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That low moaning sound in the background just might be the Founding Fathers protesting from beyond the grave. They have been doing it when George Bush, at a breakfast of religious leaders, scorched the Democrats for failing to mention God in their platform and declaimed that a President needs to believe in the Almighty. What about the constitutional ban on "religious test(s)" for public office the Founding Fathers would want to know. What about Tom Jefferson’s conviction that it is possible for a nonbeliever to be a moral person, "find (ing) incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise" Even George Washington must shudder in his sleep to hear the constant emphasis on "Judeo- Christian values." It was he who wrote, "We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land ... every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart." George Bush should know better than to encourage the theocratic ambitions of the Christian right. The "wall of separation" the Founding Fathers built between church and state is one of the best defenses freedom has ever had. Or have we already forgotten why the Founding Fathers put it up They had seen enough religious intolerance in the colonies: Quaker women were burned at the stake in Puritan Massachusetts; Virginians could be jailed for denying the Bible’s authority. No wonder John Adams once described the Judeo-Christian tradition as "the most bloody religion that ever existed," and that the Founding Fathers took such pains to keep the hand that holds the musket separate from the one that carries the cross. There was another reason for the separation of church and state, which no amount of pious ranting can expunge: not all the Founding Fathers believed in the same God, or in any God at all. Jefferson was a renowned doubter, urging his nephew to "question with boldness even the existence of a God." John Adams was at least a skeptic, as were of course the revolutionary firebrands Tom Paine and Ethan Allen. Naturally, they designed a republic in which they themselves would have a place. Yet another reason argues for the separation of church and state. If the Founding Fathers had one overarching aim, it was to limit the power not of the churches but of the state. They were deeply concerned, as Adams wrote, that "government shall be considered as having in it nothing more mysterious or divine than other arts or sciences.’ Surely the Republicans, committed as they are to "limited government," ought to honor the secular spirit that has limited our government from the moment of its birth. When mentioning "Quaker women" (Para. 2), the author is talking about
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PART TWO
Here in the U. S. a project of moving the government a few hundred miles to the southwest proceeds apace, under the supervision of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Apart from the usual highways and parks, Byrd has taken a special interest in transplanting pieces of federal agencies from metropolitan Washington to his home state. Strangely, Byrd’s little experiment in de-Washingtonization has become the focus of outrage among the very people who are otherwise most critical of Washington and its ways. To these critics, it is the very symbol of congressional arrogance of power, isolation from reality, contempt for the voters, and so on, and demonstrates the need for term limits if not lynching. Consider the good-government advantages of (let’s call it) the Byrd Migration. What better way to symbolize an end to the old ways and commitment to reform than physically moving the government What better way to break up old bureaucracies than to uproot and transplant them, files and all Second, spreading the government around a bit ought to reduce that self-feeding and self regarding Beltway culture that Washington-phobes claim to dislike so much. Of course there is a good deal of hypocrisy in this anti-Washington chatter. Much of it comes from politicians and journalists who have spent most of their adult lives in Washington and wouldn’t care to live anywhere else. They are not rushing to West Virginia themselves, except for the occasional quaint rustic weekend. But they can take comfort that public servants at the Bureau of the Public Debt, at least, have escaped the perils of inside-the-Beltway insularity. Third, is Senator Byrd’s raw spread-the-wealth philosophy’ completely illegitimate The Federal Government and government-related private enterprises have made metropolitan Washington one of the richest areas of the country. By contrast, West Virginia is the second poorest state, after Mississippi. The entire country’s taxes support the government. Why shouldn’t more of the country get a piece of it As private businesses are discovering, the electronic revolution is making it less and less necessary for work to be centralized at headquarters. There’s no reason the government shouldn’t take more advantage of this trend as well. It is hardly enough, though, to expel a few thousand midlevel bureaucrats from the alleged Eden inside the Washington Beltway. Really purging the Washington Culture enough to satisfy its noisiest critics will require a mass exodus on the order of what the Khmer Rouge instituted when they took over Phnom Penh in 1975. Until the very members of the TIME Washington bureau itself are traipsing south along 1-95, their word processors strapped to their backs, the nation cannot rest easy. But America’s would-be Khmer Rouge should give Senator Byrd more credit for showing the way. As used in the text, "the alleged Eden" (Para. 6) symbolizes
Once the exclusive domain of executives with expense accounts, mobile phones are set to become one of the central technologies of the 21st century. (46) Within a few years, the mobile phone will evolve from a voice-only device to a multi-functional communicator capable of transmitting and receiving not only sound, but video, still images, data and text. A whole new era of personal communication is on the way.Thanks in part to the growth of wireless networks, the telephone is converging with the personal computer and the television. (47) Soon light-weight phones outfitted with high resolution screens--which can be embedded in everything from wristwatches to palm-held units will be connected to series of low orbit satellites enabling people to talk, send and receive E-mail, or take part in video conferences anytime, anywhere. These phones might also absorb many of the key functions of the desktop computer. Mobile devices are expected to be ideal for some of the new personalized services that are becoming available via the Internet.The communications revolution is already taking shape around the globe. In Europe, mall-scale trials are under way using mobile phones for electronic commerce. For example, most phones contain a subscriber identification module (SIM) card that serves primarily to identify a user to the phone network. Some manufacturers plan to upgrade the SIM card to an all-in-one personal identification and credit card. Another approach is to add a slot to mobile phones for a second smart card designed specifically for mobile ecommerce. (48) These cards could be used to make payments over the Internet or removed from the phone for use in point of-sale terminals to pay for things like public transportation, movie tickets or a round of drinks at the bar. In France, Motorola is currently testing a dual slot phone, the Star TACD, in a trial with France Telecom while in Finland Nokia is testing a phone that uses a special plug in reader for a tiny smart card. Siemens is pursuing a different approach. (49) Since it is not very clear whether it’s best to do everything with a single device, Siemens is developing dual slot phones and Einstein, a device equipped with a smart card reader and keypad that can be linked to the phone via infrared wireless technology. (50) For those who want to, though, it will be possible to receive almost all forms of electronic communication through a single device, most likely a three-in-one phone that serves as a cordless at home, a cell phone on the road and an intercom at work. "The mobile phone will become increasingly multifunctional," says Burghardt Schallenberger, vice president for technology and innovation at Siemens Information and Consumer Products. 48
It was a fixing sight: there, in the Capitol itself, a U.S. Senator often mocked for his halting, inarticulate speaking, reached deep into his Midwestern roots and spoke eloquently, even poetically, about who he was and what he believed, stunning politicians and journalists alike. I refer, of course, to Senator Jefferson Smith. In Frank Capra’s classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart plays this simple, idealistic small-town American, mocked and scorned by the big-moneyed, oh-so-sophisticated power elite--only to triumph over a corrupt Establishment with his rock-solid goodness. At root, it is this role that soon-to-be-ex-Senator Bob Dole most aspires to play: the self effacing, quietly powerful small-town man from Main Street who outwits the cosmopolitan, slick-talking snob from the fleshpots. And why not There is, after all, no more enduring American icon. How enduring Before Americans had a Constitution, Thomas Jefferson was arguing that the new nation’s future would depend on a base of agrarian yeomen free from the vices inherent in big cities. In 1840 one of the classic, image-driven presidential campaigns featured William Henry Harrison as the embodiment of rural virtues, the candidate of the log cabin and hard cider, defeating the incumbent Martin Van Buren, who was accused of dandified dress and manners. There is, of course, a huge disconnect between this professed love of the simple, unspoiled life and the way Americans actually live. As a people, Americans have spent the better part of the 20th century deserting the farms and the small towns for the cities and the suburbs; and are torn between vacationing in Disney World and Las Vegas. U.S. politicians too haven’t exactly shunned the temptations of the cosmopolitan life. The town of Russell, Kansas, often seems to be Dole’s running mate, but the candidate spends his leisure time in a luxury condominium in Bal Harbor, Florida. Bill Clinton still believes in a place called Hope, but the spiffy, celebrity-dense resorts of Martha’s Vineyard and Jackson Hole are where he kicks back. Ronald Reagan embodied the faith-and-family pieties of the front porch and Main Street, but he fled Iowa for a career and a life in Hollywood. Still, the hunger for the way Americans believe they are supposed to live is strong, and the distrust of the intellectual hustler with his airs and his high-flown language runs deep. It makes sense for the Dole campaign to make this a contest between Dole as the laconic, quiet man whose words can be trusted and Bill Clinton as the traveling salesman with a line of smooth patter but a suitcase full of damaged goods. It makes sense for Dole to make his campaign song Thank God I’m a Country Boy--even if he is humming it 9,200 m up in a corporate jet on his way to a Florida condo. We learn from the very beginning of the text that politicians and journalists may feel
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