ARCHIVE OF WORKING OPINIONS

2000

BUSH II PROVOKES A NIGHTMARISH SCENARIO (17 December 2000)

THE MOMENT FOR STATESMANSHIP IS NOW (4 December 2000)

THE SAVING GRACE OF TELEBLATHERERS (19 November 2000)

WHAT I HOPE THE NEW PRESIDENT WILL DO (5 November 2000)

BUSH & GORE SHOULD DEBATE FRINGE CANDIDATES--SEPARATELY (23 Sep 2000)

"W." AND AL CREATE CARTOON WORLDS (24 August 2000)

BEGINNING AND ENDING IN THE KOREAS (19 June 2000)

CUBA: A LAST CHANCE FOR CLINTON? (1 April 2000)

GLOBALIZATION: BRAVE NEW FUTURE? OR BAD OLD IMPERIALISM? (19 February 2000)

THE WEB: BANE OR BOON TO EDUCATION? (29 January 2000)

CONSERVATISM LITE DEPLORED (1 January 2000)

 

WORKING OPINIONS 2002

WORKING OPINIONS 2001

WORKING OPINIONS 1999

 

 

4 March 2001; last updated 7 May 2003 Copyright © 2001 Richard P. Richter

 

 

 

 

bush ii

BUSH II PROVOKES A NIGHTMARISH SCENARIO

(17 December 2000)

A friend sent me a blind copy of the following letter she wrote to President-elect George W. Bush. She has an extremist tendency, but, hey, who knows where "W." may be preparing to lead us?

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Bush:

In his patriotic, statesmanlike concession speech, which you and Mr. Cheney and your brother Jeb and many other Republicans generously praised, Al Gore urged us all to give you our support. So, out of respect for Mr. Gore, I'm writing to wish you well.

I watched the Clinton's farewell open house at the White House on TV just before writing this. I couldn't help remembering Bill Clinton's painful beginning. When he blundered into the issue of gays in the military and created a sensation, I imagine he also was groping around the White House trying to find which room was which. You won't have that problem, of course, since you had plenty of time during your dad's years in office to scope it out.

You ran as an "outsider," but I hope you knew we all knew you were an insider's insider all along. The "outsider vs. insider" distinction was one of the many cartoonlike non-issues that entertained the public without mattering much to your campaign or Mr. Gore's. I'm sure Veep Cheney and other veteran insiders of your dad's administration will deftly put the ropes in your hands and keep you from making amateurish policy errors in your first days. A good thing too.

Before the election, my friend Dick wrote an open letter to whichever one of you was destined to take over the White House. Like me, he expected in that innocent moment--when we had never even heard of a chad--that one of you would win a clear mandate. I hoped that either you or Mr. Gore would acquire the political leverage to put together an agenda along the lines Dick suggested.

I'm afraid the month-long tug of war in Florida makes everything different. The virtual tie has made me trim my hopes for your administration. Well, worse than that--I've been worrying that the Bush II administration is going to be a downright disaster. Honoring Mr. Gore's call for us to close ranks, I don't wish failure on you, please understand. Still, I haven't yet shaken the doom-and-gloom funk that overwhelmed me after seeing him and then you that night after the US Supreme Court gave you the nod.

Maybe the best way for me to honor your entrance into the White House is just to put my worst-case nightmare on the line. I'll give you a glimpse here of what's been disturbing my sleep. If you see it now, you might be able to think of a way to avoid it. It seems to be set about six months or a year into your administration. Let me know if I can help:

Tom DeLay overcomes the common sense of Dennis Hastert and your party succeeds in passing a tax cut in the trillions, as you proposed. The national debt soars partly because of the tax cut and partly because the former Secretary of Defense, now your Veep, and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, now your Secretary of State, have come up with a reason for quintupling the military budget. Chad (that's the country in Africa) has been discovered to be a secret ally of China, which your administration has elected as the successor to the Soviet Union as our global nemesis. You have authorized pulverizing strikes on Chad if the rascals so much as blink. The CIA is working on the link between Chad and Iraq, and you'll bomb Iraq as soon as they show you a little evidence. You figure you can settle dad's old score with Saddam for good while doing the larger work of the nation. You've had to tell the United Nations to bug off and make do without financial support from us....Now that the fat budget surplus has turned out to be just a campaign cartoon, lacking substance, it would not be prudent for you to do anything about reforming Social Security, health care, or to fund solutions to mental health or other social problems. Your vision of educational reform, especially among the most needy, has gone on hold--we have no money to support it and your right-wing friends don't want to hear about it anyway....The tight financial situation, however, does not prevent you from drawing on your Texas experience to build more federal prisons. That, combined with defense contracts, is helping sustain the otherwise-moribund economy. The state-of-the-art prisons are obviously needed as law and order in urban poor areas worsens and as suburbs lose their safety net under the pressure of increasing white collar economic distress. Violence and drug abuse in white neighborhoods beyond the central cities have reached epidemic levels. You counsel the people to exercise their Constitutional right and get a gun to defend themselves, as any red-blooded American citizen should....You inspire more state governors--even a Democrat or two--across the nation to push the death penalty vigorously as a deterrent to the increasing unrest in the underclass and among the middle class....The underprivileged simply have been blind so far to the compassion wrapped in your new conservatism; you are coming to think it will take much more time to show them how kind and gentle it really is....You reached across the aisle when you first arrived in the White House, but Mr. DeLay and his wing quickly grabbed your wrist and educated you in the ways of Washington. Now the standoff between your half and the other half of the legislature is keeping CNN ratings high but yielding precious little for the good of the nation. The news coverage is fomenting further discontent....Through Executive Orders, you have been able to reclaim for corporate development much of the federal land that Bill Clinton tried to take out of production on the grounds that we should preserve the environment....You are poised to select the right judges for the Supreme Court as soon as Stevens and whoever retire. You have broadly hinted that the reversal of Roe v. Wade is just around the corner. The coalition of pro-choice forces is raising hell in Hollywood and the media. They make you chuckle, though. They may have the power of the airwaves but you have the power of appointment....

Well--you get the idea. When I shake off this nightmarish picture, I try to see the good side. We'll be fortunate, I think, to see church attendance in mid-America going up, thanks to the example that you and Laura will set. I tell myself that many will feel that your self-deprecating manner and fraternal style will help restore dignity and honor to the office. And the common people will undoubtedly feel you are connecting when you speak your unpretentious syllables.

Again, sir, you have my good wishes. Any assurances that you can send along to allay my nightmarish fears will be gratefully received. If I can be of help in any other way, please let me know.

God bless America.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Ever the optimist (hysterical though she may sometimes become), my friend is waiting patiently to hear from the President-elect. She knows he's on a crowded schedule, what with the delay in deciding the election outcome. She's heard he's a good listener. She thinks perhaps he'll pay attention to her letter, even if he doesn't acknowledge it. Lots of luck, I've told her.

 

 

 

statesmanship

THE MOMENT FOR STATESMANSHIP IS NOW

(4 December 2000)

A president waits to be elected. The people talk.

A Bush supporter on Gore: "He won't be MY president."

A Gore supporter on Bush: "I'll move to Canada if he gets in."

Somebody said the most important speech of this contested election will be the one the loser makes. That's right.

And today Al Gore gave the nub of what the loser will need to say. He said that he will acknowledge Bush as his president without protest or contest if it is Bush who is inaugurated on 20 January. It was the first whiff of statesmanship I've heard so far. (Statesmanship: the art of putting the nation's interest above the individual politician's interest.)

 

Dick Cheney also spoke today. He said that Gore ought to concede now for the good of the nation and his place in history. You decide if that's statesmanship.

Warren Christopher, Gore's man in Florida, also spoke today. What he said was sensible if not statesmanslike: if the Bush people would stop posturing as the winners while the contest is proceeding, they would make it a lot easier for the political system to function after it's over, no matter who wins.

Gore was beginning today to set an example for his supporters: don't secede from the Union if Bush wins. Bush should take a lesson.

 

 

 

 

 

blather

THE SAVING GRACE OF TELEBLATHERERS

(19 November 2000)

Wolf, Bernie, Judy, Larry, Ted, Peter, Tom, Dan, Sam, Cokie, the Georges, all their ilk, not to mention the parade of pundits and pols they cheer and jeer in front of their cameras--how they've all been filling our homes with blather since the election impasse in Florida!

The more words they spew into the airwaves, the less value we attach to them. We want to say, "Shut up, already! Let the people count their ballots. Come back on the air when you know the results. Your big screw-up on election night should have taught you to cool your tongues."

Nevertheless, I've found myself checking in throughout the day and evening, just to be sure I don't miss the count, or the latest court action.

 

And there, I think, is the saving grace of teleblatherers.

It doesn't matter that they don't have much to report that's new. What matters is that they're there, blathering away. Doing so, they assure us that the country is intact. They are NOT reporting that Caesar has been stabbed on the steps. Though their reports are confusion itself, the result is reassurance. The center holds.

I compare them to the crones and cronies on the front porches and back rooms of America before radio and television. Their gossip kept the country secure. Who cares what they were saying? The mere fact of their being there to say it was what mattered.

Say on, talking heads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

newprez

WHAT I HOPE THE NEW PRESIDENT WILL DO

(5 November 2000)

Dear Mr. President-Elect (whoever you are):

Writing the weekend before the election, I want to let you know what I hope you will do when you get to the White House in January.

Follow fiscal policies that will sustain the good times in the US. Study Clinton; he was cleverer at this than many acknowledge.

Increase federal funding for mental health research and for the support system for the mentally ill in the states. Hold back on a mere fraction of a percent of what you want to spend on beefing up the military and channel that money to mental health. The quality of the support system shames our national values.

Devise legislation to broaden the economic safety net for those not participating in the current prosperity--there are more of them than many like to believe. Do this by better subsidies for education and training leading to productive work in the constantly changing environment. Do something for better child care for working mothers. And put forth legislation that somehow gives greater help to the cohort who can't make it on their own. It won't break us. Do all you can to cancel the idea that we "solve" our social problems by warehousing more and more black men in jail.

Stop bickering with the opposition about "my plan" and "your plan" and get something done to improve the management of health care cost. In the process, help restore the patient as the first priority of health care and remove cost containment from that privileged slot. Help the ghost of Hippocrates rest in peace again.

 

Get off Microsoft's back.

Encourage transnational corporate enterprise; but don't think that that is the end-all and be-all of the US role in the development of the world. Favor legislation that restrains the power of transnational corporations to harm individuals or to hobble the growth of freedom in areas outside the US.

In foreign policy, realize that our desire to do good for others often unintentionally steamrollers their values. Realize, at the same time, that we cannot avoid our major role in managing the world-system. Try to define this global duty in a way that enhances what others define as their welfare.

China! Really think about it!

 

Talk sense to the American people about guns. Be sure that Heston checks his weapon at the gate before entering the grounds--in case he forgets to keep the safety locked.

Think Green. Act on the assumption offered by one historian: in the 20th century we conquered nature; in the 21st century we will restore nature.

Work the system in Washington zestfully and unashamedly. If you don't, it will work you into a corner (remember Jimmie Carter). It's the only game we have.

Reduce your appetite for contributions--and that of your opponents-- by advancing legislation to reduce the need for politicians to buy TV advertising.

 

Be our man, not a montage of focus group findings.

Acknowledge that your fellow Americans differ deeply, sometimes bitterly, on social values and political priorities; try to blunt their sharp edges with wise humor, and suffer all us fools gladly.

Respect the power of the press scorpions to sting you, but remember, too, that the common sense of people can be a powerful antidote for you, if you talk straight to them.

Accept sweaty statecraft as your duty; but situate your duty in the broader sphere Walt Whitman saw when he said, "The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadest doings of the day and night...Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes." (Preface to Leaves of Grass)

 

 

 

 

 

debate

BUSH & GORE SHOULD DEBATE FRINGE CANDIDATES--SEPARATELY

(23 September 2000)

Keep the fringe candidates out of debates between Bush and Gore. So say mainstream pundits such as David Gergen. Let Bush and Gore have at each other without distractions; since one of them is going to be president, voters need a clear impression of the differences between the two, uncluttered by those of the likes of Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan.

I agree with that.

But I also think Ralph and Pat enrich the public dialogue. Voters deserve to know what it is about the issues that sustains their impossible dream of occupying the Oval Office. Knowing that could influence the choice that voters finally make between Bush and Gore.

Bush and Gore should separately debate Nader and Buchanan (and perhaps others, like John Hagelin, the Natural Law Party candidate who challenged Buchanan in the Reform Party convention).

 

The deeper-rooted political issue of this election is how to balance transnational corporate power with governmental power in a "globalizing" environment.

Bush and Gore together are too tangled in obligations to the current corporate-government structure to debate that issue meaningfully by themselves. Such obligations do not burden the fringe candidates. This frees them to speak with disarming (sometimes outrageous) candor.

In a post-Marxist world, free market capitalism is the only game left. It lacks the tonic of a real-world alternative to keep it flexed and healthy. With no ideological counter-pressure, the transnational corporate system risks total immersion in its own frenzied process. The risk in that for people in the US and the rest of the world is a devaluing of social justice and individual human rights in favor of corporate control of markets.

 

Nader and Buchanan would be equally out of place as the US president. However, they could test the mettle of the mainstream candidates on the deeper issues in ways that Bush and Gore cannot do alone to each other.

Both Bush and Gore would be better as president if they first had to face up forthrightly to the concerns that drive the fringe candidates--social justice and individual rights in a transnational world. Let Bush and Gore debate separately with the likes of Ralph and Pat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"W." AND AL CREATE CARTOON WORLDS (24 August 2000)

So, the parties have convened and nominated. George W. Bush and Al Gore are now going about their campaigning. They must use the arts of exaggeration and oversimplification to tout their virtues and trash their opponent. They have to use sharp lines and hard edges, without subtle shadings (even the Monicagate code was transparent in the Republican "restore honor and dignity" theme and in the choice of Lieberman).

Political junkies get a kick out of the cartoon quality of presidential campaigning. The fun of it, for them, must come partly from the falsity of it. In an outrageous (and, if they're on target, entertaining) way, the contrasting cartoon worlds drawn by "W." and Al and their mouthpieces bear only a remote resemblance to the lives Americans really lead.

What makes the discussion particularly cartoonish is the loony assumption on both sides that the president can just go to Washington and "do" something. Both campaigns shunt aside or oversimplify the complex political relationships among the branches of government.

You wouldn't want to put yourself into the sketchy scene either contender draws. You'd have to become a two-dimensional cartoon character yourself.

But if it's just a game of cartoons bashing cartoons, why do we think presidential campaigning is so important? How does the silliness of our electioneering process lead to the serious business of governing?

 

It's the dialectic that takes over the cartoons and transforms them into something we think might really pertain. The campaign compels the candidates to draw themselves and their opponents in reductionist terms as they contest for the assent of voters. The opposing forces are the reduced cartoon-like collection of images, positions and personalities of each party. As those forces join, something happens in the minds of voters. They synthesize the cartoons into real issues for real people. The cartoonists themselves turn into beings that voters feel they ought to take seriously. As election day nears, the White House comes to look like a real place where one of these guys, however two-dimensional they seem to make themselves, will wield real and awesome power. The modulated marvel of our system begins to become apparent.

That marvel rests on our amazing ability to choose--with some civility and without bloodshed--an ordinary person for the most complex public position known in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEGINNING AND ENDING IN THE KOREAS (19 June 2000)

In early July 1953, I arrived for basic training as a US Army draftee at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. Just a couple of weeks later, on 27 July, my platoon buddies and I were in the midst of learning how to handle an M-1 rifle and getting ready to stick dummies with our bayonets. That was the day news of the cease-fire at Panmunjom swept through our barracks.

What a relief we all felt. Even if we shipped out to the Far East, as the majority of us expected, we would now not be going into combat against North Koreans.

As it turned out, I was among the lucky draftees assigned to Europe, where a desk job waited, instead of to the Korean war zone. Nevertheless, the shadow of the war lay over us through the remainder of our tour of duty in Germany--the Korean cease-fire, we all knew, could end anytime and lead to new assignments in the Far East theater.

 

Now, half a century later, reading about the historic first meeting of the leaders of South and North Korea this month, I marvel that the political dynamics of that long-ago war remain relevant. The fighting lasted three years and cost 33,629 American lives. The North Koreans failed in their objective to take the south. The peninsula has remained divided into Communist and democratic states. The US has kept a major military presence at the DMZ for half a century. And a final peace agreement has never formally ended the cease-fire declared that July day in 1953.

What has changed is the welfare of South Korea. It has blossomed into a player on the world economic stage, committed to a democratic political system and free enterprise. Its hostile cousin to the north, meanwhile, has become the bastion of a failed ideology, isolated by choice from the world, armed to the teeth, and economically impoverished.

The pundits have had differing opinions about the prospects opened up by the meeting and agreement between South Korea's Kim Dae-jung and North Korea's Kim Jon Il. Some called their June summit little more than a photo-op. Others called it a significant beginning toward an eventual reconciliation.

 

The feelers look to me like steps in the worldwide process of postmodern globalization. The Communist regime of North Korea no longer carries with it even the shadow of a promise of human betterment--its only significance is its ability to tyrannize its own people and terrorize the rest of the world with threats of nuclear bombs.

The economic success of South Korea exemplifies the system of worldwide late capitalism, which has won out over the collectivist ideology that spawned regimes such as that in North Korea.

The politics in the north are simply the failed remains of the 20th century's great political struggle. With the door open even a crack, the desire of North Korea's people for material betterment should lead them to see what global capitalism is doing to make life materially attractive among their cousins in the south. They should want to get into the global capital flow one way or another, sooner or later.

It may take a long time for this dynamic to work out. Meanwhile, North Korea can still raise fears as a rogue state supporting international terror. But sometime in the foreseeable future, the magnetic pull of global capitalism should transform North Korea's relations with South Korea and the rest of the world.

It would be good in my lifetime to see an end of the aftermath of the war I was lucky to miss half a century ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CUBA: A LAST CHANCE FOR CLINTON? (1 April 2000)

It was Jack Kennedy who said life is unfair. Anyone who is set adrift at sea, as Kennedy was when his PT boat sank during World War II, has a right to think so. Even when he survives.

Elian Gonzalez, at age six, already has had his time adrift on the open sea and has survived. He is surely too young to think of life as unfair. But, considering the political and media buzz over his arrival on the Florida shore, we can think so for him.

It was enough to see his mother drown and then to bob in a tube at sea for a couple of days. Now, he is a little pawn surrounded by a board full of power pieces in the last Cold War chess game.

No matter where he ends up living, you have to hope that it won't matter all that much in a short time. You have to hope that as soon as Castro goes, normalization of US relations with Cuba will go into high gear. This would defuse the issue of Elian's domicile. He would be able to be with his father or visit his relatives in Miami at will, without carrying an international anachronism on his frail shoulders.

 

The bizarre child custody issue points up the ludicrous perpetuation of a Cold War stance against Cuba, long after international Communism has ceased to be a threat to the security of the US.

In his last year, President Clinton has been seeking his seat in history's Hall of Fame by adventuring in far places as an emissary for peace. He could still undertake a bold Cuban diplomatic adventure that would hasten the normalization process and add to his chances for fame as a statesman. This might be the best strategy for marginalizing the Elian Gonzalez affair, now holding the front page hostage. It might also bail out the little boy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

GLOBALIZATION: BRAVE NEW FUTURE? OR BAD OLD IMPERIALISM? (19 February 2000)

"Globalization." The mantra of mega-corporate investment….the ad theme for intercontinental communication marvels….the buzz word of those who would spread prosperity around the world.

Each time I hear it hymned, I have mixed reactions.

--I want to stand and cheer. "Globalization" sounds like the critical next step in the implementation of human dignity to the far corners of Earth. It sounds like the death-knell for the remaining zealotry lurking behind fundamentalists’ robes and rogue regimes.

--I want to reach for the anti-euphoria medicine. "Globalization" sounds like another false "metanarrative" that offers us an unattainable one-world destiny. It sounds like American economic imperialism dressed in working clothes.

These mixed reactions make me remember the working words of Isaiah Berlin: "The perfect universe is not merely unattainable but inconceivable, and everything done to bring it about is founded on an enormous intellectual fallacy."

With this tangy taste of reality, I then feel better. When "globalization" has finally happened to everyone on Earth, I can feel sure that everyone will still inhabit a messy, imperfect place.

 

"Globalization" is probably bringing material and cultural improvements to many of Earth’s people. It certainly is fueling the current prosperity in the Euro-American sphere.

Just as surely it is upsetting existing cultural systems that support and give meaning to millions of human beings.

And it is surely leading to the formation of increasingly large social organizations never seen before. These are the multinational corporations operating in a climate of instant worldwide communications. Their scale and scope are giving them new power to do good--and harm--on a global scale.

Buchananite adherents of a nativist, protectionist position are reminders that, even in America, "globalization" does not appear to everyone as a good thing. The protesters at the Seattle World Trade Organization meeting punctuated this reminder. Within the Euro-American hegemony itself, the French resist being "globalized" because to them it is synonymous with "Americanized."

 

Meanwhile, "globalization" seems to have had little good effect to date on nasty local wars, urban terrorists, Internet musketeers, neo-nationalists, or sweatshop operators in underdeveloped regions.

Yes, from the perspective of those sitting in Europe and America, "globalization" appears to be inevitable and, by and large, good for everybody in the long run. This makes it sound like a return of the Enlightenment dream of a universal good. But we know now how the eighteenth-century Enlightenment dream fed into the twentieth century’s totalitarian nightmare.

Maybe "globalization" unaccompanied by dreams will be best, all things considered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE WEB: BANE OR BOON TO EDUCATION? (29 January 2000)

In his State of the Union address on 27 January 2000, President Clinton called on Congress to close the "Digital Divide" that separates those on the Web from those excluded from it for lack of equipment.

Meanwhile, a growing number of parents are shunning the putative social benefits of public schools and opting to educate their kids at home. And they are discovering courses on the Web to enrich their own teaching. (Education Week, 20 Oct 1999)

But then this: "Today, many in academe worry about how the Internet has revolutionized students’ thought processes," warns Judith A. Ramaley, President of the University of Vermont. (Trusteeship, Jan/Feb 2000, p. 5) She fears that if too much online learning replaces face-to-face learning in a real social setting, students will lose sight of themselves as responsible members of a democratic society.

 

Just as the Web is revolutionizing business, so it is revolutionizing learning, in alliance with related technologies such as email, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and digital two-way videoconferencing.   

Nobody is clairvoyant enough to see the full effect--for better or worse--of information technology on education by, say, 2010. However, a few things already are clear.

--The power of the Web (I include all its kindred technologies in the term) to provide information and communication links is so great that it will not recede as a passing fad. As the technologies, under intense competitive market pressure, further improve, they will increasingly envelop traditional educational structures.

--We are not in a struggle to the death between face-to-face teaching and online learning. The Web is coming to complement and enrich face-to-face teaching, not supplant it. The most creative people even now are developing the hybrids that will best survive and serve.

--Schools and colleges and teachers and professors who try to ignore the Web will poorly serve their students and themselves. It is too late for that.

--On the other hand, those who seize it and domesticate it to their own uses will preserve what they do best and enhance their professional work. In particular, I think small residential colleges will become even more important in our society in a full-blown Digital Age. They are among the last social agencies left to conduct the seventeen-year-old into creative and responsible adulthood—families, churches, neighborhoods, employers are, for varying reasons, unable to provide passage. Colleges will meet that persistent social need better if they embrace Web culture as an unprecedented resource for cognitive learning set within a traditionally rich social environment on campuses.

 

So, fear about the baneful effect of the onset of the Web in education is misplaced.

But some academics still worry that the Web will make our familiar institutions obsolete. It will change them, yes. My hunch is that it will make them obsolete only if they ignore the new possibilities offered up by the Web.

Institutions traditionally have had to stand alone and offer everything out of their own resources. The power of the Web is that it can open a door to new institutional and academic relationships. Creatively pursued, they can make one and one equal three.

I think the greatest impact of the Web will be on the very structure of knowledge itself. The content of knowledge emerges from the forms into which scholars shape it. As the Web matures in the graduate schools, it will become increasingly central to the way a field of learning proceeds. That will lead to the configuration and integration of texts in ways that were impossible before. The speed and breadth of collegial communication will change the perception of what comes to be considered knowledge. The space and depth of disciplines inevitably will shift as a result. This could sound terribly threatening. But it must be greatly challenging and exciting to the young minds now preparing to rethink the disciplines as we know them.

 

Is the Web, then, an unadulterated boon? Surely not. For one, just think of the ongoing costs of keeping up a state-of-the art infrastructure. Think of the discomfort and uncertainty that constant technological innovation foists on an academic community yearning for a measure of tranquil contemplation.

And, yes--there IS something to the fear that a nerd-like life pursued almost solely in front of the tube leadeth not to civic virtue and social grace. Sounds familiar—remember the old fashioned bookworm?

See a review of the book about the origin of the Web by its inventor.

Visit the website of CAPE, an organization dealing with the transformation of institutions and pedagogy through electronic technologies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONSERVATISM LITE DEPLORED (1 January 2000)

Columnist William Rusher said most foundations started by conservative capitalists soon fall into the firm grip of liberals:

"Ford. Pew. MacArthur. Packard....The great fortunes of modern capitalism [have been] turned to the service of anti-market initiatives." (Pottstown Mercury, 24 December 1999.)

Rusher deplores the transformation of "free-market gold" into "philanthropic dross."

Rusher doesn't quite see the larger dynamic. He seems to believe that all ideas of human welfare ought to derive from the free operation of the market. He deplores the use of capitalist gain for humane ends that might contradict the acquisitiveness that amassed the money in the first place.

This is Conservatism Lite. It should be deplored.   

 

American society is indeed buoyed by the success of capital in a free market. The stock market is on a fantastic bull run. That makes it particularly tempting at the moment to hitch the whole value of American civilization to Wall Street.

But America is about more than making bucks. In the American story, material wealth marries goals of equality, liberty, and justice. The making of wealth, left to itself, would be a nightmare. The condition of post-Soviet enterprise in Russia gives us a glimpse.

Corporations lack (and should lack) the inner strength to resist their own first imperative--to make profit. They are not equipped to advance equality, liberty, or justice, except in an incidental way. And their power equips them to diminish equality, liberty, and justice in many ways, even if inadvertently.

The uniqueness of our civilization is that it seeks to give parity to both the creation of wealth and the advancement of equality, liberty, and justice. It would soon fail if it did not have institutions whose first imperative is to uplift those visionary goals. Those institutions should have the ability to augment the good that corporations can do and to resist or repair the harm they can do.

 

There is thus a kind of American political genius that (a) encourages the creation of great personal wealth through corporate enterprise and then (b) through tax laws transforms that wealth into foundations dedicated to the idealistic goals of equality, liberty, and justice.

As Rusher says, the big foundations fund some crazy projects. To be sure, some of them may contradict the idea of free corporate markets. In the main, however, they are tending usefully to the goals of our society that extend beyond the freedom to acquire material wealth.

That may well create a tension with corporate enterprise, augmenting a tension already felt by corporations from government regulation. Such a tension is the price of sustaining a complex society in a state of health.