A Real Vision

Dave Weinberger has done something I've thought about many times but have never actually gotten around to: He's written The Speech I Want To Hear, a fictional speech by a fictional presidential candidate that describes the kinds of things Weinberger wishes politicians were talking about. Besides just being a great exercise, the speech contains some real big-picture vision for the future. For example, Weinberger writes:

We will raise the quality of the natural environment not just for our own people but for every person who breathes the earth's air, eats its fruit, or drinks its water. Our goal is, at the end of 20 years, to be confident that the world will sustain us and our children's children's children.

Doesn't that sound great? Think about it for a minute: How many of us can say we're confident that the world will sustain us and our children's children's children? I certainly can't, and the research I've read is pretty conclusive—if we continue current practices and trends, our children's children's children might not be able to survive on our planet. So why isn't this a major U.S. priority?

Now think about this: Instead of taking up nearly the entire world's time and energy debating whether the U.S. should go kill more people (attack Iraq), what if our president was leading the global community to create sustainable ways of living so that there's something left on our planet worth fighting for even years from now? Wouldn't that make you more proud to be an American?

Final question: Could you compose a 5-minute speech outlining your ideal vision for the future? I'm not sure I could do it with the kind of political spin necessary to win support for it, but it seems like we'd all be better voters and citizens if we'd run through an exercise like this every couple of years. Kind of an Imagineering thing. (See Item 6. And no, that's got absolutely zero to do with juggernaut Disney.)

Final final (and unrelated) question: Is Weinberger serious when he says David Chase, creator of the too-good-to-be-true show, "The Sopranos," should kill Tony Soprano?!?

Posted 09:31 AM | general politics

Support for Free Speech

I really want to avoid turning this into a big lefty rant soapbox, but this is almost too scary to believe:

Support for the First Amendment has eroded significantly since Sept. 11 and nearly half of Americans now think the constitutional amendment on free speech goes too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a new poll.

What are these people thinking? Oh, wait, here's a partial explanation:

Seven in 10 respondents agreed newspapers should publish freely, a slight drop from 2001. Those less likely to support newspaper rights included people without a college education, Republicans, and evangelicals, the survey found.

During the Reagan years I remember bumper stickers that said "Vote Republican, it's easier than thinking." Apparently it's true.

Contrast the above article with Bob Herbert's editorial, Secrecy Is Our Enemy, which discusses a recent decision by udge Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that said "it was unlawful for the Bush administration to conduct deportation hearings in secret whenever the government asserted that the people involved might be linked to terrorism." Herbert writes:

The opinion was a reflection of true patriotism, a 21st-century echo of a pair of comments made by John Adams nearly two centuries ago. "Liberty," said Adams, "cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."

And in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1816, Adams said, "Power must never be trusted without a check."

Herbert's position has been proven true by history time and again. Here again we see the American ignorance of history—an ignorance carefully cultivated by a culture of individualism and immediate gratification—sprouting the seeds of a very scary future.

Later: Jason Rylander offers a less freaked out take on the news that people are becoming less supportive of the First Amendment. Very good point. Still, it's pretty sobering that people who are dissatisfied with how the media work in our country would even consider restricting the first amendment rather than simply demanding media reform. The two are very different things.

Posted 09:24 AM | general politics