This question is going to be asked increasingly, I believe, as Americans of serious intellect and sober sensibilities start to examine what really is being offered--for huge sums of money--at America universities. As they do, some may stop falling for propaganda from university alumni relations offices that is designed to mislead them about the realities on campus.

I am going to return to this theme. Part of it is that old fashioned liberals and thinking conservatives should be making common cause on the issue of real university reform, especially as regards undergraduate studies.

Meanwhile, this article appears in The Washington Post. Its hero is a "secular humanist", or else it probably would not have been published by The Post. But at least the author gives a glimpse of a reality in which the big issues that used to matter--the "meaning of life" itself being at the top of the list--are now ignored or turned into silly cartoons.

Again, why do you give money to institutions like Yale? And what makes you think your alma mater is, in a significant respect, any different?

Here is another reason to go online for news features.

Michael Gerson cannot bring himself to point out the theme of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that has been in theaters for three weeks now, but he still hits the mark with his column on the bogus "War on Science" issue that certain liberals have tried to float. He cites a useful paper by Yuval Levin of Ethics and Public Policy Center. Both are former Bush White House officials.

Former Washington Governor Dan Evans proposes holding Lincoln-Douglas debates, abbreviated for the short attention span of moderns. I have advocated something similar in the past.

Crucial to the success of real debates is having the two presidential opponents speakdirectly and without the filtering influence of the media. Reporters asked to participate correctly assume that this is their personal big chance to make a name for themselves, usually with a "gotcha" question of some sort. But their career interests as journalists and the public's interest in knowing what the candidates think--about themselves, their priorities, and their opponents--are likely to be very different.

Let's let the candidates speak directly to the people and to each other, and at enough length that we can get past the sound bites.

Theodore Roosevelt is one of the nation's most popular presidents for many reasons; among them his vigorous and intelligent personality, his charge up San Juan Hill, his political reforms, the conservation work, and, of course, the Teddy Bear. But as a shirt-tail descendant (my wife, Sarah, is one of TR's great grand-daughters), I agree with those who argue that Roosevelt's greatest accomplishment was making the USA a world power militarily at a time we also were gaining prominence as an economic power. TR, by the way, held the same opinion.

The Navy was Roosevelt's main instrument for affectuating the military transformation. And nothing made it so clear that he had succeeded as his dispatch of "The Great White Fleet" on a cruise around the world from December 1907 to February, 1909. TR sent 22 war ships to show the flag, but he painted them white to show good will.

The effect was positive and striking in port after port. And it also was a hugely successful domestic gesture to the America of 100 years ago, especially in the bumpteous young city of Seattle, flush with people and cash from the Klondike and Alaskan Gold Rushes. The Puget Sound community had risen from 30,000 population to 300,000 in one decade, and toward the end of it--late May, 1908--some 400,000 Seattlites and neighbors from throughout Western Washington turned out to welcome the Great White Fleet as it prepared to go to Asia. http://www.greatwhitefleet.info/Parade-Seattle_jpg_view.htm

This past Tuesday a rather smaller group of about 150--organized by the Navy League and the Seattle chapter of the Theodore Roosevelt Society, and sporting, among others, Mayor Greg Nickels and a TR impersonator from Illinois, Joe Weigand--gathered atop the Pier 66 International Conference Center on Elliott Bay to note the anniversary. Two contemporary Navy ships, the USS Preble and the USS Rushmore, and a very noisy hovercraft, passed in review. Assistant Secretary of the Navy B. J. Penn and Admirals O'Brien and Symon were on hand, along with an impressive array of other brass--and a brass band. Later, my wife and I enjoyed entertaining many of the visitors at our house (itself a relic of the Gold Rush days). Wednesday the Navy welcomed the public on board the Navy ships and tonight there is a lecture at the Museum of History and Industry that is opening an exhibit on the Great White Fleet.

We have a vastly different and bigger, more powerful Navy now. The roles are not that different, however from what TR envsiaged. Just as The Great White Fleet wound up performing disaster relief after an earthquake that occured while the ships were in Italy in 1909, so, too, the US Navy today is one of the most efficient ways available for providing humanitarian relief around the globe. A carrier is, among other things, a floating hospital, an airfield for flying out the wounded, a desalinization plant, several restaurants and a huge team of trained relief specialists.

Of course, it also is a considerable deterrent to would-be warlords and expanionist dictators. TR very much had all of that in mind. http://www.greatwhitefleet.info/index.html

Steve Forbes is usually right and never more so than on the issue of inflation.

Two comments:

* The greatest damage to an economy is done when neither party is on top of the issue. That seems to describe the present moment.

* It takes about one generation--twenty or so years--to unlearn a lesson in economics. When was inflation licked? Early 1980s--twenty five years ago. The young of today have no idea of how the Carter years damaged this country, while the older have conviently forgotten.

Tell your neighbors: the increasingly united Iraqi government is moving from victory to victory over al Qaida and its allies. There will be elections again this December (four years after the successful ones of 2004) and most likely a new mandate. Sunnis no longer protest unfair sectarian treatment by the government and Shiites are cooperating, for the most part, in shutting down the Sadr militia (which, in turn, now lacks the excuse that it is only defending its people from the Sunnis).

The report from Iraq the Model is several days old (I missed it), but it makes several points you probably won't see in the MSM. Such as: the government's own ministers went to Mosul to help lead the campaign to clean out al Qaida. Such as: 1,100 suspects arrested--the number is big and so is the fact they were arrested, not ousted in fighting. (Al Qaida is having a hard time mounting a fight any more.) And again: the "infant Iraqi air force" could be relied upon to provide "valuable live imagery" for the ground forces. Did you even know that the Iraqi air force was being rebuilt? This is very significant.

Washington State Secretary of State Sam Reed is calling for federal action by the Republicans and Democrats--and by Congress and the White House, if necessary--to prevent a repeat of the current two year presidential campaign.

There is no excuse for a process whose duration is unprecedented in our history and without compare in the world. No polity can maintain morale when the intense hurly-burly of political campaigns, wherein every small issue is deeply politicized, becomes the normal state of affairs. When you have the effective beginning of the presidential race the day after the mid-term elections, you condemn government and the people to perpetual and mostly synthetic uproar for the entire second half of a presidential term. The patient work of politics that requires study, reflection, discussion and compromise is usually impossible in this environment.

For one example: the present inability of a Democratic Congress to allow the passage of a bill providing protection for phone companies that help the government in the efforts to track calls by potential terrorists would not be much of a problem in a non-political environment, but now it is.

Political parties should be strengthened, but they should not be allowed to dictate the terms of the presidential selection to the extent they do now. The stakes are too high.

If you care about this problem, tell your party leaders and members of Congress. Specifically, Secretary of State Sam Reed needs active allies and backers on this issue.