Thought-provoking work

Finished Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case (Hardcover)
by Stuart Taylor (Author), KC Johnson (Author). It's one of those books that makes you cry for your country. I suppose a Duke mom sums up my response:

For many, the biggest shock of this case has been to see, in the most blatant terms, that police and prosecutors would pursue a prosecution of three young men based on no evidence and refuse to accord them any of the hard won protections of legal due process that this country has achieved.

For me, and probably for other moms, the bigger shock has been to see teachers, Duke faculty, whom we would hope would be shining beacons of learning and integrity to our kids their life long,. . . when we see them taking time out in a very public statement to suggest there is something rotten about these very students, the young men and women with whom they share a campus and a university and whose education and growth as individuals is one of the primary missions of that university,... we are shocked and dismayed and saddened and changed....

I'd followed the case but didn't realize how extreme some faculty (mostly liberals in the humanities, like myself) members behaved. And when the truth came out, that there had been no rape at all, very very few of the faculty changed opinions: instead they changed the subject, broadening the canvas to the historical injustices that are their specialty. But no apologies to the young men they had defiled and slandered without real evidence.

I think a travesty like this easily could happen at my university. I think mindlessness is a plague and the university isn't immune. Because my initial training was in math and science, despite a lifelong career in the humanities and as a writer, I am tempted to conclude that a failure of early education in the scientific method, in logic, contributes to the ease with which otherwise bright people can go off the deep end in mindless, irrational behavior. But it's more complex than this. German Nazis scientists did no better in human affairs.

I also started watching Ken Burns' epic story of WWII, more food for thought. The American character was so different half a century ago, or so it seems to me. More died at the towers than at Pearl Harbor -- but where is our "great generation" rising to the challenge? Of course, we are without intelligent leadership at the moment. But the threat is real. Will it take a nuke to get our attention again?