Actually this is rather encouraging. They sound worried!
<g>
Nat
2001 The Kansas City Star Co.
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
April 22, 2001, Sunday METROPOLITAN EDITION
SECTION: METRO; Pg. B1 ;C.W. GUSEWELLE
LENGTH: 591 words
HEADLINE: America can still make do without move to metric system
BYLINE: C.W. GUSEWELLE
BODY:
After something like five decades of legislating, lobbying and
public skepticism, metrication - the crusade to impose the metric
system on America - is a dragon that refuses to be slain.
If you doubt that, get on the Internet, look up the U.S. Metric
Association, and see where it leads you.
Over the years, the message from proponents has been the same.
Unless we convert to the metric system of weights and measures that
is the standard in Europe and much of the rest of the world, we're
doomed to suffer terrible disadvantage in trade, science, education
and other important areas of our national life.
One might reasonably ask why it is, then, after all this time,
that the U.S. economy still is the most robust in the world, that we
remain the leader in volume of foreign trade, and that students the
world over pray for the opportunity to be educated in the
universities of this most backward of nations.
We have measured in inches and feet and in gallons, pounds and
ounces from colonial times to the present, and judging from what's
become of us, we do not appear to have suffered any major harm.
True, it's not how most of the world does it. But we're different
from most of the world in many areas - law, governance, manufacture,
human rights and conservation, to name a few. And are very much the
better for it.
Do not imagine for a minute, though, that metrication is a dead
issue. The passion for meters, liters and kilograms simmers just
under the surface, nurtured by committed interest groups and,
indirectly, by the fabulous - and fatuous - notion of a world without
borders, the so-called global village.
National sovereignty, the catechism maintains, is a narrow and
malicious conceit that must yield to the larger good. The European
Union is seen as a model, although the zeal for it is far from
uniform. Some members were dragged kicking and screaming into the
club.
And when economies go sour, the common currency gets anemic, or
foot-and-mouth infects some member's herds, one gets a revealing
demonstration of the fragility, the conditionality, of the community.
The plain fact is that there is no one Europe, just as there is
no global village. We are different peoples, shaped by our histories,
our experiences and our luck, driven by different needs, guided by
different values.
But those who would have it otherwise are determined to bend us
to their will. Just ask Steven Thoburn, the British grocer who
recently was fined, placed on probation, and faces tens of thousands
of dollars in court costs for violating the Weights and Measures Act.
Actually, the measures we Americans use were derived from the
so-called "Imperial" system, developed in England over more than
1,000 years, beginning in the reign of Edgar the Peaceful and given
formal standing in 1215 in paragraph 35 of the Magna Carta.
But England, as you know, now belongs to the European Union. So
what was grocer Thoburn's offense? He sold a customer a bunch of
bananas, weighing them out in pounds and ounces, without using the
metric measures obligatory for the conduct of business in the member
countries.
Now I'm all for rooting out high crime wherever it's found, and
punishing evildoers to the full extent of the law. Why just fine the
grocer? Why not take off the rascal's head?
Anything to save the community - which must not be too durable if
a single bunch of bananas can put the whole jerry-built structure at
risk.
