Democracies and Mutual Respect

This is true Okie. The tendency of some people to assign 'villain' and 'victim' to just about everything is glaringly obvious when it comes to corporate America or indeed even America itself. The unintended hypocrisy is stunning however.

America is condemned for consuming much more per capita than do third world countries while the contribution America makes to the world economy and relief of human suffering is ignored.

The division between rich and poor in America is condemned as evil while the far greater divisions between rich and poor in third world countries is ignored.

Large American corporation are condemned for exploitation, receiving corporate welfare, etc. etc. while the massive number of good jobs, making it possible for others to achieve the American dream, and the general promotion of the national and/or world welfare is ignored.

Corporate executives are condemned for their very lucrative compensation packages while entertainers and sports figures who earn comparable incomes with far less contribution to the economy or common good are ignored.

Of course there are bad apples now and then, and it is unfortunate that these make the headlines and appear to be the rule rather than the infrequent exceptions that they are. But these are what some will focus on while ignoring all the ethical business and commerce conducted that is the lifeblood of the American standard of living.

America's saintly halo is tarnished now and then as is that of all nations everywhere. But neither are we a devil to be scorned and held in contempt. There is much more to commend us than thereis to condemn us, and I think some mutual respect among all Americans and their institutions and corporations would go a long way to strengthening our democratic Republic and the quality of life for us all.

LittleK said -
I'm reading about American schools: past, present and what they should be in the future.

In Deborah Meier's "The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons For America From a Small School in Harlem", the author basis an ideology on the idea that ".... mutual respect is the bedrock condition of a healthy democracy...." What do you think? Is it?

It was an interesting and new (to me) way of seeing something that seems so obvious. What, then, can be said about our current political life here in the US, where there doesn't seem to be much respect among factions on either side of the political spectrum? Or among ordinary citizens.....?



I just read through the 25 pages fast.

In ostensible democracies there are constitutions with notations of citizens rights. I'll go further and say I think it is a democratic ideal, of mine anyway, if not of democracies across the board, to respect human rights.

As some have pointed out, this is not the same thing as respecting everybody else's ideas.

Speaking personally, as I tend to do, I think it is possible for people to change their minds, evolve their ideas, affect others' ideas over time and I idealize that a democracy's populace is full of people thinking, learning. For people to be fully informed and vote based on that we need people to communicate with each other, preferably in an atmosphere not filled with threats, lies, corruption, and so on. For people to be well informed and communicate to each other necessitates that they have education in learning the means of thinking, indeed critical thinking.

My own kindergarden through high school education did not give me that.
I learned to compose with words and compute with numbers and the belief system of my family's religion. I learned to highly respect authority and that to disobey my superiors was a sin. I was not allowed to sass, that is argue in any way, with my primary at home parent, my mother. My teachers certainly had their own biases re history, civics, and religion, and I'd be able to pick those out now if I had a tape recording of the classes, all these years later.

Not until I got to university years did I have any challenge at all to my own previous thinking or discussions of pros and cons of theories, much less theologies. To much extent my concept of what my real education has been is that I have gotten most understanding from my own later reading and thousands of talks with other people over many years.
Sometimes what has flipped a switch for me has been a simple comment by someone else that just sat around in my brain for a few days while I subsequently came to accept it as a possibility. I've rarely moved a mental muscle from having someone mock my view or myself, but I might have been tweaked by someone just laughing, not particularly meanly. Or simple words such as "do you really think so?"

But that's me. I guess there is a time and place for adhominem filled confrontation but I doubt its usefulness for modifying anyones views, any learning, any compromise, any respect of the "respect the idea" type.

I'm still learning about strictly held sharply maneuvered debates, part of my enjoyment of a2k on the rare occasions they happen.
I think it would be a good start to teach logic, critical thinking, debate, et al much earlier in school than I am guessing it is, if it is.

I pretty much agree - maybe not entirely - with EBrown's early distinction of when a teacher can elaborate his or her own opinion, relative to early schooling and university. However, I think of my own early school as near destructive and still resent my own lack of preparation for questioning concepts and therefore questioning expertise, questioning authority. I think that's plain dangerous, for a democracy and for a dictatorship.

osso said



I think that the primary and secondary educational systems give this lip service, but without any clear ideas on how best to go about it.

Perhaps the assumption is made that a liberal arts education will expose people to the necessity for such skills, but that doesn't mean that they will develop.

But then again, I have no background in teaching so can't really say what the teachers' aims are when they ask specific questions of their students.

The latest example, for me, of full bore ad hominem (lack of verbal respect, eh) confrontation was the recent election re italian prime minister. That became ad hominemity as tragicomedy, virtually all of it from one participant. Wonder how useful that was for Berlusconi's election totals.

And yet a well-placed barb with wit would be something I could stand to see more of in some of our US election years.

<Hi>

Osso, thanks for that rich reply.

I continue to think about this concept even though I have largely abandoned this thread. I should go back and review from where I left off.

I am researching a paper that is due at the end of this week. The paper is on international testing, and comparing 'us' to 'them'. The fact that the U.S. is falling behind is pop news, but analysis of the results of the tests show an interesting thing. Our students are lacking in critical thinking, problem solving and not so much in the memorization side of education. I'd love to see a wide spread curricula devoted to helping our young'ns develop their critical thinking skills. If PISA (program for international student assessment) gets us there, great (even though I sort of dislike standardized testing).

Hmmm, that last Hi was to Sumac, saying that I didn't know about current schooling in critical thinking or whatever the cover term is either.

Hi to both of you.

Okie is in favor of poverty! Okie decries paying just wages for honest labor! Okie favors limiting career opportunities! If you don't believe me, just look at what I pasted here, a quote from Okie!

Frankly, the reason most stuff is made in China is because they are willing to work for less money than most of us spoiled, coddled Americans that are living better than ever.

And if you think you can do it cheaper, its a free country, you are free to produce the products at a lower price if you think you can, and then you will become a rich fat cat too.

Okie -- That should read, " . . . if you think you can do it MORE CHEAPLY, IT'S a free country."

Sorry! Just could not resist!

WOW! This is from Foxfyre:

And if the big corporations are so evil with their health plans, matching 401Ks, stock options, profit sharing, etc., why is leftish America so gung ho to demand that small business emulate them

First of all, if you listen to the news at all -- I strongly suggest NPR and not your local television station with its stories about auto accidents and lost pets, you should know that GM is claiming to go under because of its retirement policies and health care benefits.

Second, the movement to make small business owners pay such benefits comes from Republican governors, like our own Mitt Romney, and conservative legislatures.

Foxfyre responds to Okie:

This is true Okie. The tendency of some people to assign 'villain' and 'victim' to just about everything is glaringly obvious when it comes to corporate America or indeed even America itself. The unintended hypocrisy is stunning however.

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE SEEN THEM BLAME THE LEFT?

If you put those you quote into context before you excoriate them, Plainoldme, you wouldn't make quite so many errors in your assessment of what they say.

I have several things to say.

First of all, Okie, it is nice to think of all those corporations drilling for oil and building battleships. But, if corporations of that ilk -- and has it occurred to you that a corporation that builds battleship builds for the government and therefore is the government -- had their way, the planet would have been gone long ago.

Second, Okie, you called my statement that we have no real choice in clothing simplistic or something similar and then you posted again, asking where I live. (Funny! It is listed under my icon!) When I was growing up in suburban Detroit, my girl friends and I began walking the THREE MILES to Michigan Avenue, Dearborn's main street, just after graduating from 8th grade. The street stretched for several miles the full length of this large suburb. We stayed in West Dearborn.

The street was lined with many small shops, each owned by a single owner or a married couple. These people did their own buying. Each displayed their merchandise as they saw fit.

The clothing was largely made in America.

Now, it wasn't the "spoiled workers" who made OshKosh take its manufacturing away from Wisconsin, stranding a group of highly skilled sewers who had no other work skills in that state, far from jobs they could do.

It was the corporation.

It wasn't the "spoiled workers" that shut Hathaway, the shirt company famous for its eye-patch wearing models and quality products that left skilled garment makers marooned in Maine without a chance to practice their craft.

It was the corporation.

Now, several years ago, the Boston Globe carried a story that we then had 30% more stores than we needed to effectively distribute goods and merchandise.

Since then, hundreds of stores -- or rather branches of stores -- opened in this area.

These giant retailers pass down to their branch managers instructions on how to dress those stores so that each has the signature look.

I miss the little shops of my teen years that let you know how the owner felt, what his/her artistic talent was, etc.

When I was in high school, a Michigan department store chain called Jacobson's opened what I believe was its third branch in Dearborn. I think there were five branches in all, at the time of the chain's greatest extension: its home store in Jackson, Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Birmingham and one more, maybe on the other side of the state, as well as one or two in Florida.

If I were to go to a national chain like Macy's or Ann Taylor or Chico's, I would find the same merchandise in every store.

What is the point of going from one Boston suburb to another -- either adjacent or fifty miles away -- to shop at another branch of Macy's? The same rotten merchandise, displayed in the same ho-hum way will be at both stores!

Now, Jacobson's had five Michigan stores, but, guess what? The merchandise was different! True, it was all top quality (think Barney's or Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue) but the sort of merchandise presented matched the community.

Ann Arbor is a college town, home to the University of Michigan, so the clothes were those favored by co-eds. Birmingham was a wealthy suburb and the clothes there were the sort preppie women -- the Babe Paley types -- wore. Dearborn had more of blue-collar air so the clothes there were conservative in the sense of "tame" or "classic."

Today, stores offer the same crap to everyone in every community.

Which is one of the reasons why I've returned to my sewing machine!

But, as two female Harvard profs and I talked about last night, buying good dress fabric today is next to impossible.

Why? Because corporations decided women should not be home sewing. Puh-leeeze do not respond that feminists made that decision, because the feminists believed women should please themselves.

My conservative husband hated the fact that I sewed for myself and our daughter.

BTW, who would these two profs and I purchase clothes from if we could?
Eileen Fisher, a small corporation whose clothes are made in AMerica (at least, the suit I bought at a thrift shop was) and who refuses to sell the same colorway to a more than one shop in any given market. Sounds like Jacobson's to me.

I wish I could extend an invitation to you all to watch me teach Romeo and Juliet to my foreign students.

Ossobucco -- When I took Drawing 1 at Wayne State University in the early 1970s, the professor said he could always tell which students graduated from Catholic schools because their imaginations seemed hemmed in; that they may have been good draftsmen but they were always lousy colorists.

To all -- I recently heard a wag comment on NCLB. S/he (?) said that in the name of ease of teaching, the Repubicans have decided to round pi to 3. That sums it up!

I've read through all of your compaints about what is available in the market, mostly blaming corporations for it. I've picked out the above statement, which illustrates your basic misunderstanding of the free market. It seems so simple that anybody should be able to see it, but apparently you do not. Corporations did not decide women should not be at home sewing. WOMEN DID. To put it another way, THE MARKET DID. Why is that so hard for you to figure out?

In the home sewing industry, it is quilting and machine embroidery that are driving the market in terms of selling sewing machines, which are now digital or computerized, and sewing accessories, notions, and material. I do not think the market could mainly rely on women making and patching garments for their families, as it once did. The companies producing material probably wish for the demand that there once was from women that sewed their own garments, but it is not up to them to determine it. It is the market.

You are the one lacking in understanding. If you think there is a free market, you're woefully naive. If you think consumers have any say, you're not living on the planet.

I wonder who you think is CHOOSING to buy all the stuff in the stores and on the internet and everywhere else?

Okie sure has a point. My definition of free market is that producers of products and services sell to whomever will buy it and buyers with the wherewithall can choose to buy whatever is for sale. In the final analysis, those who offer a product that buyers want will prosper. Those who do not will not. And the buyers will most prosper the seller that offers a product the buyers most want.

Pretty basic Foxfyre. If our society can't understand the simple principle of the free market, I would say its about over. And I thought plainoldme taught something in college? Sheesh, this is worse than I had ever imagined.