Over at Easily Distracted, Tim Burke has two posts up about e-technology and scholarship that are of interest to all of us. "I Also Froth" argues that the continued print form of most journals is a folly. On the other hand, "Burn the Catalog" argues that e-library catalogs are largely and increasingly inadequate.

As out-going president of the American Historical Association, Jim McPherson addresses complex issues facing our profession – the relation of fact and fiction, the role of the historical imagination, whether history is a construction or a reconstruction, the scandal of fraudulent sources -- in a fascinating final column for Perspectives. He calls attention to Leonard F. Guttridge and Ray A. Neff's new book, Dark Union: The Secret Web of Profiteers, Politicians, and Booth Conspirators That Led to Lincoln's Death (John Wiley & Sons, 2003). It apparently relies on documents or copies of documents which may never have existed to reweave conspiracy theories about Lincoln's assassination which have been debunked long ago. Will Guttridge and Neff reply to the charges from a president of the AHA? Will Wiley withdraw the book from publication? If not, why not? Does freedom of the press require that we tolerate occasional fraud or research so unself-critical that it verges on fraud? The book is fiction, McPherson suggests, but so long as Wiley markets it as history it is fraud.

Finally, do read Quentin Hardy's"Hitting Slavery Where It Hurts" in the current issue of Forbes. Market strategies seem to be more effective in freeing large numbers of people, but they risk rewarding slave traders. Legal strategies, however, are slower and simply do not work in places like the Sudan, where there are no legal structures to work within to abolish slavery.

Garelick laments, “Although virtually all of my female students expect to pursue careers, this is where their enlightenment seems to end. For them, the reassuring power of a college degree to unlock professional doors seems to have rendered ‘feminism’ obsolete. In other words, the fires of feminism may have burned down to the ashes of careerism.”

To revive these fires, Garelick says that she has looked “to introduce contemporary politics into classroom discussions.” Alas, such efforts “meet with blank stares. Even this past year, as our country began a war, I encountered mostly silence when I broached the topic of Iraq, a mix of paralysis and anxiety, plus some disgruntlement over my deviating from the syllabus.” Rather than consider that, perhaps, students whose parents are paying $37,900 annually for them to attend Connecticut College enroll in classes at the school to learn academic subjects rather than to have professors lead discussions of contemporary politics, Garelick admits that, “each year, frankly, I feel increasingly compelled to look beyond my syllabuses and to devote myself more to teaching ‘wakeful’ political literacy.” She goes on to criticize the Bush administration’s policies toward overtime pay and the war in Iraq, and to laud Howard Dean’s reliance on the internet in his campaign—all perfectly reasonable political positions. But unclear is either their connection to French and Italian or Garelick’s professional training to “teach” on such issues. And, of course, every minute spent in class on “wakeful political literacy” is one minute less spent on the academic subjects Garelick’s course is supposed to cover.

At least, to her credit, Garelick doesn’t hide her teaching goals.

My comment about the"pick-a-candidate" quiz ended with some thoughts on what I called"ranked preference" voting and the possibility of doing a national party primary poll instead of a dribble of early state votes. Anne Zook thought I was being silly, at least in my reliance on Internet technology. (She also has some eloquent ranting about non-participants in the comments section, with which I fully agree: I am starting to get a little nervous about the percieved legitimacy of a system in which a minority of the population elects representatives who seem to work in the interests of their supportive constituents without a lot of attention to larger pictures.)

She's right, in a sense: we haven't developed an on-line voting system that is as secure and reliable as our current paper ballot systems. I think that's because we haven't been trying very hard. When the stakes are high enough, it can be done: we send personal financial information over the Internet all the time, but most identity theft still relies on stealing data from merchants, public sources (how many colleges still use social security numbers for student identification?), or reconstructed physical evidence (receipts, etc.). But a national primary could be conducted in a number of other pretty secure ways. Mail-in ballots, for example, wouldn't be any less reliable than our current absentee ballots, and that system could certainly be tightened up with small changes. They are getting more popular, anyway, and have been shown to increase levels of participation (and Anne approves of them, too). Properly designed closed-circuit computer systems -- stand-alone networks without internet connections, like the networks which operate ATMs -- couldn't be hacked from the outside: terminals could be set up in voting districts, just like the primaries now. That's a couple of ideas.

But the method of voting is not as interesting to me, except as a technical issue, as the system of voting. The current dribble of early states is a classic case of evolution beyond function: there's no reason for 80+% of the voters to be excluded from the process because it's become a habit. If the technical aspects can be worked out, why don't we run a single national primary? We can make both primary day and election day holidays (someone recently suggested that we shift Veteran's Day to election day, which I like; we can use Memorial Day or Presidents' Day for primaries, depending on how long we want the general election to last.) and have some real fun.

If running a national poll with a single deadline seems too precipitous, there was a proposal floated four years ago to carry out"stacked" primaries, a kind of organized"Super Tuesdays" system. The states would be divided into groups (equal numbers in each group; I think ten was the original proposal), by size. The primaries would happen at one-week or two-week intervals in order of ascending size: the smallest states would vote one week (this preserves the value of voting in small states), followed by the next tier of states, ending up with a couple of weeks in which the bulk of delegates would be chosen. This has the virtue of being a relatively short process, compared to our current primaries, but one which distributes attention much more equitably."Momentum" would still be a factor, but it might actually mean something....

But my deep-rooted qualms about our electoral system have more to do with the actual voting process. One of the things I like about the Iowa caucus process is that it doesn't result in a winner-take-all delegate allocation for achieving a slight plurality. I'd be happy with either of two changes -- proportional allocation or Instant-Runoff Voting -- but both would be even better.

Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV), it turns out, is what I was calling ranked preference voting: voters choose multiple candidates, ranked first, second, etc. If there is no majority candidate, the candidate who recieved the lowest vote total would have their votes rescinded and those voters' votes would go to their respective second choices. This continues until there is a majority winner. As the current Z Magazine points out [by subscription only, but check out the CVD site for more by the same authors] this will both strengthen alternative parties as well as reducing the"spoiler" effect of candidates like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. Attack politics will be less attractive (if you can't be their first choice, you don't want to be the guy who called their first choice bad names) and coalition politics will rise quickly. If people don't have a second choice, they can just put a first choice. A little confusing? At first, perhaps, but people will get used to it pretty quickly, and just imagine what political scientists and pollsters will do with this data! (More information on IRV than you ever dreamed of is at The Center for Voting and Democracy, including tallies of current state and national figures elected by pluralities, and a withering analysis of districting and uncontested elections.)

And let's just ditch the winner-take-all system of state votes, and give the top vote-getters (say, everyone over 10%) a proportional allocation of delegates: CVD calls this"Full Representation" or"Proportional Representation" (PR). So a candidate who was a strong regional candidate would still have to present good campaigns elsewhere because they would still be getting only a share of their states' candidates. On the other hand, they wouldn't be getting shut out of other states, either. It would slow down the selection process, and would also reduce the tendency towards attack campaigns (even if a candidate drops out, they still have delegates to broker). PR could also produce more parties: I foresee candidates appealing to different wings of their respective parties deciding to forego brokering deals and forming new parties.

Iowa already has PR, and a form of IRV because non-viable candidates' supporters get to pick a viable caucus to join. It can work (actually, it's fun, but I'm geeky). Before you say things like"well, it sure didn't reduce the attack campaigning in Iowa" remember that Iowa was just the first stop in a short string of winner-take-all winnowing exercises that may or may not last long enough for a majority of delegates to be chosen.

And all ballots should have"none of the above" as an option, and if"none of the above" wins they should hold the election over again, with different candidates. Seriously.

I've often wondered about our legal and social approach to guns, and now with the Assault Weapons Ban expiring, we're looking, I would hope, for new and different approaches to the issue.

Now, if it were entirely up to me, I'd go for an England/Japan-style total ban on personally owned weapons. In those countries, outside of very limited circumstances, it is illegal to own a firearm and certainly illegal to have it outside of a shooting range, unless you are a police officer. Yes, collecting existing firearms would be a problem, and criminals would certainly continue to have access to weapons in the short term and limited access in the long term. But in the long term the number of accidental deaths -- which even gun ownership advocates admit is too high -- would drop, and murder and suicide rates would probably also show benefits. But my view on this is deeply affected, I admit, by the sense of safety I felt in Japan, where crime in general is low and crime against large, white foreigners was nearly unheard of. Still, I'll never forget the yakuza summit which police raided while I was in Japan, from which they confiscated dozens of knives, wooden practice swords, a few longswords (the vast majority of this stuff was in the trunks of their cars, not in the meeting itself) and one handgun. The only people who were killed by firearms in the years I lived in Japan were gangsters. That's something to aspire to, in the long term.

But, for what it's worth, we have that pesky 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, and there are arguments in favor of guns that make some sense, even to me. Guns are tools: not an evil or good in themselves, but a tool whose great power is magnified by its ease of use. There are moments when I think that a gun would be a nice thing to have access to, for personal and familial protection, against disorganized crime and organized hate. There are moments when I think about my students, and what an open target we are in academia. Hunting, apparently, is great fun, and around here it's part of an organized attempt to control invasive species. And in my darker moments, the idea that the government has a monopoly of force makes me nervous, too, though the extent to which guns are an answer is a question to which historians have not applied themselves with any rigor, to my knowledge.

[A great deal of the above can be accomplished with a crossbow and a short sword. Granted, it's not as compact, and more training is necessary. I'm probably revealing myself as an historian who came of age in the heyday of Dungeons&Dragons.]

I believe in consensus. I believe in making progress slowly, as long as it's in a positive direction, particularly when complex social and legal issues are at play. And I think that gun control should be considered a national security issue, and discussed with the same urgency as border security, intelligence reform, foreign policy, etc. So here's my suggestion: FDA the BATF.

Healthcare is a fundamental need (it's not a right, yet) and modern medicines are powerful tools -- miraculous when used correctly and devastating when misapplied. Because of the power of medicine to harm as well as heal, access is limited, channeled through professional gatekeepers, and its use is monitored by government and professional agencies. If a drug does more harm than good, it can be recalled or banned; if a drug turns out to do good in more ways than originally intended, its use expands. Drugs that prove safe over the long term, and which are effective in low, safe doses, are available without gatekeeping control,"over the counter" without a prescription. Trickier drugs remain under prescription control, and those with the greatest potential for personal and social harm -- addictive substances -- come under strict institutional monitoring. Most importantly, every drug which comes to market must pass through FDA approval and scheduling.

Yes, there are problems with the model as a functioning system: slipshod doctoring, approval process (delays and shortcuts), corruption and black markets, patents (too long or too short, depending on your perspective), costs, and the potential to abuse even 'safe' medicines. These are not fundamental problems, I think, but rather normal systemic slippage, which can be addressed as they occur.

Another model which might be applied, though there's no clear federal analogue, is driver licensing, which requires study, practice and testing, and which contains multiple levels and categories of licensing specific to the vehicles' weight and features.

How can this model be applied to guns? Gun use falls roughly into six categories:

• personal protection
• hunting
• law enforcement
• military
• criminal
• drama (including historical recreation)
• (not a use category, but ownership category): archival/collection/historical

Most people would fall into the first two categories and be eligible only for the most modest firearms: revolvers, small-caliber/small-clip semiautomatic handguns; breech-loading and repeating rifles; breech-loading shotguns. It may be that those would be collapsed into a"personal use" category, though I think that handguns would be more likely to be useful for protection and rifles/shotguns for hunting, so that there would be some overlap and some exclusivity if they were retained. Concealed weapons should require a considerably higher standard of training, but if they were limited to the modest handguns described, they would present a lesser threat of accidental or malicious use.

Law enforcement weapons would include the previous categories, but would mostly focus on more powerful handguns, particularly the semi-automatics, as well as pump-action shotguns, with semi-automatic rifles and high-powered sniper weapons for special purposes (perhaps a separate level of training/licensing). If the categories are extended to include other forms of weaponry, tear gas and concussion grenades might also fall into that category. One problem I foresee here is the question of private security forces and the weaponry allowed to them. Many years ago I read that the number of private security officers had surpassed the number of police officers in this country. In addition, distinguishing legitimate security forces from militia groups, or gun clubs, could be difficult without clearly articulated standards. My immediate response, to forestall the problem, is to categorically deny non-governmental groups access to even these weapons, but the situation might warrant negotiation on this point.

Military weapons would include almost anything, except for those items restricted by international convention and such limits as we ourselves choose to impose. But those weapons would never be considered personal property, even when individuals were properly licensed: only the federal government (State Guards, too? Probably) would have the right to own such weapons.

The drama category would include weapons that fired only blanks, as well as muzzle-loading historical weapons (which could be loaded only with powder, not shot). The collectors' category is tricky, but I think it might work, in general, to forbid owners of historically or militarily interesting weapons from owning ammunition. Or, if you want to collect ammunition, you don't collect guns (at least not the same ones).

I'm not entirely sure what would fall into the category of a weapon that was more useful for criminals than for military or law enforcement purposes. Even the traditional outlawing of the derringer and single-shot"pen gun" seems to me questionable if they are placed in the personal protection category and require, as with other weapons, specific training. I suppose fully automatic urban weapons like the Uzi or Mac-10 would fit here, though the military might want to keep their options open. At some point we will have to address the question of weapons made of non-metallic composite materials, but that's more a security problem than a gun use problem.

Why is this a good system? Because it preserves a right to access while clearly delineating professionalized levels which ordinary citizens need not and should not operate at. Because instead of banning specific weapons or specific features, it requires that any and all weapons pass through the categorization process before reaching the market, and that all users pass through the licensing process before obtaining a gun. The excess firepower in the market would be replaced with much more appropriate weapons, and higher levels of social confidence.

What's the problem? Obviously, any law put in place now which separates current owners from their guns, however inappropriate to their lives and purposes, is going to face resistance and take time to implement properly. This would have to be done in stages of several years each, including amnesty periods in which current gun owners could sell or trade their weapons to more appropriate buyers. Licensing standards would need to be worked out carefully, and with the same presumptions of access as voting standards and driver licensing, which will probably equally offend the ownership and disarmament camps. There are already serious loopholes in the system: gun shows, gun sale licenses in the hands of irresponsible individuals, black and gray markets. As my father says of computers, any sufficiently complex program will have bugs.

The crux, though, is our willingness to address the big questions in a creative and wholehearted fashion. So, here's a starting place. Let's talk.