Today the Hun School had its second annual Convocation to commence the year. As the current holder of the Distinguished Faculty Endowed Chair, it fell to me to present a speech. (I did this last year, too; you can find that speech online.) The text of this second speech can be found below the fold.

Good morning. Being offered a second opportunity to address the School community has been a great honor. I have to confess, it has also been a great challenge. For a while — longer, perhaps, than I should admit — I toyed with the idea of hedging my bets. The plan was to offer a searching analysis of the phenomenon of the “one-hit wonder” — the savant, found in science, in literature, in every human endeavor, who bursts onto the scene like a shooting star, shakes the foundations of a field, and then curiously vanishes back into obscurity, never to contribute again. I trust the parallel here is clear. Best of all, even if the speech fell flat, I would win: I could always claim that, rather than being a textual failure, it was a meta-textual success.

But on Sunday morning I woke up and realized that I was running away from what I needed to say. I had to abandon the whole thing and start over. I hope you’ll indulge me.

Today we meet as a School on a date both solemn and raw for the nation. It wasn’t planned that way; it’s just an accident of the calendar. But sometimes I wonder if history is anything more than accidents of the calendar. If it is, it is because we take those accidents and create meaning in them. As a native son of New York, my jaw still clenches and my eyes still tear whenever this day looms again. Six years later, there remains a hole in my city — a hole in my country — a hole in my heart. When I sat down to write, I thought that I was still not ready to speak about that day, to sift through the ashes for meaning. As I began to write, though, I made a shocking discovery.

It’s true — I am not ready.

But that doesn’t matter.

That is the first important lesson of the 21st century: We will face severe challenges for which we may not be ready. The challenges aren’t going to go away, though, so we have to get ready. Despite what the movies tell us, failure is an option — in fact, it’s the default option. We are going to have to choose success; we are going to have to work for it. Last year I laid out what I see as some of the dangers and pitfalls we might face and what might help us get past them. I remain proud of that speech, perhaps inordinately proud of it. But it didn’t take long to knock me down a peg. Within a few days of Convocation, several different people — students and faculty — had told me that they had appreciated the speech but that I had scared them sleepless. This disappointed me, because it meant that I had missed my mark. I had hoped to navigate the thin space between raising an alarm and causing a panic. Looking ahead, it’s a good thing to be a little alarmed. It’s a terrible thing to be panicked.

And this is the second lesson of the 21st century, as hard in its own way as the first: You cannot live in fear. You must not live in fear. Stimulate an animal’s fear centers continuously, and eventually it will die. Stimulate a free society’s fear centers continuously, and eventually it will wither.

We have spent the last six years cowering in a corner, huddling in our fear. It’s unhealthy for each and every one of us. It’s unbecoming of a great nation and a great people. It’s simply bad posture. Now, today, it is time to wake up. It is time to step up. It is time to grow up. My generation and the one preceding mine, we’re asking a lot of you. You’re being asked to grow up in the hardest century we’ve ever faced. You’re being asked to step up and shepherd this fractious and fearful world through fire and fury to a destination none can even imagine yet. It’s hard and it’s frightening and it is not fair. That doesn’t matter. It’s what is.

There will be those — there already are those — who will offer to take this burden from you. “Give yourself over to me”, they claim, “and I will tame the night for you. I will face down the bogeyman, I will guard you and keep you safe.” The best of these will be merely misguided. Most will be outright deceitful. No one can grow up for you. No one can live your life for you. That won’t stop them from trying to tempt you into surrender. They will bang the drum and rattle the saber and do everything in their power to convince you that your rightful place is prone on the ground, helpless and afraid. They will attempt to buy your birthright by selling you fear.

Fear of other people taking your things.

Fear of other people taking your job.

Fear of other people taking your life.

Fear of other people, period.

Fear of being different, of being outcast, of being alone.

Fear of other opinions and other beliefs and other faiths.

Fear of the different, of the alien, of the Other — of anything not them.

Simple fear.

They will tell you that there is only one path, that you must make yourself a smaller target by becoming less than yourself. We must, we are told, jettison the lessons of four hundred years of liberty. We must, we are told, give up our quaint notions of due process and restraint and fair play. We are told, “Dissent divides”. We are told that asking questions costs lives. We are told these things, and in our fear, we pretend that they are true. But in our hearts, we know that they are not.

Fear lives in the oldest, darkest corners of the brain — parts far older than humanity. Like everything else, fear persists because it offered an evolutionary advantage. But it never evolved for creatures like us, who think and remember. Those who appeal to your fear are trying to short-circuit your brain. They don’t want you questioning, because questioning gives you context. They don’t want you learning, because learning gives you options. Above all, they don’t want you thinking, because thinking gives you freedom. They want you reacting, worrying, following, fearing. It is a blatant confession of a bankruptcy of solutions; it could not be more obvious or insulting; and yet, amazingly, every day we fall for it.

You cannot live in fear. You must not live in fear.

What is the alternative? Should you go through the day in an optimistic fog, counting on the world to be always sunshine and daisies? Of course not. We face the hardest century. The world is going to be sharp edges and deep chasms. But consider this: When suddenly dropped into a frightening situation, the most primal instinct is to close your eyes and hope it goes away. It’s a very natural, a very human reaction. But closing your eyes doesn’t make the danger go away. In fact, the only safe course is to open your eyes and face the frightening thing. Even if the smart move is to run, you’re going to want to run with your eyes open.

Your would-be guardians and rulers have always been here, since our species huddled in the darkness, vulnerable and afraid; and for a time, they served a role. They interposed themselves between the sleeping masses and the vast unknowable night. Now a bright bonfire called civilization blazes and pushes back the night. Yet the fearmongers persist, hovering at the edge of the light, on the shore of the shadows, unwilling to come closer. They fear the darkness but they hate the light, because it reveals that we don’t need them any longer. Seeing the fire hold back the night, they scream that it will attract monsters and must be extinguished — that we must go back to cowering in darkness and terror, trusting only in them. But the fire doesn’t attract danger. It allows us to see danger coming and to prepare for it and thus avoid it. Our system of justice and liberty doesn’t threaten our lives; it makes them possible. It lets us see what truly is.

Despite what you’ve been told, most people on this planet are not out to kill you. Most people on this planet don’t hate you for your freedoms, whatever that means. They don’t hate you for your wealth or even for your actions. They don’t hate you at all. Just like us, most people desire little more than the opportunity to create a better life and the peace to enjoy the fruits of that labor.

Be wary of those who tell you differently. Distrust those who ring the alarm bell so loudly that you cannot think. Ask yourself: What are they afraid of? What do they fear you will discover? Fear is a powerful and dangerous drug on the body politic. It can be used to strip people of their defenses, of their dignity, of their principles. Using fear to bludgeon you into assent, people will act in your name to do the most dreadful of deeds: To abrogate elections, to spy illegally, to detain indefinitely. To discriminate and intimidate, to torture and to execute. In pursuit of imaginary security, they will demand that you surrender your privacy, your identity, your opinions, your self. They will tell you, “We cannot afford outdated customs such as judicial oversight or checks and balances or free debate.” They will say to you, “To fight the monsters, we must become monsters ourselves.” Don’t let them fool you.

We are stronger than that.

We are smarter than that.

We are better than that.

And you cannot live in fear forever.

I am currently in LAX International Airport. I’ve been here since 10:30 AM and it is currently 9:00 PM. If you knew my itinerary, you’d see that this is the time listed for boarding Continental Flight 1803, nonstop LAX to Newark/EWR. You can probably guess that I am not actually getting on that plane at this moment. You see, it’s raining in Houston.

Now, I am not in Houston. I am not going to Houston. As mentioned, my flight is nonstop and so is not stopping in Houston. Nonetheless, rain in Houston has added about half an hour to my departure time each hour since 4 PM.

(Aside: I’ve received no fewer than six email alerts warning me that the flight will be delayed — although I was also warned that I had to show up at the airport at the printed time, since the airline reserved the right to leave then after all. I’m not exactly what the point of the alerts are, to tell you the truth. I mean, if I can’t leave for the airport any later, than why do I need to know that the plane is going to be held? It’s some sort of weird Calvinist thing: I’m delayed if I do and delayed if I don’t. I can know my fate but I cannot do anything about it. [And if that's not a true metaphor for a citizen in the hands of corporations, I don't know what is.] )

Back to my delayed flight. Despite the frenzied pace of email alerts, actually very little information has been shared about why. Apparently, even though — as I said — my flight neither originates in, terminates in, or passes through Houston, I have been bolluxed by the remnants of the tropical storm Erin, which has delayed the plane I’ll be taking, which is for reasons unknown to anyone but God, flying out of Houston.

Now… The people of Houston have known, of course, that there’d be rain in Houston. The people at CNN and Weather Channel and every podunk news outlet in all the land knew that there’d be rain in Houston. Heck, I’ve just spent the past fifteen days at sea and even I knew that there would be rain in Houston. But somehow the airliines, with state of the art equipment and a literally million-dollar information infrastructure, somehow did not know that it would be raining in Houston.

More below the fold.

Of course, they did know that it would be raining in Houston. They knew probably a day or two earlier than today. The issue of course is that they did not care. Their business model depends on cramming every last person into every last seat. They don’t allocate any resources for “unexpected” contingencies — like, say, rain. There should be enough give in the system that when something like this develops, equipment can be routed from other places to cover. But in fact, all the eggs are allowed to drop. Somehow, this does not constitute breach of service.

It’s almost amusing, because I am writing this standing at the counter (which is just about the only horizontal surface available for my laptop). So I get to hear everyone come and kvetch at the harried counter attendant. I’m continually amazed that each and every person is shocked that this has happened — even though studies show that one out of every four flights suffer noticeable delays. Instead everyone asks to be scheduled to the now-earlier flight to Newark. (I’ll leave aside my burning rage that a later-scheduled flight will depart an hour or more before my flight — I am so glad I paid premium price for a first-class seat.)

It’s almost heartening, the unending stream of slightly-forlorn travelers ever-hopeful that the attendant will magically conjure a new flight for them. At the moment, the stand-by list is at 18 people, but newcomers keep adding themselves to the list. God bless American optimism, I suppose. (I cannot imagine the scale of the disaster now necessary to get some of these people on the plane. I mean, eighteen independent reasons for eighteen separate people to miss a flight? What are the odds?)

On the other hand, I am undergoing a slow burn every time I hear the attendant explain that the plane is not here because “sometimes there’s a thunderstorm in Houston”. Again, as if the tropical storm that’s been tracked across CNN for over a week could not have been foreseen. It’s that fundamental disingenuousness that ticks me off the most — the unwillingness of the airlines to come clean and admit that such delays are not unpredictable, unforeseeable acts-of-God. Their business model is predicated on frustrating and misleading thousands of people each day. They hide the true cost of the ticket from the piurchaser and so can claim “low fares” — as if my time had no value.

But there are two things that really piss me off. First, the attendant just got on the mic and told us that the plane “looks good for the 12:10 departure”. I know it’s all weasel-words and I know she’s under pressure. But the fact of the matter is, that’s an hour and a half after the printed departure time. It is now no longer possible for this to “look good”. The best they can hope for is, “This has stopped looking like crap.”

Second, the sign to my right now shows the updated information: “Flight 1803. Departs 12:10 New York / Newark. Ticketed passengers must be onboard 20 mins before departure“. Take a moment to grasp that. The airline can arbitrarily delay my flight by 90 minutes and all I can do is suck it up. But if I should be 21 minutes late, oh my God, no force on Earth is going to get them to hold that plane for me.

It is that fundamental asymmetry — that inability of the airlines to even pretend to play fair — that sours me on air travel, to the extent that I just might not ever do it again.

Last note: As I send this, it is 9:45 — exactly the originally-scheduled departure time for Continental Flight 1803.

Seven days ago I had the opportunity to relive the American experience in the Second World War in one morning. In reverse. As part of the Regal Princess‘ stop at the port of Honolulu, I took part in a tour of the memorials to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri. In case your command of WWII facts is rusty, the Arizona is a battleship sunk during the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on 1941 December 7 – the date that will live in infamy. The Missouri is part of the American response to that act. It’s an Iowa class battleship, the largest ever built and the last in service. On the decks of the Missouri, on 1945 September 2, the Japanese government signed the papers surrendering to the United Nations. In between, tens of millions of people died – nearly half a million of them American.

For reasons having to do with long lines and scheduling, my tour group actually explored the Missouri memorial first. The Missouri Memorial is, in fact, the Missouri – all of BB 63, anchored and refit as a floating museum. It’s not exactly a WWII monument. During the half century between VJ Day and its decommissioning, the Missouri served as a flagship of the United States Navy. It saw action in Korea, in Viet Nam, and even in the (first) Gulf War. During this span it was modernized and upgraded: the seaplane replaced with helicopters; the machine guns replaced with gatling anti-air. A full complement of Tomahawk cruise missile launchers was installed. In case all of that should fail, though, the Mighty Mo’ kept her main armament, nine 16-inch cannon in three independent turrets.

For all of the intimidating bigness of the battleship, the most stirring part turned out to be the surrender documents. Both copies – American and Japanese – are displayed. I was struck by the contrast of grand and mundane. At one glance are all the grandiose phrases calling for the end of war and the dedication to new peace. But look a little closer and you see the mark of a very human moment, where the representative of Canada, in his nervousness, signed on the wrong line and necessitated a hurried penciled correction. MacArthur insisted that the proper titles be penciled in and each signatory initial next to his correct line. How bizarre – between them, these men had fought the most devastating war ever known, had overseen barbarities of a nature hard to contemplate, had rained down obliteration on entire cities and had sent thousands of men to their deaths to do it. Yet here they were, worried that somehow, a signature in the wrong place could render the document worthless and the exercise moot.

Yet that’s the way of it, isn’t it? Paper covers rock. We think it’s the things that matter, but somehow, it’s the pieces of paper that seem to actually change the course of history. World War I became World War I, in a sense, with the British treaty guaranteeing Belgian neutrality – dismissed as just a “scrap of paper” by the German High Command. World War II spread to the West and became a World War with the Allied treaty of defense with Poland, again dismissed as just words on a page. In both cases, the powers that derided the words went on to be humbled by them.

The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the United States. The Magna Carta and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Emancipation Proclamation. The Fourteen Points and the Atlantic Charter. Words on a page. Scraps of paper. But nothing more feared by tyrants, more despised by despots. It’s no accident that the Soviet Union registered all typewriters and made private possession of a mimeograph a felony offense.

And here, under glass, on the gently rolling deck of the mightiest warship ever constructed, was a piece of paper that had ended a war because it said so. The history of the war was written in the blood of its combatants – but it was ended through ink. The document contains little in the way of soaring oratory or grand pronouncements. It is a legal thing, a dry thing, a weary thing yet resplendent. That piece of paper recognized a changed reality and so enabled it.

Scraps of paper.

Word on a page.

Paper covers rock.

May it always be so.

Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Were he still living, he might well amend that to be the definition of “Democrat”. Although, truthfully, there seems to be less and less difference between being a Democrat and being insane. And I say that as a lifelong member of the party!

Jumping at the President’s command, the Democrats passed modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA). In this latest craven capitulation, the Democrats agreed to give the executive the power to spy without warrants, subject only to “guidelines” issued by – believe it or not! – the US Attorney General. This, after eight months of hearings have uncovered crippling incompetencies and indeed outright political corrosion within the Department of Justice. My God, even his own party believes the Attorney General should resign! Yet somehow this creature of the President, who cannot seem to muster a single truthful answer to the most innocuous question – this lapdog now will be the guarantor of our civil liberties.

More below the fold.

The Democrats have to stop thinking it’s still 2000. In the last seven years this Administration has unrelentingly compromised the rights of Americans while undermining the rule of law and, indeed, the Constitution itself. We are not in the same America we inhabited at the end of the Clinton administration. Yet the Democratic Party keeps strategizing from the same – failed! – playbook. It didn’t even win them elections back when it was relevant. Now, it threatens the very Republic itself.

When pressed, those Democrats who voted for this noxious bill offered the usual, lame excuse: “If we stand against this, the Republicans are going to paint us as weak on national security.” As if the Republicans were going to play nice, now, and say, “Look, those Democrats, they love our country too.” No, the Republicans are going to sandbag the Democrats again, going to go on all the Sunday shows and trumpet how much the Democrats fail to use “Islamic” immediately followed by “terrorist”. The Republicans are going to score their points no matter what the Democrats do. It’s time to take a lesson from them: Sometimes, the only response to a bully is to thwap him down hard.

Is this a good bill? Almost to a person, the Democrats say ‘NO’. Then attack the bill, you twits! Don’t accept the “weak on defense” argument. Why isn’t any major Democrat painting the Republican party as “weak on liberty” or “soft on freedom”? Why aren’t they pointing out the frightening turn toward authoritarianism evidenced by almost all of the Republican candidates and leadership? Why isn’t anyone standing up for the Constitution, for the time-honored rights of free citizens? Don’t vote for a bad bill hoping it will go away. Expose it as a bad bill.

If the bill is bad, attack it. Spell out its defects. Point out how none of the supposed “fixes” addresses any real concerns, how these additional powers were not needed to foil the plots in Britain and Spain and even here. Educate the public regarding FISA’s already-generous tools that allow the law to go after the bad guys without trampling four centuries of jurisprudence. And while you’re at it, why not point out that the President of the United States had openly admitted to committing actual felonies while in office?

By the way, even from thousands of miles away on a cruise, it was clear to me that the Republicans were going to push a bad FISA bill. Why the hell didn’t the Democrats have their own bill fixing the true deficiencies in FISA (if any) without granting even more broad powers to the executive? Why are they always playing catch-up? After winning both houses last November, the Democrats should have the initiative on every major issue. How do they keep getting blind-sided?

What the hell is the point of a “loyal opposition”, when they interpret it as “loyal as a dog” and roll over at every instigation?

It’s pretty clear that there’s only one reason why Alberto “Fredo” Gonzales didn’t commit perjury: Because GOP senators arranged for his March testimony to not be under oath, and an oath is required for perjury. It’s equally as clear that he lied to Congress, and he should suffer for it. But it demands we consider: Why are the AG and POTUS so concerned about the fact of dissension within DoJ about their program? It can’t be to avoid the appearance of illegality, because the President has admitted to committing repeated felonies since 9/11, in his flagrant disregard of FISA; and apparently that wasn’t enough to trigger DoJ concerns.

What had they been doing, that is so beyond the pale that the acting AG, the actual AG, the director of the FBI, and virtually the entire upper staff at DoJ were willing to resign en masse rather than stomach? This can’t be anything as prosaic as violating FISA or even just simple data mining. What was this Administration doing, that even four years later, they are so terrified of becoming public that the Attorney General is willing to debase, embarrass, and all but perjure himself?

I don’t know (sorry) but I have a pretty strong suspicion. Other than a good juicy sex scandal (and I don’t believe that’s at the heart of this, though you can never rule it out), there is only one thing that is so terrible, so unthinkable, that the merest hint it had happened could in fact rouse the notoriously soporific American public. I think that if the fact ever do come out — and, if the next Administration is a Democratic one, the facts will come out — I will be proved right by history.

Here’s my speculation:
These thugs were using the NSA to spy on Americans for the express purpose of steering the Presidential election to George W. Bush.

It’s possible that this man has stolen not one election, but two. And I still have faith in America: The truth will out, and the wicked will suffer. It’s just a matter of time.

Interestingly, that’s not how the right-wing noise machine is approaching this story, about how some of the indictments against Tom DeLay have been thrown out. You’d think that people who have spent literally four decades decrying “judicial activism” and unjust outcomes of people “clearly” guilty, would be a-twitter that a judge and then an appeals court threw out the indictments on a technical point.

In fact, however, people at, say, the National Review think this post-facto justifies Mr. DeLay and makes it almost criminal that he was forced to step down as House Majority Leader. We should all cry for Mr. DeLay, apparently. Except of course — as even the more-friendly Houston Chronicle article is forced to admit — Mr. DeLay still faces charges of laundering money and of committing conspiracy to launder money. Those were crimes at the time (Illegal to launder money? Who knew?) — and he may still face trial on them.

The guys at the National Review take this as evidence that “the charges seem to be falling apart”, but that seems a tad over-optimistic based on the articles I’ve seen. The dismissal came because the crime Mr. DeLay was alleged to have committed didn’t come into force until 2003, whereas his disreputable actions happened in 2002 and before. It seems the courts had little choice on this one — though I’d love to know what prosecutor Ron Erle had in mind when he pressed the charges in the first place. I doubt this is as open-and-shut as it seems. All that notwithstanding, the other charges are not hobbled by the same calendar problem. Money laundering and conspiracy have been on the books as crimes for quite some time now.

Though the Review article would have you believe that the dismissals taint the other indictments, in fact, the only reason that Mr. DeLay has not faced trial yet is that the presiding judge opted to wait until the appeal of indictments was complete.

Has “the Hammer” been vindicated? Hardly.