We Don't Need No Education?

David Brooks has written another insightful editorial piece on the current state of the election campaign, and the issues involved therein. I strongly encourage you to read the whole article, but I think a line worth quoting comes toward the end of his article: "Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared."

If we have learned the lesson from the Bush years, writes Brooks, we should not fail ourselves in this election by putting into office those candidates who "are like us" and "share our values," but who nevertheless lack the wisdom and education necessary to lead a nation and direct a complex administration.

"It turns out," says Brooks, "that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence." We don't need more shoot-from-the-hip nonsense, or more apocalyptic talk about the importance of not blinking. We need good sense. We need the steady perception of well-trained eyes. A rigorous, well-respected, and demanding (e.g. "Ivy League") education is a significant help here, not a handicap.

Brooks is, by all accounts, a conservative intellectual. He falls in with the likes of George Will and David Frum - two people he specifically mentions at the start of his editorial. Thus, it is somewhat surprising to read such criticism of the Republican ticket here (though, to be fair, his main target is Palin, not McCain).

This is, after all, the same Brooks who had originally celebrated Palin, and in previous articles had sounded excited about the McCain/Palin ticket. After Palin's announcement as VP-candidate, he wrote that "she seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent" ("What the Palin Pick Says," 9/2/08). After her speech at the convention, he proclaimed her as the revelation of "the new" in the Republican party, and wrote that "her words flowed directly from her life experience, her poise and mannerisms from her town and its conversations. She left behind most of the standard tropes of Republican rhetoric [...]. There wasn’t even any tired, old Reagan nostalgia." In sum, said Brooks, "in those 40 minutes [of her speech], the forces of reform Republicanism took control" ("A Glimpse of the New," 9/4/08).

It would seem that the high of the convention, however, has left Brooks with a lingering hangover about Palin and the Republican ticket, especially as the vast reality of the problems we will inherit from the Bush administration becomes more and more palpable, by the day.

Old Mother Reagan

If you haven't seen this video yet, you need to watch it. Probably one of the best political satire pieces SNL has done. Certainly among the best from the current election.



Enjoy! Back with more forwarded letters later this week, perhaps.

Time Has Told Me

Well, it's been a few weeks, but I finally got some time and motivation to sit down and write a quick blog post.

I'm getting settled in at IU, and have found much to admire about Bloomington and the university over the past few weeks. One of the things I admire most about the campus, though, are the many pithy phrases carved into the exterior and interior walls of the buildings I frequently pass by or through in the course of a typical weekday. So, I thought I might share a few of these with you over the next few weeks, as I have occasion to reflect on them.

One phrase that has been on my mind lately is carved into one of the exterior walls of Ballantine Hall - a large, imposing structure in the center of the South part of campus, which houses (among other things) the main offices of the English department. On one wall, there is a carving with an inscription that reads "Veritas Filia Temporis." You can see a picture of it by following this link.

For those of you who didn't learn Latin in high school, the inscription means (roughly) "truth is the daughter of time." In other words, Time is the father of Truth. Truth springs inevitable from the eternal loins of Time. Time strips every untruth bare, corrects every lie and error. "Truth," as another saying goes, "will out."

One might ask, at this point, "is that really true?" From my own short time of education and experience, I can say, Yes. Sometimes.

Another way to look at this nice little aphorism might be to say that any quest for truth requires time, which I can certainly verify from my experience. My own searching after truth in grad school has cost me much in time, and will cost much more time before it is over. And this assumes that the culmination of my Ph.D. will complete that search, which it likely will not.

So we might also read the epigram this way: truth, being the daughter of time, thus shares time's qualities: it is eternal, it is constant, and it exists in a realm outside of any human. But it is also, therefore, just as elusive as time. Remember that other Latin epigram about time: Tempus fugit. Time flies (literally, it "flees"). Truth, too, has a tendency to get away from us.

I have an hourglass that sits on my desk, and it is just as impossible to arrest those slipping grains of sand for one instant as it is to get a firm grasp on any one truth. I can apprehend time's passage, and I can become familiar enough with it that I can go through a day with relative ease, comfortable within time's rhythms. But if I stop and try to nail time down, distinguish one discrete moment from the next, when present becomes past and the future becomes the now, I am at a loss.

Time remains in a world apart from mine. So, too, with truth, the daughter of time.

Some might think such reflection on truth and time is, in fact, a waste of time, and I'm inclined to think they're probably right. But I can't help it. It's carved into the side of a building I pass by every day. You'd be just as haunted.

Perhaps more epigrams will follow in the coming weeks. Time, I guess, will tell...