Whither civility?
Columnist Kathleen Parker today takes on a topic we’ve been kicking around ourselves on the Ideas & Voices team in the last few weeks: Is our society more or less civil these days than it used to be?
People we’ve put the question to locally tend to agree that yes, civility, politeness and good manners aren’t all they used to be. And people have different reasons for this, which we’re gathering for a page we’ll be running a few Sundays from now.
Parker, at least in my view, is one of the more intriguing syndicated writers. She considers herself a conservative, but unlike a lot of people who brand themselves one way or another, you can never quite predict which way she’ll fall on a particular issue. Today’s column is a thoughtful consideration of a subject that is clearly on a lot of minds lately.
Yours included, perhaps. I’d like to hear your views on this as we put our page together. Drop me a line at rrollins@coxohio.com and let me know what you think. You don’t even need to necessarily be all that civil, though of course that never hurts.
The problem isn’t that the roads are too small, but rather, that there are too many cars on them. A quick look at the history of highways in this country will show that any improvements in traffic congestion resulting from such projects are typically lost within about six years. This might seem strange, but there is a simple answer for why this happens: bigger roads encourage more cars. Highway construction in the United States is caught in a positive feedback loop that is little more than an economic and environmental sinkhole.
The only way that we will ever be able to escape this cycle of perpetual construction is to begin investing in something different. It makes little economic sense to spend so much on one small stretch of highway, while refusing federal funding for a rail system that would connect Ohio’s largest cities and make further projects such as this unnecessary. It’s time that we really take a look at how we are spending our money; we deserve better.
Yes, Black History Month still needed
Re “Do we need Black History Month,” Feb. 8: The answer is yes, we need Black History Month. When should it end? When the public school curriculum includes black history as a required subject to be taught at the junior and/or senior high school level.
Why is this the only option? Because starting with the year America was discovered (Columbus Day) up to the year segregation ended, black history has played a major role in American history. To cite several eras: slavery (Harriet Tubman); peanuts (George Washington Carver, Tuskegee, Ala.); U.S. military (Tuskegee Airmen/ “Red Tails” movie); civil rights/segregation (Martin Luther King Jr./rosa Parks), etc.
Since it is unlikely that
Speak Up:
Facebook: black history will ever be added to the public school curriculum as a required subject, Black History Month should be continued.
I agree that black history is American history and should not be relegated to just one month.
The Republicans should win the 2012 elections because of the economy and jobs, but they must win the elections because of the Democrats’ continuing attacks on religion and our country’s defense.