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A bridge over untroubled waters
After 50 years, no one believed it would ever happen. That’s why they called it the bridge that was going nowhere.
But now that’s all water under the… well, you know. The new St. Croix Crossing Bridge opened last week to great fanfare, connecting eastern Minnesota with western Wisconsin and replacing the Stillwater lift bridge that was built in 1931.
Which just goes to show that two sides are never so far apart that they can’t be brought together.
The project was first proposed way back in the 1960s, but every imaginable obstacle conspired to prevent its construction. Needless to say, funding was the first challenge. Then came the predictable squabbling among federal and local agencies. Finally, the inevitable lawsuits brought by the environmental lobby threatened to kill the plan before it could begin.
People said it would take a miracle for the bridge to get built. What they got was something even more remarkable than divine intervention.
They got cooperation.
In 2012, an unlikely alliance formed between two Minnesota congresswomen, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and then-Republican Representative Michele Bachmann
Their task was herculean. They had to persuade, convince, and cajole U. S. representatives and senators, as well as state governors and local legislators, to sign off on the project. Incredibly, they had to get unanimous approval from all 100 U. S. senators to gain an exemption from the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Ms. Klobuchar personally prevailed upon every one of her colleagues in the senate to give their support.
The final product is more than just a river crossing. It’s a work of art, a thing of beauty. The bridge is a hybrid, a cross between box girder and cable-stayed designs, only the second like it in the country. The innovative design minimizes the number of piers in the water while keeping the tops of the towers below the tree-line. Even opponents of the bridge grudgingly conceded that their fears were unfounded.
Could there be a more fitting allegory for our troubled times than the new “miracle bridge” of St. Croix? In a time of knee-jerk partisanship, of hyperbolic rhetoric, of militant groupthink that drives all proponents of moderation to the far extremes lest they be slaughtered on the altar of ideology by their own comrades – in times like these it is the concerted effort to bridge the divide that can calm the waters below. All that’s needed is the courage set aside personal agendas and the willingness to work together for the general welfare.
Nothing puts an end to quarreling faster than a spirit of common purpose. Nothing builds trust more certainly than a shared commitment and collaboration toward a universal goal. The feeling of being united in a higher mission, combined with a sense of urgency to achieve results, raises the rewards of success above egoism and ideology.
Once we resolve to make the effort and take the first step, almost anything is possible.
King Solomon says, Like water reflects one face to another, so too the heart of one man to his fellow. By showing our adversaries that we are committed to peaceful cooperation, the chances increase dramatically that they will see themselves reflected in our sincere intentions and respond in kind.
Of course, there will always be those too petty to seek common ground. But strong, sure leadership will relegate them to the footnotes of history while inspiring others to discover greatness within themselves. With vision and determination, we can refashion the world into a place where human spirit can overcome any obstacle and truly soar toward the heavens.
Spread your wings today and soar tomorrow
What can we learn from ravens? Everything we need to know.
If you’re fed up with the politics of tweeting, maybe it’s time to trade in your Twitterfeed for raven song.
New research shows that corvids — a variety of raven — are more adept than chimpanzees at solving puzzles, recognizing symbols, using tools, and preparing for the future. Most significantly, corvids are able to delay gratification, forgoing immediate pleasure now for bigger rewards later.
If this sounds eerily familiar, it should. The now-famous Stanford Marshmallow experiment that began in the 1960s demonstrated that higher levels of self-control in nursery-school-age children foretell a lifetime of dramatically greater success in academic achievement, professional success, and psychological well-being.
So we should be asking ourselves: if ravens can learn from experience and plan for their future, why aren’t humans doing a better job of it?
LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW
Massive deficits to fund blossoming entitlement programs might feel good now, but what’s going to happen when the birds come home to roost and the bills come due? Partisan posturing and government gridlock might provide talking points for the next campaign cycle, but how does it serve the national interest to point fingers instead of finding solutions for our problems? Watered-down and politically-correct school curricula may buoy self-esteem and promote social agendas, but what will happen to the next generation when they have to compete in a world that won’t cater to their feelings?
As the culture of short-sightedness grows ever more entrenched, it becomes more urgent for us to start changing our thinking now. As Robert Redford quips to his secretary in Spy Game: “When did Noah build the ark, Gladys? Before the rain, before the rain.”
Speaking of Noah and the ark… perhaps we can find a new lesson in that very old story.
After the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, Noah released the raven, and then released the dove. However, a careful reading of the verses reveals something curious: where Noah sent forth the dove to see if the waters had abated, scripture gives no reason at all for why he sent out the raven.
What’s more, although Noah waited seven days to send out the dove the second time, there is no indication that he waited to send out the dove the first time after he sent out the raven. And whereas the dove returned to Noah because it found no place to rest its foot, the raven continued circling the ark until the earth became dry.
FAR AS HUMAN EYE CAN SEE
The classical commentaries offer a variety of explanations to resolve these contradictions. But let’s engage in a bit of creative interpretation for the sake of political allegory.
What if Noah had a different reason for sending forth the raven? What if he recognized that the raven possessed a more profound faculty of insight, not merely to report on the present status of the earth but to extrapolate beyond the superficial conditions of the moment? Might the raven symbolize mankind’s obligation to project its inner eye forward? Might the moral of the story be that we must hold ourselves accountable so that we never again to sink to a level of corruption that brings about global devastation?
The sages of the Talmud teach that everything follows the beginning. If we start with the end in mind, then the road to success carries us where we want to go. But if we set off in pursuit of our own gratification, then we are likely to wander into oblivion.
The greatest accomplishments of human history were set in motion by visionaries who imagined futures no one else considered possible. Nelson Mandela endured 27 years in prison rather than renouncing his convictions, eventually breaking the hold of apartheid on his country. Mohandas Gandhi devoted his life, and ultimately gave his life, for the ideal of human rights and non-violent revolution. The Framers of the Constitution envisioned a society of freedom and equality, risking their lives and their fortunes to bring democracy into the world.
Greatness requires vision and self-sacrifice, both of which are in short supply. But if we’re wise enough to learn from ravens, then we’ll soon find ourselves soaring like eagles.
Let the truth set you free
“James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
@realDonaldTrump 12 May 2017
This was one of President Trump’s tamer tweets, although you wouldn’t know it by the ensuing chorus of condemnation from the media.
“There’s no good motive for saying this except to intimidate James Comey,” said news anchor Greta Van Susteren in an interview with Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who emphatically echoed her indictment.
Unpresidential? Possibly. But intimidating?
ALL A-TWITTER
No reasonable person can deny that Donald Trump has made a mockery of himself and his office with his litany of derisive, degrading, and delusional tweets. There is no excuse for any public figure, much less the President of the United States, to whine that he is the victim of the “single greatest WITCH HUNT in American history,” to assert that a distinguished senator from his own party is an “embarrassment” to his home state, or to spew adolescent invectives regarding the physical appearance or psychological stability of media personalities, no matter how slanted and unprofessional their reporting might be.
There should be a code of ethics — whether implicit or explicit — governing the use of social media, which relentlessly eats away the foundations of civil society. But the misuse of modern communication in general, and of Twitter in particular, does not make it all bad all the time.
In a world where the media has grown increasingly untrustworthy, unfair, and unbalanced, the power of social media to circumvent inaccurate or misleading reporting should be warmly welcomed. But that power is so easily abused that it routinely invalidates its own effectiveness as an alternative information source.
Which brings us back to Mr. Trump’s tweet warning that James Comey’s own words might be subject to verification.
Was that intimidation? Was it coercion?
FOR THE RECORD
Well, let’s see. Mr. Trump did not say that he had any tapes. He did not even say that he might have tapes. He did not threaten Mr. Comey with reprisal or retribution of any kind. He did not suggest that Mr. Comey should in any way distort or omit the truth.
What he did do was raise the specter that Mr. Comey’s statements might come back to haunt him if found to contradict anything Mr. Comey himself had previously said.
Come to think of it, this might be the most cogent message Donald Trump has tweeted since he launched his campaign to run for president. By what twisted logic can it now be suggested that confronting public figures with the truth is a form of intimidation?
Has our moral compass spun completely off its axis?
The humorist Charles Marshall wrote, seriously, that, “Integrity is doing the right thing when you don’t have to — when no one else is looking or will ever know — when there will be no congratulations or recognition for having done so.”
That is a universal truth. But it’s all the more relevant in an age when everyone carries a camera, when anything and everything we do could end up on YouTube or the evening news. If there is any upside to the ubiquitous presence of recording devices lurking in every shadow, it is that we have to consider the very real possibility that someone is always watching, and that anything we say or do might be used against us.
King Solomon said, Curse not the king even in your thoughts, and curse not the rich in your bedchamber; for a bird of the air shall carry your voice, and that which has wings shall make the matter known.
More than ever, there are flies on the walls, and the walls have ears. Rather than worrying that we might be overheard, wouldn’t we be better off making sure that nothing leaves our mouths that we wouldn’t want repeated or retweeted?
Video: What are Ethics? Part 23
Short-Term Seduction
The Fool in the Mirror
The Green Generation has arrived! We recycle; we favor alternative energy; we’re environmentally conscious. Clearly, we are on our way to saving our planet.
Or maybe we’re not.
But at least we feel really good about ourselves.
That’s what Remi Trudel discovered. The Boston University marketing professor ran a study in which subjects were asked to sample four different beverages. With a recycling bin placed nearby, people more often took a new cup for each beverage; when there was no bin, more people reused the same cup.
Paradoxically, the opportunity to recycle increased the production of waste. In other words, environmental consciousness increases environmental carelessness.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that people who buy hybrid cars typically increase their driving miles. From the perspective of human psychology, it seems that conservation is a zero sum game: if I save here, I’m permitted to indulge there.
Professor Trudel suggests that, for most of us, recycling is more about making ourselves feel good than about being responsible custodians of the environment. If I save a plastic bottle or aluminum can from the county landfill, I can go on consuming with less guilt. The result is that we become like the dieter who justifies an extra helping of dessert because he used Sweet’N Low in his coffee.
HOW GREEN IS YOUR VALLEY?
Mike Adams of Natural News takes it a step further. If you sift through a recycling bin, you’re likely to find all kinds of containers for chemical products that potentially do more harm to the environment than the boxes and bottles in which they are sold. We don’t mind releasing pollutants into the ecosystem in the form of scented laundry detergent, antibacterial soap, and perfume. Why? Because we assuage our collective conscience with the knowledge that those plastic and cardboard containers will be turned into packaging for more toxic products.
For decades we’ve been warned about the evils of polystyrene cups. But many paper cups are not biodegradable; they may cost more to produce, while requiring more raw materials, use more energy, and produce more greenhouse gases. But, hey, paper feels more eco-friendly.
All this is the natural, if maddeningly irrational, consequence of our national obsessions with feelings. Motives are important. Fairness is important. Perception is important. Results are largely irrelevant.
That may explain why Al Gore, at the time he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize for chiding the American people for their environmental irresponsibility, was simultaneously living in a mansion that guzzled 12 times as much energy as an average American home. Presumably, he reasoned that the benefit to the world from his advocacy far outweighed his own environmental rapaciousness.
This kind of inconsistency is not limited to environmentalism. Repeatedly during his campaign and presidency, Barack Obama promoted increasing capital gains taxes in the name of fairness, even though empirical evidence showed that such increases actually decrease tax revenue rather than raise it. For decades, California lawmakers relentlessly raised corporate taxes on the most successful businesses, eventually driving many of them out of the state and plunging the economy into chaos.
But at least they can sleep at night.
IF WISHES WERE FORCES
The worldview that values feelings and good intentions over results inevitably fosters a terrifying ideology of utopianism. On October 11, 2002, former President Jimmy Carter received his own Nobel Peace Prize, in large part for his role negotiating a treaty in which North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear weapons program. On October 16, just five days later, the United States announced that North Korea admitted to having a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
Many observers continue to wonder how anyone could have believed that the North Korean leaders could be trusted to honor their commitments. But the idea of peace was just too good to let go.
Social conscience, environmental awareness, world peace — these are all noble ideals. But the mere desire to make our planet a better place will not make it so. Indeed, lofty dreams untethered from reality typically produce much more harm than good.
And yet the dreamers continue to dream, unperturbed by either logic or history.
King Solomon ponders: What use is wealth in the hands of a fool when his heart has no desire to purchase wisdom?
The real challenge is to get the fool to recognize the self-destructive consequences of his folly. In literature, the Knight of Mirrors forces Don Quixote to see his own madness, but the tragic hero quickly returns to the comfort of his delusions once the looking glass is taken away.
So how do we speak truth to power, when power shows such persistent disdain for truth?
The Curse of Cowardice
“The implications for our country are so serious that I feel a responsibility to my constituents… as well as to my conscience, to voice my concerns forthrightly and publicly. And I can think of no more appropriate place to do that than on this great Senate floor.”
~Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, September 1998
It takes courage to stand up to our enemies, but even greater courage to stand up to our friends. And that’s precisely what is missing in modern political culture:
Courage.
In today’s world of groupthink, challenging the party line can be socially and professionally self-destructive. Friends and allies turn into assailants at the first whisper of dissent, at even the suggestion that there may be more than one side to any issue.
THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
In June of last year, Maya Dillard Smith, head of the Georgia ACLU, came under attack for suggesting that the topic of transgender bathrooms warranted deeper discussion. To her credit, Ms. Smith resigned her position rather than remain part of an organization so fervently opposed to the principle of civil discourse.
The previous November, Professor Erika Christakis (together with her husband) lost her job at Yale after sending an email suggesting that students should be treated as adults, then compounding her transgression by attempting to engage demonstrators in reasoned debate.
And for years, moderate Republicans, disparaged as RINOs – Republicans in Name Only – have been hunted and attacked as traitors to their party.
In this age of polarization and partisanship, it’s much safer to attack the other party, whether from the right or the left. Republicans and Democrats alike circle the wagons to defend those among them who hurl even the most outrageous verbal projectiles across the aisle. To stand alone as the voice of reason by suggesting temperance, moderation, or compromise means taking your life in your hands.
After last week’s horrific shooting spree, which targeted Republican lawmakers as they practiced for the annual congressional baseball game, the obligatory expressions of unity and civility poured forth from both Democrats and Republicans. But it didn’t last long. By week’s end the rhetoric was already ratcheting up again, with each side blaming the other for creating a cultural atmosphere of toxic hate and violence.
Both sides are right. Yet neither is willing to offer more than lip service toward solving the problem.
SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE
So who will be today’s Joe Lieberman? Who will speak out against entrenched power and political pressure to risk the slings and arrows of reprimand and reprisal? Who will show the courage to call out his or her own colleagues for their inflammatory excesses instead of taking the coward’s way out by indicting the other side while claiming the high moral ground from amidst the morass?
Where are the mavericks, the lone wolves, and the white knights who fear the sting of their own conscience more than lash of their own party, who will bet their own future on the long odds that their example might spur others to join them in building a coalition of responsible statesmen to right the ship of state?
When Senator Lieberman took to the senate floor two decades ago, he directed his censure not only against his president and the leader of his party, but against his personal friend. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t safe. But loyalty to truth and responsibility to country outweighed emotional comfort or potential fallout. Abuse of power could not be tolerated. Corruption of office could not be sanctioned. Silence was not an option:
“The president is a role model and, because of his prominence in the moral authority that emanates from his office, sets standards of behavior for the people he serves.
“His duty… is nothing less than the stewardship of our values. So no matter how much the president or others may wish to compartmentalize the different spheres of his life, the inescapable truth is that the president’s private conduct can and often does have profound public consequences.”
If so, how much more so his public demeanor.
King Solomon teaches: When a ruler indulges falsehood, all his ministers disdain the law.
Herein lies the awesome responsibility of all who wield power. Every elected official, every appointed judge, every journalist and news anchor and editorialist has a moral obligation to ensure that his words are accurate, that his positions are based in fact and reason, and that his language is respectful.
And it is the moral obligation of We The People to hold our leaders accountable, and to support those among them who demand accountability.
Yonason Goldson 