I'm watching a movie, "Assault at West Point", which deals with one of the first black cadets to attend West Point Military Academy. Johnson Whittaker was drummed out of West Point in the early 1880's after it was found that he had beat and mutilated himself and tied himself up in his room. The movie uses the court martial transcripts, and that was the final ruling of what officially happened.

Early on in the movie comes up the point that the white good guy lawyer is helping out of a sense of "noblesse oblige" to Whittaker. The black lawyer assisting in defense remarks that that's not the same as promoting racial equality. And it's not. The problem in this era is that although many people want to help the negroes, it's because of a sense of obligation to a lesser, formerly subjugated people. It's not because they believe that blacks are their equals.

Social change comes slowly, and I've said this before. Once people are set in their ways it's impossible to change them at the level of the whole society. That doesn't mean that we can't change our society. Change comes by the ideals that we imbue upon the next generation. Young people are impressionable, if you want to affect a significant change you should concentrate on them. Once they grow up then they'll implement the ideals that have been taught to them.

For most people, the first twenty years are when they are the most impressionable. The next twenty years is when they have the energy and confidence to do something to change the world. After that, most people have settled down and have integrated with mainstream society. Societal change comes slowly, generationally, by instilling that change into the next generation. It's not easy, since the vast amount of ideals and attitudes that young people get are to conform to the current norms.

Now, it's true that teenagers and college kids rebel and support various causes and movements. But that's all really superficial. Kids do that because they are trying to establish their own identity, one that's different than the one they've grown up with, which is their parents'. Once they've settled down into their own personal identity, most have come back to the societal norms.

In any case, those aren't quite the societal changes that I'm writing about. I'm talking about the deep, fundamental beliefs that underlie our society without being some sort of activist cause. The equality of humans, the essential human morals, the universal truths, all rather vague ideas since I don't have the skills to bring them out clearly.

I'm watching the news and the stories about the protesting against the World Trade Organization and some of its policies. The WTO does not try to deal with work conditions, or human rights, or standardized salaries, which seem to be the contentions of the various groups protesting. The WTO just wants to increase trade between nations, by lowering trade barriers of all kinds. Some of which, such as forcing nations to allow more polluting oil to be imported, are not good when viewed by environmentalists. But the concept of free trade is vitally important, in my opinion. Not only economically for the future growth of the US, but because it opens up countries to other ideas, ie free trade promotes the exchange of ideas. Once you have that communication you can then work on making other changes in other countries, which is ultimately what the environmentalists, human rights activists, and to a certain extent labor unions, want.

So to me, free trade is a fundamental ideal, while protecting your jobs, or rubber band aid for the environment or human rights are all just superficial concerns. You don't change people by just trying to ban their low quality oil exports, that's too specific. Change their stance and their ideas on the environment, a much harder goal but one that helps and affects many things, rather than affecting this one special case.