PC or not PC: Is the cure worse than the disease

Social issues | Mark Seely - 08:30pm Jul 14, 1999 PDT (# 155 of 165)

People who are members of a class of race, religion, sexual orientation, or the like, are no more important than people who are members of a class of personality type, socioeconomic level, IQ, learning style, political party, profession, marital status, etc. The former classes do not deserve any more protection than the latter classes.

Many of the latter classes are treated poorly, too, you know. Why is there a movement to single out some classes of people in preference for others? What is the real motive behind hate crimes laws? It is certainly not a moral motive. It is not a motive based in love or sympathy. Such a motive would not distinguish between people on the basis of their class.

People who support hate crimes laws are saying that some motives for non-self-defense murder are worse than others. That is wrong. No motive aggravates the criminality of a murder. The idea that a non-self-defense murder can be considered more or less bad, depending on the motive, is garbage. Some examples of this politically/religiously motivated (as opposed to morally motivated) thinking are:

1) Some people think that what the Nazis did to the Jews around World War II was bad, or extra bad, because the Nazis killed people for their ethnic/religious attributes. Wrong. What the Nazis did to the Jews around World War II was bad because it was killing for no good reason.

2) Some people think that what John William King did to James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper, Texas (dragging him behind a pickup truck until he was dead) was bad, or extra bad, because he killed Byrd because of his race. Wrong. What King did to Byrd was bad because it was killing for no good reason....

Meaning of myth

Mind and spirit| Paul Scott - 03:20am Jul 16, 1999 PDT (# 113 of 117)

One of the many fascinations of mythology is the convulated interplay of the universal and the specific. Just as a child toys with their identity with horoscopes, so too do peoples play in a serious way with their myths. As some scholars look for human nature, so too do other scholars look for human differences. We find what we seek in such an infinite labyrinth.

Women's World Cup -- 1999

Sports | Saivan Lujan - 09:42am Jul 16, 1999 PDT (# 171 of 188)

I was very fortunate that despite being born in America, I was raised abroad. That way, I can attest to the difficulty of relating to sports you were not raised with.

Even though I played about a dozen baseball games, and half a dozen American football games as a kid (in the many American schools abroad). I can't stand even watching the highlights of either sport in the news. I can't think of two more boring sports than those.

I played a lot more basketball games. And I find a lot of enjoyment in watching THE FOURTH QUARTER of a playoff game (if it involves the Knicks or the Heat). But that's it.

Of soccer, like most of the world, I can't get enough. Of course there are some slow games, but for those of us who know the sport, is like watching live chess (a war game after all, which is exactly the spirit on the stands). Teams spend all game trying different things, with different twists until it clicks (and while you are watching you are actively studying the possibilities of this or such move).

Soccer has made tremendous progress in this country. We have 18 million registered players. This is a fact that has never happened before. You can't refute today's claim by speaking of a time where we only had a couple of million registered players.

But even that is not that important, for the importance of that (and now those numbers will increase even more) grow up and raise children in soccer families. Not like now, where the child is the one educating the parent about soccer. Knowledgeable parents and the closing of the gap between the pay of American top athletes and soccer players in Europe (no athletes have seen their pay increase more in the last five years than soccer players, although they still have some way to go) will be crucial to capture the imagination of kids to keep playing soccer for life.