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February 19, 2019
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James Webb

James Webb served as combat Marine in Vietnam, as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs and as assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy during the Regan administration. His most recent book is A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America.

What Is It Good For?

How the American military went from defense to offense

by James Webb | Tuesday, March 01, 2005

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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

School Survival

by Anne P. Beatty

As L.A. teachers prepare to go on strike, we’re revisiting an essay by Anne P. Beatty about her time teaching high school in South Central Los Angeles, where her homeroom class often paused for a moment of silence to mourn students who had died in drive-by shootings. Her students knew that this was not the case in wealthier school districts. “They knew that somewhere there were schools with computers that worked, just as they knew that somewhere it was safe to walk through the streets at night,” Beatty writes. “They knew it wasn’t normal for 16-year-olds to die.” But what she found shocking, her students had to learn to endure. “Apathy was involved in giving in to the violence, and there was despair over the prospect of a better future.”