Representative Gohmert Wants to Take Congress Back to the 1850s

Yesterday, Representative Louie Gohmert from Texas is introducing a bill that would allow Congressmen to carry firearms on the Senate and House floor. Gohmert argument for this bill is that members of Congress do not feel safe. Gohmert told Politico that,"[He knew] friends that walk home from the Capitol. There’s no security for us.” His solution to this problem is to allow members to be armed.  This does not seem like a good idea, because of the history of firearms on the floors of Congress.

Firearms and Congress historically do not mix well. The best period of history to look at this mixture is between 1830 and 1850s. According to Joanne Freeman in her New York Times article When Congress Was Armed And Dangerous that violence was normal on the floors of Congress at this time. It was found that if Representatives wanted to gain the upper hand in a debate a weapon was a valuable tool.  For example Freeman gives is stories about Representatives threatening each other if angered by a fellow Representatives statement. This attitude slowly came to a stop when telegraph was invented and when Civil War started. Violence was toned down and their were a few fist fights during the Civil Rights Era. After that Congress was more behaved.

Now according to Think Progress the reasoning for Gomhert's bill is that he fears that Congress' civility will deteriorate and duels will come back. This seems like flawed logic. Looking at Freeman's article we see that weapons did not deter violence, but increased it. Congressmen  used weapons to intimidate fellow Congressmen. Weapons should not be on the floor of Congress. If we allow this to happen we are reverting back to the 1850s. With the violent rhetoric used by some members of Congress, giving them the ability to have a weapon of any kind on the floor is dangerous and not needed.

We as a nation need to be civil towards each other. When we form a society, we trust each other to act in accordance to the ideas of law created by that society. When these laws are broken, we break the trust of society. As a society we make these laws to protect society against acts of violence. We should not as a society revert back to violence or threatening themes to get what we want. By allowing Representatives of Congress to have firearms, we will revert back to a Congress of the 1850s. We suggest opposition to any law or rule that will decrease the civility of any society.

Updated: Media Matters has an interview of Representative Gohmert with Fox and Friends. Gohmert argued that, "guns are the great equalizer." Here is the interview below.

Six Dead and Eighteen Shot at Arizona Democratic Congresswomen's Cracker Barrel

Today at about 10 a.m. Mountain Time in a North Tucson Safeway during Representative Gifford's Cracker barrel a gunman, Jared Loughner of Tucson, open fire on the Giffords and the crowd. In Loughner's shooting spree he killed 6 people including Federal Judge John Roll, and 18 people were wounded including Representative Giffords.  Most of the wounded are in critical condition, but hopefully they will all recover.

Now many areas of the web both sides are trying to pin the shooting on different political identities. The more Liberal blogs like Talking Points Memo have pointed out to the web and rhetoric of the shooter matches some of the rhetoric of the Tea Party. While some Conservative blogs like Red State argue that their rhetoric had nothing to do with this and that we will find out that the shooter was a leftist radical.  Both sides are trying to use this as a smear on the other side, but also giving their condolences. It is sad in America today that each side uses a tragic incident like this as political leverage against the other side.

Outlets like Fox News and Tea Party pundits like Sara Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Glenn Beck are the easiest to blame in this situation because their rhetoric is often includes violent language that excites people. They are not to blame for this shooting. All current signs show that they did not influence the young man that committed this crime. The problem though it has been the aim of Conservative pundits to use violent language in exciting their base. If you go to a Tea Party or watch Fox News you will see throughout the day a reference of revolutionary violence either against the 111th Congress or the Presidential administration. Television leaders like Sara Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Glenn Beck help stoke the conspiracy theories by playing them out or creating new ones.  When people believe in conspiracy theories, they start to morph fiction into reality.

Now Liberals are not out of the woods on this one yet. The shooters was not a Tea Party member and had a broad reading list. The overall theme of the list was anti-government not anti-Democrat or anti-President Obama. Talking Points Memo interviewed the Tucson Tea Party and their spokesperson Allyson Miller, said,"she knows the members of her tea party, who she called "reasonable individuals" closer to her age of 55 than the suspected shooter's 22." Yes the Tea Party's average age according to a February 2010 CNN Poll is closer to 55 than 22, but that does not mean the rhetoric only stays with people around the age of 55.  That is the problem today.

The rhetoric used by Politicians, Pundits, and Everyday people is to the extreme. We as Americans now do not hash our differences out now at a coffee table or at a cafe, but with loud speakers and weird signs. Both sides have started an arms race in who can go to the furthest extreme and have the most followers. This is madness. John Stewart was correct in having his Rally to Restore Sanity. By doing that he showed that their are sane people, and they want a voice in government. For us to survive as a country we need to stop the insane rhetoric and to talk to each other as human beings. We need not to call names, but buy each other coffee. If we do that we can bring back civil discourse back to the United States and accomplish something.  If we do not, we could see more of these tragic events. My suggestion to all of you is to by your political opposite a cup of coffee and find some common ground.

House Republican Promises can be Tracked

Now that the Republicans have control of the House of Representative, it should be our job to know their agenda and how they are going to implement it. Now instead of reading the Pledge to America, we have found all fifty promises on on PolitiFact.com from the St. Petersburg Times. I hope you all look at this link and then call your congressional representative if you agree or disagree with the Republicans plan. It should be an interesting two years. Enjoy!

Death of Bees:An Obvious Sign of Global Warming and the Over Use of Pesticides?

Yesterday The Guardian reported that a study from the University of Illinois that found out that the bee population in the United States dropped 96%. This is not shocking back in 2006 scientists started finding out about colony-collapse disorder. Colony-collapse disorder happens when the bees contract a virus and then die suddenly. This shocked many scientists, but what colony-collapse disorder would hurt the most is the U.S. farming industry which uses bees for pollination 90% of all crops. The economic impact of these crops not being produced would cause a loss of 15 billion dollars in the U.S. farm industry. 

According to the University of Illinois study they argue that two reasons why bees are dying off lack of genetic diversity and pesticides. The lack of genetic diversity comes from the inability of bees to move from hive to hive, or not being able to start new hives. As most high school biology classes teach their students, lack of diversity hurts a species population. When species diversity is non-existent, genetic mutations happens and usually these mutations have negative consequences to that species.

In addition to lack of genetic diversity the increased use of pesticides by agricultural industries and the public sector exploit this problem and cause an even faster decline in the bee population. Since bees are unable to adapt to the new climate reality and their range is limited, pesticides are affecting bees more. This is not good because most agricultural seeds are developed to resist most herbicides and pesticides, but the bees have not adapted and have became victims.

What we can do to help the bees are very obvious. If we cut our CO2 output, we can help the bees. By cutting our CO2 output slows the climate change and will give the bees a fighting chance. Another item that can be done is not use pesticides on your yards. There are natural pesticide alternatives that can be used that would have the same effect as the chemicals pesticides, but they would better for the environment. Another way to help the bees is to have more bee habitat. By making a bee habitat will allow the bees to move around, will allow them to intermingle with the other bee populations in the area. It is important that we will make sure this insect survives.

Overall, climate change and pesticides affect bees. The increase of CO2 in the climate with the warming temperatures have caused the decrease of the bee population. With the heavy use of pesticides in the United States, has not helped the bees survive.  We could be seeing the effects mentioned in Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring. We need to work together to make sure that the bees will not become extinct.

New Year New Technology for the Blog!

For some of our regular readers will see changes in the Common Civic Good. We have added another writer to the blog, we are now have a facebook page Common Civic Good, and we have opened up a Twitter account to be more mobile and to highlight some of our new stories. The goal of this is to allow our articles to reach the most people we possibly can. By using this technology we hope that we can move information faster and create connections with our audience to make the blog better.

If you have any ideas that you would like to see the blog do or any story ideas please tell us. We would love comments and we hope next year we will have more social interaction.

Thank you for reading and have a Happy New Year from the Common Civic Good.

Sloppy Oversite Hurts the Teaching of U.S. History in Virginia

Talking Points Memo and the Washington Post covered a story today about how the elementary history textbook Our America had many errors in it and according to some of the reviewers should be removed immediately from students. Some of these issues involve African Americans fighting for the South during the civil war, the United States entered World War I in 1916, and the first Europeans to explore the continent wore full suits of armor. All of these items are untrue. One historian, Mary Miley Theobald quoted in the Washington Post,  "Any literate person could have opened that book and immediately found a mistake."

Now a question that needed to be asked is how did these textbooks get into the hands of Virginia school children? In Virginia all text books have to go through a set of standards called Standards of Learning. The Standards of Learning are a set of standards indented to give students a full academic experience. These standards are good I have read all of the Third Grade History and Social Science  Standards and United States History to 1865 and they are legitimate. The United States History to 1865 standards reads like a college syllabus. So we can conclude that the standards did not create the problem.

The main problem that occurred came from the elementary textbooks to fulfill the Third Grade History and Social Science Standards. As the Washington Post article points out that all elementary school books are reviewed by elementary school teachers before entering into the class room. With some of the worst errors such as African Americans fighting for the South should have been spotted by the review committee or someone in the Virginia Department of Education. I just read the Wikiapedia article on African Americans in the Civil War and their article stated African Americans did not fight for the South. Simple fact checking should have found that error. The Virginia Department of Education should have had a historian of some degree, a Graduate TA, RA, a Professor, or a member of the Virginia Historical Society, double check the books. They did not and now some Virginia schools are stuck with an inadequate textbook.

Now though we cannot place all the blame on the Virginia Department of Education or the elementary teachers that reviewed the book. The publisher should also have to take the blame Five Ponds Press out of Weston Conn. They are the ones who published the textbooks in question. There are many flaws in their production of the material. A historian did not write the textbooks a random author with no historical authority wrote them. The book was not vetted by an independent historian validating that the text was factual and properly covered the material. An independent historian should have reviewed the text for quality and accuracy. If that did happen, most of these mistakes would have been caught.
As a historian having the facts is a important part of understanding history. Without those false narratives can be created and dueling views of the world can be promoted.  These ideas can be taken to the extreme and create an alternate view  of reality and create hate or misunderstanding that can be used to move an agenda. When history is used to move an agenda, it is more like propaganda than history. It is important for all parties in the production of any historical textbooks to go through them like a fine comb to find all the inaccurate claims.  If everyone works hard together, we as a society can produce texts that we can be proud of and teach our children an accurate version of history.

DADT Repeals Passed in the Senate 65-31

At 3 P.M. EST today the Senate passed the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell by a vote 65-31. Senator John Ensign from Nevada and Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina. This was increase of two Republican votes from the cloture vote. Now the bill will go to President Obama for his signature, which will happen since it was part Obama's goals told during his 2010 State of the Union. Below is the Democrat response to this historic day.