MacNeil/Lehrer, PBS and realjohnboy - "By The People"

I'm young, I'm interested, and I'm not even american. I agree with nimh that the absense of young people probably is not caused by lack of interest in the elections.

So for our little group we had a moderator who was very earnest. He's a PHD candidate in History at UVA. He was perhaps a bit overwhelmed because there were three college level teachers in the group, two of whom had enough class-room experience to know when to say something and when to remain silent so the discussion could progress.
And there was another person, a self-described "mediator" by profession who seemed to feel the need to fill any pause, any silence, with some chatter.
I'm afraid that those two people ended up hurting our group. There were many other people in our group that I would have loved to have heard more from: the man who had immigrated from Canada in 1991 whose son is on his 3rd tour as a Ranger with the Army in Iraq/Afghan; the Anglican Nun who spoke eloquently (to my mind) about one issue and then made some comments about another that were completely off the wall (to my mind). And then there was the old, old lady who said nothing. I wanted to hear from her.
Ears, letty? Ears, indeed. If we would only spend more time listening....
more tomorrow on the substance of what we talked about. Goodnight, all. john

...and thanks for your comments. I didn't mean to step on yalls lines. Welcome Einherjar.

Thanks, can't wait to hear the substanse tomorrow.

I hope none of you mind me inserting myself in the discussion...

I.A: I really have a view of terrorism that many of you will probably find odd. I see terrorism as a reaction (to many things, but I will try to keep my focus on the US). We Americans have a tendency to believe that our government, our culture, our religion, and even our language are superior to all others. The British, the French, the Chinese, etc., just blow us off when they don't agree with us because they too are superpowers. However, the Middle Eastern countries do not have this "luxury." They must constantly deal with our meddling "for their own good," as we tell them. As a result, many in that region feel oppressed by our "good will." Furthermore, their religion is not nearly as liberal as our own. When they see our rock music, our movies, our permissiveness invading their borders, they see no way to stop it. Their reaction is one of desperation. Consequently, I believe that the men who flew planes into our buildings viewed their actions much as the passengers who revolted on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania did: They were trying to save others in their own sick and twisted way. So my answer to the war on terrorism is, basically, twofold: 1. Hunt down those who were responsible and destroy them. 2. Extricate ourselves from the Middle East and assist only those countries who ASK for our help. As for exit strategy? Knock the dust from our boots as we leave. It is not our responsibility to clean up messes in other countries. Our responsibilities extend to ourselves and our allies. (Do I sound somewhat like Pat Buchanon? If so, I'm sorry.)

B. Easy: We need no one's help to assure our safety. There's a reason the US comprises over 80% of the UN's military and budget. Everyone relies on us. And we need only look to our constitution and to our citizens to determine the rightness of a military cause. No other nation should have input into our security decisions.

C. Balance? Why should there be a balance? That assumes that we must weigh one against the other. The Patriot Act was a huge mistake. The early Congress and state legislatures ratified the Bill of Rights for a reason. Without liberty, what good is security? Every detainment resulting from a suspicion of terrorism must pass constitutional muster. The constitution does not limit rights only to citizens. So we build a balance by returning the liberties which were guaranteed by the constitution, not by saying that the taking of liberty is justified. After all, the constitution is clear that life, liberty, and property may only be taken through "due process of law." No mention of national security.

D. Again, our federal government has a responsibility to its citizens. Other countries choose their own forms of government. We have no right to force democratization on any country. We are not even a true democracy at the national level, and rarely do the governments we create even resemble our own. So what's the purpose?

Good morning and thank you, bastoreth, for joining in.

In the morning discussion in our group, we focused on the trade, jobs and taxes issues for about 90 minutes. The goal (we were told by our moderator) was not to come to any agreement/consensus via persuasion or majority vote at the end. Rather, our goal was to agree on a question or two that we would pose to a panel of four men (as it turned out) at the end of the day when the PBS/TV station would be filming.

The four panelists were Ming-Jen Chen (from the Darden Graduate School of Business at UVA-johnboy has his MBA from there but long before Mr Chen's arrival as an expert on "global competitive dynamics");
Nathanial Howell, another professor at UVA who was the ambassador to Kuwait during Iraq's invasion there in 1990. He was a career foreign service officer specializing in affairs in that region of the world.
The other two panelists were Tim Kaine, the Lt Gov of VA (a Democrat), and Jerry Kilgore, the Atty Gen of VA (a Republican). A Gov in VA can serve only one term so these two guys are campaigning for the next election to take on the top job in the state. That election will be in another year or so.
The moderator has the uniquely Virginia name (I am not making this up) of May-Lily Lee. -johnboy

May-Lily Lee. <smile>Quite an assembly there, Virginia John.

We didn't have a lot of trouble with this issue of American Jobs In A Global Economy. We had little problem agreeing that, under a system of capitalism, the production of goods or the providing of services will flow to wherever the costs are lowest. Tariffs or subsidies may be good local politics but they are doomed to failure in the long-haul.
Wal-mart, of course, came up in the context of sweat-shops in Asia or Africa.
(As an aside, we were mostly older professional types in our group who make or have made our living with our minds, not our hands. The bias is there).
We had trouble with the taxes. That's where we got into johnboy's tattered sweater. I can, and do, pull on a thread of it from time to time, particularly when I'm listening to somone drone on and on about something (I used to pull up my shirt and contemplate my navel so I guess I am evolving).
We started to talk about taxes, tax policy (funding government or the redistribution of wealth); the federal budget deficit, the national debt of the US, and our trade deficit with other countries. Johnboy pulled thread from his sweater and discovered that each thread was wrapped around another thread. All of us were hopelessly confused by the end, but we managed to come up with a question for the panel.

The raveled sleeve of Johnboy. And the question was?

And the question was adroitly dodged by both of the guys running for office and supporting Mr Bush or Mr Kerry. The question had to do with our trade deficit and Mr Chen ended up being the only panel member to respond, talking about (as we did) the west's propensity to comsume.
He wasn't talking about environmental issues (the environment never had a chance to be talked about). Rather, he spoke of the notion that we in this country are up to our eyeballs in personal debt.
Is it good that we buy a lot of stuff? If you make bobble-head dolls in China that we can put on our dashboards, I guess yes. But is making bobble-head dolls the best allocation of resources?

<this is fascinating>

bobble headed dolls. Have to smile at that one, John. Well, I'm doing my part to help the doctors of cars, heh heh.

Equivocating is one thing they teach in political science at UVA, right?

So after lunch we did another 90 minutes on National Security.
One of the folks (I never figured out his political inclination) posed this question: Define the term "War on Terrorism."
Johnboy knew, or thought he knew, what that phrase meant. We ended up tussling over that for about 15 minutes (You'd have to have been there).
Preemptive action/working with allies/spreading democracy:
There are "rules" regarding preemptive action, johnboy is told. Could be, but I am troubled: the US has the (perceived) right to attack anywhere where we think there might be a threat. Do other countries have the same right?
We wrestled with that and came up with the UN (or some variaition of it) as the only alternative to countries misbehaving. I'm not happy with that. I know how slowly bureaucracy works and before the wheels get going, thousands and thousands end up dead.
Spreading democracy? We all laughed about that idea as we head in to the last couple of weeks of our campaign. It's a great concept but not something that can be dictated.

<reading along>

Reading with great interest, rjb. It sounds a very full-on experience!

Good evening yall: a few more comments...
When we started filming the panel discussion at the end of the day, the stage manager said that, unlike in the presidential debates where the audience was admonished to be totally silent, we were welcome to "applaud or whatever."
I mentioned that there were these two guys on the panel positioning themselves for a run for the Gov of VA. They were also surrogates for Mr Bush and Mr Kerry. The Republican was quite a bit taken aback at how loudly a bunch of old folks could jeer .
(johnboy didn't do that, of course, he's too much a Virginia gentleman).
Related to that, in my group of 12 I was the only person who claimed to be a native or near-native Virginian. Not that that gives me any special status of superiority; rather it shows how much Virginia is changing. Two to fifteen years here was the norm.
Virginia will probably go for Mr Bush. The last poll had him up by some 10 points. The last Dem to win here was LBJ. But Charlottesville (because of UVA) is solidly Dem; I guess the same as Madison is in WI or Columbus is in OH.
I think it could end up being a bit closer, which for johnboy, a liberal Dem (did you know that?) would be a moral victory.
My group's question on National Security was a bit dumb. My suggestion, with regard to civil liberties (the Patriot Act), and "putting the genie back in the bottle" in terms of detention without charges and wiretaps and surveillance didn't get the support it needed.
I didn't realize how tired I was until I got home on Saturday. I thought about watching some football on tv (fortunately didn't-UVA got creamed by Fla St). I ended up enjoying silence.
I found myself feeling frustrated that so many things didn't get discussed that should have if we had had the time.

Anyway, I think I have run out of things to say. Thank you for reading through this.

PBS will present a compilation from this and the other 16 similar sessions held in other parts of the country on Thursday, October 21 at 8 pm under the title "Time To Choose: A By the People Election Special."

johnboy