GOP, Lawsuits

A column a couple days in the go lambasted the Republican Party, namely its leadership, for deserting its values.  Indeed it has.  Founded in 1854 as the party seeking to eliminate slavery, if at first only in the territories, the Republicans counted in its membership A. Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.  Douglass even stressed, "I am a Republican, a black, dyed-in-the-wool Republican."  He added, "I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress."

Today's Republicans seem to shoot themselves in the foot, from that Missouri Congressman Todd Akin to the extremely mediocre candidates they've dished up to us in the past couple of decades.  In fear of appearing to live up to the Democrats' charges of "mean-spiritedness," "greed," etc., the Republicans have taken to running away from their traditional values of "liberty and progress." 

In fact, most people today likely don't identify the Republican Party this way.  And, that's fully understandable.  When was the last time it stood up for its founding principles?  Republican leaders seem to have one thing on their minds--elections.  And, if perchance they are winners, they don't do anything with their victories or, rather, they don't do anything related to their founding principles.  and the leadership strongarms or blackballs those like Eric Cantor, Rand Paul, and others, those who are far closer to what Republicans once stood for than any of the "mainstream" party leaders.

And, they have left me as a man without a party.  As a matter of fact, I have felt for almost 30 years that neither party represents my interests or values, that neither one gets it right.

It was interesting to see this AM a letter-to-the-editor concerning the above column.  I think the letter writer was trying to criticize the columnist.  But, he got it all wrong.  His supposed criticisms actually made her point.  What he was saying, thinking he was criticizing the columnist, was not particularly thoughtful.  It reminded me of the columnist E.J. Dionne.  If this letter writer is typical of Democratic Party thinking, well, it's lacking.  If Dionne is what the liberals hold up as thoughtful, well, he's not.

A former student e-mailed me an article that told of a Lehigh University student who is suing the school because she received a C+ in a course.  I think the amount sought is well over $1 million in damages, damages stemming from her inability to get where she wanted to be in her career choice.  What have we come to??????  Why isn't this one laughed out of court?  No, wait.  I think I'll watch this with some interest.  Let's see, at Amherst I had quite a few Cs and C+s (I wonder if B-s would also count as being damaging?).  And when I returned to Michigan, I applied to well over three dozen different school districts.  In fact, I was only interviewed twice--with an Amherst degree, work experience, organization leadership, and athletic experience and leadership.  So, the only reasonable answer to why I didn't get any interviews is my C and C+ grades.  I was competing against others who all got As and Bs at their schools.  (Toss in the fact that lamebrained so-called "educators" in Michigan never heard of Amherst College.)  And, since this was more than 40 years ago, the compounding of the losses over that span....  Oh, I could make billions in a lawsuit!  Yes, I'm being facetious (well, mostly).  I still, to this day and every day, thank heaven for my Amherst education and overall experience.  I am a very, very lucky man.

I was informed today that there is an incipient movement afoot to pull Amherst College out of the NCAA.  The thought is that the NCAA is antithetic to the values and standards of college education and that Amherst is a leader (or at least purports to be one).  If Amherst relishes its role as one of the very best institutions of higher learning in the US, then it has a responsibility.  I don't know how far this is going--likely nowhere--but I like the thought.  The NCAA has become a caricature of the folly of "student-athlete."  (See my previous post about "student-athletes" as I remember them.)  Eric Hoffer once wrote, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."  The NCAA, once begun with noble intentions, seems to have lost that vision and is in existence only to keep that existence.  I hope it can prove me wrong.