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Let
the Camera Roll
George
Mason may or may not have agreed with film-maker
Michael Moore, but he would have been outraged by
the move to run him off from the university that
bears his name.
That
faint sound near Gunston Hall last week might have
been statesman George Mason turning over in his
grave at an attempt to inject intellectual
flabbiness into the
Virginia
university that bears his name. Legislative
bully boys tried to force George
Mason
University
to cancel a scheduled appearance by documentary
film producer Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine) by questioning the
appropriateness of using university funds to pay a
$35,000 speaking fee. But Moore
still will make his appearance at the Fairfax
campus
later in October. He just won’t be paid for it.
Statesman
George Mason, of course, drafted Virginia’s
Declaration of Rights and its constitution, then
declined to sign the document the national
Constitutional Convention drafted because of its
failure to provide for the abolition of slavery or
the affirmation of rights that later became the
first 10 amendments. Mason considered slavery a
source of national weakness and worked to legalize
all forms of worship in Virginia,
controversial matters indeed for the Commonwealth
at that time. He feared neither threats nor
revolution and certainly not a distinctively
different idea. That public resources might be
used to present a critique of a president might
have seemed ironic to him, but certainly not
inappropriate, particularly in a system where
public funds now finance presidential campaigns.
George
Mason University President Alan G. Merten made it
clear it was the money, not the controversy
surrounding Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, the
most successful documentary film in American
history, that gave the university pause. The
highest contribution to civilization of the
university’s namesake, after all, is a bill of
rights that more than anything else centers on
freedom of speech and expression.
Still,
the attempt to make sense out of those headlines
in a week that also included the presidential
debate and a speech by former Secretary of State
Madeline Albright at Virginia’s information
technology symposium in Norfolk drove me back to
thoughts developed in June of this year while
sitting in a hard wooden pew in the Old Chapel of
the Vienna Presbyterian Church. The occasion was a
memorial service for Paul M. Kattenburg, a Vietnam
and Southeast Asia specialist in the U.S.
Department of State in the 1950s and '60s and a
graduate school professor of mine in the '70s.
Kattenburg
bought a house in the Vienna, Va, suburbs of the
nation’s capitol as a young Foreign Service
Officer after World War II. By the time he arrived
at the University of South Carolina as a professor
in 1972, students found his energy, wit and
appreciation for a point well made both engaging
and encouraging. But more than that, Kattenburg
had hands-on, real-world experience. He had been
out there in the foreign policy wars and as the
speakers at his memorial service would explain,
Kattenburg had retired with success and respect
earned the hard way, through dissent.
To
his students at the time, Kattenburg was an
intellectual hero. David Halberstam’s The
Best and the Brightest was a national best
seller in 1972, providing as it did one of the
first narratives on how national leaders got the
United States so deeply involved in the Vietnam
War. Halberstam discussed how Kattenburg assessed
in 1964 that Vietnam was lost, reporting back
“that if the United States went in, it would
take about 500,000 troops, five to ten years, and
about 5,000 casualties a year ….”
The
reaction from officials in the Johnson
Administration was predictable. Instead of
welcoming what turned out to be a surprisingly
accurate if somewhat conservative assessment,
Kattenburg was attacked as performing a
disservice. “The pessimism was unwarranted, it
was not that bad, an injustice to the people
working there and serving there, that they felt,
yes, the signs were bad, but it could be turned
around,” Halberstam synthesized the responses.
Kattenburg,
himself, would later remember a National Security
Council meeting this way. “What struck me more
than anything else was just the abysmal ignorance
around the table of the particular facts of
Vietnam, their ignorance of the actual place. They
didn’t know what they were talking about. It was
robot thinking about Vietnam and no distinctions
were being made.”
Those
who came of age during the Vietnam War years
remember other books (no Internet or CNN then),
some focused on the American political system -- The
Arrogance of Power, The
Imperial Presidency – and others on the
difficulties of engaging constructively with a
vastly different culture – Fire
in the Lake, A Bright Shining Lie. Kattenburg’s own writings reflect his
professionalism, dedication to facts and
willingness to weigh the views of others.
We
students worked extra hard to earn a revealing
comment from this man on topics such as the
origins of the cold war and the limits of coercive
diplomacy. He insisted on honesty in our
assessments, use of facts and logically drawn
conclusions. Beliefs and opinions left
unsubstantiated or unsupported were not welcome.
Dr. Kattenburg was one of the reasons I reported
for duty at a Foreign Service Office in 1974, the
week President Richard M. Nixon resigned. Whenever
essential and urgent national security and foreign
policy questions are discussed, those lessons send
me looking for facts and the best ideas.
So
a statesman and a professor likely would see the
importance of Michael Moore and his critics alike
engaging university students through a
well-produced discourse on politics, presidents
and war. Where better can students learn that it
is not irresponsible, illegitimate, un-American or
giving aid and comfort to the enemy to ask
questions or produce a documentary film. Where
better can students grasp that speaking is a
right, indeed a requirement of American
citizenship and the self-correcting representative
democracy George Mason helped construct.
Imagine
George Mason himself reviewing his writings and
thoughts about slavery, citizen rights and the
structure of a new American government, all
political sticks of dynamite in their time, in
such a forum. Invite the legislative critics to
bring their questions and ideas to that session
and let the Michael Moore camera roll.
--
October 4, 2004
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