Does religion have a role in a free society?

Religion isn’t talked about much publicly anymore.  The thinking is that religion is a personal matter.  But even more than that, the thinking is that it doesn’t really matter anyway.  Whatever you want to believe doesn’t matter.  As long as it is your belief and you sincerely hold to that belief, nobody can tell you that you are wrong.  So there is nothing to discuss.  To even think that somebody is wrong in a sincerely held belief is deemed arrogance and a form of hatred.

However, our country was founded on what can be called religious beliefs, though the Founders didn’t call them beliefs.  They called them facts.

They didn’t just believe that God created all people equal, such that nobody has a divine or inherent right to rule over other people.  It is a fact.

They didn’t just believe that God gave human beings unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government, rights that the government did not give and that government cannot take away.  No, it’s a fact. 

Now if a person is an atheist, how can they believe that all people have unalienable rights?  Not even every religion believes in that.  Not every religion believes in a right to life or the right to pursue happiness either. 

A religion is an all-encompassing worldview that defines what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, what are the rules, are there any rules? 

Every person lives by their personal worldview whether it has the name of a religion or not.  Nations have worldviews too that shape the kinds of laws that it makes.  Our country was founded on the Christian worldview.  That’s why we believe in a right to life and the right to pursue happiness.  And why we don’t have kings but representatives.

The Founders, and the Constitution, believed in a small government.  That presumes that the people are self-reliant, responsible, caring of their fellow citizens, and of a high moral standard.  Our Founders encouraged the use of the Bible in public schools, where it remained for almost 200 years before a court called supreme deemed that unconstitutional. 

Now this doesn’t mean that people are or should be compelled to believe the Bible or even in God.  The right to freedom of speech means that people are free to believe what they want and to talk about it.  But you have that right, because our Founders believed in a worldview where God gave you that right.  And that is Christianity.

You don’t have to believe in Christianity to live in our country and to enjoy our freedoms, but you have those freedoms because our Founders did believe in that.

Some people will insist that our Founders were deists and that these rights were natural law and had nothing to do with the Bible and Christianity.

Except that a deist god wouldn’t give humans anything, let alone tell them about it. 

And natural law is an outworking of philosophy.  Every generation sees new philosophical systems that influence things until the next one comes along.  But the Founders believed, no, affirmed that God gave these rights to human beings.  That’s not philosophy but a statement of fact, undergirded by their belief in the Bible as God’s revelation to humans about Himself and life.

 

Transgenderism and children

A Chicago newspaper recently published a full page column by Mona Charen who thinks that society needs to wait and give medical science a chance “to measure what is really going on and how best to respond” with this new thing in the world: transgenderism. 

We have always had homosexuality – people who engage in sexual activities with members of their same sex, and transvestitism – people who dress and generally act as though they were of the opposite sex.

Transgenderism required advancements in medical technology and expertise to exist. 

It also required the rise of postmodernism and identity politics.  Postmodernism is a philosophy that values personal experience over objective reality.  It questions whether we can actually know true objectivity, because we see through eyes tinted by biases, faulty knowledge, and our own experiences. 

Identity politics practically speaking probably originated in Marxism or communism.  It first focused on economic classes and saw society as a struggle between them.  Now society is composed of an ever-increasing number of identity groups competing for equal treatment and societal status.

This last such group now is transgenders.

Charen wants science to say more about transgenderism before society makes too many laws regarding it.

I would say that science has already spoken. 

There are two genders, and this is woven into a person’s DNA at the moment of conception.  We act as if we can remove certain exterior body parts, create or reform new ones, administer hormone treatments for the rest of a person’s life, and voila, what?

What exactly have we created?

A person’s sexual characteristics are an intrinsic part of a person’s internal body formation.  Scientists can scrape off skin cells from your arm and tell you what sex you are without having to even see you.

We are asking our children to experiment with sex at very young ages as it they understood what sex is all about.  Then we are asking them to decide at this young age what sex they want to be for the rest of their lives, long before they ever even thought about getting married and having children.

I’m sorry, but this is wrong. 

Children need to be taught and guided.  A big part of growing up is learning to accept who you are, and that includes the physical characteristics you were dealt – looks, height, general body frame, intelligence,        and sex.

We do them no favors when we suggest or encourage them to try to be the sex that they are not.

We are doing that, thanks to new federal guidelines on sex education asserting that there is no such thing as normative sex.

I think science has already spoken on this. 

What we call sex organs are known in science as reproductive organs.  And science will go so far as to say that their purpose is to reproduce the species.  And, so then, there is such a thing as normative sex.

And we should not be telling our children otherwise and urging them to experiment now so they can make an intelligent and informed decision what sex they want to be for the rest of their lives.

Transgender people are people.  As such, they are worthy of our utmost respect and kindness.  Transgenderism is a lie. 

Adults are free pretty much to do as you please, as long as you don’t hurt other people.  But please, don’t tell children that what they see in the mirror has no bearing on who they really are.  True maturity is accepting the person you were given and making a better you.  We should not be encouraging and allowing children to undergo hormonal and surgical treatments to try to create a new reality. 

This is why we separate human beings into children and adults.  Children don’t have the experience and the information to make permanent life-altering decisions, and adults need to stop letting children think that they can and need to.

should we confirm the latest Supreme Court nominee?

The Sun-Times believes that Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves a seat on the Supreme Court.  (March 27)

Why?

Because she is a black woman.  And because Republican Senators are just being mean to her.

I believe there is one reason that should be enough to pass on her confirmation.

That is her inability, or was it her unwillingness, to define what a woman is.  True, a biologist might have a technical definition beyond the expertise of a non-scientist, but the question was answerable and should have been.

This question is significant for several reasons or for the same reason.

The Supreme Court in the next few years will get cases dealing with what it means to be a female in sports and whether newer understandings of womanhood can be read back into older legislation like Civil Rights laws. 

The question is essentially whether Jackson will approach the law with a common-sense approach or whether she will try to find legal ways to put square pegs into round holes.  Many laws were written long before transgenderism was ever an issue, and the Court will be asked to apply those laws to situations they were never intended to address.

Rather than having Congress update the laws to meet new circumstances, the Court will decide for us what these laws mean today.

Jackson has shown clearly here that she will use legal sleight-of-hand to find rulings that ordinary people would reject out-of-hand. 

And, frankly, I like the old days better when a Supreme Court justice required more than the slimmest possible majority to gain confirmation.  

Critical Race Theory: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a description of life in America which, while it has a basis in fact, focuses on the wrong things and so draws the wrong conclusions. 

Is America racist?

Depends on what you mean.

Are there racists in America?

Of course, there are.  And there are racists in every country of the world.  This is the human condition. 

In 1994, there was a war in Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsis.  Both groups were blacks, one was a minority group that had more political power than the other.  But when the killing began, it was simply based on which group you belonged to.  People had identification cards in their wallets to tell them apart.

Is there systemic racism in America? 

Again, it depends on what you mean and what that means.

There is not a country in the world today where a black person has more freedom and opportunity to achieve success in life than in America, however you want to define it. 

Is it harder for a black person to achieve this success than for a white person? 

In many or most cases, I would say yes. 

And this is where I believe CRT goes astray.  Not all the problems blacks face are caused by other people.  I submit that three of the largest problems in the black community are single parent homes, high dropout rates from school, and crime.  Are these self-inflicted problems or caused by other people?  CRT would want to fault other people as the primary cause of all the ills of black people.

Imagine a marathon run.

Imagine that white people get to start 5 miles into the race. 

Wait, that is unfair. 

If the goal is to be the first person across the finish line, yes, that is unfair and wrong.

But the goal of a marathon for most people is to just finish the race.  That is success, and whether you finish the race, that is entirely up to you.

CRT says the whole thing is broken.  The system, the people, the whole dang country.

I submit we live in the best country in the world to do whatever it is you want to do.  If you focus on that, what they call racism is but a headwind in the run.  When people are focusing on what they consider obstacles, they are not running toward the goal but standing on the sidelines complaining, while everyone else is running.

But shouldn’t we try to improve our country?  Root out racism?

Sure.  And how do you propose we do that?

The Founders believed it was through the Bible and Christianity.  Racism wasn’t their focus but a society where people cared for each other and weren’t reliant on other people.  Other people, though, were there to help them if they needed it.

It was Christianity and the Bible that taught our people to love their neighbors as themselves and to do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

We’ve lost this in our country.  Primarily because the court called supreme said we can’t talk or teach about God in our public schools, and so we essentially removed God from public life 

CRT wants to remake our country by changing the system, where the real need is to change people.  If you change the system, we will lose the freedoms that made our country great.  It will try to legislate equality, and while it may raise up some people on the very bottom, it will bring everybody else down in the process.  We will all be more equal, but more equally poor.

 

 

religion and Supreme Court nominees

Our country is in the midst of confirmation hearings for a new Supreme Court justice.  It’s a good time and a needed one for us to look again at the interplay of religion and politics.

Some people think that asking this nominee and questions about religion as improper and unconstitutional.  Article VI of the Constitution that says: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

I’m not sure we are understanding that article correctly.

For example, the earliest State Constitution of Tennessee (1796) has the two following statements: 1) Article VIII: No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishment, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State, and 2) Article XI: That no religious test shall every be required as a qualification in any office of public trust under this State.

Requiring a belief in God and an afterlife of rewards and punishment was not considered a forbidden religious test.  This is significant, because lawmakers at that time understood better than we today the intent and wording of their laws. 

These beliefs were also assumed for being a witness in a trial, and even for the ability to take the oath of office.

A person who did not believe in God was considered untrustworthy.  A belief in God included the idea that people will be held accountable in this life or the next for their lives, and anyone who didn’t believe in God they thought would have little qualm about being dishonest for personal advantage.

And while specific religious beliefs or tests may not be required as a condition for holding office, people who are to vote for or confirm such people have every right to know what that person believes and how it governs their lives. 

Religion is not something extraneous to a person’s character and conduct, like their taste in food or music or movies.  Religion is a worldview that answers all your most important questions in life: what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is true, what is false, what are the rules?

Our country is founded on the belief that all people are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If a person does not believe in God, how can they believe that people have unalienable rights?   And I venture to say that not all religions even believe that you have an unalienable right to life or the pursuit of happiness.  At the time of the founding of our nation, multiculturalism and pluralism were not even remotely thought of as likely descriptions of American society.

A Supreme Court nominee may not be disqualified for their religious beliefs or lack of them, but those who are entrusted with their confirmation certainly should and need to inquire about the person’s worldview to decide if they want this person to sort through our highest legal and Constitutional questions.

a sports story that should concern all of us

This doesn’t happen often, but sometimes there is a story in the sports section of the newspaper that should concern all of us.

The Ricketts family owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and they want to buy a professional soccer team in England.

Twelve years ago, papa Ricketts sent an email to a son that was critical of Islam. 

Now, because of this, he is considered a racist and the Ricketts family unqualified to buy this soccer team.

First off, this was a private email.  Unless he was planning a terrorist attack or a murder, it’s nobody’s business what he said to a family member in private.

But just what did he say?

Like I said, he made some critical comments about Islam.  It was the fact that he said critical comments that are the issue, not what those particular comments were.  Nobody is discussing whether his comments were true.  It was his willingness to actually say them that is the problem.

Ricketts is being branded a racist.  That is probably the worst thing a person can be today.

However, Islam is a religion.  One of the world’s largest. 

Islam is not a race or ethnicity. 

It is a religion.  It has nothing to do with race.  What, we can’t criticize religions anymore?

A religion is a set of beliefs.  It is a set of beliefs that describes an all-encompassing worldview down to the ideas of what is right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, the very rules of life.

There are sharp irreconcilable differences between all the major religions in the world.  They cannot all be true.  People have to decide what they believe in or what they don’t believe. 

This means that people need to discuss the various religions, weigh their claims and teachings.  That means that even Islam should be discussed and even criticized if need be.

Disagreement with a religion’s teaching is not ignorance, hatred, racism, bigotry, or intolerance.  And neither is expressing that disagreement.  Especially in America where freedom of speech is considered an inalienable right and necessary for a free society.  Everything is and should be open for discussion.

There is a trend today to shut off discussions and opinions by labelling even any comments questioning something as racist, bigoted, intolerant, etc.

I’m sorry, but that is wrong.  More and more, people in America are afraid to say what they think about a lot of things, because somebody might complain, and the cost for speaking can be very high.

It is important and necessary in a free society to be able to speak freely.  If that speech is limited by whether somebody, somewhere, might be offended by it, then freedom is gone.  The list of possible offenses will only grow, differing opinions will be labelled misinformation, and everyone will live in fear of doing or saying something that can jeopardize their lives or livelihood. 

We must not let that happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

is abortion a right?

The Tribune had a major opinion piece today, by a lawyer no less, explaining how killing unborn children is a Constitutional right.  (Constitutionally, the right to abortion isn’t something made of nothing, March 21)

Something about privacy.

If I killed dogs in my basement, is that OK because I have a right to privacy?

Yes, there are all kinds of issues relating to a person’s personal life that the government has no business regulating, but pregnancy is unique.

What is this thing that this woman is carrying?

Is it of intrinsic worth, or is it something like a litter of puppies that you can flush down a toilet, give away, or keep one or two for yourself?

This is the first question that has to be answered.

When our nation had a religious foundation, we saw children as creations of God, created in His image.

Now that we are a secular nation, supposedly, how do we decide what the child is, and how much value it has?

One of the founding principles of our country is that human beings have the right to life.  Who are we to say when that right begins?  Does it begin?  I would think that a child would have that as soon as it has life.

That is the question that we need to answer as a society before we flatly say that a woman has a right to kill her unborn child.

This whole idea of rights has morphed into things I don’t think the Founders ever imagined.

They imagined the right to speak freely, believe freely, pretty much do what you want without taking what belongs to somebody else. 

They saw having children as a privilege and a great responsibility given to us by God.  Do we have a right to refuse that?

I think we need to give this issue more thought and not just frame it as a woman’s rights issue.  She is not the only one who is involved here.

 

 

 

Is abortion related to violence in our society?

Two days, two entirely unrelated stories in the paper, but then maybe they are related. 

Yesterday, the Chicago mayor was talking about the need to give children love and support from the earliest ages to keep them from going into a life of violence and crime.

Now today, the Illinois attorney general tells us that we must be vigilant to protect our right to kill our children before they are born. 

He didn’t word it like that.   But then words are important to shape the way we think about things or to frame the argument for them.

But reproductive choice is just that: the right to kill our children before they are born, and having that as an accepted norm in society. 

This raises two immediate questions: what exactly are we killing?  And does the worth of this thing we are killing depend on what others decide it should have? 

For all the history of Western Civilization, except for the last several generations, we have always recognized human beings, even before they were born, as beings made in the image of God and by God.

Human life is valuable, even apart from any value that we might give to it.  Having children was always considered a privilege, an honor, and a duty.  Yes, an enormous task, but one in which every human being was expected to participate. 

We treat our children as disposable.  Their birth is not important in itself, only if we want it to be.  And I think that whole thinking permeates throughput our society, maybe not overtly, but it’s there. 

We don’t speak of the image of God anymore, because that is religious.   But what does that leave us?

We are just animals.  Children are like pets.  As long as we feed them and clothe them, anybody can take care of them while we live our lives. 

Going back to the problem of violence.  When people commit violence against other people, it is because they have no value of the importance of that other human being. 

I submit there is a direct correlation.  People can commit violent acts for many reasons, but at bottom there is just no respect for life. 

To value abortion as a right cheapens life.  Children don’t have a right to life.  Life is then not an inherent right; it’s not even a right at all.  We shouldn’t really be surprised when people take the lives of other people intentionally.  Life isn’t sacred anymore.

the latest cure for violence

Mayor Lightfoot had a major meeting with the new mayor of New York City to discuss anti-violence strategies.  (Crime Consult, March 19)

The mayor is “laser-focused on ‘stopping the pull of the soul of our young people to the streets.’ “

“We’ve got to do more to make sure that we intervene in a pro-active way to provide support and love to these young people at the earliest possible stage in life.”

Well, I am happy to announce that we already have such a program in place, and it doesn’t even involve spending public money.

It’s called parenting.  Every child enters life through the union of a man and a woman, who then are called parents.  The plan is that these parents, and particularly the father, work together to provide the necessary love and support this child needs to become a responsible, loving adult.

The problem is that our society no longer promotes marriage, and it encourages young people to get involved sexually at the youngest ages.  Our current sex education program in public schools in Illinois encourages children even before puberty to explore their sexuality.  There is no normative sex, they say, so children essentially need to experiment with all the various possibilities at the youngest ages so they can make wise sexual choices for their lives.

But then, this is a new program, where this violence is an old problem.  I venture to say that this new school initiative will only contribute to the problems we already have: too many children growing up without a complete home life, and children having children.   

You will not solve the problem of violence in a society without addressing and supporting families that have the child’s mother and father in a loving marriage together raising their kids.

the census and racism

Another day, another charge of racism in our country.  (Census undercount is another sign of racism, March 16)

This time the fact that there was an undercount of certain racial groups in the last census, the reason had to be racism, even though the count is based on residents filling out the census forms.   If a particular group is undercounted, it means that a lot of people in that group didn’t fill out the census.

Please stop blaming everybody else for problems that are self-induced.

It should be noted too that federal money and Congressional seats are not doled out on the basis of race.  If one race is undercounted and another overcounted, hopefully the final numbers are close. 

If particular groups feel aggrieved that their group was undercounted in the census, tell them to write themselves a note for the next census to fill out the census forms.

 

a wake-up call to America

When I was a kid, we made everything in America.  We had a strong middle class, jobs paid good living wages.  Spouses didn’t have to work in most cases.  You could stock shelves in a grocery store, and your wife could stay home with the kids.

We taxed all our imports.  We didn’t even have an income tax until 1913.  Taxes on imports paid for most of our federal spending.

But the need for this tax became important later on for other reasons.  Foreign companies generally don’t’ have labor unions, pensions, employer-provided medical insurance, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, standard workweek and overtime laws, OSHA, and government subsidies.  How could our companies possibly compete against companies like that?

We always imported a lot of products.  But they were genuine foreign products like Swiss chocolate and French wine.  They cost more, and nobody cared.  They were getting something unique.

Then somebody had the bright idea that trade should be free.  This would make consumer goods cheaper.

Oh, and millions of our jobs sent overseas.  Not just in the sense that we started buying more foreign products, but the foreign products were our products now being made in other places.

So we lost millions of middle class jobs.

Then at the same time, we flooded our country with immigrants.  Legal and illegal.  And this drove down wages. 

So now, we are heavily dependent on other nations for a lot of really important stuff.  And as in the case of China, millions of our everyday products.

And we are finding, no, this international cooperation and dependency is not contributing to increased harmony and goodwill among the nations, but it not only creates hardship for our people at home, and it also gives undue leverage to nations that are not friendly to achieve goals that are not in our best interests.  We have less good paying jobs, and we are reliant on nations with different values and goals than ours.

We were energy independent; now we buy oil from Russia.  So we stop that to punish them, and we hurt our own people too.  That is not how government is supposed to work.

China is a tyrannical country with global ambitions, and we feed the beast with our insane dependence of them for just about everything.

What the bleep are our leaders thinking?

We let our leaders lead us on the wrong paths, while we were perhaps too busy just living our lives. 

Enough.

Time for us to raise our voices and tell them to start acting in the interests of our country, like they’re supposed to.  Too many of us have stood by and watched our country slowly being destroyed, and we didn’t know what to do.

The first step is to start talking about it and keep talking about it.

 

 

 

 

filling out census forms and personal responsibility

The Sun-Times is rightly concerned that the 2020 census undercounted important groups in our society.  (As feared, 2020 Census undercounted Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, March 15)

Of course, the editorial notes that this happens, because people don’t fill out the census forms. 

I don’t understand the Times’ fear here.  Oh, we won’t get as much in federal money, but why should the federal government give us money anyway?  Why is everybody always looking for other people to give them money?

My question is: if the census bureau knows how much these groups of people are undercounted, then they must know how many people there are anyway.  Why do we ever bother taking a census?

Just let them tell us what the numbers are.

But the bigger issue.

America is a land of unparalleled freedom.  With freedom comes responsibility.  People decide whether they want to vote or whether they will fill out a census form.  That’s their choice, good or bad.  And they accept the consequences. 

But just don’t blame other people for what these people did or didn’t do.  America is not perfect, but you can do more here than anywhere else in the world.  There is a lot we can complain about in our country, but don’t complain if you aren’t doing your part to make it work.

 

 

 

conspiracy theories and gas prices

The Tribune reported on some new conspiracy theories regarding fuel prices and electric vehicles.  (Surge in fuel prices lead to conspiracy theories over EVs, March 12)

There is no need to resort to conspiracy theories here.

It was a priority of the last administration that our country be energy independent.  The first day of this new administration, it was clear that that is not a priority when it shut down an oil pipeline, and there was talk of shutting others.

We now import millions of barrels of oil a day, and all from countries that we would not call our best friends.

It is not surprising that events out of our control cause the price of that oil to surge. 

What is a fact and not a theory is that for this administration and the Democratic Party in general, low fuel prices are not a priority, and even a bad thing.  They want oil and gas prices to be high, and, yes, they would also like everybody to own an electric vehicle.

So whether the high gas and oil prices are the result of incompetence or careful planning, they are getting the results they want.  And that is not a theory.

high gas and oil prices and the push for electric vehicles

The Tribune reported on some new conspiracy theories regarding fuel prices and electric vehicles.  (Surge in fuel prices lead to conspiracy theories over EVs, March 12)

There is no need to resort to conspiracy theories here.

It was a priority of the last administration that our country be energy independent.  The first day of this new administration, it was clear that that is not a priority when it shut down an oil pipeline, and there was talk of shutting others.

We now import millions of barrels of oil a day, and all from countries that we would not call our best friends.

It is not surprising that events out of our control cause the price of that oil to surge. 

What is a fact and not a theory is that for this administration and the Democratic Party in general, low fuel prices are not a priority, and even a bad thing.  They want oil and gas prices to be high, and, yes, they would also like everybody to own an electric vehicle.

So whether the high gas and oil prices are the result of incompetence or careful planning, they are getting the results they want.  And that is not a theory.

comparing the US to Russia

A Tribune reader noted what he sees as similarities between the US and Russia.  (Similarities between Russia, US, March 12)

He’s certainly right about that, but I think he made the wrong comparisons.

Our country now bans people from questioning the last election and the safety of these latest vaccines.  Now that sounds like Russia. 

All debate and discussion are now forbidden on those subjects.  Now that sounds like Russia.  Only approved messages can be spoken.  Next will be criticism of the government, the President.

Now it’s not what you do that matters, but things you say and think.  There is no more freedom of speech in our country.  You have to be careful what you say or you could be out of a job.

The government now decides what people can say or think.

Yes, the United States and Russia are becoming more alike everyday.

The reader’s concerns were about laws that deal with what is taught to children in our public schools and whether parents have a right to be involved in what their kids are taught.  It’s Russia, not the US here, that would want the government to make all those decisions.  Now, however, the public schools are insisting that parents should have no say over their kids’ public education.

The reader should be concerned about that.  That is where we are becoming like the Russians.

 

election runoffs

No slight to Mayor Lightfoot. but she should not have been in the last mayoral election runoff.  (Running toward a runoff?, March 9)  And then neither should have Toni Preckwinckle. 

Why?  More than 4 out of 5 voters didn’t vote for them in the primaries.  Having a runoff with the top two vote-getters when you have 15 candidates is the barest possible resolution of the problem.

I suggest that when there are so many candidates in a primary, let voters pick as many candidates as they want.  Everybody who they think will make a good candidate and not voting for anyone they definitely don’t want. That could have been Lightfoot that last time around, but we’ll never know.

I should add, though, that only votes cast in person should be able to do this.  There the voter inserts their own ballot into the machine.  If a ballot is mailed-in, it’s possible that other people could mark off other candidates as well before the ballot is counted.

A primary system needs to be able to determine which candidates have the most support, and our current system does not do that.  In 2016, when the Republicans had 17 candidates running for President, I could have supported about 8 of them.  Having to choose only one of them won’t give you the candidate with the most overall support.  And that’s what the parties and the people need.

a letter to my village on diversity, inclusion, and comprehensive plans to incorporate them

Comprehensive Plan

Diversity, Inclusiveness, Welcoming, Community…

 

We have lived in Wilmette for almost 50 years.  For the most part, we have been happy here.  Property taxes are about to drive us out of here.  Property taxes are absurd.  It is the one tax that is not tied to a person’s ability to pay the tax. 

When I hear of comprehensive plans, specifically government plans, I become very wary. 

Why?

Comprehensive plans are large plans that have many parts to them.  It is hard enough to get people to agree on small plans, but comprehensive plans inevitably include controversial things that either they hope you don’t notice, or you are forced to accept to get the things you do want. 

Those are false choices that have no place in government initiatives.  Honest, responsible government would identify particular issues and seek input and discussion.  But it would not bunch a lot of disparate policies together as one package that require accepting or rejecting the whole thing at once.

Our Constitution says that government, our government, exists to unite our people and to ensure domestic tranquility.  It is not the place of government to try to shape the people or the community to attain preconceived ideals that it decides on. 

I am not even talking yet about the plan itself.  I am talking about the nature of government comprehensive plans. 

A comprehensive plan is saying that there are so many things wrong with something that we need to overhaul it from top to bottom.  I submit that Wilmette is a good community as it is and does not need the government to remake it into something different.  If the Village keeps the cost of living here as low as possible and still provides the usual services that we have come to expect, then it has done its job.

Now to specifics.

I am curious about the choice and wording of these goals.

Diversity and inclusion?  Did you forget equity, or did you omit it intentionally?  The only time those words are used, equity is like the third leg on the political stool.

Two comments on diversity.

The very idea of diversity denotes a simplistic and faulty view of people. 

Every person is unique.  We should never assume that we understand anybody, because we have classified them by race, gender identity, religion, or whatever parameters are important to you.  Every person has their own story, their own perspective, their own worldview, even though they may all be of the same race and gender and whatever.

To say that we are not a diverse community, because we have too few people of a different demographic is misleading, wrongheaded, and very shortsighted.  Isn’t that stereotyping, which   we’re not supposed to do, assuming that everybody of the same demographic is vastly similar, and people of another demographic are so different that justice and life demand that we spread all these various demographics throughout all of society for our necessary enrichment and social justice?

Secondly, people have always formed their closest ties with people they have the most in common with.  They seek out people with the same interests, the same beliefs, the same lifestyles.  People they are most different from make for an interesting conversation or two, but it hardly fosters committed friendships and relationships. 

I fail to see the value of a goal of diversity.  Diversity is more likely to divide people than to unite them.  How are people who are diverse supposed to be united, or isn’t that a worthy goal?  What holds us together, what binds us to each other, if we are so different from each other? 

Our nation is built about the idea of unity: the UNITED States, e pluribus UNUM.  When people focus on diversity, they are accentuating our differences and making those difference the paramount factor in the relationship.  That is not going to unite us, and that is what we need most today in our society, not more division.  We need to find what we have in common and not how we are different.

Then you speak of inclusion.

Does Wilmette have a problem with exclusion?  And I don’t mean a hundred years ago, or even 50. 

Who are you thinking of that we are not including?  And what does it mean to include them?

From my observations, when people talk about inclusion, they mean people who for various reasons have beliefs or practices or cultures that people have generally found unsettling in some ways.  They are not unsettling, because they are different, but because they require everybody else to conform to some new way of looking at things. 

Inclusion as used today always means a forced acceptance of ideas, beliefs, and behaviors that one would generally have questions about, but any criticism, questioning, even discussion of these matters is now forbidden.  That is not America.   

Nobody cares who moves in next door.  Unless they have loud parties late into the night.  They figure it’s a married couple with kids, financially stable, responsible, good job, probably educated.

When I say they don’t care, I don’t mean that they are unfriendly or different to them.  I mean they will accept them, as long as they are good neighbors.  Not too loud, not messy, don’t let things get rundown.

There is one exception.  What I call subsidized housing.  When the government either directly or indirectly creates situations where people who cannot afford to buy a house in Wilmette are able to live there.  Then we no longer have those general assurances that these people are responsible, educated people with a good work ethic. 

We both came from Chicago.  Both of us grew up there.  I worked most of my life in Chicago.  Neither of us would want to move back there.  No, it’s not the demographics but the crime.  Which coincidentally increased as the demographics changed.  And those changes were mostly driven by government pushing diversity rather than natural migration.

People don’t buy houses because the neighbors have regular block parties or there are welcoming committees for potential home buyers. They just want a safe neighborhood with low taxes and good schools.  If they meet their neighbors, that’s fine.  But if not, that’s OK too. 

You want a comprehensive plan as if there are major problems that need addressing.  I don’t see that, and I feel the solutions that you will propose to reshape our community will not be in everyone’s interests.  I fear in your attempt to make a better Wilmette you will incentivize people to move out, so you can get others more to your liking.  Again, that’s not America.  It’s not government’s role to run people’s lives or to tell them how to live.

What does it mean to build community?

 

I think you’re asking: what can the government of Wilmette do to promote more neighborliness among its residents? 

 

I definitely don’t think it should create a program or an office that requires tax dollars.  The basic need would be some way to facilitate people getting to know their neighbors better.  I’m sure block parties are helpful, but it takes somebody to organize them. 

 

If you enlisted volunteers who could, say, plan a block party.  i.e. do all the logistics. 

Set up vendors, provide a template for any person to use to have a block party.  Then you let everybody know that you have made putting on block parties as easy as possible.  You have done 90% of the work for us, and it’s only a matter of somebody deciding to do it.  You could make Wilmette the town for block parties. 

 

You could have volunteers who go to the houses of people who have just moved in and provide them with brochures, coupons to local businesses, important phone numbers, political information, representatives, etc.  You could even perhaps try to get a volunteer for every block who could, I don’t know, lead the way somehow.  I don’t think we should give them titles like Block Captain.  This person would have constant contact from the Village on things that might make life better in some way.

 

You could ask local businesses to provide discounts or coupons to new residents.  You could funnel to them name and addresses of new people if they want to contact them in some way.

 

What is our role as individuals? 

 

It’s almost all individuals.  We are the ones who have to do the talking, the taking of the time to share our lives.  We have to be willing to make the effort. 

 

Maybe you can have volunteers who would meet regularly to think about stuff like this.

 

How can Wilmette foster a real sense of belonging such that anyone can feel welcome and thrive?

Things like this can work both ways.  Most people I think just want to be left alone.  Yes, be friendly to people, but they want their space.  Some people would want added attention, but I think would rather not.

Thank you

 

neighborhood politics

One of the foundational principles of our country is local government.  That is to say, as much as possible, the government closest to the people is one that should make as many decisions concerning its constituents as possible.

A city should make as many decisions as possible before the state makes those that override them.  And a state should make as many decisions as possible before the federal government overrides those.

In a city like Chicago, the level of government closest to the people is the alderman.  They represent the people of their ward to protect their interests before the full city government.  (Despite Solis shenanigans, Mayor warned not to pick zoning fight, March 4)

One of the biggest issues facing aldermen is zoning.  Neighborhoods develop certain characteristics over time.  People move there for those characteristics.   And in many cases, they buy houses, both as an investment and as a place they can lay down roots and stay there.  All that depends on the stability of the neighborhood, i.e. retaining as much as possible those things that made the neighborhood attractive in the first place.

There is a struggle going on now in City Hall with the aldermen.  And it is pejoratively called aldermanic prerogative. 

Essentially the issue is who should have more control, if that’s the right word, over the neighborhoods.  The people who live there and represented by their alderman, or a group of people who don’t live there and in most cases probably don’t even have a firsthand feel for that community. 

They look at spread sheets of neighborhood demographics and decide ways to correct what they deem to be deficiencies.  If the people in the community thought the neighborhood lacked something, they could always move out.  If somebody else decided how to improve the community without the resident’s support, then you are just pushing people out of their communities, and that is not government’s job.   The government’s job is to ensure domestic tranquility, not insist the people like what the government deems best.

Maybe I should add that I grew up in Chicago and worked most of my life there.  If we move again, it will definitely be out of Cook County. 

 

guaranteed income

Toni Preckwinckle believes she is doing a great service to humankind by launching a guaranteed income program for suburban Cook County residents.  (Preckwinckle launching guaranteed income pilot for suburban Cook County residents, March 4)

She said something here I find disheartening.

“I find it quite sensible to give people what they need most when they’re living in poverty: money.”

And this is all just a temporary program using one-time funds, so that the people benefitted will be right back where they were before the program started when the money runs out.

What poor people need most are jobs and self-respect.  Giving people money for no reason but that they need it only encourages less work and less self-confidence, and more dependence and more entitlement. 

What is today a program tomorrow becomes a right.  And there isn’t enough money to be had to pay for all these rights.

billionaires and gun manufacturers

The Sun-Times’ ire against Ken Griffin for his ties to gun manufacturers is wholly misplaced.  (Billionaire Griffin owes city . . . , March 1, Citadel’s gun ties, February 28)

Our Founders knew that without a robust gun ownership among ordinary people, America would never become a free nation.  They saw what things were like in Europe. 

Guns are not the problem in the United States but a total breakdown in our society, individually and collectively, where everybody is part of an aggrieved group, locked into a system that divides and inflames.  Even white people are aggrieved today, as they are charged with all of society’s problems through their own oppressive behavior.

We used to teach our children to love their neighbors as themselves.  But now too many view their neighbors with envy, anger, and hostility. 

As we speak, a sovereign nation has been invaded by a foreign army.  It is not enough for an invaded nation to have a military to defend itself.  Every able-bodied person is needed to repulse the enemy.  It is not always or even usually possible to get the means to protect yourself after the hostilities begin, whether it’s an attacking army or an angry mob. 

If you must find fault with Griffin because he is not supporting the Democratic Party, that’s fine.  But your choice of issues only shows the paucity of real ones.