Interesting......

On my ride home from running with my blind buddy, I happened upon a radio talk show called, "Joshua's Highway."   (I think that was it.)  It identified itself as coming from "the black conservative perspective."

I was shocked to hear one of the hosts refer to Obama as "that Muslim imam."  As if to emphasize that, the other host added, "I can't disagree with that."  Wow!  I don't believe Obama is a Muslim, although he is quite familiar with the faith.  But, in a sense, so am I.  That doesn't make me a Muslim nor does knowing a lot about Hitler and his followers make me a Nazi.  Still, that this came from the hosts on this radio show was a shocker.

There was also, a bit later (It's a long ride from my blind buddy's, about an hour.), a pretty good debate with a caller about religion's place in the US, namely in the gov't.  Both "debaters" were knowledgeable about Scripture and history (to an extent), they were hampered, I think, by their ideological positions.  But it was worth listening, esp in comparison to the nasty music (supposedly "music," although I thought music is supposed to be mellifluous) that was being blared on other stations.  Noise, incongruent noise, is what it sounded like to me.

A while back, I heard a female talk show host, whose name I don't know, gave a scathing rendition (and evaluation?) of the music of the '90s, perhaps the rave scene.  She was hilarious in her mockery and mimicking of it.  And, I think it was right on the money.  I still find/found a lot of that incongruent noise to be depressive, if not outright depressing.  I continue to wonder if that and even some of the current music contributes to teen suicides.

The debate over the Orville Hubbard statue continues, too.  It has been removed from the site of the old city hall in Dearborn.  But its future home is up in the air:  the new city hall?  not likely.  the Dearborn Historical Museum?  much more likely.  buried somewhere?  who knows?  I'm not going to argue the merits of the Hubbard administration--he was mayor of the city for, what, 36 years?  He certainly did a lot of good things for the city, of course, aided by Ford Motor Company tax dollars,  He was also, just as certainly, a segregationist, if not a racist--both might well have reflected the white citizens' of Dearborn views at the time.

What this does is bring up an important reason why we study history.  Of course we study it to discover the good things.  Obama is wrong and shows an incredible ignorance of American history when he insists the United States isn't "exceptional."  There are many reasons why it is and I've shown how a number of times.  But we shouldn't gloss over the bad.  We should study that, too.  This important part of history forces us to confront our values, past and present.  We have to countenance the, shall we say, challenging aspects of American history.  That, like the Confederate battle flag controversy, is why the Hubbard statue issue is important.  It forces us to ask some uncomfortable questions.  For instance, if we are now going to bury Hubbard, what do we do with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among others?  They, after all, owned slaves.  There is a movement now to take Andrew Jackson's portrait off the $20 bill, in part due to his ownership of slave and in part because of his treatment of the Indians.  Are Washington and Jefferson next?  It's a debate worth having, at least until we eliminate all the flawed people until we get to Mother Teresa.