[Speed Gibson,
Sunday May 15, 2005 at 12:23am]
Where's the Nuance?
The Left loves nuance. They have it, or more properly, they can see it and react accordingly. We clods on the right, don't.
I remember the one time I chanced to hear Mario Cuomo's Saturday talk show years ago. The former Governor spent an hour talking about the "shades of gray" (i.e., nuance) they saw and dealt with in policy, vs. the "black and white" world of the Conservatives.
But the Liberals have their blind spots, too. There is no nuance on abortion, of course. The rules must be the same right up to within seconds of the baby drawing its first breath.
With judicial nominations, the Left constantly quotes the overall percentage cofirmed, giving equal weight to all levels. The nuance of relative responsibility escapes them, or rather, they hope it escapes us. A prosectutor that won all his misdemeanor cases but lost half of his felony cases and all of his capital cases would soon be out of work despite his 98% conviction rate.
Also, the use of the Abe Fortis "fillibuster" in the sixties requires total suspension of "nuance" as well, since the circumstances were so much different.
Here in Minnesota, that some schools are doing substantially better than others with substantially less funding generates no nuanced insight or even curiousity. The only "solution" allowed on the table is money. More money. Our money. Reformers who look into other factors, like David Jennings and Cheri P. Yecki, are shown the door.
Everyone has some black and white issues, but everyone has any number of "gray" areas where the circumstances matter. In other words, everyone has "nuance" so in and of itself, nuance means absolutely nothing. It is your core beliefs and ability to reason that matter.
I remember the one time I chanced to hear Mario Cuomo's Saturday talk show years ago. The former Governor spent an hour talking about the "shades of gray" (i.e., nuance) they saw and dealt with in policy, vs. the "black and white" world of the Conservatives.
But the Liberals have their blind spots, too. There is no nuance on abortion, of course. The rules must be the same right up to within seconds of the baby drawing its first breath.
With judicial nominations, the Left constantly quotes the overall percentage cofirmed, giving equal weight to all levels. The nuance of relative responsibility escapes them, or rather, they hope it escapes us. A prosectutor that won all his misdemeanor cases but lost half of his felony cases and all of his capital cases would soon be out of work despite his 98% conviction rate.
Also, the use of the Abe Fortis "fillibuster" in the sixties requires total suspension of "nuance" as well, since the circumstances were so much different.
Here in Minnesota, that some schools are doing substantially better than others with substantially less funding generates no nuanced insight or even curiousity. The only "solution" allowed on the table is money. More money. Our money. Reformers who look into other factors, like David Jennings and Cheri P. Yecki, are shown the door.
Everyone has some black and white issues, but everyone has any number of "gray" areas where the circumstances matter. In other words, everyone has "nuance" so in and of itself, nuance means absolutely nothing. It is your core beliefs and ability to reason that matter.