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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (662873)	11/27/2004 10:14:27 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Respond to of 769667

E, this post serves as a perfect example for me to use in answering some of the thoughts/questions it contains. First, if I do not answer questions you post, it is not meant as a form of condescension. I would not engage you in discussions if I did not enjoy the give and take with you. I said once that you a high-maintenance poster-pal. I meant that you are a prolific writer, and any one of your posts may require extensive time to reply to. Like this one. I don't have the typing skills, or even perhaps focus, to frame lengthy answers, point-by-point, in the fashion that you do. Moreover, a barrage of questions by any poster is a form of control, i.e, taking charge of the agenda. I don't always wish to submit to that, particularly if I view the questions as repetitive, i.e., already asked and answered. That's all just me and I am not likely to change a whole lot. At any time you find me frustrating or non-responsive, you always have the option of disengaging from our exchanges. A professor is not so much a teacher as a producer of knowledge; hence the irony that the most successful professors teach the least hours. At a university one can only become a full professor and achieve tenure based on research and publication; teaching skill is a factor, but a minor one. I speak as having been the chairman of the Rank and Tenure committee as my university. This bothers lay people, but it is why we have so many world-class universities in this country. You can connect the dots as to the relevance of this to your question about the student papers. We have gone on so long with the internment that futher discussion of the details seems to get us nowhere. One thing I have learned after all this time (from the book I am reading) is just how bad our situation was in the spring of 1942. FDR's military advisors told him the war was already lost in Europe; Hitler had won. The U-boat menace on the East Coast was so bad (390 ships sunk) that it was concealed from the public. The disruption of oil supplies threatened to bring war mobilization to a halt within months. The West Coast was essentially undefended and an invasion by Japan was considered likely. You may call all of this "changing the subject," but I think the usefulness of our exchanges is enhanced by each of us expounding upon what we think the subject really is. You have a mission to convince me and others that the internment was "wrong." I, on the other hand, think that context is everything. Was slavery "wrong?" I would say no, it was a stage in the evolving of humanity, and honorable people of earlier times could in good conscience engage in the practice, and of course did. It may be that in times to come humanity will view slaughter houses, and eating other animals, as an atrocious, despicable practice. Does that mean it is "wrong" today? Again I say no, although as you know I hope that such a time comes in future generations. But we are not there yet. I'm personally not there yet, as I do eat meat. If one chooses to go through a book on the history of the world starting in 1000 B.C., and marking with a red pen everything that was "wrong" by our standards of today, one will end up with a book more red than black and white. And just what would one have proved? And so it goes with the internment of 1942. It may be useful to employ the word "wrong" in an argument about interning certain citizens today, but it becomes abstract, meaniningless,and useless to attempt to apply it to a different context that is now three generations behind us. That will always stand as my opinion, and there is zero likelihood of any new facts coming to light that we don't already know. Well, that's the best I can do with this one of your posts. I hope I don't get an "F."