Rebuilding America After Berlin

LOOKING at the condition of the inner cities, the environment, the infrastructure and education in this country, it seems as if the United States has just been through a war.

It has.

Since the early 1940s the United States has been fighting authoritarianism around the world. During the '30s, before America embraced its role as a major player in world affairs, the shadow of repressive governments spread over much of the planet: Hitler and his Nazis controlled Germany; Italy was fascist; Stalin and his secret police ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist; a small military cabal dominated Japan.

Now, almost 50 years later, countries that were once governed by oppresive regimes have much freer and more democratic systems.

Certainly this has much to do with the vision and talent of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in spreading his ideas of perestroika and glasnost. And the United States has not always pursued its foreign policy goals in a noble and ethical way. But the part played by the United States in accomplishing its mission--of encouraging democracy around the world--has been a great one.

The recent events in Eastern Europe--the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the Solidarity government in Poland, the disintegration of Hungarian Communist Party--have validated the trillions of dollars spent in the long and costly struggle in which the United States has been engaged since World War II.

Since November 9, when citizens of East and West Berlin reveled on top of the Berlin Wall, there have been no victory orations in the United States. No parades through Washington. No brass bands. No elation. This is unfortunate, because in effect the country has been through a successful war.

IT has been an expensive fight. And now is the time that Americans should shift their attention from governments around the world and start worrying about government in this country.

The United States should take advantage of the opportunity Gorbachev has given it to get out of Europe and slash the defense budget.

"The notion that we should spend billions of dollars to defend Western Europe from the Soviets is as ludicrous as spending billions of dollars to defend Thailand from the munchkins," said U.S. Representative Barney Frank '61 (D-Mass.) in an interview yesterday. Frank said that House Democrats plan to hold a caucus when Congress reconvenes in January to discuss cuts in the defense budget and to earmark funds for "health care, education, housing, and the infrastructure."

It is now the time for the United States to heal the injuries and wounds it obtained during its half-century-long fight for freedom. It is the time to take money out of defense and put it into an intensive program to rebuild America.

DURING the past 50 years the country has overlooked and neglected many important areas, such as poverty, the environment, the infrastructure and education.

The inner cities give evidence to this neglect. Drugs threaten to make life unliveable for millions of ordinary people who fear to walk down the street in their neighborhoods. AIDS, poverty and homelessness are related problems that have been overlooked and imperil the lives of many Americans.

"One in five children in this country lives in poverty: half of those are in long-term poverty," said Kennedy School of Government Lecturer in Public Policy Olivia Golden '76. Even worse, she said, is the fact that since 1985 the nation ranks 19th in infant mortality worldwide.

During the Sixties President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to fight a war in Vietnam and a "War on Poverty." He couldn't do both. Now, with more money and innovative ideas, we can undo much of the neglect of the past 50 years.

And instead of designing increasingly complex weapons to kill, the nation's top scientists can focus on creating ways to improve the environment--making discoveries that can help, instead of injure, humans.

The nation's infrastructure is also in shambles. Roads, bridges, tunnels decay with each successive day. Here in Massachusetts, public works officials have said that the state faces a great infrastructure crisis.

BUT it is the area of education that has been most forgotten by Americans.

Recent surveys have shown that students find themselves unable to tell when the Civil War took place within a 50-year period. Many can not tell where their own state is on a map. Others just don't worry about school and go watch TV. The problem, however, is not the student's fault, but the fault of a society whose sole mission over the past 50 years has been to promote democracy abroad. Well, the risk of expansionary communism has been eliminated, and it is time to properly educate the students of America. Without educating our students, the United States runs the risk of turning into a second- or third-rate nation.

THE United States should never have to be in a position of global dominance again, but, by the same token, America's citizens should not allow the nation to sink into a condition where it must depend on other nations for its economic solvency.

America has fought a long and hard war for global democracy since the days of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt '04. Now the nation must turn inward and correct some of the many problems that threaten to destroy what we have fought to preserve.