Who gets to be called “Doctor” anyway?

I am curious why Jill Biden is frequently referred to as Dr. Biden in the media. I know that she had a doctoral degree in education (Ed.D.) so it is clearly proper for her to be so addressed. Michelle Obama also has a doctoral degree (J.D.). Why is she not referred to as Dr. Obama in those instances when she is not referred to as the First Lady of the United States?

The local and now retired school superintendent has for years had the personalized license plate of DOC DON. Is there something about educational professionals with doctoral degrees touting their terminal degrees?

Then there is NPR’s Doctor Science--“I’m not a real doctor; I have a master’s degree in science.” What about Kermit The Frog? He at least deserves an honorary doctoral degree. I really like the title: Dr. K. T. Frog. I would suggest that Dr. Frog’s degree be in Humane Letters, which is exclusively an honorary degree. That way I don’t offend any more folks with this posting, except for all those folks who have been awarded honorary degrees in Humane Letters.

Sometimes even presidents have questionable ideas--at least in my judgment.

The suggested criteria for selecting a college and by inference that must also include the choice of major, minor, and/or dual major has become "getting the most bang for the buck." We have come a long way in assessing value of post-secondary education, and the way travelled has not been on the road to a very desirable place--again in my judgment.

Estimating the lifetime earnings of every 18-year-old incoming college freshman must be easy, if you are the president and have a cadre of MBA's from Wharton Business School, Yale, and Harvard providing support. What are the careers that will be the goldmines for earned personal income over the next four decades? If word gets out that pea-picker is an up and coming career choice with promise of a 6 digit annual income until 2053 and beyond, what is the effect of US and foreign colleges and universities producing twice as many pea-pickers as global industries can absorb? Let's see. Pea-pickers will be working half-time; half of the diploma clad pea-pickers will be out of pea-picking work; pea-pickers working in their chosen field will be working for credit at the company store. Then there is always the possibility that a pea-picker with a secondary major in mechanical engineering will develop a robotic pea-picker that puts the pea-picker dudes and dudettes in unemployment lines and eligible for retraining for the latest up and coming goldmine career.

Another challenge in sizing up the bang of the buck is the impact of a college or university education apart from the academic field of study. Certain academic institutions are able to significantly add to the success of their graduates based on the network of alumni and a reputation that may or may not evidenced in any particular graduate. Would Clarence Thomas or Sonia Sotomayor be US Supreme Court justices, if they had not gone to Yale Law School? (I am glad that they did, and they are.) I suspect their legal careers would have unfolded very differently, if they were graduates of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, MN. Would either be a less competent legal mind, if they had?

Does the medical profession provide us with an example of the unintended consequences of chasing the big bucks? Forty years ago, the advice was to go to medical school, if one wanted to make big bucks. The evolution of health care and the development of medical specialties with questionable claims to higher rates of reimbursement has left us with a void of family practitioners and pediatricians and other socially less sanctioned specialties.

Recent reports on MBA careers may be another example.

This country needs more good lawyers, physicians, and bankers than can ever be absorbed by Washington, DC legal firms, for-profit cardiac surgery centers, or Wall Street banks. Come to think of it, this country needs good high school chemistry teachers, automotive mechanics, and philosophers--to name just a few--again in my judgement.

The use of the term “God-given-rights” and its application to the contemporary socio-political scene are problematic for me. My first read of the term includes both universal and irrevocable qualities. If these rights are in fact “self-evident” and “unalienable” as so stated by the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, these rights must precede their embodiment in the documents, which form the basis for any organized society and government. In addition, they must apply to all members of the human race irrespective of where folks reside either on this planet or on the international space station. Any national government that proposes to curtail such rights based on residency and/or membership in a specific national state, i.e. citizenship, would appear to be guilty of overreach. If one’s faith tradition posits a Creator Deity, who has so “endowed” creation, how is that we creatures can deny that gift to fellow human beings based upon either their national identity and/or physical location? Do accidents of birth modify an individual’s rights as a human person?

The recent release of the Department of Justice memo outlining a supporting rationale for targeted killings, i.e. drone strikes, is the motivation behind this posting. I have been stewing over the matter for some time. Many of the actions discharged under the umbrella of the so-called war on terror seem to be defended with this same inconsistent logic and internally contradictory speech.We need to be intellectually honest and rationally consistent, even when our short term interests will not be served and a convenient course of action will be called into question—serious question.

 Despite claims of “self-evident” and “unalienable” rights, our practice and the practice of nation states down through the ages speak to a much more mundane origin of and utilitarian application of civil liberties. At any given time and in any given place, these liberties are what a given group has sanctioned at that time and in that place. In cruder terms, civil liberties are what the powers-that-be have decided what will be in their best interests at the time. Claims of historical precedence, divine sanction, and self-evidence are often nothing more than poorly founded claims of legitimacy.