Republicans in Missouri are trying to prevent 240,000 (mostly black) voters from voting by insisting on identity cards at polling stations. In order to get a card you have to have a birth certificate. Statement from Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan: “As Missouri’s chief elections official, it’s my job to ensure fair elections, and …
Continue reading ‘The price of democracy is eternal vigilance’ »
The 15th Century Aztec poet, Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin, suggested that there is a time when humankind can touch the enduring truths that underlie our fleeting lives. That time is the moment of artistic creation. “From whence come the flowers (the artistic creations) that enrapture man?†asks the poet. “The songs that intoxicate, the lovely songs?†And …
This from Greta Akpeneye, head teacher and a former “loony Left” Lambeth councillor: IQ and other test identify not ability but rather the level of socialization and indoctrination into limited notions of desirable knowledge and ways of understanding the world, which can be typified as “middle class”. Access to this “culture” enables access to academia …
4.5 million Americans suffer from severe mental illness, of which 1.8 million are receiving no treatment on any given day. The results? Homelessness, incarceration and a high level of violence (schizophrenics and manic-depressives commit 1000 murders every year). When de-institutionalization began in the U.S in 1955 the States were responsible for the mentally ill, most …
Continue reading ‘Caring for the mentally ill (no, don’t tune out!)’ »
“Americans are in serious intellectual trouble, in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations. (Susan Jacobs, The Week, February 29th, 2008). Ignorant about science, art, history and geography, Americans are generally proud of their ignorance, labeling anyone who has a command of the English language, …
