Apparently, at least eleven U.S. senators and a number of news organizations are concerned about the U.S. use of drone aircraft to kill individuals or small groups whom the Administration determines are a threat to U.S. security. Like most thinking individuals, I believe in checks and balances and Constitutional limitations on the power of any one branch of government, having witnessed and lived through periods of both Congressional and Administration abuse of power, not to mention having concerns about that potential from the Judicial Branch.

Two particular concerns raised by these individuals, however, concern me just as much as the possibility of Executive Branch abuse of power does. The first concern is the idea that an American citizen abroad plotting terrorist activities is somehow different from any other individual plotting terrorist activities. A related concern that has been expressed by some is that the memos being sought allow the president the “power to kill” any American anywhere with no oversight and no legal process. The second major concern is the idea that somehow drone attacks away from the battlefield are in themselves wrong.

What has led to these concerns is that the nature of war and conflict have changed, or rather war has changed, perhaps regressed, from an almost formal pattern of conflict that prevailed for centuries to a wide range of the use of force, including the possible use of everything from terrorism and counter-terrorism to the possible employment of nuclear weapons on a civilization-destroying basis. And neither tactics, strategies, nor legalities have totally kept pace.

All that said, I’m sorry, but a terrorist is a terrorist, regardless of nationality.  There may be very good reasons to limit drone attacks on individuals, but whether the target is an American or a foreign national is not one of them. At the same time, allowing the precedent of targeting an American citizen without due process raises another question.  When and where does an American citizen become an enemy combatant?  Saying that the president or the armed forces cannot attack or kill an American citizen plotting terrorist acts against Americans and others without a warrant is ludicrous, but allowing the president or the government authority to kill expatriate citizens, or other citizen, or for that matter foreign nationals, without defining the conditions that justify such actions could easily allow the “legal” transition to a type of police state.

The question of allowing drone attacks is, at least to me, somewhat less problematic.  There certainly are areas and places and individuals against which drones should not be used, for any number of good and legal, not to mention moral, reasons, but in a world where terror can and has struck anywhere, where terrorists and those supporting them do not limit themselves to a defined battlefield and never will, the idea of limiting the use of drones to a defined battlefield is not only absurd, but also runs the considerable risk of resulting in the killing of not only more soldiers but more civilians.  If one cannot use drones away from the battlefield, then what are the options left to the government?  Terrorists do not respond to negotiations, if indeed, they could even be found for such negotiations; they just want their demands for power met, and virtually every terrorist group ends up killing and oppressing others when it obtains power.  If drones cannot be used, then governments must either do nothing or use other means of force, and that usually means either economic sanctions or boots on the ground, both of which fall disproportionately upon the innocent.

Both of these concerns, if carried to extremes, reflect a certain naiveté, if I’m being kind, or a willful blindness in the service of ideology, if I’m being more honest.

Is there that much difference between someone who shoots someone in a gang war or a robbery and someone who shoots innocents in pursuit of political power?  In either case, people are dead because someone wants something and believes they can get it in no other way.  And in the United States, we have plenty of American citizens, unfortunately, who kill to get something, whether that something is fame, glory, material goods, revenge, or to take their anger out on others. While we do have means to deal with such individuals, assuming we can discover and apprehend them, those mechanisms do not operate overseas, and many countries, especially in parts of Asia and the Middle East, are either actively or passively endorsing terrorists.

The Senate is right to look into the policies adopted and employed by the military and intelligence agencies, but to insist on pre-conditions that exempt all Americans from actions to preclude terrorism or those which may effectively leave our government with no effective way to deal with terrorists in certain countries is anything but wise.

There have been a number of stories lately about the Millennial Generation, loosely defined as those young adults born between 1982 and 2004, and one author has even written a book claiming that the Millennial Generation will be the next great generation.  Let us just say that I have my doubts, but I could certainly be wrong, since that generation has another five to six decades to allay my concerns.

What I do know, however, is that a significant proportion of that generation has an enormous and largely undiagnosed problem that has gone largely unrecognized.  Oh, some of the symptoms of that problem have been widely reported, but these “symptoms” are seen as separate problems, rather than as a manifestation of a far larger problem.

One of those symptoms was reported in a four-page feature spread in The New York Times last Sunday.  It was all about a once-promising young man who ended up overusing a popular attention-deficit disorder drug [Addarall] and who ended up committing suicide at age 24.  The young man had never been diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder and clearly did not.  He had been focused as a teenager, excelled academically, and had gotten a full academic scholarship to a good but not Ivy League caliber college, where he was his college class president and played on the baseball team.  But… in college he had a tendency to procrastinate and then attempt to write papers and cram for exams at the last moment, and that tendency worsened as he progressed in college, and as he relied more and more heavily on drugs such as Addarall.  He wanted to be a doctor, but he didn’t score well enough on the MCAT exams to be accepted at top-flight medical schools. After college, and as adult, he visited doctors and convinced them that he was indeed ADHD and needed Addarall and other attention disorder drugs.  He became violent upon occasion, then paranoid, and depressed and then swore off the drugs for a brief time, which abrupt withdrawal caused even more problems and likely led to his suicide.

What does this sad story have to do with the Millennial Generation?  To me, it’s emblematic of a generation that has far too many members believing that everything can be accomplished instantly and with little real work. Real work, either physical or intellectual, requires focus and concentration… and neither are being taught or instilled to the degree necessary among the younger generation.  No…for all too many of them, it’s the mouse-click, easy button generation.  If you don’t have the self-discipline to study, take a pill to focus your concentration.  If you don’t want to do real research for that paper, use the internet the night before, doctor your plagiarized copied words, fake the references, and turn it in the next morning. If you don’t want to do the hard workouts to stand out in sports, or if they aren’t enough, try various steroids.  If a student can’t or won’t concentrate, all too often the first option is ADHD drugs. If a student, or anyone, is depressed, the first option is usually anti-depressants.

The use of ADHD drugs has become epidemic.  According to the Times, over 14 million prescriptions are filled monthly, and usage by young adults in the age range from 20 to 39 has almost tripled in the last five years.  In addition to that, over 90% of the media-reported school-related shooting incidents involve students or former students on anti-depressants.

Now… to be fair, it’s certainly not entirely their fault, perhaps even largely not their fault.  We have a media culture that extols instant celebrity and instant accomplishment…. and the parents of that generation have made it worse by insisting that an child can do anything if they just “want” it enough. You want to sing professionally?  Don’t bother with years of studying voice and music; just get on “American Idol” or “The Voice.”  You want to write the next great bestseller?  Throw it together on your computer with spell-check and grammar check; get some friends to read it; and then self-publish it as an e-book. The media and the internet are filled with ways to reach instant success.  Then add to that a generation or two of “any child can do anything” and “no child left behind” and incredible numbers of parents who believe that their child can do no wrong, not to mention educational curricula on the primary and secondary level that have become, except in a comparative handful of schools, watered down, and top it off with astounding grade inflation all the way through college and even graduate school, and you have a generation where far too many leave school with vastly inflated ideas of their own competence and often no idea of what real work requires. They also have no idea that there are many things they cannot do, no matter how much they “want” them, and no matter how hard they may try.

What all of this praise, the instant success myth, and the wanting ignore are the hard facts.  Only a few high school athletes will ever become professional athletes, and even fewer become stars.  Only a minuscule percentage of “gifted” school-age writers will ever become best-selling authors.  Medical schools have become so competitive and selective that only the truly gifted and hard-working will be accepted to the best, and even mixed A and B grades will likely disqualify most applicants – unless the A grades are in the hard sciences.

And once a young person enters a profession, it doesn’t get easier. Only a comparative handful of lawyers ever make “big bucks.”  Perhaps one in a thousand junior executives makes it to the top.  Most professional singers sing in clubs or in second or third tier performance venues, hoping to make enough just to keep singing. And for most of those who do eventually succeed in any profession, it takes years of hard and dedicated work, and more than a little concentration… not a mouse click or an instant prescription for something to improve concentration or feelings.

That message isn’t being delivered… and the failure to do so has already caused untold misery… and a toll that we haven’t even begun to count.

Before my wife and I were married, over 21 years ago, she informed me of a number of things, telling me she didn’t want me laboring over any misconceptions about her.  She was totally and brutally honest about herself… and that forced me to do my best to do the same, and what we said will remain between us – mostly.  She did tell me that she was required, by her job, or at least by every job she’d had in twenty years, to be a pack-rat. She also told me that, any time she threw the only copy of something out, or any prop item, she invariably needed it, even if it hadn’t been required for years… and that turned out to be true in the first years of our marriage, and I’m not about to go into details, except to say that she was right.

The past twenty years have confirmed that she was absolutely right.  She’s had to keep a copy of every program on which she has sung, every journal article or review she’s ever written, all the documentation on every opera or musical theatre performance she has directed, all to prove, time and time again, in the name of accountability and proving qualifications, that she can do and has done what she’s done. Part of this was due to the endless tenure process and part has been because of post-tenure review, and part has been because of accreditation reviews, and part because of changes in college deans… and so forth.  Part is because she teaches singing, and because certain sheet music, particularly in the area of classical music, is getting harder and harder to find, and because different students have different needs. So, over the years, the numbers of file cabinets holding sheet music have expanded.

But, unhappily, and sometimes humorously, it doesn’t stop there.  Because she directs a grossly under-budgeted university opera program, our basement storeroom has become over the years the “auxiliary” prop and set storeroom, containing those items she has personally purchased for productions. Most have been used at least twice and some time and time again, but they don’t go to the Music Department storeroom because that storage area isn’t secure and smaller items vanish.  And, frankly, she doesn’t want to spend her own money twice for things the university should have purchased in the first place.

When we moved, or attempted to reduce our volume of stuff in every summer’s “spring cleaning,” I’ve asked more than once if we really need this 1920 telephone or three battered but ornate boxes, or the three canes, or the closetful of dresses not in her size, or… and the answer is invariably, “No. I’ll need that sometime.” And so I nod and replace it and try to find a way to make more space for the props and other items she purchased personally for the last semester’s show.

For the most part, except for the times she’s borrowed my fedora or my Stetson, or my old trench coat, or the time she used the lower family room furniture, all the items are generally part of her pack-rat collection and go back in the storeroom after each production.  Last summer, however, when we were cleaning the storeroom, I came across the old leather briefcase that she’d bought me for my birthday years ago – the old battered one that she’d replaced with a new one the previous fall and thought, “We don’t need this.”  And I threw it out.

Two days ago, she called me from her office and said, “You remember your old leather case… the one I gave you before the latest one…  It’s perfect for the show.  I need a battered leather case…”

Like she said, you never need it until you’ve thrown it out.

Authors come in all flavors, interests, and abilities beyond their skills as wordsmiths and storytellers… and we tend to follow our own work in different ways.  Because the closest “real” new bookstore is more than 50 miles away, I tend to watch how my books are sold and presented on B&N.com and Amazon… and it’s truly eye-opening at times.

Given the changes in the bookselling marketplace, I was particularly interested to discover just how my latest book – Imager’s Battalion – was selling, at least comparatively.  So I’ve followed it daily, and I’ve discovered some very interesting things.  First, the advertised price of the hardcover has varied almost daily on Amazon, from over $18.00 to $17.00 as I write this, although there was a time when it could have been pre-ordered or ordered for under $17.00.  Barnes and Noble’s hardcover price seems to follow that of Amazon, if with a bit of delay.  On the e-book side, from what I can tell, Amazon and B&N.com both originally listed the ebook version at $14.99, prior to sale, but for the past week Amazon has been selling the Kindle at $13.49, while the Nook remains at $14.99.

Recently, a number of news stories have suggested that on-line retailers are sending out targeted advertisements to existing customers based on their previous purchases and what they have bought or browsed on-line.   And because I have browsed my own books online, I have gotten “recommendations” from Amazon as well, but I discounted reports that on-line retailers were offering differential prices to customers – until two weeks ago.   That was when I received an email from a reader telling me that, much as he loved my work, there was no way he was about to pay $19.00 for the Kindle version of Imager’s Battalion.  I couldn’t believe this and sent a return email politely pointing out that on the Amazon sites [U.S. and Canada] the price was nowhere near that high. In return, he sent me a copy of an Amazon solicitation sent to him, which did indeed offer the Kindle version at $19.00.  In turn, I sent it to Tor, and was informed that it was a genuine Amazon communication and that they were looking into it.  So far as I know, they still are, but it may be with the anti-trust lawsuit by the Department of Justice, they feel they can’t comment.

In the meantime, the reader informed me that he had gone directly to the main Amazon website and purchased the ebook for the far lower price there.

Now… it’s been acknowledged that users of search engines, especially of Google, get different results from the same inquiry, based on the browsing patterns of the user, and it’s now fairly apparent that Amazon has the power to offer different prices to different people – at least on their direct mail solicitations or “recommendations.”  And exactly what is there now to prevent them from offering different prices to different customers seeking to buy the same item on the main website?  Given that there’s no way to tell exactly what the “true” base price is, isn’t this essentially the practice of monopoly?

With the “agency model” proposed and still used by a few of the publishers, at least readers had some confidence of what the price might be.  Now… it appears, Amazon is trying to get the highest price possible based on past purchasing patterns of individuals… rather than the lowest price that they’re claiming in support of their opposition to the “agency model.”

So… tell me again how supporting Amazon and DOJ against the publishers and their agency model is going to reduce monopoly pricing in bookselling and provide low prices to all consumers?

I sometimes feel as if almost everyone in the United States takes not only the laws, but the Constitution, if not most of the foundations of our nation, out of the context in which the framers set them, all the while screaming about rights that the founders never envisioned.

The state of Utah, and a number of other states, have been attempting in various ways to circumvent federal rules and regulations established under laws passed by Congress, and the rationale for these acts is that Congress is acting against the Constitution, but Article VI states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”  In short, federal law supersedes state law.  And, if the Supreme Court declares a law Constitutional, then it is. Period.

You may not like the law.  You can certainly lobby and try to persuade Congress to change it, but state laws cannot overturn a federal law, except by a successful appeal to the Supreme Court… and yet a number of state legislatures have passed or attempted to pass laws in contravention of federal law.  Doesn’t anyone remember the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, caused because a handful of states insisted that state laws preempted federal authority?

As a side note, interestingly enough, there is a section of the Constitution which states that Congress shall have the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This does suggest that the Founders did not believe that information should be “free.”

I just read about a lawsuit in which the plaintiffs contend that they have the right under the first amendment to inundate a website that they oppose with such a volume of internet traffic that it results in denial of service and renders the website inaccessible to others.  Come again?  You have the right to use your freedom of speech to deny others theirs?  I don’t see this in the text or the subtext of the First Amendment, which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Now the case in point sounds extreme, but how would that be, in practice, much different from the impact of the Citizens United decision, which essentially said that, if you have enough money, you can buy up the airwaves to the point where you deny others the right to express their views.  The Founders, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson and his mistrust of the power of massed financial interests, never envisioned a modern communications system where “free speech” is not free but purchased by the minute.

Likewise, there’s the bit about an “establishment of religion.”  In the context of the time, and even in the language, it’s clear that the founders did not want Congress establishing any religion.  Yet lawmakers have attempted and in some cases been successful in legislating religious doctrines into law, in issues such as abortion, evolution, and in school curricula and even public school textbooks.  Yet these same legislators are all too often the ones who complain that “liberals” or others are thwarting the intent of the Constitution.

Then, there’s the second amendment to the Constitution.  The words are fairly simple: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”   How does context matter?  To begin with, at the time the amendment was adopted, “arms” that could be used by the people consisted of swords or sabres and single shot pistols and rifles.  Anything larger or more deadly, such as cannon or warships, was clearly the province of governments.  In addition, although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment does convey an “individual right” to keep and bear arms, it has also held that such a right exists primarily as a right of self-defense.  Both historical context and law would strongly suggest that it is stretching the Second Amendment, if not smashing it, to contend that it conveys an inviolable right to any kind of weapon an individual wants to possess, the National Rifle Association notwithstanding.  And, in fact, the previous ban on assault weapons was held to be Constitutional.

Now… all of this won’t persuade anyone who thinks differently about these and other issues, but for the record, I’m suggesting that the actual words of the Constitution and the context in which they were adopted do indicate what the Framers had in mind… and not what we’d like to hope they had in mind.