Culture
Clips —
July 18 , 2006
The Complexity of Crisis
I am thinking about the huge and
crushing number of issues we force politicians to understand and
make decisions on. These are issues of great variety, complexity,
and even in some cases, many cases in a way, unknowability.
All of us, as good citizens, feel
that we must know something about them, study them, come to conclusions.
But there are too many, and they are too complicated, or the information
on them is contradictory, or incomplete.
For politicians it is the same but
more so. They not only have to try to understand, complicated
and demanding questions, they have to vote on them.
We are asking our politicians, our
senators and congressmen, to make judgments, decisions and policy
on: stem cell research, SDI, NATO composition, G-8 agreements,
the history and state of play of judicial and legislative actions
regarding press freedoms, the history of Sunni-Shiites tensions,
Kurds, tax rates, federal spending, hurricane prediction and response,
the building of a library annex in Missoula, the most recent thinking
on when human life begins, including the thinking of the theologians
of antiquity on when the soul enters the body, chemical weaponry,
the Supreme Court, U.S.-North Korean relations, bioethics, cloning,
public college curriculums, India-Pakistan relations, the enduring
Muslim-Hindu conflict, the constitutional implications of McCain-Feingold
campaign finance reform, Homeland security, Securities and Exchange
Commission authority, energy policy, environmental policy, nuclear
proliferation, global warming, the stability of Venezuela's Chavez
regime and its implications for U.S. oil prices, the future of
Cuba after Castro, progress in gender bias as suggested by comparisons
of the number of girls who pursued college-track studies in American
public high schools circa 1950 to those on a college-track today,
outsourcing, immigration, the comparative efficacy of charter
and magnet schools, land use, Kelo, health care, HMO's,
what to do with victims of child abuse, the history of marriage,
the nature and origin of homosexuality, V-chips, foreign competition
in the making of computer chips, fat levels in potato chips, national
policy on the humanities, U.N. reform, and privacy law.
And that was just this week.
Just seven days in the modern political
world.
Lucky for us our congressmen and
senators are smart as Einstein, good as Mother Teresa, knowledgeable
as Henry Kissinger times Robert Kaplan, and wise as Solomon.
Oh wait.
We are asking too much. Of ourselves
and of the mere mortals who lead us.
Peggy Noonan
Opinion Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/
--
Free
Speech is Loser Where Religious Expression is Concerned
Brittany McComb's microphone went
dead at her high school commencement because school officials
thought she was talking too much about religion. This was during
her valedictory speech last month at Foothill High School in Henderson,
Nev. The crowd of some 400 jeered for several minutes after her
speech was cut off, but the American Civil Liberties Union of
Nevada thought school officials had made the right call. No surprise
there. If the issue is freedom of speech vs. fear that a commencement
speaker will imperil church-state separation, the ACLU will come
out against free speech every time.
Officials of the Clark County school district read the text of
graduation talks in advance and edit out comments they consider
inappropriate. In this case, administrators deleted all three
biblical references, several references to "the Lord"
and the one mention of Christ. But McComb rebelled and said what
she wanted to say. She thinks commencement speakers have the right
to thank anyone they want to. "Other valedictorians thank
their parents. I wanted to thank my Lord and Savior," she
said.
John Whitehead of the Rutherford
Institute, which will represent McComb in a suit against the district,
made the same point: "She has a constitutional right — like
any other student — to freely speak about the factors that contributed
to her success…"
One problem here is the great bugaboo
of the culture wars: sensitivity. Many people think they have
a right never to be annoyed, never to hear anything they disagree
with. In one California case, decided against a religion-minded
salutatorian, a federal judge wrote that "Forcing a dissenter
to make the choice between attending... and participating in a
religious practice in which the dissenter does not agree is not
constitutionally permissible." That is one sensitive judge.
She thought listening to a student's speech was like compelling
attendance at someone else's religious service.
John Leo
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnLeo/2006/07/17/
free_speech_is_loser_where_religious_expression_is_concerned
--
Ending
the Stigma of Mental Illness
You’d
think nothing could compare to the heartbreak endured by families
whose loved ones suffer from diseases such as cancer or muscular
dystrophy.
But as a recent House committee hearing
on mental health made clear, the darkest and most devastating
of illnesses often deal with the brain. Why? Because of the stigma,
ignorance and pathetic health-care/legal policies that surround
what we still call “mental illness.” Unfortunately, this phrase
makes it sound as if it’s all psychological. The fact is that
brain diseases are just as physical as heart diseases, diabetes
or any other illness of any other organ.
Unfortunately, I know much more about the issue than I’d like.
My late mother suffered from bipolar illness, transforming the
best mom in the universe into someone I didn’t recognize. Brain
disorders bearing the names of bipolar, depression, schizophrenia
and others aren’t about emotions or having “down days” — they
are conditions that affect judgment, mood, actions, relationships,
finances, employment, integrity and every other aspect of one’s
makeup and human existence…
According to Dr. Kay Jamison, a renowned
researcher and psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins who also suffers
from bipolar disorder, the cost of untreated brain diseases for
America’s young is particularly staggering. Dr. Jamison testified
at the hearing that at least 70 percent of the teenagers who commit
suicide suffer from a potentially treatable major mood disorder.
Yet “the effort to develop new treatments for severe mental illness
and to prevent suicide seems remarkably unhurried,” she said:
“Every 17 minutes in America, someone
commits suicide. Where is the public concern and outrage? … I
cannot rid my mind of the desolation, confusion and guilt I have
seen in the parents, children, friends and colleagues of those
who kill themselves. Nor can I shut out the images of the autopsy
photographs of 12-year-old children, or the prom photographs of
adolescents who within a year’s time will put a pistol in their
mouths or jump from the top floor of a university dormitory building…”
America has abandoned those who suffer
with brain disorders for far too long. We can, and must, do better.
Rebecca Hagelin
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/RebeccaHagelin/
2006/07/13/ending_the_stigma_of_mental_illness
--
Rated “R” for Religion
Has the MPAA begun rating films based
on religious content?
It depends on who you believe. The
one thing everybody agrees on is that Facing the Giants,
a church-made film about a Christian football coach who conquers
the "giants" of fear and failure, deserved its PG rating.
But was it for the adult themes of infertility and depression,
as the Motion Picture Association of America claims, or was it
for its evangelical Christian content, as its producer, Provident
Films, maintains?
Provident spokesperson Kris Fuhr
told Scripps Howard News Service that the MPAA used the word "proselytizing"
in its explanation for giving the film — which contains no sex,
violence, or profanity — a PG rating. "They decided that
the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and
that this might offend people from other religions," Fuhr
said, adding: "It is kind of interesting that faith has joined
that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents
to worry about."
Christian bloggers went ballistic
over the news, and the MPAA received 15,000 angry emails, along
with a letter from Majority Whip Roy Blunt asking MPAA president
Dan Glickman for an explanation. Pointing out that — according
to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health — the MPAA's
standards for onscreen sex and violence have weakened dramatically
in the last decade, "This incident raises the disquieting
possibility that MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more
dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and mindless
violence," Blunt wrote.
Anne Morse
Weekly Standard
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/
000/000/012/419mfmbq.asp
