The Department of Education

Yikes! The Republican Party wants to kill the U.S. Department of Education. What are we going to do!

Think Progress, a popular liberal blog that I follow regularly, claims that 111 Republican Congressional incumbents and candidates have expressed support for abolishing the Department of Education. This story is part of a series Think Progress is publishing on legislation that might emerge if Republican’s take back Congress.

I’m sorry, but this just isn’t an issue. Such legislation would never pass. And even if it did, President Obama would veto it.

Also, why should we care? Think Progress takes it for granted that its readers know that the Department of Education (ED — yes the Department’s acronym is ED. DoE was taken by the Department of Energy) is essential. It’s got the word “education” in its name so it must be good, right? The country needs education, so why abolish it?

What I’d appreciate in an article like this is a little bit of what we journalists like to call the “nut graf,” the paragraph that forms the core of a story and tells a reader why he should care. It’s also referred to as the who, what, where, why and how of a story. Why should we care about the ED? What would happen if it were abolished? What the heck does the ED do?

I’d say that the average voter has very little idea what the Education Department does. They just know it’s a $60 or $70 billion bureaucracy that “intrudes” on individual states’ efforts to administer education. Only, the ED doesn’t really have the power to do that. It doesn’t set curricula in this country. It doesn’t set rules for budgeting education. It doesn’t set standards for teachers. It doesn’t even manage accreditation of primary, secondary or post-secondary education institutions.

What does it do? It disburses federal education grants and scholarships. It manages federal student loans. It enforces privacy and civil rights laws in the context of education. It collects statistics on education in the country. That’s about it.

What about in terms of the GOP’s so-called fiscal conservatism? In the grand scheme of things, the ED’s 5,000 employees and $60-70 billion budget are a drop in the bucket. You could cut the budget by 100% and the deficit would still be measured in trillions.

Instead of being on the defensive and assuming that the ED is a sacred cow that deserves our unquestioning support, perhaps Think Progress should ponder whether we need the ED in its current form. Maybe the GOP is right. Maybe we should kill it. And then replace it with something else with a stronger mandate. I say we should be doing more, not less.

I think this country needs a centralized education system more than ever before. Math and science education is critical to the future of the economy and yet our schools struggle to instruct students on these subjects.

We’re leaving this policy up to the individual states? Fifty individual bureaucracies, some of which are headed by elected ideological gasbags (Exhibit number one, the Texas’ State Board of Education, which wastes its time trying to ferret out “pro-Islamic bias” in textbooks). The current ED’s mandate is very limited in scope, because Republicans opposed its creation from the start. Republicans say there is nothing about an education department in the Constitution. I don’t think there was any mention of the Department of Energy or the Department of Housing and Urban Development in there, either.

I say the ED should be doing more, not less. Instead of defending its turf, the Democrats should be rallying for  stronger federal role in education. Go on the offensive for once. Hammer the Republicans who want to kill the ED and emphasize that we should be doing more for education at the federal level. That’s what Think Progress should be advocating.  It kneejerk defense of the ED is preaching to the converted. Instead, this article should be pointing out how the ED could be doing more to reinvent education in our country. Maybe that would give some moderates and independents a reason to go to the polls on Tuesday. They need a reason, and articles like this gem from Think Progress just don’t cut it.

Don’t let the serial comma die

Book editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden unearthed a stark example of why the serial comma must live on, from a review of a documentary about the life of country singer Merle Haggard:

The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

The absence of a comma in a sentence like this can fundamentally change the reader’s understanding of the writer’s intent. Without the comma, Kristofferson and Duvall could be mistaken by a naive reader as the ex-wives of Haggard.

As an news editor who has been taught the virtue of brevity, I’ve mostly abandoned the serial comma, but this single sentence has convinced me that it’s not such a simple matter – this letting go of a standard of punctuation. Why should we get rid of it, anyway? In a society dominated by IM chats and text messages, the fewer characters in your message the better. But in real writing that’s fit for print or online publication, why do we need to rid ourselves of the serial comma?

The Chicago Manual of Style, the standard for written grammar and style for American English, still considers the serial comma to be standard grammar but the Associated Press Style Book, which nearly all journalists use for guidance on grammar, advocates the removal of the serial comma. Why does journalistic style demand the removal of the serial comma? It’s the same reason that journalistic writing in general is so spare and concise. The printed word has historically been very expensive, especially for a newspaper that is setting type and printing pages on a daily basis.

As blogger Melissa Donovan noted:

Traditionally, the serial comma was standard fare in written English. However, once the printing press entered the equation, newspapers decided to forgo the serial comma to save space. That’s why journalism style guides such as The New York Times Manual of Style and The Associated Press Stylebook do not include serial commas in their guidelines.

I haven’t written for a print publication since 2006, so I’m tempted to start using the serial comma a little more. My publication is between copy editors at the moment, so this might be the subject for discussion once we bring a new one on board.

(H/T to Stephen Bainbridge and Jeff Weintraub).

 

 

Nazi uniform-wearing Republican: Honest but clueless

Rich Iott, a Republican candidate for a U.S. Congressional seat in Ohio, says he wears a Nazi military uniform because he is fascinated by military history, not because he’s a Nazi sympathizer.

I believe him. But I also believe he has a thing or two to learn about history.

I love to read about history because I enjoy learning how the past shaped the world we live in today. A full understanding of history requires  you to take a broad view of past events. You can’t just interpret events to suit your own prejudices. History is about uncovering the truth. And the truth can be ugly.

Rich Iott is a millionaire businessman who is running for the  9th Congressional District in Ohio. The Atlantic has revealed that in his spare time he participates in a group that reenacts World War II battles as a unit of the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, a Nazi Germany military unit noted for its valor and known for having a large number of volunteers from Northern European countries that had either been conquered by or allied with Germany during the war.

This division was also part of the Waffen SS, the military arm of the German Nazi Party. The Waffen SS was a military organization that was distinct from Germany’s traditional regular army, the Wehrmacht. In fact, commanders and enlisted men in the Wehrmacht were known to despise the Waffen SS for a variety of reasons, in particular its function as an instrument of terror. The Waffen SS was responsible for a large percentage of the war crimes Germany perpetrated in World War II. During the 1939 invasion of Poland, the Waffen SS systematically murdered thousands of Jews and Poles. When officers in the Wehrmacht complained to Hitler’s government about the brutal and inhuman behavior of the Waffen SS, those complaining officers were usually relieved of duty. The Waffen SS continued to be an instrument of terror throughout the war, but it also was a competent fighting organization that proved itself in conventional battle.

So, we have a GOP candidate for Congress who in his spare time wears the uniform of a Panzer (tank) division within the Waffen SS. This has the media in a frenzy. Iott is such an easy target. Perhaps rightly so. But even as the media takes aim at him, they miss the real issue.

After all, is it really so terrible that Iott and some friends wear these uniforms in order to reenact battles from World War II? If he liked to dress up as a British Redcoat and reenact battles from the American Revolution, would we be so riled up? Reenacting historical military events is a common pursuit in our country. These are people who enjoy military history. They enjoy learning about it, reliving it and teaching about it.

If you visit the website of Iott’s “Wiking” reenactment group, it’s quite clear the group is sincere in its pursuit of learning and teaching history.

The real problem lies in the groups misrepresentation of history.

The group’s website describes a very narrow view of the history of the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking. According to Iott’s group, the division was a valiant and highly decorated military unit made up of volunteers from Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland and other Northern European countries who wanted to fight Soviet Russia and “the threat of communism.” According to the website, these men saw Nazi Germany as the “protector of personal freedom and their very way of life.”

This historical account is highly misleading. First of all, it neglects to mention that this SS division was involved in several war crimes. For instance it assisted the Einsatzkommandos (Germany’s paramilitary SS death squads that roamed Europe rounding up and murdering Jews) in murdering at least 50 Jews. Can any reenactment of this division be fully honest without some acknowledgment of this atrocity.

Second, the most famous member of the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking must be acknowledged somewhere. He is Dr. Joseph Mengele. He served as a medic in this division before getting wounded. He was reassigned to the rear and eventually served in Germany’s concentration camp system. If you haven’t heard of Dr. Mengele before, do some reading. There are many reasons why he is known as the Angel of Death.

Finally, I believe that the “Wiking” reenactors are deliberately misinterpreting the motivations the of the 5th Division’s non-German volunteers. Did these men really see Germany as the protector of personal freedom? Germany had bombed Holland back into the Stone Age. It had invaded Norway and set up a puppet regime there.  It invaded Denmark, although it let the Danish government remain in place until 1943.  Only Finland was a real ally to Germany, and in some ways it had no choice. The Soviet Union tried to conquer Finland shortly after Germany invaded Poland. The Finns turned to Germany for help.

Did these people see their conquerors as defenders of freedom? Was their main motivation to fight the spread of communism? I think the truth is more complex than the “Wiking” group would have you believe. Perhaps some of them saw Germany as a beacon of freedom. I think others were drawn to the Nazi Germany’s ideology of racial superiority and xenophobia. To many, Communist was just a euphemism for Jew or Gypsy.

I think Iott has been seduced by the idea of Europeans volunteering to fight against communism because the idea appeals to his ideology. He is a “Tea Party” candidate for Congress, which means he’s a part of the movement which thinks that anything slightly left of the political center is socialist. I think he has a romantic view of these Danes, Finns, Norwegians and Dutch men who became SS soldiers in order to fight communism and socialism because he still sees communism and socialism as an evil that plagues our country today. He’s wrong of course, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Because of their romantic view of these Nazi soldiers (and let’s not be coy, these were Nazi soldiers) and their so-called struggle against communism, Iott and his colleagues have chosen to ignore some of the more unsavory facts of the history of the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking. By painting an incomplete picture of the division, they are doing a disservice to the study of history. In some ways they are rewriting it. And that is unforgivable.

Did April 1865 really save America? Not enough for me.

In April 1865: The month that saved America, author Jay Winik argues that this  month at the end of the American Civil War was a pivotal moment in history where the future of the country was in serious doubt. Yes, the Union in the north was beating down the Confederacy through attrition, but the war was very much still undecided. Winik says that events unfolded in a way that led to a swift end to the war and to a period of national healing that allowed the South to reintegrate back into the the United States.

I don’t buy it.

I don’t think April 1865 was quite the miraculous month Winik says it was. The country continued to bleed from open wounds for at least a century. The war may have ended slavery, but the freed slaves spent the next 100 years as third class citizens, with very few rights and almost no equal protection under the law. Also, when I look at our country today – at how divided it is – I can’t help but notice the regionalism. Most of the South votes one way. Most of the North votes another way. That’s no coincidence.

Yes, the future of the country was still very much undecided in April 1865. The South had fewer resources than the North but it did have better military leadership. General Robert E. Lee had made every single Union general he faced look silly. Even in the final weeks of the war his hopelessly outnumbered forces inflicted massive losses on General U.S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was considering a transition from a conventional war to a guerrilla war that could have prolonged the conflict indefinitely. The Confederacy’s people had formed a national identity of their own and the prospects for them ever identifying themselves as citizens of the United States seemed dim. President Abraham Lincoln was about to be assassinated by a conspiracy that sought to kill him, his vice president and his secretary of state, an attack that had the potential to send the country into a paroxysm of panic and anarchy.

Winik argues that the almost everything seemed to break just right, allowing the war to end and allowing the South to slowly reintegrate into the country. He points to decisions by men like General Robert E. Lee and his fellow Confederate officers to order their men to surrender rather than take to the hills and the mountains as partisan fighters. Had they become guerrillas, the war could have raged for many more years. Imagine the South turning into something like Vietnam or Iraq. Such a conflict would have destroyed the South and broken the spirit of the North.

On and on, Winik points out events that unfolded in a way that allowed the country to survive and heal. And he’s right. Lincoln’s assassination could have been a decapitation that led to chaos. A dictator could have emerged in the White House. The Northern armies could have avenged Lincoln’s death by burning what was left of the South to the ground. Anything could have happened. But the war ended quietly, despite Lincoln’s death.

Winik overlooks a critical part of the war’s outcome. The United States may be irrevocably united by law and nationhood. People in the North and the South consider themselves Americans. But the country remains very, very divided. The South is the land of Republicanism. The North is Democratic. The division in America is complex, but much of it is rooted in the racism that originally perpetuated slavery for centuries.

During the Civil War the Republican party was the party of abolitionists. The Democratic party defended state’s rights and slavery. After the war ended, the parties continued on this course. The Democrats dominated in the South, at least until the late 1940s,  and Republicans dominated in the North. Then President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, advocated and signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and began enforcing judicial orders to desegregate the country and end institutional racism.

When the Democrats became the party of the Civil Rights movement, the South’s political leanings shifted sharply. It wasn’t all about ethnic divisions, but Republican leaders were explicit behind closed doors that they would exploit Southern racism to take the South from the Democrats.

For nearly 50 years the South has been solidly Republican.  Today there’s very little difference between the two political parties, but the South remains Republican. I’d say that’s a legacy of the racism that has plagued the South and divided it from the North since the war ended 145 years ago. Yes, there was and remains plenty of racism in the North, but racism was a key issue that divided the nation in 1861 and it continues to be an issue today.

Today, the divisions between the North and the South are more complex than smple racism. And the regional divisions are also less geographically monolithic. Some states in the South and the North buck regional trends. The country’s expansion has led to other regional divisions, too. There is a lot of talk about “Real America” and “Real Americans.” People in Alabama might see New Yorkers as alien and vice versa.

I’d say the wounds that cut the country apart in 1861 are still very raw today. Winik should have mentioned something about that in his book. Instead, he barely even mentions the failure of Reconstruction, the North’s attempt to remake the South after the war.