Posted on 01/14/2010 7:15:09 AM PST by Tolik
There are a number of things we simply no longer talk about. The silence is partly due to intellectual laziness. Or maybe it is because of political correctness—or even attributable to ignorance and the absence of curiosity.
In no particular order, I list five propositions that simply have become taboo.
1). Illegal Immigration and California.
There are dozens of recent exposés on the California mess. The “I accuse” themes—all quite accurate—are well known.
(a) The state propositions have hamstrung the legislature, and resulted in almost no free choices anymore in budgetary decision.
(b) The legislature—due to partisan gerrymandering, the unnecessarily large number of legislators in an unnecessary bicameral system, and term-limits—is inexperienced, captive to special interests, and increasingly incompetent.
(c) State employees have taken over the state: they are paid far above the national average, not accountable, and almost impossible to fire when found to be incompetent. The state pension system is unsustainable. Pay cuts, lay-offs, or furloughs loom.
(d) The nation’s highest income, sales, and gas taxes have driven out the most productive residents—to the tune of 3,500 a week—to no-tax or little-tax neighboring states.
OK— agreed, and I have written all that myself in various articles. But there is another problem never raised in polite company.
California, by most estimates, has somewhere between 40-50% of the nation’s illegal immigrants. That may mean 5-7 million residents here illegally, most without English, documentation, or high-school diplomas. This makes the practice of assimilation into the middle-class a multigenerational process over decades, rather than in the past, when immigrants came in fewer numbers and more often legally.
The state ranks 47-48th in most studies of the achievement levels of the nation’s schools, mostly due to millions of entering students who do not speak English well, if at all.
Of the some $50 billion in remittances that leave the U.S. each year to Latin America, perhaps $20 billion come from California residents, draining the state of capital, and ensuring that the donors will be in need of state health, education, housing and food supplements. California’s taxpayers, in essence, subsidize Oaxaca and Jalisco—that may be humanitarian, and worthy of praise, but it is costly nonetheless, and perhaps beyond the financial resources of the majority of the population.
I’ll pass on increased per capita rates of crime, gangs, etc. that are considered too illiberal to mention. But if studies are correct that anyone who comes north, without English, legality, and education, over his life-cycle will have to draw somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000 more in entitlements than he contributes in various taxes, and if we were to prorate that on an annual basis, and if we were to multiply that by several million, then one can envision an annual outlay of several billion in state expenditures.
Instead, illegal immigration is never much cited as a contributor to California’s fiscal implosion. To mention all this is considered racist. Yet, to take one instance, the cost of incarcerating the state’s illegal aliens alone exceeds the budget of the new UC Merced, a campus intended to serve mostly minority communities of the central valley.
The solution? Allow only legal immigration. Base admittance to the U.S. mostly on skills and our own need for expertise and capital. Trust in merit, and ignore the race and origin of the would-be immigrant.
2) Iraq.
We are tired of Iraq and have Trotskyized it out of our existence, given the huge cost and 4,000 dead.
But consider: not a single America died in Iraq in December (38 murdered in Chicago during that period); three have been lost this month (24 murdered so far this month in Chicago).
Some random thoughts. The surge was a brilliant success.
The heroes are relatively ignored. They are U.S. forces who served in Iraq, of course; Gens. Odierno and Petraeus (recall what he endured from Hillary Clinton and moveon.org in his Senate inquisition); civilian analysts like Fred Kagan and retired Gen. Keane; and, of course, a demonized George Bush—attacked by most of his former supporters, the majority of pundits and columnists, those Democrats who had voted to authorize the war, many of the Iraq Study Group members; and by a cadre of retired “revolt of the generals” officers.
Yet for some reason, very few senators (cf. the You Tube videos of the debates of October 11-12, 2002) who gave impassioned pleas, authorizing 23 writs to go to war, have ever quite explained why they flipped—and what they think now of both their original support, and their subsequent opposition.
A Harry Reid (“the war is lost”) or Barack Obama (out of Iraq by March 2008 and the surge “is not working”) have never subsequently suggested that they were wrong at a time when our troops desperately were trying against all odds to save the fragile country.
Nor has anyone questioned the conventional dogma that Iraq empowered Iran, supposedly by removing the demonic Saddam. (Yet consider the liberal logic: we were wrong to remove a monster because he was a useful balance-of-power monster [ignore the genocide of the Kurds, Marsh Arabs, etc]; yet we deplore prior administrations for giving the same monster some aid in his war against Iran.)
In fact, mass demonstrations and unrest now take place in an isolated Iran, not so much in a democratic Iraq. The latter is proving more destabilizing by its open broadcasting and word of mouth freedom to Iran than Iran is to Iraq by its savage use of terrorism. (What will happen to conventional wisdom, if there comes a day when Iran is constitutional, along with Iraq and Lebanon?)
No one has officially said they were wrong in alleging “No Blood for Oil.” But we got no oil from Iraq. The price rose after we invaded. The Chinese, Russians, and Europeans got the contracts in free and fair bidding.
(Contrast Saddam’s rigged pre-war, quid-pro-quo oil concessions to the corrupt French). There was no Halliburton conspiracy to steal resources. The left often now, mirabile dictu, accuses us of being naïve in bleeding to give others the resources that they once accused us of wishing to steal. Barack Obama still talks of Iraq as a mistake, even as he quietly ignores his own prescriptions to have gotten out by early 2008, and to have stopped the surge—and continues to follow the Petraeus/Bush plan.
3) Affirmative Action.
The concept was noble, but now antiquated and mostly absurd. It requires the logic of the Old Confederacy to determine racial purity among the intermarried citizenry. Jet-black Punjabis get no preferences. Light-skinned Mexican-Americans of the fourth-generation claim privilege. Poor whites from Tulare don’t rank. The children of black dentists do. I see very little logic here.
Asians? We both claim them as minorities, and yet we discriminate against them at the University of California admissions process on the basis of their own superior achievement. (Apparently, the deplorable record of discrimination against Asians is now deemed irrelevant due to the community’s own success. Ponder the ramifications of that for a bit: should Asians have been struggling at UC, they would be considered suffering from the legacy of oppression; since they are excelling, they need to be quietly discriminated against).
As far as I can tell, here is the logic of this Byzantine system: Affirmative action in the 21st century has no logical basis in skin color, actual discrimination, poverty, class, or need. It is predicated on two archaic thoughts: previously discriminated against American minorities shall be defined as only Hispanic, Blacks, and Asians, and thus their children shall receive privilege for decades. BUT that new discrimination will not apply if such minorities on their own have prospered and are successful. (Why that would be so in some cases is again a taboo question).
So, Japanese-Americans, whose parents were put in camps, don’t quite qualify any more for compensation seemingly because they are successful and are thus “over-represented” in the racial spoils system. But Chilean and Brazilian immigrants do—if they can fraudulently piggy-back upon the Mexican-American experience by virtue of a shared language and last names.
If one is of mixed race, nomenclature trumps all. Bob Wilson, the son of a Mexican-American mother, is liable to get nothing, Roberto Martinez will get quite a lot, if the son of a Mexican-American (or any Spanish-speaking) father. A Barry Soetoro is of mere pedestrian mixed ancestry; Barack Obama is not merely black, but exotically so.
In short, the system is corrupt. In our society of intermarriage, immigration and mixed ancestry, we cannot any longer determine who is and who is not a certified “minority” (cf. the con of mostly white candidates claiming some sort of Native American ancestry).
Class and need are no longer connected with race. Hyphenation only creates cynicism and enhances a professional class of grievance mongers in journalism, politics, academia, and the arts (yet somehow we quietly and unofficially drop affirmative action dictates when it comes to 747 pilots, brain surgeons, or nuclear power plant engineers. [No one sues to disregard competency exams for air-traffic-controllers solely on the basis of undesirable racial results]).
So what is left of affirmative action? Cynicism. Mostly it is an easy way for elite whites and Asians to feel good about themselves by helping the “other”—usually at someone else’s expense (cf. the lower-class white applicant from Tulare who is rejected with equal or superior qualifications, without the resources and preparations of the wealthy and connected.) It provides psychological alleviation of guilt, without the need to be tutoring in the ghetto, sending your kids to a mostly Hispanic school, or living among the lower classes. In that sense, the construction of Barack Obama, the former Barry Soetoro, and his apotheosis by elite whites, is again an unintended paradigm of the times.
For those who find the above illiberal, I’m sorry, but after twenty-one years as a professor I have never quite seen any American institution so corrupt, unfair, and cynical as the practice of affirmative action.
4) The Ivy League is a Naked Emperor.
By Ivy League I do not mean just Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, but the entire concept of high-priced elite schools like a Stanford, Duke, or Columbia as well. We know a BA from such institutions does not ipso facto any longer, as it once may well have, guarantee knowledge or competence. We know the race/class/gender craze has watered down the curriculum, and ensured therapy and empathy trump recall of facts and adherence to the inductive method. And we know that one’s first two years will probably mean instruction largely by graduate students and lecturers.
Had we national exit requirements, I am convinced those leaving a Hillsdale College or St. Thomas Aquinas or St. John’s would do better than the average Yale BA.
A motivated undergraduate student, who picks the right professors and classes, can get as good an undergraduate education at San Jose State as at Stanford. Certainly, the four years are not worth $200,000 in room, board, and tuition— if education is the goal.
But wait! If, in contrast, networks, influence-accumulation, and contacts are the objectives to ensure a child remains, or enters into, the elite class, then the investment in such undergraduate schools is very much worth it—but should be considered analogous to a debutante ball, the social register, or the Grand Tour.
Does anyone believe that the present professional classes of Ivy-League certified technocrats in the administration understand the law, the economy, or the government any better, by virtue of their university educations, than a does a country trial lawyer, a military officer, a CEO, or any of the others who were educated elsewhere, or received training in the rather rougher arena of the real world?
I am fortunate for a wonderful graduate education in the PhD program at Stanford, but I learned more about the way the world works in two months of farming (which saved a wretch like me) than in four years of concentrated study.
In short, the world does not work on a nine-month schedule. It does not recognize concepts like tenure. It does not care for words without action. And brilliance is not measure by vocabulary or SAT scores. Wowing a dean, or repartee into a seminar, or clever put-downs of rivals in the faculty lounge don’t translate into running a railroad—or running the country. One Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower is worth three Bill Clintons or Barack Obamas. If that sounds reductionist, simplistic, or anti-intellectual, it is not meant to—but so be it nonetheless.
5) The “Middle East” is a Fraud
Why do we beat ourselves up over Israel and the Palestinians? Why not occupied Cyprus? Or the Kuriles? Or South Ossetia? Or the divided city of Nicosia? Is there a “Falklands Question”?
Why are not Germans blowing themselves up in Gdansk, the former East Prussia, the Alsace, or old Silesia to recover “lost” land?
Were there no Israeli-Arab wars before the “occupation” of 1967? Does anyone think that, should the West Bank simply take a 30-year break from the violence, emulate Western business and government, draw in Gulf capital, a few thousands acres here or there would then be still be relevant?
Are the far poorer people of Chad blowing themselves up? Is the world crying for those in the slums of Lima? Does want and famine drive those in rural China to capture the world’s attention by virtue of their terrorist acts? Do we send special envoys to occupied Tibet? Is there a Green Line there?
Sorry—take away three things, and the Mideast “crisis” is relegated to Cypriote status. If there were no oil in the Arab Middle East; if there were no Islamic terrorists; and if there was no endemic global anti-Semitism, we would be as likely to have a “Mideast czar” as we would an “Ossetian Czar.”
I wouldn't be so sure. I've taught at both a Land Grant University (my current permanent job) and an Ivy (as a TA and later as visiting faculty). Business? I'll take the B.A. from Wharton over the B.A. in business from a land grant school (I've taught the math service courses for both programs, no comparison in the student motivation and ability, the Ivy wins hands down, and I suspect the programs at Wharton and Harvard Business are more rigorous than those at land grant schools' colleges of business).
Math? The best and brightest among undergrads at both institutions are comparable and get comparable educations (if the ones going to the land grant school had calc in high school so they can skip over the lower division courses and end up topping off their major with a few low-level grad courses), but at the land grant school we have maybe one major per year in an undergrad program which graduates about 20 majors per year, that falls into that category, at the Ivy there were two in the twelve person class I taught while visiting.
Until we start to talk about and address REAL problems, many which are listed here, we will continue to flounder as a nation.
The time has come where the politics of obfuscation, lies and false promises has ended. The winners over the next few years, and the leaders that will harness the energy of the masses to fix our problems, are those that will shoot straight and be honest.
BTW, these leaders do not necessarily need to be at a national level and the farther away from the static political organizations the better chance they have of success.
It will take some time, but these crazy ideas are in the process of been discredited. It will probably take bankruptcy to make it so. Painful but necessary.
schu
Hence, the FAA has a uniquely high percentage of women, minorities and disabled stuffing the management ranks (often in enclaves of a make-work mission, and often where hands on supervision is required, they are buffered with competent "peers" near at hand.)
Nice try Yankee, you guys had black codes and laws against interracial marriage same as we did Senor Hypocrite
What we could use from my ancestors is some of that courage and valor and respect from where one comes from.
My daughter is at David Lipscomb...which is pretty conservative.
Most of the faculty are right wingers....problem is most of the kids are not.
They are kumbaya love thy neighbor good works types sent their by their folks...for 32k a year.
my daughter is fairly right wing though....
the academics are rigorous though
Well put, Dr. Hanson.
“I think Hanson is wrong here...”
I think you’ve got it wrong here ....he’s referring to how the graduates from Hillsdale or St. Johns’s perform in the real world. As opposed to a Yale graduate.
I agree with his proposition. The Ivies select from pool of trained spaniel’s that perform well in an academic/academicized environment.
IMO, the reason the Left hates "merit" is because "merit" is ultimately a "religious" concept (established by a Holy, Whole, Undivided God) and the Left hates most of all this Holy God
A religious person (i.e. who serves this Holy God who watches his actions and knows his mind) has an obsession with things like merit and integrity and honesty that an atheistic Lefty could not even begin to comprehend.
To me, this is the predicament that America finds herself in now. In fact, it is this war that has burst out into the open for all to see.
It is the religious Right (choosing merit, integrity, etc. in the service of its God) VERSUS the Left who live by the rules not of atheism, but of rebelliousness (such rules including but not limited to "the end justifies the means", "if it feels good, do it", "if I can take if from you, it is mine", "cheating is good, just don't get caught", and the ever popular "there is no right or wrong, good or evil").
All this said, however, don't be fooled into believing the atheist Left is truly godless. The Leftie most certainly serves a god. While there are some who are still, as yet, oblivious to this fact, their leaders are not.
Just ask Alinsky...and Obama. They know full-well that the one who wrote their rules is Lucifer.
Those ideas would not fit into the Far Left's "politically correct" world view, because the ideas were derived from religious thought and, as such, are "flawed," as are the ideas of America's genius Founders.
I know - I know (waving hand in air - call one ME!)
Here's the logic: The groups with the benefits are DEMS. The groups without have FEW voters - or they're Republican...
You are correct, and this is nothing new under the sun. Baal, high places, totems, eros, it has been going on for thousands of years. It is the rebellion against God.
The left, with its roots in the early 1900 progressive movement, is about replacing God. Like most human endeavors of that nature, problems often are the result of man trying to play God.
This hatred of God is at the root of the left’s visceral hatred of Bush. Yes, Bush had many faults, and much of the crticism was deserved. But him being a man of God was the reason for the left’s demonization of all he did. They simply could not allow him to succeed at anything, and it is all due to his beliefs.
When man decides he knows better than God, then it is time to turn tail and run, as one can be assured a disaster is not far away ....
schu
Eggs-actly!
But I would clarify that it is very dependent upon the candidate. A good candidate, like Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham, will gain much at an Ivy beyond "connections." And it depends on the major and what the purpose of the education is.
In some cases, you just can't beat that Ivy Leaguer. Most jobs, however, demand the good foundations that are obtainable (perhaps more easily!) at a non-Ivy state or other school. Obviously, Hillsdale is a great option in many ways.
Actually, demonizing Free Trade is a great example of leftist anti-merit thought that is similar to these anyone else.
God did not give us some Right to be more prosperous than others automatically. If they can outcompete us, then so be it.
And before you say that is anti-American, I would say that trying to complain about it is like getting mad at gravity. No matter how much protectionism you try, why should our customers around the world buy from us rather than a better deal elsewhere? If we're a better deal, then benefits would come to us. If we're not, how can you complain that nobody wants to do business with us?
Global markets are a fact of reality. Closing our eyes to that fact doesn't make it go away.
Actually, demonizing Free Trade is a great example of leftist anti-merit thought that is similar to these anyone else.
God did not give us some Right to be more prosperous than others automatically. If they can outcompete us, then so be it.
And before you say that is anti-American, I would say that trying to complain about it is like getting mad at gravity. No matter how much protectionism you try, why should our customers around the world buy from us rather than a better deal elsewhere? If we're a better deal, then benefits would come to us. If we're not, how can you complain that nobody wants to do business with us?
Global markets are a fact of reality. Closing our eyes to that fact doesn't make it go away.
I guarantee you that California would not have a budget problem but for illegal immigration. It is a problem caused by the US Supreme Court (when it decreed that illegals had to be served in schools and hospitals), by the Feds, allowing unfettered illegal immigration, and by the illegal alien lobby within California, which has taken over the legislature and which looks at illegals as the best path to Aztlan. They don't just fund the illegals, they actively seek more of them and lionize them.
The amount the budget is under water could be erased overnight if illegals were not here. Our streets would be safer and there would be more jobs with decent pay contributing to the tax base.
Yep...and that’s why they are absolutely apoplectic over Palin!
No seriously, you can say that again...particularly this part:
Actually, demonizing Free Trade is a great example of leftist anti-merit thought...Strong medicine but absolutely right!God did not give us some Right to be more prosperous than others automatically. If they can outcompete us, then so be it.
BTTT for Merit!
If I said it again, I would do so without the scrambled (uh, I mean, scarmabled) end of the top line! :-)
"these anyone else" --> s/h/b something like --> "the examples given"
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.