For Crying Out Loud

Good grief. Brett Favre cried on live TV. He was announcing his decision to retire as quarterback of the Green Bay Packers and he didn’t just get a little choked up - he sobbed - and was unable to talk for minutes at a time. He would start and stop, too emotional to continue. I was watching during my lunch break at work and I felt ambivalent. I sympathized, but I was also embarrassed for him. Others had similar reactions, both men and women, judging from what I heard on radio and television afterward. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.

Favre is admired by football fans across the country. Men admire his athletic talent, his abilities to think quickly and lead his team against another team of talented athletes trying to make him and his team look foolish. He’s taken a lot of physical punishment and continued to show up ready to play year after year. He’s won championships and compiled one of the best records in pro football. Women admire those things, and also consider him attractive. Whatever Favre is, he’s a man upon whom many project their images of what a man should be, so his behavior that day continued to reverberate. The way we react is a window on our culture, an insight into Americans male and female.

Laura Ingraham, a syndicated, conservative, radio talk show, hostess, had a profoundly negative reaction to Favre’s crying. She acknowledged all his accomplishments and the esteem in which Green Bay fans held him, but she believed he should have been able to suck it up better when he made his announcement. When she opened it up to comments from her listening audience, the reaction of most men to Favre’s crying was distinctly different from that of most women callers, but not in the way I expected. Generally, the men thought it was okay for Favre to cry, but the women didn’t. They agreed with Laura Ingraham that it was unmanly.

Most men respect Favre because they know he’s not a wimp. They believe he has a right to display what many consider weakness because his strengths are beyond doubt. Strong men can actually admired for displays of weakness. Only semi-tough men are afraid of them. The semi-tough ridicule weakness it because they fear it. They fear it because they hide their own from others. Some hide it even from themselves and have a mostly unconscious negative reaction when they see it.

Most women who called in that morning agreed with the hostess and disapproved of Favre’s crying. That surprised me because women I’ve known criticize men, me included, for not showing enough emotion. Could be they just wanted to kiss up to Laura Ingraham, the show’s hostess. Whatever their reasons, I sensed they wanted to protect and preserve their own proclivity to cry, but to do so believing that strong men were around to keep their composure and rationally deal with whatever situation caused a woman’s grief. When Favre cried, it disturbed that feeling of security.

American soldiers on a web-based military forum discussed Favre’s crying and many poked fun at the episode, claiming that according to the “Man Book,” crying is only allowed for a man “when mother dies, his dog dies, or when Christina Aquilera gets married.”

My favorite forum comment was by “MightyB” who said: “Talk about the Libs, downgrade the Democrats, rip the Conservatives, Demonize the Republicans… BUT DON'T YOU SAY A DAMN THING ABOUT ONE OF THE GREATEST QBs to ever suit up . . . I've seen some real badasses cry in my day. I once watched someone cry as he d*** near beat another man to death. I've also seen men cry upon taking a life. Men got to get over [calling] a field warrior like Brett a [wimp]. I don't know for sure, but could anyone of us here take a solid hit from Strahan and stay in the game? [Wimp] indeed!”

Under MightyB’s name was the quote: “Bravery isn’t the absence of fear but the conquest of it.” I like that.

Maybe I wasn’t embarrassed for Favre. Maybe what I felt was compassion for a good man suffering a loss. Most men have strong feelings but we don’t usually know what they are. They sneak up on us sometimes and we don’t even know what to call them, much less how to deal with them.

Californicating Homeschoolers

Teachers’ unions are pro-choice on abortion, but not on education. They use their enormous political capital with the Democrat Party to block voucher initiatives in whatever state or municipality proposes them, including in California. Consequently, many parents homeschool their children at their own expense, even though they still have to pay local property taxes which are spent mostly on public schools their children do not attend. Right now, about 166,000 California children are taught at home. Last week, an California appeals court declared that all children must be taught by a “credentialed” teacher. That means most homeschooling parents without teaching credentials would be violating California law and subject to prosecution. That is going to touch off a political conflagration.

The teachers’ unions love it. "We're happy," said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors, to the San Francisco Chronicle. "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting." A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said he agrees with the ruling. "What's best for a child is to be taught by a credentialed teacher," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Teachers’ unions would like to stop being embarrassed by home-schooled kids who continually outperform those taught by “credentialed” teachers in national contests. According to a 2002 article by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy: “Only 2 percent of U.S. students are home schooled. Yet, in the [National Geographic] geography bee, 22 percent of the national finalists and 40 percent of the final 10 students were home schoolers. Such a showing is nothing short of phenomenal.” Home-schooled kids dominate the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee as well. In 2000, home-schooled kids took first, second, and third place. Last year, home-schooled kids won both the National Geography Bee and the National Spelling Bee.

Meanwhile, we learn that those “credentialed” teachers so prized by California courts and teachers’ unions compare very unfavorably to people credentialed in other professions. To become “credentialed,” teachers have to major in education. According to economist Walter Williams: “Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have graduated with an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admissions tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. As such, they are home to the least able students and professors with the lowest academic respect."

Clearly, too many “credentialed” teachers don’t know much. Or, to paraphrase Maine humorist Tim Sample: “They don’t even suspect much.” The slow ones - and trust me, there are a lot of slow ones in public education - don’t want any light shining on just how slow they are. That’s why they fight standardized testing for teachers. The first time Massachusetts forced new teachers to take a basic competency test in 1998, an astonishing 59% of them failed. These were college graduates (education majors) taking a test that Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas Finneran said: “a reasonably educated ninth grader could pass.”

Former Boston University President and Massachusetts Board of Education Chairman John Silber wanted to eliminate teacher certification, or “credentialing” as California calls it, because it was keeping really bright people out of the teaching profession. Teachers’ unions blocked him however. Why would unions favor credentialing when they disdain standardized tests? Because it’s easy to pass college education courses and difficult to pass standardized tests which cannot be fudged. I’ll bet a lot of the 59% who flunked the teacher test graduated with honors from their college education departments. Grade inflation there is rampant.

Silber knew there were many mature, successful, college-educated professionals from other fields who wanted to teach and he didn’t want to discourage them by requiring they take two more years of largely useless education courses in order to be certified or “credentialed.” My school district participated in the University of Southern Maine’s “Extended Teacher Education Program,” or ETEP for several years in which aspiring teachers described above could become certified with only one year of coursework and student teaching. I was on teams interviewing promising candidates for whom I might serve as “mentor teacher” during part of that year. As the teams discussed candidate suitability, a disturbing pattern emerged. Several of the above-described “mature, successful, college-educated professionals from other fields” were naturally confident, competent, and bright - as you would expect. But, as such, they were threatening to the insular academics from the university cloister who would have to supervise them. Some interviewers came right out and said the candidates were “too sure of themselves.” They were not typically obsequious, worshipful, college students enthralled by anyone with a Ph.D who calls himself “doctor” and so they were passed over.

There are still excellent public school teachers out there, but mediocre ones are increasing and so are the downright terrible ones, thanks to teachers’ union protection. They may be happy now, but California’s decision on homeschooling will touch off a firestorm the unions are going to regret.

Multiculturalism Kills

Marked for death, his life will never be the same. He and his wife move constantly under police guard. Kurt Westergaard did what he was told: he drew a cartoon of Muhammed for his employer, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. He had no idea that by doing so he would have to spend the rest of his life hiding from Islamofascists who want to kill him. Watching him interviewed on Danish TV, it occurred to me that Westergaard’s situation symbolizes the utter failure of Multiculturalism. Most Europeans still don’t get it and neither do most Americans. They still insist that we all tolerate a culture which pledges to destroy our own. Westergaard’s interviewer epitomizes smug, multicultural ignorance.

His cartoon depicted Muhammed with a bomb in his turban because he wanted to show “that there are terrorists who get their spiritual dynamite or their spiritual ammunition from Islam.” Radical Muslims proved him right as they rioted across the realm of Islam. His Danish interviewer asked if he felt responsible for a hundred riot deaths. “I see the riots as something which was staged by some governments in some badly managed countries,” responded Westergaard. They were staged because governments in Muslim countries want to divert popular attention from their failure. “But that is not my responsibility,” he concluded, and he’s right of course.

“But Kurt Westergaard, they would not have been in the streets of it hadn’t been because of your drawing,” said the interviewer. “What does it make you feel? You drew a few lines on a piece of paper. You took less than an hour to make that drawing and it has actually caused riots which cost more than a hundred people their lives. As a human being, how do you feel about that?”

He said he felt bad that those people were killed and repeated: “It’s not my responsibility. There were [radical Muslims] who had an interest in using [the drawing] more globally.”

“Why is it so important for you to draw that drawing that even these very large consequences does [sic] not create doubts in your mind?” the dedicated multiculturalist asked yet again.

Westergaard said it was important to express the dangers of radical Islam in the debate. “It should be reasonable to comment on something of a most alarming nature which goes on in this world today: this terror . . . Then we get this clash around freedom of speech, we experience . . . a cultural friction where there are two cultures which . . .”

“You mean the Islamic and the western culture?” asked the thick-headed interviewer.

“Yes.”

“What values are you defending with a drawing like that?”

“I fight for Western values. I fight for freedom of speech . . .” said Westergaard. “We live in a secularized society, so it is clear that religion cannot demand any special status.”

“But do you think about that you could be causing trouble with such a drawing instead of fighting against self censorship?”

“Well I hope that such a satirical drawing works in some way when it is being seen.”

“And how is it supposed to work? How can you create freedom of speech with such a drawing of a prophet Mohammed with a piece of dynamite in his turban?”

“Well I think I serve freedom of speech when I make such a drawing. Freedom of speech has been put under some pressure. We experience museums which have to remove pictures. We experience an opera in Berlin which has to close down for a period of time and we experience that intellectual, cultural personalities who speak against Islam are threatened. Van Gogh [in] Holland was murdered. Hirsi Ali has to live under protection. I think there is good reason for us to demonstrate that freedom of speech is something which we cherish. We cannot live without it.”

Danish police recently arrested three Danish immigrants from Tunisia plotting to kill Westergaard in his own home.

“What do you think about that situation?” asks the interviewer. Westergaard said he and his wife were depressed about having to move around so much to avoid being murdered. He says he’s angry about being threatened and sentenced to death by fanatics. Then the Danish government released one of the Tunisian plotters. “You could risk meeting him in the walking street in Aarhus tomorrow,” said the interviewer. Then he summed it all up: the threats, the moving around, the hundred deaths, and the deportations. Given all this, does Westergaard regret making the drawing?

“No. I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“There would have been a similar confrontation, so this friction between these two cultures is there all the time. What has to be done in the future is that our culture, the . . . superior culture will win and we may see some more modified version of Islam which fits better in a secular society.”

This is anathema to multiculturalists who insist that all cultures are equal.

“So there are no regrets in your mind I can hear?” said the increduluous interviewer.

“No. We have to get a grip on it.”

Indeed. Liberal multiculturalists who dominate government in Europe and North America have to get a grip. The western culture they disdain is superior to, and must be defended against, Islamofascism. If they don’t give up their silly notions and wake up, we’re doomed.

Nice guys, but . . .

They’re all nice guys, but for president we need someone who can be a hard-ass. He’s the commander in chief. He has to order men into battle to kill and be killed. He can be nice sometimes but not all the time, and our enemies must know he has fire in his belly.

They had to be nice or they never would have been elected as congressmen, senators and governors. They were the candidates for president I had a chance to question this election cycle. All have since dropped out: Sam Brownback, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Mitt Romney, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo. Of candidates still in the running, I’ve seen McCain and Huckabee speak in Washington and they seem like nice guys too. I didn’t go down there to see them, but they happened to be at the same conferences I went to, so I listened. I could have gone to hear Hillary speak nearby in Conway, NH but I didn’t feel like driving twenty miles. I don’t like Hillary and I don’t agree with her on anything. I wouldn’t have been able to question her so there was no point. Obama seems like a nice guy on television, but I don’t agree with him on anything either and I didn’t have an interview lined up, so twenty miles was too far a drive to see him too.

Nice guys can be congressmen, senators and governors because they don’t have to deal with foreign enemies who want to kill us. Nice is necessary for a president too, but not sufficient. President Carter seemed like a nice guy and became a terrible commander-in-chief. He groveled when Iranian mullahs kidnapped Americans and held them for a year and a half. As leader of the most powerful nation the world had ever seen, he was a wuss and our enemies knew it.

Bill Clinton wasn’t tough either. He was brazen, but that’s not the same thing. He feigned toughness, but Saddam Hussein knew he was bluffing and so did the rest of our enemies. I’ve known many like Clinton and you probably have too. They’re slick. They can talk a good game, but when push comes to shove they don’t have it. It’s something you just know. They’ve always been able to talk their way into something or out of something, but talk is the only weapon in their arsenal. They never consider fighting. They’re not willing to fight and they don’t know how.

Some guys don’t seem like leaders until it’s thrust upon them - like Harry Truman. Who would have predicted that he had the right stuff? He didn’t look the type but he had it - but then he’d been an artillery captain in World War I. Congressman Duncan Hunter had it but it wasn’t evident in any other candidate I interviewed. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, but we’ll never know.

Women can be courageous leaders too. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher certainly was and I sense that Reagan’s UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, could have been too. As fellow cabinet member Bill Bennett described her: “She had no patience with [Islamofascist] tyrannies, said they had to be confronted, you couldn't deal with tyrannies, that there were some people you could work with -- these people you couldn't.” By contrast, Clinton’s UN Ambassador, Bill Richardson, believes he can talk to anyone. His plan for dealing with the tyrannical mullahs running Iran? “I’d sit down and talk to them,” he said. “Heck, I talked with Saddam Hussein. I’ll talk to anyone.” Did Richardson have the stuff to go beyond talk? Maybe, but I didn’t sense it. Guess we’ll never know.

We have to use both gut and brain to size up candidates. It’s not for sure yet, but it looks like Americans will choose either McCain or Obama as commander-in-chief in November. What will the winner face in January? Tests like these:

Iran is building nuclear weapons, has the missiles to hit our ally Israel, and is virtually promising to do so. If we intervene, they promise to block the Strait of Hormuz. North Korea is trying to export nukes to Syria. China is spending billions beefing up its military and conducting war games around Taiwan - which we have pledged to protect and China wants to take back. Russia is beefing up its military, threatening to choke off natural gas to Europe, assassinating expatriate dissidents across that continent, and rattling sabers over Kosovo independence. Al Qaida and the Taliban are on the verge of controlling Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Venezuela threatens to choke off oil to the United States, supports communist guerillas in Colombia and Bolivia who smuggle cocaine into the United States, and conspires with Iran to bring us down. Europe, which we’ve spend trillions protecting, doesn’t want to help us in Afghanistan. No country but the United States is capable of dealing with even one of these scenarios.

Which commander-in-chief can handle these tests?

McCain? Nice guy, former fighter pilot, POW, five years of torture without breaking, decades of congressional experience in military affairs.

Obama? Nice guy, good talker . . .

God's always there

As most of you have probably heard about and or seen the destruction caused by the tornados that hit afew weeks ago in Tennessee. Well my family was not hit but a lot were. Several people in my church attetend Union University which you may have heard was hit pretty hard. None were hurt but several lost almost everything. I love this picture. It wasn't taken in this storm but I thought it goes along though. It shows that God's hands are always in the storm. And He's Always there.

And again Spell check isn't working .

Dangerous Weapon?

One of my coming-of-age milestones was carrying a pocket knife. Completing Cub Scout training at about ten, my mother allowed me to have one. For the last forty-seven years, the world judged me competent to carry it, but for about the last five it’s been getting me into trouble. It’s a little black one with a two-inch blade I got at WALMART for eight bucks. I can open the blade with one hand - which is handy since I often need it while holding onto something else with my other hand. It’s one of the six things I always have wherever I go, the others being my glasses, my watch, my planner/wallet, my pen, and my flash drive. All are essential: I can’t read without my glasses. I can’t be on time without my watch. I can’t remember much unless I write it down with my pen in my planner/wallet - without which I can’t buy anything either. I can’t transfer files between computers or back them up without my flash drive. Without my knife, I can’t peel the orange I eat every day, open envelopes, boxes, newspaper bundles, clean my fingernails, or countless other things I use it for.

All last week, however, I reached into my pocket and it wasn’t there. Finally, it was delivered back to me by Federal Express. I had to give up my little knife when I rushed through the Portland Jetport trying to catch an early flight and avoid a storm delay. I’d forgotten to put in into my luggage before checking it at the ticket counter and didn’t realize it was still in my pocket until I’d taken my shoes off and was about to go through the metal detector. The guard pointed to a little kiosk nearby where he said I could ship it to myself for five bucks if I stepped out of line. Though I had very little time before I had to board the plane, I did it. I addressed an envelope and paid the $5, then waited at the end of the line again. I still set off the alarm on the metal detector though, because I’d also forgotten to take out my pen or take off my watch. Again, I had to step aside and wait to be frisked before going to the boarding area. They let me keep my glasses and my watch.

I keep a Swiss Army knife with my traveling toiletries because it has scissors and a corkscrew. At the hotel I took it out and put it in my pocket. It’s bulky and I need two hands to open the blade, but it was better than nothing. It was okay for a few hours until I had to go through another security checkpoint to attend Vice President Cheney’s speech in the hotel’s ballroom. I had to turn on my laptop so the guards could ascertain that it really was a laptop and not a bomb, and I had to do the same thing with my digital camera. Because I was carrying that Swiss Army knife though, I had to step out of the line in which I had waited for half an hour. The guard wouldn’t keep it for me to pick up after the speech so I had to bring it up to my room, then go back down and wait in line again. Traveling between Israel and West Bank last year I could keep my pocket knife, but not while traveling between Portland and Washington DC. Israelis and Palestinians trusted me with it but my own countrymen are afraid I’m going to kill someone.

Sometimes I carry a handgun because I’m caretaker for properties with alarm systems and occasionally I have to answer one in the middle of the night. It would be foolish to do so unarmed. As a teacher, however, I work in a “gun-free zone” where there are penalties for carrying a weapon. We’ve seen how well they work lately at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. Although I consider gun-free zones a violation of my Second Amendment rights, I comply, but I refuse to give up my pocket knife. Five years ago, I got a visit from an administrator because a student had seen me peel my orange with my little black knife and she was scared. Imagine that. What are we doing to kids these days to make them scared of a two-inch pocket knife? “You’re not supposed to have those you know,” said the administrator.

I was flabbergasted. “When custodians give up utility knives and cooks give up kitchen knives, I’ll think about it,” I said. “The school is not dangerous because I have this in my pocket. If it bothers you, don’t call it a pocket knife. Call it an orange-peeler. Call it a letter opener. I’m not giving it up.”

Correction: Last week I wrote that Congressman Ron Paul withdrew from the race in his speech at CPAC. I wasn’t actually in the room for it, but watched a small portion on a monitor outside with others who reported that he was dropping out. I didn’t double-check and I should have. His campaign is anemic and hard to notice, but continuing - rather like when "Silent Cal" Coolidge died. One reporter asked: "How can you tell?"

The Right Gathering

McCain at CPAC

Too bad I had to travel hundreds of miles to feel at home, but it was nice nonetheless. Very nice. Now it’s back to the reality that I live in a blue state where very few people see the world as I see it. It’s hard to get three conservatives together around here. At CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington DC, 6800 of us gathered to discuss what was important and what to do about it.

We didn’t agree on everything, but there was mutual respect between those with different opinions. Vice President Cheney spoke in the morning under heavy security on Thursday, the first day of the conference. Then, at lunchtime, I listened as Mitt Romney announced he was suspending his campaign. Most of us were shocked and I don’t think even Laura Ingraham, who introduced him, knew what was coming. That left only McCain, Huckabee, and Ron Paul, and it looked like McCain would win. With that, divisions within the attendees loomed larger. In the lobby outside the ballroom, NPR’s Mara Liasson put a microphone to my face and asked, “How do you feel about Romney dropping out?” Classic liberal question.

“You mean ‘What do I think?'” I asked.

“No. I mean how do you feel? Did you support Romney?”

I told her I did and that I was disappointed. Then she asked if I would work for McCain. I said I would vote for him but I was not inclined to work for him, except to point out in my writing why his Democrat opponent’s positions on issues are wrong. Then a New York Times reporter asked me the same question.

Many of us were struggling with the realization that our choice in November would most likely be between McCain and Obama or McCain and Clinton. Though McCain claimed to be a conservative and his support for our war with Islamofascists was strong, his positions on issues like illegal immigration, tax cuts, campaign finance, global warming, closing Guantanamo, and others were decidedly liberal. He’d even considered becoming John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. Prominent conservative leaders like Rush Limbaugh (not in attendance), Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter had been suggesting they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for McCain in November given his liberal positions. Could other strong conservatives bring themselves to put an X beside his name? That was the dilemma, and he was due to speak in a few hours.

Though I originally intended to go elsewhere in the big hotel for the next two sessions, I instead attended the ones scheduled in the big ballroom where McCain would be speaking to make sure I had a seat for his 3:00 PM appearance. During those sessions, his name came up several times as the speakers - two senators and two congressmen - began referring to him as “the presumptive nominee” and urged the audience to unite behind him. Most applauded when they heard this, but enough were booing that they could be heard everywhere in the large room. It was going to be interesting when McCain finally came to the podium.

The whole day’s program had been shuffled around to accommodate the vice president and the candidates. There was confusion when it got closer to McCain’s speech, but another factor was in play too. There were a lot of media in the room and not all of it friendly toward conservatives. Cameras were rolling. More than one speaker begged the crowd not to boo when McCain walked up but some still did whenever they heard his name. The Emcee gave a big introduction and many of us stood up and cheered loudly, but there were still plenty of audible boos. Then, instead of McCain, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma came out again to praise McCain up and down as if he were trying to tenderize the crowd. Finally, McCain came out and received the same combination of about 85% cheers and 15% boos.

It was a very important speech for McCain - almost an acceptance speech before a very sophisticated and very critical audience whose support was essential if he were to have any chance of winning the White House. He did as good a job as could be expected and moved significantly to the right on many issues including tax cuts, Supreme Court appointments and illegal immigration, pledging to build a border fence, and only after it was completed and functioning, to address the millions already here.

Later, Ron Paul announced his withdrawal, and the next morning, President Bush asked the audience to unite around the party’s nominee. Mike Huckabee came in Saturday morning saying he was still a candidate. McCain still has to beat him, win a majority of delegates, and unite the party. He’s not the nominee I would have chosen, but as for my choice in November? It’s a no-brainer: McCain. I hope my fellow conservatives come around to that before November.