Just a few random thoughts about the news of the day. I’ll try to keep it brief.
1. Yes, I was elected Third Alternate to the NEA Board of Directors from Texas by my Texas State Teachers Association colleagues at the TSTA House of Delegates in El Paso a couple of weeks ago. What that means: basically, whenever the NEA Board of Directors meets, Texas gets 3 seats at the table. We have 3 elected Board members. If one of them can’t go, we send the First Alternate (the TSTA President) to maintain our 3 spots. If a spot is still open, we send the Second Alternate (the TSTA Vice President). If there is still a spot open, we send the Third Alternate (me). So, that’s that.
2. Fiscal conservatives are a funny lot and often maligned in our political system. We are often maligned (yes, I am a fiscal conservative, too; it fits in well with my mainly libertarian viewpoint on most issues) because most people don’t really get what fiscal conservatives actually believe. That’s okay, because there are a lot of people out there calling themselves fiscal conservatives that aren’t, mainly because they don’t know what a true fiscal conservative believes either. Basically, it’s simple. A fiscal conservative believes that a private citizen knows better how to spend their own money than the government, but also realizes that there are certain things which the government must have money to spend on. A fiscal conservative believes that the government attains this money through taxation. A fiscal conservative does not believe in unnecessary taxes for unnecessary government expenditures. One of the things that all truly democratic-republican governments in existence believe the government must provide (and therefore must pay for) is public education. There are many other issues we can debate (welfare, health care, retirement pensions) and those are debates I’ll be happy to argue with whomever would like to, but public education is, according to Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Houston, and the Texas Constitution, publicly-funded provision number one. If we don’t pay for that, we forfeit the right to call ourselves a democracy, because an uneducated populace can never be free. A conservative budget is a wonderful idea and one which I fully support, but realize that we, as a free society, have certain obligations. And funding public education is number one.
3. The birther movement…ah, the birther movement. A bunch of people who actually believe (and yes, even after President Obama released a copy of his long-form birth certificate, they still believe it) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, Indonesia, or wherever they decide he’s really from this week. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if they came out soon saying he was really from a moon of Jupiter. That’s about how much sense these people make. He was born in Hawaii, guys. Get over it.
4. The reaction to these people by the news media, however, is almost as entertaining as their insanities (or is it inanities). They seem horrified by the fact that there are people out there who are uncomfortable with the fact that the President of the United States is … well … not white. I guess in their ivory towers and pretty, rainbow-decked, kingdoms, everyone’s happy and there is no racism. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, which is sometimes (even often maybe) dark, gritty, and dangerous, and where people hate others based simply on their race, gender, sexual orientation, and all sorts of other stupid reasons. Reporters of the world, come out of your little cocoon and into reality. In other words, get over it.
That’s all that’s spinning through my brain on a random Wednesday night. I hope all of these thoughts (as dreary as that last one was) find you healthy and happy. If you’re reading this, know that I value your readership and love you for it.
And so, in the words of an old Irish prayer, “May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and may you be in Heaven ten minutes before the Devil even knows you’re dead.”
