politicalcivility.com Blog

This is an open invitation to all the Blog Hive Bloggers.  Sutherland is holding a 3rd District debate for bloggers only on September 9th at 7:30 in the morning.  Sutherland will provide a light breakfast.

Format will be as follows:

1. 15 minutes for each candidate to lay out his platform (we’ll do a coin toss to see who goes first)
2. A session for 15-20 minutes, with each candidate getting 1 minute to answer and we’ll alternate who goes first, who responds second.  I will moderate this portion of the debate and keep time. 
3. 2-minute closing statements.  The candidate who is first in part (1) will go last.

I am asking that questions be submitted no later than Friday, September 5^th at the close of business.   I will forward 20 or so questions on to the candidates for them to prep for, but we will probably only have time for 8-9.   Hopefully there will be some time after the debate to chat with the candidates.  Please RSVP as soon as possible to me: lswim@sutherlandinstitute.org

Lyall

I heard about this story while coming into work this morning.  How can you tell a 9-yr old he’s too good to play?  Kids have enough to deal with without being given a complex by adults who want their own kids to win (which appears to be the motivation behind not letting him play).  Here’s the quote from Jericho (the 9yr old):

“I feel sad,” he said. “I feel like it’s all my fault nobody could play.”

It’s just a little league game and the fact of the matter is that in a couple of years the other boys will catch up with him.  Are we so concerned about winning that we can’t just enjoy the fact that we’re watching something pretty cool?  Should we have told Tiger Woods he couldn’t play in youth golf tournaments because he was too good?  Jericho’s mom hit the nail on the head with this quote:

“I think it’s discouraging when you’re telling a 9-year-old you’re too good at something,” said his mother, Nicole Scott. “The whole objective in life is to find something you’re good at and stick with it. I’d rather he spend all his time on the baseball field than idolizing someone standing on the street corner.”

This baseball league needs to relax and let the kids play.  If anything the kids playing against a great 9yr-old will, in the end be the better for it…kind of like the baseball team in “The Rookie” where the coach didn’t realize it, but he was throwing 90 mile/hr heat to high schoolers and so by the time they faced ‘real’ high school pitching they hit the cover off the ball.  Why not look at this as a blessing versus finding a way for kids not to face great competition?

Clinton’s presidency may have highlighted this debate better than any in recent history, but it is again relevant in the debate in California.  I am not going to use this post to talk about my thoughts on gay marriage, but rather to highlight a major flaw in one of the arguments used in support of it, namely “What I do in my private life is my business.  It doesn’t affect society or you my nosey neighbor, etc.” 

My experience as an HR manager gave me ample evidence that this line of reasoning or rationalization is nonsense.  I saw hours and hours wasted, unnecessary confrontations, emotional frailty, and on and on that was a direct result of private lives of employees that were in chaos (either from their own ‘private’ actions or a spouse, child, etc.).  You could go to your average school teacher and ask them who is struggling and why and that teacher could show you a large majority of those children who are struggling have issues in the home.

We are the sum of our lifes’ choices (virtuous or otherwise), whether those choices are made in private of public.  And the result of those choices are manifest in private and public, whether we realize it or not. 

Perhaps the best statement countering this poor line of thinking comes from James E. Faust, who (prior to his full-time service as an apostle for the LDS church) was by profession an attorney and probably saw his fair share evidence of private acts impacting for good an ill society in general. 

First, adults need to understand, and our children need to be taught, that private choices are not private: they all have public consequences…It is simply not true that our private conduct is our business.  Our society is the sum total of what millions of individuals do in their private lives.  That sum total of private behavior has worldwide public consequences of enormous magnitude.  There are no completely private choices.

Wise words…

As I have spent the last several months studying Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution i have often pondered the question, why didn’t I hear more about this in middle school and especially high school.  I remember three US history classes in school: 8th grade with Mr. Rosenthal, AP US history with Mr. Williams and finally, AP Gov’t with Mr. Thomas.  Not one of them came close to teaching me about US history or gave me an appreciation for our Republic and constitution like reading Story.  I believe we are failing in large measure to heed Story’s admonition in the closing sentences of his book.

“Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings and blood of their ancestors; and capable, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence…Republics are created by the virture, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens.  They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.”