To all those advocating force as a governing philosophy

Thanks. You just made this shit all the more likely.

Caught on tape: Teacher attacked

Guess what kids are learning from the political and popular culture, right now?

I'll give you a clue. It has something to do with force.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for contributing to such rationalizations.

It's makes the job all the more rewarding. So much more rewarding than it is today.

Getting honest with ourselves

Eboo Patel has a really refreshing column, today, on the schism between religious pluralism and religious extremism, in the wake of the release of the movie, "Fitna" (Strife), by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, arguing that the Koran inspires terrorism.

We've Seen This Movie Before

It is a column worth reading. And its message - that the real schism is not between Islam and the West but between those who respect religious pluralism and those who espouse religious extremism - is not only an important and valuable message, I think, but is equally true of contemporary politics, as well. The on-going troubles in politics and religion in and between liberal democracies and illiberal forces within and outside of them is a schism between those who respect religious and political pluralism and the differences that allow us to engage and learn from one another and those who self-righteously impose upon that conversation and shut down a more honest and open engagement.

It has always been bizarre for me to watch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and say to myself, "Isn't it completely obvious that these parties must sit down and negotiate a political and security agreement that brings together those who want peace for this region in a common effort to end the violence that so fruitlessly kills innocent people?"

And it is equally clear to me, today, that most of our most persistent squabbles have, at their center, self-righteous leveraging that obscures more honest engagement and effort and which seeks to undermine and manipulate the efforts of those who seek more honest resolution to problems so that less honest and more manipulative actors, who have decided that lying and manipulating for a favored cause is more important than seeking genuine and honest resolution to our most persistent conflicts, can exploit the pain and anguish that such manipulative efforts create.

Some people would rather hurt and impose on those they identify against, now, rather than resolve, when possible, the substantive differences that they face between them for some honest resolution for a more sustainable future.

And it is refreshing to read someone with a longer-term, more honest effort to find such resolution amidst a period of self-righteous posturing pretending to be something more honest.

I have to say that it's been a particularly bullshit period watching less honest actors persistently duping the public to the disfavor of more honest actors because most people both don't know the difference and because those doing the duping hope to capitalize on the pride of most people that the most honest and thoughtful folks aren't nearly as smart and good as they want everyone to believe. Intelligent folks have plenty of disagreements and I do think that the most intelligent observers have done their share to fuel many of the problems we have witnessed this period. But more honest engagement has been overwhelmed, often, this period, by leveraging and pressuring for position rather than developing stronger and common understandings. Just as it was in King's time. Just as is has been since the beginning of time, I am quite sure.

But it needn't be that way, if we can only get honest with ourselves as much as with one another.

That is the problem with sanctimony and the reason why it has taken us down such dark roads for most of our existence: it does not allow for being wrong and for learning from others. It only allows for being right and imposing one's will on those who one believes are not.

And letting go of that legacy is the final chapter of illiberalism. Or at least the beginning of the end.

Perhaps we can take our strongest values that seriously.

If not, this is the world we choose.