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Often I am reluctant to acknowledge myself as a former Baptist. No longer a Baptist (a long story), I am nevertheless proud of a basic Baptist tenet separation of church and state.

The First Amendment short but brilliant is, in fact, the foundation of freedom on which our beloved nation stands. It is a grand and bold statement. The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Civil War of 1861-1865 was fought over states rights to secede, and eventually and inevitably over the issue of slavery. During that war, at Gettysburg, Penn., President Abraham Lincoln said, Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.

Sadly, now we are engaged is a great civil and cultural war. It is an attack upon truth itself. The press is assailed as fake news, the findings of science are debunked (global warming), and the exercise of free speech is taken to allow sedition and insurrection as patriotic.

Most pernicious, to my mind, is the conflating of church and state by the religious alt-right, with undertones of white supremacy, racism, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitism and Christian nationalism. The civil or cultural war of today, in part, is being fought, alas, with sedition and insurrection, over our country being a Christian nation, which it is not now, nor ever was, nor ever should be.

The First Amendment guarantees that the USA is a nation that includes and welcomes peoples of all religious persuasions, and those of no persuasion. Our founders were primarily Enlightenment Deists with a profound faith in reason, upon which the Constitution was based. Thomas Jefferson is famous for the Jefferson Bible, cutting out portions of the Bible with which he disagreed.

We make a grave and grievous mistake conflating our nation with any particular religion to the exclusion of other faiths. The great experiment of our nation, as conceived, is embedded in the First Amendment. One nation, many diverse peoples. One nation, many faiths. It is a bold and grand experiment. Shall it endure?

Conflating nation and religion often results in a distortion of patriotism, which tends toward idolatry of nation. True patriotism is defined by love of ones country indeed, the willingness to fight, and if necessary, to die for the freedoms our country affords, including the freedom of religion, along with free speech, etc.

I love this country and the values and freedoms for which it stands. But I cannot admire nor condone those who strive to undermine the very foundation of freedom that must be afforded to every person. I pray this nation and the foundation on which it stands shall not only long endure, but thrive, with liberty and justice for all.

The Rev. Dr. Lloyd Parrill is a retired United Church of Christ minister. He served the Trinitarian Congregational Church, UCC, in Northfield for 35 years, from 1977 to 2012.

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Faith Matters: Our bold and grand experiment: Shall it endure? - The Recorder

As soon as President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, political pundits began speculating on what the post-Trump Republican Party would look like. Fresh on the political scene and the newest sweetheart of the Republican Party, Madison Cawthorn just might be a picture of what a future GOP might embody: a concerning picture.

Cawthorn was born and raised in western North Carolina and was sworn in this January as North Carolina District 11s representative at the U.S. House at only 25 years old. Cawthorns politics combine traditional social conservative values, youthful proximity to Gen Z, Trumpism and an utter lack of experience or education. Now, under a guise of charisma and youth, Cawthorn is bringing hard-right conservative values and dangerous rhetoric to Congress as a representative of North Carolina.

Despite many Republicans making a last-ditch effort to put distance between themselves and President Trump after a disastrous and deadly end to his term, Trump has left a lasting impact on the Republican Party (GOP), especially their voters whom Cawthorn skillfully appeals to. Cawthorns Twitter presence, much like Trumps prior to being banned, is peppered with immaturity, including calling his Democratic opponent a simp and infamously tweeting Cry more, lib right after winning his House race.

Fearmongering and conspiracy theories also make appearances. In alignment with Trumps base, Cawthorn has actively promoted debunked allegations of election fraud, objected to the Electoral College votes on the House floor and contributed to the incitement of violence in the events of Jan. 6. Cawthorn also seems unconcerned about COVID-19, rarely mentioning the virus on social media except to ostensibly compare public health restrictions on businesses during the pandemic to oligarchical rule an absurd misuse of the term.

Like former President Trump, Cawthorn is also the focus of multiple sexual misconduct allegations and accusations of white supremacy. Various symbols of the alt-right have been discovered around him including the name of his real estate company, on a gun holster he owns, a flag flown at his home, a picture posted while visiting Hitler's vacation home prompting concern that he is an alt-right Trojan horse.

Perhaps due to his young age, Madison Cawthorn seems aware of the generational rift amongst Republicans. According to Pew Research Center, young Republicans are far more likely than their older counterparts to believe that climate change exists, acknowledge the unfair treatment of Black Americans and say that the government should do more to solve problems. While Cawthorn claims to take an active stance on issues like these that aren't traditionally Republican, the actions he proposes on his website concerning health care and the environment are essentially a doubling down on free-market approaches.

Status quo 2.0. Madison Cawthorn consistently speaks of a big tent New Republican Party that welcomes voters of any identity. Meanwhile, he and his conservative colleagues show absolutely no desire to protect voters of more marginalized identities. Cawthorn simply wants a rebranded Republican Party capable of capturing new voting blocs without any real shift in policy or ideology.

Although Rep. Madison Cawthorn may be an appealing political figure to conservative Gen Z voters who want a party rebrand that is in alignment with the policies that matter most to our generation the environment, health care, being seen as welcoming this rebrand is nothing more than a face-lift. While this slight shift in focus might make the Republican platform more palatable on the surface, figures like Cawthorn could ultimately represent a dangerous shift to the right. As support for a conservative agenda has lapsed amongst younger voters, it is not a surprise that the rising leaders will hail from farther right areas of the party. Meanwhile, Cawthorn claims to speak for the younger generation, but his ultra-conservatism simply doesn't align with the values of young North Carolinians.

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OPINION: Madison Cawthorn shows the troubling future of the GOP - N.C. State University Technician Online

President Biden likes to talk about healing and unity, but he also keeps pledging to prioritize the supposed interests of certain favored minority groups. When is he going to realize that his goals of racial unification and racial favoritism are at cross-purposes?

Last week Mr. Biden signed an executive order on racial equity. He said that George Floyds death last summer marked a turning point in this countrys attitude toward racial justice and is forcing us to confront systemic racism and white supremacy. He added that this nation and this government need to change their whole approach to the issue of racial equity and make it not just an issue for any one department. It has to be the business of the whole government.

Nothing quickens the pulse of progressives like talk of systemic racism and white supremacy, so its hard to know if Mr. Biden is just telling leftists what they want to hear. But if its more than thatif the president is serious about focusing on equal outcomes instead of equal opportunitiesthen heaven help us. Milton Friedman said the society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither, while the society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both. Of course, Friedman had a constrained view of the governments capabilities that isnt shared by very many Democrats today. For them, good intentions are what matter most.

The political left has long used racism as an all-purpose explanation for racial disparities. This ignores that disparities down through history have been the norm, not the exception, and that they exist even in regions of the world where most people are of the same race. The per capita income gap between people in Eastern Europe and Western Europe, for example, is wider than the gap between whites and blacks in the U.S. Moreover, racial disparities have both grown and narrowed over time, even though racism has been constant. If Mr. Biden wants to change the governments approach to racial inequality, this history ought to inform his actions.

The greatest success of the civil-rights movement wasnt a new government program but getting government off the backs of blacks by defeating Jim Crow. Nothing the government has done since then in the name of advancing blacks has been more effective than simply ending government-sponsored discrimination. Black poverty fell by 40 percentage points between 1940 and 1960. It continued to decline in the wake of Lyndon Johnsons Great Society interventions, but at a much slower pace.

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Progressives Put the Racial Equity Squeeze on Biden - The Wall Street Journal

The usually sunny Flo is perturbed with Mara (yet again) during a work-from-home Progressive Insurance staff meeting over video. While seated at the computer, Mara is busy talking to someone at home. Mara, you know youre not on mute, right? says Flo. Oh, theres a mute button? the laconic Mara replies with genuine surprise.

During these months of work-from-home meetings, we all can relate. And Flo, of course, makes everything more relatable.

Progressive Insurances iconic spokesperson, portrayed by actress Stephanie Courtney, has not only been the star of Progressives TV ads since 2008, but also has a strong social media presence, including more than 4 million followers on Facebook. In fact, Progressive created a Flo chatbot to enable customers to interact with Flo on Facebook Messenger, as well as other channels, to help customers with basic insurance questions.

Now, Flos voice is being added to the chatbot, creating an even more personal experience for customers who adore the personable lady in the white apron.

Flo obviously has been a staple and a highly recognized brand icon for Progressive, says Matt White, technology and innovation manager in Progressives acquisition experience group. We wanted the chatbot persona to be friendly and helpful to consumers in their path to purchasing insurance, and ultimately, in becoming customers of Progressive for what we hope will be decades.

The Flo Chatbot runs on Microsoft Azure. Azure Bot Service and Azure Cognitive Services are among the services used to create the Flo Chatbot in 2017 and now, to give her a voice.

You can banter with the virtual version of Flo, if you like, and youll find shes just as polite and matter-of-fact as she is in Progressives ads.

Ask Flo what her favorite movie is, and she responds, I could try to pick a favorite, but wed be here until next Tuesday. Want to know her favorite food? I could go for a taco right about now but was told I could only have one every hour.

To get a behind-the-scenes look, we spoke with White to learn more about the Flo Chatbot with voice, Progressives work with Microsoft and whats important when it comes to helping customers.

TRANSFORM: Tells us about the origins of the journey for Progressive, Flo and Microsoft.

WHITE: We began the journey with Microsoft three years ago, when we wanted to embark on building a chatbot. But more importantly than building a chatbot was really to build a conversational experience, and frankly, learn about the potential power of having conversational experiences available in a variety of digital channels.

As weve continued to learn about what it takes to build and maintain, and ideally excel, at conversational experiences, we wanted to learn: What does it take to integrate text to speech in a voice component?

The foundation of the bot itself is the Microsoft Bot Framework. What weve done is layered on another cognitive service, so we could take all that existing architecture and foundation, and layer in the text-to-speech service.

TRANSFORM: How does the Flo Chatbot help people now, and how will adding voice change things?

WHITE: The Flo chatbot is capable of a variety of different things. Theres a large question-and-answer functionality, from Insurance 101 kind of questions What does comprehensive mean? What does collision mean in terms of car insurance coverage? to if you have policy servicing questions, we can point you in the right direction.

If youd like to get an insurance quote for a variety of products, with our subsequent releases of the Flo Chatbot, well fully build out the ability for people to get a car insurance quote through the experience.

TRANSFORM: What are some of the wackiest questions the Flo chatbot has been asked?

WHITE: I guess it depends on your perception of wacky. Theyll ask for jokes. They ask, Whats your favorite movie? Whats your favorite food?

You could say, well, its not really worth training answers on that, but people ask. The Microsoft tools certainly make it easy enough to train answers for those kinds of persona-based questions, or just chit-chat kind of questions. I think those are opportunities to delight consumers, so why wouldnt we?

TRANSFORM: Is incorporating Flos personality and sense of humor in the chatbot difficult to do?

WHITE: No, not from a technical perspective. Thankfully, we have some very talented copywriters who are used to writing in the voice of Flo for various purposes.

You always want to be on the lookout for opportunities to delight, but not unintentionally create frustration. You want to be able to acknowledge frustration, too. There are times where some wit or humor is appropriate, depending on the users engagement and what theyre asking. And then therere times when it should be just the facts, or empathy, to help. If someone chats with us and says they had a car accident, thats not the time for talking about tacos and unicorns. You still want to be friendly and helpful but get them the information they need.

TRANSFORM: What have you learned about chatbots based on communications so far from customers?

There are lots of repetitive questions that a chatbot can certainly handle well informational questions, point people to the right information. I frankly think its just as important to recognize the kinds of things where you really want customers connected to a live person.

One of the things we try and think about, too, is that we always want to provide an off-ramp; we want to avoid user frustration. So if the bot doesnt understand, or doesnt comprehend what the user might be asking, we have logic built in such that, rather than getting stuck in a loop, we offer a connection to a person who can help.

In addition to dealing with some of those repetitive questions and repetitive transactions, the chatbot has also helped surface those more complicated questions that you could envision potentially training the bot to handle, but you may not want to. It might make more sense to have a licensed insurance agent from Progressive handle those questions.

TRANSFORM: What are the benefits of using Azure Cognitive Services for the Flo chatbot?

WHITE: One advantage for us is the decoupled nature of the services. In other words, you can use what you need to use. You dont have to use everything. We use a variety of services for natural language understanding the LUIS service as well as QnA Maker. Those are two stand-alone services. We use them together, depending on the nature of the users question. Now were using the neural text-to-speech service that weve been able to kind of bolt on, if you will, to this so that we can bring voice to the experience.

Being able to integrate the bot framework, which lives in Azure, into our own kind of Progressive APIs to help answer questions or execute transactions has been one of the key advantages. Youre not locked into a huge suite of products. You can use the products that you need, and then you can layer in other products your own or others, if needed.

Another advantage with the open-source nature of the Microsoft Bot Framework is that all these services are but an API call away. If you want to layer in a new experience, or tailored experience, or use a service, its easy to integrate those pieces on the foundation theyve already built.

TRANSFORM: Are there other features that Progressive might want to add to the Flo chatbot in the future?

WHITE: We dont have any near-term plans, but as you might imagine theres a variety of other cognitive services that, depending on where our conversational journey takes us, you could envision potentially layering in things like computer vision, or machine vision, and other cognitive services.

For example, if we needed pictures of documents, if we needed pictures of anything where people could load them up into the chatbot experience we could use the machine vision service to help identify what is in the image and then process it accordingly.

I think one of the things well find as people get used to chatbots, and engage with them, theyre going to want to be able to do more things. So as those consumer demands grow, well certainly grow with it.

TRANSFORM: Its crucial to Microsoft that machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) be used responsibly and ethically. What was your experience in those areas in developing the Flo chatbot?

WHITE: I appreciate Microsofts partnership on this front as well. The technology that is out there is incredibly powerful. You can train chatbots to do a lot of things that people can do, but just because we can, doesnt mean we should. As I mentioned before, there are questions we could reasonably train the chatbot to answer, but that doesnt mean that we should. It still might be better to get people to a live Progressive Insurance consultant to discuss their particular issue, concern or question.

I think thats particularly true when you start introducing a characters voice but still a voice and I thought Microsofts approach to that in ethics and AI has been very upfront and straightforward in terms of how we use it. Its certainly been an approach consistent with Progressives own core values.

One of the things I appreciate from some of the disclosure thats required we want to make it sound real, we want to make it sound authentic, but we also want to be transparent that its not. And thats actually a requirement from Microsoft that even when you initially engage with the voice font on Google Assistant, as an example, we say upfront that this is a virtual version of Flo.

We want it to sound and act like Flo as much as it can, being a machine, but we want to be very transparent about what it is and what it isnt. So when people ask, is this a bot, is it a person, we dont try and pretend its a person. Right up front. We offer help if they want to speak to a live person, we can certainly get them there.

(Photos and audio files courtesy of Progressive.)

Visit the AI Blog to learn how Custom Neural Voice is bringing to life other iconic characters, like Bugs Bunny and the Duolingo crew.

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Progressive gives voice to Flo's chatbot, and it's as no-nonsense and reassuring as she is | Transform - Microsoft

Once upon a time, the filibuster was part of a uniquely American idea of standing up for principle even if you're outnumbered. That theme was at the heart of Frank Capra's 1939 movie, "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington": Jimmy Stewart plays the young, idealistic Sen. Jefferson Smith, who tries to block passage of a corrupt appropriations bill with a talking filibuster refusing to give up the U.S. Senate floor.

"No, sir. I will not yield," Smith declared in one of the film's pivotal scenes.

Smith held the floor for 24-straight hours until he collapsed with exhaustion. But his efforts exposed the corruption and blocked the bill. That was Hollywood's view of how Washington could work, and according to Adam Jentleson, "[The film was] an accurate depiction of how the filibuster was deployed in those days."

Jentleson, a progressive strategist who worked for Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, is the author of "Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy."He argues that over time, the filibuster changed from a procedure to give one senator a chance to persuade his colleagues across the aisle, to a legislative sledge hammer that allows the minority to kill legislation supported by the majority. That's because in the modern Senate, it takes 60 votes rather than a simple majority to stop debate and move a bill to an up or down vote.

"We've come to accept that the 60-vote threshold is sort of a normalized part of the Senate," Jentleson said. "But this is a recent thing."

'The Filibuster Must Go'

As Jentleson pointed out, throughout most of the Senate's existence, simple majorities determined if bills passed or died. But that changed in a big way during the push for civil rights when southern senators used the filibuster to block civil rights legislation.

"That was the major contribution of the Jim Crow era by the southern white supremacist senators, to finally use the filibuster to actually stop bills altogether by raising the threshold for passage from a simple majority to a super-majority," Jentleson explained. "And this is sort of the principal source of gridlock in our federal government today."

With a series of executive orders addressing everything from climate change to immigration to COVID-19, President Biden has quickly begun to push his agenda forward. But progressives like Jentleson argue that unless the Senate does away with the filibuster, Biden's more ambitious legislative goals will stall.

"The filibuster must go," Sen. Ed Markey told WBUR recently. "It's something that's rooted in a racist past, and it's used today as a way of blocking the progressive agenda, which President Biden is proposing [including] environmental justice, racial justice, economic justice."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she also favors ending the filibuster, which she argues cripples any effort to pass progressive legislation.

"The filibuster is giving a veto to the gun industry," Warren said in a Democratic presidential debate last year. "It gives a veto to the oil industry. It's going to give a veto on immigration. ... We are willing to roll back the filibuster, go with the majority vote and do what needs to be done for the American people."

The politics around this are fraught. With the filibuster gone, Senate Democrats could pass everything from the Green New Deal to Medicare for All with a simple majority. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said they would pay a price.

"When Republicans next control the government, we'd be able to repeal every bill that had just been rammed through," McConnell said recently on the Senate floor. "And we'd set about defending the unborn, exploring domestic energy, unleashing free-enterprise, defunding sanctuary cities. You get the picture."

'You Need Some Buy-In From The Other Side'

A number of moderate Democrats also oppose killing the filibuster, including academicRichard Arenberg, who takes McConnell's warning seriously. Arenberg teaches at Brown University and is co-author of "Defending the Filibuster: The Soul of the Senate," a book he wrote with former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove.

After working on CapitolHill for more than 30 years with three different senators, including Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, Arenberg said he believes calls to kill the filibuster are "short-sighted."

"[Every time] I brought any kind of legislative proposal to one of those senators the first question [they asked] was, "'Who's my Republican co-sponsor?' " he recalled. "Because every senator understands if you're going to get anywhere with your legislative proposals, you need some buy-in from the other side."

With regard to how those segregationist senators used the filibuster, he said: "It was evil. Immoral." But, he argued, that doesn't make the procedure itself evil, adding "I don't accept that."

Instead, Arenberg argued the filibuster cools the legislative temperature and offers a degree of protection for whichever party is out of power.

"Progressives, at least the ones in the Senate who are now clamoring to get rid of the filibuster, weren't doing that in 2017 when Trump took office with majorities in the House and the Senate," he said. "So that's why I say it's short-sighted."

According to Arenberg, polarization is at the root of the crisis in Washington and killing the filibuster would only make it worse.

On the other hand, use of the filibuster spiked in the past decade particularly by Republican minorities. And Democrats like Markey are ready to push back.

"I believe that ultimately it's inevitable that we have to repeal the filibuster," Markey said.

Moderates might need convincing. But they'll face a tough choice: give up on key parts of the Biden agenda or kill the filibuster.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the co-author of Richard Arenberg's book. The post has been updated to reflect that his co-author was former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove. We regret the error.

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Sens. Markey And Warren Are Part Of A Progressive Push To Kill The Filibuster - WBUR