Assuming Opinions Are Facts

There’s a new issue of City Weekly in the boxes this morning in Salt Lake City, but until yesterday the extant issue’s cover story had this headline: “Biting the Bullet.” It had this subhead: “How a peace-loving British journalist ended up shopping for a gun in Utah.” It’s an excellent story by Stephen Dark, well worth reading. But my point is the subhead, not the story.

City Weekly - Biting the Bullet

Often our words reflect or even promote unspoken biases. We may or may not be aware of this. We may or may not be attempting subtly to persuade people of our unspoken views. We may or may not notice a problem when it’s done to us — but it would be nice if we did.

Careful writers and careful readers do well to consider what’s between the lines.

The subhead plays on the presumed contradiction between being “peace-loving” and shopping for a gun. But this is only a contradiction if you believe than peace-loving people don’t shop for guns, or that gun-shopping people don’t love peace.

This belief might locate you in a certain part of our political spectrum. It’s not the part I inhabit. The gun-toting — let alone gun-shopping — people I know love peace. A lot of the peace-loving people I know carry guns. For me this is not a contradiction.

So, in the parlance of the courtroom — or the courtroom drama, where I’ve spent far more time — I object to this subhead. It assumes facts not in evidence. In fact, I don’t think they’re facts at all. They’re opinions I do not share, packaged with the suggestion that I unreflectively embrace them as facts and read on. (I did the “read on” part.)

And I wonder if the subhead doesn’t trivialize the complexities which the article addresses thoughtfully and at length. So the subhead is not just subliminal politics. It’s questionable writing too.

The Post I Never Finished Last Year (Updated)

For me 2015 was, among other things, a year in which I didn’t blog as much as I hoped to, and didn’t finish some of the writing I started.

I’m trying to avoid that this year, in part by scaling back my expectations, but also by doing a little better outside of election season. There are things other than politics and government about which I want to write — am writing — elsewhere, but these things matter too.

I have fragments of an unpublished post from last year in which I predicted some things for the coming year. I thought it might be interesting to look back, forward, and around on the same topics one year later.

Learn Before You Vote: afelection.info

Folks, if you’re in American Fork, you’ll want to check out afelection.info for information about candidates and issues in next week’s municipal election. We keep adding more, so keep going back. You’ll find infographics, audio and notes from meet-the-candidate events, explanations of some of the popular misinformation coming from AFCitizens (again) and their pet candidate (but less, as he learns that their numbers are often bad).

This weekend will also bring the 2015 edition of David’s Handy Little Election Guide. Stay tuned.

American Fork: 4 Candidates, 3 Seats, 2 Public Events, 1 Friendly Request

Election Day is two weeks away, early voting starts today, and this is my first blog post about the American Fork City Council election. Granted, there was no primary, but I’ve still been slow doing my homework this year.

This post is informational (except, arguably, for the “1 Friendly Request” at the end). I’ll post some event notes, commentary, and recommendations after this week’s candidate events.

4 Candidates, 3 Seats

We’ll be choosing three candidates to serve four-year terms on the American Fork City Council. Each voter may vote for up to three on the ballot, and the three with the highest vote counts win. There is no districting in this race; all candidates run citywide.

There is no substitute, in terms of conscientious voting, for personal contact with local candidates. Here are the candidates, with the contact information I have for each. (If I’m missing something, please let me know, and I’ll add it ASAP.) They’re in alphabetical order by last name, not necessarily in the order of my preference.

Constitution Day: A Big Deal

US ConstitutionHappy Constitution Day!

228 years ago today, the 1787 Constitutional Convention finished its work and formally sent its proposed Constitution of the United States of America to the states for ratification. It was a pivotal day (and then some) for the United States, but also for the world.

Granted, the Founders each brought large, vigorous bundles of competing interests to the convention. Granted, they were imperfect on many levels, as mortals tend to be. Granted, some of them owned slaves, and the rest of them were (just barely) willing to defer that problem as the price of having a functioning government at all. Granted — and inevitably — their work was imperfect, incomplete. That’s why they established a mechanism for amending it. But their compromise of compromises was the best they could do under the circumstances. It was the best we have ever done. They gave us a flawed, tempestuous republic which survives to this day.

A Tale of Two Teachers, Part 2: They Got It Right

After a personal introduction last time, I promised we would speak of Hadleyburg (not its real name), and so we shall.

Last year, about this time, the administrators at Hadleyburg Valley High School (HVHS) needed to find a new math teacher for the coming (now the current) academic year. They didn’t just post the job, then sit back and wait for whatever applications might come in. Their commitment to their students and to academic excellence demanded more. They went out looking for the right candidate.

They found a teacher who was highly regarded not only for his mastery of math and math curricula and his creative command of the teacher’s art, but also for his diligence and his care for each student. They persuaded him to leave his comfortable position in the big city, move his family to Hadleyburg, and take the job.

SB 296, SB 297, Religious Freedom, and Nondiscrimination

My readers may know two things about me, based on statements in public meetings, private conversations, or what I wrote at this blog’s predecessor, LocalCommentary.com.

First, for a long time I have supported local and state legislation to prohibit discrimination in housing and employment based on actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation.

Second, the level of my confidence in the Utah legislature is perennially low.

These two themes came together last year at about this time, as the Utah legislature sat on its hands and refused even to debate last year’s version of a non-discrimination law (SB 100). I wrote:

It’s an extraordinarily discerning litmus test, where Mormon Utah Republicans are concerned. It tells us where people land on the freedom-versus-using-my-power-to-compel-universal-righteousness spectrum, which sometimes seems to be the primary axis of Utah politics.

Beyond the moral principles on which society generally agrees, and finds suitable for regulation by law, I believe that sinners as I define them and sinners as you define them deserve political, economic, and religious freedom. I believe that a person’s violation of someone else’s sectarian principles (or his own) should not jeopardize the roof over his head or his means of earning his daily bread, assuming he doesn’t work for an organization with a primary mission to promote those principles. . . .

I . . . believe that the greatest and most constant threat to free and healthy society and good government in Utah is the subset of Mormons who think the law is a suitable tool for imposing their principles on all people — and who think that this is somehow a proper exercise of their religious freedom. (“I Am Unfit for the Utah Legislature,” February 5, 2014. See also “Rights and Rites and Right and the Rights” and “Tonight in American Fork.”)

When the Utah Legislature took up the topics of nondiscrimination and religious freedom this year, I was skeptical of their competence to produce wise legislation on such a topic, and skeptical of their good will, too.

A Tale of Two Teachers, Part 1: Teachers Are Heroes

Within a few hours’ drive of my small city is a much smaller town. I’ll call it Hadleyburg. That’s not its name, but I read of a noteworthy town by that name in Mark Twain (which wasn’t Samuel Clemens’ real name either, but I digress).

Human nature varies little from place to place, so Hadleyburg’s location probably doesn’t matter. And perhaps its size matters only to the extent that it is large enough to have its own high school. We will call that institution Hadleyburg Valley High School, because we have to call it something.

My major purpose today is to describe the vantage point from which I will tell my tale. That vantage point may not be precisely what you might suppose, if you know my politics.

My title tells you that my theme includes some happiness. Since long before the iPad first twinkled in Steve Jobs’ eye, I have enjoyed hearing and talking about great teachers. I had my share in the public schools. There are plenty more in the public schools my children attend. I’ve tried sometimes to find ways to thank and honor them, publicly and privately.

Why I’m Walking Tomorrow

[Slightly revised after first posting. I do that.]

A couple of weeks ago, student-leaders at American Fork High School latched onto the idea of honoring Sergeant Cory Wride on the first anniversary of his death. That anniversary is tomorrow, Friday, January 30, 2015.

They immediately began to think big.

I helped last year with some press releases and a smaller, more permanent piece of writing, when American Fork City undertook to honor and remember Sgt. Wride. So I suppose it made sense to invite me to help with this too. Soon I was meeting with student-leaders, other adult volunteers, and City officials whose assistance is essential, even though the Wride Memorial Walk is not a City-sponsored event.

Before we were done — and we’re not quite done — there was a web site (wridewalk.com); a six-minute, professionally-produced video about the people and the event; two hash tags (#wridewalk and, for tomorrow night, #irangthebell); a Facebook event; a videotaped statement of support from the President Pro Tem of the United States Senate (with more endorsements still on the way, we think); numerous inquiries and expressions of support from other schools around the state; and growing buzz about the event on social media. I don’t deserve credit for most of that; these students and the other adults who are helping are amazing. And this isn’t about credit anyway.

What you and I are doing here — and thanks for being here, as in reading — is noting the reasons why I’m attending the Wride Memorial Walk tomorrow evening, and the reasons why I should attend. I leave it to you to ponder the reasons why you should join the Walk, whatever they may be.