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RP John Y. Brown, III appeared on “Louisville AM Radio,” with local media titan Rick Redding, to discuss his new book “Musings from the Middle.”
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I guess you could call them Atheist Enthusiasts. Seems like a growing group of people these days like to take on the Big Guy and prattle on and on about it. I think it makes them feel powerful. How couldn’t it? I hardly ever win an argument with my wife. I can’t imagine what it would feel like feeling like I won argument against God.
I mean….I don’t believe in UFOs but I don’t go around telling people about it everyday. It just never occurs to me because I am at peace with it. Which makes me wonder if atheist enthusiasts who also don’t believe in UFOs create groups and write books about not believing in UFOs. If so, I want to be clear I am not in that group of UFO non-believers…but in the more dignified group that doesn’t believe in UFOs. Do we parents really raise our children? Or do they secretly really raise us? Some days I feel like Rod Serling will step out from the next room and start explaining this entire hoax — that all along our children have patiently and lovingly been guiding us into adulthood. And as the youngest approaches age 18, facing the horrifying feeling that you are not ready for her to leave because you are not yet fully an adult. === Parenting and job classifications
I would say for mothers it would be Life Coach. For fathers I would say Talent Agent. Ironically, fathers often secretly believe they are a Life Coach to their wives. While wives are convinced they are really like a Talent Agent to the husband. And kids assume their job has always been Life Coach for both parents. I remember in my high school psychology class learning that ages 40-55 were the most “productive years.” (I hope that has since been adjusted to 45-60. But I digress.) The theory goes that we spend our first 20-25 years getting educated and the next 15-20 mastering a trade or profession and then achieve at our work at the highest levels during that next phase (40-55) because we are finally “ready” and adequately “prepared.” I am now age 50 and can report (at least in my case) that theory is at least half true. Maybe even 60% true. But what about the other 40% that makes these years the “productive years?” I think the other 40% of the cause of our spike in productivity is the looming sense of our own mortality. At around age 40 we realize we don’t have the luxury to wait until we can produce the perfect concerto, write the best selling novel, deliver the life-changing lecture, launch the brilliant new business idea, or are finally ready to manage like a CEO case study before “going for it.” At age 40 perfection stops being our teacher and starts being our nemesis. And so we just start producing whatever we can and realize, to our surprise, it is better than we expected and others don’t notice the deficiencies (or at least don’t notice them as prominently as we feared.)
It reminds me in football games of the final minutes when teams coming from behind go into their “Hurry Up Offense.” These teams may not have scored a single point in the first half, but in the “Hurry Up Offense” they may post 14 points in 5 minutes. They must be in what psychologists call “Their most productive time of the game,” right? Or maybe they are simply playing against the clock. Or both. About 60% and 40%. I think it is both. So now…I am ready to start my day. “Huddle up. Wide receiver go for first down. On one. Break!” After a week of national debate, I think I follow the arguments for the pending Syrian force resolution before Congress: air strikes won’t threaten Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power; and they may or may not deter Assad from continuing the devastation of his own citizenry (which, by the way, has been well underway for the better part of two years without any attempt at American intervention.) Bombing would enforce the conscience of an international community that also happens to be conspicuously unwilling to act, even under the auspices of the usual fig leaves, NATO and the UN Security Council. True, Assad is not even remotely on the verge of exporting his destruction to his neighbors, and there is not a shred of evidence linking him to any credible threat to our homeland. But we should push ahead in the interests of future presidents having the flexibility to rattle sabers with credibility: and by the way, you are likely guilty of being an unsophisticated strategic thinker or an isolationist if you disagree.
The defenders of the Syrian resolution assert a variety of fearful consequences if Congress actually asserts its prerogative of limiting a president’s war-making authority (never mind the irony of suggesting that the system is broken when it works exactly as it is constitutionally supposed to). But the specter of future chief executives suffering a dangerously weakened hand when they rhetorically draw “red lines”, or assert that renegade dictators “must go”, assumes the hand is a particularly strong one now: in fact, that strength is always tied to the precise nature of the national interest at stake, and a yes or no vote won’t change the calculus. Read the rest of… I shot this Saturday and Sunday at Camp 584 and for those who’ve never seen a silver lab, meet Gunnel. This is only 4 minutes long and rest assured, for my big film, Why the Klamath Matters, we have a team of professionals.
Judging from media coverage, one would think the emerging solution to the Syria predicament arrived somewhat randomly. But when considering the supposedly “random” sequence of developments on Syria, what emerges is something far more strategic: A) President Obama, on the eve of the G20 summit, reminds international leaders that chemical weapons containment is a shared obligation:
B) During the G-20, Obama and President Putin (Syria’s enabler to date) find time during the G-20 Summit to meet on Syria:
C) Secretary Kerry supposedly off cuff response to a reporter’s question if there was anything Syrian President Assad could do to avert an attack: “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay,” Kerry said. “But he isn’t about to.” Russia seizes the opening created by Kerry’s comment:
D) Within a couple hours, Russia presents Kerry’s “rhetorical” comment as a solution. Syria responds immediately: “Syria today ‘welcomed’ an offer by Russia to put its chemical weapons arsenal under international control so that they could eventually be destroyed’”:
Now let us consider the possibility that these development were not so random … Read the rest of… It is great to wake up on the right side of the bed. To feel like this is your day. To have your mind clicking; memory fired. To have one of those days when you feel it is all coming together. Yet no day, no feeling, no waking up on the right side of the bed can compete with the sense of supreme invincibility ine gets when driving into a crowded parking lot and instantly finding a good parking place.
What the heck is up with that? Especially since I woke up feeling good about myself today but can’t catch a break parking today. While the political world is consumed with Syria—and the close question of whether Barack Obama’s muddled case for intervention is bolstered by worries about the institutional damage to the presidency that would come from a “no” vote on his Syrian resolution—a perceptive piece by two Democrats, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, on the travails of the Republican Party, deserves a serious read. In their essay “How to Save the Republican Party, Courtesy of Two Democrats”, Galston and Kamarck outline Republican misconceptions about the electoral environment that as they point out, almost identically mirror what pre-Clintonian Democrats surmised about their party on the heels of successive presidential losses: (1) faith that there is a non-voting segment of the electorate that would be energized by a move toward an undiluted, ideologically pure version of the party’s ideological message and (2) that a solid majority in the House of Representatives and a majority of governorships are proof of an underlying electoral strength that will eventually reassert itself at the presidential level. Anyone who has perused this site can guess that I am aligned with much of the Galston/Kamarck critique, and that I view what they call the “hyper-individualistic libertarianism” that is dominant in conservative grassroots circles as a liability for Republican aspirations to raise their vote shares with minorities, under 35 professional women, and white working class voters: in fact it is a liability about equal to the constraints interest group liberalism posed to eighties era Democrats trying to resurrect their appeal to southern moderates, white ethnics, and suburban professionals in the aftermath of Reagan.
A generation ago, the Reagan era managed to rewrite one dramatic element of the domestic policy framework—namely, a sizable reduction in marginal tax rates—but to an extent that was downplayed then and obscured now, that framework was undisturbed in most other aspects. Discretionary spending was not sharply diminished; the entitlement structure was solidified; legal policy was turned rightward at the edges, but not in a manner that criminalized abortions or undermined affirmative action; and the regulatory footprint was mostly indistinguishable in 1989 from what it was in 1981. Read the rest of… Twerking, a word I was unfamiliar with until last week, is now officially part of the Oxford English Dictionary. OK. Fine. It’s now officially a word. But before you start to think Twerking is something worthy of a week near the top of the news, think about it this way. What if you or someone you know well became an accomplished Twerker?
And then what if, after several more years of training and practice, you or someone you know became the Best Twerker in the World? Then what? Would it really have been worth it? Or would you have been better off…..I dunno….doing something, like, well, other than Twerking? Even if it isn’t a word in the Oxford English Dictionary. |
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