MARK STEYN IS MOST DEFINITELY * NOT * WRONG

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I’ve seen some curious representations around the blogosphere that Mark Steyn was wrong when he said we are witnessing the death of the idea of the West. Austin Bay, primarily. I beg to differ, and as Steyn's latest column in the Chicago Sun-Times proves, he meant what he said:

Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there's no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.

I couldn’t agree more, and stated a reason or two why a few days ago. A new world is being imagined right now all across the globe. Good luck to all of us.

ANOTHER 9-11 REPUBLICAN

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I saw this article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Cinnamon Stillwell the other day on RealClearPolitics.com and simply had to make note of it here:

As one of a handful of Bay Area conservative columnists, I'm no stranger to pushing buttons. Indeed, I welcome feedback from readers, whether positive or negative. I find the interplay stimulating, but I am often bemused by the stereotypical assumptions made by my critics on the left. It's not enough to simply disagree with my views; I have to be twisted into a conservative caricature that apparently makes opponents feel superior. They seem not to have considered that it's possible to put forward different approaches to various societal problems and not be the devil incarnate.

That’s a strong and accurate beginning.

As I spent months grieving the losses, others around me wrapped themselves in the comfortable shell of cynicism and acted as if nothing had changed. I soon began to recognize in them an inability to view America or its people as victims, born of years of indoctrination in which we were always presented as the bad guys.

Never mind that every country in the world acts in its own self-interest, forms alliances with unsavory countries -- some of which change later -- and are forced to act militarily at times. America was singled out as the sole guilty party on the globe. I, on the other hand, for the first time in my life, had come to truly appreciate my country and all that it encompassed, as well as the bravery and sacrifices of those who fight to protect it.

Thoroughly disgusted by the behavior of those on the left, I began to look elsewhere for support. To my astonishment, I found that the only voices that seemed to me to be intellectually and morally honest were on the right. Suddenly, I was listening to conservative talk-show hosts on the radio and reading conservative columnists, and they were making sense. When I actually met conservatives, I discovered that they did not at all embody the stereotypes with which I'd been inculcated as a liberal.

I am a witness to much the same experience, although I never really thought Republicans were that bad (I did think Ronald Reagan was that bad), I just thought they were wrong. Bush 41 was okay with me – now I know why.

Read her whole piece, it’s well worth your time. She closes with this fact:

In the end, history will be the judge, and each of us will have to think about what legacy we wish to leave to future generations. If there's one thing I've learned since 9/11, it's that it's never too late to alter one's place in the great scheme of things.

Ain’t life grand?

TWO LADIES ON THE LARRY SUMMERS FRACAS AT HARVARD

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Peggy Noonan says this proves our universities are now simply medieval cloisters:

The Larry Summers story continues. What choice does it have? It could end, but its authors would have to have the good sense to put a period in and change the subject.

Tuesday he faced an angry faculty gathering where "his ears were pinned back," as one reporter said. Summers now seems to be saying he made a mistake in airing the idea of gender-related differences in the interests and aptitudes of scholars. But here is what he may be forgetting, for people under pressure often lose track of their lack of culpability: Summers did nothing wrong. He thought aloud about an interesting question in a colorful and un-defended way. That's what universities are for.

His mistake was stepping on the real third rail in American cultural politics. It's not Social Security. It is attempting to reconcile the indisputable equality of all people with their differentness. The left thinks if we're all equal we're all alike. Others say we're all equal but God made us different, too, and maybe he did that to keep things interesting, and maybe he did it because each human group is meant to reflect an aspect of his nature. Our differentness is meant to teach us his infinite variety and complexity. It's all about God.

But what the Summers story most illustrates is that American universities now seem like Medieval cloisters. They're like a cloister without the messy God part. Old monks of leftism walk their hallowed halls in hooded robes, chanting to themselves. Young nuns of leftist deconstructionism, pale as orchids, walk along wringing their hands, listening to their gloomy music. They become hysterical at the antichrist of a new idea, the instrusion of the reconsideration of settled matter. Get thee behind me, Summers.

These monks and nuns are the worst of both worlds, frightened and so ferocious, antique and so aggressive. Will they exorcise Summers from their midst? Stay tuned. But cheers to the Ivy League students who refuse to be impressed by these relics.

You do wish Summers had been able to muster up more intestinal fortitude, hold his ground – and defy the hysteria. Deb Saunders apparently feels the same way and has thrown down the challenge to Summers:

Dismissive and arrogant? If anything, Summers is too accommodating. He keeps apologizing and promising to be more sensitive and a better listener when he ought to be blasting his critics for their intolerant rush to exile people who express unpopular ideas.

My advice to the Harvard president: Don't apologize and promise to be a better listener. Be a man.

Be.

A.

Man!

BLACK ON BLACK?

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Spotted in the Best of the Web - February 22, 2005 from the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal:

Some Blacks Are More Equal Than Others
Buried in a New York Times story on the massive increase in black immigration to America may lie the undoing of racial preferences in higher education:

“African-born and Caribbean-born brothers and sisters have realized that the police don’t discriminate on the basis of nationality--ask Amadou Diallo [an immigrant from Guinea who was accidentally shot by police in 1999],” said Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr., who teaches at Harvard Law School and has warned colleges and universities that admitting mostly foreign-born blacks to meet the goals of affirmative action is insufficient.

“Whether you are from Brazil or from Cuba, you are still products of slavery,” he continued. “But the threshold is that people of African descent who were born and raised and suffered in America have to be the first among equals.”

Ogletree seems to be arguing that American-born blacks deserve preferential treatment vis-à-vis foreign-born ones, at least if the latter do better than the former absent such preferences. In other words, in the name of “affirmative action,” he is calling for discrimination against black people who were born outside the U.S.

The trouble with this is that the argument the Supreme Court has used to justify racial preferences in university admissions is “diversity.” Favoring someone from the Bronx over an African-American from Burkina Faso is hardly a way to achieve that goal.

Hmmmmmmmm.

We sit on the sidelines bitching and moaning, taking direction from the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, “other” black people come in and meet the country on its own terms (that is to say, understanding and satisfying American standards) . . . and, will wonders never cease – they advance.

We may still be keeping our “eyes on the prize” but we’ve sure as hell forgotten how to define the prize. And before we claim our “citizen of the world” status we must first claim ownership of our American citizenship.

AFRICAN ART EXHIBIT AT U.F.

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The New York Times recently had an interesting article of an art exhibit at U.F. featuring an African and Islamic context:

Among the saints’ names, one recurs, over and over: Sheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the African Sufi movement known as the Mouride Way. And far from being out of sight, his white-robed, dark-skinned figure is visible everywhere in the modern city of Dakar: inside homes, shops, in public murals, in paintings and prints sold in markets, in amulets worn around the neck.

He’s also omnipresent now at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art here, in the traveling show “A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal.” Like Bamba himself, it’s out of the ordinary, an event. Its heady mix of materials - high and low, sacred and profane - is a joy to the eye. But more important, it introduces us to an art we don’t know, an Africa and an Islam we don’t know.

When I say “African art,” what do you think? Villages, carved masks, “primitive”? But Mouride art is cosmopolitan and modern, portrait painting and history painting, calligraphy and photography. How about “Islam”? Fundamentalist? Anti-Western? Dangerous? Well, there are many Islams, and Sufism, mystical and pacific, is one. The plan for living Bamba prescribed is based on tolerance, generosity and hard work, values most Americans treasure.

Islam, in fact, is not monolithic; Osama bin Laden doesn’t seem to understand or respect that and a strange mix of people in this country prefer to overlook that aspect of bin Laden.

The book, by the way, is wonderful, intellectually wide-ranging and deeply humane, as well as visually vibrant, more so than the exhibition itself, which feels less atmospheric and dense here than it did in Los Angeles. This is a space issue: the Harn has less of it and what there is is somewhat choppily arranged. That said, the museum is impressive. There is an expansion in progress, it has a strong non-Western collection on permanent view, and it is part of an institution, the University of Florida, blessed with a young, very on-the-ball Center for African Studies.

The center’s director, Leonardo A. Villalón, organized a symposium to accompany the show. Titled “Islam in Africa: Sufism and Modernity in a Globalized World,” it approached Mouride art through the lenses of history, politics, religion, sociology, linguistics, and, finally, music. Indeed, after many hours’ worth of ideas, questions, arguments and emotions, the long day ended where the exhibition itself began, with Mr. N’Dour’s voice and words:

“My strong faith in you makes me survive in this crazy world. Now I can go anywhere, because I know you’ll be there. We know your pain will always make us stronger, Father Bamba.”

Congratulation to the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida for mounting such a unique exhibit.

THE DEATH OF THE IDEA OF “THE WEST”

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Mark Steyn heralds the death of the idea of “The West” and all I can say is – it’s about time!

America and Europe both face security threats. But the difference is America’s are external, and require hard choices in tough neighborhoods around the world, while the EU’s are internal and, as they see it, unlikely to be lessened by the sight of European soldiers joining the Great Satan in liberating, say, Syria. That’s not exactly going to help keep the lid on the noisier Continental mosques.

So what would you do in Bush’s shoes? Slap ‘em around a bit? What for? Where would it get you? Or would you do exactly what he’s doing? Climb into the old soup-and-fish, make small talk with Mme Chirac and raise a glass of champagne to the enduring friendship of our peoples: what else is left? This week we’re toasting the end of an idea: the death of “the West”.

What will go unremarked, however, about that "death" is how this contributes to a necessary American step; our continuing transformation away from the mythology of a “white” nation – meaning “European” – to that of a global nation, more representative of the entire world. This new status, already well-underway an unstoppable, will be accomplished in the unique manner of the United States; building upon the base of a common language (English) and a foundational culture (European) – but absolutely American.

And American is becoming progressively less synonymous with “white” and “European.” There’s a lot of unnecessary confusion (it seems to me) about this on the political left and political right in America right now but electoral necessities are slowly but surely sorting that out.

THE EFFECT OF INCREASING THE SPREAD OF A QUASI-MERITOCRACY IN A COMPETITIVE WORLD

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This letter to the editor in the London Times struck a chord with me:

From Mr Trevor Dingle

Sir, Thirty-six years ago, as a son of a poor working-class family, I managed financially to secure a university education. During term time I enjoyed a normal student’s social life and was able to live acceptably on my grant, a routine “County Major Award”. During vacations I worked full time to pay for my living and to provide a small back-up for term times. I left university with a degree, happy memories of a normal student life, and no debt.

As a consequence of my education, my eldest son is now at university as the child of a well off, upper-middle-class family. He receives major financial support from my wife and me, even though he works part time during term and plans to work full time during vacations. He will graduate in two and a half years with at least £10,000 of debt.

Were his origins, and level of family support, as mine were 36 years ago, it would be extremely difficult for him to complete a degree without serious hardship and future debt.

How have 36 years of investment in education managed to worsen the situation so much for the poorer student, and simultaneously increase the burden on the middle-class student’s family?

Yours sincerely,
TREVOR DINGLE,
(Director), FEI UK Ltd,
Philips House,
Cowley Park, Cambridge CB4 0HF.
February 21.

It’s called competition, Mr. Dingle. That education was more of a privilege in your youth. There has been a rapidly-expanding world revolution in knowledge, commerce and technology since then.

Do a quick Google search and you can easily pull down a million concepts similar to this definition applicable to businesses and their supporting enterprises worldwide: position management involves the structuring of positions, functions, and organizations in a manner that optimizes productivity, efficiency, and organizational effectiveness. That “privilege” of long-ago days is now much more of a necessity required by global commerce. Almost all higher education in the 21^st Century supports, in one way or another, commerce. Necessities, in the commercial world, must be rationed through the marketplace. Everything in the commercial world is rationed in some way by money. This requires that the utility of every position or slot be maximized and leads to the educational paradox the writer the laments.

Right?

His inability to make that connection makes me think of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. Booker T. knew we had no choice but to compete through our labor – and, further, he had FAITH that everything else over time would take care of itself. W.E.B., unfortunately for us, drank the utopian Kool-Aid, kicked God to the curb and won the hearts and minds or our African American public intellectuals.

I don't hate W.E.B., I love the guy. We would have unquestionably been much better off, however, following Booker T.

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH AND THE WAY AHEAD

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An interesting addition to the Harvard v. Summers debate is ex-Harvard Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton. In 2002 The Chronicle for Higher Education published an article that seems relevant to the totality of the discussion:

In My Father's House is rife with themes, but its core argument is that the very concept of race is false, that race is in fact a construct, a superimposed category that does not correspond to biological reality. The 19th-century idea of dividing the human population into racial groups -- Negroes, Caucasians, Asians, etc. -- was bad science. The genetic diversity within the human population turns out not to be distributed along racial lines. There is more genetic variation within Africa alone than there is in the rest of the world; there is likely to be more in common genetically between a Swede and a Nigerian than between two individuals from Congo.

But the idea of race isn't merely bad science, Mr. Appiah argues; it is also morally dangerous. And it isn't only people of European provenance who have bought into the idea of race; many on the receiving end of racial oppression have done so as well. Thus Pan-Africanists and black nationalists have, in their efforts to unite people of African ancestry, often posited a racial “essence,” a quality or set of qualities supposed to be shared by all blacks. Such thinking, Mr. Appiah argues, is just as fraudulent as the 19th-century European notion of a racial hierarchy with whites at the top -- and is implicated in that notion's racism, as well.

That is an unsettling thought, obviously. How far does that idea go? What precisely does it mean? Does embracing this idea necessarily dictate the denial of another? Are there only American-Americans, if you know what I mean? The idea was so unsettling, the folks in Black Studies still haven’t exactly recovered – much like the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party:

Writing in the journal Social Theory and Practice, Paul C. Taylor, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Washington, termed Mr. Appiah a “racial eliminativist.” He wrote that the “metaphysical strand” of Mr. Appiah's argument -- that race doesn't exist -- is fashioned “badly,” while Mr. Appiah's ethical claims are “poorly developed.” Writing in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia, Nkiru Nzegwu, an associate professor of Africana and art history at the State University of New York at Binghamton, accused Mr. Appiah of “Anglo-Saxon imperialism” and “ideological recolonization.” Molefi Kete Asante, a professor of African studies at Temple University, accused Mr. Appiah in the journal Diogenes, of “Eurocentrism” and a “rapprochement with white triumphalism.”

Mr. Appiah calls such criticisms “one of the features of the contemporary academy I like least,” as they “stigmatize ethically someone you disagree with intellectually.”

As for Mr. Taylor's charge, Mr. Appiah says that if a “racial eliminativist” is “someone who thinks that there are no biological races among current humans, I plead guilty. If, on the other hand, it is someone who thinks that races have no social reality, I plead innocent.”

That last paragraph captures my current thinking. And, true enough, many in the halls of academia are in agreement. For instance:

Kenneth W. Warren, a professor of English and humanities at the University of Chicago and the author of Black and White Strangers (University of Chicago Press, 1993), thinks those critics have it wrong. He says that while such social realities are enormously significant, they do not contradict Mr. Appiah's argument that race has no objective reality. To enumerate the sociological vicissitudes of race, he says, demonstrates the various ways in which it is constructed, but lends no credence to the idea that there are intrinsic racial properties or essences.

We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .

But while one thrust of his work is to challenge received notions of identity, he affirms an identity that is not just cosmopolitan and universal but rooted and particular. He aims therefore, to avoid the “twin pitfalls of parochialism and false universality.” A tricky balancing act, indeed.

He says he has tried to follow his father's example. In an essay titled “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” he talks about his father's simultaneous love for Ghana, his commitment to a nonchauvinist Pan-Africanism, his Christian humanism, and his internationalism. In a letter to his children Mr. Appiah's father exhorted them to “remember that you are citizens of the world.”

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights . . . as citizens of the world. I mentioned yesterday the left-wing’s hermetically sealed parochialism (as stated by Mark Steyn) and its similar application to African Americans.

Appiah is pointing us in the right direction. He, himself, given his British upbringing and socialist heritage may, in fact, go off in a direction antithetical to America and Americans but this isn’t the important fact in the here and now. He has pointed us in the right direction, as did his father.

STANLEY KURTZ ON THE HARVARD V. SUMMERS SITUATION

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From National Review Online:

Jonah, I’ve now read the transcript of the Summers talk, although not yet the Q & A. I agree with you that the campaign against Summers is an outrageous inquisition. Summers’s talk is very thoughtful. It makes a perfectly reasonable case that biology might play a role in career choice. Summers has been attacked for using the weak anecdotal example of his daughters’ reaction to toy trucks, but he in fact invokes a number of important arguments for a biological role in sex differences¬the Israeli kibbutz experience, separated twin studies, our changing views on the causes of autism, and divergent career outcomes in spite of a growing pool of women with graduate educations in mathematics and engineering. All of these arguments can be challenged, and Summers’s admits that. But if it is illegitimate even to put this sort of argument forward, then free speech at Harvard is a thing of the past.

Something else emerges from these transcripts that I think helps to explain this whole flap. I don’t doubt that those who are complaining about Summers are infuriated at biological explanations. But it’s pretty clear from this transcript that their deeper goal is to get rid of Summers because he is asking too many uncomfortable questions about the way affirmative action works. In this talk, Summers calls for research on whether affirmative action does what it claims to do. Do diversity searches really find top quality professors who were only being overlooked because they are minorities, or do these searches only yield professors of middling or low quality? Summers also points out contradictions in what diversity advocates are asking for. Some of them want faculty picked on purely objective criteria like number of papers published. This will supposedly eliminate subtle hiring discrimination. But other diversity advocates want the opposite. They call for choosing minority candidates based on subjective considerations like potential and collegiality, supposedly to overcome the discrimination built into “objective” criteria. Summers asks, which is it? He also wants data to back up the choice of strategy. So in this talk, Summers is subtly but clearly exposing the contradictions and secrets of the campus diversity industry. By calling for objective proof that diversity searches really produce faculty equal in quality to color blind or sex blind searches, Summers is laying out a standard that he knows diversity proponents can’t meet. And the contradictory criteria thrown up by diversity advocates are just different ways of getting to the numbers they want. By calling for objective studies of which strategy actually works, Summers is exposing the failings and contradictions of the whole diversity enterprise. I think this is the deeper reason why Summers is in trouble. His pro-affirmative action opponents can’t openly condemn him for asking these questions, so they’ve focused on the biology issue instead.

I have to agree. Remember, Cornel West got so bent out of shape that he got the hell out of Dodge at the very first sign of challenge from Summers. Not a good sign from an academic heavyweight – with tenure – but it does help to explain why we have so many people who so easily fall into a course of behavior that renders them punk ass surrender monkeys. Who, in the face of attack, tap into the fight or flight vortex and choose . . . flight.

Finally, it bears repeating the words of the Harvard President one more time in his defense:

Let me just conclude by saying that I've given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said. But I think we all need to be thinking very hard about how to do better on these issues and that they are too important to sentimentalize rather than to think about in as rigorous and careful ways as we can.

Ah hell, we can’t have THAT, man!

SIXTEEN RULES TO LIVE BY

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Bob Parsons, head honcho of GoDaddy.com and a former U.S. Marine, posted 16 rules to live your life by and I reproduce them here for your consideration. Thanks to Vanderleun of American Digest for the HT:

Here are his 16 rules to live by:

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say, “But I’m concerned about security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”

2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.

3. When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. There’s an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”

4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”

5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, “As you think, so shall you be.”

6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don’t look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.

7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

8. Be quick to decide. Remember what the Union Civil War general, Tecumseh Sherman said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.

11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.

12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you’re doing as anyone else, provided that what you’re doing is legal.

13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn’t fair. You make your own breaks. You’ll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).

14. Solve your own problems. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There's also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: "A wise man keeps his own counsel."

15. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.

16. There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you’re really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: “We’re not here for a long time; we’re here for a good time.”

The above-listed rules are Copyright 2005 by Bob Parsons. All rights reserved.

 

 

MIS-EDUCATION OF THIS NEGRO

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Mark Steyn in the British Spectator takes down Arthur Miller and furthers my understanding of just how skillfully I was trained to buy the left-wing worldview that hates America (I've Americanized the spelling):

He wasn’t amiable enough to be an amiable dunce but he was the most useful of the useful idiots. It was a marvelous inspiration to recast the communist ‘hysteria’ of the 1950s as the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Many people have pointed out the obvious flaw — that there were no witches, whereas there were certainly communists. For one thing, they were gobbling up a lot of real estate: they seized Poland in 1945, Bulgaria in ’46, Hungary and Romania in ’47, Czech