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e job here for several years dear readers but i did manage to wake the other day to notice oh i dunno that we were bombing syria and iraq that the israelis shot down a syrian plane that vladimir putin was denouncing u s bombing of syria and meanwhile russia is basically invading the ukraine and ebola is apparently out of control in west africa and that s just to name a few of the noisy interruptions to my rem slumber it may be time to get this cocktail party started again my friends december 16 2012 no right to remain isolated posted by quayfortuna under community guns newtown leave a comment in light of the heartbreaking tragedy at newtown i am reposting a talk i gave in 2007 after the virginia tech shooting june 28 2007 sangamon county illinois the tragic events that occurred last april at virginia tech rendered all of us speechless the best i am able to offer to the families of the victims and to members of the virginia tech community is to join the rest of the nation in offering my condolences in the painful analysis of what happened in blacksburg we are left with more questions than answers we ask how is it possible that a quiet middle class suburb can produce such violence and hatred we ask shouldn t it be harder to acquire guns shouldn t we ban violent video games is it something we re eating it is easy to be distracted by the misuse of guns and the tastelessness of certain music video games websites tv shows and movies in some sense though all of these are reflective of some rather powerful social dynamics that have been shaping american culture during the past century ultimately the guns and the shows of violence in pop culture are like the rocks that end up hitting us in the avalanche they can hurt us and they can even kill us but it does us no good to outlaw rocks we have to examine what started the avalanche allow me to point out a few interesting generalizations about our country around 1915 the population of the u s shifted so that a majority of americans lived in large cities rather than in rural areas from 1970 to 2000 however suburbanites began to displace city dwellers the percentage of americans living in suburban areas shifted from 38 to 50 while the urbanites dropped to just 30 of the american population while most americans still live within 100 miles of their birthplace at least one out of five families changes its residence each year in 19 th century literature the iconic american family living under one roof most often consisted of middle aged parents and their multiple children along with grandparents and occasionally a spinster aunt or bachelor uncle in 1970 less than 18 of american households consisted of just one person and households with five or more people represented about 20 of all households but by 2000 large households now only represent about 11 and one person households represent 26 of all households the iconic american family is now fairly often represented in our culture as the single parent with one or two children affordable air conditioning for the home was introduced in the 1930s by 1997 93 of all housing units in the warmer climates of the south had air conditioning a circumstance which appears to have had a pronounced effect on the increase in population in the southern half of the u s as late as 1969 one fifth of american households did not own a single car meanwhile between 1990 and 2000 however 30 million vehicles were added to american households on a net basis and it is common for americans to spend 60 to 90 minutes alone in their cars going to and from work more than a quarter of all americans watch television every night and one third of those go online while they are watching tv one group projected that in 2006 the average american will have spent 575 minutes a day over 9 hours consuming various types of media including tv radio the internet recorded music dvds and video games books and magazines represent a mere 37 minutes per day of that total look on any residential city street with homes built from 80 to 100 years ago and you will see rows of tightly collected houses with ample front porches for sitting and taking in the sights and sounds of a neighborhood look on any suburban street today and you will often have a hard time finding the front doors of the houses the most prominent feature will be a driveway or a garage or a gated wall is anybody home you be the judge to crystallize all this in a century we went from being a people who rarely moved lived within multi generational extended families mainly in small towns or rural areas enjoyed homes with front porches on which we actually spent time and generally worked within a short distance of our places of employment to being a more transient people collected within fractured nuclear families living in suburban homes with hidden front doors often located a significant distance from our jobs spending significant hours of each day seated within our cars or barricaded with our air conditioning watching tv surfing the net or playing video games one thing that small town america did very well was provide moral stability living out in the open within a community of acquaintances there was a certain built in deterrent to doing harm to your neighbors it was the glare of community disapproval one learned early that actions had consequences and generally speaking that good actions have good consequences and bad actions have bad consequences what happens in the dark the cockroaches come out and do their work until someone turns on the kitchen lights and sends them scattering fungus grows you can spread out your arms but you can t see what you might be hitting with them i don t mean by pointing out every day differences between america today and america past to promote the idea that we need to reorder ourselves into a kind of mythical leave it to beaver or little house on the prairie lifestyle that would be a vacuous suggestion when the spirit of an age passes away there s no returning to it you simply have to do the best you can within the spirit of your own age and i do not intend by the way to indict the internet or air conditioning as the roots of all evil they are not i do wish to point out though that in america we have gone from being primarily social actors to being de facto solitary figures and that we should not be surprised that a certain kind of unremitting solitude produces anti social behavior if your child spends all of his or her non school time poking around in internet chat rooms or playing video games they are engaging in the practiced avoidance of social consequences for their cruelest actions in the meta interaction of a video game we can whack away at virtual human beings without meaningful punishment the only bad consequence is losing the game pushing the cancel button and starting over again in chat rooms we can be shunned for being obnoxious but we can always rejoin under a new identity participating as a voyeur in the daily violence that television has to offer has no readily identifiable immediately admonishing consequence at all in some children these circumstances merely create sloth or apathy toward social goals in the worst situations they can create a habit of sociopathic behavior the outdoor public precedents of each of these activities on the other hand beating up people being obnoxious even witnessing crime provided immediate consequences that tended to teach better manners and higher ethical standards is it chat rooms or video games that i deplore no other than to remark that they evidence a race to the bottom fed by value neutral commerce what i deplore is a generation of lives structured around institutions and habits that are inherently anti social fueled by one of the greatest public frauds perpetrated upon american citizens over the last 100 years the self righteous misapplication of a right to privacy as a right to remain isolated and uninvolved you have a right to avoid publicity generally you have a right to make decisions about the conduct of your health care and to conduct your spiritual affairs outside of the public eye you have a right to keep your financial information private in order to avoid the misappropriation of your identity and your credit i want to assert to you today though that as an american citizen you have no right to secede from your community you have no right to avoid the warning signs of anti social behavior you have no right to fail to exercise moral authority within your community simply because you don t want to get involved you have no right not to intervene we ll never hear a constitutional scholar say it but a community simply does not work unless people are willing to participate in it or more importantly a community in which the inhabitants do not meaningfully interact with each other on matters of ethics and social welfare is not a community at all rather it is simply a mob an anonymous random selection of human lives inevitably subject to the moral ambiguity of mob rule in which sociopathic behavior is unfortunately often rewarded in this context it is easy to see that the sixth amendment right to confront one s accuser does not exist simply to benefit defendants it is emblematic of the moral function inherent in the idea of community the effective exercise of moral authority is always personal and confrontational it cannot be enforced with anonymity i believe our founding fathers implicitly recognized that it has been discussed ad nauseum that the teachers and other officials at virginia tech felt powerless within a maze of privacy regulations and potential liability to do anything about what they perceived to be a troubling situation involving the young man who ultimately committed mass murder in their community so we are starting with the disadvantage of a physical and social milieu in which without effort isolation prevails and in which socialization is therefore weak adopting isolation as a kind of ersatz public virtue we have built around ourselves a fortress of laws regulations common law misjudgments and bad habits that actually discourage the very behavior that keeps a community running smoothly and all of that is shrouded by the misguided notion that the poverty of my neighbor my neighbor s illness the consequences of my neighbor s advanced age or of his or her hard times are not my problem the notion that these are problems that the politicians in washington or the financiers on wall street or the capitalists in their board rooms should be solving not me well it is really no wonder that our society is breaking down around our ears and elbows there is no morality in society unless i can also get it through my head that i am my brother s keeper that is the essence of an ethical relationship community moral authority is not solely about restricting behavior moral authority in the absence of practical human charity and compassion is empty and ultimately meaningless i know we want to remain secure in our hermetically sealed cars with our satellite radios drowning out the ugliest noises we want to remain comfortable on our couches watching our tvs and sending emails and we want to elect presidents who tell us that we should just sit tight and they will solve our problems that s a lie that we re all participating in on some level the tragedy at virginia tech shows that fundamentally beneath all the manifestly ungovernable debris of pop culture our communities are not working the way they should we re not producing real citizens the solution to all of this is not a simple one each of us has to examine our own role in providing moral authority within our communities and we need to exercise courage in seizing the initiative we need our legislators to examine ways in which we can liberate those of us who would rise to community leadership to help bridge the gap between the forces that isolate us and the necessity of self stewardship and we need a president and a federal apparatus that uses its authority to enable communities to take the leading role in solving their own problems our nation s leaders have to stop pretending they have all the answers and instead show real leadership in providing us with the tools to help our communities coalesce and flourish there is no superman there is no wonder woman there s only you and me and we ve got to get busy i thank you for listening and i ll be seeing you along the trail november 7 2012 four more years now what posted by quayfortuna under uncategorized tags natural gas obama simpson bowles 1 comment the polls have held and president obama has been re elected frankly the hysteria and the hand wringing are a little more than i can bear since i can find little difference between the incumbent and the moderate northeastern ex governor who implemented obamacare in his own state before obamacare was called obamacare so what can be done with a white house won definitively by the president 303 235 electoral votes a house won definitively by the republicans despite modest democratic gains and a senate stubbornly held with an improved majority by the democrats possibly nothing if recent history is an indicator on the other hand there are two areas that pragmatically speaking really should be attacked by all of the above without delay they are areas of natural compromise among our divided leaders first it is time to enact the bi partisan simpson bowles budget recommendations 200 billion reduction in discretionary spending per year 100 billion in increased tax revenue raising the payroll tax and retirement age to strengthen social security during the lame duck session tacticians in the white house and in congress have the perfect opportunity to cherry pick among retiring congressmen those who were not re elected and those who won by large margins to take a patriotic stand and show the world that we americans are serious about responsible balanced deficit reduction some of those who won re election by small margins can be forgiven if they sit this one out second a natural area for compromise by the white house would be in the area of energy specifically if we can all agree that coal is dead not actually dead by the way it will continue to operate in the u s on a smaller more sustainable level serving export markets and people will still make money from it then the president has no choice but to lend some support to clean american natural gas you can t kill coal unless you have a credible fuel with which to replace it if coal fired power plants are coming off line gas fired plants are really the only thing available to replace them supporting natural gas development and the development of independent gas fired power generation in the u s is the president s best hope for articulating a practical meaningful energy policy and it is an initiative that conservatives should be able to get behind as well time to stop all the childish nonsense time to work together to govern after all that s why you re there april 19 ...