A spate of killings (Illinois Tech and NY): liberty vs. safety

The New Neo Posted on by

As far as the recent horrific killings at Northern Illinois University go, I’ve said most of what I want to say before, here. As I wrote earlier in connection with the shootings Virginia Tech:

Yes, a gun was involved here, and would that the shooter had never had access to it. But he did, either legally or illegally [in Illinois, it was legally]. And, given that, it stands to reason it would have been a good thing had someone in that crowd of students been armed and trained, as well.

I am often reminded, of all things, of the story of Sleeping Beauty. Whatever am I talking about? Just this: you can burn all the spindles in the land, but you can never get them all. And rest assured, the ones that remain will fall into the hands of those eager to do evil.

Speaking of doing evil, there’s of course this story, as well. A man (a patient? an ex-patient? the friend/husband/lover of a patient?) stabs and hacks a NY psychologist to death, and seriously wounds her colleague. Continue reading →

Obama’s the one

The New Neo Posted on by

It appears that Obama is starting to pull away from Clinton.

I’ve made no secret of my preference for Hillary over Obama: I think she’d mount less of a challenge to McCain, but if elected I also think she would be less likely to abandon Iraq as precipitously as Obama would.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that Obama will be the nominee, of course. But it’s looking more and more like it. Just read the pundits; the consensus seems to be that Hillary is toast.

This means that the media may (may) finally begin to subject Obama to more careful scrutiny. Continue reading →

Third anniversary: if you blog long enough….

The New Neo Posted on by

…you find you’ve written about almost everything.

Now that I’m somewhere around my third anniversary of active blogging (yikes! gadzooks! arghhh!) I have to say I never expected to still be doing this at this point. But I continue to enjoy it, and as long as that’s true, I plan to keep on keeping on.

One of the added benefits of lengthy and daily blogging is that, after so long a time, I find I’ve blogged on an amazing number of topics. Often, even I forget how many. I’ve probably duplicated myself more than a few times without even realizing it, since certain themes keep popping up with great insistence.

Sometimes, though, I find myself writing about something—or thinking of writing about something—and it begins to ring a faint and distant bell. Continue reading →

A sonnet in praise of sonnets

The New Neo Posted on by

I write some poetry from time to time,
And gravitate to forms, I must confess.
I crave some meter and a bit of rhyme.
Free verse can be illusory progress.
The sonnet with its prescribed fourteen lines
Presents a special challenge to be met,
A game that Frost, my hero, thus defines:
No point in playing tennis with no net.

Ah, freedom! It’s a lofty modern goal.
And rules? Meant to be broken, don’t you see?
Let’s shed the last vestige of stiff control
And revel in a life and art that’s free!
But rules are guides, not just constraints or chains.
Throw all out, and mere anarchy remains.

For those of you not familiar with what it’s like to try to write a sonnet (and I’d guess most of you aren’t), please take my word for it when I say that it is really a very demanding form of poetry.

But fun, like a game with rules. If you like to solve double-crostics or crossword puzzles you might have a taste of what I’m talking about. Continue reading →

Obama: too young at heart

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s no accident that Obama does well with young voters. There’s something about his rhetoric that especially appeals to the idealism of youth. As Betsy Newmark points out, the young are often “too ignorant of history to realize that change just doesn’t happen no matter how attractive the politician arguing for change seems to be.”

Obama is certainly an attractive politician. But there’s nothing about him that indicates an ability to do what he says he will do. That isn’t meant as a slap at Obama in particular; no one could, even if elected President. It’s a promise that cannot be kept, and those who are older and more experienced ought to know that.

Candidates always promise more than they can deliver. Continue reading →

Ten most famous Americans: the changing American educational scene

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been some hoo-ha in the blogopsphere about a poll asking 2000 high school students to name the ten most famous Americans.

Here was their list:

1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%

2. Rosa Parks: 60%

3. Harriet Tubman: 44%

4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%

5.Benjamin Franklin: 29%

6. Amelia Earhart: 25%

7. Oprah Winfrey: 22%

8. Marilyn Monroe: 19%

9. Thomas Edison: 18%

10. Albert Einstein: 16%

The fact that Harriet Tubman (a minor figure at best) and Rosa Parks (an influential and courageous person but hardly one of the giants of history) are way up there is no doubt a reflection of diversity education gone amok. And what’s up with the inclusion of Oprah Winfrey?

But in certain respects the students are merely repeating what they’ve learned—look at some history texts and you might think Harriet Tubman was among the ten most famous Americans, based on the amount of attention paid. Continue reading →

Preach it Ross, preach it!

The New Neo Posted on by

Ross Douthat has a description of the McCain-bashing pundits that’s not likely to sit well with them. But I think he’s spot on:

With their inflexibility, grudge-holding and eagerness to evict heretics rather than seek converts, too many of conservatism’s leaders sound like the custodians of a dwindling religious denomination or a politically correct English department at a fading liberal-arts college.

Or like yesterday’s Democratic Party. The tribunes of the American right have fallen into the same bad habits that doomed their liberal rivals to years of political failure.

And I would also caution that those conservatives who consider McCain too accommodating to liberal viewpoints and think his Presidency would “destroy America” may be only enhancing his appeal to those voters he needs on his side if he wants to win it all in November: Independents. The appellation “maverick” is just fine with them, thank you very much.

McCain: a choice, not an echo?

The New Neo Posted on by

Read the speech John McCain made on Thursday to CPAC for yourself, and see what you think. Although he freely admits that he hasn’t always marched to conservative tunes on every issue, he asserts his basic conservatism.

McCain then goes on to wisely emphasize how conservative he is in comparison to his likely opponents, Clinton and Obama, and how high are the stakes:

Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences. This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things. Continue reading →