Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture » Cultural Revolutions

Perpetual Education for Perpetual Indoctrination--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:51:38 +0000

The Obama administration already wants every child to go to preschool and everyone to go to college. Yesterday I noticed a cover article in Time magazine taking aim at summer vacation. It seems our leaders want all young Americans in school, all the time. Forgive my skepticism, given the long track record of failure when it comes to policies endorsed by the educational establishment. But there is one thing our public schools have come to excel at: indoctrinating students in political correctness. Maybe that helps explain the current enthusiasm for perpetual education. A generation subjected to PC brainwashing from preschool through college will have very few members who can still think for themselves.

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The Inequity of Diversity--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:29:44 +0000

A new study of admissions at elite colleges by Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford is attracting a lot of attention at Steve Sailer’s website and elsewhere on the internet. Deservedly so, since the study clearly shows that “diversity” in college admissions is nothing more than a code word for systematic discrimination against whites. According to Espenshade and Radford, to have the same chance of admission as a black applicant with an SAT score of 1100, an Hispanic applicant would need to score 1230, a white applicant 1410, and an Asian applicant 1550.

It’s even worse for working-class and rural whites. Compared to working-class whites with comparable credentials, a working-class Asian applicant is seven times more likely to be admitted, a working-class Hispanic eight times more likely to be admitted, and a working-class black ten times more likely. And although extracurricular activities generally improve the chance of admission, participation in such activities as high-school ROTC, 4-H, and Future Farmers of America actually decrease the chance of being admitted.

This study is just another reminder that working-class whites are disdained by our elites and discriminated against with impunity, a result that seems especially inequitable when one remembers the achievements of such as Alvin York and Audie Murphy. Of course, I suspect that most Ivy League admissions officers have never heard of Alvin York or Audie Murphy, and would be appalled by them if they had.

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Disappearing Summer Jobs--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:21:25 +0000

The redoubtable John Derbyshire had a piece at NRO this morning on how mass immigration is causing summer jobs for teenagers to disappear, and why our feckless elites think this is a good thing. The piece is well worth the read, and it may be found here.

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Obama Still Dislikes “Anti-Trade Sentiment”--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:46:39 +0000

David Frum has now praised Barack Obama for urging Congress to ratify free-trade pacts with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama, saying this represents “an amazing turnabout for President Obama.” Actually, Obama’s support for free trade is quite predictable, despite the occasional protectionist noises he uttered to win over gullible voters in manufacturing states. Obama’s true feelings were unveiled to wealthy donors in San Francisco when he disparaged Pennsylvania primary voters unreceptive to his message of “hope” and “change” for “clinging” to religion and guns. One of the other sins of those benighted Pennsylvanians was their “anti-trade sentiment,” a sentiment quite common among members of the blue-collar middle class that was created by an American manufacturing sector decimated by free trade but alien to Obama, his San Francisco audience, and other credentialed members of the overclass. A Democratic Party controlled by Obama and those who think like him can hardly be expected to oppose consistently or credibly the economic forces that are helping to sweep away a blue-collar middle class that has never been receptive to trendy leftism and that has long been scorned as reactionary and racist by our leftist elites. (Hat tip to Matt Roberts, who pointed this story out to me.)

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Hitchens and Israel--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:04:28 +0000

The print issue of National Review has a very revealing review of Christopher Hitchens’ autobiography by Ronald Radosh. It comes as no surprise that Radosh praises the book and its author as a “voice to treasure”; Hitchens has been enjoying neocon praise since he emerged as a very vocal supporter of the neocon project of using American blood and treasure to impose democracy on the Mideast. What is surprising, given NR’s history, is where Radosh chooses to criticize Hitchens. Hitchens is not criticized for his jihad against religion, which is arguably at the heart of Hitchens’ worldview. Instead, Radosh charges that Hitchens is insufficiently supportive of Israel, which Radosh sees as part of Hitchens’ being “strangely unable to empathize with ‘the tribe,’” a peculiar term Radosh employs because Hitchens has Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side. The same priorities are reflected at NRO, where piece after piece extolls Israel and no dissent on American policy toward Israel is allowed.

If anyone had predicted 50 years ago that the magazine founded by the author of God and Man at Yale would someday view hostility to Christianity as no big deal and would instead have as its litmus test support for Israel, he would have been laughed at. Nonetheless, he would have been right.

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The Feds and Arizona--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:23:54 +0000

What Hillary promised an Ecuadorean TV interviewer has indeed come to pass: the Obama Justice Department has asked a federal judge to enjoin enforcement of the Arizona immigration law allowing Arizona police to ask for proof of citizenship, on the grounds that federal immigration law has preemptive force. Of course, the only reason the Arizona legislature passed the law was because the federal government has failed in its duty to enforce American immigration laws, and Obama and his predecessor each have wanted to gut those laws and to remove whatever impediments remain to mass immigration from Mexico. Let us hope that the federal court rejects Obama’s argument, and that more states follow Arizona’s example.

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“How to Make an American Job”--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:23:19 +0000

Andy Grove, one of the founders of Intel, has a thought-provoking piece today on “How to Make an American Job Before It’s Too Late.” The article contains lots of interesting detail on how the loss of manufacturing jobs has hurt our country, as well as policy recommendations similar to those found in Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures. The article is well worth the read.

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The Elite Mr. Hitchens--Tom Piatak

Tom Piatak — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:51:03 +0000

Yesterday brought the news that Christopher Hitchens has cancer. Of course, the Christian response to that news is prayer for Hitchens’ recovery and conversion, just as it would be to the news of anyone’s serious illness. But I wanted to highlight some of the gushing tributes to Hitchens that continue to pour forth, such as today’s David Brooks column in the New York Times and yesterday’s exceedingly pompous and dull review of Hitchens’ memoirs in The New Criterion. What these reviews show, despite all the talk of Hitchens’ iconoclasm, is that Hitchens is something far different from an iconoclast. He is instead a harbinger of elite opinion, representing opinions our elites hold or are coming to hold but are as yet wary of fully expressing. Far from harming Hitchens in any way, his hatred of religion has won him the admiration of our elites, who see in it something similar to their own views, even if Hitchens’ hatred is still fiercer and more bold.

Real iconoclasts don’t get mash notes published to them in the New York Times.

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Islamists--Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:31:40 +0000

Two small additions. First, the powers-that-be insisted upon Islamist as a negative term to distinguish real Muslims who want to kill us for the sake of religion from people who pretend to be Muslims without really having firm convictions.

Perhaps we should call them Methodist Muslims or, for AW’s sake, ELCA-Muslims. Second, why don’t we quit playing around and go back to the good old ways of our ancestors who knew what they were fighting. Ali Mir is a Paynim who worships the demon Mahound.

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The Supremes and the NRA--Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:28:39 +0000

I agree entirely with Aaron Wolf both on the constitutional argument but also on the deeper political question of the centralization of power. The problem is that we are all tempted to use the court when it suits our purpose, and in this case if I lived in Chicago I’d probably be happy with this victory of Washington over the people who live in the country. To see what people think, I am allowing writebacks on this.

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