Notice that Wisconsin becomes three states. Blue Wisconsin runs from Grant County to Milwaukee. Superior includes the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, neighboring northern Wisconsin counties, and part of Minnesota.
Northern Wisconsin’s antipathy to Madison is, in my experience, nonpartisan — they generally think official Wisconsin ignores anything north of Wisconsin 29. The state of Blue Wisconsin is too large, given that Grant County is represented by Republicans in the Legislature, and I doubt Milwaukee’s suburbs want to identify themselves with Tom Barrett, Red Fred Kessler, Christine Sinicki, Lena Taylor, et al. As you know, though, if Madison through Milwaukee wanted to secede, that would be fine with me. (Perhaps they can change the names from Red Wisconsin to Working Wisconsin and Blue Wisconsin to Tax-Sucking Scum.)
Geraghty adds:
If Beck really means America is deeply politically divided, indeed, it is, but I’m not so sure our divisions would look that much better or different if Glenn Beck had remained a wacky “Morning Zoo” radio DJ his entire life. …
We’re a divided country because we have 317 million people, and at least two major strands of thought and philosophy about the role of the government.
It’s a broad generalization, but we have red states and blue states. Ideally, we would have let each part of the country live the way they want, as long as its laws didn’t violate the Constitution. You want high taxes and generous public benefits? Go ahead and have them; we’ll see if your voters vote with their feet. Let Illinois be Illinois, and let South Carolina be South Carolina. …
The country would be “torn apart” less if we were allowed to address more of our public-policy problems on a local or state basis. But anti-federalism is in the cellular structure of liberalism. All of their solutions are “universal,” “comprehensive,” or “sweeping.” Everything must be changed at once, for everyone, with no exceptions. Perhaps it’s a good approach for some other species, but not human beings.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable … Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values — that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
National Review’s Jim Geraghty writes about Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who reports:
“I spend more time with voters than anybody else,” Luntz says. “I do more focus groups than anybody else. I do more dial sessions than anybody else. I don’t know [squat] about anything, with the exception of what the American people think.”
It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. “They want to impose their opinions rather than express them,” is the way he describes what he saw. “And they’re picking up their leads from here in Washington.” Haven’t political disagreements always been contentious, I ask? “Not like this,” he says. “Not like this.”
Luntz knew that he, a maker of political messages and attacks and advertisements, had helped create this negativity, and it haunted him. But it was Obama he principally blamed. The people in his focus groups, he perceived, had absorbed the president’s message of class divisions, haves and have-nots, of redistribution. …
The entitlement he now hears from the focus groups he convenes amounts, in his view, to a permanent poisoning of the electorate—one that cannot be undone. “We have now created a sense of dependency and a sense of entitlement that is so great that you had, on the day that he was elected, women thinking that Obama was going to pay their mortgage payment, and that’s why they voted for him,” he says. “And that, to me, is the end of what made this country so great.”
To which Geraghty replies:
Imagine if the most bland and milquetoast president had been in office since January 20, 2009. Instead of electing uber-celebrity munificent Sun-King Barack Obama, we elected President Boring Center-Left Conventional Wisdom — the genetic hybrid of David Gergen, David Brooks, Tom Friedman, and Cokie Roberts.
America would still have endured the Wall Street crash of late 2008 and the Great Recession. This recession (still ongoing, in the minds and experiences of millions of Americans) was driven by many factors but largely from the bursting of the housing bubble and the mortgage securities and asset-backed derivatives that came out of that. We can argue that better policies would have generated a more significant recovery from 2009 to 2012, but indisputably, America’s economy fell far and fast, and climbing back up to, say, 2007 levels of employment and average household-retirement savings was destined to be a long, slow, tough slog. All those folks employed in the housing bubble — the home builders, the construction guys, the realtors, the house-flippers, all that real-estate-advertising revenue, etc. — had to find some other work. And with the exception of the energy sector, there hasn’t been much of a boom in the U.S. economy in the past five years.
At the same time, we spent most of 2001 to 2009 absorbing millions of illegal immigrants, and the unskilled labor was flooding the market for the few unskilled labor jobs out there. The multi-decade decline of American manufacturing hasn’t abated much, schools and universities continued to pump out new American workers who are only partially prepared for the reality of the modern job market, and new technology continues to wreak havoc in established industries (ask Newsweek). Competition from cheaper labor overseas continues unabated. The era of spending your career at one company is gone. The era of traditional defined-contribution pension plans is gone. The era of a college degree automatically providing a ticket to a white-collar job and middle-class lifestyle is gone.
Economic anxiety is baked in the cake in American life right now. It’s not that surprising that a lot of our fellow countrymen are receptive to a message seeking scapegoats. In other words, even under President Cokie Gergen Friedman Brooks, Luntz would be seeing a similar cranky, resentful, demanding mood in the electorate. This president may be particularly skilled at opportunistically exploiting that anxiety to further his agenda — in fact, it may be the only thing he’s really good at — but it’s not like he invented it, nor like he’s the only one to ever practice it (remember Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich calling Mitt Romney a ‘vulture capitalist’?), nor like he’ll be the last to try it.
If Luntz is right that a large chunk of the American electorate has turned angry, entitled, resentful, and spiteful — and I’ll bet a lot of us have suspected this in the past year or five — then it is indeed ominous for the next few elections, and suggests American life will get worse before it gets better.
But there’s also an upside to this, at least for us. Because it means large numbers of our fellow countrymen are embracing a philosophy and attitude that is destined to fail them and leave them miserable. Anybody who sits and waits for the government to improve his life is going to get stuck in endless circles of disappointment, anger, self-destructive rage, and despair.
We would be foolish if we told ourselves that being conservative means we’ve gotlife all figured out. We all have our flaws, our foibles, our sins, and our moments of not practicing what we preach. But if you’re conservative, you’ll probably manage to avoid certain mistakes and pitfalls on this journey called life.
If you’re conservative, you’ve probably learned that there’s no substitute for hard work. Even great talent can only get you so far, particularly if you don’t apply yourself. Yes, luck is a factor, but we also acknowledge that old saying, “the harder I work, the luckier I get.”
If you’re conservative, you probably at least try to embrace individual responsibility — meaning you realize the quality of your life is primarily up to you — and there’s no point in blaming mommy or daddy, no point in blaming the boss, no point in blaming society at large, no point in complaining that life isn’t fair. It isn’t. We can’t control a lot of things. The only thing we can control is how we react to things.
If you’re conservative, you hopefully don’t spend much time worrying about or grumbling about somebody else who’s doing well for themselves. You want to figure out how to join them! Or at least “do well” enough for yourself and your family, and maybe have a little something left over to help out somebody who really needs it.
If you’re conservative, you may or may not believe in a higher power, but you probably believe in right and wrong and you’re wary of people who talk about the world as a murky blur of grey and endorse a moral relativism. You know doing the wrong thing catches up with you sooner or later. You know the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and life’s bad guys are always insisting that the ends justify the means.
If you’re conservative, you believe there’s evil in the world, and we’re not likely to successfully sweet-talk with it, negotiate with it, ignore it, or reason with it. Confronting it, on terms most beneficial to us, or containing it seem to be the best options. …
Both liberals and conservatives were appalled by the administration’s management and handling of Obamacare rollout, but only the liberals were surprised. (Well, maybe we were surprised at just how epic the failure was.) We don’t expect government to do a lot of things right. We don’t count on it to immanentize the eschaton — to build God’s Kingdom, or utopia, on earth.But year in and year out, the Left always convinces itself anew that government can do it — even after it completely botches a website and fails to tell the president before the unveiling.
Those boys are grown up now, and they are dads. And they don’t want to be like their dad. They want something different.
We have unrealistic expectations for fathers.
So more men are leaving the workforce than ever before. But when men stay home, they are largely disrespected as incompetent breadwinners. And the men who choose work all the time are largely disrespected as incompetent parents. If they try to do a little of both, they are not particular standouts in either. (I’m struck by the art world’s depiction of this problem. For example, Nathan Sawaya‘s sculpture pictured above, and a comic strip from Zen Pencils that depicts the problem.)
The other challenge to being a standout breadwinner is that you almost always need a big city. Most people imagine themselves raising their kids in a metropolitan area. But the truth is that it costs a lot of money.
Most men will not make enough money to afford living in the right kind of metropolitan area. The number of men who will make $150K after the age of 35 is tiny. First of all, if you want to be making $150K after 40 you need to be making it at age 35. Which means you need to be clearing $100K at age 30. (And places like Singapore, Tokyo, and Bermuda don’t count. Because you won’t be able to make that much back in the US. Your market is artificially inflated.) …
We have unrealistic expectations for husbands.
So let’s say you are 35 and you’re ready to get married. You have a three choices:
1. You earn enough to support a family in a metropolitan area. (You need to reliably earn $150K for the next 15 years – unlikely.)
3. You move to a small town where your career is limited but the cost of living is low. (Negotiate this before you get married.)
The problem is that men don’t like to hear that these are their choices. So men pretend that their salary will continue to rise in their 30s at the same pace it rose in their 20s.
There is not a contemporary template that works for most men.
I fortunately did not have the experience of being “raised by a dad who is never around.” (My parents celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary today.) The number of children with absent fathers isn’t shrinking, however. It’s one thing for parents to get married, have children, and then divorce; it’s another when the first step is skipped entirely and children never, or rarely, see their fathers. Everyone needs role models, and more than one per gender.
Two reader comments stand out, the first of which is this blog’s headline:
I think we are all screwed. I don’t think the pressure of unrealistic expectation is unique to men and fathers. These exact same thoughts and discussions are ones that I’ve had as a 30 year old woman and mom. What is it about humans today that there is the expectation of perfection in all aspects of your life. Get a good job, push push push up the ladder, don’t slack the young guns are at your heels, make a marriage work, raise amazing kids, don’t age, and try to look happy doing it. Seriously, it’s exhausting. I know I’m tired.
I think what’s changed is feminism, frankly. Much as I admire intelligent women with real jobs, it messes up the whole family dynamic. The woman now feels she has to hold down the high-powered job or she’s betraying all that women have worked for. The guy feels he should be doing more at home with the kids even if he doesn’t want to. They are both worried about how their jobs compare to one another.
They are also both worried about falling out of the “educated power couple” group. They absolutely don’t want to be in the “middle class, boring job, low ambition” group. That’s seen as low class, and doomed. The feeling is that between automation and globalization, all those “flyover country blue collar” types are going to suffer terribly. Don’t be in that group!
What’s happening: the middle income group and middle income jobs are really, really shrinking, so more and more people have to work crazy hours to try to get to the top just to make a living wage, since lower paid jobs are part time and poverty level. One middle income job no longer pays enough to raise a family in an expensive area (but even those jobs are more concentrated in expensive areas). And job security isn’t what it once was, so you can’t plan on a long career with one company, you have to remain competitive and be prepared to move on. We have to live *in* this system as individuals, and figure out how to raise families in a time of insecurity and wage stagnation, but it’s not just a cultural phenomenon and it’s not just the result of individual choices.
Another comment suggests avoiding the corporate world entirely and …
I often advise people with enough talent and experience to start their own business. While risky, it is perhaps less risky than staying in the corporate world nowadays. And, there is more potential to create a “portable” business that does not have to stay in an expensive metro area.
To which Trunk said …
Yes, I agree. Starting your own company is one of the best solutions to the problem. But it definitely falls into the high risk category that most people aren’t willing to do. Most people just don’t have the stomach for that sort of risk.
On top of that, I coach so many people who want to start their own company, but they don’t have an idea. For most people coming up with a viable idea for a company is nearly impossible.
(Or, alternatively, they can come up with the idea, but can’t handle the business basics, such as day-to-day accounting.)
Someone on the Classic Television Facebook page put together photo montages of TV shows that premiered in particular years, such as my birth year, 1965:
What’s amusing to me about this montage is that I did indeed watch several of these shows, in order as shown on the graphic:
This list is in addition to shows that were already on the air in 1965. (Reruns of “The Big Valley” replaced my first favorite show, “Circus 3” on WISC-TV in Madison, so I refuse to list it, whether or not Linda Evans was on it.) I didn’t see all of these in their original runs; the various retro TV channels were my first viewing of some of them.
This is what was on TV at the beginning of the 1965–66 TV season:
It comes from Rev. Mike Donahue, pastor (who married us) and football coach who probably could also announce the games he’s coaching:
Every year it seems to get worse and I want to say in a loud voice “STOP!!!” I can not believe how much I read about people saying that the Democrats or Republicans are evil, not Christian, etc. I truly believe that Christ must be thinking “are you kidding me!”
To say that Jesus was a conservative is ludicrous. The word conservative means “one who adheres to traditional methods or views” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary). One thing is evident in scripture is that Jesus took on some of the traditional views of the time. He constantly challenged the established religious elite of the time. And let’s not forget the temper tantrum in the temple of flipping over the tables.
To say that Jesus was a liberal is also ludicrous. He said that he came to fulfill prophecy. He went and worshiped in the temple and new the Torah (Jewish Bible) with a level far advanced of his years. He was a Jew who followed the customs of the Jewish faith of the time. Don’t forget that the Last Supper was actually a celebration of Passover.
Jesus also said, “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s due.” Now I look at that statement a little different than maybe most…I don’t see it as just saying give the taxes that are due to the government, but rather we are to quit worrying about the government and put our focus on God.
What I am trying to say is let’s stop making our faith, God and Christ a political issue. I realize that, for some, my statements may seem a little strange coming from a “pastor,” but I believe with all my heart, mind and soul that for the most part Christians get it wrong. From the first page to the last the Bible is God’s love story to us. How are we demonstrating that love when we constantly attack other people because of political views?
My prayer for 2014 is that we stop politicizing God. Everyone has the right to the political view points, but let’s stop throwing Christ into that mix. Remember when our time comes and we stand before God, we will not be judged on whether or not we are republican or democrat but rather have we truly accepted Christ with all our heart, mind and soul!
Since we are about to run out of 2013, it’s time for That Was the Year That Was 2013, which like all the previous TWTYTWs is based on …
One year ago at this time, there were dire predictions of the death of the Republican Party, the tea party and the conservative movement because Barack Obama was reelected president. No one is saying that anymore, because the Obama administration has worked hard to validate the most dire predictions of a second Obama term even beyond the ObamaCare disaster.
The year started with the fiscal cliff and the Farm Bill cliff, the former of which was followed by a federal government slowdown, while the latter just got pushed back a year. But ObamaCare is going to be the gift that keeps on giving for Republicans, as (1) more people have policies canceled than get ObamaCare (let alone pay for it), and ObamaCare recipients find out that policies are (2) much more expensive but (3) deliver worse care.
We learned that the Internal Revenue Service harassed conservative groups to get them to shut up before the 2012 election. That, by any rational definition, should be an impeachable offense. (That was one of Richard Nixon’s articles of impeachment.) Obama continued his war against the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Second Amendment (though Obama has been great for the gun industry and gun dealers), but the First Amendment and other civil liberties too.
Five years after Obama took office, we have nearly 10 million more people in poverty. The U6 rate — the correct measure of unemployment, including people who want to work full-time but can only find part-time work, and those who have quit looking for work — has never been lower than the highest point during the George W. Bush presidency. Government debt is now more than 100 percent of gross domestic product. Hell of a job, Barack. (But if you criticize Obama, you’re racist.)
In addition, Obama is clearly a terrible manager, and that’s not merely my opinion. Politico reports:
After the HealthCare.gov debacle first exploded three months ago, President Barack Obama pleaded for people to cut him a little slack: “I wanted to go in and fix it myself, but I don’t write code.”
At his year-end news conference recently, he struck a different tone: “Since I’m in charge, obviously, we screwed it up.”
“We screwed it up” is not exactly the same thing as “I screwed it up.” Even so, those two quotes are mileposts on one of 2013’s biggest stories: Obama’s bumpy graduate-level education in management theory. …
The heart of the issue, many of these people say, is that Obama and his inner circle had scant executive experience prior to arriving in the West Wing, and dim appreciation of the myriad ways the federal bureaucracy can frustrate an ambitious president. And above all, they had little apparent interest in the kind of organizational and motivational concepts that typically are the preoccupation of the most celebrated modern managers.
“No one asked you to write code or be a technical expert, but the expectation is you can set up a process,” said Kellogg School of Management professor Daniel Diermeier. “Companies do it every day.” …
The critiques from these experts also raise a broader issue: Historically, the presidency is a political office, or, at its best, what Franklin D. Roosevelt called “a position of moral leadership.”
Just two modern presidents came to the office identified primarily with large-scale organizational achievements: Dwight D. Eisenhower in World War II and Herbert Hoover for leading European famine relief after World War I. Hoover’s failure, in particular, damaged the notion that effective managers necessarily make effective presidents.
It is also a fact, however, that Obama came to office with less executive experience — precisely none — than any president since Gerald Ford. …
“Where we’re seeing these costs are with the largest policy processes in the administration,” said John Hudak, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “So it’s easier to sort of smooth over or tuck away some of the small-ball managerial failures, but this is a really big one and one that requires a lot of managerial expertise and it just wasn’t there and it’s not there in the White House.” …
“Have you created an environment where it is not only OK, but it is rewarded to raise your hand early and say, ‘This worries me’?” one longtime management consultant said. “The worst technique that happens in a lot of organizations is it’s simply macho pressure. ‘Well, you gotta get it done.’ That feels good for about 30 seconds, then you’re back in deep sh—.” …
To listen to Obama discuss the rollout through the fall, he was still figuring out some of the finer points, too. If he had known healthcare.gov wasn’t going to work by its launch date, he said in mid-November, “I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great.”
“In management circles, that’s an indictment,” said the longtime consultant. “How could you not know? And if no one told you, you’re still culpable for that too.”
The global warming/climate change/whatever-it-is-it’s-man’s-fault types refuse to shut up in the face of their disappearing credibility. In fact, Mike Smith, who unlike Al Gore is an actual meteorologist, says:
Again in 2013, the world experienced another year where temperatures were well below predicted levels, in spite of ever-rising levels of carbon dioxide.
Now, after a decade and a half of no real warming and temperatures remaining far colder than forecast, we taxpayers can, and should, ask whether governments should continue spending huge ($165 Billion and climbing) amounts of money on something that may not even be a serious threat. …
So, increasing the already proliferate spending on global warming to a mind-numbing $450 billion per year versus $1.3 billion per year to bring clean drinking water and modern sanitation to most of the people in Africa who need it.
Which is the more worthy cause?
According to UNICEF, 6,000 people, mostly children, die each day in Africa from waterborne diseases and poor sanitation!Put another way, by spending 0.29% of the proposed spending on global warming for a speculative goal (we can really control the weather?), we could save 80% of those deaths by using proven technology!
Think about that number: 2,200,000 lives saved for less than 1%
of what we are spending on global warming.
Right now, during the Antarctic summer, we have a bunch of global warming zealots stuck in the ice because they believed their own propaganda about the ice shrinking when it is really growing. Three ships have tried to rescue them without success. Think about the pollution this is adding to the region! Their rescuers have been put in harm’s way because of the zealot’s disregard for the scientific facts.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin (which, in our most southern parts, has already seen two nights of double-digit-below-zero lows), the state Legislature cut taxes, something a Democratic Legislature and governor would never do, though the tax cut was really insufficient compared to what I proposed. But state tax cutting is not necessarily over, after Walker floated the trial balloon of eliminating the state income tax. (Which won’t happen, and maybe shouldn’t happen, but it’s nice to hear something from a politician other than “we need more revenue.”)
I’m not going to go through the controversies du jour, ranging from Miley Cyrus to “Duck Dynasty.” I’ve forgotten others. They eventually go away, because everything in pop culture eventually goes away except pop culture itself.
Starting shortly after my birth, my parents purchased Christmas albums for $1 from an unlikely place, tire stores.
(That’s as unusual as getting, for instance, glasses every time you filled up at your favorite gas station, but older readers might remember that too, back in the days when gas stations were usually part of a car repair place, not a convenience store.)
The albums featured contemporary artists from the ’60s, plus opera singers and other artists.
These albums were played on my parents’ wall-length Magnavox hi-fi player.
Playing these albums was as annual a ritual as watching “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or other holiday-season appointment TV.
Those albums began my, and then our, collection of Christmas music.
You may think some of these singers are unusual choices to sing Christmas music. (This list includes at least six Jewish singers.)
Of course, Christians know that Jesus Christ was Jewish.
And I defy any reader to find anyone who can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand did in the ’60s.
These albums are available for purchase online, but record players are now as outmoded as, well, getting glasses with your fill-up at the gas station.
But thanks to YouTube and other digital technology, other aficionados of this era of Christmas music now can have their music preserved for their current and future enjoyment.
The tire-store-Christmas-album list has been augmented by both earlier and later works.
In the same way I think no one can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand, I think no one can sing “Do You Hear What I Hear” like Whitney Houston:
This list contains another irony — an entry from “A Christmas Gift for You,” Phil Spector’s Christmas album. (Spector’s birthday is Christmas.)
The album should have been a bazillion-seller, and perhaps would have been had it not been for the date of its initial release: Nov. 22, 1963.
Finally, here’s a previous iteration of one of the currently coolest TV traditions — “The Late Show with David Letterman” and its annual appearance of Darlene Love (from the aforementioned Phil Spector album):
After a great deal of speculation wondering whether or not he would, Gov. Scott Walker signed the Indian tribal mascot bill.
Walker’s statement channeled the inner libertarian no one knew he had:
“I am very concerned about the principle of free speech enshrined in our U.S. Constitution. If the state bans speech that is offensive to some, where does it stop? A person or persons’ right to speak does not end just because what they say or how they say it is offensive. Instead of trying to legislate free speech, a better alternative is to educate people about how certain phrases and symbols that are used as nicknames and mascots are offensive to many of our fellow citizens. I am willing to assist in that process.
“With that in mind, I personally support moving away from nicknames or mascots that groups of our fellow citizens find seriously offensive, but I also believe it should be done with input and involvement at the local level.”
Well, maybe he does see it as a First Amendment issue. The cynical view is that Indian tribes give neither votes nor money to Republicans, whereas conservatives would be offended by a veto, so Walker signed the bill.
Regardless of motive, Walker did the right thing. There is no, and has never been any, intent to pick a nickname or mascot for the purpose of self-denigration. Complaints about self-esteem and institutional racism are a bunch of politically correct horse manure.
For some inexplicable reason, the state Democratic Party felt the need to send a news release with quotes from someone named Arvina Martin, listed as “(Ho-Chunk, Stockbridge-Munsee), chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin American Indian Caucus:
“In a time where public opinion moves against the use of American Indian imagery as school mascots, I am saddened that Governor Walker decided to take Wisconsin backwards by signing AB 297, regarding race based mascots in our public schools into law.
“Walker falsely claims that signing this legislation will protect the free speech rights of school districts while failing to realize that First Amendment does not allow government programs, in this case, schools, to offend, harm or otherwise discriminate against citizens.
“With a stroke of his pen, Governor Walker ignored the statements of many, both American Indian and non-American Indian, in order to push through legislation that does nothing but further marginalize American Indians in our state.”
Martin, not surprisingly, didn’t consult those with opposing views before her blanket “public opinion” statement. Consider a newspaper poll in an area with numerous Indian-nicknamed high schools, asking whether high schools should be required to change their Indian nicknames:
Yes: 24.
No: 174.
“It depends on the nickname”: 70.
Only a PC-sodden reading of the First Amendment allows protection from being “offend”ed. I wonder how opponents of abortion rights feel about government funds — that is, their own tax dollars — funding abortions. I suspect they are considerably more than offended, but what is their recourse? None. For that matter, I am offended that state legislators make as much money by themselves as the average family in this state. To quote John Cougar Mellencamp, my opinion means nothing.
Since I had never heard of Martin before last week, I have no idea if she’s an elected official somewhere. I certainly hope she never becomes an elected official outside a reservation, because her view of the First Amendment is an offense by itself.
The head of the state’s education establishment, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, isn’t happy either:
“The children of Wisconsin are not served well when legislation makes it more difficult for citizens to object to discrimination they see in local schools. There is a growing body of research documenting the negative educational outcomes associated with the use of American Indian mascots, logos, and nicknames. Yet this new law requires the signatures of 10 percent of a school district’s membership to file a complaint about an Indian mascot or logo. In no other situation of harassment, stereotyping, bullying, or discrimination must an individual gather signatures from others to have the matter considered by a government body.
“While many local school districts have moved away from race-based mascots, there are a few left.
Civil rights issues have seldom been resolved locally. This law is a disservice to the children of Wisconsin and their education.”
Evers is not only himself “a disservice to the children of Wisconsin and their education”; now he’s throwing not-so-veiled threats. (Since court challenges to school mascots have failed anywhere, I’d suspect Evers’ threat is an empty threat, except that you can’t guarantee that in an Obama appointee-poisoned federal judicial system.) To make this is a civil rights issue is to cheapen the entire concept of civil rights. (And it once again makes me wonder why in the world Wisconsin conservatives cannot find a candidate to remove Evers and his predecessors of the last 40 or so years and find an advocate for the two groups of people whose opinion should count in schools — parents and taxpayers — more by far than they do.)
As long as we’re being cynical here, I’m surprised an obvious solution didn’t come to the minds of tribal leadership. The tribes are making millions of dollars every day from their Wisconsin casinos. School districts are living in fiscally lean times, thanks to the abuses of government of the past. Most of the school districts with Indian mascots probably would have been just fine with changing them had the tribes been willing to pay the costs of the changeover — athletic uniforms, school signage and so on.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 