Academia

The Assault on American Identity and Cohesion

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Reading Sgt Mom’s new historical novel inspired me to research some additional sources on that era of history. At the library, I picked up A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory, by Randy Roberts and James Olson. The first half of the book is devoted to the actual historical events, the second half to the differing ways these events have been portrayed in legend and in formal history over the century and a half that has passed since they occurred.

At the end of the book, the authors describe a commemoration that was held at the Alamo in 1999. There were thousands of people there–one attendee they noticed was “an Anglo graduate student from the University of Texas, filled with passionate intensity…plain, metal-rimmed glasses rested down on his nose, and his goatee was trimmed a la Leon Trotsky.”

They also noticed a Hispanic family with three girls ages 8 to 12. The father, a CPA with a Wharton degree, photographed his family in front of the limestone walls of the chapel and told them briefly about the Alamo, telling the girls that “it stood for courage and integrity, virtues they needed to cultivate in their own lives.”

At that point, the Anglo graduate student arrived at the chapel door. He asked, “Why are you even here today? Don’t you know what this place stands for? It represents the rape and destruction of your people.”

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Changing minds one interview at a time

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Check out my recent appearance on WPWR’s (Channel 50) “Perspective” program yesterday (Sunday). The discussion was around a voucher bill, along with other issues confronting education.

The Latest News On School Reform and School Vouchers: My50CHICAGO.com

Of course, with three people defending the existing system, and only one person (me) describing it accurately as failing, it’s not like we don’t have our work cut out for us. You may be interested in the other guests, as they make their conventional case for dumping more money into a failed system. If not, my stint starts at the 11:22 mark.

As always, constructive critiques are welcome. Being more used to radio, I have to work on my TV persona. Any advice on how to quickly make friends with the first camera shot would be greatly appreciated.

BIG Day Today

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Today, March 30, is Buy Israeli Goods day. BIG Day was established as a counter to the “Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions” movement, which aims to do Israel economic harm. Information about BIG Day, along with ideas about what to buy and where to buy it, at Robert Avrech’s blog.

Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions advocates have an annual event called “Israeli Apartheid Week” (actually 2 weeks long) which is “celebrated” on university campuses throughout the U.S. and Europe. See 14 days of vileness.

Buy Israeli products today if you can; if you can’t get to it, keep in mind the ideas at Robert’s blog and his links for future reference.

What, Precisely, is the Issue with “Elites”?

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Conservatives/libertarians and especially Tea Party supporters often speak about “elites” in pejorative terms. Why is this? I doubt that many among us would argue in favor of mediocrity (a la the senator who famously argued that mediocre people also deserve representation on the Supreme Court) and/or of extreme egalitarianism and social leveling. Indeed, quite a few outspoken conservatives and libertarians could themselves be considered to have elite status in view of their professional, economic, and/or scholarly accomplishments. So what is the critique of elitism all about?

Several factors seem to me to be at work…

1)There is a perception that the multiple ladders of success which have existed in American society are increasingly being collapsed into a single ladder, with access tightly controlled via educational credentials

2)It is increasingly observed that these credentials actually have fairly low predictive power concerning an individual’s actual ability to perform important tasks and make wise judgments about institutional or national issues. The assumption that school-based knowledge generally trumps practical experience seems increasingly questionable as the sphere of activity for which this assertion is made has expanded, and is indeed increasingly viewed with suspicion or with outright disdain.

3)It is observed that people working in certain fields arrogate to themselves an assumed elite status despite the fact that their jobs actually require relatively little in terms of skill and judgment. Ace of Spades cites a history writer on class distinctions in Victorian England:

She noted, for example, that a Bank of England clerk would be a member of the middle/professional class, despite the fact that what he did all day was hand-write numbers into ledgers and do simple arithmetic and some filing work and the like, whereas, say, a carpenter actually did real thinking, real planning, at his job, with elements of real creativity. And yet it was the Bank of England clerk who was considered a “mind” worker and the carpenter merely a hand-laborer.

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Complicity and Collaboration

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An important article about the demonization of Israel–and increasingly, the outright anti-Semitism—which has been instigated by far too many members of the Chattering Classes: writers, entertainers, behind-the-scenes media people, and college professors. Carolyn Glick: Itamar’s Children. Excerpt:

Israel’s leaders were caricatured as Fagin, Shylock, Pontius Pilate and Hitler on the front pages of newspapers throughout Europe. IDF soldiers were portrayed as Nazis, and Israeli families were dehumanized.

No longer civilians with an inherent right to live, in universities throughout the US and Europe, Israeli innocents were castigated as “extremist-Zionists” or “settlers” who basically deserved to be killed.

Professors whose “academic” achievements involved publishing sanitized postmodern versions of anti-Jewish Palestinian propaganda were granted tenure and rewarded with lucrative book contracts.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: See also Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret.