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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Contrary to the commonly held view that political discourse today is more unpleasant and ugly than ever, the roots of nasty politics date back to the earliest campaigns in American history.

Joseph Cummins book “Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises,” chronicles the history of nasty politics since George Washington’s election in 1789. A 2007 New York Times interview of Mr. Cummins noted the following observations about dirty political campaigns, among others:

“I think the mudslinging definitely is still a big part of our election process, but it’s less broad and vulgar. For instance, there is less aimed at other people’s physical attributes. The 19^th century was big on that…Martin Van Buren was accused of wearing women’s corsets (by Davy Crockett, no less) and James Buchanan (who had a congenital condition that caused his head to tilt to the left) was accused of have unsuccessfully tried to hang himself. Oh, and Abraham Lincoln reportedly had stinky feet.”

In response to the question, “What was the ugliest campaign in history? Cummins commented: “So many dirty elections, so little time…There have been stolen elections (the Rutherford Hayes – Samuel Tilden contest in 1876 was certainly stolen by Republicans in the South…I would say that 1964 was the ugliest presidential contest I have researched. President Lyndon Johnson, seeking his first elective term after taking over for the assassinated JFK, set out not just to defeat Goldwater, but to destroy him and create a huge mandate for himself…They put out a Goldwater joke book, in which your little one could happily color pictures of Goldwater dressed in the robes of the Ku Klux Klan…This committee also wrote letters to columnist Ann Landers purporting to be from ordinary citizens terrified of the prospect of a Goldwater presidency…But perhaps the ugliest things about the 1964 election was Johnson’s treatment of the press. He remarked to an aide that ‘reporters are puppets,’ and had his people feed them misleading information about the Goldwater campaign.”

“Both parties at different times in American history have been guilty of mind-boggling attempts to influence elections. In the 1880s, one of the worst decades in terms of dirty tricks, Republicans sent bagmen to Indiana – then a pivotal state – with hundreds of thousands of dollars in two dollar bills (dubbed ‘Soapy Sams’ for their ability to grease palms) in order to purchase votes.”

Totallytop10.com, noting that negative political campaign ads and smears go back many decades, lists the following among the 10 most negative political campaign ads in U.S. and Canadian history. Whether these are the most negative ads may be arguable, but they are instructive as examples:

During the presidential primaries in 2007, the three a.m. White House Phone Call ad, in which a Hillary Clinton TV ad portrayed her as being more qualified on military and defense matters than Barack Obama.

The Willie Horton political ad in 1988, which implied that Michael Dukakis was soft on crime. Horton assaulted a couple and severely raped a woman during one of several weekend passes he received while in prison.

In 1980, when he was running for governor of Ohio, Jerry Springer admitted that he had paid prostitutes for sex some years earlier.

The campaign ad “The wrong kind – Congressman Ron Kind.”

In Canada, the Conservative Progressive party ran an ad that attacked Prime Minister Jean Chretien by focusing on physical defects he was said to have.

In the Canadian federal election, candidate Stephanie Dion was shown being pooped on by an animated puffin.

In the 1964 American presidential election, the “daisy girl” commercial warned that if Barry Goldwater were elected he would use the H-bomb and start a war that would destroy America.

The political ad in the 1800 presidential campaign, Jefferson vs John Adams, arguing that “If Jefferson would be president today we could expect pure evil.”

Dating back to the 1840s, dirty tricks have also played an important role in American politics. Following the Civil War, they became nastier, when, in 1880, a New York scandal sheet published a letter that was purported to have been written by James Garfield to the head of the employers Union of Lynn, Massachusetts, endorsing the right of corporations to hire the cheapest labor available, including Chinese workers. The letter was a forgery, but it almost derailed Garfield’s campaign until he was able to prove that he had not written it.

We tend to think that nasty political discourse is worse today than ever before, but the record clearly demonstrates that dirty politics has been with us since the beginning of the nation.

As with all things, in political campaigning, the more things change the more they stay the same.

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Monday, December 19, 2011

Bah, Humbug!

By Harris Sherline

Why do we allow a vocal minority to dictate how we are permitted to celebrate or even acknowledge some of our most cherished traditions? Specifically, at this time of the year, Christmas.

When you try to please everyone, you please no one. Putting it another way, when you try not to offend anyone, you are bound to offend almost everyone. And, that seems to be the situation with Christmas.

I, for one, am sick of it. Not Christmas, but the people who are attacking our most cherished traditions. And, where is the “silent majority?” Why aren’t more people standing up and telling the vocal minority on the Left to get lost. Instead, we see major corporations, educators, the media and our so-called political leaders routinely capitulating to the forces of political correctness.

Once again we are being subjected to the never-ending onslaught of politically correct efforts to do away with another of America’s historical traditions. Led by the ACLU, the warriors of the Left, who believe in nothing and want to prevent those who do believe in something from exercising their own rights. The ACLU has sued the U.S. Government to take God, Christmas or anything religious out of all public displays.

The American Family Association reported that this year the city of Richmond, Virginia agreed to rename their annual “Christmas” parade the “Dominion Holiday Parade,” at the insistence of its corporate sponsor, Dominion, an energy company. However, after receiving thousands of emails and hundreds of letters of protest, the city reversed its decision and voted to change the name to the “Dominion Christmas Parade.” My question is, why couldn’t they have made that choice in the first place?

Following are some of the ways to celebrate the “Holiday” season that are currently considered acceptable:

-It’s OK to celebrate “The Holidays” in our public institutions, as long as they do not appear to advocate a particular religious belief, especially Christianity.

-It’s OK to wish people “Happy Holidays” but not “Merry Christmas.” By the way, what Holiday would it be if not Christmas? The last time I looked, the word was based on the name, Christ.

-It’s OK to celebrate Kwanza, an artificial, made-up tradition, in our schools.

-It’s OK to celebrate Witchcraft.

-It’s OK to acknowledge Muslim beliefs, but not Christian.

I could go on, and no doubt you could add more examples to the list, but my point in writing this is to express my resentment in general about the dispute over Christmas that has been taking place in America in recent years and about the right of Americans to publicly celebrate their traditions.

It might help understand my perspective if you know a little something about my background:

-Start with the fact that I am Jewish, and I do not celebrate Christmas.

-Second, I grew up during the depression and World War II, a time when American values were clearly understood and openly supported by just about everyone.

-Third, I am well educated, was formerly a professional practitioner (as a CPA), and in the past 50 years I have owned and/or operated a number of businesses, my own as well as those of clients.

-Fourth, I have not had any formal religious training and do not attend religious services. I am what is referred to as a secular Jew, although I do believe in G-d.

-Finally, my wife is not Jewish.

So, given my background, why should I care about Christmas?

Because I appreciate the value of Christian moral teachings, that’s why.

Furthermore, I believe that freedom of speech (and expression) should include everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, not just a vocal anti-religious minority.

Our nation was founded largely by Christians, whose values and teachings provide much of the basis of our legal system and traditions. I grew up in that environment, and it never hurt me in any way. As a matter of fact, I believe it was a good thing that Christian traditions and values were present in our schools, and I would like to see them return again.

Preventing people from openly expressing themselves, even under the guise of being fair and equitable, simply forces them underground. They may no longer say what’s on their minds, but that doesn’t change their beliefs. The result is a simmering hostility that’s likely to erupt one day in ways no one expects or wants. You can’t keep a lid on a pressure cooker forever.

If it becomes acceptable to prevent people from observing certain time honored traditions, such as Christmas, it can easily become equally acceptable to silence others when they speak out about such issues as educating their children, the justice system and the death penalty, same sex marriage, gays in the military, universal health care, social security, taxation, or a host of other concerns they may have.

As noted earlier, I support Christian values. I grew up, was educated and worked in a society that had strong Christian influences, and in the eight decades of my life no one has ever tried to force me to believe as they do.

So, my inclination when the few try to silence the majority is to tell them to shut up and get lost, which brings me back to Christmas.

Although I resent the actions of the politically correct minority who are attempting to prevent others from observing Christmas and want to remove every last vestige of Christianity and Christmas from public life, my wife and I do not observe the Holiday ourselves. Unfortunately, however, the excessive commercialization of Christmas does trouble me. I’m not bothered that Christians want to celebrate the birth of Christ, and I don’t mind that their celebration has been intricately woven into the fabric of our culture. In fact, I support both.

What I do mind is turning Christmas into nothing more than a marketing opportunity. It seems to get worse every year, and the venal displays of greed and avarice that are demonstrated by businesses and consumers alike are very offensive to me.

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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Let The Reindeer Games Begin

With the start of the holidays, young people face added danger in this special season otherwise known for celebration and good cheer. The hooligan? Often it’s alcohol.

School break offers up unstructured, and perhaps unsupervised, time and thus some significant risk – especially when you add in the propensity of some adults to promote alcohol-included events as a way to mark Christmas, Hanukkah, or the New Year.

Let the reindeer games begin.

Teens and Alcohol

According to research from SADD and Liberty Mutual Insurance:

Almost one third (31 percent) of teens say that they have drunk alcohol with their parents.

Overall, one quarter of teens say that they are allowed to drink alcohol when they are not with their parents, about one in eight host parties where alcohol is served, and slightly more than forty percent are permitted to attend parties where alcohol is available.

As for the last point, more teens are saying that their parents allow them to go to parties where alcohol is being served in 2011 (41 percent) than just two years ago (36 percent). In addition, more teens are reporting that they are allowed to drink alcohol without their parents (25 percent) in 2011 than in 2009 (21 percent).

That’s not good news.

Nor is the fact that one in three teens who use alcohol say drinking is allowed by parents on special occasions – like holidays.

Parental Support of Underage Drinking

Many adults support underage drinking because they believe they have little say in the matter (53 percent). In fact, parents who adopt zero-tolerance policies are the number one reason children don’t drink.

For example, high school students who tend to avoid alcohol are more than twice as likely as those who repeatedly use alcohol to say their parents never let them drink at home (84 percent vs. 40 percent).

Other parents condone alcohol use because they feel if they allow teen drinking at home, it will keep their kids from drinking somewhere else.

Not really.

More than half (57 percent) of high school students who report their parents allow them to drink at home - even just once in a while - report that they drink elsewhere with their friends, as compared to just 14 percent of teens whose parents don’t let them drink at home.

It’s also true that some adults just don’t see the harm in allowing teens to drink. But, if that’s the case, they’re just not looking hard enough.

Young people use alcohol more frequently and in higher volumes than all other illegal drugs combined.

The earlier a young person starts drinking (research suggests the average age of onset of underage drinking is twelve or thirteen – meaning many are drinking at even younger ages), the more likely it is they will suffer from substance abuse problems throughout their lifetime.

And, neurological research suggests that alcohol use may permanently affect quickly evolving adolescent brains. And not for the better.

Ringing in the New Year

From the early eighties to the mid-nineties, alcohol-related crash deaths among youth plummeted by 60 percent. But progress can be slowed, trends turned, and higher risk realized if we don’t stay focused on the goal of keeping kids safe.

How does that relate to the holidays?

Consider that teen drivers view New Year’s Eve as the most dangerous seasonal event when it comes to driving. Wonder why? After summer, New Year’s Eve ranks at the top of the list of when teens report driving impaired.

And much of that risk remains hidden from those who could be empowered to matter most: parents.

Indeed, about one in eight teenage drivers report that they don’t tell the truth to their parents about driving under the influence of alcohol (13 percent) and one in seven are dishonest about driving under the influence of other drugs (15 percent).

Even so, good news can be found in the demonstrated power of parents and peers to influence the driving-related decision-making of young people. Together, they form a significant backstop against poor choices, saving young lives hanging in the balance.

What better holiday present is there than that?

3D Month

It’s time to tame the trend on teen drinking and bend the curve back toward a safer place. December is National Drunk and Drugged Driving (3D) Prevention Month – and the truth is that if young people aren’t drinking, they won’t be driving drunk.

So much for reindeer games.

Stephen Wallace serves as senior advisor at SADD, Inc. (Students Against Destructive Decisions) and associate research professor and director of the Center for Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) at Susquehanna University. For more information about SADD, visit sadd.org. For more information about Stephen, visit stephengraywallace.com.

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Monday, November 21, 2011

Another Year, Another Thanksgiving

With the Thanksgiving Holiday almost upon us, this year may be an occasion when Americans not only celebrate with traditional gatherings with family and friends, but perhaps we should all give special thanks that the American ideal is still celebrated during one of the most troubling and worrisome periods in our history.

With that in mind, following are some Thanksgiving messages that I thought you would find of interest:

First, a bit of humor:

They’re Coming For Thanksgiving

An elderly man in Phoenix calls his son in New York and says, "I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing. Forty-five years of misery is enough."

"Pop, what are you talking about?" the son screams.

"We can't stand the sight of each other any longer," the old man says. "We're sick of each other, and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Chicago and tell her," and hangs up.

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. "Like heck they're getting divorced!" she shouts, "I'll take care of this!"

She calls Phoenix immediately, and screams at the old man, "You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?" and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. "Okay," he says, "They're coming for Thanksgiving and paying their own way"

Next, a Thanksgiving proclamation by the man who is arguably the greatest President in America’s history:

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

From The Heritage Foundation: “...enjoy President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation below.

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

Finally, a November 25, 2004 Wall Street Journal article, “A Very Christian Holiday,” by David Gelerneter:

"Fundamentalists" gave us Thanksgiving, and we should thank them for it.

The First Thanksgiving is one of those heartwarming stories that every child used to know, and some up-to-date teachers take special delight in suppressing. Many teachers approach children nowadays with the absurd presumption that they are triumphalist little bigots who must be taken down a notch and made to grasp that their country has made mistakes. In fact they are little ignoramuses who leave high school believing that their country has made nothing but mistakes, and they never do learn what revisionist history is a revision of.

It is especially sad when children don't learn the history of Thanksgiving, which is that rarest of anomalies--a religious festival celebrated by many faiths. The story of the first Thanksgiving would inspire and soothe this nation if only we would let it--this nation so deeply divided between Christians and non-Christians or nominal Christians, where Christians are a solid majority on a winning streak and many non-Christians are scared to death, of "Christian fundamentalists" especially.

Christian fundamentalists were the first European settlers in this country, and Thanksgiving is their idea. (Puritans were one type of Christian fundamentalist--"fundamentalist" insofar as they focused on biblical basics. The Pilgrims were radical Puritans.) Many Americans are afraid that fundamentalists are inherently intolerant and want to stamp out all religions but their own. Yet that first thanksgiving was celebrated by radical Christian fundamentalists, and American Indians were honored guests--as every child used to know. Obviously fundamentalists are capable of tolerating non-Christians on occasion. In 17th-century America, some Christians used the Bible to explain exactly why American Indians must be treated respectfully. But another fact about that first thanksgiving is also worth pondering: no one tried to convert anyone else. Most of today's fundamentalist groups don't fish for converts either -- but those who do ought to contemplate thanksgiving number one.

The Pilgrims celebrated that first thanksgiving in 1621; Edward Winslow describes it in a letter to a friend. "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours." There was a great celebration, "many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted." The Indian contingent "went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation."

The first settlers mostly wanted to be friends with the Indians--and not only for obvious practical reasons. Alexander Whitaker was an early Virginia settler. His description of America was published in 1613. He doesn't think highly of American Indian religion, but goes on at length about American Indian talent and intelligence. ("They are a very understanding generation, quick of apprehension"; "exquisite in their inventions, and industrious in their labour.") And after all, he points out, "One God created us, they have reasonable souls and intellectual faculties as well as we; we all have Adam for our common parent: yea, by nature the condition of us both is all one."

In time, attitudes changed. American settlers and American Indians fell to treating one another savagely, and the Indians got the worst of it. But human greed and violence, not Christianity, brought those changes about. Christian preachers did not always condemn them--but, Christian or not, they were mere human beings after all.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony--settled by fundamentalists only slightly less radical than the Pilgrims--declared its first thanksgiving in 1630. By the late 1700s, independence was in the air, and the Continental Congress proclaimed many days of thanksgiving. President George Washington lost no time declaring the first thanksgiving under the new constitution in 1789. Each of these early proclamations was good for a single occasion. But after President Lincoln had proclaimed thanksgiving days in 1863 and '64--specifying the last Thursday in November both times--this characteristically American festival became a yearly custom. Lincoln was not only America's greatest president; he was our greatest religious figure, too. In his last speech--four days before he was murdered, with the Civil War at an end at last--he proposed one more day of thanksgiving. "He, from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for national thanksgiving is being prepared."

What to conclude? In a democracy where the majority is Christian, you can no more nitpick public life free of Christianity (as if it were so much lint on a frazzled sweater) than you can hold down the top on a pot of boiling water. Public life in this country has been fundamentally Christian since the first European settlers arrived. It continued Christian when the new nation won its independence and proclaimed its Bill of Rights, and will stay Christian forever, or until a majority decides otherwise--no matter how many antireligious rulings are extracted from how many antidemocratic power-mad judges.

Yet the fear of Christian fundamentalism that haunts a significant minority of Americans ought not to be casually dismissed. Some groups still see it as their duty to make converts of non-Christians. History suggests that they had better approach their mission with exquisite tact, or their designated target populations will soon come to hate their guts. I spend a fair amount of effort trying to convince friends and colleagues that their hostility to Christianity is ignorant and bigoted. But when a deadly earnest young Christian approaches, displays an infuriating though subliminal holier-than-thouness, and tries to convert me--it happens rarely, but occasionally--I metamorphose for an instant into a raging leftist.

But that long-ago First Thanksgiving still speaks to and for every American, and we ought to listen. It speaks to Christians; they thought it up. It speaks to Jews--Pilgrim Christianity was a profoundly "Hebraic" Christianity; the Pilgrims saw themselves as a chosen people arrived in a promised land; their organizations were based on "covenants," and they were devoted to the Hebrew Bible. (Late in life the eminent Pilgrim father William Bradford began studying Hebrew, so he might behold "the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty." More than most American Jews can say.) Those who are neither Christian nor Jew are also present in spirit, represented by the great king Massasoit. Everyone is "entertained and feasted," and everyone leaves with the same faith that brung 'im. Thanksgiving speaks for Americans too: it is just like us to set a day aside for a national thank you to the Lord, or (anyway) to someone. Americans continue to be what Lincoln called us, the "almost chosen people," struggling to do right by man and God.

Finally, I would like to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

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Friday, November 11, 2011

Beckner: Professional Educators Defy Unions, Embrace Reforms

By Gary Beckner

Education and labor reforms have been the subject of much of this year’s domestic headlines. Teacher protests, picket lines and fiery rhetoric between teacher unions and reformers have been playing out in Wisconsin, Ohio and beyond.

While the war of words continues to rage on, individual teacher voices are often lost as the union interests of self-preservation and forced dues trump the needs and changing views of our most noble profession.

After this year’s eventful legislative sessions, a survey released in mid-August indicates that Americans overwhelmingly support teachers but not teacher unions.

Among the survey results, a solid majority (71 percent) of respondents said they have trust and confidence in America’s teachers. However, when asked about the teacher unions, 47 percent say they believe the unions have hurt education, compared with only 26 percent believing the unions have helped education.

While the findings are nothing new to the growing number of teachers disenchanted with their unions, it appears that the public has begun to draw a clear distinction between teachers, as individual professionals, and the actions of the teacher unions.

This distinction is further sharpened by a survey released last week by the Association of American Educators, the largest national nonunion professional educator organization.

The AAE randomly polled its members from all 50 states to better understand the changing sentiments of teachers relating to education and labor reform. The findings show that more and more teachers are embracing reforms — contrary to union-held stances relating to alternative certification programs such as Teach for America, school choice, virtual education and collective bargaining.

For instance, despite desperate union-led attempts to preserve its monopoly on teacher preparation programs and teacher certification, AAE members recognize that in order to attract our nation’s best and brightest to the teaching profession, we must consider policies that allow degreed professionals an easier path to the classroom.

As an example, while union officials have nationally denounced programs such as Teach for America for “union busting,” 85 percent of AAE members support Teach for America and its mission to place recent top-tier college graduates into high-need classrooms after an intense training program.

With regard to school choice, 61 percent of those surveyed agree with an Arizona law providing tax credit scholarships to special education students in traditional public schools, allowing them to attend the public or private school of their choice. While the union-backed establishment sees school choice as detrimental to the teaching profession, AAE member teachers support varied policies that empower parents to choose the learning environment best-suited for their child.

While defenders of the status quo see virtual education options as a threat, professional teachers are embracing new technologies as the wave of the future. An overwhelming 75 percent of AAE members support a Utah law guaranteeing high school students access to any course via a state online database, allowing students to customize their learning experience.

In the wake of 48 states considering labor reform legislation in 2011, the value and cost of collective bargaining and a one-size-fits-all system has been heavily debated. Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents assert that collective bargaining has little to no effect on their ability to teach effectively, and just 28 percent believe collective bargaining equates to a better-compensated workforce.

A majority of member teachers (63 percent) would prefer to negotiate their own contracts to account for their unique circumstances, further calling into question the union’s one-size-fits-all system. A nearly unanimous 98 percent of AAE members believe that teachers should be free to choose whom they wish to associate with, further advancing AAE’s position that no educator should be required to pay union dues as a condition of employment, despite laws to the contrary in 21 states. Moreover, 84 percent of those teachers surveyed believe that teacher unions are hurting the teaching profession.

This powerful data demonstrates that teacher unions are out of touch with the opinions of many classroom teachers. It is this disconnect that has caused thousands of teachers to leave the unions for nonunion, professional associations that offer many of the benefits they need without the union baggage.

In considering new common-sense reforms as we move forward, policymakers and other stakeholders need to know that hundreds of thousands of classroom teachers are indeed agreeable to policies that put students ahead of labor union interests.

Gary Beckner is executive director of the Association of American Educators.

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