[Winona Online Democracy]
Ouch! It appears I hit a sore nerve with my last posting.
On 2/2/05 Bob K wrote:
Sorry that you feel that we who pay the bills through our taxes have no right to express our displeasure with the plan. The School Board has a habit of doing what they want to do without checking on how much it will cost. and what the plan will cost in disruption of the Students. But then I guess that the School board has that right because they are our elected representatives. It's just too bad that they don't use the sense that God gave them to think the thing through. Oh My apologies to God for adding his Name to a Thing concerning the Government.
Of course, we all have the right, if not the obligation, to express displeasure with public body decisions with which we do not agree. However, that is not enough: we also have an obligation to go further and to contribute to a solution, which was the point of my posting. Without that, democracy breaks down. In the broader picture, we also all have an obligation to do whatever we can to improve the communities within which we live, accepting that mistakes will be made and moving on. Without that, society breaks down.
So, Bob certainly has the right to express his displeasure with the school board and with my postings. I, in turn, have the right and the obligation to expect more of everyone (including myself). I also have the right and the obligation to discount the views of those who can not or will not take that second, much more important, step. Expressing displeasure, to my knowledge, has never solved a single problem. In some famous quote by some famous talking head (I'm to lazy to look it up this early in the morning), "If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem".
Ed Thompson
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