Friday,
January 24 2003
NO INDOCTRINATION: A reader emailed this
story about a new web site called noindoctrination.org.
Luann Wright started the web site to protest the liberal bias
among college educators after her son complained about the leftward
slant of one of his UC San Diego classes.
Check out
the responses of two members of the UCSD faculty when they were
asked about bias in the classroom:
UCSD
Professor Linda Brodkey, who designed Kyle Wright's writing
course, argues that it's not necessary to teach conservative
views alongside liberal ones as long as students know their
own views are legitimate.
"I tell
students this is a free society," she said, "and that there
is always free debate."
Her
supervisor, UCSD provost David Jordan, gives a more pointed
argument: "Why should I teach a point of view I don't agree
with? I should teach what is useful to the student. I don't
know that I have the responsibility to teach somebody's view
that is benighted or irrelevant."
For all of
us rubes outside the ivory tower, benighted means "intellectually
or morally ignorant; unenlightened." I hope parents everywhere
- many of whom are helping their children fill out college applications
even as I write - recognize not only the supreme arrogance of
Mr. Jordan's words, but also the amount of power he and his fellow
academics exercise over college students. These are the people
you are trusting to educate your children. Very scary stuff. (Thanks
to HP for the link). - T.
Bevan 10:42 am
Thursday,
January 23 2003
McKINNEY & BRAUN: The name may sound like a law firm
but it's really two of the potential candidates for President
in 2004. Seth
Gitell writes that former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
is entertaining the idea of running on the Green party ticket,
while Lynn
Sweet says she's checked around and the Carol Mosley-Braun
for President campaign is the real deal. This is shaping up to
be an absolute circus.....
COLD WAR
HISTORY: John
Arquilla writes that we must stop Iraq from acquiring WMD's
- but we shouldn't do it with force. Instead, Arquilla advises:
A
better approach is to rely on and renew our commitment to
arms control, the means by which the Cold War ended without
a holocaust -- and the means by which we may yet keep the
terrorists from winning.
I'm afraid
Arquilla has it exactly backwards. It's now clear that one of
the main reasons the Cold War ended without a holocaust is because
we armed ourselves to the teeth and the Soviet Empire crumbled
under the economic pressure of trying to keep pace. The straw
that broke the Communists' back was Reagan's refusal to sign onto
yet another "arms control" deal in Reykjavik in 1986.
- T. Bevan 10:42 am
Wednesday,
January 22 2003
ABOMINATION: I can't think of any other word to describe
this
poem by Harold Pinter printed in the Guardian today:
Here
they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The
gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.
The
riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.
Pinter's
poem is so offensive on so many levels it's difficult to know
where to begin. My initial reaction to things like this which
display such a warped view of America's values and such a blatant
disregard for her historical benevolence is to toss up my hands
and quit altogether.
Let the ricin
flow in the subways of London, sarin rain down in Paris and bombs
rock Berlin. Let Saddam annex Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and march unfettered
across the landscape of the Middle East. Let him continue to torture,
mutilate and kill hundreds of thousands of own people. Let Arab
armies march to Jerusalem and set up gas chambers to exterminate
the Jewish people.
Who does
Mr. Pinter think is working desperately to prevent all of these
terrible things from happening? Yet this is the sort of world
Mr. Pinter would rather live in, a world where anything is tolerated
and moral relativism does backflips to insure that America is
the paramount evil.
And because
Pinter is so convinced of America's evil, he would rather plead,
negotiate and compromise with radicals and tyrants - anything
to shield his eyes from confronting their true nature. Only after
they've raped his wife, killed his children, and are holding a
knife to his throat will Pinter beg for America to come running
to his rescue. And guess what? We will. We always do.
POWERLINE:
I'm ranted out for this morning, so I don't have the energy to
address the University of Michigan's affirmative action case.
The good news is the guys over at Powerline
have got it covered. -
T. Bevan 7:52 am
Tuesday,
January 21 2003
BRITAIN'S REACTION: After a reasoned
editorial in the Observer the other day regarding action in
Iraq, I woke this morning expecting to find some sober commentary
in the British press reflecting on the raid
that uncovered weapons in a London mosque yesterday. Very
slim pickings.
As expected,
the Times of London printed a strong
rebuke on its editorial page, much stronger than the one
offered up in the Guardian.
Of course,
the radical-left Daily Mirror closed its eyes and printed
this instead. And the Guardian also rushed to print this specious
"Muslims-are-being-persecuted-by-the-state" piece
by Faisal Bodi. Bodi writes:
"Police
have violated the sanctity of a mosque to silence a preacher
in a way that would be inconceivable for any other faith."
Forgive me
if I fail to believe that police wouldn't take action against
a Catholic priest (or any other religious leader) who openly
espoused killing people - especially those of another faith
- and had a known history of supporting terrorist organizations
and terrorist activity.
Even more
to the point, however, is that this sort of hateful rhetoric and
subversive behavior would never occur (let alone be tolerated)
in a Christian church or Jewish synagogue anywhere in the world.
The fact that true peace-loving Muslims didn't raid the mosque
themselves and publicly expel Abu Hamza for hijacking their religion
speaks volumes about where stand with respect to Islamic "tolerance."
Unfortunately, it's a tolerance not of other religious beliefs
but of violence.
CASTRO
IS NO SADDAM: Poor Fidel could only muster a 97% vote in
favor of socialism in Cuba's one-party election the other
day. Here's my favorite quote from the BBC piece:
Mr Castro
- who has been the country's president for 44 years - has said
Cuba's elections are more democratic than those of other nations,
because voter turnout is higher and campaigns do not involve
large amounts of money and propaganda.
Castro also
said Cubans "are perfecting our revolutionary and socialist
democracy." I'm sure this was deeply moving to the Cuban
people as they headed off to stand in line for 10 hours to get
a piece of bread and a handful of rice.
SPEND
OR ELSE: Will somebody tell Gray Davis the election is over
in California? He's still in full-out
pander mode, arguing that no matter how dire the financial
situation in California becomes (here we must gratuitously point
out that while other states are suffering similar budget crunches,
California's massive $34.5 billion dollar shortfall is due at
least in part to Davis's poor leadership), spending must continue
to increase at an unabated rate. Imagine the havoc this man could
have wreaked at the federal level. - T.
Bevan 8:12 am
Monday,
January 20 2003
KING DAY: Not much time to blog this morning as we are
observing MLK Day. Recommended reading for today includes this
and this.
THE ANTI-KING:
Harry
Belafonte spoke to a rapt audience at St.
Sabina's in Chicago yesterday saying:
- "We
move about the world arrogantly, calling wars when we want,
overthrowing governments when we want. There is a price to be
paid for it--look at 9/11."
- "Affirmative
action is the next to go, and a woman's right to choice is the
next to go."
- Belafonte
questioned why Powell hadn't responded to being publicly called
a house slave saying: "Why doesn't Colin Powell want to talk
about it?"What embarrasses him? His ancestry? The history of
it? Or the fact that he may have betrayed it and doesn't want
to hear it?''
- Belafonte
labeled the Homeland Security Act "a great piece of villainy''
and said that "our Constitution has just been taken away from
us."
So there
you have it: America is responsible for 9/11, abortion is on its
way to being illegal (though I'm not quite sure what this has
to do with Martin Luther King), and Colin Powell is a betrayer
of his race. Actually, Belafonte does a nice job of succinctly
summarizing the paranoid, hateful feelings of those on the far
left.
MORE KING
DAY FUN: Andrew Sullivan questions this
item and Josh Marshall simultaneously explodes
with glee. Given Bush's propensity for delegating details
it's hard to imagine he was directly involved in this decision,
but that doesn't make it any less of a PR blunder - one that Rove
& Co. should have clearly avoided. Unfortunately, it's yet
more grist for the "Bush is racist" liberal media mill
and is destined to get 10,000 times more attention than this
story. - T. Bevan
7:58 am
