There is certainly a lot going on these days. I hope this post finds you all well.  I want to remind you that census day is April 1st, and to share some information with you about how to complete your census requirement, or get answers to your questions about what your requirement is. At the end of the day, the census is the method we use to allocate resources to meet the health and welfare requirements of our society.  One of the six purposes of government, as listed at the beginning of our Constitution, was to promote the general welfare.  The census informs social decision-making on where we need more hospitals, more schools, more roads and infrastructure.  This week you have a once-every-ten-years chance to help bring resources into your community. Please don't miss your chance!  Here's some information:

Responding To The Census
1. The 2020 Census Is Happening Now. You Can Complete Your Questionnaire Online, By Phone, Or By Mail.

Who Is Required To Respond?
2. Everyone Living In The United States And Its Five Territories Is Required By Law To Be Counted In The 2020 Census.

3. You Should Respond For Your Home In One Of Three Ways: Online, By Phone, Or By Mail.

Who To Count?
4. Before Completing The 2020 Census, You Need To Know Where To Count Yourself And Who To Count With You In Your Home   

Where You Are Counted
5. The goal of the 2020 Census is a complete and accurate count of everyone living in the United States and its five territories. You should count yourself at the place where you are living and sleeping most of the time as of April 1, 2020 (Census Day).

6. Please count everyone living in your home. Where there are more people, there are more needs. An accurate count helps inform funding for hospitals, fire departments, schools, and roads for the next 10 years.

7. You have the option of completing the questionnaire by phone. To begin, call tel:844-330-2020, or call the number associated with your preferred language.

8. You can get more information at www.2020census.gov

The path from the Articles of Confederation [1] to the ratification of the United States Constitution was hindered by widely shared distrust of any powerful central authority. Having fought for freedom from an overbearing monarchy, many American leaders were wary of any form of government that might usurp power and constrain their liberties. The fact that the Constitutional Convention produced, and the states ratified, a Constitution featuring an executive branch co-equal with legislative and judicial branches seems an unlikely outcome. George Washington was the person everyone expected to serve as the first President, and the universal high regard Washington enjoyed was probably the most compelling reason that many Americans supported the Constitution’s provisions for the executive branch.

Any attempt to outline what differentiates our greatest presidents from the rest must, therefore, begin with an examination of the character of the man who shaped the American Republic’s expectations and hopes for the presidency. If you, like me, came out of high school with a picture of Washington as a genteel colonial aristocrat whose selection as commander of the Continental Army and, subsequently, as the first President, was a natural progression in a life of privilege, then you are mistaken. On the contrary, there was no easy path to success for young Washington. His father’s death when he was only eleven years old denied him any formal education beyond about the eighth-grade level and left his future uncertain. By his own initiative, the future president—ambitious, charismatic and a bit of a rogue in his younger years—carved his place in society as an adventurer, a warrior and a ladies’ man.

A Young Man Finds His Way [2]
Washington’s father left most of his “modest property” to his two oldest sons, who were George’s half-brothers. One of these men, Lawrence, fourteen years older than George, became a substitute father of sorts, at least for a few years. Lawrence’s share of the inheritance included the property that would later be named Mount Vernon, and George lived here with his mother and four younger siblings after his father’s death.

The move to Mount Vernon brought young George into contact with the prominent Fairfax family, whose American headquarters was just a few miles away at Belvoir. William Fairfax, a minor relative of Lord Fairfax, served as the American agent of the powerful British Lord. Coincidentally, Lawrence Washington married one of William’s daughters. William’s son, George Fairfax, and George Washington became friends. It was this Fairfax connection that enabled sixteen-year-old George Washington to participate in his first wilderness adventure, surveying Fairfax lands across the Blue Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley. In love with the wilderness and in need of a way to earn a living, George set himself up as a surveyor across the Blue Ridge the very next year. In a short time, he was able to begin speculating in land on the frontier. But just as this part of his life was gaining momentum, his half-brother became ill. George accompanied Lawrence to Barbados to help care for him, but the disease did not abate. The two returned to Mount Vernon, where Lawrence died in 1752.

Lawrence had been a natural role model for George even before the death of their father. When George was just nine, Lawrence had secured an officer’s commission in an American regiment that participated in an ill-fated expedition with British regular forces against the strategic Spanish outpost at Cartagena. The excitement of his older half-brother’s military adventure undoubtedly inspired George to pursue military appointments to further his own career when he came of age. His half-brother’s marriage help George secure the patronage of the powerful Fairfax family. In 1752, a 20-year-old George Washington sought and attained his deceased brother’s post as the Adjutant General of the Virginia militia. Thus, Major Washington had his first military post without any experience in the responsibilities that post entailed.

Military Misadventures, Legendary Courage and A Reputation Secured [3]
As fate would have it, Washington’s military education would be through the hard school of experience. Britain and France were engaged in a global competition that was about to erupt into full-scale war, and the Ohio Valley—the wilderness beyond the Virginia frontier—was one of the regions where the two powers were to clash. Between 1753 and 1759, Washington commanded several expeditions into the contested territory and served as an advisor to the British Regular Army on others. Raised to the rank of Colonel and Commander in Chief of all Virginia militia, he sought to defend the Virginia frontier against raids by tribes allied with the French. Through a series of failures, Washington earned for himself a hero’s reputation for his courage and skill as a frontiersman. He also earned praise for his attempt to get the British regulars to adopt tactics more suitable to the wilderness, and his energetic efforts to protect the Virginia frontier with insufficient resources.

In late 1753, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia sent Washington with a small band on a dangerous and sensitive mission. Washington was to travel into the Ohio Valley to find and warn the French that they were trespassing on land claimed by the English crown. The mission required moving nearly 500 miles through unbroken wilderness that was home to a formidable array of native tribes. The journey would have been hazardous in good weather, but the party had to fight through snow both ways. Washington found the French, but they were in significant strength and well on with plans to increase their presence and fortify the strategic area where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio (modern-day Pittsburgh). Waterways were frozen enough to force a return journey through snow and ice. Washington was nearly shot by a turncoat guide, and, later, nearly killed by exposure when a small raft overturned while crossing an icy river. His journal of this adventure was immediately published by the Lieutenant Governor in an unsuccessful effort to raise forces from the Virginia colonists to fortify the Ohio Valley.

The very next year, the same Lieutenant Governor gained the approval of the Virginia legislature for a 300-man force, and Washington, now a lieutenant colonel, became the de facto commander. A small force of about 33 people were sent ahead to fortify “the forks of the Ohio.” Washington followed with 159 more. The advance force was quickly surrounded by a vastly superior force of French and Indians, but the Virginia men were merely escorted a short way back and told to go home. When they encountered Washington, he decided to continue westward to link up with his own Indian allies. Together, the combined force launched a surprise attack on a small party of French, killing several of them. Warned that the French were sending hundreds to avenge this attack, Washington built a fort in an open meadow dominated by wooded heights. His allies abandoned him, warning him that the fort was poorly sited, which indeed it was.

The French took advantage of the wooded heights when they attacked on July 3, 1754. Washington’s men were exposed, and only the inaccuracy of the muskets used by both sides prevented a worse catastrophe than what unfolded. The return fire from the fort was ineffective. It started raining in the afternoon. The trenches around the fort began filling with water, and the powder stored in the magazine was in danger of being spoiled due to a leaky roof. By nightfall, over 100 of Washington’s men were either killed or wounded. The French, however, offered a cease fire. In exchange for a surrender document signed by Washington, they agreed to let the garrison withdraw to Virginia. The whole affair was a disaster by British standards: the Frenchmen Washington’s force had killed in their surprise attack included a diplomat on a mission to warn the British away from land claimed by the French. On top of this, Washington’s signed surrender was an embarrassment. To Virginians, however, Washington emerged in a heroic light, having won one victory and then led a courageous defense against a superior force. Washington expected his troops to be absorbed into the regular British Army, and to receive a regular commission himself. When this did not happen, he resigned.

The next spring saw two regiments of British regulars, under the command of Major General Edward Braddock, arrive in Virginia with the mission of capturing the now-finished French fort—Fort Duquesne—at the forks of the Ohio River. Advised that no one was more knowledgeable about the wilderness between Virginia and the Ohio Valley than George Washington, the general took Washington on as a volunteer advisor. But Braddock refused to listen when Washington tried to persuade him that European tactics would not work in the wilderness against the French and their Indian allies.

The British force was ambushed about ten miles from Fort Duquesne, suffering horrendous casualties. Washington’s horse was shot with him on it. Bullets tore his clothes. But he was not wounded—all the other mounted officers were either wounded or killed. Washington led the evacuation of the wounded, which included Major General Braddock. Braddock ordered him to ride for reinforcements, which he did. Braddock died of his wounds. The British Army withdrew to Philadelphia. Once again, Washington was looked on as a hero by Virginians, and he gained a favorable reputation amongst Americans in other colonies as well. The surviving British officers praised his courage. But the British military establishment blamed Washington for Braddock’s defeat. The British abandoned the defense of the Virginia frontier, leaving Washington and his militia to try and fend off incessant raids by tribes armed and encouraged by the French.

For the next two years, Washington served as “Colonel of the Virginia Regiment and Commander in Chief of all Virginia forces,” engaged in the impossible task of defending the isolated homesteads of the Shenandoah Valley with resources—funds, troops, wagons, horses and supplies—totally insufficient for the task at hand. He attempted to garrison the valley with a series of small forts that were only one day’s distance from one another. With full responsibility for all appointments of officers and matters of supply, Washington—already legendary for his exploits in battle—earned praise for tireless and skillful administration of his small force. He was largely unsuccessful at defending the settlers in the valley, yet they respected his efforts enough to elect him as their representative to the Virginia Assembly.

By 1758, the strategic situation had tipped in favor of the British. Formal declaration of war between France and Britain in 1756 allowed the British Navy to block French supplies from reaching the French in Canada and their allies in the Ohio Valley. Washington was unaware of this development, which finally created conditions favorable for the British to capture Fort Duquesne. Perpetually involved in bureaucratic wrangling with both his civilian leaders in Virginia and the British authorities, George Washington’s experience in the wilderness nevertheless made him valuable to both. Thus, when the new British commander, Brigadier General John Forbes, launched an expedition from Philadelphia northward, Washington was given command of the advanced brigade. When British forces reached the forks of the Ohio River in late November, they found the French had abandoned and burned their fortifications. Moreover, the tribes that had supported the French cause by raiding the Virginia frontier now made peace with the British. With the Virginia frontier secure, a 26-year-old George Washington resigned from his military position and returned to Mount Vernon.

Throughout this period, surviving correspondence paints a picture of young Washington as a ladies’ man. From flirtatious letters exchanged with women around Mount Vernon to notes from his fellow officers commenting on exploits in frontier saloons, Washington’s love of dancing, drinking, and romance is clear. Biographer James Thomas Flexner writes that “Washington was in love with love.” He notes that one romance held a special place in Washington’s heart even when he was much older. Ironically, the object of this long-lived affection was the wife of his close friend, George Fairfax. It is not clear whether there was more to their relationship than flirtatious correspondence. Whatever their relationship, it never interfered with Washington’s friendship with Fairfax. Indeed, that Fairfax connection was important in the social advancement of young George Washington. [4]
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By 1759, despite his young age, Washington was widely known throughout the colonies for his prominent role in the defense of the Virginia frontier. There are reports that Benjamin Franklin praised some of his exploits. Although criticized by some for his drinking, gambling and romantic exploits, Washington was also known for his courage, administrative skill, and leadership ability. His survival during many close brushes with death lent him a mystique of invulnerability. The officers who served under his command were intensely loyal to him. Upon his resignation, the Virginia legislature passed a resolution praising his service.

Sources:
[1] * the first attempt at a federal government for the victorious states after the American Revolutionary War
[2] This section is a summary of information found in Flexner, James Thomas; Washington, The Indispensable Man; Back Bay Books; New York, NY; 1969; pp. 3-9.
[3] ibid., pp. 9-38.
[4] ibid, pp. 7-22.

First, let's be perfectly clear--any information system can be hacked if enough time and resources are available to attack it.

Given that fact, the only attainable objectives when securing an information system are (1) to make the time and resources required to break the system greater than than the value gained by breaking the system, and (2) to make any breach visible to the system's owners. In the context of electoral processes in general, the potential "value" of the attack could be to demonstrate the capability to disrupt an election in order to extract ransom from an unprepared government. Alternatively, the motive could be political rather than monetary, and the value in this case would be to undermine faith in the electoral process, to deny a government the ability to declare a valid outcome, or to change the outcome without anyone in the target country being aware of the hack.

Protecting the validity of election outcomes is, of course, fundamental to the viability of a republic such as the United States. Famous rulings by the Supreme Court in the 1960s established that equal protection of the law, guaranteed to each citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment, applied to the individual's right to vote.  In Baker v. Carr, the Court ruled that the Tennessee legislature had to redistrict on the basis of population, with the intention of ensuring that each individual's vote counted equally. Attacks on electoral systems that favor one party over another, besides being prima facie illegal, threaten this principle of equal protection of the law. Protecting electoral processes that provide a valid outcome wherein each registered voter can be certain their vote was not tampered with or discarded is therefore essential to protecting the right to vote.
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Proper information security protects the confidentiality, integrity and availability (C-I-A) of the information in an information system. Safeguarding confidentiality means we keep secret things secret, allowing only authorized people to see data that has been restricted from public view in some way. Protecting the integrity of information means keeping the data safe from changes caused by any unauthorized person or process. Ensuring availability means that all authorized users can access the systems and information they need at designated times and places without interruption. In a well-designed system, information security professionals use a layered approach of physical and procedural safeguards in conjunction with dedicated hardware and software resources to detect and defend against attacks.

This traditional layered approach is the best defense against attacks aimed at the confidentiality and availability dimensions of an electoral information system. While voting machines, by definition, must be accessible to the public, the physical security of these machines should include inspection and certification that each machine functions properly and has not been tampered with prior to election day. From the point of certification, election officials must ensure  proper chain of custody and protection from unauthorized access to the machines until the polls open. During the election, proper access control ensures only registered voters touch the machines and only for the purpose of casting their individual vote. Other nodes in the electoral system should be protected with the same physical security measures used to protect sensitive data centers--access only by authorized people with appropriate credentials for specific, official purposes. Information must be encrypted at rest and in transit, with hardware and software firewalls along with appropriately hardened network infrastructure protecting access to the transmissions and storage locations for the encrypted data. Technology staff access should be segmented, monitored, and guarded by appropriately complex multi-factor authentication and authorization protocols.

Traditional defenses remain important for the integrity of information in information systems. So-called ransomware attacks modify data in an information system by encrypting it, compromising the integrity of the data in a way that denies availability of the system to authorized users until some sum of money is paid to the attackers. To protect against this type of attack, systems must not only prevent unauthorized access, but also must ensure that authorized inputs to systems and software are validated to screen out malicious code that could alter system data.
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For electoral systems, protecting the integrity of information requires even more. Voters must have confidence that their vote is recorded accurately, and that the ballot is not altered after it is recorded. The best way to ensure votes are recorded accurately is through some kind of audit mechanism. Then, use of blockchain technology provides a nearly foolproof way of ensuring ballots are not altered once recorded. As a final step, election officials should empower designated third-party services to audit and certify the blockchain implementation.

In recent years, blockchain technology has surged onto the scene as a leading method for ensuring the integrity of transactional systems of all types, including electoral systems. West Virginia, Utah, and Colorado have all successfully implemented Voatz, a blockchain solution, for their absentee voting solution in recent elections. Understanding the mechanics of blockchain technology will clarify the potential of this new way to preserve voter confidence.

The "blocks" in a blockchain are basically payloads of encrypted information tagged with complex hash values. A hash value is a digital fingerprint for an electronic file--the unique result of running the file through a one-way algorithm. There are many different algorithms to produce hash values. Once a file has been hashed, any change to the file--no matter how small--will produce a radically different hash value. Therefore, when an encrypted file is sent with its hash value, the receiving station can confirm that the original file has not been changed by running the received file through the same hash function and comparing the hash value produced at the destination with the hash value that accompanied the file. 

Inside each block are other hash values. There are individual hash values for some number of encrypted transactions, some metadata, a function called a "nonce" that is the trigger for closing out the block, and the completed hash for the entire contents of the preceding block. As each transaction is hashed and added to the block, all of the participating nodes in the blockchain system calculate the current hash of the entire contents of the block at that instant. When one of these calculated hash values reaches the trigger point designated by the nonce, the hash of that entire block is transmitted to the entire network. When the majority of participating nodes confirm that the block hash satisfies the requirement for completing the block, the block is added as the next block in the chain.

Even blockchain solutions must be audited. When the network of participating nodes is sufficiently centralized, as we might expect it to be in a state voting system, it is technically possible to insert one or more counterfeit blocks into the chain if a majority of the nodes concur. So, for instance, in my home state of Utah, with 29 counties and a finite, relatively small number of precincts, it is possible for some number of pre-built counterfeit blocks to be seeded by compromised nodes in a manner that would preempt legitimate blocks if a sufficient number of nodes were involved in the conspiracy. The only way to ensure that the election results are valid is an end-to-end audit that can tie specific election results to specific ballot transaction id's. 

Given recent efforts by rogue state actors to create doubt about electoral processes using social media, the ability to perform an end-to-end audit of the voting process in a way that allows officials to certify election results in a credible manner is increasingly important to maintaining voter confidence. Systems to enable this type of audit by establishing a transaction id for each ballot were challenged several years ago on the basis that they violated voters' right to privacy. But a 2012 ruling in federal district court (Citizens Center v. Gessler) held that there is no constitutional right to a secret ballot. Given the need for an audit mechanism to protect the systems that guarantee our right to vote, it seems appropriate to me that the individual voter's right to privacy should be subordinate to legitimate mechanisms for providing a credible audit. It also seems to me that, beyond what is absolutely necessary to create a credible audit mechanism, the secrecy of the individual's voter data should be protected to the greatest extent possible.

​In the context of election security, traditional information security combined with blockchain technology and  appropriate auditing protocols can provide credible assurance that votes are accurately counted and protected from tampering. Given the demonstrated threat, it is important for all Americans to insist that the state officials responsible for the administration of elections take aggressive actions to implement comprehensive election security and auditing solutions.

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One of the major premises of Accountability Citizenship is that, over the past 50 years or so, technology has changed what it takes to be a good citizen of the democratic republic that we call the United States of America. Technology unleashed the crushing flood of information in which we are all immersed. Technology enabled the increasingly accurate personalization of this flood of information to surround each of us with a bubble tailor-made to convince us that we know, as individuals, what is right and best and true (and to make it very easy to buy things related to our basic needs and world view). Technology allows us to choose channels and form groups that reinforce our individual world view while, in many cases, objectifying and demonizing those who have a different world view. Technology has, in many ways, made it more difficult to form consensus, to build solutions that reflect compromise, and even to recognize that compromise is necessary.
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Being a good citizen requires that we try to understand the world we inhabit, that we share our understanding with others in a manner respectful of those with a different understanding, and that we work together to implement effective solutions to the many challenges that confront us. Technology has caused or intensified many of the challenges we face. But technology is also absolutely necessary to building and implementing effective solutions to those challenges. Technology can enable systems that allow us to inform our (and our fellow citizens') understanding of major challenges facing our society, to consolidate and summarize individual perspectives on possible responses to those challenges, and to protect the integrity and availability of the information associated with challenges, solutions, and citizen inputs.

In the first edition of Accountability Citizenship, I introduced the idea of using technology on the web site of every Member of Congress to create something I called Congress 2.0. The basic idea was to convert the web site of every Member of Congress from the one-way information bulletin boards that they are today into secure, comprehensive, two-way platforms for anonymously collecting and displaying the sentiments and priorities of every registered voter in every congressional district. Along with the survey tool, a Congress 2.0 web site would incorporate a dynamic scorecard mechanism that would display the performance of the Member of Congress representing that district as measured by the priorities of registered voters in the district and performance metrics common to all Members of Congress (like attendance and percentage of missed votes). 

There were a few illustrations in the first book to give readers the general idea of what the tool would do. Unfortunately, no Member of Congress accepted my challenge to incorporate such technology into their web site. My own congressional delegation offered nonsensical reasons why they "cannot" (really, should be "will not") add this technology to their taxpayer-funded web sites.

​Over the course of the past six years, as I have pursued degrees in computer science and information systems, my understanding of the technology has increased to the point where I built a “mockup” of the Congress 2.0 web site, or, as I call it, the Voter Transparency Tool (VTT). The technology to build and secure the VTT has also improved dramatically. In this blog, I include a few screenshots to show how the voter logs in, records their input, and checks the current VTT survey results for their district and state. For those interested in testing the working mockup, you will be able to access that on the accountabilitycitizenship.org web site in the near future.

The login functionality is just the same as we are all used to for logging in to our online bank accounts. Your voter registration number serves as both your user id and account number. When you log in for the first time, you create a password long enough to provide reasonable security. For additional security, multi-factor authentication is mandatory. That means you have to use your fingerprint or respond to a system-generated message on another device you own or another secure web site in order to gain access to the survey and see statewide results for your state. The initial login page is shown here:

Once the voter logs in, they are redirected to the survey page.  The survey shown in the mockup includes a question about abortion, a question about budget discipline, a question about the re-districting process for elected officials, and a space for voters to nominate issues they want to see included in future revisions of the Voter Transparency Tool survey. While much of the data could be the same in all congressional districts in a state, it is important to build the tool from the level of the congressional district to enable registered voters in each district to nominate the issues they feel are most important. So in each state, the VTT for the two senators will be identical, but there could be different survey questions in the VTT for each Member of the House of Representative's congressional district. Here is what the mockup survey page looks like:

When the voter completes their responses to the survey questions, and clicks on the submit button, they are taken to the results page. The results page provides a receipt of the individual input recorded for that particular voter, and it also provides a graphical summary view of the counts of registered voters in each county in the state who have voted on the same issues. In the mockup itself, voters will be able to click on the summary data for each county to see an expanded view of the numbers of voters who have recorded survey votes in favor of the issue and opposed to the issue, as well as a tally of those who have not voted.  Here is a partial screen shot of the graphical summary:

The Voter Transparency Tool would accomplish a number of beneficial effects in our country. First, it would make voter participation fun and would give people a reason to register. No one would want to be the person who could not log in to the VTT; most people would be curious about what issues their fellow citizens nominated as the most important, as well as how people in various counties voted on specific issues. The tool would also display a dynamic scorecard (not shown here) on the senators and the representative associated with each district. Members of Congress would have an incentive to manage their score, and that would require much more extensive engagement with their constituents than is currently the case.

There is no doubt that a major increase in the quantity and quality of available information has radically changed the requirements for effective citizenship in the United States over the past fifty years. In my view, we as a society have failed to provide the education and the information management tools to enable healthy citizenship in this new environment. Our failure has created a vacuum that has been filled by special interests. Those interests are now manipulating the information stream to further their own agendas; this has the second-order effects of discouraging participation, increasing polarization, and degrading our ability to identify and solve the most pressing challenges we face.  The Voter Transparency Tool is one way we can leverage information technology to enable efficient management and accountability for our republic.

     The 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet projects the plot of Shakespeare's Tempest into outer space, and makes that brilliant plot accessible to all of us. A young Leslie Nielsen leads a rescue expedition to a distant planet only to find the sole survivors of the previous mission unwilling to accept their help and unable to explain the deaths of the rest of their party. Walter Pidgeon plays the scientist father engrossed in the study of the Krell--the extinct super-race that once inhabited the forbidden planet. We learn this super-race had invented technology that magnified their mental capacity, enabling them to reach unimaginable technological achievements. Eventually, we learn that the same technology that propelled them to great achievement ultimately destroyed the Krell. Only the dying words of one of Nielsen's crew gives the critical insight: Krell technology not only magnified their positive mental capability, but also their negative, violent emotions as well. 

     Hopefully, you have a sense of deja vu when you consider the amazing advances we have experienced in the information age. Without a doubt, information technology has greatly accelerated the technological achievement of the human race. In just the last 50 years, we have gone from putting the first humans on the moon to mass marketing cell phones that give almost all of us more computing power than the Apollo 11 space ship. Starting around 20 years ago, we began producing more bytes of information every few days than was produced in the entire history of human kind previously. Advances in medicine, artificial intelligence, transportation and communications propel our human species at a dizzying pace. Yet, for all of the power of our technology, we seem helpless to stop the destructive side of our technology. No where is this more true than in the realm of social media, where we seem to have lost our ability to treat each other civilly, to disagree without letting our differences fuel hatred and division, and to tell the difference between truth and deception.
 
     I will resist the temptation to call for some mechanism to curb the evil effects of our technology. The lesson is all too clear. From Shakespeare to Forbidden Planet, the solution to the challenges of power are not to be found in magic or in the next technological leap forward.  The basic challenge is to balance the allure of an ever-more-powerful independent individualism with the irresistible force of our nature as social animals. 

     They say the largest organism on the planet is either the pando "forest of one tree" in Utah or the Armillaria ostoyae fungus in Oregon. The forest seems to consist of over 47,000 individual aspen trees, but in fact shares one massive underground root system. Similarly, the so-called humongous fungus in Oregon is connected mostly under the surface of the ground--its visible manifestations appear to be discrete individual clusters of mushrooms that bloom in the autumn. In both cases, the appearance of individuals is an illusion, and we can confirm the connection that exists beneath the surface. In both cases, however, the health of the organism as a whole depends on protecting the health of the connective tissue.

     In the case of our species, I think it is perfectly reasonable to note that the sense we have of our individual existence is largely an illusion--the "roots" that connect us are our thoughts, and we have never been more connected as a species than we are today. The challenge lies in the fact that thoughts and the media through which we share them are not physical, and can just as easily spread poison as nutrition. It is up to each of us to tend to the portion of the root system that we touch: to be respectful, kind, honest, and to demand the same from those around us. Ultimately, we are indeed affected by and connected to our fellow creatures. It is less important to be right or to win as an individual than it is to support the growth of the community you inhabit.

The Battle of Yorktown ended with the surrender of the besieged British Army on October 19, 1781 to a combined American and French force. It was the last major battle of the American Revolution. Though there would be two  years of negotiations before the Treaty of Paris would officially end the war, the victory at Yorktown marked the decisive defeat of the last major British force outside of New York City and removed any realistic opportunity for a British victory in the war.

Like much of our revolutionary experience, the story of Yorktown is full of fascinating details, plots and sub-plots. There's Washington's masterful concentration of the Continental Army in Virginia. He brought together elements of the army across significant distances while deceiving the British into thinking he was planning an attack on New York, and even managed a short visit to his home at Mount Vernon on the way to the fight. There's the timely arrival of the French fleet, which not only delivered key reinforcing troops, but also defeated a British fleet and blockaded the besieged garrison from the sea. There's even some Spanish gold finding its way into the pockets of American soldiers to keep them moving towards their final battle. But the real magic of our revolutionary story lies in the broader tapestry: who we were then, who we are now, and the unifying political philosophy that provides the connective tissue between past and present.

My son was about twelve when his elementary school curriculum turned to a comprehensive block on the American Revolution. Over spring break that year, he and I went on a special father-son trip: we flew to Boston and spent a day touring the battlefields at Lexington and Concord, where the Revolution began in April of 1775, then drove to Philadelphia and spent several hours touring Independence Hall, then drove to Yorktown and spent some time on the Yorktown battlefield and at Colonial Williamsburg. If you asked my son, he would probably have told you the best part of the trip was the two days riding roller coasters at the Busch Gardens near Yorktown.

But my agenda was simply to impart to him a visceral understanding of the physical geography of three key locations from the American Revolution, the time and distance relationships between those locations in the revolutionary era, and the relationships between the battles and the major political documents that shaped our country. I wanted him to know that, even though we could drive the 308-ish miles from Concord to Philadelphia in about 6 hours today, it would have taken a week or more for news of the fighting there to reach Philadelphia in 1775. Likewise, it would have taken a similar time for news of the victory at Yorktown to reach Philadelphia in 1781. I wanted him to understand that the fighting at Lexington and Concord started the war a full fifteen months before the Continental Congress published the Declaration of Independence. I wanted him to know that the significance of the military victory at Yorktown was magnified by the fact that the colonies had just ratified the Articles of Confederation seven months earlier, in March of 1781. I wanted him to understand that the United States Constitution was not drafted and signed until September of 1787, a full six years after Yorktown and four years after the end of the Revolutionary War. I wanted him to understand that, because it took so long for information to travel a few hundred miles in those days, the world was a much bigger place then, at least in terms of the kind of human contact that makes governments necessary.

​Think about it. In the Revolutionary War / Articles of Confederation / Constitutional Convention era (1776-1787) it took 7-10 days to travel the 308 miles from Lexington and Concord to Philadelphia, depending on whether you rode a horse or rode in a carriage. Let’s take the low end of that range: 7 days is 168 hours.  So the speed of information was roughly 2 mph. There were about 3 million colonists and slaves living under the 13 colonial governments, which controlled at most an area of about 200,000 square miles, for a population density of roughly 15 people per square mile. Without any technology for communication beyond the printing press, you could pretty much only communicate with the people within earshot. Compared to the world we inhabit today, it took a long time to communicate with any significant percentage of the population.   

Today, information travels at the speed of light: roughly 671 million mph. Our country is much bigger, but so is our population, with an average density of something like 82 people per square mile, 5-ish times what it was in the revolutionary era.  But modern communications and transportation technology makes a huge difference. Quite literally, we can communicate with all 310 million of our fellow citizens nearly instantaneously via television and the Internet. There are a lot more of us, and there is a much higher concentration of interactions per unit of time--the kind of interactions that make government necessary. 

​When the founders did get around to writing the Constitution, they listed six purposes for that Constitution: to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. After their experiment with the Articles of Confederation, they incorporated a national executive in the Constitution even though they were all wary of the notion of executive power. It is worth considering how well the government we have today achieves the purposes set forth in the Constitution, and how the evolution of that government over the past 232 years reflects the changes in communications technology, transportation technology, and population.

This month marks the two-hundred-thirty-second anniversary of the signing of our United States Constitution. The Constitution was drafted and signed in Philadelphia, in the same building where the Declaration of Independence was signed. George Washington was one of the delegates to the convention that produced the Constitution, and he was elected President of  the convention, which convened on May 25th, 1787 and adjourned on September 17th of that year.

Here is the excerpt from the first edition of Accountability Citizenship in which I discuss the United States Constitution:

Our republic is founded on a Constitution. That Constitution was developed after a group of dissatisfied colonists--subjects of the British Empire--declared their independence from Great Britain and fought a war to win their independence at great risk to themselves and to their families. The colonists were dissatisfied because they believed the British government was abusing its power, treating them unjustly, and not responding to their needs. The first effort to structure a unified government for the new United States was based on something known as the Articles of Confederation, and it was a failure. Generally, historians agree the Articles of Confederation did not provide the central government with sufficient powers to administer the basic functions of a viable government. The Constitution was developed in 1787 to address the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution is not perfect, either--it has been amended twenty-seven times. The first ten amendments were adopted in 1791 and are collectively known as the Bill of Rights. (Accountability Citizenship, xlibris, 2013, pp. 46-7)

Google's icon for the past several days has linked to a video commemorating the Apollo 11 mission that put the first people on the moon on July 20th, 1969.  Mike Collins, the crew member who remained in orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the surface, narrates this terrific summary of an amazing accomplishment. I remember my mom and dad getting my sister and I out of bed to come watch the landing live. There is nothing we cannot do when we work together! Click to watch the video.

I am a bit of a Star Trek nerd. I've watched every episode of the original series, the "Next Generation" series, and all of the movies. I like the franchise because, like all good fiction, it weaves some powerful messages about common aspects of the human condition into its very uncommon settings. If you pay attention, there are some good lessons to be found in the adventures of the starship Enterprise and its crew. One of my favorite episodes of all is "The Day of the Dove", which aired the first week in November, 1968.

For those of you who didn't live that time, let me provide a bit of historical context.  The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union (Russia) was at its height, with both sides armed to the teeth with enough nuclear, chemical and conventional weapons to destroy the world many times over.  Proxy "hot wars" were being fought in places like Africa and South America. The Vietnam War was at its height.  At home, the Civil Rights Act was just a few years old, and the conflict between the federal government's enforcement of the new law and some state and local efforts to resist it was one source of violence in American cities.  Just a year earlier, during the "long hot summer of 1967" racial violence had led to so much violence in Detroit that the government deployed the 82d Airborne Division and the National Guard to help restore order.  There was also conflict between those who were protesting against the war in Vietnam and those who insisted we had to support our military. In a span of just over two months 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis (April 4) and Bobby Kennedy (the Democratic nominee for the 1968 presidential election) was assassinated in Los Angeles (June 6). The episode of Star Trek I am referencing in this blog aired 4 days before the 1968 presidential election.

If I were to summarize the lesson of "The Day of the Dove", I would say it is simply that hate and violence warp our ability to accurately perceive facts and reality, and that cycles of violence are "vicious cycles" where negative behaviors can reinforce each other and perpetuate--even magnify--the cycle. I'm attaching a link to the youtube trailer for this episode.  I wish everyone in our country would take 45 minutes and watch the whole episode (you can download it from Amazon and probably other places as well).  I wish everyone would familiarize themselves with the history of this turbulent time in America.  Spoiler alert: the crew of the Enterprise join forces with their arch-enemies, the Klingons, to defeat a hate monster.  They do it by recognizing that hate blinds us, and that we can overcome it if we work to find common ground. 

​We have a lot of common ground in America.  Things are nowhere near as bad today as they were in November, 1968.  But we have to make an effort to celebrate the goodness in our country and what we have in common, even as we work through our disagreements over how to make it even better.  We have to focus on facts rather than on blind loyalty to this faction or that faction. Beware of any group that tries to prevent you from seeking common ground and understanding with others. Any others. Even the Klingons.

Live long and prosper!

At West Point, they spent a lot of time teaching us about duty.  One of the ways they did that was by having us memorize something called Worth's Battalion Orders, which goes like this: 

"But an officer on duty knows no one. To be partial is to dishonor both himself and the object of his ill-advised favor. What will be thought of him who exacts of his friends that which disgraces him? Look at him who winks at and overlooks offenses in one, which he causes to be punished in another, and contrast him with the inflexible Soldier who does his duty faithfully, notwithstanding it occasionally wars with his private feelings. The conduct of one will be venerated and emulated; the other detested as a satire upon Soldiership and Honor.”
–Brevet Major William Jenkins Worth

Robert Mueller nailed it.  Well done, sir.