Getting Over the Hump

Garrison Keillor is fond of pointing out that, when you get to the end of the sidewalk at an intersection, sometimes there is a little ramp there, and sometimes there isn't. If you're walking with a rolling suitcase, shopping cart, or if you are in a wheelchair, it's much better for you if there is a ramp. And, since those ramps don't inconvenience anyone, why shouldn't we put them everywhere, so that people in wheelchairs don't have to deal with the hassle of trying to get over a bump?

Keillor's point, though, is that we have to pay for this. We have to pay for the sidewalk, and we have to pay to make the sidewalk better, and we have to pay for other people to pour the concrete to make the sidewalk better. We also have to pay people to sit in boring meetings and decide which contractor they're going to pay to pour that concrete.

Now, sometimes the contractor who pours the concrete does a terrible job, perhaps because he's the unqualified nephew of a city councilman. Sometimes he's not the nephew, but he bribes the city council or gets his hands on photographs of the city council in flagrante delicto with livestock. Sometimes, even when everybody behaves ethically, the ramp still doesn't work out, because of bad weather, or vandalism, or this that and the other thing.

This frustrates some people to no end. In their frustration, they begin to question whether we ought to build the ramps at all. Maybe, they think, we don't even need sidewalks! This line of thinking gets very exciting. And it's probably healthy; societies should always be wiling to reevaluate their priorities.

But we've got to remember that, even though we're mad at the city council for taking bribes and hiring its nephews, the original idea is not a bad one. It's good to have ramps for people in wheelchairs. It's a polite, decent, human thing to do. And it's not the fault of the people in wheelchairs that the people in charge of pouring the concrete turned out to be incompetent or corrupt.

Another important thing to remember is that, as Molly Ivins says, "The Government Is Us." Those city councimen who tooks bribes were not imported from Mars. We elected them, and if they're doing a bad job building ramps, the buck really does have to stop with us. It is difficult to get rid of them, but it is our job, as citizens, to do it. Complaining about how corrupt they are feels nice, but does nothing for the guy in the wheelchair who just wants to get to his girlfriend's house. You throw the bums out using your hands, not your mouth.

Finally, some people, who are frustrated to the point of prolapse, wonder what it would be like to just get rid of the city council altogether. The answer is it would be like Somalia. So there you go.

Social Distortion

In the old days no one worried about whether they had enough money for retirement. This is because, in the old days, no one ever really retired. You kept hunting woolly mammoths until you couldn't run after them any more, and then you probably ended up getting left behind when you couldn't walk any more. Sure, maybe your clan appreciated your wisdom about which fruits and berries were poisonous, or your knowledge of the movement of the herds, but come on, it's not like they had the resources to take care of you when you were too doddering even to feed yourself. They were all trying to stay alive long enough to have babies. Such was life.

Not that most people lived long enough to become doddering. You were pretty likely to end up tiger food before you even got a grey hair, in those days. But, over the centuries, we've worked hard with our opposable thumbs to create a civilization that keeps us alive longer, often waaaaay into the doddering phase. This progression has been good, overall, despite the occasional unfortunate side effect of thermonuclear war or the bubonic plague. But it's left us with all these old people, plus the equally unfortunate modernity side effect known as compassion. The law of the jungle got replaced a long time ago.

So the old system was eventually replaced by old people moving in with their children, which worked okay. But if the old people didn't have any children, or if their children were too poor or jerks, the old people became charity cases. During the Great Depression, when many, many people were too poor even to feed themselves, let alone a grandparent, Franklin Roosevelt and his ilk came up with the idea of Social Security. Old people now got money straight from the government, without having to worry if little Tommy would grow up to have a good enough job to feed them.

As it turned out, giving old people regular monthly checks was a very popular thing to do. It didn't matter if you were rich or poor in your working life; it didn't matter if you started a family or not. It didn't even matter, financially, if your kids turned out to be jerks who wouldn't support you. No matter what, the money was going to be there.

This is where we stand today.

Now, we're not talking about a lot of money per person. However, thanks to advances in medicine, people are living longer these days. This means that more and more people are drawing money for longer and longer. Social Security is the biggest part of the budget there is.

This causes problems, because the way we can afford to send old people checks in the mail is by taxing the wages of people who are currently in the workforce. And taxes are just as unpopular as regular monthly checks in the mail are popular.

The political and economic thinker Michael Lind has suggested, in a version of an idea that has many followers these days, that we change this system; instead of having the current workforce subsidize the current retirees, everyone should subsidize him or herself. This idea has an undeniable appeal; wouldn't you rather pay your own way than let someone else pay for you? Wouldn't you rather pay for yourself than someone else? It seems fairer, and would have the added benefit of making sure the system never runs out of money, because, if everyone is paying for themself, it won't matter if the population shrinks or grows over the generations. Sure, some people are never able to work, but the vast majority of people have jobs; the few who don't could be taken care of in other ways.

Unfortunately, the idea on the table currently is "privatization" or "personal accounts" or whatever. What happened is this: the President and the people he works with heard this idea of making everyone pay their own way and thought, Great! Let's do it! And while, we're at it, why not have private investment firms administer the funds, too? That way, we'll get the government out of the pension business.

But, as it turned out, the idea of every worker paying his or her own way sort of got pushed aside by the idea that private investment firms should administer the accounts. No one seems to know exactly how this happened, but this is all we've got left. The current workforce will continue to subsidize the current retirees. And, if the President gets his way, we'll have these extra funds administered by private investment firms. Who of course will charge a reasonable fee.

The President's idea hasn't turned out to be all that popular. Why? Well, old people can be impatient. They like direct talk. The President came over to their house, jack in hand, and said, Hey, your tire's flat. They said, Oh, thanks, I didn't notice. Could you fix that for me? I'll pay you. The President says, Wait, I've got a better idea. Wouldn't you like to buy some new hubcaps? The old people say, Huh? You just said my tire's flat, now you want to talk about hubcaps? But the President just keeps smiling and talking about hubcaps.

Is it any wonder that so many people wonder if their tire is really flat at all?

The Cost of Education

All over the country, state legislators are considering bills that would allow students in universities to sue their professors. The latest such bill was introduced in the Florida legislature by Rep. Dennis Baxley, who says that professors should be teaching alternative academic theories in the classroom and should not use their profession as a "platform" to encourage only one viewpoint. The bill gives students who feel they are subject to ridicule in the classroom because of their opinions standing to sue their universities in court.

As the blogger called Billmon has pointed out, this is the sort of thing that Mao encouraged during the cultural revolution; revolutionary Chinese student zealots got to "criticize" their teachers. Sometimes the criticism was so constructive that the professors wound up in work camps, or dead.

I doubt that sort of thing will happen here. All that will happen if the law passes is professors will get called into meetings with the dean, who will tell them to be extra careful. Some teachers will dutifully tone down their rhetoric; others will be rebels and get called in to multiple meetings with the dean. This second group might get denied tenure or, in a few cases, fired. But that will be it.

So it's not going to be so bad. And, in the end, the Supreme Court will probably rule these laws unconstituional, so the laws won't be with us forever, either.

However, some damage will be done. A few excellent classroom debates will fail to develop. Some education that could have taken place will not take place. A few people who would have been inspired will not be inspired. Some essays that would have been interesting will turn out boring instead. And one or two truly brilliant ideas will simply not occur.

I have always felt sympathy for the few conservative students who argue with liberal professors. Young people are passionate enough about their ideas, but lack the self-confidence and experience to debate a professor. The liberal professor, a seasoned student of thoughtful discourse, always ends up making the conservative student look like a hothead. Many professors do allow themselves to become bullies, to the point of foreclosing meaningful classroom debate; professors sometimes criticize the student's debate technique without addressing their argument. The professor thereby looks like they've got the better idea, when really they're only better at talking.

But allowing students to sue their schools for this sort of thing is a terrible idea. One thing the conservative legislators pushing these bills haven't thought out is that the sword will cut both ways; there are enough conservative professors out there that liberal students could do the same thing. Would these legislators really want liberal eighteen-year-olds seeking out these professors and taking their classes, hoping to goad them into a debate, getting them to say more than they should, and then suing them? That's what's going to happen, to liberal and conservative alike. A pox on both houses.

The professors who shut kids down in class, or, worse, who give them bad grades because they disagree with their ideas, are just bullies. But we've all lived through such teachers. I had a government teacher in high school who gave me a bad grade because I wouldn't admit that Bill Clinton should be impeached, and I had a history teacher in college who gave me a bad grade because I wouldn't admit that Stalin wasn't such a bad guy. These guys were rotten teachers, and I'm glad to be rid of them.

But I'm also sort of glad I took classes with them; it's a good life lesson. The world is full of people who aren't going to give your opinions a fair shake, and you need to learn how to deal with that. It's also not a bad idea to learn how to stand up for your principles even when they cost you. Plus, if you work really hard and hone your debating skills, by the end of the semester you might have earned your professor's grudging respect, if not a good grade. Personally, I'd much rather have the grudging respect of an adversary than a victory in a petty lawsuit.

Thoughts on Easter

What would it actually mean if someone, say, a semi-divine Son of God, were to die for our sins? What if it were true that the blood of another could wash all our sins away?

Think of it. You commit a sin; you stole music from the internet, say. You know it. The people around you know it. God, being God, knows it. You're all ready to face your punishment. But then...bam...here's Jesus Christ, dying so that you can be forgiven. What's this? But I was ready for my punishment. God says, No punishment. You are forgiven.

Lots of people say that they "accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior." But what if it's not about "accepting" Jesus? What if the forgiveness itself is the point? What if, when you steal that music from the internet, you don't have to feel guilt or shame, because you have been forgiven?

Well, that would be terrible. People would be free from guilt, so they'd do whatever they wanted. They would sin as much as they cared to. Don't we need to keep the guilt and shame as part of our religion, so that we can stop people from behaving badly? Why would God want to take away that useful tool, guilt, by showing us such forgiveness?

But Christianity is not about preventing people from doing bad things. Which is good, because if that's what it's for, it's been doing a lousy job for a long time. Well, you might ask, what's the point of a religion that has no rules that need to be followed?

The point is not that you shouldn't follow the rules. God made the rules and surely wants us to follow them. The point is that, after you break the rules (and you will), you don't need to wallow in your sinfulness. That's not what God wants. God wants you to follow the rules, but hey, you're only human. When you sin, don't go around beating yourself up over it; just stop sinning. Do something else, like maybe feed the hungry, clothe the naked. There's a long list.

Incidentally, this would also mean that you shouldn't waste your time condemning other sinners. They're forgiven, too, by the way. Tell people right and wrong all you want, but don't waste your breath on the fire and brimstone condemnations. God says, Get over it. Get over yourself. I took care of it already, says God. Go. Do.

We get all hung up on our feelings of guilt and shame, and our feelings of superiority over those who are more guilty and shameful than we are. We like to talk about our feelings, and we like to do it in church. But what this forgiveness says to me is, Our feelings are valid but talking about them does not make us good Christians. Talking about what we did or what other people did does not make us good Christians. It's fine, but it's not the point. Talk is cheap. Doing the right thing is holy.

Happy Easter.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

No matter how hard I try, I can never spell Kyrgyzstan correctly without checking first. I also can't look at the name of the country without at least a little amusement, because I speak English and we have a different consonants-to-vowels ratio in our language than it seems like most central Asian countries have. It would be interesting to do some kind of historical-sociological-linguistical-biological study to determine if there is any reason why some languages have grown up preferring to use the vocal chords to make vowels, while others demonstrate a preference for using teeth, tongue, and lips to make as many consonants in their words as possible. It could be just random.

But the point is that I should put all my amusement aside, because what's going on in this central Asian country that no one can spell is deadly serious. Revolutions always are. I think that, these days, this is an important point to make, because lately it seems like lots of people are in love with the idea of a revolution, worldwide revolution, that will wash away tyranny and install democracy.

With luck, Kyrgyzstan will have a Velvet Revolution, with little or no violence and a seemingly spontaneous installation of a regime that is much better than the one that existed before. Most of the time, though, Jefferson was wrong: a little revolution is usually an ambiguous thing.

Now, you can't help but feel terrific when a popular revolt like this storms the corrupt president's office and throws his presidential chair out the window. It's a terrific story, and, like the people spontaneously tearing down the Berlin Wall in 1989, the pictures are beautiful to look at, not just because they inspire, but because they show courage and hope. They show us at our best.

But you have to be realistic about these revolutions, for the sake of the people that actually live in the places they happen. There will be a government; it will be new, but it will still be a government. Governments are usually corrupt, and often behave violently. It is a rare government that restrains greed and rewards compromise; often, a government is mostly about giving away money to whomever controls the men with guns.

Making a semi-decent government, the kind that won't lock up dissidents without trial and massacre ethnic minorities, is work that cannot be done by throwing anyone's chair out the window. The work of crafting a government that does not suck is done mostly by people arguing at meetings. These meetings are never as inspiring as a man staring down a tank; how could they be? Revolutions are about aspiration and ideals; the work of putting together a government is about compromising away those aspirations and ideals so that people with differing needs and desires can live together. Revolutions are what we dream of being; governance is who we are.

The reason I am always a little scared of revolutions is that, often, the frustration that comes from trying to put a good government together after the revolution leads to more violence. Moreover, tyrants, though evil, are sometimes better than those who replace them at making the milk trucks deliver on time. So there's always the possibility that the old regime will come back; after all, nostalgia can be just as powerful a force as aspiration, especially when your family used to be hungry but now they are starving.

Maybe it really is time, finally, for revolution all over the world. Maybe it's time for a domino effect of democracy, of peaceful revolutions at every corner of the globe. Maybe the twentieth century's growing pains were just the storm the rest of the world had to endure in order to get what we in America have: relative peace, relative welfare, despite our troubles. There's nothing wrong with hoping so.

And it's the privilege of an observer to be skeptical of a revolution; you don't get to choose the times you live in, and no one person creates a revolution. Therefore, I'll hold out hope for Kyrgyzstan, and for another peaceful transition in this season of revolutions in former Soviet republics. I hope they all end in boring meetings. Because you have to fear the day the twenty-first century's version of the guillotine comes rolling down the street; we're a lot better at killing people than we were two hundred years ago.

Let 'Em In

Life is a mystery. This is not a particularly radical thing to say, but I'm not talking about the lives we lead, and how we don't understand them in the abstract. I'm talking about how life, as a concept, is mysterious. Where did it come from? Why are there things out there, anyway, in the universe? Why is there anything? Doesn't nothing seem like it would be much less trouble? And not just rocks and gases...we've got planets out there, and at least one with life on it...at the very least, wouldn't it be easier if there were just rocks?

Well, the answer is that God made it. Or whoever. It all came from somewhere...even if you think it all came about slowly through evolution, you have to admit, at some point there was not even a molecule of Hydrogen out there...and then there was. So how did that happen? How did the something come from nothing? Or have there always been...things, out there? Is the necessary existence of "things" a concept that exists outside of time?

You're probably thinking, whoa, Mr. Blasphemy is thinking too hard. Which is true. But I enjoy this process, you see. I like to think about the mystery of existence. Why did God make anything, if God made things? And where did God's power to make things come from? How does it work? There I go again.

I accept that there are things I will never know. But I reserve the right to wonder, mostly because I can't help it. This is why I dislike it when people try to mess around with teaching evolution in schools. For me, it is worse than banning Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye; studying evolution is when you get to contemplate the very nature of the universe. To shut off the contemplation by saying, "God made it. That is all. The rest is not for mortal minds to know," just ruins the party for everyone. It denies the mystery of existence. I believe it is good and right for people to contemplate this mystery. I just don't see why God would mind.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the movement to teach the concept of "intelligent design" in biology classes. This would be the idea that evolutionary theory alone cannot explain the complex systems that exist in nature; someone "intelligent" (probably God, who, whatever else you might think, is very smart) must have "designed" things the way they are. It seems pretty clear to me from reading up on intelligent design that it's sort of a stupid theory, and most biologists sure seem to hate it. That said, I think we ought to stop fighting people who want to put it in biology classes. Just let 'em in.

Jay Matthews, who reports on schools for the Washington Post, wrote yesterday that he thought bringing the theory into the biology classroom would actually improve science education, even though it's a bad theory, because people would argue about the merits of the two theories and thereby reach a greater understanding of biology and evolution. He also notes that biology classes can be really boring, and the inevitable debates that would result if intelligent design were included would make them more interesting.

My own reason for wanting to end the debate and let intelligent design in is similar, but simpler: I don't think trying to keep it out is worth the trouble. They want to present a crackpot theory as good science? Go right ahead, folks. But remember who it is you're handing this pile of manure; it's a bunch of teenagers. They're not a group known for their sympathy to stupid ideas they didn't come up with themselves.

And, even if intelligent design does catch on with the kids, I am skeptical that it will turn them into staunch creationists. I mean, you've taught kids that God, like Dr. Moreau, has been tinkering around with cells and DNA, building eyeballs, pasting together livers. What's the next inevitable question? How? Why? What's this omnipotent entity up to, anyway? You'd have a whole generation trying to understand the actions of God, and the mechanisms used to undertake said actions. Now that would be some real blasphemy.

A Matter of Life and Death

When it comes to death, there is really only one thing that need be said: we are afraid of it. Beyond afraid: we are terrified, more so than of any other thing we have to face. This is why, when you are really, really afraid of a horror film or a bungee jump, you say that you are "mortally terrified." Our fear of death is the fear against which we measure all other fears.

Why are we so afraid? Because, deep in our hearts, we worry that, when we die, there will be nothing else. Many people have strong convictions that make them tend to believe in some kind of afterlife, including me. However, doubt is an inevitable fact of human existence, and all of us, at some time, have asked ourselves the question, "What if this is all I get?" We hope that the thoughts and feelings we experience daily will go on in heaven, that death is just the undiscovered country...but because no one returns from death, we can't be sure. There are stories of people being clinically dead and then returning to life, having glimpsed some kind of bright light...and there is the story of Jesus Christ being resurrected. But still, we are skeptical. We can learn about Jesus and hold beliefs about him, but we didn't see it happen; we've never seen anyone resurrected. We can't be sure that the clinically dead people weren't just dreaming. We can't help but doubt.

When it comes to Terri Schiavo, who has been in a persistent vegetative state for fifteen years, people are very emotional because they see their own deaths when they look at her. Some people are definitely trying to use her for their own political advantage, but many other people look at her and worry about taking away her life, however diminished that life is.

Other people are equally as sure that it is time for Terri, after fifteen years, to be allowed to die. Her brain has been mostly destroyed and replaced by spinal fluid; she cannot speak or decide anything. Most of these people say something like, were they in a similar position, they would not want to be kept alive.

Her situation is not unique by any means, but because of circumstance she is on TV and she has Congresspeople arguing over her fate. And we all assume that it is our business, because, in a way, it is. We're all worried about death, after all. And what happened to this poor woman could happen to any of us.

But it is not our business, no matter how afraid we are. This is because the situation is so complex that no one except the people closest to it could possibly understand it. Are Terri Schiavo's parents just trying to get their hands on part of a medical malpractice settlement? Is her greedy husband trying to hold on to same? What about these duelling doctors; which one is correct, the one who says that Terri's life will never improve, or the one who says that someday, it might?

It has been said that everyone dies alone, but it's not always true. Sometimes you die alone, but sometimes you die surrounded by people who love you, or at least people who know you. It's more accurate to say that, when you die, you leave other people alone. The loneliness that we feel when people die is an intense, private emotion. We deal with it by having funerals and remembering.

It seems that we are all invited to Terri Schiavo's bedside, in what appear to be her final days. I'm not quite sure that her parents meant to invite us here when they sued to keep the feeding tube from being removed, but here we are. We're all in the room with her. Her parents and her husband get to stand closest to her bed, her doctors behind, but still close. The lawyers and the judges are behind the doctors. And behind them, the rest of us. These first three rows of people are arguing about what to do about Terri. The rest of us are arguing, too. The room is getting loud. The room is crowded.

Let's leave the room now. Let's stand outside, and let the people in the room decide what to do.

Change Yourself

Guns don't kill people, people. People kill people. We must always remember this. Also, cars don't crash into people. People crash into people. Cocaine doesn't snort cocaine; people snort cocaine.

You see what I'm getting at here. The NRA has a point. A gun does no harm so long as the person holding it knows what they are doing and has no desire to do wrong. The world is dangerous; cars crash. Guns fire and misfire. Lightning crashes. Prohibition of old dangers only creates new dangers, plus the same old dangers which are illegal but still around.

Still, the urge to ban the tools that people use to cause others harm is quite strong. There are so many things that people use to harm. Back at the beginning of the century, radical feminists thought they could curb violence against women if alcohol were banned. In the 80s, Tipper Gore thought she could curb licentiousness and depravity among teenagers if nasty music were restrited. And, for a while now, people have been saying that guns ought to be banned because they are so very dangerous and have been used to kill people in these horrible school shootings.

So this kid Jeff Weise in Minnesota taking a gun to school and killing people, after he killed his own grandfather, and then taking his own life...it's going to make us want to ban things. And not just guns. He was a professed neo-nazi, apparently; let's outlaw hate speech and swastikas. He got made fun of in school, so let's outlaw teasing in the classroom. At some point, someone is going to get their hands on his CD collection, and then we'll be deciding what music to ban again.

But let's not ban things. Why? It doesn't work. The reason is simple: Jeff Weise killed people because there was evil in him. Notice, I don't say that he was evil. There was evil in him; there is a difference. There is evil in all of us.

And you can't ban that. You cannot ban hatred or legislate against the temptation to do wrong. But wait, can't we legislate against temptation? We could, after all, ban the guns and Mein Kampf, which tempted the boy to do what he did. Well, that bans one kind of temptation, that is, the things that are inducements and allurements. But temptation is also the desire to do wrong, and that comes from inside us. There would be no murders if people did not desire to kill; if there were no guns, no knives, and no heavy stones, the desire would still be there, piqued by our jealousy when we are denied or our rage when we are wronged. We would find ways strangle each other with our stumps if our hands were cut off.

It is not foolish or naive to hope that a day will come when no one wants to do anyone else harm. Hoping for that day, and working toward it, is what makes human beings pleasant to be around. However, everyone knows that the road is long. And every step we take, we take alone. Because, though inspiration inspires and influence influences, no one changes you but you.

It Warms the Cockles of My Heart

It turns out that people really care about what happens to Terry Schiavo. This is astonishing, and truly heartwarming. The fact that all these people, all over this great nation, will put aside whatever it is they're doing and turn to with messages of hope and giving, all for the sake of one woman in one hospital bed in Florida, just makes me glow with newfound appreciation of the human capacity to care for others.

Two days ago, I wrote about how it was too bad that Congress, our august legislative body, was spending its time worrying about just one woman. But this was wrong of me; I am guilty of having a closed mind.

I thought that, since Congress usually writes rules of broad application, like budgets and Constitutional Amendments, it should refrain from writing a law designed to help just one person. But now I see the error of my ways. One need only listen to the impassioned speeches made by Jeff Miller and Tom DeLay from the floor of the House to know that the passions of these men are inflamed by the continuing possibility that this poor woman might be allowed to simply starve to death.

And this got me to thinking: what if Congress has missed its calling? What if, for all these two hundred-odd years, Congress has been messing up by writing its rules that affect everyone, and look to some amorphous "Big Picture" that never materializes? What if, instead, Congress focused like a laser beam on the problems of individual Americans, and drafted its legislation to help them accordingly?

Think of the possibilities. If you don't like your mother-in-law, you could petition Congress to allow people to sue their mothers-in-law in federal court for emotional distress, using much less stringent standards for "emotional distress" than courts currently require. Or what about those of us who love those "mid-major" conference basketball teams, who are distressed that such teams never seem to make it to the Final Four? We could have Congress pass legislation that reserves one of those "final" four spots for someone other than snobby Duke or mammoth Michigan State. What, you think Congress couldn't force the NCAA to put Gonzaga in the Final Four because the NCAA is a private actor? Please. There is no privacy any more. I, personally, plan to ask Congress to force Hollywood stars to publish their phone numbers online, so that I can call whomever I want and ask them for money and free DVDs.

Wouldn't this be great? Congress, no longer a bunch of bureacrats in an impregnable Washington fortress, but rolling up its sleeves to help the common American. We could probably do it for six whole months before the government went bankrupt. But, thanks to Congress, we'd still have to pay off the debt.

Attention All Layabouts

I advise everyone to cancel their plans to become poor immediately. It's looking like it's not going to work out for you the way it might've used to, in the good old days when welfare mothers led carefree lives with Joe and Norma Taxpayer picking up the bill. Not everyone remembers this, but the welfare state used to be so desirable that people were literally burning their bearer bonds in the streets, just so they could become poor and take advantage of the rewards that entail. Remember that? No? Well, you're just getting senile, probably.

Because it was happening, no doubt. And Congress was not pleased. "No more of that, we say...the champagne and oyster crackers on the Potomac must end!" So they've done a few things to take the poor people down a notch. Back in the 90s, the Congress decided to reform welfare so that all those women who were basking in the joy of childbirth over and over again and then sitting around eating bonbons would have to get up and work. The result? Declining welfare rolls, all right. Seems to be working. Also, when you stop counting the number of times your house is robbed, your records will reflect that your house has been robbed less. No need to move; just stop counting.

Now, Congress was justifiably pleased with itself for this reform of welfare. The president at the time, a guy named Bill Clinton, tried to take credit for it, but everyone knows that Congress writes the laws. And they felt good about it. But then, about a decade later, Congress looked around and was still displeased with the uppity manner these poor people were displaying all the time. Sometimes, for example, these loafers simply refused to pay money the owed at all. Imagine the nerve! What's more, this was legal! How crazy is that? Clearly, something had to be done.

So Congress passed its bankruptcy reform act, making it harder for people who owe money to credit card companies to have their debts discharged. And things are good again...for now. But you can just bet that, sometime soon, those poor people will start walking around with their noses in the air again. And when that day comes...

Hell in a Handbasket

That's where the country's headed, folks, and I'm not afraid to say it. Things are worse now than they have ever been before. I could hardly bear to watch the whole sorry mess unfold today, but there it is...as a country, can't we allow a sick human being fade away in peace? Is it really worthwhile for a life so useless, so tortured, so (dare I say it?) meaningless to continue? Can we not, as human beings, acknowledge that the time has come to put an end to unnecessary suffering?

I'm talking, of course, about Bobby Knight going back to the Sweet Sixteen.

Not everyone knows about Bobby Knight, even though he is on TV a lot. Well, he's a basketball coach...and, if there is a Hell for people who take sports too seriously, Bobby Knight lost his soul to it long ago.

Some people think that he has mellowed in recent years, because he used to throw chairs and kick people when he got angry about the way a basketball game was going, but he no longer does this. I suppose you could make an argument that a man who once threw a metal folding chair because he disliked the way a game was going, but who has not done something similar in a long time, deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to deciding if he still takes sports too seriously. But my feeling is, he was already a grownup when he did that, so, if I ever see Bobby Knight with a chair, I'm speaking to him calmly, and I'm standing at a safe distance.

The point, though, is not that Bobby Knight is a bad person, because he's not. He has what many of us Y-chromosome afflicted people have, but he has it worse than most of us. When it comes to sports, you see, we are much more emotionally invested than we ought to be.

The other example of this is Congress, and their recent nationally-televised hearings on the ultra-important national security issue of whether baseball players take drugs to help them hit home runs. You might think that Congress, what with the continuing danger that the next World Series will be canceled on account of the Bronx being reduced to ash by a nuclear explosion, would have more pressing concerns.

But Congress, like Bobby Knight, just couldn't help itself. Jim Bunning, a Senator from Kentucky who could not find the time to travel to that state and debate his opponent during his recent reelection bid, found time to testify about his major league baseball career before these hearings. (It turns out that he's against steroids, too. Thanks for the info, man.)

The Congressmen, most of whom spent a lot of time talking at the hearing about how much they loved baseball as kids and how they want to preserve this beautiful sport for generations to come, had to do it. They were compelled. This is just what men do...we care about sports more than we should. Can't help it. Could it be that we're afraid to deal with important things, so we waste our lives drowning in unimportant things? Could be...

After all, the steroid hearings were not all that Congress did this weekend. They also got heavily involved in this one instance in Florida where a woman has been really sick for a long time and can't live without a feeding tube or talk, so her husband wanted to take out the tube so she could die with dignity, because he thought that's what she wanted. But here parents said, No, that's our daughter, and we think she would want to stay alive and besides, that's what we want, too. So they couldn't agree and it ended up in court. Congress is very worried about this. Not euthanasia as a wider issue, just this one case. They say they don't want to set a "wider precedent." Hey, it's all right, you're just Congress. Leave the big issues to somebody else, right? Precedents are for the Supreme Court, I guess.

Life and death, the mysteries of human existence, the infinite possibilities of human thought...I know we can't be working on these things all the time. But come on, guys. Let's show a little effort and do, like 50/50. You know, spend half the weekend going on TV about steroids, okay, but then spend the rest talking about the deficit. Boring, but important. Sort of like most of our lives.