Our forefathers, in creating a new nation, were concerned about a democracy’s capability to degenerate into “mob rule” through “the tyranny of the majority.” James Madison, who later became our fourth President, in Federalist #10A and in debates in 1787, argued that the government should protect “the minority of the opulent against the majority”.
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According to vocabulary.comD means rich and superior in quality (but contains connotations of pretentious). Our forefathers, like Madison, were considered wealthy.
Yet Lord Acton’s belief that “. . . absolute power corrupts absolutely”A can be seen in states like Florida with supermajorities controlling their government. In 2023, legislatures with veto-proof majorities in both housesA control 29 states. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, with no resistance from the legislative branch, has waged a culture war of tyranny against “the woke” – Democrats, women, minorities, and anybody that publicly disagrees with his policies – in his bid for President of the United States.
In my article “Two Political Parties Are Not Enough”, I address some of the problems of our current two-party system (promoting polarization, guarantying an instant majority). I propose a solution (more political parties). But then I also discuss obstacles to that solution. While waiting for changes, I’ve come up with a simpler solution.
My New Solution
I propose adding a requirement to the only existing rule of securing a majority vote (or 60% in the Senate, or . . .) when state and national legislatures vote on bills. It should also be necessary to secure at least 25% of the vote from each minority party. This would fight polarization and encourage collaboration, compromise, and bi- or multi-partisanship to find solutions at least partially acceptable to all constituents.
Is 25% the right number? It can be tweaked. And as the rule is stated, it can be combined with other solutions (whether previously discussed or not). Could it get in the way of passing laws in an already dysfunctional government? Well, yes, but that’s actually the point until we can elect representatives that represent all the people while trying to solve problems instead of just making sure the other team doesn’t score any points. They apparently can’t do that individually, but maybe they can collectively.
By now I shouldn’t have to tell you that we accept opposing view and solutions. Start the discussion in the comment section below. Thank you.
Above is one version of a common billboard along the interstates in Florida and across America. The problem for me is that the spokesman didn’t look anything like that when he was 18 days from conception; he would have been barely visible and a lot less cuddly. Below, I’ve taken the liberty to replace him with his earlier self, which would have been about half the size of a pea or just able to fit through the pupil in the eye of his older self as shown in the background of the revised billboard. His heart would have been larger than a grain of sand. He still has no eyes, arms, or lungs, and I’ve found no information on brain function. I don’t think he’s feeling any pain. Now ain’t that cute?
His Odds Of Success
While I have touched on this subject before (in my article Save Your Birthday – Vote For Clinton), this time I dug deeper in order to put things into a more serious perspective. Here’s what I found:
According to ABORT73.COM, abortions have been decreasing slightly every year for the last decade. 879 thousand occurring in the United States in 2017.
The Statistica website says that the number of births in this country has been fairly stable. There were about 3.86 million of them in 2017.
Here’s what that means: if you start with 18 fertilized human eggs, 13 will die from natural causes before birth, and one embryo or fetus would be aborted. Both forms of attrition are “front-loaded”; 2/3 of abortions happen by the 8th weekA1, while 2/3 of fertilized eggs will die in their first 11 weeksA2.
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A common mistake would be to compare the number of abortions with the number of births directly but to compare apples to apples, as they say, you need to use the same reference point. Here’s the math:
3.86 million births divided by 25% (or 0.25) gives 15.4 million fertilized eggs. That would be the common reference point. Divide that by 879 thousand abortions and you get the total number of fertilized eggs there are for every abortion (17.6 – let’s round to 18). To find the number of those fertilized eggs that would die naturally, simply multiply the same 18 by 75% (or 0.75).
One thing that is not clear is “what are the odds that the aborted “child” would have died from natural causes anyway?” The easy answer (and my best guess so far) is 75%. That means there are a lot of self-righteous people out there (many being middle-aged white males with nothing invested) who are willing to throw a woman in jail for long periods of time without even caring about the circumstances of her case to protect something that probably wasn’t going to make it anyway. I guess for the pious, any excuse is a good one for beating up on your neighbor.
As a teacher, I didn’t heartily endorse “the Curve.” I didn’t believe that just because a student could find five friends who were either stupider or lazier than they were they deserved a free pass (although I’m sure that for some of my students that was no trivial feat). This also tied into a theory I developed early in my teaching career (which turned into a prophesy). Unlike doctors, who are said to be able to bury their mistakes, if teachers were to make mistakes, and for political or social reasons were unable to correct the system to reduce the number of those mistakes, then non-educated people could eventually reach critical mass. They could then elect enough unqualified politicians to negatively affect the education process (with budget cuts, for example). This would be the beginning of a feedback loop that could put American education and thus American society on a death spiral. But that could never happen here, right?
Now that Mr. Trump has been elected president and his conduct, unchecked by congress, has become more and more outrageous, I find it interesting to watch some of his supporters as they have to warp their world (or the principles by which that world is defined) to greater degrees in order to be able to justify His actions within that small world. To do that successfully, they need other people (their five friends) to be dumb enough to fall for those contorted explanations. As time goes on, those friends need to recruit their own set of even dumber friends so that they don’t look like the fools that they are . . . and so on. But even now, dumb and foolish people are not an unlimited resource in this country, and Trump’s actions will continue to test that resource like no other leader in the history of the Earth. So as in all such schemes, the buffoon bubble is bound to break. The only question is – will that happen before the next election? I’m not so sure it will. Any comments?
Listening to discussions on Facebook about the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, I was surprised and disappointed to see the “innocent until proven guilty” principle so often misapplied (and in two different ways). It became clear to me that a lot of people just don’t understand the concept.
A Larger Doctrine
When something is being awarded to somebody, whether it is good, bad, large, or small, most people would like to think the recipient deserved the award. It is the presenter’s responsibility to make sure that’s the case. The more extreme the action, whether reward or punishment, the more effort the presenters should take to see that the award has been earned.
The Bad
When the award is a punishment, this doctrine takes the form of “innocent until proven guilty”. If the death penalty is under consideration, for example, we need to go to great lengths to be sure we aren’t making a mistake. I’ll save the discussion of the two types of possible errors – letting a murderer go free vs. hanging an innocent person – for another day.
The Good
When the action under consideration is a reward, one would expect some law of symmetry to apply, and it does. In this case, the slogan “innocent until proven guilty” has no place. Whether it is the Mega Millions jackpot or the Nobel Prize, one does not assume a prospect is ‘innocent’, or deserving, until proven otherwise. It is up to the claimant to prove they deserve the award. For the Mega Millions jackpot, that would be by showing the winning ticket and some form of identification. The Nobel Prize has even more stringent requirements. Republicans have no trouble applying this principle to welfare recipients but seem to get tripped up when it comes to Presidents and Supreme Court nominees.
The Ugly
In either of the above cases, it is well understood, as stated above, that the candidate will be fully vetted. And the more significant the award, the more serious the investigation. For someone to insist that a candidate is “innocent until proven guilty”, especially for a reward, and then refuse to hold a meaningful investigation into any evidence of guilt is the height of duplicity. But that seems to be the current state of the Republican Party. It hasn’t always been this way.
Anyone with a logical alternate interpretation of the facts is welcome to share. You can be sure the civility of this discussion will be maintained.
One problem in government is that the longer a politician is in power, the more out-of-touch with their district they tend to become, the less responsive they tend to be to their constituents, and the harder it is to remove them from office. In the pursuit of reelection, getting campaign contributions takes more and more of their time, and the focus on money rather than solutions to problems makes them more susceptible to less altruistic interests. As they gain funds and influence, even lousy incumbents have been shown to have a clear advantage in an election.
The simple answer has been to restrict each politician to two terms of office and then force ‘retirement’. I think that’s wasteful. A statesman requires critical qualities and talents that can improve with experience, and the qualities that separate the statesman from the politician seem to be becoming increasingly rare.
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It’s been said that “the difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman thinks about the next generation”E. For better definitions of ‘statesman’, check out the Houston Chronicle and/or “The Art of Manliness” blog (This is not an endorsement of the AoM blog; nor is this disclaimer a denunciation. I’m always suspicious when people define “real men” because it seems it’s usually the wannabees that speak loudest, and the result is usually watered down and/or distorted into something they can succeed at. Although I have not yet had the chance to investigate this particular site, this article is very good).
There should be a way to make the most of these skills without suffering the adverse side-effects.
A Better Plan – The 50% Rule
My idea would be to let a candidate serve as long as his constituents want him/her without ever letting them be the incumbent. This means after serving their term, they would return to their district for at least one term to reconnect with their constituents. They would not be allowed to hold any political office during that time, whether local, state, or federal.
It would also be good to have a separate law prohibiting them from working as a lobbyist for a set time longer than one term (maybe seven to ten years) after leaving office. And if not already on the books, a law should be put in place requiring a candidate to live in their district for at least one term of office before becoming a candidate. If the candidate is any good at being a statesman, s/he could end up with more than twenty years of public service. It would just take him/her over forty years to achieve that goal. The term incumbent and the advantages of being an incumbent would disappear while still allowing the gifted to fulfill a career in public service.
Other Helpful Ideas
Since we’ve mentioned the need to chase campaign funds as a root of this problem, it also makes sense to try to level the playing field there too. I believe the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court was a mistake (see ‘If You Don’t Have To Pay For It, It Can’t Be Considered Free Speech” – Supreme Court). Steps should be taken to limit campaign contributions have the government fund viable campaigns, or even limit the duration of political campaigns to keep us from going from a one ‘man’, one vote system to one dollar, one vote. In debunking arguments favoring the electoral college (Another Look At The Electoral College), I also decry the ‘one acre, one vote’ notion. I discuss other possible improvements to the election process in Two Political Parties Are Not Enough.
As wise and principled as our forefathers were, even they could not imagine the changes in store in the future before them. That’s why they made provisions to change our rules of governing as needed. We may need to do that now to preserve the power that was originally intended for the people of this great country.
Is President Trump really a racist? Well, of course he is!
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Martin Luther King’s nephew suggested Mr. Trump wasn’t a ‘traditional’ racist, he was just clueless (I’m paraphrasing)A. I agree that Mr. Trump is clueless, but that doesn’t mean he’s not racist. I think there are plenty of Trump tweets to suggest he is both.
But was his racism the underlying motivation for those infamous ‘Shithole’ remarks? If the only commonality that you noticed among the countries he referred to in his comments was the color of the inhabitant’s skin, then maybe you are a racist. I’m not sure people who live in a world with only one bipolar dimension, and who can only see life in terms of one characteristic, can go too long without becoming some sort of bigot. Whether it’s skin color, or sex, or nationality, you soon begin to define your neighbors as either “us” or “them’, depending on whether their single variable matches yours, and from there you have an easy scapegoat for all of your problems and it is all downhill from there. In this case, it is a pity you didn’t notice any other differences. The one that popped out at me was the average income level in these countries. I think Trump noticed that too. In Trump’s mind, the plaque at the statue of liberty should probably go something like this:
“. . . KeepGive me, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” Cries she with silent lips. Send your top one percent.Give meKeep your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . . .”
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See the original poem, “The New Colossus”, and its history at Wikipedia.
Based on his behavior, speeches, and accomplishments as President, it seems to me that Donald Trump is primarily class conscious. Maybe race (and sex and religion and nationality) are only being invoked to give the lower classes cause to fight among themselves and thus distract them from his true agenda.
So?
What difference does any of this make? If it is only a race issue, people might think it only adversely affects 13% of America, and the white folk can sit back and say “better them than me”. But if it is NOT about race, it negatively impacts 99% of us – sorry, but that includes you.
How To Tell
So which theory better matches reality? One easy way to tell is to find people who fit in one group (blacks) and not the other (poor); in other words look for rich blacks or poor whites, and see how Trump feels about them. In praising dictators, Trump seems to be an equal opportunity kind of guyA. Would he have aided Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier of Haiti if given a chance? On the other hand, he does seem to have an affinity for white supremacists even if few of the activists fall in his favorite one percent.
What To Do
The jury may still be out on the ‘shithole’ motivation question. First, as your math teacher would have told you, never just grab the first ‘obvious’ answer (just as buyers and negotiators should never jump at the first offer). Carry both theories in mind, and as new information becomes available, test it against both ideas until one of them can be clearly eliminated. Implicit in this plan is the assumption that your news sources are diverse enough to give you access to plenty of information that would support either theory (if it exists). If that’s not the case, diversify your sources now, or feel your grip on reality slip away.
Am I the only one who, upon hearing that the SAG awards will be using only female presentersA, wondered if this is some sort of sick joke? Am I the only one to wonder what type of “sag” awards – awarded to image-conscious, well-paid Hollywood residents – we might see? “Best Boob Job”, perhaps? “Most Facelifts In A Single Year”? “Most Radical Tummy Tuck”? Who will receive the lifetime achievement award – I’m not sure I even want to see those before-and-after shots.
To be fair, S.A.G. actually stands for Screen Actors Guild, and any resemblance of their acronymD to any real word in the English language, or any other language, is purely coincidental. Still, wouldn’t any of the other meaningless events of self-promotion in Hollywood this season be a more appropriate venue for this gesture? Is it too late for the Oscars, or would that still be too far above a woman’s station in life?
I see that after the Harvey Weinstein incidentA, companies like E! (and NBC, and Comcast)A are quick to redraw the lines of acceptable behavior in Hollywood (and thus the rest of the country). For those having trouble keeping up, it is now totally unacceptable (for anyone short of President of the United States) to actually squeeze a woman’s breast or buttocks in public, or even pretend to squeeze in a fashion undetectable by the victimA, as Al Franken can attest.
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Although I am referring to the simulated groping photo, other allegations of improper behavior later surfacedA, leading to Mr. Franken’s resignation. Debate ensued about whether his level of disrespect rivaled the level exhibited by the President and a well-known Republican Senate CandidateE in Alabama at the time. Opinions expressed about the severity of his offenses crudely correlated with party affiliation.
All other forms of abuse or discrimination, whether verbal, or emotional, or social, or professional, or even financial, are still perfectly fine. As Oprah Winfrey pointed out the other night, “A new day is on the horizon”video. But as everyone who ever traveled west discovered some time after they first saw the Rocky Mountains begin to rise above the fruited plains, we still have a lot of hard miles before we can enjoy the view from those lofty peaks. Keep moving!
Earlier this summer, I overheard a Florida man trying to explain why the electoral college was so important. His main argument was the defense-of-small-states argument I mentioned in My Last Thoughts On Our Last Election. Since the election, I have heard (and readA1,A2) a number of Republicans, using similar arguments, try to justify an institution that even Mr. Trump bad-mouthed before he won the electionA. For the most part, I thought their arguments were contrived and even deceptive.
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For example, Reference A1 argues that slavery had nothing to do with the establishment of the electoral college because:
slaves only counted as 3/5 as much as a free white voter (even though slaves didn’t vote), and
the electoral college gave Abraham Lincoln victory in the 1860 election even though he only had 39% of the popular vote.
If slavery were not an issue, there would be no need to count slaves at all (even at a discount). And while the second argument makes it sound like somebody else would have become President (presumably the one who had the majority of the popular vote) if it were not for the electoral college, there were four candidates that year and Lincoln had 35% more votes than his nearest competitorA. Reference A2, after some discussion, claims that “Unneeded tinkering with a process that is over two centuries old could destabilize one of the steadiest political systems in the world.” Earlier in their article, they had reported that the popular vote differed from the electoral vote only four times (and once more since their article was published). The question that comes to my mind is “which of those five losing candidates would have sent us spiraling toward Hell?”
What Our Forefathers Were Thinking
There were two concerns discussed during the establishment of the electoral college. Foremost, many of our founders didn’t trust the public to be immune from manipulation. It was Alexander Hamilton who argued that it was “desirable” that “the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” (see A2 again).
Second, the small states were worried about being considered relevant. The debate about state power vs. individual rights raged during the framing of the constitution. To have all states equally represented in one house of Congress while the number of delegates of the other house is based on state population was a compromise solution to that issue. That compromise further implemented itself in the electoral collegeA. Some have discounted the significance of the big state vs. small state battle. One example of this is Time, but in their article, Time goes on to argue that the specific reason smaller states needed protection from larger states (in the same way minorities need protection from the majority) was to preserve slavery.
Next, we will take a closer look at each of these arguments.
Can The Elites Protect Us From Democracy?
You don’t have to be an elitist to be concerned about our education system (see my blog post The Real Reason Teachers Are So Important). Old people have openly been questioning the fitness of their progeny to relieve them at the helm for generations. This last election did nothing to assuage my concerns about the dumbing down of America, so I can appreciate our forefathers’ concerns. The problem is that history has shown that our forefathers’ proposed solution won’t work. It turns out those elites are part of the same world and subject to the same influences as the rest of us (who knew?).
But it is more than that – there has been sabotage. An article Don’t look to the Electoral College to upend Trump victory by AP News discussed why we can’t depend on the electoral college to bail us out. They are bound by state law, duty, history, and party loyalty to rubber-stamp their state’s results. As the article mentions, some states have passed laws requiring the college to follow the popular vote. Doesn’t that alone negate this whole argument?
Another thing states have done, which would tend to increase the likelihood of the electoral college differing from the popular vote, but not in any positive way, is go to the all-or-nothing planA (better known as the unit rule) because they wanted the extra attention or power their fifteen minutes of fame for the bigger prize would get them. I discuss other impediments to electoral fairness and possible solutions in another blog post, Two Political Parties Are Not Enough.
What Do Small States Know That We Don’t?
When it is said that the electoral college favors small states, do you have any idea what that really means? Below is a table showing the influence of a voter in our least populated state (Wyoming) compared to other states. It shows how many voters it would take in that state to have the same impact on the electoral college as one voter in Wyoming. It’s not pretty.
Much has been said about the need to protect the interests of rural farmers from the big industrial states. Reference A2 stated “Farmers in Iowa may have very different concerns than bankers in New York.” I will ignore that invitation to argue who among us chose the more noble profession, and instead refer you to the first column in the above table about the electoral college. In that table, the states are listed in decreasing order of how many voters are represented by one electoral vote. But as you can see in Column 2, the more populous states gravitate to the top of the list. Column 1 shows each state’s ranking based on the number of dollars brought in by agriculture. I got lazy and quit after the top 25. Each of the other 25 represents less than two percent of total U.S. agriculture. The two highest agricultural states are also the states with the highest populations and are already the states with the largest number of electoral votes. They don’t need protecting. And whether we are protecting slaves or sheep, does one voter anywhere deserve almost four times as many votes as another? What happened to the “one person, one vote” idea? Should my vote be discounted just because I can wave to my neighbor from my front porch?
Let me put a little counter-spin on this argument. If you were alone on a desert island, pretty much any form of government would work for you. Is living in Wyoming any different? For background, about half of the land in Wyoming is public property. According to Wikipedia, their economy is dominated by mineral extraction, followed by travel and tourism. They say agriculture is also important, but the state ranks 38th in that areaA, contributing less than 1/2 percent of the U.S. total. 78% of that agriculture is beef, with the rest hay, sugar beets, wheat and barley, and wool. About 85% of the people in Wyoming are non-Latin white, 10% are Hispanic white, under 3% are Native American, and a little over 1% are black. They are not big on diversity. For religion, the statistics I read were not entirely consistent, but around 90% of those with a religious affiliation consider themselves Christian, with Protestants the most common, followed by either Mormons or Catholics. One percent are Jewish. Muslims weren’t mentioned. Politically, 67% are Republican, 18% Democrats, and 14% have no political affiliation. They haven’t voted for a Democrat for President since 1964.
I get the idea that if you live in Wyoming (with a half million of your best clones), your nearest neighbor is five miles away, and when you do see each other, you don’t waste a lot of time in debates. I can understand why you may not think you even need a government. And if I had any question about how to make the most effective government, or what is the proper role of government, or even what’s the best way to get along with my diverse neighbors, I definitely would not come to you. I would ask someone from New York or California. Everyone knows that living in groups is more demanding than living alone (I read somewhere that the reason humans evolved larger brains is not to better solve calculus or advanced physics problems, but to better keep track of group relationships).
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Mathematically, the number of relationships grows much faster than the number of people in a group. Let’s say your universe consists of the high school gym, and relationships can be represented by handshakes (why not keep things simple) as the gym fills on a Friday evening. You are the first one in. There are no handshakes. Just stand there and try not to look silly. As the next person enters, you shake hands. As the third person enters, you shake and the second person shakes with the newcomer. That makes three handshakes so far. Here is a small table to keep track:
People in room
1
2
3
4
5
. . .
10
. . .
100
. . .
Total handshakes
0
1
3
6
10
. . .
45
. . .
4,950
. . .
There is a simple equation to describe this, which I will leave as an exercise for the reader, but the number of possible relationships increases roughly in proportion to the square of the number of people in the room. Relationships can get complicated.
But you just couldn’t handle the heat. Why do you really deserve four votes?
Well, it’s obvious I’m missing something. If you know what it is, leave a comment. If you are from Wyoming or were otherwise protected from debate or different ideas, I’ll be gentle – and so will everyone else. You have my word. And thanks for listening.
“This isn’t fair! I worked hard to be honest and caring to my fellow man. I was active trying to get laws passed that would benefit humanity, thinking it would eventually get me elected as President of the United States. Then Trump comes along, insults everyone he can think of, gropes women, thinks only of himself, offers nothing but lie after lie in a blatant effort to tell people whatever he thinks they wanted to hear. He doesn’t even try to hide his ignorant, hateful, and self-centered ways. Yet there he is, now working out of the oval office. Why did I waste my whole life being so good?”
This is not a new problem, with precedents going back thousands of years. There are even a couple of cases in the Bible that may shed light on this situation.
The Prodigal Son
This story D is about a father and his two grown sons. One day the younger son asks for his inheritance. The father relents. That son takes off and squanders his new assets on drink and parties. He falls on hard times. Eventually, he realizes that even his father’s servants are better off than he is. He comes to his senses, and returns to his father’s house begging for forgiveness. The father is thrilled to see him back and throws a party.
Most sermons focus on this part of the story. One of my preachers, however, went on to discuss the ‘good’ older son. He remained with the father and looked after the farm while the younger son was away. Like the Democrat mentioned above, the older son wasn’t so happy that the father threw a party for the errant son and not him, since he was the one who did all the work.
A Deathbed Conversion
Then there is the issue of ‘deathbed conversions’. This is where a long-time sinner repents just before s/he dies. In the earliest case, mentioned in Luke 23:39–43, a lifetime thief being crucified on a cross next to Jesus’ asked to be remembered when Jesus gets to his kingdom. Jesus agrees. But if you were to Google “deathbed conversion” you would find plenty of articles questioning the existence of a genuine last-minute change of heart.
I, for one, can appreciate a little skepticism. But as Reverend Billy Graham points out in www.christianpost.com, God is a lot harder to fool than many christians give him credit for, and much less predictable. The doubting “christians” whose complaint follows the same reasoning as our first Democrat mentioned above may be telling us more about what’s in their heart than the heart of the convert, as I discussed in “It’s The Light”.
How I See It
Those people who complain about having missed opportunities to be jerks simply don’t understand the concept and are not good Democrats, or christians, or just regular people, as the case may be. If you don’t see the benefits of improving the lot of your fellow wo/man as well as yourself or if you don’t really believe that honesty and fairness make for happier people in both the short and long run than debauchery or ass-holiness do, then you are just another fraud. You are no better than those who you are complaining about. It’s that simple.
I apologize for the lack of diversity of my examples. Both are from the New Testament of the Bible. I didn’t remember anything pertinent from Greek mythology (I did find plenty of life lessons in those stories while in school even though their gods had even more flaws than our current President), and there are plenty of other realms and resources about which I know nothing. If you have better references for this issue, I would be glad to hear them. I would even accept counterexamples.
Earlier this month, the Catholic archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, decreed that after four years of Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) basketball together, the St. John’s 5th grade team (nine boys and two girls) would not be allowed to play the last two games of the season with girls on the teamA.
First, A Little Math
The maximum of any subset cannot be greater than the set maximum. This means that if the largest member of your weight-watching group is, say 400 pounds, then as people leave the group, that maximum will not get instantaneously larger. It could remain 400 pounds for a while, but will eventually get smaller as people continue to leave.
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The average group weight, on the other hand, could go up or down depending on how people are selected for removal from the group, but averages aren’t generally used to measure greatness.
Similarly, in sports you cannot raise the level of competition by restricting participation. This means that you can’t say your team is the best in the universe if any member of the universe was barred from competing. Consequently, the only logical reason for restricting membership would be to protect the members from unfair competition. A team would only ban girls if they thought their boys weren’t ready for real competition.
Motives
As we all know, a group’s stated reasons for an action may differ from their real reasons. I suspect the archdiocese’s advertised reason for the decree is to protect girls from competition they can’t handle. But for that argument to have any credibility at all, at least two new conditions would have to be in effect:
There would actually have to be a girl’s team if you want anybody to believe that their interests are really your first priority.
You would protect a “weaker” group by banning the unfair competition from that group, not banning the allegedly weaker competition from the “stronger” or open group. The later option will rightly cause others to question your motives. “Who are you really protecting?”
The required game forfeitures would be further evidence of their true motive. A team should be required to forfeit a game only if they won using an unfair advantage. You would not make a boxer forfeit all the matches he won with one hand tied behind his back. Obviously, the other boys’ teams not only considered the girls a threat, but most likely the sole reason for the team’s success.
A Happy Ending
On hearing the decree, the St. John’s 5th grade team immediately and unanimously decided to stick with their teammates and forfeit the season.
The girls, understandably, felt bad and offered to sacrifice themselvesA. St. John’s athletic director honorably rejected that offer. (In the body of that article, it suggests that the league director had already cancelled St. John’s season, making the athletic director’s gesture moot.)
A new Cardinal reversed the ban and allows St. John’s to playA.
A Not-So-Happy Ending: Politics Trumps Logic
I just read about a different, but logically related case in TexasA. A girl was taking testosterone to become a boy and wanted to compete with boys. New rules for the state of Texas required her to compete as a girl. She won their state wrestling championship. Not everybody was happy with her. I’ll leave the application of principle and subsequent comments to the reader.
