3) Affirmative Action
The concept was noble, but now antiquated and mostly absurd. It requires the logic of the Old Confederacy to determine racial purity among the intermarried citizenry. Jet-black Punjabis get no preferences. Light-skinned Mexican-Americans of the fourth-generation claim privilege. Poor whites from Tulare don’t rank. The children of black dentists do. I see very little logic here.
Asians? We both claim them as minorities, and yet we discriminate against them at the University of California admissions process on the basis of their own superior achievement. (Apparently, the deplorable record of discrimination against Asians is now deemed irrelevant due to the community’s own success. Ponder the ramifications of that for a bit: should Asians have been struggling at UC, they would be considered suffering from the legacy of oppression; since they are excelling, they need to be quietly discriminated against).
As far as I can tell, here is the logic of this Byzantine system: Affirmative action in the 21st century has no logical basis in skin color, actual discrimination, poverty, class, or need. It is predicated on two archaic thoughts: previously discriminated against American minorities shall be defined as only Hispanic, Blacks, and Asians, and thus their children shall receive privilege for decades. BUT that new discrimination will not apply if such minorities on their own have prospered and are successful. (Why that would be so in some cases is again a taboo question.)
So, Japanese-Americans, whose parents were put in camps, don’t quite qualify any more for compensation seemingly because they are successful and are thus “over-represented” in the racial spoils system. But Chilean immigrants do—if they can fraudulently piggy-back upon the Mexican-American experience by virtue of a shared language and last names.
If one is of mixed race, nomenclature trumps all. Bob Wilson, the son of a Mexican-American mother, is liable to get nothing, Roberto Martinez will get quite a lot, if the son of a Mexican-American (or any Spanish-speaking) father. A Barry Soetoro is of mere pedestrian mixed ancestry; Barack Obama is not merely black, but exotically so.
In short, the system is corrupt. In our society of intermarriage, immigration and mixed ancestry, we cannot any longer determine who is and who is not a certified “minority” (cf. the con of mostly white candidates claiming some sort of Native American ancestry).
Class and need are no longer connected with race. Hyphenation only creates cynicism and enhances a professional class of grievance mongers in journalism, politics, academia, and the arts (yet somehow we quietly and unofficially drop affirmative action dictates when it comes to 747 pilots, brain surgeons, or nuclear power plant engineers, but no one sues to disregard competency exams for air-traffic-controllers solely on the basis of undesirable racial results).
So what is left of affirmative action? Cynicism. Mostly it is an easy way for elite whites and Asians to feel good about themselves by helping the “other”—usually at someone else’s expense (cf. the lower-class white applicant from Tulare who is rejected with equal or superior qualifications, without the resources and preparations of the wealthy and connected.) It provides psychological alleviation of guilt, without the need to be tutoring in the ghetto, sending your kids to a mostly Hispanic school, or living among the lower classes. In that sense, the construction of Barack Obama, the former Barry Soetoro, and his apotheosis by elite whites, is again an unintended paradigm of the times.
For those who find the above illiberal, I’m sorry, but after twenty-one years as a professor I have never quite seen any American institution so corrupt, unfair, and cynical as the practice of affirmative action.
4) The Ivy League is a Naked Emperor
By Ivy League I do not mean just Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, but the entire concept of high-priced elite schools like a Stanford, Duke, or Columbia as well. We know a BA from such institutions does not ipso facto any longer, as it once may well have, guarantee knowledge or competence. We know the race/class/gender craze has watered down the curriculum, and ensured therapy and empathy trump recall of facts and adherence to the inductive method. And we know that one’s first two years will probably mean instruction largely by graduate students and lecturers.
Had we national exit requirements, I am convinced those leaving a Hillsdale College or St. Thomas Aquinas or St. John’s would do better than the average Yale BA.
A motivated undergraduate student, who picks the right professors and classes, can get as good an undergraduate education at San Jose State as at Stanford. Certainly, the four years are not worth $200,000 in room, board, and tuition— if education is the goal.
But wait! If, in contrast, networks, influence-accumulation, and contacts are the objectives to ensure a child remains, or enters into, the elite class, then the investment in such undergraduate schools is very much worth it—but should be considered analogous to a debutante ball, the social register, or the Grand Tour.
Does anyone believe that the present professional classes of Ivy-League certified technocrats in the administration understand the law, the economy, or the government any better, by virtue of their university educations, than a does a country trial lawyer, a military officer, a CEO, or any of the others who were educated elsewhere, or received training in the rather rougher arena of the real world?
I am fortunate for a wonderful graduate education in the PhD program at Stanford, but I learned more about the way the world works in two months of farming (which saved a wretch like me) than in four years of concentrated study.
In short, the world does not work on a nine-month schedule. It does not recognize concepts like tenure. It does not care for words without action. And brilliance is not measure by vocabulary or SAT scores. Wowing a dean, or repartee into a seminar, or clever put-downs of rivals in the faculty lounge don’t translate into running a railroad—or running the country. One Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower is worth three Bill Clintons or Barack Obamas. If that sounds reductionist, simplistic, or anti-intellectual, it is not meant to—but so be it nonetheless.
5) The “Middle East” is a Fraud
Why do we beat ourselves up over Israel and the Palestinians? Why not occupied Cyprus? Or the Kuriles? Or South Ossetia? Or the divided city of Nicosia? Is there a “Falklands Question”?
Why are not Germans blowing themselves up in Gdansk, the former East Prussia, the Alsace, or old Silesia to recover “lost” land?
Were there no Israeli-Arab wars before the “occupation” of 1967? Does anyone think that, should the West Bank simply take a 30-year break from the violence, emulate Western business and government, draw in Gulf capital, a few thousands acres here or there would then be still be relevant?
Are the far poorer people of Chad blowing themselves up? Is the world crying for those in the slums of Lima? Does want and famine drive those in rural China to capture the world’s attention by virtue of their terrorist acts? Do we send special envoys to occupied Tibet? Is there a Green Line there?
Sorry—take away three things, and the Mideast “crisis” is relegated to Cypriote status. If there were no oil in the Arab Middle East; if there were no Islamic terrorists; and if there was no endemic global anti-Semitism, we would be as likely to have a “Mideast czar” as we would an “Ossetian Czar.”
(c) State employees have taken over the state: they are paid far above the national average, not accountable, and almost impossible to fire when found to be incompetent.
(As your Aristotle said, argument requires offer of proof.)
Well said in all counts.
Brilliant. Again.
Can we cancel the whole program and start over?
We may have to when we’re bankrupt.
Incuriosity, not curiosity, killed the cat of Century 21.
We are so unfree to think, speak,do… in this dreary age.
Dr. Hanson, we are free to blog and I thank God for your posts, and that of our brothers of La Mancha herein.
But where do we go to breathe as a free man?
My experience personally, is: group insanity is hurtsome to the sane. They’ll do anything, I mean anything, to eliminate the sane.
Why, the mere presence of a sane mind dements the character of the infirm.
“California, by most estimates, has somewhere between 40-50% of the nation’s illegal immigrants. That may mean 5-7 million residents here illegally, most without English, documentation, or high-school diplomas.”
There were many jobs available in the early 20th Century for marginally to functionally illiterate laborers. A strong back and good work ethic were often enough to find employment capable of supporting one’s family. That same person would be royally screwed in today’s economic environment—and also their children. The grandchildren might have no more than a 50/50 chance of eventually getting their act together. California is a total mess. I don’t pretend to have any magic answers to offer. I’m speechless. Is there anyone on this entire planet with the wisdom to help the citizens of California save themselves? A large of number of them will obviously have to move to another state. These people also should not seriously consider stealing from the remaining 49 states in the union. I particularly don’ t want to feel like the sucker forced to pay the bill for somebody else’s wild partying. The Californians have made their own bed—and now must sleep in it. They don’t have the moral right to beg Obama to give our money to them.
“The Ivy League is a Naked Emperor”
The affirmative action programs implemented in the 1960s lowered the academic standards of the liberal arts programs of the Ivy League institutions. Nevertheless, a hard science degree from these same schools is still worthy of respect. The postmodernists have thankfully yet to convince the world that 4+4=9. Inflated grades are taken for granted at Harvard University. It’s not even hidden! The typical teacher and student are not even slightly hesitant to engage in such nefarious behavior. Let’s be blunt: Harvard people seem to be rarely moral. Lying and stealing is second nature to the “elite” classes. They feel entitled to be such despicable human beings.
VDH: Not only do I applaud your excellent analysis above but more importantly your ability to wage through a cloud of black mist, which I feel surrounds, and smothers, our society. The litany of bull crap we wade through each day gets to me as it seems to get to many others. Yet, you stay your course and bring a sense of reason through your essays. Thank you for that.
Dr. Hanson: Fine and insightful post, as always, and please allow me to thank you for the opportunity to participate in an informed, but practical and common sense commentary community.
I see an interesting thread running through your five issues: Merit, and the liberal hatred of it. In order to buy socialism, which is above all an unshakeable belief in the necessity of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity, one must utterly ignore individual merit, and where it cannot be ignored, it must be attacked in every possible venue. America, a capitalism democracy was actually built on individual merit, and whenever we have, as individuals, businesses, schools, institutions, a people and a government, tried to ignore it, unpleasantness has occurred.
Illegal Immigration: We cannot even call illegal immigrants illegal immigrants, but “undocumented this or that.” Because everyone must have the same outcome–American citizenship and all its benefits–liberals cannot consider merit, even as the elite of the elite push the idea that American citizenship is absolutely nothing special. Thus an illiterate former drug runner with no marketable skills should receive the same immigration consideration as a college educated engineer. That America is reaching the point California long ago reached–that there are no longer enough meritorious, productive citizens to provide unlimited equality of opportunity (endless entitlements) for those without merit–is never considered by liberals because acknowledging it would undermine their entire belief system.
War/Heroism: Heroes–and there have been many in the last decade- plus, including at last count, two women who have won the Silver Star, the only two since WWII–are the epitome of merit, but they must be studiously ignored lest the virtue of merit become obvious. As a high school teacher, I’ve discovered that my students cannot name a single decorated military hero of their lifetime (something I endeavor to remedy), though most are pretty much on top of the most recent American Idol contenders. On the positive side, they don’t know who John Kerry, the military, pseudo-hero poster boy of the left, is either. In the same way, America’s success in war cannot be lauded, because, again, this inescapably reveals skill and incredible martial merit, and America, as our post-American president has made clear, is just another of the many nations, without particular merit in any way. To remedy this, I tell my students of the battle of 73 Easting. Perhaps the Haitians will have a different view of the relative merit of our military in the days to come, though I doubt our president will.
Affirmative Action: This issue is all about merit, and the tacit admission by the proponents of affirmative action that those they seek to advance are not smart and capable enough to succeed on their own, and with affirmative action, they need expend no effort to become such. They will always lack that which must never be spoken. Thus has the Obama Justice Department filed suit against the New Jersey State Police because they require a written test for promotion to Sgt. on the laws they must enforce. Too many whites are being promoted, you see, so the test must, ipso facto, be discriminatory. Merit can never enter into such equations. Presumably society would like to employ police supervisors who actually know and can discourse at some length on the laws they are charged with enforcing and teaching to their subordinates, but then, that would require that merit be considered. Left to its own devices, New Jersey would prefer to do that. Our DOJ disagrees. Oh yes, let’s keep in mind that many liberals absolutely hate the police in general, considering them only slightly above frozen lobster on the relative intelligence and morality scale, yet they labor to lower the level of the general police intelligence pool. Being forced to ignore human nature and merit has all kinds of interesting contradictions and consequences.
Elite Schools: The confluence of all of these issues is in our elite schools where lunatic speech codes reign supreme and political orthodoxy rather than merit is the primary, indeed, even the sole, hiring and tenure granting criteria. Liberals scorn Gov. Sarah Palin because she graduated from some little school in Idaho and actually attended several schools before graduating. As she pointed out in her book, she and her contemporaries often had to take a semester off to work to earn enough money to continue, yet did continue, and left college with a degree and without crushing debt. This is, to most Americans who are free to consider the reality of such things, meritorious, but of course, cannot be taken into account as merit does not exist in the liberal worldview, thus we end up with Cornel West, Ward Churchill, Michael Mann and similar hucksters. My undergraduate degree transcript includes credits from four separate institutions, and I too worked while attending school. I suspect this is not at all unusual in most colleges, but may well be in the Ivy League. The fact that I earned that degree in 2.5 years and made the dean’s list every semester would be meaningless because I did not graduate from an elite school, and anyone who did, though they majored in beer and barely passed, would be considered my superior in every way. And of course, affirmative action ensures that far too many people will attend college, people who are simply not ready and/or intellectually capable of genuine college level work, and who will quickly drop out, or worse, will eventually be granted a degree in the name of equality of outcome rather than individual merit. Society is schizophrenic in this. We dare not suggest that some are not capable of college level work, that some people are just smarter than others, but we don’t bat an eyelash over the reality that only a select few will inhabit the ranks of the varsity football team. Sports–which many liberals scorn–seems to be our sole exception to the practiced ignorance of merit.
Middle East: Merit applies here again, for the Israelis have done something that no people who live in that part of the world (with the very limited possible exceptions of the Lebanese and the Jordanians) have done: Made the desert bloom. Not only that, they’ve established a modern, thriving, technologically advanced society that rivals any in a region that is, for the most part, still living in the 7th century. Note the contortions, the blatant lies that must be advanced to ignore the merit of Israel and her citizens. So caught up is the world, and these days, our government, that America seems willing to allow a second Holocaust rather than admit that merit matters, that Israel has it, and that her enemies are essentially 7th century barbarians with modern weapons who would be only to happy to murder us when they’re done with the Jews. People who produce nothing, who build nothing, who live only to destroy, are lauded by the elite, the intellectual, the nuanced, when the Israelis, who seek only to live in peace, and failing that, preserve their lives, are scorned.
There are hopeful signs, however. Having been exposed to Obama and his functionaries, more and more Americans are coming home to the idea that merit matters and that not everyone, for example, should live in their own home because they just can’t afford it. Most Americans understand that this is why we have apartments and do not look down on those who live in them. Still, in the understanding and acceptance of the importance of merit, lies at least part of our salvation. Now if only the congressional Republicans would believe it and act on it rather than behaving like slightly more civilized versions of liberals…
The first ripples of the irretrievable collapse of the dollar will start from the way Washington bails out California.
Our military leadership knew they had a choice of fighting one of two wars: the one against politicians in Washington, or the one for freedom in Iraq. They chose Iraq and have earned honor.
The worst for our country for having an AA president is his ideas persuade only the AA community. To the rest of us, our historic first Islamic apostate president sounds mostly lame, and almost as often, seditious.
When centralized command and control in Washington replaces wealth creation with redistribution, then success depends not on what you know, but on who you know.
Prior to man-made global warming hysteria, the most effective third-world tactic to subvert the West consisted of the claim there was never a price too high for us to pay for peace.
Doc, I love it when you do that. Plainly speaking the truth regarding liberal sacred cows is like a breath of fresh air.
It has been said that a Democrat never met a tax he didn’t like. I propose a 10% tax on remittances sent to Latin America by illegal immigrants. Maybe the government could then lighten the load on the rest of us a bit.
Mr. Hanson, I greatly respect you as a professor a writer and historian, and as classics major I have overwhelming sympathy towards your subject and your cause.
However I will have to ask you not to mention that school again, Saint Thomas Aquinas, at least in a favorable light. Please Sir, for you to speak positively of that place dishonors yourself and what you stand for. If I may explain
Last summer I went to Saint Thomas Aquinas College for what was going to be a two week summer school program. What I saw there was truly saddening and a bit chilling. My objections to that school are as followed: firstly it was anti intellectual. They laughed at Darwin, shunned any questioning of dogma, and their professors dismissed Kierkegaard not on his logic or prose but on his status as a Protestant. If this does not discredit them in your eyes then may I add that their curriculum has, at least if memory serves me right, limited Latin and no Greek what so ever (and how can anyone be properly educated if they don’t know Greek?). Second the mindset of the people there was deeply disturbing, students and teachers alike. At first I thought it was just the students, who were mostly home schooled and thus some odd behavior was to be expected. However as the time went on I found that this odd behavior, the scuttling of logic and appearance of tics when the status quo was challenged, existed in the prefects and teachers as well. In addition to this I began to notices a sort of Lotus eater mentality to the place. They were overly happy and lacked any sort of tragic view of humane nature. Third and finally, I believe the school had strong ties to… well some parts of the Catholic church which are heretical, corrupt and malevolent. (I won’t mention which for the sake of decorum, but I’ll give you a hint, they have a fetish for smoking)
(after a week I found the place unfit for any education, and decided it would be better for me to attend my local state school, SDSU that is, and take Greek and Latin there. However that’s beside the point.)
What I mean to say Sir is this. Just because this school marches around the parade grounds in the colors of the Greeks does not make it Grecian. And that you should not honor it as such.
(And the excuse the impudence from a lowly freshman… but such boldness is in the nature of western man is it not)
Your articles are too short VDH. I can tell you have more to say on the subjects your write about, and you seem to be cramming, clipping and shortening. I know the format is 2 pages for reasons I can guess at, but can’t you get a 4 page exemption here or something?
Thanks for writing Dr. Hanson.
Brazil and Mexico do not have a shared national language.
Also: Anonymous: Jan 13, 2010 – 11:05 pm
VDH: The effort to create our country began in Massachusetts in 1775 and the effort to dissolve our country might well start in Massachusetts too. It’s almost ironic that the feelings of estrangement from England is also where we’re hearing the rules of fair election results might be discarded. While your essay above is excellent, that analysis means nothing if our society no longer has a meaning as a civil society, if raw thuggery and open election stealing becomes the rule of the day. I certainly don’t wish for that terrible result yet the Democrats are playing with a strong resolve to win their way regardless of elections or the desires of a major part of society; they play with fire and don’t seem to care who’s burned.
Joey, while I will say that folks at TA tend to be, shall we say, zealous, I don’t think two weeks over the summer is really an effective means of gauging the academic merit of a school. In particular, I am unsure where you got the impression that Greek and Latin studies are lacking. TA has one of the most extensive programs in classical languages of any college I know…and I have an Ivy minor in classics. Interestingly enough, The salutatorion delivers his address in Latin, while the valedictorion-a former one being a close friend of mine-delivers his in Greek. While TA might not be your cup of tea nor mine, that does not mean it is not educating students well.
VDH: Great work as always but I’m afraid you let the cat out of the bag now, the pilot and airport controllers unions are going to be under pressure to “color up” and we’ll have an affirmative action leveling of competence. In other words we may have seen our last Captain Sully.
When will this insanity end?
Huuum, sounds as if JoeyRam is describing Columbia.
My daughter went to Columbia for her Masters in Journalism strictly for the “credentials” attached to that school. She still assumed she would start out in some small city paper or station. Instead she got a good job at NBC News in NYC, where she learned there was no practical difference between facts and assumptions.
Step one in recovering California…
Disbanded all organized labor groups for public sector jobs! The idea that you would even require a union for a government job is lunacy at every level. Labor unions were to protect workers from shady practices by corporations…. Last I heard the pilots union wasn’t electing the CEO for American Airlines…. in the private sector this is exactly the power which the public employee unions have… the get to elect the CEO of the state… or threaten to see that he is not elected.
Far too much power has resulted. Get rid of them NOW! If you can.
Islam is the answer.
Your grandchildren will be Muslim.
Allahu akbar!
When Rubic’s Cube was the rage, I came home and, using a book, tried to solve the device my kids had been playing with. I couldn’t do it.
On further investigation, I discovered someone had swapped several pieces of the colored tape from one surface to another to achieve a partial solution. In doing so, they rendered the full solution impossible.
We are living it.
MCdaniel, I suggest you and the Doctor write a book together. The doctor writes a chapter, you follow with a chapter.
That would make for a great book and interesting reading. Can I suggest everyone read the following article that I have read several times from American Thinker “Obamas Anger” by Ed Kaitz.
It plays beautifully into the Doctor’s article and Mcdaniel’s observations.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/obamas_anger.html
Dr. Hanson, I love reading your posts. We have similar problems in the northeast, just like California. But I do see light at the end of our tunnel…at the town level and even state level. However despite California’s problems I’d love to live there! Several years ago in the winter I was out in the Sacramento-Roseville area for a week at my company’s California facilities. First thing I noticed was…no snow!!!! No ice!!! And I loved the area. During my visit my California manager offered me a job out in California. I was ecstatic! But at the time I couldn’t persuade my family to move. Circumstances have changed…too many blizzards…and we may be coming out anyway! In fact I hear a rumble behind me..I think the entire northeast will be following us!! The only thing us latter day 49′ers know is that there is golden sunshine beyond those hills! Yippee!! If you can tell us some of the other good things about California we’d love to hear it! Anyway back to shoveling snow off the driveway and packing the cars.. Here we come! Bob brrrrr
As ususal VDH is right on target. That being said, I am surprised that he omitted the most obvious and most unspeakable truth – that of man caused disasters, aka Radical Islam. Of all of the threats facing the west today, it’s without question that the failure to recognize and to confront Radical Islam, the 21st century “ism”, is our greatest challenge. The terrorists have moved beyond hijacking planes with the intent of prisoner releases; their stated aims and goals are to distrupt and eventually destroy western civilization in favor of the installation of a nihlistic calliphate. Lest the fellow in Butte think that he’s safe, reality dictates otherwise. These Islamic troglodytes caught in a 7th century mindset have the wherewithal to use our various technologies against us. Be it employing airplanes or the use of nuclear weapons (their ultimate aim), these Koranimals know no bounds and have absolutely zero respect for life.
So, while I worry about the long term effects of Affirmative Action or the implications of an Ivy League degree, the prospect of the unacknowledged war swirling in our midst scares me more.
Dr. Hanson: Sir, you are simply masterful and skilled at your work. I truly admire your skill at context, wit, logic and presentation. Your writing is truly in a class by itself and I offer you my highest commendation and eagerly peruse this website for your columns. I am reading through Thomas Sowells new book and appreciate the extraordinary level of reason and logic that men such as you and Dr. Sowell bless upon our society. Keep doing that.
From today’s LA Times.
California Taxpayers paid this guy nearly one-half million dollars to do nothing. Is there any wonder they have budget problems?
N.B., he’s not gone yet. I’m sure there are more appeals.
———–
January 13, 2010
A city schoolteacher removed from the classroom more than seven years ago for alleged misconduct — and who continued to receive a full paycheck the entire time — should be fired immediately, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered Tuesday.
Dr. Hanson, they speak Portugese in Brazil, not Spanish. Good column though, thanks.
Adios California, don’t look to the rest of us to bail you out. You made your bed now lie in the feces you dumped.
“The Ivy League is a Naked Emperor”
i have to disagree with you on this. my son is a freshman at a private ivy league college and his high school friends are attending state colleges, the difference in their classes and work load is astronomical. while his friends are still studying what they did in high school and sailing through the year my son, a straight a student all through school, is working his butt off struggling to maintain a c average. there IS a difference in the level of education
No one does illegal immigration and education elitism better than you, Victor. I recall the first day I met you years ago, when I picked up ‘Mexifornia’ in a little bookstore outside of Santa Barbara. I couldn’t put it down and felt it was one of the most important little books I’d ever read. Years later I still do. That California hasn’t yet completely imploded financially is amazing to me. And frankly, with all due respect for your family far, I hope you have a second home somewhere else. Best wishes.
excellent essay VDH.
I think that it is the liberal world view and their (liberal) moral standard that is causing all the problems in the USA
One small quibble: a Brazilian immigrant would not share a language with other South and Central Americans. He or she would speak Portugese.
concerning the death toll in Iraq, if you check the stats at wikipedia, almost 4300 people in Chicago have been murdered in 2001-2009. Iraq is almost safer.
Mr. Hanson, I always enjoy your splendid commentary but don’t you know if you object to Americans being bankrupted by illegal immigration that makes you a RACIST? We conscientious objectors are just told to shut up and go away. It has gotten to the point where we are being driven away.
Thanks for your input regarding the Ivies. After weighing the benefits of a $50,000-a-year institution (which by the way, increasingly do not provide merit-based aid, further demonstrating that the elite schools aren’t about education, but rather, social engineering) and after a stroll through the college bookstore to see what kind of liberal arts studies my child is likely to encounter, we settled on the Colorado School of Mines. Even without his scholarship, we’d have picked it. But it was less than half the cost of the “other” school he liked.
Why anyone seeking a math/science degree would blow $200,000 on a bachelor’s degree is beyond me. It’s the major that counts, the rest is just window dressing. Very, very expensive window dressing.
Brazilians and Chileans share a language with Mexicans? Which language would that be?
Terrific Doc.
Seems also that meritocracy in Islam- controlled countries is measured by the rabidity, ruthlessness and cruelty by which the totalitarian regime is maintained.
MikeMc@7,
Very tight. Thank you.
Begs two questions:
- what would the Founders do?
- what would Jack Bauer do?
“24″ starts this coming week – about terrorism, shot on location in NYC. I only mention this as it could very well be the prequel to the upcoming KSM show trial. US could release KSM today and save $400+ MILLION. Or just take him out and shoot him; hold the trial in absentia – post mortem. Not without precedent.
Or be forced into a hostage exchange, or lose ANOTHER airliner, or a school, or some malls, or…
The creative staff @Fox might ought wait to script the last half, cause they wouldn’t want to outdone by the reality of unfolding events.
Some time ago I saw an analysis of the educational backgrounds of Fortune 500 CEO’s. The large majority were not from the elite universities but from places like Ohio State, Denison, Texas, U of Washington, Willamette U, etc. As a product of these elite universities I counseled my daughters to look at the “other” schools and so far they are doing quite well, are happy, and not getting indoctrinated about the horrible injustices caused by a patriarchal society. In other words they still love me, are getting a first-rate education, and I still have some money in the bank.
Bravo!
Victor,
If you choose to frame a response to “In-Your-Next’s” query at number 1 above, let me remind you about Sacramento’s Gramscian debt-for-credentials-for-votes mills, of which Gray Davis’ teacher certification campaigns is one vivid example. You can’t explain California’s quagmire without dissecting the Sacramento Demcrats’ deeper schemes.
Every student that is matriculated by the UC system with a civil service-related degree – be it a Masters in Family Therapy, or a RN’s degree or a teacher’s cert. – and that borrowed money from Sacramento’s “preferred” lenders to afford their degree, is a single-issue voter. This was by design. The scheme engineers rafts of pliant “educated” slaves, who rely on Sac’s government both to mediate away their crippling debt and to manufacture a job for them that matches their state-mediated credential.
And thus, Sacramento comes away from the table with clear claims on the student’s future income, her livelihood, her prestige (insofar as she derives self-worth and “identity” from her credential), and even her vote.
At end of the day, ask any indebted UC undergrad in the “Liberal Arts” intending to pursue a civil service position, and she’ll tell you that it was a state-provided academic advisor that convinced her that the California’s social-services sector was pregnant with opportunity, and that her income in the first years after graduation would be lucrative enough to allow her to pay off her debts muis pronto.
Gramscian schemes like this one, that pull directly from a state’s lower, middle and higher education hierarchies and enmesh promiscuously with political centers and friendly lenders, all under the thin cover of “deniability,” are killing once-great states like California. A gardener’s diagnosis: prune-away these diseased branches (cut deep using clean pruners, snipping at the periphery won’t do) and fertilize the plant with plentiful, domestic energy (yes, this means drilling and building more refineries – two more “taboo” topics) and she’ll be right.
I am so VERY happy somebody had the stones to actually say what a lie an Ivy League education is. I asked people during the last presidential election why they would vote for Obama. After all, he never ran a small town, a city, a state, or a corporation (either big or small). He never ran anything, ever, and yet he claimed that he was qualified to run perhaps the most complex nation in the world. Those people answered me, “Well, he must be smart. he went to Harvard and wrote for the Law Journal.” I kid you not, people actually voted for this guy simply because they thought he HAD to be smart because, after all, he went to Harvard. It didn’t seem to matter that he had absolutely no practical knowledge in running ANYTHING, let alone the United States. The only thing he ever did in his life was run for office, and I don’t really cosider that a real job. Yet smart people on television said, “He speaks well and went to Harvard, so he must be smart.” What a load, what a big, stinky, load people in this country were sold and what a crying shame these people actually believed the spin coming out of the Obama campaign.
Perhaps that’s why the elites in this country hate Sarah Palin so much. They can’t comprehend how anyone who didn’t attend a “top tier” Ivy League school could become a governor of any state, let alone have the nerve, the nerve, to run for Vice President of the United States. The elites assume that she must be a joke simply because she graduated from a school in, of all places, Idaho (I’m sure the elites in New York or California or Washington DC don’t even know that Idaho is even part of the United States). According to the liberal elites, those people in the “flyover” parts of this country MUST be rubes, right? It’s amazing they even have schools out there! Don’t they still marry their sisters out there in the sticks?
I just think it’s ironic that those same liberal elites, those same pompous asses out there who had the gall to compare, actually compare, Obama to Lincoln, didn’t realize they were comparing Obama to a man who was basically self-taught and never attended a fancy University, let alone an Ivy League school. I only wish Obama had Lincoln’s common sense and practical experience. Perhaps it would have made Obama a better president. Instead, we have a spoiled baby as a president who feels a sense of entitlement to his job because, after all, he did go to Harvard.
Typo Alert!
[...O]f which Gray Davis’teacher certification campaigns provide a vivid example. You cant explain California’s quagmire without dissecting the Sacramento Democrats’deeper, entrenched schemes.
Sorry for the edits, but pedantry calls!
-Steve
4) The Ivy League is a Naked Emperor.
Well written!
Although you forgot to mention the biggest Ivy League failure of them all:
George W. Bush a.k.a The Decider.
But I’m sure your omission was just by mistake.
The keystone that holds the while building together is the ratio of productive to non-productive citizens, is it not? The building holds together if there are more productive than non, it comes apart if there are more non-productive parasites living off of the efforts of an essential, dwindling, productive core.
I am afraid we are fast approaching the state in which there are more incompetents, fraud artists, and parasites of various kinds—sucking on the public teat–than there are actual competent producers, and as greater and greater numbers of those who are productive realize that they are like a fish, fighting harder and harder to just swim, because of all the Remoras attached to it, sucking out its lifeblood, they will find—if they can—more productive places and situations for themselves and their families, where they can swim relatively free, or they will give up, swim a lot slower perhaps, or become parasites themselves. Yes, there is dignity in labor, but why work, and work hard and diligently, if all that you produce is stolen from you?
From what I read, this is the situation in Europe already, England being a prime example. Such Marxist theft and redistribution is the strategy of Obama & Co., which is why Ayn Rand’s books and the figure of John Galt are so popular today.
Thus is the quote, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, coming true:
“When the people discover that they can vote themselves money, that will be the end of the republic.”
“Thus has the Obama Justice Department filed suit against the New Jersey State Police because they require a written test for promotion to Sgt. on the laws they must enforce.”
This is the direct result of the horrible 1971 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Griggs vs. Duke Power. As a practical matter, it institutionalized stupidity and incompetence. The damage has been mind-boggling. Many Americans have had their lives severely harmed—and have no idea what happened to them. Griggs vs. Duke Power is the mystery decision. The majority of our fellow citizens have never heard of it. Even constitutional law professors like Glenn Reynolds are apparently unaware of its existence. It literally makes it near impossible to test job applicants without risking a major lawsuit. Employers are forced to place too much emphasis on academic credentials that are often phonier than the proverbial three-dollar bill.
It is also against the law to hire the best and the brightest security applicants to protect our national airports. Yes, please read that again: it’s against the law! A certain number of minorities must be hired regardless of their qualifications. Some of them may not even be able to read at a 7th grade level. They could be dumber than a doornail, but it will not prevent them from being hired. God help us if these mediocrities get unionized.
JoeyRam, well spoken, and sad to know. Sounds like what happened to my Davidson. Hillsdale appears a last bastion.
Thomson, you continue to have clear eyes and a logical mind.
For me,
—Eliminate the Civil Service Code, fire 4 out of 5 sniveling servants in the decimation manner: keep every fifth in the alphabetic roster.
—Sunset all laws and have a Robespierrean Consitutional Council test all rewrites for constitutionality.
—Limit terms of all legislatures by instituting capital punishment for service disloyal to the constituition.
None of that will happen, so the sickness will progress. Unstoppable.
[...] The solution? Allow only legal immigration. Base admittance to the U.S. mostly on skills and our own need for expertise and capital. Trust in merit, and ignore the race and origin of the would-be immigrant. [...]
And completely exclude from the set of entry qualifiers the geographical PROXIMITY as a preferrence clause –
Geographical proximity priviledge, besides being philosophically wrong, completely bypasess this country’s necessity of importing aspiring and talented people –
Geographical proximity immigration privileges lessens the quality of the newcomers while superenhances their sense of entitlement here -
South of the border the move to El Norte is regarded as a RIGHT, or even worse, as a justified compensation for some imaginary yanqui wrongdoings one two hundred years ago -
Can’t continue this way – I think we passed over the tipping point in this immigration matter -
I couldn’t agree more.
Love your column. Thanks, I needed someone to keep me sane today. I went to state universities and some great teachers and some really bad ones. I am sure it is the same in the Ivy League schools. The variance is in the course of study. Let’s face it those English, Journo and Communication majors had a pretty smooth ride in comparison to the science and engineering majors. I laugh when they, usually among the above “educated classes”, talk and write about history, math, or science and it is really obvious they must have been asleep during whatever 101 class they had to take. One thing that puzzles me it all these high grades. I had Professors that started with B and went down! Few A scores in the upper division classes in any of my classes, maybe, we in the 60′s just were not as brilliant as the students today!ha Of course, in those days, there were no “protected classes of people”, we had few African Americans and Asians but the ones we had worked as hard (except the athleltes regardless of race)as the rest and the Asians were always the ones to set the curve.
I really think it is an insult to minorities to give them special breaks. Opportunity, yes, and help if they had poor prep in high school but I would like to think that should be the standard for all students not just assuming African Americans cannot compete because I think that is true racism. Just for the record, I think these hyphenated catagories of people is really stupid. My grandson’s (born is US) 4 grandparents were from Cuba, Spain, my husband and I’s ancestor from the mid 1600′s from Europe. Immigrants all, just from different time lines. At school they keep calling him a Mexican America because of his looks (very handsome), he keeps telling them “I am just an American”. Tried to put him in Spanish to English classes. He knows no Spanish as his mother has not been a big part of his life. So a lot of this “racism” is self imposed. I see no reason to identify a person by their race unless it is essential to the conversation such as it would never cross my mind to call Condi Rice, my African American Secy’ of State or Obama for that matter. I thought segregation was finally over. Guess we are all venting today.
Very good, but I believe you missed a key connection. The Ivy League has become worthless *because* of affirmative action. That’s the reason behind grade inflation and the general lighter intellectual workload – once you deliberately let in unqualified students, you can’t very well flunk them out, can you? Instead, water down the whole curriculum in the name of this self-destructive social experiment. Prof Harvey Mansfield has spoken out about this a few times, I think, but except for him it is yet another of the campus taboos.
VDH:
How about a:
#0) The US Government no longer serves, and doesn’t even pretend to serve, the Citizenry of the United States. It has now nakedly exposed itself as an extortion racket designed to exploit the People for the benefit of competing special interest groups, and itself.
Agreed, if not on every single point, then at least on the all of the major ideas.
But here’s the question: Is the tide actually starting to turn? I don’t mean in the rotten institutions, but in the hearts and minds of Americans?
I think it might be.
It’s not racism that has woken average Americans since October 2008. It is the shock of seeing the things we’ve quietly been against thrust so prominently into power.
Things are going to change. I just hope it doesn’t require blood.
I was amazed at how people filtered out knowledge of the 550 TONs of Uranium ore that Bush took out of Iraq. That is enough to enrich to over 200 nuclear devices but there was “no progam of weapons of mass distruction” so the Uranium did not exist.
The immigants in Calafornia come here poorer and less productive than Americans regardless of skills. They do not have to cost anything. Simply by coming in to a community they cause the average to drop. The American competing with the immigrants can not spend as much on his edudcation and expect to be competitive. It takes three generations for immigrants to match the American norm. Places like Connecticut where 60% of the population have no American ancesstors from a hundred years ago do not understand American law, economics or culture.
Nice essay, VDH. It seems to me that the common thread woven throughout each of your points, is this:
We are now a victim…of victim based governance.
a)Ivy League schools (as well as all the top ranked institutions, Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, Northwestern), are more a gauge of achievement going in…than coming out.
In fact, in a rather sad and telling manner, those who achieved at the highest levels in order to gain entrance on merit, and showed the most promise in areas of critical thinking and problem solving, come out with a sort of bland sameness…unable to express individuality of thought, exposed to a virtual cult-like mental beatdown and a vice-like gripping peer pressure to conform. It’s not higher education as much as it is Maoist “reeducation”. They are exposed to less…not more…ideas and open Socratic evaluation of them.
b)Immigration policy…and the debate that surrounds it…is not in any way, shape or form about this land of ours. The focus is on the impact of the new arrival, whether they enter through formal application or by breaking and entering. I find that rather bizarre, frankly.
I have heard the snarky comments about “bring us your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”, the Statue of Liberty quote…only it doesn’t apply to “you people of color”.
I hear this mostly spoken by the anarchists, far left leaning, tear down the system types. So, I looked at the furthest left regimes around the world to see how they were leading by example. How’s the immigration going there? Where are all the anarchists, far left leaning loudmouths? Shouting from their soapboxes in the most open Democracies. Paper tiger leftists, whose courage and venom are seen leaking all over the pavement the minute one suggests they try their anarchy in the countries that have installed permanent leftism.
We are victims…of the governance of victimization. Pre-ordained victims, regardless of what they have done, or have had done to them. A millionaire, powerful politician who can cut back room deals at his whim, avoid prosecution for crimes, …if he has the right color or surname, is a permanent “victim”…and opposing him, on any issue…is racism.
Generally well-said. Thank you, as always, for a thought-provoking column. But they speak Portuguese in Brazil, so you might want to fix that one little sentence.
Well now you’ve gone and done it, professor. A very impolitic essay. Honest, and truthful ? Of course. But it’s gonna upset a whole bunch of people. We just can’t allow intelligent folk such as yourself to opine about this and that whenever the mood strikes them. Too dangerous. Might upset the delicate relationship between the our political elites and the multiplying hoard of scammers, parasites and deadbeats rapdily remaking our country. No. This will not do, professor.
Great list, especially the last item.
I would add a couple more truths we dare not speak:
6. The “(R)s are racist” problem is a result of 40 years of brainwashing. The Democrats in America have done to the blacks in America a great evil, using Alinksy’s Community Organizing tactics (keep them down, angry, and voting) to enslave, de-educate, and use the blacks in the city for a great vote battery. The Republicans formed their party to emancipate blacks and to grant them full citizenship. The Democrats blocked it all, every act, every law, were for segregation, started the KKK, had until 2 years ago a sitting senator who was formerly a Klan leader, and were the ones who brought us the “whites only” drinking fountains and lunch counters, and were the ones with the firehoses and blackjacks and using them on blacks and Republicans like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and tens of thousands of other Republican marchers and demonstrators. The Republicans voted in the nation’s first black congressman, blacks started the Texas State Republican Party, blacks started most southern Republican parties. FACT of the matter: Democrats were angry about losing their slaves, then they were angry about losing their work to a newly-emancipated population, then they were angry about the ex-slaves voting and running for office as Republicans. That was getting “uppity” to the Democrats, and they waited until Kennedy was killed by a communist, came out the next day and blamed it on White Southern Racists, and thus began the greatest brainwashing and re-slavery campaign ever to be foisted on a population of humans.
From them on, using the MSM, the schools, Communist community organizers working within their churches and neighborhoods (before they were termed “communities”), and popular culture, the Democrat party convinced the blacks that THEY were the ones who were FOR the blacks and not the truth of the matter. They have created a population that is perpetually angry, hateful of success and learning (as both are “acting white” to this day in many schools and neighborhoods), and perpetually voting – mad about the ghetto and being kept down, not understanding who’s keeping them down, undereducated, and voting for generations, and at the same time via popular culture brainwashed into being PROUD of the same ghetto culture that they are ANGRY about.
It is the slickest, most demonic deception ever to be carried out by a group of racists on any human population, and its effects can be seen today in every single (Democrat-run) inner city, in the stultified lyrics and speech of the biggest black entertainers. The Democrats did this on purpose, and it worked, and still works. Some people know and are desparately trying to get the word out (like Alphonso Rachel of PJTV, like Kevin Jackson of BlackSphere, like many, many more brave black conservatives who had the sack to leave the plantation.)
AND
7. Islam never was peaceful, and never will be. Taqiyya is a real tactic that has been used to convince a gullible, historically ignorant population that Islam is Peaceful, and until we recognize that Islam is not like any other religion on the planet in terms of willingness to co-exist with others, we will be committing slow national and cultural suicide. Mohammad was a sick, evil, demon-posessed man, and all that he did and taught would have to be re-written or erased in order for Islam to be a peaceful ideology.
And we dare not (not me!) utter these truths.
@ 1. In your next column, please offer evidence for this statement:..:
(c) State employees have taken over the state: they are paid far above the national average, not accountable, and almost impossible to fire when found to be incompetent.
Regarding difficulty of firing incompetent state employees: I would think this would be the same for government employees across the country: not as easy as in the private sector. A no-brainer.
Regarding pay, courtesy of the Sacremento Bee:
California state employees’ average base pay in 2008 was $63,815 (excluding the university systems).
Assuming a 2000 hour work year, that comes to nearly $32/hour.
For state and local government workers nationwide, the figure wages and salaries is $26.24/hour, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The BLS link came from State Pay page at the Sacramento Bee website.
10 minutes of Googling for evidence.
The ways things have evolved in California, there is only one answer to the problem. Give California back to Mexico (if we can talk Mexico into taking it back with all it;s problems) there seems to be more Mexicans in California than there are in Mexico anyway.
The Obama could treat the state like a new nation and pour Billions into it to keep it from coming back to the USA
That solution would solve a number of problems for the US
1. Nancy Pelosi
2. Mexican drug war (give the Mexicans a legal place to sell drugs)
3. Homosexuality let the Homo’s marry and after one generation the problem of Homosexuality is settled.
4. Give the Mexicans a place to work
5. Let the Mexicans decide what California should do about it’ Polution problem, at least the US could probably find a willing partner to take our toxic waste.
JoeyRam, I wish we knew one another when I was trying to give myself a classical education at a state school; based on your thoughtful comments, I think we might have been able to form a fine and lasting friendship. At the time, it felt like I was living on another planet. Keep your right up, your going to need it, and read the published works of the prof before you commit to the class so you know their angle; be prepared to drop half of your classes. You’ve heard of Harvey Mansfield’s two tier grading system, well, I recommend a two paper system, one for your lefty prof, saying what they obviously want to hear, and write another for a scholar whose opinion matters (for me that was either Jacques Barzun or Leo Strauss). Sorry about STA, but it is good that you went there and took a close look rather than accept received opinion.
Dear Victor,
If you choose to frame a response to “In-Your-Next’s” query at #1 above, let me remind you about Sacramento’s Gramscian debt-for-credentials-for-votes mills, of which Gray Davis’ teacher certification campaigns is one vivid example. You can’t explain California’s quagmire without dissecting the Sacramento Demcrats’ deeper schemes.
Every student that is graduated by the UC system with a civil service-related degree – be it a Masters in Family Therapy, or a RN’s degree or a teacher’s cert. – and that borrowed money from Sacramento’s “preferred” lenders to afford their degree, is a single-issue voter. This was by design. The scheme engineers rafts of pliant “educated” slaves, who rely on Sac’s government both to mediate away their crippling debt and to manufacture a job for them that matches their state-mediated credential.
And thus, Sacramento comes away from the table with clear claims on the student’s future income, her livelihood, her prestige (insofar as she derives self-worth and “identity” from her credential), and even her vote.
At the end of the day, ask any indebted UC undergrad in the “Liberal Arts” intending to pursue a civil service position, and she’ll tell you that it was a state-provided academic advisor that convinced her that the California’s social-services sector was pregnant with opportunity, and that her income in the first years after graduation would be lucrative enough to allow her to pay off her debts muis pronto. Of course, the agent’s pitch comes with no guarantee, and is a calculated “soft” deception.
Gramscian schemes like this one, that pull directly from a state’s lower, middle and higher education hierarchies and enmesh promiscuously with political centers and friendly lenders, all under the thin cover of “deniability,” are killing once-great states like California. A gardener’s suggestion for Sacramento’s reformers: prune-away these diseased branches (cut deep using clean pruners, snipping at the periphery won’t do) and fertilize the plant with plentiful, domestic energy (yes, this means drilling and building more refineries – two more “taboo” topics) and she’ll be right.
Sorry for the repost, Guys!
Firefox didn’t show my comment at first, then, when I reposted, there it was!
Firefox. The gift that keeps giving!
Steveaz, you have said exactly what needs to be said on the subject, spot on. The university/public dole complex is a deadly parasite.
Affirmative action was a laudable, and affordable endeavor 45 years ago. Blacks, who comprised 10% of the population, were given a helping hand, and since the cost was spread over the remaining 90% of society, the cost to any one individual was almost imperceptible.
What happens when half or more of the population benefits from the government putting its thumb on the scale, at the expense of the white, middle class minority? Will the former majority just shrug their shoulders and say “oh well, there’s nothing we can do” or will there be a political backlash of some kind? Any backlash would carry interesting implications, because it would basically be the 2007 immigration debate all over again, pitting the political elites of both parties, big business, organized labor, big religion, big philanthropy, the media and education establishments, and the civil rights elites against Main Street, Reagan Democrats, and Red Staters.
Tuesday, January 14:
2 for 1 day…great VDH article on nationalreviewonline.
Great one here as always.
I had some good times in California…but that was years ago.
It’s dumb to think minorities don’t get a chance. All they have to do is dress like Obama. Forget about everything else. Come from the ghetto. Come from Mexico City. Come from rural America. Dress like Obama and you’re on your way.
As long as Pell grants and Stafford loans exist, higher education will thrive.
I’m happy about Iraq.
Arabs don’t want peace with Israel. Why is that so hard to understand?
1. In Your Next…
You must not come here often or you’re very young (which in itself isn’t that bad…JoeyRam is cool), …just believe it.
“They laughed at Darwin”
I laugh at Darwin too; his dumb apes manufacture bogus science for the cause of serving a tyrannical political agenda.
Dumb-monkeys, your brain-dead Darwin is about scientific as is your Climate Change fraud.
Brilliant (mostly). I do take issue with your characterization of the Middle East as a ‘fraud.’ To say it’s just like every other poor place, minus oil/terrorists/Israel is like saying Mt Rushmore is like every other hill minus Washington/Lincoln/Roosevelt/Wilson. Mentally subtracting them frome the equation just separates one from reality.
OIL: The world’s patronage of state-owned Middle East oil has financed each thuggish ragime’s iron grip on power. Even if this has been completely unintentional on the part of us oil patrons (?), it isn’t hard to imagine how the oppressed see us as co-sponsors of their misery.
TERRORISM: It doesn’t emerge spontaniously from thin air. It can’t be rewarded or excused, but the existance of unique pressures that are breeding terrorism has to be acknowledged and owned. To assume Arabs are simply a defective, terror-prone race is the same mistake made by the Nazi’s with the Jews. We need to seek to understand the pressures and address the true sources where possible.
ISRAEL: Perspective is everything sometimes. As a Christian myself, I feel a deep kinship with the Jews as well as a deep horror for their suffering in the holocost. Creating/seizing a homeland for them always seemed like a wonderful idea to me….but I don’t think it was carried out with the grace that characterizes the God we both claim to serve. We have, at least in appearance, given Israel a pass on all actions they deem necessary to the security of their new homeland. A good deal of that posture is embarrassingly self-serving, as our popular end-time theology relies on a restored state of Israel. Regular, non-terrorist Palastinians were displaced from their homes with the formation of Israel. The unavoidable conflicts that followed certainly bred perpetrations of injustice on both sides. Instead of choosing one side, we need to find a workable way to choose both sides.
RE: Illegal immigration and California
And as bad as things are on immigration, they are going to get much worse. Obamacare is going to make this country even more attractive for illegal immigrants, and it appears that the next item on the Democrat’s agenda is comprehensive immigration reform.
Will someone please point out to Scott Brown’s campaign for the Senate seat from Massachusetts that they need to hammer at his opponent for her support for illegal immigrants and her support for comprehensive immigration reform? Someone needs to remind the MA voters that if Brown loses, his opponent will support illegal immigration in the US Senate the way that she has enthusiastically supported them as Massachusetts attorney general. Her policies have been wrong for Massachusetts, and they’ll be worse in the US Senate.
Steep and high progressive taxes, regulation and all the other entaglements of the socialized nanny state destroy the circulation of classes that once was the hallmark of the United States. Taxation cuts into wealth accumulation which is how the working poor climb the ladder — regulation and overlawyering discourage entrepreneurial activities which have consistently revolutionized the economy.
Thus who you know becomes far more important than what you know or what you can do. For the liberal elites, the feedback is positive. Their kids go to the elite schools where they are taught the proper ideology and make the right contacts and slip easily thereafter into privileged spots in the law, government or established corporate America — just like their ENarch colleagues in Europe alway have.
With class lines made rigid there is no messy competition from below. No nouveaux riches elbowing into the tonier neighborhoods and no hungry competitors threatening the corprocratic rice bowl.
America is approaching a defining moment. We have to choose whether we will accept the not so soft fascism of the regulartory state or will we turn back to the true liberties of the rough and tumble republic we once were. And will that choice be made at the ballot box or on some Lexington Green.
Go back and read the question.
I predict the immigration problem will abate .. after the “big one” comes
I will add one more. Teacher Unions and how education is a complete mess. Teachers have the best of everything and tenure has got to go! As communities decrease in tax revenue not so for the teachers. Instead of backing the pay and pay increase down they keep going up with no end in sight.
Basta! This is the sentence that is wasting all this comment space, under the heading of Affirmative Action? “But Chilean and Brazilian immigrants do—if they can fraudulently piggy-back upon the Mexican-American experience by virtue of a shared language and last names.”
But in the realm of AA, Spanish and Portuguese ARE a shared language. Do you know of any Latin or Slave or any other language group that is included in AA? Is Romanian? Is Italian? With all due respect, may I suggest finding some other nits to pick. Consider my suggestion with some care, ladies and gentlemen, I beg of you.
Just to add my voice to the other who have pointed this out, in the hopes that you will correct such a glaring error:
Brazilians speak Portuguese, NOT Spanish.
66. Keith
Regular, non-terrorist Palastinians were displaced from their homes with the formation of Israel. The unavoidable conflicts that followed certainly bred perpetrations of injustice on both sides. Instead of choosing one side, we need to find a workable way to choose both sides.
I suggest you read some history. The overwhelming majority of the Palestinians who left their homes did so at the urging of their Arab leaders. The assumption was that by “clearing the battlefield,” it would be easier to defeat the Jews, and then the Arabs could return to their homes after the Jews had been defeated and driven out.
Unfortunately for them, the Arabs lost. Israel has long been willing to provide compensation for the loss of their homes, but considers itself justified in not wanting them back.
Moreover, the number of Jews living in Arab countries who lost all their property upon moving to Israel basically meant that it was a trade of Arabs who left Israel for Arab countries for Jews who left Arab countries for Israel. Again, the Jews who left Arab countries lost all their property. They arrived in Israel with the shirts on their backs.
The problem is not “two sides.” The problem is that the Arab side is uncompromising.
A beautifully and incredibly accurate piece. God will love our country more if we take actions befitting our originally written Constituion He inspired. Roger
… and certainly California is a lost cause, as LA Weekly gleefully reports:
“White Children Now A Minority In California, States Report/ LA Weekly/ By Dennis Romero in City News, Education, community, politicsFri., Jan. 8 2010 @ 4:25PM
Don’t tell the producers of The Hills or any of the other youth-oriented television shows that seem to portray people of color as background noise in California, but for the Golden State’s under-18 population whites are now a minority.
This according to U.S. Census data from 2000 to 2009 analyzed by the New York Times, which attributes the shift, in part, to higher birth rates among immigrants. The Golden State was among the top-ten states that saw increases under-18 populations. [...]
more @:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/city-news/white-children-minority-ca/
Now here is a nit in a comment that IMO needs some picking.
#10 JoeyRam say: “… (and how can anyone be properly educated if they don’t know Greek?)”
I guess it depends on what the meaning of properly is, as a disbarred lawyer once said. Joey admits to being froshomoric versus sophomoric. He reminds me of me at that level of the school of hard knocks, id est, maturation.
I love reading about the Ancient Greeks. Alas, I have to make do with translations of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the dramatists and historians. I will never know the pleasure of reading words such as these in Greek:
“Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.”
(Translation of The Odyssey by Robert Fagles).
I regret this, but, Joey, you could actually live a life such as this passage describes by joining the Navy or Coast Guard as an officer or enlisted man, or a similar life in one of the other armed services. Now which experience, Joey, do you think would be the more educational one?
“One small quibble: a Brazilian immigrant would not share a language with other South and Central Americans. He or she would speak Portugese.”
Correct. What they do share is the inability or need to speak English. The democrats will insist that they be provided education in their own language.
#19 Reza: الله هو وهمي
just tweeted the iraq and affirmative action pages to #tcot, etc on twitter.
70. Neo
I knew a geologist who was swearing that it would come in the 80′s.
I wish it never will.
i don’t care about palistien.
Not only are Dr. Hanson’s writings brilliant, but he inspires masterful comments as well. I particularly enjoyed comments by Mike McDaniel, Taqiyyotomist and David Thompson. In particular, Taqiyyotomist points out Truth #6 of which we dare not speak — the Rs are Racist problem — which even VDH declined to mention.
BOB IN THE ICE BOX; Bundle up, keep shoveling to stay warm and forget your “California Dreaming”. Cali is a mess from one end to the other. High taxes, high unemployment, high crime, drugs, gangs, poor schools, incompetent administration, racist hiring practices whereby a person is hired by the state not because they are competent or skilled but because they might be Mexican, or Black, or a woman or some other so called minority. You want to come west? Try Arizona, New Mexico, Texas.
Hilarious how some people can read a terrific article like this and find something about Brazil to quibble about. Great stuff. Keep ‘em coming Doc!
I’ll call VDH out: while its commendable that he will reform legal immigration to allow only skills based immigration, you leave a lot to be open to interpretation regarding the mass of illegal immigrants in place. If you’re willing to tax remittances, are tacitly allowing illegal immigration to remain, though not necessarily be legitimized? As far as remittance taxes, hell, tax everybody (money to all nations) at 10% and Latin America at 30%. Indians remit, Chinese remit, but because what they remit is small compared to their salary (not always the case either, e.g. the Indian cabbie and the Chinese waiter) that represents a resource loss as well. Getting off the income tax and into consumption taxes plus the remi-tax does make a difference. Somehow Texas has survived a comparable percentage of illegals to the total population.
The “Bob Martins” are claiming to be hispanic too when it suits them; Robert Sr. just tells little Bobby Jr. not to say anything to his white friends about his financial package and to tune out the La Raza presentation at college orientation.
I agree with #71 karlinsync,
We spend more money per pupil then any other country to “educate” our kids and by the time they “graduate” (if they do) they are dumb as a box of rocks compared to the rest of the world. Why is that?
Well, let’s take a look at the poster child for what the Democrats and unions want the US to be-Detroit.
Detroit Public School student scores hit rock bottom, “district educators began weeping when they were briefed on the results.” Dems “creating or saving” government dependency!
http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2009/12/detroit-public-school-student-scores.html
Just for the record, Detroit has been under Democrat hegemonic domination for more than 50 years now. Instead of the liberal utopia that was supposed to be, the city has become a cesspool of corruption mixed with incompetence. Detroit Public Schools are no exception as they have hit what was thought to be close to rock bottom some time ago. Not so! The news that it had hit rock bottom came today. From The Detroit News: Detroit students score record low on national math test. Turns out, Detroit kids are dead last in the assessment:
Some snippets from the article:
Detroit Public Schools students posted the worst math results ever recorded in the 40-year history of a prestigious nationwide test, according to scores released today.
Sixty-nine percent of fourth graders and 77 percent of eighth graders scored below basic skill levels in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test that serves as a nationwide yardstick in measuring student learning.
“These numbers are only slightly better than what one would expect by chance as if the kids had never gone to school and simply guessed at the answers,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools …
Unless the community takes action to fix these urgent academic problems, “this city has no future,” he said…
“Only a complete overhaul of this school system and how students are taught should be permitted at this point, because the results … signal a complete failure of the grown-ups who have been in charge of the schools in the past,” …
…Just 33 percent of fourth graders could subtract 75 from 301, whereas 67 percent of kids nationwide correctly computed the answer. … Students had trouble on questions ranging from geometry to estimation.
There was also this from Amber Arellano at the News: Detroit hits educational bottom.
Detroit’s results on the national report card, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, were so low, some district educators began weeping when they were briefed on the results.
That is why parents in Detroit can’t get their kids out of DPS soon enough. You can’t gold-plate a turd and sell it to the public. DPS still stinks no matter how they dress it up. Here’s an idea – let the kids free to go to any schools they want. And yes, I’m talking vouchers. Or refundable tax credits. School choice is the only solution, and a proven one at that. Of course, Democrats can’t have that because 1) it will give kids a means out of poverty, and 2) their campaign coffers are filled with teachers union money.
Now, I said many times in this blog that this misery being heaped on Detroit residents and especially the children is a feature of Democrat policies, not a bug. Certainly not by accident. It is in fact by design, as poverty gets votes for the Democrat party. Ergo for the party to survive and thrive, more people need to be pinned under government control and dependence so they keep voting for the system (read: Democrats). And it has worked. As bad as things are in Detroit and the DPS, guess who the residents continue to vote for? Their very own jailers. By wide margins to boot. Those that have in fact enslaved them to the state. In fact, Detroit is the most liberal city in the U.S. if one goes by voting record:
2008 General Election results-DEM: 96.93% GOP: 2.65%
2006 General Election results-DEM: 95.05% GOP: 4.33%
2004 General Election results-DEM: 93.61% GOP: 5.93%
Detroit residents have been voting for their own doom and the doom of their children. The Stockholm Syndrome on a massive scale. I have pointed this out many times before, but it’s worth repeating yet again. One of my all-time favorite movies of all time is The Shawshank Redemption. In it, Morgan Freeman, aka “Red”, coined the term when prisoners become dependent on the prison system and can no longer survive without it – institutionalized. One of the older prisoners, Brooks, was willing to kill to stay in the system as he knew nothing else after so many years. Yet they let him out and he promptly hung himself. He was institutionalized. The Democrats have institutionalizing the black population in this country, no different than slave masters did many decades ago. The same party that fought for slavery, not against it, segregated schools and filibustered the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 now has shackled the black population to another form of slavery – slavery to the state. Stripped naked of their dignity, their hope and their self-reliance.
The liberals want to “redesign” Detroit’s schools, want to “innovate.” Nice words, no substance. As long as the cause of the problem stays in place, the effect will be the same regardless of desire. The only solution, which the News doesn’t even hint at here, is outright school choice in the form of vouchers or refundable tax subsidies. That would do it. Ironically, many news stories and editorials on public school failure mentions other districts, including one that raised an eyebrow for me: Washington D.C.
D.C. That dilapidated school system (still a better graduation rate than DPS), which Education Secretary Arne Duncan said has “more money than God,” has tried a voucher program quite successfully. In fact, not only were the kids better educated, but the cost was 25% of what it takes for these same kids to go to failing public schools! (WaPo: Study Confirms Vouchers Superior to Public Ed Monopolies) The voucher program has been so successful that Democrats and the Obama administration want to just outright kill it. After all, they have the teachers unions to protect. The WSJ published an article about the shenanigans:
It’s bad enough that Democrats are killing a program that parents love and is closing the achievement gap between poor minorities and whites. But as scandalous is that the Education Department almost certainly knew the results of this evaluation for months.
Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.
Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they’d support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would “not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids.” Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.
Mr. Duncan’s office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You’d think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan’s department didn’t want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin’s campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.
The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs. The Sheldon Silver-Dick Durbin Democrats aren’t worried that school choice doesn’t work. They’re worried that it does, and if Messrs. Obama and Duncan want to succeed as reformers they need to say so consistently.
Ouch. What an absolutely devastating piece. Read the whole thing as it is a very worthy read. There’s more and it is equally devastating. Betsy Newmark has more:
I wonder how many other federally funded education programs show results like that? President Obama has said that he would be guided by results, not ideology. Horsefeathers! Here are results that show steady progress in reading by the students receiving the vouchers and the President and his party, despite their fine words about wanting to examine the evidence just don’t care. Senator Durbin, the sponsor of the provision killing the program claimed to want to see the evidence that the program worked. Well, Senator. What do you say now about these results?
You know that, if this were a program that the teachers unions supported, the Democrats would be pouring billions into it and talking about expanding it across the nation instead of smothering it in the cradle. Once you realize that union opposition is the only reason why these Democrats have taken the position they have on the program, you know all you need to know about their fine rhetoric about school reform and wanting to put evidence ahead of ideology.
Andrew Coulson sums up the results. Results that I pointed out in prior posts:
The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.Better results at a quarter the cost.
And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.
What happened to the notion that this was all about educating the children? A tight lid will be kept on this data by the MSM. This will, of course, hurt the kids in the DPS, but what the heck – the unions will be grinning from ear to ear!
A few weeks ago I wrote a post in response to an AP article in the Detroit News that lamented the effect, but skipped the cause, of the plight of Detroit in general, and the children of the D in particular (AP Laments Detroit’s Plight, Ignores That It Has Been Under Democrat Rule For 50 Years. Misery Is Not A Bug, It’s A Feature!!!). When Bob^2 (Robert Bobb) was appointed emergency financial manager to fix DPS, he had a few problems to contend with, to put it mildly. All of the corruption had to be tackled. Ghosts were collecting paychecks. Dead people collecting health benefits. An audit showed that 97.4% of the schools within DPS cannot keep track of its own funds. It was thought that the DPS deficit was all of $140 million. Bob^2 said that it will be more than $150 million on March 3. The tallies of the problems started increasing that number. Unpaid vendors popped up with a price tag in the tens of millions. On March 12, there was more bad news: the deficit ballooned to $200 million.
Not soon after that post, there came news that DPS owed $36 million more. Not to be outdone, this followed from the DetNews: DPS deficit climbs to $306M; thousands of layoffs expected. Then, just the other month, it was revealed that the deficit now stands at $430 million. Now pared down to about $250 million, more corruption is being uncovered. (Culture of corruption: more embezzlement charges against Detroit Public Schools workers) Just keep this in mind: DPS IS DEMOCRAT-RUN! Has been for 50 years. Natch.
sickandtired:
I don’t know which State Universities your son’s friends attend. My son is studying the biological sciences and Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, a good but not highest tier state univerisity. The average grade in his classes is a C. All but the top Ivy League students would be struggling in his environment. Getting in to an Ivy League school is hard, staying in is a piece of cake.
Re: #2) Iraq
The surge was a brilliant success. The heroes are relatively ignored.
Don’t you see, the true hero here is GWB.
IF you ask the military, they will say they are just doing what they’ve been trained to do(i.e., their jobs). Even though they are the ones performing incredible feat, facing the enemy.
The one person that can (and had) changed the tide is the buck-stops-here George Bush. None of us his supporters ‘attcked him’ because of his Iraq stand.
IF he had faltered on the surge, just imagine the daily “I inheritied this Iraq mess…” we will need to endure.
And again, this is not a ‘be-little’ our military post.
14. Jessica:”I don’t think two weeks over the summer is really an effective means of gauging the academic merit of a school.”
Ah but I’m at even more fault than you think, I left after the first week. Now there, that will add some weight to argument.
But in all seriousness, like i said my memory might be faulty, after all it was a year and a half ago. I remember they scuttled something when they adopted the curriculum from Saint John of the cross, I think it was Greek but I could be wrong. However to your point of the quality of education, although it seemed certainly extensive, it’s view point is poisoned, and thus inferior. What I would like to stress is that they lacked any tragedy in the view of man, and the overall mood was artificially happy and upon final inspection cult like.
What I mean to say is this, with all the ills that are spawned by the liberal academia there is a great temptation to run to the extreme opposite, however the exact opposite of a poisonous cult, is another poisonous cult…
16. Terry Saulsbury:
… and thus the odd similarity to Columbia.
59. uburoisc:
Thanks, nice to know there are fellow sufferers.
77. Fred Beloit:
(and how can anyone be properly educated if they don’t know Greek?)
Firstly that was a little joke, sorry sarcasm is harder to put across in type. I say this because it once was thought the only way to be educated was to learn Greek, and the only reason to study Latin was so one could learn Greek. This of course is an absurdly conservative view and well, laughable. However it’s just that I find it ironic that this school, proclaiming itself as the leading bastion in conservative education, lacked Greek. (at least of course if my memory serves me right, it might not.)
As far as the education one revives from joining the armed forces, I’ll say one better. I believe that not only is armed service potentially one of the best experiences one can have, but that the Officers schools are some of the finest schools in the world, if not the best. One of the finest teachers I ever had was a former art history professor at the navel academy. If my suspicions of their scholastic superiority are true then I attribute it to their tragic view of human nature. (however I could be wrong in the extreme, but I think not… maybe)
I was deeply conflicted over whether to join the officers program, and I am still conflicted. However my ambitions lay elsewhere and it would have distressed my family and in the end I was too weak to contest with both of those forces. Plus, I would much rather fight the enemies of the west that lurk at home (nonviolently of course) in the media, academia, and the popular imagination. Imagination I think is the key, if we can capture that, then start teaching Latin in grade school, but i digress…
Oh and as to being froshmoric rather than sophomoric, i would rather be a fool who knows that he knows nothing rather than a fool who considers himself wise.
Mr Hanson — On point #4, it is Thomas Aquinas College, not St. Thomas… Thanks very much for the reference!
http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/
Farming “saved a wretch like me” too!!!!
After a BS from Cornell in design–which I have used my whole adult life, and I am ever grateful for it–my life propelled me to operate a dairy farm with my then-new husband for 10 years; we learned as we went along, no mean feat!….It was the best thing that could have happened to grow me up in a zillion ways.
By the time we sold it we figured we had put the milk machines on our cows 235,000 times….
Along with this discipline, farming vastly increased my love for my country…and turned me into a Conservative.
“Affirmative action was a laudable, and affordable endeavor 45 years ago. Blacks, who comprised 10% of the population, were given a helping hand, and since the cost was spread over the remaining 90% of society, the cost to any one individual was almost imperceptible.”
These affirmative action policies never made any rational sense. They were merely an example of supposedly well meaning people indulging in sentimental nonsense—without worrying about the long-term consequences. Please note that there are never examples of affirmative policies to help the athletically disadvantaged gain a spot on the college basketball team. Such a proposal would be help up for justified ridicule. The hard sciences are also rarely forced to comply with these affirmative action mandates. As I said previously, postmodernist ideologues have thankfully yet to convince the world that 4+4=9. The liberal arts programs have been victimized because few really take them seriously. This might not be fair, but that’s the way it is.
I strongly suspect that our national economy could be 20% wealthier if these affirmative action programs had never been implemented in the mid to late 1960s. Once again, the stuff really hit the fan when the majority white students started to demand their piece of the pie. They also wanted to receive inflated grades. I cannot offer any hard studies to support that 20% figure. This is pure speculation on my part. Am I getting too carried away? Could I be exaggerating? It would be interesting to see what others think.
74. Gringo
If you’re point is that Arab governance is the primary source of their own problem, I’m inclined to agree with you. I still stand by my point that regular non-terrorist, non-Arab-policy-making Palastinians were displaced (if by their own leadership) and that it is an unavoidable source of conflict. There is always more than one version of history and I’m in no position to challenge your response on the facts. You may well be spot-on. My gut says no side is completely innocent and we need to be better at demonstrating that we truly are holding both sides to the same standards of human rights.
It’s the “fraud” characterization I challenge. Middle East governance may be largely a fraud. The need for us to contribute to salvaging the value and dignity of average Middle Eastern people caught in the mix is not a fraud. Other places experience suffering that deserve our attention as well–if we relied on them for our energy supply, we’d be more inclined to notice.
I support a tough stance on terror and the security of Israel. I just don’t think we’ve been very successful in demonstrating that our responses are adequately measured, if in fact they have been adequately measured.
Heres the difference between my ancestors and todays illegal immigrants. ASSIMILATION. That simple. The immigrants of prior generations learned our culture, our language, they BECAME AMERICANS. The illegal immigrants of today do not want to assimilate. They come mostly to get away from SOCIALIST MEXICO and end up in SOCIALIST COMMIEFORNIA or other innercity slums. How many of these illegals send there children to school to learn English? American history? No, today they come here because we give them free welfare, free apartments etc. We print public messages billingually. Im curious, do they do that in Saudi Arabia? Enough already. We have laws-enforce them.
Your statements are all brave and true to life. I especially enjoyed your comparison of the benefits of a Stanford PhD program with the reality of Central Valley farming. Long after Berkeley Law, where I was taught that our Constitution “means whatever the Supremes say it means”, I abandoned that viewpoint and studied the Constitution itself and concluded belatedly, otherwise. Thanks.
Perhaps I’m reading a corrected version of the article, but here is the sentence that is in the one I read: “But Chilean immigrants do—if they can fraudulently piggy-back upon the Mexican-American experience by virtue of a shared language and last names.” No mention of Brazil, unless my one good eye is fading! Maybe an earlier version of the article has been updated?
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/truths-we-dare-not-speak/2/#comment-19
I don’t think so.
The law prevents employers from describing and officially testing for job-specific knowledge. If employers could describe and give their own tests, then prospective employees could qualify by acquiring knowledge in any way they wanted, including self-study.
This is why formal degrees and experience are so highly stressed. They are an attempt to validate a person’s knowledge without giving a specific test.
I hired programmers as part of managing a software group. The HR department told me that I could ask technical questions, but to never write them down in any “formal” way. They were worried that someone would claim I was giving a “test”. Any test was illegal unless proven to be non-discriminatory in effect when applied to different races.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal: [edited]
College is an Expensive IQ Test
More on the value of college.
(1) “Affirmative action” is a euphemism for government-enforced unequal treatment according to race and national origin, a violation of the 14th Amerndment, for equality under the law. When Justice Powell invented “diversity” as a ground for legal racial discrimination in the Bakke case, “diversity” became the euphemism.
Title VII, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in employment on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and sex, and established the EEOC as a “vested interest” to enforce it, was criticied at the time as leading to the opposite, with quotas, etc., which had already occurred with previous versions. So Senator Hubert Humphrey inserted the prohibition of “quotas” and said that he would “eat his hat” if the act actually led to what was prohibited. He never did eat his hat. But the bureaucrats of the EEOC, following Parkinson’s Law rather the law itself or the Constitution, did just what was prohibited, President Nixon signing the Executive Order for the prohibited “affirmative action.” Billions of dollars have been spent on this evil system, with the bureaucrats in universities, government, and industry. (And no one mentions the violation of the Constitution in government ordering employment procedures in private industry.)
Indeed. Like our financial system. It appears that our new President and Congress have saved our great nation from near total destruction. Our reputation was horrible, our financial system in ruins, Iraq was lost and we were losing Afganistan, but now it appears things have improved markedly. All thes issues, previously ignored, have been addressed and dealt with over the past year. But I still think this Congress, and President, have alot more to do. If Republicans regain any power, will they continue the progress? Who knows…Dont you agree?
Your comments regarding the elite schools needs a bit of editting, if I might. If the graduate has majored in black studies, women’s studies, hispanic studies, or pretty much a bachelor of arts program, I would agree with you. However, if the graduate has a bachelor of science degree, they might actually have gotten a good education.
“The law prevents employers from describing and officially testing for job-specific knowledge.”
You and I know this to be true—but most Americans probably have idea what we are talking about. The company lawyers soon after Griggs vs. Duke Power became the law of the land advised their bosses to demand college credentials instead of relying on the results of tests that might land them in a court of law. Virtually overnight the bachelor’s degree often became the minimum requirement for one seeking a well paying job. Needless to add, professors also felt further pressure to inflate the grades of their weaker students. It has been 39 years of this bovine excrement. The stuff has only gotten worse over time.
These are truths we dare not speak..? get serious;
A) Govt agencies are actively involved in Illegal drug trade;providing security, transportation and sale
B) Dennis Hastert and other Ex govt officials launder money through entities attached to known terrorist organizations, mainly through Turkish aid agencies.
C) The Banking system maintains less than 3% of the cash required to pay off deposits
D) There are trillions of dollars missing from US banks
E) The federal reserve can never be audited, the books cannot be balanced as result of massive outflows to European Banking families
F) There are banks in New York specially structured to hold Oil revenues for the Saudi Royal Family exempting them from banking regulations
These are truths nobody wants to discuss or write about. The fluff that makes up most of this website is hardly worth mentioning. If the American people really knew the structure of the banking system, or their government transports and sells illegal drugs, or how ex govt officials are laundering billions though known terrorist organizations…they would probably not do a darn thing.
America has lost its moral compass and replaced it with a credit card.
A thoroughly sensible, honest, intelligent and informed summary analysis of the enduring consequences of Liberalism’s marquee policies. Thank you. This post shall remain a must-go-to reference for a long time to come.
43. Bad example. Remoras aren’t parasites- they’re cleaners. A cleaner has a mutually beneficial relationship with its host; it consumes parasites and waste on the host, keeping the host healthy. Remoras also don’t attach themselves to fish, but instead to manta rays.
I recall seeing a study about a year ago that said that between the taxes, spending and market distortion effects that running a welfare state requires and induces, the GDP would be $4 Trillion higher without the welfare state than with it. That means, if we ditch the transfer payments and other “social justice” programs, laid off the bureaucrats manning the system, and used the savings to cut taxes, the economy would grow by about 30% as a result.
Poor Citizen:
Our financial system was wrecked by the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (why do you think he quit?) Our President is a laughing stock among world leaders and we are no longer an important factor in many parts of the world. Iraq was won by George Bush while Obama and the Democrats tried to undermine the war effort. We are still losing in Afghanistan although I grant the President seems to be half committed to preventing a disaster although he isn’t committed to winning.
This essay is why I keep up with vdh.
One article contains more unique ideas than days of reading most other commentators.
The points on affirmative action and the mideast are particularly telling.
Keep it up doc.
Can you spare a day a week to run the country?
Sadly, an advocate for affirmative action has recently been given the Presidency for UVA..
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/New-U_Va_-president-shaped-by-affirmative-action-8755977-81328292.html
What a sad excuse for ‘equality’ our nation has become.
A strange thing to think about is the second law of thermodynamics applied to the destiny of mankind. Try as we might to organize and make well all the systems and economies of the world, in the end it will all merely be a parcel of the calculation that was entropy. So, while we live in the present and celebrate ourselves the truth is even the greatest of human achievements was all in lieu of an inevitable increase towards disorder.
The only way to escape this dearth gravity is to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
“Our reputation was horrible, our financial system in ruins, Iraq was lost and we were losing Afganistan, but now it appears things have improved markedly. All thes issues, previously ignored, have been addressed and dealt with over the past year.”
I get the impression that you probably do enough drugs to lack a functioning cortex.
Comment #1: “As your Aristotle said …”
“Your” Aristotle? Are you under the impression that VDH is Greek, or are you simply eager to present yourself as a proud “nekulturny?”
Keith (#94): “My gut says no side is completely innocent and we need to be better at demonstrating that we truly are holding both sides to the same standards of human rights.”
I submit to you that when the current Administration (and it’s not the first) harshly criticizes Israel for building houses in empty areas adjoining Jerusalem, but says nothing about the Palestinian Authority providing support (at minimum) for terrorist activities, it is not holding both sides to the same standards.
I have to give a hearty “Hear hear” on the Affirmative Action section. As someone with a Chinese Last Name it is interesting to see how I can get AA benefits and in the next breath turned away because we’re doing “too well.”
Really?
Honestly the whole Asian section of the Affirmative Action discussion should be proof to anyone with half a brain that the system isn’t really about “equality” but about screwing over businesses.
Bingo.
“So, while we live in the present and celebrate ourselves the truth is even the greatest of human achievements was all in lieu of an inevitable increase towards disorder.”
Actually it only states that the Total Entropy will increase. Since nothing is truly isolated there is always somewhere to put more disorder in exchange for less, or equal, order somewhere else. A saving grace as per your observation.
A healthy fire does this. It gathers people from all around in fashion, and ejects the chaos into the sky.
We ARE what we read.
Readers who love history books understand these ideas: pietas, fides, gravitas, dignitas, constantia. These virtues were interwoven into the Roman education system. We read these ideas: Forgotten Gems http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=60&Itemid=262
Readers who love science fiction understand utopian ideas. These are the ideas interwoven into our current culture.
This was drawn to my attention by this book:
Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction by Mark Bould
Product Description
Science fiction and socialism have always had a close relationship. Many science fiction novelists and filmmakers have used the genre to examine explicit or implicit Marxist concerns.
#94, Keith:
If the US held the Arab/Muslim Middle Eastern states and Israel to the same standard, there would hardly be any American ambassadors be left in the former; Sudan would have been dismantled and partioned long ago (on account of the southern genocide, not because of the latecomer that is Darfur); Egypt would be impoverished through the withholding of aid; Saudi would have been thrown to the dogs through massive covert action; etc.
Regards, H.
I think for Jews Dr. Hanson’s points numbered 3 and 5 can be combined. Denouncing Israel is the best way for Jews to appeal to the liberal elites (and sadly plenty of them have chosen that option).
Its a cynical system indeed that makes announcing one’s own illegitimacy the means of achieving success within a system.
Very insightful article. Keep up the great work.
My opinion of Ivy is dominated by the one Yalee we had in grad school. During a language primer the Prof mentioned Charlamagne and the Holy Roman Emporer whom the Yalee had never heard of. She majored in “Culture Studies” but that didn’t inlcude our own.
I think you can find a single taboo proposition that underpins three of the five mentioned.
With respect to all of California’s problems, affirmative action and university diversification, the underlying causative principle that needs to be expunged from all would be democracies is the one that assumes that legislation can be created by a simple majority. Government players may be elected by a majority but this should not mean that the governmental bodies have license to create programs, taxes, regulations, boards nor engage in all manners of social activism based on a simple majority vote of the elected representatives. This effectively creates governance and taxation without representation for up to half of the collective constituency and allows our governmental bodies to engage in all kinds of nonsense and create all kinds of permanent bureaucracies in response to problems of a temporary nature or that are best solved by free people engaging freely.
Governments have very limited and fundamental roles and should require a super majority of at least 75% to enact any new legislation with the Constitution as a guide to what is acceptable to be put to a vote.
It may seem scary but we can work out most anything by ourselves if we have proper enforcement of public safety, basic laws, contracts, property rights and principles of fairness in business. Letting government run wild is what is really scary and we are finding that out more and more these days.
Wait, no one took Reza’s bait? You mean everyone saw through the religion baiting post? Well done posters!
#101 Poor Citizen – You are amazing. Some days you start calling for changes like any somewhat conservative Indy, and other times you are devoutly defending Obama. My suggestion: Take your meds every day.
Iraq was lost? We won it in Oct ’07. That’s when the casualty numbers began to decline dramatically. Al Quaeda pulled out Summer ’08. The Iraqis voted in Jan ’09 and rejected every single Islamic party. This was ALL on Bush’s watch. It was over before Obama took office.
Afghanistan was under control when Obama took over. We were fighting there, but the exchange rate was heavily in our favor. Losses were light. The commanders were concerned, however. They wanted 30k more troops to stay ahead of the increasing violence. They got 21k. Casualties went up. They asked for 40k-90k more for the new plan; minimum 40k. They will get 30k, only decided after 3 months of waiting. Casualties went up while waiting.
Financial system recovery? Bush bailed out the banks. Even conservative economists say it was necessary to stave off a panic. The banking crisis had passed by the time Obama took office. Still, he passed the unnecessary political-payoff, porkapalooza “Stimulus” bill. Ineffective, as everyone recognizes, now.
Unemployment increased dramatically, still rising. Obama targets business, so jobs suffer. Jobs are the happy side-effect of wealth-creation. Wealth-creation is under attack by Obama. This is his fault.
Obama and cronies have made everything worse. Everything. How about terrorist attacks? 3 attacks in 6 months. How’s that working out for you?
Take your meds every day. Please.
I definitely agree on number 4:
http://powip.com/2010/01/i-agree-with-vdh/
While there is a lot of ruin in an elite institution’s reputation, I believe it is becoming more noticeable that when the “smartest guy in the room” almost ruins Harvard by betting the milk money, that people are going to question how smart all those Harvard guys are in the first place:
http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/actuarial_discussion_forum/showthread.php?t=177543
RE: Affirmative Action –
Several years ago I was watching a college track meet on TV (yes, I know, I have no life!). A featured race that day was the 1500 meters. Toward the end of the race two runners took the lead, both from the same school and both from South Africa. Yes, indeed, one was black and one was white. It struck me that only one would receive preference in school, the work-place – everywhere else – as soon as he left the track, and for past injustices his family never suffered in America.
“Truths we dare not speak”. Please Dr. Hanson, please include the importance of race as well which you seem to belittle in this sentence: “Trust in merit, and ignore the race and origin of the would-be immigrant.”
What Dr.? Ingnore Race? Does not culture define politics and does not race and religion define culture?
If one is to ignore “race”–how can you perpetuate the American culture or European Western culture with indigenous Mayan, Aztec Indians? I find your ‘pronouncement’ as Marxist or at the least “Masonic”. You are not a conservative but just as politically correct, (which is Marxism), as any other academic. Please stop with your hypocrisy. You are a globalist marxist mason.
#104 Alleggs say: “E) The federal reserve can never be audited, the books cannot be balanced as result of massive outflows to European Banking families.”
Hahahaha. (1) Who says so. (2)If the Federal Reserve is never audited, how do we know that it sends money to “European banking families” wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Further, Alleggs say: “These are truths nobody wants to discuss or write about.”
If, nobody discusses and writes about these “truths” of yours, how did you hear about them?
#90 Joey writes: “Oh and as to being froshmoric rather than sophomoric, i would rather be a fool who knows that he knows nothing rather than a fool who considers himself wise.”
So would I, Joey, so would I…so am I, so I am.
But the best of luck to you in picking a career. No decision you will make is more important, excepting perhaps whom you will marry.
In short we are going to_ _ _ _ , in a handbasket. Given recent events in Hati, I’d say Armageddeon is upon us, can you really blame the Almighty for looking down at us , and shaking his head ? God help us all. I really wanted a future for ourv children and grandchildren , In only bhope and pray that good can still triumph over evil !
One more truth we dare not speak: Obama is not our president.
Doc – You just struck the same chord as the one that resonates so deeply with the tea party folks. There is building anger out there that knows no party loyalty. Just people how hold those common sense traditional American values that many of us were raised on. We will see what happens in MA next tuesday.
I hope we again see the day that the guy who grows the peaches and the fellow who can keep the tractor running, the one who drives the truck and so forth once again command the same respect as the investment banker.
I would also caution that while our military did prosecute a brilliant surge many of us still don’t understand why we need to spend our blood and treasure in the middle east. Oh but yes, it’s the oil….
Really? Government workers at all levels are better educated. About 52 percent of California’s state government employees held four-year college degrees or higher, according to the 2000 U.S. census, double the rate of private-sector employees in the state. Another 33 percent of the state’s government employees had at least some college, according to the census figures.
Hey Wheels #127 – “Does not culture define politics and does not race and religion define culture?” – Not in this country Wheels. Openness and tolerance is the basis for our culture.
- I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Question.
Just out of curiosity; exactly where does that “96% of blacks voted for Obama” figure come from? I hear it repeated often – but I long ago learned to distrust anything constantly repeated in the media.
In any case, had every black in the US voted for Obysmal, at most we represent only 12% to 13% of the population. And we’re notorious for having a lower percentage of eligible voters then the majority population (way too many ex felons). And a large turnout for Obysmal among blacks should have been no more unexpected, then a large Catholic turnout for JFK. First of “our” group, and all that. Obysmal got 52% of the vote – which means that far more whites then blacks, voted for the knucklehead. Stop acting as if it’s all we brother’s fault. You white guys did this one to yourselves.
What is “Truth”?
“If one is of mixed race, nomenclature trumps all. Bob Wilson, the son of a Mexican-American mother, is liable to get nothing, Roberto Martinez will get quite a lot, if the son of a Mexican-American (or any Spanish-speaking) father.”
It’s funny ’cause it’s true. I’m half Mexican. White as a sheet and I don’t know more than a few words of Spanish, and even then those are profanities. Regardless, half is enough. Not that I’ve ever been on welfare, but I could still get into a school through affirmative action. Get some strange looks, but being half is more than enough.
Are we not to process the reports from Iraqi officials that Candidate Obama, on his world tour, privately insisted Iraq not cooperate with their own agreements for troop withdrawals?
…Are we to ignore the journalistic establishment refused to critique Candidate Obama’s campaign-long ridicule of those who claimed Al Quaida was in Iraq (even while it remained the prime region for Al Quaida recruitment and activity at least as late as Sept. 2008)?
Sadly, no rebuttal to the calumny of State workers.
Professor, you forgot something in the list of dysfunctions in California, and that’s what amplified the urgency of the series of propositions by which the people have sought to get some control of how their money is spent.
I don’t want to ever hear again about the bad, bad people and their propositions, until the federal court decision on Prop 187 has been reversed. The people of California voted by a near supermajority to NOT fund a laundry list of entitlements for illegal immigrants, and their decision was overturned in federal court.
If you pay taxes in California, a federal judge has decreed that you cannot avoid funding entitlements for illegals. It would be one thing if the state legislature had taken that constraint and effectively broken it by scaling back entitlements overall. But instead, the Democrat-controlled legislature has piled on, adding NEW entitlements to attract illegals into the state.
The voters have a constant sense of having completely lost control of everything. They want money spent on classroom instruction, and it gets spent on school administration, and on the employment of professionals to provide services to the handicapped — something the state should not be the employer of first resort for. The state could well provide voucher assistance to the families of handicapped students, but it should not be building clinics and therapy centers and adding therapists and evaluators to the public payroll. But that’s where the huge growth in state “education” spending has been.
Voters want money spent on repairing roads, and it gets spent instead on employing “professionals” to design transportation schemes for us that involve more people biking to work.
Voters want money spent on improving our water infrastructure — to capture and distribute more of that towering pile of precipitation the Sierra gets virtually every year — and it gets spent instead on “professionals” who design water-use schemes that involve all of us ceasing to use water, and on judges who favor fish over farmers.
Between federal judges and the very nature of entitlements, which is to grow uncontrollably, the taxpayers have just about entirely lost control of what California spends money on. Of course they are going to impose what order on it they can.
I got a hilarious questionnaire from my state assemblyman a few weeks ago, asking me to tell him my priorities for road and highway improvements, and whether I would be willing to increase my taxes to pay for them. You have GOT to be kidding! was my reaction. No! You stop using MY tax dollars to pay for the medical treatment of people whose income is HIGHER THAN MINE — you stop creating new entitlements when we have to turn felons out of prison because we can’t afford to house them to the level to which a federal judge thinks they should be accustomed — you stop threatening the TAXPAYERS with cuts to the services that matter to US, like firefighting, the highway patrol, and teachers in the classrooms, whenever you need more money to pay for the entitlements and non-education “education” spending that take up more than 50% of the state budget — you do that FIRST, and then we’ll talk.
The people have used propositions as the only means available to them to register with the state authorities what THEIR priorities are. The very fact that they had to do that means government was already failing. How anyone dares to suggest that the legislature should have a FREER hand to jack us around is simply beyond me.
OK, rant off.
TN was he claiming AlQueda was not in Iraq in 2008 or was he claiming it wasn’t in Irag when Bush said it was (before 9/11)?
Bill “Openness and tolerance is the basis for our culture.” Right. It’s written right there in our Constitution. But for some it’s not in their constitution. Proof? Just look at the world around you.
Fred Beloit Funny Nobody. One of the magic generalizing words of shallow thinkers. Everybody. All. None. If you’re willing t look, you’ll often find those thinkers in the same pool as conspiracy theorists
Victor, let me address point #2, immigration.
And what are we to do with the illegals? Can we deport them? Dare we deport them? Would this deportation produce desired results, or alter the social landscape in ways we wouldn’t like? Can we trust the same people who gave us the D[eranged] H[orde] [of] [the] S[uspicous] to carry out this mass deportation honestly and openly. Can we be sure any mass deportation wouldn’t mean the exiling of American citizens, including a number with a long list of native born ancestors. Isn’t there a better way, a more cost effective way?
Why not amnesty? Yes, illegals have broken the law by entering illegally, and they continue to break the law by staying, but; other than that how many have broken the law in other ways? What about those illegals who obey other laws, who act as honest citizens do. Is violating one law so unforgivable?
Fine, they break a law, but did they kill? Did they steal through violence, the threat of violence, or through deception? Is entering the country illegally a crime equivalent to kidnapping, rape, or blackmail? And why was the law against undocumented immigration established without a statute of limitations? Is illegal entry so nefarious an act it ranks up with murder in the first degree?
I say we get over our moral outrage against illegals, forgive, and integrate them into society. Integrate them and give them the protections given to any citizen or legal immigrant. The right to decent pay, the right to live wherever they can afford to. The right to walk down the street and not be legally abducted by a Federal agent and shipped off to another country. Let them live here legally and openly, prosper, and in time become citizens should that be their wish.
Try thinking of illegals as a potential asset instead of a liability.
It appears as if the interest in this thread has died down, but at the risk of coming in too late, I’d like to respond to a couple of comments made above. Dr. Hanson listed three colleges for which he clearly has a high respect, and JoeyRam has recommended that he remove Thomas Aquinas College from that list. Moreover, he said that “for you to speak positively of that place dishonors yourself and what you stand for.” These are very strong words, and are a severe criticism of the college, even in a casual forum such as this. First of all, JoeyRam, your one week experience at the two week summer school for high school students doesn’t place you in a position of much authority regarding the college. I can appreciate your decision not to attend the college yourself (after all, one purpose of most college summer programs for high school students is the opportunity to discern whether the college is right for you), but you must realize that the summer school is not the college, and you have disclosed that you did not even participate in the whole program. With such an incomplete experience, your criticism becomes more about your perceptions and instincts in judging the program, than a thorough knowledge of what the four year curriculum would offer. Again, this is certainly sufficient grounds for you to make your own college choices, but is a shaky foundation for your public criticism (and borderline slander) of this school.
Well, what are the stated reasons for such harsh treatment? First, anti-intellectual; second, a disturbing mindset; third, believed (sic) connections to heretical, corrupt, malevolent and tabbacco-loving fringes of the Catholic Church; and in summation (in #93) a “poisonous cult.” To support the claim of anti-intellectual, you mentioned Darwin, Kierkegaard, Greek, and challenges to the status quo. (Well, not really Greek, that was actually a sarcastic remark. If you’d like an answer about Greek, I’d suggest that anyone in charge of curriculum at the college would immediately spring at the opportunity, but ask you what you propose cutting. There already are 4 full years, and a lot of “great” books waiting in the wings.) My understanding is that Darwin is not read during the summer school – and so I’m not sure what the context was for any disparaging remarks. Typically, in a serious Great Books program, any author or text which has not been read by the class is not permitted into class discussion. If someone introduced their interpretation of Darwin into a discussion prior to the reading of Darwin, I suspect the argument would be dismissed as an argument from authority (that is, relying on the interlocutor’s reading of the text in question), and not reasonable arguments available to all. But that is besides the point, because I have a hard time believing that administration and professors are so willing to cursorily dismiss Darwin and Kierkegaard, when they are willing to dedicate a portion of the curriculum to their works. If the college really thought that Darwin and Kierkegaard could be written off, then instead of reading these authors, that time could be used to study Greek. And, as to the question of the status quo, I suspect that there is some justification here, but not anything irrational. The college teaches a system of philosophy, with a carefully crafted curriculum. Participation in that curriculum requires docility and humility to a certain extent; not docility to the intellectual whims of the PhD in front of the class (as you might find at many school, such as the Ivy’s to which Dr. Hanson referred), but to Aristotle, Socrates, Homer, and their intellectual heirs. If you pursue your interest in the armed forces, you will find a place which truly does not like challenges to the status quo. However, here too, there is a reason. (Try reading Alastair MacIntyre regarding tradition for more insight into the role of the student/apprentice.)
I’m having difficulty coming up with anything to say in response to your perception of “deeply disturbing” mindset. Besides your cheap shot at home schoolers, there are the issues of “scuttling of logic” and the challenges to the status quo, which I lumped into the category of anti-intellectual. The lotus-eaters reference is intriguing, but it sounds like these are just happy, well-adjusted people. Your pre-occupation with the tragic view of human nature is puzzling to me. Because the Catholic theology of Thomas Aquinas College includes belief in redemption and beautitude, the administration and most of the students believe that a glorious and happy fulfillment is the true end of human nature. But this was the understanding of Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and countless others, while Plato and Aristotle were not far off. Similarly, students and professors engaged in a true “liberal” education are the least likely to be self-absobed and angst-ridden. Visit Hillsdale and see if the happiness there is not close to that of Thomas Aquinas College.
Finally, your claim that school has dangerous liaisons with heretical parts of the Catholic church is inappropriate and unfounded. Certainly there are students and possibly professors who have varying religious beliefs, just as there are practicing Protestants and Jews. The school does not require a statement of faith from all its members, but they do have very strict rules for the college itself. In accordance with the direction of the Vatican, the college requires obedience to the Catholic Church from the faculty in their teaching, especially as regards the teaching of Theology (I’m sure a more precise wording of this can be found elsewhere). In this, and in the practice of devotions and liturgy, the college rests firmly in the wide orthodoxy of the Catholic Church. Certainly, the college is on the conservative side of the spectrum of orthodox Catholicism, but that should be not be news to anyone, especially people reading articles by Dr. Hanson. I think it is worth adding that Thomas Aquinas College has never lacked endorsements from Catholic bishops and cardinals – and not just one or two fringe clerics.
I think that we can all do well trusting the advice of Dr. Hanson: Thomas Aquinas College offers a good education.
To Fred Beloit.
Because the Rothschilds own 57% of the Fed stock; which is not publicly traded. They also own the bank of England and, in effect control the economies of dozens of other countries. Thats why.
In effect, they own you and the rest of us.In every war they loan to both sides and sell arms to both sides. They love wars.
Their methods and goals are satanic. But, so is the behavior of most people; who refuse to obey God, while indulging their selfishness.
One thing of which they are certain: It is not possible that the international bankers who already control the world seek to do so.
Only “conspiracy nuts” so believe.
And, of course, White Tigers.
Note : Sorry, I put this comment in the wrong page (Obamarang) first.
Mr. Hanson, I’m a French-Canadian living in the province of Québec and I wonder why there is so much opposition from Americans in general to a government or publicly sponsored universal health insurance program in United States. A lot of Western states have such programs, including Canada, and we would never go back to laissez-faire in these matters. Of course, these programs cost a fortune and there are abuses, either form users (regular folks) or providers (psysicians, among others) but the universal coverage is a treasured feature and we certainly don’t envy uninsured Americans who are ruined by health fees when they have to assume such costs. In all due respect to courageous thinkers like you, Hitchens, Thornton, Steele and others whom I admire. Daniel Fournier, Montréal, Qc, Canada