From the Archives: 'School Training for Civil Defense' (1981)

Some background may shed light on this 1981 article, retrieved from my paper archives.  Fortunately the story behind it has already been told, in a remembrance of celebrated debate coach James J. Unger, which I posted in April 2008:

The high school debate topic the previous year (1981-82) was "Resolved: That the federal government should establish minimum educational standards for elementary and secondary schools in the United States." I came up with the idea, based upon research I was doing in the real world -- if the world of Washington think tanks can be described as "real" -- that we should write a case about civil defense education in elementary and secondary schools.

The problem with this idea was that there was little, if any, information available about civil defense education. (There was some material from the 1960s, but nothing recent and little that was usable by debaters.) But I was convinced this could be a winning case.

So I asked Professor Unger, "What do you do when something is topical but so obscure that there is nothing written about it that you can use as evidence for inherency?" He replied that there was not much to do in that situation, other than to intensify your research and find the evidence you need.

My solution: since I had already had one article published on the topic of civil defense -- appearing in the Washington Star on October 10, 1980, months after I submitted it and based on research I did during the summer 1980 forensics institute -- and had subsequently become an officer in the American Civil Defense Association, I could just write another one, with a focus on education, that could be used as evidence to support our case.

And that's what I did. I submitted the article to several newspapers, and it was published in the New York Tribune (a sister newspaper to The Washington Times), just days before the institute tournament. We inserted the appropriate quotations into the case (not citing me by name), held others in reserve for second affirmative and rebuttals, and moved forward.

The case was relatively successful, with two of my teams making it into the elimination rounds. After the last round that one of the teams lost, they told me that my qualifications as a source had become an issue in the debate. The judge from that round added: "Your boys defended you valiantly, but they lost on other issues."

This is a long tale meant to be background of something that happened a couple of years later. As it was told to me, late one night while preparing for a tournament, members of the Georgetown debate team had hit a brick wall, unable to find the evidence they needed to complete a brief they were working on. Professor Unger popped up and said, "Well, why don't we just pull a Rick Sincere?" -- meaning, why not write an article and get it published in a reputable newspaper or journal? I don't think they ever followed through on that suggestion, but just the idea that my name became associated with a new debate tactic was enough to warm my ego.

This article was published in The News World, a New York City daily newspaper (later called the New York City Tribune), on July 28, 1981:

Richard Sincere

School Training for Civil Defense

Perhaps no aspect of the strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union is ignored more than civil defense and emergency preparedness. Americans waste too much effort in debates which obfuscate strategic issues by statistical manipulation of throw-weights, megatonnages, and MIRV capabilities. Public and policymakers alike are blind to the reality of the strategic balance: Deterrence of nuclear war depends as much on the willingness and ability to survive such a conflict as it does on the technical capacity to fight the battle.

Soviet political and military policies do not reflect a frightened belief in the universal destruction of nuclear war. Instead, they maintain that nuclear weapons are instruments for war-fighting. In many ways, Soviet leaders view nuclear weapons as extensions of conventional war-fighting techniques; Soviet military literature categorizes war by who does the fighting, not by the weapons which they use. Most importantly, Soviet military strategy is fundamentally a survival-oriented strategy.

One result of this thinking has been the establishment of a nationwide civil defense network. The chief of Soviet civil defense is an army general, filling an office equivalent to our own secretary of the Army. The Soviets treat civil defense as a co-equal branch of the military. On the other hand, in the United States responsibility for civil defense lies buried in an obscure bureau of the Department of Commerce called the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Which country takes its self-protection more seriously?

In accord with the principle of protecting their people from the ravages of nuclear war, the Soviets have launched an extensive training program in all public schools from elementary to university levels, and as continuing education industrial plants and communities. Towns and villages celebrate “civil defense days” as holidays, with sports competitions and games geared toward teaching the citizens survival techniques. And if some Soviet citizens scoff at these methods, they will at least have some skills to draw on in an emergency.

A widely-circulated Soviet civil defense manual state: “Civil defense training in the public schools occupies an important place in preparing the people of our country for protection against weapons of mass destruction.” In contrast, the editor of the Journal of Civil Defense told me recently that “civil defense education has been badly neglected in the United States in the past few years. With no initiative from the higher levels, it apparently has fallen off to almost zero.”

This attitude seems unlikely to change. The shame of this neglect is that civil defense survival methods are so easy to teach. Generally, Soviet schools spend no more than 15-20 minutes each week on it, mostly in conjunction with sportsmanlike competition. One civil defense game involves nearly 20 million children each summer. The final match of this game, called “Summer Lightning,” is played in Leningrad as an object of intense national interest.

In the United States, inaccessibility to civil defense literature is the greatest obstacle to survival training. A good beginning for civil defense instruction in America’s public schools would be for the Department of Education to sponsor distribution of survival handbooks (such as Dr. Cresson Kearny’s “Nuclear War Survival Skills,” published in 1979) to all school libraries. Such a minimum requirement would allow individual school districts to expand civil defense education as much as they like, especially if assistance from the Department of Defense and FEMA were available.

Civil defense education will immeasurably increase the maintenance of a peaceful deterrent to nuclear war. As long as no civil defense training is available to United States citizens, our country remains a willing hostage to Soviet weapons with little hope of survival or recovery. Survival plays a major role in Soviet strategy and plays almost no role in our own. To neglect such a vital aspect of the strategic nuclear balance is to assure our own destruction.

Richard Sincere is research assistant for church and society at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. A member of the American Civil Defense Association, he also holds a degree in international affairs from Georgetown University.

Subsequent to this and other newspaper articles on civil defense, I testified on the topic before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, discussed it on many television and radio shows, and published a journal article that was reprinted in pamphlet form by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which included a foreword by actor Lorne Greene. It was a central focus of my professional life in the 1980s but faded into the background after I finished my master's degree at the LSE and the Cold War came to an end. Civil defense and nuclear weapons policy took a back seat to Africa policy.

As an added bonus, here is a 1950s-era government training (propaganda?) video about school-based civil defense education.

Despite the jokes about it, civil defense in the schools was much more than "duck and cover."

From the Archives: At UVA debate, Creigh Deeds calls libertarians ‘Republicans with guts’

At UVA debate, Creigh Deeds calls libertarians ‘Republicans with guts’
October 27, 2011
11:28 AM MST

“Libertarians are Republicans with guts,” said incumbent state Senator R. Creigh Deeds when asked how he plans to earn the votes of libertarian-minded constituents in his bid for reelection to the 25th district seat he has held for a decade.

Deeds, a Bath County Democrat first elected to the General Assembly in 1991, spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner moments before the start of a debate with his Republican challenger, Albemarle County tax attorney TJ Aldous. The October 25 debate, sponsored by the University of Virginia Student Council, was the only such head-to-head event scheduled during the 2011 election campaign.

No special platform

Explaining his view of libertarians as “Republicans with guts,” Deeds said that “They honestly believe in less government but also less service because lots of people want the services [but] they don’t support efforts to pay for services all the time."

As to how he’ll win the votes of this portion of the electorate, Deeds added that he does not have “any special platform for any certain group of people. I try to speak truth about what I think we ought to be doing in government.”

He believes, he said, “that government is a tool to be used to level the playing field and give everybody an opportunity to succeed, an opportunity to advance, [and] an opportunity to live the American dream -- not a promise that they’re going to live the American dream or a promise that they’re going to succeed, but an opportunity.”

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party

Related to that, Deeds said he thought the Occupy Wall Street movement, and its offshoot, Occupy Charlottesville, was born of its members’ frustration.

“It’s frustration with the system,” he said, “the political system and the economic system.”

Deeds pointed out that “the Tea Party is the other side of that,” having its origins in “that same sort of frustration.”

The Tea Party, he went on, “launched in one direction” while “you’ve got the Occupy group in the other direction.”

At the same time, he said, “there’s significant crossover” between the two movements.

Deeds added that, “to a large extent, the Occupy movement is looking for direction but I think it’s grown out of frustration that a lot of people feel in our political and economic systems.”

Getting to know new voters

Creigh Deeds

Since the decennial redistricting, Deeds has represented portions of Albemarle County that until earlier this year were represented by Senator Emmett Hanger (R-SD24). He said he has spent the last several months becoming acquainted with his new constituents.

“I’ve spent a lot of time knocking on doors out in Crozet and [its] environs,” he said, “getting to know people out there and getting to know the countryside and the issues that they’re talking about.”

The people there, he said, are “basically talking about the same kind of issues everybody else is talking about.”

Summing up his experience with the new parts of the district, he concluded: “I’ve really felt at home in Crozet and Free Union and that area.”

Elections to the Virginia General Assembly will take place on Tuesday, November 8.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 27, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Gary Johnson on Donald Trump's contempt for democratic transitions: 'Unbelievable'

Last night, in the third and final Democratic-Republican presidential debate, GOP candidate Donald J. Trump suggested that he may not accept the results of the election on November 8, continuing his theme of asserting that massive electoral fraud will take place and that is the only reason he will lose to Hillary Clinton.

Today, Trump doubled down on his refusal to accept the central tenet of American democracy, that when a person or party loses an election, they become the loyal opposition and wait for another opportunity to win public office.

According to the Associated Press:

Trump kicked off a rally Thursday in Delaware, Ohio, by saying that he "would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supports and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election."

But he added: "If I win."

In response to Trump's bizarre break with tradition, the Libertarian Party's nominee for President, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, issued this statement:

Gary Johnson

“As a former Governor, who was elected and served as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, I have to say that Donald Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the outcome of an election is just one more straw too many. It’s offensive to the thousands of election officials across the nation, and it’s offensive to a nation for which the integrity of elections is what sets us apart from much of the world.

“Peaceful transition of power, which depends entirely upon honoring the results of elections, is as fundamental to our greatness and Constitution as anything else we do in America, and Donald Trump can’t even accept that fundamental without hedging.

“Unbelievable.”

Johnson and his running mate, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, have achieved ballot access in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia -- the first third-party presidential ticket to do so since Libertarian Harry Browne and his running mate, Jo Jorgensen, did it in 1996.

Guest Post by James Copeland: 'How I Would Coach Donald Trump for the Next Debate'

Publisher's Note: This guest post was written by James Copeland, executive director, emeritus, of the National Speech and Debate Association. He was a member of the Associated Press Presidential Debate Evaluation Panel, 1976-2000. He is the author of Cross Examination in Debate (1983) and has advised gubernatorial and congressional candidates about campaign debates.

Donald Trump, like Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan, is a leader, not a man of study.  Men of study like Bob Dole, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore were good with briefing books and detail.  But briefing books and practice debates are not the best way for Mr. Trump to prepare.

Preparation for the next debate must be based upon Trump's considerable skills. His greatest skill was exhibited on “The Apprentice”, where Trump evaluated and judged the arguments of others. Trump is a counter puncher and this skill can be honed to create retorts to opposition arguments.

The retort is the most effective and dramatic argument that can be posed in a debate: It takes the PREMISE of the opponent's attack and turns it back against the accuser.

Example #1: [Premise: Transparency]
Secretary Clinton insists I release my tax returns.

I insist she release the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street firms, which paid her thousands of dollars in speaking fees. How do we know what she promised them? She demands I provide transparency, yet she provides none.

Example #2: [Premise: Honesty]
Secretary Clinton accuses me of not being truthful when I say I did not support the Iraq war.

My opinion was that of a private citizen. I accuse Secretary Clinton of not being truthful about the Benghazi attack. Publicly she blamed the attack on an anti-Muslim video. Privately she tweeted her daughter, Chelsea, that it was a terrorist attack! She demands honesty from private citizens, yet refuses to provide it as a public official.

(NOTE: A retort is NOT a pivot. A pivot tries to dodge an argument, not turn it back on the accuser.)

If I had the honor to coach Mr. Trump I would follow this plan:

1] Mr. Trump should be seated in an executive chair behind a table, like “The Apprentice”
2] Facing Mr. Trump about ten feet away should be two side by side podiums.
3] At one podium is the Clinton surrogate; at the other a Trump surrogate.
4] Staff will have prepared a list of Clinton personal attacks on Trump and a retort for each.
5] Staff will have prepared a list of Trump issues, Clinton's rebuttal and Trump's retort.
6] Each surrogate will be scripted with the material prepared by staff.
7] The surrogates will act out one attack or issue at a time. THEN
8] MR. TRUMP WILL REFINE EACH RETORT ON CONTENT AND WORDING .
9] MR. TRUMP MAY DEMONSTRATE HOW HE WOULD SPEAK THE RETORT.
10] Roger Ailes should attend each session and privately offer his critique to Mr. Trump.
11] Each session will not last more than one hour (15 minutes for each issue).

For James Copeland's assessment of the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, see this post on Bearing Drift:  "Champion Debate Coach Assesses Trump-Clinton Performances."

From the Archives: LP presidential hopeful Gary Johnson calls two-party debates a 'waste of time'

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 21, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

LP presidential hopeful Gary Johnson calls two-party debates a 'waste of time'

With the third and final Democrat-Republican presidential debate approaching, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee, said in an interview that such debates are “a waste of time,” also offering his thoughts about U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa. He also indicated that he may win a large percentage of votes in his native New Mexico.

Johnson, author of the new book, Seven Principles of Good Government, spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during a recent campaign stop in Washington, D.C.

Although a social gathering at The Board Room on Connecticut Avenue was meant for Johnson to engage with his supporters and campaign volunteers, he spent the greater part of the evening answering journalists' questions on a wide range of policy issues.

Asked about the value to voters of the debates between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Johnson said they are “just a big waste of time” and that the two participants are like the Lewis Carroll characters “Tweedledee, Tweedledum.”

'State of war'

The former New Mexico governor offered this prediction: If “either one of them get elected, we're going to have a heightened police state. We're going to find ourselves in a continued state of war. Military interventions are not going to stop, and spending and debt [are] going to continue to be unsustainable. At some point,” he concluded, if Obama or Romney is elected, the economy “will collapse.”

In response to a question about radio and television advertising for his campaign, Johnson said he will soon be airing TV commercials “in areas we might actually win, or potentially taking second place” although “probably not” in Washington, D.C., despite that city's small number of Republican voters.

Johnson also predicted his vote totals will be relatively high in some Western states and one Midwestern swing state.

“I think there's opportunity in Nevada,” he said, noting that “something that really has gone unpublicized is in Ohio last week, I was polling at 11 percent.”

That is “probably an aberration,” Johnson conceded, “but nonetheless, all these polling numbers are going up. They're not going down.”

The first-time presidential candidate said he believes it is possible he could win more than 10 percent of the vote in New Mexico, where he served two terms as a Republican governor in a majority-Democrat state.

“I really believe that, I really do,” he said, “and we're not focusing anything on New Mexico. The notion is that we're trying to treat everything equally and see how that pans out but I would have to think that, [given] my experience in New Mexico, I'm really looked at favorably. I really am.”

Libya question

In the foreign policy debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, on October 22, the question of U.S. policy in Libya and reactions to the September 11 murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans will be in the forefront of the discussion, just as it was in the town hall debate at Hofstra University on October 16. Johnson has some strong views on what U.S. policy in that region should be.

“I would pull all of our diplomats out of our embassies” there, he said. “I would not set us up as being targets.”

In the “long term,” the United States and other countries should “take part in what I would hope would be mutual benefit but when I hear that” American diplomats in the region are supposed to be “protecting vital American interests, I just ask rhetorically, out loud, What are vital American interests? Are they propping up the new dictatorship that we deem better than the old dictatorship?”

In response to a question about whether American influence is better projected using soft power than military power, Johnson explained, “that's right. It's walk softly and carry a big stick. That's what [George W.] Bush said but none of that none of that was reality. None of it.”

Suggested Links

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson assesses Romney, Stein, and Goode
Presidential hopeful Gary Johnson on health care, marriage, and Colbert
Libertarian author Brian Doherty compares Ron Paul and Gary Johnson
Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode talks politics on Labor Day
Libertarian VP nominee Jim Gray reflects on electing judges, Gary Johnson

Designed to eliminate confusion: New name for NFL

Rick Sincere at NFL HQ in Ripon, 2012

News comes from Ripon, Wisconsin, that the venerable National Forensic League is changing its name to the National Speech & Debate Association.

The decision was made by the NFL's board last May.  One of the purposes behind the change in nomenclature was to reduce two separate but equally frustrating forms of confusion:  with the National Football League and with the term "forensics" as crime scene investigation procedures, as if the NFL were the trade association for characters played on TV by David Caruso, Ted Danson, and Gary Sinise.

To be fair, the term "forensics" derives from the courtroom rhetoric used by lawyers to prove their case beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Eventually this grew to encompass all the tools used by law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys, from fingerprints to DNA analysis as well as deductive reasoning and argumentation.  Orators and debaters laid claim to the word before the maggot-studying scientists started to use it.

In an FAQ on what used to be the NFL's web site, the reason for the rebranding is explained:

As a communication organization, we need to effectively communicate who we are and what we do. There is a common misunderstanding of “NFL” or “forensics,” including confusion with the National Football League or crime scene investigation; changing our name to focus on the activity of speech and debate will appeal to more students, coaches, alumni, sponsors, and the general public. We believe rebranding the organization as the National Speech & Debate Association will help us strengthen existing relationships, build new partnerships, increase national and local support for speech and debate, and allow us to pursue our mission to the fullest potential.

I have written on previous occasions about the positive impact speech and debate have had on my life and career.  Participating in debate through Marquette University High School's Webster Club and coaching younger debaters at the Georgetown University Forensics Institute (there's that word again) for three summers gave me analytical skills that I use every day.  Writing a blog post is not so different from writing a debate brief.  There just aren't as many bodies piled up on the podium, and you don't breathlessly tell your readers to "pull that across your flow."

It's too bad that popular culture has seldom offered a realistic view of speech and debate.  (Even the well-received play, Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam, is off the mark.)  Films like Thumbsucker and Listen to Me deserve thumbs up for effort but raspberries for accuracy.

The only recognizable portrayal of competitive speech on the high school circuit I have found is in James Magruder's novel, Sugarless.  In a brief review of that book in 2010, I wrote:

I don't read much fiction, in general, but when I received a review copy of James Magruder's Sugarless late last year, I simply could not put it down.

It has been almost a year since I read the book, but I still think about it because it resonates with my personal experience so much: not in every aspect, but hitting a sufficient number of points on the matrix to make me believe it.

Sugarless is the story of Rick, a 15-year-old high school student in suburban Chicago during the mid-1970s who, almost purely by chance, ends up on the speech team and finds out he has a talent for dramatic interpretation (or dramatic interp, for those in the know).

Magruder's verisimilitude about high school forensics struck me more than anything else in the book, even the parts about the protaganist's struggle with coming out as gay in an era far less accepting of that than it is now. His descriptions of the scenes at speech tournaments are amazingly accurate, and his portrayals of coaches and competitors are eerily familiar to me.

The one detail that other readers might find difficult to believe is the choice of the protaganist's speech coach to have him do an excerpt from Mart Crowley's play, The Boys in the Band. People unfamiliar with high school forensics may think that a play about gay men would be off-limits, especially in 1976, and especially in the American Midwest.

The truth is, a cutting from The Boys in the Band was circulating at that time, and my own coach asked me to do it. For reasons unrelated to the content of the piece, I ended up doing a different selection. (If I recall correctly, it was the courtroom scene in A Man for All Seasons, a far more conventional choice.) So I can testify against the doubters that an excerpt from The Boys in the Band was, indeed, being performed on the high school forensics circuit in the mid-1970s.

Having just seen the excellent documentary about Crowley and his play, Making the Boys, at the Virginia Film Festival, my memories of reading Sugarless earlier this year and my own experience in high school rushed back to me.

I recommend Sugarless to anyone who has competed in speech and debate or to anyone who was once a gay teenager. It's an excellent book, and a compelling read -- a real achievement for a first-time novelist, even one who, like Magruder, is an accomplished playwright and translator.

I would love to see Sugarless on screen, although I doubt that's likely to happen anytime soon. Too niche; too talky; too gay -- but delicious all the same.

Having mentioned Sugarless, I should also note Mark Oppenheimer's relatable, readable memoir, Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate. Oppenheimer portrays accurately the debate environment in which he competed, but that was not policy debate under the auspices of the NFL or the NCFL (National Catholic Forensic League). It was, rather, a self-contained regional circuit populated by New England prep school teams, different from the kind of debate people tend to encounter elsewhere in the country (Upper Midwest, Texas) and even in today's urban debate leagues. My review of Wisenheimer was published in December 2010.

While old-timers like myself may feel the rebranding of the National Forensic League into the National Speech & Debate Association (no approved acronym or abbreviation ) is a rejection of the organization's historical roots, at least it is an accurately descriptive moniker for the group.  It requires no more explanation than what can fit on a business card.

A final note:  it was announced earlier this month that the policy debate topic for the 2014-15 school year will be "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its non-military exploration and/or development of the Earth's oceans."

Ocean policy got me into college and was one-quarter of my master's degree -- but those are stories for another time, another day.

Robert Sarvis Speaks at the University of Virginia

Robert Sarvis speaks to students at UVA

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis spoke at the University of Virginia last Thursday evening, one week before the final debate between his election rivals, Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

WDBJ-TV, the media cosponsor of the debate, announced on October 10 that Sarvis, the Libertarian Party's nominee, would not be invited to participate because he had failed to achieve a threshold, set by the Democratic and Republican candidates in consultation with the events cosponsors, of a RealClearPolitics average of 10 percent in public opinion polls.

According to the Washington Post, WDBJ has asked the McAuliffe and Cuccinelli camps to reconsider because the station has borne the brunt of negative backlash over the decision. "As of Saturday evening," the Post's Ben Pershing reported, "Sarvis’s poll average on the RealClearPolitics Web site was 9.8 percent."

  Early last week, UVA political scientist Larry Sabato told me that he would probably have included Sarvis in the debate if he were running it.

“You know, I understand because I've been in the position of running debates, but when I turned down a third-party candidate it was because he was nowhere near the ten percent level.”

Sarvis, he pointed out, “has been over the 10 percent level in a number of surveys and they all have a margin of error.” He was showing an average of 9 percent on the day the debate decision was made.

“I've got news for you: there's a two or three percent margin of error and that suggests that he could just as easily be over 10 as under 10. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of an outcry that he's been excluded from the debate.”

Speaking in the Newcomb Theater, Sarvis fielded questions from an audience made up mostly of students but which also included faculty and staff as well as Charlottesville-area voters.

Derek Quizon, a reporter for the Daily Progress, interviewed a couple of students who attended the event:

Kyle Butler, a second-year math and economics major, said the national debt could give the party the push it needs, as slavery pushed the Republicans to the forefront in the 19th century.

The question is, how long will it take? Butler said he’s not sure.

“It’s really hard to tell,” Butler said. “When people see that debt is a real problem and they acknowledge it.”

Dylan Brewer, a fourth-year student majoring in economics and foreign affairs, said that moment is years away. But he’ll keep voting Libertarian with the hope that the party will gain momentum – and people will have a viable third option on Election Day.

“A lot of people have a false sense that voting is about picking the lesser of two evils,” Brewer said. “I don’t think that embodies the democratic spirit.”

Here is the video of Sarvis speaking at UVA, beginning with opening remarks, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

The same night that Robert Sarvis spoke at UVA, his wife, Dr. Astrid Sarvis, posted on YouTube an impassioned plea for including her husband in the final gubernatorial debate. The video quickly went viral (relatively speaking) and as of this writing, it has been viewed almost 6,000 times with 183 likes (and one dislike).

Robert Sarvis Buys Airtime During Cuccinelli-McAuliffe Debate

Robert Sarvis at Wright's Dairy Rite in Staunton

(This article originally appeared on Virginia Politics on Demand on September 25, 2013.)

Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate for Governor of Virginia, will not be participating in tonight's debate in Fairfax County between Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe, but he will insert himself into the fray anyway.

Sarvis is buying airtime on WRC-TV (NBC4) in Washington, which is broadcasting the debate, sponsored by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce and moderated by NBC political correspondent Chuck Todd.

An advance copy of the 30-second Sarvis spot was provided to Virginia Politics on Demand.

In the TV ad, Sarvis tries to distinguish himself from both his rivals.

The spot begins with a voiceover and side-by-side photos of Cuccinelli and McAuliffe: "Can't vote for these guys?" The focus quickly switches to Sarvis, who says, "Well, I can't either. That's why I'm running for Governor of Virginia."

Introducing himself over footage of himself and his African-American wife and mixed-race kids, Sarvis says, "I joined this race to give you a better choice. Like you, I can't vote for Ken Cuccinelli's narrow-minded social agenda. I want a Virginia that's open-minded and welcoming to all."

He continues: "Like you, I don't want Terry McAuliffe's cronyism, either, where government picks winners and losers. Join me, and together we can build a Virginia that's open-minded and open for business."

The ad moves swiftly, and many viewers may miss it completely.

Two polls (Washington Post and Bearing Drift) released this week show Sarvis hovering at about 10 percent of likely voters; an NBC News poll shows him at 8 percent. The last independent candidate for governor, state Senator Russ Potts, received 2.22 percent of the vote in 2005. The last Libertarian candidate for governor, Bill Redpath, received 0.77 percent of the vote in 2001.

Update:  A Zogby poll released September 30 shows Sarvis with 12.7 percent of the vote.

Charlottesville City Council Candidates Appear at JATP Forum

Last Thursday evening, the four candidates seeking election to the Charlottesville City Council this year appeared together at a forum sponsored by the Jefferson Area Tea Party (JATP). The event was held in Lane Auditorium at the Albemarle County office building.

Incumbent Democrat Kristen Szakos, her running mate Bob Fenwick, and Republican challengers Mike Farruggio and Charles "Buddy" Weber all participated in a fast-paced, hour-long question-and-answer session moderated by JATP member Terry Cooper.

Here is video of the event, beginning with the four candidates' opening statements:

The centerpiece of the evening was the Q&A, which lasted about half an hour:

The forum ended with each candidate presenting a closing statement:

After the exchange of views ended, the candidates posed together for a friendly photograph.

Buddy Weber, Bob Fenwick, Mike Farruggio, and Kristen Szakos on September 26.

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 
See my articles on Examiner.com! - See more at: http://ricksincerethoughts.blogspot.com/#sthash.GlcEe9Ke.dpuf

Four Music Videos for the Rapture that Didn't Happen

Reports from beyond the International Dateline suggest that Harold Camping was wrong again.  There were no earthquakes or tsunamis or asteroid crashes that led to the end of the world, time zone by time zone.

Not that anyone of sound mind took Camping's predictions seriously.  He had been wrong before, and he'll no doubt make another inaccurate prediction again.  (I hope nobody is taking stock market advice from this crackpot.)

Still, unlike in 1994, the last time the Family Radio mogul made his wild-eyed prediction that the Rapture was imminent, for some reason the "end-is-near-and-it's-May 21" meme caught the popular imagination. 

People were having fun with it.  There actually may be some disappointment among those who planned to be Left Behind that there will be no post-Rapture parties (raves? barn dances? orgies? pig-outs at Hooters?) to celebrate the departure of the prigs and the prudes.

In the spirit of post-Rapture bacchanalia, however, I present four examples of the kind of music that might have been played at those non-stop dance parties.  Enjoy!

First, here's Skeeter Davis singing her hit country song, "Don't They Know It's the End of the World?," from "The Star Route Show" on television in 1963:

There has long been a rumor among high school debaters that Michael Stipe wrote the R.E.M. song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" based upon his own experience as a debater, piling disadvantage upon disadvantage on top of the podium. As I understand it Stipe has denied the connection, but the rumors persist -- and no wonder, since the rhythms of the verse mimic the delivery of a debater at full-spread speed.

It would be a shame to forget Blondie's "Rapture," which charted 30 years ago and brought rap music to a wider audience. The video based on the song was also something of a genre-bender. (Videos were not widely seen back then; MTV didn't take to the airwaves until August 1981, eight months after "Rapture" was released.)

Finally, I want to add a song I heard performed by Elaine Paige the other night, in the new production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies at the Kennedy Center. Considering that the Rapture hasn't happened, what can be more appropriate than "I'm Still Here."

Here's the original Carlotta (Yvonne DeCarlo -- yes, Lily Munster), performing the song on a 1979 television show. (Unfortunately, whoever posted this on YouTube provided no more specific information about the program.) There's a slight hiccup at about 2 minutes in, cutting the words "Beverly Hills," but the rest is largely intact -- which is more than you can say for the original cast recording. (The vamp at the end is also cut short. C'est la vie!)

Enjoy the remains of your day -- even for Harold Camping, it's the first day of the rest of your life!

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 

See my articles on Examiner.com!

 

Report from the Virginia 5th District Congressional Debate

Yesterday the Senior Statesmen of Virginia sponsored a candidates' forum for those seeking to represent Virginia's Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

All three candidates who qualified for the ballot were invited to participate, but only incumbent Democrat Tom Perriello and independent challenger Jeffrey Clark chose to attend.  Republican nominee Robert Hurt decided to sit this one out, missing the opportunity to appear on C-SPAN, NPR, several local radio and TV stations, and in newspaper and blog reports about the debate.

I have written three articles on Examiner.com based on interviews conducted before and after the debate.

Before the event began, I chatted briefly with Jeff Clark, a Danville Tea Party activist who is running without party affiliation, a conscious decision on his part.  Even though we only spoke for a few minutes, he gave me enough material for at least three articles -- though so far I have only written one of them.

The interview with Clark can be found under the headline "Independent congressional candidate Jeffrey Clark says ‘the power lies with us’".

After the debate ended, I had an even briefer time to speak with Congressman Perriello, who was not, as I had expected, besieged by reporters from other media outlets.  He answered three questions from me, including one that is starting to get attention outside the Fifth District:  How does he plan to earn the votes of self-identified libertarian voters in this election?

In his response, Perriello suggested that his vote on the comprehensive health care bill was motivated by libertarian concerns, although his explanation was thin, to say the least. 

My interview with Perriello, titled "Congressman Tom Perriello explains his appeal to libertarian voters in Virginia’s 5th District," was also discussed earlier today on The Schilling Show on WINA-AM.

Finally, I caught the moderator of the debate, the Sorensen Institute's Coy Barefoot, and asked him for his impressions of the event. He thought the discussion was substantive and "covered a lot of ground."

As an aside, I also recorded nearly the entire debate on video. Unfortunately, the battery on my camera expired just before Jeff Clark's closing remarks. I have posted one short excerpt on YouTube, in which the two candidates answer a question I posed (in writing via the moderator) about same-sex marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). To my surprise, Clark gives the very libertarian answer that the best solution may be to get government out of the marriage business altogether. Perriello dodges the question about DOMA, both in the forum and when I asked him again later.

Here's the clip:

I did not, by the way, ask the question, "Do you believe that Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness includes gay marriage?" I wish I had. (Mine was the wonkier question recited by Coy Barefoot.)

Update:  Local Libertarian activists react to my Examiner.com interview with Congressman Perriello -- expressing skepticism about his claims to libertarian tendencies -- in this article: "LPVA leaders react to Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello’s claim of a ‘libertarian undercurrent’."

Update 2:  The New York Times Caucus Blog picked up this post and linked to it and the accompanying video on YouTube.

Update 3:  A second article based on my interview with Jeffrey Clark is now live on Examiner.com.  In it, he discusses his support for Governor Bob McDonnell's proposals to privatize Virginia's liquor monopoly.

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 
See my articles on Examiner.com!

Remember to Count the Buts

The punditocracy is abuzz with anticipation of President Barack Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address, scheduled to take place Wednesday night at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

(I will be in Washington, too, but won't be watching the SOTU.  Instead, I will be at Ford's Theatre to see a play about the Lincoln-Douglas debates called The Rivalry, written by Norman Corwin.  Remember when politicians really engaged their audiences with extended and articulate argumentation?  You'd have to be old enough to have seen Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas to say "yes.")

Continuing pre-game coverage of the State of the Union sent me back to what I wrote about Bill Clinton's 1996 State of the Union message for The Metro Herald, 14 years ago next week.  One paragraph leaped out at me:

Unfortunately, Clinton does not mean what he says. When he appears to embrace conservative -- even libertarian -- principles, he always has a fallback to traditional, failed liberal policies. In his State of the Union message, Clinton used the word "but" 27 times in 65 minutes. Each time he made a grand statement that conservatives and libertarians could readily and happily agree with -- such as "the era of big government is over" -- he qualified it with a "but." Each "but" meant that "we liberals recognize that conservatives have won over public opinion, so we're telling you we agree with them, even though we're sticking to the same policies we've advocated for thirty years."

Although Obama lacks Clinton's deft political skills (Obama is not nearly enough like a chameleon to match Bill Clinton in that regard), it may be useful to count the "buts" in the President's speech.

In fact, why not make a drinking game out of it? Instead of taking a shot every time President Obama says "Hi, Bob!" (an unlikely prospect, in any case), swing one back whenever he says "but" or "however."

You'll be lucky to leave your SOTU-watching party on your own two legs.

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter!