Monthly Archives: December 2003

Saddam and the US horserace

Fred Barnes writes that it would be “crass” to “assess the politics of the capture of Saddam Hussein.” (He proceeds to do so anyway.) Meanwhile, The New York Times webpage ran a story yesterday that began: “How big a political lift will President Bush derive from the capture of Saddam Hussein? Very big indeed, said several political scientists, who used words like ‘huge, ‘enormous’ and ‘profound.’ …. ‘My first reaction was, you might as well call off the election,’ said Prof. Allan J. Lichtman, a historian at American University.” By this morning, this story had disappeared from the Times, although it’s still available via the International Herald Tribune. (The story that actually appeared in today’s Times is more nuanced, less prominent, and focuses mainly on the dangers for Howard Dean.)

I admit that one of my first thoughts upon hearing about Saddam’s capture was: How does this affect the election? But I felt guilty about having that thought. On reflection, a number of (not entirely consistent) ideas came to mind:

Continue reading →

conference culture

Almost a month ago, I was at Wingspread, the retreat center near Racine, WI, to attend a meeting on national and community service programs. This was my second visit to Wingspread. The first was in 1988. Then I was one of two token college students at a meeting otherwise filled with foundation executives and college administrators, including the great Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame. The subject was … community and national service programs. The discussions of those days led more or less directly to George Bush’s Points of Light Foundation and then Americorps under Bill Clinton. (I contributed nothing to that history, but I observed a piece of it.)

Two meetings on the same subject, 15 years apart. Since that first memorable experience at a non-partisan, non-profit, professional conference, I have attended similar gatherings on campaign-finance reform, public journalism, civic renewal, digital media policy, Internet research, civic education, service-learning, philanthropy and civil society, economic development and civil society, deliberative democracy, engaged universities, youth digital media work, values in higher education, social capital in Latin America, and many other subjects. There’s a whole culture of these events: shared taxi rides from the airport; tables arranged around hollow squares; introductory sessions where you go around the room and everyone says where they’re from; “break-out sessions” with “flip charts” and “reporting back” to the full group. The conversations tend to drift, especially once there’s a long list of people waiting to speak. Speakers refer politely to previous comments (“Building on what John said, …”). There are complaints, often highly justified, about the people not represented “in the room”–usually racial minorities, but also youth and (in the circles I travel) conservatives. Participants quickly begin to speak as “we” and to imply a hostile outside world, even though they are often not clear about what goals and values they share. There’s always a point when everyone starts talking about “message” (i.e., the need to communicate some simple idea to the broad public).

In short, there are many frustrations. Yet I can’t think of any better models, and civil society would be much weaker without these events. Thus I fully expect to be back at Wingspread in 2018, talking about … community and national service.

the campaign finance decision

Justice Scalia’s dissent in the recent landmark campaign finance case is written with characteristic brio and affords an opportunity to consider the deepest issues. Some of Scalia’s points are rebuttals to arguments made during Congressional debate that I would not myself defend. For example, Members of Congress had claimed that there was too much overall spending on politics, and that “attack ads” were too negative. I agree with Scalia that the total quantity of spending is not too high, and that attacks on incumbents are desirable. But there is still a very good reason for campaign-finance reform: namely, to curb the disproportionate influence of organized interests. Against this position, Scalia makes five main points:

Continue reading →

ideology and civics

I spoke yesterday at the Learn & Serve America conference, which convenes people who run federally-funded community-service programs in schools. I talked about the Civic Mission of Schools report, which my organization and Carnegie Corporation of New York published earlier this year. One person in the audience said that he had read the first sentence to colleagues back at his home college, and they interpreted it as ridiculously and offensively conservative. Neither the questioner nor I had the report with us, so we argued about exactly what it says. In fact, it begins as follows:

“For more than 250 years, Americans have shared a vision of a democracy in which all citizens understand, appreciate, and engage actively in civic and political life. In recent decades, however, increasing numbers of Americans have disengaged from civic and political institutions such as voluntary associations, religious congregations, community-based organizations, and political and electoral activities such as voting and being informed about public issues.”

Continue reading →

the real origins of the Internet

There’s a standard version of the history of the Internet that traces it back to ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the 1960s. ARPA developed a way for computers to exchange information in small packets, so that two computers would not need to open a permanent and exclusive channel (such as a standard phone connection) in order to remain constantly in touch. Instead, they would send messages in small chunks that could be routed through whatever computers happened to be online until they reached their destination. ARPA was a military outfit (it soon became DARPA; the “D” stands for “Defense”), and its motive was to create a new communications network that could withstand massive disruption during wartime.

The DARPA system improved, and similar processes developed separately in the academic world. Under the auspices of the National Science Foundation, these networks were brought together (starting with a process for sharing email). After a while, the NSF named this network of networks the Internet, and so we entered the current era.

This is all true and important, but it’s like explaining the origins of a human being by listing all of her direct ancestors who happen to share her last name: her father, her paternal grandfather, and so on back. Lots of other ancestors have also contributed their genes and nurture, although their names are harder to retrieve. Similarly, if you look around today’s World Wide Web, you’ll see numerous important features that did not arise from ARPA, DARPA, or the NSF.

Continue reading →