Quiz Answers
At the bottom of this posting you’ll see the
answers to Quiz # 3 which appeared in the last posting, in which we asked you
to name the two States and their capital cities,
other than Hawaii, Alaska and California, whose shores are washed by the
Pacific Ocean. (If you haven’t
made your guesses, try now before you look.)
JL
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Whittling Away at Democracy
I read somewhere recently about how democracy
was whittled away in Germany during the 1930’s.
Not everyone realized what was happening. A Holocaust survivor once told me that when
his family’s store was broken into and its windows smashed on Kristallnacht,
his father actually called the police for help.
First some slight remarks by bigoted shopkeepers, then some supposed vandalism, then some changes in school curriculums, then some real estate regulations suggesting certain people live elsewhere and finally … the gas chambers.
Are similar forces of autocracy slowly whittling away at American
democracy? Minor actions, bearable in
isolation and not all at the same time, when taken cumulatively add up to doing
away with democracy. (Examples: gerrymandering,
making voting more difficult supposedly to avoid ‘fraud,’ anti-abortion laws, book
and curriculum censorship in schools, politically appointed judges, tougher
immigration laws, looser gun controls, private militias, confusing individual rights with public
health requirements, misinterpreting or ignoring American history, excessive
use of ‘States’ rights’ to justify actions, reduced financial, business, and
environmental regulation, etc., etc., etc.) By themselves just little nibbles, but what
does it all add up to?
JL
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Lotsa Problems Confronting Us
It's good to see that the House Select
Committee’s pressure on the January 6 insurrectionists and those who instigated
their action is still strong and that various prosecutors and the FBI are
involved, along with growing dissent within the Republican Party, as reported on
TV and in the newspapers.
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| Putin |
A question:
How much of this should the Democrats put on the back burner,
concentrating energy and resources on maintaining control of Congress on
November 8, nine months from now?
JL
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Another Book to Ban?
Saw a bit on TV last night where the newsman described Lot's daughters' incestuous relationship with their father and asked a nice lady if a book including that story should be allowed in public schools. "Absolutely not," she replied. The newsguy then pointed out that the story is in the Bible (Genesis 19:30-35). She gasped, "I don't believe that." Republicans know how to reach people like that. Democrats do not. They vote.
JL
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Quiz #3 Answers:
Oregon, the capital of which is Salem and Washington, the capital of
which is Olympia.
JL
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