WORDS: Shirley Sherrod

I'm often amused by words. Lukewarm makes me laugh. Where does "luke" come from? The etymology isn't clear.

Pants and shorts are always plural, presumably because of the two legs. But shirt is never plural, even though it has two arms.

I love to listen to the way people talk. Shirley Sherrod said she didn't want to help a white farmer because she thought of all the black farmers who needed help. So she took the white farmer to a white lawyer, and the white lawyer wouldn't help. This surprised her. She thought all white people took care of all white people. She thought that was their job. It dawned on her that money is the real problem, not race. The lawyer wouldn't help the white farmer because he didn't have any money to pay for the lawyer's help, so she decided that it is class, and not race, that determines who will help whom.

Beck and Limbaugh have said Sherrod thinks like a Marxist, like a Maoist. She shifted her thinking from race as the root of all evil to class as the root of all evil. Beck and Limbaugh got it right, but they didn't go far enough.

In fact, it was her job to help the farmer. It wasn't the lawyer's job. Every person has a task that is assigned to them in the description of their position. They have to do that job. They don't have to do another job.

A lawyer gets paid to help people who have legal problems.

The farmer's problem wasn't legal.

Exactly what his problem was is never defined in the video.

At first Sherrod thinks it's a problem she shouldn't have to solve because she had made a pact with God that she would help only black people.

Then she makes a new pact or covenant that she should only help poor people.

She shifts from race to class. She considers herself a moral genius for making this paradigm shift, and attempts to share it with the NAACP group before whom she is speaking.

And because the lightbulb has come back on (class, not race) she is welcomed back into the Obama Administration with open arms. Obama sees the problems of America as basically one of redistribution of wealth. If he can achieve this, he can achieve justice. Sherrod is now on the same page as Obama, so she can continue in her job.

I think that Sherrod's task should have been to help all farmers (what exactly is her job description, and if it says, help all POOR farmers, irregardless of race, then how is POOR defined?). At first she said she would only help black farmers. Then it dawned on her that she should help all poor farmers. Is that correct? Wasn't it her job to help all farmers irregardless of race or class?

What exactly was her job description? It's odd that no one has tracked that down and presented it on the news.

Descriptions of what people are supposed to do often amaze me. I once worked at a college where the top administrator told me that as a professor I should be like a parent to every one of my students. I thought about the unworkability of this description. I suddenly had 150 children. I presumably had to wake them up, make sure they were fed, make sure they ate their breakfast, (would you like butter on your toast?), help them get dressed, pay for their textbooks, and help them with their homework, listen to their heartaches, and be a personal butler to each and every one. Isn't that what a parent does?

I perhaps have too strong a definition for fatherhood. A father is a personal valet to each of his children. Some people describe fathering a child as merely siring a child. So in a sense every child has a father. But I see a father as a kind of mentor-valet-coach. I teach language arts, math (ok, I do what I can in this area, and am increasingly stressed as my kids go toward middle school), and of course I am also a nutritionist. On weekends I hit baseballs to my kids, and play soccer with them, and take them swimming. I talk with them, and joke with them, and try to keep their spirits up.

I am supposed to do all this with 150 college students suddenly? Is that possible?

Meanwhile, the immigration law is going before a federal judge today (Susan Bolton). She is going to decide whether in lieu of the Obama Administration's total lack of support for tracking down illegal immigrants, whether the state of Arizona can do the job that the Federal government won't.

One side says it is "racist" to go after illegal immigrants. Therefore, illegal is legal, or at least better than being "racist."

The other side says this shows disregard for the "law" which makes the Feds criminals in that they are helping illegals to resist their own law.

What is the law supposed to do? What are the people who carry out the law supposed to do?

What is the job of the Federal Government? Can anyone provide a clear explanation?

From the smallest words like pants and shirt to bigger words, words that resolve questions of law and order, we depend on documents such as the U.S. Constitution and on the American Heritage dictionary. Words help us to understand our role, and define and delimit our actions.

I often wish people could be more clear. When I listen to BO, I never get any sense of clarity from him. I read his autobiography and just felt he was a genius at obfuscation. I read the letters he sends to my wife (who is a big fan of BO), and wonder at the language. The only thing I understand is that he wants our money, and that she sends it to him.

My wife believes in Obama!

I think he's a Marxist, who thinks through the race, gender, and class lens. He can't do anything else. He sat in Reverend Wright's church for twenty years. What else could he possibly know but what he learned there? Wright is a liberation theologist, which is heavily dependent on Marxism. However, Marxism never defined clear universal laws. They outlawed wealth. They tracked down and destroyed private wealth, and gobbled it up with the intent of redistributing it. In most cases they redistributed the wealth to themselves. Kim Jong-Il owns North Korea at this point. No one else owns anything.

Without the ability to articulate clear universal laws that protect private property, our nation is at risk of constantly going before lawyers and judges who will use the triumph of the will to define boundaries and to arrogate all wealth to themselves and theirs. Few judges believe any longer in a transcendent or universal truth or the notion of universal human rights. Now "will to power" is left to make decisions. If I'm on one side, and not the other, like Shirley Sherrod, I help my side, and neglect the other. A Democratic judge is a partisan now, many of whom do not apply the law, but want to make new precedents, and set the law, as Shirley Sherrod not only wanted to do her job, but do it with a twist, helping those she perceived as her in-group, throwing the others to white lawyers who she presumed would help them but who were in fact sharks waiting in the water to make a killing.

We need people who can think clearly and without bias when it comes to doing their job whether it's teacher or judge. We need people who can think clearly about Arizona's immigration law SB1070 which will be decided today in the Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Courthouse in Phoenix. We need to reinvent the term "American," and think about what it means, and who it will contain. Some think it contains anyone who wants to be an American. I don't think this can possibly be so.

Do we really want the whole world to move into America, simply because we have (had) good laws that protect human rights such as private property, life, liberty, and health? I don't, and I am aghast at the idiots who do.

I want tighter definitions. I still don't know why I am wearing "shorts," and a "shirt" but I hope to find out.

In what way are legs multiple, and arms singular? When we walk, legs move automatically as one. When we use our arms, perhaps, the arms have a much greater sense of autonomy -- I can do separate things with my arms, and with my hands, such as the typing I am doing now can operate the two hands not as one, but as two independent entities, as fingers reach asymmetrically for letters -- 120 words a minute.

Some Lutherans think our job is to help everyone, all day long, while others have a "focus on the family," and believe that our primary responsibility is at home. I'm always for the tighter definition. The tighter the definition the more functional. Loose definitions or overbroad definitions aren't functional, and so are almost worse than no definition.