An Attempted Clarification Regarding LT

This is a response to the comments on this post, in which I clumsily offered a short critique of Lebanon Truth.

I support the existence of LT. In general, I support the ideas the blogger is promoting and I am supportive of the content of most of the posts (I generally note my disagreements with LT through comments at their place). I support freedom of speech, though I should note that this should not be taken as an endorsement that all speech is good speech. Freedom to speak and the wisdom of one's words are very, very different things.

The catch is that I believe that the same content can be delivered in many ways. Language - especially written language - is a powerful thing. The style and tone one uses is crucial in how readers understand one's writing.

In the case of LT, I sometimes think the tone of their writing is often more confrontational and abrasive than need be, and that as a result, I think readers will more likely become mistrustful of the content based on the tone in which it is delivered.

Repeating the truth loudly and often does not guarantee positive outcomes. The phrase "don't shoot the messenger" did not evolve in a vacuum. If it were so, politics in this country would look a lot differently.

This is to say nothing about the malleability of truth for all you Foucault fans out there. That's another post.

So, specific responses:

One anonymous commenter suggested that I think truth-telling and reconciliation are incompatible. That's incorrect; in fact, I think telling the truth is necessary for reconciliation, but not sufficient. Case in point: I've been calling Bush an idiot for years (a statement there is mountains of evidence for), yet he's still in office.

Another commenter suggested that I've bought into a tactic to hush LT up. That's a little unfair, since nowhere in the original post did I suggest that LT should stop blogging. In fact, as noted above, I support LT's efforts. However, my support is certainly not blind. That would be stupid. If anonymous commenter #2 on the original post thinks that supporting LT means never saying anything that could be construed as critical, said commenter is wrong.

This has been my attempt at clarifying my attempt at constructive criticism.

Who's the Enemy, Again?

Via Slashdot, I came across this Boston Globe story: FBI warns colleges of terror threat.

The story goes on to explain how some FBI officials are worried that "terrorists" are going to try and use universities as a way to gather information or intelligence, or possibly conduct espionage.

Personally, I'm not seeing the threat here, for two reasons.

First, I don't really trust the FBI's warnings anymore, especially those directed at universities. There's too much of a history of mistakenly (to put it charitably) viewing universities and university students/staff/faculty as 'dangerous' (read: not conservative or authoritarian enough) for some reason, and this whole "the terrorists are coming" crap sounds like a cover to combat the 'real' threat - the (relatively) open spread of information.

Second, I'm not sure that this would even be much of a problem if it were true. In the first place, existing security procedures, if rational, should take care of 99% or more of the problem. Second, I have to admit I'm in favor of some publicity when it comes to the amount of research done on university campuses in the name of 'national security' or 'national defense.' At least at the college I attended, I know that the U.S. Department of Defense dumps millions of dollars into the school for research. A friend of mine once said the only project he could work on without using DoD dollars was one in which he figured out how to more effectively crush bones. The entire rest of the research in his department (which was an engineering department, by the way), he said, was funded by DoD.

So if there was some shadowy group of folks angling to pierce the veil of secrecy that's been laid over lots and lots of university work, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, depending on the context. I'm pretty sure most college students don't know how much research is done at their schools on subjects they really want nothing to do with.