Your idea is excellent.

When the teamsters union was organizing in the northeast in the earlier twentieth century my grandfather ran a small trucking business (5 employees at the top). He was not union.

The union thugs would accost truckers on roads to intimidate, and even beat some of them.

Grandpa had a sign printed for his truck windows -- "I.O.O.I.T." -- with the appropriate text underneath. It allowed him to get waved through the [illegal] union roadblocks.

International Order of Independent Truckers.

This compulsion to make people participate is a dehumanizing. And weird.

It's not 1937 anymore.

"Democracy" in the workplace or out of the worklplace includes freedom from intimidation, right?

I am sure you support the anti-harassment laws in workplaces, right?

I would make a safe bet if I said you were all for the anti-bullying programs in the schools, right?

Then how the hell can you support the unions intimidating these Wisconsin businesses?

Explain to us all here how *that* is democracy?

To have novelettes published by the Chronicle of Higher Education is appalling.

Is there a reason to mask the soldier's identity? Really? Ask the "student's" permission if it violates your teaching ethics to use their story -- their REAL story. On the other hand, if one is *using* a person and abusing them in the process of "making your point" then find an honest, compassionate way to Make Your Point.

Bellesiles is a coward. Changing so much information allows one "plausible deniability" and gives him a platform to promote the Howard Zinn version of American history. It reminds me of the definition of "is." Facts seems to be irrelevant to The Narrative if you're Michael Bellesiles.

If the person doesn't exist as described, the point doesn't wash, and Chronicle has become the 2010 educational version of "TrueRomance Stories."

It's pretty pathetic that this guy is so in love with his ideology that he, as a "military history" instructor, can't be bothered with the real war.

Name? Date? I am looking at November 2009 and do not see anything like that.

If this has already been posted -- sorry.

To check on war dead:

Honor the Fallen - The Military Times
http://militarytimes.com/valor/search.php

Go to Operation Irai Freedom.

I just looked at 2010. Maybe he meant 2009?

There is no such soldier (Javier -- or variation -- or history) listed that I could find.

The DSM-IV has names for people like this, under the Personality Disorder section.

Love the internets.