The Decline of Debate
Debate is, potentially, a great thing. It’s a chance to air your opinions and have others agree or disagree with you. It’s like a sword duel in a way, strike with stats, parry with logic, etc. It’s an intellectual wonderland, and in the end, if one can say it ever truly ends, maybe someone will change their view.
However, it seems that lately debate has become a series of personal attacks and hasty generalizations, which are both, ironically, logical fallacies. It has become constant attacks of: -you’re just ignorant-, -two kids died imitating a stunt on TV, so TV is evil-, and the like. Another common attack is –they manipulated the facts-. That last one is particularly amusing, as both sides tend to use it and, often, both sides are right to varying degrees. People manipulate facts, there’s a big surprise! How often, readers, have you yourself stretched the facts (truth) to get yourselves out of a jam? I’m not saying it’s right, but if every debater told the absolute truth and the exact facts, a lot of debates would be settled very quickly.
Although this may seem to just be an attack on how people debate (the process, not the people, mind you), it’s really more of a way to get others, like you readers, to really think about debates on TV, radio, the Internet, etc. and think to yourself “Is this logical or just a bunch of generalization and fancy-sounding words?” Maybe if enough people really consider how they debate and how others debate, we can return the activity to its rightful place as an intellectual and honorable event.
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The Presidential Bully pulpit has historically been a major weapon for the White House, regardless of which party is in power; however, Barack Obama is taking it to a new level next week. On the night of June 24, the media and government become one in a certain sense, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care.
Republican National Committee Chief of Staff, Ken McKay wrote, “Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party’s views to those of the President’s to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party’s opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.”
His letter to Obama went on to say the following.
“In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.”
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that worrying about the U.S. government’s finances “keeps me awake at night” and the country needed to start planning now to tackle soaring deficits.
And yet, we’re hearing that the national health care program could cost another $1.6 TRILLION. We simply can’t keep printing money and HAVING whatever it is we WANT regardless of how good or beneficial it looks because they end thereof is our demise. We may have already crossed that threshold for the US$. If a corporation can’t pay their bills, let them go bankrupt. Enough of the bailouts, enough of the bankruptcy-style politics (on both sides of the aisle).
Neither Obama nor Bush are or were able to do the right financial thing. It’s POLITICS! 
Despite the Supreme Court ruling banning creationism and intelligent design in science classrooms, evolution is still on trial in Texas and Louisiana.
I feel like it’s the Scopes monkey trial all over again. [Or at least the fictional account I read in Inherit the Wind.]
Both Texas and Louisiana are voting on changing the curriculum to allow for “weaknesses” in the theory of evolution to be introduced to students.
Many science teachers see this as a backdoor approach to integrating creationism or intelligent design (basically creationism 2.0) into science curriculum and potentially, science text books.
Since Texas makes up such a large percentage of the textbook market, publishers will likely tailor their national materials to suit their needs.
“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.” NYT article
Personally, I have to vote with the Supreme Court and science teachers on this one.
Science education is about teaching children to question, discover truths about the world and learn to prove those truths. It seems a disservice to students to introduce materials that have been overwhelmingly disproved by the scientific community.
Don’t get me wrong, America guarantees people the right to believe whatever they want to believe. People should be allowed to teach their children whatever they’d like. They are welcome to send their children to private schools that provide a curriculum that introduces religion into the classroom.
But public school just is not the place.
As a Catholic school alumna, I fully support finding the balance between religious beliefs and science education. Unlike many who think science kills faith, I think that evolution is a much more impressive interpretation of the Biblical “7 days” creation.
Regardless, this dated debate is taking valuable time and consideration from the major problems facing science education. Texas CFI exec. Dir. Clare Wullner represented it best. She was pictured in the New York Times wearing 19th century clothes.
The sign on her seat reads: “Evolution was a controversy . . . 150 years ago. It’s not anymore. Teach 21st Century Science.” Read more about the debate
The Presidential Bully pulpit has historically been a major weapon for the White House, regardless of which party is in power; however, Barack Obama is taking it to a new level next week. On the night of June 24, the media and government become one in a certain sense, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care.
Republican National Committee Chief of Staff, Ken McKay wrote, “Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party’s views to those of the President’s to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party’s opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.”
His letter to Obama went on to say the following.
“In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.”
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that worrying about the U.S. government’s finances “keeps me awake at night” and the country needed to start planning now to tackle soaring deficits.
And yet, we’re hearing that the national health care program could cost another $1.6 TRILLION. We simply can’t keep printing money and HAVING whatever it is we WANT regardless of how good or beneficial it looks because they end thereof is our demise. We may have already crossed that threshold for the US$. If a corporation can’t pay their bills, let them go bankrupt. Enough of the bailouts, enough of the bankruptcy-style politics (on both sides of the aisle).
Neither Obama nor Bush are or were able to do the right financial thing. It’s POLITICS!
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