Louis R. Avallone

Category: American Values

  • Knowing Better

    Knowing Better

    Being informed today about current events is both easier, and more difficult, than perhaps at any time in our nation’s history. While our access to information from various sources is growing more expansive, we have increasingly less time available to give thoughtful consideration to any of it – not to mention discern fact from fiction.

    Many of us are working longer hours to make ends meet and reading the news is less of a priority when children have their homework to finish, baths to take, and the checkbook still has to be balanced.

    So last Sunday, when I read Prentiss Smith’s column on this editorial page, where he attempted to simplify the thought process for black voters this fall by reminding them that voting for Republicans is analogous to voting for racists, I got angry.

    I got angry because it’s a lie, and because history is filled with examples of lies that have oppressed the human spirit, in an attempt to seize those rights that were granted unto us only by God – and not by government. But as Hitler’s propaganda minister understood, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” And this is the case when it comes to Democrats.

    Prentiss knows better that Republicans enacted the civil rights laws in the 1950’s and 1960’s, over the objection of Democrats. He knows that even though Democrats are considered more caring and sympathetic to the plight of the poor, it has been the Democrat-led welfare programs over the past 50 years, which have virtually destroyed the black family, and the black community.

    He’s aware that before these welfare programs began in 1965, only 22% of black children were born into single parent families, but that after these Democrat-led programs began, the illegitimacy rate in the black community tripled to almost 70%. He knows too this sent millions of black families into poverty, since the poverty rate for single-mother families is nearly five times more than the rate for married-couple families, not to mention that boys born to these single-mothers (especially who didn’t finish high school) are twice as likely to end up in prison, as well.

    He knows the statistics back then show that the unemployment rate among young black men was not only lower than it is today, before these welfare programs were enacted, but that it was nearly the same as the unemployment rate for whites.

    And he knows that today the race hustlers in the Democrat Party are still manipulating the black community, even as the unemployment rate for blacks continues to balloon under this administration – an unemployment rate that is twice as high as whites, and almost as much as the unemployment rate of Asians and Hispanics combined.

    And he knows that Washington is marginalizing the black community more each day by allowing more illegal immigrants to flood the market, reducing wages and employment opportunities in the black community (not to mention taking their votes for granted) because there are simply not enough low-skilled jobs to go around for both blacks and illegal immigrants.

    Despite these facts, the lie persists that Republicans are racist and therefore (according to Prentiss) need to find a way to broaden their appeal to blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc.

    I disagree. This pandering has gone on for too long now, and our nation has to only political correctness and trillions of dollars of debt to show for it. It has divided us as a country, and is one of the reasons that Americans are frustrated with our political party system in the first place, and are registering to vote as “no party” instead. Republicans sounding like Democrats will have the same destructive effect on the black community that Democrats have had all these years.

    So, no, the Republican Party does not need to talk to minorities as minorities – we ought to be talking to one another as Americans, demanding results, instead of more rhetoric, and planning for the long-run, instead of merely how to win elections.

  • Don’t Give Weeds a Fighting Chance

    Don’t Give Weeds a Fighting Chance

    ­It’s often said that life is a fight for territory, and that once we stop fighting for what we want, what we don’t want will automatically take over. We need only to turn on the television, or pick-up a newspaper, or read comments on social media to realize exactly what we, as a country, have stopped fighting for – and what has automatically taken over.

    Too many have stopped fighting for moral values by their silence, while others openly mock traditions and customs, such as building a stable family unit that is committed to the precepts of the Bible, or protecting and defending life, especially the most vulnerable.

    Many more of us say today, “to each his own”, or “that’s none of my business,” or “it’s not my place to judge”. And as a result, more and more of us are teaching our children that morality is a matter of opinion, convenience, or consensus. Our children then grow up in a culture where right or wrong is not so much an absolute, as much as it is a decision about what makes us feel good, or is convenient for us – even if it is destructive to ourselves and to others.

    Our seeming indifference to immorality is akin to watering the weeds in a garden, instead of removing them altogether – the weeds only get taller and stronger, while the fruitful plants become smaller and weaker.

    And the “weeds” seem to be flourishing. Last month, a gunman opened fire in a Lafayette theater, murdering 2 people, and maiming countless others in the process. Barely 2 weeks before that, a 25-year old man killed four U.S. marines at a military recruiting center in Chattanooga. In June, a 21-year old man killed nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina during a prayer meeting.

    And these are just the well-reported, senseless mass-shootings by those who have no regard for the sanctity of human life. But these mass-shootings are taking over our culture, it seems. In fact, it is reported that there have been 206 mass shootings so far in 2015 – nearly 1 mass shooting everyday this year where four or more persons were shot.

    Not surprisingly, our murder rates are climbing, as well. In Milwaukee, twice as many people were killed in the first half of 2015 as in the same period last year. In St. Louis, murders are up by 60%; in New Orleans, by 30%; in Washington, DC, by 18%; in New York by 11%.

    More and more of us feel unsafe in our own homes, or going to the grocery store, or taking our children to the theater or a sporting event – or even sending them into our schools.

    To make us feel safe, there are calls to install more metal detectors in public places, and more cameras in our shopping malls, and more security guards during worship services on Sunday mornings.

    Maybe you are one who says that gun control is the solution to the carnage in our country because if bad people didn’t have guns, they couldn’t murder people as easily. Even if that were accurate, making new laws won’t effectively do anything to reduce the number of guns currently in our country, and FBI crime statistics show more people are murdered by clubs and hammers, than rifles and shotguns, anyways.

    And then there are those that say we should simply pray to God to save us. That’s always a good idea. But worshipping in our churches on Sundays is not enough, if we are unwilling to change our ways, or abandon the “to each his own”, or “that’s none of my business,” or “it’s not my place to judge” mentality that is so entrenched in our culture now.

    Our prayerful words seem meaningless if we allow our culture to silence the expression of our moral values, and if we all choose, instead, to live our lives on our terms – and not on God’s.

    You see, protecting one another from evil is an “inside” job. It starts inside our homes, where children are being raised by adults – instead of YouTube. This is because it is the family that passes down wisdom on how to live one’s life best.

    And through the family, from generation to generation, by word of mouth and religious teachings, we all learn what works, and what doesn’t, harvested from trial-and-error, and not from what’s merely easier to do or popular in our culture.

    Calling for more police officers, or new laws, or adding metal detectors is important, but it ignores the reality that we can never protect one another from the growing number of people whose understanding of right or wrong is not so much an absolute as much as it is a decision about what makes them feel good.

    You see, we’ll eventually run out of police officers and metal detectors in our country – there simply are not enough of them to go around, in all the places they will be needed in the future, based on the present trends. The question really is, will our country eventually run out of righteous people like you first, in all of the places you will be needed, instead?

     

  • Out of Sight, Out of Mind

    Out of Sight, Out of Mind

    There are not many readers who would encourage smoking, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs while pregnant. In fact, many people become angry – and sad – when they see reports on television, or read stories in the newspapers about women who abused alcohol, or ingested methamphetamines, for example, during their pregnancies, and their babies suffered, as a result.

    Recently, there was a story of a 22-year old mom from Tulsa who gave birth to a premature baby while she was high on drugs, and then placed the infant on a pile of trash and did nothing while the baby turned blue. Or the heart-wrenching stories from hospitals, where often a baby’s first experience of the world is the slow withdrawal from drugs, as they suffer vomiting, diarrhea, low-grade fevers, and seizures, because their mom abused heroin, for example, during her pregnancy (heroin use by women alone, incidentally, is up 100% since 2009).

    Even the unapologetically, pro-choice magazine, Cosmopolitan, recently tweeted out that it was “REALLY disturbing” to see how unborn babies react when their mothers smoke and that “nicotine is terrible for unborn children”.

    On one hand, then, there are those whose hearts hurt for the babies in the neonatal intensive care units, or the addicted babies whose pain can be viewed through the monitor during an ultrasound scan.

    And on the other hand, many of these same people remain silent on – or even promote – the matter of abortion or the selling of fetal body parts for science, which are harvested from those abortions.

    The trouble for those whose hearts cry out for the newborn child suffering in NICU with tremors and sweating, and not for the unborn child killed in a way that would best preserve its body parts for sale, is that – for too long – out of sight has been also out of mind.

    But as technology continues to make more visible the life of the unborn (and no longer out of sight) remaining silent is becoming more difficult to reconcile with one’s conscience. After all, for many, abortion is a private decision only between a woman and her doctor, as part of a Constitutional right to privacy. If that’s true, then none of us have any standing to object to how many drugs or how much alcohol a pregnant woman ingests, which may be slowly killing her unborn child, since none of us have any standing, in the first place, to object to her killing the unborn child altogether, all at once.

    It’s insincere and inconsistent to express disapproval at a pregnant woman who is abusing drugs or alcohol, while at the same time we are condoning the killing of their unborn child. And until we reconcile this contradiction, the problem will only get worse.

    In fact, Louisiana already performs worse than nearly every other state in the nation for infant mortality rates, preterm births, low birth weights, etc.

    And that is saying a lot, because nationally the number of addicted babies admitted to neonatal intensive care units has nearly quadrupled – with a new addicted baby being born every 25 minutes.

    There are some people that say the dangers of alcohol or cocaine to the unborn child, for example, are exaggerated, and that calls for concern are merely the invention of pro-life supporters who are wanting to find ways to criminalize abortion, and interfere with the relationship between a woman and her doctor.

    The problem with that is the federal government’s own studies, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which indicate that the suffering to both the mother and unborn child are real. They concluded that smoking during pregnancy can cause tissue damage in the unborn baby, particularly in the lung and brain, and babies whose mothers smoked are about three times more likely to die from SIDS.

    They found that mothers who drink alcohol can cause the baby to develop issues in learning and remembering, understanding, and following directions, controlling emotions, communicating, and socializing. And their statistics show that taking drugs during pregnancy also increases the likelihood of birth defects and stillborn births.

    But all of this is only important if you end giving birth to the child in the first place. Otherwise, if the unborn child is killed and its body parts are sorted for sale, it’s just another day at the abortion clinic.

    For the pro-choice crowd, however, that’s seems more desirable, since for them it is more painful to see a child suffering on life-support, than after an abortion and on the inventory sheet.

     

  • Happiness to Blame

    Happiness to Blame

    So, what is it for you? What will make you happy? When you get that raise? When you finally finish the project you are working on? Maybe it’s when you get that promotion or retire? Or when you finally get moved into the new house? Maybe it will be when you lose the weight, or stop smoking, or stop drinking, or get married. Or maybe you’re waiting for the economy to improve, or for your candidate to be elected into office?

    The trap here is that the goal post of happiness is always moving. Once you get what you wanted in the first place, most of us tend to reset the “If I had this thing, I’d be happy” thinking – and then your happiness will be once again be a distant point, off in the future.

    This is important to figure out because there’s a lot of anger in our country today. What is it for you? Maybe you’re angry at white people because of slavery. Or at rich people because they just get richer and need to share more of their wealth. Or maybe it’s the bad teachers, who aren’t providing our children with a quality education? Maybe you’re angry with those who don’t get it, and continue to fly the Confederate battle flag, or you’re angry with those who disagree with the Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples can marry nationwide. Perhaps you hate America so much that you burn our flag, in hopes that it may one day be replaced by the banner of Islam.

    Whatever it is that has us angry, more than likely, even when the source of that anger diminishes, most folks will still be unhappy and looking for someone, or something new, to blame. Maybe next you will blame your wife, or your pastor, your kids, or your co-worker. Maybe it will be the next President, or a past President. After all, when things go wrong in life, it’s natural for us to blame, because then we don’t have to accept responsibility for what we did, or didn’t do.

    We come by this quite naturally, though. Remember in the Garden of Eden?

    God: “Adam, did you eat the fruit?”

    Adam: “Eve gave it to me.”

    God: “OK. Eve, did you eat the fruit?”

    The problem is that none of us can improve any situation unless we accept responsibility for ourselves, and otherwise reject the philosophy that someone else, or something else, is to blame for our circumstances in life – whether it happened last week, or from when you were a child, or even 150 years ago.

    You see, there is greatness within all of us, but when we resort to blame, and refuse to take life on, and accept responsibility for our circumstances, we hand over the power – the control of our very destiny – to others, as if other “people” or the government will fix everything for us, like a genie in a bottle.

    Here’s the bottom line, though: Happiness is an inside job. Only you can make you happy, and furthermore, it’s no one’s job to make you happy. Not other people. Not the federal government, or the Supreme Court. Not your kids. Not the rich. Not your spouse. Your life is intended to be lived fully…because there is greatness already within you.

    The sooner we let go of our excuses, and more of us take responsibility for our own pursuit of happiness, the sooner we will have the power to change our lives, and our nation, for the better. It’s much easier to come up with excuses, of why we are where we are in our lives. It’s easy to complain about our situation or our circumstances, or to give up on our dreams, and become angry or depressed, or live in the past. Anyone can do that.

    But, if it is true, as Abraham Lincoln said, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be,” then the question today is, “What will it be for you?” How happy will you make your mind up to be?

  • Before It’s Too Late

    It is impossible to forget, that just four days before last Christmas, two (2) New York City police officers were ambushed, and murdered, in their parked patrol car in Brooklyn. The murderer attributed his motive to revenge, and his cowardly act came only days after Al Sharpton led protesters through the streets of New York City chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!”

    This ridiculous rhetoric is nonetheless resonating with a growing number of people in our country, despite the fact that these men and women voluntarily place their own lives in harm’s way to serve our communities, and protect our children, even though they may never get to see their own children again, in doing so. They wake up every morning knowing they will be subjected to cursing and screaming tantrums, including threats to their own safety, and outright challenges to their authority.

    They go to work knowing that a police officer is killed every 58 hours in our country, leaving behind countless sons and daughters, and wives and husbands, who must now live their own lives without their loved ones, so that we might live better and safer lives, instead.[br][br]
    From Ferguson to Baltimore, police officers are increasingly being accused of racism and the use of excessive force. But are there bad police officers? Surely there are, just as there are bad plumbers, doctors, lawyers, dry cleaners, and teachers who all could do their jobs better. There’s no doubt.

    Out of 800,000 police officers across the country, certainly there is some percentage of them who are racist, as well. There’s no doubt. Some who are too aggressive. Some who make very poor judgments. Again, there’s no doubt.

    But an encounter with a police officer is not an opportunity to prove these points, or to become part of a YouTube video that documents your disrespect of authority.

    As Franklin Graham put it, “If a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police officer tells you to put your hands in the air, you put your hands in the air. If a police officer tells you to lay down face first with your hands behind your back, you lay down face first with your hands behind your back.”

    The trouble is there’s a growing number of people who don’t get it, and are cooping up the cops, and driving them out of our communities, except in times of emergencies, when we ask them to place themselves between us and harm’s way. And unfortunately, it’s in our poorest neighborhoods –– that need police presence the most. Or to provide a father figure for those who have none, and to give hope to those who might have given up that there’s still good in our world.

    Because it’s becoming easier and easier to sue police officers for even the most menial of interactions or infractions, community policing, or proactive policing, is declining. This was the practice of arresting offenders for less serious crimes, sending them to jail for a few days or weeks, which then interrupts the arrestees’ more serious criminal activities.

    Proactive policing is credited in New York City with the largest crime drop on record, overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods – and that is over the past 20 years.

    As a result of this proactive policing, the prison population in New York has declined, while prison populations rise across the country. In fact, a recent study indicates that you can decrease incarceration, without increasing crime, by having more law enforcement, not less.

    And yet liberals, like the mayor of Baltimore, believe the opposite. Remember, during the recent riots, she instructed the police to back off, and give space to “those who wished to destroy”. Incredible.

    Again and again, the results of less law enforcement is deadly to the very communities who need it most. Gun violence is now up more than 60% in Baltimore, with 32 shootings just over Memorial Day weekend. And it’s spreading. In Milwaukee, homicides are up 180% this year, over the same period last year. Same in St. Louis, where shootings are up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%.

    In Atlanta, murders are up 32%, and in Chicago, shootings are up 24% and homicides are up 17%. The list can go on and on. It’s epidemic, and the media reports of police misconduct claims are sending our police departments into virtual hibernation.

    A lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department put it this way: “I get a lot of calls where the officers are basically telling me they’re going to roll up their windows, they’re going to answer the box — the radio calls — and they’re just going to go from call to call…and do their job. But other than that, they’re just going to shut down. They’re not going to do any proactive police work.”

    And that’s not good for anyone. So, here is the bottom line: Without police, law and order, we have nothing. Police officers don’t deserve to be argued with, threatened, or called names. They deserve our respect, and if our nation is to flourish again, these good men and women must be invited back in our communities before it’s too late. As it is often said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

  • Call Me Mannerly, First

    Call Me Mannerly, First

    Do you know that there are 50 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute? Or that there are 6,000 messages sent on Twitter every second? And that there are more than a billion people who are regularly sharing stories, links, photos and videos on Facebook? It reminds me of the Toby Keith song from 2001, “I Want To Talk About Me”:

    I want to talk about me
    Want to talk about I
    Want to talk about number one
    Oh my me my
    What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see
    I want to talk about me

    Our nation, and indeed the world, has increasingly placed a greater emphasis on the fact that each of us should do what makes us feel good, or comfortable, regardless of how good, or comfortable, doing such makes others feel – and to make sure everyone knows we’re doing it. Some say that the self-esteem movement from the 1980s is to blame, as many parents and teachers emphasized the confidence of children as priority, rather than making the children face the consequences of their choices, or otherwise “feel” bad.

    At Jesuit High School in New Orleans, for example, there recently were ten valedictorians recognized at graduation. At some high schools there are more than 100 valedictorians. Now, many schools are abandoning the recognition of valedictorian altogether, because of how it makes the other students “feel”.

    Many schools also won’t even post the honor roll any longer because how it makes those students “feel” who do not qualify. In fact, schools now have created the “Effort Honor Roll.” This is for the kids who want to “feel” good about not qualifying to be on the honor roll, in the first place. And at Field Day, yes, everyone gets a ribbon, just for participating.

    To borrow a line from the movie, The Incredibles, “Everyone’s special,” says one character, only to have another reply, “Which is another way of saying no one is.”

    You see, we’ve watered-down our standards so much that it’s quite easy for no one to feel special, or to be recognized for any extraordinary achievement or applauded for their good choices, since we don’t want to make any one “feel” bad for making bad ones.

    Maybe this lack of feeling special is why narcissism is on the rise, where more and more people find the need to inflate their view of themselves, leading to relative indifference of the needs of others. In fact, compared to 30 years ago, 70 percent of students today score higher on narcissism, and lower on empathy. This means more people than ever are willing to share more and more lurid details of their lives with you and me.

    But is that a good thing, for any of us?

    Look at Bruce Jenner, for example. He says he has always been a woman, and that by making this transition, “We’re going to change the world.” Regardless of your opinion of his particular situation, do we need to know the most intimate details of complete strangers? What greater good does it serve, other than the way it makes the person sharing the details “feel”?

    Is it a good thing that my 8 year-old son knows that a father can become a woman, because of a new television series being advertised on the Disney Channel? No, it’s not.

    Forget about the subject matter, though. Today it’s gender selection. Next week it could be polygamy. Next year it will be who knows what. That’s not the point. Morality aside, at the end of the day, we should only share intimate details about ourselves to complete strangers if it would be mannerly to do so.

    “Manners,” says Emily Post, “are sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners.” Without that awareness, you don’t.

    Manners are more than choosing the right fork at dinner, or placing your napkin in your lap. It’s more than if you notice someone has a zipper down or an earring that is missing, and you take them aside in private and tell them. Or if someone tells a story wrong, you just let it go without correcting them. Or if you want to tell a child about how a man can become a woman, and decide that’s really a discussion for the child’s parents to have.

    Being mannerly means being aware that what you do, or share with others, affects the greater good for us all. It means recognizing that no one should “feel” good at the expense of everyone else’s liberty, whether it’s removing references to God in our schools or to raising expectations from one another – even at the risk of hurt feelings.

    There are parents, for example, who insist their children be respected by the teacher, and yet they are disrespectful to the teachers themselves. Or those who demand respect from law enforcement officers, but are often anything but respectful, in return.

    Will the number of people who believe the world revolves them continue to grow? It may. But in the meantime, folks can call you Caitlyn or Bruce, or whatever you like. As for me, I’d like to call you mannerly first.

  • All In The Family

    All In The Family

    He was well-intentioned enough, in his explanation, as this well-known member of our community called me Thursday evening before the vote to discuss the election. “We must pass this tax renewal for the Caddo Parish school system,” he urged, “to make a difference for the children and the future of our community,” he added, as the passion in his voice grew more palpable with each syllable he spoke. He believed that spending an additional $108 million in tax dollars, to improve the physical conditions of our school buildings and the teaching environment would lead to improved educational outcomes, especially for disadvantaged students, who need it the most.

    But the facts don’t seem to bear that out because even when schools of disadvantaged children are well-financed with new facilities, it’s the conditions outside of the classroom (i.e parenting, poverty, homelessness, etc.), which consistently produce the widest disparities we routinely see in educational outcomes. For example: only 2 out 3 Caddo Parish high school seniors graduated in 2014, in a school system that spared little expense to educate them – spending $480 million last year, or $12,000 per student.

    But just as we have spent billions of dollars on food stamps and welfare, Medicaid, Head Start – you name it – without any change in the poverty rate over the past 50 years, our spending more money on education will not change the quality of our children’s education unless, and until, we change the quality of our children’s parents first.

    That’s a tough one, though, I know. For some, it seems an impossible task, since it’s much easier to talk about increasing teacher salaries in order to attract better teachers, or to reduce class sizes, or to supply the children with new technology. It’s easier to blame the school administrators for not holding teachers accountable for poor test scores and below-average graduation rates, than to address the 800 lbs. gorilla in the room: parenting.

    That’s tough also, though, because we have an epidemic of children being born to unwed mothers (40% and rising). Aside from that, the poverty rate for these single-mother families is nearly 5 times more than the rate for married-couple families. And boys born to single-mothers (who didn’t finish high school) are twice as likely to end up in prison, as well.

    You see, poverty is the most significant predictor of academic success, bottom-line (although it wasn’t so much so prior to the 1960s, but that’s another story for another day).

    You see, spending $108 million, or $800 bazillion, on new schools won’t improve a single child’s education whose parents’ least concern is a designated homework time because they are homeless (there are more than 1 million public school students in the U.S. that are homeless). What if you are part of the 33% of children in the U.S. that live without the presence of a father? Children achieve higher education levels with an involved father early on. Or if you don’t have a designated dinner time because you don’t know where your next meal is coming from (more than 1 out of every 4 children in the U.S. is enrolled in the food stamp program now, which is more than ever before).

    Or if there is no structure at home and you’re shuffled from place to place, because your mom is on crack, and your dad has disappeared or is in jail (research shows for every 2 moves in a school year, a child essentially loses that year of learning altogether).

    Or if there’s no one to read to you at night, and build your vocabulary by sounding out the sounds that words make (many children who enter kindergarten without pre-reading skills in place simply never catch up).

    How can a child be expected to perform academically as well as other children who don’t face those challenges? It’s tough.

    The federal government, though, is responding by funding public boarding schools, in selected cities, at a cost of $35,000 per student, per year. These at-risk children live at school for 5 days a week, and they get to go home to their parents on the weekends. Certainly, that’s one way to “fix” the conditions outside the classroom that plague academic performance, and turn it around.

    But with 16.4 million children in the U.S. living in poverty, paying for this “fix” and enrolling them all in public boarding schools would be cost prohibitive ($574 billion per year). So, how about we just fix the real issue, and find a way to make better parents, instead, and then make a better school system, in the process?

    I believe voters really said “no” earlier this month to spending $108 million for new school construction because they realize we don’t have a general education crisis in our country, or a revenue issue here in Caddo Parish. Instead, we have a parenting crisis that is at the root of our education system and that spending money on new classrooms, carpet, and fresh paint simply won’t fix any of that – not at all.

    If we want to improve education system and the future of our community, we must somehow start at the beginning, and with something that money cannot buy: the family. After all, in the words Frederick Douglas, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

  • Join the Crowd

    Join the Crowd

    If there was ever a good example of how an uninformed electorate got it completely wrong, it would be when Jesus and Barabbas stood before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and a large crowd of people. Despite Pontius Pilate looking for the facts to support the charges against Jesus, and asking the crowd for any evidence whatsoever of his crime, the crowd had made up its mind – without the facts. Their loud shouting to crucify him was based on “some things they had heard” from others, and as a result, they got it wrong.

    So, when there’s talk in Washington, D.C. by the President about a Constitutional amendment to make it mandatory for everyone in the “crowd” to vote, under the penalty of law, it warrants a closer look.

    The President said last month that mandatory voting would place young, lower-income, immigrant, and minority groups into the polls, and then he went on to imply somehow that young, lower-income, immigrant, and minority groups cannot get into the polls now.

    Of course, that’s not entirely true – and that’s putting it politely. Consider that black voters in 2012 voted at a higher rate than whites for the first time in American history, according to a Census Bureau report. In 2008, 5.8 million more minorities “somehow” got into the polls, compared to 2004 minority voting, and then in 2008, fewer whites went to the polls by almost 1.2 million.

    If you’re scratching your head right about now, like Pontius Pilate standing before the “crowd” of folks shouting “crucify him”, and you’re wanting to make sense of this talk of mandatory voting, you’re not alone.

    For millions of Americans, the privilege to vote is not a compulsory requirement to vote. Although millions of Americans have sacrificed their lives to protect this privilege, voting for the sake of voting, is not enough. Along with the privilege to vote comes the responsibility to become informed, as much as possible, regarding the issues being voted upon and the candidates being elected.

    For example, if you were being wheeled into the emergency room, would you choose a doctor whose practice of medicine was based on what he or she had “heard from others” or whatever feels right? Or would you choose a doctor who treats patients based on scientific methods, drawing from the best available evidence? The first doctor means well, of course, but isn’t helping a bit, and neither is the uninformed voter pulling the lever in the voting machine based on what they “heard from others”.

    Now there are some folks in the “crowd” who would mention that we compel citizens to perform some civic duties, and they will bring up jury duty, to support the notion of mandatory voting. That’s true, and our mandatory jury duty system is effective, and is supported by the Thirteenth Amendment. But consider if you had a friend, or a loved one, whose guilt or innocence was being determined by jurors who were not well informed of the evidence supporting the charges? Juries are well informed about the trial issues because it would be immoral to ask any juror to vote on a matter unless they were knowledgeable of what they were voting on. Still, even after all that, any juror can choose not to vote, at all.

    And so it should be the same with the American people in our elections. We should retain the right not to vote, despite our civic duty to do so.

    Military service is considered a civic duty also. However, the U.S. ended the draft in 1973 and then we converted to an all-volunteer military force. During the 50’s and 60’s, the draft forced some people into the military that simply were not yet prepared to serve in the military, and this increased the rate of turnover, since these same coerced folks reenlisted at much lower rates than the volunteers did. Moreover, these involuntary soldiers often diminished the morale of their unit, and caused discipline problems, as well.

    Without the draft, however, the statistics reflect that we now have the highest quality military personnel in our nation’s history. Our military force is better educated today than the draft-era recruits, and our military is more capable than ever before.

    By comparison, would a mandatory voting law force some folks into the polls that are simply not yet prepared to vote, because they are not knowledgeable of what they are voting on, like the folks who were forced to enlist in the military, but were not yet prepared to serve? Would forced voting ensure that the voters know enough, or care enough, to vote? Would that increase the morale of our country or produce a better election outcome?

    Or would it diminish the voice of the volunteer voter at the polls – drowned out by the crowd of coerced voters instead?

    Of course, we teach our children not to follow the “crowd”, and maybe that’s because of stories like that of Pontius Pilate and Jesus, where the “crowd” got it so very wrong. But there’s something to that lesson – the “crowd” was uninformed and unprepared, and no law could have changed that 2,000 years ago, nor can it today, for it takes nothing to join the crowd, but it takes everything to stand alone and honor your civic duty – even if that means not voting at all.

  • Stupid is as Stupid Does

    Stupid is as Stupid Does

    By Louis R. Avallone

    –

    Sometimes we get so caught up in using labels that we miss the forest for the trees. Of course, labels help us organize our world, which is increasingly loud, confusing, and misleading. Folks often bite their tongue, or hold their comments back, afraid that they will be called a racist, or an elitist, a liberal, or a conservative, a sexist, or an anti-environmentalist – for simply what they believe.

    But no matter the label, I think it all boils down to the plain wisdom of Forest Gump’s momma when she said, “Stupid is as stupid does”.

    And the world is certainly full of lots of examples of stupid. It’s hard to comment on any of it, or engage someone in a meaningful discussion about it, without offending them – or some group – or risk being branded as a heartless so-and-so, or an insensitive you-know-what. Thus, lots of folks just keep their opinions to themselves.

    And a recent Pew Research poll indicated this as well: Most people who regularly use social media sites are less likely to share their opinions, even offline, unless they know their audience agrees. Our fear of isolation from others, it seems, keeps too many of us from sharing our opinions, and this encourages a sense of apathy, or a “to each his own” mentality.

    The problem with that, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., is that “(o)ur lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

    For example, does it matter that welfare spending has increased 16-fold since the federal government began the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s, and that welfare spending has risen 32% since Obama took office? Yet the number of people on food stamps in the U.S. today exceeds the total population of Argentina (43,024,374)?

    Doesn’t it matter that Obama said earlier this month that he was “proud of saving the economy,” during the same week that 25,000 Americans filed for unemployment, and that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 93 million Americans being unemployed now, or not even looking for work?

    Does it bother you that our federal government is borrowing 14¢ out of every dollar it spends now, just to keep the “lights on”, and yet Obama’s Executive Order on immigration enables those here illegally to get a check from the federal government through the Earned Income Tax Credit, even retroactively, going back 3 years? And did you know that last year the IRS sent $4.2 billion in checks to illegal immigrants in our country?

    This is exactly the kind of “stupid is that stupid does” thinking that will do us in. It’s contagious and it’s reaching epidemic levels – especially with the nonsense thinking in our society that places more value on how something looks or feels, rather than what it is actually.

    Does it bother you that our president is more concerned with “showing” the world that Americans are united together to fight ISIS terrorists, instead of him simply freeing up our military commanders to go break things and kill the bad guys (instead of just “showing” the bad guys how united we are in spirit)?

    And does it bother you that NBC anchor Brian Williams wanted to look more heroic when said his helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade as he was covering the Iraq war in 2003 (when it really didn’t), or when Hilary Clinton said that she landed in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire (when there wasn’t any)? Or when Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal wanted to appear as a war hero and said he served in Vietnam (when he hadn’t).

    If any of these examples bother you, speak out, be heard. There’s more people who think like you do than you might realize. And like fleas, roaches, rats, rust, and termites, if you say nothing, or ignore the problem, it will only become worse.

    Our society too often confuses doing something with actually accomplishing something. We give more praise and attention to those who care more, than those who actually help more.

    And it’s got to stop.

    So don’t be silent about things that matter, and call it like it is, no matter what side of the aisle you are on. And if anyone happens to get offended by you defending what you believe, especially the intellectuals who “know better” than the rest of us, just tell them to go see Forest’s momma. It’s not any more complicated than that.

    Image credit to grabgewalt.deviantart.com

  • Beauty is Only Skin Deep

    By Louis R. Avallone

    –

    By now, you’ve heard about the Caddo Parish School Board’s plan to close six schools, and open three new ones, and make improvements in various others using $108 million in bonds. The plan is branded by the CPSB as, “Reinvest in Caddo”. The plan has drawn both supporters and critics, but both groups may be missing the forest for the trees. Here’s why:

    You see, supporters point out that the average school building in the parish is 60 years old, and that the maintenance costs alone of the three schools slated for closure is $150,000 per year, and that to make those aging schools ADA-compliant and technology-ready would require an additional $18 million.

    Now, the critics explain that the CPSB could lower our public school taxes, instead of reallocating them to build these unneeded new schools, since Caddo Parish has 20,000 fewer students to educate than we had in 1970, yet today we still have roughly the same number of schools to pay for, nonetheless.

    They point to Census data that indicates that the number of students to educate in Caddo Parish will continue to decline, considering the number of child-bearing aged women in Caddo Parish has been declining over the past 20 years (down 8.5% since 1990). And with virtually no population growth in the parish since 1990, the math seems to support the trend towards fewer students for the foreseeable future.

    Taking math out of the equation, for a moment, though, the Shreveport Historic Preservation Commission opposes the plan to “Reinvest in Caddo” for altogether different reasons. They feel they were flat-out ignored by the CPSB, and that shuttering any school is the beginning of the end for any neighborhood in which it is located. That would be particularly true for the Highland neighborhood, under this plan.

    Still others say that this plan is ill-conceived, and the evidence is that it was rushed so quickly to be put before the CPSB on the same night that 50% of the school board members were showing up brand-new – serving for their very first time after having been elected just last fall.

    And for CPSB member, Dottie Bell, the plan to “Reinvest in Caddo” is real simple: It’s about putting the children first. And for Superintendent Goree? It’s about providing something better for our children.

    But does getting “something better” for our children mean spending more taxpayer dollars, considering that Louisiana is already spending over $1 billion now on schools that are rated “D” and “F” each year? As it stands now, for the 200,000 students in Louisiana, their odds are “50/50” of graduating high school or even reading on their grade level.

    Perhaps, instead of investing money, this CPSB plan might be better received if the plan included strategies for getting parents more involved in their children’s education, and thereby improving the quality of their education – rather going back to the taxpayers and wagering tax dollars on the expectation that new buildings will improve the quality of education parish-wide.

    The issue of increasing parental involvement is the “800 lb. gorilla” in the room, and it ought to be front and center, especially whenever someone wants to increase spending and raise taxes “for the children”.

    In order for students to do well in school, however, they need more than new buildings. They need someone to make them do their homework. To fix them a well-balanced breakfast. To communicate with their teacher on their progress. To make sure they get a good night’s sleep and get to school on time. To be respectful and obey. You see, building new schools alone cannot accomplish any of that – without first increasing parental involvement.

    Did you know that one of the most successful school systems in the U.S. are the schools situated on U.S. military bases? A report by 60 Minutes found that these students’ test scores are among the best in the nation, and in some cases, represent the “narrowest achievement gap between minorities and whites of any school in the entire country”, and that’s with half of those students living below the poverty line.

    And why the positive difference here? Parental involvement.

    So, before the need to build an auxiliary gymnasium, or reduce the number of “T” buildings at our schools, perhaps we need to address, as an example, the unequal education in the black community first, and why the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader (according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress). This is particularly important for our community – 64% of Caddo Parish students are black.

    Michael Jordan was not successful because he played in multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art arenas. Luciano Pavarotti does not sell out performances because he performs in the finest, most exquisite opera houses. Steve Jobs launched Apple Computer from his home garage, and not from the 32-acre campus that makes up their glimmering, class “A” corporate offices in Cupertino today.

    Yes, shiny new buildings are pretty. But beauty is only skin deep. It’s what you do with what you have that matters most, and perhaps we ought to start there first.