Is the only way to get rid of racism to, “Stop talking about it?”

Actor Morgan Freeman suggested this in an interview with the Associated Press, saying that the concept of dedicating a month to black history is “ridiculous.” For Freeman, black history is synonymous with American history. Continuing to label people “black” and “white” and setting aside a month to honor African-American history does little to eliminate racism in society.

This article has two themes. One is Obama vs. McCain and in particular one of the many slanderous slurs – namely, infanticide – the McCain camp has directed toward Obama, as well as the rebuttal of that accusation. The second theme is the responsibility of the media when they are asked to convey slanderous (or libelous, to be technical) material.

The first theme takes the form of a story. The story begins with a letter-to-the-editor in the Sun newspapers accusing Barack Obama of supporting infanticide, and it continues with my attempts to rebut the accusation, including a conversation with a Sun newspaper editor and a letter-to-the-editor which was not printed.

The second theme appears in my discussion of the issues raised by this incident...

At its September 4 meeting, the City Council passed a resolution favoring a timetable for comprehensive withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, with all votes affirmative except for Demro’s abstention.

The crimes of Michael Vick haunt me. I look into our beloved dogs’ eyes and I think of the atrocities that Vick and his partners-in-crime committed, and I shudder. “How could they have done such things?”

Lakewood Public Library’s new building looms majestically above the avenue, like a distinguished paterfamilias watching over his protégés. The city’s school buildings have all been rebuilt and spruced up and technologized.

Our national anthem, as we all well know, is serious business. Why else would we play it at every public event? Why else does an individual, especially a male, risk his safety if he fails to stand when it is played?

The atheists are on the attack. The likes of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have recently written books aiming to eradicate belief in God and devotion to religion, Christianity in particular. This may be a backlash against the intrusion of certain religionists, especially those called fundamentalists, in our lives. (On this, more later).

America, historians tell us, has been largely shaped by its frontier. Of all the types of frontier life, none has received more popular attention than the Wild West, and perhaps the best-known and most enduring example of Wild West life is the gunman-to-gunman shootout.

By the time this reaches print, the scandals involving the Duke lacrosse team, Don Imus’s racist/sexist remarks, and the firing of U.S. attorneys may be out of mind, overshadowed by the tragic and senseless shootings at Virginia Tech. However, the scandals are worth keeping in mind for the deeper problems they exhibit.

Do I need to belabor the obvious? We are now in the middle of the 2008 “money primary,” in which candidates vie not for the favor of voters but for the largesse of contributors, with the clear aim of amassing enough money to make their victory seem inevitable. (So much for “one person one vote.”) One presidential candidate at least has dropped out not because his program was unworthy or even unpopular, but simply because he couldn’t raise large amounts of money.

How often have you heard those words, and how often have they been empty window dressing? With your help – both before the election and after – I will make them mean something again.

First there was moral clarity. From moral clarity came self-righteousness and supreme self-confidence. Then came arrogance, and out of arrogance came the waging of aggressive war.

In the previous issue I held that misuse of an expression is not merely a matter of taste but rather demonstrates obtuseness of one kind or another -- about logical consequences, historical context, or distinctions.

Here are a few more examples:

It gripes me – and many others, I suppose -- to hear someone misuse a common saying. On the surface, these irritations are only a matter of taste – or pedantic preference -- but on a second look we might find more obtuseness than mere preference. One incident especially summed it up for me . . .

In a previous column I admitted to having no solution to the immigration problem. But discussions with the Lakewood Public Library’s “Great Decisions” group changed my perspective. And immigration is worth another round of discussion, for under the new and (hopefully) improved Congress it might again be on the table.

As Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday approaches, my thoughts turn not toward him but toward Bob Moses. No, not Robert Moses the highway megalomaniac, but Bob Moses the civil rights leader.

Conservatives and liberals: Like cats and dogs? Or like yin and yang? As with so many questions in this world, the answer is “It depends.” It depends on what we mean by conservatism.

Judging by the recent election, we may hope that the nation is recovering from its posttraumatic stress disorder. Or to look at it another way, we are awakening from a six-year sleep punctuated by nightmares. More and more of us realize that the Bush administration is merely a deplorable aberration, born of arrogance and nourished by stupidity. From the start it was obviously not liberal, and conservatives are realizing as time goes on that it is not conservative either.

Come back in time to World War II, to all wars, to the Trojan War. Our vehicle is a song, "Lili Marlene," which I have cherished for more than three decades.

Electoral Systems: Other Ways to Skin the Cat

As the time approaches for campaigns and campaign promises, multitudes of politicians are competing to be our representatives. So this might be a good time to consider what they are competing for: What does the job of a representative consist of? (By "representatives" I mean not only legislators but also executives such as presidents and governors.) What are the legitimate grounds for a representative's decision? Conversely, when do a representative's constituents have a right to feel betrayed?

The Bush administration is unique within recent history. Its antagonism toward liberalism has been evident almost from the very beginning, and now conservatives have begun to distance themselves from it also, for various reasons such as fi scal irresponsibility.

Recently we've seen a controversy about whether the Star-Spangled Banner should be sung in Spanish or only in English. But if it's important to think about the language in which the song is rendered, isn't it even more important to think about the song itself, about what it means?

Let's Get Government Out of Religion
When is a tempest-in-a-teapot not a tempest-in-a-teapot? When it reflects deeper issues. That is why I hope you will bear with me as I recount my enforced displacement on Election Day, last May 2nd.

"What's the deal here? Why do costs outstrip inflation? A college education is one of the most expensive and important things you'll ever buy, and, yes, it's still a good value, blah, blah, blah, but you can find out more about a lot of other products."
So said Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education, on a subject of great concern to many Americans -- college tuition.

The Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) program, in effect since 2004, provides tax deductions to individuals on condition that they spend the tax-free money on health care needs. The Bush administration's rationale is that "market forces" will drive down health-care costs, just as they drive down the costs of other commodities.

The Bush program for health care focuses on Health Savings Accounts, a program to give tax deductions to the individual health-care consumer for certain amounts of money, on condition that the individual spend the money on health care needs at his or her own discretion. The program has been in effect since the beginning of 2004, and has just recently been re-emphasized by the Bush administration, including mention in the State of the Union address.

You don't need to be an inveterate Bush-basher to recognize that the Iraq War is far from a complete success. To be sure, it may yet come to a successful conclusion - successful from the American point of view - some years down the road. But more likely the outcome will be successful instead for some group at odds with our interests, for example Shi'ites and their Iranian allies, or Al Qaida. From its misconceived beginning to the present, the war has been riddled with mistakes and erroneous assumptions.

In my last column I distinguished between evolution and natural selection, which is the supposed mechanism by which evolution is accomplished. Evolution is established beyond question, in my opinion, but not natural selection. The crucial question is: What is the cause of evolution- natural selection? Intelligent Design? something else?

Never learned much biology. . . . But as time went on I came to understand that the accepted principles of a field of study contain, along with the true and profound, a certain amount of enshrined obtuseness bordering on stupidity. (The professions of academia and journalism are the chief examples in my catalogue, but there is no reason to believe that the sciences are exempt.) So there may be some advantage in looking at the Intelligent Design controversy from the outside.

"Patriotism" is such a brass-band word that it's hard to get a handle on. We're all familiar with the martial trappings of patriotism - the thrill of pride at our country's triumphs, the urge to sacrifice, the homage to veterans who have made the sacrifice. But is that all? Where is patriotism when danger disappears? If patriotism is love of country, what kind of love is it? What, at bottom, is patriotism?

Before turning to the main subject, I would like to praise religious persons of uncommon good will. I am thinking of medical missionaries throughout the world. I am thinking of the missionary priests in Latin America during the 1500s who tried to save natives from the evils of European conquest, and of their latter-day counterparts who composed the Liberation Theology movement until it was squelched by the late pope. I am thinking of the four nuns killed in El Salvador. I am thinking of those religiously-inspired civil rights workers and martyrs, of whom Martin Luther King Jr. was only the most illustrious. And many, many others.

Like most people, I have a fairly casual attitude toward op-ed columns and letters to the editor in other publications. I read them and pass on. But occasionally a piece will appear that is so noxious it must be challenged and dissected. Kevin O'Brien's column in the August 10 Plain Dealer, on the occasion of the memorial for troops lost in the Iraq War, is such a piece.

n the last issue I talked about supposedly "activist" judges, defined in three ways: 1) ignoring the original text of the Constitution; 2) overriding the decisions of Congress, the president and the states; 3) disregarding precedents. Activist judges, so-called, are usually thought to be liberal, but there is one group of activist judges, in the third sense listed, that is decidedly conservative. Bush's second appointment to the Supreme Court may come from this group.

All right, class, here is your citizenship quiz. Who said the following:

Symbols are always worth noting, for they help bring into focus some of our half-formed ways of thinking and feeling. They clarify what had been indistinct; they solidify what had been scattered and amorphous.

In the last column I outlined the way in which Social Security works, including the progression of its benefit schedule, and suggested changes that could be made to remedy the solvency gap with which the system is faced. Let's focus now on Bush's proposal for private Social Security accounts.

Rarely if ever has a subject of public importance been so obscured by demagoguery, endlessly recycled rhetoric and misplaced emphasis as Social Security and its problems. But after some modest research and a great deal of thought I may have broken through the smoke and mirrors.

As a college freshman I took a Humanities course that dealt in large part with classical Greek literature. During one lecture, Professor Havelock, mentioned that the ancient Greeks, meaning primarily the Athenians, lived better than we do. There was no chance to discuss this remark in class, so through all these decades I have wondered what he meant. Perhaps Lakewood will show me.