Blog

It is becoming clear that the New Orleans catastrophe resulting from hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst natural disasters in our country’s history. As such, I think that it is understandable that the authorities who we hire (through elections and taxes) to manage and respond to problems and disasters were overwhelmed and not able to respond as well as they would have liked.

There. Simple statement – how can you argue with that? Local authorities were overwhelmed. State authorities were overwhelmed. Federal authorities were overwhelmed. And that is the right order, is it not? Don’t we expect local authorities to call on state and federal assistance only when they are overwhelmed? And don’t we expect state authorities to call on federal assistance only when they are overwhelmed? Bottom-up management in action.

And from a top down perspective, we certainly expect the federal government – with its vast resources – to proactively seek to provide assistance to “lesser” entities when it is clear that they are going to be overwhelmed. That is how it has worked for quite a number of years, through quite a number of catastrophes.

Thus far in this post, I can’t imagine that there is very much controversial in what I have written. But this is the point that this probably changes, because I have to say that I am sick and tired of the refusal of this administration to be accountable for anything that it does or does not do. Those who lean right and tend to support President Bush will now (most likely) find controversy in what I have to say.

I assume that mistakes have been made in this effort as are made in every effort. I assume that these mistakes have been made by governments and bureaucracies at all levels – local, state, and federal. Voters at each level will have to hold those people accountable for their performance

It will be up to the local authorities to identify and fix the mistakes that they have made, and they should be held accountable for their performance by local voters. The people of the local parishes in the South will have to hold them up to scrutiny when the time comes.

It will be up to state authorities to identify and fix the mistakes that they have made, and they should be held accountable for their performance by state voters. The people of Louisiana (and other states) will have to hold them up to scrutiny when the time comes.

As for the national media, and the vast majority of the people in this country, the only entity accountable to us is the federal government. It is upon the federal government, and their response to this disaster, that our focus should be maintained. Not that we should spend much energy on it now – right now we should be focused on providing aid to those in need.

Once we have provided the aid required, and have FUNDED THIS AID, then we should focus on the rebuilding effort, decide who should be paying for this effort, and FUND THE REBUILDING EFFORT. We have many precedents to follow regarding how much the federal government should be funding the rebuilding of “at-risk” infrastructure and private property, and we should be following those precedents, or we should be publicly debating and changing the role of the federal government in this regard.

Then, we should be holding our federal government accountable for their performance during this disaster. We should do this in the media and at the voting booth. The fact that this administration is spending its time and effort trying to “spin” things is such a way to re-focus the national media on state and local efforts rather than federal efforts has the top of my head coming off. These people have refused to accept accountability for any action that they have taken in the past 5 years, and now with Americans dead by the thousands, they continue to shirk accountability.

Note that I say “they” here, as it is hard to really focus on President Bush alone. For the past 5 years, we have seen him pointing his finger everywhere else whenever bad things happen, so we have grown accustomed to this new “shared accountability” style. Let me tell you how I feel about shared accountability.

I had a boss for several years with whom I disagreed about many things. Although we had disagreements that were often loud, table-pounding affairs, we also had an abiding respect for one another. He demanded of his top people that when you were wrong and had made a mistake, you admitted it – hat in hand – and you filed it away as a lesson that you had invested yourself in, and a mistake that you would not make again. He used to say that so long as you defended your mistake, you could not learn from it. And if you were going to be a leader, he used to say, your shoulders must be broad enough to carry not only your own mistakes, but also the mistakes of those who report to you. That was the essence of leadership – the courage and strength to be fully accountable for your actions and the actions of those who worked for you. Regarding “shared accountability”, he had a very simple response: When everybody is accountable, then nobody is accountable.

And that seems to be how this president runs his administration. Let’s have an investigation – let’s investigate ourselves. Let’s study it – by the time the study is done, the press will have moved on to something else, and the American people will have forgotten the issue, and we won’t have to be accountable.

I’m sick of it frankly. Have the guts to stand up and say, “The buck stops here – I am accountable.”

• The fact is that we have used our National Guard as a foreign occupying force – a job that they were NOT designed to do – and we have stretched our armed forces very thinly. This is not an interpretation of fact, this is a fact. This fact certainly had some impact on the ability of our government to respond rapidly to a disaster that they knew was coming. Accept this and be accountable for it.
• The FEMA director lies to the people (a way of defending the slow response) by saying that nobody could anticipate the break in the levies as. Note that clearly at this stage, they knew that they had a response problem, and were trying to justify the reasons for the slow response. Yet, he had apparently been briefed just days before on the fact that these levy breaks were a likely result of this hurricane – before the hurricane had hit. Accept the fact that you knew it was likely, and that you failed to respond quickly with anything approaching adequate aid. Perhaps adequate assistance would have been impossible anyway?
• Our national focus regarding taxation during the last 5 years has been on cutting taxes. We cut taxes even as we wage war – unprecedented in American history. Part of this effort to cut taxes means that we must find ways to continue to cut funding to programs, in order to try and reduce the huge deficits that this tax-cutting frenzy creates in our national budget. Among the programs that the administration cuts are programs aimed at fixing the very levies that broke. For the first time in 30 years, construction and upgrading of these levies was stopped during this administration. This is a fact, not an interpretation of fact. If you are on the left, you will interpret this fact and say that they did this to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy. If you are on the right, you will interpret this and say that these programs were not effective, and were wasteful. In either case, be accountable.
• In fact, it appears that since about 2002, there has been a fairly loud cry from those in that area that they are sitting ducks for exactly this disaster. They have loudly protested the funding cuts that they have seen stop the sorts of contingency preparedness that was clearly required, and mitigation efforts that had been underway. Again, if I believe in the policies of this administration, then I need to be accountable for the fact that it appears that I may have been wrong on this one – perhaps it was a mistake to stop these programs – perhaps a few more lives could have been saved? Or perhaps not – perhaps the programs were so useless that they would have made no difference at all? I don’t know, but I should be accountable enough to at least ask the question rather than trying to blame someone else.
• And what about the bigger picture here. We have invested so much of our grandchildren’s money in this effort to “fight the terrorists over there instead of over here”, without ever talking about what it costs to do this. Is it possible that in this process, we have taken our eye off of the ball here at home, and have allowed our ability to respond to homeland disasters erode significantly? Is it possible?

I could go on about this, but the bottom line is that I am sick of the lack of courageous leadership within this administration. Courageous leadership would stand up and say something like, “We have a disaster to deal with right now, so I don’t have time for spin. When we are done with triage within this disaster, then I expect the American people to review the performance of me and my administration in this disaster, and I stand singly and solely accountable for the mistakes that we have made, and I share accountability for the things that have gone well with those in my administration.” Wow, now that would be leadership!

But instead of real leadership, we have the president and all of his spin patrol trying to divert attention from themselves, and on to state and local officials.

Shame, shame, shame.

Where is my hero Teddy?

Islamic Extremist Fundamentalism – Calls for drastic measures to institute their own form of Islam, including the assassination and death of those who disagree with them. In general, opposed to the notion of democracy, (though they will claim otherwise), as they want to institute their interpretation of God’s law.

Christian Extremist Fundamentalism – Calls for drastic measures to institute their own form of Christianity, including the assassination and death of those who disagree with them. In general, opposed to democracy, (though they will claim otherwise), as they want to institute their interpretation of God’s law.

We ask the majority of Muslims, who are moderate and opposed to the sort of measures that the Fundamentalist are willing to kill for, to stand up against that minority who appears to have hijacked Islam for their own political purposes. It is clear to us that this must be done, in order to make it clear that these Fundamentalists are not following the more widely-held viewpoint of Islam as a faith and tradition that stands up for and preaches not only peace and brotherhood, but also calls for continued movement toward God’s justice, primarily the equality of people and fair distribution of the gifts of God.

In the same way, we as Christians who are opposed to the measures that Fundamentalist Christians are calling for and trying to implement. We must do this in order to make it clear that these Fundamentalists are not following the widely-held viewpoint of Christianity as a faith and tradition that stands up for and preaches not only peace and brotherhood, but also calls for continued movement toward God’s justice here on earth, primarily the equality of people and fair distribution of the gifts of God.

Pat Robertson prayed publicly for more vacancies on the Supreme Court, and since these are lifetime appointments, this generally would be construed as praying for either the death or serious illness of sitting judges. (I can only assume that he was praying for the ill-health of only the 2 judges who were appointed by Democrats…) There was no public outcry. There was no demand for apology. Nobody made it clear that this man is a nut-case, and does not represent Christianity as most people practice it.

Now he calls for the assassination of the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LEADER OF A NATION. While there is some press, much of the press is focused on the victim – the democratically elected leader of Venezuela– rather than on demanding a public apology and an FCC investigation. My guess is that this will die down after a day or two – at least in the American press.

And most pointedly, our President and all of our elected leaders should loudly denounce this hate-speech. If we believe that it is a good idea to spread democracy in the world, then we should hold those within our own country who oppose democracy and advocate the assassination of democratically elected officials to the highest public scrutiny. Mr. Robertson has the right in this country to say whatever he wants, (though we should scrutinize whether we are willing to allow this sort of pornography on the public airwaves), and we should make sure that the rest of the world knows that when he does so, he does not have the support of our leaders or of the Christian community.

We as Christians must stand up against this sort of hate-mongering by extreme Christian Fundamentalists.

The debate over public education in general is one that has gotten little attention recently.

I have very dear friends who are fundamentalist Christians, who are disgusted that we don’t teach Biblical history and morality in our public schools. They believe that the world is 5700 years old, and that “macro” evolution, (or Darwinism as many groups have taken to calling it), should not be taught. These people are loud critics of, and I would say enemies of, the notion of public education – unless it is taught their way.

This movement has been working its way through our culture for several years now, painting a generally dim view of the public education systems in our country. I can tell you that in our family, back in the 80’s, we went through a brief period where we put our kids in a private Christian school with an outstanding academic reputation. After just a couple of years, it became plain that the quality of instruction that they were receiving was very plainly less than that they had received in the public system. We switched back.

I tell that story so that you know my bias from experience. From that experience, I have come to understand that generally, private schools pay their teachers less than public schools. It should come as no surprise, then, that the public schools have better teachers.

So why private schools? I see it as broken into 3 main groups:

1. The folks with more money than sense who just can’t stand the thought of their child with the common folk.

2. Folks who live in areas with poor public schools, and with the means to send them to private schools, which in their case means an improvement in both quality of education and safety for their child.

3. Folks with strong idealogical (religious) convictions who don’t want their children to learn the mainstream knowledge taught in public schools.

Of these 3 groups, the first one will never go away. There will always be an “elite” class, who will not want to mingle with the common folk. Nothing wrong with that.

The second group of folks use private schools as an escape from poor public schools. Fixing the public schools in their area would fix this problem, and eliminate the need for private education. Better models for distribution of funding for public education is at the heart of that discussion.

The third group is the one that I want to focus on.

Should education be a “right” of citizens? If so, to what level? 8th grade? High School? College?

If the answer to that question is no, then we should focus our discussion on the direction our culture takes as we define ever widening “classes” of people. As ignorance increases among the masses, and the resulting “want” that lower employment will likely bring increases, what will be the result?

If the answer is yes, that some level of education is a “right”, then we are left with public funding for education. Let’s start with where we are now.

So far, we have taken an approach that says that local public school districts should exist, and with varying degrees of oversight from the state, these school boards should decide what gets taught and how to teach it.

Of course, the national government has some very high-level authority, in that they want to assure that the rights of citizens are not compromised. This is why the national authority has asserted that it is not constitutional for “creationism”, for example, to be taught in school, as it violates the constitutional prohibition of establishing religion. (The thought being that by teaching the Creation Myth of just one religion, you are essentially “establishing” this as the accepted religion.)

The movement among the public school opponents asserts both explicitly and implicitly that they don’t like this. They assert that the founding fathers were Christian, and that what they really meant to do was establish a Christian country. (While it is true that most of the fathers were Christian to varying degrees, this new movement ignores that fact that NOTWITHSTANDING their Christianity, they explicitly forbade the establishment of religion. In other words, the fact that they were Christian actually makes a stronger case for their intent to keep religion out of government.)

The solution of the public school opponents is clear. Change education so that it is private rather than public, then you don’t have to deal with that pesky constitution. This fits very nicely with an anti-tax agenda, which doesn’t like the fact that the public has to pay for any of this stuff anyway.

And this is exactly what has happened. Those with an anti-public-school agenda that is driven by a religious ideology are aligned with those with an anti-tax ideology. They have been successful in redefining to varying degrees the way that school funding money is distributed, resulting in the increase in “vouchers” which essentially take public funding and funnel it to private schools. (The idea being that the public should fund the education of a student, but that the student and the student’s family should be allowed to learn whatever they want.)

So we only got to this point by saying that we did believe that it was a right of citizens to receive an education, which means public funding. I think that this means that we agree that we have a “moral obligation” to offer education to all citizens.

Should there be any limits on what the public funds in terms of education? What if the local Islamic Mullah wanted to set up a local school that taught Islamic Fundamentalism and Extremism? What if a local Christian group wanted to set up a local school that taught Christian Fundamentalism and Extremism?

If it is not “anything goes”, then who sets limits? The US constitution? Other national authority? State authority? Local school districts as it is now?

What constitutional principles should apply to publicly funded education?

And here is the real reason why I put this post together. Beyond the agreement on a moral obligation to educate citizens, are there other moral obligations that we have in educating ourselves? Are there common morals that we can teach that don’t take steps down the road of establishment of religion in our country? Can these be taught outside the context of a specific religion? How about teaching morals that are common among many religions?

My own bias is that I have a problem with public funds being used to finance private schools. I do believe that we have an “education obligation”, but am undecided on how far that obligation reaches. I do believe that we have a common moral compass in our culture, and that reinforcing that compass can be achieved outside of the context of a specific religion, and that school curriculum should do this. How…