How to be a "Good American"

Food for thought From our friends at Buzzflash.com

July 20, 2002

I Am A Good American

by Faun Otter

I am your worst nightmare, I am a GOOD American.

Did you ever get that piece of right wing crap posing as an email forwarded by a friend or relative?

You might know the one I mean.

I decided it was time to construct a reply.

I have to admit it, I may be a GOOD American.

My car gets 35 miles per gallon, my domestic partner just finished their Ph.D., I earn a big pay check, don't cheat on my tax and we have no plans to get married even though we have kids.

I believe the money borrowed by our government needs to be paid back and not stolen from my parent's social security funds.

I don't trust some board room billionaire with a bad comb-over not to bribe his congressman into handing out both a corporate pocket liner and a personal tax break for him to buy his third Lexus.

I believe that if you speak more than one language, you should be proud of this ability and should flaunt our nation's diversity.

I believe that honesty is the best personal morality regardless of which God, if any, our nation happens to be under.

I believe that a village can raise a child best when that child is not the product of rape or incest.

I believe that if drivers must show they are competent before being given a license, at least the same rules should apply to owning a gun.

I want to know who is paying Rush Limbaugh two hundred and fifty million dollars and which parts of his script they get to change for such an investment. Why can't he keep his story straight from day to day? And why is he so stuck on Clinton's penis?

I believe if you were too drunk and drugged to turn up for your national guard service, it is called being AWOL. This even applies when you have been appointed President of the United States.

I think that education is the best investment for the future of this nation, the best way to reduce drug abuse and the only way to maintain our global leadership. In fact, if we spent one-tenth of our defense budget on schooling, we would have the finest education system in the world and the lowest teen pregnancy rate at the same time. Knowledge is freedom, so why are so-called conservatives trying to replace it with superstition?

I believe everyone has a right to privacy, just stay out of our bedrooms and our doctor's offices. This also applies to our political meetings. I believe it's called the bill of rights for a reason. Everyone is a minority, so we should all have exactly the same rights.

I don't use the excuse "it's the free market" as a shield for screwing the weak or disadvantaged.

I think the confederate flag has been hijacked as a symbol of prejudice and not of heritage. My heroes are JFK, Monty Python, and whoever canceled Dr. Laura, fake medicine Woman.

I don't believe the rich need the governments help to become obscenely wealthy.

I don't believe a safety net for citizens who fall on hard times is the cause of our trillions of dollars in debt.

I know Fox news is fake and I don't waste my time arguing about it.

I know global warming is real and our oil addiction is not going to be cured by selling more SUVs. How come we are letting the Europeans get a jump on us in developing wind and solar power?

I recognize that we all have a skin color and different shades should have no bearing on our access to the voting booth. No Christian has ever been persecuted in America, so shut up already.

I think cops should apply the law without being above the law. I also think they should stop drunk drivers and strip them of their license even if their father is the President.

I think if you are too stupid to vote on the issues instead of by who you would like to get smashed with in a bar, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.

I think if you are selling energy, you should not be allowed to cause fake shortages of gas or electricity in order to line your own pockets with vast profits.

I believe drugs sold as food supplements should be tested for safety and drinking water should not be filled with Arsenic and mining waste.

I think private schools and golf club memberships are fine if you want them, but please don't pretend they are business costs that you should be allowed to deduct on your taxes.

I think refusing to investigate the circumstances leading up to the murder of 3,000 Americans should be considered treason.

I'm neither a communist nor an anarchist, no matter how desperately the corporate owned mainstream media would like the public to believe otherwise. If that makes me a GOOD American, then yes, I'm a GOOD American.

If you too are a GOOD American please forward this to everyone you know.

We need our country back.

* * *

This article was first posted on Bartcop.com

Space!

Lots of cool developments of the space exploration scene the past week or so. All sorts of good stuff from going back to the moon and reasons why (mining, pharmaceuticals, training, energy production, study of ancient Earth), to how to do it. Like I've said before, Space Access isn't a typical liberal issue, but then, I'm not really a liberal, I'm what fraternities called in college a Godamned Independent.

Space is sort of my pet issue. I can't help it, I'm a geek. There are plenty of good reasons to move off the planet Earth, if only to move some nasty production items off-planet. And no, the Moon has no ecosystem or ecology It would also relieve population pressure. Not to mention al of the high tech items generated out of the Apollo program.

Operation TIPS is back

Just as it appeared that Republican House Majority Leader would save us from becoming yet another police state masquerading as a democracy, the DOJ has brought Operation TIPS back from the brink. Rep Armey added language to a security bill that prevented the creation and use of TIPS, prevented creation of a National ID card, and would have created a Privacy Officer in the Dept of Homeland Security to endure that our rights aren't trampled by policy or technology. Mr. Armey's reasoning is simple: there are betters ways to enhance our security than for us to spy on each other. Maybe he remembers the history of other nations. Or maybe he remembers Joe McCarthy.

Unfortunately for all of us, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who seems not to have read the same version of the Constitution as the rest of us, is pressing on with the plan. He sees nothing wrong with us being spied upon by meter readers, package delivery people, phone and cable installers, bookstore clerks, or anybody else. He also has no problem with all of these unsubstantiated items going into a massive database. I'm assuiming that this means he doesn't use any of the services, or that he thinks his position places him above the law. Maybe this is why the good citizens of Missouri elected a dead man instead of Aschroft for the Senate.

So, for now, we're stuck with the spectre of anyone and everyone being an informer. Just like it was behind the Iron Curtain. Isn't that fun? Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people who spend a lot of time in sensitive or public areas having a mechanism for reporting suspicious activity. Who better to know if there's something weird going on at airports, the docks, at railheads, than the people who work there? The difference? They aren't sticking their noses in our homes.

Of course, we already have a great mechanism for reporting strange goings on: the police. I thought being involved in the cummunity was what "Community Policing" was all about. Guess not.

Here's a logical outgrowth of all this "Big Brother" garbage from the UK.

The New Cruelty

More on the New Fascism from The Progressive

July 18, 2002

Photographers Detained Four Hours
Photography buffs William P. Madeira and Jonas Lundquist were out taking pictures on the Passyunk Bridge in Philadelphia at dusk on June 9 when they ran afoul of the law--or at least of law enforcement personnel.

"One cop came by and asked what we were doing and looked at our I.D.s and went away," recalls Madeira, who happens to be an elected Democratic official at the ward level and works at Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth. Lundquist is a professional dancer who had a two-year stint with the Pennsylvania Ballet. "A few minutes later, we were surrounded by four cop cars and there was a helicopter flying overhead. They asked for our cameras, and we gave them to them because they had their hands on their guns.

"I said, 'What's happening? Did something happen today?'

"And they said, 'Haven't you heard of 9/11?' "

As first reported in a superb story by Linda K. Harris of the Philadelphia Inquirer on July 3, Madeira and Lundquist were photographing the Sunoco oil refinery.

The police told them it's illegal to take pictures of an oil refinery, Madeira says.

Madeira and Lundquist were then taken into custody for four hours.

"We were handcuffed, put in separate cars, and taken to the station," he says.

Three times, Madeira asked to call his lawyer, he says. Three times he was denied.

On the bridge, Madeira asked, "When do I talk to a lawyer?"

"We'll worry about that later," they said, according to Madeira.

In the police car, Madeira said, "I'm going to call a lawyer."

"It's not the time for that," they told him.

At the station, Madeira reiterated: "I want to talk to a lawyer."

"You can talk to a lawyer when people from downtown get here."

But no one from downtown ever got there, says Madeira. "Finally, we were ineptly interviewed and let go and never charged with anything."

After he was released, Madeira did call his lawyer, Stefan Presser, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

"This was an arrest without a warrant and without probable cause," Presser says. "It bespeaks a mindset that is prevalent right now. They're making the rules up on the fly without the recognition that there is something called the U.S. Constitution, and notwithstanding Mr. Aschroft's best efforts, it's not quite shredded yet."

Presser and Madeira are threatening a lawsuit. Aside from everything else, Presser says Madeira was not given his Miranda warning.

"Any time there is litigation, or potential litigation, we can't comment," says Jim Pauley, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia police department.

More than a month after his detention, Madeira remains steamed.

"This probably is happening to lots of other people who are not white and upper middle class, and I don't want to have to think about what happens to them," he says.

Overall, he views his detention as the result of a harrowing new climate: "There's a lot of ill-focused, irrational fear going on in this country. The Bush Administration is manipulating fear, and that is what leads to totalitarianism."

-- Matthew Rothschild

Joe McCarthy Would be Proud

Is Operation TIPS vile or what? I guess we have more of this sort of thing to look forward to, because I haven't heard too many "regular" people upset about it. It seems in our new, undending climate of fear, we should expect that our neighbors, utility workers, and neighborhood busybodies to ingorm on anything that isn't "normal" and anyone who looks "different".

Happily, the Postal Service has declined to participate, so no one will be turning me in because Mother Jones tries to get me to subscribe, or the ACLU sends me membership information, or because my wife is now on some weird mailing list that sent her a catalog full of vintage Soviet and Tsarist Russian paraphernalia. Unless somebody else is checking our locked apartment mailbox.

The Feds will have to be happy checking our book purchases, reading our email, and checking our library records. Oh, yeah, there's always this website for them to check out. I'm on the record as being against all of the above. I have no desire to live in a Stalinist or neo-Stalinist state. I would much rather be free and deal with terrorism than worry about whether my neighbor approves of my politics or my friends.

Think I'm exaggerating about the issue here? How about this: most reports are saying that the goal for the Bush Administration is to get at least four percent of Americans involved in the domestic spying program. That's more nitches than the East German Stasi used. That's right, when the U.S. cracks down on civil liberties, we don't do it by half (unless we're talking gun ownership).

The situation is bad enough (between TIPS and holding prisoners incommuncado) that former CIA and FBI head William Webster is concerned. So is former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who was in Argentina to see protests about the disappeared. The Bush Administration's Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, who claims that his experiences as a child in South Vietnam mean he want's to safeguard our rights, seems to have forgotten one of the most basic: habeas corpus. How are we supposed to verify that your rights haven't violated, if no one knows you've been detained. Keep in mind that there are at least three US citizens (Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh and Yaser Esam Hambi) that are in custody, and who the government has not intention of charging, or allowing access to legal counsel. Yeah, they've been given Mr. Dinh's "full panoply of rights". Ok, so Lindh and Hambi were captured in a war zoen and brought back, and Lindh plead guilty to some charges, but it still appears that his confession was coerced.

And that leaves out the six hundred our so who were detained by the INS, and who have received closed hearings. The courst are still out on whether this is legal or not, but reports have abounded of people held for months without lawyers and without being able to contect loved ones (like wives and children) to tell them why they aren't coming home for dinner.

I keep waiting for the outcry on these issues, but it hasn't appeared. Why? Because the Bush Administration has been allowed to frame the debate, and the media, along with a compliant Congress, have not pursued the issue. No one seems to care that there is no debate, that we are suddenly not as free as we were. It is possible that the people don't know. After all, who reads the paper? These issues haven't appeard on nightly newscasts here in Colorado, which implies that they haven't appeared elsewhere, either.

This is in the best interest of our political and corporate masters. It makes us easier to control our thoughts and our bodies. The corporations control the media and the government both. They ought to, they paid enough through acquisitions and campaign contributions, so we hear what they want, and they are ready when we complain: they can read our email, our websites, our chatrooms, our financial and library records with impunity. They can search our homes without warning or notification. If we organize political protests, our causes are distorted, our presence hidden. If we attempt reasoned debate, we are caled unpatriotic. If we appear dangerous, we are arrested and accused of being terrorists, but no charges are brought.

Welcome to the new America.

Science as Dogma - Again

Some days I feel strangely incoherent. At least that's how I feel about yesterday's rant. I'll say this about it and drop it for a while. In some quarters on both sides of the political fence there seems to be a trange move away from facts, figures, reason, and logic. That is, away from rationality and reasoned discourse. Away from logical investigation into issues, whether they be scientific research or political debate. Some commentators I've read (I wish I could the links) have called it the "End of the Age of Reason".

This bothers me on both a rational and emotional level. Rationally, I see any move away from logical investigation as a mistake. While many of our research methods have problems, the problems ar replicable and generally understood. There is a base understanding of how to approach things. Emotionally, it feels like the end of the civilized world when we start talking about astrology being equivalent to astronomy, or channeling being as valid as archival records.

Some would say that this means I'm part of the opressive system setup by "the Man". So be it.

Here's another article about problems in Academia to go along with Ernest Partrdge's and Lynn Stratton's. Comments are welcome.

The Historical Present
What has superseded the academic culture wars of the 1990s? It's not what you think.

By Rick Perlstein
Issue Date: 7.15.02
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The phone call made me nervous. I'd never been offered an all-expense-paid press junket before. Wasn't this the sort of thing you'd expect from a petroleum conglomerate, sponsoring a conference on debunking global warming? Instead, a humble scholarly organization, the Historical Society (THS), was proposing to fly me to Atlanta, Georgia, for its annual meeting. What's more, the group wanted to put me up in a nice hotel, where it would pay all the tabs I cared to charge them. What could these people possibly be up to?

The Historical Society's executive director, Louis Ferleger, a fast talker, attempted to put me at ease. Of course I could write anything I cared to, in any publication; or, if things didn't work out, in no publication at all.I asked him where the money was coming from. Following his own political instincts, said Ferleger, he had first approached liberal funders, but right-wing foundations were the only ones that ponied up. Then he practically leaped through the phone line to assure me that his group was politically ecumenical -- offering himself, a Marxist historian of agriculture, as exhibit A, and laughingly confirming a Wall Street Journal description of another THS stalwart as a "self-described Harvard 'communist.'"

From what I knew of THS, however, it was a group founded in 1998 to fight shoulder to shoulder with the cultural warriors of the right. It claimed to offer an alternative to the corrupt political correctness of the academic mainstream -- especially the historical profession's two blue-chip organizations of record, the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians. THS underwrites polemics, such as the one its co-founder, Eugene Genovese, published in the Los Angeles Times, observing that the "demand that historians privilege race, class, and gender is occurring in an atmosphere that uncomfortably resembles the McCarthyism of the 1950s." At the same time, however, the actual scholarship THS supports -- for example, the historical essays in its 1999 anthology, Reconstructing History: The Making of a New Historical Society -- is not all that different from what's published in the mainstream journals the group purports to revile. That's not surprising, as history is pretty much a middle-of-the-road discipline in the first place. Its few sinful experiments with postmodernism (loosely defined) were mostly confined to a certain era, now passed.

For all the so-called mainstream academy's fascination with marginality, THS is a group that has attained marginal status in virtually every way: It's willfully marginal to the historical mainstream, but also marginal to all those other conservative scholarly groups that sprang up in the 1990s to take on the mainstreams of their disciplines. In fact, THS is so marginal, Ferleger plaintively told me, that since an initial burst of publicity at the time of its founding, not a single reporter on the higher-ed beat has accepted an invitation to attend a THS event -- even though the group has grown substantially since its inception. This must say something useful about the culture of academia in the opening years of a new millennium, I thought, but I wasn't sure what. I flew to Atlanta to find out.

So there I was at the Crowne Plaza Ravinia Hotel. And so were a surprising number of graduate students. They constituted perhaps 10 percent of those present, a healthy number considering that unlike the bigger historical conferences, departments did not send representatives here to interview junior hires. Then again, in a 1998 Los Angles Times op-ed, THS officer and diplomatic historian Mark Trachtenberg predicted that young scholars "who still believe in the traditional concept of what historical work should be" would flock to the Historical Society. Was he right?

Not exactly. "I'm actually a little wary of the ideology," explained a recent University of Chicago Ph.D. "And to me, the bigger conferences are sufficiently diverse that they're not really stifling anyone." He came to this conference for the same reason many grad students did: They studied the Reconstruction and that was the meeting's theme. Another student, who described himself as a social democrat, only hazarded the trip after learning that David Landes and Sean Wilentz were participating. "I like their work," he said, "so I kind of felt it was safe to come." Others appreciated the group's stated intention of encouraging a more generalist approach to history (at the conference, at least, that intention was honored more in the breach, with most sessions neatly segregated by scholarly pigeonhole). One new graduate student even came with a meta-analytical agenda: He had read Reconstructing History in college and was intrigued by the way many of its contributors sneaked in intellectual strategies from the very bête noire they were supposedly working to subdue -- postmodernism.

I did find two graduate students who were attracted to the Historical Society out of frustration with the mainstream. One was sick of being labeled a conservative when he considered himself a moderate liberal. The other, David Ulbrich, chair of THS's Student Affairs Committee, detected an unpleasant "ideological narrowness" in the mainstream, but his grievance was mostly class-based: He thought the AHA was dominated by arrogant Ivy Leaguers who loved to lord it over colleagues from middle-tier schools like his. "It's all about Marxism," he said. "I'm the proletariat." This was not a plaint about a profession riven by the politics of race, sex, et cetera. (That particular student, in fact, was proud of introducing a gender-theory perspective into his work on the history of the Marines.) No, the cultural warriors among the Historical Society's graduate students were few.

Surprisingly, they were no more numerous among THS's tenured complement. "I got a call from Gene," -- meaning Genovese, whose personality bears a force akin to that of Lennox Lewis's left jab -- was a common explanation for attendance. "Nothing in particular," answered another member, who, upon reflection, wondered whether he didn't just come to the first conference because it was in Boston, where he happened to be living at the time. Others just said they liked the Historical Society, and had a hard time saying any more.

Not that there weren't any right-wing culture warriors here. I met my first on perhaps my 10th interview. Lawrence Okimura is "a historian of imperial Rome's relations with its" -- I struggled to remember while framing a follow-up question -- "um, subalterns?" He affected a mock shiver at the sound of the postcolonialist buzzword.

Here was one historian who indeed thought just as Genovese's Los Angeles Times piece suggested he should. Okimura quit the AHA because its journal, American Historical Review, "became unreadable, the politics one-sided." He deplores postmodernists' attacks on objectivity, hates the way they turn their skepticism into dogma, but "never apply it to themselves." He voted for a straight Republican ticket in 2000. He is an anti-PC poster child.

The next day I saw Okimura at a panel that staged mock job interviews for graduate students. Okimura and one other historian, also a bit of a conservative, grilled a twentieth-century French history dissertator from NYU -- the social Democrat, as it turns out, who had expressed wariness about the conference's possible ideology. The professors conferred privately over his vita, the interview began, and all went smoothly. Then, a question: "What are your feelings about teaching our required Western Civilization lecture class?"

A trap! I silently applauded the canny questioner. Now the poor kid would be forced to stake a position on the debate at the white-hot center of the culture wars, the one that can move state legislatures and revolutionary socialists alike to apoplexy: whether every student should be required to receive a thorough grounding in the cultural heritage of "the West."

I presumed the suits on the other side of the table would advocate devilishly against whatever side the student chose. There followed a letdown. The student, a fine specimen of the up-and-coming scholarly generation, answered that he would love to teach Western Civ. Nods; next question.

A fascinating discussion I could never have anticipated, however, soon erupted. The right-leaning profs began trading horror stories about the Western Civ survey. Their gripes had nothing to do with ideas -- both, in fact, were sympathetic to a West-centered approach to inquiry. The problem was administrative. One told the story of a promising graduate student who quit teaching after being entirely broken by the task of controlling a huge lecture hall. And they hated the way "the university gets good press when it says we offer a broad base of education about the West."

It seemed to me an extraordinary, and telling, thing. What were the culture wars? They had long been symbolized by this debate alone: preserve "Western civ" or purge it? But now it seems that for those on the ground -- even relative ideologues -- the ideological debate is no longer worth it. For all the oceans of ink spilled on the subject, you would never know that the debate has shifted, among its actual stakeholders, to an entirely different terrain.

A reasonable sounding of sharp- and fair-minded academic observers will confirm it: The energies behind the culture wars have been dissipating for some time now. Just this past weekend I was strolling with a history grad student friend through New York's Central Park. He spoke, with slight nostalgia, about the time when critical theory was the comforting coin of the realm for the well-dressed intellectual. Not that he rejects theory: His dissertation on left-wing violence contains a useful discussion inspired by Jean Baudrillard. No big deal; for most attentive scholars today, theory is just another tool.

The evidence was before me. I became fascinated with the number of trendy threads woven into the intellectual tapestry on display in Atlanta. There were some, for example, in the conference's very theme, "Historical Reconstructions," which was interpreted in exactly the undisciplined, airily metaphoric way it might have been at a trendy comparative-literature conference. Participants repositioned the word "reconstruction," technically a description of events in the American South after 1865, to encompass historical moments as far afield as Greece after the Peloponnesian War. As for the American experience, the dominant claim was that one "cannot understand reconstruction outside an international context" -- echoing the trendiest demand of all these days, for a "postnationalist" American studies. Discussions of the social construction of national identity, meanwhile, abounded.

What, then, was there to distinguish this conference from the ones it was set up to challenge? The THS conference still tilted ever so slightly in a politically incorrect direction -- more military history, a palpable aversion to gender studies (a factor that no doubt helped produce the 114-to-20 ratio of male to female presenters); a distrust of an approach to Reconstruction that treated the South as other to the United States rather than as complexly integral to it, which I found salutary and fascinating; and other discussions too subtle to get into here. But nothing to shake the earth.

Bigger conferences can be cold, but there was impressive warmth at this THS meeting. It made for a satisfying intellectual experience. "What I'd say is that the intimacy and the sustained focus of the THS gatherings make them more intense than most other professional meetings, at least for me," Wilentz later observed by e-mail.

That intimacy is no accident. It emanates from THS's guiding spirit, the late Christopher Lasch. The society confers a Christopher Lasch prize (this year's winner was Alex Keyssar, author of the brilliant The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, an unsparing left-wing indictment of this country's proudest claims about itself). Reconstructing History is co-edited by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Lasch's daughter and intellectual heir.And the University of Pennsylvania Press has just published a posthumous Lasch book, Plain Style: A Guide to Written English, which he wrote for his graduate students back in 1985. Therein, Lasch tars all manner of commonplace writing sins as "bureaucratic" -- the gravest epithet in his vocabulary. The anonymity of the passive voice, for example, "endears it to bureaucrats, who wish to avoid responsibility for their decisions."

When I read that, the inchoate cri de coeur of THS finally cohered for me. It concerned bureaucracy. The bureaucratic imperative, on the question of Western Civ, to stand helpless in front of lecture halls filled with hundreds of students. The graduate student's feeling of being swallowed up by an arrogance at the heart of the AHA (whose meetings, like all very large scholarly gatherings, are as much about business matters as scholarly ones). The anti-bureaucratic, almost communitas way so many of its members were recruited: through personal phone calls from friends they trusted. THS is a close-knit group, smaller, grown organically from the specific interests of its members rather than from any outside imperative to behave this way or that. It's a quiet community of mutual respect.

If I could go back and experience the conference again, I could more readily tally up the examples. But I came to the insight very late; my mind was on another script. And here is the lesson about the culture of academia in the opening years of a new millennium: Drop the script. THS seemed to attract scholars vexed by something in contemporary academia, though they had trouble describing what. They had clung to a familiar description -- of a profession riven by the politics of race and sex, reliant on theory instead of evidence, given to naval-gazing, obscurantism, and writing that reads like badly translated German -- but it didn't quite fit. Why did they -- do they -- not discuss the frustrations an excess of bureaucracy brings to the life of the mind? Probably the culture wars have stolen their words.

These 1960s-inspired culture wars may never truly end. But the sooner we stop using them as a crib sheet for explaining academia and its discontents, the likelier we are to draw fresh insights into the contemporary scholarly world -- not, that is to say, the academy of 1994, which might well have been characterized by the wrangling over political correctness.

I'm certain this is not what the Historical Society has reimbursed me to find out. For my conclusion certainly works against its financial interests. Conservative foundations are not paying it to create a thoughtful community of the mind. They are paying it because they spy a possible battalion for the culture wars. The preface to Reconstructing History trumpets that "burning questions about the state of the profession must be engaged." Perhaps; but truly, nothing much burned at the Historical Society's third annual congress. And there's nothing wrong with that. More academic conferences that turn off journalists on the higher-ed beat -- and more scholarly organizations that behave like cottage industries to the major associations' factories -- may now be exactly what we need.

Rick Perlstein
Copyright © 2002 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Rick Perlstein, "The Historical Present," The American Prospect vol. 13 no. 13, July 15, 2002 .

Back to the Final Frontier

Space Access and Space Exploration are not typically leftist, liberal, progressive, or populist issues, but they are a pet peeve of mine. Of course, I tend to defy labels, politically speaking. I guess you could call me a conservative liberal progressive populist. Or, alternately, an Independent. I think what I think, to hell with the labels.

To the point, last week I lamented the pathetic state of American space exploration, both current and planned. This is nothing new for me, or for readers of this site. I've complained about the design and operation costs of the Space Shuttle (called Super Shuttle by some detractors), planned new vehicles, lack of planned new vehicles, and the methodology of our Moon Missions. My calls for privatization of Space Access, with basic research being done by NASA are old and well-known. Let business run satellite operations and that sort of thing. They'll find a way to do it cheaply and often. Let NASA do exploration: going to the Moon, Mars, and outer planets. That's what they exist for. This business of NASA running the Shuttle Program and killing DC-X has got to stop.

Today, some good news. NASA has a plan for some manned (or womanned) exploration. It isn't a great plan. It starts too late, and will be run like the rest of NASA has since the Apollo days. Too much tail (i.e. beauracacy). Here's the plan according to Space.com:

A Sneak Peek at NASA's Plans for Exploring Mars and Beyond
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
18 July 2002

WASHINGTON -- NASA has long been hungry to put the Earth in an astronaut's rear view mirror. Today the agency finds itself embroiled in the sticky business of sorting out the financial, technical and scientific woes resident within the multi-billion dollar International Space Station (ISS) program.

Putting that turmoil aside, the space agency has quietly scripted a step-by-step plan to send astronauts to locales between Earth, the Moon and the Sun, to Mars and the asteroids, and even farther -- to the moons of several outer planets.

This suite of far-out space missions beyond Earth's orbit was assembled as a NASA strategic plan for the Human Exploration and Development of Space (HEDS).

The images accompanying this story were commissioned by NASA from John Frassanito & Associates to illustrate the proposals.

It is clear, however, until the ISS effort is under cost and managerial control, NASA's escape velocity vision will remain in limbo. Furthermore, the space agency's new chief, Sean O'Keefe, sees as priority one getting the ISS effort under control. But as part of this futuristic plan, new artwork was created specifically to highlight what NASA officials consider as viable steps in human space exploration.

Beyond Earth's orbit, 100-day class missions would send crews on missions to Earth-moon and Earth-Sun "libration points." Also known as L-points, these locales are where gravitational forces balance.

At these outposts, humans could maintain revolutionary new telescopes and build up the hardware to further explore the lunar surface.

Extending the human experience even farther, 500 to 1,000-day missions would integrate human and robotic abilities to explore the Mars system, as well as asteroids.

This class of human exploration mission would be staged within 2 astronomical units (AU) of the sun. One AU is defined as the Earth's average distance from the sun -- about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). Travelling within this region, access to numbers of asteroids become feasible.

Lastly, missions of 2,000 days and longer are called for in the NASA plan. Human treks outward to Titan could be attempted.

How soon are these missions plausible?

According to NASA study groups, for the midterm, 100-day mission duration flights were projected for the 2006 to 2011 time frame. Missions lasting 500 to 1,000 days are seen as the far-term, starting in 2012.

For 2,000 days and longer voyages to outer-solar-system targets, those voyages were tagged "beyond" the far-term.

Free Speech on Campus

The growing trend of governments, large and small, around the U.S. attempting to limit free speech and hide protesters away has arrived on campus at Florida State University.

Students protesting FSU's refusal the Worker's Rights Consortium, a sweatshop monitoring group, were arrested for protesting in a tent city in front of the school's administration building. After the arrests, the students were relocated to a "Free Speech Zone" in a remote quad, where they are safely out of sight, and out of mind.

FSU's president, Talbot D'Alemberte, defends the arrests by saying that, "I've read the First Amendment pretty carefully, and I don't see any mention of tents." I guess by his interpretation music, movies, art, dancing, theatre, and other means of expression would also not be protected.

I'm not advocating trespassing, but FSU students who want to protest, wouldn't necessarilly be trespassing on school grounds. The students have the right to protest and have their voices heard, not blocked away from the schools's administration. As ong as they don't harass people with legitimate business at the building, they should be allowed to stay, but their presence was an embarassment to D'Alemberte, so he had them moved.

This is part of a trend started in Seattle for the WTO meeting and continued elsewhere for all sorts of events, where protesters are kept not only away from those they are protesting, but the media as well.

Free speech and the right to assembly are two of the cornerstones of American democracy. If governments are allowed to limit them in this manner, no effective protests can be made at any level. Requiring permits and having guidelines for durations and size of protests are one thing, as are police presence in the case of violence, or for traffic control, but sequestering protesters is something else entirely.

Science as Dogma

I haven't come across much of this, except in reading things online and some really unfortunate television programming. It does seem to me that it is increasingly common for people to dismiss most or all scientific research and logical reasoning as just another opinion. My question is why and what happens? If people accept astrology and astronomy as equally valid "social constructs" or that global warming doesn't exist because the President says it doesn't, where will we end up? Is this simply a case of too much television rotting the brains of America, or is there something else going on here?

What is the consequence of irrational thinking on America? Or is this nothing new, just a consequence of too many unprepared students entering our institutions of higher learning? It would be easy to blame the problem on the Religious Right and their insistence on pushing Creationism into public schools, but that would be more soft-brained nonsense. Just as much of this thinking (if you can call it that) comes from PC and left-leaning "intellectuals" as well. Who else would be pushing aromatherapy, medicinal marijuana, and "eastern" medicine without empirical research into each area? What about those great "therapists" who push parents of troubled children into "rebirthing" therapy programs? Who else comes up with the notion that Cleopatra, the descendent of the Macedonian Ptolemies was a black African?

This type of thinking obviously goes beyond science, we see it in politics all the time. How else do you get an unending "war" on terror with no Congressional oversight, no debate, and no firm enemy or goals? How else do you get unthinking acceptance of civil rights violation in the name of security -- again without open honest debate.

Is science "just another dogma?"
Ernest Partridge
The Online Gadfly and Online Journal Contributing Writer


Science will flourish only in a society that cherishes its norms. The reason, openness, tolerance, and respect for the autonomy of the individual that distinguish the social process of science . . . are norms desirable in every human community. They describe a world in which, we can agree, all of us want to live.—Gerald Piel, Science, 86117.

July 4, 2002—A student asks: why should we believe in global warming, and you respond with a meticulously logical argument, along with a citation of scientific research. As you continue, the student's eyes begin to glaze and the student-bodies begin to squirm in the seats. And as you conclude, you hear that dreaded question: "but who's to say?"

At length it finally dawns on you: to these kids, logic, science, rationality, are just "cultural artifacts"—no more or less credible than witchcraft, astrology, divination, tarot cards, or plain off the wall hunches. (See my "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Real World")

Nor are these views unique to our students. Just listen to the media, to corporate public relations, to televangelists, or worst of all, to the policy pronouncements of the Bush administration. Consider the spectacle of the tobacco company CEOs telling the congressional committee, under oath, "I do not believe that nicotine is addictive"—this, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that nicotine is, in fact, addictive. We are all aware of the evangelical Christians' avowed disbelief in evolution, the fundamental organizing principle of modern biology. And George Bush (who also has his doubts about evolution) is confident that he and his associates in the "awl bidniss" are fully qualified to dismiss the reports on global warming by two thousand leading atmospheric scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the National Academy of Sciences. (See "The President of Fantasyland")

Sadly, the virus of irrationalism has spread even to the colleges and universities of the realm, in the guise of "post-modernism" whose most extreme adherents regard competing theories of reality, such as astronomy and astrology as "social constructs" and "stories," each with an "equal right to be heard and appreciated." Post-modernism was (or should have been) discredited by Alan Sokol's notorious hoax: A parody article, "Trangressing the Boundaries . . ." which the post-modernist publication, Social Text, swallowed hook, line and sinker, in its Spring 1996 issue. Sokol thus describes his article as "a melange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoood, non-sequitors, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever."

What was Sokol's motive? First of all, he writes, "I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them." And furthermore, "my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe inimical to the values and future of the Left." (Sokol and Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense, Picador, 269-270).

He has a tough battle ahead. For, as most of us who have taught college for more than a couple of decades will testify, the struggle to defend the integrity of critical intelligence against the onslaught of subjectivist and post-modernist mush has, of late, lost considerable ground. Thus, as George Englebretsen, a Canadian philosopher reflects:

We've become increasingly a society of people who consider channeling as effective as archival research for discovering the past, who believe therapeutic touch can heal more than modern medicine, who believe it appropriate to teach Klingon in the university but doubt that Latin serves any academic purpose. And why not? After all, many of them have been taught by professors who cannot distinguish between a legitimate treatise on a problem physics and [Alan Sokol's] bald, outlandish parody of it." (Skeptical Inquiry, July/August, 1997 )

How has it come to this? Throughout the just-completed century, the United States has been the world leader in technological innovation and scientific advancement. And yet, the American public, by and large, is dismally ignorant of basic scientific information. Thus the Los Angeles Times reports (May 10, 1992), that a third of Americans believe that astrology "has some scientific merit," and reportedly half do not accept evolution. And in May 1996, the Associate Press reported that "fewer than half of the American adults understand that the Earth orbits the sun yearly . . . Only about 9 percent knew what a molecule was, and only 21 percent could define DNA." (See my "Regarding Junk Science and Other Detritus")

But however ignorant the average American might be about the content of science, that ignorance is exceeded regarding the method of science. And from this ignorance of scientific method emerges the widespread belief, embraced large portions of our population, including the post-modernists, that science is "just another dogma"—a "story" that deserves no more credence than any other "story" such as astrology, aromatherapy, or whatnot.

A library of books have been written about the methodology of science, many of them quite controversial. Among philosophers of science one will find a myriad of hotly contested theories about "how science works." Even so, there are a few fundamental features of scientific activity that most observers of science will accept, and which the ordinary non-scientific citizen might readily understand. They are also features that set science distinctively apart from non-scientific truth claims. I will discuss just seven of these features.

First, Scientific Activity Is Public and Replicable

The community of scientists is elite and restricted, and yet, paradoxically, it is also open. Few individuals are qualified to conduct an experiment with a particle accelerator, or to carry out a DNA test. But anyone with requisite intelligence and diligence who is willing and able to undergo the required training may, in principle, perform these activities. Moreover, any and all such qualified individuals must be able to repeat the experiments and produce the evidence claimed by other scientists. Remember "cold fusion," that "revolutionary scientific breakthrough" that was going to supply us with and endless supply of cheap energy? It failed the "replicability test." Repeated failures by other scientists to duplicate the results claimed by Fleischman and Pons led to the well-deserved demise of this "breakthrough." "One-time-only" episodes of "Divine revelation" and "anecdotal evidence" from singular events do not cut it, scientifically. (However, as we will see below, some accounts of singular events can launch fruitful scientific investigations).

Science Is Cumulative

"If I have seen further," said Isaac Newton, "it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." And thus, of course, Newton became another of those "giants." Mathematics necessarily developed sequentially, from arithmetic to algebra (the Arabs) to analytic geometry (Descartes) to calculus (Newton and Liebnitz). Without Galileo and Kepler, there would have been no Newton. Without Linnaeus, no Darwin. Because science is ever open to new discoveries (see "falliblism" below), science allows nature to "speak to us" through experiment and observation. But only if we ask nature the right questions, i.e., if we know what we are looking for and describe it with an adequate (often mathematical) vocabulary. The science of the preceding "giants" gives us those questions. Thus science, as an accumulating body of knowledge and theory, is vastly greater than any scientists.

Science Is Systemic and Coherent

Scientific theories are marvelous structures built out of scientific concepts ("vocabularies"), laws, empirical facts, and logical entailments. (They are not, as "creationists" say of evolution, mere unconfirmed "facts." See "We're Not in Kansas Anymore") As theories encompass more observed and confirmed facts and formulate new "laws," this growth reverberates throughout the entire theoretical system. Thus, for example, post-Darwinian discoveries in genetics, bio-chemistry and paleontology have not "refuted" evolution, they have enriched and expanded it.

Robust scientific theories are characterized by their scope of application—another indication of their structure and coherence. Thus, for example, "natural selection" explains such diverse phenomena as dated sequence of fossils, comparative anatomy and physiology, comparative species DNA, declining potency of insecticides and antibiotics. Similarly, Einstein's theory of relativity explains observations at the working end of particle accelerators, nuclear and thermonuclear reactions, the behavior of clocks on spaceships, astronomical observations, and the apparent bending of light near massive objects (e.g., during a solar eclipse).

Science Is Empirical

A scientific investigation "begins" and "ends" in experience. A scientist might find, in the field or his laboratory, an interesting phenomenon worthy of investigation. For example, Darwin found varieties of finches on the Galapagos Islands and the South American mainland. Why both the variety and the similarities? And Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally made a momentous discovery while experimenting with X-Rays in his laboratory. In a desk drawer below his apparatus, a key was placed atop an unexposed photographic plate. He later discovered an image of the key on the plate. How come? His search for an answer led to X-Ray photography.

Darwin and Roentgen developed hypotheses ("hunches") to explain these experienced phenomena. Some failed to "pan out" in experience, so new hypotheses were formed. Eventually, they came up with hypotheses which, in conjunction with settled scientific concepts and data, predicted events which were empirically confirmed by experiments.

Scientific theory and laws are not made up of "hunches." And yet creative imagination ("hunches") can play an important role in scientific investigation. Legend has it that Archimedes came upon the concept of specific gravity while taking a bath. (Did he really? Who knows? Who cares? The story is illustrative, not scientific). James Watson tells us that the idea of the double helix came to him as he recalled his boyhood exploration of the spiral staircase at a lighthouse. And Einstein thought of relativity as he was riding a Zurich trolley and contemplated the "relative motion" of a passenger walking in the trolley.

But when the scientific community demanded confirmation of the theory of DNA, Crick and Watson did not look to lighthouses. Nor did Einstein demonstrate Special Relativity with a trolley car. These insights were the beginning, not the end, of scientific inquiry. The inquiry "ended" with empirical confirmation in the laboratory or the field.

Scientific Assertions Are Fallible and Falsifiable

For any statement whatever in the body of science, we know what it would be like for that statement to be false. (I exclude "formal" statements: e.g., definitions, logical rules and tautologies—a technical point which I can't elaborate here). It is thus possible, in principle (i.e., through the wildest imagination), to describe a refutation of a scientific claim. In other words, scientific statements, hypotheses and theories are falsifiable—not "false," but falsifiable. The distinction is crucial.

To put it another way, for a hypothesis, prediction or confirmation to have scientific meaning, one must be prepared to say, "expect to find such-and-such empirical conditions in the world, to the exclusion of other describable conditions." If you find these conditions, your statement has been proven true of this particular "real nature," and not some "fanciful nature." For example, Galileo determined that a free-falling object falls at a velocity of V = ½ gt2 (with "V" for velocity, "t" for time, and "g" for a gravitational constant at the Earth's surface). Not 1/4g or 1/3g, but 1/2g. And not time cubed, or time to the 2.5 power, but time squared. In other words, that sample equation describes one sort of nature to the exclusion of a virtual infinitude of other "natures" described by different formulas. But experimentation and observation has proven that Galileo's formula applies to the "nature" we live in. In short, the free-fall formula is falsifiable.might be false, but have determined experimentally that it is true. We can easily describe how it

Similarly, in Eddington's famous 1919 eclipse experiment, Einstein's theory of relativity predicted that star near the eclipse would appear in a precisely defined location, and not in any other location in the night sky (a falsification). And sure enough, it appeared where predicted by the relativity theory. Confirmation!

In contrast, dogmas give us unfalsifiable assertions. Once in a debate with an evangelical minister, I asked: "Why should I believe that the Bible is the inerrant truth, and that I must believe in Jesus Christ to be saved?" He replied, "Just you wait—when you die and face your maker, then you will find out." Of course, that challenge was utterly unfalsifiable to anyone alive, which is to say, to anyone at all. Similarly, economic dogmas, which are "theory rich," have an "explanation" (after the fact) for every and any developments in the national economy. What they cannot do is describe a turn in the economy that would disprove their dogma. In short, unfalsifiable assertions, because they describe every possible world, describe nothing unique about the world we live in, which is to say that they "describe" nothing at all.

An important implication of the falsifiability rule, is what Charles Peirce called "Falliblism." Because every scientific statement is falsifiable, we must be forever open to the possibility (however remote) that some new observation or experiment will prove it wrong. The "falliblist" says, in effect, that "while I have strong beliefs, I am forever prepared to change these beliefs if confronted with compelling evidence to the contrary." (See "One Nation Under God, Divisible")

The Order of Scientific Inquiry Proceeds From Evidence to Conclusion

In science, as in jury trials, the outcome remains in doubt until all the evidence has been examined and evaluated. Evidence is assembled, hypotheses and theories are tentatively formed, and from all this, events and conditions (all "falsifiable") are predicted. Only if the predictions "pan out," are the hypothesis and theory confirmed, whereupon science progresses once again.

In contrast, dogmatists take the position of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland—"verdict first, trial afterwards." The caption of a New Yorker cartoon that I have used for years in my classes summarizes that "method" perfectly: "That is the gist of my position, now go out and get some evidence to base it on." This is the strategy of the preacher, the advertiser, and the political propagandist. The doctrine, or the client's product, or the party policy are all sacrosanct—not to be questioned. Beneath this exalted and unalterable truth, a scaffold of concocted "evidence" and argumentation must be assembled. This is the methodology of "creationism," of the Tobacco Institute, of the Global Climate Coalition (funded by the fossil fuel industry), and of the Supreme Court decision of December 12, 2000, Bush v. Gore.

And, of course, it is a "methodology" that is unfalsifiable—no amount of evidence to the contrary will budge these advocates from their pre-ordained conclusions.

In Science, the Burden of Proof Is On the Affirmative

We've all heard it in political and religious debates: "Prove me wrong." It a cry of despair. A belief, innocent of supporting evidence, is proclaimed to be true, absent a compelling argument in the negative. (Logicians call this "the ad ignorantum fallacy.")

This tactic of placing the burden of proof on the negative is inadmissable in courts of law, where the burden must fall on the prosecution to prove affirmative guilt, rather than on the defense to negatively prove "not guilty."

Common sense shows us the wisdom of placing the burden of proof upon the affirmative. For example, no one has found any evidence of Noah's ark on Mt. Ararat. "So prove to me that it isn't there and never was!" Of course we can't. Is this sufficient reason to believe the Bible story, and that this mountain is the place in question? Similarly for stories about Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, and UFO abductions. "Prove me wrong!" Well I can't, but so what?

The rule of "burden of proof on the affirmative" is a splendid device for de-cluttering the mind of intellectual rubbish. One might approach the world with the attitude of believing everything not disproved or, on the other hand, believing nothing unless proved. The latter, the approach of the scientist, is a far more reliable guide to truth, not to mention the management of one's practical affairs.

George Santayana had it just right: "Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect."

This list of seven (among many more) distinguishing qualities of science indicates, I trust, that science is "not just another dogma." This fact is demonstrated by the universal appeal and application of science. Scientists from around the world and from numerous cultures and traditions, readily communicate with each other, as scientists. Science is an institution and tradition which, while not without subjective elements (e.g. creative "hunches" and imaginative theories), attains an objectivity through its constant commerce with nature, and through the discipline of its methodology which ruthlessly culls out theories and hypotheses that fail the test of confirmation. Science is not perfect—no human institution is. Nor does science encompass all human knowledge, for there is much more to be learned from the arts, from literature, from moral reflection and practice, and from living in the company of fellow human beings. But science is supremely good at what it does—discovering the nature of physical, biological, and social reality, and articulating that reality in abstract and general laws and theories.

All Americans affirm science every time they boot up a computer, start a car or make a phone call. These everyday activities take place only through the successful application of thousands of scientific laws and theories. When Jerry Falwell stands before a TV camera to denounce evolution, or George Bush to debunk global warming as "unsound science," they both know that the device that is pointing at them will send their image and words to millions "out there." Thus they implicitly affirm the validity of physics, chemistry, advanced mathematics and computer science, even as they deny biology and atmospheric science.

The downgrading of science is quite agreeable to the religious right, of course. But also to the corporations that own the Congress and that put George Bush in the White House. And as the pesticide and tobacco cases vividly demonstrated in the past, and the global warming issue reminds us today, scientific research and discovery can be very threatening to the corporate bottom line. A scientifically educated and sophisticated public would appreciate the significance of that research and discovery, and would see through the sophistry of corporate public relations. That same public, under a democratic system, would select leaders that act in behalf of all citizens, act to preserve the natural environment that is our ultimate source and sustenance, and act to the benefit of future generations. Accordingly, those corporate elites whose concerns are confined to their own self-interest have no stake in a public that thinks critically and is scientifically informed. Sadly, the American public today gives those elites little cause for concern.

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly"

Bush and Ethics

Does anyone really think that George W. Bush has any place lecturing anybody on corporate ethics? Does he really think that self-policing can be effective after all of the problems? He showed in Texas that voluntary compliance with environmental regulations just doesn't work, but then the beneficiaries of that policy got him elected Governor as well.

Mr. Bush's questionable character is easily poited out by an examiniation of the whole Harken deal. First, it was the focus of an SEC investigation over the timing of his stock sale, which hapened just before Harken posted a huge loss. Now it has come out that the timing of his sale violated an agreement he signed that said he would not sell the stock for six months. He sold it after 2 and a half.

And additional issue with this is that Mr. Bush and spokesman Ari Fleisher seem to be mixing up the concepts "didn't prosecute" and "exonerated". Just because the SEC decided they didn't have evidence in 1990 to prosecute the then President George H.W. Bush's son, doesn't meen they found him innocent or didn't have outstanding questions regarding the transaction. It means that the =y didn't pursue the issue.

The current Bush Administration would have us believe that this is old news, and none of our business --- personal issues. They are taking this tack with Dick Cheney's Haliburton problems as well. Claiming that they have nothing to do with the President, Vice President, or their suitability for public office. From this arises the question: if these deals that encompased over $800,000 is the President's case and millions in Cheney's are none of our business, what was the hullabaloo over the Clinton's Whitewater deal? Why was that worth over $50 million taxpayer dollars to investigate?

According to right-wing harpy Ann Coulture's interview on Good Morning America, "it just is". Nice to know they have some logic, reasoning, and facts to back that up. Of course, she, and the rest of the Republican party like to ignore the fact that the only thing President Clinton was guilty of was trying to keep his personal life (involving an intern) just that, personal. Which leads to another question, for another time...why the uproar of President Clinton's affair, but not over Newt Gingrich's. At least the President didn't leave his wife.

PACs and Attack Ads

For the record: I am against attack ads and I detest the influence that PACs and soft money have on politics, but why is it ok for conservative think tanks, institutes, and PACs to organize, hide their origins and attack political figures on issues, but not for liberal ones? The New York Times seems to think it's just horrible. After what we've seen from the Republicans and their allies over the past decade, they need to quit complaining, but that would require a little bit of reflection and intellectual honesty about their own tactics. I think this is one of those "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" situations.

The Education Mind Police

When I was in high school (in Hawaii), we were taught a system of writing similar to what appears to be mandatory in Florida where I attended junior high and college. In lower level English classes most of the emphasis was on form, but the reading assignments were thought provoking, even if they didn't seem so at the time.

As we progressed to more advanced classes (those of us that did progress), we used more complicated writing structures. Five paragraphs and three ideas were a minimum, not the requirement. We also had a grammar requirement. Any run-on or fragmentary sentences resulted in a failing grade.

The standards were tough, but effective. They were also a starting point, not the end-all be-all of the writing experience. We were encouraged to have opinions, and back them up with logic and facts. At least in upper-level classes we were not stifled.

That was thirteen years ago, and Hawaii is a much more liberal place than Florida. When I attended USF, my writing instructors did follow the carefully crafted college guidleines for English I and II. I guess I got lucky.

Taught to remove all thought
By LYNN STRATTON
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 7, 2002

Writing by the numbers, as dictated by Tallahassee, has created a generation of students whose words lack passion, creativity and original ideas. I'm about to become a college dropout for the second time in my life.

The first time, I was a freshman in New York City during the last years of the Vietnam War. I decided I didn't want to be a part of what we called "the system."

This time, I'm not a student but an instructor. And I'm dropping out again. It will be hard, very hard, because I love teaching.

But I know when I'm beat. I can't do this job anymore.

Here's the problem: In our zeal for numbers, for measuring our kids so we can report that they really can write because they've passed a test, we're focusing on the forest but forgetting the trees.

Writing is putting ideas on paper. That's all -- and it's a lot. It's one of the most important things we can learn to do, putting our ideas on paper, expressing what we think. Putting our ideas on paper can make magic.

But to make kids pass our standardized tests, we force them to see writing as simply a formula, as anything but what it really is. Writing should be dangerous stuff -- and it was before we killed it.

We tell kids, "Okay, this is how to write. You must have five paragraphs in your essay, and the first paragraph must have a thesis sentence in which you specify the three main points of your paper, and each paragraph must have four to seven sentences, and each sentence must have eight to 10 words." (Yes, trust me; that's what they're being taught.)

But we forget that we're not talking about words and sentences and paragraphs; we're talking about ideas. What we're really telling students is that they must have exactly three ideas in everything they write, and each idea must be exactly such a length. And it's ludicrous. Ideas can't be measured; they can't be quantified.

But I'm clearly in the minority now, marching in the opposite direction, going against all the educators and bureaucrats. Still, I refuse to teach -- even to allow -- this mediocre writing, this uninspired thinking.

So, I quit. Our children, our teenagers, are victims of the Stockholm Syndrome; they've begun identifying with their captors. Our schools have brainwashed them into believing that writing -- that thinking -- is simply a matter of numbers. I can no longer teach them because, more than ever, they no longer believe me when I tell them that writing in the real world isn't like that.

Look, I tell them. Read something that's been published. Do you find everything in five neat paragraphs, with four to seven sentences in each paragraph?

They look at me. Why am I telling them this?

And look, I say. Don't real writers repeat words? (Oh, yes -- they're told they must never repeat words.) And their eyes give away their mistrust of what I'm telling them. I'm denying the validity of their belief system, contradicting everything they've been told.

But I keep trying. Look, I say. Don't all these writers, these people who have been published, don't they often use the word "I"? (They're told they must never use that word in most schools.) Don't some of these real writers use paragraphs that are one sentence long, or sentences that are one word long? These people you're reading are real writers, and they know there are no formulas to follow in writing.

As I say it, though, I know I'm telling them a lie. There are formulas in writing, the ones the people in Tallahassee use to show us that our children can write. That the system works.

Yes, it works: It produces unthinking teenagers who produce automatic essays full of, well . . . nothing, really. Because another thing they're taught is that opinions are bad. Of course, opinions express ideas, and if you follow that thinking through to its logical conclusion, then ideas are bad. I'll have my students read a particularly good essay, and they'll say, Well, but that's an opinion. Yes, it is, I answer. And? And, well, that's bad. You can't have opinions, only facts.

So they go out into the world, and they're timid; they're afraid to have an opinion. Ah, but that's good: good for business, which likes people to do as they're told; good for the country, because dissent, especially now, is . . . well, not good.

So I tell them, You know, it was a crime in most of this country many years ago to teach a slave to read or write. Why do you think we had those laws? Sometimes, one of the less timid students will cautiously raise a hand and take a stab at it. Because slaves could get ideas?

Right, yes. Slaves could get ideas, and ideas are dangerous. The owners, those in power, didn't want that. Do you see any parallel between that and what's happening in our schools?

No, they don't. Oh, I might have one occasionally who gets it, but the majority have been trained so well they don't see any connection.

Most of them think I'm nuts. Just another crazy, ranting professor. Their eyes blink off, and they go someplace where they don't have to think about what I'm saying. They're planning lunch or their trip to Ybor City that night. Someplace safe.

But I'm trying to steer them away from that safety, that sameness. I'm trying to make them dangerous. I'm trying to get them to think.

They'll have none of that, thank you. Our young people have had the thinking beaten out of them. We do it in our classrooms, in what we have them write. We do it especially in what we have them read. It's no longer a secret that our standardized tests, even our textbooks, have been sanitized. They've been cut up, had all the important ideas taken out of them -- all the tough questions, the conflicts.

I explain to my students that writers don't write about nice things; they write about the hard things, the difficult ideas. No one writes about what a nice day it is.

But all this has been going on for years. So why am I quitting now?

Because it's about to get much worse. Now that Tallahassee has taken over completely, now that we're to have one seamless educational system, prekindergarten through graduate school, the practices entrenched in our schools will become entrenched in our colleges.

It's happening already. The students who have been trained to write this way are now teachers who teach writing this way. More and more, I encounter college writing instructors who insist on the formula: five paragraphs, no more -- even in advanced courses, even in other departments. The older professors, the ones to whom the formula essay is simply bad writing, are retiring. The younger ones are taking over, passing on their wisdom about writing, what they were taught: Count your ideas. Be careful not to have too many.

And if a student dares to have four ideas, instead of three? . . . Toss one out. Only three ideas allowed. I've seen students fail assignments because they had the wrong numbers.

And they can't stop writing that way. Many have told me, even in tears, that they try to write differently, but they can't.

Brainwashing does that. Now, imagine the future. Imagine these students, your children, afraid to write, to put their ideas on paper. Imagine them trying to fight for what they believe in -- if they're brave enough to believe in anything at all.

Imagine them in business. In medicine. In law.

In politics.

As for me, I have no children, other than the ones I've worked with over the years. But I no longer can fight this system, the one that tries to deaden our kids, to make them afraid to think. Worse, I'm afraid that eventually they'll get to me, too.

The first time I dropped out of college, I was afraid the system would kill my ideas and make me less human. I didn't want any part of it.

This time, the system is different, but the result will be the same.

I don't want any part of this system, either.

-- Lynn Stratton has taught writing at the University of South Florida for 13 years. She lives in St. Petersburg.

Southern Heritage

This Democratic Underground article accuses anyone involved in the Confederacy of outright treason, and tars current supporters of their Confederate forebears with the same brush. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't quite agree, and it has nothing to do with slavery or state's rights per se, but an understanding of history.

Let me get something out in the open before I go on. My Mother's family is an old Southern one. They've lived in the South since the 1600's. One of my ancestors enlisted in the Continental Army. Several, including my Great-Great Grandfather fought for the Confederacy. Some of the cousins were killed at Cold Harbor. My Great-Great Grandfather was a POW at the Union POW camp at Ship Island, Mississippi. While I disagree with the cause they were fighting for, I am proud that they fought (and honestly after conscription began they had little choice in the matter).

I think slavery was (and is) an abhorrent institution. At best, it was repugnant, at worst, evil. I''m not sure that I accept the argument that the states could leave the Union at anytime. I don't know that that makes the Confederates traitors for trying to leave and start their own country.

I cringe every time I see a redneck with the Stars and Bars on his pickup, because nine times out of ten, he's a racist punk with no understanding of what the real issues were. I'm ambivalent about the flag issue in southern states. My thought is that the flag is part of history, but we shouldn't be keeping it on public buildings. But then, I don't live in South Carolina, so my opinion doesn't matter much.

Today, we would see states trying to leave as traitors and we would be right. That's what the Civil War was about, after all. That's why we say "The United States is", not the "United States are" in a conversation. Above all else, the war decided the supremacy of the Federal Government and the Union.

The argument that COnfederacy made was based on several things. First, they had a Constutional set of arguments. The Constitution has two competing items that were germane to the Civil War and Secession. Whether Secession is alowed is more or less based on these. The first item is the elastic clause, which says that the Congress can make any law the is necessary and proper. The second item is the clause stating that any power not specifically given to the Federal government belongs to th states. Using these two items, it is possible to argue that Congress can enact legislation either allow, or disallowing, states from leaving thw Union. It can also be argued that since breaking the Union is not mentioned in the Constitution, then Secession is a right left to the states.

Obviously, the Southern States felt that they were allowed to leave and the Northern ones felt they weren't.

The other area used to bolster their claim for leaving was the Social Contract theory, espoused by John Locke, which formed the basis of the American Revolution, which took place less that one hundred years before the Civil War. According to Social Contract Theory, governments rule by the consent of the governed, and that is is the responsibility of the governed to replace the government if they feel it is no longer doing an acceptable job. Social Contract Theory held armed rebellion as a resonable option in extreme circumstances, which lead to both the American and French Revolutions.

Knowing this, it is hard to condemn the Confederates out of hand, even if you aren't related to any. After all, without these ideas, we'd still be part of England. This is also the philosophy that has lead generations of Americans to support revolutions in other lands. That is, until recently. Now we call revolutionaries terrorists, along with the criminals that really are terrorists. Buts that's a different argument.

The Final Frontier

Interesting news on the Space Exploration front the past couple of days. The Chinese reiterated their plan to not only have manned space flight capabilites this year, but to have both a space station and Moon mission of their own by 2010. I wish them luck, and I hope they do their Moon mission the right way, not with the "collapsing telephone pole" of the Apollo era. Yes, Apollo got us to the Moon, but we also haven't gone back. If the Chinese are smart, they'll build their space station and use it as a halfway point for their Moon attempts. Not only is it likely to be cheaper,but it leaves them with assets in space.

In a similar vein, Russia is trying to garner support for a multinational mission to Mars. Although, the Russians are interested in working with NASA, NASA's long-term plan doesn't even address Mars missions (or Moon missions) until at least 2012. Somehow, I don't see NASA getting opn board this one, partially due to cultural malaise, partly due to the budget. The cultural issue could be a real challenge to fix, but the basic solution is easy: new blood. NASA needs new engineers and administrators with the vision to push space exploration. Budgetary issues are pretty easy. A good PR campaign that got Americans excited about space would be all it took. Congress would follow pretty quickly.

Finally, the ESA is working on a project for a Moon mission and possible Moon base in the next 10 years. Their plan would ultimately establish a permanent human presence on the surface of the Moon. No American involvment required.

Notice a trend here? The world's only superpower isn't participating in the visionary new age of exploration. Of course, we're barely interested enough in the rest of the world to learn where other nations are, why should it be a surprise that we don't care about the rest of the solar system. It's beginning to look like Robert Heinlein was prophetic when he said that it wouldn't necessarily English speakers who would colonize space.

Ann Coulture - Again

In an all new piece of irresonsible commentary, Ann Coulture says that liberalism and terrorism are next to the same thing. Her logic is a bit tortuous, and is in the same vein as Ari Fleisher's infamous "People better watch what they say," or Dick Cheney's "Dissent helps terrorists".

In a nutshell, Ann's argument is that because "Liberals" (conveniently leaving out libetrarians and Republicans concerned with civil rights) are protest government policies restricting or removing Constitutional protections, and those protections help terrorists hide from the government, then "Liberals" are aiding terrorists.

This argument pre-supposes that either government will in no way abuse its new powers, or that the collateral damage caused by the abuse of those powers is ok as long as we bag a few terrorists. Never mind that we already convict innocent people and throw them in jail. Never mind that it allows the government to toss you in the clink for no reason. Never mind that the government can read all or your email and listen to all of you phone calls. People not doing anything wrong have nothing to worry about.

Tell that the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other targets of the FBI's COINTELPRO shenanigans. Tell that to the victims of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's HUAC. Tell that to the Denver activists who were followed around by the Denver Police Department.

Yeah, we're safe from the government as long as we play be the rules. Sure.

Bombing the Afghans

I've been meaning to address this since it happened, and honestly, I thought we'd apologize for bombing a wedding (of all things). It looks like we won't, though. We should, just as a PR ploy, if nothing else. It would also be the right thing to do.

Here's what happened. A US fighter plane was flyinh over the wedding and saw small arms fire from a building. Thinking he was under attack, the pilot of the plane bombed the building into rubble killing 30 people. An honest mistake, right? Except that when on patrol, or even making bombing runs, US planes fly at 30,000 feet.

So how exactly did this pilot think he was being targeted with those AK-47s and handguns. Nothing that could have even reached the aircraft. If the plane was down at 2,000 feet or so he might have had a legitimate concern.

But we won't apologize for the deaths or injuries because the pilot thought he was under attack. No wonder the US is seen as an arrogant bully and wannabe imperial power. We act like the lives of our citizens and our soldiers are the only ones that matter. This type of behavior is what has lead to almost every attack on US soldiers or civilians since the Marine barracks in Beirut. It is guaranteed that if we continue with our current disregard for the rights of other peoples, we end up with renewed acts of terror against US interests.

It is time to decide whether we are an imperial power or a republic and deal with the consequences of that choice. If we are to be an empire, then we should accept that other nations will resent us and act accordingly. If we are to remain a republic, then we have to accept that other nations are our equals, and seek to address the sources of worldwide resentment of our nation.

I know which option I prefer.

Threats to Liberty

A local TV newscast today called acts of terrorism a "threat to liberty and freedom" at the end of a brief story about the attack at the El Al counter at LAX. At first I was just going to ignore this patent bit of nonsense, but my wife pointed out that this was the sort of half-baked, dangerous thinking that is giving the President and his cronies the leeway they need to push all sorts of new regualtions and guidelines without question.

Terrorists you see really only attack two things: lives and property. By attacking lives and property in surprising and vicious manner, they seek to create change by scaring governments and people into doing what they want. Or, if what they seek is the downfall of a society or political system, the try to scare people into making changes that destroy who they are.

Attacks like the ones on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon can not destroy the United States. New atacks in a similar vein can't destroy the United States. Why? Because we are bigger than any of these things. Just like Palestinian terrorists (or militatnts or freedom fighters) have not destroyed Israel, or forced a withdrawal, al-Qaeda can not do those things to us. Unless we give them the tools to do so.

The real way terrorism hurts the United States is not just in terms of lives or property, though those losses are painful on many levels, but in the changes we adopt in our society. Fear allows scared or opportunistic politicians to push through draconian "security" laws that take away the freedoms that have always made the United States what it is. We are now subject to restrictions on free speech and assembly like never before, with any criticism of the President and his policies being deemed anti-American or unpatriotic. Art galleries and college students receive visits from the FBI investigating "anti-Americanism". Even American citizens can now be detained without representation, hearing, or trial simply because the President deems them dangerous. Non-citizens can be "disappeared" without a trace, in a land that has always extended its COnstitutional protections to all residents both by law and by general consensus. The government can now legally monitor any email, web traffic, or phone conversation they like simply by saying they are investigating "terrorism".

In other words, an extreme act of terror has pushed the land of the free, into the same tactics of the banana republics we have always criticized.

It is time for Americans to reclaim their birthright.

Independence Day

In 1776, after a year of skirmishing with British troops, the representative of the thirteen American Colonies proclaimed their independence from England in a document that expounded on the Rights of Man and set forth their grievances against King George III.

Although there have been set backs over the years, for most of our history we have marched steadily forward. We have abolished slavery, granted women's sufferage, ensured the civil rights of all within our borders, and struck down the Alien and Sedition Acts and Jim Crow laws. We have acknowledged the wrongness of other acts, such as slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, the suspension of habeas corpus during the CIvil War.

Recently, we've seen attacks on our hard-won freedoms. Freedoms that were bought and paid for with the blood of patriots. Freedoms that were guaranteed by the sacfrices of thousands of men and women over the coures of the past 225 years. If the Bush Administraion is allowed to continue its attacks on our basic rights unopposed, their scarifice will be in vain.

Free Speech and Freedom of Assembly are being curtailed. The prohibition of state sponsored religion is under attack. The Fourth Amendment has been gutted thourgh irresponsible legislation and executive order. We have a President who seems to thik that he can govern by imperial fiat.

Perhaps it is time for us all to re-aquaint ourselves with the document that created our nation. A careful read will bring to light some unfortunate similarities between President George W. Bush, and King George III.

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Gettysburg the 2nd Day

On this day in 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg raged. Gettysburg is generally considered to be the beginning of the end for the Confederacy, and some even call it the "turning point" of the war. I personally think that the true turning point came when two Generals who had been successful in the West, were brought to the war in the East. Those Generals were Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. They, along with the Confederacy's Gen. Thomas Longstreet saw how modern weapons had changed war. Their methods, combined with North's advantages in industry and manpower ensured the fall of the Confederacy.

Nonetheless, for a three day period a terrible battle was waged across the hills of Pennsylvania. The outcome of the battle forever changed the course of the development for this country. I would argue for the better, but some people would seem to disargee. They must: the States' Rights battle has crept back into the courts and the Congress. Ultimately the sacrifice of those who died on the battlefield in Pennsylvania could be for nothing. Of course, it isn't likely that we'll see any slavery in the United States, other than wage slavery.

Still, if you accept the claim that States' Rights, not slavery, was the cause of the war, then a lot of Americans will have paid the ultimate price for nothing. That's a really depressing thought. Almost as depressing as the idea of 150,000 American soldiers fighting against each other on the battlefield.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

-- Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania