Democracy swings like a pendalum do

The only bright side to the Schiavo mess is that people are talking about classroom topics like separation of powers, state v. federal jurisdictions, public v. private matters, church and state, and consistency on healthcare issues.

I have a firm faith in democracy and human nature. Because we have the power to vote people in and out of office, when we get disgusted enough, we can change the direction of politics. We experienced a "liberalism backlash" and a "feminism backlash" when enough people thought that these agendas weren't working. I believe that we will experience a "conservatism backlash" of the same type. It's like pendalum swings--and pendalum swings get progressively less extreme.

When we lived in California, I became shocked over welfare abuse. California and Texas have very different welfare systems, with California paying out very hefty welfare (Texas is one of the lowest paying systems). One of my co-workers had gone on welfare when her husband left her with three under-schoolaged children. When she was offered a receptionist job at Cal State, her welfare caseworker told her she shouldn't take it because she could get more money from the state for not working than she would get working for the state. That and other stories of welfare abuse from people who were in "the system" made me think I was more conservative than I had imagined--that in conservative Texas I was a liberal, but in liberal California I was surprisingly conservative.

There's a very vocal hyper-conservative faction that is getting a lot of attention, but I imagine that it will result in conservatives having a reaction similar to the one I had in California--that it is conservatism taken to an unacceptable extreme. And just like the welfare reform movement, which was a response to an overblown system, we will see a return to a more middle-of-the-road conservatism.

By the same token, I believe that education will eventual wrest itself from the hands of legislators--but only when parents and teachers demand it. And this will be in response to a generation of less-well-educated children who have been overburdened with legislature-imposed testing. This is sad, but it is apparently the direction we'll take. We see the effects at the university level these days. All this testing is having the opposite of its intended effect.

And all this legislated morality is having the opposite of its intended effect. I have a student who is profoundly disabled. He has no use of his hands or feet and his speech is very difficult to understand. He has an assistant with him at all times to interpret for him and to transcribe his college assignments, so every assignment takes him much longer than able-bodied students. He and I have developed the habit of staying after class to talk. He very much appreciates that I take the trouble to try to understand his speech--and that I recognize the bright mind inside that disabled body. He told me his position on abortion--he personally is opposed to abortion, but he believes God would oppose legislation against abortion because it takes away our free will. That's one of the most thought-provoking ideas I've heard from a freshman in a long time. When you legislate moral choice, you take away the need for people to decide for themselves, to act in accordance with their own moral decisions, and to accept the consequences of their acts.