PUBLIC UPROAR
a journal for eclectic policy

Statement of Purpose:
           I hope to present a place for a new independent outlook on politics, social criticism, and philosophy that I call “eclecticism”. This publication will be dealing with both current issues and long-term theory. In doing so, it is my goal that I can illustrate the basis of this new school of thought, which is primarily concerned with the end of ideology in the modern age. Therefore, the method of presentation and formatting will be very individualized and underground; not to mention the start of a grassroots movement, as well, if there is an interest. Enjoy!

THE FINE LINE OF JOHN ROCKER:
between ignorance and hate

Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker may in fact be a racist. However, what is beyond doubt is that he is definitely ignorant. This is ignorance in the truest sense of lack of knowledge or information. This distinction is important due to the fact that any racist attitude in our society is built on the foundation of ignorance and stupidity. The racist statements or propositions that are put up as facts, by hate groups, require a lack of information to be bought by converts. This information would normally come from experience or logic. But, as proposed by Sartre in “Anti-Semite and Jew”, the racist creates the stereotyped identity of the hated one in order to escape the responsibility of forming one’s own identity. In the particular case of Rocker, this also means the responsibility of existing in a state of ignorance. As an individual, Rocker can not know the effects of his actions or words and relies on instinctual reactions. In general, this is a common occurrence in de facto racism; racism by custom that should be the concern of race relation advocates now that de jure, or racism in law, is extinguished. The immediate solution is direct sensory experience to illuminate the illogical underpinnings of racist assumptions, not the hypocritical covering over of meaning by politically correct language. Political correctness is not only a hypocritical half-attempt to cure intolerance by the ideological Left, it also opens up a new space of vagueness that allows ignorance to go on unaddressed. John Rocker is an outspoken grain of sand among a beach of unknown people who unconsciously slow race relations from moving forward in any conceivable sense. These people are not evil, but their isolation from simple perception and logic make them the soldiers in an unwelcome, but sadly possible, race war.          

REINTRODUCING COMMON SENSE:
in religion within the state, and in schools

Should Geometry be taught in an English class? One of the finest movies made in the last years of black and white cinema (the early 1960’s) is “Inherit the Wind” starring Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelley. That movie illustrates perfectly the distinction between fact and faith. It is a fictionalized telling of the Scopes trial in which a teacher in the South was arrested for teaching evolution in a class in the early 1920’s. The man broke a state law, which made it illegal to teach any doctrine that opposed the Bible. In the Summer of 1999, the Kansas School Board made it possible for evolution to not be mentioned in state tests, thereby making it possible for creationism to be taught in Science classes. Which brings me to my initial question, for the scenario is the same. Teaching a religious idea as the Genesis story in a Science class is equivalent to teaching Geometry in a British literature class. There is no correlation between concept and context. Of course there is no doubt that students in public schools would benefit from a comparative religion course where Genesis is treated as fact. But in a Science class, creationism is not based on provable physical evidence but on the belief that there is a Christian God that exists in spite of physical fact.