Remarks for the Gorton Lecture Series

Remarks for the Gorton Lecture Series

Discovery Institute, Seattle 

January 5, 2012

Hans Zeiger

See a video of this presentation from the Seattle Channel here. 

The next generation of leaders faces huge challenges: how to be good neighbors in a global economy, how to combat terrorism, how to balance between markets and government, how to remain economically competitive, protect our environment, eradicate poverty, and make health care more affordable. In the upcoming state legislative session, we’ll deal with some questions that will remain with us for the foreseeable future: how do we have sustainable budgets with increasing public demands? What about marriage equality? What about education reform?

Now, I started out with some bold questions because I was once advised that I should do such things. When I was running for the legislature in 2010, Slade Gorton was kind enough to speak at a fundraiser for me, and I began my speech with a list of thank yous and acknowledgements. After I had finished speaking, Slade pulled me aside and said to me, “Always begin a speech with a bold statement or question. They’ll forgive you for not starting with the thank you’s.” So I’ve tried to practice that.

Today’s program is about lessons like that one and others from Slade Gorton.

But first I will mention some acknowledgements. First I have to mention John Hughes, who we planned on having here today, but some personal circumstances have prevented him. John is a veteran journalist who spent years at the Aberdeen Daily World and was hired by Secretary of State Sam Reed as the state’s historian for the Legacy Project, to record the stories of our great Washingtonians. John and I met for lunch in Olympia last year and I think we sat there for two hours talking about our state’s political history, and I knew I had found a new friend. And he is a first class biographer. He wrote a biography of former Governor Booth Gardner, and now this one of Slade. It is marvelous, and I hope you’ll be inspired to purchase a copy tonight.  

I also want to thank Steve Buri and Bruce Chapman and the Discovery staff here for making this possible. And I want to mention our Advisory Board members, some who are here:

Dr. Michael Allen, Professor of History, University of Washington

Steve Buri, President, Discovery Institute

Dr. Jeff Cain, American Philanthropic, Poulsbo

Hon. Bruce Chapman (senior advisor), Discovery Institute

Dr. Reed Davis, Chairman, Political Science and Geography Department, Seattle Pacific University

Trent England, Vice President of Policy, The Freedom Foundation

Dr. Robert Kaufman, Professor, Pepperdine University, biographer of Henry M. Jackson

Hon. Mary Ellen McCaffree, former legislator, agency director, author

Ralph Munro, former Washington State Secretary of State

Rep. Kevin Parker, 6^th Legislative District, Spokane

Hon. George Scott, Ph.D., former State Senator, historian

Dr. Andrew Tadie, Professor of English, Seattle University

Dr. John West, Discovery Institute

Why do we need a program on civic leadership? For a few reasons.

The first reason is many young people in the Puget Sound region are looking for ways to make a difference and become leaders. I’ve become distinctly aware of this as a young person myself in public life, as I have opportunities to interact with young professionals and college students. They call us the Millennial Generation, and we haven’t really had time to prove ourselves yet, but we have big aspirations. You combine that with the history of big aspirations that Steve talked about in this region, and that’s a powerful combination. There is this great desire that is absolutely radiant in this room tonight to do great things for the communities in which we’ve been blessed to live. We feel this not only as an ambition but as a responsibility. And if our generation is going to be any good at leading, we must study how to do that, we must learn from previous generations, and we must form friendships that last through the years. 

A second reason why we need to focus on civic leadership is because of a certain breakdown in that type of leadership that has occurred. We have delegated many of the tasks of traditional community leadership to highly-trained and specialized bureaucrats. This has come both with benefits and costs. The benefits are that human problems can actually be addressed with some effectiveness on a large scale by experts and centralized agencies. The costs are to relationships. Policies take the place of human relationships. Leaders become accustomed to thinking about regulatory solutions and bureaucratic solutions instead of community-based leadership where people can solve their own problems. The decentralized network of families, neighborhoods, businesses, houses of worship, and private associations of all kinds is capable of doing far more than we sometimes think. And I would argue that a strong community, with all of the free institutions that make it up, is a heck of a lot better at loving and caring for people than any bureaucracy ever was.

The third reason why this program is important is the civic tradition of which we are part. We are inheritors of an experiment in self-government and individual liberty, and all of history should teach us to be grateful for that. Every generation must do its part to continue this tradition, so here we are today. Here in downtown Seattle, we’re reminded of our own part in that tradition. Many in this room have done, and are doing what they can to make the best of this experiment in self-government, whether you’re in business, education, religion, media, or public service.  

I myself am conscious of carrying on a tradition greater than myself. I recently learned that I sit in a seat on the State House floor that was occupied 50 years ago by a representative named Slade Gorton. Since we’re about to go back into session, I’m planning to bring something down with me to put on my desk: bobblehead.

If you study the book by John Hughes, you will discover a man who has grappled like few others in his time with the greatest political and civic questions. How do you order a good society? What kind of leadership is necessary? What kind of character is necessary?

In Slade Gorton you will find a man whose life is devoted to making a difference for Washington State. Without him, our part of the country would be very different. Seattle would be very different. He has left a mark on the biggest institutions around here: the Seattle Mariners, Microsoft, Boeing, the tribes, the environmental movement, the timber industry…the Discovery Institute. He sits on its board. In all of these things he has been at times controversial, always resolute, always just, and always the smartest guy in the room.

  

His public career spans more than half a century. He was elected to the legislature in 1956 where he was the architect of the most successful Republican governing majority in state history. He served for twelve years as Attorney General and argued 14 cases before the Supreme Court. He did an impossible thing in 1980 by unseating Warren Magnuson from his Senate seat, in which he served for 18 years. He became one of the most respected statesmen of his generation, an intellectual power in the Republican majority of the 1990s. He continued his service thereafter as a member of the 9/11 Commission, and his continuing contributions to Washington are too numerous to count.

In Slade’s final days in the Senate 11 years ago, Peggy Noonan wrote a wonderful column in the Wall Street Journal celebrating his public service. She wrote about some of the extraordinary tributes that were made by his colleagues on the floor of the Senate. And I want to just read a couple paragraphs from that column:

“Over and over Thursday the speakers spoke about two things. Because Mr. Gorton was wise and calm and highly intelligent, he was listened to. And because he wasn’t a showboat, he was respected. He wouldn’t just pop off with a statement and hope to get credit for it. He was the last to run for the microphones, though he wasn’t above noticing who did. He spoke on the floor less often than some other senators; he spoke in private councils. He probably authored fewer bills, but shaped more law through advice and addendum. In all of the praise you could hear the sound of an institution defining itself, showing through what it said what it values and honors.

“I think it was saying this: In the clamor of big egos bumping into daily events that is Congress, we do notice who gets things done, who really works. Who really thinks, who contributes, who has a long-term historical view, who is a patriot, who doesn’t care who gets credit, who will quietly counsel and help you with your problem and not capitalize on it or use it against you, who stands not only for the party but the country and not only for the job but for the institution—the Senate, this august chamber, which can actually make a difference in people’s lives, and which is a strong and necessary element in our republic.”

Well I don’t think I need to say much more. Slade is going to talk for about fifteen minutes about his leadership lessons, and then I’ll follow up with some questions, and finally we’ll open it up to your questions. So I introduce to you the smartest man in the state, a great Washingtonian and a great statesman, Slade Gorton.

Veteran's Day: The Story of Eddie, Bobby, and Al

Veteran’s Day: The Story of Eddie, Bobby, and Al

By Hans Zeiger

Stahl Junior High School

November 10, 2011

This morning I want to tell you the story of three kids who grew up here in Puyallup. They were neighbors. If you go down around Decoursey Park—that’s the neighborhood where they grew up about 75 years ago. Their names were Al, Bobby, and Eddie.

Al Tresch was the son of a Swiss immigrant dairy farmer, a hard worker who saved up money from odd jobs in Tacoma to buy a big dairy farm in the valley. There were three brothers, Albert, Robert, and Jim. Albert was the mischievous one in the family, and I’ll say more on that in a minute.

Bobby Bigelow grew up on ten wooded acres across Pioneer from the Tresches, and across Fruitland from the Washington State College Experiment Station. His father was a farmer at the Station. The Bigelows were a prominent family in the community.

And Eddie grew up on the grounds of the Experiment Station, where his father worked as the foreman. Next door to the Myerses were the Kinseys. Essey Kinsey and Eddie Myers were best friends. In the evenings after school at Maplewood Elementary, Essey and Eddie, along with Ruthie and Bobby Bigelow and a few other neighborhood kids, played games in the fields.

         

All three of these kids played an important role in their school.  

Everybody liked Eddie because he had a way of making everybody feel welcome. He wasn’t a genius, and he repeated the first grade at Maplewood. But people liked him because he was the most joyful and the most caring guy you could find.

Eddie was the quarterback of the Puyallup High School football team. His high school classmates remember him at what’s now Sparks Stadium, as he grabbed hold of the punts from fourth down. Eddie was only 145 pounds, but as his teammate and friend Don Henderson told me, “Eddie Myers was fearless.”

Bobby was a quiet kid who spent much of his childhood exploring the DeCoursey woods and learning the local trees and flowers. He was a Boy Scout. He loved to be outdoors. Not many people remember Bobby, because he was just so quiet. He kept to himself. But he was a good and loving brother to his two sisters, one who was older and one who was younger.  

As for Al, he is well-remembered for all the wrong reasons. He was the dropout, the troubled teen, the overweight kid. He dropped out of the fifth grade at Maplewood Elementary in the 1930s and became the town bully. If you talk to the old-timers around here, they’ll tell you that Al Tresch was a terror in town. He often got in fights. He weighed over 300 pounds by the time he should have been in high school. They called him “Fat Tresch.”

Well Eddie graduated 71 years ago in June of 1940 and left for Washington State College. He was a couple years into his education when he entered the Army. Assigned to the 417^th Infantry Regiment, 76^th Division, Lt. Myers met up with his men at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. He was made a rifle platoon leader.  

Lt. Howard Randall from Texas joined the 76^th as a rifle platoon leader in June. Since he was new to the platoon, he was at a disadvantage in relating to the men, but he quickly observed that Lt. Myers had won them over. Eddie made himself available to the GIs to assist them with personal troubles or to reassure them about the stresses of war. He was a counselor and friend. Some men in the platoon were illiterate, so Eddie took time to transcribe their letters home.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1944, the 76^th boarded the troop transport USS Brazil out of Boston. They continued training at Bournemouth, England. Just before Christmas, the troops at Bournemouth learned that the Germans had gone back on the offensive at the Ardennes Forest on the Western Front, and so they were ordered to ship across the channel to France.

The 76^th marched from Limesy to Luxembourg in less than two weeks through the snow, arriving in Junglinster on January 26. The winter was deadly. Snow blanketed the ground. Inadequately booted and clothed, the men struggled to survive.

In the Luxembourg winter of 1945, Lt. Myers was almost, as his football teammate Don Henderson had known him at Viking Field, “fearless.” But as Howard Randall remembers, “We were all afraid that we were going to get killed or wounded in combat.” And by war’s end, three of six officers in Eddie’s company had been killed. The other three were wounded. One wounded officer became mentally unstable. 

The first officer in Eddie’s company to be severely wounded in the Battle of the Bulge was the company commander. Then the executive officer was killed. With no time to mourn the dead, Eddie took over as company commander.

In mid-February, several hundred men of the 76^th penetrated the Ziegfried Line. They crossed the Zauer River through German-occupied territory. On the other side, Lt. Myers led his men as they climbed about 450 feet up a mine-laden escarpment. At the top was an obstacle course like no other. Stretching 1,000 yards across and three and a half miles into the distance were 144 German pillboxes. Inch by inch, pillbox by pillbox, the infantrymen made their way through.

It was after two days of rest beyond the Ziegfried line that the 76^th began an assault on the town of Welshbillag. Two-hundred fifty men charged into the town.

Two German tanks fired rounds of 88-mm rifle shells into the advancing Americans. Some men were killed instantly. A shell landed beside Lt. Randall; it was a dud. Lt. Myers was hit in the stomach. He was losing blood quickly. Some of his men helped him into a barn. Most of the platoon continued on, fighting through the night. Eddy sat up in the barn in agonizing pain. Eddie was 21. 

That same month that Eddie was killed, Bobby was in hard combat in the Philippines.

After high school, Bobby went off to Oregon State to study forestry. And it was there that Bobby was drafted for the Army. He went to Basic Training in Texas. In basic training, he formed a close friendship with a quiet young Japanese-American man named Frank Yano. They had similar personalities, similar interests. After boot camp, Bobby went on for cavalry training at Fort Bliss, Kansas with the 1^st Cavalry, 5^th Regiment. Frank, along with his two brothers, was assigned to the segregated all-Japanese American 442^nd Infantry Regiment, training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

And before Frank was to depart for service in Europe, he asked Bobby to be the best man in his wedding.

By the summer of 1944, Frank was in Europe, where he and his two brothers in the 442^nd saw some of the toughest fighting in Europe. Frank earned the Bronze Star for helping to rescue wounded comrades. Bobby was with the 1^st Cavalry as they took back the Admiralty Islands, and then they waited there for the invasion of the Phillipines.

Bobby was in the fifth assault wave into the Philippines. “I guess by now you have read all about us in the paper,” he wrote home to his mother on November 6. “It’s quite a place, we traded stuff and got chickens several times so have had fried chicken. Lots of sweet potatoes and corn too. The people here are sure glad to see us come and are a great help to us.” On Thanksgiving Day, as the Army fought its way through the Philippines, a dinner of roast turkey and three fresh eggs was sent out to the men on the lines. 

From a foxhole, he wrote to his mother on December 4. The Army, he said, was “doing a swell job” as it pushed its way to Manila. “Right now I’ve got three inches growth of whiskers and haven’t washed in just about that length of time.”

But the road to Manila was hard. They fought at Leyte and Luzon. Bobby’s high school classmate Del Martinson was in the infantry, and he described for me the nightmare of a Japanese ambush in the Philippines, dropping to the ground and laying there absolutely helpless with bullets whizzing just above his head. And he described the sensation of wanting to get up and run away but somehow being unable to move. Martinson’s squad leader was killed in that ambush.

And in the midst of things like this, Bobby provided medical aid to countless men along the way. By the first week of February, the 1^st Cavalry was in Manila. They participated in the liberation of 3,000 civilian POWs at the University of Santo Tomas. And then in combat on the Jones Bridge over the Pasig River, Bobby went out to aid a wounded soldier. And as he bent down to help, he too was shot. He died shortly after that. And so, when I drive by the Veteran’s Memorial in Pioneer Park, with the soldier bending down and reaching out to help, I think first of Pvt. Robert Bigelow.

Somebody else who thought first of Bobby was his best friend Frank Yano. And a few months before he was killed, Bobby learned by letter that Frank’s wife had given birth to a girl. And in honor of Bobby, the girl’s name was Roberta.

Well, what about Albert Tresch, the dropout and the town bully? He ran away and joined the Army in 1939. He was in the Philippines by 1941, and then he was fighting to defend a place called Coreggidor as the Japanese took over more and more of the island. And in the final days there, Albert Tresch and another young soldier put their lives at risk. There was a Japanese machine gun nest that got in the way of the soldiers, and Albert volunteered to go around with a grenade to take out the nest. Well, they succeeded, and for that he was awarded the Silver Star.

But it would be years before Albert Tresch saw Puyallup again. Coreggidor fell, and the survivors of that battle were taken prisoner by Japan. For the next four years, Albert struggled to survive, first along the trail that became known as the Bataan Death March, and then in a hellish place called Fukuoka not far from Nagasaki, where he spent those dark days trying to survive. Most of the men in those camps, and along that Death March, never made it.

Most of what I know about the Bataan Death March comes from a survivor I knew named Bryce Lilly, who grew up in Tacoma and just passed away in 2009. Mr. Lilly came and spoke at Aylen at a Veteran’s Day assembly like this one when I was in junior high and told about the horrors of Coreggidor, where he was shot in the head, bandaged up, and fought on. He recalled being fed nothing but a handful of rice and a cup of water as they marched 70 miles in 100 degree heat. He recalled being packed into a transport ship with dead and dying men. In Japan, he worked as a slave laborer in a steel mill. Before the war, Mr. Lilly was 175 pounds. When the war was over, he was down to 70 pounds.

Like Bryce Lilly, Albert Tresch struggled to survive. He knew that freedom was waiting on the other side. To him, home meant something special.

And he finally made it home that fall of 1945. Not long after Albert had stepped through the farmhouse door at the dairy farm on Pioneer, he asked his brother Jim to take him up for an airplane ride. Jim had just gotten out of the Army Air Corps, and Albert had never been in an airplane before. After years of confinement, he longed to see Puyallup from the sky. Jim and Albert drove across town to the little airfield beside the river. Jim arranged to rent a plane for the afternoon, and in a few minutes the brothers were airborne.  

Jim came in low over downtown, over Pioneer Park, over Puyallup High School, and then they flew low over Pioneer Street, disturbing more than a few residents unaccustomed to an airplane among the local traffic. A few dutiful citizens, conditioned by an era of blackouts and night watches, phoned the police.

But the Tresch brothers had taken to the airspace of their parents’ dairy farm, circling round the cows as they grazed in the pasture, startling them into a desperate trot. Near the fleeing cows stood their strong old Swiss dairyman father, his fist raised to the heavens as the plane swooped up to avoid the old growth cedar tree in the middle of the pasture. But they were too close, and the wing clipped off the top of the tree, and as the cedar boughs came in for a landing amid the riled cows, mother Tresch was out on the back porch, hands on her hips, rejoicing in the homecoming of her sons and hoping that they would come home alive for dinner. Al was completely thrilled. That, to Al Tresch, the hero of Bataan, was freedom.

By the time they landed at the airstrip, every police car in town was waiting at the end of the runway. Out stepped the daredevil flier and the prodigal town bully. Jim rolled up his sleeve to present the cops with his ruptured duck tattoo. They let him off. Obeying the speed limits, Jim and Al drove home for dinner.

In the years after the war, life moved on, and many in that generation tried to forget the pain of the war. When somebody asked Al if he would share his experiences about the war at the Puyallup Kiwanis, he declined. Al died a number of years ago, and his brother Jim Tresch died last year.

Frank Yano became a postal carrier but he said little about the war. In the 1960s, Roberta Yano made a weeklong visit to Puyallup to meet Bobby Bigelow’s family, and she and her father kept in touch with them over the years. Bobby’s best friend Frank Yano died in 2008.

And about 20 years ago, Howard Randall traveled with the reporter Bill Moyers of PBS to visit a Luxembourg cemetery. Randall guided Moyers to a special part of the cemetery. Randall stopped in front of a white cross and pointed at the name: Edward J. Myers. And finally through tears he told of the man he and many others came to love. He recalled how he was a good man, how he was like a father to his men, and how Eddie hailed from a place called Puyallup, Washington. 

It’s been more about 75 years since Eddie, Bobbie, and Al grew up together here in Puyallup. Our community has grown and changed since then. But because of the sacrifices they made in that war, we have freedom and opportunity today.

Others have made sacrifices in later wars, and they deserve our thanks too. So as I conclude, let’s thank our veterans once again.   

An essential primer for legislators

An essential primer for legislators
by Hans Zeiger
Crosscut.com
September 14, 2011

Read my review of Mary Ellen McCaffree's outstanding book on legislative life here.

Earth Day article in the News Tribune

This Earth Day, we need both public investment and private enterprise

by Hans Zeiger

The News Tribune

April 22, 2011

On this 41st Earth Day, it is worth reflecting on the direction of environmental policy in Washington state.

Washingtonians are shaped by the environment we inhabit — the mountains, Puget Sound, the forested foothills and river valleys, the Columbia River and the vast farmlands of Eastern Washington. Across our state, across party lines, the environment is more than a plank in a platform. It defines our way of life.

Earth Day grew out of this state’s strong tradition of environmental stewardship. Its founder, Denis Hays, hailed from Camas in southwest Washington.

As our state and the Puget Sound region grow, so does the need to protect our environment. The environmental champions of our own generation will be creative leaders who identify ways to promote economic progress and environmental sustainability at the same time. They will work to protect our water, land and air while strengthening communities, not rule-making agencies.

First, we need to keep our rivers, lakes and Puget Sound clean. Clean water legislation this session included restrictions on phosphorus in fertilizer and bans on coal-based tar sealants and copper-containing boat paint. 

This regulatory approach may do some good for our waterways, but it will take more than laws to 

successfully address water pollution.

Stormwater runoff is the single most pressing environmental challenge in our region. Our systems are both costly and inadequate. The problems of nonpoint pollution and runoff from roads and highways require thoughtful solutions and incentives.

Many emerging ideas for dealing with stormwater are to be found at the Washington State University Research and Extension Center in Puyallup, a national leader in the study of stormwater mitigation technologies like pervious asphalt and rain gardens (soil arrangements that are designed to contain runoff). Puyallup is also home to a successful neighborhood rain garden experiment. In future legislative sessions, lawmakers should explore new incentives for stormwater mitigation.

Second, we must continue to conserve valuable land resources in our communities. As our region grows, we must find creative ways to save our working farmlands and forests and to develop new park lands. In many cases, public investment is necessary. The Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program and other public conservation programs do much for our quality of life.

In other cases, the work of conservation is best handled through private ownership, from small landowners who wish to leave a legacy to the extraordinary forest work of Weyerhaeuser.

Our state can do more to help private property owners. Owners can be more effective caretakers of the land in a culture of voluntary stewardship than in a culture of administrative rule. Recent recommendations by the William D. Ruckelshaus Center, adopted by the Legislature, will help communities and landowners solve problems and settle disputes in a more collaborative fashion.

Third, we need to decrease our use of fossil fuels. Whether you’re concerned about our carbon footprint or our dependence on foreign oil, it is worth moving toward alternative sources of energy. This year’s biggest environmental legislation was ratification of negotiations to ease our state off coal-fired electricity by 2025, to be replaced with natural gas.

In other instances of energy policy, incentives may be preferable to plans. Policymakers are not always the best judges of energy solutions – witness the failed federal experiment in ethanol subsidies. It was private innovation that produced hybrid and electric vehicles.

How do we encourage the market further? Lawmakers would be wise to hold off on a new fee for drivers of electric cars. I voted against this fee in the House Transportation Committee because it seems it would be a small disincentive for the nascent electric vehicle industry.

Furthermore, the Washington Policy Center proposes a revenue-neutral carbon price as a way to roll back business taxes and stimulate clean technologies while acknowledging pollution in the cost of products.

This Earth Day, legislators are grappling with priorities. Yes, the protection of our water, land and air will require sustained public investment. More importantly, it will require creative policy leadership that values free enterprise, private property, voluntary collaboration and strong communities.

Martin Luther King Day speech, House Floor

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a great honor for me to give my first speech in this House on this occasion.

Central to Dr. King’s vision and to this experiment in democracy we carry on here is the belief that free men and women must give their consent to be governed. That our equality as human beings entitles us to a say in the proceedings of government.

A week ago today, Mr. Speaker, I was in awe as we stood here and took our oaths to do our best in this work we’ve been given. We come here to these chambers by way of the ballot box. We enter beyond those curtains by the votes of our equals.

Mr. Speaker, I haven’t quite learned all the ropes of this place yet, but I came to Olympia knowing this: we are representatives, and that means we are duty-bound to the people who sent us. We represent all of them, each of us in our own districts, regardless of sex, color, or creed. 

The story of civil rights in Washington State is long and rich and often unremembered. Mr. Speaker, I hope we can do more in our state to tell that story. It has so much to do with our work here, and with those who have worked here before us.

It’s the story of Frances Axtell from Bellingham and Nena Croake from Tacoma who became the first women to serve in this body in 1912. It’s the more familiar story of Warren Magnuson, the State Representative from Seattle who later went on to author the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It’s the story of Owen Bush, our state’s first black legislator when the state was formed in 1889.

But it was almost six decades before another black legislator came to this chamber. His name was Charles Stokes. I have been learning about Representative Stokes these past few weeks. He was a Republican from Seattle. He was a lawyer and later a King County District Judge. As an NAACP leader, he took an active role in pushing for the 1949 Washington State Fair Employment Practices Act. The following year, 1950, Stokes was elected to this body and served for three nonconsecutive terms. During the Korean War he gave a speech on this floor about the patriotism of black Americans, for which his colleagues gave him a standing ovation.

But it was in 1957 that Representative Charles Stokes helped to pass one of the greatest pieces of legislation in our state’s history. It was Omnibus House Bill 25, and I have a copy of it from the State Archives on my desk if any of my colleagues would like to see it afterwards. Omnibus House Bill 25 was Washington State’s Civil Rights Act. Mr. Speaker, would you grant me permission to read from this bill?

Isn’t that beautiful, Mr. Speaker? Nothing more I can say could measure up to the words of that great bill. So I’ll conclude. 

It is right for us to honor the legacy of Dr. King, as it is right for us to honor the men and women who came before us in this Chamber,

Who stood for civil rights.

May we do our part

To be like them

In this time we’ve been given.

A Case for Civics Education

A Case for Civics Education
Parkland Spanaway Rotary – June 22, 2010
Hans Zeiger


The educational challenges facing our country are very great. We are increasingly aware of our need to compete with the rest of the world.

An aspect of education that we overlook in our haste to make students economically competent is the need for political competence. Education is more than just how to be a worker. It is how to be a citizen.

A study of 14,000 college freshmen and seniors by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute with the University of Connecticut in 2007 found that civic literacy was appallingly low. The survey asked 60 basic questions about American government and history. The average freshman score was 50.4 percent and the average senior score was 54.2 percent. Those are failing grades. According to a 2003 survey by the National Conference on State Legislatures, the Center for Civic Education, and the Center on Congress at Indiana University, only about half of Americans between 15-26 said it’s important to be informed about government and politics; fewer than half thought it was important to express opinions to elected officials. The same survey showed that 82 percent of young people could identify Springfield as the hometown of the Simpsons, and 64 percent could name the current American Idol; only 10 percent could identify the Speaker of the House.

Civics education is important in a democratic republic because each of us is responsible for our government. Our form of government requires participation, and participation requires education.

Civics education teaches the way in which all can be included in the American experiment. It contains at its heart the American creed, that all human beings are created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It teaches the need for responsibility, both personally and publicly.

The study of citizenship both locally and nationally is so important now, because our sense of identity is challenged in so many ways. We are more diverse and more globally-focused than ever before. The internet draws young Americans beyond the local communities in which they live. All of these things are good—diversity, globalization, the internet. Young people also need a sense of national identity and sense of responsibility as citizens.

The problem with civics education isn’t just a statistical thing that’s reflected in the study I cited. It’s a real crisis of priorities. In the 1960s, civic education began to disappear from schools. In 1961, 73 percent of high schools offered U.S. History, and by 1973, that had dropped to 53 percent.

The main reason government invests in public education in the first place is because we need to educate the future leaders of our government. Our Founders saw this civic link. They wrote in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787– one of the four organic documents of our country – “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government an the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Many of the Founders emphasized the importance of education. George Washington called for a national university. Benjamin Franklin taught the necessity of practical education and founded the University of Pennsylvania.

Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Tyler in 1810 that with his political career concluded, “I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength.” The two goals were:
1. “That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.
2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.”[1]

Jefferson’s 1818 Rockfish Gap Report listed thirteen educational goals of the university, including several directly related to the formation of good citizens:

“To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either….
To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests, and duties, as men and citizens….
To form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend;
To expound the principles and structure of government….”[2]

Washington Territory took education very seriously; our first territorial governor Isaac Stevens said that every child should have the equal opportunity to receive an education.
This continued under statehood. Our Constitution says that education is the “paramount duty of the state.”

But the father of basic education in Washington was a man from Puyallup named John R. Rogers. He is best remembered because he is the man who first took the words of the State Constitution seriously in working to implement them.

So State Senator Rogers introduced what has become known as the Barefoot Schoolboy Bill in 1893. It proposed that there should be adequate funding for the Basic Education of every child in the state. And that was a radical thing, because it meant that if you lived in the Valley and went to Maplewood School you had just the same right to a basic education as if you lived in the Woodland area and went to Woodland School. And it was to say that all of us together have an interest in the education of the young, even the Barefoot Schoolboys and Schoolgirls. And that was actually a hard sell with the big cities at the time, because that meant they would have to pay more taxes to cover the poorer rural areas. So Rogers lost his first attempt to get that bill in the Senate. But he was a persistent man. He introduced the bill again, and it failed, and then again. His persistence paid off, because he was also a persuasive man. And in the very final days of the 1893 session, the Rogers Barefoot Schoolboy Bill passed.

Guess how much the per pupil state cost of basic education was for one year? $6.

There was a reward for Rogers’s persistence, and it isn’t just that they named a school in Puyallup after him. People in this state have always loved education, and if you are a champion of it, you can become a hero. Rogers suddenly became a sensation, and in the 1896 election, he was elected governor.

The story of John Rogers serves two purposes. It tells us something about our education system in this state. It also shows us what men and women can achieve in a free society. And young people need to learn about men like this in order to have models of how they can do great things as well.

Civics education took a couple of turns in the 20th Century. First, it was complicated by the Progressive movement, which celebrated the administrative state as a solution to the increasing complexity of society’s problems. Instead of solving problems through the three branches of government, you could delegate a lot of issues to bureaucracies, and so you needed a professional expert class of civil servants to deal with problems. Second, a lot of what was known as civics and history was lumped together under the heading of Social Studies. That meant that current events and issues often became more important than a deep understanding of our institutions, history, and national idea.

But civics education is just as important as ever. There are at least five reasons why we need to make it a priority:

1. We need a knowledgeable electorate.
2. Every generation must be reminded of the American idea of equality and liberty.
3. We need good and well-educated political leaders.
4. We need a way to educate new citizens.
5. We need civility grounded in a common understanding of who we are as a people.

Altogether civics education can help to cement our identity as a people. We should be humble – we are far from perfect, but our experiment is great in the history of the world. We have always had sufficient pride in our country and common intellectual and moral resources to pull together in time of need. It would be a tragedy if we forgot our identity. Nations can survive wars and famines and depressions. But nations that go through identity crises rarely come through intact.

Today we can do three things to promote this: get involved in organizations that promote civic education, ensure that local school districts are taking history and civics seriously, and find ways to get involved in civic life of our community. Of course, Rotary does that.

[1] Jefferson to John Tyler, 26 May 1810, The Essential Jefferson, ed. Jean M. Yarbrough, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2006), 207.
[2] Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” 1818, Yarbrough, 67.

A Message to the Class of 2010

Puyallup High School Commencement
Hans Zeiger
June 12, 2010

Watch a video here.

Thank you Lauren. Mr. Smith, Boardmembers Heath and Ihrig, Superintendent Apostle—my brother Ross Zeiger:

My task this morning is to persuade Dr. Apostle that you deserve your diplomas. If I succeed, you can walk. If I fail, you have to start all over again as sophomores.

At the dawn of time, about eighteen years ago, the class of 2010 came into the world.

It was a remarkable moment in history. About that same time, a new word entered our vocabulary: internet. You in the class of 2010 have never known life without it. Think how much the world has changed since you and the internet were born. And consider the opportunities as well as the challenges before you.

Not least is the challenge of remembering what it is to be human.

For all the technological wonders that mark our age, nothing can replace the wonder of the person sitting next to you. No collection of online information can take the place of the teachers who have guided you through school. And no number of Facebook “friendships” can improve on the awesome potential for love and service that you’ve known in a flesh-and-blood community.

You in the class of 2010 are the inheritors of a grand story—generations old, borne of extraordinary generosity, and deeply infused with pride of place.

One hundred years ago, 1910, the new Puyallup High School opened its doors. Ninety-nine Junes ago, the great educator Edmund B. Walker presented diplomas to the first class. To the sons and daughters of Puyallup who walked after that class, the friendships and values formed here have been a source of strength in the midst of the years.

Today, a new generation of Vikings is waiting at the commencement platform. Because our hopes are invested with yours, today is a happy day. It is also sad, because it’s hard to say goodbye.

But always remember that you can come home.

As you part ways today, take inspiration from the significance of your heritage. Wherever you go now, let them know that you come from a place called Puyallup. Tell them that purple and gold runs in your blood. Then come back here to this Valley and let it run on.

And so, I have one charge for you this morning: Never forget where you come from. May it be your lifelong ambition to give generously to the community that has given so much to you. Puyallup means “The Generous People.” All around you is proof that we live up to our name. Your task in the years ahead is to continue that great tradition.

God bless you.