Higher education should be truly that, not the charade we have now. You should see the illiterate resumes I read from "college graduates". Unbelievable. Most people should not go to college. High schools ought to be providing the education that colleges only pretend to be giving people now. We should have a two track system of trade schools and universities and give up this pseudodemocratic pretension that people with IQ's (or whatever) of less than or equal to 100 should be attending universities, when we can't even provide them a basic pre-college education worthy of something more than ridicule.
Here's a nice anti-Al Gore piece to sink your teeth into. I totally agree that the father deserves his child and that the sanctity of the rule of law is at stake (what shall we do, forcibly adopt away all the kids in China because we don't like their leaders?...these crazed Cuban-Floridians need to understand that they only endorse totalitarian, Castro-like techniques by refusing to give the father his child as required by law...it also is a slap in the face to the rights of fathers everywhere--no one would be raising a fuss if the father had drowned and his mother wanted him back) :
nytimes.com
April 7, 2000
FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Eli n and the Panderers
BOGOTµ, Colombia -- Visiting Colombia today is a very clarifying
act. This is a country where things that we value and take for
granted in our own society -- the safety of our children, the right to speak
one's mind freely, respect for the rule of law -- are threatened every day.
Being here you are reminded not only of how much you cherish these
things as an American. You are reminded of the sheer political courage it
takes to fight for them in a country where speaking truth can cost you
your life or get your kids kidnapped with the snap of a finger.
It was therefore doubly clarifying, and doubly disturbing, to be in
Colombia during the Eli n Gonz lez case in Miami. It was sickening --
there's no other word for it -- to see Vice President Al Gore, someone I
actually respected, intervening in this case. He intervened in a way that
was not only wholly inappropriate for a vice president, but he did so in a
way that attempted to fiddle with U.S. law, by introducing a legal ruse
designed to give Eli n U.S. residency status -- status that would never be
granted in such a way in any other case. And for what? In order to chase
a few cheap votes by right-wing Cubans in Florida -- who are so
consumed with hatred for Fidel Castro that they couldn't care less about
the U.S. Constitution.
If Mr. Gore has decided that he no longer wants to function as vice
president, that he no longer wants to stand up for basic principles, then
would he please donate his salary to the Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights or some other group that does have the will and the courage to
defend the rule of law in the U.S. and abroad. And while we're asking,
what is one to think of Alex Penelas, the mayor of Miami-Dade County,
who suggested he wouldn't use the county's police to assist federal
officials if they came for Eli n? Mr. Penelas signaled that his allegiance
was to anti-Castro Cuban-Americans, not to the laws of this land.
I understand politics and pandering. But there are limits. Thank God, the
U.S. is still a long way from the lawlessness of Colombia. But if you want
to know what happens, in the extreme, when people cheapen the rule of
law and political movements let any means justify any ends, well, visit
Colombia -- a country where the honest judges, journalists and
politicians, and there still are plenty here, cannot walk the streets without
fear of being abducted or killed by drug lords, vigilantes or Marxist
guerrillas.
But it's not the random chaos here that impresses me. It is the courage,
the raw courage, of those who have chosen to stay and fight for the rule
of law and freedom of speech. I speak in particular about the journalists
of Colombia.
I speak of Enrique Santos Calderon, the editor of Bogot 's biggest
paper, El Tiempo, who picked me up for dinner in his bulletproof jeep,
followed by a car full of his machine-gun-toting guards -- whose
presence is essential for him to do his job.
I speak of Maria Jimena, a columnist for El Espectador, whose sister
was murdered while filming a documentary, and who now gets
threatening e-mails from guerrillas or vigilantes any time she writes
critically about either.
"You don't have any arguments to stay here," she remarked. "The only
argument is that it's important -- freedom of expression has always been
important here. We know we have a very important place in this country.
But it is very scary because more and more [the journalists] here have
become the targets of the worst violence facing this country. . . . I have
stopped reading my e-mails."
Roberto Pombo, the editor of Cambio, insists that journalists are not
heroes here. Anyone who stays to try to improve Colombia, or to just
live here, is. "Don't write that being a journalist here is dangerous. Half
the journalists are killed here not for being journalists but for just being
here. Everybody is killed in Colombia in the line of living, not just in the
line of work. . . . We don't want you to come save us, but we need your
help so we can help ourselves."
This is what dinner conversation with good people sounds like in a
society whose politicians, years ago, became complacent about the rule
of law, where they sold themselves cheap to the highest bidders and
where political factions became so polarized and consumed with hatred
of each other that they would not let any law, any norm, constrain their
behavior.
This is how it ends. The Eli n Gonz lez case is how it starts. |
