Sen. Trent Lott of the no-longer-so-sovereign state of Mississippi is still bleeding from his suggestion that the U.S. might have been better off if Strom Thurmond, the former Dixiecrat, had become President. Both in Blogdom and the Real World, which increasingly intersect, many are calling for Lott to step down as leader of the of the Senate Republicans. We won’t comment here on the controversy itself even though we found his comments to be just as offensive as billed.
But if Lott is indeed eager to demonstrate contrition, he might well show a little imagination and make a policy proposal that could especially help many Black Americans without anyone even using the dreaded AA phrase. We’re talking about a well-stocked national digital library system. By increasing the range of reading material, it could be a godsend for students and others of all races and income levels.
Such a grubby issue is off the radar of policymakers in DC, but Trent Lott could help put it in the center of the screen. Along the way he might score points in his own state, which is hardly known for lavishly funded libraries, and which sorely needs the additional resources that would be available from a national collection. Significantly, TeleRead would not just put thousands of books and other items online; it would also help drive down the cost of book-friendly computers and in other ways help make the national library actually usable by those who needed it the most. No nefarious socialism here. William F. Buckley Jr., in fact, has written two columns sympathetic to the proposal.
TeleRead even comes with a war-on-terrorism angle. Some of the same techniques that worked in poorer areas of the States–such as the spreading around of low-cost equipment–could also work in developing countries and help provide the infrastructure for national library systems there. No panaceas. But think about the long-term opportunities to disseminate knowledge in such crucial areas as agriculture and public health, and demonstrate that the U.S. is interested in treating some of the causes of the hatred, not just vaporizing the thuggish dictators who have exploited the anger. In concrete ways, certain people in developing countries are already using technology to improve the lives of farmers and villagers, and America should be helping.
