Archive for the ‘Tolerance’ Category
January 15, 2012
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It’s been a holiday in all fifty states only since 2000, when Utah finally adopted it. MLK was a hero, and the holiday dedicated to him is a good time to reflect on his life and on the meaning—and especially the limits—of being a hero.
If we venerate some of our Presidents for their accomplishments, then we surely should venerate King. He arguably did more to make America a better nation than anyone since Lincoln. He dreamt that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
America is not that nation yet—not quite—but we’ve progressed awfully close to it since King’s 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial. And the progress has been largely inspired by King. His insistence on non-violence sealed the commitment of African-Americans to it, and his description of what justice meant captured the conscience and then the heart of much of white America.
Yet when his birthday was first proposed as a national holiday in 1979—just eleven years after his death—it was so controversial that it failed to win a majority vote in the House of Representatives, and it took another twenty-one years for the fiftieth state to recognize it. Many reasons have been cited for the resistance, but surely a major reason (more…)
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Tags:adulterer, African Americans, content of their character, ethics, EthicsAlarms, heroism, I have a dream speech:, J. Edgar Hoover, Jack Marshall, John McCain, Jr. Day, justice, King’s 1963 speech, Martin Luther King, non-violence, Shakespeare, Vietnam war
Posted in Ethics-general, History, Tolerance | 2 Comments »
December 31, 2011
There were 112 Ethics Bob posts in 2011, and 14,000 page views. Here are my ten favorites:
- Ex-Auburn Prof Jim Gundlach gets a mythical Sam Goldwyn award* for speaking truth to power—to Auburn football http://goo.gl/x3ro4
- Turks trust strangers, and the trust is repaid http://goo.gl/4UBW6
- Drew Brees: ethics hero and football hero. He lives by “If not me, who? http://goo.gl/RMzsV
- Tim Pawlenty announces for President, grabs third rail of Iowa politics, earns mythical Edmund Burke Award. http://goo.gl/yBdXS
- Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) defends Muslim judge Sohail Mohammed, calls opponents “crazies.” Hooray for an ethics hero http://goo.gl/KtCCQ
- Three cheers for Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, and Byron York of Fox News, and for Rachel Maddow of MSNBC http://goo.gl/gsXAx
- Ethics: I’m giving it away http://goo.gl/Rl1jB
- LSU Tigers Coach Les Miles gets a mythical Chip Kelly Award* for suspending three stars for the big game with Auburn http://goo.gl/rjns5
- Report from Zuccotti Park, and what’s next for Occupy Wall Street http://goo.gl/Sk5sV
- Rose Bowl, BCS Bowl, Ethics Bowl http://goo.gl/MxGYu
- The lesson from Penn State http://goo.gl/Tnn03
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Tags:Auburn, Bret Baier, Byron York, Chip Kelly award, Chris Christie, Chris Wallace, Drew Brees, Edmund Burke Award, ethics, Ethics Bowl, Ethics Hero, Fox News, If not me, Jim Gundlach, Les Miles, LSU Tigers, MSNBC, Muslims, Occupy Wall Street, Penn State, Rachel Maddow, Sam Goldwyn award, Sohail Mohammed, third rail of politics, Tim Pawlenty, trust, truth to power, Turkey, who?, Zuccotti Park
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, Media, Politics, Religion, Sports, Tolerance, Turkey | Leave a Comment »
December 30, 2011
Israelis staged a massive rally Thursday to protest the assault by ultra-religious Haredim on eight-year-old Naama Margolese, and she was welcomed back to school after the Hanukah break by the Education Minister and several members of parliament. Good.
Meanwhile 15 miles away in Jerusalem more Haredim were practicing their religion, threatening and shouting “Prostitute!” at Doron Matalon, a female Israeli soldier who refused to move to the back of the bus.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted the soldier: “This isn’t the first time this has happened, I just asked for help this time,” Matalon said, adding that she had experienced “worse incidents on this line,” including one in which she was shoved off the bus when her stop arrived.”
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Tags:back of the bus, Doron Matalon, ethics, Haaretz, Haredim, Naama Margolese, prostitute, ultra-religious
Posted in Ethics-general, International, Religion, Tolerance | 1 Comment »
December 27, 2011
Who would spit and curse at a second grader and call her a whore? Haredim, that’s who. The Haredim are considered the extreme of orthodox Jews, although they reject the label: to them they are just “Jews,” everybody else is not. In the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, some Haredim spat and cursed at second grader Naama Margolese (pictured here with her mother), and called her a whore for dressing immodestly. Since the assault Naama.is afraid to walk to her religious school, even when her mother is with her, holding her hand.
“When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared … that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting. They were scary. They don’t want us to go to the school.”
But that’s okay, “Moshe,” a Haredi explained to Israeli TV:
“To spit on a girl who does not act according to the law of the Torah is okay. Even at a seven year old. There are rabbis who empower us to know how to walk in the street and how a woman should act.”
To the Haredim women and little girls are unclean, not to be touched or seen, except when they are covered up. Burqas would be fine. Women soldiers are an abomination, not to be heard. And Arabs? Even lower than women (more…)
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Tags:Bar Ilan University, Beit Shemesh, ethics, Haredim, Menachem Friedman, Moshe, Naama Margolese, Netanyahu, Orthodox Jews, Shimon Peres
Posted in Ethics-general, International, Religion, Tolerance | 7 Comments »
December 21, 2011
Fiction
The Submission: A Novel by Amy Waldman. My favorite, about a design competition for the 9/11 memorial, won by a Muslim and leading to chaotic controversy.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Vintage) by Stieg Larsson. Much more than just a crime novel.
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. An American searches for a colleague in the deepest Amazon
Non-Fiction
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. A magisterial page-turner of a biography of the greatest American.
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Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy. An Iranian-British reporter is seized and tortured by the Islamic Republic.
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Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation Is Remaking America by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais. Learn who will be running America in a few years.
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Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future by Stephen Kinzer. The former New York Times Istanbul chief proposes new relationships with Turkey and Iran.
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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson. The American Ambassador to newly Nazified Germany and his adventurous daughter
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Here If You Need Me: A True Story, by Kate Braestrup: A memoir by a middle-aged mother who was suddenly widowed11 years ago, then became a Unitarian-Universalist minister, and now works as chaplain to game wardens in Maine
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1861: The Civil War Awakening, by Adam Goodheart. The beginnings of the Civil War
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Tags:best books, Favorite books
Posted in Books, History, International, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
December 11, 2011
The story of fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford and eight other African-American teenagers still takes my breath away, even though I lived through it on live television. I relearned the story last week on a visit to Little Rock, Arkansas, Central High School, the site in 1957 of ugly, beautiful and inspiring events that changed America.
Returning to Los Angeles I discovered that my friends of baby boomer and subsequent generations knew nothing about what happened outside Central High School on September 4, 1957. Like the story of the Israelites flight from Egypt and the story of the first Thanksgiving, the Central High School story merits retelling every year.
After the US Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregated schools violated the Constitution, the Little Rock School Board developed a plan to gradually integrate city schools, starting by admitting nine African-American students to prestigious—and white only—Central High School. On the eve of the first day of school, September 3, 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered troops of the Arkansas National Guard to Little Rock to prevent the nine children from entering the school.
Elizabeth Eckford was one of the nine. She took a bus that dropped her a block from the school, and from there walked with unimaginable grace and courage (Will Counts’s photo above) through a mob of screaming, spitting adults. She tried to enter the campus (more…)
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Tags:101st Airborne Division, Arkansas National Guard, Central High School, Constitution, Eisenhower, Elizabeth Eckford, Encyclopedia of Arkansas History, ethics, integration, Little Rock Nine, Little Rock School Board, National Historic Site, Orval Faubus, segregated schools, US Supreme Court, Will Counts
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, military, Tolerance | 1 Comment »
November 28, 2011
Sometimes intolerance can be so wildly nonsensical that you can only laugh. Thursday in the Australian parliament Luke Simpkins, Liberal MP from Western Australia, sounded a warning* about the sinister implications of unwittingly eating meat from animals that had been slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law.
“Mohammed, the prophet of Islam—as reported in the Hadith, the traditions of Islam, the book second only to the Koran—talked of how Islam would be furthered to those parts of the world that had not yet embraced it. He reportedly said, ‘The non-believers will become Muslims when, amongst other things, they eat the meat that we have slaughtered.’ This is one of the key aspects to converting nonbelievers to Islam.”
“By having Australians unwittingly eating halal food we are all one step down the path towards the conversion, and that is a step we should only make with full knowledge and one that should not be imposed upon us without us knowing.”
If Mr. Simpkins is right, we probably should stay away from the Hebrew National hot dogs sold at Costco snack bars (more…)
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Tags:Australian parliament, conversion, Costco, ethics, Hadith, halal, Hebrew National, intolerance, Islam, Islamic Law, Islamophobia Today, Luke Simpkins, Mohammed, non-believers
Posted in Ethics-general, Religion, Tolerance | 2 Comments »
November 24, 2011
Muslims are jihadis. Muslims subjugate women. Muslims stone adulterers. Sound familiar? Perhaps as familiar as Jews are stingy and control the media, Irish are drunks and raise one child to be a priest or nun, and blacks are ignorant and want special treatment.
These ethnic stereotypes are held by people who don’t know. If you know some Muslims or Jews or blacks you know that they’re just people, some like the stereotype, most not.
I was raised in segregated Delaware and went to segregated schools. The first black family I knew was the Huxtables: obstetrician Cliff, attorney Clair, dyslexic son Theo, and normal daughter Denise, from The Cosby Show. The first Jewish family many people of my generation knew was the Goldbergs, Molly and Jake and their kids Rosalie and Sammy. And the first Indian-Americans many people knew were Gogol Ganguli and his parents, Ashima and Ashoke, from The Namesake.
Most Americans don’t know any Muslims, even though there are almost three million Muslims in America. You can meet several Muslim families from Dearborn, Michigan on All-American Muslim, telecast Sunday nights on the TLC channel.
Some on the right say the program is nothing more than (more…)
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Tags:All-American Muslim, Dearborn Michigan, ethics, ethnic stereotypes, Indian-Americans, jihadis, The Cosby Show, The Goldbergs, the Huxtables, The Namesake, TLC channel
Posted in Entertainment, Ethics-general, Media, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
October 25, 2011
Reasons to vote against Mitt Romney: He’s a liberal trying to look like a conservative. He has no convictions other than a determination to appear what’s necessary to get elected. He’s willing to employ illegal immigrants as long as no one knows about it. He put his pet dog in a cage on the roof of his car and drove 500 miles.
But some people have another reason: He’s a Mormon! And Mormons aren’t Christians. Not really. Mormonism is a cult!
So said Robert Jeffress, a senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, explaining why Christians should prefer his candidate, Rick Perry, who he introduced at the Values Voter Summit two weeks ago in Washington.
Jeffress and the people who agree with him are repudiating the Constitution of the United States, which says in Article VI, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Pretty strong statement, using ‘no,’ ‘ever,’ and ‘any’ in one clause. But Jeffress believes that Christians must prefer a Christian to Romney. That’s a religious test. It’s wrong when practiced by Evangelicals opposing Romney for the Republican nomination, and it’ll be just as wrong when liberals use it if and when Romney gets the nomination.
The theological argument over Mormonism as Christianity (more…)
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Tags:Article VI, Ask Mormon Girl, Constitution, cult, dog on the car roof, ethics, First Baptist Church, illegal immigrants, Mormonism, On Being with Krista Tippett. Joanna Brooks, religious bigotry, religious Test, Rick Perry, Robert Jeffress, Romney, San Diego State, Values Voter Summit
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics, Retail, Tolerance | 3 Comments »
October 22, 2011
On the morning of October 12, Melissa Franchy boarded the B110 bus in Brooklyn and sat down near the front. For a few minutes she was left in silence, although the other passengers gave her a noticeably wide berth. But as the bus began to fill up, the men told her that she had to get up. Move to the back, they insisted.
When Franchy asked why she had to move, a man scolded her. “If God makes a rule, you don’t ask ‘Why make the rule?’”
That’s from a story in Tuesday’s New York World. The B110 line is a public bus line in New York operated under contract since 1973. But 38 years may be enough for the New York authorities. Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a news conference on Wednesday that gender separation is “obviously not permitted” on public buses. He added, “Private people: you can have a private bus. Go rent a bus, and do what you want on it.”
Let’s see when segregation ends on the B110. Bet it won’t be today.
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Tags:B110 bus, Brooklyn, bus segregation, ethics, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Melissa Franchy, New York World
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Religion, Tolerance | 2 Comments »
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It’s been a holiday in all fifty states only since 2000, when Utah finally adopted it. MLK was a hero, and the holiday dedicated to him is a good time to reflect on his life and on the meaning—and especially the limits—of being a hero.
Ethics Bob 