he gauntlet has been dropped.  And it is the Republican Party rather than the Democratic Party that has dropped it.  Of course, John McCain made a political move in choosing Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate.  The issue, rather, is whether it was a remarkably shrewd political move.  And there is no getting around the fact that it was.  Like it or not, the Republican Party is now just as much in the position to talk about instituting major change as is the Democratic Party. 

Of course, Palin is open to criticism on one front or another.  But so is Barack Obama.  And if Senator Joseph Biden balances Obama’s lack of experience, then it follows by parity of reasoning that McCain balances Palin’s lack of experience. 

What is most intriguing about McCain’s choice is that in a single move he has essentially changed the terms of the debate.  Or to put the put the point another way, McCain has undercut Obama’s thunder. 

Obama has taken himself as the very embodiment of change.  And suddenly it turns out that there is another embodiment of change. 

Many, of course, will no doubt point out that Alaska is no New York or Massachusetts or California or Florida or Pennsylvania.  But exactly the same can be said about Arkansas; and Bill Clinton was elected to the presidency. 

Some will undoubtedly suppose that these remarks reveal that I a pro-McCain Republican.  Alas, what they reveal no such thing.  Whether I am for McCain or a die-heart Obama supporter, the simple truth is that McCain made an incredibly shrewd move. 

Of course, the first-female vice-presidential candidate was Geraldine Ferraro, who was Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984.  And it might be thought that this undermines the significance of McCain’s choice.  Alas, this is not the case owing to the social reality of the moment, which includes the fact that Hilary Clinton did not win the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party and she was not picked as Obama’s running mate. 

Hilary Clinton put front and center the idea of a woman being in the oval office.  And nothing will change the fact that McCain has masterfully responded to that reality by serving up the next closet possibility. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I do not hold that Obama ought to have picked Hilary Clinton to be his running mate.  Biden was undoubtedly a good choice for Obama, because Biden brings the experience of seniority minus serious controversy.  What is more, there is the fact that Hilary Clinton is married to Bill Clinton.  So having her as the vice-presidential running mate, or actual vice-president, would have too easily involved the former-President Bill Clinton.  Obama was wise to avoid that morass.

Alas, avoiding that morass did not change the fact that the issue of woman being the oval office had been put front and center with unparalleled vivacity. 

Now, in choosing Sarah Palin, McCain revealed himself to be far more malleable than many might have supposed.  And it is this reality that oddly enough makes him quite a threat to Obama.  For the choice Palin quite thunderously shows that McCain can bring initiate breathtaking change.  The mighty winds of change no longer emanate only from Obama. 

And while people can surely attack Palin, what is manifestly clear is that it is going to be extremely difficult to do so without opening the door to quite stinging counterattacks.  There is no way to go on about her inexperience without opening up the very wound that the Democratic convention has been concerned to heal, namely the differential between Obama and Hilary Clinton in terms of experience.  If indeed experience counts that much, then people were fools in choosing Obama over Hilary Clinton.  And if things other than raw experience count for Obama, then they also count for Palin. 

In choosing Palin, McCain made a masterful choice.  While McCain hardly destroyed Obama, what is undeniable is that McCain has re-inserted himself into the conversation in a most resounding way.  Either McCain is much smarter than many would have supposed, or he has got some damn good advisors and, moreover, he listens very well. 

ow is it possible that Jericho Scott is not some sort of hero?  In general, my interest in sports rapidly approaches zero.  But even I know enough to know that something has gone terribly wrong when the criticism of a 9-year old boy is that his pitching is too good, because his fastball simply cannot be hit.  He should be a veritable fount of inspiration rather than an occasion for despair.  I mean even I admire him; and I just manage to know about baseball to know that what Jericho Scott is doing is marvelously admirable.  First, I shall say something about the issue of encouraging excellence, especially among males.  Then I shall have some damning things to say about the parents. This I shall do about talking about the role of affirmation in the lives of children.

Part I. The ideal, I had always supposed, is that one person’s excellence inspires either the same or a different excellence on the part of others.  This is precisely what people used to mean by the American spirit.  And at the risk of sounding unbelievably sexist, this sort of competitiveness was once taken to be one of the defining features maleness.  What males did not do is cry when they were beaten squarely and fairly.  Rather, what they did was vow to come back stronger.  And parents, even as they understood their boy’s bruised ego, would encourage the latter.  And if not that, then they would encourage the child to do something different.  But the very idea of parents exhibiting any sort of consternation over the fact that their son had a competitor who was simply that good would have made no sense at all.

What is particularly disconcerting here is the role model that the parents of the community have set in allowing Jericho Scott to be treated in the way that has been treated. 

It borders on being unconscionable that parents inculcate in their children the attitude that the children entitled to complain when someone is substantially better than they are.  As a child I was noted for having a very impressive memory which resulted in my always getting a major part in school plays.  Good thing that this sort of thing happened back-in-the-day because nowadays, no doubt, parents would have complained about this excellence on my part. 

Nobody complained for more or less the obvious reason.  I was better than most at remembering things but not as good as others when it came to doing lots of other things.  And everyone understood that simple reality.  Indeed, I understood this reality no less than others.  It never crossed my mind to complain about the fact that many of my classmates could do things that I simply could not do.  Regardless of the sport, I wasn’t worth a damn on the field.  Everyone knew that.  I knew that.  And I never complained about that.  Rather, I expected that there would be a fight over how not to choose me as a team-member.

The more sublime point, of course, is that at every turn excellence was valorized.  And it was very nearly a conceptual impossibility to suppose that one might have grounds for complaining about the fact that someone was amazingly good.  That would have been rather like saying that rain causes things to get wet.  Duh !

Part II. Then there is the damage that the complaining parents have done to Jericho Scott.  And I mean precisely those words.  And you will have to forgive me for once again reaching for a moment that occurred back-in-the-day.  There must have been some adult who disliked the fact that I had a good memory.  But no one comes to mind.  Every adult who ever witnessed my ability to remember things did nothing but pay me compliments.  Of course, my parents did—and that, needless to say, is hardly trivial.  But it is also true that praise from other adults was in no way trivial.  We are social creatures; and our affirmation and sense of self does not come only from our parents.  And this is understandable because there is a very important respect in which our parents are rightly partial. 

I have brought tears to the eyes of the parents of this or that student by sharing with them a letter that I wrote for their child.  Did those parents have a high opinion of their daughter or son?  Absolutely.  But I brought to the moment a perspective and affirmation that was entirely independent of their will.  More precisely, they got to be witnesses to the affirmation of their child and not givers of that affirmation.  And that difference makes all the difference in the world to both the child and the parents. 

It is precisely this affirmation that the parents of the community have withheld from Scott—a young man of 9 years old.  Quite simply, this is none other than a form of cruelty.  It is cruelty masquerading as parental love.  Let me explain.

What seems to be the prevailing attitude these days is the warped view that parental love means elevating one’s child above all other children.  This is thought to convey in the child a sense of worth.  Well, it does that but the sense of worth in question is called narcissism.  And narcissism is unhealthy precisely because it constitutes a woefully distorted conception of the self vis-à-vis others.  Thinking well of oneself should never in any way be incompatible with acknowledging the excellences of others.  And parental love at its best enables the child to value herself or himself not because the child thinks that she or he is better than all others, but despite the fact that there are others who have talents than she or he does not have.  That is the real gift of parental love. 

The parents who rushed to protect their children from Jericho Scott did their children a profound disservice.  For there is no greater significance of parental love than having it bestowed in the face of all the talent in the world that other children might have. 

The parents than did a disservice to their children and they did a disservice to Jericho Scott.  Once upon a time, it would have been obvious to any reasonable adult that one finds away to affirm publicly a 9-year old child like Jericho Scott. 

In its perverted wisdom, modernity has chosen to discount the extraordinary of excellence displayed by Jericho Scott.  This presumably was done in the name of protecting the greater good.  The problem is that the greater good has transmogrified into a self-serving bottomless pit that is incapable of recognizing the good.  Indeed, it is too obvious for words that in this instance nothing good at all has come of what has been done to Jericho Scott.  Yet, no one is capable of seeing precisely that. 

Shame on the parents.  But then the possibility of shame already presupposes a modicum of decency.  And we already know that this is absent in the lives of the parents.

o colleges want the drinking age lowered to 18.  This has to be a college student’s dream come true.  College is surely a rite of passage; and nowadays, at any rate, getting rip-roaring drunk seems to be a part of that rite of passage.  This is in fact what a great many college students do, the illegality of under-aged-drinking to the contrary notwithstanding.  And now students even have colleges on their side.  I can hear any number of students who are off to college saying to themselves: If this is a dream, don’t wake me up !   

I do not need to rehearse the arguments for lowering the drinking age to 18: If at the age of 18 people can vote and, more importantly, they can go to war thereby risking their very lives, then they should damn well be able to drink at the age of 18.  It is that argument which got the drinking lowered in the first place.  The problem, of course, was that it had absolutely disastrous consequences in terms of young people losing their lives owing to drunk-driving.  Hence, the drinking age was raised back to 21.

It is extremely interesting, then, that many colleges are favoring lowering the drinking age back to 18.  The most obvious question that arises is this: What is motivating colleges to take that stance? 

This question turns out to be a particularly potent one, since there is next to no evidence at all that 18 year olds now have a much greater sense of personal responsibility and self-discipline than their counterparts did back-in-the-day.  What we can all agree on is that 18 year olds have vastly more freedom nowadays than 18 years old had back-in-the-day.  What is more, and this gets to the heart of the matter, colleges once had the status of locus in parentis—parents away from home.  Professors had some measure of “parental authority” over students.  A professor could very well say to a student back then: “Listen, young woman or man, you should not act like that”.  And it would never have occurred to the student to retort: “You are not my parent”.  That day, of course, has completely vanished.  And the nasty attitude of parents has played a large role in the disappearance of the locus in parentis moral backdrop on college campuses.  For parental love has come to mean that parents defend their children no matter what their children do. 

In view of these considerations, there is a very straightforward sense in which colleges today play a far less important role in promoting responsibility and self-discipline among young people than colleges once did.  Indeed, it is arguable that nowadays colleges play next to no role at all in promoting these values among students.  In fact, the college campus has become a breeding ground for irresponsibility and the utter lack of foresight.  And ironically one reason for this is that on most college campuses the very idea of right and wrong is routinely considered an antiquated idea—a hang-up of which people need to free themselves.  The college campus is not, whatever else it might be, an environment that is conducive to the acquisition of a deep sense of personal responsibility and self-discipline. 

Here is a different and more poignant way to put the point: If a student does not arrive on college with a very deep sense of personal responsibility and self-discipline, it is extremely unlikely that she or he will become a more responsible and self-disciplined individual as a result of what transpires on campus.  Over the years, I have been blessed to teach some extraordinary students.  But each and every one of them came to the moment with an extraordinary sense of personal responsibility and self-discipline.  All that I and the college did if anything was merely provide additional buttressing for a marvelous moral structure that was already in place. 

Against this backdrop, there is something particularly odd about colleges being supportive of lowering the drinking age, especially in view of the fact that their argument is woefully stale, namely that keeping the drinking age at 21 is not working.  That is true enough.  One does not need to be a sociologist to grasp that reality.  But the most obvious question on the face of the earth is: Why is having the drinking age at 21 not working?  And the answer to that question is most disconcerting, namely that self-indulgence on the college campus has become a rite of passage.  Needless to say, self-indulgence is the very antithesis of personal responsibility and self-discipline. 

In effect, then, colleges are arguing that we should lower the age because the mindset of self-indulgence is an insuperable impediment to college students obeying the law.  I could be mistaken, but I think that this constitutes a horrendously bad argument.  Remember when people thought that it was a woman’s fault for being raped precisely because, after all, what else was a man supposed to do when a woman’s behavior “caused” him to be sexually aroused other than have sex with her. 

There may be good reasons for lowering the drinking age, but flagrant irresponsibility cannot possibly be one of them.

This brings me to MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).  MADD, of course, remains steadfastly opposed to lowering the drinking age to 18.  All MADD needs to point out is that from a social point of there is, on two levels, a vast structural difference between voting and military service, on the one hand, and drinking, on the other.  (a) The first two do not admit of peer pressure in anything like the way in which drinking does.  (b) The very nature of the first two activities is not such that engaging in them thereby renders one less capable of acting responsibly, whereas this is precisely what drinking occasions.  What everyone knows is that drinking invariably lowers inhibitions. 

e have to opportunities for a good parent-child relationship.  One is when we have marvelous parents who love us and adore us, and so who are there for us in just the right ways. The other is when we are parents; and get to love and adore our children, and so to be there for them in all the right ways.  If perchance things flounder in the case of the first opportunity, we nonetheless have the second opportunity to make sure that things go right.  This, in a nutshell, is Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s view about parenting.  Simplistic brilliance wonderfully recommends her line of thought. 

Of course, there is considerable subtlety to her view.  However, I should like to focus upon one very rich and powerful and, at the same time, demanding implication of view. 

It is not uncommon to hear a caller to the Dr. Laura Program in deep agony over the fact that the fist opportunity for a good parent-child relationship was a very unhappy one.  These are often cases where the mother has remarried and the stepfather regularly commits acts of sexual abuse against one or more of the mother’s (biological) children.  What is more, the mother knows that this is going on.  The fact of the matter is that it is usually the mother who tolerates this sort of moral horror.

In any case, there can be no greater indication of just how important parenting is than the fact that often enough the caller is still searching for a way to have a warm relationship with her or his mother notwithstanding the systematic abuse that the mother allowed. 

I roundly agree with Laura Schlessinger that any parent who allows for one of her or his children to be systematically sexually abused thereby loses her or his parent card. 

What particularly impresses me, though, is Dr. Laura’s point that there is a way of healing or, at any rate, putting the pain in the background.  Her view quite simply is that people who have endured such a horrific past would do much better in terms of psychic healing if they made sure that they were among the best and loving parents ever to walk the face of the earth than if they spent all of their time grieving over the pain of the past. 

Dr. Laura is profoundly right in that even if the parent who allowed for such moral horror were to do a complete moral-turn-about and was contrite and repentant in every conceivable way, such a transformation on the part of the parent, as wonderful as it may be, would not in fact erase the abuse of the past.  Nothing will erase that.  There is no amount of saying “I love you” to an adult child that can erase the systematic abuse that the person endured as a child. 

I repeat: Not even repentance will undo the damage that was done. 

I have emphasized that point because it is so very clear that what is wanted is a way of undoing the damage that is done or, in any case, a way of diminishing it.  More accurately, what is wanted is a way of minimizing the pain left by the wrong done.  

Dr. Laura’s sublime point is simply that people who have been abused have more power than they realize to bring about an extraordinary measure of moral healing in their lives.  It suffices that they stop looking to the past to heal and start looking to the future in order to do so. 

What this means quite explicitly is that in some instances the very best thing that an adult who was abused as a child can do is simply sever all ties with the parents who allowed such abuse, given that the parents have shown no signs whatsoever of being repentant.  What seems like a most drastic measure proves to be a remarkable source of strength precisely because the individual stops being hostage to the futile hope that the parent who allowed the abuse will somehow make things better.  Maintaining any sort of relationship with the parent is to keep one’s self hostage to that futile hope. 

Notice the language here.  By maintaining any sort of relationship with the parent, it is the adult (who was the victim as a child) who keeps herself or himself hostage to a futile hope.  Thus, it is that very adult who stands as a formidable impediment to her or his own happiness. 

In this respect, the parent-child relationship is rather unusual.  You see, in most other cases we shoulder some of the blame for the mess in which we found ourselves, as we refused to heed this or that warning or even to acknowledge commonsense itself.  And when there is significant damage, that damage is always a reminder of our recklessness. 

Not so with being born or being sexually abused by a parent.  In no way in either case is a child at fault.  There may be scars.  However, those scars are not a reminder of the child’s own wrongdoing.  The perpetrator was entirely another person.  And while none of us can walk away from ourselves, each of us can walk away, thereby severing all ties, with an individual who is an every single way morally responsible for the harm that we have suffered.  A parent who allowed her or his child to be sexually abused is just such a person.  Better to choose to walk away from such a parent and become morally whole than to choose to maintain ties with the parent who is an inescapable reminder of the damage that the individual endured.  The is tantamount to refusing to do what most wish they could do, namely entirely walk away from the damage.   Moral healing can indeed be a matter of courage.  So it is when it means walking away from one's parents forever.  That, however, is precisely what such parents deserve. 

ever had so many with so much liberty blamed so many for the things that go wrong in their lives.  One would have thought that the more liberty individual have the less appropriate it is for them to blame others for the things that go wrong in their lives.  Ironically, though, it seems to be the other way around these days.  People are constantly blaming others for things in their lives that have gone wrong.  From debt to overweight, it is someone else’s fault, nowadays, if a person is faced with a most undesirable outcome.  It would seem that people have lost sight of the truth that, for human beings, liberty works only when it contributes to the perfection of humanity. 

It goes without saying, of course, that people can be mislead and deceived.  They can be lied to outright.  And while it would be wonderful if we could always detect when someone has lied to us, it is obvious that deception and lies work best when they go undetected. 

But in the vast majority of cases, deception and lies are not the explanation for why so many are faced with rather painful consequences.  Rather, the explanation is none other than a lack of both self-discipline and foresight in the exercise of the very liberty upon which people insist upon having. 

This is where the blame-game comes into the picture.  This is to live what can only be characterized as a radical inconsistency.  If you give me the choice of 5 food times, and I choose item #2 although with each bite I end up vomiting, it is unmistakably clear that after the first time the fault lies with me, and none other, if I continue to eat item #2.  And if I blame you for my continuing to vomit because after all you made item #2 available to me, then I have a deep, deep, deep psychological problem. 

My thesis, then, is quite simple: Insofar as human beings are not willing to take responsibility for the untoward consequences that manifestly flow from the exercise of their liberties, then human beings thereby render themselves more like animals than not.  From Plato to Rousseau: It is been held that it is the proper exercise of our human capacities that affirms our humanity; otherwise, we necessarily become more animal like precisely because our human sensibilities become deadened.  It is this truth that modernity refuses to acknowledge. 

With the exception of capacities that are genetically determined from the outset such as seeing and hearing, our human capacities are sustained only if there are reinforced.  Notice that while we may never lose our capacity to speak (given that we remain healthy), we can indeed lose the capacity to speak with the eloquence that we once did if we become a vagabond.   

Pavarotti was well known for his high notes.  What is true nonetheless is that he practiced and practiced and practiced; and, moreover, he took enormous care of his voice. 

Watching on You Tube a diva version of “Natural Woman”, with Aretha Franklin, I was rather impressed by the way in which Aretha Franklin would so effortlessly and naturally throw in a chord here (see at 1m49secs) and there (see at 2m34secs), which added a wonderful touch to the song.  She even throws in a growl at one point (see at 2m13secs) that make for a really amazing transition in the song.  But there is the simple truth that she has been singing in this fashion virtually all of her life.  And her singing power exemplifies the saying that practice makes perfect.  (There are different versions on YouTube.  I am referring to the version hyperlinked here.) 

Well, self-discipline and foresight are not at all exceptions to the precept that practice makes perfect.  The wherewithal to say “No” to what one wants ever so badly but absolutely does not need and, moreover, which one simply cannot afford, is not an ability that falls from the heavens.  Rather, it is an ability that is cultivated.  True, it may be easier for some rather than for others to cultivate this ability than others.  Just so anyone who has this ability had to cultivate it.  And make no mistake about it: this cultivated ability can be easily enough destroyed.

Foresight is none other than the ability to consider with sufficient vivacity the different ways in which a choice on one’s part may impact both upon oneself and others.  Needless to say, considerable foresight is not something that is just acquired within a fortnight.  Invariably, we learn to be more attentive here and there precisely because in this or that instance of the failure to be attentive had sufficiently untoward consequences or, to go in the opposite direction, our being quite attentive had particularly fortuitous consequences.  . 

The point here is rather sublime: just as practice is pivotal to become and remaining an excellent singer, it is also pivotal to acquiring, and sustaining, self-discipline and foresight.  And all the liberty in the world will not change this truth.  

Thus, insisting upon liberty without simultaneously insisting upon the perfection of humanity is essentially to occasion none other than a vicious downward spiral in the realization of the human self. 

What distinguishes homo sapiens from all other creatures is that homo sapiens have a plethora of capacities that the other creatures do not have.  Alas, there is all the difference in the world between having a capacity and realizing it.  And modernity is bringing this truth into ever sharper relief. 

Precisely because exercising self-discipline and foresight are so very crucial to living well, one would have thought that traits of character would be well-realized in every human beings life. Nothing of the sort is the case nowadays; and that is precisely what one would expect when, as has come to be the case in modernity, insisting upon excellence, including excellence of character, is deemed to be an anathema to liberty. 

People now claim these days that they should have the freedom to act like animals if they so choose.  Perhaps.  But one has to ask, given such a claim: How exactly is the argument supposed to go that the enslavement of human beings is conceptually at odds with affirming the humanity of human beings?  Or, to proceed in the other direction, is it any accident nowadays that increasingly people think that their pets have the same moral standing as human beings?  I challenge any reader of this entry to locate the moral progress in either one of these lines of thought. 

Quite simply, liberty in the absence of the perfection of humanity leaves with less humanity. 

n a world of increasing nonsense, it is surreal beyond measure that both PETA and the Westboro Baptist Church should exploit the death of Tim McLean of Winnipeg, Canada.  These two equally represent a depravity of moral sensibilities that has no equal. The only thing that it is left for PETA to do is to declare the slaughtering of animals as akin to the Holocaust.  And the only thing that it is left for the Westboro Baptist Church to do is to accuse McLean of being some sort of ambassador of none other than Satan. 

The unwitting pairing of PETA and the Westboro Baptist Church is so brazenly incongruous that each group ought thereby to consider itself has having a fundamental reason to re-think its views.  The Westboro folks most certainly do not have any concern for animals that exceeds the basic tenets of not treating them cruelly; whereas PETA certainly does not give a damn about the souls of human beings taken as human beings. 

The real problem is not so much groups such as PETA and the Wesboro Baptist Church, but a society that has made it possible for these people to take themselves seriously.  Society has done this in three ways.  One is by retreating from objectivity.  The other is by not holding people accountable for their assertions.  The third is that news has been reduced to none other than a form of sensationalism. 

On a single occasion, the Westboro Baptist Church receives more publicity for being utterly foolish in its assertions than most people will ever get in a lifetime for saying what is thought and useful.  More significantly, on any reading of the Bible, even God thought that there were better and worse times to chastise people.  Indeed, in the biblical story of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve, God is said to have waited “until the cool of the evening” before chastising them.  So even it is true that there are signs of utter moral corruption everywhere and God has every intention of destroying us all, it does not thereby follow at all that protesting a funeral when people are mourning the loss of a loved-one is appropriate.  The word "callous" comes more readily to mind. 

There is nothing at all about believing in God or the idea of an eternal judgment that requires accepting anything like views that the Westboro Church puts forth. 

As to PETA, there can be no doubt that cruelty to animals is wrong.  But it is ludicrous beyond measure to suggest that there is no substantial moral difference between killing a human being and killing an animal.  As I noted in a blog-entry commenting upon Peter Singer: The argument really cannot possibly be that animals and human beings are moral equals to one another; for then it would follow that animals have just as much of an obligation to protect human beings from cruelty as human beings have to protect animals from cruelty.  Not even the most ardent defenders of animal rights think that.  From just this difference, it follows that there is a substantial moral difference between animals and human beings.

It may be that people are entitled to their opinion—an entitlement that does not amount to much.  What most certainly is not true, however, is that people are entitled to be heard. 

One of the ways in which the capacity for news coverage 24-7 has lead to irresponsibility is that the producers of news are in need of tidbits to fill up television air-space.  Stupidity has become increasingly synonymous with an interesting tidbit. 

PETA and the Westboro Baptist Church are both fringe groups. Yet, the have been allowed to command enormous air-time; and that, alas, is a fundamental part of the problem.  The other part is that people are not held accountable for what they say. 

John Stuart Mill held that there should not be any limits on speech.  But what everyone seems to overlook is that he took accountability very seriously.  This meant that one could not simply hide behind one’s sympathizers.  Rather, precisely what he thought was that one should be prepared to answer one’s strongest critics. 

Responsible journalism would have had both groups addressing their strongest (but not malicious) critics rather than merely using the media as a vehicle for obtaining publicity by making outlandish statements to a journalist.  And this is what we as a society should demand of both these groups and journalism. 

There is the expression that “one gets what one asks for”.  A slightly amended version would that “one gets what one settles for”.  Excellence does not just wrestle us down and thrusts itself upon us.  It is quite the other way around: We will nothing but mediocrity or worse unless we are absolutely determined not to settle for less than excellence.

The arguments of PETA and the Westboro Baptist Church are horrendously lacking in substance.  But if that were not enough the very idea of using the death of another human being for self-promotion is most morally fulsome. That alone disqualifies them from any decent consideration.  And if were as concerned with doing what is right as we are with being comfortable, amused, and having the latest gadget: Well, these two groups would already be in the throws of massive re-formation or dissolution..