Guns and Violence: An American Problem

Nine year-old Eddie Smith* walked home from school on a sunny spring afternoon in 1992 and headed in the direction of his grandmother’s apartment in Barry Farms, a housing project in southeast Washington, D.C. Eddie’s grandmother had lived in the Anacostia section of Washington her entire life and was wise to the dangers that confronted the city’s youthful inhabitants. She frequently admonished Eddie to come straight home after school, determined to keep him under her watchful eye. Eddie cut through a grassy field leading to his home on Sumner Road, when he noticed Kenny Copeland, a 29 year-old drug dealer who drove fancy cars, wore lots of gold jewelry, and flashed wads of cash, driving down the street in his gold Pathfinder SUV. Eddie watched from 50 feet away as Copeland came to a screeching halt, jumped out and, in broad daylight, walked briskly to a parked car, where Lamar Jones* was seated listening to rap music. Copeland pulled from his waist a .45 caliber pistol, pointed at the driver’s side window, and pumped six bullets into Jones’ head. Copeland ran back to his SUV and sped off, leaving exhaust fumes and a dead body in his wake. Three days later, the family of Lamar Jones gathered at the local Baptist Church and mourned the death of their beloved family member. The family wept and wailed in agony, not understanding why God had taken their son and brother, nephew and grandson, whose life was cut short at the age of 25.

Two years later, Eddie Smith was the government’s sole eyewitness in the case of United States v. Kenneth Copeland. I was the prosecutor. On the day of jury selection, about two hours before opening statements were set to begin, Eddie’s uncle was in the witness room with the two FBI agents who had painstakingly worked the case for more than a year as part of a Cold Case Squad Task Force. Based on information supplied by confidential sources and old fashioned detective work, the agents had learned the identity of Eddie and his grandmother. After much soul searching, persuasion, and offers to relocate them to a safer neighborhood with better schools, miles away from the drug-infested, crime ridden streets of Barry Farms, Eddie and his grandmother agreed to testify. But on the day of trial, Eddie’s uncle would have none of it. He said there was no way Eddie was getting on the witness stand. My case was about to fall apart.

During the lunch break, while anticipating what I was to tell the judge about the government’s readiness for trial, and before resuming jury selection, we convinced the uncle that allowing Eddie to testify was the right and necessary thing to do, that otherwise Kenny Copeland would kill again and that, without citizens willing to stand up to these thugs, entire neighborhoods like Barry Farms would remain unsafe. In the end, Eddie courageously testified and identified Copeland as the killer. Despite the best efforts of Mark Rochon, a prominent D.C. defense attorney who failed to shake Eddie on cross-examination, the jury found Copeland guilty in less than an hour. Six weeks later, Copeland was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The Copeland prosecution was a success, if such a word can be applied to the daily toil of murder and intimidation that occurs in our nation’s cities. In the early 1990’s, murder trials similar to Copeland’s case, in which witnesses were scarce and reluctant, happened every day in D.C. Superior Court; funerals laying to rest sons and daughters before their prime occurred several times a week. The city was in the midst of a crack epidemic accompanied by turf wars and a slew of drug-related shootings that left hundreds of young black men dead and wounded on the streets of the nation’s capital. Lamar Jones was just one of 450 murder victims gunned down each year on the streets of Washington. The Metropolitan Police Department solved less than half of the murders in those years – the District of Columbia was called the murder capital of the United States – as witnesses refused to testify and the anti-snitch culture took root. Most of the murders occurred in the poorest sections of southeast D.C., far from the view of tourists and the plush confines of Georgetown and Dupont Circle. Lawyers, sociologists, journalists, and policy makers debated the root causes of the drug underworld and the cultural influences that contributed to a de-sensitization of violence and dehumanization of its victims. We debated mandatory minimum sentences and demanded that politicians “get tough on crime,” yet the shootings continued.

Sixteen years later, hundreds of young men and women continue to die every year in the District by gunfire and, according to the Centers for Disease Control, over 12,000 Americans die of gunshot wounds annually. Of all industrialized countries, the United States exceeds each in gun-related deaths and violent crime. Despite the number of prescriptions offered to prevent the violence, it is the easy access to guns that make the shootings so prevalent. The strict gun control laws of the District of Columbia had little effect, since anyone could cross the Potomac River and purchase a firearm in Virginia with little effort and no identification. That Kenny Copeland, who already had a murder conviction under his belt – as a juvenile he killed his stepbrother – could so easily obtain a concealable handgun with which to murder Lamar Jones, speaks volumes to this pure insanity.

As a prosecutor in Washington and later Philadelphia, I considered gun violence in America a uniquely urban problem. But a recent article in the journal Pediatrics proves otherwise. A study of gun deaths in the United States from 1999 to 2006 found that children in the most rural areas of the United States die from guns at the same rate as children from the inner city. Although homicides are more prevalent among city youth, gun suicides and accidental gun deaths even the score among rural youth. The study examined data on 15,000 homicides, 7,000 suicides, and 1,400 accidental shootings that occurred over a seven-year period among those aged 19 and younger. The researchers found that children in rural areas die from guns at about the same rate as urban youth – about four deaths per 100,000 children. A previous study showed that adult gun deaths followed similar patterns.

We live in a country that romanticizes gun ownership and glorifies violence. We fought and won a violent revolution, survived a bloody civil war, and forcefully settled the frontier on the backs of native Americans. Today, not a day goes by that we don’t witness gun violence on our television screens and in the movies. The newspapers of all our major cities report tragic gun deaths virtually every day of the year. Yet when someone attempts to question the wisdom of guns and gun ownership, or suggests some modest restrictions on the types of weapons that can be sold or whom can lawfully purchase them, the gun lobby and Second Amendment advocates come out of the woodwork.

Gun proponents contend that gun ownership serves two primary purposes: (1) self-defense from criminals, and (2) protection against political tyranny. Neither contention stands up to scrutiny in today’s world. I understand the desire of some law abiding people to own a gun. If I thought my family was in danger and that a gun could protect them, my first instinct would be to obtain a gun. Emotionally, it is completely understandable. A rational look at the evidence, however, suggests that gun ownership makes one’s family less safe, not more so. Two long-standing, peer-reviewed studies in The New England Journal of Medicine, in 1986 and 1993, found that having a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be the victim of a homicide (with the perpetrator most likely related to or intimately acquainted with the victim) and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide.

To provide maximum protection against an intruder, a gun must remain loaded and within arm’s reach at all times. A gun safely stored in the closet, separated from its ammunition, provides little help in a fast-moving emergency. Not surprisingly, however, research has shown that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or a friend, than an intruder. There can be little dispute that the risk of a loaded weapon in the home greatly exceeds the benefits. (I am not talking about hunting rifles or those in law enforcement who need to have weapons in their possession on most occasions).

The notion that private gun ownership will protect us from political oppression makes even less sense. Private gun ownership was very common under Saddam Hussein’s regime and gun ownership was legalized in Germany five years before Hitler’s rise. In neither case was political tyranny prevented or even diminished. By contrast, although guns are banned in the United Kingdom, the British (call me crazy) enjoy far more freedom than the citizens of Saddam’s Iraq or Hitler’s Germany. And should the U.S. military, with its tanks, fighter jets, and nuclear arsenal, someday declare martial law, that .22 caliber pistol in your closet will do you little good. The best protection against political tyranny is the U.S. Constitution, a strong press, and three branches of government.

Nor does gun control mean that only the criminals will have guns. Today in the United States, the criminals can get a gun anytime they want. States like Pennsylvania and Virginia won’t even consider restricting gun purchases to one gun a month. So a straw purchaser (someone who can legally buy a handgun and will not have any issue with background checks) can go to a gun store, buy multiple handguns, and sell them on the street to convicted felons. It is not legal, but it happens every day, and many of these guns end up being used to commit homicides and other gun-related crimes. The easier it is for everyone to obtain guns, the more prevalent and lethal are the guns in the hands of criminals.

Although the Supreme Court recently instructed that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own firearms and is not restricted to the ability of citizens to form a well-regulated militia (despite 200 years of case precedent to the contrary), it makes no sense that, in many states, it is more difficult to obtain a driver’s license than to buy a gun. In an ideal world, except for police officers and active military personnel, there really is no good reason to permit the civilian population to possess concealable handguns, assault weapons, and cop-killer bullets. Few people dispute the government’s right to ban the private sale of dangerous chemicals, hand grenades and bombs, and all sorts of inherently dangerous items. Why are guns so protected? What does it say about the maturation of American society that gun ownership is considered, in some circles, more sacrosanct than home ownership? If the Second Amendment really does mean that individuals are entitled to own as many handguns as they like, then it is time to amend the Constitution.

Although I would like to see the elimination of many civilian-owned firearms, I understand that this goal is politically unrealistic and, given the historical prevalence of guns in American society, not practical. But there are sensible, reasonable restrictions on gun ownership that everyone should embrace. First, we should have a national system for registering guns and ammunition. Second, instant background checks must be made a priority, and the flaws of existing laws should be corrected. Anyone with a prior criminal record, or mental health issues, should not be allowed to purchase a gun, period. Third, gun purchasers should be required to pass a test on gun safety; obtaining a permit to own or possess a gun should not be easier than obtaining a driver’s license. Just as drivers must prove they know the rules of the road and can handle a car safely before they are entitled to drive, gun owners should be required to prove they can handle a gun safely and lawfully. Fourth, gun owners, like car owners, should be required to purchase insurance, to compensate victims and society from intentional or accidental injury caused by a gun's use. Fifth, there should be stiffer sentences for illegal gun possession and straw purchasing, so that those who are not entitled to possess a gun (e.g., convicted criminals) will be deterred or prevented from doing so, or pay a steep price when they are caught. Sixth, no state should permit anyone to purchase more than one gun a month, in order to prevent straw purchases and the circumvention of other gun laws. And finally, all loopholes that apply to gun shows and private gun dealers must be eliminated. The laws should not vary from state-to-state or allow any exceptions based on the nature of the gun seller.

Kenny Copeland will be eligible for parole before 2020, free to return to Anacostia and walk the streets of D.C. Will the political forces of the gun industry and the NRA continue to promote the myth of a John Wayne America, where people like Copeland and thousands of other drug dealers, thugs, and violent criminals, have easy access to firearms, assault weapons, and the instruments of death? Or will the forces of reason prevail, those who would balance Second Amendment rights with reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of firearms? Let’s hope, for the sake of victims and their families, it is the latter.

* - Denotes that the name has been changed for purposes of this essay.

In Search of a Good Justice: Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court

A few weeks ago, I knew nothing about Elena Kagan, the U.S. Solicitor General who President Obama has nominated to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. My gut tells me, however, that she possesses the attributes we want in a Justice – an open mind, intellectual depth, a willingness to listen to opposing views and to seek consensus, a non-ideological approach to the law, one driven by reason, fairness, and a respect for democracy. Kagan has an impeccable resume, having clerked for the Supreme Court, taught at the nation’s finest law schools, and served as a presidential domestic policy adviser, Dean of Harvard Law School, and now Solicitor General of the United States.

Kagan does not have a prolific written record from which to determine where she stands on important legal issues, but she has known Obama since their days together teaching law at the University of Chicago, and reportedly shares Obama’s cautious and pragmatic judicial philosophy. She has politically progressive instincts, with a cerebral, yet practical approach to legal questions. Her academic writings, it is said, are completely non-ideological. When she served as Dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan was a forceful critic of the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian service members, but she also was instrumental in bringing more intellectual diversity and conservative legal scholars to a law school previously mired in ideological divisiveness and political correctness. And while she greatly admired her former boss, Justice Thurgood Marshall, she has expressed ambivalence toward his jurisprudence, a brand of judicial activism anachronistic by today’s standards.

What makes a good Supreme Court Justice? What traits should we look for in a person when selecting someone to fill this all-powerful, life-tenured post? When the Founding Fathers met in the summer of 1787 to draw up a Constitution, they gave seemingly little thought to the judiciary. Article III of the Constitution says nothing about the qualifications of judges and almost nothing about the mechanics of the judicial process, only that “[t]he judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time establish.” And while Article II empowers the Executive to appoint justices of the Supreme Court “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,” the Founders offered little additional guidance.

History, if not the Constitution itself, has dictated that federal courts fulfill weighty and far-reaching responsibilities, more than any other judicial branch in the world. The importance of the Supreme Court to the daily lives of all Americans and to the functioning of our democracy owes its origins to an opinion in 1803 by Chief Justice John Marshall declaring a federal statute unconstitutional. “It is emphatically the province of the judiciary to determine what the law is,” Marshall wrote in the case of Marbury v. Madison. In holding that the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 conflicted with Article III of the Constitution, Marshall considered it “the essence of judicial duty” to follow the Constitution. He declared “that a law repugnant to the constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.” These seemingly non-controversial positions were unsettled at the time, as the Constitution said nothing about which branch of government had the authority to address the constitutional validity of federal and state law. Marshall’s bold and visionary ruling risked a constitutional crisis, for had the Executive or Legislative branches not accepted the Court’s self-declared supremacy on questions of law, it could have altered irreversibly the young republic. The ruling has withstood the test of time, and today stands as the classic expression of judicial review in American constitutional law. It is precisely why we care about the character, intellect, and judgment of the men and women seated on our highest court.

There exist many conflicting views on the proper role of the courts, from strict constructionists and those who believe in discerning the text’s original intent, to those who believe in a “living” Constitution that changes with the times. In U.S. history, the Supreme Court has been a source of great inspiration as a symbol of liberty and justice for all, as in 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education held that segregated schools violated the Equal Protection Clause. It also has been the source of embarrassment and shame, as in 1857, when the Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that people of African descent, forcibly imported into the United States and held as slaves, were not “citizens of a state” within the meaning of the Constitution.

If confirmed, Elena Kagan will become one of nine individuals responsible for interpreting and applying a document that embodies 18th century ideas about the rights of man and the powers and limitations of government. It is a text written in a slower, agrarian time that now must be applied to the exigencies of a rapidly changing industrial and technological society, which faces issues and circumstances the Founders did not and could not envision.

The most important, if perhaps the most elusive, quality of a Justice is, quite simply, judiciousness – the ability to judge dispassionately and impersonally. A justice represents neither her political party, her geographic region, nor her ethnicity, but only the Constitution. When Benjamin Cardozo, one of the great judicial minds of the Twentieth Century, was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1932, he faced resistance in part because New York already had two justices on the Court. In defending the nomination, one senator noted, “Cardozo belongs to Idaho as much as to New York,” that there is but one U.S. Constitution and but one national law. In an essay published in The New Republic nearly forty years ago, historian Henry Steele Commager wrote, “We do not want judges who confess a regional view, a partisan view, a racial view, or an economic view; we want judges who express a commonwealth view. This may be a counsel for perfection, but if we are allowed to strive for perfection anywhere, it is in the judiciary.”

John Marshall said that “a constitution is framed for ages to come and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as any human institution can approach it.” But the Constitution contains concepts like due process, equal protection, and liberty; concepts that mean different things to different people, and which depend on the particular circumstances. When the nation awakened to its history of racial oppression and applied the ideals of equality and due process to the challenge of segregated schools, whites’ only businesses, and restrictive covenants, it took justices who foresaw the insincerity of the “separate but equal” doctrine and who truly believed in a colorblind Constitution. In the sexual and reproductive privacy cases of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, it took justices willing to infer a right to privacy as essential to ordered liberty in the due process clause, in order to forbid the government from intruding into our bedrooms and interfering with our most intimate, private decisions.

Elena Kagan has the ability to process diverse points of view and to mediate between different factions. But does anyone really know what her judicial philosophy is, or whether she has a “judicial philosophy”? It seems that Kagan, like Obama, is not enamored of the judicial activism practiced by certain adherents of the left or the right, those who put their faith in the courts to affect social and political change, outpacing and moving ahead of (or pushing back) our democratic institutions. Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker has suggested that “Obama’s jurisprudence may rest less on any legal theory or nomenclature than on a more primal political skill – the ability to keep winning elections.”

“It used to be,” Obama remarked last month, “that the notion of an activist judge was somebody who ignored the will of Congress, ignored democratic processes, and tried to impose judicial solutions on problems instead of letting the process work itself through politically.” In the 1960’s and 1970’s, judicial activism was a liberal concept that emphasized racial and gender equality, enforcing through the courts – through expansive interpretations of Due Process and Equal Protection – what could not be obtained through the legislative process. The social and political progress made through the rulings of the Warren and Burger eras was mostly necessary at the time, particularly on issues of race, and the country is better off for it. Nevertheless, an expansive view of constitutional rights, particularly when such rights are implied and not found within the four corners of the text, poses philosophical difficulties in a democracy, when unelected justices are essentially creating new rights and entitlements that the elected representatives of the people have not embraced.

In earlier years, judicial activists were conservatives opposed to legislative protections for consumers, children, and employees, striking down laws that violated the “freedom of contract”, a right stated nowhere in the text of the Constitution but implied by the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. Today’s judicial activists also are conservative – “movement judges” like Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas – who set aside judicial restraint to overturn long-standing precedent and laws with which they disagree. The Citizens United case, for example, applied an overly broad reading of the First Amendment to corporate and union political contributions and voided a duly enacted statute that placed limits on such contributions. Such activist, results-oriented rulings, whether from the left or the right, pose the same troubling questions for a democratic republic.

The constitutional doctrine of substantive due process – from which most judicial activism, left or right, stems – originated in the late 19th century, when the Court barred government action that abridged one’s “freedom of contract” or “liberty of enterprise” and thus restricted the ability of government, through its democratically elected representatives, to regulate private industry. Certain conservative justices believed that the “freedom of contract” was implied in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of liberty (i.e., that no state may deprive someone of liberty without due process of law). Progressive critics countered that, through an application of “freedom of contract,” unelected justices imposed their personal economic and political philosophies on the populace, acting as a “super legislature” by overturning the will of the people as reflected in democratically enacted laws. Many progressive judicial voices – men such as Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, Charles Evans Hughes, and Harlan Fiske Stone, among others – criticized what they perceived as extra-constitutional jurisprudence.

In the mid-20th century, liberal judicial activists adopted an expansive notion of substantive due process for their own purposes, particularly in the area of civil rights (they similarly adopted expansive notions of procedural due process on matters of criminal and administrative law). In ending segregation in public schools, a unanimous Court in Brown v. Board of Education used sweeping language that, while morally and politically just, had no firm textual basis in the Constitution. Brown led to decades of expansive applications of Equal Protection and Due Process that fueled criticism from the political right, who conveniently ignored the prior brand of judicial activism. Conservatives are particularly adamant about the “right to privacy” cases – symbolized most boldly by Roe v. Wade – contending that, like “freedom of contract,” there is no explicit “right to privacy” in the four corners of the Constitution.

Some leftist legal scholars contend that there is a constitutional right to economic equality, and to housing, health care, and many other areas of life. The further one advances such arguments in the courts, the less democratic the law becomes and, at some point, the legitimacy of the courts must be questioned. Most constitutional principles should not be taken to extremes. While it is impossible to determine the original intent of the Framers on most constitutional provisions – they were far too smart and politically astute to attempt to draft a constitution that could anticipate every issue – it is important to understand the historical context in which the Constitution originated and to remain true to the spirit and principles of its text. That the concept of liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment would encompass a right to sexual and reproductive privacy is, to me, a very reasonable interpretation of the textual language of the Due Process Clause. Changing societal mores, advances in technology, greater enlightenment on social and medical issues are proper considerations in discerning the meaning and application of the Constitution’s enduring principles. On the other hand, imposing one’s economic ideology onto constitutional doctrines to void democractically enacted laws (as some on the right would do), or to force economic equality on all aspects of society through the courts (as some on the left would do) are equally misguided notions of constitutional jurisprudence.

Obama understands this. In choosing Elena Kagan, as with his choice of Sonia Sotomayor, Obama is not seeking a justice with an overly broad view of constitutional rights. According to Richard Epstein, who served as interim dean of the University of Chicago Law School when Obama taught there, “Obama has nothing much he wants from the courts. He wants them to stay away from the statutes he passes, and he wants solidity on affirmative action and abortion. That’s it.” Obama’s jurisprudence essentially comes down to, “leave me alone on economic issues and protect me on civil rights.”

Regardless of one’s constitutional and judicial philosophy, there is no aspect of our economic, social, and political life completely unaffected by the Supreme Court. Who fills its nine seats is too important for an informed citizenry to ignore. Of course, how a justice will evolve once given the chance to shape a nation is impossible to predict. Earl Warren and William Brennan, among the most liberal activist judges of the past century, were appointed by a Republican President, as was Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade. President Kennedy’s sole appointment to the Court, Byron White, turned out to be a disappointment to liberals. In 1986, Justice White authored Bowers v. Hardwick, a deplorable opinion that upheld the right of the government to criminalize private, consensual homosexual behavior (a beautifully written dissent by Justice Blackmun, and a separate dissent by Justice Stevens, would eventually become the prevailing constitutional view when Hardwick was more recently overruled).

It is clear that, since Marbury v. Madison, when the Supreme Court decidedly became the final arbiter of the Constitution and the limits of federal power, there have been, from the left and the right, varying degrees of judicial rule-making and differing interpretations of constitutional provisions. This is understandable given the human nature of the Court as an institution. The conservatives presently serving on the Supreme Court, for example, believe in a far more sweeping view of the Second Amendment than judges and scholars – including the Founders – ever applied. It is a form of judicial activism of the worst kind to conclude, as many gun proponents do, that Congress cannot ban the sale of assault weapons or place reasonable restrictions on the private ownership of deadly weapons. Neither side is pure on constitutional issues – ideologues on the left or the right simply do not make for good justices. But in choosing a justice, the President and the Congress must be attuned to how a justice’s world view, concepts of judicial restraint, and ideological leanings will translate into the decision making process in real life cases.

What we will think of Elena Kagan twenty or thirty years from now is anyone’s guess. But if she retains a cautious pragmatism and a fidelity to the Constitution that does not ignore the realities of life; if she has an open mind, is willing to listen to all sides of an argument; if she maintains a sense of fairness, compassion, and justice and a healthy respect for history, judicial precedent and the democratic process, she may indeed become a justice who serves with pride and distinction.

America and Energy: A Failure of Vision

In the fall semester of my senior year, I attended American University as part of its Washington Semester Program. The 1980 presidential race in full swing, I became caught up in the issues of the day, issues which defined the times and, in many ways, remain with us today. As in most election years, the economy was on everyone’s mind, with talk of high inflation, stagnant job growth, double digit interest rates, and a mounting federal deficit (though at $50 billion, it was a surplus by 21st century standards). The Iranian Hostage Crisis was approaching its 365th day and represented a failure in presidential leadership that defined the Carter Presidency. And the Energy Crisis, as illustrated by rising oil costs, long gas lines, and America’s growing dependence on Middle Eastern oil supplies demonstrated how closely related all three issues actually were.

1980 was the only presidential election year in which I did not vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. President Carter was a disappointment to me and, following Ted Kennedy’s inspirational speech at the Democratic National Convention, I salvaged little enthusiasm for Carter. Though I dreaded the thought of a Reagan Presidency, my vote was to be cast in the District of Columbia, whose three electoral votes were safely in the hands of the Democrats. So I voted with my heart, rather than my head, and pulled the lever for John Anderson, a liberal Republican Congressman from Illinois who ran as an Independent that year. Anderson, I knew, could not win, but he was intelligent, articulate, and talked about the issues that most needed to be addressed.

One of Anderson’s primary concerns was America’s dependence on foreign oil, which he viewed as both an economic and a national security issue. Starting in August 1979, Anderson called for a 50-cent-per-gallon energy conservation tax to encourage reduced gasoline consumption and to spur more fuel efficient automobiles, steps he believed essential to reduce our dependence on oil supplies from the Middle East and other politically unstable regions. Anderson recognized the regressive nature of such a tax and its short-term economic burdens, so he proposed that the new gas tax revenues be used to cut in half employee Social Security taxes, to increase Social Security benefits, and to compensate those not on payrolls. He also proposed to exempt farmers and allow tax credits for businesses unfairly penalized. Although ridiculed at the time by the two major parties, had they or Congress paid attention, we would today be driving more fuel efficient cars, importing less oil, enjoying cleaner air and experiencing fewer oil spills. And we would be far more advanced in our energy conservation efforts and the development of alternative, renewable energy sources.

Anderson’s candidacy caught my attention that summer when I read Energy Future: Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School (Random House, 1979), which surprisingly became a bestseller despite its 72 pages of footnotes. Edited by Harvard professors Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin and written in plain English, Energy Future applied a business school perspective to the energy industry, assessing costs and risks, priority and potential, incentives, profits, and the marketplace. It explained that the oil shocks of the 1970’s were predictable, a reflection of the shifts in market power between energy users and energy producers (as countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq accumulated exorbitant power over the consuming nations). The report examined the external costs of energy use – the environmental, social, and geopolitical costs – which it contended had to be considered for there to be an accurate market analysis of each industry sector. And it advocated for an energy policy that combined subsidies and tax incentives, but which emphasized a free market approach, to achieve energy independence without sacrificing economic growth.

According to the B-School whiz kids, for different reasons, none of the four conventional sources of domestic energy – oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear – could be relied upon to supply any more of our energy needs than these sources already did by the late 1970’s. Oil reserves in the United States were limited, and the potential for offshore drilling came with major environmental concerns and political barriers. Coal, while abundant in supply, brought with it serious labor-management disputes and a militant labor union, deadly health and safety risks, and huge environmental drawbacks. Building more nuclear reactors, while a potential source of relatively clean energy, was not politically viable in the United States due to the partial core meltdown that had occurred at Three Mile Island in March 1979, and given the growing public concerns with reactor safety (concerns heightened seven years later when a catastrophic accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine that dispersed large amounts of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere); and no reliable method had been developed to store the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. Nor could we realistically rely on natural gas to provide much more than 25% of America’s energy needs (about what this source supplied in 1979). While natural gas provided a clean source of domestically produced energy and lacked the problems associated with nuclear and coal, it involved huge production and exploration costs in an industry mired in price fluctuations, an uncertain cost structure, regional disputes, and a complex interstate pricing and regulatory scheme. Although we could count on some growth in natural gas production, it alone could not lessen our reliance on foreign oil.

Energy Future also examined the negative externalities, or external costs (social, political, environmental), of each energy source. The study demonstrated that, if external costs were factored into the pricing structures of the traditional energy sources, then coal, oil, and nuclear were among the most expensive energy sources, while the true costs of natural gas production contained too many uncertainties to provide a reliable measurement. The report suggested not that we give up on the traditional sources, only that such sources would not and could not solve our energy problems and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

What John Anderson and the Harvard Business School both realized was that the best hope for the United States, the solution that had the most chance of success and that made the most sense, economically and politically, was conservation (principally through increased energy efficiency) and development of solar energy. Anderson discussed policy measures similar to that set forth in Energy Future – tax credits and subsidies that provided market incentives promoting fuel efficiency, conservation, and the development of solar and other forms of renewable energy, which had high start-up costs but offered long-term solutions to America’s oil addiction and reliance on dirty and dangerous energy sources. It was essentially an attempt to place conservation and solar on an even footing with the traditional energy sources, all of which had benefitted for decades from subsidies and tax breaks. Although John Anderson tried to educate a reluctant populace, mainstream politicians and the two major political parties refused to listen.

Thirty years later, we find little has changed. America continues to suffer from a short-term perspective. When oil prices temporarily declined on global markets in the 1980’s, the Reagan administration backed expanded domestic oil production and Americans continued to drive large cars and SUVs, blast air conditioners, and play with motor boats and recreational vehicles. The United States, having lost its enthusiasm for a new approach to energy policy (President Reagan even ordered the removal of solar panels that President Carter had placed on the roof of the Department of Energy’s Forrestal Building), by the mid-1980’s once again returned to gas-guzzling cars and trucks. Today, our oil consumption has increased by over 40% and we remain as reliant as ever on foreign oil, as American dollars increase the wealth of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and our government spends over a trillion dollars on the War in Iraq.

Our oil addiction and reliance on conventional energy sources is further apparent when we look at the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the worst environmental disasters in American history, yet reminiscent of 1969, when a major spill from an offshore platform off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, coated its pristine beaches in oil and led to the founding of Earth Day. Several major oil spills later, including the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound in 1989, America continues to consume increasing amounts of energy. Despite some tinkering around the edges, little has been done to seriously address the environmental, health and safety, and national security risks of our stagnant energy policy. As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote recently:

There is only one meaningful response to the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and that is for America to stop messing around when it comes to designing its energy and environmental future. The only meaningful response to this man-made disaster is a man-made energy bill that would finally put in place an American clean-energy infrastructure that would set our country on a real, long-term path to ending our addiction to oil.

That is so obviously the right thing for our environment, the right thing for our national security, the right thing for our economic security and the right thing to promote innovation. But it means that we have to stop messing around with idiotic “drill, baby, drill” nostrums, feel-good Earth Day concerts and the paralyzing notion that the American people are not prepared to do anything serious to change our energy mix.

President Obama has the right instincts on energy policy, but it remains to be seen whether he has the political will and courage to truly lead our nation in the direction it needs to go. He has taken some positive steps:

• Accelerating the development of renewable energy – wind, solar, and geothermal power and battery-powered vehicles – through subsidies and tax incentives.

• Investing in high-speed rail, clean coal technology and smart grid investments as part of last year’s economic stimulus act.

• Defining greenhouse-gas emissions as a danger to human health and the environment and implementing a new “clean car” standard that, for the first time, allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse-gas tailpipe emissions; and

• Adopting improved fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

Of course, the President has also pushed for expanded offshore oil drilling (much to the chagrin of environmentalists, who can now honestly say, “I told you so”) and authorized financing for the construction of two new nuclear power reactors, the first such reactors since the 1970’s.

As the Harvard Business School concluded in Energy Future, there is no easy fix to America’s energy problems. We are all to blame – I am no exception, for I watch my color television sets, crank up the air conditioning on hot summer days, enjoy the freedom of travel, and regularly turn on the light switch – but until we finally see the big picture, until we can envision where our energy future is headed, until we realize the true costs – environmental, national security, and economic – of our dependence on oil and coal (and nuclear, until we find safe means to dispose of radioactive spent fuel), we will continue to be held hostage by Arab sheiks, Texas tycoons, and Wall Street commodities traders. The real problem with the oil spill in the Gulf and the coal mining tragedy in West Virginia (and the repeated history of such tragedies over the past two centuries), are not the tragedies themselves, for the risks are foreseeable and will continue to be so as long as we depend on these energy sources. The real problem is our reliance on oil and coal itself.

Until we as a nation – as consumers, as business owners, as policy makers – embrace conservation as a national priority, adopt serious fuel efficiency standards, and maximize our development and use of clean and renewable energy sources, we will continue to harm our most precious resource, the Earth, and be dependent on forces and nations outside of our control, at great risk to our economy, our environment, and our national security.

Natan Luehrmann-Cowen: Finding Meaning in the Face of Great Loss

And, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of Heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
--William Shakespeare

He was a sweet, gentle soul, full of smiles and energy. For thirteen years, he lived, laughed, and loved. A brilliant young man possessed of enormous gifts, Natan Luehrmann-Cowen had a giant heart, a generous spirit, an imposing intellect, and a zest for life that exceeded most mortal souls. He lived life as if each day were his last. He loved his family; he loved his friends; he loved his Jewish faith; he loved living and dreamed undoubtedly of grand achievements and unlimited milestones. He was gifted in so many ways it is not possible to do him justice. Best of all, he was a mensch.

A bit reckless at times, Natan possessed a stubborn independence that recognized few limits. He believed he could do anything he set his mind to, from rock climbing to chemistry, from performing a piano recital to running a 5K race. He was a champion chess player and an academic standout (to us mere mortals, Natan was a near genius, scoring close to 700 on the math SAT’s in only the seventh grade). He was an enthusiastic member of his synagogue’s junior choir, a budding clarinetist and concert pianist, a competitive swimmer and the newest member of the middle school tennis team (though he did not find out that he had made the team on the day he died) and, as if that were not enough, he played baseball, soccer, and cross country. He did everything with gusto and zeal, his fervor and determination occasionally outmatching his athletic skills. For thirteen short years, Natan led by example, getting everything he could from life, a young man determined to find meaning and purpose, to have life catch up to him.

Although small in stature, Natan had an enormous presence, providing energy and light to any room he entered. Had he been given the chance, I am convinced he would have someday found a cure for cancer, or invented a new energy source, or written the definitive treatise on the laws of physics, or perhaps all of these things. He was a special young man, destined for greatness.

I do not know why bad things happen to good people, only that they do. Young men and women die in combat, fighting valiantly for their country in wars they do not fully understand or have any control over; young children die of cancer and leukemia and other illnesses that turn the world upside down, violating the natural order and causing chaos in the lives of their family and friends. Natural disasters inflict suffering and death on thousands of people every year. The world reminds us each day of life’s fragility, yet most of us ignore the signs and, when something tragic occurs, we are caught blindsided, our breath taken away by unexpected and unwelcome events.

I cannot offer any good reasons for why Natan is no longer with us, why God, or fate, or just pure bad luck decided to take him from us. It is easy to wonder, and impossible to answer, why God would allow someone as good and decent and with so much potential to benefit the world as Natan Luehrmann-Cowen to become the victim of a criminally reckless act. I cannot explain why the forces of nature would permit Natan, while skateboarding after school on a warm, sunny, early-Spring afternoon, to be struck by a truck operated by a 25 year-old heroin addict doing 63 miles per hour in a 25 m.p.h. zone. A police investigation found that the driver was under the influence of several illegal street narcotics at the time of the accident – blood tests proving he was seriously impaired – while an accident reconstruction found that the truck was traveling nearly 40 miles per hour above the speed limit on a quiet, side street in a normally safe, suburban neighborhood. The District Attorney has charged the driver with vehicular homicide and other crimes, but that is another matter, one for the courts and public scrutiny; it will not return Natan to us, nor console or comfort his loving family.

It is difficult not to ask why, not to be full of anger and bitterness that a bright and shining star of this world was taken from us. Where does one find comfort in the face of such tragedy? How does one continue to pray to a God that would allow such things to happen?

Though it is easy to blame God for such tragedy, in the end it serves no purpose and gets us off track. We often attribute to God the ability to intercede and protect us from harm, as if the orderliness of the universe cannot let bad things occur. But sometimes tragedy strikes the innocent for no good reason; sometimes a conglomeration of forces mold together in a string of unlucky circumstances, and there is no point in looking for a reason. The world is full of random suffering, occasionally caused by nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In When Bad Things Happen to Good People (Avon Books, 1981), Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, whose own faith was tested when his young son died prematurely of an illness, has written that suffering is sometimes caused by the workings of natural law, by forces and circumstances blind to good and evil and involving no moral judgment. Kushner suggests, correctly I believe, that God does not intervene to save good people from earthquakes, disease, or misfortune, nor does God intercede to punish the wicked. "Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people. A bullet has no conscience; neither does a malignant tumor or an automobile gone out of control. That is why good people get sick and get hurt as much as anyone.” God does not interrupt the world’s activities to “protect the righteous from harm” and, while God does not cause tragedy, neither does God prevent tragedy.

Why then, do we resort to prayer in the face of tragedy? How then, do we continue to believe in a God whose ability to protect us from harm or to correct injustice is so limited? There may be no true answers to such questions, but Rabbi Kushner provides two reasons that I believe are worth consideration: First, the prayers of others can make us aware that we are not facing our problems alone. Second, God can give us the strength of character that we need to handle our misfortunes, if we are willing to accept it. “People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles. . . . But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered." God neither sends us the problem, nor can he fix it, but “[h]e gives us the strength to cope with the problem."

Natan’s funeral service was held at Congregation Beth Or, a place where Natan left a huge footprint and touched the lives of so many. In leading the service, Rabbi Gregory Marx made plain that he could offer no words of comfort, that Natan’s death violated the natural order of things; children should bury their parents, not the other way around. Natan’s fate is a cruel example only of the chaos of this world, proof that there is no order to the universe, not when such pain and suffering can be allowed to occur. But perhaps, as Rabbi Kushner has written, pain “is the price we pay for being alive.”

When we understand that, our question will change from, 'why do we have to be in pain?' to 'what do we do with our pain so that it becomes meaningful and is not just pointless empty suffering? How can we turn all the painful experiences of our lives into birth pangs or into growing pains?' We may not ever understand why we suffer or be able to control the forces that cause our suffering, but we can have a lot to say about what the suffering does to us, and what sort of people we become because of it. Pain makes some people bitter and envious. It makes others sensitive and compassionate. It is the result, not the cause, of pain that makes some experiences of pain meaningful and others empty and destructive.

In the end, "All we can do is try to rise beyond the question 'why did it happen?' and begin to ask the question 'what do I do now that it has happened?'"

That Natan is no longer with us is a reality we all must learn to accept; for Natan’s wonderful parents, Ben and Mia, and Natan’s older brother, Aron, perhaps only God, with the support of friends and family, can provide them the strength to endure and carry on over time. For the rest of us, those touched by Natan’s greatness and zest for life, it is the necessity of moving ahead, to transgress the pain, knowing that what happened cannot be reversed but can only be prevented from happening to another child. Perhaps our aspirations must encompass the goal of helping the Luehrmann-Cowen family maintain their sense of purpose, compassion, and taste for life, so that Natan’s wonderful memory, his love and generosity, will endure and live on forever.

So, in the words of Rabbi Kushner, “Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?”

That depends on what we mean by 'answer'. If we mean 'Is there an explanation which will make sense of it all?' . . . then there probably is no satisfying answer. We can offer learned explanations, but in the end, when we have covered all the squares on the game board and are feeling very proud of our cleverness, the pain and the anguish and the sense of unfairness will still be there. But the word 'answer' can also mean 'response' as well as 'explanation,' and in that sense, there may well be a satisfying answer to the tragedies in our lives. . . . [T]o forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all.

Dreams of a Nuclear Free World

Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
--President John F. Kennedy, September 25, 1961

Growing up in the 1960’s, the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever present, an essential ingredient of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the United States pointed thousands of nuclear warheads at each other, the possibility of unimaginable destruction the push of a button away, the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings hanging in the balance. Although the two countries maintained a cold peace through a policy of mutually assured destruction, we flirted with catastrophe for decades, escaping the worst only because our civilian leaders thankfully refused on several occasions – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean War, even Vietnam – to acquiesce reflexively to the recommendations of certain overzealous Generals.

At the peak of the Cold War, we relied on the leaders of both sides to understand the “balance of terror” – the knowledge that a nuclear exchange would destroy all of us. Even our principal adversary Nikita Khrushchev warned that, should nuclear war occur, the survivors would envy the dead. This perverse rationality acted as a strong restraint against war. Judged by most measures of human morality, the arms race was tragic and ethically bankrupt. But as long as the weapons remained in the hands of America and Russia, it was believed that sanity would prevail. Quietly under the surface was the fear that other nations, and worse, those applying a less thoughtful risk management calculus, would seek to join the ranks of the nuclear powers.

In To Seek a Newer World (Doubleday & Company, 1967), Robert Kennedy argued that halting the spread of nuclear weapons “must be a central priority of American policy, deserving and demanding the greatest additional effort.” Kennedy, possessed with the knowledge that for 13 days in October 1962 the world stood on the brink of a nuclear holocaust, recognized that if nuclear weapons became generally available, “each crisis of the moment might well become the last crisis for all mankind.” He questioned whether “our politics can grow up to our technology” for he knew that it is “far more difficult and expensive to construct an adequate system of control and custody than to develop the weapons themselves.” Moreover, even with controls, human errors are inevitable. “In a world of nuclear weapons, one [mistake] could be fatal.”

Kennedy further recognized that nuclear weapons could not solve the problem of national security or act as a substitute for sound policy. The struggle of other nations for prestige and independence, power and recognition, has served as a powerful motivation for them to develop and possess armaments of death and destruction. As I write, Russia and the United States together possess more than 23,000 nuclear missiles (including reserves), and hundreds more are in the hands of Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, and China, with North Korea now also believed to have nuclear capabilities. That volatile nations in unstable regions, and non-state terrorists out to harm America and its allies, seek to develop and possess nuclear weapons is a risk the global community cannot abide. Unlike the Cold War policy of deterrence, however, the threats associated with nuclear proliferation are undeterred by massive firepower.

Robert Kennedy’s vision of a world disarmed of nuclear weapons was for him a moral imperative. In the years following the Cuban Missile Crisis, he asked rhetorically, “What, if any, circumstance or justification gives . . . any government the moral right to bring its people and possibly all people under the shadow of nuclear destruction?”

Kennedy's concern and vision is one now embraced by some of this nation’s wise and elder statesmen, including former high-ranking cold warriors George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and William Perry. These men believe that a world without nukes is, in the long term, both achievable and essential. As reflected in a 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial (“A World Free of Nuclear Weapons”), they contend that, with the rising threat of nuclear terrorism, the world urgently must reduce the number of nuclear weapons to zero. These former hard liners are no longer worried about a cold war nuclear missile exchange, but they do worry about jihadists seizing fissile material from an unstable Pakistan, or a possible Middle East nuclear race involving such countries as Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. They also worry about human errors and mistakes by the traditional nuclear powers. As former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, recently told the Christian Science Monitor, the United States and Russia remain on a five-minute “quick launch” timetable, a policy “bordering on insanity.” And as more countries turn to nuclear power to solve their energy needs, there will be an exponential increase in the reprocessing of plutonium and uranium, the essential ingredients of a nuclear bomb.

The continued existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. As Robert Kennedy foresaw 43 years ago, to control the spread of nuclear weapons, we must recognize “the need to lessen our own reliance on nuclear weapons, and to halt the growth of the overwhelming nuclear capabilities” of the United States and Russia. We cannot expect existing nuclear states to disarm, nor can we expect others desirous of nuclear weapons to forego their development, if we are unwilling to reduce substantially our own destructive forces. “[I]t is the prestige associated with nuclear giantism, humbling and infuriating smaller nations, that leads them to think that only a nuclear power is heard in the councils of mankind.”

Equally important is the need to lock down known fissile material and its attendant technology, to prevent even a small amount of plutonium from falling into the wrong hands. The ambitions of North Korea, Iran, and other volatile nation states, and the stated desires of Al-Qaeda and terrorist groups to possess and use the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, makes evident both the difficulty and urgency of this issue. To that end, we must strengthen the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which sets international standards to prevent new states from developing or possessing nuclear weapons; and we should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear explosions on Earth whether for military or experimental purposes.

A modest effort in the right direction occurred on April 8, 2010, when President Obama and Russian President Dimitry Medvedev entered into the most substantial nuclear arms pact in a generation. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will shrink the limit of nuclear warheads to 1,550 per country over seven years and presents a fresh opening in relations with our former Cold War antagonist. Although the nuclear arsenals of both countries still allows for mutual destruction several times over, the arms reductions nevertheless signal that the United States and Russia -- which between them possess 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons -- are serious about disarmament and the further spread of nuclear weapons. The treaty is the culmination of a movement started in the mid-1980’s by then President Ronald Reagan, who like Presidents Kennedy and Obama, have called for a world free of nuclear weapons.

There are, of course, skeptics who argue that the goal of a nuclear-free world is both impossible and dangerous, that total disarmament would lead only to rogue states and terrorists in possession of nuclear arms, with law abiding nations held hostage. This is not a frivolous concern. No one, however, is advocating unilateral disarmament. The United States cannot dismantle all its nuclear weapons without absolute, verifiable assurance that no one else possesses them. Whether this is feasible in my lifetime is doubtful, but as former Secretary of State Schultz has said, “If a few leaders of nuclear-armed states stepped forward with conviction . . . to seek the prohibition of nuclear weapons, many obstacles that seem immovable today might become movable.” The fact is that the global community has previously banned certain weapons deemed immoral and unfit even for warfare (e.g., 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention). That certain rogue states and terrorists may attempt to circumvent international conventions does not mean we should secretly possess such weapons, but instead we should work with law-abiding nations to ensure that no one obtains the ingredients or capacity to develop and manufacture these weapons.

If we fail to pursue a solution to the nuclear issue, we do so at our children’s peril. As Robert Kennedy wrote in To Seek a Newer World:

[T]hose who disparage the threat of nuclear weapons ignore all evidence of the darker side of man, and of the history of the West. . . . Twice within the memory of living men, the nations of Europe, the most advanced and cultured societies of the world, have torn themselves and each other apart for causes so slight, in relation to the cost of struggle, that it is impossible to regard them as other than excuses for the expression of some darker impulse. . . . The camps and the ovens, the murders and mutual inhumanities of the Eastern front, the unrestricted bombing of cities (with deliberate concentration on areas of workers’ housing), the first use of atomic bombs – truly this was war virtually without rules or limits.

That the so-called civilized nations of the West, in the middle of the 20th century, were capable of the most cruel and inhuman atrocities imaginable does not bode well for the 21st century, when jihadists and non-democratic forces seek the weapons to destroy us all. As President Obama warned last week during the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, the dangers associated with nuclear terrorism present “one of the greatest threats to global security [and] to our own collective security.” Only a concerted effort by the global community can reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, for “the problems of the 21st century cannot be solved by any one nation acting in isolation – they must be solved by all of us coming together.” On this we should all agree, for the challenge of nuclear security is neither Democrat nor Republican, neither liberal nor conservative; it is a matter of inescapable morality, of planetary survival and the future of humankind.

Opening Day and Superstitions of the Faithful

The snow has melted and the warmth of the sun, the smell of barbecue, and the blooming flowers of spring have replaced winter’s harsh edges. Historically, the winds of March and the cold, wet rains of April delay the advent of spring’s gentle touches, but that matters for little now because, come the first week of April, baseball is for real. The rookies who gave their all in Spring Training have been sent packing to farm teams in small town America, places like Asheville, Bowie, and Reading, their dreams deferred until rosters expand in September or, through the happenstance of luck and fate, a big leaguer is cursed with injuries or a prolonged slump.

For fans spiritually and existentially attached to their teams, the ones who invest emotion and passion and irrational exuberance, this is when the games count, when every pitch, every at bat is recorded in the box scores, the standings a daily reflection of a team’s worth. On Opening Day, every team is a contender, each tied for first place, when all possess hopes and dreams of October success. Even fans of the lowly Washington Nationals – well, at least the young, innocent ones, those for whom the drumbeat of defeat has not beaten down the soul – believe they have a chance on Opening Day. If our players remain healthy, if Jones can make a comeback, if our defense holds up and the bullpen doesn’t let us down, if . . . .

On Opening Day, last year’s disappointments and life’s discouragements are temporarily washed away, the fresh scent of optimism a direct corollary to the sun’s reflection on the outfield grass. For Roger Angell, it is when the season becomes the “real thing”, when “the sudden new standings and fresh stats, the return of line scores and box scores and speculation and involvement” can make us well again. As explained in Game Time (Harcourt Books, 2003), a collection of Angell's baseball essays from The New Yorker:

Seen from the veranda of Opening Day, the sunlit new season appears to stretch away almost endlessly into summer. The winners of each first game may entertain hopes, however manic, of a wholly unexpected pennant, while the losers remind themselves that there remain one hundred sixty-one games in which to do better.

Opening Day is when baseball superstitions reassert themselves, when seemingly rational people displace logic and adopt a respectful adherence to the Gods of Baseball. Of course, one must tread lightly on this topic, for the baseball gods are sensitive, fickle souls. As any baseball player can attest, you must not disrupt or upset the angels and demons of the national pastime. There are certain rules for which nearly all players abide: do not step on the foul line; do not talk to a pitcher in the midst of a no-hitter; and do not mess with a winning streak. Skeptical ballplayers ignore superstitions at their peril. Mel Stottlemyre, pitching coach and former ace of the New York Yankees, once thought that the foul line myth was a silly belief, that stepping on the foul line would have no effect on his performance. He once tested this proposition against the Twins, cavalierly stepping on the foul line on his way to the mound to start the game. “The first batter I faced was Ted Uhlaender,” Stottlemyre recalled to the Baseball Almanac, “and he hit a line drive off my left shin. It went for a hit. Carew, Oliva, and Killebrew followed with extra-base hits. The fifth man hit a single and scored and I was charged with five runs. I haven’t stepped on a foul line since.”

The baseball gods have been known to curse entire teams, refusing championships for decades, even centuries, the curse removed only upon adequate displays of remorse, misery, and despair. Perhaps the most famous curse to afflict an entire team is the one that no longer applies – The Curse of the Bambino – inflicted on the Boston Red Sox following the 1919 season when the team’s owner sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $125,000. For 84 long years, Red Sox fans suffered in pitiful agony, occasionally flirting with victory only to have their aging first baseman watch a groundball go through his legs, or a Game 7 end in painful defeat. The Curse of the Bambino ended in 2004 at the dawn of a new century, when the Gods of Baseball had a change of heart, satisfied that sufficient despair had transpired over the banks of the Charles River.

The Cubs have not made it to a World Series since 1945, the year Billy Sianis, owner of a Chicago tavern, was ejected from Wrigley Field during a World Series game. Sianis had brought his pet goat to the game (he had bought a ticket for his goat, which displayed a sign that said, “We Got Detroit’s Goat”), but by the seventh inning, the stench became intolerable and stadium security removed Sianis and the goat from the park. Outraged over the treatment afforded him and the goat, Sianis placed a curse upon the Cubs, declaring that they would never again play in another World Series game at Wrigley Field. 65 years later, the Curse of the Billy Goat remains intact as the Cubs have yet to return to the World Series.

The baseball gods exert their influence in Japan as well. For the past 25 years, the Hanshin Tigers of the Japanese Baseball League have endured the Curse of Colonel Sanders. In 1985, the Tigers won their first championship in 68 years and, in celebration, fans resembling Tigers stars began jumping into the polluted Dotonbori River in Osaka. Unfortunately, no one among the inebriated fans resembled the Tigers’ American star, Randy Bass, so in a creative attempt at improvisation, resourceful fans went to a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet and forcibly removed a statue of Colonel Sanders, tossing it into the river. Since that fateful day, the Tigers have plummeted back to mediocrity. Legend has it that the team will not win another championship until someone finds the Colonel. Although city officials have attempted to recover the statue from the river’s depths, it has been for naught. The Colonel remains at the bottom of the Dotonbori, and the Tigers remain in the cellar.

It is well known that players are always on the lookout for anything that might provide Divine assistance. Minnie Minoso of the Chicago White Sox once showered in his uniform after going hitless in a game, believing he needed to wash away the evil spirits. The next night, Minoso got three hits and, following the game, eight of his teammates jumped in the shower fully clothed.

When Frank Viola pitched for the Minnesota Twins in 1984, he noticed during one home game that a fan held up a large banner that said, Frankie Sweet Music Viola. Whenever the banner appeared, Viola seemed to pitch well. In fact, neither he nor the Twins lost that year when the banner was displayed; Viola went 15-0 in games that the banner appeared, and his four no decisions all resulted in Twins victories. According to an account in Sports Illustrated, when Viola met the fan, Mark Dornfield, they talked for two hours. When the Twins made it to the World Series, Viola learned that Dornfield was without a ticket. At the last minute, Viola’s wife, Kathy, called Dornfield and gave him tickets to the first and seventh games. With the banner proudly displayed, Viola won both games and the Twins won the World Series.

I would like to tell you that all of this is silly, that it is simply the irrational imaginings of men who play a boys' game. I know from experience, however, that this is not so, that you really must respect the Gods of Baseball. If your team wins whenever you wear that unwashed, grimy, spaghetti stained tee shirt, then wash it at your peril. On the Cardinals’ opener on Monday, I tried to anticipate the needs of the Gods that I imagined would be in charge that day. I put on my bright red Cardinals polo shirt commemorating the World Series Championship of 2006, classy but low-key, so as not to offend. I brought out my favorite Cardinals hat – the one with the sweat stains that has brought good luck on past occasions – and placed it strategically on the couch; wearing it, I thought, might be deemed arrogant and cocky, a surefire means to agitate the higher powers.

My strategy initially paid off; the Gods were in a generous mood, allowing a Pujols homer in the first and a Rasmus dinger in the fourth. But later that inning, with the Cardinals up 3-0, things started to falter. Carpenter conceded two home runs to the Reds in the bottom of the fourth, narrowing the lead to 3-2. As anxiety quickly set in, I knew that an adjustment was needed. So, I put on my hat, believing that perhaps my display of team loyalty was overly modest, as today – Opening Day – the Gods of Baseball expected more. Was it the displaced hat that disrupted the spirits, or something else? Then I recalled that, in the middle of the fourth inning, I had turned off my ceiling fan to accommodate a slight chill. Was it just a coincidence that the Reds soon thereafter hit two home runs? I think not. After the fan powered back on, the sweat stained hat positioned atop my head, the Cardinals went on to score eight more runs, including a grand slam by Molina and a second Pujols home run. Colby Rasmus in centerfield robbed Scott Rolen of a home run with a fantastic jumping catch over the outfield wall, and the game’s balance comfortably drifted back in my favor. The world was set right again, the Gods of Baseball temporarily satisfied. At least until next game.

Does America Need a Civics Lesson?

Freedom of speech and the First Amendment are a testament to America’s greatness, a declaration of confidence in our system of governance and our institutions of democracy. Recent public displays of anger over passage of health care reform, however, portend a perilous moment in our nation’s history. Death threats against Members of Congress, broken windows and acts of vandalism, a cut propane line at the home of a targeted congressman’s brother, and other acts of intimidation bordering on violence, signifies that we may be relinquishing our capacity for civic engagement. Among the most hurtful displays of vitriolic outbursts were the racial epithets shouted at Representative John Lewis, among the most dignified and honorable leaders of the civil rights movement, and the homophobic slurs against openly gay Congressman Barney Frank.

The history of nonviolent protest in the United States, from the woman’s suffrage movement to civil rights and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, have inspired positive social change and reforms to unjust government policies. But when peaceful demonstrations cross the line into mob rule, when an African American Congressman from Missouri, Emanuel Cleaver, is spat upon by a grotesque and disgraceful display of venomous immaturity, there is something wrong with the body politic.

I understand those who share a passion for politics and who feel strongly about issues of importance. The art of politics, the thrill of debate, the intellectual give-and-take of verbal combat – while not for everyone – are notions I embrace. On some issues, on matters of conscious, when injustice is perceived, public demonstrations in an effort to move public opinion or influence the vote of a Senator are shining examples of democracy and a resounding proclamation of the freedoms we all share. But the ugliness on display in the recent past, especially when wrapped in shades of racism and homophobia and a false patriotism disguising a xenophobic nationalism – are detrimental to democratic values, to republican ideals, and to robust citizenship.

Incivility is distasteful regardless of its political stripes. I was in law school in 1981, when just ten blocks away President Reagan and White House aide James Brady were shot (Brady paralyzed for life) by a mentally disturbed gunman. When news accounts first reported that Reagan had survived, I winced at and denounced a classmate who “joked” that she wished the gunman’s aim had been more accurate. The remark was humorless and shameful. Although I had opposed the election of Ronald Reagan several months earlier, on March 30, 1981, he was our elected President and, not unlike the Kennedy assassination, the attempt on Reagan’s life was a near tragedy from which this nation would have suffered greatly. I also was disturbed at left wing critics who suggested that President Reagan, and later President George W. Bush, were modern versions of Hitler, or were fascists and other historical inaccuracies.

So, I recognize that the current state of affairs, the belittling and degrading attacks on President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and John Lewis, are not exclusive to Republicans or Tea Party activists (though I find it laughable that anyone could equate Obama with Hitler – please, go back to school and read a history book). But the acts of violence, the insane level of anger displayed during the protests on Capitol Hill this past weekend have reached heightened and potentially dangerous levels. I hope that Frank Rich of the New York Times is wrong when he suggests, “To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look . . . to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” A historic piece of legislation that outlawed racial and other forms of discrimination at public establishments and businesses affecting interstate commerce, it was impugned as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” by the Republican nominee for President, Barry Goldwater, while Richard Russell, the Democratic senator from Georgia and a staunch segregationist, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” Although history has proved these statements absurd, the right wing and segregationist opponents of the law exhibited much hysteria in attempting to persuade the populace that civil rights laws would destroy America. The issues are different, but much of today's rhetoric sounds all too familiar.

It appears that much of the feverish excitement these past several months has very little to do with the proposed changes to our health care system. Do the Tea Party protesters really oppose requiring insurance companies to permit parents to keep their sons and daughters on their health plans until age 26? Do they really want insurance companies to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions? Are they opposed to tax credits for small businesses? Or is something else at work, something more sinister, an awakening of a repressed and dark resentment of the changing face of American society. “It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver – none of them major players in the health care push – received a major share of last weekend’s abuse,” wrote Rich in The Times op-ed piece. “When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan, ‘Take our country back!,’ these are the people they want to take the country back from.”

That Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to a group of Tea Partiers, “Let’s beat the other side to a pulp!” and that Representative Randy Neugebauer, a conservative Republican from Texas, shouted “baby killer” at pro-life congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan on the House floor on Sunday night, attests to the sad state of affairs of American politics. John McCain, who ran for president on the slogan, “Country First,” now proclaims a vow of “no cooperation for the rest of the year.” As Steny Hoyer of Maryland said, “Democracy can’t survive unless we can have a civil society in which debate is open and free and unfettered.” But a civil society implies that we listen respectfully to the other side and respond appropriately. It does not involve death threats and rocks, racist slurs and spit.

Peaceful protest, vigorous debate, creative expression, and public statements of persuasion are the fuel upon which a healthy democracy thrives. When public anger turns to mob rule; when stones are thrown through windows of congressional offices; when a Member of Congress, Bart Stupak, feels compelled to refer 50 death threats to the FBI because he voted for legislation that expands health care for the uninsured; and when John Lewis, who forty years ago withstood near fatal beatings and vicious verbal attacks in fighting for equal rights for black Americans, is called racist names because he wants all Americans, black and white, rich and poor, to have access to health care, we are in trouble as a country. It is time for the leadership of both parties to stand up and put an end to angry distortions and rhetoric that encourages violence.

It is entirely possible to engage in aggressive and spirited debate, yet acknowledge that, as fellow Americans, you and your opponent share equally in love of country. Were he alive today, I believe that Ronald Reagan would have denounced the recent bad behavior. While he often sparred publicly with Tip O’Neil and Ted Kennedy, he (and they) never lost cite of their common citizenship.

Treating those with whom you disagree as the Enemy is so much easier than seeing the other side as friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters, fellow citizens whose views merely differ on an issue. With all of the problems confronting the United States and the world today, will there be a time when liberals and conservatives, Tea Partiers and Coffee Drinkers, talk, listen, and work together to find common ground? For the future of our country, I hope that day comes soon.