The Honor of Egypt

Like millions I have been intently watching the situation in Egypt and that anxiety brewed over into desperation today as the all too familiar government repression began today. In what seems like a textbook repeat of the Green Revolution in Iran it appears as if the government is going to use sympathetic civilian actors (or plain clothed government agents to handle the dirty work).

I suppose that for a brief moment on Monday or Tuesday it appeared as if a non-violent transfer of power was possible. I wanted to believe that the proud Egyptian people has voted with their bodies and encouraged Mubarek to give up control. As always those thoughts seem idealistic and naive just a few hours after I was thinking them.

One has to wonder what the end game is here. The international community has lost whatever long standing loyalty for Mubarek. A loyalty that perhaps he deserves for so long standing as a pro western voice against extremism. Certainly today's events will convince the world that the government of Egypt is the fraud that Egyptians have been protesting all week.

The Spring Classics

From the 2nd to last week in March to the last weekend in April is a special time of year. Sure, American fans are supposed to flock exclusively to the Tour in July. In 1988 I stumbled upon a CBS broadcast of Paris-Roubaix and I was captivated. The classics are one day races staring with Milan San Remo in Italy and ending this weekend with Liege Bastogne Liege in Belgium. These are not races for the weak, usually the strongest win and the conditions the races are held under, cold rain in Belgium, cobblestone climbs in Flanders and dirt roads in Northern France all create some of the best bike racing in the world. Here's a look at this year's Paris Roubaix.

Justice Jackson spinning in his grave

Read a curious story in today's Washington Post about a suburban Washington DC school that recently used school resource police officers to escort a student out of a classroom for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. Clearly this teacher has never heard of the Pledge of Allegiance cases of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Justice Jackson wrote the majority opinion in the West Virginia case that ruled schools could not mandate that students said the pledge. The most compelling argument Jackson makes is as follows

The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

I have been teaching for eight years and only once have I had a student consistently refuse to say the pledge. The year was 2004/05 and when I asked her privately why she chose not to stand for the pledge she told me that it was her silent dissent against the Iraq war, which at the time was spiraling out of control. Her peers never directly challenged her on her beliefs or actions.

The teacher in question should be forced to apologize to the student and be made to write the highlighted sentence from the Jackson opinion 100 times on the dry erase board.

We Want America Back!

I dare you to listen to the spoken word segment in the middle of this stirring song and not be moved to immediately start homeschooling your children.

Ron Paul Revolution alive and well!

Good news! I returned home from a blue bird skiing day to find out that the straw poll at the CPAC conference has chosen Ron Paul as their 2012 presidential candidate of choice. Fergus County was a win for Ron Paul in the 2008 GOP caucus.

I feared that the days where I could spend twenty minutes listening to a Paul supporter speak blissfully of the return of “Constitutional Government” were over. The look of confusion when I tell them Social Security, Medicaid, compulsory public education, and a myriad of other services don’t quite line up a strict interpretation of Article I Section 8 is one of my favorite joys. I just hope the Seventy Four year old Paul makes it to 2012.