Category: Musings

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Commentary

Nikki Haley Gets an ‘F’ in History

Can the fumbling Republican presidential hopeful get anything right about our nation’s history?

Earlier this week, former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley told Fox News viewers that the United States is “not a racist country” and has “never been a racist country.” While her first statement is debatable, her second is not. Even the most generous reader of U.S. history would come away with the understanding that, yes, historically we’ve been a pretty racist country.

Just to name a few examples: The Naturalization Act of 1790 exclusively limited naturalization to “free White person(s)” and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Immigration Act of 1924 combined to bar entry to a majority of Asian immigrants. These were matters of national public policy.

Is the racism charge true everywhere and at all times? Of course not. Individual opinion is never monolithic, and the degree of social or legal discrimination against certain groups of people varied. But over all, the predominance of laws targeting nonwhite people (for lack of a better term), especially prior to the mid-twentieth century, is well documented.

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Commentary

Newsweek Goes Off the Rails

Hyperbolic headlines are not exclusive to news about Donald Trump–even local elections get the clickbait treatment.

Over the years, I’ve written many, many articles about bias, sloppy reporting, and outright lies in the news media. Usually it comes from journalists with a left-wing bias, but this article in Newsweek is absurd in the opposite direction.

“Republicans Annihilate Democrats in Virginia Election Sweep,” it proclaims. “Republicans scored massive victories in elections held in Virginia on Tuesday, returning two GOP politicians to local legislature following the departure of the incumbents.”

Um, no, that’s not what happened.

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Appearances Saudade

Carman Hall: Left in the Past

Matt Williamson, a student at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, put together this short video on Carman Hall for a class project. He read my reminisces, and interviewed me. The final result was a pretty interesting short video about what happened to the building since it closed and how it may be used in the future. Seeing the inside of that old building for the first time in, oh, 22 years brought back a lot of memories. Check it out!

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Commentary

Remembering 9/11 Two Decades Later

I remember September 11, 2001 as a tragedy, but for more than just what was lost on that day. It was a tragedy for all we have lost since that day.

Twenty years ago, at around 8am in the Chicago suburbs, I awoke to a phone call. It was my father, calling from work to tell me to turn on the television. He said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, and true to his word, there it was live on CNN: a black plume of smoke billowing out of the North Tower.

Moments later, I, along with millions of other Americans, saw a second plane smash into South Tower. At first, there was disbelief. “Did you see that?” I asked. “I think something is happening.” Then, a chill ran down my spine. Instinctively, I think, we all knew that everything changed with that second explosion.

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Commentary

A Nation of Wimps

In a harsh world we can either become tolerant by not shying away from pain and disappointment, or we can shelter ourselves and be unable to cope when those challenges rear their ugly head.

In a political cartoon for the Detroit Free Press entitled “Traveling Across America,” artist Mike Thompson juxtaposed two women: a pioneer from 1857 and a businesswoman from 2007. The pioneer declares, “the trip is grueling and filled with hardship.” The businesswoman replies, “I hear ya!  My flight was packed and 20 minutes late!”

In 1905, Art Young was far more critical of his contemporaries when he illustrated a cartoon for Life magazine entitled “World of Creepers.”  It depicts a sea of men in sport coats crawling along the ground under a dark cloud.  The word “fear” hovers just above the horizon.

These two political cartoons express concern that we are (or were) becoming a culture of complainers, snivelers, and grovelers; mere shadows of our immigrant and frontier ancestors who attempted to prosper despite enduring constant hardships.

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Commentary

Unfree Markets and the Diminishing of Choice

Over the past several decades, major cities across the country have introduced market-strangling regulation designed to protect certain industries from competition, resulting in a net loss for consumers and an unhealthy constraint on the local economy.

In a truly free market, choice would only be limited by supply and demand, and human imagination. If retailers see a steady stream of profit, whatever a customer desired would be made available. If the market for one product declined, merchants and manufacturers would repurpose and cater to some other need or desire.

As government comes calling, however, freedom of choice is restricted. Sometimes those restrictions are good, but often they are not. Arbitrary restrictions on street vendors and ride sharing companies like Uber are a good example of what happens when business and government collude to reduce consumer choices.

Over the past several decades, major cities across the country have introduced market-strangling regulation designed to protect certain industries from competition, resulting in a net loss for consumers and an unhealthy constraint on the local economy.

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Commentary

On Culture and Law

How can we claim to live in a free society, if our only choice is between conformity and punishment? In a truly free society, culture, not law, should be the proper vehicle for changing behavior.

It’s become a reflex in American society: all bad things, or even potentially bad things, must be banned. Whether it be vaping, smoking in public places (coming to a home near you), texting while driving, wearing your pants too low, large sodas, or other nuisances, a consensus has emerged that government has the right and obligation to punish behavior deemed harmful to the individual, perhaps even simply annoying or unsightly as well.

By making these activities illegal, the oft-repeated claim goes, it will promote the general welfare by discouraging them. But how can we claim to live in a free society, if our only choice is between conformity and punishment? In a truly free society, culture, not law, should be the proper vehicle for changing behavior.

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