<p>Actually there are several men posting, including myself. The Atana name is a historical reference. </p>
<p>About the concept of national identity and patriotism, that also links to the concerns about educational costs, and access. </p>
<p>As college costs increase, and the attendant debt loads drive more of the lower classes out of higher education, our ability to define or defend our societies ideals will correspondingly decrease. </p>
<p>What we will get is a situation where the sound bite and the trivial slogan could control and define our culture even more so than they do today. Simply because the ability to effectively refer to the moral core of our nations foundation, will be denied to increasing numbers of people. And as such, an elite with immoral motivations, could have a much easier time of pursuing a malevolent agenda. </p>
<p>Because those voices from the common people, could be silenced because of excessive educational costs. And if this does happen the ideas and eloquence necessary to defend their rights or the ideas upon which those rights rest, could be lost. And there are already disturbing harbingers of such things to come. Here in Colorado, in a dispute about educational funding, community colleges were recently referred to as educational ghettos. The disturbing implication and attitude being that if class of people cannot afford a flagship school or a substantial debt, they have no right to any better status. </p>
<p>The increasing costs of education, and the corresponding limited access to education for an increasing number of the common people, could ensure that we do not get a Dr. King when our country needs such men and women to step forward. </p>
<p>This problem is what W.E.B. DuBois and John Dewey were addressing when they advocated that the common man attend college, and learn the words and ideas of the great thinkers. They knew this was power, and a means to protect the rights of the common man. </p>
<p>But, if rising college costs and debts continue, what Dewey and DeBois advocated will disappear. And at best, all that situation will contribute to is a permanent demarcation of an underclass. Who might be a good market for junk food, malt liquor and cigarettes, but able to be little else. </p>
<p>The core of the problem is whether and how our nation choses to make access to higher education possible and equitable. If we chose to limit that access as a correlative factor to ensuring profits for corporate powers and attendant academic agendas then we have failed. And all our lofty words about freedom, opportunity and mobility will mean little. </p>
<p>And we do have to remember that denying access to the ideas in books, however that may be done, is just as effective as burning them.</p>