Freedom, appearance and discrimination
I read my friend Mac’s offerings with mixed feelings: Some agreement; lots of amusement; and some disagreement. With regard to his Saturday effort, I saw the incident in South Carolina and have no question that the young woman was disrupting the class and, after several requests to stop, the teacher was justified in requesting her removal. Personally I think the removal ruckus was a bit much and the school should bear as much blame as the overzealous officer. The school, because they “knew” the officer, had (apparently) disciplined him for similar behavior twice before, and should not have assigned him to the task. I do not agree with Mac that a law enforcer is always blameless
I do agree with Mac that much blame for this kind of incident lies with the student’s family and a lack of ethics and behavioral values provided to the student by them. There seems to far too much community effort in many places to “show our difference” than to show evidence of being part of the whole society. I am a firm believer that behavior, and attitude toward society’s laws should not be allowed to vary according with an individual’s appearance. Not going to be soon and will take a lot of work on the part of a lot of people. Whether we like it or not, the basis for a lot of continuing “discrimination” is based on the perceptions of someone’s appearance and activities/behavior.
A frightening thought, to me, is that perhaps the whole incident could have been obviated had the school banned “cell phones” from class rooms. But I suspect someone would object to that as a “reduction” of personal freedom.” Hogwash!
Guff Worth, Lakeport
Has it gone too far?
Paris has declared war after the terrorist attack. America agrees.
The Eastern world has very different views on life and death from the western world.
What is it the terrorists want from us? Is there no middle ground; no compromise in order to live side by side?
Is it simply a struggle for dominance and power? The balance of opposites is being destroyed.
Can someone please help to answer these questions? What is happening to our world? Thank you.
Carolyn Hawley, Nice
Explain
Kevin Bracken seems bound and determined to show that Hillary Clinton is a truthful individual. I wonder how Kevin would explain Clinton’s assertion that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary who scaled Mount Everest. It turns out that HRC was born before he had gained notoriety.
Another whopper was HRC’s claim that she had to duck down because there were so many bullets flying overhead as she exited a plane several years ago in the Middle East. But I am sure that Kevin will have an answer for that also.
Bill Kettenhofen, Kelseyville
Speech and thought
Sensitive instruments can detect faint activity in parts of the body other than the organs of speech when movements of these parts are thought of. The activity would of course be much more pronounced in the organs of speech when words are thought of. This because speech, thought, the finding of words, and the calling of attention to interaction with others often occur in company with others and almost always with a similar objective. Add that of all life forms, man, being the most intelligent, is the most prone to habit formation, and it is easy to assume that speech and thought, so grown together by habit, are two parts of one function. Since there is no opportunity for speech and thought to function in any way other than they do, it’s natural they should be considered two parts of one function.
Speech and thought are two different functions, unrelated except by long use together; and the proof is that, if they were two parts of the same function, there would be only one language the world over.
Dean Sparks, Lucerne
