Monthly Archives: December 2017

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by Reid Fitzsimons

We’ve had the pleasure and honor of being friends with a remarkable young person, now 41 or 42, for 10 years. She is a very accomplished professional and makes good money but lives frugally in an inner city area. She spends much if not most of her money mentoring and supporting young woman “of color,” both in the US and in poor countries. She is the type of person who would, and in fact has, put everything on hold and travel to the a third word country to help someone in crisis. She seeks no fanfare whatsoever and, it should be noted, is able to do what she does largely because the expensive tastes to which we are so accustomed do not interest her.
A number of years ago she expressed some frustration with one of her girls, perhaps 15 or 16, because she was doing poorly in school and was functionally illiterate. Reading was not important to her because, “Reading is for white people” she said. That is a significant and even tragic statement and mentality, obviously, but not the subject of this article (recall that one goal of slave owners was prohibiting literacy among their chattel). Several years later I asked our friend how this particular girl was doing. She replied she’s doing well and going to college. My response was predictable, an “oh great, so she buckled down and learned to read.” To which she replied her girl never really became literate, but “everyone knows the college she’s attending isn’t a real college.” Exposing my own naiveté at the time, I have to admit I didn’t realize there were colleges that weren’t real.

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by Barry King

Progressive dinosaur Dan Rather penned emotional poetry about tax policy, which as of now has been liked by 80000 facebookers and shared by 50000 of them and commented on by perhaps hundreds of thousands. To see what a post or a tweet is actually doing and how and why, the thing to do is skim the comments, and my skimming of the comments on this one, as far as I got, shows that Rather is reaching only people who already agree with him at a rate of close to 100%

Which means, he is accomplishing nothing toward bridging America's political divide. He is "preaching to the choir" in an echo chamber, which is what he has been doing (and destroying his originally brilliant journalism career in the process) for about the last 20 years of an (at least) 47-year-long career now, and probably longer, I just mention that number because I myself remember reading him since 1972, at which time I agreed with him.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

The worldwide annual rate of motor vehicle related deaths is apparently 17.4 per 100,000. The highest rate is in Africa at 26.6, Honduras at 17.4, and the US at 10.6 per 100,000. In general, and the reasons are numerous, there is a higher rate in so-called third world countries than in the “first world.”

So what does this have to do with anything? I know Honduras very well, and can state unequivocally that it is common and typical for any number of people to hop in the back of pick-up trucks and go barreling down the pothole laden two-lane corridors of death which is their national highway system. I’ve done it myself enough times and it is probably one of the worst practices in regards to vehicular safety, but no one bats an eye, including the cops. It is, however, illegal in Honduras to drive while smoking, using a cell phone, and to not wear a seatbelt. For those who know the New Testament this might bring to mind the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:3, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

I am, of course, not privy to the legislative machinations of governments that are perpetual recipients of foreign aid but have a theory when it comes to laws that concentrate on a speck of dust but ignore the gaping eye wound. Somewhere in the comfort of the US or European Union there are politicians or non-profit progressive special interest groups who can’t imagine the entire world doesn’t share their concerns and values, anti-smoking activists for example (what enlightened person doesn’t want to have a group for whom they can show contempt?). While somewhere there is perhaps a legitimate goal of improving health, their focus becomes the means, not the result, and even the most oblique attack on their target is justified. Hence, a well-funded organization can perhaps influence the pertinent foreign policy people and say, “It would be a righteous thing if we could demand other countries pass anti-smoking laws.” Attach a little bit of foreign aid, ostensibly to help enact the law and, Que Bueno, the money goes into some corrupt politicians pocket and there is an essentially meaningless new law just waiting to be broken.

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