The Other 82 Percent

Finish the following sentence: WEAC, Wisconsin’s teacher’s union, wants:

A: more money for public schools;

B: no more money, but equalization of spending among public schools;

C: no more money, but more flexibility in allocating money among public schools.

There may be some truth in all three, but I (and I’ll bet most of you) picked A.

According to one Wisconsin blogger who’s also a Milwaukee teacher, the right answer isn’t A at all – it’s some combination of B and C.

Jay Bullock, known in the blogoshpere as Folkbum, recently responded to a couple of my columns (here and here) about education in Wisconsin. Among his comments:

“‘Adequate funding,’ according to WEAC, has nothing to do with spending ‘a lot more.’ It has to do, rather, with spending a lot smarter.”

I’m thrilled to hear it. Now somebody go tell Stan Johnson, and Libby Burmaster, and Governor Doyle.

Was it equality in funding, or flexibility in spending that they were demanding during the recent budget debate? No, they were demanding $900 million in new spending. Nearly every press release they issue either praises Wisconsin’s great schools or demands more money (seems that way, anyway). Thus, I find it hard to take Folkbum’s comment seriously.

Still, Folkbum has a point. In his second post, he points out funding differences between two nearby districts – Milwaukee ($9,565 per student in 2003), and Nicolet ($13,532 per student in 2003).

I admit, that’s a shocking disparity, especially considering that Nicolet is a suburb, relatively wealthy, which probably offers a much healthier educational environment for the children who live there.

But it doesn’t make me “rethink my position” on school funding, as Folkbum suggests it might. In my opinion, we could spend an equally per student in each of those districts, or even switch the numbers entirely, and it wouldn’t make much difference to the outcomes.

I think there’s a much better predictor of educational outcomes: family life. In his own way, Folkbum agrees with this:

“…students, believe it or not, only spend about 18% of their time with us teachers in their first 18 years…

…what happens in the other 82% is just as important, if not moreso, than what happens within school walls…the problems of urban education often begin and end in the community.

In Milwaukee, we have staggeringly high unemployment, appalling rates of teen pregnancy, and the kind of segregation that most of the country only reads about in history textbooks.

If that’s the 82%, I can’t fix it in the time a student is in my classroom.

Problem is, I want to.”

This speaks well of Folkbum, but this is where our philosophies diverge. We both see a problem. He wants the government, funded with taxpayer dollars, to solve it. I don’t.

Government never solves problems. Not entirely. Education is a perfect example. Wisconsin leads or nearly leads the nation in all kinds of educational outcomes, from dropout rates to test scores to students going on to college.

Other states, like Minnesota, Iowa, and Utah, share these honors with us. Those three states spend considerably less than we do while achieving them, but no matter. Our educators still demand more money.

Why? Because government never stops, never shrinks, and never finally solves a problem. Government bureaucrats never tell us that they’re all finished, problem solved, or that they’ve done all they can and more resources won’t help.

Government grows. For example: the SAGE program, begun in the early 1990s to reduce class size in high poverty areas, because there are correlations between high poverty and low educational achievement. SAGE was an attempt to level the playing field. Give an advantage to otherwise disadvantaged kids.

Today, there’s no poverty requirement for a district to have SAGE. The program grew until every school in the state was eligible.

And we’re still talking about the disparities between poor and wealthy parts of the state, and we’re still waiting for the government to help.

Depending on the government to solve our problems only produces more dependency on the government, and as we grow more dependent, we also have to give government the power to solve those problems. More money. More authority. With no guarantee the problem will ever be solved.

This doesn’t mean I’m “willing to leave those (Milwaukee) children behind,” as Folkbum asserts. It means we have to realize that some problems will never be completely “solved,” and that government isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, we have to depend on ourselves.

Getting Back

It’s not easy being back.

The family and I – all six of us – just returned from our first real family vacation – a camping trip to As-Far-North-As-You-Can-Go-Without-Getting-Your-Feet-Wet, Wisconsin.

Leaving was easy enough, naturally. My wife handles things like planning, and packing, and logistics. I play pack mule between the front door and the van, by which I mean I direct the kids as they haul stuff to the tree bank (what, I’m having all these kids so I can do the work?). The wife then arranges it in the van. I graciously allow this.

Being gone, well, of course that part was easy. Once you’re there, you’re there, and we were definitely there. In the woods, eating outdoors, sleeping on the ground. Like animals. At least we camped at a place with showers. Laugh, if you wish. Then try sharing a tent with me for a week with no showers.

Before going, some of my co-workers scoffed at my ability to live without newspapers, the Internet, access to the daily political tickertape. To them, I say: Ha! Made it, and I didn’t even miss my computer!

Which is true – I didn’t. I did manage to catch two brief snippets of news, just by walking past the newspaper racks on my way out of the convenience store with my full mug of coffee (please refer back to the paragraph on showers).

The first: the Madison area finally got some rain. The second: President Bush nominated John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, which made me think I’d been gone longer than just a few days.

Right away, I thought: John Roberts? Who’s that?

Now I’m back at my computer, Internet connection as slow as ever (seriously, I was supposed to miss this?), and I’m already seeing polling data on his favorable/unfavorable ratings. I guess I was the only one who never heard of him.

Up until today, I’d had no time for it. Any of it. Madison may have had rain and heat indexes into the hundreds, but Up Nort’, the skies were clear and the temps might have brushed 80.

Maybe the Supreme Court fight was beginning to bubble, but so was my battle with four kids and their fishing tackle. Hint: just put a sinker on the line for the young ones.

Since coming back, I’ve found that the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame kerfluffle is still going on; the University of Wisconsin has continued to provide scandal fodder; candidates continue to emerge for next year’s Congressional campaigns; and, oh yeah, Governor Doyle has signed the state budget, complete with over a hundred partial vetoes.

I’m supposed to care about these things. Other than the first one (I never bothered to absorb the details of the Plame/Wilson thing, and I’m sure not going to now), I know I cared about them before. I know, back in the recesses of my mind, that I still care about them now.

But a week’s worth of campfires, s’mores, rivers and train rides keep crowding those other things out. I’d rather give my kids one more chance to start their own campfire than pore over the budget or analyze the Supreme Court.

Oh, I know, they’re worth caring about. Worth fighting over.

Maybe, over time, I’d have gotten tired of vacation. Maybe, over time, I’d have come to miss the daily political grind – dissecting the policies, plotting the politics, guessing and second-guessing and wondering what’s going to happen next.

Over time, I would have missed being part of it, for the simple reason that it is so important.

But right now, other things seem more so.

Blazing Saddles - A Parent's Handbook

Editor's note: Lance Burri has been abducted by his wife and children, who are holding him in an unknown location and demanding a "vacation" in return for his release. Until such time as Lance has made good on their demands, we will continue to publish from the Best of Lance Burri Collection.

The following column first ran on October 19, 2004.

Funny where you can find life lessons, when you really need to. Even in a Mel Brooks flick.

Blazing Saddles is one of my favorite movies: in my top 10, if not my top 5. So you can imagine how excited I was to get the DVD for my birthday.

I wanted to watch it sometime when we could all sit down together – the kids, too. Sure, it’s vulgar, but hey, this is a comedy classic. Even Shakespeare talked about sex. Should I banish him from their reading lists?

Bring the kids up right, or don’t bring them up at all, I say.

Still, my modern parental instincts were in warning mode. Every parent knows that kids will repeat and/or try every single thing they see on a TV screen. I’m fairly certain I could be accused of participating in the delinquency of a minor, should any of my kids re-enact certain parts of this movie.

So, I warned the kids up front. Told them they would hear a lot of unrepeatable words. Brandished my whoopin’ stick, that sort of thing.

They understood. And we sat down to watch. And guess what? A life lesson emerged.

The movie’s protagonist is an ex-slave named Bart, who, after hitting his racist boss with a shovel, finds himself in a long line, waiting to be hung.

Meanwhile, Hedley (not Hedy!) Lamarr, the Territorial Governor’s right hand man, needs to appoint a new sheriff for the town of Rock Ridge, the last one having been killed by a band of plains marauders.

Little do the peaceful folk of Rock Ridge know, the marauders are the same guys Lamarr hired to build the railroad. Once the railroad goes through Rock Ridge, the land will be incredibly valuable, so Lamarr wants to chase the townsfolk out.

In a stroke of brilliance, Lamarr yanks Bart from the gallows and names him the new Sheriff, knowing that the townsfolk will reject him, (“Can’t you see that that man is a ni?”) and thus be left unprotected.

It almost works. Upon his arrival in Rock Ridge, Bart narrowly avoids being lynched. He makes an attempt to be friendly, and is crudely rebuffed by a sweet little old lady. He is, to be kind, disliked.

Then a bad guy, Mongo, comes to town, and suddenly Bart is needed.

Defeating Mongo brings an underground acceptance, but Bart still can’t show his face in the daylight. As time goes on, though, he uncovers Lamarr’s plot, and by the end of the movie the townsfolk are accepting not just him, but even all of his former railroad fellows – black, Chinese, even Irish.

To me, the central moment of this movie was when Bart first rode up to Rock Ridge. Why, I wondered, did he bother? From nothing, suddenly he owned a horse, a gun, some nice clothes. Riches, and the means to get more. He could simply have run away.

And don’t give me that stuff about getting caught. This was the wild, wild West. Even today, we can’t find bail jumpers.

Why did he stick around, when the townsfolk so clearly hated him? And not only did he stay: several times he risked his own life to – what?

To do his job.

Yes, I know I’m reading way too much into this. It’s just a parody, done in classic Mel Brooks style: nothing is ever too goofy.

And yet, I saw a way to turn this crass spoof into a good reason for a parent to let his kids watch it. The lesson: there are jerks in the world. I could use stronger language, but that’s the point. Some people are just jerks.

It’s true in the schoolyard. Some kids are going to be mean to other kids. It’s true in grown-up-land, too. Office politics, gossipy neighbors. There are bullies in every walk and stage of life. There is adversity in every stage of life. Things are never easy.

The question is, do we allow the actions of others to decide what our actions will be? Or do we do what we think is right, even knowing that others will disagree with us, dislike us, slander us, try to do us harm for it?

Bart didn’t: he kept on playing the hero, doing the right thing, even though others gave him every reason to do the opposite.

There’s something in there for all of us, I think. Or at least for a dad who wants to watch a movie without feeling guilty.

Bumper Stickers

Editor's note: Lance Burri has been abducted by his wife and children, who are holding him in an unknown location and demanding a "vacation" in return for his release. Until such time as Lance has made good on their demands, we will continue to publish from the Best of Lance Burri Collection.

The following column first ran on August 6, 2004.

I love bumper stickers. In fact, if you ever look in your rear view, and see me right on your tail, odds are I’m trying to read whatever you’ve got stuck to the back of your car.

That’s the only reason I ever tailgate, I swear.

Political bumper stickers, I find especially fascinating. Working in Madison, you can guess what that means.

One car I frequently see has two stickers: one says “I’m pro-choice, and I vote!” The other says “The death penalty is dead wrong.”

I’ve spent many a walk into the office contemplating the mind that agrees with both those statements.

Another favorite, on a car I see now and then: “Capitalism = Problems; Socialism = Solutions.”

The driver is some young guy. What do you want to bet his parents are paying his way through college?

While some make me roll my eyes, and some make me think, a bumper sticker will rarely make me angry.

One did, though, just the other day.

The car was parked near Memorial Union (my daughter was in the office with me that day, so we went for an ice-cream walk). Amid a number of Kerry for President stickers was one that read “What Would Jesus Bomb?”

Okay, I get the reference to the “What Would Jesus Do” thing, but, really, is this meant to be a serious question?

It reminded me of yet another bumper sticker: “We are the rogue state.” That one’s an eye-roller, trying to equate the U.S. with nations like Iraq, Libya, Sudan. It’s ironic, though I know it’s not meant to be: like accusing the U.S. of censorship.

But this one, “What Would Jesus Bomb?” This one seems to equate Christianity with that radical wing of Islam with which we’re at war – the wing that sends its children to blow themselves up, kills stewardesses with box cutters and flies airplanes into American skyscrapers.

What does it mean? That Christian opposition to abortion and gay marriage (issues on which Christians are hardly united, I might add) are the same thing as suicide bombings?

Or is the car’s owner suggesting that the U.S., an arguably Christian nation, is bombing indiscriminately, just like the radical Islamicists are?

When was the last time this person was in a church, I wondered? How many actual Christians does he know?

None, I bet. I could introduce him to a few, like the manager of my softball team, who always votes Democrat, and who puts me to shame with the amount of time he spends working in our church. Or to my coworker, who took a second job so she could afford to go on a missionary trip to Guatemala, where she volunteered at an orphanage.

That was my reaction: angry, that this person so ignorantly lumps the kindest people I know in with mass murderers.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, I thought, to find that sort of anti-Christian bigotry on one of the most liberal campuses in the country.

But on further reflection, I came to a different conclusion. A wonderfully ironic conclusion.

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Nobody.

Obligatory nod here toward the Crusades and the Inquisition, and other such tragedies staged in the name of Christianity before most people could read the Bible for themselves. Also acknowledged that, with 2 billion Christians in the world, there are going to be a few nutcases who think it’s okay to murder abortion doctors.

Okay, Christians aren’t perfect. Newsflash: that’s why we need Jesus. The U.S. isn’t perfect, either.

I’m no theologian. I hope that Islam really is a religion of peace, and that these terrorists really are warping its real message, just as those who led the Crusades and the Inquisition warped Christianity’s.

But the fact is, it’s a widespread wing of radical Islamicists who are pursuing worldwide terrorism – not Christians, not Jews, not Hindus, not atheists, not Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Radical Islamicists conspire to kill, and sometimes succeed in killing, indiscriminately. Radical Islam imprisons and kills homosexuals, forbids women from being educated, and teaches children that the murder of non-Muslims is a sure path to Heaven.

Meantime, what are Christians doing?

Show me the analogy between radical Islam and Christianity – not the occasional aberration, but the widespread norm. Show me the analogy between the nations ruled by radical Islam and the U.S.

That bumper sticker attempts to make just such a comparison. I’m sure its owner intends for us to see the similarities. Instead, he succeeds in pointing out the differences.

Was Blind, But Now Can See...The Mice

Editor's note: Lance Burri has been abducted by his wife and children, who are holding him in an unknown location and demanding a "vacation" in return for his release. Until such time as Lance has made good on their demands, we will continue to publish from the Best of Lance Burri Collection.

The following column first ran on May 7, 2004.

Actual humans may be worried about health care, but if you’re a blind owl, you’re covered. In Wisconsin, at least.

You may have heard the story. In December of last year (2003), someone found an owl, perched on a fence post, starving, because cataracts had blinded it, making it impossible for the owl to hunt for food.

An organization called Wildlife of Wisconsin brought the owl to Madison, where the UW Veterinary clinic performed surgery to remove the cataracts. They also placed specially-made lenses into the owl’s eyes, enabling it to see.

The owl, named Minerva, was released back into its old hunting ground near Manitowoc recently, after about half a year away. Some effort is being made to track it, and I’m sure we’ll have updates in the future.

It’s an all-around feel-good story. Who doesn’t like owls? And who would want to see an owl starve to death?

The procedure didn’t cost all that much, in the grand scheme of things. Only $1800, $300 of which was donated by the group which found her. The lenses were also donated – years ago, it turns out, by a company that normally makes them for humans. The lenses were meant for another owl way back then, but it didn’t work out. So the lenses were still in storage, still good, and still available.

It pays to be a pack rat, I guess.

Still, it makes me wonder – was that $1500 taxpayer money? Was there no other, better use for it, that would have produced something more than a feel-good story?

What was the true cost? It was more than just the cost of the procedure: keeping a wild animal for the better part of 6 months costs something, too. Work time was spent on this. Food. Cleaning. Etcetera.

And let’s not forget the cost to the environment. Surely, Minerva wasn’t the only creature in that area, relying on a limited food supply. Other animals now have more competition for that food – competition which, had nature simply taken its course, wouldn’t be there.

And that’s what I find funniest about this story: this was a creature targeted by nature to die. Minerva wasn’t hit by a truck, didn’t get caught in an oil spill. Her eyes went bad, naturally.

Now, she’s been given a second chance. A second chance, thanks to modern medical technology – a technological advantage has been given to Minerva, which isn’t available to the rest of her environment, with which she must compete for food and living space.

If this were a human, I’d expect protests about the “uneven playing field.”

More, this technological advantage has been provided by the very sort of people who normally abhor the human habit of encroaching onto nature through technology. Yet that’s exactly what they did – they ignored nature’s will, and used man’s ingenuity to circumvent it.

In doing so, they may have ignored a greater question: why did Minerva get these cataracts? Is it possible that some flaw in her genes makes her more liable to this sort of defect? By saving her, have we unintentionally passed that genetic flaw on?

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t mean much. Just a few dollars, a negligible amount of work time, an effect on the environment that we’ll never see, much less measure.

It does make me wonder, though: when certain people argue that our high taxes pay for services, which produce a higher quality of life, is this what they mean?

Wisconsin Has Great Schools

What’s the goal of public education? Here in Wisconsin, according to one group, it’s to provide “great schools.”

Okay, so, how do we do that?

Last week, I had a few suggestions which boiled down to: provide the basic tools, and let students and their families do the rest.

“The basic tools,” defined as 12, 13, or even 14 years of tuition-free education; school buildings; professional, university-trained teachers; free transportation to and from school; a curriculum that will at least present basic, intermediate, and sometimes advanced reading, writing, and arithmetic – and hopefully more.

You might notice: we’re already following my suggestions. We have been, for a very long time.

Is it working? WEAC, the state’s teacher’s union, says it is. Their slogan is: “Every Kid Deserves a Great School.”

Are our schools great? Yes, WEAC says, they sure are: “…Wisconsin has one of the best systems of public education in the nation.”

And: “Wisconsin public schools are among the best in the nation, according to objective measures of educational accomplishment.”

To cite just a few examples, Wisconsin is tops nationally on the ACT college entrance exam, and in the percentage of highly qualified teachers. We’re second nationally in graduation rates, and second in the world in an international science test comparison. I could go on.

Now, no matter how highly ranked WEAC says we are, or how many of my own criteria we’re meeting, public education in Wisconsin isn’t all sunshine and puppies. Our status as an educational giant is in great jeopardy, placed there by controls on teacher salaries and school spending.

At least, that’s what WEAC says.

To combat this, they’re calling for “A revised system of school funding that ensures that every child has access to an adequately funded public education,” and “A fair collective bargaining law for teachers and education support professionals.”

There, again, we have a problem with definitions. What is “adequate funding?” What is a “fair collective bargaining law?”

WEAC’s website provides no further details, so let me fill in the blanks: it means we have to spend more. A lot more.

Why we have to spend more when we have clearly achieved WEAC’s goal of “great schools,” and have been achieving it for at least the past decade, I simply don’t know.

Okay, so I do know. I pretend I don’t, just so I can be sarcastic.

WEAC says our great schools are threatened, but other than some incomplete salary data (they don’t include benefits in their analysis) they offer no proof to back that up. So, again, I’ll fill in the blanks.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a national standardized test, given every few years to 4th and 8th grade students. Wisconsin, as WEAC will happily tell you, performs very well compared to the rest of the nation.

But that’s not the case for every student, particularly those from the lower economic classes, defined as those eligible for the free and reduced lunch program (I’ll refer to them as “eligible” students).

In 2003, 35% of all Wisconsin 4th graders scored in the top two categories – proficient and advanced – on the NAEP math test. Only 16% of “eligible” students scored the same.

On the 8th grade math test, 35% of all students scored in the top two categories, compared with only 11% of “eligible” students.

Reading tests yielded similar results: the average of all students was 33% and 37% on 4th and 8th grade tests, respectively. The average for “eligible” students: 18% and 16%.

One might suggest that we aren’t providing “great schools” to those students. How can we do better? Is more money the answer?

It might be, if “eligible” students weren’t sitting right next to their “non-eligible” peers in class. They all share the same schools, the same classrooms, the same teachers. The opportunities available to one student in a public school are also available to every other student.

So what’s going on here? Simple. We can make sure every student has opportunities while they’re in school, but we can’t make sure they all have the same opportunities outside of school.

Which is why, when considered alongside their goal of “great schools,” WEAC’s demands for more money make little sense. By insisting on more, more, always more, WEAC succeeds only in showing their true motive: the motive of any union – to get more for its members.

But we have little incentive to give them more. We’re already providing great schools. I know this, because WEAC said so, and I’m inclined to agree.

The Limits of Public Schools

So, you want to learn to paint? Fix a car? Start a business?

What if I offered to teach you how? I’ll provide the place, the books, the professional teachers, and I’ll even drive you there and back every day, all free of charge. Won’t cost you a penny.

Oh, sure, it will still take a lot of effort on your part. Practice. Trial and error. It will take time for you to really succeed.

Still, doesn’t this sound like a good deal?

No. At least, not if you’re a professional educator.

One of those professional educators – Libby Burmaster – was sworn in this week to a second term as Wisconsin’s highest-ranking education bureaucrat. She gave a speech to mark the occasion. It was a good speech, full of feel-good, universal hyperbole. For example:

Access to quality education and information has been a shared value and responsibility that has defined the excellence of our great state in the past and will most certainly define the future of our state for years to come.

…the public faith and commitment in our New Wisconsin Promise of a quality education for every child…is a top priority.

How can you argue with that? You can’t, unless you already know that, to Burmaster, the teacher’s union, and the rest of the educational bureaucracy, the way to accomplish it is more money, bigger government, and even more money.

The numbers have already been argued ad nauseum. Wisconsin leads or nearly leads the nation in all kinds of educational standards – test scores, graduation rates, kids going on to college.

We’re also near the top in total teacher compensation and spending per student. Nearly half of all tax dollars collected in Wisconsin go to K-12 education. For the past six years, property taxes have grown 37% faster than personal income

If that doesn’t demonstrate our commitment to education, then I don’t know what does. But just try to find an official who says it’s enough. It’s not. It never is, and never will be.

Case in point, the state budget. The legislature approved $450 million-or-so more for public schools over the next two years. A cut, according to Burmaster and her allies, because Governor Doyle had proposed a $900 million-or-so increase.

Well, I hereby propose that we increase public school funding by $1.8 billion over the next two years, and I’ll be the first to ask: how DARE Governor Doyle cut $900 million from our schools!

The state constitution says only that the state “shall provide by law for the establishment of district schools, which shall be as nearly uniform as practicable; and such schools shall be free and without charge for tuition to all children between the ages of 4 and 20…”

Now, obviously, schools have to do more than just exist and not charge tuition. They have to teach something. The question is: what, and how much?

And how much does it matter? Take two examples: one, a child from a college educated family, whose parents stress education, check homework, read. A house full of books. Two, a child of a single parent who works two jobs, never finished high school. No books in the house, no emphasis or even attention paid to schoolwork.

If we spend $5,000 on the first child’s public education, and $20,000 on the second child’s, which will grow up better educated?

There’s a limit to what the schools can do. The rest has to come from us, as students, as the parents of students, and as adults – just getting that diploma, even the one from college, isn’t enough to ensure success. Neither does school. School is an opportunity, not a solution. It’s us, ourselves, who make or break our chance at success.

We need to do two things: first, ignore the educational bureaucracy. Money will always be the answer for them, because they have a personal interest in the dollars.

Second, agree that our task is to offer the opportunity – not to ensure that every student takes it. We will provide the buildings, classrooms, blackboards and computers. We’ll supply university-trained professional teachers, free transportation, and a curriculum that teaches, at a minimum, the basics of what it takes to succeed, so students will have more opportunities throughout their lives. We’ll provide tests to gauge achievement, and we’ll let those who fail at first keep trying. And we – the taxpayers – will pay for it all.

That’s what we’ll do. That’s all we can do. The rest is up to you.

No Morality in Medicine

Ignore your consciences, medical professionals. That’s the advice from Baraboo’s newspaper of record, the Baraboo News Republic.

Now, the BNR editorial board is not a just your average bunch of knee-jerk bleeding-heart Times-wannabe liberals. Even I, a staunch conservative, have frequently agreed with their opinions. They also have at least one excellent writer – probably more –among them.

Which is why I find this editorial – both spectacularly wrongheaded and sophomorically-written – so confusing:

“To pharmacists and doctors: Don’t allow your moral beliefs – rather than your sense of professional responsibility – to dictate whether you dispense drugs or provide care.”

When dispensing drugs or providing care, no. When choosing between the Tylenol and the rat poison, yes. At least, one hopes.

Among others, the issue here is the “conscience clause bill,” a Republican-sponsored piece of legislation offering some protection to medical professionals who refuse to take an action, like dispensing drugs intended to cause an abortion, which conflicts with their moral code.

The Baraboo News Republic does not believe medical professionals should have that choice. Their advice: “find a new line of work that doesn’t force you to choose between following your principles and doing your job.”

Once you’ve chosen your career, they opine, you are committed to providing every service required, no matter how odious, even evil, you believe it to be.

More examples (not available online):

“We believe it should be up to patients, not health care workers and certainly not lawmakers, to determine the course of their care. No one else should decide whether patients get the treatment or the pills they seek.”

Even if the treatment they seek is unnecessary surgery? Even if the pills they seek won’t work, or don’t react well with other medications they’re taking? This suggests that medical professionals should ignore not only their morals, but also their professional judgment.

“Can you imagine bankers refusing loans to people whose religious or moral views differ from their own? Or police refusing to help a crime victim because she’s on the pill?”

These nonsensical examples have nothing to do with the issue at hand. No such legislation exists, which would allow professionals to refuse service due to a customer’s beliefs. The issue at hand is whether professionals can refuse to perform services that conflict with his or her own beliefs.

Here’s a better example: an attorney refusing to represent a city government in an eminent domain proceeding, which will take residents’ homes to make way for a new Shopko. By refusing, the lawyer will lose business and money. He may be subject to discipline by his employer, the Bar Association, or both. The city’s position may be correct legally, but he refuses because he believes it’s wrong.

By the BNR’s standard, he’s the one who’s wrong.

The editorial board is right about one thing: medical professionals did freely choose to enter their professions. By refusing to fill a prescription for the “morning after pill,” a pharmacist is losing business, at least one customer, and therefore money. If the boss/owner doesn’t share the same views, they may have to consider whether or not that pharmacist can continue in that job.

But to say we shouldn’t allow our own morals to guide our decisions – what, then, should guide them?

Professionalism? The law? Choosing to follow the law or a professional code is in itself a matter of morality – of deciding right from wrong, and acting on it.

So, too, is making decisions based on money. The convenience store owner who follows his morality, leading him to follow the law, doesn’t sell cigarettes to minors. That store owner will lose business to other stores whose owners follow a different moral code: one that allows them to sell the cigarettes, because they earn more money thereby.

Which leads me to this: a pharmacist who is willing to fill a prescription for the morning-after pill is following a moral code, just like the pharmacist who isn’t willing to do it.

So what does the editorial board mean by admonishing legislators to ignore “more and religious conservatism” that wants to “rule every element of private and public life”?

Not that we should ignore all our morals – just the ones that conflict with theirs.

Getting Out of Iraq?

“We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed and not a day longer.” – President George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

“The president must also announce immediately that the United States will not have a permanent military presence in Iraq. Erasing suspicions that the occupation is indefinite is critical to eroding support for the insurgency.” – Senator John Kerry, in the NY Times, June 28, 2005

We want to get out of Iraq, just as soon as circumstances allow. That’s the conventional wisdom, as voiced by both the President and his most recent campaign opponent.

I’d like to say I agree, and I do, with a couple of caveats: how long is “as long as we are needed?” And what does Kerry mean by “indefinite?”

A few disclaimers: I’m neither a military expert nor an historian. Thus, the following thoughts may or may not be useful, or even reasonable. Still, I think we’ve got to ask the question: why is it such a foregone conclusion that our stay in Iraq is going to end, and end as quickly as possible?

In 1946, we had umpteen-thousand troops in post-Third Reich Germany. The war was over. The Soviet Union was still a sort-of ally. Did we have any inkling that, over 40 years later, we would still have a quarter million troops stationed in Western Europe? Even today, fifteen-ish years after the end of the Cold War, we still have over a hundred thousand troops in Western Europe, mostly in Germany.

For forty-odd years, a strong presence in the region suited our interests. Big Momma Russia was a-knockin’ on the door and the door was only a couple dozen clicks to the east.

Today, well, the door is several hundred miles further east, and Big Momma Russia can’t seem to find her false teeth. Middle Europe is no longer where the action is: it’s moved to the Middle – and Far - East.

We’ve got real interests in the Middle East. Security interests: this is where the money, security, safe havens are for those who would carry out the Jihad.

It’s a security interest for another reason – the same reason that makes it a major economic interest: oil. Oops, I said oil. The war wasn’t supposed to be about oil, was it? That’s a greedy, materialistic, imperial in its implications.

And it’s naïve to think that oil is important only as pork for Republican campaign contributors. I’m as ready as the next guy for that great new power source that will cut us loose from Middle Eastern oil, and will get me from Baraboo to the Florida Keys for five bucks or less, but it’s not around the corner. Oil runs the world – it runs our ships, our planes, our trains, our trucks. Oil gets those fresh organic veggies to the corner co-op.

It behooves us to keep an eye on the main source, and not just to safeguard our own national economy. Our economy depends on the world economy. Not as much as the reverse, perhaps, but what happens in Europe, China, India also affects us.

And speaking of China: they’re becoming a strategic rival to the U.S. Warmongering alert! Wouldn’t it be prudent to, while we can, ensure some level of security for our own strategic interests, which include a secure source of oil?

A permanent presence in the Middle East – as permanent as our presence in Western Europe over the last five decades – would help give us that security.

So let’s have that. It doesn’t have to be in Iraq: it could be in Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia, or UAE. But let’s put some fraction of the effort into this that we put into holding back the Bear all those years.

President Bush rightly says setting a timeline and deadline for withdrawal will send the wrong message to our troops, to the Iraqi people, and to our enemies. If that’s true over the short term, it’s also true over the long term. Islamofanatacism won’t disappear in the next one to five years. Neither will the modern world’s need for Middle Eastern oil.

What better way to tell our enemies – both current and potential – we’re not going away?