What you should read this week, in my opinion:
Fred Clark's Empathy Part 4:
"What's the matter with Kansas?" Thomas Frank asks.
That's a good question, and a fair one. The majority of Kansans, after all, continually vote against their own economic self-interest. That's how Frank puts it, anyway.
I would put it somewhat differently: The majority of Kansans continually vote against the economic interests of the majority of Kansans. I don't really care whether or not you cast your vote in your own economic interest, but when your vote betrays the interests of most of your neighbors, well, that's a sin.
Flea's Letter To Alex and Chris, Twelve Years Into The Future:
As young white men, you sit at the pinnacle of opportunity and privilege. All the power in the world can be yours, but as the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. You may be faced with situations where causing harm is an option. You may be faced with situations where refusing to cause harm may cause you to lose face. You may be faced with a situation where you know you can easily get away with causing harm to another living being. And when the road ends here, my sweet boys, I beg you to remember my words, and the example of Hugh Thompson: It is your duty to protect those who can not protect themselves.
Talking with my 11-year old daughter about abortion, and other difficult but necessary tasks on Running with Scissors:
And as she sat down with me this morning, taking in this enormous news story that was all but buried within mainstream television media, she immediately understood. Her eyes widened. No exception for women who are raped? She knew that was bullshit. (No, I don't let her use words like bullshit. Yes, in lots of ways I'm a conservative and hypocritical mom, but anyway...)
AngryBlackBitch's By request, a bitch's thoughts on South Dakota...:
The sad reality is that anti-choice advocates are creating more unplanned pregnancies through their ignorance is bliss policies…and those of us in the trenches are shoveling in a downpour. A bitch struggles to understand the logic and finds that there is none.
Refusing To Choose One Racial Box by Sasha Debevec-McKenney:
If administrators at Windsor High School had their choice, would I be considered black for just the days of the interdisciplinary writing and response to literature tests? That way, I could help boost the scores for blacks, making the school district look better. And then, when the math and science tests rolled around, they could just switch me over to white - a racial group whose statistics could afford to take a hit from my test scores. Wouldn't I be so convenient?
And though this is part of a speech reported in the New York Times (now only accessible in the NYT archives), I bet the speaker wrote it down while he was working on it, or at least rehearsed it - so I'm including it:
As the scrape of silverware quieted at the breakfast, the Rev. W. Stewart MacColl told the audience how a Presbyterian church in Houston that he had led and several others had worked with Planned Parenthood to start a family planning center. Protesters visited his church. Yet his 900 parishioners drove through picket lines every week to attend services. One Sunday, he and his wife, Jane, took refreshments to the protesters out of respect for their understanding of faith, he said.
Mr. MacColl said a parishioner called him the next day to comment: "That's all very well for you to say, but you don't drive to church with a 4-year-old in the back seat of your car and have to try to explain to him when a woman holds up a picture of a dead baby and screams through the window, 'Your church believes in killing babies.' "
Mr. MacColl said of the abortion protester: "She would, I suspect, count herself a lover of life, a lover of the unborn, a lover of God. And yet she spoke in harshness, hatred and frightened a little child."
Mr. MacColl quoted the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: "'Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good.' "
The crowd murmured its assent.
Then Mr. MacColl challenged them. "The trouble is, I find myself reflected in that woman," he said. "Because I can get trapped in self-righteousness and paint those who oppose me in dark colors they do not deserve. Is that, at times, true of you, as well?"
