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James Flanagan

In Michigan, A Conservative Governor Takes Careful Aim at Unions | TIME.com - 0 views

swampland.time.com/...or-takes-careful-aim-at-unions

shared by James Flanagan on 17 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • When he ran for governor of Michigan in 2010, Rick Snyder adopted an endearingly dweebish slogan: “One Tough Nerd.” The moniker, which was cooked up by the eccentric Republican adman Fred Davis and still serves as Snyder’s Twitter handle, sought to make a virtue out of the candidate’s colorless persona. In a state where ineffectual leadership in both the public and private sectors has exacerbated a dizzying economic tailspin, Snyder’s C-suite resume helped him win.
  • While fellow Midwestern governors Scott Walker and John Kasich led assaults on collective-bargaining rights in neighboring Wisconsin and Ohio, Snyder carefully slalomed around the issue, calling it “divisive.” And no wonder: Michigan, the birthplace of the United Auto Workers and a cradle of organized labor, has an unmatched organized-labor tradition.
  • On Dec. 11, the state passed a pair of sweeping bills designed to cripple unions by barring the requirement that workers pay dues as a condition of employment. The freshman governor signed the controversial bills the evening of Dec. 12, making Michigan the 24th state to adopt so-called “right-to-work” laws.
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  • . Across the Rust Belt, unions’ clout has been crumbling — even in Michigan, where a referendum to enshrine collective-bargaining rights in the state’s constitution was soundly defeated in November. Anti-union forces sensed weakness, and the state’s Republican-controlled legislature pushed a package of right-to-work bills.
  • The term “right to work,” coined by foes of union influence, is somewhat misleading. It has little to do with whether workers are eligible for employment. Instead, it restricts unions’ ability to require employees to pay union dues if they work for a unionized employer. Unions argue that anyone who benefits from union representation should foot his or her share of the cost, while proponents of right-to-work legislation counter that right-to-work laws mitigate costs for employers, boosting the state’s ability to lure potential business and create jobs.
  • In 2010, union workers made an average of 28% more per week than non-unionized workers, according to a study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  • On a trip to a Detroit factory on Monday, Barack Obama told autoworkers that right-to-work was a political tactic masquerading as economics. “What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money,” Obama said.
  • . More than 10,000 people thronged the capital in Lansing on Tuesday, brandishing signs like “Kill the Bill” and “One Term Nerd” and locking arms in a tense standoff with baton-wielding police decked out in riot gear. According to reports, pepper spray and tear gas were deployed against a handful of protesters, some of whom tore down a tent outside the capitol belonging to the Koch-funded conservative organization Americans for Prosperity
  • “I think it’s important to make a distinction with Wisconsin and Ohio,” Snyder told MSNBC on Tuesday. “That was about collective bargaining. That was about the relationship between employers and unions. This has nothing to do with that. Right-to-work has to do with the relationship between unions and workers.” And while the Badger and Buckeye State bills targeting public-sector unions, Michigan’s legislation deals with both.
  • As the backlash builds, Michigan is about to find out how tough their nerd can be.
James Flanagan

Russia and America: The dread of the other | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...nism-todays-russia-dread-other

shared by James Flanagan on 21 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • No other country looms so large in the Russian psyche. To Kremlin ideologists, the very concept of Russia’s sovereignty depends on being free of America’s influence.
  • Anti-Americanism has long been a staple of Vladimir Putin, but it has undergone an important shift. Gone are the days when the Kremlin craved recognition and lashed out at the West for not recognising Russia as one of its own
  • , it wants to exorcise all traces of American influence.
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  • The Russians have shut off all co-operation that uses American money, including on health care, civil society, fighting human trafficking and drugs, and dismantling unconventional weapons.
  • All this, according to Mr Pushkov, ends an era when Russia looked to the West as a model. Some Russian deputies have even suggested fining cinemas that show too many foreign films, or banning foreign words. A new law makes it treasonable to provide consultancy or “other assistance” to a foreign state directed against Russia’s national security. “The government’s policies are driving Russia into isolation,” says a Western diplomat.
  • For instance, the Kremlin has banned American couples from adopting Russian orphans, depriving many children with severe disabilities of the chance of a decent life.
  • . The trigger for the new anti-Americanism was the street protests against the Duma election in December 2011, which the Kremlin blamed on America. Falling popular trust in the Kremlin, worries about capital flight and the economy, and an antagonistic urban middle class have led Mr Putin to resort to nationalism, traditionalism and selective repression. Unable to stoke ethnic nationalism for fear of igniting the north Caucasus again, he has instead taken aim at the West and Western values.
  • As Mr Pushkov tweeted, “Stalingrad was not only a breaking point in the war, but also in the centuries-long battle between the West and Russia. Hitler was the last conqueror who came from the West.”
  • A few years ago, such comments came only from right-wing nationalists. Now they belong to the mainstream.
  • the Kremlin has imposed its traditionalist agenda on Russian society by prosecuting Pussy Riot, the punk singers who performed obscenely on the altar of Russia’s main cathedral, by banning the promotion of homosexuality and by blocking the American adoptions.
  • Yet it has not boosted Mr Putin’s popularity or restored trust in his presidency. Indeed, the numbers seeing America as a friend, not a foe, have risen in the past year, according to a Levada opinion poll. One explanation for this might be growing mistrust of the Kremlin. That is what made Soviet propaganda ineffective 20 years ago. Russian society also seems to have limited enthusiasm for the growing political role of the church.
  • The irony is that the Kremlin’s anti-Americanism reveals not its independence but its reliance on America as an enemy. The real casualty may be Russia itself.
maddieireland334

Germany's AfD Party and Its Anti-Islam Platform - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484700

Germany Crisis Islam AfD

shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • After racking up historic gains in regional elections in March, the party this month adopted a new manifesto insisting that “Islam is not part of Germany.”
  • A meeting between the AfD and Muslim leaders broke down this week after the president of the Central Council of Muslims refused to retract previous comments comparing the AfD to Nazis.
  • It called for empowering national governments to ditch the euro, limiting state bailouts, and mandating national referenda for certain EU policies, alongside scintillating stipulations about European Central Bank maneuvers and alternative funding for renewable-energy subsidies.
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  • Last month’s manifesto not only declared Islam incompatible with German legal and cultural values, but also endorsed a ban on burqas and the call to prayer.
  • First, despite having a woman at the helm in the figure of Frauke Petry (as well as trigger-happy aristocrat Beatrix von Storch, who has advocated using deadly force  against illegal migrants at the border, as deputy party chief), AfD supporters are predominantly male.
  • As the German daily Die Zeit pointed out, that means AfD support follows roughly the same pattern as support for the intensely anti-Islamic pan-European movement PEGIDA (“Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West”).
  • Theories abound as to why and to what extent men are more likely to vote for far-right or xenophobic platforms than women—a pattern that holds with Trump supporters in the United States, as well as voters for Austria’s far-right presidential candidate Norbert Hofer, who just barely lost that country’s election this week.
  • A second trend in AfD demographics involves class. Originally, professors, journalists, and business leaders dominated the party, with over half the founding members in 2013 sporting a “Dr.” in front of their names.
  • Third comes age. “[AfD supporters] are youngish to middle-aged,” said Arzheimer. “Interestingly, voters over 60 seem to shy from voting for the AfD because they're still tied to the Christian Democrats,” Merkel’s center-right party.
  • When Bernd Lucke founded the AfD, he intended to win voters both from the Christian Democrats and Germany’s liberal party, the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
  • Crucially, Arzheimer pointed out, the AfD manages to attract NPD voters while also remaining “acceptable for a much larger group of the German population.”
  • Part of AfD’s strength so far has been its ability to capitalize on intense concerns about the economy and immigration with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric while maintaining a sheen of respectability—crucial in German politics, where incitement to ethnic or racial hatred is a criminal offense.
  • The AfD’s fragility may be what sets it apart both from right-wing parties further east and the newly nativist turn in the United States.
  • Art made a similar point, but turned westward. “There’s been a major containment of this far-right nativism in Germany … but it’s the United States in which it’s become in fact a part of the political system.”
  • There’s a term in German, he mused: ausgegrenzt, translating roughly to “excluded” or “marginalized,” but with a literal translation closer to “beyond limits” or “out of bounds.” Those who wanted the NPD banned wanted it “ausgegrenzt.”
Javier E

In Praise of Hypocrisy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...in-praise-of-hypocrisy.html

hypocrisy trump crisis culture fascism cynicism

shared by Javier E on 20 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • In requesting the resignation of his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, however, Mr. Trump made his first public concession to political expectations. Hypocrisy has scored a minor victory in America. This is a good thing.
  • Mr. Trump wasn’t just breaking the rules of political conduct: He was destroying them. He was openly claiming that he abused the system to benefit himself. If he didn’t pay his taxes and got away with it, this made him a good businessman. If he could force himself on women, that made him more of a man. He acted as though this primitive logic were obvious and shared by all.
  • Fascists the world over have gained popularity by calling forth the idea that the world is rotten to the core. In “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt described how fascism invites people to “throw off the mask of hypocrisy” and adopt the worldview that there is no right and wrong, only winners and losers.
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  • In the last decade and a half, post-Communist autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin and Viktor Orban have adopted this cynical posture. They seem convinced that the entire world is driven solely by greed and hunger for power, and only the Western democracies continue to insist, hypocritically, that their politics are based on values and principles.
  • This may be the first time that the new administration has made a concession to norms, or at least appearances, of decency. As with any victory of hypocrisy, this one is bittersweet.
Javier E

Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills in New York City Schools - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-in-new-york-city-schools.html

reading curriculum education K-12 core

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 12 - Cached
  • For three years, a pilot program tracked the reading ability of approximately 1,000 students at 20 New York City schools, following them from kindergarten through second grade. Half of the schools adopted a curriculum designed by the education theorist E. D. Hirsch Jr.’s Core Knowledge Foundation. The other 10 used a variety of methods, but most fell under the definition of “balanced literacy,”
  • The study found that second graders who were taught to read using the Core Knowledge program scored significantly higher on reading comprehension tests than did those in the comparison schools. It also tested children on their social studies and science knowledge, and again found that the Core Knowledge pupils came out ahead.
  • The study found that for each of the three years, students in the Core Knowledge program had greater one-year gains on a brief reading test than their peers in the comparison schools.
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  • Under the balanced literacy approach, which was used by seven of the comparison schools and remains the most popular method of teaching reading in the city’s schools, children are encouraged to develop a love of reading by choosing books that are of interest to them.
  • Reading nonfiction writing is the key component of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which is based on the theory that children raised reading storybooks will lack the necessary background and vocabulary to understand history and science texts. While the curriculum allows children to read fiction, it also calls on them to knowledgeably discuss weather patterns, the solar system, and how ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia compare.
  • The curriculum may have a particular appeal for city schools beginning to adopt the Common Core standards, which emphasize nonfiction reading and will go into effect in 2014.
  • anonymous on 23 Mar 12
     
    Though the Core Knowledge approach seems to have its merits when it comes to standardized test scores, there are certainly disadvantages. Students in the Core program are receiving higher scores on the test because they have been "trained" in that specific field. Now, as a junior, I have recently taken my first SAT. The SAT tests three areas of study (critical reading, writing, and mathematics). If my entire school experience had been based solely upon these three areas, I would be lacking much vital information. Sure, in this alternate universe, I might be a 2400 scoring genius debating between Yale, Brown, and Princeton, but does that mean I am at all prepared for such colleges? By these standards, we might as well just toss out History class (Not on standardized testing? Get rid of it!). I am not suggesting that preparation for standardized testing should be completely overlooked in school curriculum; I just think that it should not be the main objective. In the long run, reading "Ramona Quimby, Age 8" in 1st grade may not have made my scores as high as those reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest work, but it did something just as important. It, along with numerous other books of my choosing, cultivated my love for reading. This love for reading will stay with me long after standardized test scores even matter, and I might just get to that Gladwell book after all.
Javier E

E. D. Hirsch Sees His Education Theories Taking Hold - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tion-theories-taking-hold.html

education theories content Common Core Core Knowledge

shared by Javier E on 29 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • E. D. Hirsch Jr. is being dragged back into the ring at the age of 85
  • Invitations to speak have come from Spain, Britain and China. He has won a prestigious education award. Curriculums developed by the Core Knowledge Foundation, which Mr. Hirsch created to disseminate his ideas, have recently been adopted by hundreds of schools in 25 states and recommended by the New York City Department of Education for teachers to use in their classrooms.
  • “This is a redemptive moment for E. D. Hirsch, after a quarter-century of neglect by people both conservative and liberal,”
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  • Mr. Hirsch’s newfound popularity comes largely because of the Common Core, a set of learning goals for kindergarten through 12th grade that have been adopted by almost every state in the last few years.
  • Mr. Hirsch did not write the Common Core, but his curriculums — lesson plans, teaching materials and exercises — are seen as matching its heightened expectations of student progress. And philosophically, the Common Core ideal of a rigorous nationwide standard has become a vindication of Mr. Hirsch’s long campaign against what he saw as the squishiness — a lack of specific curriculums for history, civics, science and literature — in modern education.
  • Two things happened,” Mr. Hirsch said in a recent interview. “I had become less controversial, and people actually agreed with or appreciated the general argument I’d been making.”
  • The Soviets’ launching of Sputnik led to a new rigor devoted to math and science in the late 1950s and ’60s, but Dewey’s theories still held sway, and his ideas inspired generations of teachers and education professors to move away from classical notions — stressing facts, figures and memorization — of what and how students should be taught.
  • “Cultural Literacy.” He said that if poor students were ever to achieve equity in American society, they needed to be taught a core body of knowledge.
  • it was eviscerated as promoting a Eurocentric view of the world, and elevating rote memorization over critical thought.
  • Mr. Hirsch explained his work as an effort to help the underprivileged. “They had me pegged as a reactionary, but my impulses were more revolutionary,” he said. “You have to give the people who are without power the tools of power, and these tools of power don’t care who’s wielding them.”
  • Meanwhile, a broader range of sources were incorporated into the Core Knowledge curriculums with input from teachers and a multicultural advisory board.
  • Mr. Hirsh said he still worries that Common Core proponents might doom the standards by saddling them with test preparation and meaningless assessments, rather than ones that measure learning in history and civics, science and literature.
  • “That is the real battle to overcome,” he said, “whether anybody will have the courage to specify the content a first grader needs to know.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>
Javier E

The Most Important Thing, and It's Almost a Secret - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...g-and-its-almost-a-secret.html

poverty global birthrate

shared by Javier E on 02 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • One survey found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost doubled over the last 20 years. Another 29 percent believed that the proportion had remained roughly the same.
  • That’s 95 percent of Americans — who are utterly wrong. In fact, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty hasn’t doubled or remained the same. It has fallen by more than half, from 35 percent in 1993 to 14 percent in 2011
  • • The number of extremely poor people (defined as those earning less than $1 or $1.25 a day, depending on who’s counting) rose inexorably until the middle of the 20th century, then roughly stabilized for a few decades. Since the 1990s, the number of poor has plummeted.
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  • • More kids than ever are becoming educated, especially girls. In the 1980s, only half of girls in developing countries completed elementary school; now, 80 percent do.
  • one reason for our current complacency is a feeling that poverty is inevitable — and that’s unwarranted.
  • The world’s best-kept secret is that we live at a historic inflection point when extreme poverty is retreating. United Nations members have just adopted 17 new Global Goals, of which the centerpiece is the elimination of extreme poverty by 2030.
  • “We live at a time of the greatest development progress among the global poor in the history of the world,” notes Steven Radelet, a development economist and Georgetown University professor, in a terrific book coming in November, “The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World.”
  • Cynics argue that saving lives is pointless, because the result is overpopulation that leads more to starve. Not true. Part of this wave of progress is a stunning drop in birthrates.
  • Haitian women now average 3.1 children; in 1985, they had six. In Bangladesh, women now average 2.2 children. Indonesians, 2.3. When the poor know that their children will survive, when they educate their daughters, when they access family planning, they have fewer children.
Javier E

They Told You So: Economists Were Right to Doubt the Euro - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...through-greek-debt-crisis.html

europe economics policy austerity Euro monetary

shared by Javier E on 22 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • the problems facing Europe today are not sui generis. They are merely the latest installment of a story that has been unfolding for many decades.
  • In 1997 he wrote: “Europe’s common market exemplifies a situation that is unfavorable to a common currency. It is composed of separate nations, whose residents speak different languages, have different customs and have far greater loyalty and attachment to their own country than to the common market or to the idea of ‘Europe.’ ”
  • Mr. Friedman concluded that the adoption of the euro “would exacerbate political tensions by converting divergent shocks that could have been readily accommodated by exchange rate changes into divisive political issues.”
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  • Why can’t Europeans enjoy the conveniences of a common currency?Two reasons. First, unlike Europe, the United States has a fiscal union in which prosperous regions of the country subsidize less prosperous ones. Second, the United States has fewer barriers to labor mobility than Europe. In the United States, when an economic downturn affects one region, residents can pack up and find jobs elsewhere. In Europe, differences in language and culture make that response less likely.
  • As a result, Mr. Friedman and Mr. Feldstein contended that the nations of Europe needed a policy tool to deal with national recessions. That tool was a national monetary policy coupled with flexible exchange rates. Rather than heed their counsel, however, Europe adopted a common currency for much of the Continent and threw national monetary policy into the trash bin of history.
  • The motive was more political than economic. Europeans believed that their continent, once united with a common market and currency, would provide a better counterweight to American hegemony in world affairs. They also hoped that a united Europe in the 21st century would damp down the nationalist sentiments that led to two world wars in the 20th.
  • Flash-forward to today. Greece finds itself overwhelmed by its accumulated debts. To be sure, it bears primary responsibility. The Greek government borrowed too much, and for years it hid its fiscal problems from its creditors. Once the truth came to light, a large dose of austerity was the only course left. The result was an economic downturn with a quarter of the Greek labor force now unemployed. Continue reading the main story 136 Comments Making matters worse, however, was the common currency. In an earlier era, Greece could have devalued the drachma, making its exports more competitive on world markets. Easy monetary policy would have offset some of the pain from tight fiscal policy. Mr. Friedman and Mr. Feldstein were right: The euro has turned into an economic liability that has exacerbated political tensions. For this, the European elites who pushed for the currency union bear some responsibility
Javier E

How Did the Democrats Become Favorites of the Rich? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ome-favorites-of-the-rich.html

policy politics economic culture GOP Democratic party donations voters

shared by Javier E on 07 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • On economic issues, however, the Democratic Party has inched closer to the policy positions of conservatives, stepping back from championing the needs of working men and women, of the unemployed and of the so-called underclass.
  • The current popularity of Bernie Sanders and his presidential candidacy notwithstanding, the mainstream of the Democratic Party supports centrist positions ranging from expanded free trade to stricter control of the government budget to time limits on welfare for the poor.
  • The authors, from Stanford, Princeton, the University of Georgia and N.Y.U., respectively, go on to note thatthe Democratic agenda has shifted away from general social welfare to policies that target ascriptive identities of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.
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  • “Both Republicans and many Democrats have experienced an ideological shift toward acceptance of a form of free market capitalism which, among other characteristics, offers less support for government provision of transfers, lower marginal tax rates for those with high incomes, and deregulation of a number of industries,
  • Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, political scientists at Princeton and Northwestern. In a 2014 essay, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” they analyze congressional voting patterns and conclude thatThe majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose.
  • the share of contributions to Democrats from the top 0.01 percent of adults — a much larger share of the population than the Forbes 400 list — has grown from about 7 percent of total campaign contributions in 1980 to more than 25 percent of contributions in 2012. The same pattern is visible among Republicans, where the growth of fundraising dependence on the superrich has been moving along the same trajectory.
  • upscale voters were just as important to the Obama coalition as downscale voters. One consequence of the increased importance of the affluent to Democrats, according to Bonica and the three co-authors on the inequality paper, is that the Democratic Party has in many respects become the party of deregulated markets.
  • “The Democratic Party pushed through the financial regulation of the 1930s, while the Democratic party of the 1990s undid much of this regulation in its embrace of unregulated financial capitalism,” the four authors write.
  • Between 1982 and 2012, the Republican share of contributions from the Forbes 400 has been steadily falling, to 59 percent from 68 percent. As membership in the Forbes 400 changes, this trend will accelerate
  • “These findings may be disappointing to those who look to the Democratic Party as the ally of the disadvantaged,” Gilens wrote in a 2012 essay published by the Boston Review:In some respects Democrats have in fact served this function in the social welfare domain. But in other domains, policies adopted under Democratic control are no more consistent with the preferences of the less well off than are those adopted during periods dominated by the Republican Party.
  • Gilens, in a forthcoming paper in Perspectives on Politics, is critical of both Democrats and Republicans:On important aspects of tax policy, trade policy, and government regulation, both political parties have embraced an agenda over the past few decades that coincides far more with the economically regressive, free trade, and deregulatory orientations of the affluent than with the preferences of the middle class.
  • Most important, in recent years, the Democratic Party has become the political home for those whose most passionate cause is cultural, as opposed to economic, liberalism: decriminalization of drug possession; women’s rights; the rights of criminal defendants; and rights associated with the sexual revolution, including transgender rights, the right to contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage.
  • the party, if its aim is to mobilize those on the bottom rungs of the ladder, whites as well as blacks and Hispanics, will face some bitter conflicts, because these target voters are often the most hostile to the left-leaning social rights agenda.
  • College graduates were 22.9 percentage points more liberal on homosexuality than those without high school degrees, and 24.8 percentage points more liberal in their views on gay marriage.The same class differences have been found in views on abortion, school prayer and the survey question: should women should be the equal of men.
  • For many black and Hispanic voters who hold conservative views on social issues, the Democratic Party’s commitment on civil rights, immigration reform and the safety net trumps any hesitation about voting for Democratic candidates who hold alien cultural and moral views.
  • The same is not true for noncollege whites. Many of these voters hold liberal economic views, as evidenced by the passage by large margins of minimum wage referendums in four solidly red states last year. In the case of these white voters, however, animosity to Democratic cultural and moral liberalism trumps Democratic economic liberalism, as demonstrated by the near unanimous Republican-majority midterm and presidential voting in the poorest white counties of Appalachia.
  • The practical reality is that the Democratic Party is now structurally disengaged from class-based populism, especially a form of economically redistributive populism that low-to-moderate-income whites would find inviting.
Javier E

Many States Adopt National Standards for Their Schools - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...21standards.html

states standards national education US

shared by Javier E on 28 Apr 11 - Cached
  • The quick adoption of common standards for what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school is attributable in part to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition.
  • national standards are seen as a way to ensure that children in all states will have access to a similar education — and that financially strapped state governments do not have to spend limited resources on developing their own standards and tests.
  • This time, the standards were developed by the states themselves, not the federal government. Last year, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers convened English and math experts to put together benchmarks for each grade.
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  • They lay out detailed expectations of skills that students should have at each grade level. Second graders, for example, should be able to read two-syllable words with long vowels, while fifth graders should be able to add and subtract fractions with different denominators.
  • the new common core standards are stronger than the English standards in 37 states and the math standards in 39 states.
  • “Vocabulary-building in the common core is slower,” he said, citing one example. “And on the math side, they don’t prepare eighth-grade students for algebra one, which is the gateway to higher math.”
Javier E

The Problem With History Classes - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...387823

history historiography teaching memory AP myth American idea

shared by Javier E on 18 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The passion and urgency with which these battles are fought reflect the misguided way history is taught in schools. Currently, most students learn history as a set narrative—a process that reinforces the mistaken idea that the past can be synthesized into a single, standardized chronicle of several hundred pages. This teaching pretends that there is a uniform collective story, which is akin to saying everyone remembers events the same.
  • Yet, history is anything but agreeable. It is not a collection of facts deemed to be "official" by scholars on high. It is a collection of historians exchanging different, often conflicting analyses.
  • rather than vainly seeking to transcend the inevitable clash of memories, American students would be better served by descending into the bog of conflict and learning the many "histories" that compose the American national story.
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  • Perhaps Fisher offers the nation an opportunity to divorce, once and for all, memory from history. History may be an attempt to memorialize and preserve the past, but it is not memory; memories can serve as primary sources, but they do not stand alone as history. A history is essentially a collection of memories, analyzed and reduced into meaningful conclusions—but that collection depends on the memories chosen.
  • Memories make for a risky foundation: As events recede further into the past, the facts are distorted or augmented by entirely new details
  • people construct unique memories while informing perfectly valid histories. Just as there is a plurality of memories, so, too, is there a plurality of histories.
  • Scholars who read a diverse set of historians who are all focused on the same specific period or event are engaging in historiography
  • This approach exposes textbooks as nothing more than a compilation of histories that the authors deemed to be most relevant and useful.
  • In historiography, the barrier between historian and student is dropped, exposing a conflict-ridden landscape. A diplomatic historian approaches an event from the perspective of the most influential statesmen (who are most often white males), analyzing the context, motives, and consequences of their decisions. A cultural historian peels back the objects, sights, and sounds of a period to uncover humanity’s underlying emotions and anxieties. A Marxist historian adopts the lens of class conflict to explain the progression of events. There are intellectual historians, social historians, and gender historians, among many others. Historians studying the same topic will draw different interpretations—sometimes radically so, depending on the sources they draw from
  • Jacoba Urist points out that history is "about explaining and interpreting past events analytically." If students are really to learn and master these analytical tools, then it is absolutely essential that they read a diverse set of historians and learn how brilliant men and women who are scrutinizing the same topic can reach different conclusions
  • Rather than constructing a curriculum based on the muddled consensus of boards, legislatures, and think tanks, schools should teach students history through historiography. The shortcomings of one historian become apparent after reading the work of another one on the list.
  • Although, as Urist notes, the AP course is "designed to teach students to think like historians," my own experience in that class suggests that it fails to achieve that goal.
  • The course’s framework has always served as an outline of important concepts aiming to allow educators flexibility in how to teach; it makes no reference to historiographical conflicts. Historiography was an epiphany for me because I had never before come face-to-face with how historians think and reason
  • When I took AP U.S. History, I jumbled these diverse histories into one indistinct narrative. Although the test involved open-ended essay questions, I was taught that graders were looking for a firm thesis—forcing students to adopt a side. The AP test also, unsurprisingly, rewards students who cite a wealth of supporting details
  • By the time I took the test in 2009, I was a master at "checking boxes," weighing political factors equally against those involving socioeconomics and ensuring that previously neglected populations like women and ethnic minorities received their due. I did not know that I was pulling ideas from different historiographical traditions. I still subscribed to the idea of a prevailing national narrative and served as an unwitting sponsor of synthesis, oblivious to the academic battles that made such synthesis impossible.
  • Although there may be an inclination to seek to establish order where there is chaos, that urge must be resisted in teaching history. Public controversies over memory are hardly new. Students must be prepared to confront divisiveness, not conditioned to shoehorn agreement into situations where none is possible
  • When conflict is accepted rather than resisted, it becomes possible for different conceptions of American history to co-exist. There is no longer a need to appoint a victor.
  • More importantly, the historiographical approach avoids pursuing truth for the sake of satisfying a national myth
  • The country’s founding fathers crafted some of the finest expressions of personal liberty and representative government the world has ever seen; many of them also held fellow humans in bondage. This paradox is only a problem if the goal is to view the founding fathers as faultless, perfect individuals. If multiple histories are embraced, no one needs to fear that one history will be lost.
  • History is not indoctrination. It is a wrestling match. For too long, the emphasis has been on pinning the opponent. It is time to shift the focus to the struggle itself
  • There is no better way to use the past to inform the present than by accepting the impossibility of a definitive history—and by ensuring that current students are equipped to grapple with the contested memories in their midst.
Javier E

A Military Manual for Nonviolent War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...tary-manual-for-nonviolent-war

non-violent activism strategy methods

shared by Javier E on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • These two Serbs start with the concepts of the American academic Gene Sharp, the Clausewitz of the nonviolent movement. But they have refined and added to those ideas. In a new book, “Blueprint for Revolution,” Popovic recounts Canvas’s strategies and how people use them.
  • Otpor’s methods and signature — a stylized graphic clenched fist — have been adopted by democracy movements around the world. The Egyptian opposition used them to topple Hosni Mubarak. In Lebanon, the Serbs helped the Cedar Revolution extricate the country from Syrian control. In Maldives, their methods were the key to overthrowing a dictator who had held power for 30 years. In many other countries, people have used what Canvas teaches to accomplish other political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.
  • “We’re here to plan a war.” Nonviolent struggle, Djinovic explained, is a war — just one fought with means other than weapons. It must be as carefully planned as a military campaign.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Myth: Nonviolent struggle’s major tactic is amassing large concentrations of people. This idea is widespread because the big protests are like the tip of an iceberg: the only thing visible from a distance. Did it look like the ousting of Mubarak started with a spontaneous mass gathering in Tahrir Square? Actually, the occupation of Tahrir Square was carefully planned, and followed two years of work.
  • You can start with tactics of dispersal, such as coordinated pot-banging, or traffic slowdowns in which everyone drives at half speed. These tactics show that you have widespread support, they grow people’s confidence, and they’re safe.
  • Myth: Nonviolence might be morally superior, but it’s useless against a brutal dictator. Nonviolence is not just the moral choice; it is almost always the strategic choice. “My biggest objection to violence is the fact that it simply doesn’t work,” Popovic writes. Violence is what every dictator does best.
  • The scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan analyzed campaigns of violent and nonviolent revolution in the last century (their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” uses Otpor’s fist as its cover image) and found that nonviolence has double the success rate of violence — and its gains have been more likely to last.
  • laughter is 10 ten times more powerful than scream. Nothing breaks people’s fear and punctures a dictator’s aura of invincibility like mockery — Popovic calls it “laughtivism.”
  • Most people don’t care about human rights. They care about having electricity that works, teachers in every school and affordable home loans. They will support an opposition with a vision of the future that promises to make their lives better.
  • on a tactical level, decentralization was critical. Otpor had only two rules: You had to be anti-Milosevic and absolutely nonviolent. Follow those rules, and you could do anything and call yourself Otpor. This kept activists feeling busy, useful and important.
  • Myth: Police, security forces and the pro-government business community are the enemy. Maybe, but it’s smarter to treat them like allies-in-waiting. Otpor never taunted or threw stones at the police. Its members cheered them and brought flowers and homemade cookies to the police station.
  • I lived in Chile when the opposition to Augusto Pinochet made mistake after mistake; advice from Otpor might have shortened the dictatorship by years. Had the Occupy movement in the United States adopted these tactics, it might still be a relevant force.
redavistinnell

Leaders Move to Convert Paris Climate Pledges Into Action - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...imate-pledges-into-action.html

leaders convert paris climate action new york times

shared by redavistinnell on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Leaders Move to Convert Paris Climate Pledges Into Action
  • PARIS — Before the applause had even settled in the suburban convention center where the Paris Agreement was adopted by consensus on Saturday night, world leaders warned that momentum from the historic accord must not be allowed to dissipate.
  • With nearly every nation on Earth having now pledged to gradually reduce emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The task may prove most challenging for India, which is struggling to lift more than half of its population of 1.25 billion out of poverty and to provide basic electricity to 300 million of them. But rich countries are intent that India not get stuck on a coal-dependent development path.
  • President Obama has endorsed the idea of a price on carbon — in the form of a tax, or a cap-and-trade system like California’s — and leaders of Canada, Chile, Ethiopia, France, Germany and Mexico endorsed the idea at the start of the Paris conference. But there was not nearly enough support to incorporate it into the Paris Agreement.
  • China, meanwhile, is investing so heavily in clean energy that some observers think its carbon emissions might have hit a peak — a milestone that China had promised to reach only by 2030.
  • Giza Gaspar Martins, an Angolan diplomat who represents the Least Developed Countries, which negotiated in Paris as a bloc, said of the accord: “This puts a system in place to do climate action, but we will have a lot of work to do.” Photo
  • “It is essential that the developing countries are able to transform their energy system before they develop a level of dependence on coal that we have in the industrialized countries,” said Jan Burck of the activist group Germanwatch.
  • The United States will be one of them; through careful legal craftsmanship, the Paris Agreement will not be considered as its own treaty under American law but rather as an extension of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the Senate ratified in 1992.
  • By May, the United Nations climate staff will update its estimate for the combined impact of the national pledges (now known as nationally determined contributions, the qualifying word “intended” having been dropped). Estimates of the first round of pledges suggested that, if carried out, they would still result in a rise of 2.7 to 3.5 degrees Celsius (4.9 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — far above the newly adopted goal of just 1.5 degrees Celsius.
  • But as the Paris Agreement is put into place, the front lines of the battle to stabilize the planet’s atmosphere will shift elsewhere. At the start of the talks, 20 governments pledged to double spending on clean-energy research and development over the next five years, while a coalition of business leaders led by Bill Gates vowed to invest billions on developing renewable energy.
  • Climate activists have long used a “power of the people” approach to promote sustainability and organize globally, and the world leaders who met here credited “civil society” for keeping up the pressure.“Now the work to hold them to their promises begins,” the American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben wrote on Twitter, moments after the gavel fell on the Paris Agreement. “1.5? Game on.”
Javier E

Review: Charlie Savage's 'Power Wars' Dissects Obama's Evolution on National Security -... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tion-on-national-security.html

Obama counterterrorism civil rights civil liberties policy history

shared by Javier E on 30 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly criticized President George W. Bush for his “war on terror,” including the use of torture, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, secrecy and expansive presidential power. Yet after nearly seven years of the Obama administration, many (though not all) of these Bush-era policies remain in effect.
  • the political fallout from this incident, arguably including the Democrats’ loss of a Senate seat with Scott Brown’s upset victory in Massachusetts, effectively spooked the Obama team. It “profoundly hardened the Obama administration’s attitude towards counterterrorism,” he writes.
  • Charlie Savage addresses that question exhaustively, describing how President Obama, his top aides and, above all, his lawyers grappled again and again with the many questions about counterterrorism they inherited when they took office.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • in its 700-plus pages, the author catalogs virtually all the legal disputes over counterterrorism in the Obama era, all the justifications, procedural steps and bureaucratic battles, to the point where at times his book seems more like a compendium than a narrative
  • With the exception of torture, which President Obama prohibited on his first day in office, his administration managed mostly to provide new legal underpinnings for many of the national-security policies (including warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay and drone strikes) that were first adopted under Mr. Bush
  • President Obama will some day be seen “as less a transformative post-9/11 president than a transitional one.”
  • in some areas like surveillance, the Obama team never planned to outlaw the policies, despite what some of his supporters on the left may have thought
  • He has led a “lawyerly” administration, Mr. Savage writes, one that has added “an additional layer of rules, standards and procedures” to “the unsettling premise that the United States was still at war and would, of necessity, remain so with no end in sight.”
  • Power Wars” opens with an incident that Mr. Savage considers a fundamental turning point for the Obama administration: the attempt by the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to detonate explosives aboard a plane heading for Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.
  • Why was there no greater change?
  • there are alternative ways of interpreting the Obama administration’s policy steps on national security in its early years. One is that well before that time, the administration was already spooked: It had retreated on counterterrorism issues throughout the president’s first year in office.
  • Gregory Craig, President Obama’s first White House counsel, who had pushed for quicker and more vigorous changes in counterterrorism policies, had already left the administration after a series of battles with other White House officials who were reluctant to take actions that might anger the C.I.A.
  • In short, the Obama White House was from the outset under pressure from the military and intelligence communities not to veer too sharply from the policies and decisions of the Bush era
  • during the Bush years, the Democrats mounted two strands of attack on the post-9/11 policies. The first was from the civil liberties perspective, to assert that policies like warrantless surveillance were inherently wrong. The second line of attack was to say that the Bush administration’s policies violated the rule of law because President Bush adopted them on his own without congressional or other legal authority.
  • President Obama’s “specific complaints” about the Bush programs and his promises “were heavily tilted towards fixing the legal process.”
  • the death of Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan, a subject of renewed controversy
  • He concludes that the lawyers’ activities and the memos they wrote fit with the Obama administration’s account of the raid and not with the revisionist theories about it.
  • Mr. Savage writes that there is no simple judgment to be made on President Obama’s legacy on counterterrorism issues: His administration deeply disappointed defenders of civil liberties critics on the left but was also regularly attacked by hawks on the right.
  • “Obama’s record was irreducibly messy and complex, not unlike the world in which he tried to govern,”
Javier E

Halloween Costume Correctness on Campus: Feel Free to Be You, but Not Me - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...iation-halloween-costumes.html

culture halloween costume political correctness sensitivity university

shared by Javier E on 31 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The term “cultural appropriation,” which emerged from academia but has been applied more broadly — say, to refer to Washington Redskins fans wearing feather headdresses or white people in cornrows — has drawn ire from opponents of political correctness. But supporters say it captures a truth: that the melding of cultures is often about which group has the power to take symbols, styles or language from another.
  • The video issued by the University of Washington shows students from various ethnic groups and of various sexual orientations saying that almost any portrayal of them can cause a wound: For example, dressing in drag can denigrate the struggles of gay and transgender people.
  • At Duke University, the Center for Multicultural Affairs has filled its Facebook page with images of young people holding up pictures of offensive stereotypes, including white people in blackface and a man dressed as a suicide bomber, with the hashtag #OurCulturesAreNotCostumes.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Adopting physical or cultural characteristics of those with higher status/more power is fine. Adopting the same characteristics of those lower in status or power is risky. For example, virtually nobody would be offended if someone dressed up in full preppy regalia, complete with lacrosse stick, Dartmouth ring, and golden retriever. Many people would be upset if someone dressed up with a huge hooked nose, greasy cheek curls, and fur hat. Both costumes would be based on ridiculous stereotypes, but one would be funny and the other offensive
  • Students at various schools said in interviews that they viewed racial tension as the driving force behind many of the warnings, especially in the last few weeks, since stories about a fraternity party gone wrong at the University of California, Los Angeles, raised concerns at many schools. Some white students at the party dressed as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, with smudged faces and exaggerated, padded body parts.
  • And at the University of Michigan, the dean of students has a webpage titled “Cultural Appropriation — what is the big deal?” It urges students to ask themselves why they are wearing a particular costume, and then to consider how accurate it is in depicting a culture or identity.
  • One right our constitution does NOT bestow is the right to NOT be offended. Quite the opposit, the First Amendment, the right of freedom of speech, bestows the right TO offend.The harsh realities of being alive in an insane world ARE offensive. Being offended is a GOOD thing. It builds resilience, and character. It provides for personal growth. It toughens you.
  • Mocking someone's culture is a cheap shot and often leads to worse. Also, if it's such a heinous imposition on you to respect other people's benign wishes regarding how you treat their culture, then maybe the problem isn't their sensitivity but your own.
  • There is a difference between dressing up as Kim and Kanye, both of whom have made a career of being campy exaggerations of themselves, and being culturally insensitive. Kim and Kanye, as willing celebrities, are legitimate subjects for parody.
  • I'm gay and there are lots of men dressing in drag at the local college. A woman dressed as a football player. So what? I laughed because some of them looked so ridiculous. I would look ridiculous dressed as a Samarai warrior. Isn't that the point? To be silly and ridiculous on Halloween. Maybe everyone should just wear black t shirts and grey trousers which is about the only thing left that seems to be safe to wear.
  • It is somewhat different if you want to go as a celebrity. Suppose you want to go as Lebron James. The #23 jersey, and the baggy shorts, and the ball all make a great costume. If you are short like me, the joke is even funnier. If like me you are white, however, don't go in blackface. People who go in blackface (or something similar) know it offends and intend to offend. You might as well wear a sign that says, "I'm supposed to be Labron James, but in real life I'm am just a jerk."
  • Halloween, Ms. Garcia said, is now often about ridicule. “Dressing up as Pocahontas (or Sexy Pocahontas, let’s get real), is offensive because it takes the whitewashed version of a whole group of people that have been victimized and abused in their own land,” and presents it as “a thing one can just try for a night,” she said.
  • I find it quite sad that so many commenters here have such an odd interpretation of what's going on. What these Universities are so boldly doing is teaching our children how to navigate the increasingly diverse world we live in, and that mutual respect and understanding are more important than being able to act stupidly without regard for how it affects others. Do we expect everyone to be perfect? Of course not. All that is being asked is that we THINK before we act (or dress up), and use good judgement -- anyone that thinks that isn't a worthy aim by dismissing this all as "hypersensitivity" is seriously missing the point.
  • Dressing up in ways that mock POC cultures isn't harmless -- it perpetuates stereotypes that result in actual harm. To you, it's only a Halloween costume that you get to take off at the end of the night -- for them, it's their LIVES. To me, protecting POC and dismantling dangerous stereotypes is more important than your desire to dress up for Halloween without thinking about the impact of your costume.
  • There are stereotypes and stereotypes. Surely we can all agree that a Halloween party isn't an appropriate place to don blackface and pretend to be a negro minstrel. And there are tasteless jokes that offend us no matter how friendly the person telling them or the lack of intent to offend. I understand the desire to promote a sense of decency at a time and place where good judgment often goes out the window. But at the same time, if we lose all perspective and the ability to laugh at our own stupidity, then what we embrace is a culture of outrage. Those of us with unique and interesting backgrounds ought not to be so precious.
  • Some schools advise that borrowing from any culture is demeaning and insulting unless the wearer is a part of that culture. In other words, do not put on a karate outfit with a black belt, the University of Washington advised in the video it sent to students, unless you actually earned that belt.
  • Are you serious? Halloween costumes aside, what many universities are doing is shielding students from divergent points of view.
  • I'm not sure if donning a sombrero, a false mustache, and clothes suitable to a mariachi band is offensive. But I don't think that dressing as a geisha or a judoka is offensive in the same way that dressing as "a suicide bomber" is. But is dressing as Osama Bin Laden offensive, because it means wearing typical Arabic clothing? Would the clothing itself be offensive without racial stereotypes? Are Viking costumes offensive to people of Scandinavian descent? Are leprechaun costumes offensive to the Irish? Are Tyrolean costumes offensive to Austrians, Germans, and Swiss?
katyshannon

Nepal just elected its first female president - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...ted-its-first-female-president

nepal female president politics history

shared by katyshannon on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A month after adopting a new national constitution, Nepal has elected Bidhya Devi Bhandari as its next president. She will be the country’s first female president and only the second president since Nepal became a democratic republic in 2008.
  • The new constitution required an almost entirely new government,
  • beginning with parliament’s election of prime minister Khadga Prasad Oli. He and Bhandari both represent Nepal’s Unified Marxist-Leninist Communist party.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • It also required that either the president or vice president be a woman, and that one-third of parliamentarians be women. Parliament’s first female speaker, Onsari Gharti Magar, was elected last week.
  • Bhandari became involved in politics as a teenager in Nepal the 1980s, but stepped away from the action after marrying communist leader Madan Bhandari and having two children with him. After becoming a widow in 1993, when her husband was killed in a mysterious car accident, she stepped back in and campaigned to take his place in parliament.
  • Nepal is still reeling from the violence and unrest sparked by the adoption of the new constitution. Minority groups complain that it marginalizes them, while others are dismayed at its secularism. India, Nepal’s neighbor, appears to have sided with the dissenters by instituting an unofficial blockade of fuel and other supplies across its border.
  • katyshannon on 29 Oct 15
     
    Nepal just a elected its first female president
Javier E

Opinion | The Case Against Meritocracy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-meritocracy-ross-douthat.html

WASP aristocracy meritocracy diversity centralization hierarchy mobility

shared by Javier E on 10 Dec 18 - No Cached
  • I think ideals of diversity and meritocracy are two different ways of shaping an elite, which can advance together but which are just as often separable, or even in tension with each other.
  • I think it was a good and necessary thing that the American upper class diversified, and that more African-Americans and Jews and Catholics (like myself) and women now share privileges and powers once reserved for Protestant white men.
  • But I think that same upper class was unwise to abandon an aristocratic self-conception in favor of a meritocratic one
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it forges an elite that has an aristocracy’s vices (privilege, insularity, arrogance) without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed.
  • The term properly refers to a specific kind of American elite, mostly from the Northeast, mostly high-church Protestants, concentrated in a few cities (Boston, Philadelphia, New York, plus some Midwestern and Californian outposts), generally associated with the Republican Party (with occasional defectors like F.D.R.), who dominated a particular set of fields (academia, finance, foreign policy) and shared the code of service and piety and manners that defined the elder Bush’s career.
  • Their importance rested, to borrow from a WASP acquaintance’s email this week, on being “primus inter pares” — first among equals, with a particular kind of power in a particular set of institutions, and an ability to set a tone for the American upper class that was adopted by other groups when they ascended.
  • And ascend they often did, because the older American system was both hierarchical and permeable, with room for actual merit even without a meritocratic organizing theory.
  • Those advancing groups included non-Anglo-Saxons, and eventually non-Protestants and non-whites.
  • their example suggested that an aristocratic spirit was transferable to a more diverse elite, that there could be Catholic and African-American and Jewish aristocrats — like, say, the family that has long stewarded this newspaper — who could adopt the WASP establishment’s upper-class virtues without the ethnic and religious chauvinism.
  • The way of the “best and the brightest” at the dawn of the technocratic era and the “smartest guys in the room” decades later, the way of the arsonists of late-2000s Wall Street and the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley.
  • This was meritocracy, the system that we now take for granted. And for several reasons it didn’t work as planned
  • then the WASPs themselves decided to dissolve their own aristocracy, and transform their once-Protestant universities into a secular mass-opportunity system — a more democratic way of education, in which anyone with enough talent could climb the ladder, and personal achievement and technical expertise would be prized above all else.
  • instead of an Eastern establishment negotiating with overlapping groups of regional elites (or with working-class or ethnic leaders), you have a mass upper class segregated from demoralized peripheries.
  • Second, the meritocratic elite inevitably tends back toward aristocracy, because any definition of “merit” you choose will be easier for the children of these self-segregated meritocrats to achieve.
  • But even as it restratifies society, the meritocratic order also insists that everything its high-achievers have is justly earned. “He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple,”
  • This spirit discourages inherited responsibility and cultural stewardship; it brushes away the disciplines of duty; it makes the past seem irrelevant, because everyone is supposed to come from the same nowhere and rule based on technique alone
  • As a consequence, meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice.
  • First, meritocracy segregates talent rather than dispersing it. By plucking the highest achievers from all over the country and encouraging them to cluster together in the same few cities, it robs localities of their potential leaders
  • Diversity, despite what many liberals want to think, does not provide a solution to this problem
  • nothing about being a woman or a minority makes you immune to meritocracy’s ruthless solipsism. Just ask Elizabeth Holmes or the slipping-from-grace Sheryl Sandberg
  • I don’t want to bring back the WASPs; if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.
  • But I do want to raise the possibility that an aristocracy that knows itself to be one might be more clearsighted and effective than an aristocracy that doesn’t, and that the WASPs had at least one clear advantage over their presently-floundering successors: They knew who and what they were
Javier E

Opinion | Our Disgrace at the Border - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...border-crisis-immigration.html

border immigration policies

shared by Javier E on 12 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • the border crisis is paradigmatic of our politics right now. Both parties are content to adopt abstract ideological postures. Neither is interested in creating a functioning system that balances trade-offs and actually works. In the age of Trump, national politics is showbiz — self-righteous performance art to make the base feel good about itself.
  • The U.S. cannot take in everybody who wants to come. So the first task is to set priorities. The victims of violence and persecution get top priority, then those being systemically denied their basic rights because their country has become a failed state, then those seeking economic betterment.
  • on many issues the 2020 Democrats aren’t really having a primary campaign; they’re having a purity test. The candidates are not sure if they can deviate from wherever the social media warriors have defined the leftward edge. So the Democratic show consists of indignant generalities intended to sound radical while changing nothing.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Designing a practical response that wins widespread support is, in theory, not hard. But it requires starting with a certain question: What can we do to help them? Much of today’s politics starts from a different question: What posture can I adopt that will reflect well on me? What can I say to prove I’m manly or woke?
Javier E

Opinion | The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...call-out-social-justice.html

justice mercy civilization polarization binary tribal culture

shared by Javier E on 16 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • In this small story, we see something of the maladies that shape our brutal cultural moment. You see how zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds. You see that when denunciation is done through social media, you can destroy people without even knowing them. There’s no personal connection that allows apology and forgiveness.
  • You also see how once you adopt a binary tribal mentality — us/them, punk/non-punk, victim/abuser — you’ve immediately depersonalized everything. You’ve reduced complex human beings to simple good versus evil
  • You’ve eliminated any sense of proportion. Suddenly there’s no distinction between R. Kelly and a high school girl sending a mean emoji.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • It shows what it’s like to live amid a terrifying call-out culture, a vengeful game of moral one-upsmanship in which social annihilation can come any second.
  • I’m older, so all sorts of historical alarm bells were going off — the way students denounced and effectively murdered their elders for incorrect thought during Mao’s Cultural Revolution and in Stalin’s Russia
  • call-outs are how humanity moves forward. Society enforces norms by murdering the bullies who break them. When systems are broken, vigilante justice may be rough justice, but it gets the job done
  • Do we really think cycles of cruelty do more to advance civilization than cycles of wisdom and empathy? I’d say civilization moves forward when we embrace rule of law, not when we abandon it
  • Once you adopt binary thinking in which people are categorized as good or evil, once you give random people the power to destroy lives without any process, you have taken a step toward the Rwandan genocide.
  • Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with a quality of mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption. The crust of civilization is thinner than you think.
Javier E

Trump Puts the Purpose of His Presidency Into Words - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...550454

trump racism policies tribal white supremacy politics history culture crisis

shared by Javier E on 13 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • These remarks reflect scorn not only for those who wish to come here, but those who already have. It is a president of the United States expressing his contempt for the tens of millions of descendants of Africans, most of whose forefathers had no choice in crossing the Atlantic, American citizens whom any president is bound to serve.
  • And it is a public admission of sorts that he is incapable of being a president for all Americans, the logic of his argument elevating not just white immigrants over brown ones, but white citizens over the people of color they share this country with.
  • The racist pseudoscience underpinning Walker’s belief that immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were incapable of responsible self-government is out of vogue today, but the both the sentiment and logic are now applied by the descendants of those very same “beaten races” who now work for Trump in the White House, who craft arguments defending his prejudice, and who cast ballots bearing his name.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • they are all now a part of Trump’s only sincere ideological project, the preservation of white political and cultural dominance.
  • Trump has adopted policies that would be responsible for the displacement of nearly a million people of color in less than 12 months in office.  
  • The benefit of this history is that we know how the story ended then; with the adoption of racist immigration laws, and the immigrants from the “shithole countries” of the turn of the century defending the country in two world wars. But their children and grandchildren, having assimilated into the very whiteness Walker and his ilk saw as endangered, now repeat the same slander laid upon their ancestors against a new generation of immigrants looking for a better life in America. The old lies are now again embraced by the descendants of those who once suffered because of them.
  • The president was not making an assessment of the relative quality of life in Haiti or Norway, he was condemning entire populations of people of as undesirable because of where they were born. Trump’s remarks do not merely express contempt for foreigners; but also for every American who shares their origins.
  • The president’s focus on the nationality, rather than on the personal merits, of immigrants suggests what he means by “merit-based” immigration: Not accepting those immigrants who have mastered science or engineering or some other crucial skill, but instead a standard that finds white Scandinavians acceptable, while ruling out Haitians, Salvadorans, and Africans. The only “merits” here are accidents of birth and geography, owing to no individual accomplishment at all.
  • Trump’s is not a logic that employs facts, it is one that employs tribe. It is the logic of “us” being better than “them,” with white Scandinavians reflecting a self-definition of “us,” that excludes blacks and latinos regardless of their relationship to this country.
  • To describe the issue here, as many media outlets have, as one of coarse or vulgar language, is itself an obscenity. The president’s remarks reflect a moral principle that has guided policy while in office, a principle that is obvious to all but that some simply refuse to articulate.
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