Columns of interest
When I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place
Dennis Prager
When I was a boy, America was a freer society than it is today. If Americans had been told the extent and number of laws that would govern their speech and behavior within one generation, they would have been certain that they were being told about some dictatorship, not the Land of the Free. Today, people at work, to cite but one example, are far less free to speak naturally. Every word, gesture and look, even one's illustrated calendar, is now monitored lest a fellow employee feel offended and bring charges of sexual harassment or creating a "hostile work environment" or being racially, religiously or ethnically insensitive, or insensitive to another's sexual orientation....
When I was boy, I was surrounded by adult men. Today, most American boys (and girls, of course) come into contact with no adult man all day every school day. Their teachers and school principals are all likely to be women. And if, as is often the case, there is no father at home (not solely because of divorce but because "family" courts have allowed many divorced mothers to remove fathers from their children's lives), boys almost never come into contact with the most important group of people in a boy's life -- adult men. The contemporary absence of men in boys' lives is not only unprecedented in American history; it is probably unprecedented in recorded history.
Cocky Ignorance
Thomas Sowell
Because of the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up, Senator Obama says he wants the Secretary of Defense to tell him, swiftly:
"What changes will you make to provide our soldiers in theater with real access to mental health care?" ...
What has been widely publicized in the media is that suicides among American troops have gone up. What has not been widely publicized is that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable civilians....
Moreover, this is not the first time that military service overseas has been portrayed in the media as the cause of problems that are worse in the civilian population at home.
The New York Times led the way in making homicides committed by returning military veterans a front page story, blaming this on "combat trauma and the stress of deployment." Yet the New York Post showed that the homicide rate among returning veterans is a fraction of the homicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.
When are controversial actions free speech? Depends on which flag is flying
Katherine Kersten
Two controversies involving schools, kids and flags have made recent news in Minnesota. But the cases had radically different outcomes.
The first occurred in May at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High. Four eighth-graders refused to stand while the rest of their class recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The kids got one-day, in-school suspensions. But school officials lifted the suspensions immediately after the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota fired off a letter pronouncing that the First Amendment protected the students' conduct....
...The ACLU cited soaring language from First Amendment court cases: "Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. ... The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."...
Let's turn now to the second incident, last week at Bloomington Kennedy High School. Three seniors arrived on the last day of school in trucks flying the Confederate flag. They said they were Dukes of Hazzard fans, celebrating the Southern lifestyle.
Kennedy officials suspended the students for three days, barring them from their graduation ceremony.
Again the ACLU weighed in -- but this time with a helpless shrug....
Why was the sacred "right to differ" suddenly, well, gone with the wind?
Does the left really want to go here?
Jonathan Martin
John Aravosis, who writes at Americablog, had this headline yesterday: "Why is McCain getting $58,000 a year in disability income?"
In his post, Aravosis wonders why the GOP nominee is receiving a military pension for the injuries he sustained in Vietnam.
Noting that a McCain aide explained it was because the former POW was "tortured for his country," Aravosis writes: "Yeah, we get it. The torture card. It's to McCain what 9/11 was to Giuliani's candidacy: the never-ending name-drop."
But McCain was tortured for his country — and the disability payment he receives is common to all veterans who sustained combat-related injuries.
But Aravosis doesn't stop in what is already very dangerous territory.
Suggesting a double-standard, he writes: "Imagine had the Democratic candidate served in Vietnam, been captured, and then made propaganda videos for the enemy while claiming all the while to be a hero."
Posted by Danny Carlton at June 10, 2008 8:20 AM