A daisy chain for Anna

annaMy grandmother passed away a few days ago, and I will be at her funeral tomorrow morning.

She’s been unwell for a while so her passing was not unexpected. In fact, I have been thinking about writing this blog about her for over a year without having found the strength to string any words together until now.

I’m not a sentimental person. I spend very little time thinking about what is done except when a memory can help me move forward. Even in mourning I find myself thinking about today.

The picture below is of four generations. The woman at the centre is my great grandmother, Ada. On the left is her daughter, my grandmother Anna. On the right is my mother and Anna’s daughter, Margaret. The babe in arms is me.

fourgenerations

In the past week I have thought fondly of moments, items and traditions that link me to these women, and my grandmother in particular.

I remember spraining an ankle because I jumped on Grandma’s couch even after she told me not to. I have a photo of me taking my first steps in an emerald green velvet dress she sewed for me, and I have the pattern she used to make it. I remember sitting at her old sewing machine while she helped my sew clothes for my baby on the way. I remember when she helped me give him his first bath. I use her pastry recipe when I make my Christmas butter tarts.

I cherish these little memories of her, but what I value most is the differences between our lives. The gulf of experience between the babe in arms and the woman who holds her is immense.

nowthatwearepersonsAda was born before women could vote. My grandmother Anna was born seven months before women were recognized as persons under Canadian law. My mother Margaret was born seven years before Canada passed The Female Employees Equal Pay Act. I was born the year after Prime Minister Lester Pearson established a Royal Commission on the Status of Women.

The world – my world – is a better place for each step forward taken by generations before me. My life is better for what each generation of women have passed on to me.

I recently read an article about the ‘mother wound’: the pain of being a woman passed down through generations of women in patriarchal cultures.

grandmahillI feel this wound as part of mourning. I feel not only the loss of my grandmother, but the final and irrevocable loss of what she wanted to be, could have been, and would have been had she been born when I was. I feel guilty that I have achieved that was out of her reach.

How do I reconcile that with my continuing pursuit of happiness? How do I avoid carrying the guilt of continuing my journey, knowing hers is at an end? I do that by keeping her in the present. Ada, Anna, Margaret and Darcy are tied together.

No matter how far I go in life, how many more choices I have available, how much more freedom I enjoy, and how much more dignity of person I win, my life is tied to her life, and my life will be tied going forward in an endless daisy chain of of women’s experiences and dreams.

Anything I have, it belongs to my Grandmother too. She earned it with me.

I don’t have to say goodbye to her because I’m not leaving her behind. I’m keeping her in my heart, tied to me with everything I do.

heart-daisies-meadow-40289068

 

Oil or Nothing: Alberta’s false dichotomy

Leduc1_WesternExaminerImage_GlenbowAs long as I can remember in Alberta our defining narrative has been oil or nothing. Which, given that I was born in Alberta in 1968 and came of age in Alberta in the 1980s, rather coincided with how the rest of the world saw the story of modern human prosperity.

Fossil fuels, the industrial revolution, automation. We used to think of it as an uphill journey we had come to the end of. But it wasn’t an uphill climb, it dipped and soared. And the journey isn’t coming to an end, the resource is.

These booms and busts became the Alberta story. In the boom everyone celebrated oil, in the busts everyone became nostalgic for oil. Getting stuck in today’s self congratulation is not future forward. Nostalgia is not future forward. Oil is not future forward.

As decades have rolled by the global mindset has shifted, and there are significant swaths of the global physical and ideological landscape that have begun to look past oil (past fossil fuels in general) and toward a future we need to prepare for.

We lag behind in Alberta. We still tell ourselves that our future is oil or nothing. Sadly our stubborn refusal to lift our heads and look down the road has meant that we have not adequately prepared for our future on the immediate horizon.

This is why I am less concerned with Alberta’s current deficit than some are. I’m not happy about it. I think it absolutely could have been avoided, but that avoidance horizon was 20 years ago. It can’t be avoided now if we want our province to be prosperous into the real and looming future.

windturbinecropWe need to bring our infrastructure up to a level that makes us competitive. We need to educate our youth to a level that makes them competitive. We need to build an economy that is competitive.

Yes, we are creating a debt that will be handed down to our children, but at least this time the debt we are creating will be offset by their prosperity gain. Debts past were handed to next generations who had less to pay the debt off with.

Our young people, and our own generation, can and should invest now in alternatives to oil. For reasons of economic stability. For reasons of environmental preservation. For reasons of lofty ambition and creativity and what makes the humans unique as a species.

Close up of a graduation cap and a certificate with a ribbon --- Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

So, thank you Alberta NDP for reinvesting in education. Our kids will have the means to pay back the debt because we borrowed to give them the skills for future jobs.

No more boom and bust. No more oil or nothing.

Bro busters

diversity treeThe push for diversity in media is picking up speed. It’s part of an overdue movement toward building a world in which more of us have more access to our share of the glory.

It’s important because what we see as children is what we are trained to accept in adulthood. After all, to become a doctor you must first be able to imagine yourself as a doctor, right?

There are lots of threads to this movement; caucasians being cast in asian roles, african american women being stereotyped, gay men being muted – but the one that is (after some hard work) hitting social media lately is the lack of screen time and quality of roles for women.

The push back against the call for more women in meaningful roles is frightening.

Imperator-Furiosa_612x380Take the Mad Max reboot for example. Now, Mad Max was never my thing, but I saw the original and I saw the new one. I can’t say I cared about either. I also can’t say that the addition of the Furiosa character made a difference to how I felt about the second. That’s the point. She’s just a character. The actor’s skills, the writing, the directing, the script – these all matter. Her gender didn’t.

ghostbustersnewI’ve just endured the same rage filled hue and cry about the ruining of the ‘classic’ Ghostbusters brought one by remaking the film with *gasp* women. And AGAIN; sure Ghostbusters amused me as a young teen, but watching it now I can’t say I would have used the word ‘classic’ to describe it. I caught the new Ghostbusters with a friend then I sat down and rewatched the original. My takeaway? 1. Could Bill Murray have been more flat in his Ghostbuster’s reboot cameo? Meh.

black bondSadly this ridiculous outrage is not limited to women black hermiomein film. The internet also lost it’s shit when there was a possibility of a black Bond and when London’s West End got a black Hermione.

There is no quantifiable, objective reason that white male is our default poster child for
everything done in the public sphere. It’s a social construct that we need to socially
destruct and rebuild.

janeway

That’s it. No amount of angry little boy outbursts are going to stop the world from changing.

Next up, my review of the outrage over Oceans Eight…

Oceans8

 

 

A little pre-apocalypse entertainment

political-theater

Man! What a time to be alive for fans of pre-apocalyptic political theatre.

The GOP has fallen into the oldest political trap in existence. The Grand Old Party has fallen victim to pandering.

Pandering

There is a huuuge difference between letting the loons have their soapbox on the corner and letting them have the podium.

No society will ever eliminate its fringe element. In fact no society should try to eliminate it; it keeps us on our toes. However, all societies should keep the fringe on a long leash. Long enough to give the loons some freedom, but short enough that the person at the handle end of the leash is the one choosing the direction.

The Republicans have been letting the dog walk the master for a while now, and it has come back to bite them in the ass. As it always will.

To be fair, this a universally problematic political temptation and not one unique to the Republican Party. It isn’t only Americans who need to maintain proper perspective on the lunatic fringe. For instance:

In the spring I was working a contract with an Alberta government ministry I won’t name. On April 1st, commonly know as APRIL FOOLS DAY, the government put out a joke news release – as many governments and businesses do. Staff in the office I worked in freaked out. I think their concern was that it would make some people angry. And it did. It make the same bunch of lunatics angry that got angry when the Premier wished us all Happy Chinese New Year. The over reaction of my fellow staff members revealed them as firmly in fear of the lunatic fringe. The government, however, wisely just kept on going on and continued to politely ignore the screaming of the  loons. This was the right thing to do.

Zeppelin2

To survive, governments and political parties have to know how to politely ignore some constituents. They must consciously choose not to woo or expect support from their less stable fringe elements.

crazy-trump

The Republican party’s looming disaster comes only because it chose to pander to this fringe element and it’s ripping them apart at the seams. Now all the loons are driving the party toward the abyss of irrational banjo accompanied anger and frenzied orgies of socially conservative outrage.

trump fight

At this point I think there may be no real way out for the party aside from full retreat. The mainstream republicans – the non-loons – need to run away and wait until the Trump zombies eat each other. That’s gonna be a while so I suggest they find a nice pub to hide out in. Forget this election. In fact, pray that this election goes to the Democrats because recovering as an ideologically driven political movement will be easier under a stable Democratic President than during the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

shawn of the dead

Planned Pedanthood Planning

I seem to hit great stretches of time when I can’t finish writing.

typewriterAs a professional gadabout, my life simply involves too many things that compete for my attention. Theatre. My dog. My amateur art attempts. My husband. Reading. My sons. And in summer, the lure of my garden.

Until I get a better speech to text program this means the writing stops when the other things begin, because I can’t take my writing with me.

But as my friends can attest to, I do find time to go on long winded soap box soliloquys on Facebook. These  don’t have embedded links to back up my assertions like I try to  have in a good blog. Still, they allow me to play with words. I love words.

I’ve decided they are appropriately categorized as miniature versions of  my pedant wordplay, and as such belong here.

So consider this warning. Mini blogs full of wordy goodness are coming. Great wordplay, less citing… right after I get through the Folk Fest Weekend.

 

For or against

No article attached. My two cents in 5 minutes…

160719005412-melania-trump-michelle-obama-composite-large-169Google Melania Trump and you’ll find a dozen articles about her speech in Cleveland. It’s the issue of the day: plagarism. But the real issue is what has happened to the Republican party.

The GOP has fallen into the oldest political trap in existence.

Every good leader knows that to fight a good fight and win the day they must give their people something to fight FOR.

All the GOP has is against. Against immigrants. Against radical Islam. Against planned parenthood. Against gay marriage and trans people peeing. Against federal stewardship of public lands. Against gun laws. Against Obamacare. AND against ‘crooked’ Hillary.

This is why they will lose, and lose this big. Because they are only ever acting against the democrats and for no other reason.

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 13: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discusses her new book, 'Hard Choices: A Memoir,' at the Lisner Auditorium on the campus of George Washington University June 13, 2014 in Washington, DC. Clinton is on a nationwide tour to promote the new memoir with media interviews and book signings but has said she would not decide whether to run in the 2016 presidential race before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

So, in a twisted way, Hillary is to blame for Melania’s speech because, by default she is leading them.

Hillary is to Darcy, as history is to …

Here’s a story I have been telling people for 30 years: my mother named me Darcy so that when I applied for jobs no one would know I was a girl and for that reason not interview me. It’s an important story.

suffragists

Darcy is a name without gender. It is the symbol of the world she handed me. She was confined by her gender. I was less so. I am my mother’s daughter, she is her mother’s daughter. That is how we move forward in time.

How far forward we have come is evident in what we are mourning at the same time as what we are celebrating things like gender parity in government, and a woman Premier in Alberta. Our society is only now mourning the last of a generation of women born before women were given the vote.

Before you freak out: not the generation, a generation.

We all know about intersectionality (now), but progress is is inherently imperfect. Imperfection does not invalidate the improvement, it simply makes the next necessary step all the more obvious. My mother was not perfect. I am not perfect. Being Darcy didn’t eradicate sexism, but the story of my name is a good story looking back at it.

 

This US election cycle is laying bare our mistaken tenancy to judge people’s pasts while looking forward. Improvements are very seldom self evident, frequently they are milestones only in context. And yes, I am talking about Hillary Clinton.

hillary smart girlHillary Clinton is my mother’s generation. I don’t get to vote for her, but I do have to respect the struggles she and my mother’s generation overcame for me. She is not the past, she cannot be compared to the future, but she is the foundation we are standing on today. Her nomination is absolutely and without question a milestone for women. You know, a feminist milestone. Not the last one I ever hope to see, but definitely a stop on the march to progress we should celebrate.

It is easy to see Hillary Clinton as a white, wealthy, christian member of the establishment and say that being a woman is not what has defined her journey. The ‘establishment’ Bernie rails against is male – very male and very white. It’s not every male, but it is male. hillary and billIt’s made up of the people who have been pulling the strings. Being married or born into the establishment as a woman is not the same as being the establishment. For women, it has historically meant a seat next to the a man who is establishment. Your daddy or husband.

Hillary’s full membership in the establishment is a result of hard work and perseverance. The group of people who have access to the strings has broadened, and she has been part of that broadening. But she had to work to gain entry, and she has worked to give others entry – in neither case by opening the door to let them in, but by standing outside the door refusing to go away until they let others in. Not to disparage Bernie Sanders’ excellent record on civil rights, but he was opening the door from inside.

Hillary’s accomplishments and ideas were FOR THEIR TIME very significant. Her journey has been to clear the path for the next generation of women. By today’s standards she possibly pales only if you choose to judge from the place you stand without admitting you stand in a place she helped build. Scan a history book. She has weathered more scathing criticism based on her gender than I would ever want to have to endure. Don’t reduce her to what was not done when she was working doubly hard for her place at the establishment table, credit her for what she got done by using what influence she did have.

Is she perfect right now exactly as is? No. Should you not challenge her to reevaluate, to grow, to move forward? No. Of course not. But if you think you’re ahead of her you are ignoring how much longer she has been in this race than you have.

HIllary speechAre women’s rights human rights? If you say yes it is because she said that loudly in 1995. Over 20 years ago she had to formally announce what we can now assume. That was her doing what was not popular, and that pushed progressive discourse forward.

I admire Bernie Sander’s advocacy and his support of civil rights, but I resent them being used against Hillary Clinton. I admire what he did that aligns with my world view, I like many of his current messages, but I resent that he uses Hillary’s ‘lapses’ against her but pretends his own away. She has been  walking a different path, a path assigned to her by her gender. He went to bat for a disadvantaged group he was not a member of, and therefore went to bat from a place of privilege. She went to bat for a disadvantaged group she was member of, and therefore went to bat from a position of disadvantage.

She is not going to be your saviour. She will lead a group effort. She won’t do it without you, your input is necessary. Which means you should be part of the progress she makes and can help her maintain the momentum. It isn’t a revolution. It is the continued march of progress.

She will be a female president who is the reason a female president is possible in exactly the same way that Obama was a black president who is the reason a black president was possible.

Hillary’s nomination is a milestone exactly because it does matter is how high a woman can rise within an oppressive power structure. It is insulting to diminish that achievement because she isn’t more oppressed.

first ladies

We must acknowledge that people are good in context, and allow them opportunity to improve in new context. Otherwise we can never admire anyone because, no one is ever intersectional enough. Effort matters, growth matters, ability to reevaluate matters. And they all matter more than getting it perfect the first time. She worked hard for what she accomplished, and she is still working and learning and growing.

hillary for barakHillary will be a good tool for further change. She has always had to be a tool for change: imperfect change, halting and meandering and sometime mistaken attempts at change, but change nonetheless.

I don’t support her because she is a woman. I would never have voted for Margaret Thatcher, I would never vote Sarah Palin, and I didn’t vote for Rona Ambrose in my riding. I support her because she a woman who has been working a long time on making the world a better place in support of a party whose ideology lines up with my world view.

Many of Bernie Sander’s ideas also align with my world view. Had Sanders been ahead I would not have proposed he didn’t deserve the nomination because he was not a woman. I would judge him in context. He wouldn’t get credit for taking as many punches for being a woman in a man’s world, but obviously that’s because he isn’t and has never been a woman in a man’s world.

woman cardBut the fact still remains that the fact that she is a woman means something to me, she gets credit for being a woman while in politics. She gets to play the woman card because it has been dealt to her over, and over, and over. And because of her some young woman somewhere is not being dealt the woman card. Some women still are, as I said, progress is imperfect.

Hillary deserves to be President. She deserves to be her imperfect, conflicted, battle scarred self. She is the woman card, and she is playing it yet again to spare you having to have it dealt to you.

Hillary is to Darcy, as history is to progress.

 

Oh, everybodys got a beef now…

I am so tired of going from burst of outrage to burst of outrage in Alberta.

Ok. I can get through this…

earls sourceA local restaurant chain, Earl’s, announced that they were pleased to be the first chain in North America to serve certified humane beef as part of their commitment to conscious sourcing. Apparently Earl’s could not find a source of enough Canadian beef that was certified to meet their expectations, so they are getting their beef from a Kansas producer.

It is so weird to see that so many Albertans conflate a local industry with a purchasing obligation for local consumers.

Yes, Earls started in Edmonton. Yes, Earl’s headquarters is in Vancouver. Yes, both of those are in Canada. But what isn’t in Canada is a process to certify that beef is produced in a humane way. That’s the problem.

It’s also distressing to see Albertans acting as if this is an out of the blue attack on Alberta beef producers.

It’s not out of the blue. Unless you live under a rock you’ve probably seen this ad by A&W about using beef raised with out any added hormones or steroids. Or this story about McDonald’s switching to cage free eggs. The precedent is there. There is growing consumer concern about animal welfare.  Earls, and A&W, and McDonalds are not creating this issue, they are responding to it.

It was not an attack, it was a business decision. What this move by Earl’s makes them is an innovator and an industry leader, not a saboteur. It’s not an attempt to do anything more than respond to market trends. That’s what resilient, strong companies do.

Also worth noting: the point is only marginally whether the beef is raised humanely. The point is the certification the producer provides. The point is a standardization and definition of the minimum acceptable treatment of animals raised for food.

This is not a targeted snub of Alberta beef producers. It could be an accidental rebuke of Alberta’s cattle industry for not staying ahead of the curve though. Another company, an American company, beat them to the punch and were earlier to respond to a growing market demand. It’s a pretty poor business model where producers get angry at consumers for choosing what product they want and going to the business that gives it to them.

I guess Earl’s didn’t consult the Alberta industry when they made their decision. I didn’t consult Safeway when I switched to buying my cheese and pasta at Italian Centre, or my smoked meats at that market in Holes Greenhouse, and I won’t consult them when I start buying my produce at Farmer’s Markets this summer. I’m not clear why consultation was an expectation.

This is not restaurants telling consumers that Alberta beef is not good enough. Earl’s, and MacDonald’s, and A&W are reacting to the shift in consumer perception about the the way animals are treated in all the meat producing sectors – not just beef. They are taking their cues from consumers, not dictating them.

This is not a battle for social license. Social licence is the level of acceptance or approval CONTINUALLY granted to a producer by their consumer. Social license changes over time. Companies have to constantly earn and re-earn social license. Companies need to conduct constant environmental scans and maintain an awareness of shifts in their market.

Alberta beef producers could have Earl’s as a customer if they want Earl’s as a customer. Earl’s is no longer their customer because that is what happens in a free market when you don’t/can’t give the customer what it wants. Earl’s want a certification. If the Alberta beef industry is already doing all these things then this is an easy fix for them. All they have to do is finish development of the certification program. If they can’t then they need to address gaps in industry standards, because this is where the future of the industry lies – in open, transparent and humane standards for the production of animal products.

It’s happening in the fashion industry, it is happening with diamonds, it is happening with laundry detergent, it’s why companies are boycotting North Carolina. Ethical consumerism is a growing global movement. No amount of complaining will make that less of a reality for any industry.

alberta beefMy message to Alberta beef producers is simple. Get together, draw up some parameters and a good plan for enforcing and regulating the standards you choose, and you’re golden. Earl’s has indicated it would consider using Alberta beef if this happened.

Adapt or die. You can do this. It can be done.

When one door closes: Ghomeshi

It’s been two weeks.

The trial and verdict in the Jian Ghomeshi sexual assault trial has come and gone. I find the reaction more subdued than the internet predicted it would be, and I feel more subdued than I thought I would be. That being said, the trial has changed the way I see Canada’s justice system. And it changed the way I pay attention to how our society treats sex, sexuality and women.

Two weeks ago I was keeping an eye on twitter as the verdict was read. A co-worker was not and asked me to tell her as soon as the verdict was known. I sent her a quick email, and seconds later heard her holler “He said that?” So I walked around the corner to her office, feeling quite sad, looked at her equally sad face and she said “I have a daughter.”

scales

Given how the trial rolled out I did not expect a guilty verdict. Given the current state of our laws a guilty verdict was not possible. Not because Jian Ghomeshi isn’t guilty, not because the woman are liars, not because what happened didn’t deserve a different outcome – because our laws are not written to give us the better outcome.

Our culture builds a case against the women before they even have a chance to make their case. That was confirmed when, at the end of his verdict, the judge said: “…need to be vigilant in avoiding the equally dangerous false assumption that sexual assault complainants are always truthful.” His equating trusting half of the human race to be experts on their own bodily integrity to the danger posed by rapists sent a chill down my spine.

innocent or guilty presumption of innocence until proven guilt as charged in a fair trial for crime suspect

We vociferously, adamantly and unwaveringly defend the idea that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Rightly so.

And yet, in the case of this completely unique crime, we do not with equal conviction defend the idea that a woman is honest unless proven otherwise.

That alone proves the system is biased against female victims of sexual assault, because we start from the assumption that women could lie, that trusting the woman is a threat to all men, and so we interpret normal human behaviors as reasonable doubt.

I read a Facebook story by a male ally in which he likened this to a wallet being stolen. It was a good analogy but I amend that narrative this way:

…I have an invisible wallet. It holds something I value. You can’t see it, but you can touch it, and you can damage it, and you can take it from me. Because it is invisible I can’t prove when you have done any of these things. I will rarely have evidence to support my accusation. It will often be my word against another’s. The damage done to me will be invisible to most people…

Why do we need to start from the premise that we believe women? Because with sexual assault it is all about believing that a woman has the right, and ability, and credibility as a human being to her own sexuality. No one else owns it. It isn’t a matter of property. It is a matter of controlling what happens to her own body, and having redress under the law when that inalienable right is infringed upon. It isn’t about cuts or bruises. It is about one human being violently usurping another human being’s right to self. The nature of the harm done by crime may be invisible to the eye, but the human toll of the crime must never be.   

lady justice6We need to re-examine our laws, and make some sounder judgments about what we have put on the scales of justice. We need to make some sound judgments about the weight of things that are difficult to quantify.

One in four women will experience sexual assault in her lifetime. One in four men will not commit that offense, and one in four men do not being accused of that offense. Crimes like this are perpetrated by a very, very small pool of men who re-offend as they get continue to away with their behavior. The risk to one in four women is significant. The risk to the many men is significant. For most men, the risk of being tarred with the same brush, being lumped in with those few men, is real.

By doing a better job of punishing the few criminals we are not only protecting women, we are protecting men from the criminals that hide among them and use them as a human shield for their behavior.

This is not making sex more complicated or risky, for the vast majority of men this will make sex easier and better. Same goes for women. Because when we stop confusing violence with healthy human sexuality, we all win.

This door has closed. But we must open a new door to discussion about how we can do better as a culture, and how our justice system can be made to better serve the best interests of all Canadians.

[read this, it’s interesting]

This civilization accepts change only

when-the-winds-of-change-blowAs many of my pedantic tales do, this one begins on social media.

In response to a thread about Ted Cruz and his demagoguery, a Facebook friend asserted that he was a liberal, to which I replied:
“Of course you’re liberal, … Most of the civilized world is liberal (progressive, we call them progressives here). Being liberal is a requisite to being civilized.”

Later someone challenged me on this, and after thinking it over, I continue to believe I was correct. Look:

civilize: bring (a place or people) to a stage of social, cultural, and moral development considered to be more advanced.
civilization: the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced.
liberal: open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.

Civilization is not a place. It is not a location in time. The march towards civilization is not linear (which of course may also be true of time, but let’s not go there). Once we recognize civilization, it ceases to be the most advanced point because our recognition of the advancement is an advancement in and unto itself. Conversely, recognizing that a something is not civilized we are progressing. Get it? Civilization is a continuous process. Civilization is a progression of moments in which we move toward bettering ourselves and our societies. It is advancement.

mirrorA person who is civilized is individually at a stage of individual peak advancement, because of the same circular proof I outlined above.

Ergo, being civilized is to be in the process of change. You can’t advance without moving, you can’t move without changing position, you can’t change position if you’re not open to the possibility that your position can change.

HuxleyThis is the question I answered at the start; how can you be civilized if you are not open to change? Being open to change and the state of being resistant to change are mutually exclusive, which leaves only liberality compatible with civilization. In the long run, being open to new behavior or opinions (the definition of liberal) is the only of those two states compatible with civilization. Being liberal not only has a civilizing effect, it is in fact required for the civilizing to take place at all.

I will agree that what we consider to be a civilization is relative. But regardless how subjective the judgement call that ‘civilized society’ is, change is necessary to advancement. It is the willingness to consider change, not the adoption of new ideas, that makes the liberal mindset requisite to civilization.

I’m going to rest my case right here… what do you think?

quote-the-true-law-of-the-race-is-progress-and-development-whenever-civilization-pauses-in-the-march-of-william-gilmore-simms-171220