Divided We Stand

Most of Sam Haselby’s “Divided We Stand” (Globe Ideas, 3/22/09) presents an excellent history of, as his subtitle calls it, “the problem with bipartisanship.” In his concluding paragraphs however his own partisanship for Barack Obama undermines his credibility. He starts to go off the rails by including the 2002 Iraq War resolution with slavery and Japanese internment camps as “shameful episodes” with bipartisan support. This is not a historian speaking but an anti-war advocate.

More egregious is Haselby’s blindness to the hypocrisy in President Obama’s use of the bipartisan card; Obama talks about ending the old divisive ways, but the President seems to believe that since he won the election, he doesn’t have to compromise. It’s my way or the highway. Let the losers reach across the aisle.

Haselby calls partisanship “strong and critical advocacy that opens public debate,” but when he analyzes the current debate over the stimulus bill, he sees Republican partisanship as “squabbling,” while Obama’s partisanship presents “the best—or the only—solutions for the crisis facing the nation.” Open public debate does not flourish when one side is convinced they have all the answers.

my way or the highway

Most of Sam Haselby’s “Divided We Stand” (Ideas, 3/22/09) presents an excellent history of, as his subtitle calls it, “the problem with bipartisanship.” In his concluding paragraphs however his own partisanship for Barack Obama undermines his credibility. He starts to go off the rails by including the 2002 Iraq War resolution with slavery and Japanese internment camps as “shameful episodes” with bipartisan support. This is not a historian speaking but an anti-war advocate.

More egregious is Haselby’s blindness to the hypocrisy in President Obama’s use of the bipartisan card; Obama talks about ending the old divisive ways, but the President seems to believe that since he won the election, he doesn’t have to compromise. It’s my way or the highway. Let the losers reach across the aisle.

Haselby calls partisanship “strong and critical advocacy that opens public debate,” but when he analyzes the current debate over the stimulus bill, he sees Republican partisanship as “squabbling,” while Obama’s partisanship presents “the best—or the only—solutions for the crisis facing the nation.” Open public debate does not flourish when one side is convinced they have all the answers.

letter to the Chronicle

I’d like to express solidarity with the organizers of the protest against the Westboro Baptist Church demonstration (Cambridge Chronicle, 3/19/09). Any decent person—irrespective of the debate on gay marriage—recoils at Westboro’s harassment of high school students and their protests at military funerals with signs rejoicing in the death of American soldiers as divine retribution for America’s tolerance of gays.

I’d also like to point out that Westboro is a non-partisan offender; they have been universally denounced by all parts of the political spectrum, including, among many others, conservative radio/television hosts Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. The issue Westboro raises is not conservative vs. liberal politics, but common decency vs. hate-filled demagoguery.

Exploding toasters

Obama made an interesting comment in his Leno interview:

When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face there's a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But when you get a credit card, or you get a mortgage, there's no law on the books that says if that explodes in your face financially, somehow you're going to be protected.

While it's true that some people get in over their heads with debt and deserve a second chance, i.e., declaring bankruptcy, Obama doesn't seem to be aware of the difference between a faulty toaster and a maxed out credit card. The consumer has no way of controlling the manufacture of a toaster, but he should be responsible for his decisions to purchase too much on credit, whether it be a house or a flat screen television. In Obama's vision, we are children who must be protected by the government.

And by the way, do toasters explode?

RAT

According to the Globe, "Obama has continued to stress the importance of community service by promoting federal programs such as Renew America Together." An entity that would chose a name whose acronym is RAT doesn't inspire much confidence.

The Helping Industry

The Boston Globe highlighted the careers of three community organizers in this story:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2009/03/10/organized__energized/?page=2
One is an ex-con who is Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner’s Director of Constituent Services. His job sounds reasonable enough, despite the nutcase politics of his boss—but he seems more like a city employee than a community organizer.

Another example is the Phillips Exeter & Wesleyan graduate who “leads a program that uses hip-hop to teach about sustainability.” No comment.

The lead story is more disturbing:

Penn Loh was a star MIT electrical engineering student from the Pennsylvania suburbs on "a model minority track," he says, when he heard the call of community service.

A talented Chinese-American student pursuing a lucrative career in a scientific profession, Loh had just begun an internship at Draper Laboratory, which works on defense projects. The position was the outcome of winning a spot in a competitive electrical engineering program that would allow him to get a bachelor's and master's degree in five years. That same semester he took a class on intellectuals and social responsibility. The more Loh heard in that class, the more his job at Draper Labs made him uncomfortable.

"I was questioning the value of the work I was doing," says Loh, 40.

Loh quit the internship and finished his years as an electrical engineering student participating in anti-apartheid rallies and other social justice issues. He began working at Alternatives for Community & Environment in 1996. Until he left at the end of February, he had been the organization's executive director for the past nine years. Through ACE, Loh has advocated for better, more affordable subway service. ACE also looks for opportunities to redevelop abandoned buildings in a green and sustainable manner that will produce jobs and ownership opportunities.

Perhaps Mr. Loh finds satisfaction in his current employment. It would be presumptuous to tell him he should have stuck with the internship at Draper.

But in general, it seems like a bad idea to convince “star MIT electrical engineers” that they are of more value to society by becoming “advocates” for things like “affordable subway service.” This is the paradigm advanced by Michelle Obama, when she told college students “to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry”:

Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that.

Teachers and nurses, to be sure. But how many hip-hop sustainability educators do we as a society need?