Welcome to Black History month.  Or if you live in Florida, END OF BLACK HISTORY month.  Ironically, it is the loudest voices decrying “freedom of expression” in education and view their opponents as “snowflakes” who (1) are passing laws to limit free speech and (2) claim their children can not handle controversial topics.  As has been said on numerous occasions, these folks need to take the copy of the U.S. Constitution they use as a performance art prop out of their coat pockets and purses and actually read it.

If they did, you might not have a spokesperson for Florida governor Ron DeSantis tell us “the state education department is reviewing the revised (AP Black History) curriculum for compliance with Florida law.”  If DeSantis was ever to take an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he would be committing perjury if he did not add the words “except for the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”

Forgive the brief lesson in Constitutional Law.  The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…” among other things. For those of you who believe this restriction to Congress means it applies only to the federal government, you would be right if you lived in pre-1868 America.  Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment made the “incorporation doctrine” the new standard. According to Cornell University’s Law School, “The first ten amendments of the United State Constitution (know as the Bill of Rights) are made applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause.  Incorporation applies both substantively and procedurally.”

In what can only be described as 1984-style NewSpeak, the Florida Legislature passed and DeSantis signed HB 7, the “Individual Freedom Act” under which a public school teacher can be charged with a crime for mentioning “critical race theory (CRT).” That act defines CRT as the concept that “one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior to members of another race, color, national origin, or sex” and that “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”  Hard to disagree, except that it is not true.

An honest discussion about CRT should start with a more accurate description.  Per the Encyclopedia Britannica:

An intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color.

In  other words, CRT specifically contradicts the false narrative that it accuses individuals of being racists.  The latest and best evidence is the beating death of Tyre Nichols by five Memphis black police officers.  Nichols was not the victim of a hate crime.  He was the victim of a public policy, the creation of the “Scorpion Squad,” an elite, specialized unit formed in 2021 to fight violent street crime.  The culture and training associated with the Scorpion Squad was colorblind. It did not matter if the members of the unit were white or black. 

The valuable lesson a CRT discussion in public schools could provide is that policy matters. If an excessive response to urban crime can turn Black police officers into alleged murderers of a brother who just wanted to get home, what other policies result in harmful outcomes? That conversation does not teach any black child to accuse a white classmate of racism or for any child to think he or she is superior to another. It implies just the opposite. Each of us, regardless of accident of birth or life experience is susceptible to the the same shortcomings of human nature. And it does not matter if children grow up to be a police officer or governor, they need to be cognizant of the power they wield and the consequences of misusing it.

Sadly, the Florida Department of Education and an increasing number of parents across the state think their precious snowflakes lack the intellectual capacity to appreciate the importance of that lesson.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

ALICIA FLORRICK: Mr. Dudewitz, are we in danger of A.I.?

ANTHONY DUDEWITZ: I think its getting smarter every day. Learning our boundaries and its boundaries. It’s evolving. I think there will be an adjustment period after it takes over. But eventually…

FLORRICK: Wait, I’m sorry to interrupt. What do you mean by “takes over?”

DUDEWITZ: The singularity. When the system is capable of recursive self-improvement, when it is better at recalibrating, expanding and spawning than we are. The brief blip of humanity’s reign will reach its inevitable conclusion…I’m just saying, they won’t have much use for us.

The good wife, Season 7, Episode 5, “DRIVEN”

The above exchange occurs during a deposition in which Florrick is questioning Dudewitz, who was responsible for designing the driverless software being tested by a fictional Tesla doppelganger. A version of the test car is involved in an accident in which the corporation claims one of its employees failed to override the software when it did not operate as programmed.

Dudewitz is a modern day Victor Frankenstein. Except his monster is not made of body parts. His creation consists solely of zeros and ones. However, his testimony becomes much more relevant if you stop thinking about artificial intelligence as a mechanical substitute for the human brain. It becomes a metaphor for today’s body politic when you view the adjective “artificial” as the opposite of “actual.”

To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, you might be an example of artificial intelligence if…

• …you run for the U.S. Senate from Georgia but take advantage of a homestead exemption in Texas which you must claim as your principal residence. (Herschel Walker)
• …you compare the Russian invasion of Ukraine to asylum seekers on the U.S. southern border. (Marjorie Taylor Greene)
• …you oppose forgiving $10,000 in student loans after supporting forgiveness of COVID relief loans which totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for some individuals. (GOP Governors, Senators and Representatives)
• …you tell Pennsylvania voters to go to the polls before Sunday’s Steelers’ home game on their bye weekend. (Mehmet Oz)
• …you advocate establishing a mandatory retirement age of 70 for the president of the United States, but never mentioned it when TFG ran for re-election at age 74. (Local newspaper columnist Howard Pine)
• …you run for governor on the platform “Keep Florida Free” but punish businesses that do not support your policies. (Ron DeSantis)
• …you do not understand how you can lose the Arizona governorship after telling former McCain supporters to get lost and mock the 82 year old victim of a violent attack in his home. (Kari Lake)
• …you admit TFG was largely responsibility for the January 6th violent insurrection but would still vote for him if he is the 2024 Republican nominee. (Mitch McConnell, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, etc., etc., etc.)
• …you run on a promise of bringing down inflation, reducing crime and securing the southern border, then announce the day after winning control of the House your priority is impeaching Biden administration officials and Hunter Biden’s laptop. (Kevin McCarthy and the GOP Freedom Caucus)
• …and finally, to be non-partisan, you think your party lost House seats in competitive districts because the candidates were not progressive enough. (Extreme left-wing Democrats)

Anthony Dudewitz may be right. These purveyors of artificial intelligence have made it pretty clear. 2020 was a learning experience. They are capable of recursive self-improvement. They will have a better understanding of voters’ boundaries and their own. They will adjust. And when their singularity arrives, they will have little use for us.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Eleven years before Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the case in which the Supreme Court sanctioned same-sex marriage, my students at Miami University reached the exact conclusions it took the U.S. Senate another seven years after Obergfell to adopt.

In 2004, I taught a summer session of my “Imagination and Entrepreneurship” course which included the following exercise based on the false concept “there are two sides to every story.” There are always more than two sides. To prove this, I asked the students to explore a controversial topic and identify the extreme positions, i.e., the two sides. Their choice? Same-sex marriage which was viewed on one extreme as an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and on the other, an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness delineated in the Declaration of Independence. I then told them they should not seek a compromise on that continuum. Instead, they should look for answers ‘outside the line.’

If you think all universities are bastions of liberal dogma, you do not know Miami University. The student population is 72 percent white and they come from households with an average annual income of over $200,000. Sixty-two percent of the students are Ohio residents, a state we know from the recent mid-terms is ruby red. Not surprisingly for a school with these demographics, College Values Online ranks Miami as the 11th most conservative university in the United States.

In that environment, I feared our discussion of marriage equality would be a dogfight. Not even close. As is so often the case, the critical point came when a student asked an important question. What is the purpose of a marriage license? A not unexpected response came from class members I knew to be actively engaged in religion-based student organizations. They viewed government sanction of a marriage secondary to that of God’s. Which led to the suggestion it was not about the license but the fee to obtain the license. In other words, this was just one more way for local governments to raise revenue by taxing the formation of a household.

Yet, they pointed out lots of non-married couples form households. College students live together in off-campus rental housing. Co-workers form households to share the cost of shelter in cities where the sale price or rental fees are beyond the reach of many who work there. Why shouldn’t they be taxed as well? Which brings me to the title of this post. The tax was only applied to those household occupants the government assumed were having intercourse. Without stating the obvious, you can see where this is going. Government regulation of relationships makes no sense.

And that is EXACTLY what the Senate compromise on an amendment to the Respect for Marriage Act proposes, an amendment that garnered the bipartisan support of 62 senators including 12 Republicans. An amendment based on the same conclusion reached by my students 18 years earlier. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from mandating that any sectarian institution which opposes marriage other than that between a man and a woman must conduct a union for a same-sex couple. But those who had their marriage ratified by either a civil or religious authority must be honored nationwide. The government should keep it nose out of the marital business.

I know some may be offended by the fact the revised bill codifies the right to religious discrimination. But that has always been the case. Most orthodox rabbis will not officiate in an interfaith marriage. Catholic priests will not bless a second marriage unless the first has been annulled. And somehow there are still interfaith unions and second Catholic weddings. In other words, “forum shopping” is not reserved for those in search of a sympathic judge to hear their case.

My wife occasionally reminds me how often, as an agnostic, I cite scripture to make my point. And I am sure she will remind me again when I point out, the Senate amendment to the Respect for Marriage Act is just one more example of the Biblical underpinning in Matthew 22:21 that justifies the separation of church and state. “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Perhaps, the spouses of the 27 GOP senators who voted against the amendment need to remind them to open both their Bibles and the pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution they always carry with them.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP