When rules become arbitrary
Two news items caught my eye the other day. One, San Benito High
School’s recent increase in discipline related problems and two, a
cancelled concert creating a street disturbance in Salinas. Both
situations cause concern because in one case an actual policy has
changed, and the other, a discretionary decision was made not to
enforce the law.
Both choices would seem to reinforce logic that rules and the
law are to be enforced arbitrarily, or just disregarded entirely.
When the law and rules are not enforced, society tends to ignore
them. This escalates the norm and creates a vacuum for incremental
laws.
These laws have unintended consequences such as enhancing
political correctness and unequal justice. When justice becomes
more equal for some and not others, justice is no longer blind. Who
should pay for the property damage that ensues from lawlessness?
The State, ie the taxpayer, since the state now endorses not
enforcing the law, or insurance companies, fully expecting the
state to enforce the law and base their premiums on such.
Interesting how we are encouraging our youth to express
themselves.
Mark Dickson
Hollister
When rules become arbitrary
Two news items caught my eye the other day. One, San Benito High School’s recent increase in discipline related problems and two, a cancelled concert creating a street disturbance in Salinas. Both situations cause concern because in one case an actual policy has changed, and the other, a discretionary decision was made not to enforce the law.
Both choices would seem to reinforce logic that rules and the law are to be enforced arbitrarily, or just disregarded entirely. When the law and rules are not enforced, society tends to ignore them. This escalates the norm and creates a vacuum for incremental laws.
These laws have unintended consequences such as enhancing political correctness and unequal justice. When justice becomes more equal for some and not others, justice is no longer blind. Who should pay for the property damage that ensues from lawlessness? The State, ie the taxpayer, since the state now endorses not enforcing the law, or insurance companies, fully expecting the state to enforce the law and base their premiums on such.
Interesting how we are encouraging our youth to express themselves.
Mark Dickson
Hollister
Bagley’s a hidden gem
Where have you been hiding John Bagley? Thank you for giving him an outlet.
I agree with Bagley in his January 23 column that one reason the Republicans lost so badly in November 2006 was “America is unhappy with the way we are fighting a very just war.”
There is another reason the Republican Congress was turned out. They lost focus and abandoned their core principles of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, and a strong national defense.
They did lower taxes but then spent more than the increased tax revenue on non-defense items. This lack of personal responsibility resulted in an increasing the size of government. And as Bagley pointed our, they misused (underused) the strong national defense.
The Republicans need to return to their roots of supporting individual liberty and stop trying to act like Democrats.
Marvin L. Jones
chairman
San Benito County Republican Party
Mortgaging our future?
After reading John Bagley’s article on the Iraq war, I began to wonder if John would still be for the war if we actually had to pay for it. What a concept, pay as you go. But no, John and the Republicans want their big tax cuts and their little war. Why should they sacrifice while those in our military make it for them? Why pay for something, when we can make the grandkids pay for it?
Steve McDonald
Hollister
It’s not about kicking ass
John Bagley’s commentary on America’s current approach to war in the last issue of the Pinnacle left me stunned and saddened. I’ve often enjoyed his articles on the sports pages, but his opinion piece on the war was not as thoughtful as we have a right to expect from an article given such prominence.
I can understand his frustration. A series of bad judgments and failed policies by the Bush administration has opened a Pandora’s Box of sectarian hatred and violence in Iraq and mired the young men and women of our military in the middle of it.
Mr. Bagley says, “Americans want us to go in there, kick ass, take down names and go home.” Unfortunately for America, which spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined, all problems cannot be solved by kicking ass. If they could, our troops would have been home years ago.
When Mr. Bagley talks about kicking ass, however, he means more than just roaring around some third-world country in tanks and hummers blasting everything that opposes us. He thinks big.
“What if we came out tomorrow,” he writes, “and said the next Iranian-built weapon that is used by Iraq insurgents to kill any member of the U.S. military will result in the wiping out of Tehran from the map?”
And he’s not just talking figuratively because a little farther along he adds, “If we said that to them now, they would laugh in our face until we actually followed through.”
Let’s stop right here and examine this proposition for a few seconds. If we were to drop a hydrogen bomb or two on Tehran, a city of nearly 12 million inhabitants, what would the actual results be? Certainly several million people would be killed almost instantly and many more would die of their injuries in the following days, many of these in horrible agony. Radiation would be spread far and wide, affecting friend and foe alike.
Humanitarian concerns aside, it is hard to imagine any action we could take that would be more damaging to the image of our country in the world. Nuking Tehran would not result in the tidy disappearance of a major city and its people, but in a grotesque scene of carnage and destruction. Images of the unspeakable suffering of dead, wounded and bereaved men, women and children would be shown endlessly on televisions across the world. If any feelings of the sympathy and solidarity our country received after 9/11 remain, they would be replaced certainly and justifiably by hatred and revulsion almost everywhere.
Of course, we would not be the first nation to use terror indiscriminately against civilians. During the 13th century, the Mongols made it their policy to kill every man, woman, and child in cities that refused to surrender. During World War II, the Nazis in their frustration sometimes wiped out whole towns in retaliation for attacks on their forces by partisans. I don’t think this is the company we wish to keep.
Richard Pitschka
San Juan Bautista
