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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 16, 1991)
Opinion Jana Pedersen, Editor, 472-1766 Alan Phelps, Opinion Page Editor Kara Wells, Managing Editor Roger Price, Wire Editor Wendy Navratil, Copy Desk Chief Brian Shellito, Cartoonist Jeremy Fitzpatrick, Senior Reporter Dangerous ignorance Bill of Rights changes harm democracy On Sunday the Bill of Rights turned 200 years old. Unfortunately, the document that guarantees American freedoms is barely known by the average American. A recent survey conducted by the American Bar Asso ciation showed that many Americans don’t know the sections of the Bill of Rights. And, they don’t agree with them. Thirty-three percent of the 507 individuals interviewed by the ABA could not identify correctly the Bill of Rights as the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. But more appalling than mere ignoranck are the changes in the Bill of Rights sbme would favor. Forty-one percent would allow law enforcement officials to search the homes of suspected drug offenders without a search warrant. Fifty-one percent would have the government bar speech that demeans anyone’s sex, race, religion or national origin Fnrtv-six nercent would ban the news media from reporting national security issues without prior government approval. Proposed changes such as these are reactions to real problems that plague American society today. The war on drugs, for instance, leaves some Americans with a sense of helplessness. But the answers do not lie in the knee jerk chipping away of our basic freedoms. The greatest danger of democracy is the rule of the majority. Perhaps many have forgotten that to protect the innocent, America first must protect the guilty. This basic principle is what American law and the Bill of Rights are all about. Surely the people in this survey did not realize the ramifications of the alterations they would have made. Or did they? The truth is that many, if not most Americans, just disagree with the Bill of Rights, as shown by the ludicrous flag-burning fiasco. Some seem to contend that the Bill of Rights only applies to those activities that the majority support. When delegates at the ratifying conventions of the original 13 states looked at the product of the Constitu tional Convention, they recognized that something was missing. Remembering the abuses they had suffered under the British system of unwritten common law, leaders of the new republic wanted to prevent government from taking advantage of the populace. Government power would have to be limited, once and for all, by setting down in writing specific actions it could not take. What the earlv leaders came ud with, what they de mantled to be included in the new Constitution, was the Bill of Rights. They were not paranoid, or shortsighted — they simply knew the corrupting power of government. Former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. once said the First Amendment is the most important part of the Constitution. “Its enforcement gives us this society," he said. ‘The other provisions of the Constitution really only embellish it.” How ironic it is that so many people would change the document that for 200 years has provided the foundation for all of our rights. It is those people we must guard against, because there would be no going back once rights are stripped away. —AJ.P -LETTER POLICY ■» The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor from all read ers and interested others. Letters will be selected for publi cation on the basis of clarity, original ity, timeliness and space available. ' The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit all material submitted. Readers also are welcome to sub mit material as guest opinions. Whether material should run as a let ter or guest opinion, or not to run, is left to the editor’s discretion. Letters and guest opinions sent I the newspaper become the propen of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot t returned. Anonymous submissions will n be considered for publication. Le ters should include the author name, year in school, major ar Submit material to the Daily N braskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448. WITHERS *A\WStt. VW CUVUM’ ^00 0U1 v EKRU* 10 GET \ \WEKP START W GARY LONGSINE I Marketplace needs numeracy I CC'WW ow much for some inspi ration?” I asked. * “Fifty bucks,” replied the grey-eyed Goddess of Informa tion. “That’s a bit out of my price range. Do you have any used inspirations?”^ I asked, humbly. “Sorry, 1 sold our last used inspira tion to the White House last week. President Bush called and asked us to send it via overnight courier. Cost him more than fifty, and it was worn pretty thin.” “Hmm . . . then, how much arc tips?” “Advice is free, but you need to sign a waiver releasing the Student Union and all employees acting in their capacity as employees from any and all liability as a result of your correct or incorrect use of any advice provided .actual or hypothetical. Sign here.” I signed, saying, “I need to know what to write about.” She thought for a moment and replied, “Write about something dif ferent, write about... accretion disks in interacting binary stars, or... how to route a warp field through a phase conductance transporter coil to boost the mava-gain and beam the Enter prise out of danger when the warp engines are cold, or... innumcracy.” “Innumcracy ... that’s being illit erate about math-things, right?” 441-_.1. I* I_L__ I_!_1 LAaciij . it uaa uvtii as the root cause of America’s dccl in ing ability to compete in a global marketplace. John Allen Paulos wrote about it in his book, ‘Innumcracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Con sequences.’ Get a copy.” I did. Paulos says that people don’t understand simple things like “one cup of water plus one cup of popcorn are not equal to two cups of soggy popcorn.” He notes that many people can’t -1 tell you how tall a building is when given the number of stories it has. (Multiply the number of floors by 10 to gel a measure in feet of the build o ing’s approximate height.) ^ Innumeracy leads to widespread belief in silly things. Astrology, for example, has few adherents among it people who understand simple statc t- ments about probability. My reputa ’s tion relative to Jcane Dixon’s aside, I id am every bit as good at predicting the Lo future. So are you. j Astrologers get reputations in e. supermarket tabloids that fail to fol r low up thousands of completely in ane predictions made each year and f Innumeracy leads to widespread belief in silly things. Astrol ogy for. example, has few adherent! among people who under stand simgk state ments about proba bilitv. herald widely the few unremarkable statements that come to pass. Long lists of failed predictions arc not printed at the end of the year. Astrologers arc lousy at predicting world events. Last year Elvis did not return to Earth on a UFO bringing a tusion tccnnoiogy inai woum provide free energy from kitchen scraps. El vis also failed to address the United Nations and propose a world govern ment. Elvis was not discovered run ning a discotheque in a small town in Wyoming. Elvis didn’t father a child with a convenience store clerk in California. My successful prediction rate has b6en much higher. Unlike astrologers all over the world, I made only one prediction about Elvis: Elvis stays dead. I also predicted that there would be continuing turmoil in the Soviei Union, including challenges to Gor bachev’s rule of the nation. However 1 didn’t predict the coup attempt, noi the rapid disintegration of the Sovie Union that followed. Even people presumed intelligcn otherwise often suffer from innumcr acy. According to Paulos, a clos< friend of Freud darned Wilhelm Flics: invented biorhythmic analysis. Flics: based it on an unremarkable mathe malical assertion using the number: 23 and 28, which were supposed U represent some male and • fcmal< metaphysical trail. Fhess noticed that if you add ant . s subtract appropriate multiples of 23 and 28, you can express any number. Freud was so impressed with Fliess that he expected to die at age 51. Neither noticed that many pairs of numbers can be used to express any number. In fact, any pair of numbers that have no common factors can be used to express any number in the equation 23X + 28Y — given suitable X and Y values. Innumeracy has a terrible impact on national policies. It results in con tinued spending on the B-2 bomber, even though the delays in procure ment have driven the cost of the mis sionless plane to over $ 1 billion each. That’s a thousand piles of a million dollars for each plane. I could go to school forever on the interest from $1 billion and lake all of my friends with me. For a decade we’ve sent hundreds of millions of dollars to El Salvador each year. There are only a few mil lion people in that tiny country. The overwhelming majority, of them arc poor and will remain poor despite the fact that they receive one of the high- ^ est pcr-capila aid packages ever sent by the United Stales. I ne money was sent 10 supjjui i military oppression of impoverished and desperate people. If it had been used to provide hospitals, schools and jobs, El Salvador would be the envy of Central America. Instead, it is locked in the grip of violence and poverty. The same could be said for our inner cities. The leading cause of death for young black males in inner cities is homicide. To put this in perspec tive, if you’re a University of Ne braska student, your odds of getting killed by gunfire arc only slightly higher than getting struck by light ning. Innumcracy has not completely undermined rationality. However, if we expect living standards to increase, if we want to live in a peaceful and prosperous world, we must develop our understanding of problems and 1 solutions. Simple applied mathemat ics must be taught as vigorously as reading. In a world of limited resources, we _ all need to do our part to be literate, ’ not just about the problems, but about ! the solutions as well. This means ! knowing something about the rela ' tive sizes of different problems and the relative costs of different solu ‘ tions. When you read, don’t skip over . the numbers. Longsinc Is a senior International affairs and economics mqjor »nd a Dally Nebraskan col I umnivt - V
