Port Folio Weekly Has a Big Idea

september 26, 2006  11:51 am
Port Folio Weekly announced a "Big Idea" essay contest in their Independence Day issue, an idea inspired by Gen. Wesley Clark's speech at the 2006 AAN Convention. "Clark noted that today ... there are few if any big ideas around which the country can rally," Tom Robotham says in his Sept. 26 Editor's Note. "What we need in these dire times, it seems to me, are motivating ideas that appeal to our inherent expansiveness -- our collective and foundational belief in intellectual enlightenment, social justice and tolerance of diversity." This week's issue contains the top three submissions as well as an interview with the winner, Missy Cotter Smasal, who proposed "a Foreign Language Corps, to be sponsored by the federal government in a manner similar to university ROTC programs throughout the country. "