0 comments Do people have a moral obligation to be intelligent?
H.L. Mencken said we do. In one of his last books, "Treatise on Right and Wrong," Mencken wrote that the failure to live up to this responsibility was the primary shortcoming of every established religion.
Today, it's the primary shortcoming of the entire U.S. political system, of both political parties and two branches of government. The courts are all that's left us - barely.
The preferred manner of being unintelligent today is to drag religion into every question of public policy, no matter how remote or specious the connection.
Since Jan. 19, 1981, the citizens of the United States have become so accustomed to being lied to that now we demand pleasant untruths, instead of an even remotely unpleasant truth, no matter what the subject, no matter how necessary the truth.
Perhaps, then, it's to be expected that our political debate is fatuous, vile and phony. But there is no need for it to be willfully unintelligent.
That's immoral.
Five generations ago, here is how Mark Twain described the federal government. Twain, who caused millions of people around the world to love the United States, was describing the Civil War cemetery at Vicksburg.
"Everything about this cemetery suggests the hand of the national Government," Twain wrote. "The Government's work is always conspicuous for excellence, solidity, thoroughness, neatness. The Government does its work well in the first place, and then takes care of it."
Twain was not joking. He praised the federal government repeatedly in "Life on the Mississippi." And Mark Twain was not one to hand out praise lightly.
How have we come, since the days of Mark Twain, who thought the work of the federal government "conspicuous for excellence," to a situation in which virtually every candidate for every office in the United States runs for election by wailing about how rotten the federal government is, what a cheat and a fraud it is, how incompetent, what an oppressor?
And then proves it.
Why do so many people around the world hate our country today, not for its literature, but for what we have become?
And why do we let it continue?
If the federal government indeed has become a cheat, a fraud, and an oppressor, how did it become that way, since the same two political parties have traded power since Twain wrote "Life on the Mississippi"?
Congress and the executive branch are hopelessly corrupt. They will not reform themselves, yet short of violent revolution, they are the only ones with the power to do it.
The courts can no longer stop even the most flagrant constitutional violations, including torture, nor the Bush's administration deliberate crippling and corruption of the courts themselves, through the Department of Justice, our next-to last protection against tyranny. Our final protection, of course, is the guns that are so easy for us to buy, but the average American citizen has become so stupid he no longer knows whom to shoot.
I object to most of the policies of the Bush administration. I particularly object to the fact that for seven years it has treated me, and the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, as though we are all morons.
Just two generations ago, the United States government, then truly pacific and isolationist, managed to defeat the most fearsome army in the history of the world in less than four years. Why is it that now we are unable to defeat a tenth-rate army, a weak and miserably managed army, in nearly twice the time it took us to win World War II?
I'm just asking.
I also blame the members of my own profession, journalists, for this. Mencken, a journalist himself, summed up the problem 75 years ago: "Most of the evils that continue to beset journalism today, in truth, are not due to the rascality of the owners nor even to the Kiwanian bombast of business managers, but simply and solely to the stupidity, cowardice and Philistinism of working newspaper men. ... A Washington correspondent is one with a special talent for failing to see what is before his eyes. ... I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. He is, in his first phase, genuinely romantic. He plans to be both an artist and a moralist - a master of lovely words and a merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass in his community - that is, if his career goes on to what is called success."
Sunday, May 11, 2008Last Update:
|
|
OAKLAND, CALIF. (CN) - General Electric, Sears Roebuck, Whirlpool are poisoning the public by selling carbon drinking water filtration systems that discharge arsenic into the water, the Center for Environmental Health claims in Alameda County Court.
HOUSTON (CN) - Three teen-agers were charged with abuse of a corpse for allegedly digging up the body of an 11-year-old boy who died in 1921, removing its head with a garden tool, and using the skull as a bong to smoke marijuana, police said. DETROIT (CN) - Gregory McKnight and Legisi Holdings took $72 million from more than 3,000 people in a Ponzi scheme, says the SEC, which has obtained an emergency court order freezing their assets.
RENO (CN) - More than 100 flood victims want to stop officials from resuming normal water flows through the Truckee Canal on Saturday, four months after the canal flooded hundreds of homes in Fernley, Nev. LOS ANGELES (CN) - Infomercial marketer Robert Klayman stiffed federal inmates for five months of work, Federal Prison Industries claims in a federal complaint. SAN JOSE (CN) - Marvell Technology Group will pay $10 million and its CEO Weili Dai $500,000 to settle an SEC complaint that the Silicon Valley semiconductor company backdated stock options and juggled the books to hide it - overstating corporate income by $362 million from fiscal years 2000 through 2006.
|
WASHINGTON (CN) - The Federal Circuit reinstated part of Lucent Technology's patent infringement claim against Microsoft and Dell for allegedly infringing on two patents: one for digitizing speech and another for allowing computer hosts to exchange information with personal computers, phones and other devices.
WASHINGTON (CN) - The Drug Enforcement Administration requests public comment on classifying over-the-counter steroids boldione, desoxymethyltestosterone, and 19-nor-4,9(10)-androstadienedione as schedule III anabolic steroids. WASHINGTON (CN) - The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposes to add to the list of entities for which banks do not have to report coin and currency transactions over $10,000. ENVIRONMENT - The Vermont high court concluded that the environmental court improperly added a condition to the air-pollution permit for the operation of an asphalt plant that mandated on-site, six-month meteorological data collection. CONSTITUTION - The Missouri Court of Appeals partially affirmed an injunction preventing state highway patrol from publishing photos of sex offenders whose convictions predated the Sex Offender Registration Act. |
Joseph Flowers claims Interscope Recordings violates copyright on "Po Nigga Blues," a tune he wrote in 1994, in Tupac Shakur's posthumously released "Loyal to the Game" album. The St. Clair County Commission's Superintendent of Roads Rick McKay sexually pawed and harassed a woman he supervised, and other women, and when she complained, McKay "threatened to kill everyone in her department," the woman says in a discrimination claim in Mobile Federal Court. In an estate squabble, Nora Garibotti, who says she was Joey Bishop's common law wife since shortly after the comedian's wife died in 1999 until he died in October 2007, claims Bishop's attorneys committed legal malpractice. Guardian Media Technologies claims Toshiba, Philips Electronics and Vizio sell stuff that violates its patented "automatic censorship of video programs," in separate complaints in Los Angeles Federal Court. Sports agent Kim Grillier claims CSMG Sports and Henry Thomas owe him for recruiting NBA stars Dwayne Wade, Devin Harris and Chris Bosh to the agency, in Wayne County Court, Detroit. Shareholders sued Huntington Bancshares, as successor to Sky Financial Group, for Sky's alleged false and misleading statements in its $330 million acquisition of Waterfield Mortgage Corp., exposing the defendants to millions of dollars in losses on subprime loans, in Columbus, Ohio, Federal Court Zwicker & Associates violates the law and exposes people to identity theft by sending debt-collection notices displaying the alleged debtors' complete Social Security numbers, and refused to correct this when it was pointed out, a class action claims in Boston Federal Court. California sued Va Moua and Herh Moua dba Excel Travel to stop them from practicing immigration law without a license, and advertising these services, in Fresno Superior Court. A class action in New York County Court claims Everbank Reverse Mortgage and Metlife illegally changed the terms of reverse mortgages because they were unable to securitize and/or close on its loans. Strassberg Elementary School Dean of Students David Cech took a 10-year-old boy out of class and sexually molested and photographed him in his office, and was arrested for this, the boy's parent claims in Cook County Court; also sued is Sauk Village School District No. 168. |
MEMPHIS (CN) - FedEx, sued repeatedly for classifying drivers as independent contractors and thus avoiding overtime pay, now faces a shareholder class action saying directors who adopted that policy cost the company $319 million in taxes and penalties for 2002 alone, and exposed FedEx to hundreds of millions more in class action lawsuits and legal fees. 
LOS ANGELES (CN) - The publisher of "Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus" claims that a competitor lifted items wholesale for an online thesaurus, and made millions of dollars from the plagiarism. 
NEW ORLEANS (CN) - The 5th Circuit ruled that the government should have allowed victims of the deadly 2005 BP refinery explosion in Texas City to participate in the plea-bargaining process, but that its failure to do so did not invalidate the plea bargain. 
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - State lawmakers hope a program they approved Thursday will decrease methamphetamine production by restricting sales of a precursor, pseudoephedrine. The program creates a real-time electronic log of purchases of pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in cold medicine. 
WASHINGTON (CN) - Technology used in Toyota hybrids, including the Prius and Highlander, does not violate Solomon Tech's patented combined motor and transmission device, the Federal Circuit ruled, echoing the International Trade Commission's finding of non-infringement. 
