http://www.nytimes.com/2009/
For background on Prop 8 go to:
http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.
If you really don't know anything about Prop 8, please use the web and look it up in a bit of detail as well.
Try to think of ALL of the public/private questions this article (and Prop 8 itself) raise. Should we be allowed to donate private money to a public cause? (This one has campaign finance implications too). Should we expect the public to conform to our beliefs? And so on.... this article raises so many more. This will be the focus of our conversation, but the rest of this is important too.
Now, read this:
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=david%20brooks%20private%20public&st=cse
This article was written in the winter of 2007-- what was happening in the country? (the troop surge in Iraq was being debated in the House and Senate during the weeks preceding this article).
I'd like to talk about the assertions that Brooks makes about politics and to connect these to our current government and structures of power. Less than two years later, some of this seems outdated, does Brooks' argument change given what you know to be the outcome of the Election of 2008 (Brooks for those of you who don't know is a known conservative author)? Please think about the situation of public/private both in the context that this was written and in the implications it might have for today.
And lastly, please just read this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/opinion/30brooks.html?scp=4&sq=david%20brooks%20private%20public&st=cse
(This one is from 10/30/07) What do you think about this "happiness gap"? Given the events of the past year, is any of this still relevant? Does our definition of the boundary between the public and the private shift as the political situation changes? Should it?
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