0 comment Sunday, November 23, 2014 | admin
The United States has been called the 'melting pot of the world.' The peoples who make up its population have come from all nations. They have proved without question that peoples of all colors, religions, and national origins can live together peacefully and happily. The American melting pot has been a success, but not a perfect success. In the United States there has been a certain amount of friction between white people and Negroes [sic], and among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.''
Before I continue, a disclaimer: the politically incorrect language in the last sentence above is a verbatim quote from the source, and not my own choice of words.The paragraph is from a half-century old World Book encyclopedia entry on ''Intercultural Education.''
I read it while browsing in this set of 1956-vintage encyclopedias recently, and was reminded of it when I read this
story from the UK Daily Mail, announcing a multicultural curriculum, which will encompass all subjects in schools:
Children will be taught race relations and multiculturalism with every subject they study -from Spanish to science - under controversial changes to the school curriculum announced by the Government.
In music and art, they could have to learn Indian and Chinese songs and instruments, and West African drumming .''
I used to believe that this kind of news story was unique to our own degenerate times, but reading the old 1956 encyclopedia, I found that the PC agenda has been around for decades, albeit under slightly different names, and with a less heavy-handed approach.
The British school plan is not that different from the approach in many schools in our own country, where multiculturalism and 'inclusion' are injected into every subject. Example: multicultural math.
More from the old encyclopedia:
The growth of large cities has brought troubles about housing . The growth of industry and business has caused more intense competition between groups. The Communist Party teaches its members who live in democracies to stir up race hatred in an attempt to make democracy appear ineffective.''
[emphasis mine]
Note: the article writers were correct in pointing out the role of the Communist Party in dividing people along racial and ethnic lines; divide and conquer, divide and rule, is a precept that has been used forever. Marx believed and taught that blacks would be part of the 'vanguard' of the revolution in our country and in Africa. When our home-grown leftists saw that our 'proletariat' was not revolutionary, as the working class became too comfortable and middle-class, the Left began to look to blacks as the revolutionary force in America, and worked at stirring up strife towards this end. Add that to the natural group frictions, and you have today's balkanized America, but further complicated by many, many new ethnic groups.
Educators in the United States have recognized the growth of friction between people of different groups. They have realized that the best way to stop friction is to educate children in the ways of tolerance, brotherhood, and interdependence. So they have introduced training in intercultural relations into the schools.
What Is Taught.
The Declaration of Independence gave the basic rule of intercultural relations. It declared ''All men are created free and equal.'' [sic] The United States Constitution gave equal rights and freedom to all citizens.
It is the purpose of intercultural education to fix in the minds of school children a belief in the American creed of freedom and equality. Anothere objective of intercultural education is to show how this creed must be practiced in daily life. Students are taught that "people are people", and that no man should be denied any rights because he is a Negro [sic], a Jew, an Italian, a Catholic, or a Japanese.
Teaching Methods
Some schools which were the first to teach intercultural education taught the subject as a separate course. The system was not very successful. Teachers soon found that much better results could be gained by including the subject in all courses on which it had bearing. One of the main aims of intercultural education is to show pupils how much their own group owes to others. This can be shown in many subjects. The study of English can show how the language has come from French, German, and Latin.
[...]Art and music teachers can point out that there have been masters in all nations and of all races and religions -- Da Vinci of Italy, Tschaikovsky of Russia, Beethoven of Germany, Chopin of Poland, Marian Anderson the Negro [sic], Mendelssohn the Jew, Rembrandt of the Netherlands, and El Greco, a Greek who lived in Spain. [Wow, a twofer with El Greco.]
Science teachers can show what inventions we have received from the Chinese, such as the making of paper and explosives. They can tell of the wonders perfomed by the Negro [sic] chemistry genius, George Washington Carver.
[...]All teachers can find frequent occasions to explode popular misbeliefs about various groups by presenting the facts.''
Yes, I can recognize much of this agenda in what I was taught in school back in the 1950s, although perhaps the agenda was less zealously pushed in the South, where the True Believers in the educational field were not as numerous back then.
Intercultural education goes beyond the classroom. On the playground, children of the various races and creeds can be taught to play together and show respect for each other.
In 1939 the public schools of Springfield, Mass., started such a program of intercultural education. The program was worked into all subjects and all activities of the school. Some Negro [sic] teachers were hired to teach classes of both white and Negro [sic] children. The sponsors of the plan have reported considerable success.
Outside The Schools.
Intercultural education is not limited entirely to the schools. It has been made part of the programs of churches, young people's clubs, and other organizations. One church in a New England town invited a group of Negro children from New York City to visit the town and live with white families. Later some of the New England children visited their New York friends in their Harlem homes.
Newspapers and magazines have done much to aid intercultural education.
[...] During World War II, most newspapers were quick to tell of the patriotism and loyalty of Japanese-American members of the armed forces. National Brotherhood Week is celebrated each year in the United states. Newspapers, radio, television, and motion pictures give special publicity to questions of group tolerance at this time.''
And the media have become even more gung-ho for political correctness in the intervening decades. But this encyclopedia article does show us that some of these ideas have been around in American society since at least the 1930s, when the Springfield, MA schools instituted the 'intercultural education' agenda. I truly think that leftists have been insinuating themselves into crucial positions in the media, education, and politics for many decades. That was their announced intention and plan, and yet some people still doubt that such is the case.
So much of the leftist agenda has been absorbed into our culture that it has become second nature to many people. Many people don't even realize the source of many of the pervasive ideas in our culture, like the obsession with egalitarianism which the intercultural education proponents cited so often in the excerpts above. Of course it sounds good and noble to say that 'all men are created equal', which Thomas Jefferson wrote, but did he intend for that phrase to be interpreted as justification for multiculturalism and a complete leveling of society? A thorough reading of his written works shows that he did not believe in the idea of erasing distinctions between people, and he did not propose that all cultures were equal, which is the basis of multiculturalism. So much of the leftist agenda is only a twisting and perverting of sound ideas into something else. 'All men are created equal' has been twisted to support Communism and various more benign-sounding leftist theories, as well as multiculturalism and open borders. 'All men are created equal' is also being used to justify things like 'No Child Left Behind', affirmative action, and racial quotas. After all, if all men are created equal, why should they not all have equal outcomes in life?
It all sounds benign and well-intentioned when we read the excerpts from the encyclopedia; who could object to phrases like 'people are people'? Who could object to people treating each other fairly and civilly? Who would favor unkindness or unfairness? The problem is not with that simple intention, but the lengths to which it has been taken, some 51 years later. Now, we not only have schools teaching children about the talented people of various nations or races, with credit given where due, but we have reached the point of absurdity, as in this:
The teachings are sheer fantasy, unsubstantiated by any credible evidence: ancient Egyptians mastered flight with gliders, which they used for both recreation and travel. They invented electric batteries and mastered electroplating, discovered the principles of quantum mechanics and anticipated Darwin's theories of evolution. Furthermore, all Egyptians were black, and their abundance of the dark skin pigment, melanin, not only made them more humane and superior to lighter-skinned people in body and mind but also provided such paranormal powers as ESP and psychokinesis.
Incredible as it may seem, these fallacies are being included in public school multicultural courses in a growing number of U.S. cities and espoused in black-studies departments on some college campuses.''
Afrocentric theory is the basis of such nonsense, but to dispute it is to open oneself to the inevitable charges of 'racism.' I actually had a black professor in college in the 70s who insisted that Beethoven was black. 'Just look at his hair in the pictures', she said, by way of 'proving' her assertion. Not only was Beethoven black, but so were Socrates, Pushkin, (he apparently did have some African descent) and other luminaries. Now we have people claiming that Edward 'the Black Prince' of England, was actually black.
This school web page says coyly,
His nickname probably was derived from the color of his armor, but nobody knows for sure.''
Right. So we leave the door open to the possibility that Edward was actually black, as in African.
If we ask skeptically why this fact was not known in the past, I am sure we would find somebody who would say 'they kept it quiet because of racism', just as my professor said about the cover-up of Beethoven's race.
Such is the arrant nonsense that we have opened the door to, in the name of making everybody feel good about themselves. If the goal of bringing about 'tolerance and brotherhood' and nowadays, boosting that sacred self-esteem, is noble enough, then that makes it permissible to lie and concoct fantasies about the past. If there aren't enough accomplishments by every race and nation, why not make them up? After all, it's in a good cause. But the truth is, achievement, on an individual level or on a national and racial level, is not equally distributed. Yet the truth is not acceptable, because it doesn't support the egalitarian agenda. So let's discard the truth and make up some flattering lies and fairy tales, like Egyptians flying around among the pyramids, and a black prince in England in the 14th century.
I suppose, being generous, we might excuse this as silliness for the sake of putting a good face on things; white lies of a sort. But then there is the darker side of this kind of revisionism for the sake of leveling: the depiction of Europeans and people of European descent as being arch-villains, committers of 'genocide' against the noble savages; this kind of thing is the stock-in-trade of the Aztlan crowd, with their stories of Columbus killing 30 million people, and of their mythical 'Aztlan' being stolen from them. This kind of belief system, irrational as it is, is a danger to us, because it may motivate those who would usurp our country.
In the UK, the sinister elites there seem intent on convincing people that Britain has always been multiracial and multicultural. Is it a coincidence that there has been a spate of stories like this one attempting to establish that there are long-standing African genes among the English? Notice how the article uses scare quotes around the word 'indigenous', as much as to question whether the English people are the 'real' indigenous people. It's all motivated by the multicultural agenda, it seems. Even science is being used for political ends.
The result of all this deceptively benign-sounding 'intercultural education', after decades, is a decidedly less benevolent one. The majority populations of all Western countries are demoralized after generations of being told that they and their ancestors are guilty, and intrinsically 'racist', and that they have no right to take pride in who they are, no right to consider their own interests as a group, while every other group and ethnicity has that right. 'Intercultural education', whether it was intended to do so or not, has had the effect of softening up the West for invasion and submission. The seeming capitulation of much of Europe to Islam seems mostly attributable to this pernicious doctrine of 'tolerance' inculcated in us for decades. When you have one group of people who are heavily indoctrinated to be all-accepting, open, tolerant, and self-blaming, while their competitors are aggressive, hyperconfident, and without restraint, the outcome is sadly predictable.
I see promising signs that people are now aware of some of these things, and awareness is the first step to shaking off the chains of our decades of leftist conditioning.
And to all thinking people with school-age children, home-schooling is an option to be considered.
Before I continue, a disclaimer: the politically incorrect language in the last sentence above is a verbatim quote from the source, and not my own choice of words.The paragraph is from a half-century old World Book encyclopedia entry on ''Intercultural Education.''
I read it while browsing in this set of 1956-vintage encyclopedias recently, and was reminded of it when I read this
story from the UK Daily Mail, announcing a multicultural curriculum, which will encompass all subjects in schools:
Children will be taught race relations and multiculturalism with every subject they study -from Spanish to science - under controversial changes to the school curriculum announced by the Government.
In music and art, they could have to learn Indian and Chinese songs and instruments, and West African drumming .''
I used to believe that this kind of news story was unique to our own degenerate times, but reading the old 1956 encyclopedia, I found that the PC agenda has been around for decades, albeit under slightly different names, and with a less heavy-handed approach.
The British school plan is not that different from the approach in many schools in our own country, where multiculturalism and 'inclusion' are injected into every subject. Example: multicultural math.
More from the old encyclopedia:
The growth of large cities has brought troubles about housing . The growth of industry and business has caused more intense competition between groups. The Communist Party teaches its members who live in democracies to stir up race hatred in an attempt to make democracy appear ineffective.''
[emphasis mine]
Note: the article writers were correct in pointing out the role of the Communist Party in dividing people along racial and ethnic lines; divide and conquer, divide and rule, is a precept that has been used forever. Marx believed and taught that blacks would be part of the 'vanguard' of the revolution in our country and in Africa. When our home-grown leftists saw that our 'proletariat' was not revolutionary, as the working class became too comfortable and middle-class, the Left began to look to blacks as the revolutionary force in America, and worked at stirring up strife towards this end. Add that to the natural group frictions, and you have today's balkanized America, but further complicated by many, many new ethnic groups.
Educators in the United States have recognized the growth of friction between people of different groups. They have realized that the best way to stop friction is to educate children in the ways of tolerance, brotherhood, and interdependence. So they have introduced training in intercultural relations into the schools.
What Is Taught.
The Declaration of Independence gave the basic rule of intercultural relations. It declared ''All men are created free and equal.'' [sic] The United States Constitution gave equal rights and freedom to all citizens.
It is the purpose of intercultural education to fix in the minds of school children a belief in the American creed of freedom and equality. Anothere objective of intercultural education is to show how this creed must be practiced in daily life. Students are taught that "people are people", and that no man should be denied any rights because he is a Negro [sic], a Jew, an Italian, a Catholic, or a Japanese.
Teaching Methods
Some schools which were the first to teach intercultural education taught the subject as a separate course. The system was not very successful. Teachers soon found that much better results could be gained by including the subject in all courses on which it had bearing. One of the main aims of intercultural education is to show pupils how much their own group owes to others. This can be shown in many subjects. The study of English can show how the language has come from French, German, and Latin.
[...]Art and music teachers can point out that there have been masters in all nations and of all races and religions -- Da Vinci of Italy, Tschaikovsky of Russia, Beethoven of Germany, Chopin of Poland, Marian Anderson the Negro [sic], Mendelssohn the Jew, Rembrandt of the Netherlands, and El Greco, a Greek who lived in Spain. [Wow, a twofer with El Greco.]
Science teachers can show what inventions we have received from the Chinese, such as the making of paper and explosives. They can tell of the wonders perfomed by the Negro [sic] chemistry genius, George Washington Carver.
[...]All teachers can find frequent occasions to explode popular misbeliefs about various groups by presenting the facts.''
Yes, I can recognize much of this agenda in what I was taught in school back in the 1950s, although perhaps the agenda was less zealously pushed in the South, where the True Believers in the educational field were not as numerous back then.
Intercultural education goes beyond the classroom. On the playground, children of the various races and creeds can be taught to play together and show respect for each other.
In 1939 the public schools of Springfield, Mass., started such a program of intercultural education. The program was worked into all subjects and all activities of the school. Some Negro [sic] teachers were hired to teach classes of both white and Negro [sic] children. The sponsors of the plan have reported considerable success.
Outside The Schools.
Intercultural education is not limited entirely to the schools. It has been made part of the programs of churches, young people's clubs, and other organizations. One church in a New England town invited a group of Negro children from New York City to visit the town and live with white families. Later some of the New England children visited their New York friends in their Harlem homes.
Newspapers and magazines have done much to aid intercultural education.
[...] During World War II, most newspapers were quick to tell of the patriotism and loyalty of Japanese-American members of the armed forces. National Brotherhood Week is celebrated each year in the United states. Newspapers, radio, television, and motion pictures give special publicity to questions of group tolerance at this time.''
And the media have become even more gung-ho for political correctness in the intervening decades. But this encyclopedia article does show us that some of these ideas have been around in American society since at least the 1930s, when the Springfield, MA schools instituted the 'intercultural education' agenda. I truly think that leftists have been insinuating themselves into crucial positions in the media, education, and politics for many decades. That was their announced intention and plan, and yet some people still doubt that such is the case.
So much of the leftist agenda has been absorbed into our culture that it has become second nature to many people. Many people don't even realize the source of many of the pervasive ideas in our culture, like the obsession with egalitarianism which the intercultural education proponents cited so often in the excerpts above. Of course it sounds good and noble to say that 'all men are created equal', which Thomas Jefferson wrote, but did he intend for that phrase to be interpreted as justification for multiculturalism and a complete leveling of society? A thorough reading of his written works shows that he did not believe in the idea of erasing distinctions between people, and he did not propose that all cultures were equal, which is the basis of multiculturalism. So much of the leftist agenda is only a twisting and perverting of sound ideas into something else. 'All men are created equal' has been twisted to support Communism and various more benign-sounding leftist theories, as well as multiculturalism and open borders. 'All men are created equal' is also being used to justify things like 'No Child Left Behind', affirmative action, and racial quotas. After all, if all men are created equal, why should they not all have equal outcomes in life?
It all sounds benign and well-intentioned when we read the excerpts from the encyclopedia; who could object to phrases like 'people are people'? Who could object to people treating each other fairly and civilly? Who would favor unkindness or unfairness? The problem is not with that simple intention, but the lengths to which it has been taken, some 51 years later. Now, we not only have schools teaching children about the talented people of various nations or races, with credit given where due, but we have reached the point of absurdity, as in this:
The teachings are sheer fantasy, unsubstantiated by any credible evidence: ancient Egyptians mastered flight with gliders, which they used for both recreation and travel. They invented electric batteries and mastered electroplating, discovered the principles of quantum mechanics and anticipated Darwin's theories of evolution. Furthermore, all Egyptians were black, and their abundance of the dark skin pigment, melanin, not only made them more humane and superior to lighter-skinned people in body and mind but also provided such paranormal powers as ESP and psychokinesis.
Incredible as it may seem, these fallacies are being included in public school multicultural courses in a growing number of U.S. cities and espoused in black-studies departments on some college campuses.''
Afrocentric theory is the basis of such nonsense, but to dispute it is to open oneself to the inevitable charges of 'racism.' I actually had a black professor in college in the 70s who insisted that Beethoven was black. 'Just look at his hair in the pictures', she said, by way of 'proving' her assertion. Not only was Beethoven black, but so were Socrates, Pushkin, (he apparently did have some African descent) and other luminaries. Now we have people claiming that Edward 'the Black Prince' of England, was actually black.
This school web page says coyly,
His nickname probably was derived from the color of his armor, but nobody knows for sure.''
Right. So we leave the door open to the possibility that Edward was actually black, as in African.
If we ask skeptically why this fact was not known in the past, I am sure we would find somebody who would say 'they kept it quiet because of racism', just as my professor said about the cover-up of Beethoven's race.
Such is the arrant nonsense that we have opened the door to, in the name of making everybody feel good about themselves. If the goal of bringing about 'tolerance and brotherhood' and nowadays, boosting that sacred self-esteem, is noble enough, then that makes it permissible to lie and concoct fantasies about the past. If there aren't enough accomplishments by every race and nation, why not make them up? After all, it's in a good cause. But the truth is, achievement, on an individual level or on a national and racial level, is not equally distributed. Yet the truth is not acceptable, because it doesn't support the egalitarian agenda. So let's discard the truth and make up some flattering lies and fairy tales, like Egyptians flying around among the pyramids, and a black prince in England in the 14th century.
I suppose, being generous, we might excuse this as silliness for the sake of putting a good face on things; white lies of a sort. But then there is the darker side of this kind of revisionism for the sake of leveling: the depiction of Europeans and people of European descent as being arch-villains, committers of 'genocide' against the noble savages; this kind of thing is the stock-in-trade of the Aztlan crowd, with their stories of Columbus killing 30 million people, and of their mythical 'Aztlan' being stolen from them. This kind of belief system, irrational as it is, is a danger to us, because it may motivate those who would usurp our country.
In the UK, the sinister elites there seem intent on convincing people that Britain has always been multiracial and multicultural. Is it a coincidence that there has been a spate of stories like this one attempting to establish that there are long-standing African genes among the English? Notice how the article uses scare quotes around the word 'indigenous', as much as to question whether the English people are the 'real' indigenous people. It's all motivated by the multicultural agenda, it seems. Even science is being used for political ends.
The result of all this deceptively benign-sounding 'intercultural education', after decades, is a decidedly less benevolent one. The majority populations of all Western countries are demoralized after generations of being told that they and their ancestors are guilty, and intrinsically 'racist', and that they have no right to take pride in who they are, no right to consider their own interests as a group, while every other group and ethnicity has that right. 'Intercultural education', whether it was intended to do so or not, has had the effect of softening up the West for invasion and submission. The seeming capitulation of much of Europe to Islam seems mostly attributable to this pernicious doctrine of 'tolerance' inculcated in us for decades. When you have one group of people who are heavily indoctrinated to be all-accepting, open, tolerant, and self-blaming, while their competitors are aggressive, hyperconfident, and without restraint, the outcome is sadly predictable.
I see promising signs that people are now aware of some of these things, and awareness is the first step to shaking off the chains of our decades of leftist conditioning.
And to all thinking people with school-age children, home-schooling is an option to be considered.
Labels: Education, Multicultural
0 comment Friday, October 31, 2014 | admin
It seems to me that one of the sources of greatest division between the person who relies on public opinion or popular trends to determine his morality and the rest of us is that the former group of people believe in the 'evolution' of human beings in terms of morality and standards. What was good enough for our fathers: the eternal verities, the traditions, the old landmarks, none of these things is held in any regard by those we call 'liberals' or leftists or progressives. Their basic assumption is that WE (or at least the liberals of today) are the greatest generation; we have more understanding, are more enlightened, more true, more perceptive, and more 'sensitive' than our forebears, who were little better than the cavemen of popular lore, at least in matters of morality and practical matters. The older generations were sexist, narrow-minded, puritanical, repressed, judgmental, rigid, exclusivist, ''anal'' to use the hideous modern jargon. And it goes without saying, above all, that they were 'racist' and xenophobic and homophobic. And anti-Semitic.
I will offer just this one general piece of advice to those who believe that our generation is the last word on morality and enlightenment. Read old books; go to older sources for a needed balance or a corrective to today's popular morality and ideology.
C.S. Lewis wrote, in the Introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation:
''Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.
All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook�even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united � united with each other and against earlier and later ages�by a great mass of common assumptions.
We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century � the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" � lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth.
None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill.
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.''
I would make one small objection to one thing Lewis says. He says there is nothing magic about the past, and that people were 'no cleverer' than they are now. I would say, with a few reservations, that they were 'cleverer' than we are now; they were certainly better-educated and more well-read, more versed in the classics, including the Bible, at least in certain eras. Our generation has been shockingly dumbed down. And no, in some ways they of the past were not any better than we are; as a Christian, Lewis would agree that in every age, people are sinners, we are born fallen.
However the Bible clearly says that some generations are worse than others. Mankind takes one step forward occasionally, but then tends to take two (or three) steps back. We are in one of those eras which has taken several giant steps backward.
The Bible tells me, as does my own power of observation, that people are 'waxing worse and worse' as we move through history.
In any case, each age, as I've said before on this blog, has its particular blind spots, and we need the corrective of the witness of people in other ages, who perhaps saw certain things with more clarity than we.
We need to have a word from past generations in order to understand ourselves and our world. If we get all of our information from our equally confused peers, or from the dishonest media and the opinion-makers, we will be the blind being led by the blind.
Once in a while on this blog I delve into some old book from my shelves, or I find an obscure old book in a used book store that I like to share with you. I think it's essential food for not only our minds but our spirits. Let's not lock ourselves into a house of mirrors where we see nothing but our own reflection; it's better to seek a glimpse of the wider world, of other vistas, of that 'other country' that is the past.
I will offer just this one general piece of advice to those who believe that our generation is the last word on morality and enlightenment. Read old books; go to older sources for a needed balance or a corrective to today's popular morality and ideology.
C.S. Lewis wrote, in the Introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation:
''Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.
All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook�even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united � united with each other and against earlier and later ages�by a great mass of common assumptions.
We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century � the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" � lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth.
None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill.
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.''
I would make one small objection to one thing Lewis says. He says there is nothing magic about the past, and that people were 'no cleverer' than they are now. I would say, with a few reservations, that they were 'cleverer' than we are now; they were certainly better-educated and more well-read, more versed in the classics, including the Bible, at least in certain eras. Our generation has been shockingly dumbed down. And no, in some ways they of the past were not any better than we are; as a Christian, Lewis would agree that in every age, people are sinners, we are born fallen.
However the Bible clearly says that some generations are worse than others. Mankind takes one step forward occasionally, but then tends to take two (or three) steps back. We are in one of those eras which has taken several giant steps backward.
The Bible tells me, as does my own power of observation, that people are 'waxing worse and worse' as we move through history.
In any case, each age, as I've said before on this blog, has its particular blind spots, and we need the corrective of the witness of people in other ages, who perhaps saw certain things with more clarity than we.
We need to have a word from past generations in order to understand ourselves and our world. If we get all of our information from our equally confused peers, or from the dishonest media and the opinion-makers, we will be the blind being led by the blind.
Once in a while on this blog I delve into some old book from my shelves, or I find an obscure old book in a used book store that I like to share with you. I think it's essential food for not only our minds but our spirits. Let's not lock ourselves into a house of mirrors where we see nothing but our own reflection; it's better to seek a glimpse of the wider world, of other vistas, of that 'other country' that is the past.
Labels: Education, History, Old Books, Old Days, Traditional Morality
0 comment Thursday, September 11, 2014 | admin
Hmongs want respect for role in Vietnam
Several Democrat lawmakers are reintroducing the Hmong Migration Education Act. Principle author Donna Seidel (D-Wausau) says she wants Wisconsin school districts to be required to teach our kids about how and why the Hmong population came here. She hopes to create an environment in our state of mutual respect and tolerance. "Our hope is that this legislation will create a better understanding of the Hmong's heroic role and enormous sacrifice in support of America's military during the Vietnam Era."
ChaSong Yang, Executive Director of the Sheboygan Hmong Mutual Association, says Hmong children in the US often question their parents about whether the Hmong really helped the US government during the Vietnam War, because it's not mentioned in the US History books.''
For those who don't remember this incident from a few years ago, this indicates some of the problems between Hmong and the majority local population:
Hmong Hunter Charged With 6 Murders Is Said to be a Shaman
Before the crime above happened, Joe Guzzardi at VDare wrote this piece, and James Fulford wrote this piece, after the killings:
'From our ''We Told You So'' Department -- A Hmong Hmedley
And here is Roy Beck's thorough explication of what happened with the growth of the Hmong settlement in Wisconsin.
It's worth reading; the situation in Wausau since the arrival of the immigrants/refugees is a microcosm of what is happening across America, with one town, formerly homogeneous, being overwhelmed by immigrants from a drastically different, essentially stone-age culture. There have been gang problems, the inevitable strain on social services, and the divisions among the locals that the presence of the immigrant 'community' brought.
And then recently, a Hmong was killed, further complicating the tensions.
I encounter so many Americans who are caught up in the romanticized American vision of immigration as portrayed in gauzy Hollywood images and the sentimentally rosy pictures of some history books. Today's immigrants, it can't be said often enough, are not the equivalent of the immigrants of the old days, so glowingly represented in our collective memory.
There are a lot of Vietnam vets who cling to their own sentimental ideas that we must, that is MUST provide a refuge and a home for the Hmong 'because they helped us out in Nam'. If they did help us, and I am assuming they actually did, they did so because it was in their own self-interest. They merely joined forces with us against their hereditary enemies. An analogy would be the American Indian tribes who sometimes made alliances with the white settlers and colonists against enemy tribes, or against other whites. They did not do so because they loved us but for reasons of their own, for the most part, because it suited their purposes, it was expedient for them to help us.
And if it's necessary to give the Hmong a perpetual place at our table, then we must bring all our allies or helpers from the troubled Middle East, also, to America, and probably drop them down in some nice quiet Midwestern town, if such a place still remains. That is always the way these resettlement programs work; there must be an official government policy to that effect: refugees and exotic immigrant groups are required to be resettled in a quiet, homogeneous small town. Always. Can't have homogeneity; diversity is good, ergo homogeneity is doubleplusungood.
But if the Hmong did help us in Viet Nam, how long does our obligation to them last? Why is America now the designated savior of the entire world? Can we resolve all the age-old conflicts in the world? Are we so problem-free, so wealthy, and so secure in our land that we can now take on the problems of the whole world? Apparently a sizeable portion of our population thinks so, as they are hellbent on our being the servant of humanity, at our own expense.
It looks as though the conflicts the Hmong left behind in Southeast Asia are now being replaced by conflicts in our own country. American citizens are being killed, and life in many of these Midwestern towns will never be the same, all thanks to our do-goodism run amok.
And if we follow this policy of rescuing everybody, we will be seeing a huge increase in immigration from Iraq; we will be compelled to give visas to everybody that has been an ostensible ally or helper to us over there. But what happens when the various factions of Iraqis end up next door to their enemies from back home, as has been happening in Detroit? And what about the possibility of fraud and taqiyya? Can we be sure that potential refugees are who and what they claim to be? Might there not be some terrorists or would-be terrorists among them?
Terrorism is not the only concern, as the stories about the Hmong demanding 'respect' in our history books. Every new ethnic group we introduce to our country becomes another part of an unworkable puzzle, whose pieces don't fit together. They become 'victims' which is all part of post-Civil Rights era America: claim victimhood and discrimination, demand 'respect' and deference, and you win the lottery. And America loses; it's a one-sided deal in which we lose every roll of the dice, because those dice are loaded. We can never do right, only wrong. If there is a difference of opinion, we have to apologize, we have to bend, we have to make concessions and amends. We have to rewrite history to include mea culpas, to make ourselves the sole villains and authors of every injustice. We have to give up pieces of our history and heritage and common memory so as to avoid offending some victim group. When is enough enough?
I am still waiting for the day when not just a lone voice or two, but masses of people stand up and say that the multicultural emperor has no clothes.
Several Democrat lawmakers are reintroducing the Hmong Migration Education Act. Principle author Donna Seidel (D-Wausau) says she wants Wisconsin school districts to be required to teach our kids about how and why the Hmong population came here. She hopes to create an environment in our state of mutual respect and tolerance. "Our hope is that this legislation will create a better understanding of the Hmong's heroic role and enormous sacrifice in support of America's military during the Vietnam Era."
ChaSong Yang, Executive Director of the Sheboygan Hmong Mutual Association, says Hmong children in the US often question their parents about whether the Hmong really helped the US government during the Vietnam War, because it's not mentioned in the US History books.''
For those who don't remember this incident from a few years ago, this indicates some of the problems between Hmong and the majority local population:
Hmong Hunter Charged With 6 Murders Is Said to be a Shaman
Before the crime above happened, Joe Guzzardi at VDare wrote this piece, and James Fulford wrote this piece, after the killings:
'From our ''We Told You So'' Department -- A Hmong Hmedley
And here is Roy Beck's thorough explication of what happened with the growth of the Hmong settlement in Wisconsin.
It's worth reading; the situation in Wausau since the arrival of the immigrants/refugees is a microcosm of what is happening across America, with one town, formerly homogeneous, being overwhelmed by immigrants from a drastically different, essentially stone-age culture. There have been gang problems, the inevitable strain on social services, and the divisions among the locals that the presence of the immigrant 'community' brought.
And then recently, a Hmong was killed, further complicating the tensions.
I encounter so many Americans who are caught up in the romanticized American vision of immigration as portrayed in gauzy Hollywood images and the sentimentally rosy pictures of some history books. Today's immigrants, it can't be said often enough, are not the equivalent of the immigrants of the old days, so glowingly represented in our collective memory.
There are a lot of Vietnam vets who cling to their own sentimental ideas that we must, that is MUST provide a refuge and a home for the Hmong 'because they helped us out in Nam'. If they did help us, and I am assuming they actually did, they did so because it was in their own self-interest. They merely joined forces with us against their hereditary enemies. An analogy would be the American Indian tribes who sometimes made alliances with the white settlers and colonists against enemy tribes, or against other whites. They did not do so because they loved us but for reasons of their own, for the most part, because it suited their purposes, it was expedient for them to help us.
And if it's necessary to give the Hmong a perpetual place at our table, then we must bring all our allies or helpers from the troubled Middle East, also, to America, and probably drop them down in some nice quiet Midwestern town, if such a place still remains. That is always the way these resettlement programs work; there must be an official government policy to that effect: refugees and exotic immigrant groups are required to be resettled in a quiet, homogeneous small town. Always. Can't have homogeneity; diversity is good, ergo homogeneity is doubleplusungood.
But if the Hmong did help us in Viet Nam, how long does our obligation to them last? Why is America now the designated savior of the entire world? Can we resolve all the age-old conflicts in the world? Are we so problem-free, so wealthy, and so secure in our land that we can now take on the problems of the whole world? Apparently a sizeable portion of our population thinks so, as they are hellbent on our being the servant of humanity, at our own expense.
It looks as though the conflicts the Hmong left behind in Southeast Asia are now being replaced by conflicts in our own country. American citizens are being killed, and life in many of these Midwestern towns will never be the same, all thanks to our do-goodism run amok.
And if we follow this policy of rescuing everybody, we will be seeing a huge increase in immigration from Iraq; we will be compelled to give visas to everybody that has been an ostensible ally or helper to us over there. But what happens when the various factions of Iraqis end up next door to their enemies from back home, as has been happening in Detroit? And what about the possibility of fraud and taqiyya? Can we be sure that potential refugees are who and what they claim to be? Might there not be some terrorists or would-be terrorists among them?
Terrorism is not the only concern, as the stories about the Hmong demanding 'respect' in our history books. Every new ethnic group we introduce to our country becomes another part of an unworkable puzzle, whose pieces don't fit together. They become 'victims' which is all part of post-Civil Rights era America: claim victimhood and discrimination, demand 'respect' and deference, and you win the lottery. And America loses; it's a one-sided deal in which we lose every roll of the dice, because those dice are loaded. We can never do right, only wrong. If there is a difference of opinion, we have to apologize, we have to bend, we have to make concessions and amends. We have to rewrite history to include mea culpas, to make ourselves the sole villains and authors of every injustice. We have to give up pieces of our history and heritage and common memory so as to avoid offending some victim group. When is enough enough?
I am still waiting for the day when not just a lone voice or two, but masses of people stand up and say that the multicultural emperor has no clothes.
Labels: Diversity, Education, Immigration, Multiculturalism
0 comment Monday, June 16, 2014 | admin
Our cotton-candy-fluffy-bunny news
...To confirm the permanence of our society's deterioration, news of Lindsay Lohan, as well as the meltdown of Britney Spears, spread across TV screens Thursday and Friday like a bad virus on your computer. Yet these are these stories Americans want. We clamor for news about our favorite celebrities. Does she trim her nails herself? Did he have a weekend fling on the beach? Will they get married, or just continue living together for the next 12 years?
Why are we so shallow?''
Are we so shallow?
I've blogged about the issue addressed in this article before: our junk-food news, or as Jonathan Krive calls it, our cotton candy news.
I question whether we are fed this stuff because of public demand, or because for whatever reason, our media elites want to feed us this non-nourishing, empty-calories substitute for real news of importance.
There are elements of both aspects: if people are demanding this non-nutritive filler as their 'news'-- and I suspect a certain segment of the public does prefer it -- it is because of decades of dumbing-down, in our media and in our school system and our popular culture generally.
Still, I encounter plenty of people, not overly educated or highbrow people, high-school educated, not hard news junkies, who express disgust at the surfeit of the 'bimbo' stories. Outside of Lohan's fanboys and fangirlies, I think many people wonder why the news channels waste so much airtime on Lohan's misbehavior. It is not just overeducated, ultra-serious people who are disgusted with the cotton-candy, bimbo-oriented 'news' on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. It is average people too who are sick of the fluff and nonsense that fills our news channels and those supermarket magazines.
However it is probably true that the younger generations in particular, having grown up in a trivia-driven, celebrity-fawning culture, are more accepting of it. And these younger generations have, not coincidentally, grown up with an educational system that neglects the basics and focuses on making kids 'feel good about themselves'. There is also an overemphasis on Politically Correct ideology at the expense of teaching young people about their own heritage and culture. I've heard from some of them that they spent more time in school learning about (probably apocryphal) African kingdoms than about the founding of our country, or about the English traditions from which our unique American system derives.
How can young people take an interest in the actual news of what is going on around the world, and hope to decipher it, without a grounding in history and political science and geography?
Krive, in the linked article, quotes from Joseph Farah's piece on 'The dumbing down of America.'
In that piece, Farah quotes questions from an eighth grade exam from the year 1895.
For example, these questions on American History:
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?''
Now I, despite having had a good solid education back in the olden days, might have to struggle a little on some of those questions, but I wonder how many could answer more than one or two nowadays?
Back in the era in which that test was written, an eighth-grade education was all that many Americans would have; they had a graduation ceremony at the end of the eighth grade school year, and received certificates, following which many of them would proceed to some kind of apprenticeship in a trade or livelihood of some sort; only the more academically talented would go on to high school, and even fewer of those on to college. That was perhaps a better system. It's often been said that an eighth-grade education then was better than today's high school education. Nowadays, even the high school education has been woefully dumbed down, so as to allow as many as possible to 'graduate', and then go on to college, where they are really out of their depth -- despite the fact that college, too, is watered down and geared to the lowest common denominator.
Even when I attended college in the 70s, my counselor, in helping me put together my class schedule, commented that few students were choosing a classical education, with basic courses like World History, English literature, and so on; most seemed to be choosing psychology and sociology and 'relevant' courses like Minority History and Women's History. Once the old core requirements were dropped and dumbed down and the politically correct pabulum offered, most students opted out of the basics and chose the fluff. Nowadays we read of classes having to do with the 'gay experience' and pornography, as well as the frivolous courses on popular culture, which is, after all, ephemeral.
The goal these days seems to be to grind out as many 'graduates' as possible, rather than to truly educate and enlighten the majority of students, or to fully develop the talents of the more able. And the goal is also to make students 'feel good about themselves' by forcing some kind of pretended 'equality' among people, with the mediocre student and the laggard not made to feel inferior by some inconsiderate prodigy.
So whose interest does it serve to make people more shallow and ignorant, or to focus their attention on the antics of drug-addled 'celebrities'? Are we fed this stuff because the media elites truly think it is newsworthy? Is it simply eye-candy, because people want to look at 'beautiful people' like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan? Or is it meant to distract us from the real, behind-the-scenes, world-changing events? Is it just a sideshow to keep us occupied and to further dumb us down?
Or is it merely another side-effect of the feminizing of our society? It does seem that many women are more focused on the doings of other women, the clothes they wear, the hairstyles, the plastic surgery, their private lives, who they sleep with and/or marry, and so on? I'm a female and I know that not all women are into this gossip as news thing, but a good percentage of them are.
Just look at the TV channels which are 'women's channels': the Lifetime Movie channel, which specializes in soap-operaesque movies about domestic abuse, troubled romances, and so on, and the Oxygen network, which takes a relentlessly PC, 'you-go-girl' look at the world, with focus on 'women's problems': relationships, fashion, sex, body image.
Back in the 1970s, in the era in which feminism was commanding so much attention, Irish writer Desmond Fennell
wrote a piece which asked an interesting question. I cannot locate anything of the piece online, and I no longer have it, but his question was essentially 'why do feminists act as if woman has no soul?' The question was in response to the new 'feminist' talk shows which were all the rage then: there were many such talk shows, hosted by some earnest feminist, interviewing other women of course, on subjects of interest to women. Fennell, if I am recalling correctly, pointed out that the women never discussed deep spiritual or philosophical questions, but only things like women's health, relationships, body image, and feminist politics and letters. They seldom seemed to deal with the wider, more inclusive world. The same gynocentric concerns are served up by Oprah and her ilk today. Fennell pointed out that the feminists criticized the 'misogynistic' prejudices of early theologians who questioned whether 'women had no souls' -- and yet the feminists themselves seemed to corroborate that opinion by dwelling only on parochial female concerns, mostly of a fleshly nature. That same observation can be made today.
But I stop short of blaming only my fellow females for this phenomenon of junk news. Maybe the reasons for this trend include a little of all of the above.
So what, if anything, can we do about it, if we don't like it? The usual answer is 'just turn the TV off', which may not be bad advice, but even those of us who turn off, tune out, and drop into the real world instead of the TV world, still have to deal with the reality which is fed and fostered by the trashy content of the media. And if we have children, those children are affected by the unfortunate trends, unless we truly do drop out and homeschool them and isolate them from the worst excesses of junk culture.
But my concern is the dire state of our country, and of the West in general, and the fact that the cotton candy news is acting to dull people's awareness, to merely keep them entertained and distracted. The junk news is empty calories, taking the place of necessary mental nourishment.
Ultimately this junk news diet will be deadly to our Republic, producing, as it does, dulled and disconnected citizens who lack information or critical thinking skills to make responsible decisions about our future.
Does it help to write to the networks or other news media and make your concerns known? Or will they respond once they lose sufficent viewers and readers? We read every day about how the dead-tree media, the old print newspapers, are losing readers at an alarming rate. Has this changed how they do business? I see no evidence of that yet. And with cable TV, news channels are not subject to the same pressures as newspapers, considering that cable channels are carried as part of a package, so that the channels with a tiny viewership are not eliminated from the lineup.
The only hopeful sign I can point to is that people are slowly getting disenchanted and downright fed up with their TV news and newspapers, and many are looking elsewhere, as on the internet. And now the blogosphere is an alternate source for news and especially opinion and analysis not allowed by the narrow standards of the controlled media.
I can only hope that the TV news media and the dead tree media will become increasingly irrelevant and obsolete, and that people will turn to sources which treat them as sentient, thinking human beings and not as dull-witted units of consumption.
...To confirm the permanence of our society's deterioration, news of Lindsay Lohan, as well as the meltdown of Britney Spears, spread across TV screens Thursday and Friday like a bad virus on your computer. Yet these are these stories Americans want. We clamor for news about our favorite celebrities. Does she trim her nails herself? Did he have a weekend fling on the beach? Will they get married, or just continue living together for the next 12 years?
Why are we so shallow?''
Are we so shallow?
I've blogged about the issue addressed in this article before: our junk-food news, or as Jonathan Krive calls it, our cotton candy news.
I question whether we are fed this stuff because of public demand, or because for whatever reason, our media elites want to feed us this non-nourishing, empty-calories substitute for real news of importance.
There are elements of both aspects: if people are demanding this non-nutritive filler as their 'news'-- and I suspect a certain segment of the public does prefer it -- it is because of decades of dumbing-down, in our media and in our school system and our popular culture generally.
Still, I encounter plenty of people, not overly educated or highbrow people, high-school educated, not hard news junkies, who express disgust at the surfeit of the 'bimbo' stories. Outside of Lohan's fanboys and fangirlies, I think many people wonder why the news channels waste so much airtime on Lohan's misbehavior. It is not just overeducated, ultra-serious people who are disgusted with the cotton-candy, bimbo-oriented 'news' on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. It is average people too who are sick of the fluff and nonsense that fills our news channels and those supermarket magazines.
However it is probably true that the younger generations in particular, having grown up in a trivia-driven, celebrity-fawning culture, are more accepting of it. And these younger generations have, not coincidentally, grown up with an educational system that neglects the basics and focuses on making kids 'feel good about themselves'. There is also an overemphasis on Politically Correct ideology at the expense of teaching young people about their own heritage and culture. I've heard from some of them that they spent more time in school learning about (probably apocryphal) African kingdoms than about the founding of our country, or about the English traditions from which our unique American system derives.
How can young people take an interest in the actual news of what is going on around the world, and hope to decipher it, without a grounding in history and political science and geography?
Krive, in the linked article, quotes from Joseph Farah's piece on 'The dumbing down of America.'
In that piece, Farah quotes questions from an eighth grade exam from the year 1895.
For example, these questions on American History:
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?''
Now I, despite having had a good solid education back in the olden days, might have to struggle a little on some of those questions, but I wonder how many could answer more than one or two nowadays?
Back in the era in which that test was written, an eighth-grade education was all that many Americans would have; they had a graduation ceremony at the end of the eighth grade school year, and received certificates, following which many of them would proceed to some kind of apprenticeship in a trade or livelihood of some sort; only the more academically talented would go on to high school, and even fewer of those on to college. That was perhaps a better system. It's often been said that an eighth-grade education then was better than today's high school education. Nowadays, even the high school education has been woefully dumbed down, so as to allow as many as possible to 'graduate', and then go on to college, where they are really out of their depth -- despite the fact that college, too, is watered down and geared to the lowest common denominator.
Even when I attended college in the 70s, my counselor, in helping me put together my class schedule, commented that few students were choosing a classical education, with basic courses like World History, English literature, and so on; most seemed to be choosing psychology and sociology and 'relevant' courses like Minority History and Women's History. Once the old core requirements were dropped and dumbed down and the politically correct pabulum offered, most students opted out of the basics and chose the fluff. Nowadays we read of classes having to do with the 'gay experience' and pornography, as well as the frivolous courses on popular culture, which is, after all, ephemeral.
The goal these days seems to be to grind out as many 'graduates' as possible, rather than to truly educate and enlighten the majority of students, or to fully develop the talents of the more able. And the goal is also to make students 'feel good about themselves' by forcing some kind of pretended 'equality' among people, with the mediocre student and the laggard not made to feel inferior by some inconsiderate prodigy.
So whose interest does it serve to make people more shallow and ignorant, or to focus their attention on the antics of drug-addled 'celebrities'? Are we fed this stuff because the media elites truly think it is newsworthy? Is it simply eye-candy, because people want to look at 'beautiful people' like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan? Or is it meant to distract us from the real, behind-the-scenes, world-changing events? Is it just a sideshow to keep us occupied and to further dumb us down?
Or is it merely another side-effect of the feminizing of our society? It does seem that many women are more focused on the doings of other women, the clothes they wear, the hairstyles, the plastic surgery, their private lives, who they sleep with and/or marry, and so on? I'm a female and I know that not all women are into this gossip as news thing, but a good percentage of them are.
Just look at the TV channels which are 'women's channels': the Lifetime Movie channel, which specializes in soap-operaesque movies about domestic abuse, troubled romances, and so on, and the Oxygen network, which takes a relentlessly PC, 'you-go-girl' look at the world, with focus on 'women's problems': relationships, fashion, sex, body image.
Back in the 1970s, in the era in which feminism was commanding so much attention, Irish writer Desmond Fennell
wrote a piece which asked an interesting question. I cannot locate anything of the piece online, and I no longer have it, but his question was essentially 'why do feminists act as if woman has no soul?' The question was in response to the new 'feminist' talk shows which were all the rage then: there were many such talk shows, hosted by some earnest feminist, interviewing other women of course, on subjects of interest to women. Fennell, if I am recalling correctly, pointed out that the women never discussed deep spiritual or philosophical questions, but only things like women's health, relationships, body image, and feminist politics and letters. They seldom seemed to deal with the wider, more inclusive world. The same gynocentric concerns are served up by Oprah and her ilk today. Fennell pointed out that the feminists criticized the 'misogynistic' prejudices of early theologians who questioned whether 'women had no souls' -- and yet the feminists themselves seemed to corroborate that opinion by dwelling only on parochial female concerns, mostly of a fleshly nature. That same observation can be made today.
But I stop short of blaming only my fellow females for this phenomenon of junk news. Maybe the reasons for this trend include a little of all of the above.
So what, if anything, can we do about it, if we don't like it? The usual answer is 'just turn the TV off', which may not be bad advice, but even those of us who turn off, tune out, and drop into the real world instead of the TV world, still have to deal with the reality which is fed and fostered by the trashy content of the media. And if we have children, those children are affected by the unfortunate trends, unless we truly do drop out and homeschool them and isolate them from the worst excesses of junk culture.
But my concern is the dire state of our country, and of the West in general, and the fact that the cotton candy news is acting to dull people's awareness, to merely keep them entertained and distracted. The junk news is empty calories, taking the place of necessary mental nourishment.
Ultimately this junk news diet will be deadly to our Republic, producing, as it does, dulled and disconnected citizens who lack information or critical thinking skills to make responsible decisions about our future.
Does it help to write to the networks or other news media and make your concerns known? Or will they respond once they lose sufficent viewers and readers? We read every day about how the dead-tree media, the old print newspapers, are losing readers at an alarming rate. Has this changed how they do business? I see no evidence of that yet. And with cable TV, news channels are not subject to the same pressures as newspapers, considering that cable channels are carried as part of a package, so that the channels with a tiny viewership are not eliminated from the lineup.
The only hopeful sign I can point to is that people are slowly getting disenchanted and downright fed up with their TV news and newspapers, and many are looking elsewhere, as on the internet. And now the blogosphere is an alternate source for news and especially opinion and analysis not allowed by the narrow standards of the controlled media.
I can only hope that the TV news media and the dead tree media will become increasingly irrelevant and obsolete, and that people will turn to sources which treat them as sentient, thinking human beings and not as dull-witted units of consumption.
Labels: Celebrity Culture, Education, Feminism, Junk News, Media, News, Trivia
0 comment Wednesday, May 28, 2014 | admin
At Steve Sailer's blog, there is a post on National Merit Semifinalists, and of course the Asian issue becomes the main point of discussion in the comment thread.
At the time I am writing this, there are 164 comments, and only one or two of them seem to come to the obvious conclusions.
It's rather ironic that a number of posts accuse the regular posters of anti-Asian bias, which is amusing to me because I see just the opposite among that group of commenters: they admire Asians, specifically East Asians, to an almost fawning degree. They are very much in awe of the high IQs of East Asians (although usually credit is given to 'Asians' in general) and of their superior academic skills and study habits.
It seems to be widely accepted, even on the pro-White right, that East Asians are much more intelligent than Whites. Fine; credit where due. But as one or maybe two commenters imply, if high IQs and academic prowess don't result in a people's homeland being more liveable and more well-functioning, then are they really as super-intelligent as most seem to think them to be?
Why are so many of the people from the high IQ East Asian countries bound and determined to leave and to come to the West? Oh yes, we know, for ''opportunity'' or ''a better life.'' But why not use that superior brainpower to create opportunity and a better life in their homeland?
As always, I am a big believer in results. Intelligence will out. The highly intelligent, or those of ''superior'' minds, should be able to create countries that are liveable, countries where people are not eager to escape. Of course, the Japanese have created a very liveable and safe society, given that no society is perfect. All credit to them.
However the rest of East Asia hardly looks like the work of intellectually superior people.
Having high intelligence on paper is insignificant if no proof is shown in the kind of environment these superior intellects create for themselves.
Or maybe, as some commenters suggest, something besides IQ is at work in making successful countries -- or individuals.
One thing that exasperates me (still) is the almost-universal belief that 'culture' shapes people; to me, this idea is a cop-out, a way of avoiding the elephant in the room: race, and the differences in abilities among the various races. Perish the thought that we might consider that the people themselves produce the culture, and it reflects their innate qualities and strengths and weaknesses. Where, for heaven's sake, does the vaunted Asian culture, with its emphasis on learning and academic success, come from?
The people make the culture, not vice versa. And genetics, to a great extent makes the people.
But it seems many Americans are wary of any such thoughts. So we go on pretending that, exposed to the right cultural influences, all races could achieve at the same level. Right.
At the time I am writing this, there are 164 comments, and only one or two of them seem to come to the obvious conclusions.
It's rather ironic that a number of posts accuse the regular posters of anti-Asian bias, which is amusing to me because I see just the opposite among that group of commenters: they admire Asians, specifically East Asians, to an almost fawning degree. They are very much in awe of the high IQs of East Asians (although usually credit is given to 'Asians' in general) and of their superior academic skills and study habits.
It seems to be widely accepted, even on the pro-White right, that East Asians are much more intelligent than Whites. Fine; credit where due. But as one or maybe two commenters imply, if high IQs and academic prowess don't result in a people's homeland being more liveable and more well-functioning, then are they really as super-intelligent as most seem to think them to be?
Why are so many of the people from the high IQ East Asian countries bound and determined to leave and to come to the West? Oh yes, we know, for ''opportunity'' or ''a better life.'' But why not use that superior brainpower to create opportunity and a better life in their homeland?
As always, I am a big believer in results. Intelligence will out. The highly intelligent, or those of ''superior'' minds, should be able to create countries that are liveable, countries where people are not eager to escape. Of course, the Japanese have created a very liveable and safe society, given that no society is perfect. All credit to them.
However the rest of East Asia hardly looks like the work of intellectually superior people.
Having high intelligence on paper is insignificant if no proof is shown in the kind of environment these superior intellects create for themselves.
Or maybe, as some commenters suggest, something besides IQ is at work in making successful countries -- or individuals.
One thing that exasperates me (still) is the almost-universal belief that 'culture' shapes people; to me, this idea is a cop-out, a way of avoiding the elephant in the room: race, and the differences in abilities among the various races. Perish the thought that we might consider that the people themselves produce the culture, and it reflects their innate qualities and strengths and weaknesses. Where, for heaven's sake, does the vaunted Asian culture, with its emphasis on learning and academic success, come from?
The people make the culture, not vice versa. And genetics, to a great extent makes the people.
But it seems many Americans are wary of any such thoughts. So we go on pretending that, exposed to the right cultural influences, all races could achieve at the same level. Right.
Labels: American Diversity, Culture, Education, Egalitarianism, Ethnic Differences, Immigration, Intelligence, Multicuturalism
0 comment Thursday, May 1, 2014 | admin
A while back, I read this piece about the decline of copy editors.
...As newspapers lose money and readers, they have been shedding great swaths of expensive expertise. They have been forced to shrink or eliminate the multiply redundant levels of editing that distinguish their kind of journalism from what you find on TV, radio and much of the Web. Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced.
Webby doesn�t necessarily mean sloppy, of course, and online news operations will shine with all the brilliance that the journalists who create them can bring. But in that world of the perpetual present tense � post it now, fix it later, update constantly � old-time, persnickety editing may be a luxury in which only a few large news operations will indulge. It will be an artisanal product, like monastery honey and wooden yachts.''
In other words, with the disappearance of old-time 'persnickety editing', quality will decline. I'd say it's already happening, not only in the open bias of the news media, but in the increasing numbers of errors, sloppy grammar, and even bad spelling. The copy editors who still exist, and who are not yet 'outsourced' to India, God help us, seem not to have the strict standards of the old days.
That's no surprise; as I often lament on this blog, standards in general are under siege; we live in a rebellious age, an age in which 'individual self-expression' is king, and in which standards are seen as repressive, unfair, biased, and elitist.
Our obsession with being 'non-judgmental' has reached every area of life.
When I was in college, before I declared a major, I considered linguistics. However I found that in the introductory linguistics class I took, the orthodoxy was that 'prescriptive' linguistics was bad, and was passé. The ideal was supposed to be simply 'descriptive' linguistics, which does not judge how people use language, and above all does not lay down or enforce rules of grammar, usage, or spelling, but simply describes. No dialect of English is the standard; all are equal and equally 'proper' or valid. Language is also an 'evolving', living thing which should not be ossified by rules and standards. But is our language evolving or going backwards?
I've noticed certain misspellings and grammar errors that seem to be endemic on the Internet, whereas I had never seen them previously. Now, don't get me wrong; I make mistakes. I don't claim to be without sin here. Sometimes I slip up with the keyboard; I spell better than I type. So I make mistakes, though Firefox's built-in spell checker catches them for me usually. But here are a few examples of those viral Internet solecisms:
'Wrecking havoc' -- or in some cases, 'reeking havoc' instead of 'wreaking havoc.'
'Wreckless' instead of 'reckless.' This one is particularly humorous to me; when we read of someone being charged with 'wreckless driving', does the writer think that the wayward driver is being charged for not having had any accidents? I suspect this solecism may have had its origin with the 1980s rock musician 'Wreckless Eric.'
'Reign in' - this one is seen so very frequently that I suspect it will take over and replace the correct phrase, 'rein in.' I actually saw someone use the correct phrase 'rein in' over on the Mudcat Forum, and for a moment it looked wrong to me, since I'm so used to the incorrect spelling. The metaphor refers to 'reining in' a horse, and has nothing to do with 'reigning' as in ruling.
'One in the same' for 'one and the same.' This one is prevalent too.
'Tounge' for tongue. I think it must be misspelled at least half the time.
'Here, here!' instead of the phrase, 'Hear! Hear!'
'Baffoon' for 'buffoon.' Is a 'baffoon' supposed to be a cross between a baboon and a buffoon?
'Shoe-in' for 'shoo-in.'
'Toe-headed' instead of the correct 'tow-headed.' I suppose it's understandable that many people today are unfamiliar with the term 'tow', meaning flax. 'Tow-headed' people are those who used to be called in archaic language 'flaxen-haired', having very pale blond hair. Since there seem to be fewer and fewer such individuals in our country these days, maybe we will have no use for the term 'tow-headed' or 'flaxen-haired' soon anyway.
'Pour over' as in 'pouring over old documents'. What liquid, I always wonder, is being poured over the documents? The word, as I am sure my readers know, is 'pore'.
'Hypocracy' for 'hypocrisy'. Would 'hypocracy' refer to rule by hypocrites?
'Hoards' for 'hordes' .
'Boarder' for 'border.' As in frequently-seen phrases like this: 'hoards of illegals are crossing the boarder every day.'
Those last two would not be caught by spell checker, since they are words, but just homonyms for the desired word.
And then there are the gramatically tortured phrases like these real-life examples I've seen:
'Being a second-class citizen at home, America was the perfect place for the Scots-Irish.'
Or how about this one: 'Charged with child abuse, four psychiatrists diagnosed him with schizophrenia.'
And this one: 'Scared to death and shaking I took her home.' This sentence was supposed to convey that 'she' was the one scared to death and shaking; not the writer.
What is it about the above few sentences which so many people seem to struggle with? I see these errors more and more all the time, and not just among average people posting on blogs or forums; I see them in newspaper articles, magazine articles, and hear them spoken by educated people. Obviously even the highly educated are not exempt from making such mistakes. The problem is, though, that these mistakes seem just fine to most people when they read or hear them.
Another thing that seems to give most people problems is this kind of thing:
'...as reported to she and her husband.'
''The prize money was split between he and I.'
It seems that everybody is afraid to say 'to her and her husband' or 'between him and me.'
I suspect that people have been conditioned to think that, since sentences like 'Him and me went' are ignorant, then the phrase 'him and me' is not a legitimate phrase anywhere.
I don't advocate becoming a language vigilante; nobody likes to be corrected publicly, or in a tactless way.I don't go around correcting people, especially people I don't know well. I do think we as parents should correct our children, but in a gentle way. Needless to say, teachers and copy editors are paid to teach and to correct, and I suspect they are too concerned with harming somebody's 'self-esteem' so they let errors slip by.
The English language is one of the richest and most nuanced languages in the world. The sheer number of words at our disposal in the English language is quite staggering. And I suppose that in itself is part of the problem; so many words to remember, and to differentiate.
It's a shame that with such an expressive language we neglect it, and fail to develop and use the full potential that is there.
I suppose it's inevitable with the decline of our educational system, and the general dumbing-down of our culture, that our language is becoming less and less precise and careful. Maybe in the overall scheme of things, these matters are trivial, but I do believe that language shapes thought as well as thought shaping language. Both work together. The more precise and specific we can be with our language, the better and the more clearly we communicate.
...As newspapers lose money and readers, they have been shedding great swaths of expensive expertise. They have been forced to shrink or eliminate the multiply redundant levels of editing that distinguish their kind of journalism from what you find on TV, radio and much of the Web. Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced.
Webby doesn�t necessarily mean sloppy, of course, and online news operations will shine with all the brilliance that the journalists who create them can bring. But in that world of the perpetual present tense � post it now, fix it later, update constantly � old-time, persnickety editing may be a luxury in which only a few large news operations will indulge. It will be an artisanal product, like monastery honey and wooden yachts.''
In other words, with the disappearance of old-time 'persnickety editing', quality will decline. I'd say it's already happening, not only in the open bias of the news media, but in the increasing numbers of errors, sloppy grammar, and even bad spelling. The copy editors who still exist, and who are not yet 'outsourced' to India, God help us, seem not to have the strict standards of the old days.
That's no surprise; as I often lament on this blog, standards in general are under siege; we live in a rebellious age, an age in which 'individual self-expression' is king, and in which standards are seen as repressive, unfair, biased, and elitist.
Our obsession with being 'non-judgmental' has reached every area of life.
When I was in college, before I declared a major, I considered linguistics. However I found that in the introductory linguistics class I took, the orthodoxy was that 'prescriptive' linguistics was bad, and was passé. The ideal was supposed to be simply 'descriptive' linguistics, which does not judge how people use language, and above all does not lay down or enforce rules of grammar, usage, or spelling, but simply describes. No dialect of English is the standard; all are equal and equally 'proper' or valid. Language is also an 'evolving', living thing which should not be ossified by rules and standards. But is our language evolving or going backwards?
I've noticed certain misspellings and grammar errors that seem to be endemic on the Internet, whereas I had never seen them previously. Now, don't get me wrong; I make mistakes. I don't claim to be without sin here. Sometimes I slip up with the keyboard; I spell better than I type. So I make mistakes, though Firefox's built-in spell checker catches them for me usually. But here are a few examples of those viral Internet solecisms:
'Wrecking havoc' -- or in some cases, 'reeking havoc' instead of 'wreaking havoc.'
'Wreckless' instead of 'reckless.' This one is particularly humorous to me; when we read of someone being charged with 'wreckless driving', does the writer think that the wayward driver is being charged for not having had any accidents? I suspect this solecism may have had its origin with the 1980s rock musician 'Wreckless Eric.'
'Reign in' - this one is seen so very frequently that I suspect it will take over and replace the correct phrase, 'rein in.' I actually saw someone use the correct phrase 'rein in' over on the Mudcat Forum, and for a moment it looked wrong to me, since I'm so used to the incorrect spelling. The metaphor refers to 'reining in' a horse, and has nothing to do with 'reigning' as in ruling.
'One in the same' for 'one and the same.' This one is prevalent too.
'Tounge' for tongue. I think it must be misspelled at least half the time.
'Here, here!' instead of the phrase, 'Hear! Hear!'
'Baffoon' for 'buffoon.' Is a 'baffoon' supposed to be a cross between a baboon and a buffoon?
'Shoe-in' for 'shoo-in.'
'Toe-headed' instead of the correct 'tow-headed.' I suppose it's understandable that many people today are unfamiliar with the term 'tow', meaning flax. 'Tow-headed' people are those who used to be called in archaic language 'flaxen-haired', having very pale blond hair. Since there seem to be fewer and fewer such individuals in our country these days, maybe we will have no use for the term 'tow-headed' or 'flaxen-haired' soon anyway.
'Pour over' as in 'pouring over old documents'. What liquid, I always wonder, is being poured over the documents? The word, as I am sure my readers know, is 'pore'.
'Hypocracy' for 'hypocrisy'. Would 'hypocracy' refer to rule by hypocrites?
'Hoards' for 'hordes' .
'Boarder' for 'border.' As in frequently-seen phrases like this: 'hoards of illegals are crossing the boarder every day.'
Those last two would not be caught by spell checker, since they are words, but just homonyms for the desired word.
And then there are the gramatically tortured phrases like these real-life examples I've seen:
'Being a second-class citizen at home, America was the perfect place for the Scots-Irish.'
Or how about this one: 'Charged with child abuse, four psychiatrists diagnosed him with schizophrenia.'
And this one: 'Scared to death and shaking I took her home.' This sentence was supposed to convey that 'she' was the one scared to death and shaking; not the writer.
What is it about the above few sentences which so many people seem to struggle with? I see these errors more and more all the time, and not just among average people posting on blogs or forums; I see them in newspaper articles, magazine articles, and hear them spoken by educated people. Obviously even the highly educated are not exempt from making such mistakes. The problem is, though, that these mistakes seem just fine to most people when they read or hear them.
Another thing that seems to give most people problems is this kind of thing:
'...as reported to she and her husband.'
''The prize money was split between he and I.'
It seems that everybody is afraid to say 'to her and her husband' or 'between him and me.'
I suspect that people have been conditioned to think that, since sentences like 'Him and me went' are ignorant, then the phrase 'him and me' is not a legitimate phrase anywhere.
I don't advocate becoming a language vigilante; nobody likes to be corrected publicly, or in a tactless way.I don't go around correcting people, especially people I don't know well. I do think we as parents should correct our children, but in a gentle way. Needless to say, teachers and copy editors are paid to teach and to correct, and I suspect they are too concerned with harming somebody's 'self-esteem' so they let errors slip by.
The English language is one of the richest and most nuanced languages in the world. The sheer number of words at our disposal in the English language is quite staggering. And I suppose that in itself is part of the problem; so many words to remember, and to differentiate.
It's a shame that with such an expressive language we neglect it, and fail to develop and use the full potential that is there.
I suppose it's inevitable with the decline of our educational system, and the general dumbing-down of our culture, that our language is becoming less and less precise and careful. Maybe in the overall scheme of things, these matters are trivial, but I do believe that language shapes thought as well as thought shaping language. Both work together. The more precise and specific we can be with our language, the better and the more clearly we communicate.
Labels: Declining Standards, Dumbing Down, Education, English Language, Media