Our topic this week was Civility and it airs Tuesday at 7 pm Central. You can listen then live at www.kuar.org, but that is the 29 minute version. The longer (1 hr 5sec) Podcast is already posted on our site at www.yttshow.org. My guests are Dr. Jeff Nash, Chair of Sociology here at UALR. The middle generation guest is Richard Bird from Columbus, Ohio and he is the author of 'The Collapse of Civility'. Our younger generation guest is Kelli Zellner from Elkridge, MD and she is with the Howard County Public Library project called ChooseCivility.org. I have posted their sites on our Archive page.
So much has been said about Civility over the last couple of weeks, but as far as I have been able to determine, the only discussion that compares what the older, middle and younger generations think about Civility, is on this program. It is a very interesting discussion and if you are using Itunes we are listed there too. The fastest way to find it there is to enter Phil Mariage in the search box...if you think about it, not too many people have Mariage as a last name????
Next week our program guests are descendants of the 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy vs. Ferguson, which is the Separate but Equal case that seemed to be one of the first shots fired in our nation's racial growth to where we are today.

September 8,2009 Program topic - CRIME

This week we discussed the nature of Crime from a generational and philosophical perspective. With so many types of crimes committed, it was really just impossible to speak about specific crimes. Rather, we tried to compare what Crime means to each generation. Paula Stittz with the Arkansas Crime Information Center (ACIC) spoke from the older generation and she emphasized that crime, while terrible in any instance, has a victim and a perpetrator and that person who commits the crime must be prosecuted and punished appropriatly, but that there is value in rehab. Not so with our younger generation guest, Rick Stallings, also with ACIC. His generation does not place much confidence in rehab and more importantly, his generation also does not have confidence in the criminal justice system itself. They find that, for the most part, criminals have little fear of punishment and therefore feel imboldened to keep committing whatever crimes they want.
The middle generation, spoken about by Brad Cazort, also with ACIC, is kind of in the middle feeling fear from crimes and disappointment in punishent and at the same time hoping that the rehab, trusted by the older generation and scoffed at by the younger, should still be tried...at least for some.
For me, as host of the program and now a memeber of the older generation, I agree with Brad's assessment. It is getting worse. There seems to be little control. I fear being a victim, but I think we have to try still to stop the causes of crime.
In all three generations there was agreement that no new crimes are being committed these days...only the coverage and awareness seems to have been stressed in the media. Also, there is agreement that it probably will be just the same when the younger generation is the older generation. There, I tend to differ. I think it will be much worse to the point of vigilanty groups and gangs being even stronger. I hope I am wrong.
Check us next week after the program. Phil