Conclusion

This Heartear project is complete, and I am changed.

One friend asked my wife if this experience was going to make me a Republican. While I am not changing political parties, I will be a more critical, better informed liberal.

Another friend asked me if the process was healing. Not healing but transforming. The project exercised my mind and spirit much in the way daily physical exercise increases stamina and capacity for effort.

Encountering the other rather than avoiding, and trying to understand rather than judge strengthened my resolve to seek beauty, delight and kindness each and every day, year by year, thought by thought.

Understanding versus indoctrination

Article

PBS Islamic Lesson Plan Encourages Students to Identify with Radical Jihadists

PBS LESSON PLAN TEACHES KIDS TO SYMPATHIZE WITH RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM

Christian Action Network letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

Summary

Breitbart and its like are reporting on a finding from The Heartland Institute (a "free-market think tank") that objects to a lesson plan offered by PBS Learning Media because its one-sided emphasis on the Palestinian perspective indoctrinates young people to sympathize with terrorists.

Quote

"The material {sic} go far beyond mere education about the Islamic religion in comparison to other religions. They are undisguised indoctrination materials, effectively a Sunday school class for Islam. The materials encourage impressionable age children to study Islamic prayer, Islamic doctrine (e.g., the Five Pillars), and Islamic practices without any hint that these matters are to be compared to or contrasted with the prayers, doctrines or practices of other religions. They are entirely stand-alone promoting the religion and practice of Islam. The indoctrination materials include worksheets, questions, activities and media that lure children into Islamic worship. "

Attorney letter on behalf of the Christian Action Network

Understanding

The conservative media gets a twofer with this story because it entwines public broadcasting with Islamic terrorism. Beneath the surface is the conflict between religion and secular humanism. The story also gives us an opportunity to consider the role of critical thinking in education.

The lesson plan is reportedly for 5th through 12th grades. These are young people who are of an age where they are aware of  the news and forming their identity. The lesson plan provides them an opportunity to consider a perspective other than their own and get beneath the headlines. Critics fail to recognize the role the teacher will play in responding to the students' opinions.

Religion and politics merge when it comes to Islam and the combination is combustible. My friend Marcia mentioned last night, "Everyone is afraid."  Indeed. Let's pay attention to how fear drives us and how far we are willing to go, how much we escalate, because of our personal fears.

Historical or hysterical perspective?

Article

Why Progressives Hate Steve Bannon’s Cyclical View Of History

Summary

A correspondent for The Federalist argues that liberals reject a cyclical understanding of history because it counters their idea of progress toward utopia.

Quote

"Progressives take it as a matter of faith that history has sides, that it is heading in a certain direction, and that it’s up to us to usher in a secular paradise. For progressives like Ashbrook, merely anticipating a crisis in the age of Trump makes a crisis more likely to happen, which might harm the progressive cause. Hence, writers like Howe are guilty of enabling people like Bannon."

Understanding

We have such a knack for creating the illusion of control. We construct cyclical patterns of history to model what we should expect in the future. We imagine spiritual-poetic values in creation as Martin Luther King Jr. articulated, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." We use books Steve Bannon reportedly likes to predict how he will act. Or, self-disclosure alert, we get up an hour early each morning to scan media sources outside our personal bubble to try to understand what the hell is going on.

This tendency of ours is useful and limited. It is vanity to over play the extent we are in charge  but as The Boss wrote, "at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe."

I want our leaders to have a fully formed worldview and act out of a thoughtfully earned philosophy. I also want them humble enough to know their worldview isn't the only viable perspective.

Spicer holds the mirror

Article

Liberal Media Attacks Sean Spicer Over Poorly Worded Hitler Reference – Ignores Years of Obama Anti-Semitic Policies

Summary

The Gateway Pundit defends Spicer by -

1. Pointing out Jared Kushner is Jewish
2. Claiming the Left is hysterical
3. Attacking Obama

Quote

"It would be naive and stupid to say that what Sean Spicer said was anti-Semitic. That is a plain and simple truth regarding this entire situation and it is part of the double-standards game that the left loves to play when it comes to their “supreme leader” Barack Obama – after all, without double-standards, the left would not have any standards to speak of." 

Understanding

The conservative media sources I scan each morning for Heartear usually cover the same topics. That was not the case with coverage of Spicer's chemical weapons remarks yesterday.  Fox News and the National Review made no mention of it on their websites. Breitbart buried the story. The other blogs defended Spicer by claiming the Left was over-reacting. The Gateway Pundit article referenced above went to the greatest extreme to apologize for Spicer.

Spicer botched his job yesterday. Our mistakes can be our best teacher. How we respond to the mistakes of others offers teachable moments too. Our reaction to his incompetence shines a powerful light on our own character, biases and values.

Wishful thinking

Article

An Indispensable Nation After All

Summary

William Murchison in The American Spectator praises Pres. Trump for seeing beyond the Nationalist perspective of "America first" and intervening in Syria.

Quote

"George Bush’s democracy-for-everybody line of business was unrealistic; but so, in a world whose dangers he tended to slight, were Barack Obama’s sermons and lectures. If Donald Trump can miraculously steer the indispensable nation between rock-’em-and-sock-’em and oh-mercy-me-what-can-we-do?, ours might prove a safer, freer world."

Understanding

Murchison characterizes our opponents as "punks and thugs" who can be subdued by a strong leader willing to assert forceful intervention.  He proposes the Trump administration should apply to international affairs the New York City "broken windows" policing strategy of bringing down violent crime through zero tolerance of vandalism.

Peace through force is magical thinking as long as we dehumanize our opponents. Even the conservatives cheering Pres. Trump's leadership wish he had a coherent, thoughtful plan or philosophy.

Court intrigue

Article

Donald Trump’s Pick For Top Economic Adviser Is Pro-Immigration, Pro-Outsourcing

Summary

Breitbart attacks the choice of Kevin Hassett to chair the Council of Economic Advisors. The article goes back and forth between two points -

1. The nomination is a win for the corporate, business-first faction versus the populist, America first faction in Pres. Trump's administration
2. Hassett's policy positions don't account for all the social costs of immigrants 

Quote

"That’s a standard pitch from D.C.-based legislators, agency officials, and political advisors, all who stand to gain from a more powerful national economy and a greater inflow of taxes — no matter how immigration changes the distribution of income or the [sic] hurts the prospects of ordinary Americans and their children."

Understanding

Hassett has outstanding conservative and academic credentials. The extreme opposition from Breitbart makes the publication seem like Steve Bannon's town crier.

This alleged power struggle between factions in the White House could be important; especially if it is true that Pres. Trump reacts tactically to situations rather than from a strategic philosophy. Policy might come from whoever whispers in his ear last.

The outward appearance of this administration seems similar to the court of Henry VIII with rival nobles vying to influence a mercurial king. Me thinks Jared Kushner is Cromwell.

The Syrian dilemna

Article

The Middle East: Where American Political Idealism Goes to Die

Still against Intervention in Syria

Bombing Syria: Six reasons why we shouldn't have

Trump's Dangerous Syria Missile Strike

So You Want To Go To War In Syria To Depose Assad. Can You Answer These 14 Questions First?

The Case for Strikes In Syria Is Better Than The Case For War

Summary

Lots of conservative opinion against intervention in Syria. Concerns range from there being no strategic interest for the U.S. to a war there will be too difficult to win.

Quote

"The U.S. attack is an impulsive intervention in a civil war in which both sides — the Damascus/Tehran/Moscow alliance and its Sunni-jihadist/sharia-supremacist opposition — are hostile to the United States. It is a war in which Bashar al-Assad’s continuation in power, dismal as that prospect may be, is in no way the worst conceivable outcome for American national security."

Andrew McCarthy

Understanding

There are competing strains of thought at play in conservative opinion.

Interventionists proclaim -

• America is back
• Obama is gone
• The U.S. is destined to enforce morality on the world order
• Showing force is good

Nationalists assert -

• There is no benefit to us
• Trump is inconsistent
• We can't win
• We don't know who we are we helping

This debate might be the epitome of a first-world problem. Our power and geographic distance from war zones give us an option to pick and choose. Our position removed from the fray comes with a heavy intellectual and moral burden, but we get to decide whereas victims in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan.... etc. can only hunker down or flee.

How can we look away? How can we send soldiers to die?  The answer depends on our vision for our country. America first and forever?  America the last best hope for the world?