Drinkwater vs. Frost, Conservative vs. Liberal

History Channel Fact

2006-01-15T14:19:00.000-08:00

"Moonshine" - following the American Revolution, we were in big time debt so the first congress decided to tax distilled alcohol. Naturally, liquor producers moved their stills into the woods and conducted their business at night "by the light of the moon." Lesson: Americans have never liked taxes (a.k.a. the United States has always been conservative).

The Mission of the University: My "Liberal" Response

2006-01-07T17:49:00.001-08:00

The way you write always puts me immediately on the defensive, William. You trot out these impervious, chest-pounding statements on "the aims of the university in the Western tradition" which are so innocuosly general that there's no way I could deny them. But then you immediately set up all of these "liberal" professors as completely heretical and antithetical to the "pursuit of truth and knowledge and wisdom and yadayada" business that you've just coerced me into agreeing with. While I do have a problem with your NEO-MCCARTHYIST tactic of naming, shaming, and defaming so-called "liberal professors" at Vanderbilt by listing thier syllabi on the blog, I do agree with all your statements on the goals of the university and in fact I probably agree with your notion of academic freedom.

There's just something fishy, though, about government trying to stick its nose into a classroom at a university. I suppose that professors should be held accountable for their teaching, and they should be responsible for teaching that a wide range of viewpoints exists in their disciplines. However:
1) I still contend that it is in the interest of private colleges and universities in the United States (and we both went/go to one of these) to monitor their faculties in their own fashions, lest higher education in the country turn into a homogenized system where every professor at every college teaches the same materials. I ask you seriously, do you want to get rid of "liberal" colleges and "conservative" universities in favor of making them all the same? I realize that's an exaggeration, but part of the individuality of schools in the US comes from the political leanings of their faculties, right?
2) I have a problem with professors being compelled to teach a wide variety of viewpoints. For one reason, a professor might find one of these viewpoints to not only be scientifically or intellectually wrong (e.g. intelligent design, a whole other debate) but also morally repugnant (see my earlier post on Skinnerian education or historical revisionism).

That's it for now. Please respond. Oh, and have you seen Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire yet?

Pacifistically yours,
The Liberal

Biased Professor - Monica Casper: Women's Studies

2006-01-04T19:09:00.000-08:00

Required Readings

WS 265: Politics of Reproductive Rights
Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Testing Women, Testing the Fetus by Rayna Rapp (feminist)
Conceiving the New World Order by Faye Ginsburg, Rayna Rapp (feminist)
Fetal Subjects and Feminist Positions by Lynn Marie Morgan
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice by Jael Silliman

Conceiving the New World Order: The feminist vision here is large, theoretically incisive, detailed, empirically deep, and politically inspiring.

Rapp, a feminist anthropologist at the New School for Social Research; Her analysis of the intersection of reproductive and disability rights and their links to feminist and power issues is interesting. This timely work provides scholars and reproductive rights activists a forum for dialogue about fetuses without conceding to a moral or political agenda that would sanctify them at women’s expense (Fetal Subjects).

Killing the Black Body: The denial of Black reproductive autonomy serves the interests of white supremacy,'' using a black feminist lens and the issue of the impact of recent legislation, social policy, and welfare "reform" on black women's--especially poor black women's--control over their bodies' autonomy and their freedom to bear and raise children with respect and dignity in a society whose white mainstream is determined to demonize, even criminalize their lives. It gives its readers a cogent legal and historical argument for a radically new , and socially transformative, definition of "liberty" and "equality" for the American polity from a black feminist perspective. The author is able to combine the most innovative and radical thinking on several fronts--racial theory, feminist, and legal--to produce a work that is at once history and political treatise.

When I went to Undivided Rights at Amazon, one of the books listed on "Customers who bought this book also bought:" was Killing the Black Body. Likewise, when I went to Testing Women, Testing the Fetus, the list included Conceiving the New World Order. It doesn't appear there's a whole lot of diversity here.

Biased Professor - Brooke Ackerly: Political Science

2006-01-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

Required Readings

PSCI 201: Contemporary Political Theory
Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era by Seyla Benhabib
Justice as Fairness by John Rawls
Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights by Will Kymlicka (liberal)
Justice, Gender, and Family by Susan Moller Okin (feminist)

PSCI 209: Issues Political Theory
Feminist Thought by Rosemarie Putnam Tong

From Library Journal: Okin, also author of Women in Western Political Thought ( LJ 1/15/80), here is concerned with the lack of justice experienced by American women in both the public and private spheres. Lack of justice in the private sphere of gender-structured marriage leads to a lack of justice in the public sphere of the work place, the professions, and politics. Marriage makes women vulnerable due to the devaluation of human reproductive work and the persistence of a traditional division of labor within marriage. Divorce compounds the problem since it results in poverty for many women. This is a strong study of the contradictions in a democratic form of government, but Okin's recommendations lack analysis and are not fully linked to the political and economic arena... this is the first feminist critique of modern political theory that in shows why and how in order to include all of us, theories of justice need to apply their standards to the family itself.

Book Description: Multicultural Citizenship. It argues that certain "collective rights" of minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to such rights can be answered. However, the author emphasizes that no single formula can be applied to all groups, and that the needs and aspirations of immigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. He looks at issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession--issues central to an understanding of multicultural politics, but which have been neglected in contemporary liberal theory.

Biased Professor: Elizabeth Boyd - American and Southern Studies

2006-01-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

Required Readings

AMST 110: Intro to American and Southern Studies
Global Woman by Barbara Ehrenreich
Crossing the Boulevard by Warren Lehrer
Beyond Borders: Thinking Critically About Global Issues by Paula Rothenberg
The Impossible Will Take a Little While by Paul Rogat Loeb

AMST 226: Gender, Race, and Class
Where we Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks
Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race by Patricia Williams (race theory, leftist)
White Privilege by Paula Rothenberg (ideologically extreme; neo-marxist)
Race, Class, and Gender by Margaret Andersen
Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing up Working Class by Michelle Tea

From Publishers Weekly: The Impossible Will Take a Little While
In this uneven collection, Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, gathers together over sixty poems, memoirs and essays tailored to buck up the spirits of a left-liberal audience depressed by the sorry state of the world. Although generally in favor of justice and democracy and against the "runaway global market," the selection of writers includes a wide range of environmentalists, civil rights crusaders, anti-poverty activists and dissidents against both fascism and communism. From these eclectic offerings some hopeful, albeit familiar themes assert themselves: ordinary people can make a difference, every little bit counts, in solidarity there is strength, a positive attitude is half the battle, the powers that be are unexpectedly vulnerable, and history is full of surprising victories of the weak over the strong. Not surprisingly, many of the pieces amount to motivational lectures, while others inflate the notion of hope into tiresome dilations on, for example, the links between information processing, daydreams and butterflies. But the articles that deal with concrete struggles and achievements—Nelson Mandela’s memoir of imprisonment on Robben Island, Vaclav Havel’s account of the ant-like construction of civil society and a dissident political culture in Communist Czechoslovakia, Bill McKibben’s homage to the urban planning triumphs of Curitiba, Brazil—deliver real inspiration.

Seeing a Color-Blind Future comprises five essays that author Patricia J. Williams presented at the highly prestigious Reith lectures in Britain. Erroneously perceived by some conservative British papers as a "militant black feminist" Williams proves in these highly readable and intelligent essays that she is an influential and important voice in race theory. Williams and other left law professionals theorize on "quiet racism." This is a racism that doesn't make newspaper headlines but occurs all the time. It is the taunting of black children by white children in the playground, it is being singled out in a crowd because you are black, it is not being viewed as the "norm." Williams asks, "How can it be that so many well meaning white people have never thought about race when so few blacks pass a single day without being reminded of it?" Reviewed by Cornel West, Gloria Steinem, Studs Terkel

If It Ain't Broke...

2006-01-02T18:38:00.000-08:00

So we're referring to each other in the second person, eh? Okay well I copied and pasted my previous post that for some reason you still refuse to put up into a new one that acknowledges me as the writer:

"Apparently there is a movement fomenting in the US for an "Academic Bill of Rights," to be adopted by colleges and universities for the protection of "academic freedom" among their students. As I understand it, this document is being considered as potential law in some states like Ohio and Colorado. At its heart, the document purports to protect students' intellectual freedom and asserts their right to be free from the politicized teachings of professors, who are (admittedly) for the most part liberal. As I see it, the primary mechanism by which it accomplishes this is a number of provisions that require professors a) not to use their classrooms for disseminating their own political views and b) teach a number of viewpoints in that discipline so that students are not exposed to only the view of the professor.
There are many problems here, not the least of which is that the document would seem to require professors to teach points of view that they do not themselves hold as valid methodologies or schools of thought within a discipline. A teacher of urban pedagogy would need to teach Skinnerian (behavior modification) theory alongside more contemporary Piagetian (developmental) theory as equally valid ways of teaching urban high schoolers. Perhaps he does not believe that one is morally right or acceptable. However, he could not say this to students because it would be turning the classroom into a "moral or political soapbox." This is wrong. Shouldn't we as students be able to take courses with professors whose teaching and research is devoted to a specific viewpoint, in order to discover that viewpoint for ourselves and decide if we will adopt that viewpoint in the field? I think so. The Academic Bill of Rights strips professors of the freedom to teach what they believe because it assumes that students are so vulnerable and mentally naive as to be incapable of rendering critical judgment on the material presented to them. Instead, they would need to provide a kind of "survey" of viewpoints in the discipline that borders on artificial. It's kind of insulting.

I would hope that if I were in a course on global economics with a pro-NAFTA/WTO professor, I'd be able to sift through his or her teachings to hang on to elements I found valuable while discarding aspects that I didn't believe in or found unattractive. If a college classroom really is a free exchange of information, a dialogue between a trained expert in a field and students who are eager to develop their own perspectives, shouldn't the professor be allowed to freely talk about his views and WHY he finds them more worthy than others? Maybe this is just my liberal arts education talking (with emphasis on "liberal")..."

Academic Freedom: Questions of Principle

2006-01-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

1. Do you agree that the fundamental mission of the university in the Western tradition is and should continue to be the fulfillment of the following general principles:

(a) the disinterested pursuit of truth;
(b) educating in the classical liberal tradition;
(c) the advancement of mankind's general knowledge;

2. Do you agree with John Stuart Mill that advancements in mankind's knowledge of "truth" depend on an intellectual environment with:

(a) unrestrained freedom of speech
(b) a diversity of views being that truth requires ideas to continuously undergo challenge and be exposed to competition;
(c) an absence of censorship, intimidation, or other attempt to silence thought and stifle competition.

Or similarly with Justice Powell's view that:

"The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth`out of a multitude of tongues,[rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection."

3. If you agree with this mission for the university (1) and believe Mill's analysis to be correct -to make progress in the search for "truth" and increase mankind's general knowledge requires a liberally educated society committed to individual liberty - (2) , would it be fair to characterize "academic freedom" as the means of achieving the university's desired ends as opposed to some transcendent principle which has value whether it aids or hinders the mission of the university?

In other words, is academic freedom a privilege which society bestowed upon college professors with the understanding and expectation that by providing intellectuals with the security of not having to fear repercussions or censorship, the free discussion of diverse ideas could thrive and produce new knowledge? Does academic freedom hinge on a presumption of good faith on the behalf of universities?

Or as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested in the court's Grutter v. Bollinger opinion regarding the University of Michigan's use of affirmative action in its admissions policies:

"Our conclusion that the Law School has a compelling interest in a diverse student body is informed by our view that attaining a diverse student body is at the heart of the Law School's proper institutional mission, and that ‘good faith' on the part of a university is ‘presumed' absent ‘a showing to the contrary.'"

I believe this is a good place for me to stop and wait for your response lest I spend several thousand words trying to persuade you on something we already agree on. I'm sure you had no problem discerning how I would've answered those questions so if you disagree in all or in part about anything I'll be looking forward to proving you wrong. Otherwise, it's okay to admit how frustrating it is for me to always be right, and I'll go on with my argument. Because I'm nice, I've ended with an excerpt from a 1915 statement of principles issued by the AAUP that might figure into your answer to my third question. And since you are, after all, not kidding about being a liberal, I thought I would bring special attention to those parts you're likely to find foreign and hard to relate to.

Fondly, The Conservative

"Since there are no rights without corresponding duties, the considerations heretofore set down with respect to the freedom of the academic teacher entail certain correlative obligations. The claim to freedom of teaching is made in the interest of integrity and of the progress of scientific inquiry...The university teacher, in giving instructions upon controversial matters, while he is under no obligation to hide his own opinion under a mountain of equivocal verbiage, should, if he is fit in dealing with such subjects, set forth justly, without suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators; he should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue; and he should, above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently."

Students for Academic Freedom Report

2006-01-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

Students for Academic Freedom is exclusively dedicated to the following goals:

To promote intellectual diversity on campus.
To defend the right of students to be treated with respect by faculty and administrators, regardless of their political or religious beliefs.
To promote fairness, civility, and inclusion in student affairs.
To secure adoption of the Academic Bill of Rights as official university policy, and the Student Bill of Rights as a resolution in student governments.

What is an Abuse of Academic Freedom?

Students for Academic Freedom supports the free speech rights of professors and believes that faculty members should be able to determine the content of their courses. These rights, however, do not provide a license to use the classroom as a political soapbox, or provide an excuse for a professor to ridicule or otherwise demean particular religious or cultural views
a student may hold. Nor do they supersede professors’ obligations to uphold professional educational standards. These include fairness to all students. They include the responsibility to make students aware of the spectrum of scholarly viewpoints on any given subject. They include the responsibility to counsel students and to encourage their intellectual development. Treating students as political adversaries is counter-productive to this task. These professional standards are recognized by the American Association of University Professors and have been since 1915.

In 1915, the American Association of University Professors issued its first report on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The premise of this report was that human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth; that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge; and that no party or intellectual faction can be assumed to have a monopoly on wisdom. Therefore, learning is most likely to thrive in an environment of intellectual diversity that protects and fosters independence of thought and speech.

According to the AAUP’s professional guidelines, professors have an obligation to present their students with a diverse range of scholarly opinions on the subjects that they teach and should not deviate from their lesson plan to bring up controversial matters that have no bearing on the subjects. Violations of this professional conduct code include:

a. Assigning required readings or texts covering only one side of controversial issues (e.g., texts that are only pro- or anti-affirmative action)

b. Introducing controversial material that has no relation to the subject of the course (ex: making remarks on political issues in a math or science class; lecturing on the war in a class that is not about the war or about international relations)

c. Compelling students to express a certain point of view in assignments (e.g., at a college in Colorado a professor assigned students in a mid-term evaluation to explain why George W. Bush is a war criminal.)

d. Mocking national political or religious figures in a onesided manner (e.g., singling out only liberals for riducule or only conservatives)

e. Conducting political activities in class (e.g., recruiting students to attend political demonstrations or providing extra credit for political activism-type assignments)

f. Grading a students' political or religious beliefs (e.g., grading a student more leniently when they agree with the professor’s viewpoint on matters of opinion)

Academic Bill of Rights

I. Mission of the University

The central purposes of a University are the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the teaching and general development of students to help them become creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large. Free inquiry and free speech within the academic community are indispensable to the achievement of these goals. The freedom to teach and to learn depend upon the creation of appropriate conditions and opportunities on the campus as a whole as well as in the classrooms and lecture halls. These purposes reflect the values—pluralism, diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, openness and fairness—that are the cornerstones of American society.

II. Academic Freedom

1. The Concept. Academic freedom and intellectual diversity are values indispensable to the American university. From its first formulation in the General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors, the concept of academic freedom has been premised on the idea that human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth, that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom. Therefore, academic freedom is most likely to thrive in an environment of intellectual diversity that protects and fosters independence of thought and speech. In the words of the General Report, it is vital to protect Òas the first condition of progress, [a] complete and unlimited freedom to pursue inquiry and publish its results. Because free inquiry and its fruits are crucial to the democratic enterprise itself, academic freedom is a national value as well. In a historic 1967 decision ( Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York ) the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a New York State loyalty provision for teachers with these words: Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, [a] transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. In Sweezy v. New Hampshire, (1957) the Court observed that the essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities [was] almost self-evident.

2. The Practice. Academic freedom consists in protecting the intellectual independence of professors, researchers and students in the pursuit of knowledge and the expression of ideas from interference by legislators or authorities within the institution itself. This means that no political, ideological or religious orthodoxy will be imposed on professors and researchers through the hiring or tenure or termination process, or through any other administrative means by the academic institution. Nor shall legislatures impose any such orthodoxy through their control of the university budget. This protection includes students. From the first statement on academic freedom, it has been recognized that intellectual independence means the protection of students—as well as faculty—from the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature. The 1915 General Report admonished faculty to avoid taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. In 1967, the AAUP’s Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students reinforced and amplified this injunction by affirming the inseparability of the freedom to teach and freedom to learn. In the words of the report, Students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion.

Therefore, to secure the intellectual independence of faculty and students and to protect the principle of intellectual diversity, the following principles and procedures shall be observed.

These principles fully apply only to public universities and to private universities that present themselves as bound by the canons of academic freedom. Private institutions choosing to restrict academic freedom on the basis of creed have an obligation to be as explicit as is possible about the scope and nature of these restrictions.

Political Conformity on College Campuses Unacceptable

2005-12-28T15:23:00.000-08:00

According to a survey conducted by Frank Luntz following the 2000 Presidential elections, 84% of Ivy League professors voted for Al Gore whereas only 7% admitted to casting their ballots for George W. Bush. Similar, if not more lopsided, results recurred 4 years later in the ‘04 race.

Opensecrets.org, a website that tracks federal campaign contributions made by both individuals and institutions reported the 20 colleges and universities which donated the most in this past presidential election cycle. Leading the pack were the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, and Stanford which favored Democratic candidates by 92%, 96%, and 92% respectively. Democrats received majority contributions from all 20 schools. 12 schools favored Democrats by over 90% and all but 2 of the 20 institutions of higher learning donated more than 84% of funds to Democrats. The most pro-Republican school which made the list was the University of Texas, and although George W. Bush is a Texan native, the 38% of funds he received from his state’s largest public university was approximately the same as the support he received from Massachusetts in the official election (37%).

As these results demonstrate, America’s institutions of higher learning consist of faculties which overwhelmingly hold liberal political views. And if you doubt or question these results, there are multitudinous other studies that confirm these conclusions. So, what does this mean and why is extreme conformity of intellectual thought on college campuses so unacceptable?

The homogeneity of political views on college campuses is problematic because it interferes with the central purpose intended for the university according to the Western tradition: the disinterested pursuit of “truth.” In order to faithfully carry out this mission, conditions amenable to the search for truth must be present. What are these conditions and what environment is required? When answering this question, it’s useful to recall the wisdom expressed by John Stuart Mill in his famous essay On Liberty.

In this seminal masterpiece, the 19th century’s greatest champion of individual liberty laid out a compelling case that one of the prerequisites for the triumph of truth is the presence of diverse viewpoints because otherwise orthodox opinion, whatever it may be at any particular time and among any particular group, will gain a monopoly and go unchallenged. That is to say, if any one belief is shared by all or a large enough percentage of individuals whereby the small minority of those who dissent are intimidated or prevented from presenting their alternate perspective, the accepted belief will be assumed to be true beyond any reasonable doubt and therefore cease to receive the scrutiny it deserves. And why does this matter?

Because, as J.S. Mill so thoughtfully noted, few if any opinions are entirely true, and likewise, few if any opinions are wholly false. In other words, even those views which enjoy clear consensus support almost certainly are incomplete and would benefit from challenges by opposing arguments which might lead to amendments to the orthodox view or their reconfirmation which would further cement their validity. In either case, the incentives to include diverse perspectives, and the academic value gained from the presence of heterogenous political ideas are undeniable.

Additionally, the educational disservice and the psychological damage visited upon college students who are exposed to only one political ideology register additional strikes against acquiescing to the status quo - liberal dominance in the world of academia. What message is the university currently sending to conservative minded students whose deeply held beliefs (although shared by a majority of Americans) are consistently derided and uniformly subjugated to secondary if not tertiary status by their professors? The answer is that it sends a message that is antithetical to accomplishing one of the most cherished goals espoused by the university: diversity.

The Supreme Court has rejected the argument that affirmative action is necessary to correct historical discrimination. The sole justification for using racial preferences in college admissions recognized by the Supreme Court in the landmark Bakke case (1978) was the educational benefit of having diverse views represented in the classroom. However, while colleges throughout the United States routinely lower their academic standards when considering "minority" applicants (read: everyone who is not a white male), they have, in fact, done everything possible to discourage true diversity - diversity of thought. Moreover, they have yet to offer any indication that, if left to their own devices, plans to remedy the widespread ideological conformity would be on the horizon. So, how does this conformity undermine the goal of diversity?

(1) Conservative students come to realize that their professors - intellectuals they look to as role models during a period when they are attempting to determine what to do with their lives - consistently hold political views alien to their own. In the absence of political opinions among faculty members which resemble or correspond with their own, conservative undergraduates naturally are left with the impression that, among academics, their views are considered (a) intellectually inferior, (b) unfit in the world of serious scholarship, and (c) effectively disqualifying them from an academic career.

(2) it creates an ideologically homogenous enclave which gives rise to the perception of consensus on topics which are, in actuality, widely disputed in the arena of public opinion. This false impression breeds an overconfidence that encourages the hostile, mocking, and derisive treatment of contrary positions.

Both of these effects, thus, make the present intellectual climate self-perpetuating and unlikely to improve absent some form of external pressure. Political homogeneity will continue to have an unwelcoming impact on conservative college students who, in terms of intellectual merit, are perfectly capable yet in terms of their political sentiments, totally anomalous. In addition to creating an uninviting environment (due to the high probability of colleague ostracism and exclusion) for potential conservative academics, this monopoly shelters academics from opposing views and leads them to assume there is consensus on various issues (after all, all of their colleagues agree) which (in the real world outside the ivory tower) the American public is sharply divided over... (to be continued)

Eminent Domain

2005-11-10T23:38:00.000-08:00

Since the Supreme Court's Kelo decision, I've already seen several instances of "eminent domain" being used to confiscate private property. One of the guests on Hannity & Colmes tonight formerly owned a small tire shop but was forced to sell his property so Sears could move in and take his place. This should be intolerable for both liberals and conservatives alike. Private property is the foundation of our freedoms, and the Kelo decision has bastardized the entire concept.

Herding Cats: A Life in Politics, by Trent Lott

2005-11-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

Question: Senator, do you think in our congress we'll ever be able to get rid of the pork situation?

Senator Trent Lott: Well, first of all, you'd have to define what is pork. I have quite often defined it as federal spending north of Memphis.

Mary Mapes, OMG

2005-11-09T23:42:00.000-08:00

RUSH: Okay, gotta hear this. We got a lot more sound bites of this, but this is the money sound bite. Brian Ross today talking to Mary Mapes of CBS says, "After 12 years of defending him, CBS and Dan Rather later admitted they couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the documents, Bill Burkett's documents, and that they should not have been used and the story should not have aired. Do you," Mary Mapes, "still think the story was true?"

MAPES: The story? Absolutely.

ROSS: This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still find that story to be up to your standards.

MAPES: I'm perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there's proof that I haven't seen.

ROSS: But isn't it the other way around? Don't you have to prove they're authentic?

MAPES: Well, I think that's what critics of the story would say. I know more now than I did then, and I think -- I think -- they have not been proved to be false yet.

ROSS: Have they proved to be authentic, though? Isn't that really what journalists do?

MAPES: No, I don't think that's the standard.

RUSH: No, she doesn't think that's the standard! Do you understand what you just heard? Mary Mapes, Dan Rather's producer, 60 Minutes II: no, the standard is not on us to prove they're authentic. What she's saying is the standard is on critics to prove that they're not. She can take anything she wants, put it on the air, without authenticating it, without verifying it, and it's up to critics to disprove it. Now, I think what's going on here, I don't think she's that far out when it comes to all these people in the mainstream press. I think this is the way they look at things. I really do! It's up to the critics to prove this is not true. That's why Rather is out there still saying he wishes he could pursue the story. He still believes it's true even though the documents may be forged. He still thinks the story is true because nobody's proven the story isn't true even though they've proven the documents are forgeries, which Mary Mapes still can't admit. I mean, this is a true basket case in front of your eyes.

Daily Journal Entries

2005-11-09T23:39:00.000-08:00

Tax Gouging – $.63 = taxes (local+state+federal) on 1 gallon of gasoline in NY; national average = ±$.45/gallon. If "Big Oil" is making 10% profits on each gallon of gasoline sold, and that is considered excessive, what do we make of government profits that are 4-6 times that?
3 bombs detonated in American hotels in Jordan; one suicide bomber blew himself up after walking into a Muslim wedding party — illustrative of terrorist outlook. In my opinion, this contradicts those who are of the mindset that Americans are primarily responsible for the terrorists' actions. Why would they deliberately murder fellow Muslims if they were simply "insurgents?"

Federal Income Taxes Charts (updated)

2005-11-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

The Content of Our Character, by Shelby Steele

2005-11-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

"Social victims may be collectively entitled, but they are all too often individually demoralized. Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change." p. 14.

"Personal responsibility is the brick and mortar of power." p. 33

"Another liability of affirmative action comes from the fact that it indirectly encourages blacks to exploit their own past victimization as a source of power and privilege. Victimization, like implied inferiority, is what justifies preference, so that to receive the benefits of preferential treatment one must, to some extent, become invested in the view of one's self as a victim. In this way, affirmative action nurtures a victim-focused identity in blacks. The obvious irony here is that we become inadvertently invested in the very condition we are trying to overcome." p. 118

"It is certainly true that white maleness has long been an unfair source of power. But the sin of white male power is precisely its use of race and gender as a source of entitlement. When minorities and women use their race, ethnicity, and gender in the same way, they not only commit the same sin but also, indirectly, sanction the very form of power that oppressed them in the first place." p. 141

I Love Black Conservatives Part 1

2005-10-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

Clarence Thomas

Federal Income Taxes Charts

2005-10-05T20:21:00.001-07:00

The rich don't pay enough in taxes?

YUCK

2005-10-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

Bill and Hillary kissing

Sociology 102 Assignment #2

2005-10-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

Assignment: How would I respond to that bitch's statement on the inner-city poor using information from assigned readings and discussing crime and cultural theories. (And be sure to sound liberal because this is a sociology class)

"Finished" and Printed by 8:01 A.M.

Woman: "I’ve read some Anderson. I think that if that’s the way those people want to live, then we should just let them alone. I mean, it’s their choice."

William: Slow down. I need you to define "those people," tell me how it is they live, and then give your reasons for why we should leave them alone.

Woman: The niggardly conditions of impoverished inner-cities are the inevitable result of the self-destructive behaviors practiced by its inhabitants. Individuals who graduate from high school, hold steady employment, and marry without first having children are virtually guaranteed a middle-class life. In the inner-cities, people seem almost oblivious to these realities. Individuals place little value on education, choose street life and crime over legitimate occupations, and the single-parent household has become the norm.

Public education offers universal access to the first condition. Census Bureau surveys suggest the number of involuntarily unemployed is small, and no one has a child without choosing to have sex. Students of inner-city schools are far more likely to drop out, and while young black males are far less likely to be employed than their Hispanic and white counterparts, one third of them will spend time in prison at some point in life. Two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock. These are choices with predictable outcomes which only the individual can make, and until urban communities’ behavior changes, there’s nothing we can do.

William: Everyone agrees that behavior needs to change, but people don’t act in a vacuum. Decisions are made within a context of constraints and opportunities, and inner-city residents encounter obstacles that those in the middle-class do not. Moreover, the paucity of material and non-material resources available to individuals living in areas of concentrated poverty constricts the role of agency in determining outcomes. As Anderson points out, this means "decent" families that promote mainstream values suffer for reasons they have no ability to control (Anderson, 267). We seem to agree on some of the most important problems: schools, jobs, violent crime, and family deterioration. However, I believe we should focus on the culture of poverty instead of the faults of the individual. The failure to appreciate the central role of ghetto culture in shaping these choices, leads us to stereotype all urban families as degenerate and blinds us to possibilities for improvement.

Woman: It sounds like you’re saying we shouldn’t place any responsibility on the individual. How does this differ from shifting blame away from criminals and absent fathers and placing it on abstract forces beyond anyone’s control? Perhaps I overgeneralized by implying all inner-city residents placed themselves in that position, but I don’t think poverty or the criminal behavior of others determines one’s outcome. Why do you think these external cultural conditions are so important, how do you see their impact?

William: A look into violent crime’s importance in poor urban neighborhoods highlights the host of ways that inner-city residents are harmed by the rippling cultural effects beyond their control. Due to proximity, the most frequent victims of criminal acts are other poor people living in the ghetto. This threat increases incentives not to appear vulnerable and to convey an aura of toughness. As Elijah Anderson describes, this often means familiarizing oneself with the "code of the street" and adopting to its modes of behavior. Respect becomes key. The indirect consequences of crime, on the other hand, can often be more devastating.

Finding a job is an important way of distancing onself from the influences of street life; however, the concentration of violence deters businesses from entering their neighborhoods and thus makes it even harder to escape. Gang presences near inner-city schools result in an unruly and ineffective learning environment. As a result, decent inner-city kids are less likely to gain the skills and forms of human capital that are necessary for a life in the middle-class.

As crime grows, those who are capable leave. This further increases the concentration of poverty and bad role-models. Because cultural capital is transformed through life’s experiences and observations, poor youths are now less likely to acquire resources that apply away from the context of street life. The complexity of the causes and effects of crime on the well-being of inner-city persons demonstrates how cultural changes often victimize decent people unrelated to deviance in the form of losses in capital and opportunities to make the best choices. It also underscores the importance of addressing problems of the ghetto poor in a variety of what might seem to be unrelated areas.

Woman: If these problems are so interrelated, how can we realistically hope to fix them? What role can schools play in ending the present cycle?

William: Probably not much right now. The creation of voucher programs carry the potential to reverse this, and parents of children caught in failing schools overwhelmingly support it. How would this work? Students would receive vouchers equivalent to per-student costs and have the ability to use them at the school of their choice. The idea is that this would increase competitiveness by forcing bad schools to become more accountable and by rewarding successful schools. Perhaps of equal importance, a voucher program could enable students to escape the influences of "street" values and experience middle-class norms. They would be around people whom they could gain cultural capital from and have opportunities to build healthier networks, groups, and support systems through extracurricular activities such as sports. However, the success of such a program might be contingent on how far along the student was in his education. The key is to start as early as possible because this is when children are first beginning to form habits and skills. Adolescent voucher recipients who come from miserable inner-city schools find they don’t have the skills to cope with increased academic expectations.

Another way to fight violence and the culture of poverty is by making it less concentrated. Government public housing programs have, in the past, probably exacerbated this problem. However, a "mixed income" project currently underway in Atlanta that limits occupants receiving public assistance to 40% of all residents has seen a 90% reduction in crime and a considerable increase in employment.

Unfortunately, no reform is likely to yield radical changes overnight. It takes time to reverse decade long trends. Cultural norms and capital accumulation develop cross-generationally. However, seeing the problem of concentrated poverty as essentially one of culture will begin to help us along the right path.

Sociology 102 Assignment #1

2005-10-03T14:22:00.000-07:00

The growing gap between high and low income earners coupled with stagnant to increasing rates of poverty reflect trends which many find troubling, if not inconsistent with America’s egalitarian principles. How can a nation that prides itself on the opportunities it offers for upward social mobility produce such realities, and what approach must it adopt to change them?

On this first question, pundits from across the political spectrum seem to agree on several main causes: globalization, a reduction in demand for unskilled labor, "skill biased" advances in technology, a falling real minimum wage, and a decline in unionization. Answers to the second question, on the other hand, are less apparent and often hotly debated. In light of the rising premium placed on highly skilled workers, some believe providing all citizens access to a college education could present a solution; however, this approach contains three major flaws: it miscalculates costs and benefits, neglects behavior problems associated with low income, and it overstates the extent of the problem.

One set of weaknesses in the "universal access" proposal arises in its excessive optimism towards low income students’ larger enrollment and conversely, in its insouciance to the possible negative side-effects. For example, although Germany offers its citizens the option of a free college education, a larger proportion of the poor receive higher education in America which has tuition fees. Extensive financial aid provisions make this possible so that, on average, students from median income families pay only 34% of prices charged by selective colleges (Economist, 9). Secondly, the observation that higher levels of education correspond to greater earning power can be misleading. According to the "skill bias" hypothesis, workers who receive the same amounts of education nevertheless experience disparate wages due to differences in the skills they possess (Ferguson, 72). This phenomenon might occur either as a result of technological changes that make some skills more valuable than others or simply because students’ skill level varies depending on the quality of the school they attended (Thernstrom, 15).

The failure to consider behavioral choices relating to education, family structure, and employment status constitute another major shortcoming of the "universal access" approach to fighting poverty. According to 2001 Census Bureau data, the household poverty rate of 12% drops to a mere 1% when the primary wage earner had completed high school, worked full-time, and was married with less than two children (Sawhill, 83). To some extent, employment opportunities lay outside the individual’s control. On the other hand, evidence suggests a relative small number of involuntarily unemployed. 1999 Census Bureau interviews of the jobless found that only 6% of women and 12% of men could not find employment. Additionally, when Wisconsin changed its welfare requirements to include work, its recipients declined by 76% (Sawhill, 86). Out of wedlock births represent another instance of self-detrimental behavior. Among those in the lowest income bracket, this rate his nearly tripled since 1960, whereas in the highest quintile they have remained fairly constant. 35% of such households fall below the poverty line, and on average, children growing up in female-headed households do worse in school, and have greater likelihoods of going to prison and living in poverty as adults. Thus, while structural barriers deserve attention, any solution to poverty must take into account some unpleasant but consequential agency based decisions.

Random Writings

2005-10-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

The rise of the global economic order has brought with it a number of significant changes. The demand for unskilled labor in the manufacturing sector has declined precipitously, causing many of those affected to voice their frustrations. On the other hand, this decrease has been counteracted by the sharp increase in demand for a highly skilled labor force. Naturally, those now prospering from changes in the economy are less vociferous than the afflicted, and the public often tends to get a one-sided view of the effects of globalization.

Despite my conviction that through the "creative destruction" inherent in the free-market capitalist system society as a whole benefits, my empathy for the necessary plight of the unskilled labor force justifies a discussion of what some have put forth as methods to alleviate this suffering. One of these ideas centers around the creation of a universal entitlement to a college education. This suggestion originates from the recognition that education is essential to success in the new economy, and as such, income should not be a barrier to higher education. Reasons for opposing this plan are abundant, and we can start by looking at the European model.

In most European countries, access to a free or highly subsidized college education is already treated as an entitlement. Universities, which for all practical reasons are totally funded by the state, are compelled to educate large numbers of students on the cheap. In making this deal with the state, they have sacrificed much of their autonomy over selecting students and faculty. As a result, the quality of education being offered has suffered and universities find themselves competing amongst other interests for funding by the government which they have become dependents of.

T.A. Editorial in Vanderbilt Hustler

2005-09-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

U.S. Hubris, Consistent Record of Instrusion Catalysts of Sept. 11

by Corey Bike November 3, 2004

For the past three years, many hubristic Americans -- the president most of all -- have been responding to the question "Why do they hate us?" with naVve and self-adulating remarks such as, "they hate our freedoms," or "they are jealous of our prosperity." Apparently, these are such self-evident truths that an understanding of U.S. actions in the world is irrelevant, and therefore, need not be analyzed. But once again on Friday, in another video message by Osama bin Laden, "they" actually offered an answer to this question.

Unfortunately, however, both President Bush and Senator Kerry once more exemplified the pigheadedness of U.S. leaders by ignoring the content of the message and using the opportunity to see which candidate could provide a stronger display of bravado that undermines the rationality and self-reflection needed to keep the United States (and the world) safe. Neither candidate addressed what bin Laden actually said in the tape; and by not doing so, the United States will continue to fuel the animosity of many who are undeservedly subject to unjust and oppressive policies -- most of which have originated before Sept. 11 -- which robs one of hope and replaces it with terrorism.

In his videotape, bin Laden clearly stated that the best way to avoid another Sept. 11 was to stop threatening Muslim security. And despite what Americans believe about the benevolent intentions of the United States to "change the nature of the Middle East" (in the words of Condoleeza Rice), most Muslims would agree with bin Laden that U.S. efforts are not at all benevolent, but rather a direct attack on Muslim culture and security. It should not be seen as cowardice or fear of the enemy to take notice of this perspective. After all, bin Laden is the one who orchestrated the attacks on Sept. 11; wouldn't we want to know why he did it, and why he seeks to do it again? It is pointless to comfort ourselves with false notions of freedom-hating terrorists when it obscures the true nature of their animosity.

If we were serious about keeping the United States safe, we must candidly confront the sources of terrorism, not just the terrorist themselves. Bin Laden stated, "Any state that does not mess with our security has naturally guaranteed its own security." There is truth to this notion; it was true when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and it is true now. This is why the Swedes or the Swiss were not attacked on Sept. 11, two of the many countries that share the same freedom and prosperity as the United States.

By dismissing bin Laden's statement outright we failed to engage in the appropriate discourse that will deter us from a perilous road of more violence. Bin Laden also stated, "Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you, and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened." In all fairness to the president, by this measure, Senator Kerry is still deceiving us too. In fact, deception cannot be limited to this presidential race at all, since U.S. intervention in the Muslim world stems back to at least the beginning of the 20th century. Hence, despite what many believe, there is a consistent record of U.S. intrusion prior to Sept. 11; one that consists of direct support for coup d'etats and dictatorial regimes (including Saddam in the 80s) and a standard pro-Israeli bias that has been an impediment to peace, and it has caused greater damage to innocent Palestinians than Israelis (the death ratio is three to one), both of which have a right to exist. The historical record should be the subject of much reflection, and the information is there for anyone concerned enough to find it.

But presently, it was Bush's decision to go into Iraq, and despite what administrative officials claim, it is not at all definite that the war has made the United States safer. In fact, if this video offers any insight to why the United States was targeted in the first place (which I believe it does), the United States will be a greater target (and by many more people) now than before the invasion.

The war in Iraq dragged the United States into a conflict with the Muslim world, one that is now viewed by many as a war of self-defense. Because of this, it is one that resonates with many more Muslims. Many Americans take more comfort in propagating simple answers about anti-American animosity rather than ascertaining them from the source itself, an approach to which any rational person would resort.

For three years we have known who carried out the attacks, but the "why" has been subject of much debate. Well, this latest videotape makes it clear. But the appeal to Americans to reconsider policy toward Muslim countries goes unheeded because of the U.S. refusal to "be intimidated" by terrorists, despite the same appeal made by many Americans (who are then condemned as anti-American) and by the vast majority of Muslims that are innocent and peaceful (but deemed irrelevant to U.S. interests even though it is their land). This is the worst form of hubris, the kind that has ruined every great power in the history of the world.

My Response

2005-09-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

Blaming America First is Wrong

by William Drinkwater November 8, 2004

When he decides to apply for a position as an Osama Bin Laden speech-writer, Corey Bike should include as part of his resume his Nov. 3 article entitled, "U.S. hubris, consistent record of intrusion catalysts of Sept. 11." Everything about this column - its righteous condescension, its base hypocrisy and its ideologically driven detachment from reality - is repugnant. What really makes Bike's piece peculiar and what differentiates it from other "blame America first" rhetoric, is the moral and diplomatic credibility it gives Bin Laden.

Basically, Bike focuses on a Bin Laden videotape which he interprets as an appeal for Americans to leave behind hubris and a call to engage in constructive dialogue. If we rationally reflected on the fundamentally oppressive, malignant nature of U.S. foreign policy, he says, we would realize that the terrorists hate us, not because of our freedom but because America means to attack the Muslim community. In my opinion, this argument reflects a serious misunderstanding of the world; it's intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt and ultimately a detriment to America's health as a nation.

This notion that al-Qaeda can be conciliated through diplomacy ignores the fact that the best available evidence suggests the contrary. As the 9/11 Commission Report correctly states, "there is no common ground - not even respect for life - on which to begin dialogue." Morever, Bin Laden's grievances with the United States include more than the perceived threats mentioned in the article. He also demands that we convert to Islam and end the immorality and godlessness that have made America the "worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind." Of course, if we stop and think about America's contributions to the world this statement seems quite remarkable.

It was America that first proved the idea that democratic government could be successful. It was largely thanks to American "intervention" that Western Europe gained liberation from fascism, and it was America that defeated Soviet Communism and removed the Iron Curtain's darkness from the lives of 100 million. Bin Laden also alleges in his latest videotape that George H.W. Bush, upon growing envious of the power of Muslim monarchs, decided to "install" his two sons as leaders. Clearly, lunacy of this magnitude should cause any rational American to seriously question Bin Laden's outlook on the world. Yet, there are those writing in Vanderbilt newspapers who would place more trust in a convicted terrorist than our own democratically elected representatives.

This is the bottom line. It is not possible to reach an understanding with individuals who can justify to themselves flying passenger jets full of human beings into buildings. Our two cultures have entirely different values. Bin Laden thinks America is the "Great Satan;" we pride ourselves on being the freest, greatest country in the world. Those who disagree with Bin Laden's fanatical vision of Islam, in his mind, deserve death; in America there is complete religious freedom. This is not, as some would suggest, a matter of American "imperialism," and simply withdrawing from the Middle East would not "naturally guarantee our security." Bike correctly recognizes that we must "confront the sources of terrorism, not just the terrorists themselves," but what he fails to realize is that Islamic radicalism, not the United States, presents the greatest danger.

When state-centered Arab regimes make it a priority to preserve elite control over national wealth, large segments of the young male population become more susceptible to radical influences. The Report also notes that most of the region's educational systems "generally devoted little if any attention to the rest of the world's thought, history, and culture," and as a result, even those receiving educations "lacked the perspective and skills needed to understand a different culture." And in contrast to Bike's claims, the Commission did find Arab resentment of the West's prosperity as a source of anti-Americanism.

Of course, the United States shares in the blame for cooperating with repressive dictators during the Cold War, but to say that our intentions are to bring injustice on Muslims rings hollow. Shortly following Sept. 11, the president clearly stated that "The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists." If the United States truly lacked concern for the Muslim people, the military would have bombed Fallujah to ashes months ago. Moreover, a democratic government has been established in Afghanistan. "Most Afghans enjoy greater freedom, women and girls are emerging from subjugation, and three million children have returned to school." As the Report so poignantly states, "For the first time in many years, Afghans have reason to hope."

Why those who seek to "blame America first" are so contemptuous of their own country, yet so willing to turn a blind eye to the real evil of terrorism, I will never understand. However, what truly concerns me is not Bike's elitist anti-Americanism, but rather his seeming endorsement and trust in Osama Bin Laden and what that means for Vanderbilt students. As a graduate student in the political science department, Bike will spend three years as a TA grading our exams and our papers so that one day he can become a teacher himself. If he is not personally capable of finding reliable sources (which Bin Laden is not one of) and evaluating the logic of his own arguments, I do not want him determining what goes on my permanent transcript, and I definitely don't want sanctimonious academics indoctrinating my future children with disdain for America. It is precisely the belief in the lofty ideals of America that enables us to continually make progress, both at home and abroad, in advancing the cause of freedom. If we let these ideals parish, the inherent greatness of the United States will die also.

America 2005 - What a Liberal Sees

2005-04-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

Questions to ask Liberals

2005-04-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

What caused the Great Depression?
What, in your mind, would be a "fair share" of taxes? Give me a rate (%).
Why should "income inequality" concern Americans?
What would you consider income equality? In other words, what quantity goal(s) are we striving for when we suggest ways to reduce income inequality?
Are we willing to tolerate any differences in income or is socialism the only acceptable option?
When political pundits make the point that citizens have come to depend on social security for their retirements and therefore privatization should be rejected, what is your typical reaction?
Do you get angry over the fact that Americans have "come to depend" on the government for income in what is an entirely predictable point in one’s life? Moreover, do you think such a shift away from self sufficiency and towards government dependence is deleterious to a democratic society?
Are we spending enough on education?
How much should we be spending?
How much are we currently spending?
Why is medical care so expensive? Who's to blame and what's the solution?
Do you favor price ceilings as a counter to high drug/health care costs?
How would this affect the economy in the context of the free-market? In other words, what does it "cost" us to gain the "benefit" of lower prices?

Magazines, Blogs, Journals, News Sources etc...

2005-04-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

Conservative/Libertarian/Religious

National Review
Commentary
The Weekly Standard
First Things
Newsmax.com
Townhall.com
WorldNetDaily.com
Public Interest
Heritage Foundation
The American Spectator
The Cato Journal
Human Events
Reason
The American Enterprise

Fairly Even

Time
Newsweek
Atlantic Monthly
Economist
The Wall Street Journal

Liberal

The Nation
The American Prospect
Harper's Magazine
New York Times
Brookings Review

"Lean on me Liberals"

2005-03-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

If you're the type of liberal who actively searches out that which you might could claim offense to; if you use the word "outrage" frequently in protest;

Basically, if you're a liberal, I encourage you to read everything I write on this page because their will aways be material for you here that's guaranteed to provide you with the daily dose of "outrage" so necessary to the committed, activist-for-life liberal's diet.

If you've had a hard day for whatever reason:

Perhaps you, of ALL people, had the misfortune of getting stuck in a Political Science class with the department's sole moderate-to-liberal professor -- you know, the one who reputedly managed to smuggle himself into the academy under the cloak of darkness and was making all those appearances this past Fall on The O'Reilly Factor in an attempt to save his job after the department head found out he was an evangelical Christian and therefore unfit to instruct (he meant indoctrinate) college students?

Or if you have to wait 24 hours before getting your Spring abortion, and as a result, can't hit the Frats with your girlfriends this weekend; if someone flashes you the Ten Commandments or it's just posted somewhere in plain view for all the public to endure; if you discover that your best friend who is black has actually been a closet Republican for years, OMG WHAT! It's on days like these when the Big Lib.O.G. will be your Godsend (uh oh, he said the G-word).

In the same vein, if you're driving in your GEO or electric car or whatever you guys are into these days, and you're flipping through the AM radio dial (forgetting how risky this can be during the weekdays between the hours of 11:00 and 2:00) and that hideous, chauvenistic, racially insensitive, oxycotten shopping hypocrite of the airwaves, Rush Limbaugh, lures you in with The Pretenders' "My City was Gone" and before you have time to think or doing anything he unhesitantly mocks an innocent, civic minded, good-to-the-party-line Canadian socialist whose one fault was simply to pass along a precautionary Judgement Day prediction concerning the increasingly imminent perils of global warming, as an "environmentalist wacko," or

If a George W. Bush bumper sticker reminds you that an evangelical Texan dunce is going to be YOUR president for another four years, by which time every last ethnic minority and if time permits him the homosexuals will have been rounded up using the Patriot Act and shipped off to Guantanimo Bay or Abu Ghraib, all the while embarassing you in front of France, Germany, Spain, and all the premiere practitioners of 21st century European socialism, so ashamed and ridden with guilt that eventually you go hoarse from participating in protest after protest in which the chant of the day was "not in my name;" or

If it suddenly dawns on you that feminism has aborted upwards of 40,000,000, for the most part, Democratic voters when Kerry only needed 60,000 more in Ohio to keep Dubya out of the White House forever... It's okay, I know what you must be thinking. Such unbearable irony could only be the work of Karl Rove who is after all, "a very clever man!"

Hopefully, you now have enough Big Lib.O.G. to get you through until next time.

October 19 - November 23, 2004

2004-10-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

October 19, 2004 (11:45pm)

Because He Could notes:

youngest governor in state’s history

“Hope” as metaphor

Chapter 2, Running on Empathy: “Clinton’s uncanny capacity for empathy is the key to understanding him — both his strengths and his weaknesses” (16). “As always with Clinton, if you want the truth you have to parse the language, to read b/w the lines” (17). “Bill Clinton...had no real experience with which to understand the struggles of average hard-working Americans. To fill this void...Clinton used his amazing ability to empathize emotionally, and to incorporate data intellectually, to understand the world around him” (23).

Clinton Presidency Questions: (1) were 1996 welfare reforms primarily the brainchild of Clinton or the Gingrich Congress? (2) results of NAFTA, Clinton’s trade policies. (3) Was Clinton responsible for reductions in crime? (4) Was Clinton responsible for the reductions in poverty? (5) How successful were Clinton’s diplomatic undertakings? (6) To what extent did Clinton contribute to the economic prosperity of the ‘90s? What argument is made by his sycophants? (7) How large was Clinton’s failure to confront global terrorism? How much blame should he accept? (8) Was the “Gorelick wall,” created during the Clinton administration, new (as Republicans claim)? If not (as Democrats claim), why was it necessary to pass legislation that restated the current institutional status quo?

October 20, 2004 (6:19pm): Time Magazine, October 25, 2004.
Cover Story: “Is God in Our Genes?” Is religion part of nature’s evolutionary scheme? Scientists are asking whether spirituality might be embedded in our DNA. By Jeffrey Kluger.

Recently, Dick Morris expressed admiration for the Bush’s political savvy. He recalls how they initially focused on painting John Kerry as a “flip-flopper.” However, during and after the debates, their strategy shifted. Now depicting the Senator as a “MA liberal” on the “far left bank” of American politics, the Bush people have allowed Kerry to boast of all the new changes he would bring to office. At least temporarily, they have remained silent to Kerry-Edwards’ promises that people like Christopher Reeve will get up and walk when the Democrats are elected b/c of fewer restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research; or that Kerry will provide all Americans with universal health-care. Now, if Kerry tries to go back on some of his promises, the Bush campaign can say “See, we told you. He’s a flip-flopper.” According to Morris, this strategy of emphasizing the flip-flopping and then the liberal leanings of the Democratic candidate effectively boxes Kerry in.

(Let Freedom Ring, 182) according to AMA, w/ all that modern medicine has to offer, partial birth abortion is never needed to save the life or health of the mother. (185-6) Norma McCorvey = Jane Roe in Roe vs. Wade (1973). (219) Tax Freedom Day (the day when Americans have earned enough money to pay off their annual taxes) in 2000 May 1; during Clinton-Gore years, federal tax burden grew by 45%. (241) Clinton twice vetoed Republican welfare reform bills before eventually passing. (244) rate of return on Social Security is 2%.

Beary, Kevin. “African Roots: Slavery was Widespread on the African Continent Long Before Europeans Appeared—and indeed, is still practiced there.” National Review. March 10, 1997.

October 29, 2004 (11:04am)
Supreme Court Decisions
Lee v. Weisman (1992)
Marsh v. Chambers (1983)
Justice John Paul Stevens Profile

Bush on Saddam’s Capture
Paul Bremer on Saddam’s Capture
1960 and 1988 Presidential Debates
2000 VP and 1992, 2000 Presidential Debates

President Nixon and Chuck Colson on John Kerry

November 2004

November 1, 2004 (12:52pm)
The Malkin Media Diversity Test

November 3, 2004 (9:15pm)
Flynn Files
Daniel Flynn - “American Academia is an Intellectual Ghetto” 9/21/04
Because campuses forgo intellectual diversity in favor of superficial diversity, real diversity suffers and consequentially truth suffers too. Despite diversity becoming something of a mantra on most campuses, colleges and universities embrace intellectual conformity more than any major American institution.

*Federal Election Commission reports for the 2004 presidential campaigns demonstrate the overwhelming bias of faculty and administrators. A full 100 percent of contributions from William and Mary, and 97 percent from Harvard, went to the Kerry campaign. Of the top 20 institutions contributing or employing contributors to the Kerry campaign, five are universities — Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, and MIT. George W. Bush's top 20 contributors, unsurprisingly, lists not a singe academic institution.
*The political affiliations of college faculty reveal a profession devoid of intellectual diversity. Faculty registered as Democrats outnumber Republicans by ratios of 14 to 1 at Ithaca College, 12 to 1 at UCLA, 25 to 1 at Dartmouth College, and 31 to 1 at the University of Colorado. A Luntz poll following the 2000 election reported 84% of Ivy League professors voting for Gore, and just 9% voting for Bush. There’s reason to believe the results will be even more lopsided this time around.

Noam Chomsky is Michael Moore with his brain on steroids. In the late ’70s, he deemed stories of Pol Pot’s killing fields capitalist propaganda. Later, he fantasized a conspiracy between ex-Nazis and U.S. government officials to shape the post-World War II world. Prior to the war on terrorism, Chomsky maintained that the U.S. was “in the midst of apparently trying to murder 3 or 4 million people” in Afghanistan, predicting mass starvation and death. Despite Chomsky’s disastrous track record as historian and prophet, at least one study found him to be cited in scholarly journals in the social sciences and the humanities more than any living person.

*The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, published by Harvard University Press, is the work of eleven scholars that ignited a continental firestorm when it first hit bookstores in France in 1997. The authors estimate the century's death toll at the hands of Communist governments (excluding wars) at 100 million people. Country by country, deaths by the state in China stand at 65 million, in the USSR 20 million, Vietnam 1 million, North Korea 2 million, Cambodia 2 million, Eastern Europe 1 million, Latin America 150,000, Africa 1.7 million, and Afghanistan 1.5 million. Additionally, the international Communist movement murdered about 10,000 people throughout the world. Despite the irrefutability of its main thesis, there is plenty within its pages to argue about. The figure of 20 million deaths in the Soviet Union is far smaller than past credible estimates; 65 million deaths-by-government for China is slightly higher than the previous high estimate. The omission of Ghana, for instance, is all the more glaring due to the book's painstaking thoroughness. Forced abortion in China is scarcely mentioned. The infamous "Bloodbath" in North Vietnam is omitted and thus seemingly denied.
*"One can hardly exaggerate the moral disaster of [religion]. We have to thank the Soviet Union for the courage to stop it."
—W.E.B. Du Bois

The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky

November 11, 2004 (5:00pm) Time Magazine 11/15/04

2004 National Exit Polls
Most Important Issue:
Iraq 15%
Economy 20%
Moral Values 22%

Bush
White Males 61%
Married Women 54%
Veterans 57%
weekly Churchgoers 58%
Moral Values Most 79%
Terrorism Most 86%
Blacks 11%
Hispanics 42%
Not Married 40%
First-Time Voters 45%
Disapprove of Iraq 11%
Economy/Jobs Most 18%

Kerry
38%
45%
42%
41%
18%
14%
89%
55%
59%
54%
87%
80%
All 11 states voting on gay marriage rejected it, supporting constitutional bans; Kerry made 36 visits to Ohio: the most by any candidate to one state; 630,000: total # of TV campaign commercials aired this election season; $1.45 billion: total spent at all levels on campaign advertising this year; $140 million: amount raised by liberal 527 groups during the campaign; $75 million: amount raised by conservative 527 groups; 2,256: # of lawyers Democrats sent to Ohio to monitor voting. All 5 Presidents who’ve run for re-election during a war have won; a big turnout wasn’t good for Democrats this time; no Republican has ever won w/out carrying Ohio; If consumer-confidence index at election time is above 99, the incumbent’s party remains in office: since 1968, only Al Gore had been the exception. But the low October figure of 92.8 didn’t hamper Bush;

“In Victory’s Glow,” by Nancy Gibbs. 15 million more voters; 193,00 polling places; no non-southern Democrat has won presidency in 44 years; 55% said country was moving in wrong direction; 49% job approval; 97% approval among Republicans surpassed Reagan; “Critics who saw his faith in contagious democracy as naive may have missed the point that the American people have always been attracted to the idea;” “through his radical assertion of presidential power, showed what a difference it makes who is the in the White House;” (reminiscent of Andrew Jackson)

*Joe Klein’s article, “The Values Gap”

November 20, 2004 (1:09am)
Garrison Keillor - NPR radio host, after Kerry lost election, joked about Fundamentalist Christians not being allowed to vote.

November 23, 2004 (2:56pm)
Yesterday (I think), Rush Limbaugh predicted that Hillary would NOT be the Democratic nominee in 2008. This was interesting b/c most of the other commentators, including Hannity, are absolutely convinced that it will be the New York Senator.

Several weeks ago, I watched either Booknotes or BookTV on the C-SPAN 2 website, and the interview was with a Republican Congressman from Oklahoma who gained election with the 1994 “Contract with America” class (Tom Coburn, now a senator). The man had written a book criticizing how Washington turns outsiders into insiders, and he described that b/c of constant reelection concerns, House members tend not to fulfill campaign promises. He commented on Newt Gingrich (whom he characterized as brilliant in intellect — a truly great thinker — but flawed in leadership as House Speaker), Dick Armey, and Trent Lott (the OK Congressman expressed his frustration with the MS Senator over the inability to get needed legislation passed, and Lott basically said, “after the election, we can start getting things done again”), among other prominent political leaders at the time. The ex-Congressman’s primary argument was for implementing term limits which, in his opinion, would eliminate much of the partisanship that prevents the Congress from acting in the best interests of “the people.” I find opinions like this (for example, the call for one 6-year term instead of two 4-year terms for the U.S. President), fascinating. While such monumental and consequential changes in term limit laws (or lack thereof) strike me as highly unlikely, I think Coburn makes a very good point. Election woes plague all of our elected representatives and inevitably lead to government officials not looking out for the public. I believe this to be true for Democrats and Republicans alike. Perhaps one day in the not so distant future, operations on Capital Hill will become more transparent and open to the public.

Following the overwhelming Republican victory in the 2004 elections, a significant number of prominent voices within the Democratic leadership (even James Carville) have expressed an understanding that their party has become out of touch with mainstream America, especially on “moral issues.” I believe this characterization is painfully accurate. Yet, there remains a very vocal and powerful segment of the Democratic party (especially in the elite media) that seems unable or unwilling to grasp this fundamental truth, and instead, appears to be turning back to the same, old tactics of moral relativism and academic condescension — tactics which, I feel, play a large role in terms of fueling the ire of many “red state” voters towards liberal, New England elites. I’m not sure if this should make me feel happy, furious, or just incredulous. My partisan side says, “let them do it; it will help Republicans win more elections in the future.” At the same time, the hypocrisy of Democrats who claim to be “tolerant,” “open-minded,” and members of the party most closely aligned with regular, middle- and lower-class Americans, makes me, at times, quite contemptuous. Finally, Northern elites whom I perceive as being blinded by ideology and as having abandoned rationality fall into the category of “intellectual morons” (to quote Daniel Flynn). I view such people as utterly incorrigible, and as such, I try not to let their lunacy to affect me.
However, I did have a relatively new thought today. Liberals define themselves as being committed to the principle of diversity (ethnic, opinion, religion, etc..) and as defending tolerance for opposing viewpoints. It’s worth noting that I have no doubt that these self-images are (in most cases) both genuine and well-intentioned. Nevertheless, I’ve observed a prejudice on the part of some (but not all) well-respected, (in my respects) good-hearted liberals which, in my opinion, undercuts the core values liberals stand for. Some of the clearest examples of this prejudice can be found in articles of syndicated columnists like Maureen Dowd, Michael Kinsley, Julianne Malveaux, Frank Rich, and Anne Quindlen, in the rhetoric of Washington officials like John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and John Edwards, and in the commentary of political activists like Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Bill Maher. Yet, my belief, based on personal experience with my liberal peers and an overall perception of American politics, is that many liberal Democrats (not just media elites) are guilty of holding this prejudice. What kind of prejudice am I talking about? Basically, it’s a mentality of moral superiority and condescension towards conservative social values (pro- life, traditional marriage, religion, etc...) which leads to the ostracization of Southerners, Mid-Westerners, and those portions of the country where conservative thought enjoys majority acceptance. I’m still playing around with what term I should designate to describe this type of prejudice... (Southist, conservativist, politicist, liberal/progressive/democratic supremacist, hypocrite of tolerance, tolerance hypocrite, *liberal charlatan - when we think about what “liberalism” is supposed to mean, it is clear that many are actually charlatans of U.S. notions of liberalism/progressivism, the bigotry of “liberal open-mindedness,” ideological bigotry/prejudice/discrimination). The new thought I had wasn’t that some liberals are deeply hypocritical. It was that this form of prejudice deserves a formal label - that it is real and should be recognized just as any other type of bigotry (racism, sexism, homophobia) gains definition.

Major Points of Disagreement: Conservatism v. Liberalism,
Instances of Liberal Bigotry
(1) Abortion — anti-choice v. pro-life; utilization of a woman’s “constitutional right” and manipulation of Roe v. Wade decision - right to privacy v. a woman’s reproductive rights;
(2) Pro-traditional marriage  anti-gays/homophobia/hatred of gays; nature v. nurture argument: you can nurture homo/heterosexuality, to say people are simply born gay or straight is an oversimplification; when this truth is recognized, liberals might find it easier to understand our resistance to gay marriage and simultaneous support for gays as people; Supreme Court overriding public will;
*(3) Morality: relativism v. absolutism — good v. evil, “understanding” criminals and why people do bad things v. punishing them; moral relativism when judging the international community but moral absolutes at home: the double standard; some people are “evil” v. the actions of people illustrate that “evil” does exist and is a real concept;
(4) Religion/Christianity - “imposing” beliefs on others; wall of separation; establishment of religion or acknowledgment of God? Ignorance of historical evidence as to intention behind 1st Amendment; failure to acknowledge great benefits that come from belief in a higher power, failure to show respect for the deeply held but different beliefs of others; more than favoring wall of separation: perceivable hostility to anything religious;
(5) Personal responsibility v. welfare entitlements and income redistribution: the distortion of conservative intentions; race-card, threat of racist label;
(6) 4th Amendment (?) and right to bear arms — selective protection of the Constitution; selective attention to historical basis of certain parts of the Constitution;
x(7) philosophy that small government is best v. taking school lunches from children/medicine from seniors/housing from minorities etc...
x(8) Spiritual morality v. economic morality
(9) Iraq — lies v. bad information; appeasement/Clinton v. confrontation/Bush; price of freedom v. free freedom; role of morality in Iraq war; neo-conservatism v. imperialism: the problem of liberal selectivity in applying moral absolutism or relativism in analyzing the U.S. or the international community, helping minorities/women/poor etc... but not deposing dictators who oppress groups traditionally receiving much attention from liberals;
(10) Patriot Act/Iraq — failure to acknowledge the good intentions of the Bush Administration/ the positives of the Act; exaggeration of intensity and frequency of wrongs committed due to the Patriot Act and failure to provide perspective as to what dangers we would be facing w/out it; misunderstanding of the terrorist threat; Vietnam mentality: self-fulfilling prophecies of military failure: the line b/w well-intentioned dissent that takes place in a free society and deliberate attempts to undermine the war effort (ideologically driven to aid U.S. military defeat);
(11) United Nations and International Community — our obligations; international law; the line b/w working together with foreign nations and preserving American interests; effectiveness (successes v. failures) of U.N.; Oil for Food, Rawanda, Somalia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Haiti, etc...; Abu Ghraib; moral equivalency: U.S. v. International Community; globalism v. isolationism; assistance v. occupation;
(12) Taxes
(13) Health Care — medicaid, medicare, stem-cell research,
(14) Affirmative Action - definition of “affirmative action” not universal: overcome current discrimination v. make up for past racism? equal opportunity v. equal outcome? color-blind v. color-conscious? ideally, should it be race based or economically based? The line between equal opportunity and socialism?
*(15) Constitutional Rights: Judicial v. Legislative v. Executive — exploitation of “rights” purportedly guaranteed by the Constitution/constitutional interpretation (abortion, religion) to legislate from the bench against overwhelming public opinion;
*(16) What is America/What is America all about?
(17) Nationalism, Patriotism, Internationalism, and Perceptions of America: its place in the world community, basic character/goodness,

liberals tend to value the perceived “other” (for lack of a better phrasing): for example, they support gays, women’s rights, diversity and accommodate reprehensible foreign countries b/c, by nature of being a “liberal,” they’re inclined to side with or come to an understanding with/acceptance of what is differs from traditional American culture, regardless of the particular merits of the differing party/view. Thus, while their efforts to understand the international community and see things from other perspectives are noble, their tendency to embrace the other side when they shouldn’t is an unfortunate side effect. The same goes with social issues like gay marriage, abortion, sexuality, affirmative action, etc...

What is America? (16)
(7)Big v. Small Federal Government, capitalism v. socialism?
(5)Responsibility to provide public needs/welfare
(14)Affirmative Action
(13)Health Care
Welfare
(12)Taxes

[much of “What is America” falls into category of “morality” too]

Morality (3)
Absolutism v. Relativism
Good v. Evil?
USA v. UN
Excusing bad behavior
Anything Goes Culture
Hip-Hop Music
Religion v. Secularism in America
Spiritual v. Economic Preoccupation
Gay Marriage
Abortion

you can’t stereotype blacks (they commit more crimes, have more out of wedlock births, score lower on standardized tests etc...) but you can stereotype the fanatic “religious right” that voted Bush into office and the gun-toting, evangelical, backward, intolerant white South.

October 13 - October 14, 2004

2004-10-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

October 13, 2004 (1:26am)
Democratic Presidential Candidates Debates 2003 12/10/03 ABC News & WMUR-TV sponsored; shortly following Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean. Edwards says, “we will not take money from Washington lobbyists in this presidential campaign.”

Charles Pickering on 60 Minutes

October 13, 2004 (10:23pm)
*Kerry and the Democrats always talk about how Bush sides with the evil “big corporations.” What corporation is bigger and more powerful than the U.S. federal government?

Ted Kennedy Speech on Iraq Policy (1/14/04)
Ted Kennedy on Iraq and Bush Administration (3/5/04)

October 14, 2004 (9:13am)
*3rd Presidential Debate: 10/13/04
President Bush in response to whether or not he thinks homosexuality is a choice or from birth: After admitting that he doesn’t know, Bush for the first time provides a good explanation for the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He says that the proposal was in response to activist judges whom he feared were redefining the definition of marriage in a way inconsistent with predominant views and basic values of Americans. Bush doesn’t want the judiciary making decisions that should be left to state legislatures or the legislative branch in general. When Kerry gets his chance to respond, he almost immediately makes use of the fact that VP Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian. This is remarkable considering that John Edwards, in the VP debate, also brought up Cheney’s daughter’s sexuality. In the post-debate analysis, several commentators express outrage over Kerry’s and Edwards’ despicable exploitation of Cheney’s daughter, saying that this is the lowest form of politics. I tend to agree. The Kerry/Edwards team knows that the Republican base overwhelmingly disapproves of gay marriage and homosexuality in general, and I think bringing up a sensitive, deeply personal issue in the Cheney family oversteps what should be considered fair game.

*Time Magazine(10/18/04): Joe Klein, “No Pain? No Gain for Either Candidate.” Concerning Bush in the 2nd Presidential debate, Klein writes, “His last half hour, when stem-cell research and abortion were discussed, was his best.” Klein goes on to say, “The abortion question, asked by a young woman near the end of the debate, was a micro-history of the entire campaign. Kerry offered a labyrinthine answer. He was against abortion (as a Catholic) before he was for it (as a public servant). This is known in political circles as the Cuomo dodge... the President responded. ‘We’re not going to spend federal taxpayers’ money on abortion’... That was, in effect, the state of the campaign before the debates began: Kerry muddy, Bush simple and clear.” Klein later writes, “The most embarrassing moments for Kerry concerned taxes. At one point, he appropriately chided Bush, ‘This is the first time the United States has ever had a tax cut when we’re at war.’ But then, in the very same answer, he said, ‘I want to put money in your pocket...I have a proposal for a tax cut for all people earning less than the $200,000.’ This is infuriating, a textbook example of Kerry trying to have it all ways.” Klein concludes that, “Kerry has seemed the more graceful, intelligent and, yes, likeable guy in the first two debates, but there is a threshold he has not yet crossed: he has not demonstrated the political courage necessary to be President in tough times.”

Charles Krauthammer, “The Case for Fearmongering: Do candidates alarm people when they talk of danger? They should.” Lately, Vice-President Dick Cheney received a fair amount of criticism for saying that electing John Kerry would increase the chances of America getting “hit again” by terrorists. For example, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi commented, “It is completely inappropriate and dangerous for the Vice President to, in effect, threaten the American people, to be part of instilling fear into our country.” John Edwards said, “Dick Cheney’s scare tactics crossed the line.” Krauthammer addresses these criticisms while reminding us that Democrats have used the very same scare tactics: “Senator Edward Kennedy thunders that re-electing Bush will make a nuclear 9/11 more likely.” In conclusion, Krauthammer states, “The ‘90s are over. It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s Hiroshima—on American soil. If that doesn’t scare you, it should. We could use more fear in this election, not less. Cheney should be commended for his candor. Kennedy too.”

*Duelfer Report on Iraq’s WMDs: Key Findings Adobe File

Political Figures: Black Listed
Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry campaign chairman - says Mary Cheney’s sexuality is “fair game.”
Paul Krugman, New York Times - dismisses the fact that Russia, Germany, France etc... all thought Iraq had WMDs by saying it was all politicized; at the same time, he and fellow liberals complain that those same countries weren’t more eager to sign on in Iraq, ignoring the role the Oil for Food scandal undoubtedly played.
Frank Rich, New York Times film critic - leads charge against Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
Dennis Kucinich, Congressman (D-OH) - accuses U.S. soldiers of sniping Iraqi civilians.
Al Franken, comedian/satirist - speaking at Vanderbilt, Franken calls Charles Pickering a racist.
Jimmy Carter - says U.S. elections don’t pass the international standard, yet when asked to monitor them, like he does for second and third world countries throughout the world, he says he doesn’t have the time. Not to mention the utter ridiculousness of the charge, but shouldn’t the legitimacy of U.S. elections be Carter’s top priority unless he just wanted to set up an excuse for John Kerry’s defeat come November 2?
Bernie Ward, radio talk-show host. America not greatest, freest country God ever gave man.
Henri Brooks (TN state legislator, refused to recite Pledge of Allegiance; American flag is symbol of racism)
Ted Turner - says Christianity is for losers.
Chris Dodd, Senator (D-CT) - one of the leaders in calling for Trent Lott to step down as majority leader in the Senate; yet Dodd later does something very similar, praising ex-KKK member Robert Byrd, saying he would be right for this country at any time during its history. Hypocrite?
Ted Rall - cartoonist
Ramsey Clark - said you could call Jesus a terrorist too b/c he was hard on money lenders.
Political Figures: General, Historical, no longer holding office
George Tenet, CIA director
Louis Freeh, FBI director
James Woolsey, CIA director
Jamie Gorelick (D) general counsel of Department of Defense (1993-1994); deputy attorney general (1994-1997); member of 9/11 Commission.
Lee Hamilton (D-IN) 34 years in U.S. Congress until 1999; Vice-chair of 9/11 Commission.
Dick Ben-Veniste
Slade Gorton (R-WA) U.S. Senate (1982-2000); member of 9/11 Commission.
Thomas Kean (R-NJ) NJ governor (1982-1990); President of Drew University (1990-present); Chairman of 9/11 Commission
Bob Kerrey (D-NE) Nebraska governor (1984-1988); U.S. Senate (1988-2000); member of 9/11 Commission.

Clinton Administrations
Al Gore, Vice-president
Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State
Janet Reno, Attorney General
Sandy Berger, National Security Advisor
William Cohen, Secretary of Defense
Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury
Leon Panetta, Chief of Staff
George Stephanopoulos, White House advisor
Richard Holbrooke, U.S. permanent representative to U.N.
Dick Morris
James Carville
Paul Begala
Joe Lockheart

1st Bush Administration
Dick Cheney, Vice-president
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Steven Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense (?)
Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor
John Ashcroft, Attorney General
Colin Powell, Secretary of State
John Snow, Secretary of Treasury
Andrew Card, Chief of Staff
Don Evans, Secretary of Commerce
Tom Ridge, Department of Homeland Security
Scott McClellan, Press Secretary
Paul Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority head (Iraq)
Dan Senor, senior advisor to Bremer
Karl Rove
Karen Hughes

2nd Bush Administration
Dick Cheney, Vice-president
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State
Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General

October 14, 2004 (2:31pm)
70% military casualties in Iraq are white.
±70% of black children are born out of wedlock.
Rev. Jesse Jackson fathered an illegitimate child.

October 14, 2004 (4:31pm)
Christopher Reeve dies the other day: In this context and following the 2nd debate, John Edwards says that, when John Kerry is elected, people like Christopher Reeve “will get up and walk again” b/c of Kerry’s commitment to stem-cell research. Of course, this is totally inconsistent with the facts, not to mention outlandish. Is Kerry God now? For people like Reeves who suffer from spinal chord injuries, advances in stem-cell technology will be of no benefit. Morever, stem-cell research is in its early stages of development, and no one really knows what could be possible in the future.

October 7 - 12, 2004

2004-10-12T13:16:00.000-07:00

October 7, 2004 (4:35pm)
John Kerry Flip-Flops:
DNC (7/29/04) - “I will be a commander in chief who’ll never mislead us into war”
Face the Nation (9/23/01) - “It is something that we know, for instance, Saddam Hussein has used WMD against his own people, and there is some evidence that there are efforts to try to secure these kinds of weapons and even test them”
The O’Reilly Factor (12/11/01) - “He is and has acted like a terrorist and he has engaged in activities that are unacceptable... I think we ought to put the heat on Saddam Hussein. I’ve said that for a number of years, Bill, I criticized the Clinton administration for backing off of the inspections when ambassador Butler was giving us strong evidence that we needed to continue. I think we need to put the pressure on no matter what the evidence is about September 11th.”
Hardball (2/5/02)
Larry King Live (12/14/01): KING: What about enhancing this war, Senator Kerry. What are your thoughts on going on further than Afghanistan, all terrorist places...KERRY: Oh, I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue, for instance, Saddam Hussein. I think we...KING: We should go to Iraq?KERRY: Well, that -- what do you and how you choose to do it, we have a lot of options. Absent smoking gun evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the immediate events of September 11, the president doesn't have the authorization to proceed forward there.
San Francisco Chronicle (9/6/02) "We're not getting enough to make an informed decision," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
New York Times Kerry op-ed (9/6/02) “If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community’s already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act.”
Face the Nation (9/14/03) - Interviewer: “If that amendment does not pass, will you then vote against the $87 billion?” Kerry: “I don’t think any United States Senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That’s irresponsible. What is responsible is for the administration to do this properly now.”
(S, 1689 10/17/03) vote against $87B
S.J. Res. 2 (1/12/91) vote against Gulf War
1st Debate: “The reason for going to war was WMD, not the removal of Saddam Hussein.”
CNN: “Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off w/out Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer w/ his capture don’t have the judgement to be president.”
Says we should increase funding for the war, but criticized the president for spending $200B on the war.”
Kerry brags in Detroit about owning a bunch of SUVs, but when asked about his comments on earth day, he first denied them only to later revise his answer to “my family owns a suburban.”

So, is Kerry a Flip-Flopper? My answer:

When asked whether he thought Saddam would cooperate and allow weapons inspectors back in, or if it would require the U.S. to use force, Kerry said that, although he didn’t envision Saddam ever fully complying, it was necessary for the U.S. to first pursue a route of renewed inspections through the U.N. If, or when this process failed, then he presumably would’ve approved preemptive action in Iraq. Kerry predicated his contention that Saddam posed a serious threat to the U.S. and the world on the dictator’s history as a terrorist and terrorist supporter, and specifically, on the possibility that he might leak WMDs to hostile third parties. The Senator voiced agreement with the President’s decision to treat terrorists and nations harboring them without distinction and to make this a global war. Kerry’s argument to pressure Iraq did not originate from an impression that there were ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda.
John Kerry also said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in December of 2001 that without a smoking gun linking Hussein to 9/11, the President had no authorization for the use of force in Iraq. This strikes me as somewhat inconsistent with his earlier statements. If Kerry endorsed the Bush Administration’s stance on the global war on terror, then the fact that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, whether or not he had links to al-Qaeda and 9/11, was enough to call for aggressive measures. Kerry’s statement also provokes the question, “whose authorization did the President need?” From Congress? From the international community? Although I strongly disagree with the senator’s wisdom, I think I understand his position. Kerry asserts the president’s right to defend the nation with or without the consent of the global community, but only after exhausting all possible options in the U.N. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with this stand. In reality, however, the U.N.’s incompetence and inefficiency render it virtually worthless and even potentially dangerous to the U.S... (not finished)
Michael Moore on “The O’Reilly Factor” Transcript

3/16/04 “I actually did vote for the $87B before...” 7/12/04 - says he is proud that he and Edwards voted against.

October 8, 2004 (6:09am)
Donald Rumsfeld Speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (10/4/04)

*The 911 Commission Report Summary

October 11, 2004 (12:16pm)
2nd Presidential Debate: Kerry claims he always said Iraq was a threat; later in the debate he criticizes Bush for diverting resources from Afghanistan and focusing on Iraq where there was no threat.

Rush Limbaugh: last year Kerry’s paid 12.5% in taxes; Bush paid ±30%

October 12, 2004 (11:26am)
In April Kerry buys into Bob Woodward’s conspiracy that Bush plans on cutting a secret deal with the Saudis to lower oil prices before the election. Today, Kerry accuses Bush of keeping prices high so his rich oil buddies will reap huge profits. This, of course, is completely ridiculous; not to mention it contradicts his previous statements. Why on earth would the President intentionally spike oil prices right before an election? It makes no sense. And Kerry, no doubt, knows this. So why toss around such accusations he obviously can’t reasonably believe himself?

*I just remembered something from the Democratic Primary Debates/Forums: while several of the candidates criticized Bush’s tax cuts, saying they benefitted the wealthy and did little for the middle class, Joe Lieberman corrected them. The Connecticut senator said something along the lines of: “Now let’s be honest. President Bush’s tax cuts have given middle class families, on average, over a thousand/several thousand dollars. It’s inaccurate to say his cuts don’t benefit the middle class.”

October 1-6

2004-10-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

October 6, 2004 (8:05pm)
Hannity and Colmes: Poll Tracker scrolls through polls on the bottom of the screen; Kerry seems to be winning certain key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico, Iowa, which he wasn’t winning before the debates; this worries me very much, even though I still believe Bush will win. It also doesn’t help that I had a dream, or rather a nightmare, a few nights ago that John Kerry won the election. I was surprised at how upset I was when I woke up.

October 1, 2004 (10:33pm)
Real Time with Bill Maher, Guests: Call-in, Dixie Chicks, Tucker Carlson. Panel, George Carlin, Steve Moore, Katty Kay.

Tucker Carlson (Crossfire) - supported Bush when Iraq War a success; now believes we overestimated Iraqis' desire for freedom, war not going well; undecided voter. "You'll never hear me attacking a reporter if what's being reported is true. Period." "Reporter has the right to report the truth. Period." even if truth endangers troops.

On Religion: Carlin rants about how religion is responsible for more death, war, guilt, etc.. Christians are superstitious, mentally ill. Audience roars in applause after this. Katty Kay: worries her that President has to go to church; doesn't understand why he feels he has to go to church; only 20% British churchgoers, Americans 80%. Carlin: Gov't spends every waking minute trying to tilt the system against the little guy. It's rich vs. poor and that's the way it always will be. Maher: "poor think that one day they will be rich." Moore: that's what makes America a great country.

October 5, 2004 (8:13pm)

Vice-Presidential Debates

Moderator asks John Edwards: if John Kerry had been President, would Saddam Hussein still be in power? Edwards responds with the typical, "We would've pressured Hussein, but we would've done it the right way etc.." Cheney gets his 90 second rebuttal but never calls Edwards on his lack of response. Why didn't he just say, "What Senator Edwards just said was a confusing way of answering, ‘Yes. Saddam would still be in power'?"

"You have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test" - Kerry on going to war (1st debate).

8:21 pm, Cheney fucks Edwards up, bad. $96B not $200B. %50 U.S. casualties, not 90%. Download the transcript for this portion of the debate. Cheney finally brings up Kerry's Senate voting record! Praise Jesus! Brings up how they voted against $87B when Dean was winning the primaries. If they can't handle Dean pressure, how can they handle bigger pressures... Edwards brings up the fact that Cheney voted to cut defenses when he was Secretary of Defense in 1988. Brings up Halliburton... Cheney: for war when good, against it when bad... Edwards: Kerry has been absolutely consistent from the beginning. Weapons inspectors needed time to do job. They would've figured out he had no weapons, no connection to Al-Qaeda... Moderator: French/German officials have said they have no intention to send troops no matter what, but that's been a big part of your campaign... Edwards: sidesteps the question of internationalizing effort. Says success brings troops, Kerry will have success... Cheney: they have no plan to internationalize; says Gulf War coalition wasn't stronger; Kerry called "coalition of the coerced and the bribed;" demeans sacrifice of allies by saying "Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time;" brings up how Kerry criticized Allawi... Edwards: 1st Gulf War cost $5B; Now it's $200B no matter what Cheney says; %90 coalition casualties... Edwards: what Cheney says is inconsistent w/ facts on ground; says administration opposed 9/11 Commission, Department of Homeland Security, they weren't aggressive enough; says they would put into effect all of 9/11 Commission's recommendations... Cheney: tries to link Al-Qaeda to Iraq with Zarqawi; earlier he mentioned $25,000 Saddam offered to families of suicide bombers... Moderator: asks Cheney about how he said businesses should be allowed to do business with Iran (download Cheney's answer off internet)... Edwards: says there are some 60 countries with Al-Qaeda members in it; are we supposed to go after all of them? Says Cheney, when CEO of Halliburton, played millions of dollars of fines for false financial information; brings up contracts they got in Iraq, how they're under investigation... Cheney: factcheck.com has real information on Halliburton... Edwards: download answer off of internet. Cheney: said Edwards has one of the worst records in the Senate; he's never there; missed 33/36 judiciary meetings; says Cheney, as VP, is president of the Senate and this was the first time he met Edwards... Edwards: 1/10 who voted against head-start, against MLK holiday, etc... (download transcript)... Cheney avoids rebuttal. Download this part of what Moderator says about how Edwards didn't answer her question about Israel.

IFILL: ... I want people to understand exactly what it is, as you said, that Senator Kerry did say.
He said, "You've got to do" -- you know, he was asked about preemptive action at the last debate -- he said, "You've got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons." What is a global test if it's not a global veto?

EDWARDS: Well, let me say, first, he said in the same segment -- I don't remember precisely where it was connected with what you just read -- but he said, point blank, "We will never give anyone a veto over the security of the United States of America." What he's saying is we're going to go back to the proud tradition of the United States of America and presidents of the United States of America for the last 50 to 75 years. First, we're going to actually tell the American people the truth. We're going to tell them the truth about what's happening. We're not going to suggest to them that things are going well in Iraq or anyplace else when, in fact, they're not. We're going to make sure that the American people know the truth about why we are using force and what the explanation for it is. And it's not just the American people. We're also going to make sure that we tell the world the truth. Because the reality is, for America to lead, for America to do what it's done for 50 years before this president and vice president came into office, it is critical that we be credible. It is critical that they believe that when America takes action, they can trust what we're doing, what we say, what we say at the United Nations, what we say in direct conversations with leaders of the world -- of other countries. They need to know that the credibility of the United States is always good, because they will not follow us without that. And unfortunately, we're seeing the consequences of that right now. It's one of the reasons that we're having so much difficulty getting others involved in the effort in Iraq. You know, we've taken 90 percent of the coalition causalities. American taxpayers have borne 90 percent of the costs of the effort in Iraq. And we see the result of there not being a coalition: The first Gulf war cost America $5 billion. We're at $200 billion and counting. John Kerry will never give up control over the security of the United States of America to any other country. We will not outsource our responsibility to keep this country safe.

IFILL: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds to respond.

CHENEY: Well, Gwen, the 90 percent figure is just dead wrong. When you include the Iraqi security forces that have suffered casualties, as well as the allies, they've taken almost 50 percent of the casualties in operations in Iraq, which leaves the U.S. with 50 percent, not 90 percent.

With respect to the cost, it wasn't $200 billion. You probably weren't there to vote for that. But $120 billion is, in fact, what has been allocated to Iraq. The rest of it's for Afghanistan and the global war on terror.

The allies have stepped forward and agreed to reduce and forgive Iraqi debt to the tune of nearly $80 billion by one estimate. That, plus $14 billion they promised in terms of direct aid, puts the overall allied contribution financially at about $95 billion, not to the $120 billion we've got, but, you know, better than 40 percent. So your facts are just wrong, Senator.

You also have a situation where you talk about credibility. It's awfully hard to convey a sense of credibility to allies when you voted for the war and then you declared: Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. You voted for the war, and then you voted against supporting the troops when they needed the equipment, the fuel, the spare parts and the ammunition and the body armor. You're not credible on Iraq because of the enormous inconsistencies that John Kerry and you have cited time after time after time during the course of the campaign. Whatever the political pressures of the moment requires, that's where you're at. But you've not been consistent, and there's no indication at all that John Kerry has the conviction to successfully carry through on the war on terror.

EDWARDS: May I respond briefly?

What the vice president has just said is just a complete distortion. The American people saw John Kerry on Thursday night. They don't need the vice president or the president to tell them what they saw. They saw a man who was strong, who had conviction, who is resolute, who made it very clear that he will do everything that has to be done to find terrorists, to keep the American people safe. He laid out his plan for success in Iraq, made it clear that we were committed to success in Iraq. We have to be, because we have troops on the ground there and because they have created a haven for terrorists.

IFILL: Mr. Vice President, you have 30 seconds.

CHENEY: Your rhetoric, Senator, would be a lot more credible if there was a record to back it up. There isn't. And you cannot use "talk tough" during the course of a 90-minute debate in a presidential campaign to obscure a 30-year record in the United States Senate and, prior to that by John Kerry, who has consistently come down on the wrong side of all the major defense issues that he's faced as a public official.

October 6, 2004 (8:05pm)
Hannity and Colmes: Poll Tracker scrolls through polls on the bottom of the screen; Kerry seems to be winning certain key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico, Iowa, which he wasn't winning before the debates; this worries me very much, even though I still believe Bush will win. It also doesn't help that I had a dream, or rather a nightmare, a few nights ago that John Kerry won the election. I was surprised at how upset I was when I woke up.

September 2004

2004-09-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

September 2004
9-10-04: Edwards, in response to (potentially forged) documents appearing on CBS's 60 Minutes which accused Bush, once again, of wrong behavior in the National Guard, says, "I think they are reasonable and legitimate questions the White House ought to answer." Despite their pattern of response to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads that they were basically ridiculous, nasty, unfounded attack ads that didn't warrant, at least in Kerry's mind, any response, now when the tables are turned, Kerry and Edwards don't hesitate to probe Bush for a response. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out with Dan Rather and CBS over possibly airing forged documents.

"If we remain silent to the extremism w/in our community, then we should not expect anyone to listen to us when we complain of stereotyping and discrimination by non-Muslims." -www.freemuslims.com

9-13-04: Kerry plays race card. "We're not gonna sit by and watch another one million votes go uncounted" etc..

9-15-04: Pat Caddell appears on Hannity and Colmes and speaks on implosion of Democratic party. Although a Democrat, Pat seemed more committed to reality than ideology; he was a contrast to an earlier and more noted partisan guest, Carl Bernstein.

3-8-04: Kerry is only 1 of 14 Senators who voted against DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), the 1996 federal law that says no state is obligated to recognize same-sex marriages performed by another state. He described DOMA as an instance of "gay bashing on the floor of the U.S. Senate." Yet, on Good Mourning America, last week, Kerry said a federal amendment was unnecessary b/c DOMA shielded states that opposed gay marriage; this put Kerry in an awkward position of supporting a law he voted against.

9-27-04: Nancy Gibbs article "Blue Truth, Red Truth." Gibbs writes, "facts have value only to the extent that they support the truth" (referring to differences in "red truth" and "blue truth"). "Above all, the stakes of the outcome seem to change the rules. If you believe that your child's safety depends on the right guy winning, what tactics can possibly be out of bounds, and what scruples—political or intellectual, or legal or journalistic—are more important than ultimate victory."

9-23-04: At a joint news conference at the White House, Iraq's Prime Minister Allawi speaks optimistically about Iraq's progress and its future hopes, thanking Bush and the American people's sacrifices for the freedom of his people. 30 minutes later, Kerry holds a conference and says Allawi contradicted himself and the reality on the ground. Referring to the contradiction, Allawi had earlier said, "Foreign terrorists are still pouring in, and they're trying to inflict damage on Iraq and to undermine the process, democratic process in Iraq, and indeed, this is their last stand...We are winning. We will continue to win. We are going to prevail." The point is that Kerry is hurting relations with Iraq's Prime Minister, and I don't see how making these comments, if Kerry is elected, would help the U.S. win the war in Iraq.

Southern Religion and Culture Essay

2004-08-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. DuBois

Two of the most influential leaders in African American history emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Booker T. Washington preached a conservative message of accommodation and focused on ways of self-improvement. At the other end of the spectrum, W.E.B. Du Bois espoused a radical strategy of political action and protest. Their ideological conflict helped produce the character of the modern civil rights movement.

My thesis is that, while Washington’s racial philosophy had pragmatic appeal, it failed to adequately respond to changes in the racial climate, and as a result, lost out to the "radical," protest-oriented social activism endorsed by Du Bois. The purpose of this paper is to show how a changing racial context framed mainstream opinion.

The following sources were incorporated into this paper: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1989); W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing my Life from the Last Decade of its First Century (1991); Manning Marable, Black Leadership (1998); Thomas Sowell, "Up From Slavery" (1994); Ramon G. Vela, "The Washington-Du Bois Controversy and African-American Protest: Ideological Conflict and its Consequences" (2002);

In an historic 1895 speech at the Atlanta Exposition, Booker T. Washington won the near universal favor of whites, and almost overnight, secured a place as the most influential African American leader of his time by urging accommodation to the status quo over agitation for political rights. As part of this compromise, he proposed that blacks be given permission to develop their own economic, social, and educational institutions within the framework of white society. Many blacks pushing for a prompt end to racial segregation and disenfranchisement fairly criticized both the priorities and rhetoric of this approach. However, as evidenced by his programs for economic and cultural development, Washington’s racial philosophy reflected more an understanding of the southern cultural context than an indifference to class inequality.

When added to the profound disillusionment of Civil War defeat and the bitter resentment resulting from northern occupation throughout Reconstruction, the humiliation of seeing former slaves acquire equal rights made the restoration of home rule in the South a time for whites to "put blacks back in their place." In light of this atmosphere of hostility, Washington adopted a racial philosophy which stressed economic and cultural advancement over political rights. This, he believed, would naturally lead to complete equality. To accomplish these goals, Washington espoused a pragmatic strategy that both recognized the need for white philanthropy and the reality that blacks would, ultimately, receive little outside assistance. For example, as a result of his accommodation, he was able to accumulate the political clout and financial capital necessary to fund certain programs like the Tuskegee Institute and the National Negro Business League (Vela, 93). Through these institutions, Washington furthered his ideas of cultural well-being by teaching "racial pride and a set of values that included thrift, hard work, obedience, and cleanliness" (Vela, 92). Economically, the curriculum sought to organize black businesses around a free enterprise, anti-union system and offered vocational skills of a "practical and technical kind" (Vela, 93). In essence, Washington encouraged a policy of self-help based on good work habits, moral character, and racial solidarity because, as Du Bois said of him: "He had no faith in white people—not the slightest" (Sowell, 85). Ironically, this same distrust elicited quite a different, non-accommodationist response from the "radical" group.

Unlike the southern Washington whose "conservative" approach focused on the basic needs of "freed plantation slaves," Du Bois, a northern intellectual, placed greater attention on the theoretical concerns of "free persons of color" (Sowell, 90). In this regard, the "radicals" disagreed with Washington’s priorities. Du Bois, for example, promoted liberal education for the "talented tenth" over the more practical, vocational training offered at Tuskegee (Sowell, 89). Most importantly, they argued that Washington’s subordination of political matters hurt blacks. Without equal rights, black businessmen would be unable to protect themselves and true economic progress would be impossible. Thus, they promoted political protest against segregation and disenfranchisement. Morever, they found Washington’s public rhetoric and praise of oppressive whites unacceptable. By downplaying the negative effects of racial discrimination and not expressing a desire to end it, Washington communicated contentment with present conditions. Despite these objections, many radicals still saw potential in the "Atlanta Compromise" articulated in 1895 and sought to avoid confrontation. As Du Bois himself wrote, "I regarded his Atlanta speech as a statesmanlike effort to reach understanding with the white South" (Du Bois, 44). However, as race-relations worsened, the balance quickly began to shift to the "radical" side.

Racist attitudes permeated the South in the years following Reconstruction, and racial discrimination became the unwritten law of the land. However, several developments in the regional and national climate between 1890 and 1915 raised sufficient concerns to cause people to reconsider the "conservative" racial philosophy. Specifically, these changes included perceptions of increased violence towards blacks, Jim Crow, and signs of growing racism in the North. During this period, thirteen states disenfranchised blacks or denied them political participation altogether, and de jure, or legalized, segregation took effect. While "these conditions were, more or less, a matter of fact...by 1890," Jim Crow "went a step further" by making it a "matter of fact" (Vela, 95). The permanence of these developments, thus, undermined Washington’s theory that economic and cultural advancement would lead to political gains. Additionally, while actual lynchings of all races decreased throughout the nation, the ratio increased for African Americans. Moreover, "an epidemic of race riots" and high media coverage of instances of violence contributed to the perception of deteriorating race relations, again calling into question Washington’s philosophy (Vela, 98). Finally, changes in national politics, and events such as the 1908 Springfield riot which targeted prosperous blacks suggested the spread of racist thought into the North (Vela, 95). The cumulative effect of these developments and Washington’s often apologetic public statements concerning racial violence was to de-legitimize the "conservative" plan of accommodation and encourage a move to an agitation-centered strategy. Further contributing to a united opposition was the authoritarian power exercised through the "Tuskegee Machine."

Washington’s enormous influence in the controlling of public discourse constituted a major grievance for fellow social activists. Particularly, the "Wizard’s" practice of censorship angered his opposition. According to Du Bois, "The controversy as it developed was not entirely against Mr. Washington’s ideas, but became the insistence upon the right of other Negroes to have and express their ideas" (Du Bois, 240-241). The effect of this suppression was to instill a greater sense of urgency over Washington’s practices. A second objection arose over Washington’s strong influence on educational issues. Manning Marable states how "the ‘Tuskegee Machine’ had developed such influence over national education policy that nonvocational schools for blacks were in serious jeopardy" (Marable, 56). Of course, this presented serious barriers for the liberal education favored by Du Bois. Unfortunately, neither his nor anyone else’s constituency fared little chance against the pervasive "Tuskegee Machine." The problem of overcoming this obstacle led to the final stage in the shift to a new "radical" mainstream in African American social thought.

The task of gathering a force capable of challenging the "Tuskegee Machine" proved difficult in light of the racial and ideological diversity of dissent to Washington’s policy. However, these various groups committed in 1909 to the establishment of a rival organization devoted to political equality, the NAACP. The shape it took differed considerably from what most anticipated. Its members included more conservative figures, such as Oswald Garrison Villard who sympathized with Washington but opposed his inordinate power, while moderate voices occupied a minority position for the most part (Vela, 97). At the same time Du Bois began to leave behind capitalism for communism, many of the most ardent critics of the "conservative" racial philosophy like Mary White Ovington and William English Walling subscribed to socialist or progressive ideologies (Vela, 97). As a result, the mainstream of subsequent civil rights activism tended to abandon Washington’s accommodationist emphasis on economic advancement in favor of a more radical agenda focused on legal rights and political equality.
The fundamental theme running throughout African American history relates to the struggle to overcome oppression and attain equality. Moreover, a complementary sub-theme of how to achieve this goal is equally conspicuous. In 1895 amidst the turmoil of white racism, Booker T. Washington proposed a philosophy of accommodation and jettisoned, at least temporarily, the quest for political equality. Many observers, including blacks, considered this a pragmatic and reasonable approach given the circumstances. However, as race relations deteriorated and the "Tuskegee Machine" came to yield monopolistic control, demands for legal rights supplanted the "conservative" approach.

2003-04-25T18:35:00.000-07:00

1984 Election

Kiss my Ass, Color Barrier

2003-01-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

Iwo Jima

2002-01-29T15:16:00.000-08:00

How Far I've Come Since High School...

2001-11-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

Terrorism: Seeing the Whole Picture

Introduction: By supporting totalitarian regimes in Middle East nations, imposing economic sanctions on Iraq, and supporting Israel against the Palestinian people, the United States has contributed to the deaths of many innocent people and has become a symbol of terror and oppression for many Muslims. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were in part a result of American abuses of human rights abroad. Americans are justifiably angry at the terrorists behind the September 11 attacks. Many call for military reprisals. However, war has failed to deter terrorism and inevitably kills innocent bystanders and civilians. The United States should seek out ways of bringing the terrorists to justice and work to remove the underlying causes of terrorism.

I. Response to Terrorism
A. Purpose
1. Prevent future attacks
2. Bring terrorists to justice
B. Precautions
1. Developing an obsession
2. Inspiring more attacks

II. Government Propaganda
A. Reasons for concern
1. deception
2. danger
B. Effects
1. Undeserved support
2. Unnecessary death

III. U.S. Foreign Policy
A. "Blowback"
1. Afghanistan
2. Saudi Arabia
B. Foreign Offenses
1. Iran
2. Iraq
C. Effects of U.S. Foreign Policy
1. Civilian casualties
2. International resentment

IV. Financial Abuses
A. Increases gap between rich/poor
1. American role
2. International response
B. Big Brother Policy
1. What it means
2. Needed change

V. Hypocritical Morals
A. Symbol of Evil
1. Supporting totalitarian regimes
2. Supporting Israel
B. Human Rights Violations
1. Economic sanctions in Iraq
2. Palestinian treatment

Conclusion: The people of Afghanistan are not liable for September 11 and should not be preyed upon by American revenge. Where an appropriate response will sow the seeds of friendship, striking their homelands will give rise to a new generation of terrorists. We need to gain the strength of character and moral authority by taking on the economic and social disparities that give rise to hopelessness and frustration.

William Drinkwater
12-2-02
Honors Contemporary Issues

Terrorism: Seeing the Whole Picture

Pacifist Brian Willson understands that most Americans perceive the United States as a symbol of freedom, capitalism, democracy, and as being the world’s model country (Willson). Abroad, perceptions of America differ enormously. As distinguished university professor Benjamin Barber observes, if we were not already aware of this reality, the September 11 attacks certainly brought it to out attention (Barber). In response, Washington quickly put the blame on the Al-Qaeda organization operated by Osama bin Laden and subsequently launched a vast campaign to battle terrorism. International adviser David Aaron reminds us of how President Bush assured that America would pursue this task with the greatest determination. He also managed to make this an international war as opposed to a strictly American war (Aaron). Virtually everyone was stunned, desperate, and unbelieving that something like this could happen on American soil. An unprecedented attack on the homeland left us dismayed. Nevertheless, Bush decided to commit the United States to a prolonged war against terrorism which, if ended, would greatly damage American credibility. As a result, we were quickly dragged into a sizeable undertaking before considering the best possible solution (Aaron). We should have taken time to mourn our losses before reacting in a manner that undermines our character as a strong a proud people who believe in the rule of law and justice.

Professor David Falk believes it is appropriate to root out any terrorists associated with the 9/11 attacks, but this allowance should not frustrate the main task at hand: to prevent foreign terrorists from attacking the homeland in the future (Falk). Unfortunately, I fear that the search for Al-Qaeda and bin Laden has become an obsession which obstructs what should be our chief focus. The U.S. Military can hunt terrorists in Afghanistan all it likes, but that is likely to produce even more terrorists for the future (Falk). Others believe that in order to significantly reduce the chances of another attack, we need to consider the terrorists’ grievances and try to understand why they felt violated (Willson). Few people willingly give their lives for a cause, and since these men did, they obviously felt strongly about their mission. Bush can call these attacks cowardly, but the fact of the matter is, these men were anything but cowards. This is not to lessen the crimes they committed or to encourage any kind of admiration for murderers. However, we need to put ourselves in Muslim shoes and identify with their pleas. I agree with the University of Illinois News Bureau’s opinion that until we understand the Middle Eastern mind-set towards America, we cannot realistically expect to make effective progress in the war against terror (Mitchell).

Despite common assumptions, the United States Government implements an unsettling amount of propaganda to assure its citizens that the 9/11 attacks came without provocation. This deception should concern Americans for multiple reasons. First, as a nation ruled "by the people" and "for the people" we deserve to know the truth. I doubt any voters went to the polls hoping to elect candidates who would convey partial truths and condescend them by withholding critical information. Secondly, when the public lacks crucial facts and the government assumes too much authority, the honest request of the people will not prevail. As a result, the government’s covert acts around the globe inevitably come back to the people in the form of violence (Falk). When this happens, the causes are kept from American eyes and people cannot make the necessary connections for an explanation; with no explanation, support for the use of government force increases (Willson). Before unraveling our predicament concerning Iraq and the war on terrorism, we must accept the reality that America’s behavior on the international level does not always match our preconceived notions.

Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic, sited the 9/11 attacks as examples of "blowback." This is a term which the CIA invented to describe unforseen repercussions of U.S. activities abroad (Beinart). Basically this says that failures of America’s previous foreign involvements have, in effect, provoked recent attacks. This principle is most directly applicable through our relations to Osama bin Laden in the 1980's. During the Cold War, the United States funded bin Laden in the Afghani defense against the Soviet Union. We provided his men with training, equipment, and capital to support our competition with the Soviet Union, but when the war ended, Afghanistan needed assistance rebuilding its afflicted infrastructure. However, after Afghanistan lost their Cold War value, Washington gave them little consideration, and it began a two year civil war that enabled the Taliban to come to power (Beinart). On top of this, following the Gulf War, the U.S. based American troops in Saudi Arabia to defend its fiercely authoritarian regime and further enraged bin Laden. Rather than continue with foreign policy as usual, the United States needs to make a serious effort to analyze and curb its global military activities.

America’s struggle against terrorism would be much easier if bin Laden posed the only threat. Unfortunately, the United States has committed selfish, immoral acts in numerous countries, including: Iraq, Iran, Chile, Panama, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua (Beinart). In 1973 the United States contributed to the overturning of fairly elected Salvador Allende of Chile and carried out illegal "extrajudicial killings" of civilians. In the 1960's the United States fixed Iranian rule by placing the Shah in power whose reign was characterized by inordinate cruelty and suppression. We armed and backed Saddam Hussein so long as he warred with Iran, but when that war ended, we bombed and starved his people for over a decade in a poorly conceived effort to get rid of him. These misguided operations convinced many capable people throughout the Islamic world that the United States was an implacable enemy. As the U.S. promotes the values of democracy, Washington simultaneously showers authoritarian empires in the Middle East with billions of dollars to make sure its people are kept from fulfilling their common aspirations (Barber). When the United States abuses its economic and military powers to shape the international scene in its favor, the rise of American resentment is only expected (Falk).

The financially driven process the United States takes in shaping global trade policies inevitably magnifies the imbalance between the rich and the poor (Falk). Seeking to engender changes in other nations' fundamental values so that they resemble America's is unreasonable. The Middle East is particularly offended by this because while the United States claims to be a "peacekeeper," it is in fact more of a big bully. Washington treats its "allies" as irresponsible adolescents when it should start treating them like fellow adults. This would mean both accepting them as peers and acknowledging the legitimacy of their national interests. However, as opposed to using its economic resources to end world hunger and redistribute the wealth of the planet, the United States only aspires to build upon its already disproportionate prosperity. The role America espouses in global economics gives rise to widespread resentment that at its inner core fuels the terrorist impulse. A more equitable distribution of global economic growth and development should be considered. America would be better off eschewing the theory of a global and universal duty, which not only commits it to unending wars of intervention, but intoxicates its thinking with the illusion that it is a crusader for righteousness. The less America does, and the less others expect it to do, the more other states will do to help themselves.

Middle Easterners not only criticize America’s selfish attitude in their region, but also the contradictory morals which it exhibits (Barber). By supporting totalitarian regimes in the Middle East, imposing economic sanctions on Iraq, and supporting Israel against Palestine, the United States has contributed to countless deaths and has become a personification of corruption and oppression for many Muslims. The 9/11 attacks were largely the result of these foreign human rights violations. Since 1991, American-led sanctions against Iraq and the effects of depleted uranium have killed roughly one million children (Willson). Since the Palestinian uprising started in September 2000, the United States has killed seven hundred Palestinians and injured twenty-five thousand more. The United States must hold itself to a higher standard. If we believe, like the terrorists, that our rationale is just, and that innocent lives may have to be lost to exact justice, then we become ethical villains, defining justice in terms of retribution and ruthlessness and we preserve the cycle of violence. Michael Lerner speculates: Do we rationalize the deaths of innocents abroad as the cost of fighting terrorism? Do we make clear to the world that we hold human life sacred only if it is American life? Or do we find ways to safeguard our lives and property in a way that honors the foundations of our society? (Lerner). Ominously, David Kaplan, writer for U.S. News and World Reports, expects extensive military retaliation with its unavoidable "collateral damage" will produce further despondent and embittered people (Kaplan).

The injustices Washington inflicts on the Middle East conveniently fail to reach the American public, and as a result, U.S. citizens remain ignorant of its own terrorism (Barber). War history professor Michael Howard recalls how leading executives like President Bush and Colin Powell blamed extremists determined to damage democracy and western civilization for the 9/11 attacks (Howard). This interpretation is not only misleading but also a way of evading responsibility for the "blowback" that America’s tyrannical enterprises have created (Willson). Regrettably, the public’s understanding of international affairs is so faint as to prevent it from distinguishing loaded representation from reality. These terrorists did not attack either democracy or freedom, as our political leaders and media claim. They attacked American foreign policy. Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the misdeeds of the invulnerable (American Heritage). The widespread perception within the region that the Middle East has long been a victim of "Western imperialism" of course exacerbates this animosity. Moreover, aggrieved groups throughout the Middle East contest the legitimacy of the regimes in Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait which the United States supports, making America even more of a lightning rod for the hostile parties. The U.S. deploys such overwhelming military force globally that only such an "asymmetric" strategy could yield any success (Aaron). This "asymmetric" method payed off immensely on September 11, rendering our massive military machine worthless.

Americans are rightly indignant towards the terrorists behind the September 11 attacks. Many urge for military pay back. However, military operation has failed to deter terrorism and consequently kills uninvolved bystanders and civilians (Howard). The people of Afghanistan are not liable for September 11 and should not be preyed upon by American revenge. Michael Lerner of Time Magazine rightly thinks the United States should instead seek out alternative ways of bringing the terrorists to justice and aim to remove the foundations of terrorism (Lerner). Children growing up in the developing world look to the already mature world, particularly the United States, as an example. Will Afghan and Iraqi children, having been subjected to hunger, disease, and oppression, perceive at the United States as a model of what they want for their country or as the antagonist on whom to seek revenge? Where an appropriate response will sow the seeds of friendship, striking their homelands will give rise to a new generation of terrorists (Lerner). Americans should confirm that we are not like the terrorists and do not take the lives of innocents. We need to gain the strength of character and moral authority by taking on the economic and social disparities that give rise to hopelessness and frustration (Howard). While it may involve determining those responsible, routing them out and seeing that they are brought to justice, the campaign against terrorism must seek to pull out the roots that spread hatred, fear, and desperation.

Works Cited

Aaron, David. "The New Twilight Struggle." The American Prospect. 22 October 2001: 24.

Barber, Benjamin R. "Beyond Jihad vs. McWorld." Nation. 21 January 2002: 11.

Beinart, Peter. "Back to Front." The New Republic. 8 October 2001: 8.

Falk, Richard. "Defining a Just War." The Nation. 29 October 2001: 11.

Howard, Michael. "What’s in a Name?: How to Fight Terrorism." Foreign Affairs. Jan-Feb 2002: 8.

Kaplan, David. "The CEO of Terror Inc." U.S. News & World Report. 1 October 2001: 19.

Lerner, Michael. "The Case for Peace." Time. 1 October 2001: 77.

"The Problem We All Live With" - Norman Rockwell 1964

2001-04-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

I Want You

1994-10-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

1990-04-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

1990-04-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

V.E. Day

1990-04-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

1990-04-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

"The Inaugural Blog"

1990-03-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

This is the first ever posting in the history of the Anti-Kook Central Blog. To say the least, AKC's future is highly tentative, and certainly it runs the risk of one if not repeated periods of lengthy neglect on my behalf. That said, perhaps this won't turn out to be my contribution to internet derelict after all.

btw, I can't believe I wasted this much of my life on this thing.

New York City, V.E. Day

1990-01-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

1990-01-29T15:13:00.002-08:00

1990-01-29T15:13:00.001-08:00

1990-01-29T15:13:00.000-08:00