Loading ...School silences Christian valedictorian
flockwoodThis story brings back memories. A Nevada high school student had her microphone cut off during her valedictory speech because she veered off the school-sanctioned text and mentioned her faith.
Back in 1985, I was elected to give a graduation speech. But school officials vetted every word, scrubbing away anything they found objectionable.
Five years later, my brother was elected to give a graduation address and his speech faced similar scrutiny. So he wrote two speeches — one for the censors and another to actually deliver on Graduation Day. No one (except the censors) realized they were witnessing an act of defiance as he spoke. The uncensored speech was so tame that it raised absolutely no eyebrows. My brother knew it was possible that they’d cut his microphone, but figured they’d be afraid to do so because it would focus public attention on their censorship.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:45 am
When reading stories like this, I always wonder how differently people would react differently if the situation was slightly redefined. Suppose the student was a devout Muslim, or Hindu, or perhaps even a Wiccan, and wanted to share his or her faith. Would we still be so supportive of the student? Shouldn’t we?
Or consider a young person who took this opportunity to tell a personal history of despair because of oppressive fundamentalist lifestyle, and what saved this kid from suicide was rejecting Christianity altogether and embracing atheism. Would we admire and applaud this student?
One cannot properly argue for the rights of Ms. McComb on the basis of freedom of speech unless you also support the rights of others to voice their very different religious beliefs.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Well, Jose is right of course. And isn’t that what the goal of education is? To make for an enlightened citinzenry that understands and appreciates such American ideals as freedom of speech, including religious and political expression.
Carry Jose’s argument one step futher. What if a Valedictorian student were to decide to espouse ideals of Communism or fascism? Should that be allowed? How about KKK ideals (assuming the speeches in each case do not go so far as to violate existing laws)?
There are all kinds of groups out there who would like to have some freedom of speech in the schools. Let’s hear it from the Christians and other religious groups too, in what instances should Valedictorian speeches be censored?
In my ideal world the students would have complete freedom of expression. In the real world, I can just imagine the public outcry/uproar that such as policy would open up. So I wonder, where should school districts draw the line? Or should they?
(Think, “Valedictorian arrested for language directed at a racial group”.)
March 25th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I was thinking the same thing, Jose; someone beginning a speech with “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet” probably wouldn’t get out of the building. Or what if the student gave a speach in Appalachia railing against the big coal companies that “stip all the timber and torture the land” with the world’s largest shovels, and the power companies that buy their coal, and suggested that the coal miners arise and embrace one another and the doctrines of socialism. The powers that be knew better than to ever let me make a speach, so we never explored the issue in my school, but I’d imagine that Christian sentiment would fly in most schools far better than dissenting views.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Why would it hurt anyone to hear mention whichever deity a particular student worshiped? To put it bluntly, I would have no problem if someone started their speech with “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet.” Just hearing it does not mean I believe it.
If we can’t stand it when someone disagrees with our version of “truth” and will not let others espouse there’s, then what does that say about us?
As long as those religious views do not espouse violence or threaten others, then let them speak.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I agree, David, but unfortunately those in power are rarely brave enough to let anyone have any freedom.
November 20th, 2009 at 5:36 am
Update. On November 16, 2009, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case of Brittany McComb They let stand the lower court decision which supported the school’s right to enforce its rules on speeches.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Unfortunately, the school has that ability. Several US Supreme Court cases support the school’s ability to restrict speech in a limited public forum.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I gotta side with the school on this one. When I go to graduations, I really don’t care if the valedictorian has an axe to grind or what they want to say. I just want to watch whomever I’m there supporting get their diploma or degree and walk off the stage. The valedictorian is not just speaking for themselves, they’re speaking on behalf of the entire class and the school, so what they say should reflect that.
A different venue would be a different story. That same kid can say whatever he or she wants on the street. If they want to set up an event themselves and bill themselves as the headline speaker, then by all means, say whatever you want, but a graduation ceremony is different, because the majority people are not showing up to hear your opinions on religion.
November 20th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Actually, the student would not be able to say whatever he or wants on the street. Location is extremely vital in making free speech restrictions.
The Supreme Court does not restrict students from stating their religion in graduation speeches but the over demeanor does not need to be like a preaching.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
The Supreme Court doesn’t restrict anyone from saying anything, other than when they appear before it. The question is whether local government can. Here, I agree that the school operates the graduation ceremony, and can do what it wants. I realize that we live in an age when folks see every meeting as a free speech zone, but sometimes a graduation really is just a graduation. As Cheese says, if they want to have a meeting and talk about anything they want, they’re welcome to, but when it’s a school graduation, the school can control what they say.
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:23 am
Since the school is run (ideally) by local elected officials representing the feelings of the local community, then those who disagree with the school’s particular censorship can always “vote the bums out” and install officials with their own biases. Any speech is going to have biases, it’s all a matter of degree and what the audience will stand for. If this kid is representing the whole school, than maybe the whole school should write the speech. I assume she was asked to give the speech because she was the valedictorian and therefore it would be perfectly within bounds to tell the audience why she became such, even if that included religious faith or the lack thereof. If she wanted to say “there is no God by Allah,” so be it, as long as she can reasonably tie it into how that made her valedictorian.
That’s just my opinion, of course, the school can do what it wants–as long as it is responsible to the local public it serves. Remember, these school officials are not put there to be our “masters” but are to be the “servants” of those who pay them for a particular service (educating our children) and no more.
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
If John is contending that the local authorities always know best, then count me out. A tyranny of the majority is still a tyranny.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I don’t think John believes local officials always know best, but rather that their decisions and their tenure ought to be subject to public referendum. He believes the voting public knows best.
November 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am
I’m not sure John is saying that the voting public knows best, but rather that Vox populi vox dei, “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” The problem with this kind of analysis is that the voice of the people is rarely guided by logic or a desire for the public good. It is too often guided by the prejudices of the people. Local school boards across the country have bowed down to pressure from religious groups to include a level of religion in their schools that seems to me goes beyond the separation of church and state.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
José, the tyranny of the minority is also a tyranny. The school officials shouldn’t go against the will of the general public unless it is an obvious and gross moral wrong being perpetrated. This case seems to be trivial and not in need of intense moral scrutiny. No speech, NO speech, will ever be free of moral questions. You can make almost anything controversial. What are these school officials teaching our kids if they can’t be tolerant of differing points of view? They must have a pretty low opinion of their graduating class if they don’t think they can handle or tell the difference between religious-speak and whatever else the girl talked about.
Caleb, I’m not saying the elected school officials (or the elected officials who appointed the school officials) should simply follow every whim of public opinion. That’s why we have a Republic. They need to take public opinion into account, but temper it with contingencies the general pubic, en masse, does not typically consider. However, when they go too far, which they may or may not have in this case, the will of the people must be respected. On this note, I feel the nose-pierced masses bought the flash and charisma of Barak Obama over substance and experience, but I’m willing to accept their will, not just because I was out-numbered, but for the sake of Democracy itself. I don’t think I have a monopoly on all that is logical and right, nor do I think anyone else does, therefore I have to give them the benefit of the doubt at times.
I have to wonder if these school officials really care that much weather the valedictorian is Christian, Muslim, Bahi, or Whatever, as much as they care about having control and power over their little corner of the world. I don’t think schools have enough checks and balances to avert this arrogance at times. (I’m not saying these officials were necessarily wrong in this particular case, just wondering about motives sometimes.)
November 24th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
John, you say “The school officials shouldn’t go against the will of the general public unless it is an obvious and gross moral wrong being perpetrated.”
My problem with this is that we’re running a school system here, not a country club. Tennessee famously banned the teaching of evolution in its schools years ago, and today the school systems are a little more subtle about it, but they manage to water down science to the point that our kids would rather pull out a Bible to study science than a science book, and that’s not going to do us any fundamental good when those folks go on to college to try to be an engineer or a physician and find out that men really don’t have fewer ribs than women.
There has to be a role for professionals here, even if those professionals are teaching something that the public doesn’t like. If we allow the public to run the public schools even more than they do, we’ll end up with a public school system exactly like everything else that is run by public opinion: Vapid, insubstantial, and flashy, with little substance.
November 24th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
while John says that the school officials have a responsibility to follow the will of the public, the flip side is that the public should have respect for the rights of school administrators to fulfill the responsibilities for which they were hired. John thinks that the school professionals should heed the wishes of the public except under the most extreme circumstances. Where should we set the bar when it comes to the public heeding the advice of professional academics? When is such meddling not warranted?
Certainly school administrators should consider the values of their local constituency but there are many other factors, such as the law (state, federal, Constitutional) and their professional training and judgment. John says that these other factors should merely “temper” the wishes of the local citizens. That’s rather like saying that the teachers can be permitted to discuss the scientific method in their biology classes so long as they teach creationism, if that’s what the town folk want.
John feels confident in blaming this showdown on the evil tendencies of the school officials– arrogance and a desire for power and and control. A honest person would admit that those same characteristics are visible in the actions of some
members of the public who seem more interesting in conflict than resolution.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:47 am
José and Caleb:
My very first question in all matters like this is to ask, “Would this happen in a private entity?” A can’t imagine a secular private school ever cutting off a valedictorian’s microphone in the middle of her speech. I mean, how childish and arrogant! A private secular school, or any other secular private entity for that matter, could care less what someone’s religious views are. Whether they agreed or not with the speaker they would simply say, “That was a nice speech” and never give it another thought.
I understand pubic schools have to be different. Because they forcefully take money from all the public, they must be extremely careful not to offend any member of that public. This is impossible, of course, but they have to at least give an honest and concerted effort to become as least offensive as possible. I sympathize with these school officials, they have to walk a tight rope at times, but I can’t help but think that sometimes they abdicate their common sense in the effort. Unless the girl was preaching jihad or something clearly wrong and not just a benign opinion, 99.9 percent of the audience, if not 100 percent, could care less. Secular private institutions understand this intrinsically (common sense) and wouldn’t even bat an eye. Of course, they have the freedom to do so. Public schools have unbelievable amounts of regulations and policies they have to follow. These public school officials in Nevada did what they felt they had to in this circumstance. However, if they had stopped to think about it a little longer and got their heads out of the regulation book, they would have probably fared far better to simply let her speak. There probably would not have been any big news articles or columns on it. It is doubtful any member of the audience would have reported it, and no one would have converted to Christianity on the public dollar. They would have said, “That was a nice speech” and immediately forgot all about it as they headed for the cookies and punch at the back of the gym.
If some hired administrator at a secular private school had done what these officials had done, he would have probably been fired immediately. These guys in the public sector can sometimes get big heads when they choose to interpret all the regulations they have as somehow giving them unquestioned power. I don’t blame them, it’s human nature. And I’m not talking about everyone here. I’m sure the vast majority of public school officials give an honest effort to administer quality education given the limitations and opportunities a public school system has to offer.
November 25th, 2009 at 11:37 am
John, your claims do not bear truth to what I know of secular private schools. They can enforce much stronger disciplinary control over their students than public schools. I won’t go into the long details, but a friend of my nephew was expelled because he had a second disciplinary offense, which just happened to be that he forgot to bring his athletic shoes to gym one day. Expelled, appeal denied, period. I can’t think of a nice way to say this, but the suggestion that secular private schools are inherently immune to arrogance or controlling tendencies is just ridiculous.
And the same goes for other private enterprises. I have worked for public corporations my entire life. They are generally tolerant of personal beliefs and behavior. There always seems to be a few folks carrying their Bibles in to work and reading them lunchtime, sometimes even in small groups. And some folks display religious items in their offices or cubicles. Employees have organized lunchtime celebrations for both Christmas and the Hindu festival of Diwali. No problem. However I cannot imagine any of my employers allowing one of my co-workers to make a testimony of faith to a captive audience. Is the company overbearing and controlling? According to your definition, perhaps.
Public schools DO have to be different. They are subject to the whims of voters. If they “forcefully take money from the public” it is because the public voted them funds in the first place. Because they are agents of government they must obey certain restrictions not imposed on private organizations. Again, there are two sides to the coin here. Talk to a public school principal or superintendent sometime and complain that they have the power to do whatever they want.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
John, Jose largely stole my thunder on this one, particularly concerning what a “secular” private school would do. The first thing a secular private school would do is tell the valedictorian EXACTLY what he or she could and couldn’t say. Though I went to public schools through high school, I attended a private liberal arts college that was very “secular” despite its Protestant church affiliation, and attended an Ivy League law school that was perhaps the height of secularism. And let me tell you, the private schools run a far tighter ship on matters that they care about than do public schools. Of course, they often don’t care about the same things that public school administrators care about.
But, I really wanted to follow up on one of the phrases Jose quoted, that the schools “forcefully” take our money. I have to give the right wing the highest praise for being able to come up with misleading and negative images for everything. In his book Parliament of Whores (which I generally like, believe it or not), P.J. O’Rourke lays out his theory of taxation: He says that if his mother refused to pay her taxes, the government would collect them “forcefully,” including shooting her if need be (how this would result in her paying money he doesn’t say).
Therefore, his theory is that we should only spend taxpayers’ money on things for which we’d be willing to shoot our mothers. This is a ridiculous argument. As Jose points out, we voted in the people who passed every single tax that was ever enacted. In this country, we at least begin with the theory that we are governed by the consent of the people. Governments spend money for a thousand things for which I wouldn’t be willing to shoot my mother. And they don’t collect it forcefully, they collect it peacefully, because someone voted in the rules by which they collect it. The problem is that conservatives see any form of taxation, particularly of rich people, as theft. As long as they have that idea, and don’t want to pay their fair share of the money that it takes to protect their wealth, they will drag all of us down.
They fail to understand that you can’t run a government without money, and most money that government spends helps the wealthy far more than it does the poor. For every dollar a poor person gets in welfare benefits or food stamps, some big corporation with a government contract gets a hundred dollars. And no one cares. Time Magazine ran a big story a few years ago on “corporate welfare,” in which it pointed out some of the major offenders, and there was no hue and cry; no one protested.
Government by the corporations for the rich! That’s what we need more of!
November 25th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
The point I’m making here, and I’m obviously not making it very clear, is that these public officials are insulated enough from the people they serve to be able to make such bone-headed decisions as to cut out a microphone and cause a stir in the audience that would not have otherwise occurred. They don’t fear losing their jobs or losing funding (or at least not very much). Your nephew’s friend’s private school should be loosing revenue when they dismiss a “paying customer.” Either the school has very high competition to fill it’s seats–students waiting in que to take his place (and possibly willing to pay more)–or they are practicing some sort of dishonesty (whether legal or not) in their tuition payment contract. That is, if they really did dismiss him only for forgetting his athletic shoes and there is not more to the story we’re not aware of.
I’m not saying that what these public school officials in Nevada did was wrong or right, the point is there is either not enough pressure on them or there is too much pressure on them to do the right thing. An argument could be made either way. There just isn’t an outside, check and balance pressure such as market forces, voluntarily paying (and therefore presumably more involved) parents or the like. Yes, we vote for public schools, but once we have, or our ancestors have, there is no way to “pull out of the system” if we want. That is what I mean by “force.” The public schools know they are far too entrenched to worry about any threat of being dismantled. Private schools go out of business all the time simply because they get a bad rep for one reason or another.
Case in point: An public elementary school teacher in my little town was caught, arrested and convicted for molesting his students. That elementary school is still in business, the same administrators are there, and the same students still have no real choice to go anywhere else. If this had happened in a private school, most likely the kids and parents would be fleeing to the winds and the school would have folded, or at least have been heavily restructured. I’m not saying the public school paradigm is all bad; limited resources and other factors contribute to the need for public schools, but we need to recognize we are giving up some freedom when we put things in a public structure. We are more likely to be abused, in one way or another, in an environment where we are not readily free or able to leave.
On the flip side, though, public schools have to take almost literally everybody and therefore have to accommodate a lot more than a private school must, so they have my sympathy and I don’t wish to judge them too harshly. (In the long run this accommodation too often leads to catering to the “lowest common denominator” and quality education suffers.)
November 25th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Caleb,
At least the “corporate welfare” companies are employing people and producing something. The fourth-generation “welfare mom” is simply watching her soaps for the money.
Yikes! Okay, I’m running now!!
November 25th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
There have been thousands of molestations in Catholic schools across the country, and these schools haven’t shut down, and as far as I can tell, there hasn’t been any shakeup of officials in them. They have adopted some new rules, though.
The schools seem particularly immune to any type of consequences for this type of thing. There was a pedophile who headed a semi-public governmental agency here, and when he was convicted, they shut down the entire agency. That won’t happen with schools.
As I’ve said on here before, I’ve represented many victims of childhood sexual abuse, both in public and private schools. My prediction is that a wave of sex abuse victims, abused in the public schools, will come forward in a wave so large that it will make the Catholics look like pikers. This was the verdict of Charol Shakeshaft, a Hofstra professor who did a report on it for the Department of Education several years ago, and I think she will be proven correct. Certainly here in Lexington, Kentucky, hardly a great metropolis, there have been a significant number of such cases over the past few years, and more are on the way.
November 25th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Yes, John, what the big corporations are “producing” by bribing the government to give them big guaranteed-profit contracts is earnings which will be unfairly paid to their executives, and only then will any trickle down to the shareholders, whose interests these good conservative business people are supposed to represent. This is stealing just as much as armed robbery is, and is worse, not better, because they’ve taken otherwise legitimate businesses and corrupted them. You like these companies better than the welfare mother because they are better and bigger thieves than she is, because they have been better educated.
The fourth generation welfare mother is producing offspring who will come and steal your stuff, John, if you and the rest of conservativedom don’t untie the purse strings and put a little money into education. Every dollar spent on education probably saves ten dollars on prisons and the court system down the road. But somehow we’d rather pay to incarcerate people than educate them.
November 25th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
That’s a good observation, John. Public and private entities have different missions and operate under different constraints. In the current healthcare debate I see an analogy between public education and the so-called “public option” for healthcare. There is a need for both– to ensure that no person gets left behind just because the market deems them unprofitable or inconvenient. Another example is the US Postal Service. I was reading the other day of a postal carrier, in Oklahoma I think. This guy said that UPS found that it was unprofitable for them to deliver in some rural areas, so they would pay the Postal Service to deliver their packages to remote farmhouses. I guess there’s nothing wrong with a private company deciding to neglect a potential market, but at the same time it’s darned good that the government sees value in trying hard to serve as many citizens as possible. In fact it’s noble.
If the number of students in a certain area increases then a private school can be more selective, and if the number goes down then they can lower their fees or their admission standards. Either way, they have the option of keeping their enrollment stable, in line with their staff and facility. Public schools do not have that luxury, and in some fast growing areas they run into real trouble trying to build schools quickly to house students that haven’t even left kindergarten. If the costs of heating or cooling the buildings increases dramatically, or the market salary for a teacher increases due to economic factors, then a private school can make a new budget and fund it with immediate increases in tuition. A public school cannot make such major changes without the approval of voters, which can be very slow indeed. Which administrators are more insulated from reality in these cases?
A private school seeks to provide the best education for a small segment of the populace. The public school program is intended to afford the best quality education to everyone, and to make sure that EVERYONE has an opportunity. Sure, there are problems with public schools in general and with a few bad apples in particular, but where do you think our country would be today if it were not for public schools? How many kids would have lacked even the most basic education? I’m not damning the private schools, and it’s most irritating to hear someone malign public schools with right wing misinformation.
November 25th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I agree, Caleb, these corporations are nothing more than thieves, but thanks to slick lawyers and lots of cash, it is exceedingly hard to prove their thievery well enough to bring them down. I would hate to over-regulate them though (that has its downfalls too) simply because of a few bad apples. And it’s a matter of definition. My small company takes public money on occasion to produce absolutely useless publications that some local or state politician, or some small interest group, wants to produce. Does that make us “corporate welfare” recipients? Maybe. Thankfully it’s not a major source of our revenue. (I shudder to think of all the years I’m going to spend in Perdition for all the trees I helped kill in my professional lifetime. Sigh…)
However, even if that corporate exec is building his seventh yacht with his ill-gotten gains, at least he’s supporting the ship builders out there. They passed a luxury tax on yachts in Massachusetts a few years back and almost immediately had to repeal it. Seems the boat building industry was loosing too many jobs and hurting the economy there (maybe a bunch of ship-builders on welfare?). Ill-gotten or not, I would rather have the money in the hands of someone who was smart enough to get it covertly than just having it blatantly handed to them out of the public coffers. At least they would know more how wisely to invest it. Well, seventh yacht, maybe not.
Point is, there is only so much a rich man can eat. The issue is really who CONTROLS an amount of money. When J. Willard Marriott died he had $7 in his wallet and some change. He was wearing 15 year old polyester pants and a shirt of indeterminate age. All his money (except the $7) was actually employing 200,000 people and supporting their families in hundreds of hotels and other businesses around the world. He helped the economies and produced wealth in many countries. Except for the greasy cash we have in our wallets right now, every dollar we earn or save is in play doing the same thing, just to a lesser extent. I would rather have the money in the hands of someone who knows best what to do with it than have it taken from him and redistributed by some insecure bureaucrat bent on using the rule of law to “level the playing field” in his favor.
I don’t support corporate welfare or any kind of welfare because it involves giving up of freedom. These corporations and “welfare moms” limit themselves, their creative ingenuity and talents, by accepting a handout they didn’t earn. They become dependent, just like we’ve become dependent on the public school system.
In some ways, the Catholic school system is like a public school system in that it has become an unwieldy conglomerate of “institution think” just like most of government. The Catholics schools get a considerable amount of their revenue from their centuries of plundering and investments and not enough directly from their actual “customers” the students and their parents. They can absorb a lot of blows before they go down. This should not be, but two wrongs don’t make a right; I’m not going to support a government takeover of the Catholic church over it and institute socialized religion.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Well, John, all I can say is that if you like rich corporate thieves, and their lawyers and accountants, better than welfare mothers, that says volumes about your view of life. For example, you love the fact that the rich thieves buy yachts and luxury good with their ill gotten gains. Well, what do you think welfare mothers do with their welfare checks? They buy food and clothing and consumer goods that are also made by people who get paid. Maybe they’re not as attractive as your corporate nabobs, in their expensive suits and Mercedes sedans, but they are where they are because of circumstance. Your corporate thieves are there because they’re thieves. I know which ones I’d prefer.
November 27th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Good point, Caleb. I was a little harsh in my description before. These corporate thieves can certainly do a lot more damage individually because of their personal connections and money, but the “welfare moms” (I hate using that term–got to think up a better one), when taken en masse, do an equal, if not greater, damage to society. They are propagating a culture of dependancy where, when they get in trouble, they immediately look to “vote” themselves relief rather than look to their families, extended families, religious societies, and then the community, county and finally state.
A few corrupt people in high places can do a lot of damage, but they are more easily tolerated or brought down than large public masses who are corrupt and dishonest. Taking food, clothing and shelter from ANY source is morally acceptable when it is a matter of basic survival, but the minute you take just one loaf of bread when you know you really could have worked for it and earned it honorably, you become insecure and self-justified and eventually begin to blame everyone but the yourself for all the troubles that come with life.
I’ve actually encountered people on the public doll who would actually blame doctors, the government, or even “the man” for the fact that we all eventually die, if they thought they could get away with it! There excuses become increasingly more absurd the longer they live their lives in this lie. Now there are plenty of honest hard-working folk who have run out of other sources and may need public assistance at times. Likewise I wouldn’t label a corporation poorly simply because they took public money to provide a legitimate and needed public service. However, the fact is, nobody starved to death during the Great Depression. (My Dad, growing up in the hills of Kentucky said they didn’t even know there was a depression–life was as hard as it had always been). The local communities, churches, counties, and sometimes the states took care of their own. To keep corruption in check, whether in schools or any other aspect of government or society, it needs to be handled on the lowest level (closest to the people) possible.
These school officials were way too separated, or at least their policies were, from the people that pay their salaries. They are taking into account too large of a sample when coming up with their regulations. The local community and it’s culture needs to be able to dictate what is acceptable and what is not to a greater degree than it is right now. Of course, allowance should be made to ensure no one is unduly discriminated against, but cutting off someone’s personal expression of faith? Let’s be reasonable people and not sink to the lowest common denominator just because somebody, somewhere thousands of miles away (maybe in Washington) due to our huge sample size, might be offended that the speaker believes in Jesus rather than Allah.
November 30th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Just as a follow up to my last post, talking about the separation between school officials and the people they serve:
Likewise, let’s say a government welfare recipient receives, instead of his monthly check, a letter stating that in order to save costs the Department of Welfare is asking that he collect his monthly money directly. He is asked to go to Mr. Jones’ house across the street and collect from him $32.66; then to go to the widow Wilson’s house two blocks over and collect $14.27; then to the Smith family on Garden Street and collect $67.18; then to… And if any of them refuse to give him the money he may call the local Sheriff to come over and “enforce” the law and take the widow Wilson to jail, at gunpoint if necessary, for not performing her civic duty. How many welfare recipients would actually do this? Virtually all of them would decide, rather than face the humiliation or force their neighbors directly, not to mention the work that might be involved in going to all the homes, to fall back to the sources of relief they should have gone to in the first place: their family, church, private charities, and then, once those are exhausted and they are truly still in need, to the community, county and state as a last resort.
They can no longer hide behind a bureaucracy or “system” that answers to strangers far away. Their family, church, or neighbors are more likely to know if they are really in need, and more likely to give them the real custom help they may need for their particular circumstances. Case in point: My uncle was a Bishop in the Mormon church right there in Lexington, KY, Caleb, and was therefore in charge of distributing “fast offering” money to needy people within his congregation. This money is voluntarily donated to the church above and beyond tithing money, and is therefore held to be very “sacred” and to be used wisely only for its intended purpose. A lady in the congregation came to him asking for assistance. As standard protocol, my uncle briefly went over her finances and said, “Okay, cancel your cable TV service and we’ll give you the money you need.” The lady said she could not cancel her cable television service. My uncle refused to give her the money. He said he would not be able to sleep at night knowing he gave money that came from other families in his congregation, many of whom were just as poor, or nearly so, as this lady, and who made sacrifices to contribute to the fast offering pool, to pay for someone’s cable TV bill.
This is not likely to happen when the government official in charge of redistribution gets his revenue, and not to mention his salary, by “right” through force. Like the school officials in Nevada, he views his authority as merely power, because some people voted for people who initiated a system of control for which he is now employed. The school official, like a welfare agent or any other “government” entity for that matter, has the easy ability to care little or nothing for the people he is supposed to really help or his neighbors who “contribute” to his being in such a position.
When the proper motivations are corrupted, power and control, along with other vices are given free expression. This is what happened to greater or lesser degree at this unfortunate school commencement service.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
“Government official in charge of redistribution???” Have you like swallowed the Rush Limbaugh political lectionary whole??? I mean, come on, does every phrase you use have to be loaded with right wing propaganda?
And if you think no one starved to death during the depression, maybe you haven’t read the full account. My family, too, lived in the mountains of Kentucky during that time. My great grandfather was county judge in our small county, and thus was in charge of distribution of relief supplies and government aid. He has been dead over forty years now, but if you’d had a conversation with him, you wouldn’t be quite as sanguine about the depression and the suffering of others.
And I suspect that’s most of your problem: You obviously come from a comfortable middle class background, and you just can’t get your mind around the fact that there is economic injustice in America, that it is caused by our capitalistic economic system, and that government aid does help poor people. The problem with the welfare mother stereotype is that while no doubt there are malingerers in every system, in my own outreach work I’ve known far more people who needed help and didn’t get it than people who got too much.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Caleb, I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh. There are people out there who genuinely disagree with you and come to similar conclusions and terminology all on their own. To follow your line of reasoning it would be like me accusing you of being an Ed Asner or Al Franken groupie because you might use some socialist term they might have used.
Fact is, I deal with “poor” people all the time. Virtually all of them have real issues that led to their poverty. There are exceptions, but many of them are “unemployable” because of substance abuse, poor work ethic, emotional trauma and/or conditions and the like. When my Dad started taking Medicaid patients in his dental practice he was appalled at the simple lack of hygiene many exhibited. Many would show up with their entire families, ten people in the waiting room for one person getting a tooth worked on. Don’t these people have something better to do, like find a job? They would complain about how much their health care costs and my Dad would ask them how much that tattoo they just bragged about getting cost. That would shut them up. You could point to anyone in the waiting room and my Dad could tell you who was on Medicaid simply by looking at them. They were usually obese, or rail thin because of drug use, and they hardly ever picked up a magazine to read (my Dad refused to have “Entertainment Weekly” and like magazines in his waiting room), they would just simply stare at the walls. He had compassion on them, because in the state they were in, they were somewhat unemployable, that’s why he accepted Medicaid even though it cost him more than it was worth, because he hoped to influence them if he could in some small way to take control of their lives.
Even the poorest in America, with a granted few exceptions, live better than the queen of England did 100 years ago. I walk into a filthy hovel of a house in my neighborhood where the residents are on welfare and there stands a big ol’ 52″ plasma TV! I don’t have a plasma TV! A missionary companion of mine grew up on welfare with his single Mom in Michigan. He would come home from school some days to find double the furniture in their apartment or no furniture at all. He then knew the welfare “wardens” were coming to inspect either his home (if the furniture was gone) or a neighbor’s (if their furniture was there). They wanted to get as much as they could from the system. When my companion discovered the Mormon church, one of the things that impressed him about it, and helped him to join, was that we put so much emphasis on self-reliance. He recognized that his mother was a literal slave to her weaknesses—weaknesses exacerbated by a government-sponsored “safety net” that almost literally gives out “free” money.
I remember being dirt poor in Las Vegas, only about 15 years ago. I was out of work and barely had enough to pay my rent and other bills and only had about $40 to last me the rest of the month and it was only the 5th! My parents had recently declared bankruptcy (they eventually paid back every dime) and couldn’t help me–not that I would ask. Standing in line ahead of me at the grocery store was an exceptionally rotund lady with here daughter buying a boatload of food with food stamps. After purchasing my meager fare, I watched them in the parking lot loading their ill-gotten bounty into a virtually brand new SUV. Sitting there in my 9-year-old “salvaged” Mazda I became increasingly more and more furious at these parasites! I wanted to just go over there and smother that woman’s flabby jowels with her “family size” bag of Doritos!
On my church mission in Washington, D.C. I tracked many poor-income housing “projects.” I remember listening to one man complaining how there were no jobs for him as I was looking right across the street at a Burger King with a huge sign in the window advertising “Now Hiring 15 Year Olds!” Seems they had gotten a dispensation from the Virginia state legislature allowing them to hire so young because they couldn’t find enough “workers” otherwise.
I spent a summer working with migrant workers picking blueberries in Maine to help get me through college (back-breaking work, btw). With the exception of the few other college students there, almost every one in the camp at night was drunk and/or brawling. And they complained they couldn’t find better work. Well, duh!
When I talk about “redistribution” that is what I’m talking about—my own experience. Fortunately I didn’t live in Russia when the soviets “redistributed” the lands of the imaginary Kulaks (translate: those who disagreed with the new “system”) or I would have been the first martyr for the cause of freedom.