Diversity: how important is it?

The editorial today insists that corporations must have diversity on their boards.  (It will take more than symbols to achieve corporate board diversity, February 21)

The very motto of our country is e pluribus unum.  Out of many, one.

Why does our country even have a motto like that?  A very wise man said that a house divided cannot stand, and our ancestors knew that. 

It seems that all our political leaders and all the activists shouting loud who seem to get the attention of the media are acting against the core beliefs of our country.  They are all trying to divide our country into myriads of groups all competing for a share of the pie.  Our ancestors believed that the pie was always growing, by the way, as our country created wealth, but that belief has gone by the wayside too.

Every human being is an individual, unique, and with their own stories.  It is a mistake, an enormous one at that, to say that, hey, all my neighbors are white, they all lived privileged lives, I have nothing to learn from their experiences, they are all just like me in every way.  I am deprived in my core being if I don’t have more people of other races in my inner circle.  Like that one characteristic is more significant than a person’s education, culture, religion, personal interests, and personal background.

We are told not to stereotype, but that is exactly what diversity advocates are doing.  All blacks, for example, are similar in so many ways, that we need black people to represent them on our corporate boards, our police forces, our teachers, and our elected officials.  And the same for an ever-increasing number of other demographics. 

They say that diversity is our strength, that it enriches us.  At the same time, diversity is more likely to divide us.  Most people, everywhere, at all times, tend to develop closer relationships with people most like them.  Not just ethnically, but interests, culture, education, religion, age, and family status. 

Our society will be healthier and happier, not just overall but individually, when we just stop being so race and ethnic conscious and just see each other as human beings.  Stop with the counting and the constant analysis and the labeling, insisting that every group must have their certain numbers of representation for a society to be just.  Those people who do the constant counting will never be happy or let society be happy, because they are always looking for more evidences of something else to fault society for. 

 

critical race theory - again

A reader thinks that any objections that people might have about critical race theory are dreamed up by right-wing media people to generate ratings.  (A real reckoning with race, February 20)

Nope, there can’t possibly be anything remotely wrong with it.

The reader then lists a number of questions to prove how beneficial CRT is for everybody to learn. 

The problem is that we are to assume that these are the only things that CRT teaches and promotes.  And some people are also finding it problematic how these things are taught.

For example, we have all heard of the Ku Klux Klan.  Mobs of hooded people with funny outfits wreaked violent havoc on black communities.  That was evil, yet it was often and long tolerated by public authorities.  And that was evil as well.

Now, please, those of you who are proponents of CRT, tell us: does CRT teach that all white people are racist at heart, inherently and immutably?  Please tell us that it doesn’t, though I doubt you will.

And what about America itself?

Is America itself inherently and immutably racist, built on racism, such that our founding documents are racist documents, seeking to perpetuate this evil to all succeeding generations?

This, dear reader, is our concern.  We are not afraid of the truth. 

But CRT does not limit itself to the truth.  That is why it is called Critical Race THEORY.  It starts with facts and builds a comprehensive narrative about the good and mostly evil in our country.

Is the United States a perfect country?  No.  And guess what?  Perfect countries don’t exist.  Why?  Because they are all composed of people.  People are inherently and immutably flawed.

Does that mean that those flaws include racism?

That depends on what you mean.

It is a fact of life that not everybody will like everybody else.  And that lack of endearment can often be generalized to whole groups of people.  And that, my friends, is nothing new.  That has existed from the beginning of humankind.

But is that racism?

The real issue with racism or supposed racism is not whether people like you, but whether they are keeping you from pursuing and achieving your dreams.

There is more freedom to pursue your dreams and achieve them here in the United States than anywhere else in the world.

And many of us think that too many people today are spending all their time trying to find fault with our country, such that too many people are missing those opportunities to achieve their dreams.  And that is because they are spending too much of their time blaming other people for things that might appear to them as obstacles. 

Don’t waste your life hoping that things will be better in the future such that you miss the present and what it has for you.

That’s what concerns the rest of us about CRT. 

An Open Letter to the Self-Appointed Word Police of the World

Another day, another life ruined because somebody said the forbidden word.  (UIC professor in ‘absolute hell’ after alluding to slur in class, February 17)  It doesn’t matter the context.  They could have read it aloud from an old book.  They could be quoting somebody else who used the word. 

The word police then spring into action, and they are not content until that person loses their job.  We never hear what happens next.  Are the word police only content with that person losing that first job, or will they try to prevent that person from every having a similar job again?  Will these people be able to get a job in a fast-food restaurant, or will their crime follow them the rest of their lives?   Is there life after saying the forbidden word?

I don’t know when the forbidden word became forbidden.  I am afraid to look it up.  Google or somebody might be monitoring my computer watching out for these word abuses.  Not spying on us, just keeping an eye out for such egregious acts of vocalization to protect society from the evil that lurks around us.

I’m trying to figure out whether this absolute and unwavering punishment is a form of payback to just anybody and everybody so that people can vent their unresolved feelings of bitterness and anger for things that happened a long time ago, or do they think they are actually helping people when they are able to punish somebody for their audacity, intentional or otherwise, to voice this word in public.

I submit that the word police are in fact not helping anybody, but, like a person who keeps picking at a sore, the wound never heals.  The word police only create anger and resentment where it probably didn’t exist before, as it works its way through society destroying one life at a time.

 

how newspapers can solve the problem of political campaign funding

A Sun-Times editorial gave a needed call for reform in our election process.  (Give candidates who aren’t wealthy, or backed by the rich, a chance to be heard, February 17)

The fact is that the money needed today to run for most political offices has gotten totally out of control.  And when people make contributions, often those donors are able to exert influence over those candidates.  Not good.

All this also makes it harder to get more candidates to run for office.  Not good either.

The biggest expense for political campaigns is media advertising, which certainly is an enormous help for any candidate.

The solution offered by the Times is to spend more money.  Taxpayers would now help pay toward the campaigns of those who don’t have their own money to spend or a rich benefactor.

I submit that there is another alternative, and one that doesn’t require taxpayer money.

And that is the very medium that made this suggestion.

Newspapers. 

Newspapers should see it as their duty to fully inform the public about at least all the major elections.  And not just these obligatory articles just before the election. 

Give candidates access to the papers and their readers. 

Of course, anything they submit must follow certain guidelines.  No hit pieces on their opponents.  Just thorough discussions of the problems with their proposed solutions.  They don’t need to be full-length pieces.  Just let them know that the papers see it as their responsibility to help political candidates.

The Sun-Times hit on a major problem in our election system.  It can wait for other people to do something about it, or it can lead the way to getting this thing fixed.

critical race theory

A professor thinks that politicians (read Republicans here) who are opposed to teaching critical race theory in public schools are ignorant of history.  (Anti-critical race theory laws based on ignorance of history, February 17)

I think the professor is missing the point of the objections.  It’s not the facts of history that are in dispute; it’s their interpretation and application to today.

History exists in two forms.  You read the daily newspaper, and you are seeing history unfolding before your eyes.  But what you are seeing is an infinite number of data points.  Particular, individual events.  This is history in its rawest form.

What historians do is to take all these individual points of information and construct a picture of what is happening in a city, a nation, or the world.  Is history going in a particular direction?  Can we say a city, nation, or the world is improving or getting worse?  But what measures?

History does not tell us that.  The historian looks at the events of history and reaches his own conclusions based on what he sees as good or bad.  Conceivably, different people can look at the same events and reach different conclusions. 

The kind professor is not here to answer questions, but there are two basic teachings of CRT that I hope he would denounce as utter falsehoods about it.  I doubt he will though.

The first is that the United States is an inherently and irredeemably flawed nation, based on racism.  America is not a good nation, but one built on oppression and power. 

The other teaching is that white people are also inherently and irredeemably flawed, as in racist. 

And the whole American system is built to favor white people at the expense of all other peoples. 

I would say to this: name a country anywhere in the world where a person of color has a better chance of pursuing and fulfilling their dreams than in America.  Name a country in the world where people of color have a higher standard of living. 

There are around 200 countries in the world today.  More people want to come to the United States than to all the other countries put together.  My question is: is CRT presenting an accurate picture of the United States?  If you are not showing why so many people want to come here but only focusing on the worst parts of our history, I think you are failing in your understanding and teaching of history.

affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods

The lack of affordable housing is a crisis throughout our nation and the leading cause of homelessness.  We learn this from a Wilmette Life column.  (New state law expands tax breaks for affordable housing.  But will it have effect in wealthy towns?, February 18)

I didn’t know homelessness and affordable housing were needs in wealthy towns. 

The proposed remedy for affordable housing is to give developers a break on their property taxes if they offer rental units at reduced rates for poorer people. 

It seems though that lawmakers have other things on their minds in addition to affordable housing and homelessness.  Things like equity, wealth creation, and diversity.  They will get more done more easily if they focus on one thing at a time.  Their efforts look to me to be just government meddling in places it has no business meddling.

Offering reduced rents in wealthy neighborhoods won’t give anybody wealth creation nor the mere fact of living there. 

You want to create wealth through increased home ownership, then reform the property tax system.

Two-thirds of property taxes goes for public education, and we keep hearing of public schools in poorer areas not receiving enough funding.  Shift funding for public schools to the income tax, and suddenly houses in rich neighborhoods become affordable, all without government intrusion.  Property taxes are absurd in the first place, because they don’t take into account a person’s ability to pay them. 

No need to try to ram down diversity in areas that don’t want it.  It’s not the government’s job to ram anything down on anyone anyway.  Just stop making things harder on people like taxing fixed assets.  That one act will open up housing more than all their other programs combined, and it won’t stir up trouble doing so. 

funding religious schools

When our kids were young, we wanted to send them to a private school, but we couldn’t afford it.  But we had to pay our property taxes which included thousands of dollars for public education.

So in essence, if we wanted to send our kids to a private school, we would have to pay double for our kids’ education. 

I don’t see any way to call this fair.  And the fact that the school was religious is irrelevant. 

A Tribune reader (Funding religious schools, February 10) thinks that doing anything to help parents in their desire for a private school education, er, private religious school education, is blatantly unconstitutional.  Something about establishing religion.

First, it should be said that helping parents, whether through vouchers or tax credits, is not the same as funding religious education.  The help is not so people can send their kids to religious schools, but so that parents can send their kids to a private school.  To exclude religious schools is punishing parents for being religious.  THAT is unconstitutional.

The confusion is over the establishment clause of the Constitution:  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

What does it mean to establish religion?

It certainly doesn’t mean that government, and by extension government entities, like public schools, should or need to avoid any mention of God, as though it were preferring religion over atheism. 

Our very nation was founded on a belief in God, because it was God who created all people equal and it was God who gave human beings unalienable rights.  Without God, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’t have the United States of America.

So what does it mean? 

Europe, then and now, has state churches.  The Queen of England is the Head of the Church of England.  That’s not coincidental.  The Church is part of their government.  Establishing religion was for government to pick a particular Christian denomination and fund it through government revenues.  This is proven by the fact that the prohibition of establishing religion was to Congress and not to the states.  The states themselves established state churches, until they realized they were causing the same problems our Founders wanted to avoid by that First Amendment.

If the government was giving money to religious schools, I would say no.  Definitely.  But giving parents a choice in educating their children, by all means.

 

 

stopping gun violence

A Sun-Times readers spelled out her plan to stop gun violence.  (Stopping gun violence, February 8)

There is one small problem with her plan. 

She acknowledges that when she was a child, murders were rare, but now they are common.  She says we don’t have gun control.  We need gun control.

But we didn’t have gun control when she was a child, and murders were rare.

So not having gun control is not the cause of the problem of gun violence.  Will gun control stop it?  We already have laws against gun violence.  Do we think making more laws will stop lawbreakers from breaking the law? 

There are two parts of this gun violence problem that the reader’s suggestions do not address.

1)      Why do people want to kill people, and why do more people want to kill people today than when she was a child?

2)      The Bible says that crime runs rampant, when crime is not punished speedily.  Ecclesiastes 8:11

Police are holding back on doing their jobs aggressively, because they know they will be second-guessed constantly and critically.  And prosecutors are less concerned with public safety than with protecting offenders from possible problems with the criminal justice system.

In answering the questions posed here, the common thinking is that the problem is the fault of other people.  If other people had done more for or spent more money on the people who commit these crimes now when these criminals were younger, they wouldn’t be committing all these crimes now.

I submit that that is simply a form of social blackmail, a demand for more government spending.

Any answer to the gun violence problem must address both parts of this problem.

forbidden words

Neil Steinberg recounts in his latest column (Baseball and the word that must not be said, February 7) a story of a famous baseball player who used to enjoy beating up a particular demographic of people with a blackjack.  He happened to refer to these people by a particular word that has been banned from public discourse, unless, of course, you are of that particular demographic, and you can use it as much as you want.

It seems the people whose opinions count the most in our society were more upset by his use of the forbidden word than in the fact he enjoyed physically beating them.  And then Steinberg mentions the school teacher who we’re all sure had no animosity to this particular demographic, but she lost her job anyway, because she mentioned the aforementioned forbidden word in the course of teaching a class about racism. 

So what are we to make of all this?

I would like to offer my observations, and I welcome anyone who has a different opinion to share it with me.

America is built on freedom, and that includes freedom of speech and the press.  No, that does not mean the right to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre, but the freedom to engage in an exchange of ideas.  Which also means opinions.  And opinions aren’t required to be approved by a board of certified researchers who tested your opinions for accuracy and impartiality.

That freedom also includes the right to pursue happiness. 

In reflecting on this, I am reminded of the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments, as the Bible relates, were given to the Israel nation by God as the means to govern society.  Oh, there were other rules, but these gave the broad outlines of what the other rules should entail.

And they are revealing.

Elsewhere in the Bible where God tells people how to live life, He talks about the importance of loving your neighbor.  He commands that, but these are not included in the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments makes no mention of our personal feelings toward anyone else or of any responsibility requiring things that we are to do for them.

It does command respect for our parents.

But as far as anyone else, it basically says to leave them alone.

Don’t kill them, don’t try to ruin their marriage, don’t steal from them, don’t make false accusations against them, and just leave what they have alone.  If you don’t do these things, society will be fine.

So what does this have to do with forbidden words?

I submit that banning certain words helps nobody.  Making people conscious of this word does nothing to further the cause of mutual understanding or empathy.  It doesn’t make anyone like anybody more or dislike them any less. 

Are we to assume that this is the only word that hurts people?  Here we are punishing people who are not using the word to hurt people at all.  But I can think of dozens of words that actually do hurt people.  But they don’t hurt people by their mere presence.  They hurt people, because they express the contempt, disregard, hatred, envy, and anger we might have toward that person or peoples.  And that is far worse, though the words themselves are not banned.

Banning words is like tearing down statues.  It makes some people feel better for having done something, but it does nothing to make anyone’s life better.  And the fact that it is used to punish people simply for the crime of uttering it is simply wrong. 

Try harder to rid society of hatred, envy, and anger.  Teach people to love their neighbors and to be kind to them.  That can be hard in a secular society.  It was a lot easier when we allowed religion and God back into our public discourse.

new political parties

A Sun-Times reader touched on one of the most important issues of our time.  (Time for new political parties, February 6)

I hope the Sun-Times would pick up the torch and lead the charge.

Our political system and politics in general are broken in so many ways, I shouldn’t need to list them here.

One of the simplest ways to fix a big part of this is to elect more people who are not a part of the two established parties.  It could be from other political parties or no party at all.

The only thing that is stopping this is our electoral system itself.  It is only set up for two candidates.  When you add more candidates, we no longer demand that the winner win more than 50% of the vote.  Three candidates they can win with as little as 34% of the vote.  Four candidates 26%.  This is not only wrong, it is stupid.

But that’s the system we have. 

Our last election we had only two major candidates.  Three hundred and thirty million people in the country, and we only have two choices? 

Yes, we had primaries to determine the choices of the two parties, but they too were determined by the same flawed system.  They select the leading candidates of both parties, but they don’t demand that that leading candidate get more than 50% of the vote to win the primary.

We need a system where we can gradually wean off the least favored candidates one at a time until one candidate gets more than that 50% of the vote.

This one simple act will open our elections up to a multitude of candidates.  Political parties can keep their primary system, but they will probably find that they have different candidates winning them.

We have such a system available to fix all this.  It is called ranked choice voting.  People can vote for more than one candidate, and the candidates with the least support are winnowed off one at a time, and the voters’ choice then shifts to another candidate on their ballot. 

I believe that any election that uses this system be counted on a computer so that the election is decided that first day, and then the ballots should be checked by hand after. 

It makes the election process a little more complicated and thus susceptible to mischief. 

But this would absolutely break the stranglehold of the two-party system in our country and force our government to actually discuss and debate the bills, and it would also have the side benefit of generating smaller bills that would foster more consensus. 

 

a letter to the papers about a teacher who was fired

I was in management for much of my working life.  I had people over me and people under me.

I saw my responsibility as a manager as a trust given to me by God.  Here are people trying to make a living, caring for their families, and I saw it as my duty to take of them.  Help them to prosper at work, make good money, and enjoy their time while there.

One company I worked for seemed to take pride in firing people in a never-ending quest for the perfect employee.  Of course, perfect employees often don’t stay long anyway, because they often are looking for better opportunities.

I never wanted to fire an employee.  I ended up getting fired myself for trying to protect my people from getting fired.  Long story.

So I was greatly saddened to read about a teacher who was fired for saying one particular word in her classroom.  (Educator fired after using slur in class, February 5)  She wasn’t even slurring anybody.  She’s just a teacher, trying to teach. 

If she had called a student that, then I can see some form of punishment.  Maybe a week or two off without pay.  I wouldn’t have fired her, unless she showed that she had gross disrespect for the particular minority group in question.  Then she would have no business teaching.

One of the founding principles of our country is free speech.  No, that is not a license to say anything at any time to anybody.  But it is meant to encourage discussion of ideas.  Now the current culture wants to stifle that, making people afraid to speak freely, for fear that it will come back to them at some point and make them regret it.

That is wrong.  That is not how America is supposed to work. 

I hope the school admits its error and restores the teacher immediately to the classroom with an apology and lost pay.

Nationalism: what is it, and is it good or bad?

I learned a very long time ago that, in many discussions, you need to understand the meaning of the key words used in the discussion. 

Nationalism is one of those words.  I saw the word used in an opinion column recently. (History is a journey we all must take together  February 2)  The article didn’t actually define the word, but it was definitely a bad thing.  Republicans were said to be using it relentlessly to assault the teaching of black history in our country.  Relentlessly.  And I’m not making this up.

I looked for some official definitions.  I stopped at four:

1)      identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.  uncited source in Microsoft Word

2)      aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on shared social characteristics of culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics (or the government), religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity.  Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture.  Wikipedia

3)      a feeling that people have of being loyal to and proud of their country often with the belief that it is better and more important than other countries  Merriam-Webster

4)      loyalty and devotion to a nation, especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups  Merriam-Webster

My conclusion is that, in modern usage, nationalism is a good thing that inevitably goes bad.

My question is: what would you call an idea that incorporates all the good features here but doesn’t have the bad ones?  Is that even possible? 

My answer is, yes, of course.

I believe that this word had been caught up in the political debates of the day, and its opponents have sought to discredit it by looking at it with eyes that wanted to see something that they figured had to be there.  Or they just want it to be there, so they label everything in a way that makes it look bad.

So let me explain it this way.

The smallest unit of government, if we can call it that, is the family.  There are two unelected leaders who rule over children for a substantial part of their lives.  But unlike the general elected ones, these two leaders generally live for the welfare of their children.  They will sacrifice time and money and energy to provide for them, giving them the best possible resources and experiences so that they can live fruitful and happy lives.

Now this does not mean that they hate all the other children on the block or anywhere else in the world.  They may or may not give of their time and resources to help children outside of their small unit, but nobody will criticize them if they don’t.  In fact, society expects them to care for their children first. 

This is nationalism at its smallest form.

The Preamble to our Constitution says that our government exists to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In other words, our government exists for the welfare of the people of the United States.

Now this doesn’t mean that we hate people in other countries.  It just means that we have a government to take care of our people, just like a family has parents to take care of their children.

Now let’s look at the four definitions of nationalism that we found and look at them in this light:

1)         Nationalism is said to have no interest in the interests of other nations and will pursue its own to their detriment.

Now I won’t say that something like this is not possible and may even happen at times, but is this a necessary attribute of nationalism? 

Go back to the picture of the family. 

How many decisions do you make where you consult all your neighbors first or even think about them actually? 

Now you may see a child who is obviously in need.  What do you do?  Would you take your childrens’ college fund and spend it on this child?  No, you wouldn’t.  But many parents do think of the needs of others outside their family.  But those children already have parents of their own.  Like people in other countries have governments of their own.  But you would not put the needs of that other child over the needs of your own.

I am not sure of what decisions a parent can make that would be to the detriment of their neighbors, and I am not sure what decisions our government would make to the detriment of its neighbors, but I contend that to call such a thing nationalism is a mistake. 

2)         Here nationalism is seen as guilty of seeing its country as having a unique character and wanting to preserve it. 

Now there are two issues here: a)  Our country was formed a unique nation in the history of the world by its belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  So our country as a nation acknowledges God, otherwise there wouldn’t be any unalienable rights. 

Now if our country is unique in human history, in the light of the fact that we allow into our country millions of people every year, if we want to preserve that uniqueness, it is necessary that we teach those people who come here what that uniqueness is, and we should be able to expect from them at least an acknowledgement that they support those ideas.

It is no fault to want to preserve the very things that made our country what it is and even that it exists at all. 

Our country is failing to do this entirely, and it is no fault to want and insist that it correct this.

b) The second issue is one that is seen more now in Europe, but there are applications here as well.

Every country in Europe has been known for its unique culture.  Now in the last few decades, millions of immigrants have come to Europe with no intention or desire to merge with those cultures.  They want to remain distinct and even expect European culture to become more like theirs.

I insist that there is nothing blameworthy in a country recognizing its unique culture and wanting to preserve it.  This has no disregard for other people.  They are not going to their countries expecting them to change, so they merely expect the same in their own countries.

3)         Nationalism is accused of having the belief that this country is better and more important than other countries. 

Certainly, any parent thinks their child is more important than other children.  Not because in the real world, their child has more value than other children, but they can’t take care of other people’s children.  They have their own by the grace of God. 

Most countries like their country, and they believe that their country is simply the best place in the world to live. 

But, no, in real life, all human life is sacred, and no person’s life is more important than others simply by virtue of where they live.

So I submit that any fault here is not an inherent fault of nationalism.  It’s just a common people fault.

4)         This last perceived fault is an interesting one.  This would probably only apply to American Nationalism.  For some strange reason, Americans think that freedom is how people are supposed to live.  They believe that these rights come from God, not the government, so, of course, they apply to every people in every country.

Is it hubris to think that all countries should be like ours?  Only if you believe that all cultures are equal.  And that’s too big of a subject to get into here.  But thinking that all countries should be like ours is consistent with the founding principles of our country. 

 

So, yes, some Americans, including Presidents, have believed in the promotion of our culture and interests even in and for countries with vastly different cultures and interests.

Does this mean that nationalism is bad?  Only if you believe that freedom is bad.

 

I think in our current political atmosphere, a person would use that word only in the securest of company, because anyone associating that person with that word would attach the negatives to the person without making sure they really apply.

 

So what do we do?

 

I would say that we focus on our Constitution that simply says that our government exists for the welfare of our people.  And by extension, that means the welfare of the people of the United States before that of the citizens of other countries.  That’s why governments exist.  That’s its job.  Just don’t complain when people tell it to do its job and do it better.

 

 

The National Foodball League and black coaches

Let me see if I have this right.

NFL teams are a billion-dollar investment, but owners regularly put their prejudices over winning.  (Fix is in?  Suit hits NFL with 1-2 punch, February 3)

A winning team can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars more a year if they win and win big. 

But instead of looking for the best coaches to bring that all about, they will only look at minority candidates, because they have to, but they don’t consider them seriously. 

I always thought that to become a billionaire, you had to be pretty smart.  But a person smart enough to make a billion dollars is perfectly willing to jeopardize that investment through business decisions based on emotion over his reason. 

I know a lot of people believe that, but I don’t.