Fairness in the Marketplace of ideas

If you flip through the AM dial these days, you’ll find that half the stations or so are conservative talk radio. You won’t find a lot of reasoned arguments, or calm discussion there. There isn’t even all that much talk, in the sense of listeners calling in and getting responses, like talk radio was when I used to listen to it as a kid in L. A. Mostly it’s long monologues by the host, who usually makes Fox News seem relatively fair and balanced and Keith Olbermann, bless his heart, look calm.

Back in the old days, before around 1982, there was something called the Fairness Doctrine. There has been some talk of reviving the Fairness Doctrine. What it said, essentially, that if you want to be doled out part of the public airwaves by the FCC, then you have to present both sides of the issues. Have Rush on for a couple hours? Fine, you need Randi Rhodes, or some other liberal talker, on for a couple to balance it out. The Fairness Doctrine was held to be constitutional by a 9-0 decision of the Supreme Court, mostly because there are a limited number of slots for broadcast radio and TV, and giving one station the right to use some of that space necessarily precludes another. Conservative Talk Radio *hates* the Fairness Doctrine.

There’s a downside to going that route, however. The biggest is that ultimately, the government has to make decisions about what balances what. In order to know whether Randi and Rush balance each other, you have to have a preconceived notion that the “center” is between them. Furthermore, Randi and Rush aren’t free to change their points of view anymore, under the Fairness Doctrine – they both have to occupy their respective liberal and conservative slots or the radio station is in violation. On the whole, it would be best not to re-enact the Fairness Doctrine.

There is another rule change made by the FCC, however, that is worth revisiting. It used to be that the FCC limited companies from controlling multiple radio stations in an area, or from controlling too many radio stations in total; now, those restrictions are much looser. There is a danger to freedom of speech if a few partisans end up controlling most of the airwaves, and putting stricter limits back on will help balance radio a little. Conservative talk, however, has a dominant position on the radio, and that probably won’t change.

In the long run, it won’t matter. HD Radio and the like mean that there will be many more stations on the radio. Cable and Satellite do the same for television. On Cable, liberal hosts Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are drawing about as many viewers as the more established Fox News right wingers Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, who are on during the same time slot. Progressives are doing fine at getting eyeballs in the blogosphere. Radio is the trailing edge of communication, and the leading edge is open and free – and fertile ground for the left.

In fact, the left does best in precisely those areas which require your attention – to read or watch. Essentially, conservatives are winning the day only when people are trying to drive at the same time. That doesn’t mean that they are unimportant – the hate that gets spewed out still drives people to the polls, and gets them to shout out epithets at rallies. But on the whole, the future of the free marketplace of ideas is bright. We have the advantage that, as Stephen Colbert once said, “Reality has a well known liberal bias.”

Governing without a fail safe mechanism

I've been reading a lot of op-ed pieces like this one in today's Wall Street Journal predicting the end of America as we know it.

Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether the America of the last 200 years could or could not use some changes, if the sky-is-falling voices from the right are sincere, it points to an amazing level of recklessness in government. Follow me for a moment:

A central part of free market theory is that the market in general is cyclical, capable of going through some rather violent ups and downs. Everyone in politics understands that if you're in power, a violent down is likely to get you booted out of power. So, no matter how long the Republicans govern, their favored system of economics assures that at some point, they're going to get booted out.

Yet, somehow, they claim, they've used their time in power to build a system that will be completely destroyed if they aren't in charge. It's like building an all wooden home on the Florida coast, or a mortar less stone skyscraper in San Francisco. I'd add like making a mandala out of sand, but I don't think the Republican philosophy has much in common with that kind of impermanence by design, and when the Mandala blows away no one gets hurt.

The War in Iraq is a good case in point. The Republican argument for staying, at this point, is essentially that they've doubled down on their bad bet to the point that it would be certain disaster to leave the table. It's as if they didn't know we hold presidential elections every 4 years, or that Bush was term-limited. Their argument for electing a Republican is essentially that they've fouled things up so badly that reason itself no longer provides a functional solution. We're in the fourth quarter, down 28 because we've been throwing nothing but long passes and they've been getting picked off all day, and now long passes are the only thing that give us a chance.

The structure of our political system, however, is that we start a new ballgame every 4 years. This isn't a closely guarded secret. The teenage mentality of the Republican party has been to govern as if they would be there forever. It's time for an adult in the White House. If the Iraq claim is false, there's no reason to keep spending our blood and treasure there. If the Iraq claim is true, then it's blackmail, extortion, an attempt to control through fear.

Either way, it's time for a change. Five more days, folks. Go vote.

Honest Disagreements and the Lying Liars who inspire them

I just got done reading an essay on how one can’t be a Christian, and vote for Barack Obama, so I’m a bit pissed off.

The right, of course, has no monopoly on questioning people’s religion, or patriotism for that matter. They do, however, do a lot more of it than folks on the left.

There are times when I don’t understand how people can come from reading the sermon on the mount and cast a vote for a regressive tax structure. There are times when I shake my head at how someone can claim to be for America, and yet be for sacrificing our troops needlessly in Iraq. But the answer is, by and large, they do not believe the tax structure is regressive, or they believe that regressive taxes benefit the poor through some trickle-down mechanism. They do not believe that the struggle in Iraq is “needless” but think that it solves some problem that is important, or they believe the cost of withdrawing is too great. My disagreement, with most McCain-Palin voters, is an honest one, on both our parts.

Some of it is a matter of judgment. Sometime, it’s a matter of facts. McCain and Palin have told some whoppers, and folks believe them. The folks on talk radio aren’t exactly informing their listeners either. Fox News has served as the propaganda arm of the Republican party for way too long.

Testifying to the integrity of the average voter mean that I think a whole lot of the integrity of the candidates. McCain has thrown his honor under the bus this campaign, and it’s been a sad thing to watch. It’s hard to tell with Palin, given that she doesn’t read the newspapers, but she may actually believe the stuff that comes out of her mouth, which is its own kind of scary. Ah well. Six more days… get out and vote!

The Rebirth of the Republican Party

There is a group out there called the Ripon Society. Among its six main goals are “a more equitable tax system” and “social tolerance,” and “conservation of natural resources.” It is also a subset, oddly enough, of the primary institution that has worked against those three goals for the past 25 years – the Republican party.

The Ripon Society used to be a significant force in our society, whether you’ve heard of it or not. Named after Ripon, Wisconsin, where the Republican party was formed, it stood for Abraham Lincoln’s values – racial equality, for instance. Before the Gingrich revolution, before Tom DeLay ham-fisted attempts to insist on conservative orthodoxy, liberal and moderate Republicans were a significant force in Washington, and these made up the bulk of the Ripon Soceity’s members. . Cast again in the minority, they may yet become one again. Susan Collins, in Maine, is one. I know a lot of Democrats who would like to see her replaced, holding as she does a Republican seat in Congress from a basically blue state. But Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe, are part of the opposition our system needs.

I think, unfortunately, it may be too late for the Ripon Society. I suspect the Republican party has turned too many of the Ripon Society’s would be adherents into independents and Democrats. I fear that a the majority of the GOP will believe it when Rush and his cohorts on talk radio claim that the Republicans lost because they just weren’t conservative enough, and will accept the labeling of moderate Republicans as “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only). The party that practiced the “majority of the majority” when it was in control of congress will split that even further, driving out a new layer of relative moderates with each schism, and leaving us, at least temporarily, with almost a one party system. That’s not good for democracy, it’s not good for the United States, and in the long run, that means it’s not even good for the Democratic Party.

Mind you, Susan Collins and the Ripon Society and all the other GOP “moderates” have much to answer for. For too long have they been willing to cast a vote to give the wingnuts power. Collins, and Snowe, and yes, McCain, should have started signaling their willingness to vote for impeachment at least as far back as 2005, and they would have save their party and the nation much grief. At that point, they could have even done it without putting a Democrat into the White House. But it is enough that they will have to settle for “Ranking Member” instead of “Committee Chairperson.” 150 electoral votes will have to do for John McCain, who could have served his country but chose to serve his party instead, this election, and has ended up helping neither.

Somehow, though, for the sake of the country, I hope they manage to scrabble their way back to relevance – and this time, hopefully, without bringing a bunch of dittoheads with them.

I thought it was time to be fair and even handed and give some time for our conservative friends to speak their minds.

“Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.” George Will.

“As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.” Wick Allison, former publisher of the National Review.

“Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.” Kathleen Parker, National Review Online.

“It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.” Christopher Hitchens.

“…there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices.” David Brooks.

“And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.” Christopher Buckley, board member of the National Review.

"When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent and imprudent; ending up just plain weird... that's no way a president can act under pressure". Ken Adelman, former assistant to Donald Rumsfeld.

“In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.” Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal.

I got nothin’.

It’s looking increasingly likely that Barack Obama will be elected president, and that he will be able, with the help of a Democratic congress, to enact the tax policies he’s been advocated. There’s a maze of credits for this and that, but there seem to be four obvious results of his plan. I’ll take them in order.

• People earning 250K a year or more will pay more taxes.

• Corporations will pay more taxes.

• The middle class, roughly people earning between 40K and 250K a year, will pay less taxes.

• A number of people towards the bottom of the income scale who currently pay some taxes will end up paying no taxes at all.

Republicans would like to claim that taxing high-income individuals more is bad for the economy. They don’t make up a large portion of the electorate, so to make an argument against these taxes you have to convince people that there’s an effect that goes beyond the people paying the tax. But I don’t think the evidence is very good for this. We were extraordinarily prosperous during the Clinton administration, when the top marginal tax rate was increased, and the economy did significantly less well so during the Bushes before and after, when it was lower. The empirical evidence seems to suggest that taxing the rich more heavily is actually good for the economy, which seems counterintuitive.

It’s hard to imagine someone making 300,000 dollars a year having to pay a few percent more in taxes and deciding to chuck the whole thing. He might cut back on his expenditures, or he might try to earn more to make up for the loss. Either way, he’s going to continue to do what it takes to earn 300K+ a year.

Corporation tax rates, on the other hand, definitely effect their bottom line, which they are going to try to solve by raising prices, or cutting labor costs, neither of which are especially good for the economy. They might even decide to move their base of operations outside of the country. I think any tax hikes here have to be very carefully targeted, so as to discourage companies from taking jobs outside of the country, or cutting jobs, or overpaying their CEOs, without punishing companies that are actually growing U. S. jobs and whose pay scale isn’t ridiculously top heavy. I’m not excited about Obama’s plan here, but some things can be accomplished with international cooperation – the Brits and others have tossed out the idea of an international effort to hold down executive pay – and most of the world seems eager to cooperate with an Obama presidency.

Middle class tax cuts probably do stimulate the economy. They’re certainly going to be popular among the middle class.

It’s the last part I struggle with most, which is taking people off the tax rolls entirely. Understand, I have no eagerness to take money from someone earning minimum wage. But when Joe Biden said that paying taxes for the rich was patriotic, he struck a chord with me. Taxes are the main way that we, in this country, pool our resources for the common good. Taxing someone not at all makes them not a part of that, and tells them that their patriotism is not wanted or helpful. What I'm hoping is that we'll see some raises in the minimum wage that push most of the people in this group into the middle class "still paying taxes but less now" group.

Either way, the deficit is rising, and the country’s bills need to be paid somehow. It’s a same the G. W. Bush, having been bequeathed a surplus, caused the US to take on so much debt in his first seven years. We can't do all that we'd like to do to stop the recession because of the deficit, and we can't do all that we'd like to do to help the deficit because of the recession.

Without a Home

All too often politics becomes an abstraction, a game where one side wins and one side loses, and only vaguely does one remember why one is rooting for one’s own side against the other guys. At other times the dots are connected, and we remember that public policy has results in real life.

I work at a moderately large suburban library. Despite being in the richest county in the country, we have a number of homeless people who come into use the library. Some read all day, others use our free internet access, still others just find a comfortable place to sit down. They come from all sorts of backgrounds, and have all sorts of different ways of dealing with life. Some have a cheer that many a rich man should envy. Others are on drugs. A few have serious medical conditions. Some have obvious mental health problems.

Their number is swelling, though. We see more new people every day. We often can’t tell they are homeless by their dress or manner or anything else, until we see that they know and greet the others, having met at a soup kitchen. There is a camaraderie of sorts among them.

Last night one of them, who used to be something of a problem patron but who for several years now, started again to be disruptive to other patrons. There had been a few other incidents with this patron, and rightly or wrongly, everyone, including myself, suspected that whatever medication had been helping her with her mental health issues was no longer being taken.

A couple of new guys, not seen before, smuggled some liquor into the library, and were flying high by closing time.

Also yesterday I noticed a missive from one of the local charities, telling us another homeless man had died from a chain of events that would never happen to a person with a roof.

I could tell you other case histories, some brief, some longer. We see a lot of these people every day. We try very hard to give them the dignity of being treated like every other patron who walks through our doors.

During the great depression, joblessness reached 25%. America was a largely rural area back then, and I think more of the homeless wandered from town to town on trains, and fewer stayed in one place. We’ll see it differently this time around. Homelessness will strike the good and the bad, the sane and the insane, single people and families. Our shelters and soup kitchens are already taxed, and resources will run thin. Those who are without homes will find it harder to get medical care, and harder to get food. Many will lose hope. Many will turn to drugs, or drinking. Many will die prematurely.

How we respond matters a lot. I don’t have all the solutions, or know exactly what government should do, and I do think that a good deal of the blame lands squarely on the current administration for deregulation and opposition to paying people a living wage. But we’re talking about a huge number of people. A change of 1% in the employment rate is a few million people, significantly larger than, say, the number of abortions that happen in this country, or the number of people executed. It’s larger than number of rich CEOs with golden parachutes, or the number of dollars Sarah Palin got out of the Alaskan treasury “for her kids.” We’re most likely looking at a jump in unemployment much larger than 1%. This isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s the number one “values” issue of the day.

Colin Powell and Racism

Conservatives have a chance to win something very important to them in this election, even if they are defeated at the polls. As is often the case, it requires the right 'spin.'

If Barack Obama wins, it is a powerful argument to the idea that African-Americans need special treatment to create a level playing field. After all, if a black man can take the White House, there is no place a black man can't go. That argument will be made the next time an affirmative action case comes before the Supreme Court, and it will most likely carry the day.

The only problem? Conservatives are blowing the 'spin.' They are whining that Obama *is* getting special treatment, and even that the only reason he's winning is because of that treatment. In other words, they're claiming Obama only stands a chance because of a propensity of Americans for affirmative action.

On Sunday Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president. It didn't take long for Patrick Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage to jump in and claim that the only reason Powell endorsed Obama was because they share a common skin color. I suspect what they'd like listeners to hear, without actually saying it, is that it's appropriate for white folks to vote for a white guy for the same reason, but I'll skip over that. I'm guessing. I don't know.

Racism comes in many forms, and I think it's legitimate to say that if Powell is endorsing Obama because of his skin color, that's a form of racism. It's not the most dangerous sort, however. I have to admit that when I was a fan of the Utah Jazz in the 90s, I was a lot more of a fan of John Stockton than Karl Malone. Part of that is because Stockton was about my height, and folks that are a lot taller are kind of intimidating. But some of it, too, was that Stockton shared my skin color. Those two features, neither of which go the character of the two men, made me a John Stockton fan. Racism? Sure, of a sort. People will always root for people who are "like them," whether it's skin color or a common profession or whatever. That might be what's going on with Colin Powell's endorsement.

If Stockton vs. Malone, however, were a more serious matter than being more of a fan of one player on the same team than another, I would take it a bit more seriously than that. If they were both running for President, for instance. If at the end of the day I chose to vote for Stockton, it wouldn't be about his skin color. I'd vote for Barack Obama over either.

So yes, it is racism, and of a deeper sort, to assume that the reason Colin Powell would endorse Barack Obama is because Barack Obama is black. There is nothing in Powell's record to indicate that race is a primary motivator in anything else he does. When people root for someone because they are the same skin color, it's a lot less dangerous than when people assume they can know just what's going on in the person's mind, because "those people" are like that.

I'd love to say that Limbaugh, et al, are just the lunatic fringe of the Republican party, but frankly, I think they're just over half of it. I give John McCain (but not Sarah Palin) credit for being part of the other half of the party.

John McCain made a comment that Powell's endorsement "doesn't come of surprise." That's reasonable; there were hints of it in the media, and Powell had said some positive things about Obama before. He didn't say "I expected it because they were both black," and I don't think he meant that, either. Nor do I think he was trying to deliver a coded message to his supporters. Extrapolating from his fellow Republicans' comments to assume we know what's going on in McCain's mind would be a mistake, I think.

At any event, it's nice to see another Republican for Obama. I don't know why moderates stay in the Republican party at all, at this point, but if the GOP is ever going to be the loyal opposition our two party democracy needs, again, they'll need people like Powell.

From the Unreal Part of Virginia...

as opposed to the Pro-American parts of the country.

Many Americans have been rather surprised at some of the things that have been said by prominent Republicans lately. First it was Sarah Palin saying that she liked talking in the pro-America parts of the country -- compared to what parts, exactly?

Then Nancy Pfotenhauer, an aide to John McCain, said that Northern Virginia wasn't part of the "real Virginia" which is "southern in nature." She claimed that, "the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia," which is just nonsense. Most of the Democrats who live in D.C. (who are mostly black, in case you didn't get the coded message) can't afford to move here. People have come here from all over the country, though, and from outside the country, too, which has given us some great ethnic grocery stores. I digress.

Joe McCain, the candidate's brother, said at a rally that Arlington and Alexandria were "Communist."

Finally Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) started ranting about all the fellow congresspeople who were "anti-american," Barack Obama in particular. I think she's angling to chair a committee. Maybe call it, oh, I dunno, the "House Committee on Un-American Activities."

This is where I'm supposed to tell you how surprised and shocked I am, but I'm afraid I'm not. When Sarah Palin was asked what newspaper she read to get her news about the world, she couldn't come up with one. We're used to hearing Republicans castigate the mainstream media, but ultimately, we know they read the New York Times and Washington Post and all the rest, because there is information there. But if you've really bought into their line, why would you read a newspaper?

There's a place in America where they've been talking like this for a while. It's called talk radio. Michael Savage uses the word anti-american to describe people who disagree with him all the time. It's casual, no big deal. So does Mark Levin. Rush Limbaugh passes for middle of the road on conservative talk radio these days, and he calls bi-partisanship "cowardly." You'll hear the word "disgusting" a lot -- not to talk about things people say, or policies, but about people. And of course every Democrat is a "socialist."

These folks, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and the rest, are just talking like they do on Talk Radio. Most of the time, most Americans don't listen to that crap, so we're surprised when we hear it from politicians. Don't be. There'll be a lot more of them that have grown up listening to Rush and Savage and Levin.

The good news is, even us "unreal" Virginians get to vote here. But by the way, Sarah -- this is a very pro-american part of the country. It's you, actually, that most of us don't like too much.

Equal Protection Under the Law

An extraordinary thing happened in the vice-presidential debate a few weeks ago, when Sarah Palin, the current flag bearer of the conservative movement in the United States, said that she supported the rights of homosexual couples to civil unions. Of course, she didn’t actually mean that – she was just pandering for votes. The Alaska Supreme Court required recognition of civil unions by a unanimous vote in October 2005, and Sarah Palin disagreed with that decision—but was required by law to enforce it. Still, she thought, if only for a moment, that it was politically wise to pretend, and she *hasn’t* thought it was politically wise to disavow that position on the campaign trail. Even Sarah Palin.

Now, Civil Unions are not equality, and they are not justice. That will, alas, take a long time to accomplish. Harry Truman began the project of integrating the Military in 1948, but it wasn’t finished until 1954, the same year Brown v. the Board of Education required integration of the schools. Laws against blacks and whites marrying were not struck down until 1967. Until then, progress, when it occurred, was state by state. We’re seeing the first few states turn just now to enable gay marriage.

But Civil Unions are the foot in the door. They give more rights to gay couples than they have without them.

For people born between 1979 and 1990, according to a Pew Research poll conducted this year, support for Gay Marriage and Civil Unions is almost identical – there’s just 3 percent difference between disapproval ratings for the two. The difference rises substantially with people with earlier birthdates, however. A majority of people born before 1958, however, disapprove of gay marriage, but a majority does not disapprove of civil unions. The gap between the two concepts is 14% in people who were born before 1943. So that distinction, between marriage and civil unions, is an important stumbling block to an earlier generation on this issue. As the percentage of the voting population that was born in the 60’s and later increases, we’re going to see a quite significant shift in the numbers, and the population that draws the distinction Joe Biden drew in the debate between Marriage and Civil Unions will become a vanishingly small group.

The reason that young people are more accepting, I suggest, is because they’ve seen healthy gay relationships among their peers. The reason old people are less accepting is because their gay peers had to hide their relationships, so they never saw them work. Just as Harry Truman making black people in just one segment of society led eventually to greater acceptance and eventual legal equality, so will civil unions make people less scared of gay people.

A lot of this will happen when judges recognize that the 14^th amendment, guaranteeing equal protection under the laws, doesn’t contain a special exclusion for gays and marriage. Judges tend to be older, but they also tend to be a bit better educated, and as time goes on the old ones retire and are replaced by people who have grown up in more enlightened times. It’s hard to be patient, but there is an inevitability to this. It’s no longer possible, I don’t think, to spook people into passing an amendment to the U. S. Constitution to stop it, so we don’t have to worry about that. We’ll get there.

Only a fool, however, would think that we won’t get there faster with Joe Biden and his running mate, than with Sarah Palin and hers. Even conservatives will benefit, I suspect, from moving past this issue, which they are doomed to lose anyway, and moving onto issues where they might, possibly, have a point.

Where we Find Ourselves

We are at the end of one of the great runs of political dominance in American history. In the last 28 years, one party has been dominant in American political life for 26 of them. Only for the first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, while Hillary was still pushing health care to the mostly democratic congress, have the Republicans not been in the driver’s seat.

Deregulation, and Laissez-Faire capitalism, has been the accepted doctrine of America. Abroad, they do not regard this as a Republican movement; they instead call it simply American, or, if they are feeling inclusive, Anglo-American. It has been a religion, the one true way. Liberal became a dirty word. Buoyed by the victory of democracy over communism, we believed that capitalism had vanquished socialism in 1989 as well. Yet now, laissez-faire capitalism is in disrepute and with it the Republican party.

This coming election, it is conceded by even most Republican loyalists, will see the Democrats increase their gains of two years ago in both the house and the senate. Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential race looks increasingly likely as well. The Democrats are in the driver’s seat, and the only question left is not whether they will be in power but how firm their grip on that power will be.

If Obama wins, they could actually undo some of the damage that the Republicans have done.

Republicans have brought us a war fought on false pretenses, and torture. The former is not a vice unique to Republicans, by any means, but it cannot be rewarded with another go around. The past 28 years have broadened the gap between rich and poor so greatly that no wealth trickles down to most people at all, and they have no personal stake in the country’s economic health – and we have done so without making the country economically healthy either. Republican presidents have swelled the federal deficit to huge proportions – perhaps fatal proportions.

We need to toss the bums out – not to obliterate the Republican party, but so that it comes back a new animal, and one capable of again playing a reasonable role the great debates about the issues not only of today, but of tomorrow. It will be a long road for them. It has been a long road for America, but now, at last, there is some light ahead, and we can pray that it is not too late.