next of course is writing. But to be a good writer, one has to read...a lot...to absorb and learn the craft from other writers, and the great writers.

Writing is the skill of telling a story in permanent form, extrasomatically, meaning manually, outside our brains. The Sumerians invented writing in 2000 B.C., and they perhaps unwittingly gave humanity the best technical tool for learning and documenting that our species has ever, and probably will ever know. The beauty of writing involves the brilliant skill of putting complete words together to form mental imagery absent the presence of the actual storyteller. One key word in the preceding sentence is the word "complete." The best writers use complete words as well as a creative and rich vocabulary.

Texting is usually not complete words, but a short-cut version of writing and is about as far from skillful writing as ketchup is from a healthy vegetable. The pleasure of texting is rapid, amusing, and casual communication anywhere in the world. But it is really only entertaining and fast at best. The best part of course is that it makes global communication nearly immediate. The dangers and worst parts of texting are that the writing is often extremely poor, and it can create terrible writing habits in the user which can then transfer into other forms of communication like e-mail and actual typed documents. By the way (not BTW), "email" is also a shortcut and should not be a word. E-mail stands for "electronic mail" and therefore the "e" should be separated from the word "mail" by a hyphen.

I know from personal experience about the probable effects of texting on the skill of writing. I taught Music Appreciation at the college level for two years and assigned the students research papers. The writing, on average, was horrible. Not only did the students probably not even bother to run the "Spellcheck" (which is still leaving to the computer what one should be doing themselves, proofreading), but I found many instances where the students used texting shortcuts, and they had not the faintest idea of how to put words, sentences, paragraphs, and the format of pages together to create a mature and riveting narrative. This is not only a pity, it's a tragedy. A general poor writing education and the habit of texting in shortcut writing (and even quick e-mailing) rather than writing carefully is not only robbing today's young people of a fundamentally necessary skill, it's robbing future generations of the ability to learn about them through their excellent writing. How do today's young people think that their writer ancestors were able to tell them about their own lives so well? Ironically, though we think that today's computer technology is an advancement, our ancestors were probably better off that they were less technologically advanced in this way. They were able to become great writers because the technology that they were limited to forced them to use their brains more than their gadgets. They didn't have speedy devices like cell-phones and computers, so they had to rely on their minds and their pens. And yes, many of them could write with pen and ink and not make mistakes because they were used to thinking more slowly and they made less errors as a result. One look at the original (or a copy of the original) Constitution and the Declaration of Independence proves the ability and skill with just pen and paper. (Incidentally, I have copies of a couple of letters that my grandfather Lee wrote to his son, my Uncle Frank, in pen. The handwriting is fairly clean and the vocabulary is superb, even for just a personal letter. And the paper has no lines and the writing is straight across the page.)

Good, clear thinking takes time, and great writing requires both. Texting requires neither and the technology supports that. The speed and ease of computers has created a hidden but devastating double-edged sword. It feels pretty wonderful to be able to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world at lightning speed. But the very two things that are valuable for deep learning, time and clear thought, are essentially obliterated by that ease and speed. I would argue with Mr. Ferguson that the gain in speed and ease of communication is not worth the complete loss of the time and clear, skillful thinking necessary to keep all of us writing at our best.