Am I missing something – or, if I’m right, why do his remarks seem to slide off other’s well-oiled backs as if they were water? Of course, your average nerd doesn’t have hair that black and eyes that blue – he reminds me of that old Irish saying, God put in those blue, blue eyes with smokey fingers.

A Reynolds’ reader points out the cross isn’t appropriate for the leader of the most powerful nation on earth; he’s more a Herod/Caeser/Pilate. And perhaps Lent isn’t a great time to blaspheme. But, then, does the Times even know the meaning that gives power to the symbols they manipulate? They swim through a world whose history is rich with such symbols, but they don’t understand the richness within an image. Of course, they do cherish that frisson of edgy sentiment. And they know enough to know that they lose power if the images are of chocolates and the Easter Bunny. (Unless, of course, like the New Yorker, they crucify the bunny.) The Times doesn’t seem campy – over-the-top, perhaps, but not ironic.

But I’m not so easily seduced – indeed, something else strikes me. This picture doesn’t have American heroism, doesn’t have the power of the great American archetypes. American history is of humility linked with grandeur: our presidents are large not because the White House is in their shadow, but rather because they are in its. Neither larger than the office nor wiser than the Constitution, their heroism comes because they reverence those ideas, losing their selves in them. Enlarged by the White House, they are well aware of the distinction between their private selves and the public office they hold but for a term or two.

Our presidents have needed a sureness of touch, a confidence that orders men into battle. But they also needed humility. George Washington handing over his sword, George Washington handing over his office – these are symbols of heroism. Many a man has been a general; few have had the self-respect, the pride in country and history (minimal as that history was for that early, role-defining president), the humility before not the founders but the founders’ ideas. Such humility gives backbone; it comes from a large, simple and even ego-less pride.

We haven’t been seeing much humility lately. But that is what moves us; it structures the archetypes Americans catch their breath over, indeed, the ones that mist our eyes.

And their priorities were broad and integrated. It is we who have become not only small but dissociated. Foster often reminds us that the big picture includes commerce, business, economics. Discussing Abigail Adams, Woody Holton emphasizes her role as canny businesswoman – as her descendants noted long ago. She wants, she tells John, to match his statesmanship with her prowess as “farmeress.” His proud rejoinder was her foresight about matters of state matched her business skills – both arising from her understanding of human nature. That understanding grew as her shouldering of responsibility did: their partnership freed both to do more for family & nation. Holton admires her courage and wisdom – in land dealing, in farming, in speculating. She understood the importance for a family and for a nation of a solid financial footing. His discussion of prenups (her sisters took that unusual but legal path) and her ways of distributing money to give responsibility and freedom to her female relatives came from her own personal growth. She understood fulfillment was the base of prosperity and felicity. She understood productivity – intellectual, personal, economic, societal – as the context for “the pursuit of happiness.”

Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, our respect for the Scots beliefs all led to a sense that businesses need independence; they should be supported by as much as restrained by our laws. The Adams must have discussed, argued & formulated these concepts in “curtain talks” like those of the HBO series Smith admires. But this is often misunderstood by our more fragmented modern society (and often fragmented selves). When Obama patronizes careers in business he is signaling his alienation from the values of our forefathers as much as when he speaks of taking action against the Supreme Court. But all is connected in ways those like the Adams understood.

They would understand what we see: an obvious correlation between the rule of law and the use of rebar. Predictable, structurally sound rebar doesn’t intrude itself in our lives but supports walls between which we can live freely, expecting the laws that stood yesterday to stand tomorrow. And we can build a rich life, expecting that our family, in a predictable fashion, will be enriched by our work – intellectual, social, material. But a society without rebar is always on the verge of catastrophe: by a whim, walls may stand or fall. And when a catastrophe comes, the walls will fall hard and fast.

(Meanwhile, Instapundit links to Jammie Wearing Fool, who tells us that only 77% of Investors see Obama as anti-business.)

Beck unhinges pretty easily (and yes, for those of us whose family owe their lives to Indian doctors, some rants are offensive). But he’s a hell of a lot more shocked at Bill Ayers. His “unhingement” still retains more balance than the left’s. What’s creepier – posing nude at 22 or acting as Edwards has at. . . , starring in a video (admittedly a bit irritating in that boring 80’s way) in your youth or being Teddy Kennedy in your old age.

Whatever may or may not be true of the Palins and Browns, they appear to have engaged life with zest; one of the balancing acts of their youths – and probably of their lives – have been economic. Perhaps their fiscal care was learned balancing ambition and tuition. The left’s desire to make loans seductive & college a “right”, to featherbed administration and tenured jobs while increasing the load on grad students and adjuncts has had detrimental effects on cost as well substance. Many an academic is critical of Benjamin Franklin, perhaps because he understood debt undercuts integrity, that “it’s hard for an empty bag to stand upright.”

Perhaps such choices came because it’s a kick to pose nude, to see different colleges when a world tour is not easily financed. I like that – some risk taking reflects energy and engagement, they live with it and learn from it. But, most of all, I’d rather people made choices that resulted in videos than a mountain of debt. The left, of course, would rather put those students who don’t buy the books – or read them – at the back of my class, whining they can’t drop because they might lose their student loans. These are students often neither stupid nor consciously dishonest; they are, however, passive and misdirected. They do not value learning but rather the “college experience,” have no imagination to see another path, and, well, have no clue about themselves, education, debt, the world. As they wander through life, they may never get that clue. And this won’t help. Plus, don’t get me started on the theory that “at risk” kids in high school should start taking college-level classes in high school – subsidized by the government of course.

He’s helped though by a pent-up irritation: policies we thought unwise have deteriorated into policies we find foolish, the unseemly has slid into the mire of outright bribery, the short-sighted has so dominated that disaster lurks. On a not unrelated note, attitudes that rankled those of us in fly-over territory have become pervasive and bizarre. They are not the attitudes of those with a sense of humor nor apparent self-confidence, and, especially, without humility. (Arrogance is not self-confidence.)

Even citizens of a state that seemed to give pre-Revolutionary respect to family succession appear annoyed a candidate disses their sports heroes, shrinks from handshaking and winter politicking, and seems appalled by pick-ups. (Whatever Marie Antoinette actually said or actually meant, the inappropriateness of her response defined her – and beheaded her – even when such kingly rights were more widely accepted).

My husband’s uncle, far into retirement and deep into Texas, has proclaimed that he intends for the first time in years to “pull an all-nighter” – to see Brown triumph, he hopes. And, in the tradition of these parts, Ray Stevens disses Obamacare.

Lamb’s long and old argument to open up such discussions has seldom seemed more important than it does here. (Note earlier requests.)
Side note: Feral Hogs. Hat tip – Fox News, Instapundit, and (surprise) the Mother Jones article Reynolds linked.

It’s been a long time since I left, but one of my daughters is thinking of moving there. She’s the one with the “Sowell Bro’” t-shirt. I’m hoping she’ll be happy.

My friends find motivation in religious beliefs that provide discipline, teach generousity, encourage altruism. My Baptist friend, my Catholic friend, my husband’s Jewish aunt, and, indeed, some of those in Sunday School – are quick to put arms around those in need, quick to notice across the room another’s discomfort, quick with a soothing word. They have led me to keep my tongue (though they would be surprised – properly suspecting I must have been pretty awful in my youth). But the faith of my fathers is a fairly tart one. And so, I return here to my Sunday class. I haven’t returned there; somehow, I oversleep. I suspect it is guilt; that isn’t the forum for my arguments. I keep returning in my mind to the last time I went. An incident disturbed me – and reminded me of how ignoring nature, nurture or will leads to policies remarkably destructive – and irritatingly self-righteous. It is a Chicagoboyz incident – but it is is one to which those great old stories can bring much wisdom.

Ours is Bible-oriented class. We were going through some Old Testament sections on child-raising. Since most of us have grandchildren, this theme unites us. We’ve seen broken families and unwed mothers. Some give to such families, knowing how difficult life without a partner can be for mother & child. But most were critical.

The substitute teacher (from sociology) saw the rate of incarceration as factor. He stumbled over his words – as I do when speaking from the gut; it seemed a gauge of his intensity. He argued the disproportionate number of single mothers in the African American community arose from the disproportionate number of men in prison; surely, he argued, they are not disproportionately irresponsible. Arguing backward to cause invites flawed reasoning, but my immediate response was he had the cart before the horse. Incarceration rates rise as percentages of intact families decrease.

He allowed circularity. If you think you are on a moral mission, data can be ignored and rearranged. After all, it can be easy to merely begin after the medieval warming period. Or to begin after the great changes of the sixties to the family. But if the family structure is sufficiently broken, it is possible to ascribe the lack of families to the lack of men. That ignores the policy and cultural pressures of the sixties.

Needless to say, he had begun such comments by implying the class lacked sympathy. The church clubs are often generous to single families. Me, I’m different. Actually, I’m even uncharitable about his motives. His Ph.D. is from Chicago in the late sixties – the days of scholars like the SDS leader, Flacks. The ideas promoted when our teacher was in graduate school prompted the decline of the family. I know; I believed them. In one of the more absurd gestures of a pretty stupid period, I gave my newlywed brother and sister-in-law a book about open marriages. I thought I understood the world. I didn’t.

A few weeks earlier, I’d remarked that his discipline had gone too far in nurture and seemed now to be giving minimal weight to nature. Horrified, he noted the pendulum needed pulling back – look at Watson. Did I know who Watson was? Dryly, I nodded. The reference seemed odd; Watson isn’t a gauge of sociology research. But I could see where we were headed.

Our cultural & governmental policy has devalued marriage (duty, faithfulness, integrity), argued the government should be the husband, encouraged no-fault divorce, actively valorized the single mother, and sexualized our relations in a superficial way at ever earlier ages. It is too early for revisionists: those who defined these movements in our youths collect the data of our maturity. I doubt they are disinterested.

Another member of our class, one of the oldest and most liberal, observed that children were raising children. Well, we could all agree on that – as most groups in their sixties would. His solution? The obvious caring & sympathetic one: the government should send someone home with the new mother and teach her and the child, staying with them, “bringing them both up.” The response of my Baptist friend who spends some time each week trying to prepare felons for the “real world” was a wry look, “Ah,” she said, “that has worked so well.”

Yes, the government’s child raising is likely to be faddish. It’s likely to be improvident. But at heart it is heartless. Nature, gut response, is important. A government worker does not look at the child as a mother does, a father does. The government is incapable of love. My oblique response was that despite much of the feminist literature about the molestation of girls by their fathers, this seldom happens within a biological relationship. The sociologist said he didn’t know. My Catholic friend, as I recounted this, said tartly, “They don’t want to know.” Well, I, too, don’t like to know some things. But I wish academics were curious about the role of biology. I’ve always thought our founder’s greatest wisdom was their desire to understand human nature, to allow for our biological instincts. A culture that survives, certainly one that flourishes, needs to understand & appreciate the raw energy within us.

Not surprisingly, abuse by father-substitutes is more common. The role of the biological father and that of the biological mother is defined by society to encourage nurture but our acts are vivified by a passion from heart & head, biological and rational. We love our own – that is a good thing. It blends our society’s need for responsible parenting with our tribe’s need to nurture and define its own. We try, with our wills and our individual choices, to provide for our children because we feel responsibility and we feel love. Probably our natural choices are the most consistently sensible. We can be influenced by bizarre theories and so can our society (witness my early response to my brother’s early and still happy marriage). But society and our own conscience also discourage us from taking advantage of a child’s vulnerability; our beliefs and our society socializes us, protects the fragile child.

Being a parent seems the most difficult, open-ended of responsibilities: working without a net, the wire seems slippery and falling inevitable. What’s best for this child? What might work better for that one? How much to hover and how much to protect and how soon to shove out of the nest? Sure, that’s difficult.

Still, nature, nurture, will – all make a strong family. We should valorize stepfathers when they truly become loving fathers – it is not instinctive, it is an act of grace. But a stepfather shouldn’t be valorized merely because he lives with or even marries the mother. We need to notice what love can do – and how much the father in a family gives love. The class discussion continued; some seemed to see a father’s love as less important. It isn’t a mother’s love, perhaps. But that doesn’t mean it is less important. The government can’t replace it. We don’t want it in the midst of our lives; we don’t want it to name us and give us its impersonal, general heritage. We want a relationship with the supplier of half our genes – a fallible but real person. And, if the impossible occurred and its fathering was consistently good, it still could not care. Did anyone in that class want a grandchild raised by the government? And to return to the earlier discussion, did any want their daughters to marry men let out of prison merely because the rate of incarceration is higher for their group? This is hypocrisy – a hypocrisy far more damaging to others than a prissy Congressman’s clandestine affair. If we don’t want it for our own children, how can we believe in it for others’ children?

A destructive society enforces patterns that run counter to biology. The Utopias of the last couple of centuries have not fared well; they eat themselves because their assumptions ignore our basic drives. Democide happens in a society with an insufficient sense of the others’ worth (the divine in the other). But it also happens when that society has not restrained but rather encouraged the worst in us. It can be destructive to encourage tribalism to take the paths it has (even when the “tribe” has been the ideological). But pretending that tribalism doesn’t exist is not useful; indeed, its power results in much good as well. The familial is tribal; however, its strength can help as well as undermine a larger society. If we encourage strong families, the rate of incarceration will take care of itself.

Economics – that still relevant social science – offers examples. When society works against our natural familial desires, it will have to employ more force and is likely to be undermined. One of our friends during the pre-Velvet Revolution days had a favorite aphorism: “A man who doesn’t steal at work is stealing from his family.” That a man should support his family is a biological imperative our society reinforces; we see it as a moral duty. In an open market, work is likely to better provide if the father has successfully understood his customer’s needs; the business is likely to be more successful if he trains and keeps a competent staff. In an open market, a man who steals at work or cheats his customers or exploits his workers is not likely to remain successful – certainly to pass the business on to the next generation. Morality & the spiritual reinforce this system. Of course, a businessman may make the moral decision (not to steal) for selfish reasons. And we are more likely to cut the man slack that provides his family’s necessities by stealing at work. Still, theft remains immoral and governments that encourage it kill productivity. Cynicism, dissociated sensibilities: the damage may be subtle but no less real.

It is in the nature of a father to love his child; it is in the nature of a family to provide love. Love empowers acts, empowers selflessness. The government cannot give love – and those who think of themselves as more thoughtful of their fellow citizens because they want to give them the government are not just mistaken, they are badly mistaken. They are doing their fellows an irreparable harm. Alienating ourselves from our natures may appear to create bypaths to freedom but, of course, they don’t. They lead us to the bleakest of deserts. Is this what we want for our children? For others’ children?

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.
 
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
 
Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.
 
Charles Allen, a former under-secretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, has described al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, as an “al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to three of the September 11 hijackers… who targets US Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen”.

I’m quite willing to acknowledge that the charming friend of my daughter from Pakistan and the guys who ran the filling station with the best hamburgers in town or my thoughtful & cheerful Egyptian student are not terrorists. That doesn’t mean that Hasan’s religion had nothing to do with his actions nor that this act was unconnected to terrorism. Perhaps that is true only in the broadest terms or perhaps he was a one-man (or more) sleeper cell. I don’t know. I care. But I care more about the fact that an unwillingness to face uncomfortable facts is part of the reason that people in Fort Hood and across the country are mourning their dead and praying for their wounded.

I’ve long acknowledged the powerful pull of tribalism. And time has only increased my nostalgia for those great flat plains. Still, you know, I would pause before voting for Bob Kerrey: that he couldn’t see the reflexive anti-Americanism in Obama (one I doubt he feels) is a problem. Of course, it is easy to understand Winger’s attraction and he was much younger; still watching her description of Polanski as victim made me wonder again at his judgment in the personal. And, sure, Krauthammer is more cogent. Still, Kerrey can be and has been heroic; he remains a Nebraskan and remains more right (and more honest) than most Democrats:

Great American leaders of our past have ignored popular sentiment and pressed on during the darkest hours, even when setbacks give rhetorical ammunition to the skeptics. . .
 
. . . our leaders must remain focused on the fact that success in Afghanistan bolsters our national security and yes, our moral reputation. This war is not Vietnam. The Taliban are not popular and have very little support other than what they secure through terror.
 
Afghanistan is also not Iraq. No serious leader in Kabul is asking us to leave. Instead we are being asked to withdraw by American leaders who begin their analysis with the presumption that victory is not possible. They seem to want to ensure defeat by leaving at the very moment when our military leader on the ground has laid out a coherent and compelling strategy for victory.
 
When it comes to foreign policy, almost nothing matters more then your friends and your enemies knowing you will keep your word and follow through on your commitments.

I will not discuss Krauthammer – others will and will do so better. The K’s agree about what needs to be done, but not about the nature of the man who has the choices to make.

Kerrey is a Democrat; he isn’t a cynic: he wants Obama to be the man he imagined he campaigned for. He hopes Obama will stand tall, believing within that opaque aura that surrounds our president is a person he would understand, respect. Krauthammer sees the president’s actions – his apologies, his “exercise in contraction” – and believes the actions are coherent expressions of policy, beliefs, the self within that suit. He doesn’t believe we are at a crossroads but moving downhill, fairly fast. He, like Kerrey, still believes in possibility, but he argues that that possibility could only come with change: “Nothing is written. Nothing is predetermined. We can reverse the slide, we can undo dependence if we will it.”

I would like to think that Krauthammer has misread the slope and we are still on the great flat plains. I suspect, however, it is Kerrey, with some personal investment, who is willing an interpretation that accounts for fewer examples than does Krauthammer.

Krauthammer suggests solutions, but he doesn’t give us much confidence Obama is likely to support that “reverse.” And, if the system has a certain strength as he points out, we may be left with the feeling that our grandkids won’t be screwed even if our kids will be. Kerrey’s argument is that they aren’t screwed yet. Neither makes me go to bed happy.

The world honors Borlaug here and here.

Aren’t we up to a little performance art – say a couple of posts done in Art Deco with a ridiculous amount of capitalization – or perhaps an iconic figure (what one you ask – ah, obviously you haven’t been paying attention) in the middle of one of Jonathan’s wide blue horizons. And if we can’t think up lyrics for kindergarteners, well, we might check to see if we haven’t checked out. (Not that checking out is necessarily an inappropriate reaction to current events.)

I suspect, however, that fears of government intervention are real. It isn’t like those countries with nationalized health care have been taking the Nobel prizes in medicine; it isn’t like we want to take our chances with the dramatically lower rate of breast cancer survival. Of course, it isn’t like we’ve ever seen anything that has been vastly improved by adding another layer of bureaucracy. It isn’t like we can trust a Congress in which Charlie Rangel sits nor an executive in which Geithner has a guiding economic role. We know adding programs can’t reduce costs – probably even with draconian rationing.

Individualism, self-reliance, independence – our tradition is not one that has emphasized our rights to nearly as much as our rights from. Leave me alone, we say. And we are skeptical of a government that tempts us with (we suspect ephemeral and ultimately unrealizable) “right tos” in order to, inevitably, distract us from surrender of a cherished “right from” government control. Of course, we don’t think that’s the government’s “right” – our tradition has long argued our freedoms weren’t given us by our government but our nature as humans and/or by God.

Still, I’d like to say that watching that woman made me proud – as has much that has been going on in the last few months. It isn’t just that we live in a country where such protests are allowed and protected by both our laws and traditions. It isn’t just that they often show a speaker like this one – sensible, educated, well-spoken – pragmatic. It isn’t that many of the arguments arising from audiences use common sense, a desire to solve a problem, and a strong sense of history. All that is true, of course.

But what I’m proudest of is that demagoguery doesn’t seem to be working. We hear political voices – Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and countless others – describe bankers, auto-makers, insurance companies as villains because they make profits. When they seem to fear losing an argument, our representatives turn to the pitches of demagogues. When Obama told bankers that he was all that was standing between them and the pitchforks, he was apparently projecting. He expected us to side with him. Few of us did. The hobbled together Acorn vans that set out were not joined by legions of pitch-fork toting Americans. Telling us that the insurance companies made, heaven forbid, profits and therefore should be put out of business was not appealing – it didn’t distract us. Instead, Americans turned on their representatives and wanted to talk issues, solutions, limitations of government power. They understand that a company which overpays its executives is one that, in the long run, will lose a competitive advantage – that is how we might define, for instance, “overpayment”.

And we understand that it is our elected representatives who are responsible to us – if they indulge themselves in a Bermuda week-end, it is we who are paying the bill. Sure, if an ineffective or incompetent executive gets overpaid, we are likely to have to pay more for the product than we would otherwise. But, then again, we don’t have to buy the overpriced product. That’s how the marketplace takes care of us – or, perhaps, we take care of the marketplace.

That we can’t be whipped into a fury, that we just don’t think in the terms that makes us vulnerable to demagogues is our strength – and our pride. Sure, we can get pissed off. Many a person at the tea parties is pissed off. But that is because they have found the people who represent them, who have been elected to serve them, don’t. They don’t all have freezers full of cash, they don’t all take cell phone calls while a voter is speaking at a town hall meeting – but the elected far too quickly see themselves as the “elect” – having access to some grace which lets them see beyond their constituents. They see themselves not as representatives of the people but as representatives of the party in power, not as finders of solutions but as adopters of broad, ideological, consequence-ridden policies. The tea parties have demonstrated exasperation, irritation. But who wouldn’t be exasperated when a congressperson seems to find it absurd that anyone would expect a representative to read a bill on which they are voting? In these meetings, some are patient, some combative, and some just silly. But often they are condescending, rude, and unaware of history. The tea parties at their best, show a give and take of ideas. At their worst, shouting and anger arise from the floor, condescension and vaporous monologues project from the podium.

However, when the class card is pulled, when the rhetoric of soak the rich reaches full voice, when a populist argument springs from the elected officials, the crowd does not follow. They ignore these red herrings. Because that is not what America has been about, is about, or, we can hope, will be about. To certain segments of our population, to people who have found certain ideologies appealing, these make sense. You might think that a century of disasters would have taught us that that coveting is not a wise (nor a productive nor a virtuous) approach to politics. Politicians from Chicago wards or the California of Pelosi & Van Jones might find such thinking compelling. But we don’t – and we believe thinking it is sensible is hardly a sign of respect for us nor of an understanding of American history.

Today Fox News discussed “Your Life, Your Choices” , an “end of life” booklet developed by the VA and recommended for use in counseling. The segment appears to have been prompted by Jim Towey’s piece in WSJ, “The Death Book for Veterans.” To counter Towey, the VA’s spokesperson was Tammi Duckworth, VA Assistant Secretary. The exchange was lively, if frustrating.

[Paragraph Added after first comment] Towey’s complaint is that the booklet has a bias – and a strong one – toward death. Towey argues, for example, questions about whether life is worth living include such questions as

being in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

The use of the word “vegetable” more than once was another criticism. Towey’s argument – and certainly Wallace’s implicit one – was not that a gag order should be imposed. Rather that this single document has a clear message,

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to “Your Life, Your Choices.” Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America’s 24 million veterans deserve better.

[end of addition]

Of course, these are the big issues. The tensions are not merely the great one intersection between life and death, but, here, it is also between religion and government, the physical and the spiritual. The booklet tries to bring clarity to the discussion. We aren’t always honest with ourselves, such a booklet defines what we often think of in amorphous ways. I suspect that is useful.

Some commentors argue it might help detect depression – that, too, might be useful. Facing questions early may relieve our relatives. I’m not sure if we really “know” what we want. What we define as a life worth living at 20 might be different than at 90. At an earlier age we might have thought life wasn’t worth living if we couldn’t support ourselves or perhaps if we couldn’t climb stairs; indeed, at some points we probably thought life wasn’t worth living if we couldn’t have sex at least once a day. Our standards change. This booklet would be used by the greatest generation (my parents) and also by someone at 20, the age of my youngest daughter; though she’s barely out of the nest, some her age are returning from battle, facing restraints only a much older person might expect. For both groups, the government should tread lightly. Towey argues this is heavy – it “presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political ‘push poll.’ For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be ‘not worth living.’”

Coming upstairs to finish my freshman English syllabus, I realized yet again that what we do is important – and seldom do I succeed. What used to be a semester’s class in argumentation after a full one on writing, has been sandwiched into one course, adding the “research” paper. Our republic rests on enabling students to develop these somewhat separate skills – ones surely worth more than four weeks. I fail, I am sure – but how quickly do any of us master these skills? Over forty years later, I have much to learn. And those years of education in explicating novels only tangentially prepared me for a class like this one.

The interview challenges us to apply that analysis – my students would find it interesting, I’m sure. My job is to give them the vocabulary and force them to examine their own – and others’ – assumptions. We often blink – certainly, I do. We forget what we feel, what we “know”. Education is sometimes helping us understand what we already know.

WSJ gives Towey’s biography: “president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.” We know where his sympathies lie. This background gives him gravitas but also a clear agenda.

Wallace does a similar framing of Tammi Duckworth’s background; she is a double amputee who returned from Iraq with major war wounds; young, attractive, vibrant she is a hero. She serves the bureaucracy that – tragically – could not put her back on her feet, but repaired her in such a way we see her its strong advocate. She began with an authority few could match.

On the other hand, we note a critical tone in Wallace’s introduction; Duckworth refused to appear with Towey. Such restrictions oten dismiss the opponent’s gravitas. We began to suspect another reason: face to face, ad hominem attacks affect the tone. They damage the smearer rather than the smearee. But speaking of another, not present – ah, the critical remark lingers in the viewer’s memory. So, she attacked motivation: repeatedly bringing up the cost of his, similar, book – one that the audience could buy if they wanted to spend $5.00. Not that “Your Life, Your Choices” was exactly free – grant money went to Pearlman, whose biographical note on the VA site emphasizes his authorship. (Her rather exasperating assumption seems to be that works paid for by the government are “free” and those paid for in the open marketplace cost us – an irritation compounded when she argued the law mandated its availability because it was paid for by the government.) This is, of course, an argument that reminds us of other government policies.

Wallace helped Towey counter this argumemt – explicitly by describing this argument of his opponents and allowing rebuttal; implicitly this reminded us that Towey hadn’t seemed to be pushing a book. Whether we find his argument compelling or not, we do have the sense that he has thought long and hard about this issue. We might have felt the playing field was being tipped by Wallace (who clearly seemed shocked by the thrust of the booklet); on the other hand, if we began with certain assumptions, we might have felt it was a fair response to ad hominem attack. Her argument also came from an interpretation of motivation and value we might not find persuasive. If your assumptions differ from your audience’s – if they see the material and financial as less important than the spiritual and principle – your argument is less convincing.

A representative also needs to know what is on the web, what is – and what can be – known. Fox is not so incompetent that it will assume what is up to day might not be different than what was up a week ago, before Towey’s piece. It seemed clear that Wallace wanted to give this remarkable woman credit; it also became clear that he wasn’t going to let her make assertions that appeared to counter the facts as he found them on the net. In exasperation, he remarked that the “he said, she said” balance just didn’t work when sites – on the VA site – were available that supported one position and didn’t the other. [This is in reference to Towey's description of the July 2009 directive - one that she denied but which Wallace gave a screen shot.]

The “gotcha” journalism at which his father was so good seems to have been passed down, though Chris Wallace has a readier good humor. Arlen Specter followed; he grabbed an opportunity with his usual flamboyance, to assert his authority & promise congressional investigations. To give him his due, he appears to be ready to fight for his life – both real and political – and may not be so ready for suggestions of the burden he might pose to others. But he was inaccurate in describing her as standing up well to Wallace’s grilling. No, she didn’t fold – politicians have seen so many weepy confessionals of late they may have developed that criteria instead of one of a lost argument. In her case, It was the lack of definition, assertions that did not seem to be supported by the documents (at least as Wallace demonstrated), and attacks on the man that didn’t stand up well. Her voice remained strong. Withstanding combat as a helicopter pilot is likely to have been a powerful experience that reset any of her senses of proportion – and I doubt this grilling is all that important in her life.

Charming, vital – her statements became longer and more discursive, became repeated sophistries, appeals to our emotions (the VA, she told us repeatedly, helps hundreds of thousands of Americans, the VA recognizes its duty to America’s fallen, the VA. . . is a good thing; veterans need to be respected). She was not unlike our local rep in his telephone conference,spinning a sugary, airy argument from, well, nothing. I’m easily distracted – but these weapons are not so useful when they have become familiar and are done with such a heavy hand – we hear them, stop, rewind, then fast forward through boilerplate we’ve heard before. I assume that Duckworth wants to help veterans and Chet Edwards wants to help his constituents – if they were worse people than they are (and I suspect they are good people) there would be no advantage to making our lives miserable. But that isn’t the point. That is when people like Wallace are welcome – with a bracing approach to that cotton candy sugary mist.

Our junior rhetoricians can also learn of the difference between a man who believes firmly in certain values – values he sees as inherent in the nature of a human being – and a woman making an argument for a bureaucratic system and who does not appear to have examined her own assumptions. One spoke with a moral clarity; one did not.

I assume it is possible to mount an argument for the culture of the VA booklet. The primary author is Dr. Robert Pearlman, who is Chief, Ethics Evaluation for the VA. Surely the criteria for that position is one of making intelligible assumptions and choices. It can’t be his judgment but his reasoning that he has to offer – it hasn’t been my impression that the position of “God” is one many of us are looking for a mortal to fulfill – Obama aside.

Debt, Obama’s grandious vision, “Death Book” or “Death Panels” – no, none of these are likely to give us much comfort. We might expect, for instance, a bit more consistency from our president (say on one-payer plans) before he asks us to trust him on end-of-life counseling.

Chet Edwards phoned tonight, his taped voice inviting us to a telephone “conference” already half through when they got to our number. I listened – I didn’t want to clean the kitchen.

The Democrats seem to be perfecting cotton candy speechifying. When given a captive audience that can’t speak back, they lean back, tell us they have our best interests at heart, and pontificate.

Like Obama, Edwards answered questions at considerable length if not depth. He says what his audience wanted to hear – that we had the best system in the world. He then brought up the statistics that work against that observation – but he seemed to have only a vague grasp of either why we might be better or why we might be worse.

Remarkably few points were raised because this approach led to a small number of vetted callers. He kept telling us he’d never sign a bill that wasn’t good for us; he’d never sign a bill he hadn’t read. But his grasp – or even curiosity about – the possible ramifications implied he read with little “creativity” about consequences. For instance, it is hard to credit his belief in competition with his complaints about health care. I don’t need a paternal figure. I figure we elect them to learn more than we could – that’s their full time job and that of at least some of their staff. This whole debacle makes me doubt they even see that as their duty.

Of course, his experience was more pleasant than it would have been at a town hall. Creative minds must have watched those peculiar demonstrations against Bush and posited how they would handle people like themselves. Such a controlled venue as this must have been a solution.

This isn’t very analytic; it isn’t even a very good report. Still – beware of the telephone conference – the one you didn’t know about until you picked up the phone and it was half over. It doesn’t get the dishes done nor inform. And I suspect cotton candy is not likely to be very good for our health.

A mean conservative Newt Gingrich argues: “we need a new federal resolve to truly defeat Alzheimer’s. As America’s largest generation ages, we have no time to lose.” On the empathic left Ezekial Emanuel (brother of the gentle soul, Emanual): “Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Now, as my friends complain, I’m not the most pro-life person around. I see abortion as a tragic choice, but one that is (rarely perhaps) the lesser of two evils. Then, there’s what my family has long called the “Edmondson syndrome” – it’s probably Alzheimer’s; without an ability to speak and think rationally, what I consider me is so far gone I’d like my body to accompany it. Still, my friends’ respect for life seems the better position than any that demean it. Choosing life seems to always be the logical default. Take Alzheimer’s – the greatest solution – a cure – is not the inevitable result of nationalized health care (we notice few cures from nationalized systems) but probably the inevitable one in a society that values life, sees the individual, and sees this tragedy in both personal terms as tragic and public ones as a great loss of productivity.

That strange category, “a culture of death,” best describes the values of many in our times. Certainly, Bill Ayers’ quite rational if quite evil belief that tens of millions would have to be sacrificed to bring his idea of a perfect society into being is a culture of death. And a certain percentage of post war art can only be described as an aesthetic of death. Then, in literary criticism we find, for instance, critics who believe a character better defines herself by suicide than loving. This may not be surprising when the most influential critic of the eighties and nineties found frequenting gay bathhouses after he knew he had AIDS an interesting adventure.

We aren’t gods – we probably won’t find ways to live forever. But some play with a nihilistic pride that defines control by negation. In any traditional and certainly any religious scheme, we would have thought that was prideful. And I suspect we were right. This is the dangerous pride our religions as well as our literature has so often warned us against – our arrogant desire to spoil what we can not have, to destroy beauty because we can neither feel it nor own it. We are reminded of Claggart’s great sorrow – that he can never be the person who has not felt the bite of jealousy, tht he can never be as content, as blissful, as Billy Budd. Ah, he says, I’ll make him feel that pang – I’ll destroy him, one way or another. And looking out at people who need convincing that nihilism is the final end, they start the convincing.

Others accept the big boundaries, but not the little one – recognizing their limitations, they celebrate the life they can create within this inevitable rise and fall. They roll up their sleeves and go to work: that is the work of the life force and that is the work of love. Pragmatism is enough of an answer for some. And it is part of the answer for others. Curing Alzheimer’s is not only the humane and indeed the human thing to do, it is also remarkably cost-effective. Enabling people who have had a lifetime’s experience to share that experience is productive as well as pleasant. Scholars (and there are many) who’ve been writing for half a century and are looking over proofs of a book coming out next year – they have much to teach us. So do auto mechanics who have seen cars change beneath their wrenches from Studebakers to Kias, of retailers who have seen skirt lines rise and lower and rise and lower through the decades, of great grandfathers who remember the ways of those who are their children but are another’s grandparent.

Fatalism isn’t helpful; humility before the inevitable and pride in our ability to create – these can go hand in hand. As Helen points out, historians don’t learn from history when they deny it. One would think we’d remember where the roads diverged in the sixties, and which was the path to nowhere and which the path to life: Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, which began “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” But, then, instead of the ‘Great Die-Off”, Borlaug (and people like him) combined sympathy and ingenuity to pull off the Green Revolution.

I am grateful to the kind of medicine that Obama repeatedly describes as a failure and the people – doctors, pharmacists, even insurers – as morally inferior to those who don’t make profits. I didn’t expect any of my kids to die young. And they didn’t. The graveyards took numbers of my grandparents’ siblings. My parents didn’t expect my three siblings and me to die – and we didn’t. But we played with a brother and sister down the street who died within 24 hours of each other when we were four or five. They had polio. My father was in a coma in an army hospital in Hawaii and, experimenting with penicillin, the army doctors revived him and the four of us were born after the war.

I know far more cancer survivors than I’ve gone to the funerals of those who have died from it. Every time someone goes to M.D. Anderson, down the road from us, they come back with stories of new treatments, new procedures, new medicines. And we are all heartened. America, despite the tragedy of the youth of those who suffered, did not have a disproportionate number of AIDS victims; we did invent a disproportionate number of AIDS medicines, which we gave with an open hand. I am sure the system needs some overhauling; I doubt that we need to spend as much on medicine as we do. But I suspect the medical Nobel Prize Winners are more worthy than Paul Krugman – and that group, heavily weighted to Americans, has benefited our economy – and the world’s. On the other hand, Rachel Carson, non-profit oriented altruist that she may have been, has done more to destroy happiness and productivity in Africa than can be easily repaired by the Borlaugs and Salks of the world.

Perhaps I should rethink my satire of my friend who is addicted to American Idol. It’s an open market – and it has, like all open markets, found some real winners. Besides, there’s something flyover about its egalitarian approach. And something even nicer – national identity rah rah along with a kind of generousity of spirit that gives the whole world art.

I’m looking forward to learning from the many on this blog who are not monolingual.

Texas is at least well represented by Cornyn. Texans, for all the talk by others of our cowboy ignorance, are aware of our southern border. Note Cornyn’s conclusion, which is gratitude for a medium that even covers Micheletti, even tries to find out what happened. The interview with a representative from our State Department is not designed to make us feel grown ups are in charge, but rather the kind of boozy judgements in a frat on Saturday night – I don’t know much about the details, but I sure know about my position.

Perhaps if Texas could develop its own foreign policy, it might be more sensible – imagine our spot on the map at the end of this report.