The experience has been made easier because, for one thing, the procedure was performed by the doctor considered to be the best in the world at it. And my post-operative care has been superb; so has the support I have received from family members, friends and colleagues.

Of course, one of the reasons why my recovery is progressing quickly and smoothly is that the operation has, in the space of not much more than a generation, gone from being very risky to fairly routine. That is a result of science and technology: My surgeon and some of her peers have dramatically improved the techniques used to perform that particular surgery. Improvements in her technique have also been made possible by the instruments used in the hospital, and in my particular operation: They bear little resemblance to the machines on Marcus Welby, M.D. and other medical dramas I saw when I was growing up.

That brings me to the one "miracle" of modern technology I haven’t had during my recovery: television.

No, I haven’t been whiling away my idle days on some uncharted isle (unless you’re such an Uptown Girl or Guy that you consider Long Island to be remote!). I have remained ensconced in my Big Apple abode, in the bustling borough of Queens. And, no, we haven’t had a power outage like the one that plagued some of my neighbors for more than a week three years ago.

I am without the "tube" by choice. When the government ordered that all viewers would have digital TV or no TV at all, I opted out. I know, I could have gotten, with a government-issued coupon, a converter box for less than a Southampton summer resident spends on a pair of flip-flops. Or, I could have subscribed to a cable or satellite service for not much more than that per month.

However, as the date for the change-over drew closer, I became more determined to try living without the "idiot box." I made this decision knowing full well that I would soon undergo the surgery I have just experienced, and knowing how much time I would spend recovering from it.

At various times in my life, I have subscribed to cable or satellite services. The result was always the same: Out of the 500 (or however many) channels, I could find three or four, maybe five, offering programming that interested me. And, after a few months, those channels would repeat the episodes or movies I’d seen during the previous months.

The sad part is that what I’ve described is a better state of affairs than what is to be found on "regular" network TV. However biased some of the films and programs I saw on cable or satellite TV were, at least some of them exhibited more understanding of economics, history or the cultures they were depicting than what one sees on Faux, I mean Fox, News or the news programs of ABC, NBC, CBS and, sometimes, PBS.

Plus, I’ve gotten to an age at which one doesn’t miss pretty faces nearly as much as one does in one’s youth. Sure, Chris Cuomo and Matt Lauer are cute, as are the escapees on Prison Break. However, the plots of the latter program actually seem less convoluted and more believable than much of what is uttered as "news" or even "commentary" on most programs with pretensions about informing and uplifting the public.

I figured that allowing my mind to fill with such stuff wouldn’t help my recovery any. My hypothesis, it seems, is bearing out: Today I visited my doctor, who said that I’m "recovering remarkably well and quickly," given the surgery I’ve had.

Perhaps my home’s new ambience has something to do with it, too. There’s a bit more clutter, as I haven’t been able to spend the energy to organize, and I can’t lift anything weighing more than ten pounds, at least for the time being. However, something else makes up for its lack of physical beauty: a calmness I never knew possible.

If you have ever gone deep into a wooded or other uninhabited area, you know how quiet (sometimes disquietingly so, for city gals like me!) it is at night. No city street is ever that placid or peaceful, even after the stores, offices and clubs have closed and people have gone to bed. The urban scene I’ve just described is the best comparison I can make to the way my house felt when I temporarily turned off the television. The natural setting I’ve depicted is how my home now feels, by comparison, now that I haven’t "tuned in" for two months.

My physical recovery, I believe, is not the only thing that has benefitted from this change in my environment. I feel now that I can more fully concentrate on what I read and write. (It will be interesting to see whether I continue that after I return to my regular job next week.) And, some friends have said that I seem "more present" and happier. I know the latter is true; I trust their judgment on the former.

I don’t know whether I will never, ever watch television again, as I don’t predict the future. However, if the surgery I underwent and the subsequent care I have received will make living in my body more tenable, I feel that forsaking television just might be helping me to find the life of my mind and spirit to be more fulfilling. And, I suspect, it could make me less susceptible to micro- and macro- forms of groupthink — which, after all, is what helped to bring this economy and country into the mess it’s in, and ensured that too many people would go along with it.

Perhaps switching off is not the solution. But, for me, it seems not to have been a bad start.

Justine Nicholas Valinotti [send her mail] teaches English at York College in Queens, NY. She is also working on a novel, a volume of her poetry and a book based on her blog.

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Now, what I know about economics, finance and banking can fill my pillbox. (OK, I’m a modern girl; I don’t have a pillbox!) So I probably have no business making forecasts about such things. However, yesterday morning I learned of an event that gave me pause. It may well spell TEWWKI.

So what earth-shattering event happened yesterday? UBS, that erstwhile pillar of the banking system that’s been the erstwhile pillar of world banking, is releasing the records of 19,000 numbered accounts to the US Government. Federal officials allege that UBS knowingly helped wealthy American clients to defraud their government.

Now, I still harbor enough residual leftism not to feel a lot of sympathy for people who have more money than the combined accumulated assets of every acquaintance I’ve ever had in my life — and me, of course. However, I am outraged when anybody’s privacy is breached by any sort of governmental authority. And, even though I never have had, and may never have, one of those numbered accounts, I am as worried as any of those account-holders probably are.

Even those of us who’ve never had an offshore account could feel a sense of security knowing that there was some place in the world that, through wars and other catastrophes, remained neutral and respectful of people’s rights to their persons and property. Since the Middle Ages (when the Swiss banking system developed), Switzerland has been seen as the world’s "safe haven." That Switzerland has managed to maintain its national integrity, if you will, and the security of its banking system while set amidst implacable enemies may well be one of the most respectable feats any nation has managed.

So if I sell my novel and someone turns it into a blockbuster screenplay, I’ll have one less option for the windfall that would follow. Life will go on. However, the quality of my life — and that of everyone else — will be diminished by the more outrageous part of this story.

Although I am not a historian, I don’t think I’d be overstating my case when I say that throughout my lifetime, our civil liberties have been steadily eroded. I think every President during my time in this world (I was born about midway through Eisenhower’s second term.) has at least held a chisel as our rights to privacy have been chipped away. I also don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that, in regards to privacy and free speech issues, every President we’ve had has been worse than the one who preceded him.

However, I don’t recall any action of theirs that strikes as low a blow to liberty as the US Government’s demand that UBS submit its records. It’s bad enough when a nation’s agencies of power nose into the affairs of citizens who live and work in that nation. I can’t think of anything worse than those same agents extending their reach across oceans and international boundaries to pry into the business of citizens who are doing business in other countries.

Then again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by such actions. After all, every single Administration during my lifetime has exhibited the most profound kinds of disrespect for the sanctity and sovereignty of other people and nations in this world. Sometimes that disrespect is expressed through legalistic proceedings like the demand the government made on UBS; other times it manifested militarily. The end-result of either is the same: a diminishment in the rights of other people — and us — to life and liberty, let alone the pursuit of happiness.

Past crises and changes have not spelled TEWWKI. UBS’s acquiescence to the US government may not, either. But I think that we are certainly less secure in our persons and with our property than we were a few months ago. If anything, that will only exacerbate the collapse of the world’s economies and diminish whatever chances we have of making true progress, much less prosperity, possible.

Justine Nicholas Valinotti [send her mail] is recovering from the year she spent as an academic administrator.

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Dee Ann, a former student of mine, called last week. She believes she’s getting a buyout from her company. So, she said, she’s thinking about switching careers and/or going back to school. Would I write her the letter of recommendation I promised? "Of course," I said.

During our conversation, she reminisced about her time in the business writing class I taught. "It’s helped me a lot," she exclaimed. "I was proofreading, and even writing, memos and reports for senior executives. I should’ve charged them a fee."

"I wouldn’t blame you if you did."

"All those skills, all those techniques you taught, have served me well. But there’s one thing you mentioned that I’ll never, ever forget."

"Really? What’s that?"

"Credit," she intoned. "When you told us what it meant…"

"It’s Latin for u2018he believes, ‘" I reminded her.

"Yes! Ever since I understood that I’ve never been able to see the economy — in fact, all of society — the same way as I did before."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, now I understand — that’s what credit is. If someone lends me or you money, that person is acting in the belief that you or I will pay it back, with interest," she explained.

"You’re right about that. "

"But you know, there’s even more belief than that. Not only does the banker — or whoever — think he’s getting the money back with interest, the person borrowing it believes he or she will be able to afford the payments."

"Even after they double, as happened with the adjustable-rate mortgage. They believed they could pay…"

"Or they just didn’t think about it," she observed.

She went on to explain that companies all over the world bought "packages" full of the "toxic" loans, believing that they would be paid back and provide a good return on the investment.

"They all believed, whether or not they examined the things in which they put their faith," I mused.

"And here we are…"

Our conversation reminded me of a sermon I heard many years ago, at my uncle’s funeral. He died, suddenly, of a heart attack, at the same age I am now. "He told me he believed in Jesus," the priest recalled of my uncle. "If that’s what he believes in, that’s what he has now. Whatever you believe in, that’s all you’ll have in the end. If you believe in money, that’s what you’ll have. (By the way, if you do, don’t leave it behind: Your relatives will only fight over it.) If you believe in pleasure in this moment, that’s what you’ll have when you leave this world, this moment. But if you believe in Jesus, that is what you will have when the Lord recalls you. Just remember: Be careful of what you believe in, because that is all you’ll ever have."

That priest was well on in years when he exhorted me and my other surviving family members about how we should live. So I’m guessing that he’s long dead. But, even though I’m not religious, I can hardly think of anyone who could better speak to our current situation.

"Be careful of what you believe, or believe in" I reminded Dee Ann.

"Yeah. Just look at all those guys who thought they were so smart. Where are they now?"

"And the guys who manipulated the system are the ones with the platinum parachutes."

"But they didn’t believe," she intoned. "They just played on everyone’s beliefs."

"And the ones who believed…"

"They’re stuck with it now," she said.

"Yeah, be careful of what you believe in." I couldn’t say it any better than that priest. I don’t think anyone who worked at Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, AIG or Washington Mutual could, either. All we have left are their beliefs — and our complicity with them.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is recovering from the year she spent as an academic administrator.

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The implosion of this country’s financial system reveals that the United States is, indeed, an economic plutocracy. We have also seen that the ruling horde lives, essentially, in a different world from that which most Americans — and other people — inhabit.

What we have witnessed is, on one hand, are men who publicly extol the virtues of the free market — that is, until the system they cared about only to the extent that they could rig it came crashing down. Then, their true colors came into view: Their behavior is ruled by what Gary North has called "subsidy madness." That is to say, when they made unwise decisions or allowed their greed to get the better of them and the inevitable results followed, they wanted — no, expected and demanded — to be bailed out.

Really, they are no different from all of those ne’er-do-wells who expect that, if they blow their paychecks, they will be rescued by parents, spouses, other "significant others," or the government. And the only thing that distinguishes those investment bankers and their political patrons — who include the Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees of both major parties, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson, Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Bernanke and every member of Congress, save Ron Paul and possibly a handful of others — from "welfare queens" are their expensive suits and the BMWs that they don’t want to give up.

(Recently overheard: What’s the difference between a pigeon and an investment banker? Only one can still leave a deposit on a BMW.)

A definition of "plutocracy" implies the aloofness of that class of people from the hoi polloi. This they have shown by their recent behavior and the bidding Paulson and any number of politicians have been doing for them. The most obvious current example of this is, of course, the bailout plan they want to ram down taxpayers’ throats. (Section 2 alone should give pause to anyone who cares about liberty.) It’s as if their definition of "capitalism" is "the military-corporate welfare system."

One of the best possible outcomes of a situation in which we now find ourselves is, aside from the opportunity to let market mechanisms purge the greedy and imprudent, the opportunity to see who is included in the plutocracy I’ve been describing. In normal (for them) times, they are a "shadow" government, operating out of sight. Even most elected officials, for all of their visibility, are part of that cohort because nearly every one of them is doing the bidding of one of Gary North’s subsidy addicts. And most of their decisions, like the ones to print more money and loosen lending standards, are not noticed, much less protested until people feel it in their pocketbooks. And, as we are seeing, by then it’s too late.

Another outcome for me is that I’m gaining some confidence in the so-called "little people." Why? From conversations at the bus stop to commentary in the blogosphere, it’s becoming more evident that many, if not the majority, of Americans oppose the bailout plan. In fact, it seems they don’t want any scheme of the sort — even here in New York, which is already feeling the effects of bursting the FIRE bubble.

Most people may not understand the politics and economics, much less the thinking, behind the bailout plan. But they can see when they’re about to be dealt a bad hand, and they don’t want to be forced to play cards designed to keep the owners of the game from losing. Even if they can’t explain why, they know that the plan will raise their taxes and possibly prevent them from owning homes or sending their kids to college. They can see the barrels of the revolver pointed at them while the ones who made and cut the cards escape with the jackpot.

So, while it may well be that nearly all of us are subsidy addicts, at least to some degree, it seems that at least some of the so-called common people understand that the subsidies the financial industry has received, and will receive under the bailout plan, will make their own lives more difficult. What remains to be seen is how they will react if the companies that employ and insure them fall to the same fate as Bear-Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mae, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Washington Mutual, but the government doesn’t rescue them. How will they react if they lose their jobs, businesses, homes and other assets as a result?

I find myself thinking of a lyric from Bob Marley’s "Them Belly Full:"

A hungry man is a angry man;
A rain a-fall, but the dutty tough;
A pot a-yook, but you no ‘nough;
A rain a-fall, but the dutty tough.
A pot a-cook, but you no ‘nough;
A hungry mob is a angry mob

Either way, it doesn’t look good: Neither plutocracies nor empires (which are, more often than not, one in the same) ever end well. Even people who don’t know the words "empire" and "plutocracy" seem to understand that.

That’s more than can be said for Paulson or nearly any member of Congress — or for current Fed Chairman Bernanke or his predecessor, Alan Greenspan. May their motivations be brought to light, and may they see the light.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is recovering from the year she spent as an academic administrator.

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America you don’t really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.

Whatever you think of Allen Ginsberg’s lifestyle or politics, you’ve got to admit that those lines — which he wrote more than 50 years ago in America — pretty neatly sum up this country’s foreign policy since World War II.

Back in the day, it wasn’t the North Vietnamese playing off Kruschev/Brezhnev and Mao against each other that exacerbated the chaos and corruption that characterized Vietnam. And nothing the French did before helped to create the situation. Furthermore, the ambitions of men addled by McCarthyism (not to mention their profound ignorance of East Asian histories and cultures) and the invasion of Laos they attempted, had nothing to do with the desultory situation. Oh, no. It was them big, bad Russians.

Them Russians — yeah, they wanted to knock over Vietnam so that all the East Asian countries would fall like dominoes. Them Russians put Castro in power. Yeah, them Russians. And them Chinamen helping the Ruskies whenever it suits them.

So what’s the deal with them Russians and them Chinamen, anyway?

Over the years, Russia and the US have been like pre-adolescent classmates: The US is the boy who claims to despise Russia, the girl. Yet he pays an inordinate amount of attention to her, whether by taunting her or asking for her help with his French or math homework. He claims she’s terrible and ugly and dirty and smelly, yet looks at her more than at anyone else — or his studies. If he flunks a quiz or doesn’t make the team, it’s her fault. How, he could never explain.

So now Georgia’s in a fix. Gotta be them Russians’ fault. How so? Well, it always is. Georgia is this year’s Prague or "plucky little Belgium." Has to be; why else would they be fighting those big, bad Russians? Them Russians. Them Russians, who want to take away the freedoms Georgians are fighting so hard to preserve. Hey, we can’t let those Ruskies deny the residents of Tbilisi their inalienable right to eat at McDonald’s, can we?

Or their right to rule South Ossetia. Oh, right…It’s part of Georgia. Must be: Every other country of the world thinks so. Hey, us Americans don’t want no war with nobody. Only them Russians want that. So whatever all those other countries say is theirs, is theirs. Palestine belongs to Israel. Armenia belongs to Turkey — or is it Iraq? Never you mind. Remember, we gotta help our friends keep what they say is — whoops, I mean what is — theirs. So as long as the Chinese play nice with us, Tibet belongs to them.

And if they don’t? Well, don’t you know: Whatever them Russians don’t take from us, them Chinamen will. Them Russians, they start all the wars, and them Chinamen are making all the money.

But seriously, folks: The Russians are going to do us in. How? By taking over Georgia and all those other little countries they once ruled? No, that would belie the fabled Russian work ethic. So what are the Russians doing — besides beating us at our capitalist game — to bring us down?

They’re hoisting us on our own petard. You see, one difference between Americans and Russians is the latter actually pay attention to history — in whatever slanted versions. We Americans simply aren’t known for that sort of thing and the Russians know it.

What’s more, the Russians have had to live with history in ways no American has. I’m not talking only about the tsars or the Revolution; I mean that Russia has had to deal with the many countries that straddle its borders. And those countries have wildly divergent cultures: from Germany and Poland to Afghanistan and China, the Russians have lived alongside countries that have had little in common with them. So, while Russians have made no more effort than any other country to befriend their neighbors (few major writers were ever more xenophobic than Dostoevsky), they have had — at least to some degree — to understand them and their histories.

And, to be sure, memories of the Cold War are still fresh. Russian leaders now recognize that Americans locked in escalation with the Kremlin essentially caused the Soviet Union to spend itself out of existence. Not only in monetary terms, mind you: in morale as well. The Russians were spending a much larger portion of their GDP on their military than the Americans were spending on theirs. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was hamstrung by overt as well as covert wars on a number of fronts. Contrary to notions popular in America, it wasn’t Reagan’s tough talk that brought Gorbachev to his knees. Rather, all the years of fighting and spending were exhausting the former Soviet Union.

So, what’s America doing now? Occupying Iraq, fighting in Afghanistan and getting ready for a war against Iran. So what are the Russians doing now? Letting the Georgians draw us into their conflict.

And the Chinese continue to lend us money.

Allen Ginsberg was right after all. Everything that’s wrong with the world is because of them Russians them Russians them Chinamen. And them Russians.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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What does — and will — the invasion and occupation of Iraq really cost the people of this country?

Dollar figures are not hard to find. Even the low-ball figures are bad enough. And, as anyone who has taken on a multifaceted task of any sort knows, it will always cost much more, and take more time, than planned. Even if we triple or quadruple the worst-case estimates we’ve seen, we can still at least have some idea of what we may have to pay, now and in the future. And, of course, if enough people had the will to end the war, all Congress would have to do is cut off the funding, and eventually — if in the distant future — it would cease to extract our hard-earned money.

But another cost of the war may be more difficult to calculate. I’m talking, of course, about the human cost. Lives lost cannot be recreated; lives disrupted and families and communities fragmented may not be made whole again. And even if it were possible to re-construct the communities broken by the war, they would never be the same cities, towns, farms or other social constructs the people remember. Those affected will need to cope in new ways yet have fewer resources for doing this.

Perhaps the best we can do is to try to find out, however inexactly, how many people have been killed or wounded (whether physically or psychologically) by the fighting, and what it has cost them, their loved ones and their communities not only in terms of money, but in their overall well-being.

Even if we add the number of Iraqi civilians (anywhere from 83,000 to 91,000) killed as a result of the invasion and occupation to all of the military personnel (4000+ for the US, 200+ for the rest of its coalition and 100,000 for Iraq) who were slaughtered on both sides of this immoral conflict, we still wouldn’t have anywhere near an idea of what the death toll really is. We could also add the number of contractors, journalists and others who have been killed in the combat zone, and we still wouldn’t have any idea of how many lives have been lost, let alone what the loss of those lives means.

For starters, let’s consider the 18 veterans who commit suicide every day. (Mental health professionals estimate that for everyone who actually manages to end his or her life, fifteen others attempt to do so.) And let’s add all the people who will die, not only from injuries, but also from the after-effects of chemicals and such. And what of the family members, friends and others who fall victim to those who return home enraged and with no other means of dealing with their anger but to kill and destroy. And, I’m sure there are shell-shocked Iraqis who are doing similar things, even if they’ve escaped to the relative safety of other countries.

And let’s not forget the ones whose experience initiates or exacerbates their substance abuse problems. How many of those will turn to deaths that will come much too early, whether to themselves or their loved ones?

But, as terrible as it is to lose any life to this war, the body count is only the beginning of what official lying has cost, and will cost, this country. Worst of all, I think, is what it’s doing to this country spiritually.

I’m not a religious person, but I believe that the venal sin of lies have led to a terrible cardinal sin (OK, I was raised as a Catholic) from which this country may not ever be redeemed. Even though I haven’t believed politicians or many other public figures for a very long time, I still thought that there was at least some basic level of morality that guided this country, whatever or whether its people believed in. Now I feel we may have lost that, and I don’t think it’s possible to recover it once it’s lost.

The mere fact that so many lives were thrown away for the mendacity of plutocrats is, in itself, an indictment of where the morality of this country has gone. The decline didn’t start with this war, of course, or even with Bush the Elder’s Excellent Iraqi Adventure, the Vietnam War, Roe v Wade, or any of the coups and insurgencies this country fomented in Iran, Nicaragua and any number of countries. Each of them was like another one of Dante’s circles of Hell through which the narrator of The Inferno descends before reaching the pit. Dante populates the Eighth (penultimate) circle with seducers, flatterers, false prophets, corrupt politicians, thieves, alchemists and counterfeiters, among others. Does that sound like a familiar cast of characters?

And don’t get me started on Pelosi and the others who enabled all of them! They have cost us too much already. I hope only that as individuals, and as members of our families, communities and circles of friends, we may still be able to redeem what this war and its antecedents have leeched out of our country and culture.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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I guess I’m vulnerable to the mainstream media’s manipulations after all. On Friday morning, I fixed my eyes on toward the television screen as the local talking heads promised the verdict would be coming "any moment now."

They were referring, of course, to the decision in the trial of the NYPD officers who fired fifty shots at Sean Bell. I could claim that I was a captive audience: After all, the large plasma screen I was watching took up a rather large part of my doctor’s waiting room. I could have read the book I brought or the two-issues-old magazines in the racks around the room. Or I could also have done some of my own writing. But I continued to watch and listen raptly to a reporter who probably couldn’t have found Sean Bell’s neighborhood if a GPS monitor were surgically implanted in her brain.

In that waiting room, as I waited for my appointment, I found myself thinking about the Presidential primaries, the upcoming elections and elections past. I could not make a connection between the electoral spectacles and the case which was soon to be decided. However, shortly after the "not guilty" verdict was announced, I understood the similarities between the polls and the trial of the police officers.

The trial led, as the process of primaries and caucuses leads, to people choosing A and B. Which choice people make is used to make all sorts of assumptions about them, to wit: If you vote Republican, you don’t care about civil liberties or the welfare of elderly people and children; if you vote Democrat, you’re ignoring the threat of Islamofascists (whatever those are) and/or don’t care about "our troops." Likewise, if you favored acquittal of the cops who shot Sean Bell, you are racist (notwithstanding the fact that two of the three officers were, uh, people of color), but if you wanted them convicted, you are anti-cop and didn’t care about the safety of my poor, dear grandmother in Rego Park.

And, in both the trial and the elections, you gain even more opprobrium by suggesting that people are picking among two bad choices: You are likely to get flack from both camps and if you suggest an alternative, you are labeled as "elitist" or "pie-in-the-sky."

But worst of all, people who think "democracy" is the privilege of picking between Frick and Frack come to their choices without ever asking, or even hearing, a relevant question about the issues in question. They still think that how quickly and thoroughly this country weathers the subprime mortgage crisis or how soon their children, siblings and spouses come back from Iraq is a matter of voting for the right candidate. By the same token, they think that "justice" (however they define it) is a matter of a "guilty" or "not guilty" verdict.

What is almost never asked is how and why the situation in which people have to choose between two bad alternatives — and think their choice will actually make a difference — came to be. I’m no expert on Middle Eastern or colonial history, but what I know about each tells me that it’s foolhardy to think that we can shape (or do anything at all) to make countries like Iraq do what our plutocrats want them to do. (In fact, I realize that creating the country of Iraq was one of the more misguided things the British Empire builders did.) However, nearly everyone who votes, and nearly everyone for whom they vote, either doesn’t know this history or deliberately ignores it. In a similar vein, they don’t understand, as Gary North and others have shown, that economic conditions of the past two decades are largely the result "bubbles" in high-technology, real estate and commodities that were induced by Fed manipulation of the money supply. So, the debate about "what to do now" centers around not whether, but how, to help people who shouldn’t have taken out adjustable rate mortgages to stay in homes they can’t afford and to lower the cost of gasoline.

To continue the comparison between the electoral process and the Sean Bell trial, whether people favored acquittal or conviction, their choice was based on flawed premises and a faulty, at best, understanding of how and why three NYPD officers pumped fifty slugs into someone who was doing little more than celebrating his last night as a single man. The pro-conviction crowd, as I’ve already mentioned, cites racism, ‘roid rage or pure-and-simple criminal dereliction of duty as the cause, while the ones who wanted the acquittal the cops got say the officers in question had reason to believe they were in danger and had to make a split-second decision. Those who think the acquittal was right also invoke Sean Bell’s unsavory past as a reason for their stance. In other words, they are saying that Bell was one of the "usual suspects."

Of course, one could ask how Officers Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper knew about Bell’s youthful offenses, the record of which was supposedly sealed. More to the point is the fact that if he had already paid for his past offenses, no law enforcement official can use them as a rationale for chasing or arresting him, any more than he could be tried for those same offenses.

Still more germane is a question that no one in the mainstream media (and, as a result the general public) seems to have asked: What, exactly, were Officers Oliver, Isnora and Cooper doing at the Kahlua Club — a dive hard by the Long Island Railroad tracks in a gritty area of Jamaica, Queens — on the night they pumped fifty bullets into Sean Bell’s body. In asking that question, one would be questioning one of the most basic premises behind the NYPD’s work — and most urban policing in this country — for at least the past two decades: crime prevention.

Up to about forty years ago, most policing could be said to have been reactive: The constables responded to an offense already committed. However, as the crime rate ratcheted up — fueled in large part by governmental bans on the sale of various recreational drugs — fed-up people were all too willing to go along with this idea, even at the expense of their civil liberties. This ceding of freedom was further accelerated by the events of 9/11 and the reactions to them. People who once cherished the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments were now willing to tolerate racial profiling, cameras in private places and other practices and apparati that would have given pause to George Orwell.

But here’s the rub: Giving up our rights — and our means of defending them — means that the police — and by extension, the government who employs them — can impose its will with less and less impunity. Inevitably, the agents of government become more and more like the evildoers they are supposedly trying to stop: Police undercover work, as we have seen in the case of Sean Bell, has become one of the most egregious examples of this. Officers Oliver, Isnora and Cooper had to act like customers of the sleazy strip club they were ostensibly infiltrating. Upholding the law and protecting public safety while behaving like overgrown, testosterone-addled frat boys requires greater acting skills than any director ever demanded even of Ben Kingsley. Most people don’t have that kind of talent or skills; those things certainly can’t be taught at the NYPD Academy.

So we are left with police departments doing what they couldn’t, by definition, do in a free society: i.e., one founded on principles of liberty and respect for law. Worse, taxpayers demand such things as "crime prevention" and the "War on Terror," just as they’re now crying for the government to help people out of the subprime mess they got themselves into.

And they sit, transfixed, in front of their TV sets, awaiting the verdict and election results — as, I admit, I have.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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Newton’s Third Law of Motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

What Newton may never have realized is that his formulation applies as much to political and social movements as it does to physical objects and forces. I was reminded of this while watching an episode of the PBS series American Masters.

The segment in question deals with Zora Neale Hurston, the all-but-uncategorizable African-American writer who was, among other things, the first member of her race to graduate from Barnard College. As an artist and folklorist, she is best known (justly so) for Their Eyes Were Watching God and Mules and Men. In these books, and other works, she turned her unique eyes and ears — which were preternaturally attuned to rhythms and motifs of speech and movement and trained by the pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas — on the communities in which she was born and raised, and in which she would spend much of her life. The result, as more than one fellow writer observed, was that she could render the idioms of early 20th Century black Americans in a way that middle-class white Americans could feel as if they were reading their own language.

So why were all of her books out of print at the time of her death in 1960? (When I was an undergraduate a quarter-century ago, the revival of interest in her work was just beginning.) And, you may be asking, how does all of this relate to Newton’s Third Law of Motion?

The answer to these questions lie with an aspect of Ms. Hurston’s life and work that has been ignored, downplayed or simply been greeted with a dismissive "tsk, tsk" by the writers and scholars such as Alice Walker and Henry Louis Gates.

I am referring to the political views she expressed. Or, more precisely, I mean the principles she extracted from her life experiences and expressed as a cogent philosophy of race relations and their relation to economics and politics. Her expression of these axioms brought upon her the wrath of the very people who once championed her books.

Actually, there was always an undercurrent of resentment against Hurston’s focus on language, stories and traditions, and the aesthetic pleasure she found in them. Richard Wright (best known for his Native Son) was probably the most prominent voice castigating her for not writing "protest" novels, or simply works that were more blatantly political (read: Communist/Socialist). Writers such as Wright as well as the critics and scholars who championed them would become part of the action and reaction that would propel the irony of Hurston’s rise, fall and resurrection in the eyes of the reading public.

Today nearly everyone deplores, rightly, the "McCarthyism" that stifled so much meaningful discourse during the 1950′s. Wright and other writers who had been, in one way or another, associated with the Communist Party before the war strenuously denounced their pasts or simply denounced their former party affiliation. It’s hard to blame them: Any number of writers and other artists and intellectuals had their careers interrupted or destroyed altogether over mere allegations of their allegiance to the Kremlin.

However, the American Masters episode about Hurston contains one of the few references — let alone more-than-cursory treatments — of Hurston’s politics outside of conservative intellectual journals.

That Hurston was a Republican was not terribly remarkable, even in the 1950′s. While African-Americans began their flight from "The Party of Lincoln" two decades earlier, many — particularly those of Hurston’s generation and members of what Richard Florida today calls "the creative class" — retained their allegiance to the Grand Old Party. Gates and any number of white liberal academics see this political orientation of the idea that "I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, so can everyone else." However, such an interpretation — which was shared by Wright and others who would denounce Hurston — does not come close to accurately representing the beliefs Hurston actually expressed.

That is the reason why leftist writers and intellectuals — very often, the very people impugned by McCarthy’s allegations — as well as leaders of the emerging Civil Rights movement attacked Hurston, sometimes viciously. As soon as they learned that she opposed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, she was labeled an "Uncle Tom" and worse. (Similarly, too many people who claim to want an end to US involvement in Iraq and to restore civil liberties wouldn’t consider Ron Paul upon learning that he opposes Affirmative Action legislation.) They never read or listened long enough to learn what may have been the most valuable lesson that Hurston learned from her experiences of gathering folklore: that she was a member of a strong and resilient race of people who, because they had endured great hardships and injustices, had the will as well as the ability to rise above their current condition. That view is best expressed in a letter she wrote to the editor of the Orlando Sentinel in 1955.

Indeed, how can anyone not see her faith in her people — and in herself — after reading the following?:

If there are not adequate Negro schools in Florida, and there is some residual, some inherent and unchangeable quality in white schools, impossible to duplicate anywhere else, then I am the first to insist that Negro children of Florida be allowed to share this boon. But if there are adequate Negro schools and prepared instructors and instructions, then there is nothing different except the presence of white people.

Lest anyone infer that she was writing as a pie-in-the-sky utopian, she shows that her work left her with about as realistic a view of human nature as one can have when she says, in essence, that laws can end segregation in schools but not people’s hearts or when she wonders, "How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them?"

Furthermore, she frequently expressed her opposition to welfare programs like the ones initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. She believed, prophetically, that reliance on entitlements would undermine black men’s and women’s sense of their self-worth. This, in turn, would destroy their families and communities: the very institutions she did so much to portray for a wide audience.

Expressing these views would lead to her being "blacklisted," although almost no one, it seems, describes her treatment as such. After her Seraph on the Suwanee was published in 1948, only letters to local newspaper editors and occasional articles kept her name in print. She had become a persona non grata to the very writers, editors, agents and publishers who, just a few years earlier, couldn’t get enough of her.

Ms. Hurston, who so strenuously refused to define herself as a victim, became just that at the hands the very people who were victimized by their actual or alleged political affiliation. Perhaps the saddest irony of all is that some of those people who shunned Ms. Hurston helped to launch, or were otherwise associated with, the Civil Rights movement that helped to bring about the Brown decision, Affirmative Action and other legislative actions that would leave Hurston spinning in her grave — and give Newton affirmation, though perhaps not the kind he would’ve liked.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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In the faculty dining room, "Larry" and I were lamenting the passage of time. He expressed disbelief that forty years have passed since the Tet Offensive. "I flew a helicopter there, you know."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It was bad enough seeing, from up there, what was happening. I can only imagine what those guys on the ground went through."

"Thank God I never had to experience that. I mean, I was only a reservist, and it was peacetime, except for that little thing called u2018The Cold War.’"

"So why did you join?"

I explained that, like countless other young people before and since my enlistment, I signed up, in part, to pay for college. Also, having come of age a few years after the US ended its military involvement in Southeast Asia, I, like so many other people of my generation, didn’t think we’d actually see battle unless the Soviets launched an attack on us. The prevailing "wisdom," to which I subscribed, said that it really wasn’t in the Russians’ interest to do anything of the sort, and if they did, we’d all be toast anyway.

"Besides," I added, "It seemed that there would be a lot of career opportunities."

"That’s one of the biggest lies recruiters use."

"Tell me about it!" But, I conceded, the Army did pay for my undergraduate schooling — a good part of it, anyway.

"Same here," Larry said. "I probably wouldn’t have been able to go to college without the Army, without the GI Bill."

"You were poor," I speculated.

"Not really," he countered. Rather, he was a "feckless and reckless kid" who didn’t do well in high school — when he deigned to attend at all — and had unofficially dropped out by the time he turned sixteen. The following year, tiring of his run-ins with authority figures, his father signed him into the Army and promised, "It’ll make a man outta ya."

He laughed bitterly at those words. If anything, he said, "I’ve become a man in spite of my military experience." It wouldn’t have mattered whether he or his father had enlisted him, the government had drafted (as it could’ve in those days) him, or whether he’d joined the Navy, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard, he explained. "My growing up wouldn’t've had anything to do with being in uniform."

It’ll make a man outta ya: Countless young men have heard those same words, or variants thereof, from other men in their lives. Even in today’s politically correct climate, I’m sure that young men still hear it; however, for the sake of argument, I’ll amend that phrase. Let’s say, "It’ll make you grow up": That, I think, is more or less what people mean when they talk about a boy becoming a man. Or, if you like, we can substitute Paul’s (the apostle’s, not the Presidential candidate’s) injunction to "put away childish things."

Now, I mean no disrespect to those of you who served, perhaps spent your entire adult lives, in the Armed Forces: I do not wish to insinuate that you are immature. I also don’t doubt that you have matured since the day you enlisted or were drafted. However, most of us change, intellectually, emotionally and physically, from the time we’re, say, 18 or 19 until we’re in our twenties, let alone thirties, forties or beyond — whether we enter the Armed Forces, college, an apprenticeship (Who does that anymore?), marriage or any of the other experiences that have defined late adolescence and early adulthood for generations.

I’m no developmental psychologist, but I’m willing to venture a guess as to why most of us make some sort of passage from childhood to adult life during the years in question. Obviously, changes in our body — and brain — chemistry have something to do with our transformations. However, I think the more important factor is our development of perspective about our life experiences. It seems to me that, when we turn twenty or so, we can really look upstream at the river of our lives and see, for the first time, that the part of the bank on which we’re standing isn’t just like the spot where he once stood. Even more important, I believe, is understanding that, however the river flows, we bear responsibility for how we arrived wherever we’re standing and how we’ll get to wherever we’re headed. It doesn’t matter whether we sail, swim, walk or fly: Getting there is our choice and responsibility.

Yet the structure of a recruit’s life seems to go against this process of understanding one’s responsibility for one’s self, of truly feeling and pulling one’s own weight. If we learn by doing, we learn how to make good decisions (to me, one of the hallmarks of maturity) by making decisions and being subject to the consequences. Recruits — and, for that matter, most people in uniform — are kept from making decisions about any aspect, serious or mundane, of their lives. Thus, when they have to make decisions about their personal lives (e.g., about finances), they are not equipped for the task.

Their day begins with reveille: They do not have to take the responsibility of getting themselves out of bed early enough to ready themselves for the day’s tasks. Everything about the day, including what, where and how they will eat and wear whatever they put in or on themselves, is proscribed — and provided for them. So are the places in which they live: They may not be a young person’s dream, but they’re provided free of charge, and the recruits don’t have to look at listings, make phone calls, budget their money or set other priorities to keep themselves housed, fed, clothed and shod.

Admittedly, the military isn’t the most financially remunerative of employers. However, a young single person has few, if any, expenses. Some young soldiers save money; others help to support their families. However, for many others, their military pay, however modest, is disposable income. And, dispose it they do: What can we expect of a young person who’s had no training or guidance in that area? One result is that officers and NCOs say that one of their chief concerns about young enlistees is their financial management skills, or lack thereof.

To be fair, increases in military pay don’t always keep pace with inflation, so finances can be very difficult for enlistees who are supporting families. However, that is not the issue I’m discussing in relation to young enlistees: Rather, they tend to behave like any other young people who have an allowance but no day-to-day expenses.

Part and parcel of a recruit’s life is, of course, their training, which includes lots of hyper-masculine role-playing (what some would call "overcompensating") and is laced with misogyny. Now tell me, does a "real" man have to continuously prove that he is one? Does a truly manly man have to degrade, or even disrespect women? We rightly denounce rappers who claim all women are "bitches and u2018ho’s," yet we willingly turn over our sons to drill instructors who call them "ladies" when their performance is, for whatever reason, unsatisfactory. And, we tell our children and students that they don’t have to be the kind of heroes they see on TV or in the movies in order to lead meaningful lives, but we (and other nations) allow the military to inculcate our young with visions of themselves as Rambo.

Is it any wonder that recruits in Iraq have raped and tortured civilians? Does anyone think that such behavior is a characteristic of mature men or, if you like, evolved adult human beings?

All of this begs these questions: What do people who have been trained to kill and to inflict suffering on the living do when they enter civilian life? And how do they manage their lives once they have to start divvying up whatever money they make for housing, food, utilities or any other necessities of their lives?

Ironically, when recruits decide not to re-enlist, they hear variants of these questions during their separation interviews. Commanders and counselors regale those who are leaving with taunts of "You won’t make it on the outside!" and "You’re nothing without us." The recruits, as often as not, joined to learn new skills or to further their educations; the goal in either event is to become a self-sufficient and self-reliant adult. But, as they’re leaving, they’re told that is exactly what didn’t happen. I don’t care how tough you are; you still have to believe in yourself in order to become an adult, a man or whatever you want to be.

So, don’t let anyone tell you that joining the military will make your kid "grow up." And don’t believe that they can "make a man" out of someone. After all, they didn’t do that for me, now, did they?

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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Open Letters

Today I am going to do something preposterous, and possibly presumptuous. Then I am going to ask you to do something that, on first glance, may seem unfathomable or simply repulsive.

First, to the preposterous/presumptuous: I am going to try to represent, and speak to, the so-called "51% minority," to which we belong.

And the unfathomable/repulsive: I am going to ask you to vote for a longtime pro-life Republican Congressman from Texas who has called Roe vs. Wade "a terrible decision." What’s more, he’s gone on record as opposing affirmative-action legislation.

By now, some of you think I’m a traitor to my sex (not to mention this country and the human race) or worse. I guess that’s just an occupational hazard of trying to speak for, and to, high-society debutantes and "butch" lesbians, homeschooling moms in Michigan and childless university professors in Massachusetts, Ivy League alumnae ensconced in Wall Street firms and teenage mothers living in public housing in the Bronx, or transgenders as well as the vast majority who were born with two X chromosomes.

At first glance, it may seem that such disparate women have as little in common as I have with an Evangelical (or other religious fundamentalist) stay-at-home mother or with recent college graduate or dropout who’s moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn and pierced or tattooed every visible orifice of her body. However, we all — most of us, anyway — have shared experiences and values that should motivate us to at least think outside of the box bounded by Hillary, Obama, Edwards and All Other Candidates.

I’m not going to say much about Paul’s anti-war stance, even though it was the first aspect of his campaign that drew my attention. For one thing, most of us want the troops brought back from Iraq and Afghanistan, the sooner the better, and many of us already are on board with his plan to bring the young men and women home from Germany, Korea and all those other places in the world that have become America’s garrisons. If you are not already convinced that these are necessary moves, I don’t know what will sway you; if you are in agreement, there isn’t much more that I can say.

More important — especially for us — is Ron Paul’s opposition to what the military represents and how it affects our economy and society, all of which are detrimental to our individual and collective well-being as women.

Last year, I had a female student who had recently retired from a career in the Air Force. She said that the reason she joined, back in the late 1970′s, was that “there were opportunities. You know, Affirmative Action had just begun.” Even today, she says, there are probably “better chances for advancement” for women in the military than in other areas of society. What she says is not merely anecdotal; the increasing role of women in the military has been noted by the media and academia.

This former student credits the Air Force not only for the career opportunities that it gave her, but also for the chance to “travel the world and meet different people from the ones I grew up with.” And, of course, the Air Force is paying for her current schooling. But, she says, “You know, I really wish I didn’t have to enlist to do all the things I did.”

I think nearly all of us can sympathise with that last statement. For all the hoopla about how we’re gaining equality with men, the sad fact is that we’ve made most of our employment and monetary gains in the public sector — which, of course, includes the military. Some may argue that “peaceful” employment in governmental social service departments is more necessary and honorable than enlistment in the Armed Forces. However, they have the same results, all of which are detrimental to this society — and to us, as women.

All jobs that comprise governmental payrolls are part of a vicious circle of welfare, taxation and legislation, warfare, more taxation and legislation, nation- and empire-building and ever-more-oppressive taxation and legislation. They may give some of us the means to subsistence, but can never lead us, or anyone else, to economic self-sufficiency. They keep us in the thrall of government, and the high taxes that must be levied to finance them discourage or even prevent entrepreneurs from starting new ventures or expanding pre-existing ones. This is not good, whether you’re looking for a job with the entrepreneur, or whether you want to be that entrepreneur yourself.

Furthermore, our dependence on government employment and programs has left us in a kind of economic apartheid: Those jobs are associated with us, and us with them, and because those jobs aren’t as highly esteemed as those in the private sector, we find ourselves saddled with accusations that we can’t make it without government mandates. So, while laws are passed and workplace policies are changed to allow us more leave time and such, we find that employers don’t accept more absenteeism from us; they expect it. In the end, this can only help to reinforce the gender stereotypes against us. And that can’t help more of us to advance, socially and economically.

Among the candidates, Ron Paul alone understands why federal affirmative-action laws don’t help us, or any other “minority” group they were ostensibly intended to help. Instead, the cuts and outright abolition of taxes and regulations that he proposes will open up the opportunities that we’re ready to take. After all, studies have shown that, all things considered, our overall level of performance on most jobs is nearly identical to that of men, and that we do better on jobs that require more interpersonal skills. In spite — or maybe because — of our increasing dependence on technology, more jobs will require greater communication, motivation and team-building skills: in other words, the things we do to get through the day.

Now, you may be convinced, as I am, that Ron Paul will remove at least some of the roadblocks to our economic advancement. But you may also be put off by his remark about Roe v. Wade. However, the comment is a good place for us to use another ability that many of us have, out of necessity, to a greater degree than men: reading between the lines and discerning the meaning behind the words.

Ron Paul has said that the legality or illegality of abortion should not be a decision of the Federal government. Just as he, a foe of abortion, opposes the Roe v Wade decision, he also opposes a Federal ban on abortion. Such a ban would be, as the Roe v Wade decision is, an abrogation of both the letter and spirit of the Constitution. While that is his primary, if not his sole, reason for his stance, we should also think about our situation 35 years after Roe vs. Wade and what many of us fear would happen if the decision were repealed. According to a study released in 2003, 87 percent of all US counties did not have an abortion provider. About one-third of all American women of childbearing age live in those counties. This situation at least hazily reflects the voting patterns of this country: Those counties are mainly red; the more densely populated metropolitan areas, most of which have abortion providers, are blue. One would expect that if the Federal government had no laws supporting or banning abortion, this scenario wouldn’t change much, if at all.

Too digress for a moment, I want to point out that those sparsely-populated areas without abortion providers also don’t have very many lesbians or gay men living in them, at least not openly. So, whether or not Federal laws prohibit the practice, not many same-sex marriages will be performed in those areas. Likewise, whatever the Federal government does or doesn’t do, those unions will be performed, if surreptitiously, in San Francisco and Massachusetts. Why not leave everyone to do whatever he or she needs to do to pursue his or her happiness — whether that happens to be as a single advertising art director in New York or a pastor’s wife in Oklahoma?

Finally, I realize that some of you are wondering what would happen to our health if the Federal government were to stop providing for our care and abolish the FDA and other agencies that are supposed to protect us from unsafe drugs and the like. You may think that this country will revert to what Upton Sinclair depicted in The Jungle. I am sure that unscrupulous manufacturers and marketers will continue to make the equivalents of snake oil and push them on us; that has always happened, whether or not there were agencies charged with preventing it. However, we are much better able to deal with those who disguise their greed as a wish to make us healthier and more comfortable than people were a hundred years ago. For one thing, more of us can read the labels on the products we find in the local apothecary or supermarket. And, for another, we have — especially with the Internet — faster and more convenient means of finding and sharing information about a product, its manufacturer and sellers. But most of all, we get out of our homes more than women did a century ago. When we go out and see each other, we can use a talent that we’ve possessed, from time immemorial, in greater degree than men have: our ability to communicate with each other. Yes, whether we’re in the groves of academia or the local nail salon, we talk to each other. There has never been anything in the Constitution to stop us from doing that, and Ron Paul does nothing to get in the way of the Constitution. Which means he won’t get in our way, either.

So, in brief, we don’t need laws to protect us; we need opportunities to do what we do well and be rewarded for them. Of all of the candidates for President, Ron Paul, in his strict adherence to the Constitution, will allow those opportunities and won’t get in the way of our pursuit of them. So forget the rhetoric and labels, and vote for him.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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Open Letters

Today I am writing to you as someone who has voted for many of the same candidates — very often for the same reasons — as you have.

Perhaps you never have considered voting for any candidate who is not a Democrat. I understand how you feel: For most of the three decades in which I have been eligible to vote, I couldn’t conceive of choosing any candidate who didn’t have the "D" affixed to his or her name. The presidencies of two Bushes, one Reagan and one Ford, as well as the Republican governorships and mayoralties under which I have lived, offered little enticement to give my vote their cohorts. To me, the so-called Grand Old Party represented warmongering and other abuses of power. I suspect that many of you have seen, and still see, Republicans in a similar way.

So why, you may ask, am I asking you to vote against your party? More specifically, you may wonder why I am asking you to vote for a Presidential candidate who doesn’t want the Federal government to sanction same-sex marriages and who opposes abortion. Moreover, he has espoused a generally anti-immigration policy that includes opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens and support for building a fence along the border with Mexico.

Right about now, you may be wondering whether: a.) this is a joke, b.) I’ve sold out on my principles or c.) I’ve regressed to indulging myself in one of the illicit pleasures of my youth. Rest assured that none of the above is true, and that I really am petitioning your support for Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy. Although your first reaction to some of his positions — and the fact that he’s running as a Republican — may be shock or horror, on closer examination you will find that you and he have more common values and interests than you realized you had.

Let’s start with the war. By now, most — if not all — of you want to bring home this country’s young men and women from Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible. That’s something Ron Paul wants to do within a year after his inauguration.

So what?, you say. There are other anti-war candidates, and some who sound like they’re not so crazy about the war. Why not one of them?, you wonder.

Well, for one thing, Ron Paul is the only candidate to have stated, unequivocally, that he wants to end America’s military entanglement in Iraq, the sooner the better. And he — alone, it seems — understands that the surest way of accomplishing this is to cut off the funds, which he has pledged to do if he’s elected. No money, no war.

However, Ron doesn’t want to stop with a withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also stated his intention to bring American troops home from Korea, Japan, Germany and throughout the rest of the world. He seems to be the only candidate who understands that ending the debacle in Iraq is only a beginning; he knows that the system that posits the US as the world’s policeman must end if we want to prevent a future Iraq — or Vietnam.

I don’t know whether Ron Paul has made the connection I’m about to make. If he has, it will explain his immigration stance, which you — and, frankly, I — find troubling. While I believe that people should be free to enter and leave this (or any other) country, I also acknowledge that either or both of two factors will guarantee a large migration of poor, unskilled people into a country: an overarching welfare state and a current or recent status as an imperialistic power. Several European countries, of course, have cradle-to-grave safety nets and the legacy of their empires. They — most notably England and France — have seen tides of immigration from their former colonies overseas.

The United States, while not quite as generous in payouts as its European counterparts, is currently the world’s reigning colonial giant. Imperial powers induce dependency, not only in those countries they rule directly, but also wherever they have a direct or indirect military, economic or cultural influence. So, when the ruling country withdraws, the former colony almost inevitably experiences hardships and dislocations. People in those places really have no other hope of escaping their hardship but to move to the country that colonized them.

If the relationship I’ve drawn between colonialism and mass immigration is valid, we can expect that ending our military entanglements and other coercive influence in other parts of the world will probably help to ebb the waves of immigration. So will free trade, which Ron Paul favors and will also reduce any actual or perceived need for military action.

Furthermore, he also realizes that countries can wage war only to the extent that their governments have power over people’s lives. This they gain, of course, through taxation, which gives them the means not only to build bases, buy weapons and such, but also to keep domestic would-be opponents at bay. In other words, taxation allows governments to snoop as well as shoot. If governments can do either, let alone both, of these things, there is little else they can’t do to their constituents. Although you may support governmental bans on hate speech or whatever, I’m guessing that, deep down, you really don’t like the government — or anyone else — telling you what to do.

More to the point, I think that you understand (even if you haven’t acknowledged) that you can’t guarantee your own freedom by destroying or negating someone else’s. Maybe you’ve seen the bumper sticker that reads, "If you don’t like abortion, don’t get one." We could substitute any number of things — a gun or marijuana, for example — for "abortion" and remain consistent with your desire for personal freedom — and Ron Paul’s philosophy and voting record.

And that, after his anti-war stance, may be the most compelling reason to vote for him. He, alone among the candidates, realizes that your freedom to marry whomever you please (or not) cannot be guaranteed by legislation, no matter how tightly-written it is. Indeed, Mr. Paul is a conservative Christian who doesn’t condone homosexuality, let alone gay marriage, or the recreational use of marijuana or other drugs. On the other hand, he has no sympathy with gay-bashers or anyone else who practices bigotry.

However, he has consistently spoken and voted against any proposed federal laws to define marriage in any form, post military border patrols to combat drug trafficking and randomly test Federal employees for drugs. By the same token, he has voted against hate-crimes legislation and language in civil rights laws to "protect" various groups. He has seen that such laws aren’t deterrents to hateful behavior or people enjoying themselves in ways that could harm them. More to the point, he knows that the resources needed to enforce such laws may just as well be burned. You wouldn’t want some politico to increase your taxes so he could pay for something wholly unproductive, would you? And you wouldn’t want him to trample all over your rights in the process — right? I thought so.

Finally, I realize that some of you became Democrats during, or in the wake of, the Civil Rights movements of the 1960′s. You were stirred by the brutal treatment blacks and others received at the hands of cops, and the discrimination they faced in applying for jobs, schools and housing. Perhaps you suffered some of those indignities yourselves.

Well, Ron Paul lived through those times and shares your sense that blacks and others are treated unfairly by the criminal justice (sic) system as well as by potential employers. He has also seen the failure of overarching legislation and the welfare state in helping to bring about equality of opportunity for people of all races. For one thing, he realizes that business owners, when they can, will leave areas where they are heavily taxed and tightly regulated for places where those burdens are lighter, or nonexistent. If a business moves, the jobs go with it. While many of these jobs don’t pay well or offer benefits, they still offer a better chance than handouts permit for an escape from poverty and degradation. Work also brings people into contact with people from other walks of life. No matter what one’s talents or credentials are, contacts will do more to help that person improve his or her professional and economic status. And that, as Ron Paul understands, is something that welfare programs don’t offer.

I mean, let’s be honest: No matter how generous the government’s benefits are, you still would rather see your kid working at a good job, wouldn’t you? You don’t want your kids to smoke pot, but you wouldn’t want them to get busted for it. At least that’s what I’m guessing. And, while you may not approve of some of the things your kids want and need to live happy, fulfilling lives, you know, deep down, that if you can’t inculcate your kids with your values and aspirations, you can’t expect a government — whether through its laws, educational institutions (which include nearly all schools in this country) or other manifestations — to do the same.

And, finally, wouldn’t you feel a whole lot better knowing that your kids, your loved ones or you won’t ever have to fight a war that has nothing to do with defending your (or your country’s) property or safety?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, I urge you to get off the donkey — if only for this one time — and go, not to the elephants, but to Ron Paul. At least he’ll leave us with the freedom to go back to the donkey, elephant or whatever animal, mineral or vegetable we choose.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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(with sincere apologies to Bob Marley and Eric Clapton)

(I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I didn’t kill no friends of ours
Oh, no oh
(I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I didn’t kill no friends of ours
Ooh, ooh, oo-oh

Yeah, all through the councils of the world
They’re trying to try me now
They say they want
My condemnation
For the destruction of a nation
For the death of a nation.
But I say,
Oh, now, now, oh

(I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I swear it was in our defense
Oh, no, yeah
(I bombed Ira-a-q))
And they say it was a gross offense

Saddam Hussein always hated me
For what
I don’t know
We try to bring democracy
But they want to kill it when we go
But the want to kill us as we go
And so,
It will be on Faux News:

(I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I swear it was in our defense
Where is that nation?
(I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I swear it was in our defense

Freedom came their way one day
After we leveled their towns, yeah
All of a sudden I saw
Saddam Hussein
Trying to kill my father
So I bombed
I bombed that place and I say
"If I am guilty, he will pay."

(I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I did not kill no friends of ours
I didn’t kill no friends of ours
(I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I didn’t kill no friends of ours

Terr-uh had got the better of me
And what is to be must be
Every day the War on Terr-uh goes well
The bottom will not drop out
The bottom will not drop out
I say,

(I
I
I
I bombed Ira-a-q)
Lord, I didn’t kill no friends of ours
Yeah
(I
I bombed Ira-a-q)
But I didn’t kill no friends of ours
Yeah
Oh, yeah

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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Trust me. I’m a government spy.

If that didn’t make you cringe, you’re probably beside yourself with laughter.

But that’s essentially what one of this country’s highest-ranking spooks is telling us to do. He reminds me of one of those doctors who tells a kid, "This won’t hurt," while he’s thrusting a long needle into the kid’s arm.

Losing your privacy won’t hurt. And it will make you sooo much safer.

Riiight. Just ignore that voice you hear: "Those who are willing to give up a little freedom for a little security will deserve neither and lose both." Who was that — Benjamin Franklin? What did he know about tera-ism, anyway?

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity.

That little gem came from one Donald Kerr, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence. He oughta know a thing or two about keeping us safe from the bad boys, right? I mean, if he says so, you really have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide. If you don’t want to give your name and want a numbered offshore account, you must be up to no good. Really.

Instead, [privacy] should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

Run that by me again. Remember, I’m not an intelligence person; I’m just an ordinary gal who’s read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Oh — and FISA, too. Oh, gee (I’m blushing now.) I guess I shouldn’t get too upset about the government wiretapping my phone calls or intercepting my e-mails because someone even thinks I am or whoever’s on the other end is in another country. After all, you never know what those foreigners are up to, do you? Sammy’s gathering our personal information only to protect us, you know.

Those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it’s not for us to inflict one size fits all.

Oh, I see. It’s all those young whippersnappers who want to expose me. Such cheek — They have absolutely no respect for the privacy of their elders! Thank you for enlightening me, Mr. Kerr, you wise eminence gris you. I’m with you when you say you don’t understand why people are

perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an [Internet service provider] who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data.

I mean, really. Who would you rather see with your name, phone number, credit card, credit score, school transcripts and health records — one of those sneaky, shifty foreigners slaving away in front of a hot computer screen for less money than you spent for that slice of pizza, or nice, clean agents of a government that only uses intelligence to protect honest Uhmurrikun peeple. Uh huh — just like they did at Ruby Ridge and Waco.

Besides, what could that illegal at the ISP do to you, if he’s so motivated? He could steal your credit card number. But, you protest, that’s more likely to happen at a restaurant or store. OK, but that alien can always b-b-blackmail you. I mean, doesn’t that scare you more than what our government did to Maher Arar after they got his information?

Just listen to that nice government agent when he says

I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but (also) what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn’t empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.

Now, I’ll admit I’m not a tekkie. All I know about cell phones is that they come in my favorite colors. So please forgive me if I don’t understand how I’m safer when anybody I don’t know has my name, the numbers of my telephone, social security and credit cards, driver’s license, passport and bank account and my FICA score and lists of all books, magazines, videos and playthings I’ve bought and borrowed.

Then again, I’m sure Mr. Kerr knows better. After all, if we’d had the Patriot Act and other such laws way back when, there may never have been any Federalist Papers because everyone would’ve known who "Publius" was. Imagine how much easier Kerr’s job would be if there weren’t all those pesky debates about what the Founding Fathers wrote.

Oh, another thing: When Agent Kerr was at the FBI, he reminds us,

It was a felony to misuse the data — it was punishable by five years in jail and a $100,000 fine, which I don’t believe has ever happened

Oh, yeah. People really quake in their boots when they think about five years in Club Fed and handing over 100Gs when they know those things have never happened to one of their own. I feel safer already. Thank you, Herr Donald Kerr.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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What gives?

First Kuwait un-pegged its dinar from the dollar.

Now the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA, which is the central Saudi bank) isn’t following the US Federal Reserve’s lead in lowering interest rates.

Did our beloved Saudi Royals spend their summer holidays on la Cote d’Azur reading Murray Rothbard? Is Austrian Economics becoming the new religion of the season?

If Saudi central bank Governor Hamad Saud Al-Sayyari really wants to ensure the long-term economic viability of his country, the question should not be whether or not his country will unhitch the riyal from the US Dollar. His question should be, How soon?

To the extent that this story has received any coverage in the media (I learned about it from International Living), it has been suggested that the Saudis won’t unhook their money from the American greenback any time soon. Analysts cite the Saudis’ alliance with their neighbors — the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain — which has the goal of creating a sort of Arabian Euro. Most experts were surprised that any of those countries, most of all the Saudi Arabia, would detach its currency from Uncle Sam’s treasure before achieving regional monetary unity.

These experts point out that in the region, petroleum has been bought and sold in US Dollars for decades. According to the sages, none of the Arab oil-producing countries would be silly enough to debase the currency they receive. They also note that the Saudis and other Arabian countries hold large and numerous assets, within and outside their own countries, that are denominated in dollars. And, of course, anything the Saudis and other Arabians earn from those assets is in dollars. However, Saudi banks, like their local counterparts in just about every nation, report their earnings and the value of their assets in riyals. So, devaluing the dollar damages the value of any assets or earnings earned in that currency, particularly when it is converted to riyals.

At face value, what the pundits say makes sense. However, if I were Governor Al-Sayyari or the finance minister of any of Saudi Arabia’s neighbors, I would also refrain from cutting my country’s interest rates in lockstep with what the US Federal Reserve does. If anything, I’d raise the rates and work toward severing my local currency’s tie to the dollar.

Why?, you ask. Well, if you’re reading this article, you know that any currency’s value is based on how much of it is issued, whether or not anything is backing it up and what people know or don’t know about either or both factors. Most likely, you also know that most of the gold reserves that were once held at Fort Knox are gone. And the government continues to print more and more "Dead Presidents" to pay for its debt, much of which has been incurred from pointless military actions and investments in loans and other schemes no sane business person would touch.

In light of these facts, it makes sense for any nation not to peg its currency to the dollar. Yes, but what’s the alternative, you may ask. Nearly every other nation’s currency is as debased as this country’s is. So, it’s probably not wise for the Saudis or any of their neighbors to hitch their wagons to the "stars" of other nations.

What’s an Arabian finance minister to do? Well, it looks like Al-Sayyari made a first good move. Uncoupling his country’s currency from the greenback would be a good next step. I’m not so sure about working toward a unified Arabian currency. However, if it were come to pass, he and the finance ministers of countries bordering Saudi Arabia would be wise not to peg it to the dollar.

Then, the Saudis — or their four partners, should they achieve monetary unity — should demand payment for their oil in their own currency, which barring a catastrophe (at least for them) will continue to rise in value against the dollar, and possibly other currencies. Finally, they should take the lucre gained from oil sales and convert it to gold.

Now, I know that most of you who are reading this would agree with the last suggestion on principle. But I should explain why, in particular, it’s a good suggestion for the Saudis and their neighbors.

Right now, the stereotype of "export oil, import everything else" comes close to describing the economic reality of those countries. And such a system will work for them as long as there’s lots of crude in the ground and lots of demand for it. However, all mineral resources run out. Or more accurately, any portion of them that’s economically feasible to extract is taken and used. Or else, economies, technologies and cultures change in ways that those resources are no longer needed. When that happens, nations whose economies are based upon those resources will, if they haven’t invested their revenues prudently (i.e., in gold and other indestructible commodities) quickly become destitute. That is what happened in much of post-colonial Africa. The European countries that ruled Chad, the Congo and other parts of Africa built an infrastructure that was designed to facilitate the extraction and transportation of various minerals to the factories of Birmingham, Lille, the Ruhr Valley and other European industrial centers. But the emphases and needs (not to mention the locales, in some cases) of these industries changed. As a result, the need for certain resources shrank or disappeared altogether. Or substitutes for them were found or created.

No one knows when the oil reserves will run out or the world will stop needing them. But one or the other must surely happen, whether it comes to pass during our lifetimes, our grandchildren’s or later on. When that day comes, if Saudi Arabia (and its neighbors) has (a) stable currency(ies) and government(s), the region and its people will be able to reap the benefits. As to what form the economy, culture or government will take, I can’t even guess. But, by that time, it most likely won’t benefit from developing a manufacturing-based economy, as Canada (another country that has depended heavily on its natural resources) has done, at least to some degree. Maybe the Arabian countries will become Islamic, Middle Eastern versions of Ireland and other small countries with educated populations that have found lucrative niches in high technology and financial services.

Whatever they do, I don’t think they’ll be hitching their wagon to the falling star of the dollar.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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We all know that wars, and the governmental usurpations of power that are entangled with them, extract a heavy price from the citizens of the nations that fight them. Most people are aware of the huge monetary costs and the unconscionable toll of human lives, most of them young, which result from fighting.

But something much more sinister happens to a country in battle, and to its people: There is an illusion of unity, at least for a time, that masks the fissures opened within the populace and its culture. Those ruptures are inevitably created by whoever happens to be in power, or more precisely, his or her propaganda machines. In times past, kings and other dictators simply ordered people to go out into the countryside or into cities and spread wishful thinking or outright lies about the motives and status of the war. Later, religious and educational institutions would perform this function (To a large extent, they still do.) and in subsequent times mass media would do the job.

And what is the result of the spread of fantasy and falsehood? Azar Nafisi, in her wonderful Reading Lolita in Tehran, described its results in her native Iran during its eight-year war with Iraq during the 1980′s. Even if you are not a student of literature and don’t care for the authors she invokes, her critical memoir is worthwhile reading for its account of how people’s lives change during a war. Equally important, she shows how people’s perceptions of that war and its actual or alleged motives also change, and how rulers exploit those changes.

"For me, as for millions of ordinary Iranians, the war came out of nowhere one mild fall morning: unexpected, unwelcome and utterly senseless." Change "Iranians" to some other nationality, and Professor Nafisi could have been describing how Americans felt on September 11, 2001 or December 7, 1941 — or Poles on September 1, 1939, or how people from other countries reacted when, it seemed, la mort vient du ciel clair (death came from the clear blue sky) in the words of Albert Camus in La Peste (The Plague).

In the days that follow such events, people are confused, angry and scared. Such mental and emotional states are exactly what those in power need in order to rally the people, or to create a semblance of unity, about the war. This happens by turning the people and the nation into proxies and symbols: by creating a myth, if you will. Professor Nafisi relays the syllogism the regime promulgated during the early days of the war: "[T]he enemy had not attacked just Iran; it had attacked the Islamic Republic, and it had attacked Islam."

All you have to do is change "The enemy to "Terrorists," "Iran" to "the United States", "the Islamic Republic" to "our nation" and "Islam" to "our way of life," or some such phrase, and you have, in essence, the first lie the President and his mouthpieces told the American people after the events of 9/11.

Politicians talk in such high-blown and patently duplicitous rhetoric because they know people who are (or think they are) hungry for security and safety will eat it up the way kids scarf down McDonald’s Happy Meals. And the politicos’ words are as devoid of truth and meaning and as full of bluster as those fast-food treats lack nutritional value and are laden with fat and calories.

The citizens of a country — most of them, anyway — rally around its leaders’ call to nationalism. There is a new sense of purpose, or the belief that there is one, for a nation under siege. And, for a time, people from all walks of life want to show their patriotism, or at least that they share the values that are being expressed publicly at such times. However, as Nafisi points out, in Iran "many were not allowed to participate fully."

On the surface, not allowing people to participate in rallying a country into war doesn’t make sense, at least from the point of view of those who are ruling. But it allows them to do what every wartime ruler needs to do in order to keep the country’s people and resources focused on the conflict. Not allowing certain people to participate means that a government can deem such people as detrimental to the war effort, and therefore unpatriotic and a threat to everything its citizens value. In the early days of the war (the fall of 1980), according to Nafisi:

The polarization created by the regime confused every aspect of life. Not only were the forces of God fighting an emissary of Satan, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, but they also were fighting the agents of Satan inside the country. At all times, from the very beginning of the revolution and all through the war and after, the Islamic regime never forgot its holy battle against internal enemies. All forms of criticism were considered Iraqi-inspired and dangerous to national security.

I can only imagine what Professor Nafisi was thinking on that day when Ari Fleischer warned Americans to "watch what they do and watch what they say." Or when Jos Padilla and others who did little more than to embrace Islam were declared "enemy combatants" and held without being charged of any specific crime. (Can you imagine Bush at Nuremberg trials?) By the time Bush, Fleischer and their partners in crime so cynically exploited events for their own ends, Professor Nafisi and her family had been living in the United States for five years. Was she saying, to herself or her friends, the Persian equivalent of "Here we go again!"?

I also have to wonder how she and her family have been treated since the Twin Towers came down. From my own admittedly unscientific observation, most Americans, if they had met Arabic, Muslim or Middle Eastern people, hardly gave them a second thought, especially if said encounter took place in a large city. While some may have thought them exotic or simply strange, most Americans did not see them as a threat to their well-being. A Jewish acquaintance of mine lives in a part of Brooklyn where Jews live alongside Muslim and Christian immigrants from Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Morocco and Yemen. Of them, he says, "What’s not to like? They work hard and push their kids to study. So do I."

His view has definitely receded into the minority. When people come under suspicion for no other reason than their race, national heritage or religion, they are, as Nafisi points out, denied the opportunity to show their solidarity with their neighbors. This, of course, places them under more intense scrutiny and suspicion — and subjects them to even greater discrimination — than they otherwise would have experienced.

I seriously doubt that the President has read Nafisi’s book. But he and his cohorts have certainly brought, in this country, a situation Nafisi describes: People united against a perceived enemy within their own borders (or an enemy that is perceived within their own borders) which is, according to the syllogism du jour, an agent of the enemy that young people ostensibly are dying to keep out of our country.

Of course, that "enemy within" doesn’t have to be imported, or even outside the mainstream. The "enemy" in the lexicon of this Administration, has come to mean any person or nation that opposes or even questions the invasion or Iraq, just as in Nafisi’s Iran, it came to mean anyone deemed not sufficiently loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini and his stated beliefs

And, whatever the outcome of the current war, the distrust that "loyalists" feel toward "traitors" is unlikely to go away. It didn’t in the Iran Nafisi left ten years ago; nor did it subside in the former GDR and other Soviet satellites after the fall of the Berlin Wall. When such suspicion deforms people’s relationships with their neighbors, whatever government comes along next is sure to be at least as tyrannical as the one that’s been ousted. And you can bet your last fiat dollar that government will do whatever it can to keep people divided against their neighbors in order to "unite" them against the next putative enemy.

Professor Nafisi is an exacting scholar, excellent writer and, from what I can tell, a fine human being. I hope only that she and others don’t have to experience, in this country, what they left in their native lands!

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] is the deputy director of the Office of Academic Achievement at York College in Queens, New York.

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There really are fashion police after all! Or, at any rate, there’s at least one person out there who wants to be a clothes cop.

This would-be garment gendarme does not work for Vogue, Elle or any other fashion magazine. Nor am I speaking of the protagonist of The Devil Wears Prada. The wannabe wardrobe warden in question is also not a mullah and does not live in a reactionary theocracy.

Rather, he is none other than an Atlanta City Councilman (This makes me very happy to be living in New York!) C.T. Martin.

This peach of a Georgia lawmaker has introduced legislation that would outlaw clothing that exposes undergarments, including thongs, bra straps (uh-oh!) — and boxer shorts. While this would seem, on its face, relatively egalitarian in its repression, Martin’s comments to Ann Curry reveal the real target of his proposed law. "I don’t think women should have to see that. I don’t think young girls should have to see that. I don’t think children should have to see that," he told the decorous and tastefully dressed Curry on Today.

So it’s about protecting women and girls, eh? Ayatollah Khomeini himself couldn’t have said it any better.

Do I — or any other member of my sex — have to be "protected" from the sight of a bra strap or a thong? Most men I know wouldn’t want to be "protected" from any such thing, so why should any man think that we need to be shielded? So what, exactly, does the Honorable Mr. Martin think we should not be exposed to?

Why, the back of a young man’s boxer shorts, that’s what! I know that my psyche has been irreparably damaged by all those hideous prints and patterns and all those ghastly colors disgracing the tushes of so many of our inner-city adolescent males Why do they have to sashay along sidewalks as their slacks and jeans slide away from their waists, down to their thighs? Don’t they have any respect for their elders? Themselves? I am s-shocked and offended beyond words by…

Their bad taste. Not to mention the judgment of the wise and venerable Mr. Martin. Now, if Martin is upset that otherwise beautiful boys bedeck themselves in such an unbecoming way, I’m with him. Not only does this look flatter almost no-one, it makes navigating cracks in sidewalks, potholes and other urban hazards more difficult (or so I would think). And the origin of this un-fabulous fad rightly gives Martin, me and many other people pause.

Nearly everybody agrees that the trend of wearing saggy pants began in prisons. One version of the story says precariously pantaloned young men are commemorating the moment a new inmate is divested of his belt. (The newly arrived prisoners are also relieved of their shoestrings. This practice is believed to have spawned the twin trend of wearing high-topped sneakers without laces.) Another version — which I find less credible — says the low-slung lederhosen were signals that their wearers were spoken for: a coutural "Keep Out" sign, if you will. Either way, young men (and, sometimes, women) believe they are proclaiming their solidarity with those who are incarcerated and, by extension, everyone in their community who is a victim of a racist, corrupt system of law enforcement.

This identification makes no sense to me, any more than "bug chasing" does. How does inflicting a handicap or illness on one’s self make one more like other members of his or her community? I’m sure that Councilman Martin and many other people ask themselves some version or another of this rhetorical question all the time. We don’t want the people we love to make their lives more difficult than they already are. Why add the burdens of illness, ungainliness or a deliberately unsightly appearance to the disadvantages one already has from being, through no choice of one’s own, a member of a stigmatized group?

If we want to "protect" people, especially the young, whose lives are on the boundary, the best we can do is to point out the harm they are doing to themselves and others by their behavior. They may or may not listen, but that still gives us — and them — more motivation to change than some law that will probably difficult and expensive, if not impossible, to enforce. If education doesn’t work, neither will legislation.

Even the Ayatollah, who had the full force of his military and the authority of Shira law behind him, couldn’t control the habiliment habits of every woman in his country. (This, among other things, is related in an excellent book I’m reading: Azar Nafsisi’s Reading Lolita In Tehran.) What makes the estimable Atlanta City Councilman C.T. Martin think he has the right impose his taste — or mine, for that matter — on a whole city located in a country that has at least some semblance of liberty?

If he doesn’t like what he sees, he should talk to the young men in question — or look the other way. It works for me, and a lot of other people. As my English aunt would say, he shouldn’t get his knickers in a twist over that.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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Leave it to the damned New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting (MOFTB: Doesn’t it sound like someone cursing in a text message?) and those persnickety civil libertarians to destroy my dreams of wealth and grandeur!

You see, I was all ready to quit my day job and become an independent businesswoman. I was going to cash in insurance policies on which I’ll probably never collect and teach my cats tricks that would’ve wowed the reception hall crowds so I could follow what would’ve been the best business idea in the history of the Big Apple.

Best of all, this plan wouldn’t have involved stocks, bonds, real estate, lotteries or inheritances I didn’t know I had. All it would’ve taken was my love of this city and my slightly-better-than-layman’s understanding of the visual arts.

So what was my grand scheme?, you ask.

I was going to open up a postcard stand next to the Chrysler Building, my favorite structure (along with the Brooklyn and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges) in this fair metropolis. Of course I would have stacked and sold those 3-by-5 images of spotless skyscrapers glistening against azure skies with a turquoise-hued Hudson as a backdrop. I also would have offered films, videos and DVDs of the landmarks tourists visit and copies of famous films like The French Connection, Midnight Cowboy, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Taxi Driver that use the one or all of the five boroughs as their subject or setting.

Just think…I could’ve grown rich and fat (Well, I’ve already accomplished the latter!) from the wallets and purses of tourists bearing pounds, euros and other currencies that make the dollar look like the paper tiger it is.

So what happened? Bowing to pressure from the American and New York Civil Liberties Unions, the MOFTB is "redrafting" a new set of rules that, had they been enacted, would have placed greater restrictions than the current ones that bind photographers, film and video makers, television producers and other kinds of artists and journalists.

The proposed rules would have required city-issued permits for groups of two or more people who wanted to work at a single site for more than thirty minutes, or for groups of five or more who wanted to set up a tripod for ten minutes or more. On one hand, the city issues the permits for free; on the other, anyone who wants such a pass has to have a million dollars’ worth of liability insurance coverage.

To be fair, there are provisions for film students and others who don’t have access to such insurance coverage. And, the MOFTB insists that they are not trying to keep tourists and amateur photographers from capturing their impressions of the Empire State Building or of little Hans or Madame Izumi posing between Patience and Fortitude on the steps of the New York Public Library.

Was the MOFTB naïve or disingenuous in making such a claim? Granted, it’s likely that the vast majority of photos taken are of the "shoot and run" variety and will not be seen by anyone but relatives and friends of the photographer. But among the throngs of tourists are significant numbers of people who, while not professionals, take great care in the way they compose their photos. They may use tripods; very often they are in groups of five or more, and they often linger where they are taking their photos. Then there are any number of hobbyists who expend considerable time, care and sums of money in trying to record people and places as they see them. I often see such photographers along the city’s waterfront, in its parks and around buildings, public sculptures and other structures that don’t look or feel like their counterparts anywhere else. To my knowledge, they are the only ones who capture such things as the oddly bucolic feeling of Wall Street or the Brooklyn and Bronx manufacturing zones on a Sunday.

Perhaps the pictures tourists and amateurs snap don’t enhance the city’s image or enrich its bureaucrats. Still, they are a vital part of life in this city, and hindering them would be an offense to anyone who enjoys the life, if not the politics, of this place.

Hopefully, the next draft of the MOFTB regulations will be more sensible than what was proposed. (I’d prefer no regulations, but I guess we’ll take what we can get.) For that I’d be very happy to give up my grand scheme to make me rich and to spend my life writing, teaching and scholaring. Tough work, but as we say in my neighborhood, somebody’s gotta do it.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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Steve has been home for six months now.

To be more precise, he has been here in the States, staying with various friends and relatives, since he returned from a tour of duty with the Marines in Iraq just before Christmas. Going back to where he was born and raised — the projects of South Jamaica, in the New York City borough of Queens — is not an option, he says.

It’s not physical dangers that are keeping him from his old stomping grounds. After a year in Iraq and a year in Afghanistan (and a class with me between those two tours of duty — oh, my!), Steve can handle himself when there is a threat. Likewise, he is not avoiding his past, I think: Most of his family and friends aren’t in the neighborhood anymore. Equally important, he says, is the fact that he’s "changed."

Although I could see ways in which he’s worked, or is working, through questions about his life and his world, I asked him "How so?"

"I understand now that I don’t owe allegiance to anyone or anything besides my mother, the guys who were there with me, and maybe a couple of other people." Though his pronouncement didn’t surprise me, I was taken aback. To say the least, it is a stunning reversal from the oaths Marines and other members of the armed forces take upon joining. In fact, it flies in the face of just about anything most of us have been taught or have absorbed from our schools, workplaces and nation. To hear those words from someone who just two years ago could not drink legally made them still more jarring, at least for me.

He announced that he wanted "nothing more to do" with any aspect of any military or paramilitary organization, anywhere. He stays in touch with "a couple of buddies" who, like him, came to realize that they were no more fighting for their country — "whatever that is," he sneers — than Fox News is in the business of conveying the truth to the public. (I can only imagine the conversations they have or the e-mails they exchange!) Other than those friendships, he says he wants nothing more from his time in the Marines.

So intent is he on breaking his ties that he won’t avail himself to the psychiatric and medical care the government offers veterans. "Those doctors are the worst," he groans. Family members and friends have urged him to take advantage of those services. "After all, you’re entitled to them," they say. To them, he responds, "Just because you’re entitled to something, that doesn’t mean it’s good for you!" He echoes a belief commonly held among veterans — one for which there is more than anecdotal evidence — that the purpose of military medicine is to "patch up and cover up." The doctors and psychiatrists "only know how to fix someone up enough to get him on the battlefield" and "cover up their mistakes, which they make a lot of."

Fortunately for him, he didn’t suffer any physical injuries beyond a couple of superficial wounds. However, he feels anger at the way he feels his country "abandoned" him and his buddies by sending them into a conflagration sparked by US involvement in the region and continuing by ongoing American presence. To aid the causes of duplicitous plutocrats, he and his buddies were sent through desolate, hostile areas to drive empty, unarmored vans. To protect themselves, they and their families provided them with flack jackets and other gear at their own expense.

And, after paying for his own defense while ostensibly serving in his country’s defense, he is now spending the money he has been earning from various odd jobs for the services of a psychiatric social worker. He plans to return to school, although his goals may differ from those he had when he was my student, he says. In the meantime, he says, "I want to get at the truth and get myself together." To that end, he has read "more than I ever have before," including two books by Vietnam veterans that I recommended: Song of Napalm, a collection of poems by Bruce Weigl, and At Hell’s Gate by Claude Anshin Thomas. I also steered him to a number of anti-war essays and articles, including some that have been published on this site, just to show him how diverse are those who want and work for peace and prosperity.

What has he learned, I asked him. "At the end of the day, there are only people. We only have each other. Sometimes we can depend on them, but we can only be sure of ourselves. And don’t expect any organization — especially any government — to give you what you need or make you whole."

If only I had such understanding when I was his age! Then again, I guess I should count my blessings that I didn’t have to experience what he has in order to gain the wisdom we now share.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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Last Wednesday, I witnessed the very essence of morning television: an "interview" between an airhead and a blowhard.

The latter, Michael Moore, was vociferously bellowing diatribes that, trite as they were, still had more substance than his cinematic oeuvre, while the former, Chris Cuomo, sputtered platitudes that resembled questions only in the rising inflection of his voice.

About the best thing you can say about Cuomo is that he didn’t inherit the looks or charm of his father, former New York Governor Mario ("I had to build more prison cells than any US Governor in history because I opposed the capital punishment and couldn’t repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws!") Cuomo. On the other hand, he also doesn’t have his daddy’s oratorical or even dialectical skills, such as they were. As for Moore, what can you say about him, except that next to his interrogator-impostor, he seems like, well, Cuomo’s father? That’s saying something because it’s not saying much.

Moore was a guest on Good Morning America, the program on which Cuomo purports to be a journalist. Sometimes I tune into it because I can tune it out: Its movement allows me to keep track of time as I’m making myself presentable enough to walk out the door, yet it requires absolutely no involvement from me. Other people watch GMA as they’re downing their morning coffee. The caffeine wakes up their bodies; the program’s chitchat puts their minds to sleep.

But I digress. The ostensible purpose of the "interview" was to discuss Moore’s new film Sicko. Since neither of them knows much about its alleged topic, they were about as likely to engage in a meaningful exchange of idea as I was to morph into Angelina Jolie while I applied my lip gloss. Worse, Moore and Cuomo both mistake the most tired shibboleths, whether they’re visual or verbal, for substantive reasons or even thoughtful responses. This is what makes Moore’s films completely unmemorable after you get over the initial shock (or simply hype) about them: Simply showing an image might make a statement, but it doesn’t tell a story, much less present a meaningful discussion. The same might be said of the clichés that Cuomo intones to conceal the fact that no thought has ever beclouded his pretty little head.

Back when I could purport to be more of a leftist than I am now, there was no one whom I felt more embarrassed about agreeing with than Pat Buchanan. Although some of his opinions still make me cringe, I have come to respect his willingness to call both government and business plutocrats, as well as the media, to task for their lies and hypocrisies. Moore seems to lack any such capacity, or more precisely, he seems to mistake decibels for dialectic, which is why he now occupies that place Buchanan once held in my mind. However, if Cuomo ever learns to do anything besides stare into a camera and repeat his surname, he just might give Moore a run for his money.

With Cuomo and Moore occupying the same set, it was no surprise that the morning’s chatfest veered into a vertiginous trip through Moore’s opinions, with Cuomo regurgitating current versions of the shopworn fantasy that it really is Dulce et decorum for someone to pro patria mori: American forces must remain in Iraq so that the deaths and mutilations of some of their compatriots won’t be in vain. Moore then accused him, and by extension the rest of the mainstream media, of misrepresenting or even glorifying American involvement in the war. While he was right, at least in the macro sense, unleashing his fury on the hapless Cuomo made as much sense as, well, invading Iraq to retaliate for the events of 9/11.

True, Cuomo did what he’s paid to do: push people’s buttons. And that he did when he invoked his colleague, journalistic "plant" Bob Woodruff, who was seriously injured by an improvised explosive device in Iraq: "[He] almost got killed because he wanted to show the truth of the situation." If we follow Cuomo’s tautology, we have to continue fighting the so-called Wars on Terror, Drugs, or whatever else you care to name to ensure that the suffering of people were injured or killed in them were not in vain. This, of course, is exactly the sort of mentality that perpetuates war and every other kind of governmental excess. Cuomo seems incapable comprehending this fact.

To be fair, Moore also seems to lack such understanding. Thus, he and Cuomo share the same fundamental flaw in their view of the world (such as it is): Every problem or crisis, real or manufactured, requires governmental intervention and needs publicity hounds like them to convince people that such coercion is necessary. They also seem to think, as Cuomo Sr. surely did, that if a government can’t interfere in one arena, it simply must meddle in another. And whatever happens, the job of people like them is to report the "truth."

Surely there have been more grotesque spectacles that have been passed off as "interviews." But few interchanges revealed the true character of media and government more than what transpired between Chris Cuomo and Michael Moore on GMA. They actually managed, for a moment, to make the developmentally-arrested Barbie dolls on Faux News seem like Karen Kwiatkowski and Amy Goodman (with whom I often disagree, but whom I greatly respect for her diligence and intelligence). If Cuomo is considered a journalist and Moore an artist, no wonder this country is in such a mess!

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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"It’s true, I’m tellin’ ya. Turn back and take a look."

Susana, a lifelong Brooklynite, had spotted something neither she, Belinda or I had seen before. Such is not an uncommon occurrence along Cross Bay Boulevard, which transverses Jamaica Bay in the New York City borough of Queens. On the shore to the east of us were the terminals of JFK International Airport, which the Feds claimed they had just saved from being blown to smithereens. However, on the strip of land where we were pedaling into a 20mph headwind, an ancient tidal marsh attracts birds and animals us cityfolk never see and people who want to see, photograph or catch them.

However, Susana’s discovery had nothing to do with flora or fauna, or fish or fowl. Instead, it was affixed to the rear of a late-model Subaru Tribeca. It was a license plate that denoted its driver/owner as a "Veteran of the Global War on Terror."

I wish I had enough of a gift for satire to make up such things. But as surely as Tony Soprano don’ wan’ no witnesses, we espied the latest monument to Bush’s War In Error, I mean, War on Terror. We thought about taking a photo on Susana’s cell phone, but after the thought that the plate’s proud bearer might be within striking distance, we thought better of it. However, after our bike ride to the ocean, I did some surfin’ (on the Net, that is) and found New York is just one of a number of states that have authorized such plates for veterans who honorably discharged after tours of duty in post-9/11 Iraq or Afghanistan.

All right. So the ones whom Dick Cheney and friends put in harm’s way, I mean answered their country’s call, to control Iraq’s oil, I mean protect our freedom, deserve to be recognized. You’ll get no argument from me on that point. Let’s authorize a new GI Bill for them. Give them first dibs on interest-free loans so they can buy those houses that went into foreclosure after their owners’ ARMs stretched beyond their financial reach. Finance their educations — hey, let ‘em get MBAs so they can learn how to make the next generation of shaky loans.

You may think I’m making light of those selfless heroes who braved Afghanis and Iraqis who didn’t want what American plutocrats decided they should want. I am not; everything I have proposed for them is better than what they have so far endured. And what I’ve suggested is also better than having to live with the knowledge that they risked themselves, not as bulwarks against linen-swathed young men just barely past puberty who dream of 72 virgins in the afterlife, but as mere tinder against the invisible flame of that abstract enemy called terrorism.

That got me to thinking about all of those other abstract wars: the ones on cancer, poverty and such. All against enemies that were neither actual people nor nations. The outcomes of all of them were the same: lives ruined and bureaucrat’s bank accounts fattened. Should those who paid the price, or at least contributed to the good lie, I mean fight, also get their own special license plates? My father spent his last days as a Coast Guard reservist back during the high season (pun intended) of the War on Drugs. Every once in a while, they’d manage to chase some boat they thought was carting contraband. Back out to sea they’d go, like hermit crabs picked up on the beach and tossed into the tide, only to return with the next incoming tide further down the coast. Dear ol’ Dad, who was as much for law and order as the next guy, saw and called the charade as it was. "We may as well take the money that’s being spent on the War on Drugs and give it to the guys we’re supposed to catch," he once sighed. And my father was never one to sigh.

Surely he deserves some sort of recognition for that. "Veteran of the War on Drugs." It doesn’t seem too much less absurd than "Veteran of the Global War on Terror." And neither strains credibility any more than the Wars on Anything Else I’ve Mentioned.

Now I wonder: When are we going to see license plates that read, "Veteran of the Defense of Liberty?" That struggle no more has an end in sight than do the wars on terrorism, drugs, rich media celebrities or anybody or anything else we can think of. So, like the War on Terrorism veterans, the defenders of liberty should be so recognized now. Certainly Lew Rockwell, Karen Kwiatkowski, Paul Craig Roberts, William Anderson, Wilton Alston, Eric Margolis, Burton Blumert and Gary North (who probably disagrees with me on just about anything that doesn’t have to do with war, peace, the long arm of the state and the non-feasibility of this country’s current economic policies) should be near the head of the line for their plates. Special places are also reserved for Tom Chartier for using his humor and old-school punk rocker’s sense of absurdity as scalpels to expose the rotting internal organs of the military-industrial welfare corpse and Becky Ackers simply because her no-punches-pulled language is the very antithesis of what we hear from those who declare Wars on Terror. And I would give special places on that line to any number of people, some of whom have written for LewRockwell.com, and countless others who haven’t.

It’s been said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. If the inverse of that statement is true, all the folks I’ve mentioned are terrorists. Does ignoring them constitute service in the war on terrorism? If it does, well, all I can say is that they’re heroes all the more deserving of my special license plate. And I can design a license plate that looks better and lasts longer than any that comes from a state!

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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As much as I oppose war, I believe that Memorial Day is the most important holiday on the American calendar.

However, the name of what, for many of us, is a Monday on which we don’t have to go to work, should be changed. A "Memorial" is an abstraction, a symbol, a myth, all of which are distorted and exaggerated by time. Or people simply forget whom or what the memorial commemorates. So, I think the holiday should be named "Remembrance Day" (the name Canadians gave to the holiday Americans call "Veteran’s Day"). It would remind us to do what may be the most important thing humans can do, aside from loving each other: remembering the dead, in particular those of our wars.

However a person dies, the reasons to remember him or her are always the same: We need to respect a life, whoever lived it, that came and ended before ours, and we need to learn lessons from that person’s death. The lessons differ according to how that person died. If someone lived a long and fruitful life, was never sick and died in his or her sleep, we may want to emulate aspects of the way that person lived. If someone dies of a heroin overdose, we might want not to emulate his or her example. (Before any of you send e-mail to Lew, let me say that I oppose any governmental bans on any substance. By the same token, I don’t advocate using ones that have more potential for harm than good.) On the other hand, if someone’s life is snuffed out in a battle, there are still other lessons to be learned.

The chief lesson, of course, is that nearly all combat-related deaths are in vain, or become so in a relatively short period of time. This is a very difficult truth for most people, and nearly all political leaders, to accept. I certainly wouldn’t want to feel that someone I love died for nothing. In times past (and, in some places, times present), young men, and less often women, have gotten themselves lanced, speared, shot or gassed in defense of "the fatherland," "mother (fill in the name of the country)" or the crown, palace or other physical symbol of the identity the people elected officials sometimes purported to represent. Later, the young would get slaughtered over more abstract principles like "democracy" and "terrorism."

One of the most pointless ways in which someone can die is to do so for the establishment, expansion or defense of an empire, for all such entities fall apart and destroy (or, at least, cause decay in) the nations that rule them. Countries like England and France are full of monuments to people, almost all of them now nameless, who were expended to conquer or hold on to Middle Eastern, African and Asian territories. While the ranks of people who glorify those chapters of their countries’ histories grows thinner every year, the aftermath of those nation’s ephemeral victories and (for them, anyway) embarrassing withdrawals and defeats continues to corrode their economies and cultures. Among the countless young men who died on the waves and sands were surely would-be chemists and composers, physicists and poets as well as businessmen and obstetricians.

To the ranks of those aborted lives we may add the ones who lost their lives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Korea. In the latter two conflicts, young men (and, less often, women) were ostensibly sent to prevent the spread of Communism. At one time, leaders who subscribed to variants of that ideology ruled Eastern Europe and large parts of Asia. Those rulers also had sympathisers in much of the impoverished world, particularly in Latin America and Africa.

However, today there are but three nations that are nominally Communist. In two of them, Cuba and North Korea, the ideology lives on, at least to the extent that it can be sustained, only because their aging leaders cling to it. And, while one out of every four people on this planet lives in China, one has to question just how Communistic a nation can be if it lends money to the supposedly capitalist United States so that it can carry out its imperialistic mischief and misadventures in the Middle East and Latin America.

In other words, young Americans died in Vietnam and Korea to stop the spread of an ideology that is dying because it is unworkable, not because of the "sacrifices" of our youth.

Turning to Afghanistan and Iraq: Even if we accept the dubious premise that American troops in those places are part of a "War on Terrorism," their presence doesn’t make any sense. As countless people (including many who are more knowledgeable about the region and its history than I am) have already reminded us, terrorists keep us in their sights because the American soldiers and Marines are there, and warships flying the Stars and Stripes are in the Persian Gulf, the eastern Mediterranean and the northern Indian Ocean. Their presence is simply a continuance, albeit an intense one, of an aggressive American presence in the region since the 1920′s.

The best way to remember the ones who have already died needlessly is, of course, to do whatever we can to prevent more like them. We often get into fights and arguments for reasons that we later forget and gain "victories" that are rendered meaningless in time. In that sense, conflicts between nations or ideologies follow the same path as ones between individual people. If we think of all triumphs and conquests as temporal, there is not any reason, save only for self-defense, to put one’s self or someone else in harm’s way.

As for defensive wars: Sometimes they may be necessary, to be sure. But there is no glory in defending one’s self; it’s not a matter of "honor." If you have ever had to defend yourself against an attacker, you know this: You did what you needed to do to keep yourself alive and, hopefully, intact, in the face of someone who would could have ended your life or maimed you. As we used to say in my old neighborhood, "Ya do what ya gotta do" and, hopefully, move on.

So if you want to honor the ones who were slaughtered in the name of plutocratic self-interest, the best thing to do on a day of remembrance is not to glorify it. Don’t go to the parades and displays of military strength or partake in mindless flag-waving. Instead, if you know someone who died in a war, remember him or her, not the stated reasons for the conflict in which he or she died. If you don’t know any war casualty, think about what is worth living for, and whether or not you would sacrifice whomever you most love for a "greater good."

As for me…Yes, I am going to a barbecue with some dear friends. It will be a time simply to spend time with each other, which we all value. And, to honor one particular war veteran who recently died (ironically enough, from a fall in his home) I’m re-reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, which, to me, is one of the best anti-war novels ever written. I’ll also reread Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum, which expresses better than any English poem I’ve seen the lies and follies for which young people march to their own deaths.

And I’ll end this article by sharing the last poem from Vietnam veteran Bruce Weigl’s collection Song of Napalm:

Elegy

Into sunlight they marched,
into dog day, into no saints day
and were cut down.
They marched without knowing
how the air would be sucked from their lungs,
how their lungs would collapse,
how the world would twist itself, would
bend into cruel angles.

Into the black understanding they marched
until the angels came
calling their names
until they rose, one by one from the blood.
The light blasted down on them.
The bullets sliced through the razor grass
so there was not even time to speak.
The words would not let themselves be spoken.
Some of them died.
Some of them were not allowed to.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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Every time, place and group of people has a "love that dare not speak its name."

Among the intellectuals, artists and academics around whom I spend much of my time, one of those guilty pleasures has been Desperate Housewives. In times past, other cheesy TV programs, movies and pieces of pop music have filled the bill. So has The Da Vinci Code (the book, anyway, even though no one actually finishes it). No one who wants to keep his or her street creds as a person of culture, education or refinement admits publicly to having seen, read or heard such things. Admitting exposure to, much less admiration of, them is like confessing one’s love of Big Macs or Twinkies to a vegan.

Being in an academic setting in one of the bluest states, one doesn’t hear or express much admiration for any politician with an "R" affixed to his or her name. One would more readily take an impressionably sensitive child to a movie rated with that letter, at least in this milieu.

However, one of the "R"-rated public figures is becoming the new shadow darling of at least some members of the liberal intelligentsia. None will publicly admit to preferring his plainspoken forthrightness to the mealy-mouthed arrogance that emanates from members of their favored party as well as from the one that foisted our current President on us. But some echo what he said in his first debate to reach a national audience and may attribute, sotto voce, those sentiments to him.

To whom am I referring? Why, to Ron Paul, of course.

In the demimonde in which I live and work, finding out that someone like Dr. Paul has more consistently expressed your views about US intervention in the Middle East and Government harassment of citizens is like being in your 20′s and realizing that you’ve become one of your parents.

So what do we do when a member of the Grand Old Party does what we know, in our heart of hearts, Hillary doesn’t and Kerry didn’t have the courage to do?

We sing his praises — as long as there aren’t any witnesses. We know that he was probably the only national public figure who warned against, then denounced, not only the Iraq invasion, but the American mischief that preceded it in the Middle East, before most Americans noticed what had happened. We know that he opposed the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act before most of us knew what they were. But we cannot admit that he’s our real hero. Instead, we debate whether Hilary or Barack can keep Rudy at bay, which is a bit like choosing between Delta and Southwestern as alternatives to American Airlines.

Of course no sane person who lived through his Gotham reign wants Giuliani for President. We all know that had 9/11 been just another day, he would probably be a well-fed lapdog of the very capitalists he made such a show of rounding and locking up when he was a prosecutor. We also know that we can’t trust Hilary: She still hasn’t so much as apologized for her support of the Iraq War. As for Obama…He’s handsome, black and well-spoken. So, for that matter, is Denzel Washington.

And even those who support his ban on public smoking and other Big Nanny edicts wouldn’t dream of electing Bloomberg for President. In one breath, they’ll tell you he’s a RINO. But he’s still, well, a Republican and he’s not Jacob Javits. Even if he were, some of them still wouldn’t vote for him.

So what does the Blue Left do when confronted with a candidate who opposes war and government constraints on civil liberties — exactly what they profess to want — and he’s a Libertarian who’s registered with the Republican Party and represents, egad, Texas? They turn redder than Dr. Paul’s home state and don’t talk about him. As with any other guilty pleasure, one simply doesn’t mention that sort of thing in polite company.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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I must say: My previous article, Oh Happy Danes, brought me some of the most interesting e-mail I’ve received.

A few respondents pointed out an error in my article. Denmark does indeed have 460 troops in Iraq, whereas I said there were no Danes there. Mea culpa. (That’s Latin for "my bad," sort of.) Still, they are outnumbered by about 150 to 1 by US and UK forces, and the Danish Prime Minister has said that they will be home by August. And I stand by my contention that military action is much less frequent, of less intensity and not the source of national chest-thumping for the Danes that it seems to be for Bush and his cronies, and that war does not constitute such a portion of the Danish economy as it does for its American or British counterpart.

One of my e-mails came from someone who spends a lot of time in Denmark. He said that whenever he’s there, he does find that people seem happy and relaxed. "At least the native Danes" seemed so, he said; he was less certain about Turks and other immigrants there. He wondered how long Danes would remain as content as they seem to be now.

His ruminations intrigued me. Of course, all nations change in some way or another. Countries like Denmark and Sweden, as I pointed out in my previous article, at least have the advantage of not trying to keep up an empire or the appearance of one. This should at least shield people from the military/colonial hangover I described. But the high-quality education and healthcare to which nearly everyone in those nations has access — two of the keys to contentment, according to the University of Leicester researchers who deemed Denmark the happiest country — are funded by tax rates that make Massachusetts seem like the Cayman Islands. What will happen when the money is no longer streaming into government coffers?

While Denmark and Sweden share the fortunate trait of non-militarism with other "happy" countries like Switzerland, Austria and Brunei, they also share another characteristic with fellow welfare states like the UK, France and Germany where the people are said not to be as happy.

Nations that have developed overarching government coverage against all of life’s vicissitudes have had, from the time these systems were established until recently, economies based mainly the so-called smokestack industries and populations that were more or less homogenous, at least in racial and cultural terms. Perhaps the only notable exception is Canada, where the primarily agricultural province of Saskatchewan started its own program of universal health coverage before the rest of the nation — which earned most of its income from its natural resources — followed suit. Also, by the time Canada developed its system, there were large numbers of immigrants and their descendants, at least in the cities.

Since I am neither an historian nor an economist, I probably cannot adequately analyze the reasons why welfare states develop in uniracial nations with manufacturing economies rather than multicultural countries with economies based on agriculture, services or high technology. But, if I may, I will venture a guess.

A government’s ability to tax is inversely related to the mobility of the people or organizations that are taxed. It’s a lot harder to move masonry and machinery than it is to transport ideas, information and capital. Likewise, blue-collar workers are not as easily relocatable as are their more educated counterparts. They also may not have the means or skills to move to the jurisdiction to which their employer is moving, or to any other place where new jobs are being created.

Blue-collar workers and the factories in which they work, as well as the companies for which they work, are practically sitting ducks for the tax collectors. The more of these workers a country has, and the more they’re concentrated in specific towns, cities or regions (Think of Birmingham, St. Etienne or the Ruhr valley.), the easier it is for a government to collect lots of revenue and impose its will. Also, blue-collar workers either don’t have, or aren’t aware of, the options they have or the alternatives they can create to government-controlled schools, medical facilities and other institutions. Or they don’t have the means to access those alternatives.

On the other hand, members of what Richard Florida calls the "creative class" and Charles Murray labeled "the cognitive elite" can readily find alternatives to health care systems that force them to pay for people who don’t or can’t take care of themselves as well or who are prone (sometimes because of their work) to debilitating conditions. Members of the creative class, cognitive elite or whatever one chooses to call them are also more likely to, or have access to professionals who, know how to keep their tax bills as low as possible. Or, if they feel that their home countries are not allowing them to utilize their education and talents for their own benefit, they will simply move to what they perceive as a more hospitable environment. The high-tech corridors of Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley and Route 128 are full of the best and brightest from all corners of the globe, and London is now referred to (perhaps hyperbolically) as the sixth-largest French city because so many Gallic professionals, primarily in financial services, have moved there.

I think that diversity is one of the reasons why the United States, even after Franklin D. Roosevelt, never developed quite as encompassing a welfare system as many European countries. How is that?, you ask. Well, for starters, most of the immigrants who came to this country were trying to shake off the yokes of poverty and government oppression. They certainly didn’t want the taxation levels they had in their home countries. As they became increasingly prosperous, they were even more likely to feel this way and vote for politicians who at least promised they wouldn’t raise taxes, or at least not raise them too much.

Perhaps more to the point is that most people are simply more inclined to help someone whom they see as one of their own than to assist a stranger. On the eve of the 1992 vote on the Maastricht agreement, UK Prime Minister John Major famously echoed that impulse: "Am I going to raise taxes to pay for the Italian pension system?" It’s also expressed in much of the rhetoric against welfare policies and programs in the other European countries and the US: Politicians pander to their constituents’ belief that they’re paying exorbitant tax rates to subsidize people of other races in other places who don’t pay taxes.

In keeping with the patterns I’ve described, the professional classes find ways to help those people whom they consider to be their brethren, whether in blood or spirit. This may mean moving, or simply finding legal ways to pay no or lower taxes. Thus, if a government wants to keep up its spending, whether on social welfare or military intervention, it must increase at ever-increasing rates those citizens and businesses that don’t escape from the net. Escalating tax rates depress development and motivate the more mobile classes and companies to move. We have seen this phenomenon throughout the industrialized world, along with its result: More displaced people who avail themselves to social services that are already strained, which leads to even more increased tax rates.

So it remains to be seen how long countries like Denmark and Sweden can keep up their generous systems of subsidies as their economies shift their emphases from manufacturing to technology and services. One hopes, for their sake, that they won’t make the mistake that France and other countries have made of nationalizing various industries in attempts (all of which have failed) to keep them from moving. Whatever happens, at least the Danes, Swedes and Canadians — like the Swiss and Austrians — can move forward without the burdens of militarism and colonialism. The US, France, the UK and Germany should be so fortunate.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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During the past few months, there’s been some buzz about a University of Leicester study that found Denmark to be the happiest country on earth.

Denmark? The country with the second-highest suicide rate in Europe? The home of gray skies, pickled eel, 60% tax rates — and Prince Hamlet, the most famously depressed character in all of literature?

Yes, that Denmark. It outranked all of the 178 nations surveyed, including the US (23rd), UK (41st), France (62nd) and Japan (90th).

Anyone who’s even slightly libertarian (Is such a thing possible?) is bound to ask how can it be. And, I suspect you are at least as skeptical as I am about surveys like this one. However, however much the validity of the researchers’ conclusions may be questioned, some striking insights emerge from their work.

The researchers concluded that access to good healthcare and education are the most important factors in the happiness of a nation’s citizens. That could help to explain why Switzerland ranked second, Austria was third and Sweden, Finland and Canada made the top ten — along with Bhutan, an autocratic Himalayan kingdom. It might also explain why most of the countries at the bottom of the list are impoverished African states (all of which are, ahem, former colonies) and former Soviet republics.

However, I believe that there are two other co-related qualities that the researchers missed because they may not be as quantifiable as some of the qualities they measured. For lack of better terms, I will call them proximity to war and empire and anxiety about influence and power. These qualities bear upon another phenomenon researchers identified in the contented countries: People in them do not have lofty expectations from their own lives or their countries.

One trait that the Happiest Ten share is that none save Canada has been involved in a war lately. This flies in the face of what some military historians and social scientists have argued: Wars actually improve the mood of a country (at least if people think they’re not losing) because people "rally around" their leaders and homelands during time of conflict. Indeed, researchers going all the way back to Emile Durkheim have noted that rates of suicide usually decrease during times of conflict and as people direct themselves outwardly rather than inwardly. However, I don’t think that people at such times are less likely to commit suicide because they’re happier. Rather, anger toward a putative enemy seems to drive people at such times. Are angry people happy people?

Of the Tickled-pink Ten, only Canada sent troops to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. However, our neighbors to the north did not send as many soldiers, sailors and flyers as this country or its other allies sent. And in my own none-too-scientific observation, based mainly on conversations with Canadian friends and acquaintances and following coverage in their country’s media, the denizens of Quebec and Manitoba did not experience the surge of jingoistic pride over their country’s sojourn in the sands as the good burghers of New York and North Dakota experienced over their country’s imperialistic adventure.

Denmark’s last entanglement in combat was its ill-fated resistance to Hitler’s invasion and its aftermath. Switzerland has not been at war, officially or extralegally, in at least half a millennium; Sweden is also centuries removed from its last military conflagration. On the other hand, there’s been talk of Prince Harry himself joining his subjects who’ve been sinking alongside their American allies in the quicksand of internecine warfare in the desert.

While France has refused to send its young men and women to be slaughtered in the idiocy in Iraq, it — like England and the US — is still staggering under the weight of its militarism and imperialism. It sent a contingent to Bush the Elder’s Gulf War, but more important, it — again like Britain and America — is dealing with the consequences of its fairly recent colonialism and its military-industrial-welfare state. Even when they’re not elected to office, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his allies influence their nation’s politics by stoking smoldering resentments against les beurs and other immigrants from former colonies. Why are Algeriens and Ivoiriens flooding the customs gates of the Paris airports and the Port of Marseille, bringing the scenarios presented in Le Jour Ou France Tremblera (The Day France Will Shake) and Le Camp des Saints (The Camp of the Saints) to life? They are the inevitable casualties of any empire: The imperialistic power takes their land and other means of support from them, so they are left with few other options but to go to their former oppressors in search of work.

Furthermore, even when France, the United States or the United Kingdom are not directly involved in conflicts, their economies can be likened to addicts whose heroin, so to speak, is military spending. (Thank peace activist/physicist Michio Kaku for the analogy.) To justify such spending, new enemies must replace the ones that have expired or become allies. Whipping people into frenzy against young men who live and die for seventy-two virgins in the afterlife surely cannot improve anyone’s mental health or well-being. If suitable bogeymen can’t be found, a country’s plutocrats/warlords have one option: to sell their wares throughout the world. Thus have the three aforementioned countries become the world’s leading arms dealers. This breeds resentment, which gives people justification for their anger.

None of the Ten Happiest countries have fallen into this cycle. In fact, the Swiss have a history of arming no one but themselves, and then only enough to protect themselves. It’s pretty difficult to build an empire with such a policy, but, as we have seen, it has also kept them out of a lot of pointless wars. To be sure, the Danish and the Swedish crowns once lorded over empires. But the spread of those courts’ holdings never came close to rivaling those of his/her Majesty or la Grande Armee in their heydays, and even the oldest Danes and Swedes cannot remember hearing their cultures’ equivalents of "Rule Britannia." And the fortunate result is that people in those countries do not have the same oversized sense of what their nation’s role is, or should be, in the world.

You might say that they don’t have the hangover or withdrawal that inevitably follows militaristic imperialism. So they don’t engage in futile battles to hold on to Caribbean or Arctic islands, as the British did for so long with Northern Ireland and the French did in their North African colonies. They also don’t have to act out of fear that terrorist will wrest their grip off the world’s affairs, as American leaders seem to be doing now.

Not having such expansive overseas holdings also ensured that the Danes’ and Swedes’ languages would be spoken almost nowhere but in their own countries, and that anyone who emigrated would be assimilated into whichever country he settled. In contrast, there are still people who remember when French was the international language of diplomacy and culture and Britain "ruled the waves." People and nations cling stubbornly to memories, however distorted, of past glories and don’t give up visions they have of current lordship. So the American President finds that he can rationalize nearly anything and everything he pleases by saying that he leads "the world’s only superpower," and the French — and, to a lesser extent, the British — still cling to the notion that their capital is the center of the universe.

The results of clinging to such misguided and antiquated notions are encapsulated in a joke I heard when I was living in France:

Q: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

A: Trilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

A: Bilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?

A: French, English or American (depending on who is telling the joke.)

At least one study testifies to this truth which, like so many others, is revealed in humor. In contrast, the Danes and Swedes are among the most likely Europeans to speak a language other than their own. I have been in many situations in which people spoke a language other than my own. I certainly felt calmer and more content when I understood the language. I suspect most people are like me: They tend to be more fearful of those they don’t understand than of those they do. In my experience, happiness generally does not include fear.

So, the University of Leicester people got at least part of the recipe for happiness right. Get a good education, be healthy — and get rid of your armies, colonies and anything else that makes governments powerful.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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In the wake of Don Imus’s trial by firing, I’ve noticed a particularly disturbing phenomenon. It’s not new, and it often surfaces after a public figure or institution commits a gaffe or has a painful or humiliating experience.

I’ve noticed it in both the private discussions and public denunciations of the radio shock jock. The loudest and shrillest cries, as one might expect, have called for Imus’s head, at least metaphorically speaking. However, I have heard a few people make some not-so-metaphorical proposals to damage The Don. Nearly all such demands for Imus’s demise involve name-calling or worse.

Why am I disturbed about such things? Well, if the history of the human race should teach us anything, it’s that mimicking or reflecting the behavior or attitudes — sometimes with a worse version of the same — of those we ostracize or punish rarely does anything to change the behavior of whomever we demonize. And in reacting in such ways to behavior that we don’t like, we diminish ourselves.

The result is that distrust and hostility increase, which further removes from our grasp any chance that the situations we don’t like can be resolved fairly and satisfactorily. So continues a futile circle of mutual disrespect.

Whether we use words or bombs to assault each other, the impetus and effects are, in the end, the same: violence, and more of it. Sometimes the conflagrations leave thousands of people killed or injured, as when Bush and his cronies attacked Iraq in response to the incidents of 9/11, even though no connection has ever been established between that country and the destruction of the World Trade Center. But more often, the result is more suspicion and hostility between individuals or groups of people, as seems to be happening in the wake of Don Imus’s infamous broadcast and some of the reaction to it. Either way, people who have been debased, or feel they have been so, by someone else go out and try to debase whoever committed the transgression, or who is believed to have done so.

Morally, I find no difference between the situations I’ve just described and those of the Vietnam-era protesters who burned down ROTC buildings to protest the war, the people who expressed their wish that John Hinckley had a better aim when he shot Ronald Reagan or the religious fundamentalists who murder abortion doctors to protest abortion. The only differences, really, are in the scope and venues of the spiritual violence that people, institutions or nations commit against each other.

Another unfortunate development of such incidents is that they foster and exacerbate an "us-against-them" mentality on both sides. According to such a worldview, if you condemned someone for burning down your college’s ROTC building, you really wanted Nixon to send more American boys to die in a futile and illegal war. If you didn’t wish that Reagan had been bumped off, you favored an expansion of the corporate-military welfare state. Denouncing the killers of abortion doctors is denouncing the unborns’ right to life, or — gasp — God himself.

And, by that same strange tautology, if you don’t call for Imus’s head on a stick, you’re racist and misogynistic. You are thus ignoring a long history and litany of abuses and outrages and either hiding behind your privilege or trying to win the favor of those who are believed to have it. Or so this way of epistemological train goes.

History, whether it happened 60 minutes or 60 centuries ago, does not become a well from which to draw wisdom. Instead, the past — whatever interpretation of it someone believes — becomes nothing but a rationale for retaliation. "So-and-so did such-and-such," is the mantra for those who are more interested in venting anger than in trying to make a situation better. Such scenarios illustrate what George Santayana wrote: "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

And so the cycle of hatred and violence continues. In some way, I believe, what Imus said and the way self-appointed leaders reacted to it is a symptom, however minute, of an addiction to spiritual violence into which too many of those who are entrusted with power or influence fall. Nearly all of the behavior on all sides is unconscious; the actors are simply repeating the lines they’ve internalized.

However, in the wake of Imus’s banishment, as in the aftermath of 9/11 and other incidents, I have also heard calmer, saner voices. Those tend not to be as media-friendly as the ones who call for spiritual violence, but as long as they are present, there is hope, I think. Among them are some friends of mine who are writers and artists and who all denounced the public tarring and feathering of Imus. Two of them thought that sanctions against Imus would have been much more effective and given him more incentive (as if he doesn’t already have a considerable amount) to think about his words and their effect, or even to explain what he, as a comic, does.

As people who live for and by their creative expression, these friends of mine are naturally concerned about what Imus’s firing says about our freedom of expression, or lack of it. But even more important, I think, is that they recognize that the human spirit needs opportunities to reflect and grow, and that no progress is possible without either.

"We should build bridges, not walls," declares one of those friends, a painter.

He has a point. Walls do not help people or countries to grow or prosper. But bridges can. It seems that demagogues end up building walls. On the other hand, people like my artist-friends want to make connections. So, in retrospect, I’m not so surprised that the painter should say: "Walls aren’t good for business. But bridges are."

The ones who essentially intimidated Les Moonves into firing Imus are, I believe, building a wall for which Imus, however unwittingly, laid the foundation. I hope to replace it. Bridges really are better for business. And, in my opinion, they look better.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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So Don Imus just got his program yanked off the air, at least for the time being. And that will improve race relations and the overall quality of life in the US….how?

Well, I would suspect that, if anything, cashiering Imus will have almost entirely the opposite effect of what white liberals and some black activists claim to want — namely, to ensure that no one will be exposed to offensive speech, ever again. Worse still, banishing one of the bad boys of radio from the airwaves will tug tense relations even tighter and make him a folk hero in some quarters.

How’s that?, you ask. Well, let’s start with the attempt to stamp out racist rants. Here we can apply one lesson we all should have learned from the so-called War on Drugs: The supply may be cut off, but will remain so only momentarily. And no attempt to stop the flow of what people want will suppress their demand for it. Because the illegal economy follows basically the same laws of economics as officially sanctioned markets, cutting off supplies — or making people believe that they’ve been cut off — simply makes it possible for dealers to demand higher prices. Thus, prohibitions make meeting demands for whatever has been banned even more lucrative. (This is one of the reasons why I have long argued that the best friends of drug dealers and others who engage in organized crime are the so-called law-and-order conservatives like Reagan and Giuliani.) And, as we know, profits motivate resourceful people to be even more so. That is why the result of any major drug bust is the same: New narcomongers take the place of those who are arrested, and they simply use different routes and means to get the product to their customers.

To follow the War on Drugs analogy, even if the FCC itself were to ban Imus from doing radio broadcasts in the US and enough people wanted to hear him, someone would broadcast him from some offshore location: a ship, perhaps. And, if said broadcaster were smart, he or she would transmit the show over the Internet. That way, anyone who had a computer and absolutely had to have his fix of The Don with their morning coffee could be sated. A really shrewd broadcaster would somehow find a way to charge listeners for hearing what they want. And, if the government should make it so difficult for Imus’s insults to reach his loyal fans, they would want —and be willing to pay — even more to hear him.

That crowd does not include me. I listened to him for a few weeks when he first became popular, way back in the day. I quickly tired of him; somehow I just couldn’t cotton to a man on the verge of middle age who talked and otherwise behaved like a boy about to enter puberty.

During the time I listened to him, I realized that his attempts at titillating his core audience with racial, ethnic, gender and sexual stereotyping simply fell flat because they were so far off their marks. Such is the case with "nappy-headed ‘ho’s." Yes, the majority of the young women on the Rutgers basketball team were black, and some of them had nappy hair. So what? I have yet to hear any lucid explanation of how hairstyles relate to a team’s success, or lack thereof. Taking a cut at some athlete’s coiffure makes just about as much sense as criticizing a successful capitalist for wearing starched white collars and diamond cufflinks.

Imus’s use of “‘ho” is a thornier issue, to be sure. As someone who has experienced discrimination for being part of three different "minority" groups, I can understand why the Rutgers players would be offended and simply hurt: "’Ho" has never been used as anything but a derogatory term. I’ve heard the argument that because black hip-hoppers use it — as well as "Nigga" — and young black males emulate their example, excoriating Imus or any other white person for using it creates a double standard. Such an argument misses this essential point: “‘Ho” has a very different context and intention than "Nigga." The latter term started as a racists’ pejorative and was appropriated by young black males who believe that it’s an acknowledgment of solidarity. (I still don’t like and refuse to use the term.) In other words, as awful as its origins and intentions may be, it refers to racial identity. On the other hand, "’ho" — a contraction of "whore," — reflects the crudest and most unjust gender stereotype of all. Any man who uses it is not trying to affirm his kinship with members of his race; rather, he is echoing the misogyny that too many males have absorbed.

When a young woman works hard enough to become the valedictorian of her class, win a scholarship, keep her grades high enough to keep the scholarship and structure her days so she can practice well enough to become one of the best in her sport, one can hardly call her a u2018ho. In fact, what may be motivating such a young woman is her desire to escape being so labelled: She may have grown up hearing boys and men in her neighborhood say, "They’re all bitches and ‘ho’s." (How does one make the plural of "’ho?" "Hoes" are garden implements.) Or they may simply want to become confident, accomplished, self-sufficient professionals. That doesn’t sound like a description of a "’ho," at least not to me.

Of course, most of Imus’s listeners are probably not so attuned to the nuances of language. That is precisely the reason they listen to him: If they ever thought about remarks like "nappy headed ‘ho’s," they would realize that they are irrelevant to the subjects at hand and therefore simply don’t make any sense. As long as his listeners don’t have such a realization, or don’t pay attention to it, they will continue to want their dose of Don in the morning. And, if radio station executives shun him or the FCC bans him, such fans will see him as one of their own, excoriated by bloodthirsty rabble-rousers who can’t get over their history and are protected by government bureaucrats with too much time on their hands.

Do you think that the scenarios I’ve described will change or stop Imus’s mindless chatter or his audiences’ appetite for it? Do you think they will lead to greater understanding and mutual appreciation between whites and blacks or men and women? If you answered "yes" to either of these questions, let me bring you to Don Imus’s studio. It has a great view of the bridge I want to sell you.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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Some people believe that the government-subsidized medical and pharmaceutical industries could not exist without ever-increasing diagnoses of illness. I have come to understand a parallel truism about the public education system. State-run school systems, to continue operating as they’re currently constituted, must label more and more students as having learning disabilities or to be in some other way out of whatever’s considered the mainstream. Hence, spiraling numbers of students are enrolled in special education and bilingual programs.

I first became aware of this situation nearly two decades ago. Back then, I was working as a writer-in-residence in New York City-area schools for Poets In The Schools, which later merged with the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. Similar programs exist in other parts of the United States, and they all work in similar ways: They send writers, artists, dancers, musicians or other creative people into schools to conduct workshops in their specialties. I led classes in poetry, fiction and journal-writing in Harlem, the South Bronx and East New York, and in a school that was part of a children’s hospital in Queens. Working with the handicapped and chronically ill kids at the hospital’s school is the most wrenching (a girl and a boy died during the two years I worked there) yet spiritually rewarding work I’ve ever done for pay.

Where that pay came from doesn’t stir such warm memories. In those days, New York City’s education was divided into 32 Community School Boards (CSB). Each CSB received funding from the State and City for basic programs and supplies. That money couldn’t be used to bring programs like the one in which I was working to the schools. Instead, the CSBs applied for money for such programs to the city, state and federal governments, and occasionally from private foundations.

Money for artists in the schools wasn’t at the top of most funders’ lists. So, a few CSBs did some creative reclassification. As a result, without any training or previous experience, writers, artists and dancers like me became special education and bilingual education teachers.

How did the CSBs and school administrators achieve such alchemy? They classified the work that my creative colleagues and I were doing as special education and bilingual programs. I actually didn’t mind working with the kids who were so labeled: In fact, some of the more interesting poems and stories I saw came from them.

But I really had to wonder what some of the kids were doing in those classes. Some of the so-called special ed kids seemed no less attentive, responsive or skilled than the so-called normal students. In fact, a good number of them were better students and better-behaved than I was at their age! And, in the bilingual classes, I thought I’d put my Spanish and love of that language’s poets to good use: I read, and asked students to read, some poems in the original. I found that about half the students in one bilingual class I taught didn’t know any Spanish at all. They were classified "bilingual" because they had surnames that were, or "sounded," Hispanic. (What if they had "looked Arab?") One’s last name was Vigorelli.

I discussed what I saw with an assistant principal at one of the schools in which I worked. "That’s the only way we can get money for our schools," she explained. "The more kids that are in those programs, the more money we can get for them." So, she said, kids who even exhibit the slightest behavioral "problem," or "the ones we don’t know what to do with" are shuffled into such programs.

"But…"

Then she revealed something should give pause to any parent. "Teachers are judged by test scores. But administrators are judged by the amount of money they bring to their school districts." Naïve as I was in those days, I asked her why school administrators should have to do such things. (Today I ask why we need most school administrators. But that’s another story.) Her reply: "It keeps us in line. We have to make nice with all the right people."

I have since spoken with a number of other teachers and education administrators all over the country and all have echoed that assistant principal’s observations and ideas. Not surprisingly, none would ever say such things for the record. And they all echoed one of that assistant principal’s rhetorical questions: "Why can’t we just get the money we need for smaller classes?" Then, she said, the kids who really have "problems" could get the help they need.

What I didn’t understand at the time — and what most people in education don’t understand — is that such a thing will never happen in a state-funded school system. Schools and school districts will always have to beg the government and hustle the private sector to get money, and the money will not end up in the right places because in a system of political employees and civil servants, someone will always owe someone else his or her job. Under this system, students whose minds wander or whose last names end up with a vowel will end up in some stigmatized program or another so someone can get his or her next promotion after cadging money from the government or foundations.

And people like me are turned into bilingual and special education teachers even though we have no qualifications for such work. Thus does a cycle of dishonesty and dysfunction continue. Now I realize that such is the norm in a state-run system.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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When it comes to legislative action (Is that an oxymoron?), the work of New York’s City Council (Is that another oxymoron?) may not be any more arcane, intrusive or simply silly than that of any other group of municipal lawmakers. However, this week the City Council did something (yet another oxymoron?) that defies even the shakiest logic and the lowest common denominator of sense.

My city’s august legislative body passed a resolution that — are you ready for this? — symbolically bans the use of the "N" word.

Now, you might say that because the legislation is symbolic, there’s no reason to worry about it. Well, as we all know, sometimes symbols can be powerful. As a libertarian, I am offended at an attempt, however unrealizable, at restricting free speech. Also, as someone who has seen that something done voluntarily as a result of enlightenment is better than something that someone was forced to do, I am appalled at the lack of common sense and insulted at the cynicism behind such a vote. Finally, as someone who’s practical at least some of the time, I am annoyed that a group funded by my taxes is spending its time in such a way.

Now, I’m not the sort of person who uses the "N" word or other ethnic slurs. A longtime friend recently told me that he’s never even heard me use any of The Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV. As a lady of education and refinement (Someone’s snickering, I’m sure.), I have no need and certainly no wish to use them. At the same time, I don’t think that I or anyone else has the right to prevent someone else from using them. On those rare occasions when an acquaintance uses such terms or indulges in stereotypes, I let him or her know how I feel. An apology invariably follows and we move on: Each of us respects each other’s sentiments and, at the same time, our right to express them.

Such moments also give me the opportunity to explain why the slurs and curses are upsetting. The "N" word has a particularly ugly history and nasty connotations, and as someone who is committed to promoting peace, I don’t want to add to whatever spiritual violence already exists in this world. That is the reason I don’t accept the argument that if rappers use the word or young black men call each other that name, it must be OK. If I follow that line of reasoning, I can justify shooting people who shoot each other. Is that sort of rationalization any different from the one that’s used to justify intervention in the unrest of a nation that poses no threat to us?

I know others who share my ideals; none of us were inculcated with them through legislation. Our respect for other people is, rather, a product of our upbringings or other experiences we’ve had. Still other people eschew prejudice because of their religious beliefs. Although I am not religious, I think that faith is a much more solid basis for tolerance than legislative fiat could ever be.

Speaking of which: Although the ban is symbolic, I can’t help to wonder how on earth anyone could enforce a prohibition on using the "N" word. Save perhaps for a few white supremacist websites and publications and some rappers and other popular entertainers, nobody uses the word publicly anymore. And those who use the word usually do so only for an audience of like-minded people. So would the intent of a ban be to restrict what people say in private conversations? If so, how exactly would that be accomplished? Even if a government were to bug people’s homes and workplaces as well as streets and other public areas, it couldn’t drive all offensive speech underground.

So, even though there is no bite behind the bark, it should be cause for concern that legislators think that they can use the tail of legislation to wag the dog of people’s behavior. As we have seen, that approach only works on people who weren’t going to engage in the prohibited behavior anyway. Legislation cannot substitute for education.

Besides, do you really want to get an earful from someone like me? If not, don’t use the "N" word….please. Thank you.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

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In a recent article, William Anderson described a culture of vicarious victimization that has pervaded so many campuses. He also explained how it has contributed, at least in part, to turning a questionable (to put it charitably) accusation into a travesty of justice that has tarred and feathered three young men who seemed to be doing little more than acting like young men.

Professor Anderson’s article, and e-mails we exchanged following it, got me to thinking about an experience I had while I was in graduate school.

At the time, I was supplementing my assistantship by teaching a night course for another university. This class met in one of that university’s "satellite campuses." The one in which I taught was located in a former junior high school in the East New York section of Brooklyn. That year, the NYPD’s 75th Precinct, which included the campus, recorded more homicides than were recorded in all of France or Germany.

All fourteen students in that class were Black and/or Latina women who lived in that neighborhood or in the adjoining communities of Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant. And all of those women were older than I was.

Years later, I still think of them as one of the most enjoyable groups of people I’ve ever worked with. Some had jobs; others were trying to jump-start their lives after husbands, boyfriends or others in their lives died or disappeared. No matter their circumstances, they all came to class prepared to engage in lively, informed discussions. Their experiences gave more resonance to the insights they gained from their reading and shared with the class.

Everything went swimmingly until one class session just after the midterm. That night’s class session was unlike any other up to that point: I was the only one talking.

Frustrated, I snapped my book shut. The students stared at me. Equally stunned, I grappled with myself for a way to proceed. I intoned, "What are you thinking now?"

Neither their stares nor silence broke.

"All right," I sighed. "Could you tell me what you think of the reading?"

I had assigned an essay from the reader the university’s English department mandated for the course. Previously assigned readings included short stories and poems from that same reader. The works all, in one way or another, dealt with some aspect of working (or not working) and community life. The essay, I thought, complemented those readings by offering another perspective, albeit one more theoretical and academic, on the issues and ideas we had discussed.

But the students thought otherwise. They made comments about not learning anything from the essay or simply finding it boring. I assured them that their responses were valid and asked them to explain why they had such responses.

"It was written by some white professor," said Marva, whose son was one of my graduate-school classmates. "He’s using lots of big, fancy words to tell us that there’s racism and sexism."

"OK. So why does that bother you?"

"Look at me. Do you think I need anyone to tell me that there’s racism."

I giggled nervously. "Hmm…I guess that would be like your son warning you about the risk of pregnancy."

Everyone laughed. Others added their comments. Finally, I said, "Well, I guess I won’t be assigning that one again."

"So why did you assign it?" Marva wondered.

I mumbled a few things about its relevance to the topics we’d discussed. But I agreed that it had its shortcomings; indeed, I really didn’t care much for it.

Then Ivette, a strikingly beautiful woman whose abusive ex-boyfriend intimidated her out of a modeling career she’d begun to pursue in her teen years, wondered aloud, "Why don’t you teach us things you really care about? Things you know really well?"

My tongue only partly in my cheek, I retorted, "What if everything I know and love was written by dead white men?"

"Well, we need to read what they wrote," Ivette responded.

"We’re here for an education. Give us the best you’ve got." That challenge issued from Shirley, who just a few months earlier completed her high school diploma at age 46.

"OK. Be careful of what you wish for…"

"Don’t be afraid to teach us," Marva insisted.

A couple of days later, I bought enough copies of the Dover Thrift Editions of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House for everyone in the class. I told the students that these books, which cost only a dollar each, were on me, but they all insisted on paying for them. I chose those two plays for no other reason than that they are my favorites.

Their responses exceeded my most optimistic hopes. They were eager to read parts of the play aloud. And, even though our "campus" was located several miles from the university’s library and none of them had computers (This was in the days before Internet usage was widespread.), all of them did probing research on various aspects of the plays, including their performances, historical contexts and, in the case of Shakespeare, his language.

Later, I realized that the plays mattered to these women for the same reasons they meant so much to me. Shakespeare and Ibsen both dealt with matters of fate and choice, and the consequences of each. And they did it in such a way that reached across centuries and continents, and across divides of socio-economic class and gender.

When I was growing up, the only books in our house were the set of Grolier Encyclopedia my grandmother purchased for us. Neither of my parents finished high school: My mother went to work to help support her family and my father joined the Air Force, where he completed his GED. For me, plays like those of Shakespeare and Ibsen, as well as the 19th-Century English and French novels, and Latin American poetry I would find at the local public library, allowed me to see worlds that existed beyond the bubbling bricks and flaking paint of my blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhood.

I realized that my students were simply asking me to help them experience the intellectual and aesthetic nourishment I gained from my own reading. To have done anything less would have been cheating them. They didn’t want to read more about "black experience" or "Latina perspective" any more than I would have wanted some ivory-tower pundit to tell me about my neighborhood. My students and I lived the lives the academics purported to represent; we wanted more.

So I gave those women the best I could at the time. It may not have been much, but at the end of the semester, all of my students thanked me.

And I continue to thank them, wherever they are. If I hadn’t met them, I might’ve become a professor of Women’s, Gender, or one of the other "studies" rather than a lifelong student of literature, history, language and art.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.

DIGG THIS

You know that someone is really duplicitous when his deception and double-dealing go undetected by most people.

Such a person has surely hoodwinked those who trust (or at least turn a blind eye to) him when, just before he dies, he rebukes someone for a failure in an area in which he himself failed.

Such is the case with Gerald Ford. Commentators have crowned the nation’s 38th President with a halo of magnanimity for such deeds as pardoning Nixon and for asking that his repudiation of George W. Bush’s reasons for the invasion of Iraq not be revealed until one or the other of them died. However, Ford’s criticism of Bush’s actions makes Ford no less disingenuous than the neo-conservatives who, as Pat Buchanan pointed out, are denouncing the current president’s policies and actions without owning up to their roles in shaping and executing it.

How is that, you ask? Well, as surely as the support Ford’s predecessors gave Fulgencio Batista is one of the root causes of Fidel Castro’s rise to power and embrace of Communism, so is one of Ford’s Machiavellian maneuvers in the Middle East a cause of the current situation.

When Ford assumed the Presidency in 1974, the United States began to covertly fund and arm a Kurdish rebellion against Iraq’s then-de facto leader Saddam Hussein. Shah Reza Pahlavi, who ruled Iraq’s neighbor Iran, was the conduit for this assistance. However, most of the American media — at least, that portion of it that was paying attention — depicted unilateral action on the part of the Shah. No one questioned or explained what motives the Shah might’ve had for helping the Kurds. Reading a bit of the region’s recent history could have led them to probe the story further than they did.

American and British intelligence services colluded in a covert operation that re-installed the Shah on the throne in 1953, several months after Irani Premier Mohammad Mossadeq deposed him. This coup seems to have exacerbated longstanding tensions between Iran and Iraq. On one hand, Iran had become one of the most powerful nations in the region and seemed to have integrated its Kurd community with a country whose residents were mainly Persian — neither Arab nor Kurd — and were Shi’ite Muslims. Furthermore, it seemed that the Shah could do no wrong in the eyes of American authorities.

On the other hand, Iraq — which the British carved out of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of its defeat and dissolution in World War I — experienced conflict from within as well as from the outside. Iran wasn’t its only unfriendly neighbor, and within its borders flared frequent conflicts between Sunnis and Shi’ites, fundamentalists and secularists, and between other groups with conflicting views of religion and government. It never enjoyed good relations with the United States; these deteriorated with the Baathist takeover (with "strongman" Saddam Hussein) in 1968. There is now evidence that the CIA orchestrated the Baathist takeover: The preceding government of Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem was perceived as pro-Soviet Union and anti-Israel.

However, once in power, the Baathists believed that the US was using Israel as a tool in preventing pan-Arab nationalism; Iraq’s new government thus cut off relations with the US. Subsequently the Soviet Union would become the major trading partner — and arms supplier — to Iraq. And after the OPEC embargo in response US support of Israel in the 1973 war, US companies wanted to wrest control of Iraq’s vast oil reserves.

While this is a short version of events, I believe I have provided enough background to show just how cynical or naïve, depending on your point of view, the Ford Administration was. Upon examination of documents from that period, it’s difficult to believe that the Administration — which inherited Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld from its predecessor — knew or cared much about the Kurds or their wish for independence from Iraq or any other country they inhabited. Instead, they seem to have seen the Kurds as mere pawns in their attempt to undermine the Baathist regime.

And the ever-loyal Shah seemed only too happy to help his patron carry out its objective, whatever it may be. Or so it seemed. In March of 1975, after an OPEC meeting in Algiers, Irani and Iraqi leaders agreed to meet to settle their disputes over borders and navigation rights. As a condition of the Iraqi acceptance of the agreement, the Shah agreed to withdraw Iran’s support (in which most people had yet to see the hand of the US) for the Kurds.

The Kurdish rebellion quickly collapsed. Despite this betrayal, the Ford Administration did not so much as reprimand the Shah. And it actually sent arms and other supplies to Iraq. It took these actions in the name of "liberty." Translation: They were trying to decrease Soviet influence in Iraq and helping out a "friend" in Iran.

Neither Iran nor Iraq honored the terms of their treaty. This resulted in the war between them that lasted from 1980 through 1988. We have seen what has happened in Iraq since then; Iran has become one of this country’s — and the rest of the Western world’s — most outspoken opponents. The Kurds are not safe; they have joined the Shi’ites, Sunnis and other groups in their dislike and distrust of the US.

And, along with the goodwill we’ve squandered, we’ve wasted a lot of lives as well as money and other resources in an area that’s in worse shape than we found it.

That’s what we got from the administration of a "healer." He sounds more like a back-alley abortionist to me.

Justine Nicholas [send her mail] teaches English at the City University of New York.