AMERICAN GOVERNMENT FINALE Go out some clear night, away from Tucson (and you have to go further away every year), and look up at the stars. You will see a portion of a universe that contains billions of galaxies, not unlike ours, each with billions of stars, not unlike our sun. The outer limits of the universe remain unknown. The nearest quasar is thought to be 12 billion light years away. That means light traveling from it at about 186,000 miles per second would take 12 billion years to reach earth. That also means the universe is at least 12 billion years old. During a few thousand of those years, man and woman have lived on the planet earth. Most of the story of their lives here is an unhappy one characterized by famine, disease, natural disasters, intolerance, persecution, torture, slavery, bigotry, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, robbery, rape, murder, and, mankind's seemingly favorite pastime, war. There are a few bright moments in this otherwise dark and depressing story, e.g., the civilizations of ancient Greece and, for a while, Rome; the works of Michaelangelo; the paintings of Monet; the plays of Shakespeare; the symphonies of Beethoven; the nocturnes of Chopin; the operas of Verdi. One of the few bright moments has to be the four months in the summer of 1787 when an extraordinarily gifted group of men met in Philadelphia and hammered out the Constitution of the United States. Their work was far from perfect, but they created a system of government that has, in 213 years, provided the conditions in which women and men could live and prosper in freedom. Perhaps more importantly, they created a society in which people could work for change, to seek to improve both their society and their government. The record of that search for improvement is far from perfect. On the negative side, poverty, drugs, and desperation still stalk our inner cities, opportunity is not equally available to all; 47 million Americans have no health care; and corporations exert increasing influence on all aspects of our society from what is done by our government to what is printed in our newspapers to what is taught in our schools. Still, the history of our nation, marred as it is with slavery, bigotry, war, crime, corruption, and assassination, is a progressive story. We eliminated slavery, and we extended, eventually, full participatory rights to African Americans and women. We have created the most heterogeneous republic in history, and we dominate the world stage because of our economic and military strength and because of the power of our ideas. Ironically, at home our national government is under continuing attack and subjected to ridicule. Polls show support levels for the President and Congress near to all time lows. People are encouraged to think that government, particularly national government, is the main problem in our society and that we can cure all of our problems if we just cut taxes and eliminate programs. In the sixties we looked to government to provide the solutions to our problems, to aspired to eliminate racial and gender discrimination, to eliminate poverty, to clean up our water and our environment (polluted by centuries of unbridled capitalism); to provide health insurance, affordable housing, and jobs for all our citizens; to help the poor nations of the world through the Peace Corps; and to stimulate the arts and the humanities through government grants. John F. Kennedy challenged us all in his lone inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." And Lyndon Johnson launched the war against poverty. No problem seemed to big for us to solve. Where is that sort of oratory, leadership, today? Politicians use focus groups and polls to find out what we do and don't want to hear and tailor their messages accordingly. (Even Bill Bradley, when he ran for President in 2000, took a poll to see if the public was ready for honesty.) They spend huge amounts of their time raising the millions upon millions of dollars it takes to run for office. In their campaigns the politicians attack each other, appeal to fear and ignorance, divide to conquer. They attack judges, the ACLU, environmentalists, and advocates of women's rights, gay rights, and affirmative action. Like every other period, this one is temporary. The pendulum will swing the other way, in fact it may already have started. The Democratic party has taken control of both houses of Congress, and may increase its margins there in the 2008 elections. The 2008 presidential nominee for the Democratic party is either going to be a woman or an African American man, and one of those candidates, Barrack Obama, is appealling to our better nature, trying to unite and not divide us. It may surprise you to learn this, but I did not choose to spend so much of my career teaching American government at the university level because of the extraordinarily high salary ir the glamour of being a lecturer. I chose to teach because I like being around young people, I enjoy serving as a mentor, and I like being on a campus. But, more importantly, I chose to teach because I wanted to inspire you to be more interested in your government and to take more seriously the responsibilities of citizenship in a republic, the job Ben Franklin said was the highest office in the land. You are the citizens and the leaders of the future. I want you to go forth and participate, armed with the knowledge you have of the founding period and the intentions of men like James Madison. Ask tough questions. Fight and stand for honest and integrity. Work to make us a better society. Franklin was asked as he left the convention what we had. "A republic," he responded, "if you can keep it." Whether we keep it depends on all of us, particularly on you and the generation that will follow you. Our country faces some of the most difficult problems in its history: The threats of terrorism and drugs and the danger they pose to our civil liberties as the government seeks more power to deal with them. The increasing imbalance of wealth with one percent of the population controlling almost fifty percent of the nation's wealth The conflict between the interest we all have in seeing the benefits of freedom and justice (rule of law) extended to all of the world and the interest our immensely powerful international corporations have in penetrating new markets and expanding their profits. How we resolve these and other problems will depend on the choices we make. Now more than ever we need to work hard to find out the facts so that we can make the right choices. For example, How do we eliminate domestic terrorist threats without eliminating our freedom? What is the best way to deal with the drug problem? Who profits from the drug trade? What influence do those who profit have on our government? Do the FBI and the CIA really need more authority? Are there sufficient checks to prevent abuse of power? Why was Madison so concerned about distribution of wealth? What would he think about the distribution today? How much does our country spend on welfare for individuals compared to other western societies? How much does our country spend on welfare for corporations copmared to how much it spends on welfare for individuals? Why have individual taxes crept slowly up since World War II while business taxes have moved steadily downward? Why did E.J.Gallo, among the top contributors to both the Democrat and Republican parties (and to Bob Dole and Bill Clinton in 1996) get a $1.8 million grant from our government? How much did Haliburton conrtibute to the Bush Cheney campaigns, and how much has it made off of the Iraq war? How much does our country spend on defense? Hwo does it compare to other countries? How powerful is the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address? How much money do defense industries contribute to our political process each year? Why are we spending more than the pentagon even asks for at a time when we are cutting aid to the poor? How much does our country spend on foreign aid? How much compared to other countries? Where does it go (to whom) and who benefits? What percentage of our spending is for foreign aid? What role does our CIA play abroad? What is the School for the Americas and what does it do? Who benefits from free trade agreements like GATT/WTO and NAFTA and who loses? It is not easy to find the answer to these questions, but, thanks to the Internet, it is getting a lot easier. As you move on from the university, I hope you will commit yourselves to taking seriously throughout your lives the responsibilities of citizenship, one of the most crucial of which is to be an informed participant in our democracy, and that you will work in your communities to encourage others to do so as well; that you will aspire to that high category of service that James Madison exemplified so well, that of citizen statesman; and that, as you exercise the responsibilities of that high office, you will be guided by the spirit of the words that Robert Kennedy used to inspire my generation, "Some people see things as they are and ask 'why'; others see things as they could be and ask 'why not'?"