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