Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered thunderstorms with high of 80. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:35 PM for 13h 19m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1845, the first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.
Saturday in Whitewater will see periods of clouds and sun with a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:36 PM for 13h 21m 49s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.0% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1832, Black Hawk, leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrenders to U.S. authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.
I’ve the original, below, but would recommend a visit to the open NYT link to make the most of the document. An evergreen point about law: law is one of the humanities, and so is as broad a subject as human interaction itself. While federal procedure, for example, is (or at least should be) familiar to all competent American attorneys, many aspects of an unusual case like this call for reliance on the small number of attorneys who practice regularly in this field. There are sad, disgraceful examples of non-attorneys, and even some lawyers, who are misrepresenting simple matters of law.
For something like this, it’s critical to rely on professionals who have dealt with these cases, either lawyers or journalists who’ve long covered this field, for solid assessments. Specifically, those who have dealt with cases involving national security classifications and documents. Any random guest on a cable news program just won’t do. The NYT annotation is a good place to start, and attorneys Andrew Weissmann, Brad Moss, Mark Zaid, and Steve Vladeck are knowledgeable lawyers on whom one can rely,
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:14 AM and sunset 7:38 PM for 13h 24m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.5 % of its visible disk illuminated.
Tuesday, August 30th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Honest Thief @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Action/Thriller
Rated PG-13 1 hour, 39 miles (2021)
The meticulous “In-and-Out Bandit” (Liam Neeson), as he has been named by the authorities, has stolen $9 million dollars from mostly small banks, managing to keep his identity a secret. But when he falls in love with a good woman, he decides to make a fresh start by coming clean about his criminal life, only to be double-crossed by two corrupt FBI agents. A thoughtful, cops & robbers character study. Liam Neeson is particularly good.
When looking at old works of art, it’s not uncommon to find a feline companion somewhere in the composition. Artist Galina Bugaevskaya (aka Cat Universe on Instagram), however, reimagines traditional portraits where cats are the stars. Her ongoing series features kitties donned in historical costumes and jewelry, posing as noblity.
Bugaevskaya has been creating her Cat Universe for over three years. The premise of the project is to place images of cats—usually via Photoshop—in unexpected situations. “I am inspired by their faces: funny, stern, curious—so different,” Bugaevskaya tells My Modern Met. “I adore non-standard photos and funny facial expressions, and I also love harsh frowning cats.”
In her series of “purrfect” portraits, she edits different felines into vintage oil paintings. To do this, she has to pair images of cats with the portraits that fit the most naturally—or with ones that are the most uncanny
Thursday in Whitewater will see morning rain and scattered afternoon thundershowers with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:40 PM for 13h 27m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1609, Galileo demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
Whitewater, Wisconsin will hold a referendum this November on exceeding state-imposed revenue limits to fund a public fire and emergency services department. The Whitewater Unified School District will hold a referendum this November on exceeding state-imposed revenue limits to fund operational services. Two public institutions, two referendums, for two different purposes.
For today: about these topics, what can one expect from the community? There will be three approaches: some will speak on the topic without regard to any faction or party, some will speak to a particular faction only, and some will try to persuade the undecided.
Note well: The City of Whitewater is a politically and culturally diverse, but divided, city. This political division is yet greater in the Whitewater Unified School District.
(Not long ago, the district’s school board rebuked some residents for “destructive communication [that] is creating disunity in our ‘Unified’ school district.” Oh, dearie me: the school district has been in a condition of community disunity, sometimes acrimonious, for many years. In any event, the first place to look for improvement in communication is with leaders, not residents.)
Those who merely speak about these referendums will do so without an expectation of more than their own right of expression. Some residents will have something to say, supportive or critical, without being part of a group seeking to advance or defeat a referendum.
In Whitewater, however, most people who speak to the issues will speak mostly to their confederates, those of a like mind. On both of these ballot questions, there will be a faction representing a soft majority and another representing a hard minority. The soft majority will speak to its members in the style that they’d like, and the hard minority will speak with the fire-and-brimstone style that they’d like.
(Which faction will be the soft majority and which will be the hard minority is the initial political question. Best guess, with emphasis as a guess: in the school district, the soft majority will favor the school operational referendum, with a hard minority opposed; in the city a soft majority will be undecided on a fire and emergency services referendum, with a hard minority opposed.)
Persuading is harder than speaking, and harder than speaking only to one’s fellows.
In the City of Whitewater, there’s a genuine opportunity to persuade, one way or the other, if it should be true that a soft majority is now undecided on referendum spending for fire and emergency services. The Whitewater Common Council has been steady and methodical in its approach since April, and that’s to the community’s benefit. This approach lowers the political temperature and allows residents to consider proposals matter-of-factly.
In the district, it’s probable that a soft majority will try to hold together, a hard minority will find itself with a turn-out-the-base strategy. Neither group is likely to persuade the other, and there are probably few undecideds. A group may think that it’s persuasive, but as with the pandemic, these groups are mostly talking to their own kind. (One faction will think of itself: home run! Others will watch and think: nah, pop out.)
The district has been through a notably rough patch of controversies, some more turbulent this year than even at the height of the pandemic. Honest to goodness, this Central Office seems as uncertain as Steinhaus’s administration was obtuse. (Never thought that could happen. Different situations, but each equally debilitating in its own way.) Administrators can’t tell one faction from another, evidently have received either no advice or bad advice on major political topics, conflate the personal and political, and find themselves like red flags to the occasional bull.
Perhaps this won’t affect the referendum result, but few public administrations have offered up so many hostages to fortune as this one.
I’ve no personal like or dislike in any of this. It is with disappointment but candor that one writes that Whitewater, especially the district, has become a place of chronic contention between factions. Of personal contention, there need to be repeated, official attempts at reconciliation in public settings. Of political contention, however, a different approach is required. There’s firm and cold, but beyond that there’s nothing worth trying. SeeThe Populists’ Dominance-and-Submission Ritual and Two Postures, Two Results.
For this district’s administration, there is now the ongoing burden of having to respond in one of these ways after determining which approach is appropriate. Hard to overstate how difficult that task is.
I’ve written many times that I represent no faction in this city, being, so to speak, only an emissary of one. In Whitewater, there could could be no better position than this. One makes one’s arguments, sincerely and freely, without troublesome associations.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 7:41 PM for 13h 30m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 7.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
It is an axiom of liberty that a rational and free man would not willingly submit to a tormentor. This brings us to the sad case of Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin J. Vos, whose fear of Trumpism and hunger for political power compels him to cower before the very man who has sought his ruin. Patrick Marley reports After attacks and primary challenge, Wisconsin GOP leader still stands by Trump:
MADISON, Wis. — Over the past 15 months, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly has sought to placate Donald Trump as the former president bombarded him with phone calls about the 2020 election, accused him of covering up corruption, labeled him a Republican in name only and endorsed his little-known primary opponent. After winning his primary by just 260 votes thismonth, Robin Vos expressed no regrets and stood by Trump.
“I think Donald Trump has done a lot of good things for our country, and if he runs again, he could do a lot more,” Vos said in an interview in his state Capitol office. “But I’m not going to say that just because Donald Trump believes something, that I’m going to change what I believe — unless I’m persuaded.”
After the 2020 election, Republican leaders fell mostly into two camps: one embracing Trump’s lies about his loss and one resisting his demands to reverse the results. Vos tried to forge a middle ground, launching an expansive and expensive review of the election but refusing to take the legally impossible step of decertifying the election. His efforts weren’t enough to escape Trump’s revenge.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 6:10 AM and sunset 7:43 PM for 13h 32m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 12.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
So, in fulfillment of a promise from yesterday, and in reply to a commenter who asked recently about books and references on libertarianism: a sketch.
Libertarians are those who believe that liberty is the critical political value: that from personal freedom for all will come a productive, diverse, and fair society. Liberty is not the only political value, but we think it’s decisive of a good society. Rather than the compulsion of the state (through mandates, taxes and tariffs, restrictions on association, and brute force) we seek a world of free and voluntary interactions (in the marketplace and in private life) of moral equals.
Here you are: individual liberty, free markets, limited & open government, and peace (though free trade with friendly nations).
We are the inheritors and defenders of an old tradition, stretching back so many centuries, long before the term libertarian was coined (it’s a relatively recent invention).
Voluntary transactions and associations are the natural, and often spontaneous, result of human sociability. Most people are sociable and friendly, and if it were otherwise society would have remained small and primitive. We believe people can organize well and best when they left to their own choices. The foundation of a productive (and so prosperous) society is private activity, not state action. Better still, free, voluntary interactions are fair in a way that state compulsion is not.
Consent. As we believe in voluntary, mutual interactions, we believe necessarily in consent in romance and relationships. Forced sexual encounters (including encounters with those who are by law too young to consent) are wrong and should be punished at law. Nonconsensual romance isn’t romance — it’s criminal assault.
Defense of Self and Others. While there are a few pacifist libertarians (there’s a Quaker Libertarian group), almost all libertarians believe in a right to defend themselves, others, and the country.
We believe this right includes a right to bear arms, but candidly the worship of guns as a part of a new trinity is simply odd and (from the religious vantage) heretical. Have these people never read a Hebrew or Christian Bible? God, Guns, Trump is simply perverse on religious or secular grounds.
Diversity. We, the advocates of individual liberty, are necessarily the champions of diversity: among adults there should be unfettered speech, association, romance, attire, and peaceful, consensual activities.
The most productive and dynamic part of a society is civil society.
That Bleeding-Heart Thing. So, some libertarians are concerned simply with the obvious problem of a bloated and overreaching of government, and their libertarianism is wholly political. For others of us, thinking of society, we are drawn to make our way in the world with an animating concern about individual well-being. Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism is the union of free-market principles and a commitment to social justice. We see and know that free markets uplift from poverty and advance prosperity better than any alternative political or economic arrangement.
And yet, and yet, we have a true concern for all people, including those who are still struggling and we seek the material advancement of all. So Bleeding-Heart Libertarians propound a fusion of free-market economics and social-justice principles. See John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness.
That’s why we think about poverty, write about poverty, and complain about failure to consider poverty. We see that those in need matter as much as those of us who have done well. (A bleeding-heart libertarian would reject, and hold in contempt, the boosterism or toxic positivity that promotes only the positive while ignoring suffering.)
For a free society to remain free, citizens must recognize that all are moral equals: there can be no supposed superiority or inferiority by race, ethnicity, gender, or orientation. A society that does not recognize this fundamental moral equality among its members will not remain free: a falsely supposed superiority of some will lead to the oppression of others, and a herrenvolk state.
(Consider Charles Murray, who is falsely labeled a libertarian. His recent work, Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America expounds one lie: that Blacks are inferior in significant ways. After attempting to establish as much, Murray then absurdly contends that we should all just move on with our lives. No and no again: Blacks are not inferior, and pretending that one can declare that they are without destroying their liberty is absurd. Those committed to liberty can see Murray for what he is: a soft-spoken, well-mannered, inveterate racist. There is no imagining of Dante too terrible for Murray and his ilk.)
The LP. There’s libertarianism, and then there’s the Libertarian Party (LP). The LP has long ceased to be a means to expand liberty. Much of it is now dominated by MAGA men who have taken the name of a famous libertarian and styled themselves a caucus within that party (the ‘Von Mises’ caucus). They’re bigots who think that free speech of any kind is an expression of libertarianism (as though one could somehow advance the liberty of all while speaking as a racist, etc.). The free speech of the Klansman is speech, and should be free, but it is not speech in advocacy of ordered liberty.
The LP once tried to find normal candidates, and was successful for a while, but those days are long past. This libertarian blogger has not been a member of the LP for many years, and will never be again.
The serious among us are Never Trump, and part of a grand coalition to preserve liberal democracy. (Liberal democracy — where liberal means preservation of individual rights within a majority-deciding democracy.)
The Think Tanks. A few quick words —
CATO: America’s premier, and most traditional, libertarian organization. Professional, buttoned-down, serious. There’s no institution one could find more state-of-the-art-Washington-D.C. than this. You’d want CATO to do your estate planning, and you’d catch him looking down during the consultation to see if your shoes were properly shined.
The Reason Foundation and Reason magazine: Libertarian, but often undisciplined, too obliging of conservative donors, and its Hit & Run blog is sometimes closer to Hit-or-Miss. You might want a weekend in Manhattan with Reason, as she’d know all the best places and prove a scintillating, if sometimes unbelievable, conversation partner. If you took the mushrooms she offered you, you’d awaken the next morning with no memory of how you found yourself in a SoHo loft with a French bulldog named Jean-Claude.
FEE (Foundation for Economic Education): Old, and struggling for relevance. Trying to get hip, but hard to be hip when about you the word hip mostly conjures notions of an orthopedic procedure.
Niskanen Center: They were libertarian, until they weren’t, and they’re so ill-defined now they’re who knows what.
A Million Conservative Sites: There are perhaps a million, billion, trillion (I’m not sure), conservative sites that talk about liberty (without personal responsibility), rights (without limit), hurt feelings (you can’t say that about me!), or rave about culture war issues (sexual orientation, transgendered people, immigrants).
How is it that all these supposedly big, bad conservative men of pure stock can’t control themselves? On a trip earlier this year, I saw a wife and her children look on with embarrassment while a husband and father had a fit at an airport gate, about the mask mandate imposed at the time. There he was, having a tantrum, while they looked on, mortified. The mandate was an imposition, unlike the sensible and easy use of vaccines, but a hysterical display at the gate, to the evident shame of his own family, was a self-inflicted loss greater than the imposed mandate. (No woman should have to take a screeching gibbon to bed.)
Men like this aren’t libertarians simply because they once saw the word liberty on an alt-right website. Ordered liberty requires a recognition of others’ well-being.
Here libertarians find themselves with a challenge similar to the conservative David French’s challenge: to reclaim the first principles of a tradition.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:09 AM and sunset 7:45 PM for 13h 35m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 20.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Unified School Board goes into closed session shortly after 6 PM, and resumes open session at 7 PM.
On this day in 1989, Nolan Ryan strikes out Rickey Henderson to become the first Major League Baseball pitcher to record 5,000 strikeouts.
For every person who approaches politics as personal advancement, there are others who begin and continue politics as a practical arrangement of state power guided by philosophical, moral, or ethical principles. For this second group, it’s principle, not personality, that undergirds one’s actions.
The same is true of theology. In this time of national conflict, the choice about politics confronts the religious: personality or principle?
This brings us to David French, a conservative evangelical lawyer who opposes Trumpism. French is a true believer, so to speak, and as a true believer he’s come to oppose the nativist authoritarianism that Trumpism represents. French opposes both on secular legal grounds and as a matter of Christian ethics.
A commenter here at FREE WHITEWATER mentioned French’s latest book, and that comment spurred me to write a bit more about David French, theology, and politics. (To the commenter: your observations are gratefully received.)
First, a few remarks on my own views. I am not an evangelical, as French is, but instead a mainline Protestant, raised Lutheran, with Catholic relatives, who worships in an Episcopal church outside the city. That church is a combination of mainline theology with an Anglo-Catholic (that is, a traditional) liturgy. So in some ways it’s progressive, and in others it would appear very traditional. It is a matter of grace, serendipitous as grace is, that I have found this parish.
Of theology, however, I was raised at a time when one was expected to read widely and seriously, of one’s own and of others’ teachings. Comparative religion was simply part of a proper education, and reading comprehensively was expected. (As a religious matter, one does not have to be literate to believe one doctrine or another, but if one is literate, it’s beneficial to read thoughtfully. Translations matter and context matters.) I’m writing this as plainly as possible, but of course it’s a field that invites lifelong study.
The MAGA crowd routinely relies on poor translations, cherry-picked Bible verses, and distorted if not heretical views of Christian teaching in their support of Trump. They often don’t know what they don’t know. They’re wrong (if not in moral error) no matter how loudly they speak. They practice a dominance-and-submission ritual that is as far from Christian conduct as one could go. (This ritual isn’t part of any major theological tradition, Christian or otherwise: it’s more like spousal abuse or a non-consensual fetish. To an observant person, dominance-and-submission does not look Christian — instead, it looks ape-like, an imitation of an animal’s behavior.)
That brings me to another part of my upbringing (and that of others of my background). We were taught to read deeply, decide carefully, and defend fiercely. These MAGA men assume that others are weak, that we will accept their shouting, that we will back down in the face of their head-shaking, arms-waving, foot-stomping, and threatening behavior.
They’re wrong. They think too much of themselves and too little of those who are committed to both a liberal democratic order and well-grounded, traditional Christian theology. We’ll not yield to their ilk, now or ever. They’ve distorted enough history, law, and theology for a century of error-correction.
An evergreen reminder on Trumpism: never means never.
And so, and so, I am not an evangelical as French is. We are now, however, of the same views on two religious fundamentals. French contends that There Is No Remaining Christian Case for Trump (‘Trump discipled the church more than the church discipled Trump’) and Christian Political Ethics Are Upside Down (‘We’re adamant about politics and flexible about virtue’).
Or, even worse, did the tension between Trump’s actions and your own morality grow so great that you started to redefine morality itself? How many people made the migration from supporting Trump in spite of his character to supporting him because of who he was? I can think of countless folks, in both public and private life.
That’s what discipling looks like.
Ted Cruz says his pronouns are “kiss my ass’ not just because he corrupted himself for Trump but because the crowd is corrupt as well. The same analysis goes for Josh Hawley’s refusal to apologize for his fist salute or his election challenge. He is morally corrupt. That cheering crowd is morally corrupt.
Why? Because they’ve absorbed the lessons Trump taught. Fight the left with profane anger. Never apologize.
When I encounter the most partisan preachers and public Christian personalities, I’m often gobsmacked at the inverse relationship between their political certainty and their political knowledge. The less they know about an issue, the more confident they’re obviously right.
(This is a confession, by the way. To take one example—the more I began to understand about the reality and legacy of racism in America, the less certain I became in my conventional, confident conservatism about law, liberty, and economic opportunity. I’m now far more open to contrary views.)
Earlier this month I was in a conversation with friends, and one of them brought up how he’s combatting the pull toward animosity by revisiting the civil rights movement. In face of indescribably greater oppression than any American community faces today (including the American Evangelical community) its leaders and members demonstrated a degree of grace and forbearance that feels unimaginable today.
While French and I agree on Trumpism and Christianity, we’ve arrived at this from different directions. His is the harder path, walking among, not apart.
In David French’s efforts, there is both encouragement and rebuke. As libertarianism, for example, drifts and slips from its fundamentals, what have we libertarians done, however small the effort, to defend first principles within that political tradition? Hard to overstate how much I admire French’s hard work among conservatives. In his achievements, there is an implicit rebuke that one has not done enough within one’s own traditions, and encouragement that, if one tries, more can be done.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:08 AM and sunset 7:46 PM for 13h 38m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 27.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1680, Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from the Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt.
The University of Wisconsin System is considering automatically admitting high school graduates to its campuses in hopes of stemming enrollment declines and boosting college access.
The percentage of high school students enrolling at the state’s 13 universities has been falling since 2013, according to UW System data. Historically, 32 percent of high school grads have enrolled at UW schools immediately after graduation. That fell to about 27 percent in 2020.
During a Thursday meeting of the UW Board of Regents in Green Bay, members heard a presentation about how a policy known as “direct admissions” could temper the trend.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Professor of Higher Education Jennifer Delaney has researched the approach and told the board direct admissions works by offering automatic admission to high school seniors who meet certain grade point average or standardized test score thresholds.
She said direct admissions sidesteps the traditional application process, which places the impetus on students and parents to fill out multiple college applications in hopes of getting a response. With direct admissions, students, parents and high school counselors are proactively notified about an open spot.
“Right now, we’re having individuals do individual searches for college,” said Delaney. “Those with parents who’ve gone to college have a real advantage.”
This is a fine idea: there would still be admission standards (grades, test scores), but the admission process would be simpler (ands easier) in time and effort. Students wouldn’t have to hunt around, and hope, for a spot.
Although the reported motivation for direct admissions is responsive to enrollment declines, a public-university, direct-admissions process should be the standard in all environments.
Government’s use public funds to establish a large university system should not come with additional time-consuming barriers to entry for qualified students. Having already paid to establish a public system of higher education, students and their families shouldn’t have to waste their time on non-academic procedural steps to gain admission.
(Private universities should be free to establish their own application procedures. If they should choose to make those procedures lengthy and complicated, they’ll be on their own to do so against public and private competitors.)
Direct admission is a better admission process for the UW System.
Wednesday, August 24th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Harold and Maude @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Comedy/Drama/Romance
Rated PG; 1 hour, 31 minutes (1971)
This dark comedy focuses on the relationship between a 20 year old man, obsessed with dying and death, and how his life is forever changed by meeting a lively, 79-year- old woman very much alive and enjoying life. This film has become a cult classic.
Saturday in Whitewater will see afternoon thundershowers with a high of 74. Sunrise is 6:07 AM and sunset 7:48 PM for 13h 40m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 36.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring. East German participation is limited to a few specialists due to memories of the recent war. Only Albania and Romania refuse to participate.
Wednesday’s Marquette poll showed support for Evers at 45%, while Michels was at 43% and Independent Joan Beglinger was at 7%.
During a campaign stop at the Brown County Republican Party office Thursday, Michels said he believed he is actually up in the polls.
“If the polls say we’re dead even right now, I believe in my heart that we are up at least 5 to 10 (percentage) points,” Michels told a crowd of GOP party members.
These aren’t bad results for Michels, but they’re not good results, either. ‘Believing in his heart’ means nothing; respondents to the Marquette Law School Poll did not check Michels’ beats-per-minute before expressing their gubernatorial preferences.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:06 AM and sunset 7:49 PM for 13h 43m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 45.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1812, the American frigate USS Constitutiondefeats the British frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.”
Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz has garnered a lot of media attention recently, thanks to the Fetterman campaign’s relentless trolling of his opponent, mainly for being a resident of neighboring New Jersey rather than the state he’s running to represent.
Fetterman has run ad after ad using Oz’s own words to highlight his deep Jersey roots. His campaign started a petition to nominate Oz for the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Fetterman even enlisted very-Jersey celebrities like Snooki of “Jersey Shore” to draw attention to his charge that Oz is a carpetbagger in the Pennsylvania race: a candidate with no authentic connection to an area, who moved there for the sole purpose of political ambition.
While Hunt is writing about candidates for federal office, his research shows how residency matters, generally:
Why do voters respond positively to deeply rooted candidates and negatively to their carpetbagging counterparts?
One explanation is that deep roots offer candidates a number of practical campaign benefits. A deeply rooted candidate tends to have more intimate knowledge of the district, including its electorate, its economy and industries, its unique culture and its political climate. Deeply rooted candidates also enjoy naturally higher name recognition in the community, more extensive social and political networks and greater access to local donors and vendors for their campaigns.
Other work has theorized that local roots help candidates tap into a shared identity with their voters that is less tangible but meaningful. Scholars like Kal Munishave shown that when voters have strong psychological attachments to a particular place, it has major impacts on voting behavior. And in a recent survey I conducted with David Fontana, we found that voters consistently rated homegrown U.S. Senate candidates as more relatable and trustworthy, and cast votes for them at higher rates.
Just as you’d trust a true born-and-raised local to give you advice about where to eat in town over someone who just moved there, so too do voters trust deeply rooted candidates to represent them in Washington.
The key point: while any resident should have an equal voice, non-residents simply lack the same status in the community.
This is true both politically and ethically.
Politically. It doesn’t matter whether one thinks they have (or should have) the same status; in political matters non-residents most certainly do not. In the end, the large commuter class of officials in the Whitewater area are vulnerable during controversies — their titles are insufficient to protect their positions during a challenge or crisis. As a matter of durability, if you’re not here, you’re at a political disadvantage.
Ethically. People have a right to work here and then live elsewhere, although I would hope that day workers would decide freely to choose Whitewater. It’s a beautiful city. While it is a pleasure to travel to faraway places and have adventures elsewhere, no matter how enjoyable those trips, every return to our city is for me a happy one. Whitewater is my home.
Something more, much more: Whitewater is a city of significant needs. People with true concern for others could find no more deserving place to apply their compassionate talents. (One carries on, doing what one can, in one’s own way, all the while Waiting for Whitewater’s Dorothy Day.)
What caring person, during the Great Depression, would have left America for the sake of a supposedly more comfortable foreign land? There is no caring person who would have done so. One would have stayed and chosen whatever role one could (and there are thousands of worthy roles) in support of American society. While there are many commendable acts within a community in need, abandonment is not among them.
In beauty and in need, Whitewater is worthy of a full commitment: to live here, sharing in both the pleasures and pains of the city, acting in whatever way on can toward the community’s betterment.
