www.dailycorinthian.com
Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Friday, June 28, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
An endangered species up in arms As many of you already have intuited, I don’t know everything. Nobody does, I suppose. More importantly, I don’t know everything about anything. I’m what used to be called “a generalist,” someone whose knowledge in any direction is a mile wide and a quarter-inch deep. Sad to say, we generalists are an endangered species. Everywhere, the pressure is on young people to specialize. They’re also being urged to concentrate on the so-called STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering, and math. Why? Donald These are disciplines that can Kaul predictably get you a job upon Other Words graduating from college. A Florida task force last year went so far as to suggest that college courses in the humanities — literature, history, the social sciences, the arts — be made more expensive than STEM courses just to steer students away from them. This idea has the humanities people up in arms. Duke University President Richard Brodhead headed a study group of educators, business leaders, artists and politicians who recently delivered a report to Congress decrying the attitude studying the humanities and social sciences is a waste of time. “This facile negativism forgets that many of the country’s most successful and creative people had exactly this kind of education,” he said. The report comes at a time not when hordes of students are crowding into “wasteful” humanities classes, but rather when attendance in them is plummeting and financing for liberal arts education is being tea-partied to death. Our higher education system is forgetting what education is supposed to do in the first place. I entered college as an engineering student — a mistake on the order of Napoleon’s decision to invade Russia. I was lucky though. I made a last-minute escape to the English department where I was not only allowed to read novels for fun but also find out about things I was actually interested in — history, psychology, architecture, and the arts. I hasten to add that I had no idea what I was going to do with this information. Neither did my father, a tool and die maker who wanted me to join one of the more practical professions — preferably dentistry. He wanted me to make a living without being in danger of killing someone. That didn’t appeal to me either. Like many students (particularly English majors) of the 1950s, I wasn’t going to school merely to learn a trade. I was out to become an educated person — well-read, witty, sophisticated — like someone in a Noel Coward play. Unfortunately, Coward never tells you how his people earn a living. When I graduated with my English degree I had no answer for my father’s question: “What now, bigshot?” Thus, I drifted into journalism. It wasn’t an unfamiliar story in the newspaper business of the time. Back then, it served as a refuge for failed novelists, playwrights, and other flotsam bearing a liberal education. The thing is, it worked out fine for me. I led an interesting life, had a lot of fun, and earned enough to raise a family in modest comfort. Moreover, at one time or another, I pretty much put to use everything I had learned in college. And that’s my point — a point these STEM people miss — there’s nothing wrong with learning for its own sake. Knowledge doesn’t go to waste. It comes in handy somewhere along the line, sometimes in the most unlikely places. I realize that the world now is a very different place from the one I grew up in. Back then, you didn’t have to be a hedge fund manager to work your way through school for one thing. But another difference is that workers today change jobs, even professions, four, five, or six times during their working lives. Specialists who know only one thing might be left in the cold when circumstances change. Generalists have the intellectual tools to adapt. Actually, we’d be better off if more of our politicians had read a few more good novels. Or if perhaps they’d written a poem or two. Knowing something is always better than knowing nothing. (Daily Corinthian and OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. OtherWords.org)
Prayer for today Lord, may our confidence always be firmly established in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures which are able to make us wise for salvation. Amen.
A verse to share “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.” — Proverbs 16:31
Summer solstice: a break from it all? May we please take a break? We have now reached the summer solstice and not one slat in the political picket fence has been mended. At least the grind of municipal elections is behind us. Last week my wife and I and our extended brood took a vacation in an area isolated enough there was (horrors) no cell phone coverage and, for a time, no Internet. The deep breath was palpable as if it were a massage of the inner lungs. Partisan politics at every level was stiffed-armed out of sight. In their place, William Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust” would have to do. I gladly took the plunge into the pursuit of the salvation of the life of accused murderer Lucas Beauchamp. If one is ever fortunate enough to have the solitude and the concentration to climb between the covers of a Faulkner novel he/she discovers people and landscapes that are all clearly and exclusively Mississippi. Dusty roads through forested and brambled and vinecovered countryside carry simple rural people who are fraught with entanglements of relationships that belie any notion of such simplicity. In such an environment, 51 weeks of political correctness, dodging of partisan bullets, and frustration at the nature and quality of government decision-
making, fade into the distance. Instead, those anxieties are replaced by the human Marty struggles that Wiseman have been passed down Stennis one Institute from generation to the next. By Faulkner’s telling, kinfolk and almost kin and even questionable kin manage to live their lives upon a stage with old unpainted dogtrot houses only half visible behind clumps of unkempt vegetation. Thankfully, I have the advantage of having ridden the back roads of my father’s and Faulkner’s birthplaces near the Tippah/Union County line north of New Albany. The hills and creeks and thick woods of rural Union County fit Faulkner’s descriptions of scenery just fine. The same may be said of the characters populating Faulkner’s stories. They scratch out their livings as saw millers, dirt farmers, country store owners and traveling “drummers” of various wares. One can imagine most of them darkening the door fairly frequently of little Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Associate Reform Presbyterian or occasional Methodist churches in the area. The ability of the reader to identify peo-
ple and landmarks today, that also seemed so vivid at the time he was writing, certainly adds credence to Faulkner’s famous quote, “The past is never dead. It is not even past.” Alas, the week passes all too quickly, even if it did include “the longest day of the year.” Lucas Beauchamp’s problems, as intractable as they were, pale alongside a return to the work-a-day grind and balancing the checkbook. Sure enough, as the reception returns to the cellphone one discovers the peculiarities of reality have mounted up in our absence. Indeed, it may take Faulkner-like stream of consciousness sentences to explain some of the news. For instance, one quickly notes the Federal Farm Bill, once easily shepherded through the United States Senate and House by the likes of Sen. Thad Cochran and Congressman Jamie Whitten, has been stopped in its tracks in the House by House Republican conservatives who wanted more cuts and progressive Democrats who wanted less. Solomon himself could not easily explain the successful blocking efforts of these two enemy camps. Then there is news the Medicaid debacle in Mississippi is apparently drawing to a close, spurred on by an Ethics Commission ruling that held that there was no conflict of interest on
the part of six Republican House members voting on the question of Expanded Medicaid. In the case of one member he could not vote in the affirmative, but only against measures leading to Expanded Medicaid. Thus, the issue of health care for those potentially affected by Expanded Medicaid will apparently have to wait for another time. Ironically, those conservatives largely responsible for killing the Farm Bill are advocating block-granting a reduced Food Stamp (SNAP) Program to the states in much the same way that was intended for Expanded Medicaid. Perhaps a long Faulknerian lecture on the nuances of human nature could shed some light on the machinations of the “loathsome, left wing Democrats and the incorrigible right wing Republicans.” Then we may know more about why these polar opposite camps can express disdain for one another yet coalesce to block public policy for opposite and competing reasons. Where are you William Faulkner when we need you? (Daily Corinthian columnist Dr. W. Marty Wiseman is professor of political science and director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government, Mississippi State University. His email address is marty@sig. msstate.edu.)
NSA regulations repeal Fourth Amendment BY DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN The only way to grasp the impact of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program is to see it as a wholesale repeal of the Fourth Amendment. The detailed rules NSA analysts follow show the breathtaking reach of its potential for eavesdropping without any of the protections of our Constitution. According to FISA court rulings released by the NSA pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, low-level agency analysts are allowed to assume that if they cannot identify the location of any participant in a phone call or an email, that he is on foreign soil, allowing them to listen in on the call or read the email. And, in the event that they “inadvertently” listen in on a conversation between Americans on American soil, they can report any criminal activity or plans to harm a person or property that they hear or read about in the call or the email. So if the NSA intercepts a phone call or email be-
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
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editor editor@dailycorinthian.com
Willie Walker
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tween Joe and Harry, both of whom are in the U.S., but the analyst could not tell where Harry is, he can listen in on the call. Once he discovers that Harry and Joe are both, in fact, on U.S. soil, he has to stop listening. But anything he had already “inadvertently” heard, was actionable. In other words, he’s perfectly free to report the “criminal” activity to his superiors, to the FBI, the CIA, the EPA, the ICE, the IRS or any other agency that seems relevant to him. Bear in mind, that we are speaking here of low-level analysts eavesdropping on tens of thousands of phone calls. The only check on their activity is an “audit” of a random sample of the calls and emails they intercept by their supervisors. So how does this NSA jurisdiction amount to anything other than a repeal of the Fourth Amendment? This “inadvertent” wiretapping needs no warrant, no notification of any court or even of any superior or supervisory official. And the crimes uncovered by it need not relate to national secu-
rity or terrorism. If the NSA analyst uncovers a plot to rob a bank, he can report it as he wishes. Goodbye warrants. Goodbye Fourth Amendment. President Obama’s and the NSA’s citation of fifty terrorist acts their surveillance has averted is irrelevant at best and disingenuous at worst. All of the examples cited were under section 702, which permits NSA to listen in on calls between an American and a person who is not on American soil. Nobody objects to that. But not one of the fifty shades of terror prevented by NSA intervention stemmed from section 2015 wiretaps of conversations among Americans on U.S. soil. The very paucity of this information indicates how unnecessarily intrusive NSA domestic surveillance is. But we dare not eliminate it in this era of terrorism and covert operations that target our lives and property. So, the clear need here is for an Internal Affairs
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unit within the NSA, fully equipped with subpoena power, the ability to empanel grand juries and bring indictments and endowed with a large staff. The head of the unit should be designated by the Intelligence Committee co-chairs and ranking members in each house so they are independent of the executive branch. The powers NSA confers on average analysts (Edward Snowden was not even a college graduate) are extraordinary and only justifiable in an environment that is rigorously policed by an independent agency within the NSA. It is only the threat of harsh disciplinary action -- including jail time -- that we can have any assurance that analysts are not abusing their virtually limitless powers. (Daily Corinthian columnist Dick Morris, former advisor to the Clinton administration, is a commentator and writer. He is also a columnist for the New York Post and The Hill. His wife, Eileen McGann is an attorney and consultant.)
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