Education: For the Mind or Mass Production?

                      Education: For the Mind or Mass Production?

                          Published in Marietta Daily Journal July 24, 2016

Modern education is obsessed with utility.  If it doesn’t help you get a job, education is considered useless.  More and more, Americans are viewing education as a sheer commodity, as job training and prospecting for careers.

            This view, less than 50 years old, is an unfortunate departure from the time-honored view of education as mind training and character building.

            Consider the word “educate.”   Its origin is the Latin word “edu-cere” which means to lead forth or draw out, not, as we have come to believe and practice, to put in.  Rather than put into students any information, skills, or biases which we believe will lead them to productive living, “edu-cere” actually means to draw out of students, and then hone, that which is already within.

            Doesn’t every child and youth have within them something that can be developed,  groomed, and heightened for their own good and for the world in which they must function?  Doesn’t everyone have a personality, an ability, an interest, or an inclination which if “educated” (drawn out), can lead to fulfillment as well as a way to make a living?

            The Latin word implies the necessity of encouragement and grooming.  I’ve not known very many teachers who were not encouragers.  Good thing, since the saddest sight in the world is a discouraged, already defeated child or youth whose life stands before them but whose gifts are not being drawn out. 

The task of the educator and of schools, then, is to learn how to draw out that which is within.  Just as surely as undisturbed water grows stagnant, so does the undisturbed, unstirred mind.  The question becomes what should we do to bestir the minds of those we are educating or drawing out?  What does the draw-ee need that the draw-er can provide?

            We hardly need to state (or do we) the necessity of the three “R’s.”  Beyond the three “R’s” is where draw-ers (not teachers, but educational policymakers) have gone wrong.  Draw-ers are insisting that all draw-ees need higher education.  But for what?  Are we to tell the manually gifted draw-ee, many of whom will make more money than the draw-er, that he best get a college degree?

            The second mistake draw-ers make is slightly ironic.  Although the draw-ers are telling the manually gifted that they need higher education, they are also telling non-manual (“intellectually oriented”) draw-ees that certain studies are useless if they don’t lead to gainful employment.  This is a whopper of a contradiction. 

            In Russian history lies an example of the debate between the value of “useless studies” such as history, literature, language, philosophy, music, and art and that of practical, job-oriented studies.  In 1862 Russian writer Turgenev published his novel “Fathers and Sons.”  The main character was a doctor, a man of science who troubled the “fathers” (conventional wisdom) by denouncing useless art and poetry. 

            The denouncing of classical values, personified in Turgenev’s hero, caught on.  The “sons” of Russia rebelled against their “fathers.”  Young educators in czarist Russia opposed their elders, arguing that only that which is “practically useful” has the right to exist, a claim akin to modern education’s claim that all learning must be measurable and test-able, and that teachers, incidentally, must be paid according to the findings.

            Russian monarchs were OK with utilitarianism because peasants certainly didn’t need to get any ideas about freedom or self-worth from poetry or music.  But three things happened: an enlightened czar and two writers.  Alexander II, the Gorbachev of his day, abolished slavery and loosened the chains of peasantry.  Tolstoy and Dostoevsky produced great novels read by millions.  “Useless literature” began to flourish as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky resisted Turgenev’s view of education.  Alexander, who didn’t like literature, began to see its value.

            Even in Czarist Russia minds and character were influenced and inflamed by two writers who wrote of freedom and of the relationship of man and God.  For a brief, shining 4 decades Russian life was different, a measure of hope introduced, because of a curriculum that touched mind and heart, not just spade and scythe.

            Yes, everybody needs a line of work, but students should not be led to believe that bread is their only need.  There is a natural world to learn of and appreciate, beauty to enjoy for its own sake, and human beings with whom to talk and laugh when the work day is over.

            No amount of industry will produce an educated man of character, but there is many a great work of literature that can.  Happy we will be when we acknowledge that proper schooling educates the head, the heart, and the hand.

Roger Hines

7/19/16

Why the Nation Needs My Parents

                     Why the Nation Needs My Parents

                                   Published in Marietta Daily Journal  July 17, 2016

            Around 11 pm, having arrived with my high school team from an away basketball game, I began the two-mile trek from the school to our house out in the country.  On the edge of town, one of the city’s three policemen stopped me and asked why I was out walking so late. 

After also securing my name, he asked, “Are you Walter Hines’ boy?”  “Yessir,” I said.  “Oh, ok,” was his response as he drove away.

Being Walter Hines’ boy often made my life easier.  My father (1894-1979) was well known in town.  Perhaps that was because he went to the bank fairly often to borrow money or because he did all of our shopping in town since my mother (1900-1965) didn’t think she could dress nice enough to go to town.

My father lived through WWI, the Depression, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  Although two of his sons engaged in some of the bitterest fighting in WWII, it was the Depression that most deeply stamped his mind, producing story after story of frugality and sacrifice.

My mother bore her first child at age 17 and her last (her 17^th) at age 47.  A working mom, her work place was fields and huge gardens.  She had no problem with Southern heat and, as one of our pastors put it, “wasn’t too cute to sweat.”

My parents laughed much.  Their joy came from their children and the friends and neighbors who populated their small world.

That world actually wasn’t so small.  My father had a high school education.  He loved  newspapers and magazines.  In our humble abode I can say we never lacked for intellectual stimulation.

Our mother didn’t contribute much to that stimulation.  Her incredible gifts lay elsewhere.  Her 7^th grade education produced the ability to read, but she often stumbled while reading.  One of the joys of my life was to pronounce words for her.  Once she ran into so many difficult words that she said, “Can you sit down beside me and read it to me?”  Obliging her on that afternoon, before saying goodbye and leaving for college, is still one of my most precious memories.

So why would I argue that a nation, especially the most advanced nation on earth, could learn and benefit from a tenant farmer and his semi-illiterate wife?  Because one night at supper, after I had told about a friend at school being punished for stealing, my father said, “Well, starve to death and be ready for heaven, but don’t ever steal, even for food.”  And because my mother, whenever her children would tell her of their misfortunes, would listen and then invariably say, “Well, just go on.”

My father’s words would be called absolutism today.  (You mean we can’t steal food even if we’re starving?)  He granted moral relativism no quarter.  He would be aghast at today’s twisting and contorting of what he considered absolutes.

My mother’s words bespoke the outlook that one should not fret, but hold up and face the wind.

Oh, Mama and Daddy!  America needs you. We need to honor manual labor again, to get out of our houses and do something to make us sweat as you did, to go meet our new neighbors, of whatever background and race, and then take them something.

Daddy, we need to give somebody our last dollar as I saw you do a couple of times.  We need to admit that demon rum is still demonic, that teenagers are not wiser than their parents, that being good is better than being smart.

And Mama, thank you for not aborting any of us.  Many today would cast you as a victim or even look down on you for having so many children.  And you would only chuckle.

Neither of you knew about England’s Wordsworth and Milton, but Wordsworth’s praise of the great Puritan poet John Milton went like this: “Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England hath need of thee / Return and give us manners, virtue, and freedom / Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart / Thou didst travel life’s way in cheerful godliness.”  That fits both of you.

Neither of you would recognize America now, but neither would you be downcast.  You would frown at our bent for therapy.   You would show us how to hold to integrity and how to look upward and outward. 

I’m praying America will start doing just that, and I’m holding on to hope, just as you would.

Roger Hines

7/14/16

The Death of Conversation … Thoreau, Where are Ye?

                    The Death of Conversation … Thoreau, Where are Ye?

                             Published in Marietta Daily Journal July 10, 2016

            Which do you suppose supplies more knowledge and understanding of your work place, your desk computer or the water cooler?  Which produces a stronger family, a modern mom in a modern kitchen talking over the intercom to her daughter upstairs, or the mom and daughter together, talking across the kitchen table?

            You get my drift, but one more scenario.  A small family, after a week of school and work, is sitting in a restaurant on Friday evening.  Which is better, all of them reaching for their smart phones or talking to each other?

            Conversation is in a bad way.  We are absolutely running from it.  We’d rather text than talk.  Emotional distance is the order of the day.

One of the bedrock truths of our existence is that everything is somewhere.  But is this truth really bedrock after all?  When it comes to our relationship with technology, it seems to me we’re always elsewhere.  The claim that technology is connecting us is laughable.  Technology is distancing us, pulling us further and further apart with each passing upgrade.

            I’m not speaking of technology in general.  What ill could come from being able to measure your living room for new carpet by casting a laser beam across the floor?  What harm is there in a GPS that talks to you in the voice of your choice, whether a true blue Southerner, an Englishman, or Bugs Bunny?  How could I not appreciate the medical technology that surrounded me during some serious heart surgery? 

No, I’m talking about the technology of social media and education, two areas in which human touch is gasping for breath.  Currently neither parents nor schools are one bit concerned about the neurological or cognitive effects of children staring daily at flashing screens.  We love babysitters, whatever the cost.  

Americans have come to expect from their technology a continuous flow of infotainment, failing to recognize that 24-hour-a-day news is not news, but news rehash, and that constant entertainment doesn’t actually entertain.  It numbs.

            We know how children and youth view and respond to the online world.  They view it as a way of life.  They respond to it as if – no, because – it is their master.  We haven’t mastered technology.  Technology has mastered us.

            There are two extremes for everything.  Total embrace is one; total rejection is the other.  When essayist Henry David Thoreau grew tired of the busy life of Concord, MA in 1845 (that’s right, 1845), he took to the woods for two years.  His action was extreme, but from it came the following wondrous words.

            “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately … and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I wanted to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

            Could Thoreau make a living today practicing that kind of escape?  Perhaps not, but he still stands as an example of a courageous man who refused to let a changing world change him.  Thoreau also wrote, “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friends, and one for society.”

            Technology is fast, but speed doesn’t always give us time to think.  It is exciting but it also offers children illusions of joyfulness (wizards, spells, seductive mermaids), and offers adults substitutes for intimacy (Skype meetings are not meetings).

            Technology is like money.  Those who knock it have never been without it, or have never had heart surgery.  Even so, we are unthinking if we disregard technology’s curse.  Its curse is that it is putting the wrecking ball to Thoreau’s three chairs.            

Solitude is not stillness.  It’s merely an occasion, even in a fast moving airplane, to be alone with your thoughts.  Family is not family if there is little or no family conversation.  And a society is not very social when its schools and work places rely almost entirely on screens, forgetting that eyeball to eyeball and heart to heart can seal a deal or hoist a relationship when gizmos can’t.

 Eyeball to eyeball we’re somewhere.  Gizmo to gizmo, we’re elsewhere.

Aristotle addressed our problem over two millennia ago.  Calling it the Golden Mean, he argued that between extremes there is the promising safe path of reason.  Golden Mean sounds nice and literary, but we could simply call it common sense.

 Eyeballs?  Yes.  Gizmos?  Yes.  But Thoreau and Aristotle would urge us to think about where the technological Golden Mean lies.  Right now, we don’t seem to care.

Roger Hines

7/6/16

Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions, Be Thanked

                 Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions, Be Thanked

                               Published in Marietta Daily Journal July 2, 2016

            Had it not been for the Marietta Kiwanis Club, I couldn’t be telling Rick Weldon’s story. 

            Rick was a member of the Wheeler High School Key Club, the high school organization sponsored by Kiwanis International.  Back before the Key Club was coed, the club for which I was faculty advisor consisted of 25 of the school’s finest young men.

              For the decade I worked with them I couldn’t wait for the weekly Thursday night meetings to experience their infectious zest for life and their inspiring maturity.  I cannot think of a single Thursday night over that decade that a member of the Marietta Kiwanis Club was not present at their meeting.  It was good having an additional adult in my classroom.  It assuaged my still-held concern that youths spend too much time with each other and not enough time with adults.

            The Kiwanians were faithful and so were school principals Larry Hinds, Jim Traylor, and Don Murphy who regularly excused members from class to attend Kiwanis meetings in Marietta.  This certainly contributed to the club’s success with their service projects, leadership retreats, and state convention awards.

            Although Key Club members were good students and young men of high character, they were not all of the same economic level.  Sons of Lockheed engineers and other professionals, most of them were from stable, well-off families.

            But not Rick.  Rick’s father, a struggling self-employed carpenter, died when Rick was 13.  Rick’s mother took on 3 jobs.  Rick had 2 jobs while in high school.  An older drugged-out sister drained his mother’s energy and joy.

            His senior year found Rick in both the club and my English literature class.  Handsome and congenial, but with struggle and weariness written deep on his face, Rick won the hearts of his classmates with his quiet strength and intelligence.

            It fell Rick’s lot to teach a passage from Tennyson’s “Ulysses” that included the lines, “Tis not too late to seek a newer world / Though much is taken, much abides / Be strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

            The class grew still and attentive as Rick began to expound.  They knew of his struggles. Among other remarks that were mature beyond his years, Rick stated, “No excuses.  We’re all supposed to bear up.”  After class I asked Rick if he planned to go to college.  “No, sir,” he answered, “I don’t think I could leave my mom in her situation right now.  I’ll stay on at K-Mart for a while.”

            Eight years ago I ran in to Rick, his beaming wife, and 2 joyful children at Books-a-Million.  He started college at age 20, “graduated late and married late,” as he put it, and now has a successful insurance business.  “I’ll never forget Key Club and those men from Kiwanis,” he stated.

            Rick Weldon isn’t his real name since I didn’t know then that I would be telling his story and didn’t get his permission.  But Ron Younker is the real name of another Key Clubber, a leader in his youth who, fortunately, is a leader in our community still.  So are Gary Cowan, one of the club’s presidents whom I met at Sweet Tomatoes only weeks ago, Judge Tain Kell who was an outstanding student and leader, and Chick-fil-A executive David Farmer.  Stuart Dyer – or General Stuart Dyer, that is – I chatted with a few years ago when he returned home for his father’s funeral.  He, too, mentioned “the Kiwanis men.”

            At age 16 I received a call from the Rotary Club president of my small Mississippi home town.  The club wanted to send me to the American Legion’s Boys’ State program that summer. That week at the state Capitol fed my desire to understand and follow politics, placing me in a world in which I still find myself.  It eventually led me to membership in the North Cobb Rotary Club in Kennesaw.

            Only days ago I was reminded of the splendid work of the Lions Club.  A friend wrote to say that the Mississippi Lions All-State band had placed first in international competition in Fukuoka, Japan.  Local Lions Clubs helped pay for students who could not afford the trip to Japan. 

            Daily and hourly on television, verbally and visually, the mayhem of the world is blasted into our homes.  Rotarians, Kiwanians, Lions, and other such organizations don’t blast.  Their effective response to a needy world is to see needs and quietly, steadily, and faithfully meet them.

            I know because directly and indirectly I have been the recipient of their goodwill, and I am grateful.

           

Roger Hines

6/29/16

Living in Never-never Land

            Living in Never-never Land

                           Published in Marietta Daily Journal June 26, 2016

One by one they have come.  Clothed in self-righteousness they have expressed concern for their country while no doubt thinking about their own hides.  Senators, representatives, governors, mayors, and even conservative political commentators apparently think we all want to know for whom they “cannot” and will not vote. 

            Posing as moralists and patriots, they tell us why they must obey their consciences and withhold their support from their party’s nominee.  With pained facial expressions they assert that the nominee is destroying his adopted party and that the world will end the moment he is inaugurated.  Therefore, they could never vote for him.

            Essentially, the Nevers are arguing that the nation can continue business as usual: ignoring the national debt, Islamic terrorism, squishy borders, oppressive regulations, anemic economic growth, and shrinkage of the middle class.  To them, a known enemy is better than a brash friend.

            Yes, the “Never” people are saying never to their party nominee because he speaks bluntly, has never held office, refuses to buckle, and refuses to play the game.  (That’s not refreshing?)  The game is kicking the can down the road and talking middle class issues on the campaign trail but joining the buddy club, once elected.

            The Nevers claim their party’s nominee would foolishly walk away from bargaining with other nations, forgetting that Ronald Reagan walked away from the Russians at Reykjavik and won the day.  They claim that being president isn’t the same as being a real estate deal maker, forgetting that Thomas Jefferson brokered a massive piece of real estate referred to as the Louisiana Purchase and that President James K. Polk didn’t do poorly in acquiring the entire southwest.

            The Nevers simply don’t believe that business experience would be better than the continuation of community organizing.  They must not know or don’t care that while a senior at Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton wrote her thesis on another community organizer, Saul Alinsky, the author of “Rules for Radicals.”  According to William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, Clinton continued to correspond with Alinsky while in law school at Yale.

            I am a Christian, but I would not have refused to vote for Thomas Jefferson because he wasn’t one.  The record (letters, public speeches) shows that Jefferson boldly defended religious freedom, including that of Christians.  Not an atheist, but a deist, Jefferson talked and walked the talk of a true believer in freedom of thought.

            Today’s Nevers would probably have withheld their support of the imperfect Jefferson.  But Jefferson’s mortal enemy Alexander Hamilton didn’t.  Given the choice of Jefferson or Aaron Burr, Hamilton chose his lesser nemesis.  Unlike today’s “Never” moralists, Hamilton accepted the fact that sometimes we are handed two stark choices.  We can either flee them, pretending there is a third option or we can, like Hamilton – the founder of America’s financial system – face facts.

            Nevers are also afraid of the nominee’s masculinity that presents such a contrast to today’s androgyny.  To them his resoluteness and forthrightness are scary.  This is not only quite a pity; it’s a recent development.  Nobody ever wondered or had to figure out what Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, or Ronald Reagan was saying.  To the Nevers, their nominee is too “street.”  He’s too close to all of those who didn’t go to college.  Lord knows we don’t need working people picking our president.

            The “Nevers” are big proponents of political consultants.  They dislike the fact that their party’s nominee won’t listen to consultants, even though consultants have never run for office themselves. Many of the “Nevers” are part of the consultant class.

            The Nevers are sore losers.  They are political elitists deeply offended that an outsider has crashed their party.  So long have they enjoyed their perch that they are in shock that the nominee has eviscerated 16 other candidates, winning the hearts and support of many an average Joe.  They don’t realize that our average Joe’s long ago grew tired of consultants, talking points, polls, tele-prompters, promises, and blah, blah, blah.

            As the saying goes, Grandma was slow but Grandma was old.  The Nevers are slow to accept a political reality.  For almost a year they have been saying that the nominee’s next speech, next debate, next comment will do him in.  Now it’s the big one, the presidential election that will surely bring him down.  That could be the scenario if the nominee’s supporters waver.

             So far, however, supporters are standing like a stone wall, including hundreds of non-self-righteous evangelical leaders who met with the nominee this week.

            More and more, the Nevers are looking just plain politically inept.

Roger Hines

6/22/16

Public Schools on Trial

                Public Schools on Trial

                                                Published in Marietta Daily Journal June 19, 2016

I’m trying hard to hold on, but it’s getting more difficult every year.

 So many insanities are promoted, if not required.   An insider and defender for 5 decades, I’m moving closer to abandoning my post.  It’s simply getting too difficult to defend public schools.

            The reason I hold on is I admire the good people who are doing their best to make things work, personal friends like state school superintendent Richard Woods and state school board member from Cobb County, Scott Johnson.

            I’m holding on because of state senator Lindsey Tippins who, as chairman of the Senate Education Committee, can be counted on to propose practical measures.  My great friend, school board member Randy Scamihorn helps me hold on.  Like Woods and Tippins, he has little use for rose-colored glasses and faces education and the world realistically.  The same is true of school board chairman Susan Thayer, of my unforgettable former student and school board member David Chastain, and of the respected Marietta superintendent, Emily Lembeck.

            All of these educational leaders have tough minds, good hearts, and steady hands.  Add to their names all of our tireless classroom teachers and you have an impressive list of troops.

            Why, then, are public schools so besieged?  Why has one critic described public education as “a sinking ship that won’t sink or sail either”?   A little history of my discouragement follows.

            Until 1965 when the federal government became deeply involved in education, it could be said that America did not have an educational system.  Such was not and is not constitutional.  America had 50 educational systems.  Effective localism ruled the day until federal aid to education and Jimmy Carter’s new Department of Education changed everything.

            Initially the federal department was a paper tiger, a mere money-dispensing mechanism like its predecessor, Health, Education and Welfare.  Eventually it began flexing its muscles, leading to more and more federal involvement.  Now, education is Bureaucratic City.  Between parent/child/teacher and the feds, there are at least 10 governmental entities with fingers in the pie.  Local school board decisions are driven by federal funding and regulations to such degree that school boards are, in effect, agents of the federal government.

            Recall President Bush and No Child Left Behind (with its testing craze) and President Obama’s directive that all schools must allow boys in the girls’ restroom (one of the insanities referenced above). 

            Compare this picture to the private school scene that doesn’t have to worry – yet – about the long arm of the Justice Department, constant curriculum change, restroom issues, suffocating testing requirements, and presidential directives that violate parents’ beliefs and common sense.  Compare it to the much safer homeschooling scene which is growing 7 times faster than public school enrollment.

            All I need to teach your child English is your child.  Teachers of other subjects would need some hardware, but you get my point that complication breeds complication.  Learning isn’t aided by federal regulations.  It’s hindered.    

  Schools have become the hub station for societal transformers.  Obama’s restroom directive is but a start.  The so called LGBT community is emboldened and will be knocking on the schoolhouse door again.

The human dimension of learning decreases yearly.  Testing and the overuse of technology are dehumanizing everything.  Preach technology all you want, but its misuse/overuse is diminishing students’ eye ball to eye ball communication skills. Screens and the absence of human interaction at school are taking their toll.  The word zombies comes to mind.

Since 2014 the federal Department of Education has been investigating school districts to sue or withhold federal funds wherever there is no “racial equality” in punishment for misconduct.  Too many black students and too few white students are being suspended, say the feds.  This potentially affects even good performing schools like Cobb County’s.

Despite the creation beliefs of Isaac Newton, former NASA head Wernher von Braun and over 500 Ph.D. science professors in America, evolutionary theory is the dogma in science classrooms.  This violates your beliefs?  Tough.

The task assigned to schools is absolutely daunting.  Teachers are having to parent instead of teach.  No wonder, when 71% of black children are born out of wedlock and 29% of white children.   We now have a culture too far out of control for teachers to teach its children.

Unless my friends can pull me back fast, I’m ready to say let those 10 governmental entities have their schools and do what they want.  There are still some of us who desire standards in manners, language, and conduct.  Dare I add dress?  Private schools and home schoolers attend to these matters.  

 Public education’s monopoly must end.  Its faltering status is no fault of teachers.  It’s the fault of absentee parents, a coarsening culture, and Bureaucratic City for whom teachers work.

Roger Hines

6/15/16            

Driving Ethnicity into the Ground

Driving Ethnicity into the Ground          

                            Published in Marietta Daily Journal June 12, 2016                                 

“For ethnos shall rise against ethnos,” the King James scholars should have written.  Not “nation against nation.”  Nations as we have known them since the 1700s were not yet fully formed, certainly not widespread, when the King James scholars completed their Bible translation in 1611.  But “kingdoms,” and “dukedoms,” ever so small, certainly were; therefore “kingdom against kingdom” is more precise and true.

            National boundaries as we know them today are fairly newfangled.  Historically, they have been political conveniences, drawn by the victors of wars and not always honored by the losers.  Ethnicity, though, like gender (yes, gender), is one of life’s realities.  You cannot change it.

            Ethnos against ethnos is exactly what best describes so many of the world’s conflicts and wars today.  When President Clinton began to speak of sending troops to the Balkans to advance stability and restrain the ethnic cleansing occurring there, my Italian born sister-in-law who grew up in nearby Trieste, remarked in her broken English, “He no help matters there.  They be fighting no matter what.”

            Think about it.  For what do most peoples of the world feel the most loyalty, a geographical area with a certain name or the ethnic or language group to which they belong? (Consider the increasing presence of Mexican flags throughout the country.)  We know what we should do, no matter where we live.  We should love our neighbor no matter who he or she is, but the truth is many people don’t love their neighbor.  Hence our present conflicted world.

            Language is at once the most unifying and dis-unifying cultural distinction that exists.   We herald so-called multiculturalism, denying that across the globe it has been the disruption of cultural groups and the forcing of other cultures on them that has caused conflict after conflict.  We thought that well-drawn Yugoslavia was stable with its various ethnic groups and indeed it was under the heel of Communist dictator Marshall Tito.  But when Communism fell, we saw that it was Tito’s brute force, not brotherly love, that held the concocted “nation” together.  Absent that brute force, ethnic loyalties emerged, leading to the disunity over which Mr. Clinton attempted to preside.

            Closer to home, we often forget the “Quebec problem,” the French-speaking Canadian province with its Separatist Party which more than once has brought Quebec to the brink of secession.  Yes, it is French that makes a Frenchman a Frenchman, not to mention French food, French dress, and other customs.  Shakespeare argued it was English that makes an Englishman an Englishman.  So it goes.  Name one corner of the world where multiculturalism (though pressed in many cases by good people with good intentions) has worked.  Seems that borders, language, and culture matter after all.

 Other things beside language differences prompt and promote disunity.  In American political discourse we’re calling it identity politics.  News reporters and analysts project a candidate’s potential success by how well he or she will do with blacks, whites, Hispanics, women, age groups, soccer moms, and I’m sure, dog owners.  The media is forever dividing people, even as office seekers try to unite them.

The glorious truth is that America has come closer than any other nation in bringing people of different cultures together.  The reasons are obvious: freedom and an ethic that says “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Several times every week of my life I see people of different races and nationalities being kind and cordial to each other: at church, at the gas pump, in line at the grocery store, and elsewhere.  At home in front of the television I see the opposite.  I’m tempted to call a television reporter and ask him or her to follow me around for just two days.

But television doesn’t want to show that.  Television wants and delivers conflict.  Recently when Donald Trump said he could not get a fair trial from a judge with a Mexican heritage, he was only echoing what Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor said at her confirmation hearing: that her cultural heritage would indeed influence her decision making.  How could it not in some measure?

Mr. Trump brought attention to our inherent racism and for it was called a racist.  Racism and ethnic politics have been the province of the Democratic Party, not Republicans.  Bill Clinton’s hero and mentor, Senator William Fulbright, was not a Republican but a Democratic segregationist.  Abraham Lincoln was not a Democrat, but a slave-emancipating Republican.

And are class references any less indecorous than ethnic ones?  Recall President Obama’s cautioning us about those who “cling to guns and religion.”

If we’re going to forgive Justice Sotomayor and President Obama for driving ethnicity into the ground, we’ve got to forgive Mr. Trump.

Roger Hines

6/8/16