Article 1 (Political Argument: a Christian Vocation)

"The Cure for Election Madness: How to be political without losing your soul." Christianity Today. (January 2012)

by Amy E. Black

Mark DeMoss, concerned about the increasingly harsh tone of public discourse, launched the Civility Project in January 2009. The Republican businessman and political adviser enlisted Democratic lobbyist and former Clinton aide Lanny Davis to help him. Together the two friends wrote to all 100 United States Senators, all 435 members of the House of Representatives, and all 50 state governors, asking each to sign a pledge promising, "I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. I will stand against incivility when I see it."

How many of the 585 recipients agreed?

Three.

Two years later, DeMoss wrote to the legislators who had signed the pledge, Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman and Republican Representatives Frank Wolf and Sue Myrick, informing them he was closing the project. "You three were alone in pledging to be civil," DeMoss wrote. "I must admit to scratching my head as to why only three members of Congress, and no governors, would agree to what I believe is a rather low bar."

Thousands of private citizens showed their support by signing the pledge, but others attacked the project. In an interview, DeMoss described his surprise and dismay at the hostile response he received from fellow conservatives: Some of the e-mails contained "unbelievable language about communists, and some words I wouldn't use in this phone call," he explained. "This political divide has become so sharp that everything is black and white, and too many conservatives can see no redeeming value in any liberal or Democrat."

Why were so few of the nation's leaders willing to take such a simple and seemingly uncontroversial public stand? Why did so many web users respond to a call for civility and respect with vulgarity and vicious attacks? What might these events reveal about contemporary American politics?

Today's hyperpartisan and meanspirited political climate makes it difficult to engage in civil and meaningful dialogues. Indeed, the temperature of the political conversation seems to rise as elections draw near. In recent months, presidential candidates have maligned their opponents for their "finger-in-the-wind politics," "ignorance of basic economics," and "frugal socialism." In the 2008 campaign, one candidate said George W. Bush was "brain-dead." Conservative radio host Bill Bennett rallied the crowd at the 2010 Values Voters Summit with the call, "If you voted for [Obama] last time to prove you are not a racist, you must vote against him this time to prove you are not an idiot." Simple differences in perspective can quickly turn into fiery battles and over-the-top attacks.

Heated rhetoric can escalate beyond wars of words. When political opponents spend more time hurling insults and accusations at one another than gathering together to hammer out solutions to complicated problems, stalemates result. Politicians focus on pointing fingers and attributing blame instead of sincerely trying to accomplish the work that voters elected them to do. At its worst, bitter rancor can turn to violence.

If we are to seek peaceful solutions and honor God in politics, we Christians of all people must avoid such hateful talk. James 4:11 commands us to "not slander one another," an exhortation that should extend beyond how we treat other believers. Whether talking with friends or campaigning for our favorite candidate or cause, we should engage our political opponents and their ideas with respect, welcome the opportunity to learn from other perspectives, and find ways to disagree charitably as a natural part of the political process.

Easy and Hard Issues

Growing numbers of Americans are registering frustration with the political process. Why do politicians constantly battle each other? Why does the government take so long to address problems, or appear unable to fix them? One reason policy debates can be so frustrating is that much of the work of government is trying to solve problems that lack easy solutions. If a problem can be addressed easily, government quickly solves it. Everything else—the complex, seemingly hopeless issues—is left for public debate.

One way political scientists divide political issues is by using two categories: "easy" and "hard" issues.

When asked if government should allow gay marriage, for example, most people will quickly answer either "yes" or "no." This is what we call an "easy" issue. We political scientists use the term easy—a misnomer for sure!—for those issues on which people instinctively choose a side. Typically, easy issues are presented as if they have only two sides: someone is either for something or against it; there is a right side and a wrong side, with little room for middle ground. The categories appear simple because the focus is sharply on the end goal. Most so-called moral issues fall into this category; political scientists typically view abortion, gay marriage, and the sale of narcotics as easy issues.

On the other hand, if you ask someone whether the government should try to stop terrorism, almost everyone (except perhaps terrorists and their sponsors) would immediately say yes. But when you ask the necessary follow-up question—What should we do?—the consensus quickly disintegrates. These are what we call "hard" issues. Terrorism is a perfect example of a hard issue. The center of controversy on these subjects is not the desired policy goal; almost everyone agrees about what needs to be done. Disagreements emerge and multiply as people debate the best way to accomplish a goal and attempt to prioritize the problem among all the other matters government might address. Classic examples of hard issues include ending poverty, protecting national security, and maintaining a healthy economy. Voters almost always agree with such goals; the problem is figuring out the best way to achieve them and when to try.

When We Disagree on Ends

Discussion on the easy issues typically focuses on ends, not means, so activists often frame the debate in absolutist terms. They directly or indirectly tell voters that compromise is not only impossible but may even be immoral. Political debates over moral issues often use the language of black and white, us versus them, right and wrong. Slogans such as the National Rifle Association's famous "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!" or the popular bumper sticker announcing Hate Is Not A Family value create stark contrasts that offer little space for shades of gray.

And here is the problem: Bargaining and compromise are essential to the political process. To an outsider, an easy issue appears to have two distinct sides, but in reality government likely has multiple options for addressing the issue. Consider the debate over abortion. The alternatives are clear: One side wants abortion kept legal, the other does not. But the hundreds of state abortion laws that have passed in recent decades have addressed only pieces of the larger issue, considering questions such as the public funding of abortion, options for physicians to refuse to perform abortions, and parental consent or notification requirements. The two opposing sides may even find common ground on some regulations such as laws that require doctors to perform late-term abortions in hospitals when the mother's life is at risk.

When people stake claims as either for or against a particular end goal, the door begins to close on possibilities for cooperating to find solutions. Some issues raise only two distinct options and require choosing one, but the subject matter of many so-called easy issues is actually multifaceted and complex. On such issues, it often makes sense to look to government to address one part of the larger problem at a time.

Why don't we look more often for areas of potential political agreement? One reason is that activists often have strong incentives not to seek solutions. Ironically, divisive rhetoric keeps the debate raging and fills their bank accounts. Potential donors are much more likely to contribute to a cause if the stakes are high and the situation appears dire.

Most of the debate over easy issues is highly charged and intentionally polarizing, but it need not be this way. Consider some examples of political leaders who took the risk to reach across issue divides and demonstrate respect for those holding opposing views.

Demonstrating a different approach to the discussion of abortion, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made national headlines after delivering a speech to a pro-choice audience, the New York State Family Planning Providers. Beginning with the principle that "every child born in this country [should] be wanted, cherished, and loved," the then senator charged the audience to find common ground on the abortion issue. "We can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women." Some observers applauded these remarks, while others scoffed. Clinton captured so much attention because she spoke of room for political cooperation on an issue usually discussed in all-or-nothing terms. Clearly, those on both ends of the abortion debate have significant areas of disagreement. But, as Clinton noted, they share some similar goals. They will likely hold opposing views on more comprehensive policy proposals, but they can find some common ground by seeking incremental, yet notable, change on areas of shared concern.

Another example: When asked about a gay rights group, GOProud, cosponsoring the Conservative Political Action Committee's (CPAC) 2011 conference, Sarah Palin responded, "Should conservatives not reach out to others, not participate in events or forums [where issues arise] that maybe we don't personally agree with? … I look at participation in an event like CPAC … as [the] more information that people have the better." Several conservative groups and bloggers criticized Palin for what they viewed as tacit support for gay activism and demanded an explanation. Palin responded, "I don't have a problem with different, diverse groups that are involved in political discourse, and having a convention to talk about what the answers are to the problems that face America."

When We Disagree on Means

What about the other category of issues, those hard issues? How do politicians, activists, and voters approach these kinds of policy problems? Ironically, it is usually easier to debate hard issues and find room for political compromise. When people recognize instinctively that an issue is complex, they are more open to considering various policy alternatives. At the same time, they are also more willing to accept partial solutions as productive and valuable steps toward solving larger problems. Debate over hard issues can grow intense and polarizing, but most elected officials and activists enter the discussion fully aware that bargaining will be necessary.

Successful public policy is almost always the result of compromise, yet much public rhetoric on hard issues ignores this reality. In the same way that divisive language can rally the troops on easy issues, politicians and party leaders often find they can capture voter attention with polarizing remarks that demean opponents' positions and question their motives.

For example, a recent Internet ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee shows an elderly man working as a stripper and a man with a walker mowing a teenager's lawn. In between these scenes, text displayed on black screens warns, "Seniors will have to find $12,000 for health care because Republicans voted to end Medicare. How will you pay?" Despite the ad's claims, senior citizens were not in danger of losing Medicare. House Republicans had voted to support a plan to restructure Medicare for adults under age 55 that would likely increase the costs for future beneficiaries, but the measure had no hope of passing the Senate. The ad used humor, distortion, and mistruths to score political points instead of highlighting legitimate concerns about the proposal.

Exaggerations, accusations, and distortions are common in both parties. A recent Republican National Committee fundraising appeal accused President Obama of trying to "buy another four years in the White House so he can continue shoving his radical left-wing policies on the American people that have added $4 trillion to the national debt, caused the loss of 2 million jobs, and led to America's first credit downgrade in history." Are President Obama's policies the sole contributor to our current economic woes? Of course not. But appeals like this often entice donors to grab their checkbooks.

To complicate matters, people are most likely to believe lies about their political opponents. Consider the persistent, though false, rumors that President Obama is a Muslim. Despite Obama's discussion of his conversion to Christianity and current Christian practice in his writings and speeches, plus independent confirmation of his religious practice in several biographical accounts, many Americans continue to believe the rumor. In an August 2010 poll, 18 percent of respondents identified Obama's religion as Muslim. One in three conservative Republicans said Obama was a Muslim, as did 30 percent of respondents who disapproved of the President's job performance.

Although it is indeed possible to find and claim common ground on hard issues, such civility is uncommon in today's politically charged climate. But it does happen.

Consider a Politico.com editorial published in the midst of the looming debt crisis last summer. When Democrats and Republicans appeared at an impasse over how to deal with the nation's growing debt, former U.S. comptroller general David Walker and Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition called for meaningful, bipartisan dialogue to address the nation's fiscal problems: "Such sweeping reforms are likely to be politically difficult, so the American people's active involvement is essential. We need a real national dialogue about the massive fiscal challenge, related risks, possible options, and the inescapable tradeoffs among those options."

Exhorting leaders in both parties to speak with civility and seek compromise, they concluded, "Despite the heated rhetoric, neither side is blameless for our current predicament—and neither has a monopoly on American values."

Keys to Civil Civic Conversation

In the midst of a raging political debate, it is difficult to step back from the battle lines and carefully assess a proposed policy's likely success. But if we want our faith to inform our political actions and offer a positive Christian witness, such a measured approach is not only wise—it is essential. Consider three practical ways Christians can demonstrate our faith in the political arena.

1. Admit the Complexity of Political Issues. Many policymakers and citizens talk and act as if they can solve most policy problems in one easy step. A strong declarative sound bite—"We will win this battle overnight!"—captures more attention and praise than an outline of a multistep, and more accurate, long-term path. Who wants to hear an elected official admit that a problem is so challenging that perhaps the best government can do is address a few aspects of it over time? American voters are much more likely to respond to optimism than pragmatism, so politicians love to promise quick fixes. In reality, few can deliver them. As long as voters respond enthusiastically to pledges of easy solutions, few candidates will have the courage to speak frankly about the dilemmas government needs to confront.

One way we can serve those in public office is to uphold the value of truth telling and accept when they have to make hard choices. When we expect and demand instant results from a slow and complex political system, we make it much harder for government officials to do their very demanding jobs. We should hold our leaders accountable when they take positions we disapprove of, but we should also allow them to explain the choices they made and give them a fair hearing.

Further, we should be slow to react to attempts to scare us. When someone sends an alarming e-mail or letter, we might investigate the claims and do a little research instead of jumping to conclusions. Their claims may be valid, but more often than not, they rely on distortion or outright lies. If a story seems too outlandish to be true, it probably is. If advocates claim a policy proposal will fix a major problem overnight, their pronouncements are likely overblown.

2. Play Fair in the War of Words. Christians—whether as candidates or citizens debating among friends—must stand firm against meanspirited, false, and misleading political talk. So much contemporary political debate shows few signs of nuance and creates a harmful Christian witness. We should not engage in vicious attacks, nor should we support others who do so. Instead, we should encourage honest and open dialogue, raise concerns and criticisms when needed, and keep politicians accountable for their actions.

Overstatement is sometimes necessary to highlight important differences and simplify complex points. But candidates can capture media attention with zippy one-liners and provocative statements without demonizing their rivals or distorting their positions.

Before characterizing someone else's political views, apply the simple test of the Golden Rule. Would you want someone speaking of you and your policy positions in the way that you speak of them? It may seem impractical to use such criteria, but practicality is not our ultimate goal. In political dialogue, as in all other interactions, we must first and foremost honor God.

3. Engage Hard Issues. Many Christians focus almost all their attention on the so-called easy issues that raise cultural concerns. Issues of personal morality are important and need to be a part of public debate; God calls many people to raise awareness of these issues and challenge the church to respond. But such issues represent a tiny fraction of the policies and proposals facing elected officials each year. If Christians focus all of their political attention on these issues, they will lose the opportunity to contribute to the public debate on the wide range of policies on the agenda.

Honoring God in Political Talk

Distortion, lies, and political rancor are nothing new in American politics. Electioneering has been a dirty business almost from the beginning. In the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland's supporters mocked his opponent with the chant, "James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine." Pro-Blaine crowds mocked Cleveland and called attention to allegations that he had fathered a child outside of marriage with the famous line, "Ma, ma, where's my pa?" Christians aren't going to change the tone of political debate overnight, but we should lead the way by our example. Instead of fueling partisan fires and contributing to extremism, we can bring salt and light to politics, demonstrating ways to firmly but respectfully disagree, modeling more civil and truthful political engagement.

When we enter political dialogues unwilling to listen, simply viewing those with whom we disagree as enemies, meaningful dialogue and mutual respect become almost impossible. I believe God calls us to enter political debates assuming that our opponents are sincere and acting in good conscience, even if we fundamentally disagree with their policy views. History reminds us that many in politics have been deceitful. But if we lack hard proof of another's motives, we are wise to begin political conversations by extending charity and respect, opening pathways to truthful and constructive engagement.

In 2 Peter 1:5-8, the apostle encourages his fellow believers to
… make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Imagine the possibilities if Christians actually modeled such Christlike behavior in the political arena! We can and should lead by example, approaching politics with humility, grace, and reason, and giving the ultimate glory to Christ.

Amy E. Black is associate professor of political science at Wheaton College. This article is adapted from her forthcoming book, Honoring God in Red or Blue: Approaching Politics with Humility, Grace, and Reason (Moody, June 2012).

Articles 8 (Riots & Their Causes)

How should we understand the recent rioting in England and the so-called “flashmob” violence and thefts in cities across the US? Or, are these incidents so senseless that they defy explanation? The following three editorials seek to explain why this nonsense is occurring.

The Cato article blames the riots on the ever-expanding welfare state that, in turn, leads the government to “fail in its most basic function — protecting persons and property.” It continues, “If an anti-market and socialist mentality replace an ethos of liberty and responsibility, then the harmony that results from limited government and free markets will disappear — and hooligans will gain the upper hand.” The Philadelphia Enquirer article blames the mob violence in Philadelphia (as it draws comparisons to the London riots) on the unstable economy, joblessness in poorer neighborhoods, and deep budget cuts to education and social services. The article argues, “[The street-mobs] might not be protesting any one thing, but [are] lashing out at everything…” The Washington Examiner article blames the riots on widespread “moral and spiritual” decay. “Personal responsibility and accountability and the right to life, liberty and personal property” are not being taught and embraced like they were in the past, and the London riots are an “extreme outcome.”

Can Christians offer a unique perspective on these events? Is one of these explanations sufficient to gain our assent? Finally, each article contains a very different kind of argument; what about the validity of the arguments themselves?

-NB


The Cato Institute. “The Welfare State's Road to Riots.” (August 17, 2011)

By James A. Dorn

(This article appeared on Orange County Register August 17, 2011).

If the riots in Britain have taught us anything, it is that when government fails in its most basic function — protecting persons and property — civil society ends, and warfare begins. The rise of the welfare state has eroded respect for private property rights and fostered a socialist mentality that dulls individual responsibility.

The U.S. is quickly catching up with European welfare states. Entitlement spending has skyrocketed since the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Those two programs along with Social Security now account for more than 40 percent of federal spending, which itself has risen to 25 percent of GDP, or nearly $4 trillion. If all entitlement spending is included, payments to individuals account for 66 percent of federal spending.

The transformation from limited government (true liberalism) to the welfare state has no constitutional basis. The three branches of government have failed in their solemn duty to uphold the Framers' Constitution, or what F. A. Hayek called "the constitution of liberty."
The lesson from the British riots is that when government overextends itself, it will fail to do what it is supposed to do: protect persons and property.

It is not free enterprise and limited government that led to the riots in Britain; it is rather their demise. The U.S. should wake up and recognize the danger the welfare state poses to property — broadly understood as rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The most fundamental question facing any society is the role and scope of government. The Framers of the Constitution accepted the idea that the primary role of government is to safeguard private property. In 1792, James Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution, wrote, "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. ... This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."

The Preamble to the Constitution states that the purpose of the charter is to "establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty." To "establish justice" means to prevent the violation of an individual's natural rights or property rights; it does not give the federal government an unlimited power to take private property and interfere with freedom of contract.
Madison and the other framers would not have enumerated — and therefore limited — the powers of the federal government in Article 1, section 8, if they thought a redistributive state was just. Nor would they have added a Bill of Rights.

Amendments to the Constitution — notably the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth — further strengthened property rights. But the Progressive Movement (1890s–1920s) began to erode the Framers' Constitution. Today, the broad interpretation of the General Welfare Clause, the Commerce Clause, and other clauses have expanded the powers of the federal government far beyond that envisioned by the Framers. In doing so, the meaning of justice has been turned on its head: from its legitimate meaning of safeguarding property to its modern meaning of using taxes, regulation, and laws to redistribute income and wealth to achieve "social justice."

The problem is that when government is seen as an instrument for "doing good" rather than a force for preventing harm, there is no end to government mischief. By its very nature government operates by coercion, not consent; and as Milton Friedman liked to remind us, when government spends other people's money, it will naturally want to do more and more.

The lesson from the British riots is that when government overextends itself, it will fail to do what it is supposed to do: protect persons and property. If an anti-market and socialist mentality replace an ethos of liberty and responsibility, then the harmony that results from limited government and free markets will disappear — and hooligans will gain the upper hand.

The massive U.S. debt is a reflection of the rapid growth of entitlements and a do-good vision of government. Next year's elections will be a referendum on the size and scope of government. If Americans return to the Madisonian principle of justice that underlies the Constitution — and is the foundation of morality — the future of peace and prosperity will be bright. If they adhere to the illiberal principle of "doing good with other people's money," the welfare state will grow and eventually put out the light of liberty.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13583&utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=f2b50d4412-Cato_Today&utm_medium=email


Philadelphia Enquirer Daily News. “London riots, Philly mobs.” (August 09, 2011)

MAYOR NUTTER has sent a new wake-up call to the teens participating in street-mob violence. Following his impassioned sermon on Sunday at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church, he announced yesterday earlier curfews in Center City and University City for minors; they now have to be off the streets by 9 p.m.

Law-enforcement officials backed him up, including District Attorney Seth Williams, who vowed to prosecute and send away any teen caught up in a violent mob.

It's clear the city's leaders are working hard to present a tough and united front against the marauding teens caught up in two street-mob outbreaks in the past six weeks. Since mob incidents were at night, in Center City, an earlier curfew is a good step, though we wonder why other neighborhoods aren't included. A curfew in two neighborhoods could shift the activity to others.
Of course, upscale dining, entertainment and tourism make Center City and University City more radioactive to mob disruption.

In the long term, though, corralling the problem within the geographic confines of a few upscale neighborhoods could do more lasting damage, if it allows us to ignore some of the factors that could help explain these violent outbreaks.

And for that, we may have to look to London.

This past weekend, more than 200 young people were arrested in London as three days of violence and looting spread through some of that city's poorest neighborhoods. There, the young people set fire to buildings and cars, and threw bottles and fireworks at police. The violent riots were thought to be sparked by anger in the black community over a police shooting of a 29-year-old man. High unemployment was also cited.

It's easy to dismiss a connection between the Philadelphia mobs and London's riots; Philadelphia's mobs don't have a "cause" and have not been prompted by an external event.

But we're misguided if we don't understand that our own unstable economy, with high jobless figures especially in poorer neighborhoods, and deep budget cuts to education and social services could be a less dramatic but just as incendiary set of circumstances that the young may be responding to. They might not be protesting any one thing, but lashing out at everything, and although it's valid for the mayor to tell parents to take more responsibility, let's not forget that many of the homes that these youth must get to earlier could be miserable; parents spread their misery to their kids.

Let's be clear: explaining is not the same as excusing. Street-mob participants should be prosecuted as fully as the law allows. Curfews should be enforced - and probably widened to include other neighborhoods in the city.

But we should also be asking: how much failure in our systems - from education to the family- can young people be expected to tolerate before erupting?

And how much can we?

http://articles.philly.com/2011-08-09/news/29867495_1_mob-curfew-neighborhoods


The Washington Examiner. “Britain confronts its real sons of anarchy.” (August 10, 2011)

By Cal Thomas

PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland -- Some have compared the riots in the U.K. to the London Blitz. It's a flawed comparison.

The strategic bombing of London in 1940 came from an external enemy, Nazi Germany. Enemies from within are carrying out the free-for-all that began in Tottenham, England, on Saturday -- quickly spreading to London and other parts of the U.K. -- following the shooting death of suspected gang member Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police.
Theresa May, the British home secretary, rejected calls for water cannons and more forceful methods to help overwhelmed police quell the chaos.

Interviewed on Sky News, May said, "The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon. The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities." If that sounds completely feckless, that's because it is.

Businesses have been wiped out. Untold numbers of jobs have been lost. Did the community "consent" to that? If even a few shop owners had been armed, perhaps these products of the British welfare, entitlement and envy state might have thought twice about their thuggish behavior. Unfortunately, gun laws in Britain are strict, owners must be licensed and self-defense can be difficult to prove.

Northern Ireland, while also part of the U.K., has more liberal gun ownership laws and the bar to prove self-defense is much lower, perhaps because of the history of violence in the country before the peace agreement. There has been no rioting in Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

Prime Minister David Cameron recalled Parliament from its summer session to discuss the situation and to present a "united" front.

But that, along with condemnations "in the strongest terms" won't address the real problem, which many Britons may not wish to confront.

The problem in Britain, and increasingly in America, is moral and spiritual, not economic and political. British history and values are no longer being adequately taught in the U.K. for fear a sense of supernationalism might be conveyed.

This comes at a time when no nation is to be considered superior to any other, a view expressed by President Obama.

According to a 2007 research report on church attendance in the U.K. from Tearfund, a U.K. Christian relief and development agency, just "fifteen percent of U.K. adults go to church at least once a month."

BBC News reports that according to a 2001 census survey, "a fifth of children are in lone-parent families ... 91 percent of these families headed by mother" and there is "a minority of married couples for the first time -- 45 percent of the population versus 64 percent in 1981."

So when the government calls on parents to be more vigilant about the whereabouts of their teenagers, the likelihood there are enough stable two-parent households who care enough to do so is not encouraging.

If civility, right and wrong, personal responsibility and accountability and the right to life, liberty and personal property are not values worthy of being passed on to the next generation, then their opposites will be taught by default.

Children don't "catch" goodness and right behavior as they do a cold. Their natural tendency is to do wrong. The goal of discipline is to teach them to do right. The London riots are the extreme outcome when "right" is no longer defined.

When a society refuses to impose a moral code in its schools, homes and culture, pandemonium is the result -- think Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington. Multiply that several times and you have the lawlessness that has swept Britain with greater force than its mad cow disease scare.

"This was not an angry crowd; this was a greedy crowd," said Chris Sims, chief constable of West Midlands police. One could see that from the TV shots of women trying on clothes and shoes before stealing them and men ripping flat-screen TVs off walls and smashing windows and jewelry cases.

There's a TV program called "Sons of Anarchy." It is fiction. These rioters are the real sons (and daughters) of anarchy and it will take more than political condemnations to repair the damage they've caused.

Seventy years ago, the London Blitz forged a national unity in Britain. Where's that unity today?

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/08/britain-confronts-its-real-sons-anarchy#ixzz1VJ89ftwS




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For more information and commentary on these events, take a look at the articles below:
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The New York Times. “London Riots Put Spotlight on Troubled, Unemployed Youths in Britain.” (August 9, 2011)

By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and RAVI SOMAIYA

LONDON — “I came here to get my penny’s worth,” said a man who gave his name as Louis James, 19, a slightly built participant in the widening riots that have shaken London to its core. With a touch of guilt on Tuesday, Mr. James showed off what he described as a $195 designer sweater that he said he took during looting in Camden Town, a gentrified area of north London.

In recent days, young rioters and looters like Mr. James have dominated front pages and television reports around the world, prompted a recall of Parliament to a special session and forced the deployment of thousands of police officers.

Widespread antisocial and criminal behavior by young and usually unemployed people has long troubled Britain. Attacks and vandalism by gangs of young people are “a blight on the lives of millions,” said a 2010 government report commissioned in the aftermath of several deaths related to such gangs. They signal, it said, “the decline of whole towns and city areas.”

The government investigation revealed that though only a quarter of such incidents were reported, 3.5 million complaints were nonetheless made to the police. An iPhone app is available to track attacks, and one enterprising inventor marketed a device, called the mosquito, that emits a high-pitched noise that can be heard only by young people as a means for store owners to keep gangs away.

Politicians from both the right and the left, the police and most residents of the areas hit by violence nearly unanimously describe the most recent riots as criminal and anarchic, lacking even a hint of the antigovernment, anti-austerity message that has driven many of the violent protests in other European countries.

But the riots also reflect the alienation and resentment of many young people in Britain, where one million people from the ages of 16 to 24 are officially unemployed, the most since the deep recession of the mid-1980s.

The riots in London began when protesters gathered outside a north London police station after the shooting of a local man by officers. The police have long had troubled relations with racial and ethnic minorities in Britain and have sought to repair these relations, although the protesters have come from all backgrounds. Days later, in Hackney, where some of the fiercest riots took place, a young man in a gray hooded sweatshirt shouted directly into the faces of riot police officers: “You know you all racist! You know it.”

The combination of economic despair, racial tension and thuggery has “a devastating effect on communities,” said Graham Beech, an official at the crime-prevention charity Nacro. “It’s something that ordinary people see on their walks to work — street drunkenness, vandalism, intimidation — and that affects the general fear of crime.” As the British government’s austerity measures begin to take effect, young people will also see their chances of employment dwindling and their financial and community support cut, Mr. Beech said. “Boredom, alienation and isolation are going to be factors,” he said.

In many ways, Mr. James’s circumstances are typical. He lives in a government-subsidized apartment in northern London and receives $125 in jobless benefits every two weeks, even though he says he has largely given up looking for work. He says he has never had a proper job and learned to read only three years ago. His mother can barely support herself and his stepbrothers and sisters. His father, who was a heroin addict, is dead.
He says he has been in and out of too many schools to count and left the educational system for good when he was 15.

“No one has ever given me a chance; I am just angry at how the whole system works,” Mr. James said. He would like to get a job at a retail store, but admits that he spends most days watching television and just trying to get by. “That is the way they want it,” he said, without specifying exactly who “they” were. “They give me just enough money so that I can eat and watch TV all day. I don’t even pay my bills anymore.”

Jonathan Portes, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London, says that Mr. James’s plight reflects a broader trend here. More challenging students, Mr. Portes says, have not been receiving the attention they should as teachers, under pressure to meet educational goals, focus on children from more stable homes and those with greater abilities and social skills. Disillusioned, those who cannot keep up just drop out.

Headlines here, which often describe the young people as “feral,” have been dominated in recent years by the gangs’ turn toward bullying the most vulnerable. Almost 30 percent of the victims of antisocial behavior surveyed in the government report said they had “longstanding illness, disability or infirmity.”

In one incident typical of those described in the report, in 2007 Fiona Pilkington, 38, pulled her car to the side of a secluded highway. Inside, her learning-disabled daughter, Francesca, 18, watched as Ms. Pilkington doused a pile of old clothes in the back seat with gasoline and set them on fire. The two burned to death.

She was driven by a campaign of intimidation that stretched back over a decade. A gang, with some members as young as 10, pushed dog excrement through the letterbox of their modest home, beat her son and threatened to kill Francesca, who had the learning ability of a 3-year-old. The mother said she made 33 requests for help to the police, to no effect.

It was this culture of impunity that forms one context for the current riots. The most vulnerable people feel trapped, said Margo Milne, 49, who uses a wheelchair part time because she has multiple sclerosis. A disabled friend of hers reported looting in a neighborhood convulsed by rioting. “But she is worried that if she reports them to the police they will come for her,” Ms. Milne said. “And what would she do?”

In a low-income housing complex in Hackney on Monday, an elderly woman was hospitalized after a riot in which as many as 300 people rampaged, setting fire to cars and looting stores. Two priests, one in full robes, were brought in by the police to persuade rioters to allow an ambulance to take her to safety. “We need to get these people out,” one of the priests was heard telling a police officer.

But as soon as the ambulance left, officers abandoned the neighborhood and looters struck up in earnest once more.

Later, when one young man, kicking a trash can into the street nearby, was asked why he was rioting, he just shrugged.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/europe/10youth.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=London%20Riots&st=cse&scp=1


The Economist. “Riots in Britain.” (August 13, 2011)

Anarchy in the UK

A bout of violent mindlessness that has shaken Britain’s sense of self—and may be exportable.
SHAME was the first response of many people in Britain to the riots that started in the Tottenham neighbourhood of London on August 6th, skipped across the capital in the following days and nights and spread to Manchester, Birmingham and many other cities. Alongside the shame, there was a jolting bafflement. The law-abiding majority suddenly saw that some of their compatriots were happy to torch cars and buildings, loot shops, and attack firemen and ambulance crews. The confidence trick at the heart of the social order was violently laid bare: it turns out that if sufficient numbers of criminals want to create havoc on the streets, they can. In the absence of internal, moral restraints, external ones can only do so much.

The world watched London in fascinated amazement. Other nations tend to regard Britain as enviably orderly and law-abiding, at least compared with many of its more excitable continental neighbours. That peaceable image is only partly justified: contagious rioting has broken out before, typically during the summer, including in the 1980s, when Tottenham and some of the other flashpoint areas this week last erupted. This time, however, the complexion of the trouble is different from those earlier flare-ups. In its sheer mindlessness, it was, in a way, even more depressing (see article).

Moral malaise

This week’s multiplying riots had some common features—looting, arson, attacks on the police—but they spanned different places, races, ages and sexes. Race was not the defining issue, as it was in many of the disturbances of the 1980s. One of the first to appear in court for looting was a 31-year-old teaching assistant: hardly an identikit hooligan. That left politicians free to project their own rationales on the carnage.

For some on the left, the real villain was the government’s public-spending cuts. This view is given superficial support by the fact that the 1980s outbreaks happened during the “Thatcher cuts”. But it is still a lazy fantasy. It might be comforting to think of the riots as an extension of a familiar debate—and to argue that the underlying ills can be easily remedied with a little more state largesse—but there is little reason to do so. Unlike the riots in Britain in the 1980s, Los Angeles in 1992 or France in 2005, these were not overtly political or racial. And since the cuts have barely bitten yet, that explanation doesn’t wash.

But the right’s knee-jerk response—that this is criminality, pure and simple, and that to seek a deeper explanation is to excuse the culprits—is also wrong. There is clearly a cadre of young people in Britain who feel they have little or no stake in the country’s future or their own. The barriers that prevent most youngsters from running amok—an inherent sense of right and wrong; concern for their job and education prospects; shame—seem not to exist in the minds of the rioters. Britain needs to try to understand why that is so.

It is unlikely that the closure of, say, a local youth club has caused that alienation. Perhaps it has something to do with the changing nature of the economy and consequent shortage of low-skilled jobs, or the long crumbling of family structures and discipline. Technology, too, may have had a role, for BlackBerrys were widely used to summon mobs. Digital communications have tipped the balance of power away from the authorities towards the streets, as they did in the Arab spring; but in Britain, the effect has been terrifying rather than inspiring.

If technology is a major factor, perhaps such scenes will be replicated in other countries. On the other hand, a peculiarly British set of conditions may be at work. Near-American levels of inequality may have combined with laxer European attitudes to criminal justice to create an incendiary mix of rage and boldness. Whatever the reasons, a moral malaise has gripped a minority of young Britons, a subgroup that is nevertheless big enough to terrorise and humiliate the country.

The thin blue line

David Cameron, the prime minister, recalled Parliament to discuss the crisis, declaring that pockets of Britain were “frankly sick”. Politicians will no doubt come up with all manner of responses over the weeks to come. Job-creation and welfare schemes will surely play a part in the debate. But the immediate focus was on policing, and why, especially on the first few nights of trouble and particularly in London, the police seemed unable to cope.

The spark for the initial incident in Tottenham was a fatal shooting by police officers; some hooligans cited resentment of the police as a motive. But as the violence spiralled and spread, the main criticism levelled at them—particularly London’s Metropolitan Police—was that they were too soft. That criticism was partly justified. The Met was caught out by the scale of the unrest and unable to respond quickly enough. In some parts of the capital the police were outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and unable or unwilling to prevent looting.

With suitable reinforcements and better tactics, they and other forces performed better on subsequent nights. Nevertheless, there were widespread calls for much more draconian measures. One opinion poll suggested a third of respondents favoured the use not only of rubber bullets but of live ones. The imposition of curfews and the deployment of the army were discussed but thankfully not implemented.

Thankfully, because that sort of response would make Britain a different place from the open, liberal country most of its citizens want it to be. Yet one message of this week’s events is that the reality of modern Britain doesn’t quite live up to that hope. The widespread assumption that, for all their inequalities and fissures, the country and its capital are fundamentally orderly and harmonious, has been revealed to be complacent. The cracks in British society—economic and moral—have opened up, and they are deeper than they seemed.

The riots have been bad for Britain’s already stuttering economy. They have been ruinous for the people whose homes and businesses have been damaged and destroyed. They have tarnished Britain’s image around the world. But most of all, they have been desperately disorienting for the country’s own sense of itself.

http://www.economist.com/node/21525891n


The Chicago Sun-Times. “For flash mobsters, crowd size a tempting cover.” (August 9, 2011)

By ERIC TUCKER and THOMAS WATKINS

The July 4 fireworks display in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights was anything but a family affair.

As many as 1,000 teenagers, mobilized through social networking sites, turned out and soon started fighting and disrupting the event.

Thanks to social networks like Twitter and Facebook, more and more so-called flash mobs are materializing across the globe, leaving police scrambling to keep tabs on the spontaneous assemblies.

“They’re gathering with an intent behind it — not just to enjoy the event,” Shaker Heights Police Chief D. Scott Lee said. “All too often, some of the intent is malicious.”

Flash mobs started off in 2003 as peaceful and often humorous acts of public performance, such as mass dance routines or street pillow fights. But in recent years, the term has taken a darker twist as criminals exploit the anonymity of crowds, using social networking to coordinate everything from robberies to fights to general chaos.

In London, recent rioting and looting has been blamed in part on groups of youths using Twitter, mobile phone text messages and instant messaging on BlackBerry to organize and keep a step ahead of police.

And Sunday in Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter condemned the behavior of teenagers involved in flash mobs that have left several people injured in recent weeks.
“What is making this unique today is the social media aspect,” said Everett Gillison, Philadelphia’s deputy mayor for public safety. “They can communicate and congregate at a moment’s notice. That can overwhelm any municipality.”

A Philadelphia man was assaulted by a group of about 30 people who were believed to have gotten together through Twitter. In 2009, crowds swelled along the trendy South Street shopping district and assaulted several people.

On June 23, a couple dozen youths arrived via subway in Upper Darby, outside Philadelphia, and looted several hundred dollars of sneakers, socks and wrist watches from a Sears store. Their haul wasn’t especially impressive but the sheer size of the group and the speed of the roughly five-minute operation made them all but impossible to stop.

“The good thing is there were no weapons and nobody tried to stop them, either,” Upper Darby Police Chief Michael Chitwood said. “The only people that tried to stop them were the police when they rounded them up.”

Dubbed “flash mob robberies,” the thefts are bedeviling both police and retailers, who say some of the heists were orchestrated or at least boasted about afterward on social networking sites.
In recognition of the problem, the National Retail Federation issued a report last week recommending steps stores can take to ward off the robberies. There have even been legislative efforts to criminalize flash mobs.

The Cleveland City Council passed a bill to make it illegal to use social media to organize a violent and disorderly flash mob, though the mayor vetoed the measure after the ACLU of Ohio promised it would be unconstitutional. The bill was at least partly inspired by the Shaker Heights disturbances on July 4.

Jonathan Taplin, director of the innovation lab at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, said he was not surprised to see people using social media for organizing flash mob robberies.

“You are essentially having a world where you have 25 million people who are underemployed and 2 percent of the population doing better than they ever have,” Taplin said. “Why wouldn’t that lead to some sort of social unrest? Why wouldn’t people use the latest technologies to effect that?”

In Los Angeles last month, thousands of ravers forced rush-hour street closures when they descended on a Hollywood cinema after a DJ tweeted he was holding a free block party. The sudden crowd dispersed only after police fired bean-bag bullets at the restive revelers and arrested three.

And in April, a man was shot when hundreds of rival gang members congregated along the Los Angeles seafront in Venice, sparking pandemonium as people scattered for cover. The group had gathered after some of them posted on Twitter and police were still strategizing their response to the huge crowd when shots rang out.

Los Angeles police Capt. Jon Peters said law enforcement’s challenge is to try to sift the ocean of tweets and Facebook updates for signs of trouble.
“We need to be able to get better on the intelligence side to pick up on communications that are going on,” he said.

Gillison, the deputy mayor from Philadelphia, said the police department there has reached out to younger community members and friended some of them on Facebook. This enables officers to monitor the traffic that could generate flash mobs and some have been prevented, he said.
In April, about 20 teenagers entered G-Star Raw, a high-end men’s clothing store in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of the District of Columbia, and stole about $20,000 worth of merchandise despite employees’ efforts to grab the apparel back, store manager Greg Lennon said. D.C. police have investigated leads but have not made arrests in the case.

Lennon said he later saw Twitter postings, apparently written after the robbery, that referenced the theft, with one person describing having been in the store and making plans to come back.
The National Retail Federation said 10 percent of 106 companies it surveyed reported being targeted in the last year by groups of thieves using flash mob tactics.

“Retailers are raising red flags about criminal flash mobs, which are wreaking havoc on their business, causing concerns about the safety of their customers and employees, and directly impacting their bottom line,” the federation said in a report, which advises retailers to monitor social media networks and report planned heists to the police.

That’s exactly what Lennon does. He says he checks his store’s Facebook page to see who’s visiting, and monitors Twitter for any reference to his store and its merchandise.

Gillison and others blame at least part of the problem on bad parenting.

“They’re 12 years old and not around the corner from their home. Where’s their parent?” said Chitwood, the Upper Darby police chief. “If they’re out doing flash mob thefts when they’re 12, what the hell are they going to be doing when they’re 16?”

Copyright © 2011 — Sun-Times Media, LLC
http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/6964774-418/story.html


The Washington Post. “Conclusions we can’t draw about London’s riots.” (August 10, 2011)
By Anne Applebaum

Riots in the British capital have hit inner-city Tottenham, suburban Ealing, gritty Hackney, chic Notting Hill. Windows have been smashed, video cameras stolen and cars set ablaze. Young men in hooded sweatshirts congregated on street corners and charged the police. “Copycat” riots have followed across the country, from Bristol to Nottingham. And nobody really knows why.
Scan the comment pages of the British press, and you will find a wide range of explanations. Read the center-right Daily Telegraph, and you will learn that the riots were caused by a weak and cowardly police force, absent fathers, welfare dependency, multiculturalism and the tolerance of gangs in schools. Read the center-left Guardian and you will be informed that police brutality, social exclusion, cuts in welfare spending and the widening gap between rich and poor are to blame. Some are convinced that high levels of immigration are at fault. Others believe the problem lies in British intolerance of immigrants and minorities.

There is a reason for the discrepancy: The rioters themselves do not wave signs. They do not chant. They weren’t protesting any particular government policy, as were student demonstrators in London last winter. They have not sought publicity for their views, if they have any. They hide from cameras and dodge journalists. And thus have they become the inkblot in a kind of national Rorschach test: Everyone sees in them the political issue they care about most, whether it’s welfare dependency, budget cuts, the decline of public education or — my personal favorite — the rise of a vulgar and amoral public culture.

And yet it is their lack of politics that most clearly defines them. If the Egyptians in Tahrir Square wanted democracy and the anarchists in Athens wanted more government spending, the hooded men in British streets want 46-inch flat-screen HD televisions. They aren’t smashing the headquarters of the Tory Party; they are smashing clothing shops. Instead of using social media to create civil society or cyber-utopia, they are using social media to steal. Someone circulated a text message on Monday night, calling friends to central London for “Pure terror and havoc & Free stuff. Just smash shop windows and cart out da stuff u want!”

Aside from stealing, a lot of the rioters — maybe most of the rioters — were also out to have a good time. Don’t be fooled by the stiff-upper-lip cliches: From Wat Tyler’s medieval peasant rebels to the modern soccer hooligans, there is a time-honored tradition of smashing things for fun in Britain, and the groups that enjoy it have been around for a long time. It doesn’t take very many of them to do a lot of damage. As of Wednesday morning, police had arrested 768 people, according to the BBC, and charged 105 in connection with violence in the capital. Overnight, London was calm for the first time since riots began last week.

I’m not counting out the other possible explanations, many of which would be worth investigating even if these riots had never occurred. The welfare state really has left a generation of young people feeling both dependent on government handouts and entitled to more. Poor state education has left as many as a fifth of British teenagers functionally illiterate. The slow economy means many will never find jobs and thus will never integrate into the mainstream. The presence of the world’s oligarchs and billionaires in London means the city has an economic gap that is unusually wide for the developed world. The tabloid press thrives on envy of the rich and cult-worship of boorish celebrities. Traditional institutions — the school system, churches, even the BBC — long ago lost their ability to transmit older values. A spate of scandals has recently discredited the banks, Parliament, the media and the London police even further.

And yet — there was looting in London after the Great Fire of 1666 and, despite the mythology, there was looting in London during the Blitz. Go back and read Dickens: Criminals, both immigrant and “native” British, have taken advantage of opportunities to loot in London during more peaceful times, too. A peculiar confluence of circumstances — a mob angry about a police murder, a sudden bout of warm weather, an unprepared police force distracted by scandal and, yes, the astonishingly widespread availability of smartphones among the underprivileged — might have allowed them to do so again. Beware of broad political generalizations in the wake of these riots: We don’t know whether we have just witnessed a “new” phenomenon, or a more mobile and technically adept version of a very old one.
applebaumletters@washpost.com
The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conclusions-we-cant-draw-about-londons-riots/2011/08/10/gIQA3H4k6I_print.html

Article 7 / Education Reform vs. Status Quo (i.e. Potential Justice vs. Certain Injustice)

The two articles below offer contrasting viewpoints on how to improve U.S. schools, particularly for poorer children. The questions that need asking move well beyond how much money should be spent at each level of government; leaders and parents must also ask where and for what purposes this money is being spent. Unfortunately, this discussion all too often ignores the reality that higher spending per student does not correlate with higher student performance.

One of these articles makes a case that moves toward justice, the other adds confusion and maintains the status quo. Please respond with your thoughts.

-NB


The Weekly Standard. "Let’s Talk Education Reform: A GOP candidate’s speech." (July 18, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 41).

By Chester E. Finn Jr. & Michael J. Petrilli

The Republican presidential field is beginning to take shape, and candidates and maybe-candidates are figuring out where they stand and what to say. Sooner or later, they will need to say something about education. May we suggest a few talking points?

***

Folks, you know that our education system is tattered. Some of it is fine, but too much is mediocre or worse. Once the envy of the world, American schools are losing ground to those in Europe and Asia. Today, many countries are out-teaching, out-learning, and out-hustling our schools​—​and doing it for a fraction of the cost.

Meanwhile, failed education systems in our cities worsen the odds that the next generation will climb out of poverty into decent jobs and a shot at the American dream. And as much as many of us prefer not to notice, way too many of our suburban schools are just getting by. They may not be dropout factories, but they’re not preparing anywhere near enough of their pupils to revive our economy, strengthen our culture, and lead our future.

Turning this situation around has been the work of education reform for the past two decades. We’ve spent a lot of money on it. We’ve had any number of schemes and plans and laws and pilot programs. And we’ve seen some modest success. Graduation rates are starting to inch up again. The lowest-performing students have made gains. Many more families are taking advantage of many more forms of school choice. And our best public charter schools are demonstrating that tremendous success is possible even in the most challenging of circumstances.
Leaders from both parties deserve credit for these gains, including President Bush and, yes, President Obama. We need to appreciate his support for quality charter schools, rigorous teacher evaluations, and merit pay.

But we’ve got a long way to go on this front, and the past couple of years have reminded us that breakthrough change won’t come from Washington. It will come from our states, our communities, and our parents. We’ve also learned that, at the end of the day, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other Democrats will go only so far in crossing their pals and donors in the teachers’ unions. While they may talk the talk, how they walk​—​and especially how they spend taxpayers’ hard earned dollars​—​reveal far more about their priorities and their loyalties.

Consider this: The president’s so-called stimulus bill included over $100 billion to bail out our mediocre education system. About $4 billion of this went to promote school reform. In other words, Obama spent 25 times as much to prop up the status quo as he did to push for meaningful change​—​$96 billion just to keep our education bureaucracy immune from the painful effects of the recession that almost everyone else in America has had to cope with.Is it any wonder we have a whopping deficit, while our schools haven’t improved? Is it any surprise that the National Education Association was so fast out of the gate with an endorsement for President Obama’s reelection?

What did we get for all that money? Nothing. Nada. Zip. No improved student achievement. No breakthrough innovations. No new insights into how to close the achievement gap. No concessions from the unions on their gold-plated health care benefits or retirement pensions or lifetime job protections. We spent $100 billion and, poof, almost all the money just evaporated.Consider this: For $100 billion, we could have sent ten million needy kids to private schools for two years. We could have created a thousand new charter schools. We could have given the best 25 percent of America’s teachers a one-time bonus north of $100,000​—​or $10,000 a year for ten years. But what did we buy instead? Nothing. We just delayed the inevitable budget cuts for a year or two.

Not that this is unusual for an education system that has perfected the magic trick of making money disappear. We spend almost $600 billion a year on our schools​—​more than we spend on Medicare and more than we’ve spent over a decade in Afghanistan. Yet we know practically nothing about where all this money goes or what it buys.

Can you tell me, for example, how much your local public school spends each year? Five thousand dollars per student? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? I’ll win this bet because nobody knows, not even the principal​—​that’s how opaque our system is.

Now, I believe firmly that the federal government has been trying to do too much in education​—​trying to tell schools whom they should hire, to shape the curriculum, to tie teachers in knots. None of this has worked except in producing red tape and frustration. Under my administration, we will turn all of this back to the states, where authority for education resides and where it belongs. And where Republican governors like Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, and Scott Walker are demonstrating real reform.

But surely our national government can ensure that we at least know what we’re spending our money on and what we’re getting for those dollars.

The cornerstone of my administration​—​in education as in other areas​—​will be transparency. We will say to states and communities: If you want education dollars from Uncle Sam, you need to open up your books so everybody can see where the money is going. Taxpayers deserve to know how much their kids’ school spends per child and be able to compare that with the neighboring school or a school across the city, state, or nation. Making this information available, I believe, will have a catalytic effect, empowering school boards, taxpayer groups, and other activists to push for greater productivity from our sheltered and bloated education bureaucracy.But transparency about money is not enough. We also need to make student achievement more visible.

We all know that we’re doing a ton of testing. Some of it is a necessary pain to gather vital information about how our children and their schools are performing. Teachers need that information about their pupils, principals about their teachers, superintendents about their schools. But considering all the testing our kids endure and all the data we collect, parents and citizens and taxpayers actually know astonishingly little about what’s working and what’s not. Ten years ago, policymakers in Washington tried to address this issue through the No Child Left Behind Act. And it did some good things. But it made a mistake when it tried to force a one-size-fits-all accountability system on every state in the land.

The proper federal role, instead, is to ask states to make their school results transparent. That starts with rigorous academic standards and tests you can trust​—​not watered down exams that almost everybody passes. And, to their credit, the states are working to meet this challenge with a set of rigorous standards for reading and math that were developed by governors and state superintendents, not by the federal government. I support those standards so long as they remain in the hands of the states and so long as they remain voluntary. What I cannot support​—​and what none of us will tolerate​—​is a top-down, federal effort to mandate particular standards or create a national curriculum.

Once good standards and decent tests are in place, states should release test scores (and other revealing information such as graduation rates) every which way, and they should rate their schools on an easy to understand scale, ideally from A to F, as Florida started doing under Governor Jeb Bush. The details of how to do this should be left to the states, however, not micromanaged from Washington.

Finally, one of the best ways to get more bang for the education buck is to strap it to the backs of individual kids and let parents decide which schools deliver the best value for money​—​and give them as wide a range of choice as possible. In my view, the available choices should include private, charter, and virtual schools, and just about anything else with the potential to deliver a quality education to kids. If a state will do the right thing and trust parents to decide what school should receive its money, the federal government should do the same with its (relatively small) part of the money. Add it to the backpack and let it travel with the kid.Let me be clear: My plan won’t fix all that ails America’s schools. Because nobody can do that from Washington. What we can do is empower parents, states, and educators with better information and more choices. And that will be a huge step forward.Chester E. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli are president and executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/let-s-talk-education-reform_576476.html





The New York Times "Hurting Poor Students" (July 19, 2011)
Editorial

Extremists in Congress have long wanted to gut the spending restrictions in Title I, a federal law dating back to the 1960s that underwrites extra help for disadvantaged schoolchildren. A bill, approved by a House committee last week, would do just that, damaging one of most important civil rights programs in the country.

The State and Local Funding Flexibility Act would let school districts spend money earmarked for impoverished children on almost any educational purpose they chose. This would inevitably lead to money going from politically powerless poor schools to those without the same needs.
Title I was created during the Johnson administration in response to the failure of the states to offer access to equal education for all students as required by Brown v. Board of Education. The education law is based on a strict formula that drives federal aid to high-poverty districts, where large numbers of disadvantaged children often pose educational challenges. It is supposed to provide an added layer of federal money to high-poverty schools that already have budget allocations similar to those of other schools in the same district.

But because the districts kept gaming the system, moving the money from the Title I schools to more politically influential districts, Congress required more close accounting of how the money is spent.

Still, the districts that receive the money (nearly $14 billion this year) have enormous spending flexibility. For example, they can hire teachers, nurses or mental health workers or finance a longer school day. But ideologues in Congress believe the federal government should not be in the business of ensuring that the most vulnerable children are served. The bill would allow local officials to take money from schools that need it most. That’s a terrible idea. Sensible members of Congress should resist it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/opinion/20wed3.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211

Article 6 / "The civil rights issue of our time"

Maureen Dowd argued in Sunday's opinion pages of the NY Times that achieving legal recognition of same-sex marriage is the "civil rights issue of our time." The editorial posted below makes the case that what happened in Albany over the weekend is worthy of celebration, though it does not "erase the bigotry against gays and lesbians enshrined in the federal Defense of Marriage Act...."

The language of civil rights is as weighty and forceful as any used in contemporary American public discourse. As Christians, it is imperative that we are not on the wrong side of protecting civil rights, finding ourselves instead on the side of bigotry. Any thoughts?

-NB

The New York Times. "Gay Marriage: A Milestone." (June 26, 2011).

By The NY Times Editorial Board

New York State has made a powerful and principled choice by giving all couples the right to wed and enjoy the legal rights of marriage. It is a proud moment for New Yorkers, thousands of whom took to the streets on Sunday to celebrate this step forward. But this moment does not erase the bigotry against gays and lesbians enshrined in the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition of same-sex marriages and allows any state to refuse to recognize another state’s unions.

Though there was unnecessary secrecy in the negotiations, Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a determined effort to achieve marriage equality in New York. He shares credit with the four Republican state senators who bucked their party and threats from conservatives to do what they knew was right. State Senators James Alesi, Roy McDonald, Mark Grisanti and Stephen Saland, all from upstate districts, deserve the support of their communities. They showed the kind of strength that is extremely hard to find in today’s politics.

In drafting a compromise, however, Senator Saland and other Republicans insisted on language that carves out exceptions for religious institutions and not-for-profit corporations affiliated with those religious entities. That provision allows those tax-exempt entities to refuse to marry a same-sex couple or to allow the use of their buildings or services for weddings or wedding parties. There was simply no need for these exemptions, since churches are protected under both the federal Constitution and New York law from being required to marry anyone against their beliefs. Equally troubling, an “inseverability clause” in the act appears to make it impossible for any court to invalidate part of the law without invalidating the whole law — raising questions about what happens to couples during an appeal.

While some civil rights advocates are optimistic that these provisions are relatively minor, we are deeply troubled by their discriminatory intent. The whole purpose of this law should be to expand civil rights without shedding other protections in the process.

The marriage equality law was such a powerful finale to this year’s legislative session that a few other important measures may be relegated to the footnotes. Lawmakers passed a limited ethics bill for legislators and statewide elected officials, a modest expansion of rent regulations for millions of New York City residents, an important five-year tuition plan for the state’s universities — all moves in the right direction.

The one big misstep is a property-tax cap of about 2 percent a year that will severely hurt schools and services in poorer communities.

This legislative session will be remembered for New York’s acceptance of same-sex marriage, a milestone in the national fight for this fundamental freedom. Five other states, along with the District of Columbia, allow same-sex couples to marry. But more than three dozen states define marriage as between a man and a woman. For gays and lesbians, the battle for freedom from discrimination continues.

Article 5 / How is Justice Done for the Poor?

This article at first glance may appear to be an intra-Catholic debate that might be interesting but is of little value for those outside the fold. To the contrary, I think Rev. Sirico's argument is very relevant to both Catholic and non-Catholic Christians.

Rev. Sirico makes an excellent point in this article about the distinction between doing good and resisting evil. Doing good involves multiple options while resisting evil involves a single option. There are other important distinctions to be made to clarify Christian moral engagement in contemporary American politics, but none directs us more forcefully toward the importance of developing our imagination for social action outside of the state as well as conducting rigorous analysis of the outcomes that result from that action.

Please give your thoughts.

-NB

Acton Commentary (Acton Institute), "Not Whether to Help the Poor, But How." (June 1, 2011)http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1180311843175061869

By Rev. Robert A. Sirico

The debate over the application of the core teachings of the Christian faith began when Jesus was presented with a Roman coin containing Caesar’s image. In that moment, the Lord drew both a limitation to the legitimate power of the state and a distinction between it and the supreme authority of Almighty God. What would unfold over the years following was a highly balanced and well thought-out hierarchy of values rooted in a core understanding of the dignity of the human person. Yet it was not so abstract a set of principles as to be incapable of providing guidance for concrete policy recommendations that nonetheless do not collapse dogmatic and unchangeable doctrine into the dynamic stuff of politics and policies.

Along this circuitous route to a more balanced set of principles, there have been dead ends and extremes from which the Church has pulled her faithful: the medieval Spiritualist Franciscan (i fraticelli) who wanted to ban private property as intrinsically evil, or, more recently, the Liberation Theologians who attempted to “collapse the eschaton” of the Kingdom of God into socialist revolution.

Yet the incarnation of Christ does not let the Christian off the hook when it comes to our beliefs about human dignity and the practical protection of the vulnerable. Understanding how to translate the social implications of the gospel into workable and concrete solutions is at times as frustrating and ambiguous as understanding the homoousian clause of the Creed.

Let us take the recent occasions of public discourse by Catholics on these matters occasioned by an open letter issued by a group of Catholic professors, which argues that the budget proposed by House Republicans violates Catholic social teaching, and in which they come close to calling the Speaker of the House a heretic.

There is evidence in this letter, and in some of the commentary surrounding it, of a failure to grasp the necessary distinctions in Catholic moral theology (of which, as the popes have noted, the social teaching is a branch). I pointed out in my original critique of the open letter that the Catholic professors’ statement neglected the important distinction between “non-negotiable dogmas and doctrines” and the “prudential and debatable give and take when it comes to applying the principles of Catholic social teaching.” Then I cited the Compendium of the Social Doctrine: “The Church’s Magisterium does not wish to exercise political power or eliminate the freedom of opinion of Catholics regarding contingent questions” (571). The use of the phrase “contingent questions” in the Compendium is quite deliberate. It means that it is simply inaccurate to say that Catholics who debate how to address poverty dissent from the Church’s teaching in the same way as someone who does not support the Church’s insistence on legal protection for the unborn.

Some Catholic commentators reject this point, offering in defense a quotation from Caritas in Veritate: “Clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church’s social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it…. There is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new.”

Benedict’s point here is that the Church’s teaching in the moral realm is one consistent body of thought. It is not a hodgepodge of policy concerns, among which Catholics may pick and choose along the lines of the fashionable Cafeteria Catholicism. The Church’s solicitude for the poor, the marginalized, the unborn, and the elderly is all of a piece. In that sense, the critique is correct: A Catholic cannot subordinate “justice issues” to “life issues”; he must embrace the Church’s teaching as a whole, because life issues are justice issues.

Yet the distinction holds. This is not because “justice issues” are less important than “life issues,” but because they are fundamentally different — a difference rooted in two millennia of Catholic moral reflection. Abortion involves the direct and intentional destruction of an innocent human life. It is never permissible intentionally to choose evil. Laws that permit abortion are inherently unjust, and Catholics are obligated to work toward legal prohibition of abortion.

When it comes to doing good, however, which is what addressing poverty entails, the Church does not stipulate exactly how such good is to be done. Helping the poor requires a different sort of moral analysis — not because I (or the Church’s teaching) am “dualist,” as some critics suggest, nor because assisting the poor is “less important” than protecting the unborn, but because the two issues possess different characteristics and therefore require different sorts of moral analysis.

This distinction holds, for example, outside the realm of the Church’s social teaching and can be seen in her teaching on the moral manner in which life is conceived. A superficial criticism of the Church’s stance against artificial contraception says, “Why is it wrong to avoid conception by the use of chemicals or condoms, but not immoral when using natural family planning methods?” The error in this argument is the same one made by the critics to whom I am responding: In the former case, an evil means is being chosen (the action to chemically prevent conception, for example), rather than refraining from doing good at a given time (actions leading to conception). It is not a sin to refrain from choosing from all the many goods available; it is always a sin to intentionally choose to do evil.

It is possible to argue that cutting welfare programs is consistent with Catholic social teaching, because we may choose from the various options available to us to do good by evaluating them in the hierarchy of goods. It will not do to fling citations of social encyclicals at each other on this point. Certainly there are passages that could be found to support increased government activity in the economy and provision of social services — when necessary to serve the common good. But there are also passages that suggest decreased government activity and withdrawal from social services (i.e., critiques of bureaucracy and calls for more vigorous private charity). Whether a particular situation — in this case, the budget battle in the United States in the year 2011 — calls for one or the other is manifestly a prudential question about which Catholics may disagree.

At the root of the incredulity and exasperation of some Catholics who mix fair arguments with vitriol is an incapacity to recognize that we really believe that many government programs aggravate rather than ameliorate poverty and other social ills. Rather than debating the prudence of the policies at hand, detractors resort to ad hominem attacks and pronounce anathemas selectively. Yet there is by this time a vast literature on the damage wrought by the war on poverty and its failure to achieve its goals. Such critics can continue to believe that shoveling government money into welfare programs discharges Catholic social teaching’s obligation to assist the poor if they wish, but their inability to see other views as reasonable, at least, is distressingly myopic.

A Catholic may not disregard the Church’s teaching to assist the poor and vulnerable; to do so would be to neglect the words and example of Christ Himself. It would be, in effect, to deny the Faith. But on the question of how best to fulfill that obligation, Catholics will indeed disagree, and the Church does not teach that it must be otherwise. The same kind of latitude is not permitted when it comes to legal protection of the unborn. I do not believe that this is “my view” of the matter; it is the mind of the Church, to which I hope my own mind is conformed.

-Acton Commentary

See the following articles for more on thinking morally about complex challenges when multiple goods are at stake.

USCCB Letter to Congress addressing Federal Budget
http://usccb.org/sdwp/2012-Budget-Letter-to-House-04-13-11.pdf

Rep. Paul Ryan letter to Archbishop Timothy Dolan addressing Republican Budget Proposal
http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/RyanLetterToDolan4292011.pdf

USCCB Letter (Archbishop Timothy Dolan) Responds to Rep. Paul Ryan’s Letter
http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/DolanResponsetoRyan5_18.pdf

Michael Gerson writes about this exchange of letters in Capital Commentary http://www.capitalcommentary.org/deficit/moral-conversation-about-federal-budget

Article 4 / Killing Osama bin Laden

Christianity Today, "Yes, Justice Has Been Done in the Killing of Osama bin Laden: But our response as Christians must be marked by knowledge of our own depravity," (May 02, 2011).

By Gideon Strauss

"I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." I will confess that this witticism, attributed to Mark Twain, was the one to which I nodded a "yes" last night as I scrolled through my Twitter feed upon discovering that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. Navy Seals in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Moments later this reminder followed on Twitter, from someone quoting Proverbs 24:17, giving me pause: "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles" (ESV).

I have no doubt that in this military killing the United States' government exercised its divinely ordained task, wielding the sword to administer justice and constrain evil. I believe this to be so largely because I am one of those Christians for whom the question of the proper task and character of government cannot be answered without reference to Romans 13: "Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. … [The ruler] is God's servant for your good . … [H]e does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer."

Because of this conviction, I resonate with the statements by President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, former President Bush, and former New York Mayor Giuliani, when they say that in this killing, "justice has been done." It will be important in the days (and years) ahead to learn more about the prudential judgments that informed this military action. What were the immediate intentions with the action: to capture or assassinate? What are the military purposes that this action will advance? Beyond just retribution, what are the proper political purposes that this action will serve? But as to the fundamental justice of the action, I suffer from no ambivalence.

The question that does trouble me is how we as Christians should respond to the news of this death, especially those of us who are citizens or friends of the United States of America.

The immediate response to the news was rejoicing in the streets. Online, some of my friends and acquaintances expressed sentiments of the "O-B-L, roast in hell" variety. And I understand this response, and have at many times in my life felt similar sentiments when faced with the perpetrators of intentional grievous harm to others. The Christian Scriptures themselves show, in particular in imprecatory prayers like Psalm 137, that the people of God often feel a desire for vengeance, and take a sometimes shockingly expressed delight in the prospect or realization of punishment for enemies and evildoers:

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, "Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!"
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

But beyond this immediate response, understandable as it is, I believe it is necessary for Christians to pause, and to consider the death of Osama bin Laden within the deeper perspective of human sin and divine grace. In the end, no death should give us pleasure. Another Scripture passage coming across the Twitter transom has been Ezekiel 18:23: "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?"

Whenever I take delight in the punishment of an evildoer, I am reminded of the words attributed to the 16th-century English Protestant and martyr John Bradford, who said from his imprisonment in the Tower of London, watching a criminal being led to execution, "There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford." And then I am reminded of a prayer attributed to Tim Keller, who has been a help to all of us as we tried to make sense of the events of 9/11:

Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but, through you, I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment and offering forgiveness. I turn from my sin and receive you as Savior.

Rejoicing in the death of another, however wicked, involves forgetting the depths of our own depravity and the astonishing reality of our own salvation.

Our best next response, I believe, to the news of Osama bin Laden's death, after we have sought our own hearts for the wickedness that resides in all of us, and have thanked God for his amazing grace that has rescued us from our own evil, is to join President Obama on May 5, this year's National Day of Prayer, "in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy" and "in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our nation." And perhaps we can add a prayer for our enemies, that God may win them to himself and in his own good time bring into the relations between this nation and those who now seek her destruction some foretaste of the just peace of his world to come.

And as we gain some distance from the events of yesterday, we do need to continue in serious conversation, with one another as believers and with our fellow citizens and friends, about war and justice, about life and death, about retribution and peace. Not everyone who reads what I write here will agree with me that the actions of the American government in the killing of Osama bin Laden were just. Neither will everyone agree with me that rejoicing over that death, understandable as it is, is inappropriate for those of us who know the depth of our own sinfulness and the scope of God's grace. But once again these events illustrate the tension in being both citizens of the United States of America (or any political community) and citizens of the kingdom of God.

Gideon Strauss is CEO of the Center for Public Justice and editor of Capital Commentary. "Speaking Out" is Christianity Today's guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the publication.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=91716

*See other articles articulating Christian approaches to justice, just war theory, and targeting Osama bin Laden at:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=91717

http://www.capitalcommentary.org/just-war/osama-bin-laden-criminal-or-enemy-combatant

http://www.capitalcommentary.org/just-war/just-war-and-osama-bin-laden

http://www.capitalcommentary.org/just-war/just-war-and-osama-bin-laden-cont-0

http://www.capitalcommentary.org/just-war/just-war-and-osama-bin-laden-cont