News articles

An article in today's paper mentioned is that there is a bill in front of the House of Representatives which would increase the ability of the president to mobilize and use National Guard troops in case of natural disasters or other emergencies. Prior to the current president, I would've thought sure, good idea, why not. Given the attitudes demonstrated by the current inhabitant of the White House, which are more those of Louis XVI than any democratically elected president, and his willingness to simply ignore any law he doesn't particularly like, I am not at all in favor of this. To my mind, the National Guard is for the protection of this nation, not others and these states, not others. It should come as no surprise that I didn't agree with the use of the Coast Guard to protect the coast of South Vietnam, back when -- and you see had much impact my opinion had then.

Every so often I find myself thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, I really am growing up, possibly getting some maturity after all. In this case, I had read an article about how the special and unique needs of boys are not getting sufficient attention in school. Well, fine, I thought, go ahead and give them specific attention. But sure as God made little green apples,you know there'll be an article in about a year to two years saying exactly the same thing about girls -- that they have unique requirements that are not being met by the educational system, and why aren't we paying attention to that? I'm no more insightful than most people, but I have to admit to a certain frisson of pleasure when I realized that this cycle of rediscovery exists. Similarly, an article in today's New York Times about how the linguistic style of Iranians lends itself to a sort of diplomatic jujitsu made me realize that I've seen this concept before-- here we are, once again, outfoxed by the wily (filling the national identifier) and their habit/ability/cultural mores that are simply inexplicable to us plain folks. Once again, we're stuck in the mud, while the others dance nimbly around us. This probably is true, but you know what? I think that given the choice of being us or them, most times, I'll still choose being us. Because I don't think any nation -- with the possible exception of Switzerland -- has moral superiority or excessive nimbleness relative to any other. We've all got advantages; we've all got impediments.