Tabasco and Tradition
A friend of mine who leans a bit to the Liberal side recently posted a meme along the lines that "Tradition is peer pressure from dead people." Obviously, not a good connotation. I pushed back a bit with the G.K. Chesterton quote that "Tradition is the democracy of the dead." The truth is somewhere in the middle perhaps, although tradition should be innocent until proven guilty. Give it the benefit of the doubt. Like the old saying, "Before tearing down a fence, find out why it was put up in the first place." Another element irked me about the peer pressure reference; the presumption that peer pressure is always a negative. Anyone who has worked a few years in a high school knows that positive peer pressure exerts an enormous sway on the attitudes and behaviors of teens. There are many more students than staff and if most of the kids don't support the school, it will suffer. I think the high school where I work, the students and staff have historicall...