Appropriate Care

Yet again, America has shown governmental disdain for the care of those who serve her. A person puts himself on the front lines of conflict, suffers from it, and then is left to suffer with his needs undiscussed, unexamined, and therefore untreated.

No, I do not speak of the military. I speak of the beleaguered and clearly unwell Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales. The man is so bewildered and confused now that it is beyond me how his ailments go unaddressed!

"I do not remember," he declares. "I was not involved," he explains. "It was done with too little thought," he grants. "It was all done according to the law and for appropriate reasons," he concludes. "I am informed I discussed this with the president," he demurs. "I do not remember any of the details. I am sorry," he reiterates.

When asked how, if he was not involved and does not remember, he can assert it was all done appropriately, he voices his conviction and faith.

Clearly, this is a man whose mind has suffered at least one blow too many. He is delusional, he is amnesiac, he is addle-pated. He claims to know things that he admits he cannot know. The man needs help, but all he is given is a grilling. The Senators and the President owe this man - he has served his country!

Get him out of office and into an institution that can help him, before it is too late!

Induced Trauma

"In that promising land the spirit of I'm as good as you has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be "undemocratic." These differences between pupils - for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences - must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and
mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have - I believe the English already use the phrase - "parity of esteem." An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma -- Beelzebub, what a useful word! - by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT."

"All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows?"

Screwtape proposes a toast, C.S. Lewis, 1959