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Every year, on Memorial Day, multiplex theaters across the United States should dedicate their biggest screen and their best sound system to showings of Saving Private Ryan.

No other film I’ve seen shows the terrible face of war nearly as well as this one. Everyone old enough to vote should see it. It’s an education for those fortunate enough never to have served in battle themselves.

No television can do this movie justice. This is what the big screen was made for.

It would be a fine Memorial Day tradition to try, year after year, to understand the sacrifices that have been made to safeguard our country and our liberty.

The New Yorker considers Unconventional War. The short piece covers a little of the history of the Geneva Conventions, and the Bush administration’s decision to ignore them.

[T]he Geneva Conventions have been surprisingly successful, given that the activity they regulate is in many ways inherently lawless. The reason is not just that gentlemen prefer to slaughter each other in the most ethical way possible. To the extent that the Conventions have been observed, they have been observed mainly because it was in the interest, mutual or individual, of warring entities to observe them. If you took their soldiers prisoner, they might take yours; and if you tortured theirs they might torture yours. If you made a habit of torturing and killing enemy prisoners, then enemy soldiers and enemy units would be reluctant to surrender. As long as the other side was still strong enough to fight, mistreatment of prisoners was, in theory, deterrable; once the other side was too weak to carry on, it was pointless.

I’ve just watched A Man for All Seasons. I recommend it highly. The following scene between Sir Thomas More and hot-headed Will Roper sent a shiver of recognition down my spine:

Roper: So, now you give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down (and you’re just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

What seems to be coming out of the administration is the idea that public information is a dangerous thing.
—Tom Connors, Society of American Archivists

The Bush-Cheney administration may be the most secretive in U.S. history.

Soon after the administration took office, Vice-President Cheney chaired a National Energy Policy Development Group, which met in secret and issued policies that seemed purpose-built to satisfy a handful of big Bush-Cheney contributors. National energy policies affect the economy, the environment, and our relations with oil-producing nations, but the administration has fought hard to prevent the American people from learning how those policies were decided, and who was invited to participate in the process. They’ve fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep their secrets.

Bush’s Executive Order 13223 attempts to repeal, by executive fiat, the 1978 Presidential Records Act. It lays down new rules to prevent journalists, historians and other scholars from seeing any presidential documents that a sitting or former president doesn’t want them to see. The shroud of secrecy can outlive a former president—he can pass his veto power over the release of information on to his heirs.

The administration resisted the creation of an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Congress created the commission anyway, and the administration’s consistent response has been to throw roadblocks into the commission’s course. For a long time they refused to allow testimony from White House officials. Under tremendous public pressure, they eventually allowed a few officials to testify, in exchange for guarantees that the commission would not seek testimony from others. The administration is blocking access to Clinton-era documents that might show what the government knew, and when the government knew it. Clinton wants the documents released to the commission. Bush wants more secrecy.

Emily Miller, deputy press secretary to Secretary of State Colin Powell, “pulled the plug” while Powell was being interviewed for the Sunday morning news program Meet the Press. I don’t know what she was trying to hide, but her bizarre behavior is entirely in keeping with Bush-Cheney policy.

The entire administration seems to be afflicted with a kind of gag reflex.

A good line, from a Slashdot comment by someone who calls himself “Frigid Monkey“:

No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don’t feel safe.

Rush Limbaugh stands behind U.S. soldiers who are carrying on Saddam Hussein’s unfinished work torturing and degrading the Iraqi people:

I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?

Paul Simon can be spooky, sometimes. There Goes Rhymin’ Simon came out in 1973. One song, titled Learn How to Fall, includes this lyric:

Oh and it’s the same old story
Ever since the world began
Everybody got the runs for glory
Nobody stop and scrutinize the plan

On the same album, the song American Tune has these lines:

Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

Don’t we all.

We are in danger of losing something much more important than just the war in Iraq. We are in danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world. I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is a very smart guy. I don’t always agree with him, but I’ve followed him long enough to realize that he’s right more often than I am. When he says something like this, I start to worry.

Much of Abraham Lincoln’s prose reads like poetry.

Lincoln taught himself, mostly. He learned to write by reading. He spent a lot of time with Shakespeare and the Bible.

Several years ago, I read a two-volume collection of Lincoln’s letters and speeches. What impressed me more than his rhetorical flourishes and biblical cadences was the clarity of his thinking.

At a time when politicians of all stripes thumped the Bible in support of their pet projects, Lincoln was unusual. He didn’t lean much on Received Wisdom. He had a strong moral sense, which was remarkably consistent throughout his public life. But he was a courthouse lawyer: he built his arguments on facts, which could be tested by rules of evidence, and on step-by-step reasoning which could be tested by rules of logic.

Nowadays, presidential candidates of all stripes have teams of political advisors who read the polls and deliver the party line for every issue, and teams of speech writers to deliver polished sound bites that aim for the gut and scrupulously avoid the mind.

Lincoln made up his own mind, and wrote his own speeches. One of the most important speeches of his career was delivered at Cooper Union in New York City in February 1860.

Tonight the actor Sam Waterston will deliver the speech in that same hall. C-SPAN2 will broadcast a tape of the event at 6 PM on May 23.

I got out my book and re-read the speech. It’s a good one. Some references may be a little confusing. For example, southern Democrats derided the young anti-slavery Republican Party by constantly referring to them as “Black Republicans.”

You can read the full text of the speech here or here. Come May 23, you can watch Waterston’s reading on C-SPAN2. It may make you dissatisfied with today’s sound bite speechifying. That’s not a bad thing.

Michael Moore is a documentarian in about the same way that Rush Limbaugh is a journalist.

They’re comedians. Just like documentarians and journalists, they work with facts. But Moore and Limbaugh each have a target market. Facts are something to be carefully selected, pruned, clipped, twisted and distorted, if necessary, to make that target audience laugh, clap, cheer, and feel good about themselves and their prejudices. Neither is interested in getting to the bottom of things. Neither wants to dig out the real truth. It’s just not their job.

Still, I’m sorry to see the Walt Disney Co. blocking the release of Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. Coming right on the heels of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s blackout of ABC News’ Nightline program last week, I’m starting to worry about giant corporations playing nanny, and deciding which facts or ideas we’re permitted to hear.

It worries me. Even if Michael Moore is a clown.

Thirty-four years ago today, I was a senior in high school. It was a Monday.

The Vietnam War was in full swing. I was not yet eligible for the military draft, but that day was fast approaching. My own opinion of the war was still in flux. A year or two earlier I had forcefully told a friend that we should never settle for anything less than total victory in Vietnam, and that I would never change my mind about that. But in the meantime I had read a couple books about the history of Vietnam and our involvement in the war there. I was no longer full of certainty. I had felt a little queasy the previous Thursday evening, when President Nixon went on television to announce that he was sending U.S. troops into Cambodia, asserting that “This is not an invasion of Cambodia.”

The day after Nixon’s speech, a wave of anti-war protests began on college campuses around the country. On Friday night, an anti-war rally at Kent State University devolved into a small-scale riot, with a number of windows broken in businesses near campus. Peaceful and violent protests were breaking out all over. On Saturday night, during an anti-war rally at Kent State, the old ROTC building was set afire. Firemen responding to the fire were attacked by some in the crowd. It was one of many such incidents nationwide.

I had no affection whatever for rioters or antiwar protesters who called policemen “pigs” and soldiers returning from Vietnam “baby-killers.” I still approved of President Nixon’s call in his 1969 Inaugural Address that we must “lower our voices” in order to “surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.”

On Sunday, Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes called out the National Guard at Kent State. In a speech, he said of anti-war organizers:

They’re worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They’re the worst type of people we harbor in America.

There was a primary election scheduled for Tuesday, May 5. Governor Rhodes was seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. He probably thought that stirring up some righteous hatred in a fiercely divided electorate couldn’t hurt his chances. (A few weeks earlier, California Governor Ronald Reagan had said of campus protests, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.”)

Thirty-four years ago today, at about noon, the National Guard fixed bayonets and fired tear gas to break up a peaceful anti-war rally on a large grassy area on the Kent State campus known as the Commons. Marching up a hill named Blanket Hill (for the student custom of spreading out blankets there to enjoy a fine spring day), the Guard cleared the Commons. The protestors scattered, some to the veranda of Taylor Hall, which straddled Blanket Hill, and some to a parking lot separated from the Commons by Taylor Hall and Blanket Hill.

General Robert Canterbury concluded that the crowd had been dispersed, and ordered the Guardsmen back to the Commons. At about 12:24 PM, about a dozen withdrawing Guardsmen near the top of Blanket Hill turned in unison, aimed, and fired into the crowd in the parking lot. They fired 67 shots in 13 seconds, and hit 13 people, all Kent State students.

The two closest victims were on the Taylor Hall veranda, 71 feet and 110 feet from the gunmen. The next closest victim was 200 feet away.

Four of the thirteen victims were killed. Jeffrey Miller, 265 feet away, took a bullet in the face. Allison Krause, 343 feet away, was hit in the side, and did not immediately realize she had been shot. William Schroeder, 382 feet away, was an ROTC student who had probably come to witness the anti-war rally out of curiosity. Sandra Scheuer, 390 feet away, was probably on her way to class, and not a participant in the anti-war rally at all.

On May 4, 1970, my views about the Vietnam War were in flux. They gelled very soon thereafter. My opinions were fixed less by the shootings themselves than by the way pro-war politicians ignored, excused or even celebrated the bloodshed.

Starting thirty-four years ago today, I chose sides.

Bit by bit, imperceptibly, we are constantly entering the amazing World of the Future.

The BBC reports on research to develop living replacement teeth.