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Here
is a warning to those who have faith in the State’s colleges, and that includes
the University of Florida, Florida State University, Florida A&M, UCF, FIU,
FAU, USF as well as the others, including community colleges.
 |
| Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men? (Words made famous by Lamont Cranston ... the 'Shadow.') |
The actions of the State legislature and the governor in changing the mission of New College in Sarasota from its present highly rated and regarded ‘open’ form to a right-wing conservative bastion patterned after religion-based Hillsdale University in Michigan should move Floridians to seek higher education elsewhere. It is a harbinger of things to come. This evil is already metastasizing to other State schools with attacks on diversity and tenure by the governor who is no friend of academic freedom.
One does not have to be an enthusiastic supporter of ‘diversity, inclusion and equity’ in higher education, goals often touted by some progressives, to recognize an attack on academic freedom when it is happening before their eyes. Only a change in the heavily gerrymandered State legislature will stop it, and that is just not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
It is absolutely essential for otherwise uninformed Floridians to read a local newspaper, even a very inexpensive online version, to keep up with the educational tragedy currently going on. Either the Palm Beach Post or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel fill this need. Open your eyes. Do what you can to stop it. You have the opportunity on every Election Day.
In seeking higher education, young Floridians would be well served to head northward on I-95 or I-75, if they can afford to do so or can qualify for scholarship aid elsewhere in States where democracy still lives.
This posting
would be incomplete without mentioning the several billion dollar increase in
‘vouchers’ for use in private and religious schools, and home schooling, just passed
by the Florida Legislature at the expense of funds intended for public
schools. These less regulated
educational tracks are favored by those who consider public schools to be ‘socialist’
or ‘godless,’ and are glad to see tax-supported resources being taken away from
them.
Because
they are usually staffed by less experienced and less qualified teachers (including
homeschooling where a distant online ‘teacher’
is selected by an untrained parent), those receiving an education that way are
short-changed in comparison with those in public schools. With the exception of those attending some
long-established Catholic schools, they receive an inferior education. As with the governor’s and the legislature’s
attacks on higher education, the public must fight these voucher programs by
supporting candidates who oppose them in all elections, especially to fill
seats on school boards.
And needless to say, when the Governor isn't attacking academic freedom or supporting alternatives to public schools at their expense, he's busy banning books and condemning LGBTQ people. It is a very sad commentary on Florida's voters that they elected him twice to the governor's chair. (A recent commentator likened present-day Florida to 1930’s Germany but with theme parks.)
It is no surprise that DeSantis takes these positions in what amounts to a 'cultural war.' After all, during his three terms in Congress, he was one of the founders of the right-wing extremist Freedom Caucus. He is not merely catering to the far right, as the defeated former president shamelessly did for their votes. He is one of them.
To defeat DeSantis and his ilk, they must not be fought on the battlefield they have chosen: cultural issues. They must be challenged on issues that are truly meaningful for all Americans, issues like Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and creating a thriving economy, which translates to jobs.
JL
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Down Deep They Know
A question: Despite the words and actions of well-paid lawyers doing their job of trying to enable their client to avoid indictment and prosecution for supposed crimes, is there anyone out there, when pressed to bet their lives on what they honestly believe way down deep in their souls, who is not convinced that the defeated former president:
(1) did indeed ask the Georgia Secretary of
State to break the law by changing voting results,
(2) did intentionally inspire the January 6
insurrectionists to march on the Capitol,
(3) did pay hush money to a stripper so that
she would not remember having an affair with him, and via loyal subordinates,
(4) did illegally overestimate or
underestimate his worth and that of his businesses, as necessary, in order to
secure financing or reduce taxes?
C’mon! His lawyer served prison time and his business’ CFO is presently doing so at Riker's Island for their involvement in his doing the last two of these things! When asked to bet their lives on their answers, is there anyone out there who truly believes, in their heart of hearts, otherwise?
If there are, and unfortunately there are, they are well described in the final two stanzas of Sir Walter Scott’s famous excerpt from ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel.’ It goes like this:
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell.
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.
JL
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More on Why Police Officers Act the
Way They Do
Adding to my comments in this blog’s
last posting concerning police officers taking overly aggressive actions to
dominate those with whom they were interacting in performing their duties of preserving the peace and preventing crime (see
the New Yorker article I quoted) is the news that Florida is considering
joining the 26 States where people would be allowed to carry concealed loaded
guns anywhere without permits.
This would add to the worries of police officers approaching anyone
about anything, including double parking or jaywalking, since the number of
armed individuals out there would be increased.
They would never know, until it might be too late, who might pull out a
weapon in response to them. It is bad
enough now, but this would make it worse.
It is more than shameful that the Florida Sheriffs
Association endorses such legislation since it increases risks for police officers
and gives them more reason to take totally unwarranted, aggressive, domineering actions
with citizens, the kind of actions which killed George Floyd and Tyre Nichols. The likelihood of the person the officer approaches being armed would be increased significantly. That is something we do not need. Sheriffs should not take political stands.
Go back to the prior blog and find out why police officers
act in such a malignant way! Or JUST CLICK RIGHT HERE to read the New Yorker
article. No one, including its author, is defending police officers who commit murders, but it provides some insight into their minds.
If your Sheriff is for such legislation, putting more guns on
the streets, work to get rid of him or her.
JL
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The Great Accomplishment of Shakespeare
The blog posting before this one
touched upon the Shakespearean theatre.
While I was never an English major, I do have on my bookshelf the Folger
editions, including loads of explanatory notes, of 22 of the 35 plays written
by William Shakespeare. I also have a practically
new copy of the massive Riverside Shakespeare, similarly annotated, that
contains every word the Bard ever wrote, that I picked up years ago for $10 at
a street fair. So while I am not a
Shakespeare scholar, I am what might be called a follower or fan of the Bard,
which is more than most folks can claim to be.
I like books and prefer to read them
printed on paper and not through the electronic devices which are available
today. I do not object to trees being
chopped down to make the paper on which the books I enjoy are printed. The same goes for reading a daily newspaper.
New books are very pricy, but used
ones, including paperbacks, can be purchased online at very reasonable prices.
That is where I get the books I read, in addition to those I charge out of the
local public library.
But getting back to Shakespeare, a
friend recently suggested that I read Harold Bloom’s ‘Shakespeare, the
Invention of the Human,’ published in 1998.
Bloom, an eminent critic of this and the last century and a leading Shakespearean
scholar, died four years ago.
So, I bought the book for $6.15 (As
an Amazon ‘Prime’ member, delivery was free. Back in 1998, this 745-page
paperback was priced at $18 according to the cover.) The copy I bought had been excessed from the
Larchmont, NY, Public Library sometime after 2006. A ‘due date’ sticker on the
back page indicated that it had only been charged out twice in 2004 and once in
2006, so it was in practically pristine condition.
Bloom is not easy reading. A lot of it what he wrote flew over my head. Way
over it. But enough of it broke through
and that was enough! His introductory
material that referenced the thoughts of other critics presupposed the reader having some
familiarity with Shakespearean criticism over the years and literary criticism in general. What got to me was that while some of it was
intended for those with Ph.D.s in English Literature, the sense of most, but
not all, of what he wrote, especially when he got to his discussion of each of
Shakespeare’s 35 plays, could be understood by the layman.
 |
| Wm. S. |
JL
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