My favorite unit in Government classes isn’t taught anymore. I don’t support too many Social Studies classes these days. For some reason, someone in the school seems to think I know how to teach writing. Goodness knows what gave them that idea. However, I have supported classes in World Geography, U.S. History, Government, and Economics. None of them addressed rights and responsibilities.

I certainly did when I taught Government. I found that it was the only unit the students were actually interested in. They were particularly interested in the fourth amendment because many of them had already had run ins with law enforcement. Either that, or they expected to have run ins. That’s largely part of the populations that I have taught over the years.

We have an epidemic where people seem to misunderstand both rights and responsibilities. It’s really very simple. Every right that we have comes with adjacent responsibilities. Speech is really no different and in fact speech brings the most important responsibility of all. Goodness knows too many people seem to think they have speech rights that they simply don’t have.

Aaron Rodgers seems to be relishing his new role as a sports villain. His shots at Joe Biden seem to be a great example of everything we are talking about. Free speech does not mean that you have an absolute right of having that speech amplified. It also does not mean that you have the right to have everyone see that speech as beautiful and perfect. Freedom of speech means everyone has the right to respond to your speech as well. Sometimes they aren’t going to like it and sometimes you won’t like their response.

However, the part which gets completely missed are the responsibilities that come with free speech. This is usually where I started talking to my classes about slander, libel, and hate speech. Those are legal responsibilities and encompass the bare minimum of what is required from us as citizens. If we are going to do more than merely pass citizenship we are expected to actually contribute to the marketplace of ideas.

This is often where we delve into topics that we would cover in a basic philosophy class. I taught that one as well in high school, but they aren’t being taught at most schools. The fundamental question is what is the difference between facts and truth. The obvious difference is that facts are verifiable and truth isn’t. Naturally, any good philosophy teacher would go beyond that obvious statement to more complex questions, but we can stop there for today.

The responsibility of citizens and speech is simple. We take available facts and we try to arrive at our own truth. People can take a set of facts and reach any number of conclusions. That’s normal discourse. What isn’t normal is making up facts and poisoning the body politic with a barrage of bullshit. Yet, that seems to be exactly where we are.

Too many people start with the statement that I have the right to and then simply stop there. Living in a society comes with rights, but also comes with responsibilities. We have to at least coexist with those around us and ideally we would do more than that. Of course, if no one bothers to teach that in civics classes anymore then it makes perfect sense that people would not know these things.

When the Texas Governor has a significant challenger from the right, you quickly discover what the hell is to the right of Greg Abbott.

Don Huffines, Texas GOP candidate for governor, says he won't fire his campaign staffer with white nationalist ties bc he doesn't engage in "cancel culture."

via @emilylhernandez https://t.co/W7SmTGxq50

— Rebekah Allen (@rebekahallen) January 20, 2022

Huffines is a former State Senator and is a grossly wealthy developer in Fort Worth.  He’s not an outlier  Republican.  He’s mainstream and Greg Abbott is far too liberal for him.

Huffines probably won’t win the primary but he’ll push Abbott to the bigot right. I don’t think Huffines’ ties to the white nationalists was exposed by accident. It’ll force Abbott into doing something brutally racist before the March primary.

Occasionally, politicians (particularly conservative politicians) get caught saying the quiet part out loud. That’s an expression we like to use when someone says what everyone is thinking, but sounds absolutely horrific when it is said out loud in mixed company. Mitch McConnell was just the latest in a long line of horrible moments.

Of course, McConnell’s legacy in Washington will largely depend on which side of the fence you sit. If you are conservative then he will go down as one of the greatest legislators in the history of mankind. No one has been more effective in getting the conservative agenda through and no one has been more effective at blocking the progressive agenda. He’s done more to tip the balance of power in the judicial branch than any three other legislators combined.

If you are a liberal, progressive, or even just a moderate you obviously can’t see Mitch McConnell as anything but cravenly evil. As much as people will blame Joe Mancin and Kyrsten Sinema for the failure of voting rights legislation, Mitch McConnell is the architect of everything the conservative caucus is able to accomplish.

They don’t accomplish much these days. In fact, the only thing they’ve really accomplished in the last five years is a major tax cut for the rich. That’s the extent of their legislative agenda. That’s the extent of their intellectual pursuit. Otherwise, they are the adult embodiment of a two-year old. The only word they know is no.

Whether McConnell’s utterance is a mere gaffe or a Freudian slip is in the eye of the beholder I guess. Someone so jaded and manipulative can’t be given the benefit of the doubt. McConnell’s legislative tactics are the perfect reflection of what conservative state legislatures have been doing across the country. The two in concert have managed to take common sense planks and make them disappear.

For McConnell and other conservatives, African Americans really aren’t Americans. Latino Americans really aren’t Americans. LGTBQ+ Americans really aren’t Americans. Poor Americans really aren’t Americans. Anyone that might cast a vote for Democrats really aren’t Americans. They’ll concede a few of us that might look conservative on the outside, but it would never be enough to win an election. So, then it is okay.

Power is theirs from birth. Power is theirs to do with what they want. Sadly, they’ve had it for over a generation and we’re living in the aftermath. Wealth disparity is higher than its ever been. There are more billionaires than ever before. This has all happened when the GOP has won exactly four presidential elections according to the popular vote since 1980. That’s four out of ten elections.

Ultimately, that’s the legacy of Mitch McConnell. He has been in national politics for nearly that entire period. Somehow he has taken a world where Democrats won majorities more often than not and created a powerful conservative coalition. They have the courts. They have a majority of states. Their will is done in Washington even without majorities. Only Americans that vote with them count in his eyes.

The bottomless pit that is Matt Gaetz managed to reach another low this week when he brought his performance art to another sad level. For those that really don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, Gaetz cancelled his membership to conservative hot spot “The Capital Hill Club.” Seems they got under the Congressman’s skin when they started requiring patrons to be vaccinated.

Like just about anyone else, I was enjoying Twitter just for the comments. Dozens retorted back with some making mention of the fact that Gaetz could be enjoying three meals a day at Club Fed in the near future. That of course was a veiled reference to his possible sex trafficking charges that could come some time this year. This story isn’t really about Gaetz. We could go off the deep end as it pertains to leadership. We can talk about moving cheese, personality profiling, communication models and other such nonsense and really talk about nothing.

True leadership is nearly as much about sacrifice and service as it is about any of those other buzz words or phrases. Gaetz happens to be hitting upon pandemic issues and like any crisis, the pandemic has revealed who the leaders are and who the pretenders are. From the get go there have been two effective strategies that have helped deal with the pandemic: vaccines and masks. While not perfect, they have allowed business to continue. If the vast majority would do both we wouldn’t see our hospitals clogged with idiots.

Our beloved governor in Texas has barred us from requiring masks. He’s barred public places and private places from such a requirement. A political philosophy that prides itself in allowing businesses and private entities to run themselves as they see fit is not allowing them to do it. They’ve essentially reduced themselves to governing by temper tantrum.

So, in our schools we are left to simply highly encourage that administrators, teachers, and students wear masks. In a world where you cannot require compliance, you are left to hope that adults will act like leaders and students will be inclined to follow their example. On my campus the administrators can’t be bothered to wear masks. Some of the teachers can’t either. You can’t make them do it and suggesting it would trample on their precious rights.

It’s all a failure of leadership. Really it’s a foundational failure of adulting. Most parents understand that they have to do things they don’t want to do. Most adults understand that we have to do things we don’t want to do. We may think it’s stupid or that it doesn’t really apply to us. We may think it’s a waste of time. Somewhere deep in the recesses of our psyche we know it really isn’t meant for us. Leaders understand this. Those who like to play leader do not.

Those who like to play leader will go to any lengths to avoid the simplest of things. They avoid the simplest of things because they are afraid it will make them look weak. So, they’ll drink their own urine. They’ll take medicine meant for barnyard animals. They may even resort to bleach or shooting sunlight up their butt. They’ll try all of these mind-numbingly stupid remedies and more just to avoid a simple shot and a simple mask. Good leaders lead by example. Good leaders subjugate their wants and needs for the good of the group. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough good leaders.

It seems that there aren’t enough voter registration cards to go around in Texas.

Sam Taylor, assistant secretary of state for communications,said supply chain issues have made it harder and more expensive to get paper, which means the Secretary of State’s office will be giving out fewer voter registration forms to groups ahead of elections this year.

“We are limited in what we can supply this year, because of the paper shortage and the cost constraints due to the price of paper and the supply of paper,” he said.

The League of Women Voters registers 30,000 new citizens every year at naturalization ceremonies, and of course that is the group being most impacted by this shortage

Grace Chimene, president of the League, says the Secretary of State’s office has told the League to seek out donations instead of relying on the state for voter registration forms. She said she “didn’t appreciate” this considering the fact her group is a non-partisan nonprofit. However, Chimene said, her group will try and do what it can.

You know, we have plenty of money for our felony indicted state Attorney General to file a mountain of lawsuits against the federal government that are going nowhere, but damn, I’m sure we won’t have enough paper to print ballots in low income neighborhoods.

Where is Dudley Do-Right when you really need him?

Justice Snidely Whiplash Gorsuch has got himself on the Supreme Court.

It’s hard to conger up how evil you have to be to purposely expose someone with diabetes to a disease that would kill them.

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1483452924093243399?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1483452924093243399%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.joemygod.com%2F2022%2F01%2Fgorsuch-refuses-to-mask-up-for-diabetic-sotomayor%2F

To matters even worse – Gorsuch sits next to Sotomayor during judicial conferences. Every other damn justice – even Clarence Thomas and Justice I-Like-Beer suited up and wore a mask.  Not Gorsuch.  Honey, you gotta have a mean streak as wide as Trump’s rump to do something like that.  Sotomayor could not attend except sitting in her office down the hall and calling in by telephone.

You’d think a Supreme Court Justice would …  I give up.