The number one single today in 1966 was presumably played on the radio on days other than Mondays:
Today is the anniversary of the last Beatles U.S. single release, “Long and Winding Road” (the theme music of the Schenk Middle School eighth-grade Dessert Dance about this time in 1979):
The number one album today in 1977 was the Eagles’ “Hotel California”:
The number one British album today in 1972 was a Tyrannosaurus Rex double album, the complete title of which is “My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair … But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows”/”Prophets, Seers & Sages: The Angels of the Ages.” Really.
A high school classmate of mine who works in history found this this week:
This is from the Wisconsin State Journal 40 years ago Wednesday. (Pause while I wipe the tears from my eyes and loudly blow my nose over The March Of Time!)
The previous Saturday, April 30, 1977, I won the Madison City Spelling Bee in my third attempt. In those days, at least in Madison, if you won your elementary- or middle-school spelling bee you advanced to the city spelling bee. I won my spelling bees at Kennedy Elementary School in fourth and fifth grade, but obviously failed to win at the city level until I won my first Schenk (now Whitehorse) Middle School spelling bee in 1977.
Spelling bees were the first kind of competition in which I did reasonably well. Spelling bees are analogous to competing in a non-relay track event or swimming race, in that your success is based on what you do in comparison to what others do. Since I sucked (and still do) at athletics, and never was a very good musician, this was my thing for five years growing up.
Spelling today is, if not a dying art, then a seriously ill art, given creative spellings in the business world (“Kwik Trip”), spellcheck in word processing applications (though spellcheck doesn’t pick up homophones, a correctly spelled incorrect word), and abbreviations in social media. (IMHO. SMH. BTT.)
The 1977 bee was, for me, somewhat of a white-knuckle experience toward the end, even though I was a grizzled veteran of spelling bees by then. Similar to team sports, winning a spelling bee requires some luck in getting words you can spell (or at least correctly guess) and your competitors getting words they could not spell. My first city spelling bee in fourth grade was a two-and-done; the second word I got was “trellis” (a frame or structure of latticework used as a support for growing trees or plants), which I had never heard of, and that ended that. One year later, I got up near the top 10, but lost on “raiment” (clothing). In my fourth city spelling bee, in seventh grade, I finished 13th on “vacillate” (to waver in mind or opinion), another word I had never heard of. (I studied, but I guess I didn’t get down toward the end of the dictionary. As it was, I think I learned more words by reading them than being told to spell words in a dictionary.)
The word “thespian” probably doesn’t show up often in a sixth-grader’s vocabulary, so when I heard it it sounded to me like, well, a gay actress, but I figured out it ended with “=pian” and not “-bian” and got it right. Shortly thereafter the runner-up missed her word, I spelled it correctly, and then I got “vassal” (according to Dictionary.com “a person granted the use of land, in return for rendering homage, fealty, and usually military service or its equivalent to a lord or other superior”), another word not found in a sixth-grade vocabulary. (In those days, again with only one person advancing to the next level, if speller A missed his or her word, speller B had to spell that word correctly and then another word.) The first four letters were easy enough, but not the last two — “-al,” “-il” or “le”?
To quote the ancient knight in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” I chose … wisely. I got to bring home a traveling trophy that was half as tall as I was, and got on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal, along with a story in the Monona Community Herald (which I would end up working for, but you knew that).
A week later, I departed the state spelling bee after spelling “bagatelle” (something of little value or importance), again not a word in a sixth-grader’s vocabulary, correctly. The first eight letters seemed obvious, but was there a silent E at the end? I got to the last L, stopped, heard no reaction, and added the E. A woman sitting in the front row protested, and the judges decided that I meant “bagatell” instead of “bagatelle.”
Two years later, as longtime readers know …
… I returned to state as the city bee winner.
(Note, by the way, how fashions changed between 1977 and 1979. Plaid pants gave way to polyester disco shirts and pants, and though I hadn’t ditched the glasses yet, there was a lot more hair, though not as much as in the previous year.)
The story quotes me as saying that “declaration” and “drudgery” were two words I had a little difficulty with spelling. Truth be told, I really didn’t, other than to make sure I had the letters in the correct order. Winning the previous school bee made me 5-for-5 in winning school spelling bees, and apparently I was the first person to win two Madison spelling bees. (A girl in that 1979 bee became the first to win two consecutive city spelling bees. Interestingly, she was hearing-impaired.)
The state spelling bee the week afterward at my future high school went sort of like my first city spelling bee, a two-and-done, though on a word that, had I thought about it for a couple of seconds, I would have spelled correctly — “bailiff.” The night before I attended my middle school’s eighth-grade dessert dance, and sl0w-danced with five girls, three of whom I’d had crushes on at some point (along with perhaps half of the other girls in what would become the Class of 1983). So on Saturday afternoon my head was still back in Friday night. And that ended that, because there are no spelling bees in high school.
The bee format appears to have changed to where more than just the winner moves on. Wisconsin’s top three state-bee spellers advanced to the national bee. Advancing to the national bee appears to be now based on some sort of population formula, or perhaps number of organizations willing to sponsor a regional bee, given that Wisconsin had three national contestants, Iowa had two, and Illinois had 18. It’s kind of become like expanding the baseball playoffs from including only division winners to adding wild-cards, where, like the 1997 and 2003 Marlins, 2002 Angels, 2004 Red Sox, 2011 Cardinals and 2014 Giants, teams can win the World Series without winning their division. (Or the 2010 Packers, winners of Super Bowl XLV as the last NFC playoff team.) The state bee also had a rule, since rescinded, that if you won the state bee you couldn’t compete anymore. (From what I’ve read most national bee winners are not first-time national competitors, which makes sense.)
For those who haven’t moved on to something else by this point, you might be asking (other than why the hell did I write this) what I got out of the whole experience. (Other than embarrassment every time I misspell a word, though mistyping a word isn’t exactly the same thing as spelling it wrong.) It was the first experience in my life of being sort of locally famous, which as those who have achieved some fame know is a mixed blessing. With the exception of friends of mine (and you know who you are, Ruste), few of my classmates appeared to care much, though adults in my two schools did. (On my last day at Schenk, a teacher — not one I’d had for a class — actually thanked me for bringing positive recognition to the school. I didn’t know what to say.) Something similar happens now because my photo has been in publications I work for (and my face has shown up on TV), and it’s one of those strange experiences where more people know me than I know them.
Was it fun? Well … it was not like my UW Band experience or a successful athletic accomplishment (the latter certainly not based on personal experience, of course) in which your first thrill is the accomplishment and then you realize what a great experience you had along the way to that accomplishment. I certainly didn’t hate it (some people can spell well but don’t do well in bees because they get excessively nervous in competition), but I can’t say I have fond memories of, say, school spelling bees or traveling somewhere with my mother giving me words out of the dictionary to spell. The experience for me was just what it looked like: (1) walk up to microphone, (2) spell the word, (3) go back to your seat, (4) watch others spell correctly or not; lather, rinse, repeat. I remember the spelling bees where I won fondly (not that I think about them often), and the ones I didn’t win I don’t remember fondly. (Athletic competition is sald to provide more lessons in losses than in wins, in the sense that failures can teach more than successes. I’m not sure that translates to spelling bees — if you don’t know a word, you don’t know it — except that if you lose that could mean you needed to study more, or, in the case of the 1979 state bee, try focusing on what you’re supposed to be doing instead of something else.) Spelling wasn’t fun; winning was fun, and when I won, I was the only winner.
The experience also taught me that being smart (or, as the British put it, “clever”) isn’t really valued in our society. (Anyone who thinks this is a recent phenomenon due to the current president has not been paying attention well before now.) Part of it probably is that there are a lot of people who are threatened by someone who can do something better than that person can. Americans like to think of ourselves as a society striving for equality, but we also like to think of ourselves as a meritocracy, and the two concepts are somewhat at cross-purposes to each other. Part of it as well probably is because some smart people unintentionally make people feel inferior, or (particularly if they’re young) haven’t figured out interpersonal skills to not do that. (Some people, such as myself, like to claim that they don’t care what people think about them, but that’s not likely to be true.) Harry Truman famously said the world is run by C students, so intelligence does not necessarily translate to leadership skills; nor does it necessarily lead to sense or wisdom, as, well, whatever political debate you choose to cite proves.
Last year for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Time magazine did an online where-are-they-now feature. One spelling bee champion became a spelling bee coach. None profiled did what I did, go into journalism, one of the few lines of work that actually appreciates spelling ability. (Or where you get nailed for lack of spelling ability. However, the standard in print journalism is to write at an eighth-grade level, and words in more advanced spelling bees are well past eighth grade.)
Not in the Time story was Joanne Lagatta of Clintonville, the first and only Wisconsinite to win the national bee. (On “inappetence,” lack of appetite, and “antipyretic,” a drug used to combat fever.) She is now a pediatric physician, certainly a better profession for the world than journalism, though I wonder if she can use both of those words in the same sentence, such as “She gave her patient an antipyretic in part because the fever had caused her patient inappetence for several days.” Of course, given the rare use of those words, most people probably wouldn’t know what she was talking about, similar to the sentence in the title of this blog.
Yesterday was 5/4 Day, which brings up the subject of songs with unusual time signatures, for those musically inclined.
Wikipedia has (surprise!) an exhaustive list, most of which is from the classical genre, many of which are songs and time signatures you’ve never heard of. For some songs you have heard of, there’s Dave Brubeck, author of perhaps the most famous 5/4 song …
… using nine-beat measures …
… and 11/4 …
… Nine Inch Nails with 10-beat measures …
… Dionne Warwick, who had a 10/4 measure in a verse and an 11/4 measure in the chorus of …
… Radiohead …
… and Jethro Tull (which has one of the most famous 5/4 songs) in 10/4 and 13-beat measures …
… the Allman Brothers Band, which started a song with two 11/4 measures …
… the Beatles, which combined 11/8, 4/4 and 7/8 in the bridge of …
… along with 29-beat parts in …
… the 13/16 theme of “The Terminator” …
… Genesis, which was turned on (again) by 13/8, 8/8 and 5/8 …
… and Frank Zappa, which includes 19/16 and 21/16 parts in …
Another of the most famous 5/4 songs, Lalo Schifrin’s theme to “Mission: Impossible” …
… was unfortunately dumbed down to 4/4 for the movies after the opening of the first movie:
Want some more?
The number one single today in 1956 was this artist’s first, but certainly not last:
The number one single today in 1962:
I’m unaware of whether the soundtrack of “West Side Story” got any radio airplay, but since I played it in both the La Follette and UW marching bands, I note that today in 1962 the soundtrack hit number one and stayed there for 54 weeks:
The Wisconsin State Journal reports:
A sweeping Republican proposal to fund transportation and cut taxes would flatten income tax rates, lower the gas tax and raise new funding for roads by applying the sales tax to gasoline.
The goal of the plan, which is subject to change, is to hold gas prices steady by lowering the state’s 9.18 percent minimum markup on gas prices, according to Rep. John Macco, R-Ledgeview, chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.
That means more money for the transportation fund could come from the bottom lines of companies that benefit from higher retail gas prices under the minimum markup law — both large national retailers and locally owned stores. Critics, however, say the money could also end up coming from consumers at the pump.
“If we do it right, the price at the pump will be exactly the same,” Macco said.
One of the goals of the proposal is to cut borrowing in Gov. Scott Walker’s 2017-19 budget plan from $500 million to $200 million.
In addition to the transportation funding changes, the plan also includes the first steps in eventually creating a 4 percent flat income tax over the next 11 years, Macco said. He declined to offer specifics.
Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, the architect of the plan, declined to comment before it is presented to the Assembly Republican caucus on Thursday.
Macco, who has been briefed on the plan, agreed to discuss some of the details after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an outline Tuesday citing unnamed sources.
Under the current thinking, the gas tax would be reduced by 4 to 7 cents per gallon, Macco said. It is currently 30.9 cents per gallon. Also the minimum markup on gasoline — currently 9.18 percent — would be reduced so as to bring gas prices down another 7 cents, Macco said.
The Depression-era Unfair Sales Act prohibits retailers from selling merchandise at less than cost and also sets a minimum price for tobacco, alcohol and gasoline.
The gas price reductions would be offset by applying the 5 percent state sales tax and any local sales tax to gasoline, which currently costs $2.26 in Madison.
Asked about Kooyenga’s proposal after Tuesday’s Assembly session, Rep. John Nygren, who co-chairs the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, said only that the plan will be “revenue-neutral,” a term that typically means a proposal’s net impact to state revenues is zero when accounting for all tax and fee changes.
Walker offered a similar proposal during the 2014 gubernatorial election. He has discussed the Assembly transportation proposal with Kooyenga, but didn’t want to divulge details Tuesday because it is in flux.
“If people are talking about cutting the gas tax as a way of reforming the system as opposed to raising revenue, I think that’s certainly something worth looking at if it’s a reduction in the gas tax,” Walker said.
Walker has sparred openly with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, about how to resolve a nearly $1 billion shortfall in the transportation fund in the upcoming biennium.
Walker has proposed borrowing, delaying projects and using general fund taxes to pay for transportation, but he has said he will veto a gas tax increase. Vos has called for leaving all options on the table, including raising the gas tax as a long-term solution.
Democrats have called for indexing the gas tax to inflation, a way of raising money to pay for road projects that was eliminated in the 2005-07 budget.
Macco noted by applying the sales tax to gasoline, the amount of revenue the state receives will increase as gas prices increase, though it would also decrease as gas prices decrease.
Part of the reason transportation funding has stagnated is cars are becoming more fuel-efficient and people are buying less gasoline.
Brandon Scholz, executive director of the Wisconsin Grocers Association, panned the proposal, saying the minimum markup law doesn’t increase prices as much as opponents say it does. The result will be retailers passing on the cost of the sales tax increase to consumers, he said.
“This is a tax increase. This is not a tax decrease,” Scholz said. “It’s kind of a smoke-and-mirrors gig.” …
Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, said the proposal is a commentary on how far Assembly Republicans have to go to persuade Walker to support increased revenue for roads, especially when he previously said he would support a gas tax increase if there was an offsetting tax cut.
“It is truly amazing and amusing the number of hoops they have to jump through to effectively raise the gas tax and index it,” Berry said. “You can’t fault them for the creativity or the cleverness of it.”
It will be interesting to see where this proposal goes. Being revenue-neutral is good, because Wisconsin’s taxes should be cut, not increased.
One simple step that I’m surprised hasn’t come up before is to apportion sales taxes from motor vehicle purchases to road uses. That would mean that sales tax revenue couldn’t be used for something else, and government hates that.
The minimum markup on gasoline should be eliminated, not reduced.
If you are on Facebook, you have probably seen Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue about his son, who was born with heart defects and required heart surgery shortly after birth.
(When Kimmel mentioned the name of the heart defect, tetralogy of fallot, I immediately recognized it, because earlier in my career I covered, within a few months, stories about three babies with heart defects. One survived, one died, and I’m not sure what happened in the third case.)
Thankfully, Kimmel’s son apparently will be all right, though he will require more surgery. Unthankfully, Kimmel concluded his monologue by supporting something he should not support, Obamacare.
Michelle Malkin explains why:
Millions of American parents, myself included, have walked in Kimmel’s shoes. We’ve experienced the terrifying roller coaster of emotions — panic, helplessness, anger, anxiety, relief, grief, and unconditional love — that comes with raising chronically ill kids.
But Kimmel didn’t use his high-profile platform to educate the public about coping with rare diseases. Or to champion the nation’s best and brightest pediatric specialists and medical innovators. The Tinseltown celebrity turned his personal plight into a political weapon, which his liberal friends were all too happy to wield. Top Democrats tweeted their praise for Kimmel’s advocacy of expanded government health-care regulations:
“Well said, Jimmy,” Barack Obama gushed.
“Thanks @jimmykimmel for sharing your story & reminding us what’s at stake w/health care,” Hillary Clinton effused.
The Huffington Post piled on: “Jimmy Kimmel’s Humanity Underscores Heartlessness Of GOP’s Approach To The Poor.”
I don’t need lectures from Huffington Post and Hollywood elites about having a heart. Neither do the rest of America’s parents, whatever their political affiliations, who know what it’s like to stay up night after endless night with suffering children, wondering whether they would ever be able to breathe normally again or see the light of the next day.
Kimmel doesn’t need more maudlin Twitter suck-uppery. He needs a healthy fact-check.
“Before 2014,” he claimed, “if you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance because you had a pre-existing condition, you were born with a pre-existing condition.”
This is false. If parents had health insurance, the child would have been covered under the parents’ policy whether or not the child had a health problem.
Kimmel continued: “And if your parents didn’t have medical insurance, you might not live long enough to even get denied because of a pre-existing condition.”
The term “pre-existing condition” is used to describe uninsured chronically ill people who apply for insurance coverage, not for a child in need of immediate care. Moreover, in the U.S., virtually all hospitals are legally obligated to provide emergency treatment to every patient who urgently requires emergency medical care regardless of the patient’s insurance status. This would include a newborn with an urgent heart condition. This requirement does not apply only to patients who enter an emergency room. It applies to all patients who set foot on a hospital’s property.
Kimmel then dramatically asserted: “If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.”
I repeat: It does not matter if you are rich are poor or if you are uninsured. If your baby is in the hospital, he or she will receive emergency care no matter what.
“This isn’t football,” Kimmel implored. “There are no teams. We are the team, it’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.”
Kimmel implies that opposition to Obamacare-style insurance mandates is both un-American and indecent. Had he been less hysterical, he would have acknowledged that different health-care systems have pros and cons — and decent Americans can have legitimate differences of opinion on such matters.
In the land of make-believe, it would be wonderful if everyone had free access to the same high-quality care Kimmel and his family did at Cedars-Sinai and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
In the real world, Obamacare plans have severely curtailed the number of doctors and hospitals that customers can use. Command-and-control regulations on guaranteed issue, community rating, and pre-existing conditions favored by Kimmel and company are driving up costs for everyone. Limited access to specialists and long waits have become the increasing norm — just like that other model of government-run health care, the Veterans Affairs system, where the despicable practice of “death by queuing” spiked under Obama.
Moving toward a nationalized health system might play well with an emotion-driven late-night comedy audience. But sober observers know it would mean undermining America’s superior access to cutting-edge diagnosis, innovative treatment, top specialists and surgeons, technology, and drugs.
This is what Kimmel’s ObamaCare has done, as reported by the Des Moines Register:
Tens of thousands of Iowans could be left with no health insurance options next year, after the last carrier for most of the state announced Wednesday that it likely would stop selling individual health policies here.
Medica, a Minnesota-based health insurer, released a statement suggesting it was close to following two larger carriers in deciding not to sell such policies in Iowa for 2018, due to instability in the market.
“Without swift action by the state or Congress to provide stability to Iowa’s individual insurance market, Medica will not be able to serve the citizens of Iowa in the manner and breadth that we do today. We are examining the potential of limited offerings, but our ability to stay in the Iowa insurance market in any capacity is in question at this point,” the company’s statement said.
Medica’s announcement comes on the heels of word last month that Aetna and Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield would pull out of Iowa’s individual health insurance market for 2018. Those are the only three choices for individual health insurance in most areas of the state this year.
The pull-outs would not affect Iowans who obtain insurance via an employer or a government program, such as Medicare or Medicaid. But the carriers’ exit could leave more than 70,000 Iowans who buy their own coverage without any options for 2018.The news caught national attention Wednesday, because of fears that residents of other states could also lose insurance as carriers pull out of the market. …
Medica Vice President Geoff Bartsh said his company would have continued selling insurance throughout Iowa if Wellmark and Aetna had stayed in the market. But Medica, which lost $1.5 million covering 14,000 Iowans last year, couldn’t afford to take on tens of thousands more from the other two carriers, he said.
“The decision wasn’t, ‘Should we continue?’ It was, ‘Should we be the only game in town?’” Bartsh said in an interview Wednesday.
Iowa doesn’t meet many definitions of being a high-cost state. What happens in high-cost states?
This is 5/4 Day, so …
Today in 1957, Alan Freed hosted the first prime-time rock and roll TV show — called, in a blast of original inspiration, “Rock ‘n Roll Show”:
The number one single today in 1961:
Today in 1970, Ohio National Guard soldiers shot and killed four Kent State University students, prompting this song:
I was going to start this blog by saying that every once in a while news comes out of left field. However, that seems to be an increasingly common place from which news arrives these days.
For instance, did you think last week that Pope Francis was going to opine on libertarianism? If you did, play Powerball tonight. Breitbart reports:
Pope Francis had harsh words to describe libertarians Friday, saying they deny the value of the common good in favor of radical selfishness where only the individual matters.
“I cannot fail to speak of the grave risks associated with the invasion of the positions of libertarian individualism at high strata of culture and in school and university education,” the Pope said in an message sent to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences meeting in the Vatican and subsequently shared with Breitbart News.
“A common characteristic of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, that is the idea of ‘living well’ or the ‘good life’ in the communitarian framework,” Francis said, while at the same time exalting a “selfish ideal.” …
Francis said that libertarianism, “which is so fashionable today,” is a more radical form of the individualism that asserts that “only the individual gives value to things and to interpersonal relations and therefore only the individual decides what is good and what is evil.”
Libertarianism, he said, preaches that the idea of “self-causation” is necessary to ground freedom and individual responsibility.
“Thus, the libertarian individual denies the value of the common good,” the pontiff stated, “because on the one hand he supposes that the very idea of ‘common’ means the constriction of at least some individuals, and on the other hand that the notion of ‘good’ deprives freedom of its essence.”
Libertarianism, he continued, is an “antisocial” radicalization of individualism, which “leads to the conclusion that everyone has the right to extend himself as far as his abilities allow him even at the cost of the exclusion and marginalization of the more vulnerable majority.”
According to this mentality, all relationships that create ties must be eliminated, the Pope suggested, “since they would limit freedom.” In this way, only by living independently of others, of the common good, and even God himself, can a person be free, he said.
This isn’t the first time that the Pope has taken issue with popular social and political trends.
In March, Pope Francis told leaders of the European Union that the populist movements that are sweeping many parts of Europe and other areas are fueled by “egotism.”Populism, he said, is “the fruit of an egotism that hems people in and prevents them from overcoming and ‘looking beyond’ their own narrow vision.”
That prompted this response from Stephanie Slade:
“Pope Francis had harsh words to describe libertarians Friday,” Breitbartreports. That’s OK. I’m a Catholic libertarian, and I’ve had some harsh words to describe Pope Francis.
My main critique, which I published here at Reason on the eve of his 2015 visit to the United States, was that the pontiff’s ignorance of basic economics has led him to a bad conclusion about which public policies are best able to reduce the crushing yoke of poverty in the world. I went on to encourage him to consider that, as a matter of empirical fact, markets are the single greatest engine for growth and enrichment that humanity has yet stumbled upon.
I don’t doubt for a second that Pope Francis cares deeply about the least of his brothers and sisters. But I deny that his chosen prescriptions would do anything but make the problem worse.
This is not a bad time to be reminded that popes aren’t infallible, according to Catholic doctrine—instead, they are possessed of the ability to deliver infallible teachings on matters of faith and morals. As I pointed out in my piece, “In practice, such ‘definitive acts,’ in which a pope makes clear he’s teaching ‘from the chair’ of Jesus, are almost vanishingly rare.” Arguably, though, the pope’s remarks today to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences do pertain to faith and morals. He seems to be arguing that an outlook that places the individual above “the common good” is morally suspect.
As with his comments about capitalism, then, the problem is not so much that he’s speaking to issues that go beyond the scope of his office; the problem is his speaking to matters on which he is ill-informed. In this case, his statements betray a shallowness in his understanding of the philosophy he’s impugning. If he took the time to really engage with our ideas, he might be surprised by what he learned.
He might, for instance, be taken aback to discover that many libertarians hold beliefs that transcend an Ayn Randian glorification of selfishness (and that Ayn Rand rejected us, too, by the way). Or that what Pope Francis calls an “antisocial” paradigm in which “all relationships that create ties must be eliminated” (Breitbart‘s words) is better known by another name: the liberty movement, a cooperative and sometimes even rathersocial endeavor among people who cherish peaceful, voluntary human interactions. Or that lots of us are deeply concerned with the tangible outcomes that policies have on vulnerable communities, and that libertarians’ support for capitalism is very often rooted in its ability to make the world a better place. Or that some of us are even—hold on to your zucchetto—followers of Christ.
Most of all, he would likely be startled to find that, far from thinking “only the individual decides what is good and what is evil,” few libertarians are moral relativists. (Except the Objectivists, of course. Or am I getting that wrong?) Speaking as a devotee of St. John Paul II, one of the great articulators of the importance of accepting Truth as such, this one is actually personal.
It’s hard not to wonder whether Pope Francis knows any libertarians. In the event he’s interested in discussing the ideas of free minds and free markets with someone who ascribes to them, I’d be happy to make myself available.
Were I Roman Catholic instead of just raised Catholic, I’d be torn about this. I’m more a fan of Pope Francis and what could be reasonably called certain liberal Catholics (including my favorite nuns) than I am of certain conservative Catholics, such as Madison Bishop Robert Morlino. (But you knew that.) But Francis speaks from either ignorance about libertarians or deliberately ignoring our God-given free will. (Which includes our free-will choice to go to church or not, or go to a specific church or not.)
The Catholic Church is not a democracy, of course. A church also gets to decide its own rules, contrary to what “cafeteria Catholics” might like to think. Our choice is to attend and support a church, or not. I didn’t leave the Catholic church for any political reason, but as I’ve written here before, my decision to leave has been validated numerous times since then.
I wonder what Catholics think about this news, from the Kansas City Star:
Saying that Girl Scouts is “no longer a compatible partner in helping us form young women with the virtues and values of the Gospel,” the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas is severing ties with the organization and switching its support to a Christian-based scouting program.
“I have asked the pastors of the Archdiocese to begin the process of transitioning away from the hosting of parish Girl Scout troops and toward the chartering of American Heritage Girls troops,” Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann said in a statement released Monday.
“Pastors were given the choice of making this transition quickly, or to, over the next several years, ‘graduate’ the scouts currently in the program. Regardless of whether they chose the immediate or phased transition, parishes should be in the process of forming American Heritage Girl troops, at least for their kindergartners, this fall.”
American Heritage Girls, founded in 1995, has become an option for those who say Girl Scouts has become too liberal and has relationships with organizations that support abortion rights and do not share traditional family values — allegations the Girl Scouts deny.
Naumann also called for an end to Girl Scout cookie sales in the archdiocese.
“No Girl Scout cookie sales should occur in Catholic Schools or on parish property after the 2016-2017 school year,” he said in a letter to priests in January.
The action has angered some Girl Scout leaders and parents in the archdiocese, who say Girl Scouts is a respected program that helps raise strong girls who become good stewards. They call the move punitive and unfair and say it treats girls in their troops like second-class citizens.
“This is frustrating; parents are very irritated,” said Maria Walters, a former Girl Scout leader in the archdiocese and mother of two Girl Scouts. “I feel we should all be together as one in the community. This does nothing but divide us.
“I don’t know why you would take an organization out of a school when it provides an option for girls to feel like they’re part of a group.”
Walters said her parish has had a Girl Scout troop for at least 25 years.
“They’ve done a father-daughter dance that has been a huge success,” she said. “And they do service projects at Children’s Mercy, animal shelters, battered women’s shelters, the Ronald McDonald House and projects around the parish.”
Walters said the troop used to have about 100 members but now has around 75.
“We have lost some to American Heritage Girls,” she said. “We are still allowed to meet here, but I don’t know for how long. It’s frustrating when you have American Heritage Girls and Boys Scouts in the school newsletter, but no Girl Scouts. We are not allowed to recruit on campus, so we’re going to have to use Facebook and other technology to reach out to people.”
Deacon Dana Nearmyer, the archdiocese’s director of evangelization, told The Star that careful thought went into the decision.
“Several years ago, a number of Catholic school moms called us up and said, ‘We’d like to have a Christian program for our after-school girls’ program,’ ” he said. “So we did a bunch of research and tried to find the best mission fit for us, and American Heritage Girls seemed like that was going to be the best fit.” …
American Heritage Girls, based in Cincinnati, is described as “a Christ-centered character development program for girls ages 5 to 18.”
“We use the methods of scouting to achieve our mission of building women of integrity through service to God, family, community and country,” said Patti Garibay, national executive director and founder. ,,,
The organization also was attractive to the archdiocese because of its opposition to abortion. Some of the troops have participated in protests and prayer vigils outside clinics that perform abortions. …
Some Girl Scout leaders disagreed, saying they were never consulted about the decision and that some of their girls had been bullied because they were involved in Scouts. …
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has studied the issue in recent years and said it held a lengthy dialogue with the Girl Scouts. It developed a resource guide for Catholics and concluded that the question of whether the church should sever its ties to Girl Scouts must be answered at the local level.
“Diocesan bishops have the final authority over what is appropriate for Catholic scouting in their dioceses,” the bishops’ conference said.
Last year, Archbishop Robert Carlson of the Archdiocese of St. Louis urged priests to drop Girl Scouts, saying the organization was “exhibiting a troubling pattern of behavior” and was “becoming increasingly incompatible with our Catholic values.” …
Naumann said Girl Scouts contributes more than a million dollars each year to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, which he called “an organization tied to International Planned Parenthood and its advocacy for legislation that includes both contraception and abortion as preventive health care for women.”
He also said that many of those who have been cited as role models by Girl Scouts “not only do not reflect our Catholic worldview but stand in stark opposition to what we believe.”
The Girl Scouts, which has 1.9 million girl members and 800,000 adult members nationwide, does not take a position or develop materials on human sexuality, birth control or abortion, according to its website. And despite what critics say, the organization says, it does not have a relationship with Planned Parenthood.
“Parents or guardians make all decisions regarding program participation that may be of a sensitive nature,” it says.
Girl Scouts officials say that each member organization of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts creates its own programs that are based on the needs and issues affecting girls in its individual country. Girl Scouts does not always take the same positions or endorse the same programs as the world organization, they say.
Some parents in the archdiocese have nothing but praise for Girl Scouts. …
Some are wondering why the Catholic dioceses haven’t taken similar actions regarding Boy Scouts.
“I feel like we’re being discriminated against,” Walters said. “We’ve been wiped from the archdiocese website, and we have no leadership role in the church at all. There’s nothing like this going on with the Boy Scouts.”
The discrimination in the last paragraph isn’t because of sex; it’s because of viewpoint. As far as I know the Boy Scouts haven’t been supporting Planned Parenthood. (As you know, the Boy Scouts has taken considerable heat over its policy to not allow atheist Scouts or homosexual leaders to the point where United Way chapters pulled their funding of the Boy Scouts.)
This could be seen as an argument about centralized or decentralized organizational leadership analogous to arguments about federalism. Apparently dioceses are free to create their own policy about the Girl Scouts, and Girl Scout leaders are free to make their own decisions about “program participation that may be of a sensitive nature.”
The church has the right to create and enforce its own rules. It seems only logical that a church’s members have the choice to either follow those rules, or leave. (And if more Catholics did leave, some of those rules might change.) Not being Catholic, I have free will to agree or disagree with the pope or a bishop and feel free to not follow their instructions.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 