A Letter to America

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A Letter to America Pub. Date: 3/28/2008 Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

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Overview

A powerful wake-up call to all Americans

With only 6 percent of the world’s population, how long will the United States remain a global superpower? The answer, David Boren tells us in A Letter to America, depends on asking ourselves tough questions. A powerful wake-up call to Americans, A Letter to America, forces us to take a bold, objective look at ourselves.

In A Letter to America, Boren explains with unsparing clarity why the country is at a crossroads and why decisive action is urgently needed and offers us an ambitious, hopeful plan.

What the country needs, Boren asserts, are major reforms to restore the ability of our political system to act responsibly. By relying on our shared values, we can replace cynicism with hope and strengthen our determination to build a better future. We must fashion a post–Cold War foreign policy that fits twenty-first-century realities—including multiple contending superpowers. We must adopt campaign finance reform that curbs the influence of special interests and restores political power to the voters. Universal health care coverage, budget deficit reduction, affordable higher education, and a more progressive tax structure will strengthen the middle class.

Boren also describes how we can renew our emphasis on quality primary and secondary education, revitalize our spirit of community, and promote volunteerism. He urges the teaching of more American history and government, for without educated citizens our system cannot function and our rights will not be preserved. Unless we understand how we became great, we will not remain great.

The plan Boren puts forward is optimistic and challenges Americans to look into the future, decide what we want to be and where we want to go, and then implement the policies and actions we need to take us there.

David Boren

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780806139449
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date: 3/28/2008
Pages: 120
Sales rank: 726,930
Product dimensions: 5.79 (w) x 7.77 (h) x 0.58 (d)

Meet the Author

Rhodes Scholar David Boren, currently President of the University of Oklahoma, was the longest-serving chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.

Throughout his three-decade career in elective politics as Governor and three-term U.S. Senator, Boren was known as a bipartisan reformer, championing efforts to make government more accountable to the American people. During his tenure in Washington, Boren crusaded for congressional campaign finance reform and stronger congressional oversight of secret intelligence programs. He sponsored legislation to declassify thousands of documents pertaining to the history of the CIA. Boren chaired the special 1992-93 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, which proposed making Congress more efficient and responsive by streamlining congressional bureaucracy, reducing staff sizes, and reforming procedures to end legislative gridlock. He authored the National Security Education Act in 1992 to provide scholarships for studying abroad and learning additional languages. Since the program's inception, more than 3,500 students have been given the opportunity to study abroad as Boren Scholars. The National Security Education Program is the largest international studies program created since adoption of the Fulbright scholarships.

A 1963 graduate of Yale University, Boren received his law degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1968. Prior to becoming President of the University of Oklahoma, he served for ten years as a Trustee of Yale. When Boren left the U.S. Senate in 1994 to become President of the University of Oklahoma, he had an approval rating of 9l percent after being reelected with 83 percent of the vote in 1990, the highest percentage in the nation in a U.S. Senate contest in that election year.

Under Boren's leadership, the University of Oklahoma has emerged as a pacesetter in American public higher education, ranking first in the nation among public universities in the number of National Merit Scholars per capita. Total endowment has grown five-fold to more than $1 billion during the thirteen years of his presidency. A teacher at heart, Boren is in the classroom every semester leading a first-year course in political science.

Acknowledgments     IX
Introduction     3
The United States and the World     19
The Destructiveness of Partisanship     43
Campaign Corruption     55
Our Economic Health     69
Our Disappearing Middle Class     79
The Urgency of Memory     87
The Question     101
Notes     111

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Anonymous

Posted March 13, 2010

Non-partisan and he speaks from his past knowledge of the whole situation.

America needs to heed Boren's non-partisan review of our world situation and be informed. Great book!
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Anonymous

Posted October 19, 2009

Foolish American Thinking

This book is pure propaganda. I was forced to read this by my WRIT 101 teacher, and I must say the ideas brought up by author David Boren are purely ridiculous. He expresses how horrible it would be if the US were not the world's leader or largest power. This is idiotic, because the world would not end if its leader was Japan or the UK.

He even suggests that cynicism is dangerous and harmful to our country, which is downright garbage. Cynicism protects the people from being controlled and ruled over like a herd of mindless sheep. With that, he also suggests that congress is saint-like, answering a call to help people, when we know for a fact that congressmen have used the system to serve themselves for years. Of course, this is to be expected from a former politician.

Still, the book is not useless, for there are still ideas that America could use. He has a valid point in saying that most Americans don't understand our government, and don't know that they can make a difference in our country, which is built on a democracy of people. This book was written during the reign of George W. Bush, however, and times have changed. I think today congress is run by industries more than ever before.

This read is enlightening, but the opinion of David Boren should not be taken as a righteous call to action, because his mentality is surely warped and narrow.
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Anonymous

Posted March 13, 2008

Read, then pass to others!

Thought-provoking, frightening and finally inspiring - this should be required reading in schools.
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A Letter to America

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