“He regarded himself as an instrument, which he used tirelessly for the benefit of others.”
Academia
9/11 Plus Eight Years
(This is basically a rerun of my posts from this day in 2006-2008. Some new links added this year are at the bottom of the post.)
I am increasingly worried about our prospects for success in the battle against those who would destroy our civilization. America and the other democracies possess great military, economic, and intellectual strengths–but severe internal divisions threaten our ability to use these resources effectively.
Within days of the collapse of the Towers, it started. “Progressive” demonstrators brought out the stilt-walkers, the Uncle Sam constumes, and the giant puppets of George Bush. They carried signs accusing America of planning “genocide” against the people of Afghanistan.
Professors and journalists preached about the sins of Western civilization, asserting that we had brought it all on ourselves. A well-known writer wrote of her unease when her daughter chose to buy and display an American flag. Some universities banned the display of American flags in dormitories, claiming that such display was “provocative.”
What, Precisely, is “Creativity”?
From this article:
At the Kansas University School of Journalism, enrollment is currently 70 percent female, according to the school’s dean, Ann Brill.
“I’m sure there are a couple of reasons for this,” Brill said. “It’s probably a right brain/left brain thing. That sounds sexist, but there’s some truth to it.”
Men tend to be drawn to more analytical majors such as engineering or business, whereas women enjoy the creativity that journalism allows for, she said.
Ignore, for the moment, the gender stereotyping and the lack of supporting data (are women really that rare in undergraduate business programs? I don’t think so) and concentrate on the implied assertion that journalism is inherently more creative than either business or engineering.
Historians in denial
Tomorrow I shall go to London Library and collect my reserved copy of “The Forsaken” by Tim Tzouliadis, the tragic story of American workers who went to the “new paradise”, that is the Soviet Union in the early thirties and what happened to them. (Hint: it is not very pleasant.) After that, I shall have to read “Spies”, the latest in the revelations about the far-reaching Communist network in the United States of the thirties and forties. I have already read with great glee the revelations about I. F. Stone.
It would be awfully nice if at some point we could have a few revelations of that kind here and not have to rely on the Americans to give us the information. But what with our libel laws and paranoid secrecy, which makes it impossible to get hold of important documents, I cannot see that happening any time soon.
Meanwhile, I have re-read “In Denial” by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr about historians trying to wish away documents and evidence about Communism and its agents. Not only re-read but wrote about it on the Conservative History Journal blog. I’ll be glad to hear American reactions.
The Privilege Card
I worked my way through college as a security guard for a company that specialized in security for the campus area of a major flagship university. The area was simply stuffed with the children of the wealthy and connected, most of whom belonged to sororities and fraternities. Most of the security and police work revolved around controlling the excesses of the frats. I got to see how the police had to deal with people quick to claim immunity because of their membership or parentage. I saw how irritated the police got every time they had to talk to one of those little snots.
So, when I read the police report on the Gates incident I understood immediately that Gates’s mistake wasn’t “being a black man in America,” it was this:
I then overheard Gates asking the person on the other end of his telephone call to “get the chief” and “what’s the chief’s name?” … Gates then turned to me and told me that I had no idea who I was “messing” with and I had not heard the last of it.
I can only imagine how many hundreds of times the Cambridge police have heard some arrogant little snot of a Harvard frat boy utter variants on that same claim to privilege. The Cambridge police also well know that frats only claim privilege when they know they’re in the wrong and they need to weasel out the consequences. When Gates played the privilege card like a frat snot, Officer Crowley immediately suspected that Gates was up to something and was trying to intimidate the officer into backing off and not investigating further.