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Professor Manweller,
Regarding your election commentary all I can say is, "Bravo!". It is truly a well-written piece (just a few typos--hope you don't mind if I took some liberties):
"In that this will be my last column before the presidential election, there will be no sarcasm, no attempts at witty repartee. The topic is too serious, and the stakes are too high.
This November we will vote in the only election during our lifetime that will truly matter. Because America is at a once-in-a-generation crossroads, more than an election hangs in the balance. Down one path lies retreat, abdication and a reign of ambivalence. Down the other lies a nation that is aware of its past and accepts the daunting obligation its future demands. If we choose poorly, the consequences will echo through the next 50 years of history. If we, in a spasm of frustration, fail to turn out the current occupant of the White House, the message to the world and ourselves will be two-fold.
First, we will reject the notion that America can do big things. Once a nation that tamed a frontier, stood down the Nazis and stood upon the moon, we will announce to the world that bringing being an example to the world is too big a task for us. But more significantly, we will signal to future presidents that as voters, we are unwilling to tackle difficult challenges using diplomacy, preferring reckless self-serving wars to peace, embracing the aggression that has characterized other civilizations. The re-election of President Bush will send a chilling message to future presidents who may need to make difficult, yet unpopular decisions. America has always been a nation that rises to the demands of history regardless of the decisions. America has always been a nation that rises to the demands of history regardless of the costs or appeal. If we turn away from that legacy, we turn away from who we are.
Second, we inform every terrorist organization on the globe that the lesson of Somalia was not well learned. In Somalia we were shown that you don't need to defeat America on the battlefield when its own foreign policy can defeat if beforehand. We learned that a wounded America can become a defeated America. Twenty-four hour news stations with ill-concealed allegiances and skewed daily tracing polls can never deal a fatal blow to the truth. Except that Iraq is Somalia times 10. The re-election of George Bush will serve notice to every terrorist in every cave that the soft underbelly of American power is the megalomania of its leaders. Terrorists will know that a steady stream of grizzly photos for CNN is incapable of breaking the expansionist desires of the American people. Our own self-serving impulses will take it from there. Bin Laden will recognize that he must topple every American administration by destroying them on their homeland.
It is said that America's WWII generation is its "greatest generation." But my greatest fear is that we have already seen America's "last generation." Born in the bleakness of the Great Depression and hardened in the fire of WWII, this is the first American generation to lose the true the meaning of duty, honor, and sacrifice. It is difficult to admit, but I know these terms are spoken with only hollow detachment by many (but not all) in my generation. Too many citizens today mistake "living in America" as "being an American." But America has always been more of an idea than a place. When you sign on, you do more than buy real estate. You accept a set of values and responsibilities. This November, my generation, which has been absent too long, must grasp that 100 years from now historians will look back at the election of 2004 and see it as the decisive election of our century. Depending on the outcome, they will describe it as the moment America joined the ranks of the other nations of the world; or they will describe it as the moment the prodigal sons and daughters of the greatest generation let fear overtake their sense of justice and moderation."
Much better, don't you think?
On reading your brief bio, it's clear to me why you prefer to avoid large cities. It's much easier to create your own alternate reality than to have to deal with the fact that there are billions of other people on the planet and hundreds of nations, each with an equal right to govern themselves (even if it's not...shudder...democracy!). If you were fighting in Iraq for your beliefs, I could at least respect your opinion. But instead you remain in your remote ivory tower, bravely sermonizing how thousands of young men and women should be sacrificed in the name of your lofty, ethnocentric goals. That is reprehensible.
wtmusic
BringHonorBack.org
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