Date: Sat, 3 May 2003 13:03:06 -0700
Subject: Re: HAB: Fwd: What does the felling of the monument mean?


George,

>then hasn't
>some
> >of it been worth it?
> >
> >MattP
>
>Yes, but at what cost, at home and abroad?
>
>George D.

At home, I am not sure what your criteria would be in terms of cost? Cost
to 
the US national deficit? Dangerously high. The US is on the verge of 
bankruptcy. HAH. Marxists everywhere rubbing their hands at the prospect
of 
another depression as the US subsides beneath an ocean of Euros. In other

words I have little idea. What's your assessment of it?

mattP.

Matt,

I need to by-pass a substantive discussion.  I have too much going on
now.

At  home.  Some of the cost;:

a)  The economy.  My field of adult literacy education suffers badly as
do many other social concerns

b)  Civil and civic discourse via Rumsfeld, Fleisher and Cable TV, to
name a few culprits

c) Policy based on a thorough grappling of diverse viewpoints

d)  the bastardization and simplification of patriotism

e)  The viability of pluralism/multiculturalism (read George Will's
editorials.  Multiculturalism is the domestic analogue to terrorism).

f)  Spiritual integrity (Bush's linkage of the war against terrorism and
Iraq with God's calling of the United States to be the light of the world
and his calling to be the nation's Moses.

More, much more, but not now

I've posted my thinking in a document titled US Iraqi Policy:  A Critique
of Rightward Thinking, Secular and Religious at:

http://www.ctconfucc.org/resources/theology/PoliticalTheology.pdf

These include several email messages on the POVRACE LIt listserv operated
by the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL).  My several messages were
archived there for a couple of months.  Just recently NIFL was forced by
unnamed powers from above to synthetically cleanse all NIFL messages
related to US foreign policy.  That has raised a firestorm in the land of
adult literacy in the United States, though lots of folks in the DC area
and those who depend on DC revenues (directly or indirectly) are feeling
intimidated to do much about that.  For more information on those
discussions see the AALPD and AAACE-NLA list archives, especially for the
past 4 or 5 days.

For the AAACE-NLA list go to
http://lists.literacytent.org/pipermail/aaace-nla/2003/thread.html aaace 

I've posted a couple of additional messages today that are probably not
archived yet,  but will be so by tomorrow.

For the NIFL-AALPD liist go to  http://www.nifl.gov/nifl-aalpd/2003/ 
AAALPD

Start with message 265 then scroll to the top.

The key point here is that NIFL cleansed the archives of both references
to US foreign policy and in calls to maintain the integrity of the ERIC
Clearinghouse which is subject to diminution in order for the Department
of Education to highlight its newer clearinghouse What Works based on the
precepts of scientific-based educational research (i.e. postpositvism). 
For a good discussion of research traditions see Donna C. Mertens (1997).
 Research methods in Education and Psychology.  Sage.

The short of it is that one of the indirect consequences of the war
against terrorism and Operation Freedom (was that what it was called?) is
the repression of free speech on the NIFL list servs and the cleansing of
the written record through the selective removal of archival materials
from the listservs.

I should get back to my book.

George


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