This week, President Obama bowed deeply and purposefully before Japanese Emperor Akihito when greeting him on official duties. Why do this, when it flies in the face of a proud American tradition? That tradition: America does not bow before earthly kings.

While other countries often dip their flags as a sign of respect, Americans do not.  As an American of Irish heritage, I proudly credit Irish-Americans with making this tradition prominent. 

In the 1908 Olympics in London, American athletes of Irish ancestry “urged” the flag bearer not to dip the Stars and Stripes in the Games’ opening parade, as the US team passed by the British royal family.  (According to a PBS documentary on the Irish experience in America, narrated by actor Aiden Quinn, some of the Irish American athletes promised the flag bearer that, if he did dip the flag, he’d be in the hospital before nightfall).  The flag bearer was convinced, and the Stars and Stripes stood tall and proud as the American team walked by the King of England.

As the story goes,  there was an uproar.  In response, Martin Sheridan, US team captain (and a native of County Mayo) reportedly said that the flag of the United States “bows before no earthly king.”  Historians dispute whether Sheridan really said this…but neverthless, it’s now part of our tradition.  To many Americans, it remains a symbol of national pride that the Stars and Stripes is never dipped to foreign powers.

Well, the President of the United States, when he’s representing our country in his offical duties, IS the Stars and Stripes.  Both he and it are symbols of our nation—its heritage, values, traditions and pride.

Our President is the guardian of those traditions and that spirit, not their owner.  They are not his to do with as he pleases.

I’m eager to hear his explanation for this, his SECOND bow before an earthly king.  Surely this wasn’t carelessness.  He must have had a purpose. 

I’m also eager to see how American media reacts.  If, as I suspect, they yawn indifferently, it won’t reflect favorably on them.  Many conservatives think that America’s media community view itself more as residents of a global community, instead of citizens of the United States.  I hope that perception is wrong—let’s see what the editorial pages have to say this week.

FoxNews photo of President Obama bowing to Japanese emperor: http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/11/13/president-obama-meets-with-the-japanese-emperor/

The Show-Me State’s loss can be the Grand Canyon State’s gain—here’s why:

1) For those Arizonans who hate the Bidwills (e.g., everyone at my local Buffalo Wild Wings), Rush could become the new face of the Cardinals’ head shed.  If, on the other hand, you like the Bidwills, Rush can be their shield.  He’s had twenty-years plus of successfully absorbing hate. 

2) Rush will bring LOTS of money with him.  I’ll bet he’ll pick up some of the bills the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority is footing to run University of Phoenix Stadium.  That might leave some money for other things in Arizona—schools, roads, etc…

3) I’ll bet Rush lowers the concession prices, so you can actually AFFORD a beer and a brat at the game.

4) Arizona is a pretty red state.  In 2008, while Obamamania swept most of the nation and all of the American media, Arizonans elected more Republicans statewide.  This is Rush Country!  (That muffled explosion you just heard in the distance was Leftfield’s skull).

5)  For Arizona’s liberals, Rush will fill their lives by giving them someone to hate and mock.   There will be unbridled joy at the Arizona Daily Star, the Arizona Republic, faculty lounges in Tucson/Tempe/Flagstaff and hackey-sack venues statewide.   The Tucson Weekly will never lack for copy, or for reasons to be smug.  (Not that that’s ever stopped them before).  Heck—Billie Stanton and Anne Denogean might re-enter journalism!  Come to think of it…

6) …if the U of A could figure out a way to turn agita into electricity, we’d never have to worry about air conditioning bills again.

The possibilities are endless!

Why? This is October 2009, not 2001.  Also, most of the dumb or careless jihadists are dead, and the smart ones want to stay alive.

From time to time, America has found itself at war with opponents who underestimated our will to fight.  Many of Japan’s leaders assumed that America would quit soon after Pearl Harbor.   In 1990, Saddam Hussein misread American diplomats and concluded that Bush 41 wouldn’t fight to free Kuwait.  More recently, Osama Bin Laden saw US troops withdraw from Mogadishu after “Black Hawk Down,” and concluded that America was a paper tiger.  We proved all of those foolish fellows wrong…at a terrible cost.

So, I reacted initally to the word of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Price with an “Oh no, here we go again” feeling.  Would America’s enemies take this, ahem, puzzling decision by the Nobel committee as evidence that the West—which the US leads, at least in security efforts—was softening its spine?  That it was quitting? Flinching from the security challenges of a 21-st century world?

On second thought, though, I don’t think it’s all that bad.

Eight years ago this month, al Qaeda and the Taliban were starting to realize just how badly they’d misread Bush 43, the American people and its military.  On September 12th 2001, they’d never heard of “daisy cutters.”  By Thanksgiving, they’d never be able to forget them.  (The ones that were still living, that is). 

Eighteen months later, America and its coalition allies ejected Saddam Hussein from power in a campaign lasting less than a month.  What followed was a years-long, often error-filled US presence in Iraq.  But, the American military adapted, changed its strategy, redoubled its efforts and turned things around in Iraq.  In WWII, Rommel complemented his American foes by remarking that he’d never seen soldiers so poorly prepared initially, but who adapted and learned so quickly.  Thankfully, things haven’t changed.

That American military, which remade itself on-the-fly from a force ill-prepared for counterinsurgency into one that excels at it,  is still around.  Weary and overextended, yes, but still around—and much better prepared for this kind of fight the next time.   Moreover, the world has now been reminded of the risks you run when despots and terrorists think you’re a pushover.     

This doesn’t mean the jihadhists won’t keep trying.  But I suspect that, the next time they see a few Western elites—like, say, the Nobel nominating committee— act like idiots, they’ll think twice before concluding that all Westerners are that craven or that dumb. 

I’ll bet that, once you hear the sound of a daisy cutter doing its thing, you really don’t want to hear it again.

School has started again, and work has picked up its pace. My garrison and I need a few days to dig out from life.

Thanks to those of you who inquired about my wherabouts…much appreciated.

In one of Al Gore’s national campaigns—I can’t remember if it was for President or VP—he appeared on a televised forum.  (The audience was young adults, so it was probably MTV. )

An obviously intelligent young lady,  just graduated from college, told Gore that she planned to pursue a career in the “creative arts.”   She wanted to know whether Gore, if elected, could enhance government-funded health care options for people (like herself) who pursued career paths that didn’t pay well.  

Gore said he’d try.  I wished he’d said something like this instead: “Ma’am, you’re obviously talented and capable.  We need to save our precious public health care funding for people who are truly needy, who truly can’t provide for themselves.  You need to take care of your own healthcare needs. Find a job that allows you to do that.”

Maybe, now that we’re in the midst of a great national debate on healthcare, Gore could say it now?  I wish he would.

I encourage everyone to follow their dreams.  If you want to be a painter, or a writer, or a performance artist, great!

However, you’re a citizen first.  That entails personal responsibility.  I submit that, one of those responsibilities is making sure your personal needs—food, shelter, healthcare—are taken care of by YOU.

That’s what jobs are traditionally for.  You take a job that gives you the money and benefits you need to feed, clothe, shelter and take care of you and yours. 

Now, it would be nice if you can find a job that does all those things AND you enjoy—but it’s not critical.  It’s not central to the reason for working in American society and it never has been.  We work to support ourselves and (hopefully) not burden our neighbors and neighborhood.  We don’t work for fun, personal growth and fulfilment.

I suspect that some of the advocates for a public healthcare option hope that, if the government will take care of their medical bills, they can then pursue jobs that they like more but pay less.  Well, in a capitalist society, the better paying jobs tend to be those that provide services that society values.  (I’m referring to private-sector jobs here.  I acknowledge that many public servants—e.g., teachers, social workers—don’t get paid commensurate with their work’s value to society). 

Remember economics class, when the teacher talked about Adam Smith’s “invisible hand?”  Capitalist economies will naturally shift resources to those needs people most want fulfilled.  People who do those jobs, who fulfill those needs, get better pay and benefits.

Does this mean that every idealistic, aspiring writer or painter should go work on Wall Street or join the Army.  No.  It does mean, though, that you need to take steps to ensure that, if you do have health problems, you’re covered.

Take a job that offers benefits, and pursue your dream on the weekends or evenings.  Most young people are healthy enough to qualify for catastrophic health care coverage with premiums of just a few hundred dollars a month.  So, buy a beater car, get the basic cable package, take a roommate and buy the insurance you need. 

We need to save our limited public healthcare dollars for the disabled, single parents, and others who really aren’t financially able to meet their needs.  The rest of us need to pull our own weight.

One of the best—and most overlooked—deals going is the annual pass.  Parks, zoos, museums etc…generally offer annual passes, and in many cases they’re quite reasonably priced.  Often, for the cost of three or four individual visits, you can have an annual pass that lets you in the gate anytime you want.

Your Correspondent* hereby begins a regular series on The Great Annual Passes of Tucson.  Our first installment: Reid Park Zoo.

The zoo (http://www.tucsonzoo.org/) is one of the coziest I’ve ever visited.  If you want to get close to the animals, this is the place for you.  HOW close?  Check out the slideshow.

From the zoo’s website:

Reid Park Zoo’s mission is “to encourage human commitment to the conservation of biological diversity and to provide educational and fun experiences for visitors of all ages.  The Zoo, founded in 1965 with a collection of birds, prairie dogs, farm animals, and a few squirrel monkeys, has expanded to a 17-acre campus that houses hundreds of animals in naturalistic exhibits and annually hosts nearly 500,000 visitors. Reid Park Zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).

A typical family (two parents plus ALL your kids under 18) can enter the zoo on a Family membership, which costs…$50.  I.e., for less than the cost of dinner for two at a typical Tucson restaurant, you and yours can have the run of a fine, family-focused zoo every day of the year except Christmas. 

Household 6 signed us up as Family members as soon as the Little Gunner could toddle more than six feet without falling.  Now he’s a zoo regular.  One of his favorites is the otter pond.  While trying to restrain him from joining the otters in their morning swim, I was reminded how entertaining they can be.  While one otter swam around and around the pool, the other stayed close by clamping down on his partner’s leg.  (The first otter seemed fine with it…so hey, who am I to say anything?)

I do feel sorry for the polar bear, though.  Stuck in Tucson, of all places!  Every time I’ve been there he’s looked miserable.  Has anyone seen him at times when he’s seemed happy?  (Admittedly, I have no idea how one tells if a polar bear is happy, but I’ll bet someone in Tucson knows).

The more we support our local attractions, the more they can do for us.  So, consider joining the Reid Park Zoo.  They’ve come a long way from their humble beginnings of prairie dogs and squirrel monkeys.

* This is my hat-tip to one of my favorite magazines, which doesn’t give its writers bylines.  Instead, it refers to them in the text as “Your Correspondent.”

A common complaint I hear in conservative circles: universities are WAY too liberal, and conservatives don’t feel comfortable being “themselves,” or expressing their true political feelings, in the classroom.

Personally, I don’t think that’s such a big deal—here’s why.

College is only a small sliver of your life, and SHOULD be just a small sliver of a lifetime of learning. Any impact from four to six (perhaps more?) years of classes taught by liberal ideologue professors should fade over time when compared to all the other books, articles, etc… you’ll read over the rest of your lifetime. Any ideologue teacher only has you captive for one or two semesters at most. You have the rest of your life to search out and study competing ideas and beliefs, and then come to your own conclusions.

Virtually all the high-quality, professional academics you’ll meet keep ideology out of the mainstream of their coursework. A lively disagreement between teacher and student never gets reflected in their gradebooks or your report card.

As for the real ideologues, most self-segregate into elective courses. News flash—if you take any class in a department whose name ends in the word “Studies,” be forewarned. Yes, speaking your conservative mind in one of these classes could easily be akin to a 19th-century cowboy sauntering solo and unarmed through the Chiricahuas.

BUT…you KNOW BEFOREHAND that many of these XXX Studies departments at universities are de facto hostile territory for outspoken conservatives. And—here’s what’s most important—most of the courses in these departments are electives. You don’t have to take them. If, however, those classes are mandatory, that’s another story. In that case…

Liberal academicians can’t be as punitive as they once could. Students can blog, call into talk radio and post videos on YouTube. Virtually every town in America has at least one conservative radio station. If your university—especially your public university or college—employs a teacher who bullies conservative students, you can get the word out. And, be reassured that plenty of voters will be unhappy at the thought of their tax dollars employing that ideologue.

Plus, there’s FIRE. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education defends conservative students who’ve been harassed by university faculty, administration and officially-sanctioned student groups. FIRE will go to court. Liberal ideologues in academia have taken notice. (http://www.myfire.org)

The craziest liberal professors often beclown themselves. Dinesh D’Souza relates this antecdote from his days at Dartmouth in his book  Letters To A Young Conservative.  An African American professor routinely spoke in “street” dialect and hip-hop slang while lecturing. A Dartmouth student recorded the professor’s speeches and reprinted them word-for-word in Dartmouth’s conservative newspaper. The professor attempted legal action, claiming he’d been libeled. To his, and the university’s, public embarrassment, someone had to explain to him that no one can be libeled by an accurate retelling of their own words. Needless to say, the professor came out on the losing end of that encounter.

Happily for we schadenfreude-loving conservatives, the foot-shooting didn’t end there. The professor’s wife was a French teacher at Dartmouth. She assigned her class to write a French-language assessment of the Dartmouth conservative paper. Most students knew the deal and wrote the scathing critiques that the French teacher obviously wanted to see. However, one naïve student wrote honestly that he liked the paper—and got a bad grade. Fortunately, that student was wise enough to go to the teacher’s supervisors and ask them what was wrong with his French. The administrators took one look at the assignment and realized that it was inappropriate thinking, not faulty French grammar, that was the problem. Guess who lost that encounter?

University leaderships don’t like to be embarrassed. I think it’s safe to say that the administration at the University of Colorado wishes that the brouhaha surrounding the statements of one of its employees, ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill, never happened.  If one of your teachers goes Trotsky too often, eventually he may find himself feeling very lonely in the faculty lounge. (Unless it’s a XXX Studies lounge…in which case, conservative student, you should have known what you were getting into in the first place!!!)

Taking a class from someone who thinks you’re an Untouchable can be a great learning experience. Sometimes, in life, you have to tell the boss what they want to hear. If your boss’s viewpoints and reasoning methods are 180 degrees in opposition to yours, it can be hard figuring out what they want. Well, here’s a chance to practice. Think of the Chomsky acolyte on the podium as a future boss. What do they want? How can you shape and present arguments that will reach them? Remember…you’re not there to change the professor’s mind or defeat him in verbal battle. You’re there to benefit, in some way, from the class.

Be realistic about the grades you really need. The ultimate fear of any college student: the professor will give me a poor grade if he/she disagrees with me. Nowadays, though, in this age of FIRE and the Internet and FOX News, professors know that they’ll likely have to justify any grade that’s shockingly out of the norm. So, that Trotskyite on the podium who hates your guts for wearing that Ronald Reagan pin to class probably won’t give you a D.  He might, however, give you a B- while the “right” thinking students get As.

If so…so what?

I’ve worked for a Fortune 500 consulting company for over a decade, and no one ever asked me for my GPA. They wanted to know what I majored in and where I graduated from. From my experience, if you take a challenging curriculum at a respected school and graduate with a B or high C average, that will check the education block with most employers. What will really make or break you, down the road, will be the work experiences you accumulate and the success you demonstrate in real-life situations, not the C+ you got from your Trotskyite Teaching Assistant in “Marxist and Maoist Perspectives on Sponge Bob Square Pants.”

So, my fellow conservatives, don’t fear the Trotskyites on campus. Avoid the vindictive ones, have fun with the silly ones, give them what they want at test time and never forget…it’s only four years. (Or five. Six?)

If you’re looking for ways to help out your neighbor in these tough economic times, consider following the advice of a South Carolina preacher, modified by a Tucson blogger of middling talent: Eat Goody’s Fried Fish…and then have Carvel ice cream for dessert.

My last My Tucson column for the hardcopy Tucson Citizen was about Carvel’s only ice cream store. Carvel, an ice cream institution in the New York metro area, might soon disappear from its only outpost in the Old Pueblo, on Silverbell and Speedway. During my last visit, the owner sadly said that poor sales might force her to sell the business.

That reminded me of advice I received a long time ago, late one evening in South Carolina, about the importance of seeking out and patronizing local entrepreneurs.

My last duty station in the Army was Savannah. Occasionally I drove to North Carolina for meetings at Fort Bragg, headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps.

One night, as I drove down Interstate 95, through the South Carolina pines en route home to Georgia, I dialed my radio looking for something interesting. The static cleared, and I found myself listening to Palmetto State Public Radio. On the radio, a minister was giving some opinions on how to help strengthen the local economy.

His prescription: Eat at Goody’s Fried Fish.

Apparently, Goody’s Fried Fish was one of the best restaurants near his church. The minister explained that, if locals bought meals at Goody’s, “Goody” could hire more people, purchase more seafood from local fishermen, perhaps expand his business…and the whole community would benefit.

The minister reminded his audio flock that local entrepreneurs had taken big financial risks and sacrificed much of their personal time to establish and run these businesses. Those businesses added spice and life to their communities. Without them…

Imagine small South Carolina towns with no Goody’s. Or Tucson without its one Carvel, or the many, many other small restaurants, antique shops, craft stores, funky clothiers, quirky bookstores, etc…

No doubt, most of our town’s restaurants and stores with nationally-known names are actually franchises, run by hard-working Tucsonans. They’re having tough times, too.

But, in my middling mind at least, there’s something extra special about having a Goody’s down the street from your church. Or an honest-to-goodness Carvel! an hour from Mexico.

So, the next time you have some disposable cash and an urge to spend it, consider looking closely around your community.

Is there a restaurant nearby that you like having nearby? I.e., a place close enough to your home that you can have an evening out—or a tasty but quick meal—without having to drive halfway across town? A family-owned garage whose mechanics treat you more like friends than statistics? A small business whose owners impress you with their pluck and determination?

If so, consider dropping some of that cash there. Especially nowadays.

Our communities will be healthier for it.

Greetings, all! Before I depart for Disney World with Household 6 and the Little Gunner, I wanted to post details from Tucson Parks & Recreation’s reply to my question on user fees for Parks&Rec facilities. Specifically, I asked if Parks&Rec made any provisions for families with financial difficulties.

They do!

The following information comes from Fred Gray, Director of Tucson Parks & Recreation.  (How did I get Mr. Gray to respond to me?  I used the online question form on the Parks&Rec website.  It works!)  Thanks, Mr. Gray.

Tucson Parks & Recreation offers a Discount Program.  It offers reduced fees for “leisure classes, KIDCO, summer clubs, summer swim lessons, senior trips and multiple uses* passes for center or pool use.”   The discount is customized to each family’s particular financial situation, as it’s computed based on household size and reported income.

This discount does not apply to daily fees for centers and pools—and I think that’s fair.  For a family that plans ahead, you get a discount.  For spur-of-the-moment visits, you don’t.  BLUF:  It pays to plan ahead.

For more information, http://www.cityoftucson.org/parksandrec/rates.php. 

And now, it’s off to see the mouse!  Fort Buckley will reopen its gates sometime during the week of 17 August.

* All emphasis is added.

10 people
plus
One active and crafty two-year old
plus
One gorgeous ocean
plus
One 900-foot square hut…er, house
equals
No update on user fees for Tucson public venues until next Monday.

If I survive this week, that is.

If I don’t make it back, Leftfield will carry on in my memory, in a manner that would make Ronald Reagan and Bill Buckley proud…I’m sure.