Racism is Racism

I grew up well after the Civil Rights Era, so maybe I just have a different perspective than people fifteen years or more older than me.  However, I was at least told that all racism was bad.  Got it: racism = bad.  Everyone should be judged on the “content of their character”, not the color of their skin.

By the time I was eighteen, however, I was well aware that not all racism was considered bad.  In fact, certain forms of racism were held up as positive goods.  Namely, racism that promoted certain minorities on the basis of the fact that their ancestors were discriminated against.  (There’s something else that goes into the equation, obviously, since the Irish, Italians, Catholics in general, Eastern Europeans, and other groups were also discriminated against, sometimes violently, but never receive any consideration for preferential treatment, but we’ll have to leave that aside for now.)

This is the same thing the feminist movement has largely devolved into: you did it to us, so we’re going to do it to you.  Reverse discrimination is still sexist or racist, and it hasn’t created any truly improved situations, but, in spite of its track record, it is still promoted as the answer to all of our discrimination issues.

Apparently, the Navy isn’t into thinking logically or looking at the actual consequences of social engineering lately.  First, the Navy announced a push to make the body of admirals reflect the ethnic make-up of the officer corps as a whole (of course, that was right around the point that the President was also charging into the realm of post-racial race-based appointments, so I guess you can’t lay all the blame on the CNO).  Never mind that you might have to promote every single eligible ethnic minority captain you have to admiral to attain today’s diversity levels, since the officer corps back when they entered wasn’t very diverse at all.  Never mind that you would almost certainly be promoting less-qualified captains because they had the right skin tone over more-qualified captains who had worked for decades to build their expertise and leadership abilities, but fell off the bottom of the list for being white.  The stated goal is “diversity” not “talent”.

Now, gee, how shocking, a professor at the Naval Academy has come out with some insider information and hard facts about the Academy selection process that, frankly, many of us had long suspected.  Pat Buchanan commented on the  dumbing down of the Academy selection process, but don’t hold your breath to see it mentioned much of anywhere else.  It seems the Navy instructed the Naval Academy Superintendant to make sure that the incoming class reflected the ethnic diversity of the enlisted corps, no matter what that meant to actual admission standards.

Newsflash to the Navy: the officer corps has never looked like the enlisted corps.  Officers have generally been drawn from better-educated, and often politically placed, classes.  Guess what?  The enlisted corps has generally been drawn from poorer, less-educated, disenfranchised classes.

In the case of, say, the heavy Irish influx into fire and police departments early in their pattern of immigration, those firefighters hauling hoses and cops walking a beat could work their way up to a position of some influence and respect.

The Navy, on the other hand, draws a much stricter line between enlisted and officers.  A few enlisted people are tagged for programs that lead to a commission as an officer, but the vast majority can only rise to the top of the enlisted ranks.  Navy Chiefs are highly respected, and any ensign worth his/her salt knows that you do not go againts the chief’s advice without very, very good reasons.  However, there is a difference in the level of education you need for the job that just can’t be ignored.  I had some really great, self-motivated, squared-away enlisted people who worked for me in the Navy; what made them memorable, however, was that they stood out from the rest of the enlisted.  They were the ones who were usually tagged for early promotions, additional responsibilities, and, occasionally, officer programs.

(I knew one particular midshipman who we all knew would make an incredible officer.  He was prior-enlisted from the Marines.  I think he spent his entire Academy career scraping by academically, but he had real experience as a Marine, and we were all happy to see him graduate.  “Experience” as a suburban black female just isn’t the same thing, nor does it merit the same level of respect or aid.)

Even if you can juggle numbers to make the skin color mix on Induction Day at the Academy look like the enlisted corps, there is no guarantee that the less-qualified candidates you picked to *improve* the diversity will graduate.  There were a number of people in my company who started Plebe Summer with me who did not graduate.  Some were bright enough, but obviously ill-suited to Academy life, which has its, shall we say, *quirks* (as we often said, we’d love to find out what a normal university is like someday…).  Most of the rest who started but failed were there because they played a sport or fulfilled an ethnic or gender quota.  Something besides officer potential got them in, but it didn’t do the homework for them, often in spite of intensive tutoring and less-demanding majors.

(One exception: some jobs in the Navy are not open to women.  Even if the top 1100 candidates for the Academy were all women, you couldn’t take all of them, because there wouldn’t be enough jobs for them upon graduation and other positions would go unfilled.  There is, realistically, an upwards limit on how many women the Academy can accept, but not a lower limit.)

So, at the end of the day, did the Navy advance or kill a post-prejudice mentality?

I’ve said it before: quotas only reinforce prejudice.  The fact that some minorities are accepted to the Naval Academy not for their grades, SAT’s, and officer potential, but for their skin color or gender, casts a shadow on everyone else in that minority: “Are you here because you earned it like I did, or are you here because you’re black/Hispanic/football player/female?”  When they fail to succeed because they weren’t qualified in the first place, it only reinforces negative prejudices about the entire minority: “Those people can’t succeed without something propping them up.”

I heard it in the Academy and in the Fleet: “You only made it here because you’re a girl.”  “The captain made you the senior officer of the deck just because you’re a woman.”  And that’s just what was said to my face by people who claimed to be on good terms with me.

No, in fact, I know that my qualifications on both counts were much higher than those of the people who made those statements, and our comparative records before and after those conversations proved it.  But that shadow of doubt remained in some people’s minds, because of the fact of the lowering of standards for women and minorities to force “diversity”.

We need to remove the shadow.  We must remove all ethnic quotas and considerations if we really want to end racism.

Let everyone know that they rose or fell on their own efforts, and be proud or not based on their abilities, not the presence or lack of melanin in their skin or X or Y chromosomes.

The Founding Fathers: Where did we come from?

On July 4th, as a nation, we have an opportunity to review where we have come from.  The Founding Fathers left a plethora of writings and quotes that give us a window on some of their thoughts.  This is where they saw the United States of America coming from and going to… and leaves us a great deal to think about when considering where we are going and what we have made of their legacy.

The Founding Fathers were aware of their position as the witnesses to the birth of America.  Even in their lifetimes, many of the Founders were concerned that Americans had already started to forget the why and what of the Revolution.

Fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams lay dying at his home.  Reportedly, his last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”  Unfortunately, Jefferson had already died earlier that day.  Both men, knowing that they were near death, had struggled to hold on to see the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the country.

That July 4th, the last of the signers of the Declaration were gone.  What would the next generations make of America?

 

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

- Declaration of Independence

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

- John Adams, 1814

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

- Thomas Jefferson

On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

- Thomas Jefferson

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.  Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate for any other.

- John Adams

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent.  It is force.  Like fire, it is a troublesome servant and a fearful master.  Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

- George Washington

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people’ (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.

- Thomas Jefferson

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

- Samuel Adams

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

- Benjamin Franklin

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds…[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

- Thomas Jefferson

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

- Benjamin Franklin

When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny.

- Thomas Jefferson

AK Governor Sarah Palin Resigning

Breaking news: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is resigning, effective July 25.

What on earth is going on?

Of course, nobody knows, which means that everyone will be talking all about this for days and days.  Those who disliked or hated her in the first place will paint this badly.  Those who admired her will probably continue to admire her, and maybe even hope over what this might mean.

Some thoughts:

1.  Yet another nasty set of accusations from former McCain staffers (who, one suspects, are more interested in blaming her than admitting their own mistakes or McCain’s inadequacies) just got paraded throught the national news.  Letterman made a nasty, foul joke about her family.  More than a dozen ethics violations accusations were filed against her (all were dismissed; she paid the state back for her children’s travel, and spend half a million on her legal defense.  The state of Alaska spent $2 million investigating the allegations).  One of her brothers, on Cavuto’s show on Fox News, said that she was disgusted with spending 80% of her time defending herself from smears and politically-motivated ethics investigations; Palin told him she felt it was unfair to Alaska to have the governor so mired in legal busywork.  As an honest person, did she admit that it was just better for Alaska for her to resign and free up the new governor to govern without distractions?

2.  Todd Palin, the governor’s husband, said that she wanted to work on issues for “Alaska and the country.”  Hmmm… so what does that mean?  It would seem unwise, if she was aiming for a Republican candidacy for 2012 on the national level, to step down before she fulfilled her first term as governor.  Did she resign to start campaigning nationally for 2012?

3.  Of course, there’s always the possibility of family issues.  Marital stress?  New medical problems for her youngest, Trig, who has Downs Syndrome?  Troubled teenaged daughters?  Did she just decide that, for her family’s sake, this had become too much?

4.  Why did she do this on Friday, right before a holiday weekend?  The talking heads have already commented that you normally do things on Friday to bury them, news-wise.

 

Or did she put this announcement in this “odd” position to highlight our founding, which we celebrate this weekend?

Has Sarah Palin been watching the Tea Parties and wondering if we’ve lost what our Founders fought for?  Has she been wondering if the infighting and Democrat-lite behavior in the Republican party have doomed it?

In her announcement, Palin highlighted Alaska’s importance for the nation, as strategic protection and for natural resources.  She discussed the private enterprise that has pushed energy production and transportation.  “Living beyond our means today is irresponsible for tomorrow,” she said.  Education initiatives, state climate change boards, wildlife management, budget restrictions, and personal responsibility in government.

This did not have the tone of “I’ve screwed up and am being forced to resign” like what we’ve seen with Gov. Spitzer and Gov. Sanford.  Nor did this sound like she was over-stressed and resigning in a panic, which some are already trying to spin this as.  (”Gee, look, we told you that anyone with that many kids, long hair, good looks, and truly pro-life and conservative convictions was too weak to take the pressure of politics…”)

In fact, it was better than almost all of Obama’s speeches… and Palin didn’t use a teleprompter.

This was a recounting of what has gone right in Palin’s term as governor as Alaska… and a litany of what the government has done wrong.

She talked a lot about protecting the Constitution and mentioned the Tenth Amendment, which many states have been using to try to get the federal government back in its Constitutional box.

Palin discussed the costs to Alaska and to her to deal with the frivolous legal accusations.  “You can choose to engage in things that tear down or build up… I choose to build up… Life is too short to waste resources…”

She said she wasn’t interested in being the “lame duck” governor and jaunting around to foreign countries for “trade missions.”  Incidentally, her stepping down should also set up the lieutenant governor well for the next gubernatorial elections by giving him a year and a half to show what he can do.

 

Ok, my prediction:  Sarah Palin is going to work on a national level to promote some (if not all) of what the Tea Parties have been pushing: a return to the Constitution, the shrinkage of government to a much more reasonable level, and fiscal responsibility.  I’m not sure she can do that within the Republican Party.

Is Sarah Palin going to show up at the big Tea Party scheduled for Washington, DC, tomorrow, July4th?

Is she going to step in to lead a new third party?  Or try to return the GOP to true conservatism?

Whatever she does, I would bet we have not seen the last of Sarah Palin.

Not by a long shot.

Under construction…

If you visit semi-regularly, you may have noticed some changes.  Having been at this for almost a year now, I really wanted to make The Political Housewyf a little more personalized.  (Yes, this will be a completely fluff post.  I’m tired.  I just spent 3.5 hours cleaning out my in-laws’ filing cabinets.  Public service announcement: be nice to your children, and CLEAN OUT YOUR JUNK REGULARLY.  They will NOT appreciate going through 30+ years of water bills and such after you’re gone, and, no, really, you do not need every mortgage, tax filing, utility bill, and credit card statement you’ve ever had!  Honest!)

Anyways… where was I?

I liked the green layout I used to have, with the weird flower and bird, but I gradually came to think it was too dark.  So, I now have a lighter, brighter layout.

With the new layout came the opportunity to choose a custom header.   So, after much fussing and cropping and splicing together two different scans (because the housewyf didn’t come out well small, and I could only make the calligraphy so big) and cursing at various editing programs for pixilating the color variations on my lovely handmade paper, there I am (sort of) in the header, with appropriate colonial-era handwriting.  (Yes, the thing that looks like an “f” with the bottom half flipped backwards is, in fact, an s.  Prettier than the modern lowercase “s”, but you can see why it got changed: it’s confusing.)  Thanks to the DH for dropping everything to take reference photos of me in the dress the other night.  (I don’t draw people well at all.  I traced the figure off of the photo pulled up on my computer.)

And then, I liked Mistress Housewyf so much (and I discovered that you can store widgets in a holding box for later use, making them easy to swap out on a whim), that I decided to do some variations, which will be appearing in the top of the sidebar.  I simply taped up my original on my giant lightbox (aka the sliding glass door to the deck), laid a fresh sheet of paper over, and copied the lines with some variations.

I was having so much fun (and the kids were tearing around the house having a blast and staying out of my hair) that I got quite a few done.  Diva looked at the parade of housewyfs taped up to the arch between the living room and kitchen and warned, “Daddy is going to look at this and say you’re crazy, Momma!”  Yep, he did.

Here are the last three I did:

• “Christmas” holding a Williamsburg-type wreath adorned with fruit and dressed in green and red
• “Chocolate” done entirely in shades of brown and holding a pile of bonbons for those days when, well, it’s just been one of those days
• “Sewing” holding a pair of scissors in one hand, pin cushion strapped to the wrist (yes, it’s the wrong wrist, but that’s where it worked), tape measure dangling out of the left hand, and Storm at Sea quilt draped for best effect.  (DH even recognized the pattern because I’d shown it to him as the one I want to make for our bed.  “See?  Impressed?” he asked.  Yes, dear, very.)

There’s also gardening, cooking, resting, patriotic, cleaning, teaching, China (gold dragons on the underskirt and red lantern in hand), and one I haven’t labelled yet but might call “Avoiding Housework”, since she’s much too well dressed to be getting dirty.

So, although politics is usually the topic of my posts, I always have something else going on in the *real* world of things happening around the house.  If anyone has a bright idea for a new occupation for Mistress Housewyf, drop me a comment!

And now, back to the news… eventually…

If you blog on WordPress, you’ve seen the top posts for the last few days: primarily Michael Jackson news and rumors.  Granted, that’s just the blogs, but the papers and TV news don’t seem to be doing a whole lot better.

As Glen Beck kept noting last night, “And yes, Michael Jackson is still dead.  Now, in other news…”

*sigh*  Is it too much to ask for more than a five-minute attention span on important topics from the general public?  I understand getting tired of depressing news, but I take a short break from the real news to do/watch something simply entertaining, not a short break from entertainment news to deal with reality.

Along those lines, I noticed something in Fox News’ crawl line tonight.  Apparently, Sudan has delayed it’s elections.  Again.

Sudan has not had elections since 1986.  The elections were supposed to be in July 2009, but were delayed until February 2010.  Now, they’ve been delayed again until April 2010.  Any bets on whether this will be the last delay?

I follow Sudan because Diva was named after a saint from there, St. Josephine Bakhita.  The saint’s life exposes some of the same problems that plague the country today: the Muslim north is out to culturally assimilate, by whatever means necessary, the animist/Christian south, and even the black Muslims in other areas.  The entire problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of Sudan’s oil reserves are in the south, which has been rebelling against the Muslim, assimilationist government in Khartoum.  Most of the world has tried to isolate the Khartoum government, but China has seized the opportunity to step into the vacuum and offer development money and oil contracts.

We get regular newsletters from Bishop Macram Gassis, who is forced to live in exile from his diocese most of the year because he has brought the atrocities of the Khartoum government to international attention.  The news is rarely good: rape, bombings, government-funded militia attacking and burning villages.  Bishop Gassis’ foundation has built hospitals, churches, and schools, only to see them destroyed or looted over and over as the attempted genocide of all non-Arab and non-Muslim groups continues.  They rebuild, and care for everyone, Christian, animist, and Muslim… and wait to see if it will happen again.

Most recently, President Omar al-Bashir was indicted in early March 2009 on charges of war crimes in Darfur.  In response, he expelled humanitarian groups, accusing them of inappropriate activities.  Earlier this month, at least some of the aid groups were allowed to return.  How many died in those three months for lack of basic necessities?  It isn’t like the refugees could go home to their burned-out villages to get food from the militias who drove them out.

Was anyone paying any attention?  Or are we teaching yet another two-bit dictator that the world has a very, very short attention span?  Avoiding attention is pretty easy, actually: if you want to get something under the radar, cause a stink, wait for the “sharply worded condemnations” from the UN, wait a few more news cycles, then do whatever you want, because the media will no longer be watching.  You’ve become “old news” and we’re all about “new, new, NEW!”

The world pays attention for a bit, but then gets distracted by more *important* things… like Michael Jackson.

200th Post and Award!

In honor of the 200th post, I am finally changing the theme around.  I had intended to do it a while back, but only now got around to it.  I hope everyone likes the art and finds the format easy-to-read and a little less dark.

In other news, I have been sent an award.  Yay!  (And the DH said, “What’s that?”  It’s an award.  “Well, what is that?”  An award, I said again, rolling my eyes.  No, not a Pulitzer, not even a big “best of”.  I’m still tickled that I got one.  It will be in the widget bar soon.)

So, to fulfill the conditions of the above award:

1.  Say “Thanks!” to the presenter of the award and provide a link to their blog.

Mrs. O (also known as opey124 on comments) at A Fine Mess!! sent me this award.  Go check out her beautiful dragonflies lately, and a fascinating copper scorpion her husband made.

2.  Share ten honest things about myself.

Um… isn’t this what I’ve been writing about for 199 posts?  Ok, ok, let’s see…

1. I hate running.  I know some runners; I admire them a lot.  But the word alone makes my knees ache.
2. My favorite color is blue.
3. I took bellydancing classes for more than a year.  (Had to quit because the New Agey junk had gotten worse and worse.)
4. I loved Dubai.  As a gardener, don’t ask me why I found the desert lovely, but I did.  I wouldn’t pay to go there for a vacation, but since the Navy took me there…
5. When I’m tired of writing about politics or digging weeds, I de-stress on Webkinz.  My husband asked, “Why?!?”  Because the rooms stay clean and decorated, my animals are always thrilled to see me, the gardening involves a couple of mouseclicks and no sweating, and the Pizza Palace game is kinda addictive.  And I can mail fresh e-vegetables to my kids’ accounts.
6. One of my favorite churches in the world is La St. Chapelle, in Paris, near Notre Dame.  (photo by Jean-Christophe Benoist , from Wikipedia)  The windows continue all the way around the church.  It’s incredible.
7.  I am a hopeless book addict.  I leave the library with a stroller full of books, and the toddler being cajoled into walking to the car without getting hit by a car in the parking lot.  Book stores can be hazardous to my budget.
8. I harbor serious doubts that there are ten interesting things about me…
9. I really enjoy most of the wildlife in my backyard.  The other day, I watched a lizard take up position on the rocks around the fountain.  The frog that is now living in the fountain was sitting on one of the concrete “frog ladders” I made to help small animals get out of the fountain after falling in.  A dragonfly was sunning on one of the rocks in the path.  An osprey was looking for lunch over the lake.  Two ducklings were rooting around under the bird feeder for tender grass.  It was beautiful.  (Crocus-munching rabbits, chair-chewing muskrats, and those stupid starlings, however, are likely to have the dog let out the back door as soon as they’re spotted.)
10. If you met me, you’d probably figure out why I blog; I get to edit it.  My mouth sometimes outruns my brain.

3.  Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.

Ok, but I don’t really follow that many bloggers… :

• First off, there’s my friend and Naval Academy classmate Jen, who inspired me to get started on blogging.  Her blog is all about knitting, lace making, and other needle crafts: The Sarah Winchester of the Fiber Arts.
• There’s Lindy over at Lindy’s Blog: Where Mom is Always Right, who I enjoy very much.  She once called me a very intelligent person… but we’ll overlook that lapse of judgment. 
• And Jen at Conversion Diary, who has a much, much more well-read blog than I could ever hope to have, but who takes the time to comment on others’ blogs and make weekly room for us little bloggers every Friday.  She also wrote an article on how to increase blog traffic.

4.  Inform those bloggers that they’ve been awarded the “Honest Scrap” award.

Getting on that!

Thanks to my regular readers (and any new ones); here’s to another 200 posts!

Here’s What’s Next

Exactly two months ago, I wrote a post I called “What’s Next?”  I concluded that I was pretty sure that, whatever it was, I didn’t want to know.  In the first 100 days, President Obama rammed through a number of pro-abortion efforts, insulted allies, played nice with enemies, and promised more havoc on the horizon.  Good grief, he moved so fast, we were left wondering what he could possibly jump into next.

Well, now we all know.

“What’s next?” has been answered by the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, 1500 pages of cap-and-trade legislation passed tonight by the House.  During the campaign, President Obama promised that this kind of legislation would cause energy prices to “skyrocket”, although that apparently doesn’t bother him.  In the video clip of the pertinent interview, he has this sort of “why would that be a bad thing?” look on his face.  I’m sure parts of the environmental movement will love it; heck, parts of the environmental movement think people breathe too much air that could be used by the nice, natural animals.  Forcing people to use less resources by making them pay more for what they need is great, right?  (At least as a stop-gap until we can get rid of most people altogether.)

Except that Greenpeace (not known for being mild-mannered or wishy-washy in their environmentalism) is against this bill.  Something about it not being based on science.

Of course, as we discovered when gas prices spiked after Katrina, when energy prices go up, everything gets more expensive, since pretty much everything we eat, wear, or otherwise purchase had to be shipped from somewhere else.  Which means that the people who will really pay for this bit of pseudo-environmentalist posturing (which will largely profit big business) is the poor.  The rest of us will pay the taxes and go without vacations or new clothes; the poor will have to go without food.  Remember that “hierarchy of needs” thing they used to teach in social studies?  I seem to remember it saying something about food being basic, and lack of food rendering all higher goals (especially fuzzy ones like “saving the planet”) irrelevant.  Even if you accept the argument that the poor suffer disproportionately from pollution, cleaner air isn’t going to make up for slowly starving because they can’t afford food.

(Not that I seriously think the environmentalists care about the poor.  Or people in general.  The food riots caused by corn shortages, which were caused by cropland being shifted to corn for ethanol instead of corn for food, hardly caused any concern.  The ethanol is still mandated, because, I guess, a couple of people killing each other over a sack of cornmeal in Africa or South America is less important that the possibility of Manhattan flooding when the ice caps melt.)

Spain tried cap-and-trade.  Critics estimate that for every “green” job they created, they killed 2.2 jobs.  They have noted that the cap-and-trade program didn’t do anything for the environment, and mostly lined the pockets of those trading the pollution permits.  Spain’s unemployment rate is 18%, twice that of the rest of Europe, which has not tried cap-and-trade policies as agressively.

Australia tried cap-and-trade.  The program has been delayed, and now looks as if it’s in danger of being completely rejected in the Australian senate.  Apparently, the Aussies started looking at the actual cost of self-righteousness and decided it wasn’t worth the price tag, especially with the growing body of evidence that whatever the Earth’s climate is doing (and we aren’t even sure of that), man’s influence is dwarfed by other factors.

I would also point out that, as Obama’s would-be poster-child, Spain, is drowning under cap-and-trade, Europe in general took a strong conservative lunge in the last elections.  After decades of socialism, Europe is beginning, ever so little, to pull back from it.

But the Americans, as usual, are charging in where angels (or at least the rest of the world) fear to tread.  We are hopelessly convinced that we can do right what the rest of the world has tried and failed at.

When combined with planning, forethought, and perseverance, that can be an admirable trait.  We have done some great things that Europe dismissed as ridiculous or outright impossible, because we learned from others’ mistakes.

When we try to just plow in and do it just like it was done before, however, things tend to go very badly, just as they did before.

My main hope for my country at this point is that President Obama will so aggressively institute the entire absurd wish-list of the far left, that the country will be thoroughly disgusted with what they finally recognize as the real liberal agenda.  Maybe, just maybe, voters will realize that pretty talk about sympathy, diversity, and saving the planet is actually covering up some pretty rotten ideas and a greed for control.

Homeschooler Conference: Dale Ahlquist

Ok, better late than never…

The last speaker from the IHM Homeschooler Conference that I’m going to comment on was Dale Ahlquist, the president of the American Chesterton Society.  (For those of you who are encountering Chesterton for the first time, there’s a very helpful (and funny) tab at their website labelled “Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him?”)

If you haven’t discovered G.K. Chesterton yet, well, it’s about time you make his aquaintance.

As I previously mentioned, Chesterton was key in the conversion of one particularly wretched anti-Catholic, racist atheist, Joseph Pearce, who now is a professor at Ave Maria University.  Chesterton inspired Michael Collins to fight for Irish independence.  Chesterton wrote an essay that inspired Ghandi to begin his movement in India.  One of Chesterton’s books was key in the conversion of another atheist you may have heard of: C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist and philosopher.

During his lifetime, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was required reading in almost all of the English-speaking universities of the world.  He wrote about a hundred books, but considered himself primarily a journalist.  He wrote more than 5,000 essays (before you try to figure out how long that took, Ahlquist also explained that Chesterton could write one essay while dictating an entirely different essay to his secretary).

Now, mostly I just enjoyed Ahlquist’s talk, and, looking back over my notes, I find mostly short, pithy quotes.  As Ahlquist said, Chesterton is nothing if not quotable, “He is the Shakespeare of the aphorism.”

So, here is a sampling:

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

“It’s a shame to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”

“Being educated means reading the newspapers.  Being properly educated means not believing them after you’ve read them.”

“We’re learning to do a great many clever things.  The next thing to learn is not to do them.”  (written in 1902)

“The moment sex ceases to be a servant, it becomes a tyrant.”  (discussing birth control)

“A dead thing can go with a stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”  (from Everlasting Man)

“When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy.  You get the small laws.”

In 1910, Chesterton wrote What’s Wrong With the World.  The problems he saw?

• Big government
• Big business
• Feminism
• Public education

Well, yeah, that would still about sum things up.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  (I’m coming to the growing conclusion that big government and big business always naturally wind up in bed, since they have both crowded out the rightful decision makers in their respective spheres, local government and small business.  Being in favor of one means, de facto, that you are in favor of the other.  Which is why, I suspect, the Democrats and Republicans look suspiciously similar on so many issues.)

In 1922, Chesterton converted to Catholicism.  In a United Kingdom that had only allowed Catholics the right to own property again in 1787 and given them nearly equal rights in 1829, this was not a minor thing.  Writing to his mother to explain, Chesterton explained he could not do other than convert, because, “It is true.”  He would also later write:

The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”

Although Chesterton has so many wonderful, insightful, short quotes, they are only the soundbites of a larger body of thought and writing.  He is well worth exploring.  As Joseph Pearce (also a convert heavily influenced by Chesterton) commented, those dead, white, European males have a lot of worthwhile stuff to say.

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.” – Orthodoxy, 1908

How health care rumors get started…

So, we were all just in the door from an hour of high-velocity fun at the local park.  I had an hour of peace and quiet, sitting at a bench in the shade, reading A Medieval Home Companion: Housekeeping in the Fourteenth Century.  The kids tore around the park, chasing birds and other kids.  Needless to say, they were hot and thirsty when we got home.

As I was pouring juice and water, Crash announced that he had a headache.  I told him he was just hot, probably a little dehydrated, and needed something to drink.  He wanted a second opinion.

Diva promptly informed him of the cure.  It sounded like something out of the book I was reading.

“If you have a headache, hit the side of your head.  If that side hurts, you get a big mouthful of water (like you were going to spit it, but don’t), and lean your head over that way and swish like this.  If that side didn’t hurt when you hit it, hit the other side.  Then, whichever side hurt, lean that way while you swish the big mouthful of water.”

And you’ve tried this?  I asked, trying to keep a straight face.  It actually works?

“Well, it makes my headaches go away, at least.”

On Iran, Tiananmen Square, and History

After so many botched attempts, you’d think that somebody (or, preferrably, a lot of somebodies) in foreign affairs would notice that nascent democracy movements in dictatorships will fail without external support.

We cheered the democracy movements that tore down the former system of satelite states behind the Iron Curtain… and then failed to do anything about Tiananmen Square (1989), besides give China “most favored nation” status for trade.

After the First Gulf War, we encouraged the Marsh Arabs to fight Saddam Hussein’s repression (1991)… but then failed to support them.  They were attacked and the swamps were drained in a massive ecological disaster designed specifically to dislocate them and silence their opposition to Hussein.

We have shrugged and mostly ignored Iran, until they continued to push their nuclear arms program.  When the previous somewhat reform-minded president saw his friends murdered as a warning that he’d better toe the official line and was constantly threatened, shouldn’t we have said something then?  Now, it’s too late, and we’ve been stuck watching Ahmadinejad strutting on the world stage, bragging about how he’d like to nuke Israel and create the chaos necessary to bring the twelfth imam.  Iran’s streets are stained with more blood every day; he has acheived chaos, if you can call it an acheivement.

 

I had a talk with one of the nuns at our parish once, in between the first and second Gulf Wars, about democray in Iraq.  “It isn’t our problem,” she insisted, “They have to take responsibility for their own democracy and demonstrate peacefully.  We shouldn’t sin by getting militarily involved.”

Um, that’s very nice, it keeps our hands at least technically clean… but it fails the reality test.

Peaceful demonstrations worked for Ghandi, who could rely on the British people growing very, very disgusted with opening their morning paper every day to be greeted by a photo of another Indian protester burning themselves to death in protest of British control of India.

Peaceful demonstrations worked for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., because the U.S. newspapers published photos of peaceful marchers in their Sunday best being attacked with water cannons and snarling police dogs.  Eventually, faced with the photo evidence of their peaceful determination, the rest of the country came around to the idea that blacks deserved equal treatment, too.

Iraq didn’t have that.  Protesters disappeared.  A teenager who scribbled something less-than-complementary about Hussein in a textbook was hauled in for police questioning, along with her entire family.  The government controlled every media outlet.  There were no democracy advocates because they had been ruthlessly eliminated or intimidated into hiding for the sake of their families’ safety.

Iran has an advantage today: the internet.  For all its idiocy and porn, the internet, and especially Twitter, is proving to be the unquenchable media outlet for the Iranian protests.  The government still controls all of the official media (which apparently mistranslated President Obama’s waffly speech into a solid statement of support for the protestors, so that the government could play the valiant defender against the “great satan” (U.S.) again).  The video got out of 27-year-old Neda Soltan dying in the street in a pool of blood while her father called her name; not only did it get out, but reports indicate that many Iranians may have access to it, too.

What Iran does not have is respect for internal freedom of discussion.  It will not have it as long as the mullahs are in power.  The professional police seem somewhat hesitant to beat up the protesters; the Basij militias, on the other hand, have reportedly been brutal in trying to supress the protests (including the sniper who killed Neda).  In any case, the government forces are heavily armed, and the protesters have nothing but numbers.

We’ve seen this before, and, without some different tactics, we will see another Tiananmen Square: a brutal massacre, mass arrests, the sudden *retirement* of certain public figures deemed too sympathetic, and an official cover-up and/or re-writing of the entire incident to blame anybody but the government.

I don’t care if some of the pundits insist that President Obama is taking a cautious tack, that he really understands what’s going on, he just doesn’t want to provoke the Iranian government.  Newsflash: they’re already blaming us.  So we might as well go ahead and earn the complaints.

Let the protesters (and the government) know that the world is with them and will hold the Iranian government accountable for what it does to them.

If we waffle again, if the U.S. officially takes the stand that we won’t “interfere”, then the protesters will lose.  It will again be proved that democracy is an aberration in the Middle East, only pushed in Western-controlled areas (Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian Territories) or in very moderate forms (local elections in Saudi Arabia, for example, seen partially as an attempt to mollify critics of the monarchy).  Of course, President Obama promised in his campaign that the U.S. would stop forcing its values (especially democracy) on the rest of the world.  So, it looks like we’ll continue to waffle, maybe holding out for some sort of concession on the Iranian nuclear program, like, “Ok, we promise we won’t nuke Israel until at least 2012.”

If the protesters lose, if the Iranian government tightens its grip and enforces its own sense of superiority and paranoia, we all lose.

We have seen this before, and we should know better.

But, as the German historical philosopher Georg Hegel famously lamented, “What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it…”