Facts about opinions

"The public is often inadequately represented  

 or wholly unrepresented. That presents a  

condition of great unfairness to the  

public. As a result, many bills pass  

 in our legislatures which would  

not have become law if the  

public interest had been  

fairly represented. . . ."  

1911.  Still relevant,  

 still true.  

Louis Brandeis was nominated to the Supreme Court. The nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as Justice William O. Douglas wrote ...

"Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible. . . ."

On June 1, 1916 he was confirmed and became one of the most influential figures ever to serve on the high court. His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the "greatest defenses" of freedom of speech and the right to privacy ever written by a member of the Supreme Court.

Opinions are not facts.

Opinions are judgements and evaluations, often with broad implications. Their best use is in discussion where we process information and make decisions. Opinions are useful when they are carefully formed from verified facts and according to principles. Today's public discourse includes little such thoughtful discussion.

If we're going to learn and improve ourselves and our world, we'll want to listen to opinions, consider facts, and understand.

We learn little from folks who agree with us.  We learn most from those resources who have information we haven't heard or considered. Shutting the door on such opportunity looks counterproductive, if you ask me.  

• What are the chances you and your teenager are going to come to the same conclusions?
• What are the chances your Senator is going to agree with you on major issues?
• What's the likelihood your congregation will know how to deal with the real world?
• What might a sixty-year-old and a twenty-year-old have in common?

How might we maneuver our way through such difficulties?  Name-calling and personal attacks won't help much, will they.  Nor will yelling, accusation, and angry confrontation.

Such questions remind us that interpersonal and social issues require more than one-sentence answers, more than simplistic declarations from quickly formed opinions. We'll want to know more, and we'll perhaps want to be a little less rigid in our own thinking.  Maybe a lot.  :)

What might a sixty-year-old Christian and a twenty-year-old Muslim have in common?  You'd be surprised.  A little humorous journey.

Apples and Oranges

In 1970, a kid could go to college and pay for it with a part-time job.  Averaging perhaps 15 hours a week at minimum wage would pay the costs.  They'd have to work maybe 800 hours over the year to cover average tuition and fees. They could do that in a summer. 

Today, a kid graduates from high school and faces a price tag of $13,200 per year for college.  That's the average for state run institutions.  At minimum wage, that's 35+ hours per week for the year, and it doesn't include food and lodging.  They've got a choice at that point.  They can join the workforce and plan on low wages for a lifetime, or they can get the money from somewhere else.  Families are less able to fund advanced education than they were in the 70's.  Wages haven't increased at all for the middle class, but college costs are up 600%+.  And, student loans are great business for the lenders.

In 2010, student loan debt surpassed all credit card debt, and by 2011 student debt exceeded auto loans. 

By 2014, U.S. student loan debt had risen above $1.2 trillion, with over 7 million debtors in default.

Anthropologist David Graeber, "If there’s a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves?"  Beyond that burden on recent graduates, the impact is worse on those who don't complete their degree.  With similar indebtedness and less earning potential, they'll spend years in bondage, perhaps decades.

It's apples and oranges, and it's not the kids' fault.  There is no similarity between 1970 and today.  You've got to have advanced education if you want to make a reasonable income. We're crippling our young people by the choices they have to make.  Economic inequality and stifling debt, it's what we've done to them.  

Parents, plan accordingly.  And aggressively.

And yes, it is time for change.

For lower income households, the increase is higher.

This is one of several key elements of modern economic inequality, persistent poverty, and the widening GAP between the elite and everyone else.  So did college costs go up because loans became available?  States reduced their funding for education as the students picked up the cost  So why would we reduce the funding for advanced education?  Are there conflicting priorities?

Honor, Courage

It is an honor to respect the flag of the country I've served and which has been a blessing to me since birth.

... the republic, for which it stands, ... 

The country today is far from perfect, however, and there are troubling issues of inequality and discrimination that provoke a response in a citizen of conscience.  I can understand an individual taking the opportunity to express their pointed concern and disapproval.

I remember the '68 Olympics when gold medalist Tommie Smith raised a black-gloved fist. He was widely criticised as a Black Power advocate, but he explained afterwards that it was a 'human rights salute'. He was accompanied on the podium by bronze medalist John Carlos who also raised a black-gloved fist, and by Australian silver medalist Peter Norman. Smith and Carlos were shoeless and in black socks representing black poverty.  All three wore Olympic Project for Human Rights badges on their jackets. All were ostracized; Smith and Carlos were expelled from the games.  They and their families received death threats. Norman was similarly treated in Australia. All were later honored multiple times for their courage. There are statues, movies, and music in their honor.

Rather than presuming a lack of patriotism or commission of some sacrilege, I'm inclined to see such behavior in light of its provocation. We are currently a polarized and in many ways a divided nation. Perhaps we'd be better served if we embraced the protesters and listened to their heart concerns rather than vilifying them (or pepper spraying them like we did the 'occupy' participants or shooting them like we did to the Vietnam war objectors at Kent State; four killed, nine wounded).  

Kaepernick: "The message is that we have a lot of issues in this country that we need to deal with," he said. "We have a lot of people that are oppressed, we have a lot of people that aren't treated equally ... there are a lot of issues that need to be talked about, need to be brought to life, and we need to fix those things."

Little of the emotional vitriol flung back in response seems to contain any understanding of Kaepernick's concerns.  Much of it reveals in the critics the very problem which he was doing his best to address.

Profoundly Christian

The greatest power on earth, a parent's love for their child, a warrior's love
 for his brother, or the love of one for another in time of need ...
 'Love' has perhaps been devalued over the years by

those who claim that heart but live without a

 changed life.  It should make a difference,

should it not?  To love as it was first

intended is a life changer

and costly.

... so loved the world ...  not the denomination,

not the race, not the country or culture,
 but all of humanity, apparently.
Should we also?

The name 'Christian' has perhaps been devalued over the years by those who claim the credential but continue living unchanged.  It should make a difference, should it not?

The one who is profoundly Christian will be unlike others. The one who is profoundly Christian will be ... the message, the light that shines. And changed.

The one who is profoundly Christian will love extravagantly, even at great personal cost.

The one who is profoundly Christian will live for a purpose, and a great one at that.  To serve as the turning point for another's life, to be help in a time of need, could there be a greater goal?  That which is right and just and good, the power of mercy and grace, that's what flows in their veins.

Wealth and privilege don't matter; class and position are valueless.  Religiosity is perhaps unhelpful; as are legalism, superstition, and wishful thinking.  At the other extreme, faith and hope, justice and mercy, these are life changers, even world changers, and are the very stones upon which eternity is built.

Knowing the Author of it all, to perhaps catch a glimpse of His greater reality is worth all our labor and every step in our journey. Knowing Him is our strength.  Of such is the substance of profound Christianity.  That is the goal and worth the fight.


Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Do we choose by truth or preference?

It hadn't occurred to me that you could come to a wrong conclusion from right information. It was a surprise.

Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy at New York University, "I want atheism to be true. And I’m made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t that I don’t believe in God and naturally hope that I’m right in my beliefs, it’s that I hope there is no God. I don’t want there to be a God. I don’t want the universe to be like that."1    
He is among the few who speak objectively about the force of preference against truth.

What we want will affect what we believe, what we admit is truth, and the impact of our lives.  

(NC-17) What if an unborn child is in fact a child?  Do we believe what we prefer, or do we acknowledge truth?  Is our position based on science or politics, truth or preference?

Pascal warned us, "Truth is so obscured nowadays, and lies so well established that unless we love the truth, we shall never recognize it."  Is he right?  When is the last time truth forced us to change our personal behavior?  

What about that unborn child?  Is there a difference in the child between the day after being born and the day before?  A week before?   Care to look at a court review or perhaps a larger context.  What are the preference issues and what are the truth components?  (ref)(ref)(ref)(ref)  Do we prefer the unborn child be disposable?  Can we see the difference between right and rights?  And responsibilities?

There are medical issues we can now see before birth.  The discussion is difficult and emotionally charged, and no one trusts regulation to provide the right answer.  It's all hard to face, perhaps in part because the outcome may impose an inconvenient burden on us individually and collectively.  

Can we choose truth even when there's a price tag?  And what about our government's role?

 ¹ Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130, emphasis added. Interestingly, Nagel has recently released a book in which he concedes to some degree the credibility of the evidence for a non-material cause of the universe. See Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Neither the first nor the last to separate preference from truth, he offers a look at the dilemma of conscience, morality, honesty, and self-choices. Aldous Huxley once explained, "I wanted to believe the Darwinian idea. I chose to believe it not because I think there was enormous evidence for it, nor because I believed it had the full authority to give interpretation to my origins, but I chose to believe it because it delivered me from trying to find meaning...."

Over Time: the Crowd

Things have changed, in part of course, because we've crowded together in the cities and surrounding areas.  There were just a few of us in the early days, comparatively speaking, and we had plenty of room to spread out and live.

We've grown dramatically in number; what impact might that have?  Our population has tripled in the last century with the majority of the increase occurring in established urban areas.  More than half of the world is now urban.

World Health Organization: The urban population in 2014 accounted for 54% of the total global population, up from 34% in 1960, and 14% in 1900. 

Increased population and density have changed our culture.

We began as rugged, independent ruralists who could build anything, fix anything, and make do with what we had. Since the beginning of industry, we've become a culture of consumerist/ specialists.  Everything we do takes hundreds of skills spread across hundreds of people.  Or thousands.  From getting food on the table via stores and transport to building airplanes via dozens of suppliers and producers and engineering organizations, we're extraordinarily complex and interconnected.  Most of us couldn't last a month on our own in the wild, of course.  And we have so much stuff, but we keep buying more.

We were a nation of younger folks not too long ago.  We've changed.  Now there are so many older people in the middle of everything.  :)

There's a benefit, perhaps.  The 50 year+ folks are stunningly productive.  They can do in a day what the 30-somethings will struggle with for a week.

It's worth seeing the things that have changed with some clarity.  Old ideas may not fit, old solutions may not work, and the way forward will not be like the past.  Everyone is scrambling to keep up. Schools, governments, churches, and families are pressed hard to cope reasonably with the high-speed changes that sweep us all along like a flood.

We do get to choose our own goals, however.  Our purpose can be noble despite the most tumultuous of times.