Address to graduating students: “If everyone is special, no one is.”

English teacher David McCullough, Jr. sharply challenged the new graduates of Wellesley Massachusetts High School by telling them that they were not special, because they were substantially like numerous other "special" students out there. He repeatedly warned the audience members that to become special, they would need to earn it. Many of McCullough's ideas walk the line between offensive and inspiring--they will offend some people because his message is a stinging indictment of the status quo. He delivered a message that we can't become special by continuing to watch our TVs, or even by clicking on our keyboards. There is no substitute for self-critical thought, hard work in the real world, and a pure heart. I admire McCullough for having the guts to say the things he said up at the podium. Watching him reminds me that excellent teachers are real heroes in a world filled with fake heroes. It makes me a bit sad that I didn't have the opportunity to be one of McCullough's students back in high school. Listening to his message mostly makes me proud that there is someone out there who can teach so much in twelve minutes.

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Quotes concerning freedom of speech and freedom of the press

Like many people, I'm a collector of quotes. This batch includes some of my favorite quotes concerning the freedom of speech and press: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.” Benjamin Franklin “The one thing that’s worse than hearing about all that violence and all that bad news on television is not being permitted to hear it.” Charles Kurault "Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment-- the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution--not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants"--but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion." John F. Kennedy http://surftofind.com/secrecy “When the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” Thomas Jefferson “The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.” Thomas Jefferson “If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson “Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power, and to withhold from them information without which power is abused. A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with power which knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.” James Madison “To the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been obtained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.” James Madison [More . . . ]

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Chinks III

Since writing Chinks II, I’ve felt uneasy about calling the Vietnamese workers in that nail salon ‘racists’. It’s true that they pigeonholed an African-American patron as a lazy welfare recipient who was unwilling to get a job. They seemed to take pleasure in voicing all the hurtful stereotypes that could be applied to a total stranger. I found their behavior cruel, terrifying and ironic.

The barb at the heart of Chinks II was minority on minority hate. Yet I described their hate speech as “tittering... nonsensical verbal massaging.” Even if the taunting was meant to be indecipherable, wasn’t I being a bigot myself by writing about it this way?

I can’t think of more alternatives to the pronoun “them.” That’s probably because I don’t know much about the Vietnamese women who taunted a black woman that day. (Here again, I resort to the roughest of rough sketches: “that black lady”). I don’t know their names. I don’t know where they live, although it’s probably not far from my own neighborhood. They are caricatures precisely because I have so few details with which to draw my group character sketch. And what would my cartoon self-portrait look like?

Qipao1

On the day of Chinks II, I was the most socially normative minority in the room. Being light-skinned, speaking with an American accent, growing up in a solidly middle-class household and earning a professional degree all help me to appear more “white” and inviolable. Who knows? It could have been my blessed-in-every-way-second-generation-Chinese-American presence that precipitated the verbal attack that I describe so vehemently. It’s not that I think I am the center of every story; though this story - all the Chinks stories - are about me and my perception of race. Chinks II simply exemplifies the pervasive, insidious, contagious nature of bigotry. This is a barb that hasn’t stopped pricking.

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Finally, a politician talks straight about the need for Wall Street Reform

In an impassioned speech this morning, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) called for the break-up of megabanks and a firmer separation between Main Street banking and Wall Street trading. At the above link video excerpts are available. OK, now we need 99 more senators and hundreds of representatives to get on board.

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The Afghanistan speech that President Obama should give

Tom Dispatch writes the Afghanistan speech that President Obama should, but won't, give. Here are three excerpts:

We have no partner in Afghanistan. The control of the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai hardly extends beyond the embattled capital of Kabul. He himself has just been returned to office in a presidential election in which voting fraud on an almost unimaginably large scale was the order of the day.

. . . I have decided to send no more troops to Afghanistan. Beyond that, I believe it is in the national interest of the American people that this war, like the Iraq War, be drawn down. Over time, our troops and resources will be brought home in an orderly fashion, while we ensure that we provide adequate security for the men and women of our Armed Forces. Ours will be an administration that will stand or fall, as of today, on this essential position: that we ended, rather than extended, two wars.

But we must not be scared. America will not -- of this, as your president, I am convinced -- be a safer nation if it spends many hundreds of billions of dollars over many years, essentially bankrupting itself and exhausting its military on what looks increasingly like an unwinnable war. This is not the way to safety, but to national penury -- and I am unwilling to preside over an America heading in that direction.

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