Eight Feet Deep

Dogs and philoso­phers do the great­est good and get the fewest rewards.  Dio­genes

Pres­i­dent Obama threw in the domes­tic kitchen sink last evening dur­ing his first State of the Union address.

Politi­cians, espe­cially first term pres­i­dents, tend to do that. Of course, Obama had a lot to cover. The nation’s aver­age unem­ploy­ment rate being in dou­ble dig­its alone could have taken half of the ground Obama marched over dur­ing his  70-minute speech.

As a State of the Union speech goes, it was very good. Obama was not Barack the law pro­fes­sor. Instead, he was Barack the pop­ulist president.

Of course, the cable media had to stir up a con­tro­versy where there really had not been one. I’m speak­ing of the president’s rebuke of the Supreme Court rul­ing allow­ing cor­po­ra­tions and unions to spend unlim­ited dol­lars on polit­i­cal cam­paigns. Some mem­bers of the high court were sit­ting near the pres­i­dent and dur­ing what was a polite but force­ful dart, Jus­tice Samuel Alito silently mouthed some­thing like “not true.” It’s not like Alito told the pres­i­dent “f**k you.” Or he didn’t yell out: “You lie” as  Rep. Joe Wil­son, R-S.C., did dur­ing Obama’s address on health care reform last year dur­ing a joint ses­sion of Congress.

Obama cov­ered a lot of ground, includ­ing his belief that now is the time to scrap “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow gays to openly serve in the mil­i­tary. The cam­eras on the Joint Chiefs of Staff showed its mem­bers in a grim state. But the pres­i­dent was right on this one.

The argu­ment against gays “telling” in the ser­vice is about 9/10ths polit­i­cal and 1/10th reli­gious. Which, if you really take the macro look at it, it’s either 100 per­cent polit­i­cal or 100 per­cent reli­gious. This is because the polit­i­cal argu­ment is mostly fueled by the reli­gious right, who in turn, pres­sure the politicians.

One exam­ple against gays in the mil­i­tary used 30 years ago when I was in the ser­vice was that the enemy could pos­si­bly cap­ture a gay ser­vice mem­ber and black­mail him to reveal clas­si­fied mate­r­ial by using the ser­vice person’s homo­sex­u­al­ity against him. (I use “him” because the “hims” were mostly those in such sit­u­a­tions. Today, there are plenty of “hers” serv­ing in dan­ger­ous and sen­si­tive mil­i­tary posi­tions.) If the mil­i­tary per­son was openly gay, such black­mail attempts would mostly prove moot.

What many sol­diers, sailors, Marines, air­men and coasties — some women but I think mostly men — would be most con­cerned with if they are not for open “gay­ness” in the ser­vice might per­haps being hit on by some­one of their own gen­der. You might ask one of these brave souls and they’d tell you “no way.” But until these mostly young males and even some females make peace with them­selves about their own sex­u­al­ity, being a straight who is hit on by a gay can be dis­con­cert­ing, and for some might rarely spark vio­lence. But the same could prob­a­bly be said about some straight guy hit­ting on your girlfriend.

The bot­tom line is if gays are openly admit­ted in the ser­vice and you are upset at hav­ing a pass made at you, you can file the same com­plaints with supe­ri­ors as when an unwel­come pass by some­one of the oppo­site sex  is made. And yes, some­times it is dif­fi­cult to see jus­tice done with that. Nonethe­less, fair is fair. Plus we don’t have a mil­i­tary draft and we need peo­ple, espe­cially intel­li­gent and tal­ented peo­ple — gay or straight — to pro­vide for our national security.

I liked, as well, how the pres­i­dent basi­cally told both par­ties they act like jack­asses, and that his own party needs to grow a (some) pair (s).

I did dis­like one of the president’s pro­pos­als. That was his pro­posed gov­ern­ment spend­ing freeze begin­ning in FY 2011. Pre­vi­ous lim­ited bud­get increases for gov­ern­ment agen­cies have con­tributed to poor equip­ment and half-ass train­ing. If the gov­ern­ment doesn’t have time or a lit­tle extra money to update out­moded equip­ment and fully train their employ­ees, it will lead to both a total break­down in ser­vices as well as cost­ing more in the end when peo­ple or things fail to work as they should.

Think about that one, Mr. Prez.

All in all, I think the Pres­i­dent did a fine job on, at least my opin­ion for now, what I hope to be many more SOTU addresses over the next three-to-seven years.

Do you remem­ber the song “Dem Bones?”

It is an old spir­i­tual allegedly used to teach chil­dren basic anatomy even though the song is anatom­i­cally incor­rect, all accord­ing to Wikipedia. Though there is no doubt of the con­nec­tion between the song and the verse from “Ezekiel 37:1–14″ where the profit pays a visit to the Val­ley of Dry Bones and through God’s com­mand causes the bones to come alive.

Anatom­i­cally cor­rect or not, the song in its sim­ple way speaks to the con­nec­tion and one­ness of the human body. The body is such an intri­cate mech­a­nism, like in many ways a fine auto­mo­bile or space ship or air­craft. Often when one part of the body has a prob­lem it can cause a glitch in another loca­tion that even some­times seems silly to the mind not trained in at least a bit of gross anatomy.

Physi­cians are trained in more than a bit of gross anatomy and they know, or should know, much more than the rest of the pop­u­la­tion of these intri­cate inter­re­la­tion­ships within the body which can cause some­thing some­where to go wrong and make a body mis­er­able elsewhere.

I known my physi­cians, who work for the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs, know all that. How­ever, I don’t know if they are too hur­ried or har­ried or caught up in some kind of mind­set that so often find them­selves unable to see the for­est of the body for the tree trunks.

 As I men­tioned here last week after my MRI at the Hous­ton VA, three dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble causes emerged for the painful periph­eral neu­ropa­thy I have suf­fered in my feet and legs since the sum­mer. One rea­son is Type II dia­betes, which was promptly diag­nosed after a lot of talk about it. Another rea­son was a type of fatty tis­sue caus­ing steno­sis of my lum­bar spine and the other rea­son being an untreat­able and pos­si­bly debil­i­tat­ing inflam­ma­tion of one of the spine’s membranes.

So which con­di­tion does my spe­cial­ist pick on which to focus? Why dia­betes, of course. And I’ll be bru­tally frank, if the VA wants me to be treated for dia­betes, they sure are pick­ing a funny way to do it. Here is this glu­come­ter and an instruc­tion book. Good luck with your dia­betes. Oh, we will fit you with some spe­cial shoes, but we can’t mail them to you. You’ll have to come back to Hous­ton for them. No instruc­tion on the diet and lifestyle that is needed to lose weight and pills to help com­bat the high blood sugar lev­els. That is the VA’s other answer for all that ails you: meds.

I find myself in a vicious med­ical cir­cle in which none of my med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have seemed to fig­ure a way out for me. I bal­looned in weight. My blood sugar went up at a mar­ginal rate. I devel­oped periph­eral neu­ropa­thy — a con­di­tion very often caused by dia­betes but also caused by per­haps more than 100 other rea­sons as well — the pain cut down on my walk­ing for exer­cise to almost noth­ing. My weight bal­looned even more. My blood sugar got higher. In the mean­time, a MRI finds other prob­lems not related to dia­betes that are caus­ing sim­i­lar symp­toms which include neu­ropa­thy. I also suf­fer from often severe back pain as well as shoot­ing pain in my hip and leg. Oh, and let’s not for­get that I devel­oped a hand tremor two years ago. Just a coin­ci­dence I guess, huh?

So my spe­cial­ist in Hous­ton says lose weight and lower your blood sugar. We’ll attack the dia­betes. Why? Well, my weight and blood sugar both needs to decrease. But also, dia­betes is the eas­ier, or per­haps, the only one of the three that can be treated. Good luck. See you in a month.

I don’t under­stand why the body can’t be seen as a whole, a sys­tem? That’s what it is. It’s true, all I can treat is the dia­betes as far as I know. But one of the con­di­tions I have been diag­nosed with has sim­i­lar symp­toms as dia­betes, includ­ing weight gain, and it can poten­tially par­a­lyze or kill you.

Once again, for how­ever many times, the VA has taken me out into the woods and left me to find my way home by myself. I have, at least for the unfore­see­able future or per­haps the rest of my life, chronic pain that can’t be treated. It can’t even be treated by the methadone I take for pain at the oppo­site end of the spine from this prob­lem. Yet, I have to some­how get up in the morn­ing, work, live, keep going. My body might break down along the way, it might not.

I am not plead­ing for sym­pa­thy. There is no need for it. Like they said in olden times: “It ain’t nothin’ but a thang.” I am, instead, just talk­ing out loud. Pretty loud at that. I am kind of going through what the late Dr. Elis­a­beth Kubler-Ross described as the “Five Stages of Grief” in her acclaimed book “On Death and Dying.” Those stages are denial, anger, bar­gain­ing, depres­sion, and accep­tance, although not all of those stages are reached and not nec­es­sar­ily in any order.

Right now I am in denial and anger over being diag­nosed as dia­betic. I am angry that, at least my spe­cial­ist thinks, noth­ing can done about my most recent chronic pain. I am also depressed. I haven’t reached the bar­gain­ing and accep­tance stage.

If noth­ing else, these stages present a way to look at the process of work­ing out a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem. If my mem­ory from classes that I took while attain­ing a minor in soci­ol­ogy — includ­ing a course on death and dying — serves me right the whole grief thing works on roman­tic breakups and var­i­ous other trau­mas. It’s funny. The last “roman­tic” breakup I had a cou­ple of years ago revealed only, perh­pas, the accep­tance stage and none of the other five. I sup­pose that could be like the exchange method of diet­ing, I could exchange two of glee for one of depression.

Leave ‘em laugh­ing. Sorry, I am just talk­ing to myself.

 Who Dat?

 What more might I really say after the thrilling over­time win the Saints foist upon the Vikings. Well, per­haps Gar­rett Harley’s 40-yard field goal was a bit thrilling. The Zebras stop­ping what seemed like every play after the OT began was get­ting tedious.

 I must admit though, a TV shot of where Hart­ley was and where he would have to kick the ball made me believe that this thing wasn’t going to work. It seemed like he had to boot the thing for miles! I really didn’t want to watch. I didn’t want to but did and I couldn’t even tell it went through because for some rea­son my recep­tion on the local Fox chan­nel here in Beau­mont, Texas, sucks. It prob­a­bly is the fault of the cable provider, the always help­ful Time-Warner.

 But the Zebras lifted their hands upward toward the heav­ens. And the Ain’ts were no longer the Aint’s they had been for the bet­ter part of 40-something years. They were the NFC Champions!

 Poor Old Man Favre. I really don’t know what to make of that dude. I want to like him but he seems as if he teeters on the edge of macho drama queen. He sure got his a** waxed yes­ter­day. He should have been totally rested after the game con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of times that dude got knocked down. But there isn’t too many like him. Many are cold but few are frozen. That is except for Peyton.

 Man­ning just needed the time to fig­ure it all out. That was what that first half was about. And I needed to do my taxes any­way. After I fig­ured out how to get back into the tax pro­gram I’ve used for the last four years, it didn’t take long at all and got a decent refund — per­haps in as lit­tle as a week — to boot. I was fin­ished by the start of the sec­ond half of Colts vs. Jets.

 Oh and Sanchez. He had a nice ride as a rookie. Now he has to start play­ing some NFL-style foot­ball. Like I could carry his shoul­der pads. Or for any other pro foot­ball player for that mat­ter. But every­one can be a Monday-morning quar­ter­back, no mat­ter what time of day it might really be.

 Pey­ton Man­ning. There is no foot­ball player any­where like him as far as I know. He will be the decid­ing fac­tor come kick­off for the Super Bowl in a cou­ple of weeks. That is, fol­low­ing an after­noon filled with your stan­dards Super Bowl hype. Yes, I wish Pey­ton the best but wish Drew Brees the mo’ better.

 In the end, I will root for my next door neigh­bors in Nawl­ins. They have some­thing to cheer about a long time coming.

Nor­mally, I’m not a big fan of Politico.

The MSM-ish, all-the-politics-all-the-time Web prod­uct once occu­pied a place on my blogroll when I was using Blogspot. But I tired of their cable news-like approach to polit­i­cal report­ing. That approach is basi­cally summed up in one word: drama. If there is no drama, cre­ate some. Plus polit­i­cal gos­sip is found there more often than not. I don’t like that. But that’s just me, the old-time news­pa­per guy who had to count head­lines and paste-up pages in the early days of his career. I’m cer­tain there are those print guys much older, or who started before me, who really are the old-timers. I’m just being half-ass face­tious.***

With all that blather I speak of Politico because there is a very good arti­cle on it today which cites rea­sons the Repub­li­can Party isn’t as well off as many believe it to be. Politico founder and exec­u­tive edi­tor Jim Van­de­Hei and writer James Hohmann report that a few unex­pected vic­to­ries, includ­ing that most recently of nude model Scott Brown who took the Kennedy Sen­ate seat, have the GOP rid­ing high.

But while some Repub­li­cans lick their chops at the prospect at tak­ing over Con­gress in Novem­ber, other GOP-ers are say­ing not so fast.

Van­de­Hei and Hohmann point out that the poll num­bers show what every­one includ­ing Repub­li­cans should know, that the pub­lic is not crazy about the Grand Old Party. The spec­u­la­tion men­tioned in this arti­cle gives the GOP an out­side chance at re-taking the Sen­ate and a fat­ter chance at rul­ing the House. The arti­cle also cor­rectly points that this is Jan­u­ary and Novem­ber will be in November.

Repub­li­can lead­ers say part of their prob­lem is get­ting their agenda out there. Other party lead­ers fret that the GOP lacks a brand. Mean­while, party minor­ity whip Rep. Eric Can­tor of Vir­ginia wrings his hands over a lack of diver­sity among candidates.

Other for­mi­da­ble prob­lems also puz­zle the GOP elite. The pub­lic likes Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, for one, and, cor­rectly, feel like he inher­ited a big finan­cial mess from Gee Dubya Bush. Money, or lack thereof, is per­haps the biggest prob­lem fac­ing Repub­li­cans, accord­ing to Van­de­Hei and Hohmann. We’re talk­ing cam­paign cash and not a Wash­ing­ton bailout.

Per­haps the biggest obsta­cle for the Repub­li­cans to over­come is not men­tioned in the arti­cle, as infor­ma­tive as it is. That is the party has a big case of see no evil, hear no evil, fear no evil.

For instance, the per­ceived agenda prob­lem. What agenda are they talk­ing about? I sup­pose if they had an agenda other than being super-obstructionist, then that would be a prob­lem. They have no prob­lem pro­mot­ing their agenda if it is attack­ing every­thing done by the Democrats.

And as for lack­ing a brand, why the GOP has unfor­tu­nately branded them­selves already as the Obstructionist-Pig-headed-Bassackwards-Reactionary party. Can­tor does see the for­est for the trees at least for the diver­sity prob­lem. But — and per­haps fate is involved here — every­thing the Repub­li­cans do turns to feces. The same can be said of their diver­sity hire pro­gram. I give you exhibit A, Repub­li­can party chair­man Michael Steele.

The GOP needs money yet they always seem to find some spare change lying around. How­ever, the whole ani­mus towards Repub­li­cans today is based on the fact that most folks who are not Repub­li­cans and even many Repub­li­cans them­selves think the party and its lead­ers — whomever they are — stinks to high heaven.

The Politico arti­cle is a great read and will only take up a few min­utes of your time. I think whether you are Repub­li­can, Demo­c­rat or Save the Bluenose Rat par­ti­sans you will find some­thing instruc­tive on what the GOP looks like at the moment. If you are a Repub­li­can you might come down off your high from win­ning in Mass­a­chu­setts a few moments, but that could be a good thing to think about which way your party is headed. If you are a Demo­c­rat you might be a bit encour­aged, but not too much.

As for as the Inde­pen­dents and Bluenose Rat lovers, well you can take what you will from it. All in all, the piece is one Politico could use more of instead of the gos­sip and faux drama that too often fills up the site.

***In real­ity I shouldn’t be so hard on Politico. Van­de­Hei is a long­time jour­nal­ist who cov­ered the White House and other polit­i­cal mat­ters for The Wash­ing­ton Post as well as other dis­tin­guished news­pa­pers. The site is doing some­thing new and I give them a B for effort. But I give them a D for over­all con­tent for the rea­sons to which I alluded.

When­ever one is handed a med­ical diag­no­sis such as Type II dia­betes — even if one is skep­ti­cal of the diag­no­sis — such a rev­e­la­tion is usu­ally some­what sig­nif­i­cant in the med­ical par­ti­tion of one’s life. But when­ever the doc­tor says: “But there’s more … ” One says: “Shoot ‘em low sher­iff, he’s rid­ing my Shet­land pony!” Or some­thing like it.

Yes­ter­day I got more than I bar­gained for at the pri­mary doc, actu­ally a physician’s assis­tant, or a “doc-lite” if you will. She went over the MRI results from my test on Tues­day and it wasn’t all that pleas­ant as med­ical news goes.

Before the MRI results though, the PA pro­nounced me as dia­betic, as if to answer the ques­tion that has floated around my Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs care­givers and me: “Am I dia­betic or am I just fat?”

So that news  involves a whole lifestyle change includ­ing diet, exer­cise (which shall be dicey as you will see) and stick­ing your self with a pin and test­ing your blood.

Now, the MRI news. I have suf­fered from neu­ropa­thy for the bet­ter part of eight months, per­haps longer. The symp­toms have included severe foot pain in both feet includ­ing that which feels like some­one is stick­ing a nail in your foot, as well as numb­ness and just plain hurt­ing feet. Simul­ta­ne­ously, I have also suf­fered from lower back pain, a sharp pain that shoots down my right butt cheek (It’s those damn Republicans!) and a shoot­ing pain in my right leg when sit­ting or dri­ving too long.

Dia­betes is one of the major causes of neu­ropa­thy. There are hun­dreds of causes it seems. Since the VA often deals in what one might call “quan­tity med­i­cine,” I was con­cerned about receiv­ing a diag­no­sis of dia­betes because it was the eas­i­est. I am the most over­weight I have ever been in my life. My blood sugar has risen but some doc­tors have said it was on the cusp of dia­betes. Thus, I got a dia­betes diag­no­sis com­plete with a meter to mea­sure my blood sugar and all the lit­tle accessories.

But the MRI found two other pos­si­ble rea­sons for my leg and foot pain. For one I have what the PA described as a “tumor” — non-malignant — and as a “fat deposit” that is caus­ing some steno­sis, or encroach­ment, on my lum­bar spine.

Sec­ondly, the MRI dis­cov­ered what is sus­pected as a rel­a­tively rare con­di­tion caused “anachroidi­tis.” This sounds, of course, like some­thing hav­ing to do with a spi­der although that word is “arachnid.”

Anachroidi­tis is the inflam­ma­tion of the two inner­most lay­ers sur­round­ing the spinal cord and often expands to the nerve roots. This can cause scar­ring or adhe­sion of the nerves. The kicker is there is no cure for this con­di­tion. So I guess the punter is that it also is pro­gres­sive and can lead to paral­y­sis and death. It’s dif­fi­cult enough to look at one the many pages I have been read­ing on the Inter­net about my new found rare and incur­able mal­ady. This is a dis­ease described as both “dread­ful” and “insid­i­ous.” To read what I have writ­ten is even more a chore.

The causes also are many: Any­thing from lum­bar punc­ture or chem­i­cals from a spinal injec­tion to trauma to viral or bac­te­r­ial infec­tions. The pos­si­ble com­pli­ca­tions are numer­ous as well. It doesn’t sound like it is or might be a whole lot of fun.

I still have to see my neu­rol­o­gist at the VA next week and I sup­pose we might go over the lim­ited treat­ment options. One, per­haps, might be surgery to remove the mass and con­tin­ued use of Lyrica which has seemed to help my feet pain some­what. Surgery for arach­noidi­tis is almost zero likely since sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures have not been very suc­cess­ful in treat­ing the condition.

I will be the first to tell you my future right now looks scary as I – so my friend Terri Jo put it — “travel the undis­cov­ered coun­try of ill health.” But I will do my best to keep active, keep upbeat, keep mov­ing those limbs, keep upright on the ground and keep on truckin’. And I don’t know what effect, if any my con­di­tion will have on my work includ­ing free­lanc­ing, but I will keep on pound­ing out this thing — eight feet deep – for bet­ter or worse as long as I am able.

So there.

This morn­ing I took the shut­tle to the VA hos­pi­tal for my mul­ti­ple appoint­ments. I don’t know who thought up book­ing me for three appoint­ments when one of those was a MRI. But it all worked out somehow.

An 84-year-old Marine sat next to me on the ride over. He seemed kind of lone­some, as to be expected, since he lives by him­self. His wife died sev­eral years ago and his chil­dren are scat­tered around the coun­try. The fel­low was, I believe he said, a vet­eran of Saipan, Guadal­canal and Iwo Jima dur­ing World War II. It’s hard to imag­ine going through and — more­over, liv­ing through — one of those bat­tles, much less three.

I know that if he had wanted to talk about those bat­tles he would have. He did men­tion the unit cita­tions his out­fit received dur­ing the war and talked about how he would sell the cig­a­rettes that came in his rations to other GIs because he didn’t smoke. We mostly talked about less mar­tial things though. We spoke of gas prices. He said he could remem­ber gas wars dur­ing the late 40s with sta­tions sell­ing reg­u­lar for 19–20 cents per gal­lon. We both remarked at how strange it is that we have the high­est aver­age gas prices in Texas right now when we are sur­rounded by refiner­ies. We also talked about movies and just com­mon every­day matters.

The fun­ni­est thing this old Marine told me was some­thing I had not heard but is evi­dently true. He said that dur­ing a visit sev­eral years ago to Madame Tus­sauds Wax Museum the vis­i­tors were informed that the wax fig­ure of Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton had its zip­per sewn shut. The rea­son was that every time the museum per­son­nel went by the Clin­ton fig­ure they would find that some­one had passed by the man­nequin and unzipped his pants.

Some­times it is great to hear of the war exploits of our older heroes. Other times it is just as reward­ing talk­ing to these fel­lows and lis­ten­ing to their take on the nor­mal affairs of man — and presidents.

Had it not been for a girl I might be liv­ing some­where today on the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast. I might also be much prouder of the state I was liv­ing in than the one in which I reside today.

Tough words for a Texan to say. For most of my life Mis­sis­sippi has appeared as a per­pet­ual bot­tom dweller when it comes to lists con­cern­ing edu­ca­tion or wealth or this and that. Texas has also made the lower parts of the same lists in more recent times though I have man­aged to stay proud of the Lone Star State itself, its peo­ple and its history.

But it is his­tory — at least United States his­tory which will be taught to future pub­lic school stu­dents — that makes me hang my head in shame.

You see, we have this bloc of ultra-conservative, fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gious zealots on our State Board of (Un)Education that is steer­ing all courses in the direc­tions of their beliefs and their beliefs alone. Right now the focus is his­tory. Per­haps tomor­row they will slant all math­e­mat­ics to the right.

These zealots tried but failed to strike the name of Scopes Mon­key Trial attor­ney Clarence Dar­row. They were suc­cess­ful in hav­ing lan­guage that tries to vin­di­cate that old repro­bate Sen. Joe McCarthy. In the new right-wing his­tory in Texas, con­ser­v­a­tive icons Newt Gin­grich and Phyl­lis Schafly are the impor­tant names to remem­ber on his­tory tests on the sec­tions cov­er­ing the late 20th century.

It is worse than I can describe. High school stu­dents who learn the his­tory accord­ing to the right-wing nuts on the SBOE or SBOU, will be at a dis­ad­van­tage when they attend col­lege and learn what the rest of U.S. stu­dents have been taught about their past. Those who don’t go on to col­lege will just be cheated out of a decent edu­ca­tion because Texas vot­ers were either duped or thought they could leg­is­late the 1950s back into schools which are per­ceived to be rife with trouble.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love the pine forests of East Texas and the marshes of the upper Texas coast. Like­wise, I enjoy dri­ving the Hill Coun­try of Cen­tral Texas when­ever the highly aller­genic ashe juniper (moun­tain cedar) isn’t pol­li­nat­ing. There is also beauty in the West Texas moun­tains and North Texas prairies.

There also is no other state, in my mind, with such a fas­ci­nat­ing his­tory as that of Texas with its past as a repub­lic and its colo­nial past which includes Spain and Mexico.

But our elected board run­ning the pub­lic schools in Texas is rob­bing kids of a decent edu­ca­tion due to their narrow-minded polit­i­cal and theo­cratic agenda. We should teach stu­dents about the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment and how it has affected pol­i­tics and the econ­omy just as we should teach the New Deal and Lyn­don Johnson’s Great Soci­ety. Like­wise, influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives in his­tory includ­ing Barry Gold­wa­ter, William F. Buck­ley, Ronald Rea­gan and as much as it pains me to say it, Rush Lim­baugh, deserve their place in his­tory texts along with FDR, JFK, Teddy Kennedy, Clin­ton and Barack Obama.

His­tory can live and thrive under a big tent. And mak­ing chil­dren edu­ca­tion­ally back­wards serves no great pur­pose either in improv­ing soci­ety, nor toward mold­ing it into one’s shape polit­i­cally unless you aim for a total­i­tar­ian soci­ety. So how about it? Let’s get these nuts off the Texas board of edu­ca­tion. Let’s teach his­tory, the good and the bad. The kids can han­dle it and they will be bet­ter cit­i­zens for it.

Oh, as for the girl whom I moved back to Texas for from Mis­sis­sippi after the ser­vice? Well, that didn’t work out, but that’s all ancient history.