My most recent letter-to-the-editor submission was accepted by my local newspaper and printed this past Sunday, so I decided on a whim to see if there were any responses to it, and there were. The first chronologically was this:

“THIS IS A TRICK DONT FALL FOR IT, both partys complain when they dont get there way.” [sic]

The thing is, if I’m reading this correctly, is that this respondent and I actually agree. Both major parties do complain whenever their policies are rejected by the other. What I can’t quite understand is why he (or she) thinks I’m tricking anyone. I thought my point was rather clear: The rhetoric from eight years ago sounds quite similar to the current incarnation. That brings me to the second response:

“It’s a shame the writer cannot see the difference.”

Well, I think it’s a shame the respondent didn’t take enough time to clarify which side of this debate he or she is on, because he (enough of the gender thing) clearly falls on one side or the other. So it it domestic spying, ignoring the law and torture what’s acceptable or is it the further explosion the budget and national debt by trying to guarantee health coverage to the entire country on the backs of current and future taxpayers?

I do know what each side thinks the difference between themselves and their opponents are.

Democrats see health care as a social necessity, and some would go so far as to say it is a “right”. To many liberals, the fact that that anyone could question this is unfathomable, except in the name of selfishness and hatred. That is true in a world where money is no object. This, unfortunately, is not that world.

Republicans believed — and most still seem to believe — the way to take care of terrorism is to take the fight to the terrorists. Opposing this is pusillanimous (i.e., cowardly, but “pusillanimous” is a great word, isn’t it?), if not treasonous. Of course, that assumes a nationalistic view that the American government has the right to meddle in the affairs of other sovereign countries due to some alleged superiority.

In both cases, the administration in power and its adherents use fear to attempt to sway the debate, letting talking points and emotion take the place of reason and facts. (In both cases, much of the major-party opposition also did/are also doing something very similar.) Hence, instead of principled discussion over something that can very easily have a major impact on this country and billions of people for decades to come, we had and have political claptrap.

That’s why I don’t see a difference.

Under my letter (and others, including one stating the Founding Fathers would support nationalized health care [wrong; defining "public welfare" like that opens almost anything to government funding and control, a very non-Founder-like policy] and another claiming Nancy Pelosi is a Nazi [NO, NO, NO, and if she is for being "obedient to their leader in a goose-stepping, unquestioning, unthinking... way", how would the author describe Hastert and most Republicans after the 2001 attacks?]), the newspaper asked people on the street: “Should all schools operate like charter schools?”

Six answers were printed, all of them no. Four of them resembled this amalgamation of two similar concerns:

“People in a corporation won’t know what’s going on in a community. Companies don’t know what the kids need like that of public schools.”

I will say that “[operating] like charter schools” is a vague notion. That could mean that all schools have open enrollment, that each school sets its own curriculum (or allows teachers to set their own class agendas within set guidelines), that each school is run by an independent company or organization, or some other alternative or combination. However, the opposition seems to be against the idea of schools being run by a company.

Charter schools are run by companies often in tandem with the local school system, and, at least in the cases of the schools I am somewhat familiar with, have open (but capped) enrollment. Parents choose to send their children to charter schools as an alternative, not as a requirement. Therefore if the charter school has to turn away children, it is because either it is a success in its own right or the public schools in the area are not doing a good job in the eyes of the parents who want their kids to go to the charter school. In either case, the company has to be doing a good job determining what the community wants and the children need; if it doesn’t, parents would reject it and the school would close. That leads me to another of the answers:

“No. There are studies coming out that they are failing in Michigan and New Jersey.”

This may or may not be true, but it is also irrelevant.

Charter schools are a category of schools, but they aren’t a method (like Montessori) or a brand (like EdisonLearning). Hence while one charter school company may fail, another may succeed. The lack of success somewhere else is worth consideration only if that is the company seeking to start a school in your neighborhood, and even then, the differences between the place the other school failed and your local community would still have to be taken into account.

“No. Everybody has a different opinion of how schools should be run.”

This is the last answer, and the one I agree with, though perhaps in a different sense than the respondent intended.

Education is clearly very important. Parents have different ideas of what their children should be taught, and children learn in different ways, hence no one style of school — be it government-run, privately-run, religiously-based or homeschooling; general education, trade school or skill/art academy — will work for everyone. For that reason alone, variety ought to be key.

I disagree with the idea of government schools less due to my libertarian leanings as much as I realize that imposing one style of learning and evaluation on millions of children with numerous different budding personalities simply cannot work.

I understand the potential problems with some children not learning critical thinking skills due to certain parents’ belief sets, religious and otherwise, but quite frankly (and sadly), it can be argued that’s already the case.

Finally, I read an interview with Sandra Bernhard in the Chicago Tribune. (No, I don’t know why I read it, either.) In it, Ms. Bernhard was asked about an album she released. She stated as it was made during the end of the Bush administration, it was influenced by “people’s fear of the world and people’s fear of us.”

She later stated she felt the Bush terms were “so long, so depressing, so oppressive.” When the interviewer mentioned some feel that way now, Bernhard replied:

“Yeah, well, I don’t think anybody on that side could possibly feel — there’s no visceral reason for them to feel it, other than the racist fear-mongering that those people deal in.”

Hmm. General disdain for a group of people pigeonholed by skin color and their supposed beliefs. That sounds quite a bit like the bigotry she claims all “those people” “on that side” are supposedly guilty of espousing.

This brings me full circle. Too many times, Democrats and Republicans claim their adversaries are guilty of some political transgression, but when their allies do the same thing, they not only let it go, they embrace it. (I call it “guest referee syndrome”, after the clearly biased officials that are occasionally used in matches staged in the male soap opera known as professional wrestling.)

If something is a political game when a liberal does it, it’s a political game when a conservative (or a libertarian, or a socialist, or whomever) does it. If something is fair when someone you agree with does it, complaining when an opponent is hypocritical. Changing policies and beliefs from red to blue or vice versa does not excuse shoddy political tactics.