“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

- George Orwell

There was a classic Saturday Night Live sketch where Chevy Chase was interviewing Richard Pryor for a job (transcript here, blurry video here). The last step was for Pryor to take a word association test where he'd say the first word that came to his mind after Chase read a word from a list. The test is innocent enough at first, but soon the words — initially ambiguous — start to take on racial overtones: "black" = "white", "tar baby" = "ofay", "jungle bunny" = "cracker" as each man gets a little angrier and more confrontational. Ultimately Chase drops the "n" word, not even looking at his list, and Pryor responds menacingly with "Dead Honky." This was way back in the 70s when SNL was a startling new phenomenon, pushing the edge of satire and taste. To dare to use the "n" word in a humorous context to satirize the volatility of the race issue and the absurdity of the language was to also push the nuance envelope. The skit confronted the words rather than running from them and drew them out into the light so their bulbous ugliness could be punctured and deflated by the sharp needle. It was ground-breaking, it was liberating, it was as if it were prophesying a new day where we could at last talk.

That glimmer of hope appears long gone. I doubt that skit could run today. In fact, many of the links I originally found to the video now have messages about "video removed for content violation." Whether it was for language or copyright violations I don't know, but it makes me wonder. Yesterday's satire is now reality, as any racially-tinged language provokes instant word association-type reflex responses of reaction unfettered by reason. "Racism" has become such a loaded word that no one can pick it up without getting a hernia. It even occurred to me after I posted the Tom Lehrer video earlier that some might watch that and fail to see the irony and would instead react with, "That's mean" or something worse, missing the satire completely. No emails like that yet, fortunately.

Ultimately, racism can't be changed by talking about it, but by living without it. I know, that sounds impossible, especially since I concur with what Mitch Berg had to say earlier his week:

I’m going to start out with a very broad statement: “Isms” are part of the human condition. All people are conditioned to favor people who are like them, and to suspect people who are different from them, whether tangibly (skin color, language, accent, smell, dress) or subtly (class, education, geography). Many white people get uneasy around many black people, sure, but that’s an easy one. Middle-class white people get uneasy around mullet-headed bikers; New Yorkers sneer down their noses at Arklahoma accents; light-skinned blacks disdain darker blacks (or so said Spike Lee); farmers roll their eyes at people in suits and ties and clipped city accents and manners.

This is true across every culture on this planet.

In many of those cultures, that suspicion is codified in the language. In many languages, the word for “Human” varies, depending on how closely-related or situated the subject is to the speaker; for “humans” whose tribe is closer to that of the speaker, it’s a fairly benign or amiable term; the farther afield the subject, the less-benign and more derogatory the term will get.

To say “everyone’s a racist” is itself simplistic; it would be fairer and more accurate to say “we are all we-ists”; all of us, black or female or suburban or mentally ill or urban or atheist, are more comfortable around people who are like us. And every single one of us practices “profiling”, whether you’re a black couple “profiling” some agressive drunk rednecks, or a Xhosa turning on a Bantu in anger, or Molly Priesmeyer “profiling” white males, or even the stereotypical white middle-class guy sizing up…anyone else.

We separate ourselves in countless ways, not just by skin color. I was just back in my rural hometown the other day, a small community of about 3,000 people, almost all caucasian. I saw a list of the churches serving this small community. There were 13. Among that 13, there were seven varieties of Baptists. We all pretty much use the same Bible, know that we're called to join and knit in the Body of Christ, and yet even in a small community that would appear to have so much in common, we can't help but separate ourselves.

We are all "We-ists" by nature. As a Christian, however, I know that that our basic nature is essentially base and sinful. It is natural to identify with "our" group, to get beyond that we need to begin seeing ourselves as a member of wider and wider groups.

I fellowship regularly with, and minister occasionally to, a group of men overcoming addictions in their lives. The group is roughly 50/50 blacks and whites, and range in age from their 20s to their 60s. Some are from the south, some from the north, some are from the country and some have lived in the city all their lives. There are any number of reasons for individuals in this group to stand apart from other members and perhaps some do. Greater, however, is the overall sense of what we have in common, including our purpose. One of our preachers is a fiery black man who knows first hand what it means to beat up on someone, and to be beat down. If anyone could righteously spout the things that Rev. Jeremiah Wright says, it would be this man, yet he preaches that our enemy isn't some person or some group - our enemy is ourselves.

About 10 years ago part of this group went on a weekend fishing trip. One of the young black men who came along was just out of prison, and he didn't have a very favorable opinion of white folks. Early Saturday morning I went down to help out in the kitchen and found this man working by himself on the bacon and eggs. He was large and imposing, the size of an NFL linebacker. I asked him I could help him by turning the bacon.

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "No."

I tried again. "How about I stir up the eggs then?"

"Nope. I got it." We could have been ice-fishing for the chill in that cabin.

"Oooh-kaay," I said, looking around and spying about a dozen loaves of bread on the counter, waiting to be toasted. "I think I'll just hang out over here with all this white bread."

It was very quiet, except for the sound of the bacon sizzling. "I am about to die," I thought to myself.

"HAWW!"

Ever since then we've been buds. My friend still comes often to the Saturday meetings, and I ran into him last week as the meeting was ending. The message had been about discipleship, and about whether you are a follower or an imitator of someone else. I hadn't seen him come in earlier so I gave him a big hug, which he returned. He then turned to introduce me to the man he had brought with him, who turned out to be his brother.

"This is John," he said as I shook the other man's hand. "He's somebody I've been trying to imitate."

I couldn't make out the look in his brother's eyes, because my own eyes suddenly got kind of misty.

Ben's post, Perpetuating Racism By Talking About It reminded me of a Tom Lehrer classic, of how much I love Lehrer's music — and how great it is that we have YouTube.

Lehrer, the predecessor to Mark Russell (though much funnier and not as smarmy as Russell), used to appear on national television in the 60s in a show called "That Was the Week That Was" (scroll down for details about the American version) where he would do a satirical song about something in the news that week. I had an album of his best from TW3 when I was in college that I soon had memorized, but I'd never seen a photo of the reclusive Mr. Lehrer until I saw this YouTube video. As funny as Lehrer was as a songwriter and vocalist, he is incomparable when you can actually see his facial expressions.

Now, ripped once again from the headlines, Tom Lehrer and "National Brotherhood Week" (the screen is black for several seconds at the beginning of the video):

Rich Karlgaard is among those pondering a return of the religious left:

Yet while secular politics are unwelcome in our church, I have noticed subtle shifts of late. The mood of the ministry and congregation is moving left. The music is moving toward a folk-rock sound of the 1960s and 1970s. Youth ministers wear berets and soul patches. The younger ministers don’t identify themselves as “Christians” but as “Jesus followers.” I would guess that most of them are Obama supporters, but I don’t ask.

To my thinking, "Christian" is ideally something that other people should call you because of what they see in you, rather than something you'd necessarily call yourself. "Follower of Christ" doesn't do much for me, since Jesus had a lot of people following him around during his ministry, perhaps just for the food. Personally, I like "Imitator of Christ" myself (more on that later).

America’s religious left seems to be mounting a comeback. I’m happy for this development, even though my own tilt is to the right.

The religious left has a distinguished past in American history. It led the abolition fight in the 19th century. It led the civil rights movement in the 20th century. Organizations like the Red Cross grew out of progressive Christianity.

Yes, and I think the basis of America's welfare program appealed to our country's Christian heritage and the well-meaning desire to do good and to help the poor. That welfare has had the un-Christian effect of destroying families and perpetuating multi-generational poverty also has to be acknowledged — something the religious left is loathe to do. It has also been, at best, ambivalent about abortion, and its infatuation and even outright embrace of communist and socialist totalitarianism from the Soviets to Castro, Ortega on through Chavez, and it's apparent commitment to replacing God with Government throughout U.S. policy is also disturbing. (That's not to say the Religious Right hasn't supported it's share of dictators and made its own alliances of convenience).

The strange disappearance of America’s religious left during the 1970s has been noted but not examined much. My own guess is that drugs, music, sex, New Age religions, body worship, tree worship, earth worship and so forth, siphoned off an entire generation of seekers who had previously found their mystic/activist fulfillment in the left hemisphere of Christianity.

Now one detects that many old hippies, and sons and daughters of hippies, are returning to progressive Christianity.

We’ll see how this plays out politically. If there must be a left, then let's cheer for a religious and not an atheistic left. However, I do think the trend benefits Democrats and is one reason why Democratic primary voter turnout has far excelled Republican voter turnout this year. The mainstream secular media, as usual, has utterly missed this story.

I think I agree with Karlgaard that if there's going to be a left let it be a religious left rather than an atheistic one. My caveat, and especially my prayer (for both the left and the right) is that the focus is on seeking and doing God's will, ideally by trying to be like Christ.

Earlier I mentioned being an "imitator" of Christ. Because we're all human (left and right), it is an easy step to try and move from "imitator" to "impersonator", wherein we try to rule by proclamation as if we, ourselves, were God. That's certainly long been a fear and a warning from the left side of the church aisle regarding the motivations of the right, while the left's own similar tendencies are ignored or attributed to "doing good" or "meaning well."

My belief is that any "theocracy", whether left or right, is fatally flawed by our own human imperfections and tendency to turn moves into movements; movements into monuments; and, ultimately, monuments into mausoleums. By all means, we should pursue faith in our lives and we should hope that our personal beliefs will be reflected in our public behavior individually and through policy. Our responsibilities to the poor (and the poor's responsibilities to God and others); to be stewards of the earth; to deal ethically and compassionately with others are all things that must be done and honored by individuals, not discharged to a collective or government to be taken care of while we blithely go our own selfish way. As I've written here before, if God asks me if I helped the poor (as if He doesn't already know) I don't think He's going to be impressed if I say, "Well, I paid my taxes." Being religiously left or right, highly taxed or not, doesn't lessen our responsibilities to do something on an individual basis, no matter how many marches, protests or church services we go to.

We often hear the phrase, "What would Jesus do?" as a guide to behavior. I suppose that's all right as far as it goes. A better statement might be, "What is Jesus doing?" and then trying to line up with that. If we believe Jesus is still at work around us, and not that He's gone off and left us to our own freedom-eroding devices, we can purpose to look for those things and and align ourselves accordingly. I urge those of the religious left, and my friends on the religious, to put our focus on glorifying God, not our own group or idealogy. If we can do that — though we may disagree from time to time — I think we'll be all right.

Back in the day, and I mean really back in the day when I had an Apple IIe computer and a computer game called Castle Wolfenstein. The game was on a 5" floppy disk and was essentially a puzzle maze where you were a WWII Allied prisoner trying to escape from the lowest dungeons of an old castle turned Nazi fortress. Graphically it was about as crude as it could be, and by crude I mean laughably simplistic by today's standards. It was a one-color, two-dimensional, third-person shooter where the game characters were essentially stick figures whose arms would only extend at 45 and 90 degree angles to shoot at other characters. To "kill" a Nazi guard you had to maneuver around the screen and try to plink him before he got you. If you succeeded, your victim fell over like a tree in the forest. Nevertheless it was hours of fun as you worked your way through various rooms, traps and puzzles while searching crates for keys, ammo, grenades and bullet proof vests.

A few years later I was using a company laptop and one day in a clearance bin I saw an updated version of "Wolfenstein" on a diskette advertising new, 3-D graphics. "Cool," I thought, and plunked down the $5, took the game home and loaded it up, finding myself in a full-color dungeon, armed with a Luger. I worked my way around a corner and a uniformed guard came rushing at me. I raised my gun and fired and — HIS HEAD EXPLODED! Blood, meat and brains went flying and I actually felt a little ill. In this case the graphics were, well, graphic and unbelievably "crude" but not in the same way as the first game. I later learned that the updated game was based on the "Doom" game engine — quite a leap forward from the tin-man stick figures of my old game. I decided it was too intense for me and turned it off, never to go back to it.

Even then, of course, the "new" graphics were still not as realistic as they are now; the game, after all, was on a little 3" diskette, running on a computer with a processor that would embarrass a calculator today. Today's games and game engines are highly advanced, technically, but some are still as base as they can be in their renderings of violence. I've changed, too, of course and I don't mind a little of the ultra-violence in a game as long as it's not too real. I've hacked and slashed my way through orcs, trolls, bug-bears, goblins and fire-breathing demon dogs without flinching (Baldur's Gate II) or sniped German storm-troopers (Brothers In Arms) while still looking forward to lunch, but while these games are well-rendered the "dead" aren't excessively gory and they thoughtfully disappear soon after falling. I've even played these with my youngest daughter, a sweet-natured girl who used to cry if someone fell off a horse in a TV show, but who now snickers if she gets the drop on a mummy and dispatches it with a spinning kick.

Perhaps this isn't the nicest daddy-daughter activity we can engage in, but I know that there are games out there that are much worse and that strive to outdo each other in replicating the most realistic dismemberments. These games typically have "M" for "Mature" ratings. These games do not come into my house. I was thinking of this today when I read the news story that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals had struck down (how violent!) a law banning selling "mature" or "adults only" video games.

Minnesota may not enforce a law restricting the sale or rental of "adults only" or "mature" video games to minors, according to an opinion issued Monday by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-judge panel said the court previously has held that violent video games are protected free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. For that reason, the law can only be upheld if it is proven "necessary to serve a compelling state interest and ... is narrowly tailored to achieve that end," the panel ruled.

As I read it I was also thinking about the day a few years ago when I went into the video arcade at Valley Fair and watched an expert player using both pistols on the big-screen "House of the Dead" game to mow down realistic, nearly life-sized zombies and monsters. He was fast and unhesitant. He was accurate and stylish, often using the turn-the-gun-sideways grip so popular in today's action movies. He was about eight years old. I wondered then if maybe something inside a young person doesn't get seared a bit from playing a game as graphic as that (or even an older person for that matter). Could you "play" enough so that the real thing wouldn't seem like that big of a deal?

About 15 years ago I was at a conference where we were all taken out to a dude ranch for the evening's entertainment. One of the things you could do was engage in a quick-draw contest with a friend. In this you each had an authentic style and weight double-action revolver in a leather holster. You actually faced each other from about six feet away and when the cowpoke "referee" gave the signal you'd draw, work the double-action, aim at your opponent and pull the trigger. Sensors determined who fired first, while the referee determined if your gun was pointed in an "effective" manner. My friend Nick and I faced off three times; each time he won. The ref looked at me and shook his head. "Dude," he said (it was a dude ranch, after all), "you're clearing leather and cocking the gun ahead of him every time, but you don't pull the trigger fast enough.

"Really?" I said. "I don't feel like I'm hesitating." We tried three more times, each time I focused on pulling the trigger with grim resolution. Three more times I died. I just couldn't overcome the split-second hesitation, even though I knew the gun was fake and the action wasn't for real. The ref just shook his head. "You're a cold-hearted bastard, Nick," I told my partner. He rather enjoyed that.

Somehow I don't think the little kid I saw playing the game at Valley Fair would hesitate. This is a good thing, perhaps, if you're under zombie attack for real but since that doesn't happen much when the legislature isn't in session I wonder if, all in all, it's not such a good thing. I also wonder at the bizarre reasoning of the 8th Circuit Court which based it's ruling in large part that graphic violence is protected as free speech and therefore can't be restricted, even by age. Which, in turn, makes me wonder if the Court will now repeal motion picture ratings and allow over-the-counter sales of pr0n magazines to 10-year-olds under the same logic.

I'd like to be just as sophisticated and blasé about the potential impact of the CG-enhanced violence in games available to kids and the TV shows and movies that are so accessible. The scientists, after all, assure us that there's a negligible effect. "Tosh," I'll think to myself, "the schools and parents are doing an excellent job of teaching manners, respect and impulse-control to today's young men. What's the worst that can happen?" And then I'll turn from the comics page to the local news section.

A young man upset about a girlfriend issue takes a rock in a sock to a knife fight and is killed by two other young men. Another man beats his friend to death with a baseball bat. A five-year-old boy takes a knife to school in order to threaten his gym teacher. A 15-year-old boy points a replica gun at police officers, who respond with real bullets. The last article appeared in the paper two days ago, the first three articles, along with the story about the court ruling, were all in today's paper. I'm sure it's all just coincidence.

Let's play two.

Update:

Then there's this: Five arrested with weapons outside St. Paul school. Three of the five are minors.

A politician caught cheating on his wife with a prostitute?
Ho-hum.

China abusing human rights only months before the Olympics?
Shocked, I'm shocked, I tell you (not).

Someone with the Hillary campaign caught saying something negative about Obama?
Yeah, never saw that coming.

An Obama staffer calls Hillary a "monster"?
Paging Captain Obvious.

A Minnesota DFL legislator's knee jerk reaction to a problem is to ban something?
Is the Pope Catholic?

But Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island gets caught with dope?
Ok, let me off here, this world is getting way too weird.

“We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth... This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.”
— Thomas Jefferson

I just spent a week away from my children. Curiously enough, I spent a surprising amount of this time thinking and talking about home education.

One afternoon I played golf with a fun couple who have two boys, aged 4 and 2, who are nicknamed "Search" and "Destroy." The mom had learned from my wife the evening before that we home educate and was interested in what was involved. I heard the usual questions from her about college admissions (colleges are now, in fact, actively recruiting home-schooled teens) and socialization (personally, I'm more concerned about socialism).

I told her that my children had always had a wide circle of friends their age, either cousins or kids from church or even the neighborhood, but also had had the experience of talking to and working closely with adults on a one-on-one basis. One of the results of this, in my opinion, is that my daughters have always been poised and comfortable whenever they speak with non-parental adults. They are respectful, but not awed or overcome with shyness or cupidity. In short, they act as if talking to other, older people is completely natural (imagine that!). Interestingly enough, the woman I was talking to and her husband spend a great deal of time (and earn a fair amount of money) trying to teach adults to regain or re-engage the child-like creativity and imagination they had had before years of education and "socialization" had beaten it out of them.

Two days later I was in the home of my wife's cousin Kay and her husband, Adrian. With us were, I think, 9 of their 11 kids, plus a few sons- and daughters-in-law (and a prospective daughter-in-law) and their own children. We were enthusiastically and effortlessly added to the dinner table where our presence scarcely created a ripple. I think that with this many kids and grandkids around on a regular basis, most of Kay's recipes start with "Take one whole cow..." One of the things you can't help but notice, besides the number, is how fresh-faced and attentive all the young folks are, even the ones that have married in. Kay home-educated all of her children, some of whom are currently pursuing college degrees.

Normally when I'm around a family gathering of this size the rising clamor will eventually start to get to me, raising my blood-pressure and level of discomfort. This night, however, though there was a steady hub-bub, I had nothing but a feeling of peace, though I'd scarcely met any of these people before that night. Several of the children cycled through our table talk as the evening rolled on, with every age having something to contribute to the conversation.

The next morning we met Adrian, Kay and their oldest son, David, at their favorite local restaurant for breakfast. One of the topics that came up was the recent California appellate court ruling requiring home-schooling parents to have a teaching certificate. More compelling was one judge's written opinion:

"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws."

Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

The ruling sent shock waves throughout the estimated 166,000 home-educators in California as well as through the California legislature and even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said, "Every California child deserves a quality education, and parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts, and, if the courts don't protect parents' rights, then, as elected officials, we will." Interestingly enough, Schwarzenegger's signing of SB777 last year may be one of the things that have led many parents to abandon the public schools. Give the Governator credit though; he may not be great at logic but he definitely knows how to count votes and probably realizes that whatever other political beliefs a homeschooling family may have, telling them that they have no right to educate their own children trumps them all.

Personally, I'm not shocked. California has long been the most overtly hostile state toward home-educators (ironically it's own school system struggles to place a certified teacher in every classroom, yet would seek to mandate it in every home-school). Similarly, Education Minnesota has no love lost for home-educators and my hunch is that they wouldn't mind if their pet DFL pupils in the Minnesota legislature were to bring them a similar bill as if it were a bright, shiny apple.

Of course, it takes a real socialist mentality to proclaim that the State is the rightful owner of your children, as I've documented before regarding events in England and Germany. The Germans, in fact, are still embracing the 1937 law instituted by a certain mustachioed megalomaniac that mandates compulsory state school educations. Seventy years later they're still enforcing it by forceably taking kids from their homes to school in police cars or even removing children from their parents' homes and hiding them in psychiatric hospitals for evaluation.

Many home-school parents in California are having to consider possibly leaving the state. That's a drastic measure for sure, but one that has had to be taken by many German parents, as described by Sheila Lange in her blog, Trying to Homeschool in Germany, which details the personal struggles of her own family (now living in South Africa) and other home-school German families.

Of course, that's all happening very far away, in Germany or even California, right? Closer to home, former Nebraska state senator Peter Hoagland is on record as saying, "Fundamentalist parents have no right to indoctrinate their children in their beliefs. We are preparing their children for the year 2000 and life in a global one-world society and those children will not fit in."

Especially not if I can help it.