Sobering thoughts

Peggy Noonan's A Separate Peace is worthy of a slow read and several moments reflection. (FYI: The rest of this post won't make much sense if you haven't read her op-ed.)

I forwarded that article to a buddy of mine for his consideration, and was a bit surprised at his reply - which he agreed to let me post here. (His email was part of an ongoing conversation between us, so some of his points may seem obscure. The relevant points, however, are plain.)

Excellent article. At the risk of sounding corny, I almost well up thinking about the travesty of it all. I've felt and thought more or less the same thing. I think the kids of today will be faced with so many less liberties than we had as kids that our childhood will seem impossible to them.

Part of this is the result of a water torture we've let go for years. Leftist agendas have failed in the public view and therefore were moved to the education system. There, under the guise of "we need to do something about education in this country" the left found and continues to find an endless supply of cash and a system open to their thinking. As these ideas are squeezed into the minds of our youth, they leak ever so slowly out into the media, their close cousin. (As a side note: My new contention is that we need to spend less on education.)

It's interesting when you discuss McCarthy and the "witch hunt" he conducted how that we all agree what he did was wrong yet what he said was largely correct. We're paying the price of communist and leftist influence in the arts now. It's pervasiveness is seen in Hollywood as much as it is in education and the media.

Perhaps we have ourselves to blame. Our own tools of liberty have been wielded skillfully against us. To the extent that we have let them actually become impotent to use them in defense let alone offer an offense. Describe correctly one's need to take responsibility for themselves and you're instantly racist, bigoted, hater, or the like. These are the new capital crimes. Rape, incest, murder, robbery, these are all secondary. For them, you merely go through the system. For the former, public opinion will ruin you to the point that those who would stand beside you are held in check. It's a socio-psychological control mechanism that has worked well in communist nations (to a point). It's mind control in its infancy. We're so numb to it now that it is very much like water torture.

Now what do we do? Boortz has maintained that he intends to die before the worst of it comes. Our children don't know what we're talking about so they don't see the problem. We may be powerless by this point. By the time someone is able to quantify what happened and what is wrong, he will be a "throw-back," or "old-fashioned." He or she won't be taken seriously. The Constitution will be viewed as outdated and unuseful in a "modern society."

The wheels are off the trolley, the trolley is off the track but the bar is open and the music is playing. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

JP

One can study either America's founding or current politics, but not both. Not without sinking into despondency, cynicism and despair. America's best days are well behind us.

Since reading Miss Noonan's editorial last fall, I've found myself more aware of the despondent surrender she describes. My buddy is but one example. Two colleagues of mine, with whom I frequently discuss politics, exhibit Ted Kennedy's and Neil Boortz's familiar attitude: "Well I'll be gone before it all hits the fan anyway."

No longer is politics the art of statecraft, the building of a nation to bequeath to our posterity. Politics has become a way of getting something for ourselves, for our own comfort, in our own lifetimes, the future be damned.

No longer do we labor so that our children will be better off than we - healthier, better-educated, wiser, with more opportunities and fewer worries, better-equipped to pursue virtue and excellence. The bumper-sticker humor "we're spending our children's inheritance" is our philosophical approach to life.

We have Ipods in our ears, music in our cars, television, movie theaters, music in restaurants, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, distractions of every sort. Distractions. But to distract us from what?

One of the most shocking scenes from Huxley's Brave New World is when Lenina refuses to gaze out the window at the seascape, the moon, the clouds. Instead she turns away in horror from the scenery, and turns on the radio. Huxley's dystopia is a world of constant distraction - the "feelies", antidepressants and hallucinogens, artificial "multimedia" stimulation of sights and sounds and smells, the constant flow of empty sexual encounters and orgies.

Overwhelm the senses and dull the mind. Render people incapable of reflecting on life and the world around them. "I have become comfortably numb."

That second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.

Our distractophilia is not mere pastime in which we idle away the hours, but verges instead on obsession. But, when we stop our ears and shut our eyes, what is it that we're trying to ignore? Miss Noonan describes this "cultural subtext":

I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon.

Birds know when a storm is coming. Rats abandon a sinking ship. And we seem to sense something is terribly wrong, even if we can't quite nail it down.

But it seems to me we must either nail it down or get hammered when it hits. (As the nurse, Stella, in Hitchcock's Rear Window put it, "When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go.")

We must begin by acknowledging that something is wrong. Until we face the danger, it's impossible for us to defeat it. We must shatter the groupthink that makes this subject taboo. That seems to have been Miss Noonan's purpose, and it is my purpose in posting my friend's recognition of this problem, and my own. Until we realize there just might be enough of us to fight it, we will go gently into that good night.

I have no children to whom to bequeath the nation. So it would be easy to simply get all I can while I'm here and leave the next generation to clean up the mess. That would be self-centered, unloving, irreponsible and dishonorable. There's plenty of that attitude around, and so I could fit right into the hedonist culture. But I spent the first half of my life pursuing my own selfish interests. Doesn't maturity at some point demand we look beyond ourselves?

Why Johnny's teacher can't read

Take a few minutes and look at this data!

I was directed to that chart during a discussion of America's education problem, and it served to confirm the anecdotal evidence I'd heard regarding our low standards for teachers. (FYI, the chart lists only select majors - the selection intended to support the author's answer to the question, why study philosophy?) Now I'm no statistician, but I think we can safely draw a few conclusions from the data.

What immediately struck me was that students who majored in education and politics - arguably the two most important factors of responsible citizenship - scored so far below average. We can't conclude, from this data alone, that we're graduating teachers and politicians poorly prepared for their jobs. But we can conclude that they're being outperformed by students in other fields.

Another oddity is the wide gap between philisophy and politics majors. America's founders were avid students of philosophy, and bequeathed to us a government forged from the best ideas available at that time. If we have so divorced politics from philosophy as to create the drastic disparity this data reveals, we shouldn't be surprised at the naive and simpleminded political theories proposed and implemented by our public officials.

A democratic responsibility

Recently I (finally) began the daunting task of reading Homer's Iliad. What a fascinating tale! I'm barely into Book 3, so since it's going to take quite some time to get through it, I've begun to think of it like watching the popular TV show "Lost": an ongoing story presented in episodes one can enjoy without being in a rush to get to the end.

My brother lent me a book a couple of years ago called Achilles in Vietnam, in which the author draws parallels between Agamemnon's abuse of the warrior's code of honor in his mistreatment of Achilles, and the abuses of our modern-day military code during the Vietnam War and their effects on our soldiers who fought that war. That book has stood on my shelf with a bookmark at chapter two for a good while, but today I recalled a point the author made in chapter one:

Time and again (Vietnam veterans) were assailed as "losers" by World War II veterans. The pain and rage at being blamed for defeat in Vietnam was beyond bearing and resulted in many brawls.

These feelings reflect not only outrage at the heartless wrong-headedness of such remarks but also a concept of victory in war that left Vietnam veterans bewildered.

I quoted yesterday Robert Post's view that "collective self-governance...requires that citizens come to accept their own 'authorship' of state actions and choices". And it seems to me that we as citizens and as a nation failed to do that with regard to the Vietnam War. Regardless of our views of the war, it was our war, and we should have accepted authorship of it.

That's not to say we ought to have agreed with it. (A discussion of the war's merits is beyond our scope here.) But inasmuch as we the people comprise a nation, we engaged the war. We are a body, a unit, a nation. And we empowered our military to make war in Vietnam.

Refusal to own up to that fact freed us (so we thought) to castigate soldiers who were merely following our orders. They discharged their duties, performing valiantly as we expect our warriors to do, and deserve honor conferred upon them by their peers and the nation. If we as a nation chose to surrender the field to our foes, we owe our soldiers an explanation, not an assault on their honor. Perhaps we even owe them an apology for denying them the glory of the victory that was within their reach. We unquestionably owe them thanks for answering the call of duty at our behest.

The wars we engage are our wars, and we must own them. This is collective self-governance. This is what it means to be citizen in a democracy.

The father of his country

Much has been written in praise of George Washington, and much more will be. The reverence and respect in which we hold our nation's first president is, I think, unequalled among America's historical figures.

Washington was not a god, of course, but merely a man. And it is in this regard that he stands head and shoulders above so many who have served this nation publicly. As mere men, our limitations and weaknesses are - or ought to be - most obvious to ourselves, and a fitting humility allows us to proceed properly and wisely with our lives, our families, our jobs. And beyond that, such a humility also allows others to develop a respect for us that is appropriate and a trust in us that is reasonable. This Washington did.

Rather than ranting about the obliteration from our calendars - and our hearts - of Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, I decided to re-read Washington's Farewell Address to the nation, given on the occasion of having served two terms as their President and declining to serve a third.

It is a beautiful speech, by any measure. But apart from his expressions of humility, what struck me at this reading was Washington's overwhelming concern for the success and endurance of the nation he had helped establish. He had staked so much - and for so long - on this project. (The Revolutionary War broke out while he was in his early 40s; he retired from the presidency at 65 and died only two years later.) His parting words to the nation were filled with concern for the preservation of that for which he had labored and sacrificed, his desire

that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.

We owe a debt of gratitude to George Washington for all that he gave for the founding and preservation of this nation. Would that God bless America with more leaders and patriots like him.

Where's Dr. Kevorkian

...when you need him?

From this story:

The execution of a convicted killer was postponed early Tuesday after two anesthesiologists refused for ethical reasons to take part

Dissenting from Scalia

It's never reassuring to find oneself in disagreement with Justice Antonin Scalia.

I'd pay good money to rent the house next door to him during the Court's summer breaks. Wouldn't it be a grand opportunity to learn at the feet of one of America's wisest and wittiest jurists? If I had to choose among Justice Scalia, Senator Patrick Moynihan and Bobby Fischer...Hmmm.

But alas, instead of taking on Fischer's onslaught mano a mano, I settle for computer simulations of his play style. Likewise, I can confront Scalia's challenging arguments only as presented in his Court writings. In both cases, even if I lose I still win, so long as my mistakes are exposed for me to learn from.

From his dissent in Hill v. Colorado, a case in which the Court upheld a state law mandating an eight-foot "no protest" zone around abortuaries, Scalia writes:

"Uninhibited, robust, and wide open" debate is replaced by the power of the State to protect an unheard-of "right to be left alone" on the public streets.

If you've read my earlier posts on the aim of freedom of speech and one appropriate restriction thereof, it should be immediately apparent that I disagree with Scalia here. I'm no fan of baby-butchery, mind you. (I fancy myself too sane for such savagery.) But I cannot reconcile my understanding of the founders' First Amendment aim with what I'm reading here from Scalia, who himself referred to, in McConnell v. FEC, "the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government."

Nor do I find it easy to understand his vote to invalidate the federal prohibition of flag-burning in U.S. v. Eichman. The only mitigating factor in this instance is that he perceived the law "was aimed directly and unconstitutionally at suppressing a manner of communicating opposition to the U.S. government and its policies." (From Kevin Ring's Scalia Dissents.)

But the burning of the American flag presents no argument whatsoever. Instead it appeals directly to emotion rather than reason. (More on that insidious tactic in a future post.) In my (admittedly idealized) view of the First Amendment's aim, the absence of argument means that flag-burning warrants no protection under the First Amendment. For how can anyone engage a reasoned debate when the "proposition" is expressed in an action or image rather than words??

"But we have the right to protest!" you reply. If we do - and yes, I believe we do - that right arises not from the First Amendment's protection of speech but of assembly. The speech in which we engage during our protests is protected, of course. But where is to be found the supposed protection of our action? (Or what would we think if Scalia, rather than penning an intelligible dissent, simply burned a copy of the Court's opinion on the steps of the Supreme Court building?)

As for me, I support the prohibition of flag-burning - not on the grounds of suppressing dissent, but because it is an insult to this nation. I support the removal of protest-tshirt-wearing Cindy Sheehan from the State of the Union Address assembly for the same reason.

Our dissenting views concerning our elected and appointed officials and their policies ought to be stated and debated. But when we express our dissent by abandoning the proper respect for our nation and its governing offices....

Robert Post wrote:

Democratic states...embody the value of collective self-governance, which requires that citizens come to accept their own "authorship" of state actions and choices, or at least of the deliberative procedures through which the state reaches its decisions.
...
Democratic states remain democratic in part because each individual citizen is offered the opportunity to persuade others to alter those decisions that (he) may find objectionable.

When we abandon confidence in our form of government, we've begun the downhill slide toward our nation's dismantling. The offices and processes established by the Constitution constitute this nation. And insofar as our disrespect for the offices, processes, symbols and occasions which comprise our form of government destroys our confidence in and "authorship" of it, such disrespect contributes to America's ruin.

The sensitivity police

Here's an oldie but goodie: This doctor warns an obese woman about her weight, giving her the standard lecture about health and lifestyle problems. After having her feelings hurt, the fat lady sings to the medical board, who recommends sensitivity training for the heartless doctor.

In a discussion of this travesty, I commented:

This doctor obviously needs some training in how to appreciate the diversity this fatso provides in our society. The death, disease and destruction wrought by high-risk behaviors doesn't hold a candle to the benefits provided by diversity.

to which someone replied:

You must be the local resident school yard bully! The last time I heard the name-calling "fatso"--- it was between a couple of 2nd graders who needed to be spanked.

Assumptions about people of size are often wrong and even mean-spirited (why they have a weight problem in the first place, they must be lazy, stupid, unmotivated, etc.) Usually none of which are true.

What this woman reported is the type of abuse large people in our society encounter everyday.

("People of size"?? That still gives me a good belly laugh!)

Okay, call me "schoolyard bully" if you must. But what you're missing is that society is made up of and self-governed by mutually-enforced mores. It's not about picking on those who are different. ("People of size", indeed!) It's about establishing community, commonality, and uniform standards of behavior.

Are there dangers inherent in this pressure to conform? Certainly. Are there benefits? Undoubtedly. Those who rebel against a tenet of the community code pay a price for it. If you're going to do so, it's best to make sure you have good cause. Galileo and Martin Luther had good cause. The kid who wears a steel pin through his eyebrow doesn't. How about the fat chick?

Maggie Gallagher gets it

Okay, actually I'm the last one to "get it". Or close to the last, at any rate. Read her encouraging commentary, Is nothing sacred?

"Frustrated and appalled legislators in five states are seeking to ban protests at funerals."

My thoughts exactly. Why shouldn't this nonsense be banned? If you've got something to say about the war, say it; nobody's stopping you. But our Constitution's protection of your speech doesn't entitle you to disrupt any and every solemn assembly to do so.

If you feel that prevents your message from having maximum impact, well, welcome to the civilized world. There are a few lust-driven sodomites who'd like to besiege churches every Sunday, demanding little kids be delivered to them to satiate their perverse appetites. Sorry, but the First Amendment grants no protection of such wickedness. Go take a cold shower and check the status of your AIDS-drug-testing application. But I digress.

"Sounds reasonable to me. I don't think such a law would be inconsistent with democratic freedom, any more than I believe the First Amendment really does require us to permit flag burning... It is perfectly possible to protect sacred symbols or sacred moments in ways that do not violate core principles of free speech necessary to robust, democratic life." (Ibid.)

There must be some reasonable jurisprudence which offers an acceptable compromise here. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' "clear and present danger" test may have been appropriate for his day, when society en masse would have frowned on such contempt with censorious force. (Or a few burly men would've told these cowards to shut their foul mouths or risk a post-funeral whipping.)

Enough of this "my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins" bunk. Freedom of speech has limits, just as Justice Holmes observed. And as Cindy Sheehan found out, decorum sometimes trumps free speech, and often is enacted into law. These folks who discover, to their chagrin, that most people aren't interested in what they have to say are ever seeking ways to intrude upon others in order to compel attention to their message.

Speak your peace; we have no problem with that. The First Amendment guarantees you that freedom - regardless of content. But don't make the mistake of thinking it guarantees you an audience.

Freedom of...what?

In these rights-infested times, some clarity regarding the purpose of our freedoms is needed. (At least I need some of this clarity.)

I recently discussed some ideas which I'm sure aren't original with me, but which finally found some purchase in this dull gray matter I call my brain. (I suspect that an original thought has never sprouted inside my cranium. Rather, as science once "proved" that maggots originate from rancid meat, I merely fail to recall who planted the idea.) As one of my purposes in this blog is to organize my thoughts in writing, I want to collect and clarify what I posted in that discussion, namely the purposes of America's guarantees of freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

The discussion began by addressing the recent ridicule of Islam which began with caricatures of Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper. I defended such ridicule by noting that Islam is a false religion, and that Elijah had similarly ridiculed the idolatrous Baalists of his day. Demonstrating its falsehood is no overwhelming task, as I noted:

We just have to be familiar enough with the Bible to know that Jesus said, "No man comes to the Father but by Me." And yep, you guessed it, that "Me" excludes Mohammed, Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard and all other false messiahs and prophets.

If all freedom of religion does is allow everybody to practice whatever religion he chooses, it accomplishes very little of value. Rather, freedom of religion allows disciples of Christ to follow "the Way, the Truth and the Life" unmolested. To desire for others the opportunity to follow Islam or Buddhism or Wicca or Scientology is not benevolence. It is, rather, to wish upon them the swift condemnation of a jealous God when they stand before Him someday.

Does this mean I'm advocating abolishing the "free exercise" clause and establishing a state religion? Hardly. America recognizes what most Americans recognized at her founding: that Christianity is true, but that if those of us who choose to follow Christ are to have the freedom to do so unmolested, each of us must be provided the opportunity to discover that truth and make his own decision of what to do about it.

Similarly, regarding freedom of speech:

I won't defend to the death your right to stand in the park and chant, "I like peanut butter and jelly!" What good does that speech do? Maybe it helps you feel better, and I suppose that's worth something. But it's hardly worthy of inclusion in such a noble concept as discourse aimed at the discovery of truth, is it?

Nonsense is included in "freedom of speech" merely because all speech must be protected from censorship if useful discourse is to go unmolested. (Otherwise we would have some speech-judge determining what is useful and what is not. And wisdom and impartiality in speech-judges isn't exactly something we count on.)

So just as freedom of religion protects false religions in order to protect Christianity, freedom of speech protects nonsensical gibberish in order to protect beneficial discourse. But the protection of gibberish cannot elevate it to an equality with reasonable discourse, any more than the protection of Scientology can elevate it to equality with Christianity. Nor do either of these protections logically require respect for and/or acceptance of pointless speech and bunk religions.

I've pursued these ideas after looking more deeply into the founding of this nation, particularly from the perspective of individual and national virtue, and have begun (finally!) to understand what is rarely - if ever - taught in the classroom: that the goal of America's founding was to build a nation that would promote the betterment of men and of mankind.

The founders were highly educated men, and had given serious study to political theory. They saw the value of freedom of thought, and so ensured Americans the opportunity to pursue excellence via religion and discourse. They saw in themselves and in one another Americans struggling toward these high and noble goals, and I don't think they even contemplated our later wholesale abandonment of this pursuit. As John Adams wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." It is, in fact, impossible to construct a government which can compel virtue and excellence in its citizens. The founders instead settled for one which would permit such a pursuit, and which would, in permitting, encourage it.

Thomas Paine wrote, "Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices." But the mainest vice restrained by America's foundational document is the abuse of power. The founders believed, it seems, that once power has been restrained, men will naturally pursue virtue, excellence, continual improvement of themselves and their society.

This is not to say "all men". They left us free, of course, to legislate as necessary to maintain law and order, not at all anticipating that the liberty they bequeathed to us would be perverted into license of all things regardless of their detriment, let alone provide the basis for demanding tolerance and respect for such uselessness and wickedness.

No, I see no reason to think the First Amendment's protections of religion and speech were established to safeguard false religions and verbal gibberish. That they are protected is merely incidental to the safeguarding of Christianity and productive discourse, as both of these are necessary to that pursuit of "happiness" to which Plato referred: virtuous character.

Irony and other important vitamins and minerals

Have I praised Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death yet?

Postman retells a fable in which an inventive god comes to present his clever inventions before the king. The god introduces and describes his inventions one by one, and the king, in turn, replies with approval or criticism. When the god introduces the incredible invention of writing, one would expect resounding applause from the king. (After all, where would we be without writing?)

Instead, the king criticizes this invention on the grounds that it is a substitute for knowledge. "How can that be?" you ask. Here's his point: If you no longer have to remember something, if you no longer have to keep it in your mind, you're free to forget it. The oral tradition by which knowledge was passed from generation to generation before writing was commonplace required knowledge to be always retained in the mind lest it be forgotten. And of course knowledge is useful only when it is present in the mind.

We live in what is commonly referred to as "the information age". I love it, because I can gather facts more quickly and easily than I ever could as a child growing up 30 miles from the nearest library, and also because so much knowledge is freely published on the internet.

As much as the rise of Fox News has contributed to balanced news coverage, their radio-news intro is dangerously misleading. "Information is power," they claim. Not so. Knowledge is power. Without digressing into a discussion of semantics, allow a simple explanation to suffice: Knowledge is information made useful.

72 - 3.5 = 68.5

That's information. You can find that information by punching a few buttons on a calculator. A carpenter makes use of that information when determining what length to cut a board so it'll fit properly.

President Lincoln suspended habeus corpus laws during the Civil War. "Yeah? So? What's your point?" That information is useful in understanding civil rights during wartime as opposed to peacetime.

Lone facts are useful only in Trivial Pursuit. (They're called "trivia" for a reason.) We consider some facts to be important, sure. Their importance is not ontological, however; it derives, rather, from the use we make of them.

"But we all know scads of isolated facts and trivia, don't we?" Indeed we do - and that ought to tell us something: If we're not making use of all this information, we're limiting our knowledge. We need to be doing something with it, not merely storing it in our brains, as one might write it in a book to be placed on a shelf and consulted only to settle after-dinner disputes.

And so now we've come round to books again, and finally to what prompted me to write this post. My copy of Postman's book has not arrived yet. I had initially checked it out from the local library before deciding to purchase it. But I tend to read like my father: with a highlighter pencil in hand - something I can't do with library books. And good books belong in one's personal library, since it takes time to transfer the knowledge from a book to one's mind. I'm not talking about transferring facts and information; those can be easily retrieved when needed, just as a calculator can tell you "It's 68.5" anytime you need. I'm talking about the knowledge found in an incisive book.

I've had Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind on my shelf for some three years, bookmarked where I left off just beyond his introduction. I recently restarted it, and found I still can't get beyond the introduction! It contains a wealth of knowledge on politics, society, culture and education, and I want that knowledge in my mind, not just on my bookshelf.

I've been trying to remember the names of the god and the king in that ancient fable Postman retells. But just as the king criticizes writing for being a substitute for memory and knowledge, I find myself anxious for the arrival of the book because I can't remember. Ironic, isn't it?

Neil Postman was an optimist

Postman suggested, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, that we'd all read Orwell's 1984 but ignored Huxley's Brave New World. (That's my paraphrase summary anyway.) As I noted in a previous post, we find ourselves in a hybrid dystopia. I call, as my next witness, the Verichip(TM), or, more generically, the RFID (radio frequency identification) V-chip.

This nifty little doodad is a personal identification "chip" planted subcutaneously, usually in the upper arm, which, when queried by a certain radio signal, replies with an ID code unique to the owner. Think of it as a miniature ID card like the one you swipe to get into a secure office building, only you never have to worry about losing it because it's permanently placed under your skin.

Brianstorming uses of this technology could occupy hours - and interesting ones at that: Banking. Shopping. Keeping track of perverts and other criminals out on parole. Voter identification. Storing vital medical information. Locating lost or kidnapped children, or senile old folks prone to wandering off, or absent-minded professors who forgot where they live.

Now let me do a preemptive strike against those who cry, "It's the mark of the beast, that's what it is!" I don't understand John's prophecy in Revelation as well as I'd like, but I do know this much: You can't get more than a couple dozen words into that book before finding out it deals with events that happened quite a few centuries ago. (Don't believe me? Try it.)

Okay, so it's not the mark of the beast. Back to Neil Postman again, for some good advice. In a speech he gave titled Informing Ourselves to Death, he advises us to look beyond the techno-marketers - whom we suspect are giving us only the upside - and find the downside. Every technology, he explains, involves tradeoffs.

Although V-chip technology has been around a few years, it's rather new to me, so I haven't plumbed the depths of its downside. The privacy concern, however, springs to mind immediately. I don't particularly relish the idea of having my every movement tracked, my shopping habits analyzed, etc. No, I haven't bought into that hooey about constitutionally-protected privacy rights. That nonsense is founded upon a logical fallacy. But there are areas of our lives most of us would agree ought to remain private; and we're perfectly free to legislate accordingly. After all, we would frown upon a police officer following someone around 24/7 without very good reason, yes? With the V-chip and a few thousand super-cooled database servers, we'll each have our own personal black-and-white-with-a-cherry-on-top shadowing us by day and night. (Hiya, Mr. Orwell. Long time no see.)

Not to be outdone by the surveillance society, the consumerists will find a way to make a buck off this technology as well. Using their databases and some uber-cool algorithms... can you say "targetted advertising"? Toll roads already make use of similar chips via readers embedded in the pavement. You drive over the reader, and it scans your vehicle for a pre-paid or billable chip. Combine the V-chip ID with such readers, and throw in dynamic billboards and, well, you see where that's going. (Hello again, Mr. Huxley.)

So you're driving to work and the billboard advertises a special on 15,000-mile service for that Beamer you bought a year ago. (Yes, they know.) That's fine. But suppose you're still driving that 1989 Camry, frugal fellow that you are, and every other billboard is another car commercial urging you to upgrade? Or suppose, since they have your medical records as well, your morning drive becomes a gauntlet of ads for adult diapers, hemorrhoid ointments, erectile-dysfunction treatments, hair-growth goop, diet pills.... It's Gmail gone terribly, terribly wrong.

And what of some of the most promising benefits? Tracking kidnapped kids, for instance? Well I'm no child-molester, but if I were, the first thing I'd do when I snatched one would be to grab a scalpel and start digging in an arm! Or maybe a few zaps with a stun-gun would disable the thing, I dunno. Ditto for V-chip-tracking of parolees or sex offenders. (You don't have to be clever to figure this stuff out; Hollywood will do it for you. Just watch Minority Report again.)

And to really blow the V-chip out of the realm of the reasonable, people are already claiming to have hacked and cloned it! (Can you say "identity theft"?) The best part of that article was the final paragraph:

"Oh, and lest anyone get overly worried about drive-by Verichip identity theft: that is probably not a big deal. Their biggest security feature is the absurdly short read range, which is restricted by the tiny antenna. As long as the user stays at least a foot away from any unsecured person or thing, there is very little risk."

So in other words, as long as you don't sit next to anybody on a bus or subway or airplane or in a movie theater, don't stand in line at the post office or supermarket, don't eat at crowded restaurants, don't spend the night with anybody you don't know well, etc., you're probably safe. I feel better already.

Technology is neither good nor bad, of course. But too often when we discover a new technology like this, only two words come to mind: Ch. Ching. In a world where technophiles and marketers are stomping hard on the gas pedal, somebody needs to be tapping the brakes a bit, lest we outdrive our headlights.

Carl who?

Recently our local university rag ran a headline that read, "Famous Reporter to Give Lecture". Yeah, I was thinking the same thing you are: If you have to bill him as a "famous reporter", he must not be that famous.

So I read further and discovered it was none other than Carl Bernstein. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing you are: Why in the world would you need to bill Carl Bernstein as a "famous repoter"??

Okay, so the U is full of mush-brained kids aged 18-25. None of 'em got left behind - thanks to bloated school bureaucracies and insidious teacher's unions - because the standard has been lowered to prevent such tragedies. Yet it's still shocking that they don't recognize Bernstein's name.

Well I was discussing this with a colleague via argumentum smokebreakum and remarked, in an incredulous tone, "It's like not knowing who Edward R. Murrow is," to which she replied, "Uh, who's that?" (Insert comic strip drawing of me, eyes wide and mouth agape, with exclamation marks above my head.) Seriously, she had to ask another colleague after I refused to tell her.

It's easy - and tempting - to despise the Murrows, Bernsteins, Cronkites of the world for allowing their anti-American politics to influence the reporting of important news. But one thing they recognize: It's important news! Americans need to be informed, but we'd rather be entertained. And unless journalists (this was Bernstein's lecture focus) hold the line against info-tainment, they will have failed the nation a great responsibility.

I saw a newsbite some months ago (on Free Republic probably) about Walter Cronkite's statement that the press is failing its job of informing Americans for democracy. My first reaction was to chuckle and think, "Yeah, you old birds still think you can run this country from behind your news desks, dontcha? Well we're wise to you now, buddy!" But I read more of his remarks and understood he was trying to tell us the same thing Bernstein was: An uninformed electorate is ripe for tyranny.

Look, we may disagree on matters of politics, you and I. Or we may disagree with Bernstein, et al. But if we disagree, we can dispute, argue, debate and fight about it. Why? Because our republic guarantees us that freedom - for now. If we lose that protection to a tyrannical federal government, it won't matter a hill o'beans whether we agree or disagree.

We've already lost the titles to our property, thanks to a supra-constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court and a do-nothing Congress that offers us half-measure sedatives. We've lost the freedom to publicly criticize our elected representatives at the time it's most needed - election time - thanks to Senators McCain and Feingold, a power-hungry Congress, an admittedly-abdicating President, and a complicit Court.

And where's the outcry among the citizenry? Where's the daily pounding on the news desk? Where are the special reports on the dire straits in which our government has plunged the nation? Where's the press informing us of this scandalous Constitution-shredding and its dreadful impact?

"Do you honestly think anybody would tune in? It's the ratings, stupid!"

Look, the press can ride any partisan hobby-horse until its legs fall off when they want to, yes? And Bernstein's & Cronkite's politics aside, their point remains: An uninformed electorate is ripe for tyranny. And fascist tyranny is what Washington is selling.

Television sedates Americans like soma, while the government silences us and takes our property at the point of a gun. Aldous Huxley, meet George Orwell.

In The Face of Evil

I just received an email informing me that the Ronald Reagan documentary, In the Face of Evil: Reagan's War in Word and Deed, is going to be aired next Monday, Feb. 20. (Nevermind that "President's Day" is another stab at excellence in this death-by-a-thousand-cuts execution. That's a subject I'll save for George Washington's Birthday.)

Based on Peter Schweizer's biography, Reagan's War, this is an excellent documentary, providing both general and specific historical backdrop to Reagan's war against communism. You can view the trailer as well as purchase the DVD at the website above. But be advised: I just tried a couple of their links and was informed their website was overloaded. (Someone with a larger audience than I must've put the word out already.)

The documentary runs close to two hours, so those of you with TV-induced ADD might want to watch "Depraved Housewives" or something else appropriate for your maturity level. You probably won't get it anyway. For the rest of you who still retain control over your brains, it'll be aired at 10:00pm EST on TBN. If you're unable to watch it, tape it, or Tivo it, and are (A) a friend or acquaintance of mine and (B) destitute or just plain stingy, I'll buy you a copy. It won't be the first copy I've given away. It's just that important. (Besides, the DVD contains a half-dozen of Reagan's speeches in their entirety, which alone are worth the price of admission.)

Where's the discourse?

(Or, You're not on politics again, are you?!)

Alexis de Tocqueville (What a great name!) observed that Americans love to talk politics - everybody! everywhere! all the time! Neil Postman, in his execllent analysis of television's impact on political discourse, pondered the "dumbing down" of this discourse into what I like to call argumentum soundbitum. Sound painful? It should!

Read Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business and draw your own conclusion from his arguments. I'll address one of them, and add my own partial-rebuttal.

The famed Lincoln-Douglas debates were lengthy affairs. An earlier debate between these two opponents went like this: Douglas spoke for three hours. Lincoln, noting the time, suggested the audience recess for their dinners before returning to attend to his four hour rebuttal, which would be followed by Douglas' hour-long rejoinder. This is an eight-hour debate, folks!

After your jaw returns to its normal position, ask yourself how long you would sit through a political debate before (yeah) changing the channel. Then ask yourself why. Surely political matters are important to you, right? You're an American, after all, charged with the awesome responsibility of contributing to the governance of this great nation.

Sure, we still talk politics, and that's a good thing. But I would posit that such chatting does not constitute discourse. Discourse is involved discussion. It's not something that lasts only until the next commercial break. It's not made up of soundbites and "elevator speeches". And it certainly doeesn't begin and end with a preference poll.

Lest I grow wordy in elaborating the point, I'll leave it to you to fill in the blanks (laziness, partisan bias, etc.) of contributing factors in our present discourse dearth, and will move instead to a partial-rebuttal of this otherwise-wholesale condemnation.

Many of you are politically-informed in spite of our ADD-inspired (and -inducing) culture. You read and digest op-ed pieces, the modern-day equivalent to 15-minute single-issue stump speeches. You devour books on opposing sides of issues, the closest thing to a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate we'll ever see in our lifetimes. You're more interested in and more prepared for serious, non-partisan, thorough discussion of political and social matters confronting America than the fellow who gives his "opinion" to a pollster only to have it regurgitated back to him in tomorrow's USA Today as though it were news that somehow impacts his life.

Digesting ideas takes time. Prematurely acting on ideas is as foolish and harmful as exercising too soon after eating. Similarly, discourse takes time. Argumentum soundbitum just won't cut it. And even argumentum smokebreakum fails to satisfy. Those of you with whom I've had the pleasure of "closing down Starbucks" know how much I enjoy good conversation, whether for 30 minutes or 5 hours. And although Starbucks may have gone PC and $4 for a cup o'java now strikes us as exquisitely insane, the need for reasoned discourse and deliberative discussion has only grown more apparent.

Ten syllables (or so) about King Lear

I cannot recommend King Lear highly enough. Even in this abridged version you'll find it a striking - even heart-rending - story of foolish vanity, black-hearted betrayal, loving forgiveness, and incomparable loyalty. (Get it on DVD. My VHS version began to squeak after about the 28th viewing.)

It's all Dan Rather's fault

That's right, I probably wouldn't be here if not for "the most trusted man in America" trying to scam the electorate. Watching bloggers assemble - "live!" - the evidence that finally exposed the memogate scandal piqued my interest; and I've followed and contributed comments to a short list of blogs ever since.

My experience had been primarily with fast-moving, multi-posting, multi-contributor blogs. (World Magazine's blog is a sometime favorite.) You know, the ones where you have to talk fast, because the thread will be dead in a day or two, three at the most?

Recently, however, a friend engaged me in a lengthy (by blog standards anyway) email discussion on oil profits, and we wound up moving to his blog, Javelinux, instead, where I discovered that the blog is as good a forum for ponderous debate as its participants make it. And since Jav doesn't post on everything I want to discuss, (nor does worldmagblog, for that matter,) I've decided to take a flying leap from the peanut gallery to the stage itself - and try for a graceful landing. Let's see what the judges have to say....