Sweatting It Out

Dedication Ceremony Program

Historical Plaque

Today, I saw something that I never dreamed I would see when I wrote my doctoral dissertation ("A Survey of the History of Black People in Texas, 1930-1954") in 1971-1972. Heman M. Sweatt was posthumously honored with a plaque in the Travis County courtroom where he brought suit (with his lead counsel — Thurgood Marshall — who moved from the NAACP legal team to Solicitor General of the United States and then to the U.S. Supreme Court). Sweatt, who was handpicked to seek admission to the UT-Austin College of Law and then failed Law 1 and was dismissed, gained vindication today.

In the 126th District Courtroom where Sweatt v. Painter was argued, I saw the heirs of Heman Sweatt: attorneys and judges of color who crowded into that courtroom to honor Sweatt's memory. I sat next to Texas Supreme Court Justice Rose Spector (1993-1998). I told her how amazing this scene was to me. It meant a great deal to her as well. On February 28, 2005, Heman Sweatt was vindicated by all of Texas, no matter the color of skin.

Sweatt v. Painter (1950) was the prelude to Brown v. Topeka, KS Board of Education (1954). I told that story before anyone else.

If this is (fair & balanced) historical closure, so be it.

A Review: The Geezerville Folly

Last eve, I went to the Social Center Ballroom to see the annual variety show staged by the talent residing here in Geezerville. I use the term, talent, very loosely here. I paid $10 for a ticket and showed at the "theater" for open seating by the time printed on the ticket. I was in the second herd of cattle allowed into the Ballroom to secure a seat. If there is one thing that distinguishes the good folk of Geezerville, it is their propensity to show up early and stand in a queue. The sound is akin to a feedlot in the Texas Panhandle.

The theme for this year's Folly was "The Fabulous Fifties." Disclosure: the 1950s were my time. The music, the culture, and the icons are very important to this reviewer. Just as I have little tolerance for fools, I have little patience with those who trifle with what I hold dear.

The premise of the Folly — once it got started — was a pair of Geezerville residents (husband and wife) reminiscing about the "good old days" at their patio table here in Geezerville. Thus, the audience — including me — was given a haphazard variety show that couldn't make up its mind between verisimilitude and parody. Unfortunately, the performers and the director tried to have it both ways. That dog won't hunt.

The first act was an attempt to do a straight rendition of "Standing On The Corner" as if the Sunspots were The Four Lads. The four voices were unequal in strength and unharmonious at times. This is a bad combination and The Four Lads (the 3 still living) — luckily — should get a lawyer and sue.

Serving as good-looking girls parading around the quartet, I saw — for the first (and I hope the last) time — the Sunsations who segued into another hit by The Crew Cuts: "Sh-Boom." The Crew Cuts, like The Four Lads, hailed from Toronto, but both groups had a strong Italian presence. I heard The Four Lads in a live performance in 1962 and they made reference to their Italian roots. The Sunspots and the Sunsations need to worry about a visit from a guy named Vito from Bayonne, NJ. Vito would tell them to "knock it off or else."

The audience was then yanked into the world of radio in an inept transition and saw a rendition of "The Fibber McGee and Molly Show." The act was passable; I sat wondering how we got from early 1950s harmony to 1940s radio.

From 1940s radio, the next act took us, supposedly, to mid-1950s TV: "The Mickey Mouse Club." Two men and six women in mouse-ears that were a parody of the actual mouse-ears attempted to cavort in the manner of the original adolescent cast. Again, the Folly cast should be looking over their shoulders for Annette Funicello's attorney. Another defamation lawsuit should be in the works.

Next up, was a painful rendition of “The Ed Sullivan Show." The actor who played Sullivan did a passable impersonation (although without much hair). I got more interested until the "acts" followed. First up, was one of Elvis' performances on the show. The parody of Elvis as the old, bloated Elvis wasn't funny and killed my interest. The so-called Elvis onstage didn't even lip-synch "Hound Dog," but just stood there. The inability to decide between impersonation and parody left me cold and growing more impatient as the evening wore on. Next up, another Sullivan highlight: a hefty actress as Tiny Tim performing "Tip Toe Through The Tulips." Tiny Tim might have appreciated seeing himself in drag, but I didn't. The backbreaker came next. "Ed" introduced Myron Floren — accordionist with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra — who played (Can you guess?) "Lady of Spain" in straight fashion. The accordionist didn't look like Myron Floren. Welk's assistant conductor fluctuated between Czech-looking shirts and a tuxedo. This Myron Floren wannabe wore a nondescript brown suit. This schizoid experience that made me wonder if I would need Lithium to make it to the end. A trio purporting to be The McGuire Sisters sang "Sincerely." In all sincerity, the three impersonators should be glad that Sam (MoMo) Giancana, Phyllis McGuire's boyfriend, has gone to the great Bada Bing in the sky.

Finally, "Ed Sullivan" introduced an original act: a talented electric guitarist and vocalist and a talented bassist performed Wilbert Harrison's "Kansas City" (1959). This was not an impersonation. The singer was a white female and Wilbert Harrison was African-American. The bassist was my across-the-street neighbor and he played straight accompaniment for his partner. One of the greatest rock'n roll songs ever was not dishonored in the highlight of the evening to that point.

Unfortunately, the moment was brief. Another wacky transition took us to "The Jack Benny Show." The Benny impersonator was recycled from "The Ed Sullivan Show" and he caught some of Benny's voice inflections and mannerisms, but not quite. "Jack" shared an unfunny exchange with "Mr. Kitzel" (the henpecked neighbor portrayed by Arthur "Artie" Auerbach in the original shows). But, the worst moment had a white actor portray Eddie "Rochester" Anderson with his back to the stage wearing black gloves. The premise had "Rochester" calling "Mr. Benny" on the telephone from the golf course (? 1950s?) to check on Benny's progress in cleaning the house. The wily servant had beaten Benny at gin rummy and took his winnings in kind (housework). Jack Benny employed an African-American actor when it was the norm to hire a white actor in blackface. Jack Benny had other foils: Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Mary Livingston, and all of the Mel Blanc characters. The folly of trying to do an impersonation of Eddie "Rochester" Anderson was insulting. The writers and director had a multitude of skit options rather than "Rochester."

From "Jack Benny," we were yanked into a "Grand Ole Opry" broadcast with an ersatz collection of impersonators of Hank Williams, Minnie Pearl, and Miss Patsy Cline. By the time the Patsy Cline impersonator sang "Crazy" in a straight attempt, I was falling to pieces. When the Sun City Cloggers came out to stomp around to "San Antonio Rose" (1944), I had enough. Poor Bob Wills has gone to the great bandstand in the sky. I wished that I were with him. Instead, at the welcome intermission (with Acts II and III and most of the show) to follow, I took my coat and went home.

This review has been — for the most part — savage. I would not do this to an elementary school group of performers. I would not do this to a high school group of performers. I did not do this to the sole dramatic performance I attended thus far at the local liberal arts college. None of the above charged me $10 and gave me a terrible evening in return. Besides, these people were dissing the 1950s. Solution: don't go back. No more folly for me.

If this is (fair & balanced) criticism, so be it.

Mea Culpa: Corrections To The Last Post

Apologies for a pair of egregious errors that appeared in the previous blog entry: "Don't Worry, Be Happy." First, the author of the article is NOT an MP, but a member of the House of Lords. The author is Lord Richard Layard. Second, the prologue babbled about the U.S. being the sole country in the world to promise its people that they had right to happiness. Wrong! All of us in the United States have the right to pursue happiness; happiness is not an entitlement. Of course, those of the same sex who pursue matrimonial bliss are denied the right to pursue that particular version of happiness. Lord Layard, though, has fixed his sights on the loftier meanings of happiness. The fact that this blog and the Brookings Institution are impressed with Lord Layard's expostion on the importance of happiness illustrates the cutting-edge quality of these rants and raves. If this is (fair & balanced) self-promotion, so be it.

[x The Brookings Institution]
Brookings Briefing — Happiness: Lessons from a New Science
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
4:00pm - 5:30pm
Moderator: Carol Graham — Senior Fellow and Co-Director, Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Brookings; Co-author, Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies (2001)

Discussion between: Richard Layard — Director, Centre on Economic Performance, London School of Economics; Member, House of Lords
and
Stanley Fischer — Vice Chairman, Citigroup


Carol Graham: Good afternoon. Welcome, everyone. It's a real pleasure to have Richard Layard and Stan Fischer here to discuss Richard's new book, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, and also the subject of happiness research and its applications to policy more generally. It's also in a way a surprise to have so many people in a room for an event on happiness in a policy town like Washington. In fact, this would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

In his book, Richard Layard provides a really bold challenge for any number of policies—fiscal policy, labor market policies, other policies—and he's based this on findings from a host of happiness studies. I think his work is extremely provocative, and perhaps it's a sign of things to come.

A new social science field—the study of happiness—could ultimately transform how governments make decisions. Policymakers may one day use a system of national well-being indicators to track a country's happiness in the same way we now monitor economic conditions.

The study of happiness lies at the junction between economics and psychology. In large surveys, random samples of people are quizzed about their mental health and how happy they feel with their lives and other indicators, including their income, job, and marital status. Their answers allow researchers to study the links between happiness and life events. Psychologists find that happy people are prone to more successful lives—in social relationships, work, and health.

Lord Richard Layard, one of Britain's most prominent economists and a world expert on unemployment and inequality, has published a new book which describes this important new field. In Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (The Penguin Press, 2005), Layard argues that money can't, in fact, buy happiness. Layard redefines what happiness is, how to get more of it, and provides bold recommendations for policymakers.

At this event, Layard will discuss these issues with Stanley Fischer, followed by questions from the audience. Reception to follow.

Copyright © 2005 The Brookings Institution

Don't Worry, Be Happy!

I drove my students crazy at the Collegium Excellens by asking them to define "happiness" as we (according to Thomas Jefferson) were entitled to pursue it. Someone wrote that the United States was the only nation in the world to promise its people that they were entitled to be happy. Happiness is a slippery thing to define. Bobby McFerrin may have been right:

Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy.
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy.
Don't worry, be happy now.

CHORUS: Don't worry, be happy. Don't worry, be happy.
Don't worry, be happy. Don't worry, be happy.

Ain't got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don't worry, be happy.
The landlord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don't worry, be happy.

CHORUS: (Look at me -- I'm happy. Don't worry, be happy.
Here I give you my phone number. When you worry, call me,
I make you happy. Don't worry, be happy.)

Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style
Ain't got no gal to make you smile
Don't worry, be happy.
'Cause when you worry your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
Don't worry, be happy.

CHORUS: (Don't worry, don't worry, don't do it.
Be happy. Put a smile on your face.
Don't bring everybody down.
Don't worry. It will soon pass, whatever it is.
Don't worry, be happy.
I'm not worried, I'm happy...)

Copyright © 1988 Bobby McFerrin

This essay by Richard Layard, MP might be the most significant posting to this blog since it launched in June 2003. Happiness may be the next Big Thing. If this is (fair & balanced) augury, so be it.


Happiness Is Back
by Richard Layard

Growing incomes in western societies no longer make us happier, and more individualistic, competitive societies make some of us positively unhappy. Public policy should take its cue once more from Bentham's utilitarianism, unfashionable for many decades but now vindicated by modern neuroscience

Over the last 50 years, we in the west have enjoyed unparalleled economic growth. We have better homes, cars, holidays, jobs, education and above all health. According to standard economic theory, this should have made us happier. But surveys show otherwise. When Britons or Americans are asked how happy they are, they report no improvement over the last 50 years. More people suffer from depression, and crime — another indicator of dissatisfaction — is also much higher.

These facts challenge many of the priorities we have set ourselves both as societies and as individuals. The truth is that we are in a situation previously unknown to man. When most people exist near the breadline, material progress does indeed make them happier. People in the rich world (above, say, $20,000 a head per year) are happier than people in poorer countries, and people in poor countries do become happier as they become richer. But when material discomfort has been banished, extra income becomes much less important than our relationships with each other: with family, with friends and in the community. The danger is that we sacrifice relationships too much in pursuit of higher income.

The desire to be happy is central to our nature. And, following the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, I want a society in which people are as happy as possible and in which each person's happiness counts equally. That should be the philosophy for our age, the guide for public policy and for individual action. And it should come to replace the intense individualism which has failed to make us happier.

Utilitarianism has, however, been out of fashion for several generations, partly because of the belief that happiness was too unfathomable. In recent years, that has begun to change. The "science" of happiness, which has emerged in the US in the last 20 years, supports the idea that happiness is an objective dimension of experience. (One of its fathers, Daniel Kahneman, won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics.) At every instant we feel good or bad, on a scale that runs from misery to bliss. Our feeling good or bad is affected by many factors, running from physical comfort to our inner sense of meaning. What matters is the totality of our happiness over months and years, not just passing pleasures. The new science may enable us to measure this and try to explain it.

To measure happiness, we can ask a person how happy he is, or we can ask his friends or independent investigators. These reports yield similar results. The breakthrough has been in neuroscience. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin has identified an area in the left front of the brain where good feelings are experienced, and another in the right front where bad feelings are experienced. Activity in these brain areas alters sharply when people have good or bad experiences. Those who describe themselves as happy are more active on the left side than unhappy people, and less active on the right side. So the old behaviourist idea that we cannot know how other people feel is now under attack.

The challenge is to work out what this means for political priorities in free societies like ours. If we accept that governments can and should aim to maximise happiness, rather than simply income, how might this affect
specific choices in public policy?

We must start by establishing the key factors affecting a person's happiness. Family and personal life come top in every study, and work and community life rank high. Health and freedom are also crucial, and money counts too, but in a very specific way.

I will start with money — or more specifically with income tax policy. In any society, richer people are happier than poor people. Yet as a western country becomes richer, its people overall do not become happier. The reason for this is that over time our standards and expectations rise to meet our income. A Gallup poll has asked Americans each year: "What is the smallest amount of money a family of four needs to get along in this community?" The sums mentioned rise in line with average incomes. Since people are always comparing their incomes with what others have, or with what they are used to, they only feel better off if they move up relative to the norm.

This process can have counterproductive effects. I have an incentive to work and earn more: it will make me happier. So do other members of society, who also care about their relative standard of life. Since society as a whole cannot raise its position relative to itself, the effort which its members devote to that end could be said to be a waste — the balance between leisure and work has been shifted "inefficiently" towards work.

To reinforce the case, let me recast it in terms of status, which may derive as much from the earning of income as the spending of it. People work, in part at least, to improve their status. But status is a system of ranking: one, two, three and so on. So if one person improves his status, someone else loses an equal amount. It is a zero-sum game: private life sacrificed in order to increase status is a waste from the point of view of society as a whole. That is why the rat race is so destructive: we lose family life and peace of mind in pursuing something whose total cannot be altered.

Or so we would — if we had no income taxes. But income taxes discourage work. Most economists consider this a disadvantage. They say that when someone pays £100 in taxes, it hurts more than that — it has an "excess burden" — because of the distortion away from work. But without taxes there would be an inefficient distortion towards work. So taxes up to a certain level can help to improve the work-life balance of citizens and thus increase the overall sense of wellbeing in a society. They operate like a tax on pollution. When I earn more and adopt a more expensive lifestyle, this puts pressure on others to keep up — my action raises the norm and makes them less satisfied with what they have. I am like the factory owner who pours out his soot on to the neighbours' laundry. And the classic economic remedy for pollution is to make the polluter pay.

People sometimes object to this argument on the grounds that it is pandering to envy or preventing self-improvement. It is true that such measures do reduce some kinds of freedom. But we cannot just wish away the pervasiveness of status comparisons; the desire for status is wired into our genes. Studies of monkeys show how it works: when a male monkey is moved from a group where he is top into a group where his status is lower, his brain experiences a sharp fall in serotonin — the neurotransmitter most clearly associated with happiness. So if the human status race is dysfunctional — from the point of view of the overall happiness in society — it makes sense to reduce freedom a small amount through taxation policy.

Those who want to cut taxes should explain why they think we should work harder and sacrifice our family and community life in pursuit of a zero-sum status race. They may say that hard work is good for the consumer. But workers are the same people as consumers. There is no point killing ourselves at work in the interest of ourselves as consumers.

And there is another consideration: if we work harder and raise our standard of living, we first appreciate it but then we get used to it. Research shows that people do not adequately foresee this process of habituation, or fully realise that once they have experienced a superior lifestyle they will feel they have to continue it. They will in effect become addicted to it. Once again, the standard economic approach to addictive spending is to tax it.

These are arguments for taxation not as a way to raise money, but in order to restrain activity which is polluting and addictive, and to help to maintain a sensible work-life balance. This should become part of the social democratic case against income tax cuts. There is also the issue of equity. The main argument for redistribution has always been that an extra pound gives less extra happiness to a rich person than a poor person. Until recently this was pure speculation; survey evidence now confirms its truth.

How else can we dampen the impact of the rat race? We have to start from human nature as it is, but we can also affect values and behaviour through the signals our institutions send out. An explicit focus on happiness would change attitudes to many aspects of policy, including in education and training, regional policy and performance-related pay.

In one sense, what people most want is respect. They seek economic status because it brings respect. But we can increase or decrease the weight we give to status. In an increasingly competitive, meritocratic society, life will become tougher for people in the bottom half of the ability range unless we develop broader criteria for respect. We should respect people who co-operate with others at no gain to themselves, and who show skill and effort at whatever level. That is why it is so important to enable everyone to develop a skill. In Britain, this means ensuring that all young people can take up an apprenticeship if they wish, so that those who have not enjoyed academic success at school can experience professional pride and avoid starting adult life believing themselves to be failures.

Equally, we should be sceptical of institutions which give greater weight to rank, such as performance-related pay (PRP). The idea of PRP is that by paying people for what they achieve, we provide the best possible system of incentives. Where we can measure people's achievement accurately, we should pay them for it — people like travelling salesmen, foreign exchange dealers, or racehorse jockeys. And where achievement depends on a team effort, we should reward the team, provided their performance can be unambiguously measured.

But management gurus are often after something more: they want a year by year alignment between individual pay and individual performance. The problem is that in most jobs there is no objective measure of individual performance, so people must in effect be evaluated against their peers. Even if the scores purport to be objective rather than relative, most people know how many are in each grade. The effect is to put them into a ranking. If everybody agreed about the rankings, it would not be that bad. But studies have shown quite low correlations between one evaluator's rankings and another's. So a lot of self-respect (and often very little pay) is being attached to an uncertain ranking process that fundamentally alters the relationship of co-operation between an employee and his boss, and between an employee and his peers.

Some comparisons between people are inevitable, since hierarchy is necessary and unavoidable. Some people get promoted and others do not. Moreover, those who get promoted must be paid more, since they are talented and the employer wishes to attract talent. So pay is important at key moments as a way of affecting people's decisions about occupations or in choosing between employers. Fortunately, promotions and moves between employers are still relatively infrequent for most people. In everyday working life, relative pay rates are not usually uppermost in their thoughts. PRP changes all that.

Economists and politicians tend to assume that when financial motives for performance are increased, other motives remain the same. But that is not so, as this example shows. At a childcare centre in Israel, parents were often late to pick up their children, so fines were introduced for lateness. The result was a surprise: more people were late. They now saw being late as something they were entitled to do as long as they paid for it; the fine became a price.

The professional ethic should be cherished. If we do not cultivate it, we may not even improve performance, let alone produce workers who enjoy their work. Financial incentives have useful effects on the careers people choose, and the employers they choose to work for. But once someone has joined an organisation, peer respect is also a powerful motivator. We should exploit this motivation. Instead, government over the last 30 years has demoralised workers by constantly appealing to motives which they consider to be "lower."

If we want a happier society, we should focus most on the experiences which people value for their intrinsic worth and not because other people have them — above all, on relationships in the family, at work and in the community. It seems likely that the extra comforts we now enjoy have increased our happiness somewhat, but that deteriorating relationships have made us less happy. What should social policy try to achieve, notwithstanding its limited leverage over private life? Here are some examples.

Divorce and broken homes are ever more common. Research shows that the children of broken homes are more prone to depression in adulthood. To protect children, the state should act to try to make family life more manageable, through better school hours, flexible hours at work, means-tested childcare, and maternity and paternity leave. Parenting classes should also be compulsory in the school curriculum and an automatic part of antenatal care.

Unemployment is as bad an experience as divorce, as research shows. It offends our need to be needed. So low unemployment should be a major objective. Our government has done well, through sensible policies of welfare to work which have avoided generating inflationary pressures. Good policy has also halved unemployment in Denmark and Holland. But Germany and, above all, France, have been slow to adopt these policies. Poor policies towards the unemployed and bad wage policies are causing high European unemployment. Job security is not the main issue.

Job security is something people want, and reasonable protection is something a rich society can afford to provide. The same is true of good working conditions, if stress is not to drive many weaker souls into inactivity and dependence on the state. It is absurd to argue that globalisation has reduced our ability to provide a civilised life for our workers. On the contrary, it has increased it — provided that pay rises only in line with productivity.

The rise in crime between 1950 and 1980 is the most striking demonstration that economic growth does not automatically increase social harmony. This rise occurred in every advanced country except Japan, and its causes are not completely understood.

One cause is anonymity. Crime rates are high when there is geographical mobility. Indeed, the best predictor of crime in a community is the number of people each person knows within 15 minutes of their home: the more they know, the lower the crime rate. So we should try to sustain communities and not rely on "getting on your bike" or international migration to solve our problems, as free-market economists often urge. The case for regional support to help communities prosper is much stronger when you focus on happiness than when GDP alone is the goal.

A focus on happiness might also help us to rethink priorities in healthcare. One of the oldest problems afflicting humanity is mental illness. A third of us will become mentally ill at some time in our lives, and at least half of us will have to cope with mental illness in the family. Of the most unhappy 5 per cent in our society, 20 per cent are poor (in the bottom fifth of the income scale) but 40 per cent are mentally ill. So if we want to produce a happier society, the priority for the NHS should be to spend a lot more on mental health.

Only 15 per cent of people with clinical depression see a specialist (a psychiatrist or psychologist). For the rest, it is ten minutes with a GP and some pills. Most depressed people want psychotherapy in order to understand what is going on inside them. Clinical trials show that the right therapy is as effective as drugs, and lasts longer. But in most areas, therapy is simply not available on the NHS, or involves an intolerable wait. If we want to reduce misery, the NHS should offer therapy to the mentally ill and then help in getting back to work.

Finally, there is the ethos in which our children grow up. One of the most depressing surveys in recent years was conducted for the World Health Organisation. As part of it, 11-15 year olds were asked whether they agreed that "most of the students in my class(es) are kind and helpful." The proportion saying "yes" was over 75 per cent in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany, 53 per cent in the US and under 46 per cent in Russia and England.

These findings are in line with surveys in which adults are asked about trust. The question often asked is: "Would you say that most people can be trusted — or would you say that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?" In Britain and the US, those who say: "Yes, most people can be trusted" has fallen from 55 per cent in 1960 to under 35 per cent today.

Since the dawn of man, older people have lamented a supposed decline of morals. But there is some evidence that it is actually happening now. At various times, samples of Americans have been asked whether they believe people lead "as good lives — moral and honest —as they used to." In 1952, as many said "yes" as said "no." By 1998, three times as many said "no."

We live in an age of unprecedented individualism. The highest obligation many people feel is to make the most of themselves, to realise their potential. This is a terrifying and lonely objective. Of course they feel obligations to other people too, but these are not based on any clear set of ideas. The old religious worldview is gone; so too is the postwar religion of social and national solidarity. We are left with no concept of the common good or collective meaning.

Contemporary common sense provides two dominant ideas — derived (erroneously) from Charles Darwin and Adam Smith. From Darwin's theory of evolution is taken the idea that unless you look after your own interests, no one will. From Smith's analysis of the market comes the idea that selfishness is not so destructive because through voluntary exchange we shall all become as well off as is possible, given our resources, technology and tastes.

But our tastes are not given, and every successful society has always concerned itself with the tastes of its members. It has encouraged community feelings and offered a concept of the common good.

So what should be our concept of the common good? During the 18th-century Enlightenment, Bentham and others argued that a good society was one where its members were as happy as possible. So public policy should aim at producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and private decisions likewise should aim at the greatest happiness of all those affected. In the 19th century, this ideal inspired many social reforms. But in the 20th century it came under attack from two quarters.

The first questioned the possibility of knowing what other people felt. According to this "behaviourism," all we can do is to observe people's behaviour. We can make no inference about their inner states. This inhuman idea started in psychology with John Watson and Pavlov, and percolated into economics through Lionel Robbins, John Hicks and others. If we accept this approach, we can no longer think of happiness as the goal. All that can be said about a person is what opportunities are open to him. If he has lost the facility for enjoying them, that is irrelevant. From this it is a short step to defining individual welfare in terms of purchasing power, and national welfare in terms of leisure-adjusted GDP. We desperately need to replace GDP, however adjusted, by more subtle measures of national wellbeing.

Fortunately, the tide in psychology has turned, and common sense has returned. We could never have lived together if we had had no idea what others felt. And now our idea is confirmed by solid psychology and neuroscience. So the Benthamite rule provides an increasingly practical yardstick for public policy and for private ethics. I would modify it in one way only — to give extra weight to improving the happiness of those who are least happy, thus ruling out the oppression of minorities. (This also deals with the superficial objection to utilitarianism that it would vindicate the brutal abuse of a small minority if such abuse made the majority happier.)

The second line of attack on the greatest happiness rule was philosophical. From the beginning it had its critics, and an alternative philosophy based on individual rights became fashionable. But this has two drawbacks. First, it is difficult to resolve the dilemma when rights conflict. And second, the philosophy is highly individualistic. It tells you what you are entitled to expect, and what you should not do. But it provides little guidance on what you should do — what career you should adopt, or how you should behave when your marriage goes sour.

The Benthamite rule provides a framework for thinking about these issues. The philosophy of rights does not: its vision of the common good is too limited to guide us in working for the good of others. But is the Benthamite rule itself solid, and can it include the concept of rights? Let us consider two big objections.

First, what is so special about happiness? Why the greatest possible happiness? Why not the greatest possible health, autonomy, accomplishment, freedom and so on? If I ask you why health is good, you can give reasons: people should not feel pain. On autonomy: people feel better when they can control their lives. And so on. But if I ask you why happiness is good, you will say that it is self-evident. And the reason for this is deep in our biology. We are programmed to enjoy experiences that are good for our survival, which is why we have survived.

We have also been programmed in part to have a sense of fairness. If a meal has to be divided, most of us accept (sometimes grudgingly) that it should be divided 50:50 — on the basis that, in principle, others count as much as
we do.

If you put this idea together with the fact that each of us wants to be happy, you arrive at the Benthamite principle. It is both idealistic and realistic. It puts others on an equal footing with ourselves, where they should be, but, unlike some moral systems, it also allows us to take our own happiness into account.

The second objection is that the rule encourages expediency. Not so. We all know we cannot evaluate every action moment by moment against the overall Benthamite principle. That is why we have to have sub-rules, like honesty, promise-keeping, kindness and so on, which we normally follow as a matter of course. And that is also why we need clearly defined rights embedded in a constitution. But when moral rules or legal rights conflict with each other, we need an overarching principle to guide us, which is what Bentham provides.

The rule is also criticised for putting ends before means, for taking only the consequences of actions to be worthy of moral consideration and not the nature of actions themselves. But this is wrong. For the consequences of a decision include the action, and not only what happens as a result of it. A horrible action — imprisoning an innocent in order to save lives, say — would require extraordinarily good and certain outcomes to justify it. The direct effects of an action should be considered when weighing up its morality, just as the results of it are.

To become happier, we have to change our inner attitudes as much as our outward circumstances. I am talking of the perennial philosophy which enables us to find the positive force in ourselves, and to see the positive side in others. Such compassion, to ourselves and others, can be learned. It has been well described in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, and it ought to be taught in schools. Every city should have a policy for promoting a healthier philosophy of life in its youngsters and for helping them to distinguish between a hedonistic addiction to superficial pleasures and real happiness.

So my hope is that in this new century we can finally adopt the greatest happiness of humankind as our concept of the common good. This would have two results. It would serve as a clear guide to policy. But, even more important, it would inspire us in our daily lives to take more pleasure in the happiness of others, and to promote it. In this way we might all become less self-absorbed and more happy.

Richard Layard, a long-standing advisor to the Labour Party on labour market matters, is a Labour Peer. He is the author of Happiness: Lessons From A New Science (forthcoming).

Copyright © 2005 Prospect Magazine

Hunter S. Thompson, RIP

Hunter S. Thompson entered my consciousness with Hell's Angels. I was astounded at his audacity. Rereading his original reportage that formed the basis of that first book, I am struck by the thorough, factual tone that runs through his article in The Nation. That magazine reprised "Hell's Angels" after Thompson's death. I read sporadically in Thompson's following works that contained the magical combination of fear and loathing in their titles. After spending a long weekend in Las Vegas a few years ago, I truly experienced fear and loathing myself. In a way, Hunter S. Thompson is the patron saint of this blog sans drugs and automatic weapons. Thompson created an original persona and stayed in character in his last act. If this is (fair & balanced) admiration, so be it.

[x The Nation]
"Hell's Angels
by Hunter S. Thompson

Last Labor Day weekend newspapers all over California gave front-page reports of a heinous gang rape in the moonlit sand dunes near the town of Seaside on the Monterey Peninsula. Two girls, aged 14 and 15, were allegedly taken from their dates by a gang of filthy, frenzied, boozed-up motorcycle hoodlums called "Hell's Angels," and dragged off to be "repeatedly assaulted."

A deputy sheriff, summoned by one of the erstwhile dates, said he "arrived at the beach and saw a huge bonfire surrounded by cyclists of both sexes. Then the two sobbing, near-hysterical girls staggered out of the darkness, begging for help. One was completely nude and the other had on only a torn sweater."

Some 300 Hell's Angels were gathered in the Seaside-Monterey area at the time, having convened, they said, for the purpose of raising funds among themselves to send the body of a former member, killed in an accident,
back to his mother in North Carolina. One of the Angels, hip enough to falsely identify himself as "Frenchy of San Bernardino," told a reporter who came out to meet the cyclists: "We chose Monterey because we get treated good here; most other places we get thrown out of town."

But Frenchy spoke too soon. The Angels weren't on the peninsula twenty-four hours before four of them were in jail for rape, and the rest of the troop was being escorted to the county line by a large police contingent. Several were quoted, somewhat derisively, as saying: "That rape charge against our guys is phony and it won't stick."

It turned out to be true, but that was another story and certainly no headliner. The difference between the Hell's Angels in the paper and the Hell's Angels for real is enough to make a man wonder what newsprint is for. It also raises a question as to who are the real hell's angels.

Ever since World War II, California has been strangely plagued by wild men on motorcycles. They usually travel in groups of ten to thirty, booming along the highways and stopping here are there to get drunk and raise hell. In 1947, hundreds of them ran amok in the town of Hollister, an hour's fast drive south of San Francisco, and got enough press to inspire a film called The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando. The film had a massive effect on thousands of young California motorcycle buffs; in many ways, it was their version of The Sun Also Rises.

The California climate is perfect for motorcycles, as well as surfboards, swimming pools and convertibles. Most of the cyclists are harmless weekend types, members of the American Motorcycle Association, and no more dangerous than skiers or skin divers. But a few belong to what the others call "outlaw clubs," and these are the ones who--especially on weekends and holidays--are likely to turn up almost anywhere in the state, looking for action. Despite everything the psychiatrists and Freudian casuists have to say about them, they are tough, mean and potentially as dangerous as a pack of wild boar. When push comes to shove, any leather fetishes or inadequacy feelings that may be involved are entirely beside the point, as anyone who has ever tangled with these boys will sadly testify. When you get in an argument with a group of outlaw motorcyclists, you can generally count your chances of emerging unmaimed by the number of heavy-handed allies you can muster in the time it takes to smash a beer bottle. In this league, sportsmanship is for old liberals and young fools. "I smashed his face," one of them said to me of a man he'd never seen until the swinging started. "He got wise. He called me a punk. He must have been stupid."

The most notorious of these outlaw groups is the Hell's Angels, supposedly headquartered in San Bernardino, just east of Los Angeles, and with branches all over the state. As a result of the infamous "Labor Day gang rape," the Attorney General of California has recently issued an official report on the Hell's Angels. According to the report, they
are easily identified:

The emblem of the Hell's Angels, termed "colors," consists of an embroidered patch of a winged skull wearing a motorcycle helmet. Just below the wing of the emblem are the letters "MC." Over this is a band bearing the words "Hell's Angels." Below the emblem is another patch bearing the local chapter name, which is usually an abbreviation for the city or locality. These patches are sewn on the back of a usually sleeveless denim jacket. In addition, members have been observed wearing various types of Luftwaffe insignia and reproductions of German iron crosses.* (*Purely for decorative and shock effect. The Hell's Angels are apolitical and no more racist than other ignorant young thugs.) Many affect beards and their hair is usually long and unkempt. Some wear a single earring in a pierced ear lobe. Frequently they have been observed to wear metal belts made of a length of polished motorcycle drive chain which can be unhooked and used as a flexible bludgeon... Probably the most universal common denominator in identification of Hell's Angels is generally their filthy condition. Investigating officers consistently report these people, both club members and their female associates, seem badly in need of a bath. Fingerprints are a very effective means of identification because a high percentage of Hell's Angels have criminal records.


In addition to the patches on the back of Hell's Angel's jackets, the "One Percenters" wear a patch reading "1%-er." Another badge worn by some members bears the number "13." It is reported to represent the 13th letter of the alphabet, "M," which in turn stands for marijuana and indicates the wearer thereof is a user of the drug.

The Attorney General's report was colorful, interesting, heavily biased and consistently alarming--just the sort of thing, in fact, to make a clanging good article for a national news magazine. Which it did; in both barrels. Newsweek led with a left hook titled "The Wild Ones," Time crossed right, inevitably titled "The Wilder Ones." The Hell's Angels, cursing the implications of this new attack, retreated to the bar of the DePau Hotel near the San Francisco waterfront and planned a weekend beach party. I showed them the articles. Hell's Angels do not normally read the news magazines. "I'd go nuts if I read that stuff all the time," said one. "It's all bullshit."

Newsweek was relatively circumspect. It offered local color, flashy quotes and "evidence" carefully attributed to the official report but unaccountably said the report accused the Hell's Angels of homosexuality, whereas the report said just the opposite. Time leaped into the fray with a flurry of blood, booze and semen-flecked wordage that amounted, in the end, to a classic of supercharged hokum: "Drug-induced stupors... no act is too degrading... swap girls, drugs and motorcycles with equal abandon... stealing forays... then ride off again to seek some new nadir in sordid behavior..."

Where does all this leave the Hell's Angels and the thousands of shuddering Californians (according to Time) who are worried sick about them? Are these outlaws really going to be busted, routed and cooled, as the news magazines implied? Are California highways any safer as a result of this published uproar? Can honest merchants once again walk the streets in peace? The answer is that nothing has changed except that a few people calling themselves the Hell's Angels have a new sense of identity and importance.

After two weeks of intensive dealings with the Hell's Angels phenomenon, both in print and in person, I'm convinced the net result of the general howl and publicity has been to obscure and avoid the real issues by invoking a savage conspiracy of bogeymen and conning the public into thinking all will be "business as usual" once this fearsome snake is scotched, as it surely will be by hard and ready minions of the Establishment.

Meanwhile, according to Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch's own figures, California's true crime picture makes the Hell's Angels look like a gang of petty jack rollers. The police count 463 Hell's Angels: 205 around L.A. and 233 in the San Francisco-Oakland area. I don't know about L.A. but the real figures for the Bay Area are thirty or so in Oakland and exactly eleven--with one facing expulsion--in San Francisco. This disparity makes it hard to accept other police statistics. The dubious package also shows convictions on 1,023 misdemeanor counts and 151 felonies--primarily vehicle theft, burglary and assault. This is for all years and all alleged members.

California's overall figures for 1963 list 1,116 homicides, 12,448 aggravated assaults, 6,257 sex offenses, and 24,532 burglaries. In 1962, the state listed 4,121 traffic deaths, up from 3,839 in 1961. Drug arrest figures for 1964 showed a 101 percent increase in juvenile marijuana arrests over 1963, and a recent back-page story in the San Francisco Examiner said, "The venereal disease rate among [the city's] teen-agers from 15-19 has more than doubled in the past four years." Even allowing for the annual population jump, juvenile arrests in all categories are rising by 10 per cent or more each year.

Against this background, would it make any difference to the safety and peace of mind of the average Californian if every motorcycle outlaw in the state (all 901, according to the state) were garroted within twenty-four hours? This is not to say that a group like the Hell's Angels has no meaning. The generally bizarre flavor of their offenses and their insistence on identifying themselves make good copy, but usually overwhelm--in print, at least--the unnerving truth that they represent, in colorful microcosm, what is quietly and anonymously growing all around us every day of the week.

"We're bastards to the world and they're bastards to us," one of the Oakland Angels told a Newsweek reporter. "When you walk into a placewhere people can see you, you want to look as repulsive and repugnant as possible. We are complete social outcasts--outsiders against society."

A lot of this is a pose, but anyone who believes that's all it is has been on thin ice since the death of Jay Gatsby. The vast majority of motorcycle outlaws are uneducated, unskilled men between 20 and 30, and most have no credentials except a police record. So at the root of their sad stance is a lot more than a wistful yearning for acceptance in a world they never made; their real motivation is an instinctive certainty as to what the score really is. They are out of the ball game and they know it--and that is their meaning; for unlike most losers in today's society, the Hell's Angels not only know but spitefully proclaim exactly where they stand.

I went to one of their meetings recently, and half-way through the night I thought of Joe Hill on his way to face a Utah firing squad and saying his final words: "Don't mourn, organize." It is safe to say that no Hell's Angel has ever heard of Joe Hill or would know a Wobbly from a Bushmaster, but nevertheless they are somehow related. The I.W.W. had serious plans for running the world, while the Hell's Angels mean only to defy the world's machinery. But instead of losing quietly, one by one, they have banded together with a mindless kind of loyalty and moved outside the framework, for good or ill. There is nothing particularly romantic or admirable about it; that's just the way it is, strength in unity. They don't mind telling you that running fast and loud on their customized Harley 74s gives them a power and a purpose that nothing else seems to offer.

Beyond that, their position as self-proclaimed outlaws elicits a certain popular appeal, however reluctant. That is especially true in the West and even in California where the outlaw tradition is still honored. The unarticulated link between the Hell's Angels and the millions of losers and outsiders who don't wear any colors is the key to their notoriety and the ambivalent reactions they inspire. There are several other keys, having to do with politicians, policemen and journalists, but for this we have to go back to Monterey and the Labor Day "gang rape."

Politicians, like editors and cops, are very keen on outrage stories, and state Senator Fred S. Farr of Monterey County is no exception. He is a leading light of the Carmel-Pebble Beach set and no friend to hoodlums anywhere, especially gang rapists who invade his constituency. Senator Far demanded an immediate investigation of the Hell's Angels and others of their ilk--Commancheros, Stray Satans, Iron Horsemen, Rattlers (a Negro club), and Booze Fighters--whose lack of status caused them all to be lumped together as "other disreputables." In the cut-off world of big bikes, long runs and classy rumbles, this new, state-sanctioned stratification made the Hell's Angels very big. They were, after all, Number One. Like John Dillinger.

Attorney General Lynch, then new in his job, moved quickly to mount an investigation of sorts. He sent questionnaires to more than 100 sheriffs, district attorneys and police chiefs, asking for more information on the Hell's Angels and those "other disreputables." He also asked for suggestions as to how the law might deal with them.

Six months went by before all the replies where condensed into the fifteen-page report that made new outrage headlines when it was released to the press. (The Hell's Angels also got a copy; one of them stole mine.) As a historical document, it read like a plot synopsis of Mickey Spillane's worst dreams. But in the matter of solutions it was vague, reminiscent in some ways of Madame Nhu's proposals for dealing with the Vietcong. The state was going to centralize information on these thugs, urge more vigorous prosecution, put them all under surveillance whenever
possible, etc.

A careful reader got the impression that even if the Hell's Angels had acted out this script--eighteen crimes were specified and dozens of others implied--very little would or could be done about it, and that indeed Mr. Lynch was well aware he'd been put, for political reasons, on a pretty weak scent. There was plenty of mad action, senseless destruction, orgies, brawls, perversions and a strange parade of "innocent victims" that, even on paper and in careful police language, was enough to tax the credulity of the dullest police reporter. Any bundle of information off police blotters is bound to reflect a special viewpoint, and parts of the Attorney General's report are actually humorous, if only for the language. Here is an excerpt:

On November 4, 1961, a San Francisco resident driving through Rodeo, possibly under the influence of alcohol, struck a motorcycle belonging to a Hell's Angel parked outside a bar. A group of Angels pursued the vehicle, pulled the driver from the car and attempted to demolish the rather expensive vehicle. The bartender claimed he had seen nothing, but a cocktail waitress in the bar furnished identification to the officers concerning some of those responsible for the assault. The next day it was reported to officers that a member of the Hell's Angels gang had threatened the life of this waitress as well as another woman waitress. A male witness who definitely identified five participants in the assault including the president of Vallejo Hell's Angels and the Vallejo "Road Rats" advised officers that because of his fear of retaliation by club members he would refuse to testify to the facts he had previously furnished.

That is a representative item in the section of the report titled "Hoodlum Activities." First, it occurred in a small town--Rodeo is on San Pablo Bay just north of Oakland--where the Angels had stopped at a bar without causing any trouble until some offense was committed against them. In this case, a driver whom even the police admit was possibly" drunk hit one of their motorcycles. The same kind of accident happens every day all over the nation, but when it involves outlaw motorcyclists it is something else again. Instead of settling the thing with an exchange of insurance information or, at the very worst, an argument with a few blows, the Hell's Angels beat the driver and "attempted to demolish the vehicle." I asked one of them if the police exaggerated this aspect, and he said no, they had done the natural thing: smashed headlights, kicked in doors, broken windows and torn various components
off the engine.

Of all their habits and predilections that society finds alarming, this departure from the time-honored concept of "an eye for an eye" is the one that most frightens people. The Hell's Angels try not to do anything halfway, and anyone who deals in extremes is bound to cause trouble, whether he means to or not. This, along with a belief in total retaliation for any offense or insult, is what makes the Hell's Angels unmanageable for the police and morbidly fascinating to the general public. Their claim that they "don't start trouble" is probably true more often than not, but their idea of "provocation" is dangerously broad, and their biggest problem is that nobody else seems to understand it. Even dealing with them personally, on the friendliest terms, you can sense their hair-trigger readiness to retaliate.

This is a public thing, and not at all true among themselves. In a meeting, their conversation is totally frank and open. They speak to and about one another with an honesty that more civilized people couldn't bear. At the meeting I attended (and before they realized I was a journalist) one Angel was being publicly evaluated; some members wanted him out of the club and others wanted to keep him in. It sounded like a group-therapy clinic in progress--not exactly what I expected to find when just before midnight I walked into the bar of the De Pau in one of the bleakest neighborhoods in San Francisco, near Hunters Point. By the time I parted company with them--at 6:30 the next morning after an all-night drinking bout in my apartment--I had been impressed by a lot of things, but no one thing about them was as consistently obvious as their group loyalty. This is an admirable quality, but it is also one of the things that gets them in trouble: a fellow Angel is always right when dealing with outsiders. And this sort of reasoning makes a group of "offended" Hell's Angels nearly impossible to deal with.

Here is another incident from the Attorney General's report:

On September 19, 1964, a large group of Hell's Angels and "Satan's Slaves" converged on a bar in the South Gate (Los Angeles County), parking their motorcycles and cars in the street in such a fashion as to block one-half of the roadway. They told officers that three members of the club had been recently asked to stay out of the bar and that they had come to tear it down. Upon their approach the bar owner locked the doors and turned off the lights and no entrance was made, but the group did demolish a cement block fence. On arrival of the police, members of the club were lying on the sidewalk and in the street. They were asked to leave the city, which they did reluctantly. As they left, several were heard to say that they would be back and tear down the bar.

Here again is the ethic of total retaliation. If you're "asked to stay out" of a bar, you don't just punch the owner--you come back with your army and destroy the whole edifice. Similar incidents--along with a number of vague rape complaints--make up the bulk of the report. Eighteen incidents in four years, and none except the rape charges are more serious than cases of assaults on citizens who, for their own reasons, had become involved with the Hell's Angels prior to the violence. I could find no cases of unwarranted attacks on wholly innocent victims. There are a few borderline cases, wherein victims of physical attacks seemed innocent, according to police and press reports, but later refused to testify for fear of "retaliation." The report asserts very strongly that Hell's Angels are difficult to prosecute and convict because they make a habit of threatening and intimidating witnesses. That is probably true to a certain extent, but in many cases victims have refused to testify because they were engaged in some legally dubious activity at the time of the attack.

In two of the most widely publicized incidents the prosecution would have fared better if their witnesses and victims had been intimidated into silence. One of these was the Monterey "gang rape," and the other a "rape" in Clovis, near Fresno in the Central Valley. In the latter, a 36-year-old widow and mother of five children claimed she'd been yanked out of a bar where she was having a quiet beer with another woman, then carried to an abandoned shack behind the bar and raped repeatedly for two and a half hours by fifteen or twenty Hell's Angels and finally robbed of $150. That's how the story appeared in the San Francisco newspapers the next day, and it was kept alive for a few more days by the woman's claims that she was getting phone calls threatening her life if she testified against her assailants.

Then, four days after the crime, the victim was arrested on charges of "sexual perversion." The true story emerged, said the Clovis chief of police, when the woman was "confronted by witnesses. Our investigation shows she was not raped," said the chief. "She participated in lewd acts in the tavern with at least three other Hell's Angels before the owners ordered them out. She encouraged their advances in the tavern, then led them to an abandoned house in the rear... She was not robbed but, according to a woman who accompanied her, had left her house early in the evening with $5 to go bar-hopping." That incident did not appear in the Attorney General's report.

But it was impossible not the mention the Monterey "gang rape," because it was the reason for the whole subject to become official. Page one of the report--which Time's editors apparently skipped--says that the Monterey case was dropped because "... further investigation raised questions as to whether forcible rape had been committed or if the identifications made by victims were valid." Charges were dismissed on September 25, with the concurrence of a grand jury. The deputy District Attorney said "a doctor examined the girls and found no evidence" to support the charges. "Besides that, one girl refused to testify," he explained, "and the other was given a lie-detector test and found to be wholly unreliable."

This, in effect, was what the Hell's Angels had been saying all along. Here is their version of what happened, as told by several who were there:

One girl was white and pregnant, the other was colored, and they were with five colored studs. They hung around our bar--Nick's Place on Del Monte Avenue--for about three hours Saturday night, drinking and talking with our riders, then they came out to the beach with us--them and their five boyfriends. Everybody was standing around the fire, drinking wine, and some of the guys were talking to them — hustling 'em, naturally — and soon somebody asked the two chicks if they wanted to be turned on--you know, did they want to smoke some pot? They said yeah, and then they walked off with some of the guys to the dunes. The spade went with a few guys and then she wanted to quit, but the pregnant one was really hot to trot; the first four or five guys she was really dragging into her arms, but after that she cooled off, too. By this time, though, one of their boy friends had got scared and gone for the cops--and that's all it was.

But not quite all. After that there were Senator Farr and Tom Lynch and a hundred cops and dozens of newspaper stories and articles in the national news magazine--and even this article, which is a direct result of the Monterey "gang rape."

When the much-quoted report was released, the local press--primarily the San Francisco Chronicle, which had earlier done a long and fairly objective series on the Hell's Angels--made a point of saying that the Monterey charges against the Hell's Angels had been dropped for lack of evidence. Newsweek was careful not to mention Monterey at all, but the New York Times referred to it as "the alleged gang rape" which, however, left no doubt in a reader's mind that something savage had occurred.

It remained for Time, though, to flatly ignore the fact that the Monterey rape charges had been dismissed. Its article leaned heavily on the hairiest and least factual sections of the report, and ignored the rest. It said, for instance, that the Hell's Angels initiation rite "demands that any new member bring a woman or girl [called a 'sheep'] who is willing to submit to sexual intercourse with each member of the club." That is untrue, although, as one Angel explained, "Now and then you get a woman who likes to cover the crowd, and hell, I'm no prude. People don't like to think women go for that stuff, but a lot of them do."

We were talking across a pool table about the rash of publicity and how it had affected the Angel's activities. I was trying to explain to him that the bulk of the press in this country has such a vested interest in the status quo that it can't afford to do much honest probing at the roots, for fear of what they might find.

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Of course I don't like to read all this bullshit because it brings the heat down on us, but since we got famous we've had more rich fags and sex-hungry women come looking for us that we ever had before. Hell, these days we have more action than we can handle."

In 1965 Hunter Thompson was living in San Francisco. He had recently quit the National Observer and was dead broke. When Carey McWilliams sent him a query, enclosing a report of the California Attorney General's office on motorcycle gangs and an offer of one hundred dollars for an article, Thompson accepted. He later expanded his Nation article into his bestselling book, Hell's Angels. Thompson, the founder of "gonzo" journalism, went on to write, among other books, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and The Great Shark Hunt.

Copyright © 1965, 2005 The Nation Magazine

The Sands of Iwo

This AM, Don Imus interviewed James Bradley (son of John Bradley) on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. James Bradley burst onto the national scene as an author in 2000 with his New York Times #1 bestseller book Flags of Our Fathers. The New York Times called it "the surprise runaway nonfiction best seller of the season." Steven Spielberg acquired the movie rights. Clint Eastwood is currently directing. Imus hyped the Bradley book on his morning show since 2000 and this was the second time I heard James Bradley with the I-Man. Imus served in the Marines and he asked good questions of Bradley. The author talked about the six boys who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. The photograph is the most reproduced photo in history. James' father, John Bradley, was one of the six Iwo Jima flagraisers. All of this took me back to the grisly photos (made into postcards) of Japanese dead at Tarawa. My dad brought them home as souvenirs of WWII in the South Pacific. If Iwo was bloodier than Tarawa (and it was), Clint Eastwood will face the same dilemma in making a film about Iwo Jima that Spielberg faced with the Normandy invasion. Film audiences will not be able to stomach the truthful images of Iwo Jima. Imus closed this morning's show with a rendition of the "Ballad of Ira Hayes" by the next governor of Texas (Imus and I are on the same page about the Kinkster.), Richard (Kinky) Friedman. To this point in my life, I heard only the Johnny Cash version of the ballad. The Kinkster did the song proud. As James Bradley taught me this AM, Ira Hayes (one of the 6 flagraisers) suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (as did a lot of the Iwo survivors) and no one knew what it was until years later. Ira Hayes drank (no meds available) because of guilt. He survived and a lot of good guys didn't and he drank himself to death. If this is (fair & balanced) patriotic gore, so be it.

[x DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER]
Oral History- Iwo Jima Flag Raising
Recollections of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima by Pharmacist Mate Second Class John H. Bradley, USN, with the 5th Marine Division.

Adapted from John Bradley interview in box 3 of World War II Interviews, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center.

---

John Bradley:
I was attached to the 5th Marine Division on Iwo Jima and I was a member of the 28th Marine Regiment who raised the American flag on the highest point on that island which is Mount Suribachi. The company that I was assigned to hit the beach, (we were in the 9th wave); we hit the beach approximately H-Hour plus 45, which would be 45 minutes after H-hour [H-Hour was scheduled for 9:00 a.m.; the first assault wave of armored tracked landing vehicles began landing at 8:59 a.m. on 19 Feb. 1945]. When we hit the beach I was a little bit too busy to do any sight seeing at the time because we had a lot of casualties around the beach. In our company we went right up in the front lines about 45 minutes after we bit the beach and we stayed there. The 28th Marines sector of that island was the southern tip of Iwo Jima which Mount Suribachi was on.

In the morning of D plus 4 [23 Feb.] we organized a patrol of approximately 40 men [from Company E]. And myself and another hospital corpsmen by the name of Zimik (?), Pharmacist's Mate, 2/c [Second Class] were the [medical] corpsmen attached to that patrol. At that time we didn't know if we were going to be able to plant the American flag on the top of Mount Suribach. but previous to that the Navy [warships] gave the mountain a terrific bombarding, assisted by the Navy, Army and Marine Corps fighter planes.

We started up the mountain immediately after the Naval barrage and plane strafing was over and we reached the top. And I might add that the reason we reached the top of Mount Suribachi without a single enemy shot being fired was because the Japs were still in their caves waiting for the bombardment to be lifted. When we reached the top we formed our battle line [the platoon moved from the column formation used to climb the mountain trail to one with the squads and fireteams on line] and we all went over the top [attacked] together and much to our surprise we didn't find a Jap in sight. If one Jap had been up there manning one of his guns I think he could have pretty well taken care of our 40-man patrol.

Well, the minute we got up on top we set our line of fire [defensive perimeter firing positions] up, the Lieutenant in charge placed the machine guns where he wanted them, had our rifle men spotted [positioned] and immediately we sent patrols to the right and to the left [on the slopes]. We went up the mountain almost in the middle so consequently we sent patrols around to the right and left to take care of any Japs that might come out. When we got there I was with the group that swung to the left and immediately the Lieutenant sent a man around to look for a piece of staff [i.e., a flagpole] that we could put the American flag on. And the Japs had some old pipes that were laying around there, they used these pipes to run water down below the mountain. And we used this Jap pipe and we attached the American flag on there and we put it up. And Joe Rosenthal happened to be there at the right time. He came up a little while after we were on top and much to his surprise the picture that is now so famous....the Flag Raising on Mount Suribachi.

After the flag was raised we went back to work taking care of [i.e., killing] the Japs that were here and there and we found many of them in caves. In fact in one cave we counted 142 Japs. And the flame throwers did a fine job on top of the mountain. We tried to talk them out. They wouldn't come out so then we used the flame throwers as a last resort. There were numerous caves all. around there and we didn't have one single casualty on top of that mountain. [Flame throwers were first used in modern warfare by the Germans in World War I. The flame throwers used by the Marines in this action were carried by one Marine on his back and shot a stream of flaming fuel - standard gasoline or thickened "napalm" gasoline - from 20-40 yards against enemy caves/pillboxes to kill the enemy by burning, suffocation, or shock.]

Mount Suribachi was a [volcanic] mountain approximately 560 feet high and at the top it was a hollow...it was hollow on top, with about a 20, oh, I'd say a 20-foot ledge that you could walk all a-way around before this crater sank in. This crater was, oh, I'd say approximately 50 to 60 feet deep and it was down in this crater that the Japs were honeycombed in these caves. They had the caves dug in all the way around this crater. Suribachi was inactive at the time but we noticed smoke, sort of a vapor coming out of the ground up on this crater but it was purely inactive. The surface of that crater down below was warm but according to the north end that our regiment went on later, it was cold compared to that north end because that north end was really hot. In fact some of the boys received burns just from sleeping on the ground.

Interviewer:
Bradley, in the picture which man are you?

John Bradley:
I'm the one that's second from the right as you're looking at the picture. And right next to me there you can see a man's helmet sticking up, that's Pfc. [Private First Class Rene A.] Gagnon [USMC]. The man bending over nearest to the ground is [Corporal Harlon Henry Block] [USMC]. And the one in back of us with the rifle slung on his shoulder is Pfc. Ira Hayes [USMC]. He is also a survivor. And the one in back of Hayes, is Pfc. [Frank R.] Sousley [USMC] who was later killed in action on the north end [of the island]. And there's two men that you can hardly see in the picture, they are from, the one on the right hand side is Pfc. Rene Gagnon who is a survivor of the flag raising. And the other one in back of Gagnon is Sergeant [Michael] Strank [USMC] who was killed later in action on the north end of Iwo Jima.

Interviewer:
Was this your first invasion?

John Bradley:
Yes it was, that was my first invasion with these Marines.

Interviewer:
Did you go up the seaward side of Mount Suribachi or the other side?

John Bradley:
We went facing the south....we went like I said before, it was in the middle of the mountain, it wasn't on the seaward side, [but the] land side.

Interviewer:
Some Naval officers that have been back said that the Naval ships let a great cheer or salute when they noticed the flag up. Could you hear anything of that demonstration or see anything of it?

John Bradley:
Well, at that time we didn't think of the significance of the flag raising but they've told me that they did and it seems to me that I can recall something of that. We men up on top of the mountain weren't thinking of anything like that at the time. In fact we were all worried.

Interviewer:
I understand this is the second flag raising that occurred there.

John Bradley:
That's right. The first flag was a smaller flag and it was put up by Platoon Sergeant [a Staff Noncommissioned Officer rank above that of sergeant] Ernest I. ["Boots"] Thomas of Tallahassee, Florida. He was the Platoon Sergeant in charge of the 40-man patrol [not factually correct - PlSgt Thomas was the senior enlisted man in the platoon and his duty was to assist the Platoon Commander, a commissioned officer]. He put up that flag about one half hour before this larger one was put up. It was so small that it couldn't be seen from down below so our Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chandler W. Johnson [USMC] sent a four-man patrol up with this larger flag which is the flag you see on the poster for the 7th war Loan Drive.

Interviewer:
None of these six men in the picture then actually carried the flag up?

John Bradley:
No sir, the flag was carried by the Lieutenant in charge of the patrol. That was the first flag. And the second flag that want up was carried, in the patrol, there was Sergeant Strank who was in the second flag raising and whose picture is on it and Pfc. Hayes and Pfc. Sousley, They were in the group of the four men that the Battalion Commander sent up with the second flag.

Interviewer:
Do you care to identify your Lieutenant in charge of your patrol?

John Bradley:
The Lieutenant in charge of that 40-man patrol was First Lieutenant [Harold] Shrier [USMC]. He is one of Carlson's Old Second Raiders [i.e., 1stLt Shrier was a former member the 2nd Raider Battalion, which was formed and commanded by LtCol Evans F. Carlson USMC from 1942-1943, when it was disbanded and the officers and men transferred to other Marine combat units] and he worked up from an enlisted man and he's now a First Lieutenant. And he happened to be Executive Officer [second in command] of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines.

Interviewer:
Do you care to tell us how you got hurt later?

John Bradley:
None of the boys got hurt or killed in action at time of the flag raising. All this took place when we received orders to go dawn to the north end [of the island, where the Marines were fighting to eliminate remaining Japanese-held pockets of resistance] and help them out with the fighting down there. My injury took place on March 12th which was the 22nd day of The operation. It was just about evening. I was getting things squared around my fox hole [a one or two-man fighting hole dug deep enough to protect the user from artillery fire and tanks and still permit him to stand within and fire his weapon over the top edge], getting my medical gear and personal gear arranged so that at night if we got the word to move out I'd know just where everything was and while I was arranging that--things were entirely quiet up to this time. While I was arranging this a Jap mortar shell lit [hit, or exploded] several feet from me and it caught four men and I happened to be one of them. I received wound fragments in both legs and one fragment hit my foot and it broke a bone in my foot. [Mortars are anti-personnel weapons designed to fire explosive or illumination shells at high angles over ranges up to 4,000 yards - the projectiles are fired at a high angle in order to clear obstacles between the mortar and the target, and projectiles plunge almost straight down into the target, thus hitting behind protective fortifications. Mortars were located in infantry company and battalion weapons platoons.]

I received very good medical care. Just as soon as I was hit the corpsmen were there to fix me up and the battalion surgeon sent his men up to evacuate me back to the battalion aid station, received supplementary treatment there and in a matter of three-quarters of an hour after I was hit I was back in the field hospital. The next morning I was put on a plane and flown to a rear area hospital which was at Guam. From Guam I was evacuated to Pearl Harbor. From Pearl Harbor to Oakland, California and then I received my orders to report to Washington, D.C. At this time I am a patient at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland.

Interviewer:
How long were you on top of Mount Suribachi?

John Bradley:
We stayed there approximately three days, a little over three days and then we received our orders to go to the north end.

Interviewer:
How long did the flag stay up?

John Bradley:
The flag stayed up all the while. That flag was never taken down.

---

Notes:

The first flag, measuring 54x28 inches, was obtained from attack transport USS Missoula (APA-211), and raised on a 20-foot section of pipe at 10:20 a.m. Several hours later, an 8-foot-long battle ensign, obtained from tank landing ship LST-779, was raised, resulting in Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph of the flag raising. This photograph inspired the bronze monument to the Marine Corps by Felix de Welden located near Arlington National Cemetery.

For a detailed description of the struggle for Suribachi see: Garand, George W. and Truman R. Strobridge. Western Pacific Operations. vol.4 of History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II. Washington DC: Historical Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1971.

For the official US Navy history of the battle, including a description of the flag raising, see: Morison, Samuel Eliot. Victory in the Pacific, 1945. Vol.14 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961.

Copyright © 2003 Department of the Navy

Money Talks, Bullsh Excrement Walks

Ah, teacher pay. Contemplating those magnificent sums makes me giddy. In 1965, with my newly minted MA in history, I broke new ground and secured a position as an instructor at the Collegium Pro Populo on the banks of the Mississippi River in western Ilinois. The method in my madness was pecuniary. I sought wealth beyond the dreams of avarice: the salary for a beginning classroom teacher in the public schools anywhere (CA was the land of opportunity with $5K starting salaries.) in CO or NM was in the $4K range. My pay at the collegium on the Big Muddy was more than any starting public school teacher could command. My colleague who started at this juco had fled an upscale high school in the north suburbs of Chicago; he gained in salary by coming to the juco. In addition, he got away from all of the nonsense that accompanies teaching in the public schools. After teaching 2 or 3 classes in the AM (usually), he (and I) were free to run and play. Teaching in grades K-12 is akin to being a guard in a prison: once in, no guard leaves until the end of a shift. Similarly, public school teachers arrive before 8:00 AM and leave after 4:00 PM. So, the juco paid better and afforded better job amenities. The distinctive feature of working at the Collegium Pro Populo was discretionary compensation. The prexy set each salary in a new contract. The entire institution was abuzz when contracts were distributed. Mainly, it was blah blah about who got what and why. The prexy and my chair were archenemies. Therefore, the salary increases in my department were less than increases in the departments of the prexy's cronies. That was my sole experience with individual contracts. After 2 years of the juco life, I got the itch for more bucks again. Off I went to Texas Technique (where I could have gone after completing my MA) and served for 5 years as a PTI (Part Time Instructor) and graduate student. I combined teaching 2 classes per term with enrollment in a maximum of 3 courses. I took a significant cut in pay, but the payoff from the cosmic slot machine of life was going make it all worthwhile. In my first 3 years at Texas Technique, jobs were plentiful. Grad students further along were going off ABD to fairly decent colleges and universities. One guy, a year ahead of me, took his prelims (oral exams over 5 history fields plus a minor field) and did poorly; the stock answer of "I don't know" didn't help. He left the exam room and went to an office and called the personnel office of the juco system in Dallas and got a job over the phone! I persevered and finished the PhD. By then, the job market was drier than the TX sand. The only job that was available was at the Collegium Excellens in Amarillo, 125 miles to the north. The Amarillo juco offered a starting salary that was on par with the salaries that my peers at Texas Technique were commanding at Western Kentucky, Wichita State, and the like. However, I was back at a collegium. This juco had begun as an arm of the Amarillo Independent School District. However, unlike the CA jucos that were the end of the line in K-14 school districts, the Amarillo juco was separate and distinct from the public school system. The school board met weekly and did public school business: awarded bids, hired and fired, and approved the budget. After completing the public school agenda, the board adjourned and reconvened as the Board of Regents of the Collegium Excellens. Unlike the public schools, the collegium had academic ranks and tenure. However, the Collegium inherited a salary schedule based upon years of service and academic accomplishment. None of that discretionary compensation with the wildfire of gossip that came with contracts. In fact, at the Collegium Excellens, we had no contracts. I received a letter of appointment when I was hired. Thereafter, I showed up for the General Ass(embly) that began each academic year. At that time, I received the new salary schedule. Most of the prexies of the Collegium in the Panhandle were believers in the "2% rule." Across-the-board increases were limited to 2%. In 32 years, I remember only a small number (fewer than 5) pay increases that exceeded 2%. The only other way to increase one's compensation was additional graduate hours of study. Here I was with a PhD in history, taking courses in political science and sociology (for overload course assignments in those fields) at the nearby teachers' college, West Teachers. I even (shudder) took a couple of grad courses in higher education. All for the sake of increasing my salary for a one-income family. As I look back on all of this nonsense, teacher salaries at any level (below major state and private universities: Harvard or SUNY-Albany) are a disgrace. If this is (fair & balanced) resentment, so be it.

[x Education Next]
All Teachers Are Not the Same
by Julia E. Koppich

It is by now a familiar story, often told as a lament: teachers in this country continue to be paid according to the single salary schedule.

They accrue better pay on the basis of years of experience and college units earned. Units may or may not be related to teaching assignment. Some districts have modestly tweaked this arrangement by paying a premium to teachers who earn certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. But by and large, in thousands of school districts across the United States, the unvarnished standard single salary schedule prevails.

Teacher unions, among the staunchest defenders of the standard compensation arrangement, are often credited—or blamed—with inventing this salary calculus. In fact, the classic teachers’ salary arrangement is an artifact of civil service. Developed in the early 1920s, the system was popularized three decades later as a way of creating salary equity between elementary teachers, most of whom were women, and secondary teachers, most of whom were men. This was not a pre-feminist revolution so much as a necessary economic response to the post–World War II enrollment boom. Over time, to be sure, teacher unions have come to defend the standard single salary schedule in the name of employee equity and fairness.

The National Education Association assiduously avoids anything that might be construed as “merit pay.” The position taken by the American Federation of Teachers is less rigid, yet replete with caveats to protect against anticipated slights and abuses. The unions’ position is not unwarranted. Merit pay schemes that have been tried in education have an abysmal track record (see “Dollars and Sense,” p. 60, for one that had a decent record—while it lasted).

Part of the problem, however, has been that merit pay systems are rarely based on objective standards, a flaw that often created unhealthy competition for the usually scarce resources rather than cooperation among teachers. These insufficient funds all too typically forced many teachers to take their rewards solely in the form of psychic remuneration.

Compounding the compensation dilemma, policies promoted by both districts and unions have endeavored to maintain the fiction that “a teacher is a teacher is a teacher.” Compensation structures have failed to recognize that some teaching jobs are more difficult than others or that some teachers are more—or less—skilled than others.

Salaries for the Real World

The time has come for school districts and teacher unions to take a different tack. It is time to develop and implement a professional compensation arrangement that recognizes the complex nature of the work of teaching and that compensates teachers for both the difficulty of the assignment and the professional accomplishment that is part of it.

We need a compensation structure that utilizes multiple approaches. These should include paying teachers more for: 1) attaining knowledge and skills that demonstrably contribute to improving student learning; 2) mentoring newer and less skilled teachers; 3) teaching in hard-to-staff schools and choosing difficult-to-staff subjects; 4) producing higher test scores, using a value-added approach.

These ideas fly in the face of long-established tradition. But it’s time to reexamine that tradition. It’s time to acknowledge publicly that some teaching jobs are more difficult than others. And we must be willing to pay more for some fields than for others. In a perfect world, perhaps, a physics teacher is no more valuable than an English teacher. But we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world in which physics teachers are at a premium, and for the foreseeable future supply and demand will need to prevail. The market must have its way.

Some will argue that what is suggested above is too complicated, that it is time to scrap the old salary schedule and pay teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores alone. After all, assert proponents of this argument, isn’t the true measure of a teacher’s worth her students’ test results? In fact, at the base of this argument lies the same fault line that threatens No Child Left Behind. Making judgments about student learning by simply examining test scores from one year to the next is hazardous at best. Tests provide a simple snapshot in time and may not be well aligned with standards or curriculum. Moreover, particularly in urban districts, given the rate of student transience, the cohort of students tested at the beginning of the year may be different from that tested at the end of the year, thus providing few useful comparative data.

The New Math for Merit

But there is a way to use test scores to gain needed information about the impact of teaching and the levels of student learning: value-added calculations. The value-added approach has the advantage of separating student effects (ethnicity, family background, socioeconomic status) from school effects (teachers, administrators, programs) since it examines test scores to determine if students are making anticipated academic gains each year. Measured on the basis of their progress from the previous year, students, in a sense, act as their own statistical control. Value-added programs calculate a projected test score for a student in a given grade or subject based on his or her previous academic achievement. The difference between the actual score and the projected score is the value added.

Value-added calculations, however, should not be used as the sole gauge of teachers’ compensation. They too are an imperfect technology. But they can, and should, serve as one important measure. Consistent value-added work by William Sanders in Tennessee has shown that several consecutive years of teachers’ adding measurable value to students’ learning provide a foundation on which students can continue to make academic progress. After several years of ineffective teaching, students may never recover academically.

Finally, it is not possible to discuss teachers’ compensation without taking up the issue of their evaluation. In most places, evaluation is done poorly, with checklists about behavior standing in for standards of good practice that should frame evaluation systems. Administrators typically in charge of the process have too little time or training to effectively help teachers improve their practice.

But there is an effective alternative to the ineffective evaluation as well. Systems of peer review, in place for a decade or more in a dozen or so districts—such as Toledo and Columbus, Ohio; Rochester, New York; and Montgomery County, Maryland—have shown remarkable promise. Beginning teachers are provided the support they need from specially selected experienced teachers, who are chosen jointly by the district and the union. Those individuals who were not meant to be teachers are soon out of the profession. Struggling tenured teachers are given the support they have long needed. Should that not prove adequate, they are encouraged to find other lines of work. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, teachers, including unionized teachers, are able to judge their colleagues fairly but rigorously. Yes, some teachers are dismissed. More important, evaluation accomplishes the purpose for which it is intended: improving professional practice.

Working with Complexity

Marrying a well-developed system of peer review and value-added test scores could create a powerful framework for teachers’ compensation. Adding pay for knowledge and skills, compensation for mentoring, and pay for teaching in hard-to-staff schools and subjects will transform a pro-forma salary schedule into a professional compensation arrangement that better recognizes the complexity of teaching and offers teachers the kinds of incentives and options that professionals deserve.

Salaries by themselves, no matter how high or competitive, will not encourage teachers to remain at schools where the working conditions are poor. Competent, supportive administrators, a decent physical plant, and requisite instructional supplies are the sine qua non for maintaining a quality teaching staff, regardless of the rate of pay.

In sum, it is time to construct a salary schedule that gives teachers choices, opportunities, and options—pay for knowledge and skills, pay for mentoring, added pay for hard-to-staff schools and subjects, and added compensation for test scores calculated using a value-added approach.

The hope is that progressive unions and districts will take up the challenge to shape this new salary construct. They will come to see rethinking compensation as part of their obligation to promote quality teaching, and as the next step on the road to creating a true profession.

Julia E. Koppich is an education consultant based in San Francisco. A former high school teacher and faculty member in the school of education at the University of California, Berkeley, she is also coauthor of United Mind Workers: Unions and Teaching in the Knowledge Society.

Published by the Hoover Institution © 2004 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University

"L" Is For Library Everywhere But The Collegium Excellens; There, It Stands For Loser!

No college can be ignorant and call itself a college. Thomas Jefferson would be aghast at the budgetary crime that has been committed against the Lynn Library at the Collegium Excellens. I was speaking with the Library Director this AM about another matter and I asked how things were going in the year that I have been gone. (Thank God and Greyhound!) The reply was the same. The anti-intellectual goons who have run the Collegium since the dawn of time (or 1929, whichever came first) have continually shirked their duties as academic leaders. For the past twenty years — for example — the budget for the Lynn Library has been flatlined. There have been no increases in the amount expended on the Lynn Library since 1985! On top of this fiscal crime against the college, the goons who call themselves president or dean have stolen space in the Lynn Library for non-Library purposes. For example, the Reserve Desk area and the technical services area have been hijacked for an office suite for the vice president and his minions. The Lynn Library now has no reserve desk. Entire floors of the four-story library have been hijacked for non-library purposes. The circulation desk has been moved from the first floor at the entrance to the second floor. Out of sight, out of mind. Thomas Jefferson would weep at the thought of dismantling a college library. I weep, too. If this is (fair & balanced) despair, so be it.

[x Library Journal]
Can Libraries Save Democracy?
By Michael Baldwin

"No nation can remain both ignorant and free." This quotation from Thomas Jefferson should be the mantra of all public librarians. The freedoms we enjoy through democracy are currently endangered by popular ignorance and political apathy. Public librarians can be a big part of the solution if we will accept the responsibility. Otherwise, ours will be among the first institutions to be destroyed when democracy collapses.

Americans are just beginning to realize that we are mired in a triple crisis (the trifecta, as President Bush so jocularly terms it): an economic recession, a "war," and a national emergency. This tri-crisis is being exploited by the federal government as an excuse for strangling constitutionally established freedoms. Our freedoms and democracy itself have been eroding for many years owing to our own neglect. Lately that erosion has become a landslide into plutocracy as corporate special interests have effectively purchased the federal government.

The current national troubles provide an opportunity for librarians to demonstrate the importance of public libraries to freedom and democracy. They also provide the incentive for us to remake our profession and institutions and in the process remake America.

Prioritize civic responsibility

We laud libraries as educational and informational institutions, as centers of grass-roots democracy, crucial to community social and economic well-being. Yet those functions have sometimes been relegated to peripheral status while recreational reading and support of education have been seen as libraries' de facto priorities. These priorities have not brought libraries success or respect. Public libraries are poorly supported and are among the first public services to be reduced during any decline in local revenues. We've experienced this cycle for decades and yet have never reformulated the library's mission to make it more socially valued and more politically defensible.

What change in mission will provide the social gravitas to assure appropriate recognition and funding for libraries? The trustees of Boston PL first stated the idea in 1852 when they asked the city fathers to fund a library from taxes: "[I]t is of paramount importance that the means of general information be so diffused that the largest possible number of persons should be induced to read and understand questions going down to the very foundations of social order...and which we, as a people, are required to decide, and do decide, either ignorantly or wisely."

The Public Library Inquiry gave us the same answer 50 years ago. The public library should be considered a primarily political institution, providing citizens with the information they need to fulfill their civic duties in our democracy. That mission has become even more imperative today as our public educational systems spew forth barely literate graduates who are then at the mercy of a rapacious economic system that threatens to co-opt our political institutions.

Librarians have never fully heeded the call to exercise their institutions' inherent and highest function as bulwarks of democracy. We must now recognize that we are part of the problem of a degenerate democracy that is in imminent danger of slipping into some bitter flavor of authoritarianism.

If informed citizenship had been the primary goal of libraries over the past 50 years, America might be a much different country. People would be better informed about political issues. Grass-roots activism would be an integral social activity. The right to vote would be understood as an almost sacred privilege exercised by an informed citizenry. Politicians would work for the public good because citizens would not tolerate undue political influence by special interests.

Take action

Perhaps it's not yet too late. Here's what public librarians must do if they would save American democracy:

• Revise your library's mission statement to prioritize the maintenance of democracy through the provision of civic information. No other major institution in American society has taken on this most important task.




• Dispense with the concept of passively providing information and the errant "give them what they want" philosophy. Americans, immersed in confusion by junk media, are distracted by junk entertainment into political apathy.




• Educate and retrain librarians as civic information specialists who develop critical issues programs, actively disseminate issues-oriented information, and encourage responsible political activity in a nonpartisan manner.




• Foment public interest in social/political issues. Creatively market your library as the civic information/action center.




• Partner with local and national organizations that promote democracy, ethical leadership, and civic responsibility.

We stand at a watershed moment. We must not take American democracy for granted. It can disappear just as did the Greek democracies and the Roman republic.

The American public library is the most important invention of our democratic society after the Constitution itself. Libraries can provide the social leverage to return America to a democratic destiny. We will be condemned by history and by ourselves if we allow democracy to perish. I'm no Tom Paine, but I'll borrow his mantle for a moment. Now is the time for all good librarians to come to the aid of their country!

Michael Baldwin, who has been a professor of political science, is currently Director, Benbrook Public Library, TX.

© 2005, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.