Amidst the frenzy of the week, there are a few stories that lend themselves to educational discourse. Let’s take a look.
CHOP CHOP- The Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone is getting papers served. Various businesses, residents, and employees have filed a lawsuit against the city of Seattle, Washington.
CHOP (formerly known as CHAZ, formerly known as the Capitol Hill) has a reputation for being a center of “free speech, community, and self-expression,” according to Mayor Jenny Durkan. So, some assume it to be logical and permissible for public safety to be managed solely by resident Chopistas, unless there is a life and death matter. Multiple shootings have occurred within the globe’s newest country. Now, Durkan says its time for everyone to go home. I guess the 2020 Summer of Love may be ending.
My take:
-You can’t steal or appropriate for yourself what someone else has worked for and paid for. Stealing is still a crime, even if you and like-minded friends disagree. A country with sanctioned theft and fraud is a h*ll hole, not a love fest. Such lawlessness leads to an eventual crumbling of the criminal enterprise.
-We need public safety. Our Founders knew of humans’ sinful nature and declared the need for virtuous citizens to keep liberty. The law is what keeps civilization from succumbing to anarchy.
What other lessons have you observed in CHOP?
CHINA— In case you are unaware, the evidence is mounting and being reported. China is doing whatever it takes to steal our secrets-industrial, educational, and military-to become the leading superpower in the world. That is, China is getting Americans’ hard work, inventions, and discoveries through covert means and appropriating them for their purposes. They are succeeding.
My take:
-If you’re China, you can appropriate what someone else has worked for IF you know how to “work the system” in an open society.
-Americans make the mistake of thinking that communist countries deal in the same way as a representative republic does. Stealing is a crime here. It is not a crime in some other countries if the government is stealing to advance its nation.
If you are familiar with Chinese operations in this country, how might our naivete’ regarding the theft of America’s intellectual property hurt our nation and our children’s future?
COVID- Yes, three southern red states have seen a significant increase in Coronavirus numbers. Why is this illness politicized? Why, if you wear a mask, are you labeled as “liberal,” and if you don’t, you’re labeled as “conservative?” When I heard this, I about dropped my jaw. A mask is political?? Where’s common sense?
My take:
-Anything can and will be used against anyone in an election year. That’s the way it seems.
-COVID spreads more easily indoors than outdoors. Southerners are going to the bars and beaches. In February. March, and April, Northerners were still inside. They had cold temps. The furnace was on 24/7. Northerners were in close quarters often, and the virus spread. Now that the north is in warmer temps, they are outside during the many beautiful days they have. Young southerners, on the other hand, go from the beach to the bar to the air-conditioning. They go from close social interaction outside to close quarters inside. Common sense says this has more to do with close interactions and less to do with political preferences.
What other common-sense lessons have you learned during this pandemic? When I was reminded that, after the terrible 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic, the Roaring Twenties came with economic growth and prosperity. There was the Jazz Age, the Model T, and the Charleston.
My take:
Think things through logically, be loyal to our country, and be hopeful.
This is Common Sense Civics and Citizenship.??
