Posted on 09/17/2005 6:25:59 PM PDT by snarks_when_bored
California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) opened in 1995 on the former Fort Ord Army Base through President Clinton’s “Peace Dividend,” that Democratic plan to exploit President Reagan’s triumph over the Soviet Empire to devastate our military and intelligence services. Now, a former, thriving military community has become a Marxist boot camp and bastion for radical, militant, racial identity-politics as well as a refuge for academic hacks. The conflict I experienced while teaching at CSUMB and the resulting actions taken against me are the topics of the latter half of this article.
CSUMB could as easily have been named CSU-Affirmative Action. CSUMB is unique among American state colleges in that it was conceived as an Affirmative Action university and officially oriented as an institution of leftist political indoctrination. Declarations from the university’s “Vision Statement” provide a sense of CSUMB’s direction (see also the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences statement of Educational Philosophy):
The campus will be distinctive in serving the diverse people of California, especially the working class and historically undereducated and low-income populations…The identity of the university will be framed by substantive commitment to multilingual, multicultural, gender-equitable learning.
The curriculum of CSUMB will be student and society centered and of sufficient breadth and depth to meet statewide and regional needs, specifically those involving both inner-city and isolated rural populations, and needs relevant to communities in the immediate Tri-County region (Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito).
Our vision of the goals of California State University, Monterey Bay includes: a model pluralistic academic community where all learn and teach one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect and pursuit of excellence; a faculty and staff motivated to excel in their respective fields as well as to contribute to the broadly defined university environment. Our graduates will have an understanding of interdependence and global competence, distinctive technical and educational skills, the experience and abilities to contribute to California's high quality work force, the critical thinking abilities to be productive citizens, and the social responsibility and skills to be community builders. CSUMB will dynamically link the past, present, and future by responding to historical and changing conditions, experimenting with strategies which increase access, improve quality, and lower costs through education in a distinctive CSU environment. University students and personnel will attempt analytically and creatively to meet critical state and regional needs, and to provide California with responsible and creative leadership for the global 21st century.
CSUMB has created a sort of Newspeak terminology in an attempt to distinguish its alternative credentials, and faculty publications tend to be in the area of pedagogy or educational philosophy. Classes, for example, are deemed “learning experiences.” General education requirements—here called University Learning Requirements, or ULR’s—include:
* “Democratic Participation” where instructors require students to engage in political action for “social justice”;
* “U.S. Histories,” the pluralization, implying a separatist approach to history;
* “Ethics”; and
* “Vibrancy,” a fancy term for physical education, for which students here receive college credit.
In addition to “Democratic Participation,” another palpably leftist ULR includes “Culture and Equity,” the “learning outcomes” of which include the following goals:
Students define and describe the concept of culture using insights from scholarly literatures of culture and compare their own culture with other cultures using their conceptual understanding.
Students define and describe the concept of cultural identity(s) using insights from scholarly literatures and compare their own cultural identity(s), within the context of their own culture(s), with the cultural identities of others.
Students analyze and describe the concepts of power relations, equity, and social justice and find examples of each concept in the U.S. society and other societies.
Students analyze historical and contemporary cross-cultural scenarios of discrimination, inequity, and social injustice in the United States and other societies.
Students define and describe various personal and institutional strategies/processes that could create equity and social justice in the United States and other societies.
Students must also fulfill the “Community Participation” (formerly “Service Learning”) ULR. Many of us have benefited personally from giving our time to the community; serving in a soup kitchen or registering voters can be fulfilling volunteer work, but for college credit? “Learning Outcomes” for this ULR demand:
Students question and analyze their own beliefs, values and assumptions while developing knowledge of the beliefs and values of others.
Students comprehend their own social and cultural group identities and those of others, and the relative privilege or marginalization of each.
Students analyze the demographics and political, sociocultural, and historical dynamics of a specific community.
Students examine and analyze a community issue in the context of systemic inequities.
Students enter, participate in, and exit a community in ways that do not reinforce systemic injustice.
Students contribute to a community through competent, responsive service.
Students demonstrate skills in reciprocal community participation and collaboration.
I realize that students are required to write an “essay” and engage in some form of “analysis” to fulfill this ULR. However, the political orientation of these required projects should be abundantly clear. Consider also mission statement of the Service Learning Institute, which facilitates the “Community Participation” ULR:
The mission of the Service Learning Institute is to foster and promote social justice by cultivating reciprocal service…
We believe that: Service learning must promote social justice…Education at CSUMB should be transformative; creating ethical and responsible community participants…
We have adopted the following core values to guide our work: …Working towards social justice: continual movement toward an equitable society; Developing multicultural understanding and respect for differences; and Cultivating awareness of self in relation to social inequities through reflection and active service with the community.
The ultimate message of these various ULR’s is one of embattled victimhood for minority and female students and that they are “special and apart” from American society, rather than invested in the “American dream.” [1] Moreover, all students, regardless of background, are told they must embrace this vision and donate free time to advancing it in society. As CSUMB is a state school, this agenda is carried out using tax dollars.
A pedagogical position institutionalized at CSUMB is the idea of “Asset Based Learning,” where the students contribute as much to the “learning experience” as the professor. In fact, there are no lecterns in any classroom on campus, despite the fact that most of my students barely demonstrate proficiency in reading and writing at a high school level – let alone posses the basic knowledge of American history that would allow them to pursue introductory collegiate level work in U.S. history, let alone participate in teaching same. When my students were directed, as a preliminary evaluative exercise, to simply write a one-page argument about a section (of their choosing) of the Declaration of Independence or Constitution, one student wrote that the Declaration of Independence may have something to do with England, but he wasn’t sure. Most of my students did not read beyond the Constitution’s Preamble and dismissed our founding documents because slaveholders wrote them and “excluded” women and African-Americans.
Another example of “Asset Based Learning” was reported by a student of mine, who discussed how a tenured professor (whose office sports a large portrait of Karl Marx) allowed his students to teach each other about issues of race. Apparently, when one student “of color” threw a desk, the professor felt that he should not reprimand this student because the professor was white – and he would not chastise white students for their misbehavior, either, because this would be seen as a double standard. (At least he’s consistent.)
The low level of academics, taking the form, for instance, of grade giveaways for reflection papers, doesn’t seem to bother many faculty members who, apparently maintaining disdain for both traditional standards of academic achievement and scholarly integrity, simply pat themselves on the back for passing along and handing out degrees to minority students (as long as they vote the way they were taught to vote).
Plagiarism and other acts of academic dishonesty are rampant here and go drastically underreported. I single-handedly tripled the university’s instances of reported academic dishonesty by referring students to the Judicial Affairs Office from a single section of my course who had committed blatant plagiarism, copying and pasting significant portions of their term research papers from internet sources. My attempts to urge the university to adopt an honor code and stricter guidelines concerning academic dishonesty and plagiarism have fallen on deaf ears. Is it any wonder when the former chair of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Armando Arias, was fined by the Commissioner of Higher Education in the State of Texas for running an online diploma mill, that issues of academic integrity are not taken seriously at CSUMB?
California State universities and the University of California system do not readily accept any transfer credits from CSUMB. To be sure, not holding students to traditional standards of academic achievement and scholarly integrity promotes an insidious, “soft bigotry of low expectations.”[2]
Far-Left Bias and Hispanic Racism
If CSUMB has dumbed down its admissions standards, it has altered the curriculum accordingly, overtly championing left-wing orthodoxy. A cursory review of course texts in the bookstore reveals titles such as Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, used for a business writing course; In Defense of Mumia; What Liberal Media?; Lies My Teacher Told Me; tracts by Howard Zinn; and other blatantly leftist works. Balancing conservative titles are nowhere to be found.
One CSUMB professor alone, Juan Oliverez, forces his students to read the highly tendentious text of the celebrated Marxist historian Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Rodolfo Acuña’s Occupied America, Paula Rothenberg’s White Privilege, and William Domhoff’s Who Rules America? As Maria Chang argues:
For Rodolfo Acuña, author of Occupied America: The Chicano’s Struggle toward Liberation, probably the most widely assigned text in U.S. Chicano Studies programs, the Anglo-American invasion of Mexico was “as vicious as that of Hitler's invasion of Poland and other Central European nations....” The book also includes a map showing “the Mexican republic” in 1822 reaching up into Kansas and Oklahoma, and including within it Utah, Nevada, and everything west and south of there. At a MEChA conference in 1996, Acuña referred to Anglos as Nazis: “Right now you are in the Nazi United States of America.” The effect of books such as those is to radicalize young Chicanos.
Never engaging in a debate presenting alternative points of view—except for who can be more radical—and quashing all dissenting voices, university events are presented in a uniformly leftist manner. Official dorm movie nights showed Fahrenheit 9/11 leading up to the presidential election last November. Recently Social and Behavioral Sciences presented its Ninth Annual Social Justice Colloquium, “Multicultural Citizenship in an Era of U.S. Dominance,” which included, among others, Ilise Cohen, a member of Voices in the Wilderness and Huda Samir of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), a group supported by the Workers-Communist Party of Iran. “Vagina Days” was another major university event, as was Howard Zinn’s play about the anarchist Emma Goldman. Another recent event, “Diversity Days,” included a discussion entitled “Unpacking Whiteness” that explored “the concept of whiteness and its relation to systematic privilege, as well as removing the guilt of being white.” (That would be a first.)
Sam Green’s sympathetic documentary about the Weather Underground was promoted extensively as a major university event, and faculty were asked to encourage their students to attend. Notice that terrorism is in scare quotes in the following e-mail announcements, and that we will learn of its “cause,” which turned out to be – surprise! – American policy:
Dear Faculty,
Please announce this to your students. It is a very engaging film about a very misunderstood part of U.S. history. There will be a discussion after the screening, an opportunity to reflect on the issue of “terrorism” and what drives people to it.
Caitlin [Manning]
Dear All: Please consider attending this timely event. Sincerely, Lilly Martinez
On the eve of the presidential election, World Languages and Cultures (WLC) presented the following “seminar” in a blatant attempt to influence the votes of Hispanic, oops, I mean Chicano or better, Xicano, students. One fli[e]r backing a university seminar last November declared:
U.S. President George Bush may be surprised to learn that he's not very popular among Latin Americans. Despite speaking Spanish. [sic.] Opinion polls reveal that only 12 percent of Latin American people think President Bush is doing a good job in the region. Mistrust ranges from the war on Iraq to U.S. policy on free trade.
MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán [Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán]) is active on campus. The overt racism and militancy of this group is well documented. The MEChA logo pictures dynamite and a macahuitl, the obsidian blade-studded war club that advanced the brutal Aztec mpire. Last year, the university hosted a lecture by Maestro Ocelocoatl, whose “teachings” include that “arqueolocos” (crazy archaeologists) had fabricated findings about Aztec human sacrifices, claiming this never happened. Spurious claims to indigenous identity, always Aztec, and territorial claims to the mythical land of “Aztlán” are commonplace, to the chagrin of California and other American Indians.
Naturally, the idea of Aztlán, the mythical northern lands from which the Chichimecas migrated, was revived within the Chicano movement to be a symbolic literary device by the poet Alturista.[3] Interestingly, Aztlán happens to coincide with the extensive lands claimed but only partially controlled by the Spanish Empire and later the Mexican Republic. The actual indigenous inhabitants of most of these territories were Indians who prevented Hispanic control through decisive military action, and who were making progress toward destroying Hispanic settlements in California and other areas at the time of American annexation. David Yeagley’s clarity is germane here: “The truth is, Mexicans were helpless against us. So where did they get this idea that they used to own our land?”
Aztlán is now a reified concept taking on an undue concrete reality and is the central rallying cry of the Chicano nationalists’ intended “reconquista” or re-conquest of the American Southwest (either through violence or immigration). One of the key “plans” of MEChA is included on the CSUMB MEChA’s website:
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops. and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent.
Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles [sic] against the foreigner “gabacho” who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.
Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada [For the race everything. For those outside of the race, nothing].
Latino faculty members at CSUMB protested the administration of University President Peter Smith, a white, former Republican U.S. Representative from Vermont, alleging widespread discrimination. I cannot evaluate those claims here. I bring these events up because the rhetoric used by those involved is revealing, if for no other reason than to illustrate the emotionally and politically charged character of race relations that have dominated the early history of this campus. Ruben Mendoza championed the conflict against President Smith's administration in inflammatory, hyperbolic terms such as calling the administration's actions “ethnic cleansing,” “brutalization,” “Latino lynching” and a “scorched earth policy” that created a “climate of fear” and a “toxic environment. Donald Urioste, Director of World Languages and Cultures, stated in an article discussing the allegations of the “racism” of Smith’s administration and the “ethnic cleansing” at CSUMB:
We have just said ‘enough.’ Many of the people who left have been Latino and African American, and as people leave, they are not being replaced. Many of us have been struggling for that goal since the ‘60s. Now we are having to fight the same battle we fought some 30 years ago. This is supposed to be our university and we shouldn’t have to struggle [emphasis added]. [See also resolutions of the Associated Students and other aspects of student politics, including headlines from Democracy Now!]
Leading up to graduation ceremonies last year, intended, of course, as celebrations for graduating students and their families, some level-headed faculty members urged all faculty via a mass e-mail to not disrupt the event to protest the university's administration with signs, body language, etc. Ruben Mendoza, for example, responded by deriding these faculty for their “middle class” values and comportment, and, making an analogy to the Boston Tea Party, claiming that his graduation protests were somehow central to promoting democracy at CSUMB.
CSUMB Opposes Academic Freedom
The “Social and Political Histories of the United States,” the Social and Behavioral Sciences course, for which I was hired to teach as a part-time lecturer, fulfills both the “U.S. Histories” and “Democratic Participation” ULR’s. Because of this, I receive e-mail from the two ULR “Communities,” i.e., committees. The chair of the Democratic Participation committee, David Takacs, e-mailed his concern that CSUMB would soon be targeted by the academic freedom movement because of “what we teach and how we teach.” In a reminder e-mail, Takacs represented the academic freedom movement with the following inane mischaracterization, “Our [discussion] topic: (How) Do we respond to the nationwide movement to censure more ‘liberal’ faculty members in Academia?” [sic.]
To date, CSUMB has “responded” by ducking, covering, and continuing its political advocacy – and its advocacy of low academic standards generally. It is beyond my comprehension how this “university,” or trumped up, radicalized remedial high school, was accredited in the first place, although the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation report mentions a “strong sense of common purpose,” explicitly citing its political “vision.” Even this laudatory report wonders aloud:
The team wonders if the intensity of the vision may serve both as an attractor and as a filter, in some cases causing those whose interests are not fully aligned with the vision to leave the campus. (page 22).
Not all CSUMB faculty are content that those with opposing viewpoints stay away; they also want to drive political heretics from their ranks. Unfortunately, I am one such example.
My Fight with CSUMB
In addition to opposing this indoctrination on intellectual grounds, I have a personal stake in the debate over CSUMB: my teaching contract was not renewed this semester after I objected to remaining in a shared office where my officemate, the aforementioned Juan Oliverez. Oliverez is a former Salinas City Council member who also sued to attempt to prevent Governor Schwarzenegger’s recall election. At issue was my objection that Oliverez monopolized wall space above the only desk in the room with left-wing propaganda posters. The messages of these posters inspired my protest, messages such as:
We are warriors, training in the schools and
on the streets of barrios everywhere.
We are the founders of a New Brown Empire.
We call ourselves Chicano, Latino, Mexicano, and Indigenous.
We are Soldiers of the Sixth Sun.
All of his posters were created by Chingao (Spanish for “F—k”) Productions. Another poster is a poem about a Chicano student, the message of which is that because George Washington wasn’t Chicano and therefore not his “father,” the student should not be required to learn about this founding father. Other posters continued on similar militant themes.
Because of my longstanding commitment to countering racism and my concern for race relations in America, I was led to object to the messages of Oliverez’s posters. I did not want to be associated with these messages day in and day out and have to explain or comment on them to my students. I certainly would not have objected if it was Oliverez’s own office and would only encourage him to expose exactly who he is and in what he believes. I originally wrote to Oliverez:
Juan:
I assume the decorations in building [15], room 110 are yours. If not, please disregard this note. Are you using this office currently? I'm unsure because your name is not listed outside. If not, would you please remove your posters? If so, were you unaware that this office is a shared space?
Philip
Oliverez responded that he was aware, but there was plenty of wall space for my decorations. He copied his e-mail to the departmental administrative assistant, who pointed out to me Oliverez's seniority and “graciousness” in scheduling his office hours on the days he teaches instead of the days I teach. She offered to have another desk placed in the small office for my decorations.
To counter these images and messages, I considered hanging photographs of American presidents, the Declaration of Independence and an American flag. Instead, I decided to write to the chair of the department, George Baldwin, and reply to the administrative assistant, Lilly Martinez, to express my concerns, understanding that retribution would likely follow. In my e-mail I stated that I would no longer meet with students in that office because, “I strive to encourage my students to be nuanced and critical in their thinking on issues of history, politics and identity, and to maintain high evidentiary standards. I encourage respect for the dignity and humanity of all peoples. The office is embarrassingly counterproductive in this regard.” Martinez immediately responded with the following e-mail suggesting that I had acted with disrespect towards Oliverez in my initial e-mail and implying that I am a racist.
Phil: It doesn’t appear (in my opinion) based on the tone and really, disrespect in your initial e-mail to Dr. Oliverez that you encourage respect for the dignity and humanity of all peoples. As a former student of Dr. Oliverez, I find him to be of the highest caliber instructor [sic.] and person [sic.] who encourages respect for everyone. I suggest you talk to Dr. Baldwin about alternative office space – perhaps you can meet your students in the other adjunct office in 17/110 unless of course the Native American posters offend you? [emphasis added]
Lilly
Martinez's e-mail rests on the Orwellian logic that to point out Chicano racism is itself an act of egregious racism. Martinez then barged into my locked office during my office hours, with another faculty member in tow – without knocking – to confront me and further berate me, stating in the end that she was, “surprised and disappointed.” After I stated that I would no longer be meeting with students in the office, Oliverez immediately rearranged his decorations placing his “Soldiers of a New Brown Empire” prominently and hanging a new poster of Ernesto “Che” Guevara with a poem that begins with the line, “Yo soy con el Che.” (“I am with Che.”)
I received no communication from the department whatsoever concerning a contract for employment this semester. I heard anecdotally from two professors in the department that Martinez and Oliverez have both filed unsubstantiated complaints against me. I have neither been formally made aware of these complaints, nor have I been provided with the opportunity to respond to them. As one professor reported to me, Martinez’s complaint, and the rumor that she has circulated around the department, was that I “attacked” and “threatened” her. Another professor put it in milder terms that I had “spoken angrily” toward Martinez and that Oliverez’s complaint apparently consists of his contention that I demanded that he take down his posters. This latter professor, tenured within the department, pointed out an official reason why I wasn’t rehired—the university needed to balance the courses that fulfill the U.S. Histories ULR among the various departments that offer competing courses meeting this ULR. He stated that though this was the official reason, he could not assure me that my conflict with Oliverez and Martinez was not the root cause.
Both professors with whom I discussed my employment issue noted that they had been made aware of student complaints against me. When I wrote to the chair requesting a meeting, Martinez forwarded e-mail from three students apparently construed as formal complaints. The chair responded that he would meet with me and that the student complaints needed to be addressed. One e-mail was from a student upset because I failed her for blatant plagiarism, another from a student who believed I was ignoring her e-mail (I was not teaching and was out of town without secure e-mail access), and another from a student with an incomplete grade. I responded positively to the chair with the times I was available to meet. So far, my request for a meeting has gone unanswered. My treatment amounts to the type of racial McCarthyism that Horowitz describes in Uncivil Wars.
CSUMB is unique in that its control by radicals was not due to a slow process of domination through the attrition and barring of conservative or centrist faculty. CSUMB was designed and founded to be an institution of leftist indoctrination. Some faculty members claim a position of ultimate persecution at the hands of allegedly virulently racist administration. On a deeper level, educational philosophy in American universities is now based on crude Marxist notions about truth and ideology – progression towards leftist politics and away from capitalist “false consciousness” is assumed to be foundational to higher education itself (more on this another time). After all, an education at CSUMB, where Cesar Chavez Day is celebrated instead of Veterans’ Day, is intended to be “transformative.” This might also serve as a warning that where the open borders lobby and rabid anti-American, whitey-hating militancy meet, “unholy alliances,” and treacherous consequences are only a fuse length away.
I wish to thank Jeff Boyd for his insightful criticisms, editorial suggestions and support.
ENDNOTES:
[1] David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy over Reparations for Slavery. Encounter Books: San Francisco, CA. 2002, p. 38.
[2] President George W. Bush, January 8, 2004.
[3] See the PBS documentary Chicano!: History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement, “In Search of a Homeland.”
This is the college that pays Leon Panetta $900.00 a day and pays his wife $600.00 a day...
Dang, that's news to me! Do you have a reference link?
I see now that Panetta's institute is associated with CSUMB. I didn't know that. But I don't see a reference to monetary arrangements. That would be quite interesting to see. I do see that Panetta's wife is on the payroll, though.
No Bard by the Bay
Cal State Monterey Bay stresses a "multicultural, global and multilingual" curriculumBy Carl Irving
FORT ORD (MONTEREY COUNTY) - Administrators and faculty members at California State University, Monterey Bay, have bypassed traditional academic programs to create a curriculum which they believe will prepare students for an increasingly multi-racial, internationally involved, high-tech California.Now halfway through its second academic year, this campus pays far less attention than most to a review of the 220-year history of the United States, and the early settlers' white, male-dominated, European cultural heritage.
Instead of traditional humanities and social sciences, coursework concentrates on what the campus academic plan calls a "multicultural, global and multilingual" perspective. Emphasis, according to the plan, is on "those from which traditionally underrepresented populations evolve."
"All campuses have some focus on multi-culturalism, but the vision of this university is one of primary focus on the given demographics of California,'' said Harold M. Murai, an educational psychologist who helps direct the collaborative education and professional studies center.
Instead of traditional academic departments, Cal State Monterey Bay has four interdisciplinary centers-Murai's and three others: arts, human communication and creative technologies; social and behavioral sciences; and science, technology and information resources. Classrooms, books, electronics and work-study projects have been mixed in unique ways that President Peter Smith said will take four to five years to evolve into effective, ongoing programs.
Smith, former education dean at George Washington University and a Vermont congressman before that, has developed "proseminar" studies to introduce students to the novel programs, and has approved 15 graduation requirements that he says will measure student achievement better than grades or course units.
Degrees will not be granted, according to Smith, unless students have mastered arts communication, community participation, culture, English communications, equity, ethics, history, information, language, literature, mathematics communication, media, science, technology and "vibrant." This last requirement is defined as "understanding of the interrelationship between intellectual, psychological, spiritual, aesthetic and physical health as it applies to one's own life."
All students must spend at least four hours a week on semester-long community projects. These have included working with children of Mexican American farm workers in the nearby Salinas Valley and helping children from low-income, single-parent families with homework and counseling.
Computers are required for everything from writing papers to staying in touch with faculty members, who, individually and collectively, custom design majors agreeable to the students. Enthusiastic students interviewed for this article said that they spend more than half their scheduled time doing community service or other projects outside the classroom.
Confidence abounds that the campus has able and willing faculty moving along an innovative path. "We have a stunning blend of scholarly talent,'' said Jusina Makau, the ebullient dean of the arts, human communication and creative technologies center, who taught at Ohio State for 16 years before coming here. "Many people (faculty members) who would ordinarily go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT find their way here because we're so outstanding in education," she said.
The setting is appropriate for a pioneering campus. It lies at the very heart of Fort Ord, which was one of the army's largest training bases before the end of the Cold War. Rows of abandoned wooden barracks and other buildings, some with large, fading regimental logos, surround the compact heart of the campus, which is housed in refurbished military structures that have been freshly painted in bright, cheerful colors.
Makau and her colleagues find this foggy, windy setting near the Pacific to be a haven from the stultifying, traditional academic groves. But those seeking radically new directions in higher education in America almost invariably must defend themselves against criticism, and this campus is no exception.
Even before questions were raised about the curriculum, the campus was controversial. Critics said the population in the three-county area around Fort Ord was not large enough to support a Cal State campus and that new campuses should be located near urban centers, where growing clusters of moderate- to low-income families are concentrated. They pointed to the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, which sought to prevent the haphazard siting of new campuses.
"I wasn't here when those decisions (about the campus) were made," Smith said. "My own view is that in an elected and representative democracy, when the Legislature, the governor, the major boards involved-both the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) and the Cal State Trustees-all agreed that something is in the best interests of the state, that is a de facto sort of staying with the master plan. It would be almost Soviet style to interpret the plan as having a larger reality than the decision-makers appointed to make policy."
In any case, the opportunity proved to be irresistible-taking over, without charge, 1,350 acres on a 28,000-acre base, as well as hundreds of units of former Army housing. To date, the federal government has contributed $49 million to convert former military buildings into a college campus.
By the year 2015, according to Richard E. Hendrickson, vice president for administration, Cal State Monterey Bay hopes to have room for 12,500 students, with enough apartment and dormitory space for 4,000 of them. Early plans called for enrollment to reach 25,000 by early in the next century, but a water shortage has cut that number in half.
The first students arrived in September 1995, only four years after the decision to close the base, and less than a year after Governor Pete Wilson signed legislation authorizing state support for the campus.
"The conversion of Fort Ord to a university campus may not reflect all the features of the Oklahoma land rush, but few could insist that the decisions were shaped by an authentic list of educational priorities,'' higher education consultant William Chance points out in a forthcoming paper to be published by the California Higher Education Policy Center, which also publishes CrossTalk.
And why not? ask Smith and sympathizers. "It was a bird in hand,'' noted Alexander Astin of UCLA, a prominent commentator on public higher education in America. "It would have been dumb not to accept the land and its accompanying subsidies."
Smith said the Cal State system, in effect, obtained a $900 million campus for $150 to $200 million in construction costs, to serve tens of thousands of students. "Is that a good investment for California, with Tidal Wave II coming?" he asked, rhetorically.
Hendrickson said the conversion of Fort Ord has become a national model for other regions despairing about what to do with huge deserted military bases. It all became possible because of considerable influence wielded by former Monterey Peninsula Congressman and House Budget Committee Chairman Leon Panetta, who subsequently became White House chief of staff.
Panetta had many allies in the region who passionately desired to make up for the loss of an estimated $700 million in annual revenues generated by some 35,000 soldiers and civilians, before the site decayed into a deserted wasteland, or worse.
About 1,250 students currently are enrolled at the campus, twice last year's total. Because enrollment is small, and will be for several years, operating costs are high, as they are at other small Cal State campuses like Bakersfield, Humboldt and Stanislaus. Cost per full-time student was $12,316 at Monterey Bay last year, while it was only $5,837 at the 21,500-student San Diego State campus.
Smith said one expectation already has been reversed: Instead of two commuters to every student in residence, it is the other way around.
So far, federal funds have paid for 90 percent of the cost of converting from a military base to a college campus. Plans call for 41 campus buildings, including a splendid former non-commissioned officers club with sweeping views of Monterey Bay, to include an elegant ballroom for festivities and ceremonies, a student union, dining and other social space, plus a number of shops. Other structures will be refurbished to provide a spacious theater and a concert hall.
Students already make use of numerous tennis courts and grassy fields, including a soccer or football stadium. Federal funding also helped to pay for landscaping that thrives despite fog and wind, and helps anchor the mounds of sand and dust that reddened the eyes of generations of Army recruits undergoing basic training.
Students who choose this campus enjoy the coastal setting, even though large areas, including miles of nearby beach, remain out of bounds pending cleanup of toxic wastes, shells and ammunition left from decades of military practice.
Freshmen tend to come from affluent coastal areas, nearly half of them from Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Irvine and Huntington Beach, according to Alethea de Soto, campus director of outreach programs.
President Smith said it is too early to assess student quality. Ultimately, he said, that will be measured by "their capacities for achievements" at graduation time, compared to when they had first enrolled, not by testing for intelligence, or by adding up grades or courses. Jobs, travel and experience in the community will be decisive, because "there's no doubt in my mind that active learning is better than passive learning unless you are studying to be a scholar," he said.
Transfer students come mostly from the four nearest community colleges. Beatrice Gonzales-Ramirez, a 34-year-old senior from Hollister, in San Benito County, is one of these. Like others interviewed here, she is enthusiastic about her studies in human communications, which she says require extensive reading about non-Europeans who immigrated to the United States.
"This allowed me a perspective I'd never heard or seen before," noted Gonzales-Ramirez, who, though a fifth-generation American, said she had been limited, before coming to the campus, to a "Mexican American" perspective. She has been inspired to pursue a master's degree and become a teacher, to help "broaden the definition of an American." Still, she volunteered, "I would have liked to read some Shakespeare."
Faculty members and administrators as well as students confirmed that Shakespeare's writings were not to be found in the Cal State Monterey Bay curriculum last fall. A visitor to the campus book shop found no literature by British or European American writers. There were works by African American, Asian American, and Latino or Mexican American writers, and collections of Native American legends.
The course covering American literature last fall was titled "American ethnic literature and cultures," and the catalogue describes it as designed "to develop students' abilities to compare and contrast world views and philosophical perspectives reflected in literature." The instructor, Qun Wang, said readings included novels by African American, Asian American and Latino authors, a "Jewish American" writer (Bernard Malamud), and poetry by Emily Dickinson, a 19th century European American poet.
When asked about the absence of British writers, since American literature had evolved from across the Atlantic, Wang responded that such material belonged in courses that dealt with foreign readings. "American culture is very different," he said. "We liberated ourselves in 1776. American people are from different cultures and should get rid of bad habits."
Two experienced academics familiar with the campus (but not affiliated with it), interviewed for this article, expressed unhappiness about the lack of European American or European authors in the reading lists. Neither was willing to be identified, observing that if they were named, jobs and relationships could be imperiled.
Both were concerned about shutting out readings and perspectives that would provide a more complete understanding of America. Without that, they pointed out, graduates can not expect to contribute to, or flourish, in a democratic, multi-cultural and technologically proficient society. Ignoring the past won't make it disappear.
One of the critics said he encountered stubborn resistance when he sought to persuade faculty members to assign readings of Greek literature and philosophy, or even early American writers. "I love ethnic writers,'' he said. "But you can't build a curriculum around Toni Morrison. You need a core structure, a library and assignments to read Herman Melville and Mark Twain and Scott Fitzgerald."
A key segment of the academic plan says that "the curriculum being developed at CSUMB is multicultural, global and multilingual...Curriculum planning takes the following direction: (a) focus on one's own sense of culture and experiences with local cultures of color; (b) learn about American cultural heritage (with emphasis on what those of a culture write and say about themselves); (c) learn about newly arriving cultures; and (d) develop a global perspective, linking U.S. cultures with the world. It is important to understand that the cultures of focus discussed here are those from which traditionally underrepresented populations evolve."
When asked for comment about the lack of reference to American cultural and historic roots, faculty members said that students already had learned about basic and traditional American government, history and literature in high school or at a community college. In any case, they said, students will be required to demonstrate they possess such knowledge before they are allowed to graduate.
Campus officials said that Cal State Monterey Bay is in close touch, through outreach programs, with local high schools, and that underprivileged local residents, such as Mexican Americans, welcome the multi-cultural approach offered on the campus.
But Edward Gould, president of the nearby public Monterey Peninsula College, said, "We are waiting for them to settle their curriculum." His campus and the three other local community colleges-in Salinas, Gilroy and Aptos-need to make sure their traditional lower-division (freshman and sophomore) classes match the exotic Monterey Bay graduation requirements.
"We respect what they're trying to do," Gould said. "It will be outstanding when all that settles down, [but] we need traditional things which have helped build up our county."
However, Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz praised the campus for "challenging fundamental assumptions about how we teach and learn." Like other Cal State campuses, he said, Monterey Bay is neither a regional nor a geographical issue but, instead, is part of "bringing education to the state."
The campus operated without an academic plan for its first year. When one finally was submitted to CPEC, it was approved within 30 days-half the time customarily allotted for such a review.
In a laudatory letter, Penny Edgert, assistant director for academic programs and policy, notified the campus of a CPEC staff consensus that "this document demonstrates a comprehensive, thorough and thoughtful approach to academic planning that reflects both the visionary nature of the campus and the realities of implementing that vision."
The campus has been slow to secure agreements for exchange of faculty, students and facilities or to share courses with several nearby centers offering higher education studies. These include the Defense Language Institute; the Naval Postgraduate School; the Monterey Institute of International Studies; the state-wide Cal State marine biology research station at Moss Landing a short distance north of the campus; and the University of California at Santa Cruz, 30 miles away. But Smith and other campus officials insist that more cooperation with all these institutions is under active discussion or will be in the near future.
For example, oceanographer William D. Head said ties with Moss Landing await more planning with fellow faculty members on how to do more meaningful research by mingling traditional academic disciplines. "We are trying to put it all in a systems concept, with students not only exposed to the rigors of science but also policy analysis and economics, plus writing skills," Head said.
Other faculty members echo Head's frequent use of words such as "multiple" or "collaborative" disciplines and studies when describing their programs. "We're integrating humanities,'' says Cecilia O'Leary, who teaches "Introduction to Multicultural History of the United States." O'Leary, who joined the faculty last fall after working as a national history curator at the Smithsonian Institution, said she's "teaching history according to the movies,'' backed by library research, because that is "a powerful way to reach students where they're at, and build on that."
O'Leary said her students "have to become their own historians" by going beyond professional historians' accounts to oral histories and government reports. She said the emphasis is on diversity, because "We're teaching while trying to create a new paradigm...integrating the humanities, what used to be literature, history, philosophy and ethnic studies."
The chairman of the new Academic Senate, Richard Harris, said the campus seeks to create "a seamless web of education," and contends that another five years will produce solid evidence that graduates have acquired skills leading to good jobs.
Tom Anderson, who headed the business studies unit last year, and then quit, disagrees about the job prospects, given the present training. Anderson said his efforts to establish courses focused on international trade, with the aid of faculty experts at the nearby schools, floundered for lack of support. Other faculty members, he said, were bored by that kind of pragmatic training, and refused to fund it. Anderson was denied tenure.
Anderson, an expert on marketing theory, has returned to teaching at Cal State San Marcos. He characterized the focus at the Monterey Bay campus as "Let's all hold hands and feel good about ourselves, without any reality that it's a tough world without preparation for jobs. It's eclectic and eccentric, but the real story is not Monterey Bay or 'Ship of Fools.' It's, 'Where has all the money gone and why can't my kid get a job?'"
President Smith conceded that Cal State Monterey Bay is not for everyone and that a few students have dropped out. The campus had "normal" enrollment drop-off after the first academic year, according to spokeswoman Holly White. Of the nearly 800 students enrolled last spring who had not completed their degree work, 20 to 25 percent failed to return in the fall, which White said parallels the statewide average at Cal State's 22 campuses.
Smith predicted that the campus will produce what businessmen seek: "reflective self starters, able workers who can produce as team members, able to write, speak and compute with technical proficiency...This is the oldest source of the academy-teaching of disciplines to create kinds of citizens to go out to be responsive to the needs of society. Here we say history is mixed with literature mixed with area studies, performing arts, graphic animation, theater, video. Give people knowledge in each, and across, these areas."
Students interviewed for this article supported Smith's outlook. Jeff Allums, 26, a senior from Pacific Grove, commented that "studies at traditional colleges are very boring. I'm more attuned to go to class here because I want to. Professors are very open minded. They're experimenting and we benefit."
Local Democratic Congressman Sam Farr said he has become a fan of the campus. Farr was quoted in an October 1993 CPEC report as being worried that the Monterey campus would resemble UC Santa Cruz, because "so many people in Santa Cruz do not believe that the UC campus is meaningful to their lives."
But in an interview, Farr praised Cal State Monterey Bay partly because it recruited students from poor families in the area, and partly because of its emphasis on community service: Cal State students were "all around the community, involved in projects," he said.
Problems, almost inevitable because of the short time available for starting up, have been evident at the campus: reshuffling administrators, trying to create a curriculum without the luxury of more time for pre-enrollment planning, and trying to determine how to translate campus scores so students can be accepted elsewhere for graduate studies.
Last fall, Smith hired B. Dell Felder, an experienced administrator, as vice president for academic affairs. An old friend and colleague of Cal State Chancellor Munitz, and the former senior vice chancellor at the University of Houston, Felder was described by a Cal State official as someone "pragmatic, who can both capture the spirit (of the new academic directions at Monterey) and bring it home." When asked about the curriculum, the newly arrived Felder said, "I think probably we are on the right page."
"This is a work in progress," conceded Smith. "It's like oil and water vis a vis traditional academics. The first four or five years will be uneven."
ping
"A visitor to the campus book shop found no literature by British or European American writers."
?????
It does mention they were allowed to read poetry by Emily Dickenson, a "European American" writer. I wonder how she slipped in.
One of the worst things abou this crap is that taxes pay for it. Take away tax money, it disappears like mist in the morning sun. We need a serious taxpayer revolution.
Oh my! For what, exactly?
I went to junior high, high school, college an grad school in the Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz and San Jose area. An Anglo, I respected and participated in the Hispanic heriatage. Where did that go wrong?
I do know this: I wouldn't trust CSUMB graduates (as they're described in the article I pinged you on) to know much, and I certainly wouldn't let any of them handle my finances or work on my automobile.
It was reported in all the local newspapers (I used to live in Carmel). A sort of bureaucratic welfare program for $1500.00 per day. Since Puñetta is such a lousy lawyer and could not get a job in private practice, how else is the former congress critter and Clinton administration cheat of staff going to clean up?
They even have an “environmental justice institute,” whatever the hell that is supposed to mean...
The local limousine liberals were begging Puñetta to run for governor during the gubernatorial recall election. I doubt he is even electable for his former Congressional seat now held by that ultra leftist Sam Farr.
I saw Mr. Puñetta one day during the final days of the presidential election. I commented obligatorily that ‘John Kerry was self-destructing quite nicely.’ He wasn't real amused. ; ^ )
He has a monthly column in the Monterey Herald which provides a plethora of opportunities for taking potshots at the leftist glitterati. He is a lousy writer (as most liberals are) and the newspaper strenuously resists printing any readers' letters critical of his drivel...
Which brings me to address another related topic concerning how the newspapers operate their so-called “editorial policy.”
They will sit on letters and other submitted commentary until their effectiveness is nullified by events, opting instead to expedite printing the most far out leftist commentary by frequent psychotic writers in the most timely fashion, often within a day or two, while others are left buried or printed in the minimally circulated editions. If you are too clever, they will usually call you to verify your authorship (and sometimes argue with you about indisputable facts) and/or tell you it is an issue already covered extensively in the paper.
Sometimes they will also do an editing hack job to garble your message beyond recognition (although your grammar and spelling may be perfect) to filter out undesirable or unfavorable comment for their agenda, giving the excuse that you were too vague or that it was edited for clarity.
The Marxist tactic is to confound the language, something “higher education” (not to be confused with smoking medical marijuana before class) has obviously striven for. This Orwellian doublespeak is also the case here with the story initiating this thread and the one you provided.
The Secret to the Suicidal Liberal Mind
Jack Wheeler
Freedom Research Foundation
Monday, Jan. 21, 2002
What do Harvard president Larry Summers, Taliban John Walker, Delta Airlines officials and the editors of the New York Times have in common with Yanomamo tribeswomen in the Amazon jungle?
To answer this question is to understand the root cause of liberal "white guilt." Lakes of ink have been splashed on newspaper, magazine and journal pages ruminating and anguishing over the bottomless guilt that pervades the liberal soul.
Paul Craig Roberts, economist and columnist, writes eloquently about the anti-white racism endemic in American universities that demonizes white males as the font of all evil. Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute explained in the Wall Street Journal recently how white guilt empowers racist frauds such as Cornel West.
The self-loathing of the white American liberal is as well-established and documented as Einstein's Special Relativity theorems. A typical example is writer Susan Sontag's denouncement of the white race as "the cancer of human history."
A racist hatred of one's own race — auto-racism — has become a defining characteristic of the liberal mind. Yet the source of such suicidal guilt remains a mystery.
Clearly understanding what disables liberals from wanting to defend their culture is today a mortal necessity — an absolute requirement if America is to be preserved and protected from Moslem terrorists and other folk desirous of her demise.
Exploitation and Black Magic
For such understanding, we need to travel to the Amazon. Among the Yanomamo and other tribes deep in the Amazon rain forests still adhering to the ancient hunting-gathering lifestyle practiced by our Paleolithic ancestors, it is an accepted practice that when a woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.
In a loud, mortified lament that the entire tribe can hear, she asks why the gods have cursed her with such a pathetically repulsive infant. She does this in order to ward off the envious black magic of the Evil Eye, the Mal Ojo, that would be directed at her by her fellow tribespeople if they knew how happy she was with her beautiful baby.
Anthropologists observe that for most primitive and traditional cultures, "every individual lives in constant fear of the magical aggression of others ... there is only one explanation for unforeseen events: the envious black magic of another villager."
Reflect for a moment on the extent to which tribespeople in a tribal, "primitive" culture suffuse their lives with superstition, witchcraft, sorcery, voodoo, "black magic," the "evil eye." The world for them is teeming with demons, spirits, ghosts and gods, all of whom are malicious and dangerous -- in a word, envious.
A great many, if not the majority, of tribal or traditional cultures, whether in the Amazon, Africa or the Pacific, have no concept of natural death. Death is always murder.
For the Shuara Jivaro of the eastern Amazon, the first tribe I ever stayed with, there are three ways to die: actual murder (such as a spear through your stomach); demon-murder (accidental death, such as being killed by a falling tree in a storm or by snakebite, which the Jivaros see as perpetrated by a demon); or witchcraft murder (death by illness or unexplained causes, perpetrated by an envious sorcerer).
The Jivaro, just like the Tiv in Nigeria, the Aritama in Colombia, the Dobua in Micronesia, the Navaho in the Southwest U.S. and the tribal mind in general, attribute any illness or misfortune to the envious black magic of a personal enemy.
Envy is the source of tribal and traditional cultures' belief in Black Magic, the fear of the envious Evil Eye.
The fundamental reason why certain cultures remain static and never evolve (e.g., present-day villages in Egypt and India that have stayed pretty much the same for millennia) is the overwhelming extent to which the lives of the people within them are dominated by envy and envy avoidance: as anthropologists call it, the envy barrier.
For the Mambwe in Zambia, for example, "successful men are regarded as sinister, supernatural and dangerous." In Mexican villages, "fear of other people's envy determines every detail of life, every proposed action."
Members of a Hispanic "ghetto" in a community in Colorado "equate success with betrayal of the group; whoever works his way up socially and economically is regarded as a 'man who has sold himself to the Anglos,' someone 'who climbs on the backs of his own people.' "
It is an ultimate irony of modern times that left-wing Marxist-type intellectuals consider themselves to be in the progressive vanguard of sophisticated contemporary thought -- when in reality their thinking is nothing but an atavism, a regression to a primitive tribal mentality. What the Left calls "exploitation" is what anthropologists call "black magic."
As sociologist Helmut Schoeck summarizes in his seminal work, "Envy: A Theory of Human Behavior" (and who collected the above anthropologists' observations):
"A self-pitying inclination to contemplate another's superiority or advantages, combined with a vague belief in his being the cause of one's own deprivation, is also to be found among educated members of our modern societies who really ought to know better. The primitive people's belief in black magic differs little from modern ideas. Whereas the socialist believes himself robbed by the employer, just as the politician in a developing country believes himself robbed by the industrial countries, so primitive man believes himself robbed by his neighbor, the latter having succeeded by black magic in spiriting away to his own fields part of the former's harvest."
The primitive atavism of left-wing bromides like "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is best illustrated by arguing that one can be healthy only at the expense of others. That in order to be in superior health, bursting with energy and vitality, one has to make someone else sick or in poor health -- just as in order to be rich you have to make others poor.
The healthy are healthy because they unjustly exploited and ripped off the sick, spiriting away the sick's fair share of health with black magic. In fact, the sick are sick because the healthy are healthy. If this is absurd, then claiming the poor are poor because they have been exploited by the rich is equally absurd.
Fear of Being Envied
Pandering to the envious, and intimidating those who are afraid of them, has been the path to power of all modern demagogues, from Lenin and Hitler to Yassir Arafat and Osama bin Laden.
The three great political pathologies of the 20th century are all religions of envy: Nazism, preaching race envy toward "rich, exploitative Jews"; Communism, preaching class envy toward the "rich, exploitative bourgeoisie"; and Moslem terrorism, preaching culture envy toward the "rich, exploitative West."
Envy-mongering has always been and continues to be the underlying strategy of all variants of the political Left, such as the Democratic Party. What a Yanomamo woman calls "black magic" and a Marxist professor at Harvard calls "exploitation," Tom Daschle calls "tax break for the rich."
So here we discover the secret fear at the source of the suicidal liberal mind. It is envy that makes a Nazi, a Communist or a terrorist. It is the fear of being envied that makes a liberal and is the source of "liberal guilt."
This is most easily seen in the children of wealthy parents. Successful businessmen, for example, who have made it on their own normally have a respect for the effort and the economic system that makes success possible.
Their children, who have not had to work for it, are easier targets for guilt-mongering by the envious. So they assume a posture of liberal compassion as an envy-deflection device: "Please don't envy me for my father's money -- look at all the liberal causes and government social programs I advocate!"
Teddy Kennedy is the archetype of this phenomenon.
This is also why Hollywood is so liberal. The vast amounts of money movie stars make is so grossly disproportionate to the effort it took them to make it that they feel it is unearned. So they apologize for it. The liberal's strategy is to apologize for his success in order to appease the envious.
Liberalism is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied.
Then there are those who are terrified of envy even though they have earned success themselves. Many Jews are liberals because such lethal envy has been directed at Jews for so many centuries that it is little wonder they consider avoiding envy to be a necessity of life.
One definitive characteristic of both envy and the fear of it is masochism. Envy is not simply hatred of someone for having something you don't -- it is the willingness to masochistically give up any chance of ever having that something yourself as long as the person you are envious of doesn't get to have it either.
Similarly, the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement.
The Masochism of Liberals
It is possible to perceive the passions of the Left as frenzies of masochism. What could be more idiotic and masochistic than to oppose missile defense? This opposition cannot be understood unless one dispenses with its rhetoric and rationales and realizes that these folks at their emotional core do not want their country defended.
The lunacy of the "global warming" hoax cannot be comprehended other than that its masochistic advocates do not want their civilization to prosper. The culture-destroying immigration policies that Pat Buchanan warns are causing "The Death of the West" were put in place by those who do not want their culture to survive.
The lethality of liberal envy appeasement is that personally felt guilt is projected onto the various social or tribal collectives to which the liberal belongs and are a part of his self-identity. Self-loathing is transformed into a loathing of one's society or race.
White male liberals become auto-racist and auto-sexist: racist toward their own race, sexist toward their own sex. Dime-store demagogues like eco-fascist environmentalists, feminazis, animal and homosexual rights types, race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all get their strength from the liberals' fear of their Evil Eyes.
As the Amazon tribeswoman who says her baby is ugly, so the white male liberal says his gender, his race, his country, his civilization and even his entire species is ugly.
I began to realize how liberal envy appeasement is the root of the problem when I was speaking at colleges back in the 1980s about anti-Soviet resistance movements in Soviet colonies such as Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan.
Students would invariably turn a discussion of Soviet imperialism into an assertion of moral equivalence between the USA and the USSR: "How can you criticize the Soviets when we're just as bad? What about what we did to the Indians?" I would be asked.
"I haven't done anything to the Indians," I replied. "What have you done to them?"
"But we stole their land!"
"OK -- let's give it back. And let's start with your property. To what tribe do you want your family's home to go? What tribe gets your stereo?"
Once I couldn't stand being heckled by a particularly loud and petulant student leftist any longer. I lost my temper and said to him: "Look, man, if you're into masochism, find some chick with long black hair who's into whips and chains and have her beat the hell out of you. Just don't take it out on your country."
Rejecting Envy
The future of our economy, our culture and our civilization depends on an antidote to the corrosive social poisons of envy and envy appeasement. That antidote was first provided by Aristotle in the 4th century bc.
The antidote to envy is emulation. In the "Rhetoric" (ca. 350 bc), Aristotle distinguishes the two:
"Zelos, emulation, is a good thing and characteristic of good people, while phthonos, envy, is bad and characteristic of the bad; for the former, through emulation, are making an effort to attain good things for themselves, while the latter, through envy, try to prevent their neighbors from having them." ("Rhetoric," 2.10.1)
Aristotle invokes the ancient wisdom of his 8th century (bc) predecessor Hesiod:
"There is not one kind of Eris (Strife), but all over the earth there are two. One fosters evil war and battle, being cruel. The other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil. For a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order. Thus neighbor vies with neighbor to hurry after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men." ("Works and Days," 11-24)
Aristotle concludes that:
"Whereas phthonos, envy, is censured because it seeks to harm another, zelos, emulation, is praised because it encourages a person to attain excellence on his own merits." ("Rhetoric," 2.11.1)
Fear of envy is very deep-seated in the human psyche. It can prevent a culture from progressing for thousands of years. Only a youthful culture full of vigor and confidence can shrug it off, enabling that culture to flourish. The road to cultural ruin lies in the fear of envy reasserting itself from the primordial depths.
America once had that youth, vigor and confidence, culminating in history's single greatest achievement, putting a man on the moon.
After the triply debilitating debacles of Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan resurrected America's self-confidence, with America's resultant victory in the Cold War.
Yet America lost her way once more, indulging in a cultural debauch epitomized by the Clintons. America's response to the atrocity of Sept. 11 provided overwhelming evidence that her reserves of vitality and self-assurance remain abundant.
Those reserves are nonetheless depleted. America's most elite universities have degenerated into fascist cesspools of envy appeasement. They survive only on the inertia of their prestige. Delta and other airlines compromise passenger security by harassing people at random rather than racially profiling Arab and other Moslem men.
Indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness -- perhaps best exemplified by the New York Times editorial page -- is nothing but a massive exercise in envy appeasement.
One of the most positive results of Sept. 11 is that it has made the American people mad enough to reject envy. They now could care less if Moslems or the French or whomever are envious of them. That rejection must now be applied to the envy panderers and envy appeasers within America herself.
Rejecting envy is the key to preventing "The Death of the West," the key for America to continue to prosper. I suggest that this rejection begin with you.
Fear of the Evil Eye is the only thing that gives the Evil Eye any power. Without fear of it, the Evil Eye is impotent. So, the next time Evil Eyes are directed at you and demand you apologize for your existence, you might suggest that they indulge in S&M by themselves and leave you out of it.
Copyright 2002 Dr. Jack Wheeler and the Freedom Research Foundation
Since they're all liberals, the "L" is appropriate even if there's no lesbianism involved. I think the term FLEMWOCs has a nice ring to it.
Interesting things in the rest of your post and in your follow-up article on envy and fear of envy. Thanks...
The FLEM/phlegm connection is nice, though.
FLEMWODS has an awsome ring to it.
Moral Absolutes Ping.
Very intersting article and subsequent stuff on the thread about multi-culti crapola.
Remember when the word "discrimination" meant a fine sense of judgement? Oops - "judgement" is bad now, too. Multi-cultism and other so-called "moral relative" theories are not relative at all. They're just a photo negative, and generally very absolutist in their twisted way.
Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.
Note: I haven't read the whole thing yet, but it looks like more evidence that liberalism is indeed a mental illness.
The university system is completely gone. In its place are liberal arts programs full of Communist propaganda. What else could be expected from non-working, inexperienced professors whose livelihood relies on public funding? Universities have relegated themselves to being money-mills whose focus is profit, which is ironic because they profess as Communists to hate capitalism. In my industry, computer science, we have stopped asking if a candidate has a college degree as a degree means absolutely nothing. Serious, a degree means absolutely nothing. In fact, a person skips the Communist “give me everything without my having to earn it” philosophies by not having attended college. We find candidates who are self-taught to be motivated in the appropriate ways to be productive hard-working professionals who demand nothing but what they deserve. My background includes Carnegie-Mellon University School of Computer Science, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and Stanford PhD work in Physics. By no means am I against a higher education, but I went to school 20+ years ago when schools still had some resemblance of educating and not just money-milling. There are some departments that emphasize education, but they are the minority.
Another one is Christine Sleeter
http://home.csumb.edu/s/sleeterchristine/world/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.