Letter from Ray Schoch
Colorado Central – February 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Martha and Ed:
(It does say “Letter From the Editors,” as in plural):
A fine job, my friends, on Issue Number 119, beginning on page 2 with Stacy Mitchell’s piece. That sales taxes fall disproportionally on those least able to afford them, and fluctuate in ways guaranteed to make any fiscal officer nervous, doesn’t even have to be part of the discussion. As long as we have locked ourselves into this odd system of community financial support, granting Wal-Mart, or any retailer, an exemption from paying the sales taxes that are for most political entities the primary source of revenue, seems genuinely and foolishly self-defeating.
So far, I’ve managed to avoid this year’s flu panic, at least partly through the happy accident of driving past the Pendleton, Oregon hospital back in October as their electric message sign was advertising free flu shots. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, and even with a $5 “donation” to the prominently-displayed box provided, it cost me quite a bit less (by about 2/3) than it ever has here in Colorado. I’ve no idea why the cost discrepancy is so great.
I’ve always marveled at the view of South Park when I’m coming over Kenosha Pass westbound. Surely the native population used it routinely for travel, but as far as I know, there are no records of the first of them to do so. The “errata” piece mentioning the pass, and the fact that Pike was likely never within 20 miles of it, left me wondering … if Pike was never that close, who, then, was the first white man to cross the pass?
Ellen Miller’s article on the 3rd Congressional District races was entertaining and informative, even if not personally relevant. In my district, Marilyn Musgrave doesn’t come close to “representing” me, but she’s likely to be reelected for as long as she wants to be. My state Senator teaches part-time at a religious school, and prominently touts his “theistic” worldview. My state representative, appointed to replace another Republican, got the job, I’m told, after a series of pointed phone calls from the Christian Coalition in Denver to local Republican precinct captains. He made sure local voters and precinct captains knew he believed the Bible should be our governmental guide. Since we have a Constitution drawn up specifically to prevent that very thing from happening, this seems a curious basis on which to be appointed to political office.
ALL OF WHICH is a nice segue into Martha’s “Letter From the Editors.”
My experience confirms Martha’s assertion that a public school teacher’s job has been made, if not impossible, then infinitely more difficult in recent years, largely due to increasingly loud, insistent and intolerant parents of every political and religious stripe. Related to that, when I started teaching in 1966, I was paid less than a garbage collector for the city where I lived and worked. In 2003, a first-year Thompson Valley R-2J teacher was paid $5,000 less than a garbage collector for the City of Loveland, according to published pay scales for the school district and city. Given the difference in preparation, qualifications, and expectations, paying a teacher 20% less than a garbage collector goes far beyond shameful. Much rhetoric about supporting schools is hypocrisy at its most blatant.
As for freedom, Martha, since humans began to live in groups larger than biological families, there have been no functioning societies wherein the members had complete freedom. Our choices are almost never between freedom and tyranny casting the argument as that sort of dichotomy is raising a straw man. The choice is how much freedom and how much restraint, and any government at all involves a compromise between the two. There will always be tension between those who lean more toward individual license and those who lean the other way. For many hundreds of years, no post-Roman culture was able to balance the two with success for any substantial period of time.
Then the British began to move away from authoritarianism, we trumped them with the Revolution and our Constitution, and by the mid-19th century a broad movement began to nudge European societies on the continent in a democratic direction. Only since World War 2 has the democratic idea begun to genuinely take hold in other parts of the world, and it’s too early to tell if it will last. All of this is part of what makes our American experiment such an interesting one, and there’s no guarantee of continued success in our case, either. Some would argue that the nation-state with which we’re all familiar is being replaced by the multinational corporation, and if that’s the case, one need only ask “How many corporations operate democratically?” to anticipate the eventual result.
I enjoyed Jim Stiles’ story, but it barely touches on the primary point you were trying to make in the “Letter From the Editors.” Religions, not necessarily “ethical systems,” but genuine religions with rules and theology are based on faith. True believers (i.e., devout practitioners of a particular theology) are not inclined to be tolerant of other systems of belief. There’s plenty of bloody history to support that assertion, from the Crusades through the Hundred Years’ War, the Inquisition, and other incidents of religiously-inspired butchery right up to “ethnic cleansing” and suicide bombers.
Much of what’s currently being labeled as “conservative” punditry isn’t at all conservative, since some of what’s being advocated would involve replacing the Constitution and Bill of Rights with … something else. Be that as it may, an interesting exercise involves reversing the ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ labels in the call-out boxes on pages 20 and 24. It doesn’t work perfectly — some other grammatical bits have to be rearranged — but it’s symptomatic of just how much stereotyping and outright prejudice has become a standard part of what passes for dialogue or discussion. I’m not sure ‘liberal’ pundits are any better, though in Colorado I see them less frequently than their right-wing brethren.
My own rule of thumb, regardless of the topic du jour, is: Never Trust a Zealot.
Ray Schoch
Loveland
Dear Ray and Charmaine,
Thank you both for writing.
Ray, I think my primary “theme” was inspired by a sense of outrage. Personally, I don’t believe that Christian doctrine supports anger, bigotry, war, keeping terminal patients on life support, the death penalty, or the Republican party.
But I don’t think that Christ was a Democrat, either.
More to the point, however, I do not believe that “true believers” are the root cause behind our “bloody history.” On the contrary, it seems to me that violent mayhem has usually resulted when people strayed from their faith (and their sacred texts) and followed the lead of maniacal zealots. I think violence is inspired not by faith, but by self-righteousness, hatred, and xenophobia. Indeed, the grand inquisitors, the Crusaders, the ethnic cleansers, and the Taliban all ignored the basic tenets of their religion in order to foment violence.
And what about Hitler’s Nazis? Japan’s suicide bombers? Mussolini? And Stalin? What inspired them?
Yes, zealots advance their causes by issuing appeals to honor God and the flag. But do zealots actually represent the traditions they invoke? Did Torquemada embody Christianity? Does bin Laden express the voice of Islam? Does David Limbaugh speak for God?
Personally, I don’t think so. I still believe that religion and faith are part of the solution, not the problem. Western concepts of freedom, democracy, and equality grew out of Christian ideals. The enlightenment was born because men came to believe that God cared about the meek, the mild, the humble, and the poor.
As I see it, zealots can twist and misrepresent the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the convictions of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, Marxist philosophy, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, and every other work of religion, philosophy, ethics, beliefs, and ideals available. But “true believers” should speak out against such misrepresentation.
Charmaine, I know that “left-leaning Christians” host many internet sites. And I agree that the media slights religious leftists. (In fact, anyone who bothers to consult the internet will quickly realize that the Pope is as dubious about U.S. commercialism and military policy as Slim Wolfe.) But even so, I’m afraid that Christians who still believe in faith, hope and charity (including both Republicans and Democrats) need to speak out more insistently — because more and more often, Americans seem to assume that “Christian” means right-wing, fanatical, intolerant, and judgmental.
Martha Quillen
