A year and a half ago I mused about "The Silencing of the Lambs" and four years before that I also wrote about "When Rattlesnakes Don't Rattle Anymore" as a way to record what I thought then about what was happening to the country and to the world so that at some future time I will be able to look back and say, "All my fears were unfounded - our children and their children are after all safe and secure to live in a world far better than what was then. Their future shall be immune from everything that I've worried about".
Today, I am sad to acknowledge that Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural message three quarters of a century ago in 1933 has not converted "retreat into advance". He said then,
"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." ------ FDR, March 4, 1933
Unfortunately, news events today still evoke the very same concerns FDR worried about. If he were alive today, he would have to lament with the same words when he sees major city streets plagued with unjustified terror, when a nameless, unreasoning mob paralyzes ordinary citizens.
Fear itself is inevitable when call to de-fund the police or abolish it entirely gains momentum and widespread support or that it goes unchallenged.
Let me share this fable: A rancher hired sheep dogs to help him manage and protect a thousand heads of sheep in his ten thousand acre land. Two ranch hands oversaw ten shepherd dogs daily. Using well orchestrated commands of hand signals and whistles they would direct them to get the herd moving from their corral to grazing land and to the next and back. The dogs also kept predators away at night and they would find every single sheep that strayed from the herd.
Everything was fine until one day one of the dogs bit the hind leg of a lamb. The dogs are trained to nip lightly at the heels of sheep that try to separate or stray from the herd. This time though it was a ghastly wound and in a couple of days the lamb died. The rancher was furious. He fired the ranch hands and got rid of the dogs. In their place the rancher's young son and his buddies took over the chore, using their 4-wheel off-road vehicles to manage the herd. The idea was doomed from the start. By mid-afternoon the young men took lazy breaks, drunk too much, and the sheep went all over the grazing land - mismanaged and out of control. By the following day what the rancher saw was his land tore up by the 4-wheelers, many sheep missing. Wolves and coyotes were well fed that previous night. All because the rancher was furious with what one dog did.
The country today is torn in half. One half is silenced while the other half is heard loudly and they get louder by the day. The lambs have been silenced. There is danger too when rattle snakes don't rattle anymore because the eerie silence could be more foreboding. It was not enough that statues already made to suffer from the daily droppings of pigeons and sparrows, rain and snow and the blazing sun but that they had to be brought down. It was as if by toppling the statues that represented the past which the protesters did not like would make their present better or their future secured. Erasing history is one clear path to repeating it because ignorance is what they will bequeath to those who follow them.
From a CNN interview: Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) criticized the President's 4th of July speech at Mount Rushmore for focusing on the accomplishments of historical figures.
“He spent all of his time talking about dead traitors,” Duckworth, a potential Biden vice president pick, told CNN in an interview.
The senator may not have realized that it was a long list of historical figures that included George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. The signals of ignorance are glaringly loud and not challenging them vigorously in the press is a clear indicator of the silencing of the lambs. Rattle snakes no longer rattle as the other half is silenced for fear of unjustified backlash.
"The New York Times is one of the world’s most famous publications – but now an internal battle at the paper is making headlines".
From a British newspaper: "On Wednesday, high-profile opinion editor Bari Weiss stepped down from the organisation with a scathing public resignation letter in which she claimed there was a culture of bullying and self-censorship at the publication.
The 36-year-old, who had been in the job for three years, had frequently courted controversy with her articles – including her questioning of the Me Too movement and her pro-Israel stance – which she said rankled some staff members.
Yesterday, she abruptly ended her stint at the respected publication by posting a lengthy message on her own website which was addressed to the paper’s publisher, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger.
She claimed she had been attacked for her views by co-workers and slammed the Times for catering to the outraged masses on Twitter".
Much of the media promotes and laud diversity, yet it had for years now disabled the diversity of opinions in print and broadcast because social media had become their ultimate editors. This is akin to permitting only one spectral frequency of light to filter through to their readers and listeners, which is most unhealthy because only the full spectrum of sunlight can provide the necessary disinfectant. Diversity in the population of people and all species of living things is without a doubt the prime mover of the development and improvement of generations over the previous ones that had gone on for centuries. Diverse ideas and debating them among people who are free to express their minds are what gave us the opportunity to experiment. As a result, over many centuries of open debate in the midst of many human conflict throughout history we have the Hammurabi Code of laws, the Magna Carta, the Geneva Convention, just to name a few.
Diversity should not be limited to just requiring the proper representation or apparent sprinkling of skin color. If the diversity of opinion or the free and open expression of what the general population is truly thinking are curtailed in the general media and the workplace then we shall have, if not already, effectively weakened the social and moral fiber of humanity when it is reduced to one monolithic block of thinkers and policy makers.
We should not allow the silencing of the lambs nor should we prevent rattlesnakes from making their noises. That is the only way we can know they are there. Society is best served - always - when two or more sides are allowed their spot in the full spectrum of sunlight
Today, I am sad to acknowledge that Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural message three quarters of a century ago in 1933 has not converted "retreat into advance". He said then,
"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." ------ FDR, March 4, 1933
Unfortunately, news events today still evoke the very same concerns FDR worried about. If he were alive today, he would have to lament with the same words when he sees major city streets plagued with unjustified terror, when a nameless, unreasoning mob paralyzes ordinary citizens.
Fear itself is inevitable when call to de-fund the police or abolish it entirely gains momentum and widespread support or that it goes unchallenged.
Let me share this fable: A rancher hired sheep dogs to help him manage and protect a thousand heads of sheep in his ten thousand acre land. Two ranch hands oversaw ten shepherd dogs daily. Using well orchestrated commands of hand signals and whistles they would direct them to get the herd moving from their corral to grazing land and to the next and back. The dogs also kept predators away at night and they would find every single sheep that strayed from the herd.
Everything was fine until one day one of the dogs bit the hind leg of a lamb. The dogs are trained to nip lightly at the heels of sheep that try to separate or stray from the herd. This time though it was a ghastly wound and in a couple of days the lamb died. The rancher was furious. He fired the ranch hands and got rid of the dogs. In their place the rancher's young son and his buddies took over the chore, using their 4-wheel off-road vehicles to manage the herd. The idea was doomed from the start. By mid-afternoon the young men took lazy breaks, drunk too much, and the sheep went all over the grazing land - mismanaged and out of control. By the following day what the rancher saw was his land tore up by the 4-wheelers, many sheep missing. Wolves and coyotes were well fed that previous night. All because the rancher was furious with what one dog did.
The country today is torn in half. One half is silenced while the other half is heard loudly and they get louder by the day. The lambs have been silenced. There is danger too when rattle snakes don't rattle anymore because the eerie silence could be more foreboding. It was not enough that statues already made to suffer from the daily droppings of pigeons and sparrows, rain and snow and the blazing sun but that they had to be brought down. It was as if by toppling the statues that represented the past which the protesters did not like would make their present better or their future secured. Erasing history is one clear path to repeating it because ignorance is what they will bequeath to those who follow them.
From a CNN interview: Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) criticized the President's 4th of July speech at Mount Rushmore for focusing on the accomplishments of historical figures.
“He spent all of his time talking about dead traitors,” Duckworth, a potential Biden vice president pick, told CNN in an interview.
The senator may not have realized that it was a long list of historical figures that included George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. The signals of ignorance are glaringly loud and not challenging them vigorously in the press is a clear indicator of the silencing of the lambs. Rattle snakes no longer rattle as the other half is silenced for fear of unjustified backlash.
"The New York Times is one of the world’s most famous publications – but now an internal battle at the paper is making headlines".
From a British newspaper: "On Wednesday, high-profile opinion editor Bari Weiss stepped down from the organisation with a scathing public resignation letter in which she claimed there was a culture of bullying and self-censorship at the publication.
The 36-year-old, who had been in the job for three years, had frequently courted controversy with her articles – including her questioning of the Me Too movement and her pro-Israel stance – which she said rankled some staff members.
Yesterday, she abruptly ended her stint at the respected publication by posting a lengthy message on her own website which was addressed to the paper’s publisher, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger.
She claimed she had been attacked for her views by co-workers and slammed the Times for catering to the outraged masses on Twitter".
Much of the media promotes and laud diversity, yet it had for years now disabled the diversity of opinions in print and broadcast because social media had become their ultimate editors. This is akin to permitting only one spectral frequency of light to filter through to their readers and listeners, which is most unhealthy because only the full spectrum of sunlight can provide the necessary disinfectant. Diversity in the population of people and all species of living things is without a doubt the prime mover of the development and improvement of generations over the previous ones that had gone on for centuries. Diverse ideas and debating them among people who are free to express their minds are what gave us the opportunity to experiment. As a result, over many centuries of open debate in the midst of many human conflict throughout history we have the Hammurabi Code of laws, the Magna Carta, the Geneva Convention, just to name a few.
Diversity should not be limited to just requiring the proper representation or apparent sprinkling of skin color. If the diversity of opinion or the free and open expression of what the general population is truly thinking are curtailed in the general media and the workplace then we shall have, if not already, effectively weakened the social and moral fiber of humanity when it is reduced to one monolithic block of thinkers and policy makers.
We should not allow the silencing of the lambs nor should we prevent rattlesnakes from making their noises. That is the only way we can know they are there. Society is best served - always - when two or more sides are allowed their spot in the full spectrum of sunlight
