Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann Represents District 6 of Minnesota in the U.S. Congress.

Congress' job is to look out for you, the American people. But as these out-of-control gas prices prove, Congress is letting you down. Each day brings another ulcer-inducing, record-smashing high -- and these dizzying costs are hurting families across the country.

Gas has surpassed the grim milestone of $4 a gallon. Everyone is taking a hit -- and the poor and middle class are hit hardest. It has to stop. The punishment at the pump needs to end. Congress must act. Several of my colleagues and I have been fighting for a plan to get gas prices down to $2 a gallon -- and create millions of jobs in the process. It's a plan that has the broad support of the American people. Only the out-of-touch Congressional leadership stands in the way.

Here's the crux of the problem: global demand for energy has soared to record heights, but Congress has done nothing to increase our energy supply. In fact, the new Democrats in charge support a virtual ban on domestic energy exploration. So prices have soared as well -- more during the last 17 months then in well over a decade.

Consider these startling truths: we are the only industrialized nation on the planet which bans 85 percent of our deep-sea energy reserves from being explored. We sit on massive energy resources from Florida to the Rockies to Alaska that Congress won't let us touch. China is exploring off the Cuban coast and Americans just watch from the Florida shores. There's enough energy locked away in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to offset all our imports from Saudi Arabia. In fact, our nation sits on two trillion barrels of shale oil -- four-fifths of it on government land. But it remains off-limits.

France gets 80 percent of its energy from clean nuclear power while the U.S. hasn't built a new plant since the 1970s. We haven't built new refineries either. We had 321 oil refineries in 1981. Now we have only 149. Yet in that same time period, demand has doubled. We've even suppressed clean coal production in the United States -- despite 25 percent of the world's entire coal reserves resting inside our borders.

Americans are starving for relief and Congress holds the key to the pantry door. All it has to do is unlock it and prices will fall back to $2 a gallon. But like a broken record, Congress is stuck in the repeating loop of business as usual. So Congress keeps repeating its no-new-energy mantra.

Our country is blessed with amazing resources and unlimited creativity. New technology allows us to explore without any harm to the environment. America should be leading the world in access to affordable energy. We should be nearing a future where energy is better, easier, cheaper, cleaner, and safer than anyone had ever imagined.

But if we want to head down this road -- and provide Americans with immediate relief -- Congress has to remove the handcuffs on innovative exploration and technology. Congress has to stop looking backward and start looking forward. Congress has to let go of the do-nothing, partisan bickering, business-as-usual mentality -- and deliver real change to the American people. The time is long overdue. *

"You know how Congress is. They'll vote for anything if the thing they vote for will turn around and vote for them. Politics ain't nothing but reciprocity." --Will Rogers

William Tucker

William Tucker is a veteran journalist. His forthcoming book is entitled Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet. Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College in January, 2008, during a conference on "Free Markets and Politics Today."

There have been a host of debates this year between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. Many of these candidates believe that among our top priorities is to address global warming by reducing carbon emissions. All or most seem to agree that decreasing America's energy dependence is another. Yet few if any of the candidates have mentioned that nuclear energy -- or, as I prefer, terrestrial energy -- could serve both these ends.

Right now there are 103 operating nuclear reactors in America, but most are owned by utilities (which also own coal plants). The few spin-offs that concentrate mainly on nuclear -- Entergy, of Jackson, Mississippi, and Exelon, of Chicago -- are relatively small players. As for a nuclear infrastructure, it hardly exists. There is only one steel company in the world today that can cast the reactor vessels (the 42-foot, egg-shaped containers at the core of a reactor): Japan Steel Works. As countries around the world begin to build new reactors, the company is now back-ordered for four years. Unless some enterprising American steel company takes an interest, any new reactor built in America will be cast in Japan.

This is an extraordinary fate for what was once regarded as an American technology. France, China, Russia, Finland, and Japan all perceive the enormous opportunity that nuclear energy promises for reducing carbon emissions and relieving the world's energy problems as reflected in recent soaring oil prices. Yet in America, we remain trapped in a Three Mile Island mentality, without even a public discussion of the issue. As folk singer Ani DiFranco puts it, the structure of the atom is so perfect that it is "blasphemy / To use it to make bombs / Or electricity."

It is time to step back and question whether this prejudice makes sense.

Fossil Fuels

All living things exist by drawing energy from their environment and discarding part of it as "waste," so there is nothing inherently shameful about energy consumption. Almost all our energy derives ultimately from the sun. Plants store solar energy by transforming it into large carbon-chain molecules (the process we call photosynthesis). The entire animal kingdom draws its energy from this process by "eating" this stored solar energy. About 750,000 years ago, early humans discovered that they could also draw solar energy from a chain reaction we call "fire." When heated, the stored energy in carbon chains is released. This heat energy can break down other carbon chains, which causes combustion. Fire has been the principle source of energy throughout most of human history. When historian William Manchester wrote a book about the Middle Ages called A World Lit Only By Fire, he was describing the world of only 700 years ago.

All this began to change about 400 years ago when human beings discovered an older source of stored solar energy -- coal. Our most common fossil fuel, coal is the compressed remains of vegetable matter that covered the earth 300-400 million years ago. Coal is superabundant and we will probably never run out of it. It was the fuel of the Industrial Revolution, and it is still the world's largest source of energy. It is also the most environmentally destructive substance ever utilized. The EPA estimates that it kills 30,000 Americans each year through lung diseases (and in China it is doing far worse). It is all the world's principal source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Oil, another fossil fuel, is rarer and is believed to be the remains of organisms that lived in shallow seas during the age of the dinosaurs. It was first drilled in 1859, but was used only for lighting and lubrication until the invention of the automobile. Now it constitutes 40 percent of our energy consumption and is perhaps the most difficult fuel to replace. American oil production peaked in 1970 and is now declining rapidly, a fact that explains much of our subsequent foreign policy. The Arab oil embargo occurred three years following the peak, when the producing states realized we were vulnerable. The question now is whether world production will reach a similar peak and decline. As Matthew Simmons has written: "We won't know until we see it in the rearview mirror." If it does come, it may not look much different from the quadrupling of oil prices we have witnessed in the last three years.

Natural gas is generally considered the most environmentally benign of the fossil fuels. It gives off little pollution and only about half the greenhouse gas of coal. Natural gas was put under federal regulation in the 1950s, so that by the 1970s we were experiencing a supply shortage. Deregulation in the 1980s led to almost unlimited supplies in the 1990s. Then we began the fateful practice of using gas to produce electricity, resulting in a price crunch and the loss of many gas-dependent industries, such as fertilizer and plastics factories, which have since moved to Mexico and Saudi Arabia to be near supplies. Now American gas production seems to have peaked and we are importing 15 percent of our consumption from Canada. Huge gas supplies have been discovered in Russia and the Middle East, but will not do us much good since gas cannot be easily transported over water. Thus China, India, and Europe will be able to buy pipeline gas much more cheaply and are already out-competing us on the world market.

Alternative Fuels

Given the precarious state of these fossil fuels, people have begun talking of "alternative" and "renewable" fuels -- water, sun, and wind. The term "renewable" is somewhat misleading: no energy is "renewable" insofar as energy cannot be recycled (this is the Second Law of Thermodynamics). The term "renewable" usually describes tapping flows of solar energy that are supposedly "free." But coal and oil in the ground are also free. It just takes work -- and energy -- to recover them. So, too, solar "renewables" can only be gathered at a cost. They are often limited and may require extravagant use of other resources -- mainly land.

What about water? Hydroelectricity is a form of solar energy. The sun evaporates water, which falls as rain and then flows back to the sea, creating kinetic energy. Rivers have been tapped since Roman times and, beginning in the l9th century, dams were built to store this solar energy. Hydroelectric dams provided 30 percent of our electricity in the 1930s, but the figure has declined to ten percent. And all the good dam sites are now taken.

What about wind? Wind energy has captured the imagination of the public and is touted by many as the fastest growing energy source in the world. All of this is driven by government mandates -- tax credits and "renewable portfolio" laws that require utilities to buy non-fossil sources of power. The problem with wind is that it is completely unpredictable. Our electrical grid is one giant machine interconnected across the country, in which voltage balances must be carefully maintained in order to avoid damaging electrical equipment or losing data on computer circuits. Wind irregularities can be masked up to around 20 percent, but after that they become too disruptive. At best, therefore, wind will only be able to provide the 20 percent "spinning reserve" carried by all utilities. In addition, windmills are large and require lots of land. The biggest now stand 65 stories tall -- roughly the height of New York's Trump Tower -- and produce only six megawatts, or about 1/200th the output of a conventional power plant. In the East, most are sited on mountaintops, since that is where the wind blows strongest.

What about the sun? Solar energy is very diffuse. A square-meter card table receives enough sunlight to run only four 100-watt electric bulbs. At best, solar could provide our indoor lighting, which consumes about ten percent of our electricity. But keep in mind: gathering and storing solar energy requires vast land areas.

Sunshine can be harnessed directly in two ways -- as thermal heat or through photovoltaics, the direct production of electricity. In the 1980s, California built a Power Tower that focused hundreds of mirrors on a single point to boil water to drive a turbine. The facility covered one-fifth of a square mile and produced ten megawatts. It was eventually closed down as uneconomical. Last year, when Spain opened an identical Power Tower in Seville, U.S. News & World Report ran a cover story hailing it as a "Power Revolution." That facility, of course, is completely subsidized by the government.

Photovoltaic cells have more promise. They are thin wafers where solar radiation knocks the electrons off silicon atoms, producing an electric current. At present, an installation about half the size of a football field could power one suburban home -- when the sun shines, of course. The problem is that photovoltaics are enormously expensive; using them to provide one quarter of an average home's electricity requires investing around $35,000. Their greatest benefit is that they are able to provide electricity precisely when it is most needed -- on hot summer afternoons when air conditioning produces peak loads.

Nuclear or Terrestrial Energy

There is one other form of alternative energy often mistakenly grouped with solar: geothermal energy. Geothermal is produced when the natural heat of the earth comes in contact with groundwater. This can produce geysers and "fumaroles" -- steam leaks that are now being harnessed to produce electricity. Where does this heat come from? Temperatures at the earth's core reach 7,000 degrees Centigrade, hotter than the surface of the sun. Some of this heat comes from gravitational pressures and the leftover heat from the collisions of astral particles that led to the formation of the earth. But at least half of it (we don't know the precise percentage) comes from the radioactive breakdown of thorium and uranium within the earth's mantle. This is "terrestrial energy," and a nuclear reactor is simply the same process carried out in a controlled environment. In order to harness terrestrial energy in the form of uranium isotopes, we mine it, bring it to the surface, concentrate it, and initiate a chain reaction that releases stored energy in the form of heat -- the very same process as that used to harness solar energy from coal.

When Albert Einstein signed the letter to President Roosevelt informing him of the discovery of nuclear energy, he turned to some fellow scientists and said: "For the first time mankind will be using energy not derived from the sun." This possibility emerged in 1905, when Einstein posited that energy and matter are different forms of the same thing and that energy could be converted to matter and matter to energy (as reflected in the famous equation E = mc2). The co-efficient, c2, is the speed of light squared, which is a very, very large number. What it signifies is that a very, very small amount of matter can be converted into a very, very large amount of energy. This is good news in terms of our energy needs and the environment. It means that the amount of fuel required to produce an equivalent amount of energy is now approximately two million times smaller.

Consider: At an average 1,000 megawatt coal plant, a train with 110 railroad cars, each loaded with 20 tons of coal, arrives every five days. Each carload will provide 20 minutes of electricity. When burned, one ton of coal will throw three tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We now burn 1 billion tons of coal a year -- up from 500 million tons in 1976. This coal produces 40 percent of our greenhouse gases and 20 percent of the world's carbon emissions.

By contrast, consider a 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor. Every two years a fleet of flatbed trucks pulls up to the reactor to deliver a load of fuel rods. These rods are only mildly radioactive and can be handled with gloves. They will be loaded into the reactor, where they will remain for six years (only one-third of the rods are replaced at each refueling). The replaced rods will be removed and transferred to a storage pool inside the containment structure, where they can remain indefinitely (three feet of water blocks the radiation). There is no exhaust, no carbon emissions, no sulfur sludge to be carted away hourly and heaped into vast dumps. There is no release into the environment. The fuel rods come out looking exactly as they did going in, except that they are now more highly radioactive. There is no air pollution, no water pollution, and no ground pollution.

Objections to Nuclear Energy

What are the potential problems with nuclear power?

First, some fear that a nuclear reactor might explode. But this is impossible. Natural uranium is made of two isotopes -- U-235 and U-238 (the latter having three more neutrons). Both are radioactive -- meaning they are constantly breaking down into slightly smaller atoms -- but only U-235 is fissile, meaning it will split almost in half with a much larger release of energy. Because U-235 is more highly radioactive, it has almost all broken down already, so that it now makes up only seven-tenths of a percent of the world's natural uranium. In order to set off a chain reaction, natural uranium must be "enriched" so that U-235 makes up a larger percentage. Reactor grade uranium -- which will simmer enough to produce a little heat -- is three percent U-235. In order to get to bomb grade uranium -- the kind that will explode -- uranium must be enriched to 90 percent U-235. Given this fact, there is simply no way that a reactor can explode.

On the other hand, a reactor can "melt down." This is what happened at Three Mile Island. A valve stuck open and a series of mistakes led the operators to think the core was overflowing when it was actually short of cooling water. They further drained the core and about a third of the core melted from the excess heat. But did this result in a nuclear catastrophe? Hardly. The public was disconcerted because no one was sure what was happening. But in the end the melted fuel stayed within the reactor vessel. Critics had predicted a "China syndrome" where the molten core would melt through the steel vessel, then through the concrete containment structure, then down into the earth where it would hit groundwater, causing a steam explosion that would spray radioactive material across a huge area. In fact, the only radioactive debris was a puff of steam that emitted the same radiation as a single chest x-ray. Three Mile Island was an industrial accident. It bankrupted the utility, but no one was injured.

This of course was not the case in Chernobyl, where the Soviet designers didn't even bother building a concrete containment structure around the reactor vessel. Then in 1986, two teams of operators became involved in a tussle over use of the reactor and ended up overheating the core, which set fire to the carbon moderator that facilitates the chain reaction. (American reactors don't use carbon moderators.) The result was a four-day fire that spewed radioactive debris around the world. More fallout fell on Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, from Chernobyl than from Three Mile Island. With proper construction such a thing could never happen.

Another objection to nuclear power is the supposed waste it produces. But this is a mischaracterization. A spent fuel rod is 95 percent U-238. This is the same material we can find in a shovel full of dirt from our back yards. Of the remaining five percent, most is useful, but small amounts should probably be placed in a repository such as Yucca Mountain. The useful parts -- uranium-235 and plutonium (a manmade element produced from U-238) -- can be recycled as fuel. In fact, we are currently recycling plutonium from Russian nuclear missiles. Of the 20 percent of our power that comes from nuclear sources, half is produced from recycled Russian bombs. Many of the remaining isotopes are useful in industry or radiological medicine -- now used in 40 percent of all medical procedures. It is only cesium-137 and strontium-90, which have half-lives of 28 and 30 years, respectively, that need to be stored in protective areas.

Unfortunately, federal regulations require all radioactive byproducts of nuclear power plants to be disposed of in a nuclear waste repository. As a result, more than 98 percent of what will go into Yucca Mountain is either natural uranium or useful material. Why are we wasting so much effort on such a needless task? Because in 1977, President Carter decided to outlaw nuclear recycling. The fear then was that other countries would steal our plutonium to make nuclear bombs. (India had just purloined plutonium from a Canadian-built reactor to make its bomb.) This has turned out to be a false alarm. Countries that have built bombs have either drawn plutonium from their own reactors or -- as Iran is trying to do now -- enriched their own uranium. Canada, Britain, France, and Russia are all recycling their nuclear fuel. France has produced 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power for the last 25 years. It stores all its high-level "nuclear waste" in a single room at Le Havre.

Conclusion

The U.S. currently gets 50 percent of its electricity from coal and 20 percent from nuclear reactors. Reversing these percentages should become a goal of both global warming advocates and anyone who wants to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil (the latter since a clean, expanded electrical grid could anchor a fleet of hydrogen or electric cars). Contrary to what some critics charge, this would not require massive subsidies or direct intervention by the government. Indeed, the nuclear industry has gone through an astounding revival over the past decade. The entire fleet of 103 reactors is up and running 90 percent of the time. Reactors are making money hand-over-fist -- so much so that the attorney general of Connecticut recently proposed a windfall profits tax on them! The industry is poised for new construction, with proposals for four new reactors submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and almost 30 waiting in the wings.

The rest of the world is rapidly moving toward nuclear power. France, Russia, and Japan are not only going ahead with their own nuclear programs, but selling their technology in the developing world. America, which once dominated this technology, is being left behind. The main culprit is public fear. Nuclear technology is regarded as an illegitimate child of the atomic bomb, a Faustian bargain, a blasphemous tinkering with nature. It is none of these. It is simply a natural outgrowth of our evolving understanding of the universe. The sun has been our prime source of energy throughout human history, but energy is also generated in the earth itself. It is time to avail ourselves of this clean, safe terrestrial energy. *

"The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly." --Theodore Roosevelt

Paul Kengor

Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004) and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007). His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).

It was 25 years ago that a remarkable effort took place concerning a small, unremarkable country at the northern tip of South America -- Suriname. What happened there was quite significant but has escaped the notice of history, a function of its confidentiality at the time. Now, at long last, the participants have decided to talk. What they are saying needs to be part of the memory of every student of the Cold War and certainly every student of Ronald Reagan.

Here's the context and what happened: At the start of the 1980s, the Soviets were hoping to have another busy decade of expansion into the third world, and especially into the Western Hemisphere -- America's backyard. The latter 1970s had been alarmingly productive for the Soviets, as they had picked up nearly a dozen "satellites" and friendly puppet regimes around the world, while the United States was hemorrhaging dependable allies like Nicaragua and Iran, which had become foreign-policy nightmares. No doubt, America was losing the Cold War.

That was the world that Ronald Reagan faced, and hoped to reverse, when he was inaugurated president in January 1981.

Quietly thrust into this scenario was a sleepy South American country called Suriname. In 1980, Suriname's citizens had lost a promising, elected government in a coup by a military thug named Desi Bouterse. This was yet another of those countries that had taken a turn for the worse under the Carter administration, leaving yet another potential crisis for President Reagan to try to manage. By December 1982, Bouterse had gotten violent and dangerous, and was suddenly getting very close to the U.S.S.R. and Cuba.

In the spring of 1983, the Suriname situation continued to be carefully monitored at the CIA by Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, who was DCI Bill Casey's right arm for Latin America, and by the National Security Council staff of William P. "Bill" Clark. In the eyes of the Soviets, Clark, Casey, and Reagan formed a kind of unholy trinity, constantly out to stop Moscow and halt its dreams of Communist expansion around the world. Casey's CIA was a popular whipping boy for the American Left and for the Soviets, whereas Clark tended to fly under the radar. Nonetheless, Clark was, as noted in a 1983 cover story by the New York Times Magazine, not only "the most influential foreign-policy figure in the Reagan administration," but "the president's chief instrument" in confronting Soviet influence in the world, particularly in Latin America.

The Kremlin, of course, knew all of this, and thus did what it could to hush its plans for Suriname.

What were those plans? Clark and Clarridge learned about the various communications and high-level visits between Bouterse's regime and Cuba, and that the Soviets actually had plans to build a full-scale embassy in Suriname's capital. The Kremlin had gone so far as to select a building for the embassy and was arranging for full diplomatic representation.

Both Moscow and Havana viewed Suriname as a potentially huge military-strategic outpost. The Soviets relished the possibility of establishing at Suriname their first base in South America, and they and their Cuban comrades were negotiating an arrangement with Bouterse that included various forms of assistance, from political advisers to doctors, teachers, and military equipment.

The South American nation posed the prospect of not only "another Cuba," but a new Soviet Base -- a vital proxy of the U.S.S.R. with 386 kilometers of coastline along the strategic Atlantic. In Cuba, the Soviets had bases to stage aircraft for submarine surveillance; this allowed them to track U.S. submarines carrying nuclear missiles. The U.S. subs hid in the south and mid-Atlantic within launching range of all of the U.S.S.R. In trying to locate the subs, Soviet aircraft had a limited range from their base in Cuba, a major source of frustration for the Soviet military. Yet, if the Kremlin could secure a foothold in Suriname, its problem of reaching the mid-Atlantic could be resolved. The U.S.S.R. could greatly enhance its surveillance capability. That was only one of the sudden strategic advantages that Suriname could offer Moscow.

Clark reported to Reagan that the focus of his concern was that the Cubans, and through them the Soviets, would establish precisely such a base on the northern tip of South America. Moreover, he wrote in a memo to Reagan, "Because of Suriname's strategic location, the Cubans and Soviets would have the potential to control the Southern Caribbean and endanger shipping lanes," including those lanes used for the transit of ships carrying large supplies of crucial commodities like petroleum from Venezuela to U.S. ports in the Gulf Coast.

Clark also warned Reagan that Cuba and the U.S.S.R. were moving to secure an outpost to spread their political influence throughout South America. Recall, of course, that Marxist advances and threats were happening all over Latin America at the time, from Nicaragua to El Salvador to Grenada and others.

It gets worse: there was also a terrorist connection between Bouterse's regime in Suriname and Muammar Kaddafi's Libya, the latter of whom at that point was doing his damnedest to try to become America's chief menace. Further, the American company ALCOA had a plant in Suriname, which employed a notable number of U.S. citizens. Bill Clark and Ronald Reagan were deeply fearful of a potential hostage situation.

In short, Suriname was a very serious matter, even though it had somehow managed to elude press coverage.

How would the Reagan team react?

Students of this period will recognize the many similarities between Suriname and what was transpiring in Grenada, but with one major difference -- the outcome: For Suriname, the Reagan administration would not need to opt for the use of U.S. military force.

In late April 1983, Clark, Clarridge, and five others flew a secret mission to South America, paying a dramatic visit to the leaderships of Suriname's neighbors, Brazil and Venezuela, authorized by Ronald Reagan and not shared with any of the serial leakers within the White House. Discussion was limited to those who needed to know and could be trusted not to blab to the Washington Post.

Clark and crew used Air Force One and in one case (Caracas, Venezuela) literally parked it in the weeds at night. Their objective was to try to salvage this situation with unique, carrot-and-stick diplomacy.

The details of precisely what they did and said are fascinating and cannot be given due credit in one brief article. In short: They pulled it off, without firing a shot. They brokered an arrangement with an extremely helpful and unheralded Brazil, which included several forms of economic aid to Suriname, enough to keep Suriname from going Marxist and becoming a Soviet-Cuban base of operation in the Atlantic.

And then, none of the participants talked about it; they had done their job and now moved on, with no need for adulation or even a pat on the back. That includes Ronald Reagan. Near the end of his presidency, Reagan rightly declared that during his eight years, "not one inch of ground has fallen to the Communists." As he said this, he rattled off some of the nations that were saved, including obvious cases that occupied the headlines, like Grenada, which the United States invaded in October 1983 -- six months after an invasion was averted in Suriname. Yet, he was silent on Suriname. He had to be; he had to keep it secret.

Why are we only now learning about this? The key was Bill Clark, and getting Clark to talk. Even though there has always been unanimity that Clark was not only Reagan's most influential adviser but the one with the best story to tell, he refused to do memoirs, strictly because of his humility and sense of loyalty to Reagan. He was urged to do memoirs by Reagan biographers like Lou Cannon and Edmund Morris, by figures like Cap Weinberger and Ed Meese, by Michael Reagan -- you name it. In the end, he finally acquiesced to a biography. One of the reasons he did so was that same sense of loyalty to Ronald Reagan -- this time to the historical record on Reagan. He wanted this story to be told for history's sake, and accurately so. Once Clark made that commitment, the other participants agreed to be interviewed.

There were certain things that Bill Clark knew that he couldn't and shouldn't take to the grave. One of these was the secret, enigmatic Suriname incident in the spring of 1983. It is worth pausing now, 25 years later, to consider this remarkable episode, to appreciate what was done, and to begin working it into our histories of the end of the Cold War. *

"Ours is not the creed of the weakling and the coward; ours is the gospel of hope and triumphant endeavor." --Theodore Roosevelt

Elizabeth Wright

Elizabeth Wright is editor of the newsletter, Issues & Views, (issuesview.blogspot.com) initially published in 1985 as a hard copy edition. She calls herself an Old Right Conservative with a libertarian streak. This article is republished with the permission of Elizabeth Wright. It was published originally in September 12, 2006

Black blogger Byron Crawford sort of, kind of, gets it. Usually quite caustic in his anti-white bias, this time he realistically speculates on the degree to which so-called white privilege might be indelibly linked to the privileges of freedom enjoyed by all Americans, including blacks.

After first making it clear that he cares nothing about legions of immigrants who might eventually cause white people to lose their dominant position in American society, their "white privilege," Crawford then reconsiders:

I wonder how much [of] what you might call American privilege is tied up in white privilege. If the U.S. becomes something along the lines of Mexico, we all stand to lose something.

In other words, isn't the way of life that we enjoy as Americans steeped in the culture of the Anglo-Euros and the "privileges" they first devised for themselves?

And don't these privileges that are so much a part of our everyday liberties, flow to all citizens of this country?

Crawford hints at the Big Question, but will not ask it outright, so I will.

What will be the consequence of other cultures dominating this formerly Anglo land? Will it matter to blacks if Asian groups, led by the Chinese and East Indians, displace the leading whites? (In the end, a century from now, regardless of the size of the Hispanic/Latino population, the Chinese and East Indians probably will have navigated their way to the national leadership positions.)

As the Anglo-Euro population diminishes, why would people from these alien cultures subscribe to the prescriptions of a Thomas Jefferson, or care about the legacy of Magna Carta?

When would the squabbling between the various ethnics begin over whose law is wisest and best fit to rule in the new, predominantly colored America?

From the behavior and actions of black leaders, one would think that a radical shift in the country's demographic make-up would have no impact on the lives of blacks. In fact, they would have us believe that decades of mass immigration that is bringing about the "browning" of America is having no impact on any aspect of American life.

Black writer Ellis Cose, in Newsweek ("Black Versus Brown," July 3-10, 2006), describes the two stages of rapid ethnic transformation of Lynwood, California. In the 1970s, blacks were the outsiders who migrated in large numbers into what was a "small, largely white, bedroom community" of Los Angeles. By 1984, they were so populous that the town elected its first black city council member. Two years later, another black was elected to the council, and soon after the council appointed the first black mayor. Ellis writes, "Blacks quickly came to dominate the political power structure."

In the meantime, Latinos were moving into Lynwood and their numbers began to grow larger. In the late 1980s, the first Latino was elected to the five-member city council and by 1997 they gained full control of the council. Today, Latinos are 82 percent of Lynwood's population [note: The Lynwood City Council now finds it advisable to make its agenda available in Spanish].

Cose writes that after the first Latino mayor, Aramdo Rea, was appointed, "the city fired several blacks and dismissed some black contractors." Rev. Alfreddie Johnson is quoted, "They got rid of 15 people at one time," 13 of whom were blacks. A Latina opponent of Rea claims that during the public promotion of Rea for mayor, Rea's supporters knocked on doors, "saying we needed to get rid of black city council members."

Cose wonders if the Lynwood example "foreshadows" America's future. Will the future be one that "will increasingly see blacks and Latinos fighting?''

The answer, of course, is Yes, and not only in California, but all across the country. After all, why should Latinos -- many of whom have proven themselves to be vigorously entrepreneurial, economically ambitious, ready-to-work-from-sunup-to-sundown, and socially savvy -- yield to political domination by a group for whom much of what they possess is perceived to have been granted as gifts from coerced, blackmailed whites?

In California, Latinos are now the dominant racial group, even in former black venues like Compton and Watts, where interethnic fighting is common in the schools and in public housing projects. Conflicts are not limited to the adolescent crowd, however, as we saw in the late 1990s, when a battle between blacks and Latinos for dominance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Center in Los Angeles, broke into full throttle.

When the medical facility was opened by the county in 1972, South Central Los Angeles was predominantly black. In those early years through the 1980s, the King Center provided a plethora of jobs for blacks -- from professional medical personnel and administrative positions, down to maintenance jobs.

By 1998, not only were most of the hospital's clientele, i.e., patients and visitors, Latino, most conversations were conducted in Spanish. It was not long before the new residents of South Central began to push for the hiring of Spanish-speaking doctors, nurses and other staff. Washington Post reporter Michael Fletcher, writing about the discord in 1998, called the struggle a "pitched racial battle" ["In L.A. a Sense of Future Conflicts," April 7, 1998]. Not only did Latinos file lawsuits against the hospital for rank discrimination, but a doctor from India also sued for the same reason. The fight was on for county jobs.

After a federal agency stepped in and ordered increased recruitment of Latinos and other non-blacks, Fletcher writes that some black officials were "fuming." He quotes the president of the Los Angeles County Black Employees Association saying, "We don't think Latino progress should come out of our hides."

In Compton, as of last year, in spite of the large population of Latinos, the city government was still exclusively black, and four out of five city jobs were held by blacks. In such places, racial tensions are sure to be exacerbated as Hispanics challenge the status quo in their drive to get their share of influential bureaucratic positions.

In August, this year, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made it clear that he intends to assume greater authority over the city's school district -- a move opposed by black Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally.

Needless to say, many blacks resent the fact that the great influx of foreigners began around the time that laws were being enacted declaring special affirmative action goodies to be reserved to the descendants of America's African slaves. In his book, Black Americans and Organized Labor: a New History, Paul Moreno describes the circumstances leading up to the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, which put an end to earlier restrictions on immigration. With the passage of this law, not only did 35 million immigrants enter the country, 26 million of them were eligible for these special preferences initially set aside for blacks.

In an unexpected consequence of legalized, reverse discrimination, employers were able to meet the now-mandated racial quotas with immigrants from foreign lands. Further, about the impact of immigration in general, Moreno writes, "Though economists differ on the economic effects of immigration on native labor, it is fairly clear that it depressed low-wage native employment and income levels."

Yet, even in the face of stark reality, black leadership organizations did not support restrictions on immigration. In fact, by the end of the 1990s, they opposed restrictions outright. The pattern among black elites -- politicians, academics, community leaders -- consistently has been to make alliances with other elites, in order to insure support for their ever-expanding demands on Establishment whites. These blacks continued to nurse the notion that any alliances with other "minorities" would give them greater power in the race intimidation game being played out against the white adversary.

The pandering of such blacks is limitless, since they are forever on the lookout for ways to expand their influence. In 1999, for instance, the NAACP announced a major campaign to recruit Hispanics into the organization. Billed as a "nationwide initiative," Las Vegas Chapter President Gene Collins explained the mission as a "fight for the disadvantaged regardless of ethnicity." When asked to explain why the NAACP would turn its attention to another racial group, Collins pompously proclaimed, "We have to save the world in order to save ourselves."

Why Hispanics should seek help from a black civil rights organization was not made clear. Well, it's seven years later, and the campaign does not seem to have picked up any steam.

The editor of the black-owned Huntsville Chronicle in Alabama writes:

The idea of a black-Latino coalition has never been close to reality; language, culture, and geographical differences are stand-out reasons for non-coalitions. . . . Jesse Jackson and others have embraced immigration, thinking that new immigrants could be used to build political power. It has not happened yet and there is nothing to indicate that there are any coalitions in the immediate future.

Or in the far distant future.

In the realm of pandering black elites, there is no more notorious public figure than Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents the 18th District in Texas, and is the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, Claims. Jackson Lee, who, for good reason, in 1998, was named the "biggest windbag in Congress" by the Washingtonian magazine, never tires of repeating that worn-out cliche about America being a "nation of immigrants." Hence, we should relax and play our proper role as host to the teeming masses of the planet.

She characterizes herself as a courageous crusader who stands against "hatred and bashing" of immigrants, which she defines as almost any criticism of the current mass influx. According to Jackson Lee, those blacks who forcefully oppose mass immigration are simply naive and are being "baited" into taking such negative positions.

She regularly attends and speaks at Hispanic-Latino events and this year, in August, at a meeting of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, she boasted of having partnered with this group "on a number of occasions to combat legislation that poses a threat to the communities we serve."

She lives for the platitude, and the more shamelessly sentimental, the better. At this meeting, she played the music her audience wanted to hear: "Those undocumented immigrants [as she calls illegals] harvest our crops, tend our gardens, care for our children and parents." These same illegals should not be offered an "armed escort back to the place of economic and political hopelessness they fled." She then waxed eloquent, as she revved up her preacher mode, telling her Hispanic flock to be of good cheer "for the Scriptures tell us that "weeping may last for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

Can this woman pander, or what?

She can even pull a soliloquy out of her bag of tricks, as she intones:

Somewhere down south, more precisely down southwest across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Laredo, Corpus Christi, or Brownsville. . . . Or maybe just south of Tucson or San Diego or Douglas, Arizona -- there is a family in Old Mexico anxiously about to embark on their own journey to the New World of America.

Not if we can get those fences up fast enough.

According to Jackson Lee, everything good is owed to those who "risk death in the desert" or "risk capture and crime." Such people should not have to hide themselves from U.S. law, as they "work in sunlight but live in twilight, between the shadows . . ."

On the one hand, she tries to associate herself with those who take a tough stance on border patrol enforcement, while, on the other hand, she claims that "our border security needs more than just fences and deportations." When informed that fences and deportation might be a good place to begin, she changes the subject.

Jackson Lee has consistently voted for amnesty bills, among them a bill she co-sponsored with Rep. Richard Gephardt in 2002, which would have created amnesty for about 6.5 million illegal aliens. This bill also would have ended the annual cap on family-based immigration and increased "chain" migration by about 250,000 a year.

This is the kind of representation that American blacks can expect from a Congressional Black Caucus, whose members live in fear of their districts' changing demographics. In California, when mass migration from south of the border induced employers to cut hourly wages in half, native-born black and Hispanic Americans lost their jobs as janitors and porters. When some of them tried to tell their stories at a Washington, D.C. meeting, they were scolded and derided for their "intolerance."

At a hearing on immigration, in 1999, Sheila Jackson Lee could hardly wait to drop the "racist" tag on whoever challenged her rosy assessment of the manifold blessings that accrue to the U.S. from the "hard working" migrants, who come uninvited to our land. At that Judiciary Committee's oversight hearing, former auto mechanic turned talk show host, Terry Anderson, a black man, described the impact of years of mass immigration in his region. A 45-year resident of South Central Los Angeles, Anderson has had a first row seat watching illegal aliens transform his neighborhood. He told the Committee about the jobs at McDonald's that are no longer available if you don't speak Spanish, of the bilingual classrooms where English-speaking children must listen to endless translations into Spanish, and of one-family homes that now house five families, whose costs have almost doubled.

He spoke of all those jobs that "Americans won't do," that were being done as recently as 15 years prior by Americans who worked as roofers, framers, drywallers, body and fender repairmen and truck drivers.

Prior to the mass deluge, native-born minority citizens dominated these occupations and were able to sustain their families on their salaries. Anderson was pleading for enforcement of laws against illegal immigration.

Jackson Lee was determined to put on the defensive both Anderson and the others who had come with him to testify at the hearing. Reminding them of the many "of us" who "came to this nation in an immigrant form," she referred to slaves brought here against their will as "illegal immigrants." And then, like so many pretentious black professionals of her class, she implied to these working class people that they should not even be employed in the kind of drudgery they spoke about.

You see, physical labor should be considered beneath blacks, "who have been here now for 400-plus years." Blacks, according to her, "deserve a little bit more uplift." Not that the good lady, sitting there in her designer suit, wished to "downgrade," as she put it, such workers. She just wanted to stress how much blacks (just because they're blacks, apparently) deserve more than low-end jobs.

To the likes of Jackson Lee, the advocates and supporters of those "undocumented" hewers of wood, like the members of the LCLAA, are just another constituency to be courted and won. So what if these foreign cooks, cleaners and cutters of grass take away livelihoods from the American citizens now being displaced? You can almost hear her brain at work: "One population is the same as another, if I can only stay in power."

For Jackson Lee, and the rest of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, it's all about establishing and maintaining a voting bloc. Yet, as they frantically work to win and keep the confidence of the burgeoning Hispanic populations in their respective districts, they might take note of those events in Lynwood, and consider the futility of their efforts.

These politicians have genuine reasons to be troubled, because once Spanish-speaking people dominate in their regions, it will be curtains for them as far as a voting base is concerned. Soon it will be of no avail that Reps. Maxine Waters and John Conyers have either co-sponsored or supported amnesty bills.

In 1995, the Roper Organization reported that 72 percent of black Americans thought immigration should be cut to less than a third of its present level. You would never know this from the activities of black elites, however. They view such reports on black predilections as a troublesome nuisance, the product of ignorant minds whose opinions the wise leaders must work to reverse. Today, polls show that the majority of blacks are against the amnesty and guest worker proposals, now in Congressional limbo -- policies supported by the wiser elites.

Ted Hayes, a black Californian, who has organized the Crispus Attucks Brigade, and has affiliated this group with the border-watching Minutemen claims that black politicians who support immigrant "rights" are "leading blacks in a circle." Hayes believes that this issue will be their "undoing."

It might also be their undoing for reasons not yet explicitly formulated. For, if this tidal wave of industrious Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Arabs, and Vietnamese does not abate, and members of these groups acquire national power and influence, there will be little patience demonstrated for those groups known for not carrying their share of the economic load.

Who will there be to patiently indulge the heavily consumer-oriented, non-producing blacks, for example? Already feeling the impact of immigrant groups that are imbued with a fervent work ethic, through lowered wages and ethnic employment networks that shut them out from jobs, blacks will discover there is worse to come.

When the white population falls below the 50 percent mark, the days of whites running interference for blacks will be over. And so will those special laws biased towards safeguarding perquisites for the "Disadvantaged," which can be mighty expensive to enforce.

Again, what are the odds that those 18th century injunctions devised by those funny little men in britches and waistcoats will prevail, once the polyglot new Americans from Asia and Central and South America begin to flex their political muscle?

So many blacks and their white liberal gurus failed to appreciate those Anglo-originated laws based on "self-evident truths" and the consent of the governed, which were flexible enough to take under their protection the nation's former slaves. Who will there be to insure that jobs and scholarships and government contracts, and the surfeit of other entitlements, will be available for a people who have grown used to looking to others for slices from the economic pie, instead of baking their own share of it?

Once what's left of constitutional law is gone, partly out of neglect, because the story of the Constitution and its creators will no longer be taught in the various Chinese-Indian-Latino-Arab-colored school systems, a new corner will be turned. If blacks think they've been mistreated at the hands of whites, just wait until the affirmative action set aside party is over -- when there is no one to insist that they get undeserved perks, or have a "right" to intrude themselves into places where they are not wanted.

The new dominant ethnics come to this land with their own sob stories of oppression. Unlike whites, they are hardly likely to fall over one another to apologize for past wrongs. Nor are they likely to spend their time in Congress concocting new laws designed to discriminate against their own sons and daughters in favor of blacks.

"Reparations," did you say? Just wait until the first move is made to un-name and re-name some of those Martin Luther King, Jr. boulevards.

So, the blogger Byron Crawford is onto something. Let me paraphrase his speculations cited at the top of this article:

If the U.S. becomes something along the lines of Mexico or Guatemala or China or Senegal or Pakistan, we all stand to lose something.

And once that something is lost, there will be no white folks to harangue, from whom to demand restitution for yet another assortment of imaginary grievances. *

"The world's becoming a museum of socialist failures." --John Dos Passos

W. Edward Chynoweth

Gentlemen:

Conservative outrage over the homosexual marriage fiasco in California -- the State Supreme Court's thwarting "the will of the people" -- ignores the real culprit, the people themselves.

Will they see the underlying problem? Please consider. For some time, it has been apparent that homosexuals have been resorting to the claim that "they're being discriminated against," which should have alerted conservatives but it hasn't. Now, it should be obvious:

In his opinion, the Chief Justice

. . . declared that any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation will . . . be constitutionally suspect in California in the same way as laws that discriminate by race or gender.

And who enacted this loose-gun "non-discrimination principle"? The people! The court majority's ignoring our culture's roots going back millennia is reprehensible but it was the "people" (with "conservative" support) who enacted the abstract "non-discrimination" idea back in 1964 and again in 1996 with their passage of California's Proposition 209. They're at least as much to blame as the Court. That the majority managed to stretch Proposition 209's acultural mandate against "discrimination as to sex" even further to forbid "discrimination as to sexual orientation" was a stretch but the fact remains that with Proposition 209, "the people" in California thoughtlessly gave them the idea.

Why conservatives continue to miss the boat on this remains a puzzle. Congress' forbidding discrimination as to "sex" in 1964-5 amounted to misfeasance, yet younger stalwarts continue to flock with those like Ward Connerly in his career to extend the non-discrimination principle nationwide through referenda in other states. The originator of the Proposition 209 idea in the 1990s was a reform liberal who believed that decisions on employment and education should be made without reference to race or sex, etc. -- carrying all the baggage of a true Marxist -- yet conservatives have bought it hook, line, and sinker. The idea was appropriate for Connerly's California Regents and similar organizations, but not for sweeping positivist statutes. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. (The European Union is using the non-discrimination principle as a club to forbid various choices by churches, groups, etc.)

Still savvy about such things, National Review editors in 1964 had the gumption to oppose the Civil Rights Act's ban on "discrimination," etc., realizing that statutes can't control non-criminal human conduct. Now, younger editors [and even Buckley (RIP), Hart, and Rusher] miss the point! Rich Lowry writes, "I'm with you on the importance of sex differences, but I cannot countenance discrimination"! Thinking they're following Reagan, etc., they forget that he signed the Glass Ceiling Act reinforcing the fallacy.

Now, new-age conservative leaders declare, "no vote should ever be cast for racial or for gender reasons" ("Gender"?! a misstep in itself, ignoring the resonant dichotomy of the two human sexes!); "I don't see your concern over not "discriminating"; "it will be interpreted narrowly"; "it only applies to state action"; "a female candidate is like all other candidates"; "but we need women's votes"; etc. etc. Men are absolutely too terrified to be honest about what their grandfathers took for granted.

Now, instead of straight talk as of old, men pretend sapience in silence. Tocqueville was right in predicting that "weak men and disorderly women" would result from an abstract "sex equality" and now male sportscasters blather about a lovely Danica Patrick's getting upset as a factor in her being "successful" when our "culture" -- the "culture" that conservatives cite endlessly -- would see her merely as a "contentious" beautiful woman out of her sphere.

Another example of current confusions appears in Frederick R. Lynch's "conservative" thought in The Diversity Machine:

If the past is a guide to the future, high government and corporate officials will likely flee the specter of sharpening ethnic-gender polarization by avoiding debate or reform of policies that would further trigger ethnic-gender divisions: abortion, affirmative action, diversity management, and immigration. (p. 362)

In a multiethnic society, discrimination by ethnicity and gender is such a volatile matter that the principle of non-discrimination must be enshrined legally in terms as absolute as possible. On a matter of such great importance, the symbolic aspect of the law is crucial. . . . While it is likely that newspapers and police departments will continue to use ethnicity as a factor in making work assignments, strong laws against non-discrimination (sic) will ensure that they do so with the greatest of care and as little as possible. The law should ensure that no one loses an educational or occupational opportunity because of race, color, creed, national origin, or gender. This goal may not be far off. By court decree and ballot initiative, experiments in doing without race and gender preferences are already beginning. (pp. 363-64; parentheses supplied)

This is an alarming example of "conservative" confusion. Lynch's editor in one passage even mistook "discrimination" for "non-discrimination" and the courts judging such matters have done no better. The "discrimination" Lynch abjures is actually bigotry -- a far cry from "discrimination" per se, a natural human requirement for survival. More thought is needed.

Instead of relying on more "propositions" to save "traditional marriage," it will take honest men and women. We should junk the sterile "non-discrimination principle" regarding sex. Besides normalization of "weak men and disorderly women," it is now threatening to normalize acultural, sterile homosexuality -- social suicide. It's a thoughtless substitute for the common law's wise discrimination, and our Judeo-Christian love-honor-obey culture of good will, natural law, common law, and knowledge of and ages-old respect for complementary sex differences. Can't you help turn the tide?

Sincerely,

W. Edward Chynoweth

W. Edward Chynoweth is a 1946 graduate of West Point, and a retired deputy county prosecutor for Tulare County, CA. He is the author of Masquerade: The Feminist Illusion, University Press of America, 2005.

"The most important consequence of marriage is, that the husband and the wife become in law only one person. . . . Upon this principle of union, almost all the other legal consequences of marriage depend." --James Wilson

Angus MacDonald

The Republican National Convention will be held in St. Paul, September 2008, and the police are making plans to control tens of thousands of protesters who will be present, protesters mind you, not delegates. About 45,000 delegates and media members are expected, in addition to protesters.

The St. Paul Police Federation hopes to have an additional 3,500 officers to assist them. Minneapolis Police Federation President wrote:

We are very concerned that many of these people (protesters) will be hostile toward the police and be prepared to initiate a confrontation with the officers assigned to keep the peace.

The police will not rely on mace or tasers to control protesters and will resort to blunt force if necessary.

The Department of Homeland Security hopes to send to St. Paul $50 million dollars to help cover expenses. The Mall of America, an enormous complex of commerce and entertainment close to the airport, is a potential terrorist target.

What shall we conclude when we can't have a political convention without violence? If the protesters disrupt meetings so that force must be used, protesters are subject to fine and imprisonment. The number of protesters is so large, however, fines and imprisonment are impossible; society must operate in a context of violence.

Individuals are of two kinds: pushy bombers on the one hand, and ladies and gentlemen on the other. Pushy bombers are know-it-alls and nominate themselves for anything and everything. Not all pushy bombers are evil and some of them do great things, but they are generally impatient and possess self-esteem in abundance. Ladies and gentlemen, on the other hand are quiet and never nominate themselves for anything. If they climb the ladder of what is called success it is because they were invited into office. They listen quietly and come to a conclusion after proving evidence. They are reluctant warriors.

In British history there are two houses of parliament: the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The upper house, it was assumed, was more intelligent and would not get lost in the coarseness of the common people. The senates and the legislatures of the United States, state and national, had a similar purpose. Senates are supposed to counter intemperance in the lower house. The goal has not been achieved in either country, but action is debated twice, and that restrains intemperance.

The progress of humankind is measured by the degree of individual responsibility possessed by citizens, and we have made progress. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Christian Church saved society when it was challenged by barbarians and brought us through the dark ages, but progress to simplicity is never complete, always hampered by the lust for power.

Candidates for office lack modesty. "I am qualified to be President of the United States," said Hillary, and she expects us to take her seriously. Hillary on one of her jaunts said:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the building.

She invented the story. A newspaper recently reported that a young girl told Hillary about a need in their community. "I'll take care of that when I am President of the United States," said our candidate.

We ask politicians to solve our problems, which is a confession of irresponsibility. We have to take care of ourselves. At the moment we have a financial problem because people have bought houses they could not afford and banks offered loans to such people. Politicians plan to help people keep the homes they cannot afford, help the investors who built homes that are not needed, and ensure banks do not go under. This is nonsense.

Why should we put money in banks that offer loans to those who do not have adequate assets? Why do banks pay next to nothing on savings accounts? Banks were sound investments when they made sensible loans.

We need capital for investment but where shall we invest our savings? Save, we are told. Where? How? Are we reduced to gambling, living in a world of euphoria, thinking dreams are facts? Current advertising of gold reflects the general distrust of our money.

Financial responsibility demands we live within our income and save. This must be our habit no matter how poor we are and can only be achieved when we live modestly, within our income, rather than within our dreams. This is how our parents lived, and we have to follow their example. If we do, we shall achieve our goals -- in time; not this year.

I am confident of our future if we hold simple, basic principles, but I worry about our native terrorists, protesters who scream and yell and try to force themselves on others. We shall prevail, but we shall have to live with a lack of good manners in the public domain. *

"Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength. Industry and determination can do anything that genius and advantage can do and many things that they cannot." --Theodore Roosevelt

Some of the quotes following each article have been gathered by The Federalist Patriot at: http://FederalistPatriot.US/services.asp.

The following is a summary of the June 2008 issue of the St. Croix Review:

In the editorial, "The Housing Adjustment," Angus MacDonald writes that effect of the stimulus checks will do little if anything to avert the mortgage crisis. We are told that stimulus package is a gift, but it is really a tax. The source of the problem was that investors lent money to people who could not afford the loans, and the solution is that the price of houses must fall to the point that they can be bought and sold again.

In the "Letter to the Editor" W. G. Thompson, who is a Medical Doctor, gives his views of what socialism will do to medical care.

In "Iran, the Capital of Terror Central," Herbert London cites six examples of how Iran has become the main enemy in the war against radical Islam; in "Carter's Misguided Peace Gambit" he considers the results of President Carter's foolish trip to the Middle East; in "Chavez and His American Friends: An Unholy Alliance," he details who is meeting with the president of Venezuela, and what he is up to; in "The Kurds of the Middle East," he relates the deplorable conditions the Kurds live under in Syria, Iran, and Turkey, and he wonders why the U.S. is not making allies of the Kurds in our opposition to the Syrian and Iranian regimes; in "Sarkozy as an European Echo," he hears the French President speak of "moralizing capitalism" and senses a continuation of the socialist policies that have kept Europe in the doldrums for decades.

In "William F. Buckley, Jr.: The Intellectual Father of Modern Conservatism," Allan Brownfeld writes about Buckley's life, full of joy and purpose, and his battle for Christianity against atheism, and for individualism, and against collectivism; in "Debate Over the Rev. Wright and Liberation Theology Ignores Dramatic Gains by the Black Community," Allan Brownfeld details the progress black Americans have made in the last 40 years, and he shows how dishonest and destructive Rev. Wright's rhetoric is.

In "Is America Too Religious?" Robert L. Wichterman comments upon the distain Europeans feel for our church-visiting, independence-minded traditions and asks, Who would defend the Europeans, if the United States did not?

In "P. T. Barum's Rules for Success in Business" Clifford F. Thies separates fiction from fact about this justly famous American.

Joseph L. Bast makes his "Opening Remarks at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change" held in March, 2008, in New York City. He challenges the so-called consensus on global warming alarmism with pointed questions, and with facts. Two hundred accomplished and widely published scientists were in attendance at the conference.

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, in "From Climate Alarmism to Climate Realism," says that it is not the climate but our freedom and prosperity that are endangered by those who would change our economic policies to solve a non-crisis. He says that the link between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth is undeniable, and that to reduce the emissions would be to force a drastic reduction in our standard of living. He thinks in essence the Communists and global climate alarmists are fellow travelers: both would sacrifice the freedom of the individual for their inhumane visions of how we should live.

The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change: "Global Warming Is Not a Global Crisis" is the culmination of 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. Among other points, the declaration states that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by scientific method, and that the costly regulation of industry and individuals to reduce C02 emissions would pointlessly slow development without effecting climate change.

In "Concluding Report from the Global Warming Conference," Joseph Bast sums up the results of a hugely successful and greatly appreciated get-together.

David Bean, in "The Wrong Cure," writes that the policy of the Federal Reserve Bank has been to expand access to credit, and so it has weakened the dollar and created inflation. He sees trouble ahead, as the Fed seems not to recognize the problem.

In "The De Facto Nationalization of JPMorgan Chase," Mark W. Hendrickson explains how the Fed is taking steps toward a national banking monopoly.

Thomas Martin, in "The Diverse University: The Victory of the Adjective Over the Noun?" traces the meaning of certain words back to their Latin roots. University Administrators write they are "committed to the academic value of a diverse university community." Thomas Martin shows that they don't know what they are talking about.

In "Writers for Conservatives: 15 -- The Readable Henry James" Jigs Gardner shows how James created and developed his characters "so that by the end we understand them all . . ."

Harry Neuwirth, in "Self-Reliance," writes about how we have lost our way, and what we should do to correct course.

Dwight D. Murphey reviews Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama. Three Rivers Press, 1995, 2004.

Since this book was first published, Barack Obama has risen rapidly to the top of American politics. It is remarkable that this book is still prominently displayed in bookstores and on his Web site, despite what it reveals about Obama's internal mental landscape. His supporters no doubt count on the average American's not reading it (a hope that in all probability is accurate, even though unfortunate). And, as we will see, there is a certain whitewashing occurring in the media about the book's content.

Dreams from My Father, as an introspective autobiography, is of continuing relevance. It wasn't long ago that he wrote his "Preface to the 2004 Edition" in which he remained foursquare behind the book: "I cannot honestly say that the voice in this book is not mine -- that I would tell the story much differently today than I did ten years ago."

This presents thoughtful readers with a sharp contradiction. The 2004 edition has added several pages from Obama's 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope. The final words there strike an amazingly different tone than the one expressed in Dreams from My Father. Without flinching, he says:

We will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break.

This summarizes the tone of the second (and much more politically attuned) book, which is an appeal to all Americans, no matter what their race. It is bound to surprise anyone who has just read Dreams from My Father, which is, from beginning to end, a paean to Afrocentricity and anti-white animus.

The first book takes its place in a long tradition of eloquent black literature. Obama yearns for, and exalts in, racial pride as a black man; at the same time, he spells out the grievances he and other blacks (whom he quotes at length) feel toward white America. The pride is seen in his statement that:

. . . it was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, Dubois and Mandela.

Both the pride and the message of white viciousness run through the length of the book. An example of the latter comes when he quotes from a friend who tells of "our rage at the white world." Obama opines that when whites see "evidence of black pathology," it would be appropriate for them to see that pathology as "a mirror into their own souls."

The book is beautifully written in the tradition of W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk and Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land. The flowing, down-to-earth eloquence makes it easy, pleasurable reading. Obama is a master orator on paper just as he is when campaigning. His writing is so polished that this reviewer, who has spent more than half a century writing and editing, is forced to wonder how much, if any, contribution Obama's editors made to the work. If it was minimal, Obama's literary skill is astonishing. It would be worthwhile for someone to investigate whether there is not, indeed, one or more editors and think tank people doing for Obama what Ted Sorensen did for John F. Kennedy.

Two literary techniques are particularly striking. The more common of the two comes in Obama's extensive use of quotations from other blacks who express, in agreement with his own perspective, a black's discomfiture about living in a predominantly white society. The other is something rarely seen: it is to create an action narrative not out of real events but out of pure introspection. As a reader makes his way through a long passage of seeming action, it is easy to forget that it started with Obama's imagining what people might be doing or thinking. "I imagined my father sitting at his desk in Nairobi," or:

Another year would pass before I would meet him [his father] one night, in a cold cell, in a chamber of my dreams. I dreamed I was . . .

Somewhat seductively, Dreams from My Father presents a surface of chronological narrative, while what is actually being presented is often mental imagery.

Obama's search for his African identity centers, as the book's title suggests, around his having idealized his father (largely with the prompting of his white mother). Thus, he speaks of "the father of my dreams, the man of my mother's stories, full of highblown ideals . . ." This romanticizing of his father led, too, to an idealized picture of Africa:

. . . for me . . . Africa had become an idea more than an actual place, a new promised land, full of ancient traditions and sweeping vistas, noble struggles and talking drums.

At one point, he traveled to meet his father's family in Kenya, and his visit prompted the following description:

A steady procession of black faces passed before your eyes . . . beautiful faces that made me understand the transformation that Asante and other black Americans claimed to have undergone after their first visit to Africa.

His sense of personal liberation shines through exaltingly when he contrasts life in Kenya with that in America:

You could experience the freedom that comes from not being watched, the freedom of believing that your hair grows as it's supposed to grow and that your rump sways the way a rump is supposed to sway. . . . Here the world was black, and so you were just you.

His father and Africa continue to inspire him throughout the book even though he relates information at odds with such a perception. He continues to seek "Third World solidarity" and to affirm blackness, speaking of "my black brothers and sisters, whether in this country or in Africa." He tells how his mother's words to him:

. . . came to embrace black people generally. She would come home with books on the civil rights movement, the recordings of Mahalia Jackson, the speeches of Dr. King.

Though white herself, she implored him to relish his blackness:

To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to carry.

A mixed picture is conveyed, however, by the actual facts that he recites about his father and Kenyan family. The father belongs to the Luo tribe, in which Obama's grandfather, Onyango, had been a prominent farmer and a medicine man. When Obama's grandmother told Obama that his Kenyan grandfather had once worked preparing food and organizing households for whites, Obama tells us (in what is really a revelation about himself) that it caused "ugly words to flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger." (Here, Obama feels comfortable writing within the milieu of black literature, in which such language is permitted.)

Coming down a generation, we see that Obama's father attracted the attention of two white teachers in Kenya. They obtained his admission to the University of Hawaii, where he was given a scholarship. (It is worth noticing that there is rarely, if ever, any expression of appreciation for such actions by whites, and the source of the money for scholarships for the father and later for Obama is never identified.) Leaving for Hawaii, the father nobly "gathered up his pregnant wife and son and dropped them off with" his mother in Kenya. Studying econometrics in college, he graduated at the top of his class after just three years, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He and Obama's mother met in a Russian language course. They married even though the father already had a wife and son in Kenya (though it isn't clear whether Obama's mother knew that at the time). They had a son of their own, the Barack Obama we know. Another scholarship -- again unaccounted for and not particularly appreciated -- saw the father through Harvard (not especially an inexpensive school) for his Ph.D. Being in Cambridge separated him from Obama's mother in Hawaii, and after Harvard the father "returned to Africa to fulfill his promise to the continent." Obama was two years old when his father and mother separated (which is why there is reason to suppose that his idealization of his father came from his mother rather than from any memories of his own).

Several reasons combined to cause Obama's parents to divorce. These included the separation; an angry letter written from Obama's Kenyan grandfather to his white grandfather saying "he didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman"; and the mother's then-awareness that she had never been given proof that Obama's father had divorced his wife in Kenya. This freed Obama's mother to marry again, this time to an Indonesian student in Hawaii. The father indefatigably tried to get his mother to leave this new Indonesian husband to live with him in Kenya; but, despite her continuing love for him, she declined. Barack Obama, Sr., was obviously a man of great sexual magnetism, since he took another American woman back to Kenya with him and continued having children by her and more than one African woman, including "a young woman he was living with." At least so far as the record shows, the future U.S. Senator has had five brothers and one sister in Kenya. There was some contact between father and son, evidenced by a one-month visit by the father and by occasional letters that continued for a while after the visit and then stopped.

The ups and downs of tribal politics largely dictated the father's career. He had a government job and then lost it during the Kenyatta regime before being hired again. A terrible driver and heavy drinker, he killed a white farmer while driving drunk. It is no surprise, then, that he was himself killed in an automobile accident in Nairobi.

Dreams from My Father doesn't give nearly so much attention to the mother's side of Obama's family but some details are worth noting: His Kansas grandfather served in Patton's army in France and after the war attended the University of California at Berkeley. It is consistent with the leftward orientation of the family and of that institution that he came "to consider himself as something of a freethinker -- a bohemian, even." Obama lived with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia for four years as a young boy, receiving two years of elementary education at a Muslim school and another two at a Christian school. During that time, Obama was blessed with a half-sister, Maya. His Muslim stepfather in Indonesia held to a somewhat eclectic form of Islam: "Like many Indonesians, Lolo [the stepfather] followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths."

This marriage, too, didn't last, and Obama's mother returned to Hawaii, where she got her Masters in anthropology. Her work caused her thereafter to be gone much of the time, so she left it mainly to Obama's Kansas grandparents (who had moved to Hawaii) to raise him. The grandparents weren't wealthy, but Obama somehow was sent to a "prestigious prep school," the Penahou Academy in Hawaii, for seven years. The book is an introspective autobiography, but Obama surprisingly has almost nothing to say about those years of education, the classes, the type of education given there, the teachers or the fellow students. The same void occurs later, oddly enough, about his years at Harvard Law School.

It wouldn't seem that Obama learned his mastery of writing at the Penahou Academy, since he tells the reader that during his last two years there he was deeply alienated, smoked pot and "drank booze." Following high school, Obama enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where "for the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies." As an undergraduate, he immersed himself in the campus Left:

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. . . . At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. . . . We were alienated.

While a student in New York City, he attended "socialist conferences at Cooper Union" and "African cultural fairs that took place in Harlem or Brooklyn."

The book contains considerable biographical detail about Obama. He worked as a "community organizer" in Chicago after graduating from college, and went to work for a consulting firm for multinational corporations, earning a promotion to the position of financial writer. It was at this time that he became aware that:

. . . power. . . in America . . . had generally remained hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of things.

This revelation about power is important because he says that he decided to go to Harvard Law School because:

I had things to learn in law school, things that would help me bring about real change. . . . I would learn power's currency in all its intricacy and detail.

His later meteoric rise was foretold by the fact that in law school he was named the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated magna cum laude.

After admission to the bar, Obama practiced civil rights law and taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, serving eight years; ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2000; and won his U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 2004. Before his election to the latter, he entered the national stage to much acclaim when, at Senator John Kerry's request, he gave his memorable keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He entered the Senate on January 4, 2005. He and his wife Michelle have two daughters.

Obama's next book, The Audacity of Hope, was published in 2006. It is titled after a sermon bearing that name by Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, at the Trinity United Church of Christ a short time before Obama entered Harvard Law School. In Dreams from My Father, Obama recounts that sermon at length, indicating why it inspired Obama to name his later book after it:

People began to shout, to rise from their seats, and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters.

Wright described the world as one "where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere." And yet even in such a situation of despair, Wright had the fortitude (the "audacity") to voice a message of hope, of "race pride and anger."

We mentioned earlier that there has been some effort to whitewash the anti-white message. Thus, black columnist Clarence Page, in a piece that appeared in early 2008, wrote that:

. . . hardly a day goes by without my receiving some e-mailed lie that claims . . . some . . . bogus notion intended to smear Obama or his United Church of Christ minister in Chicago as somehow un-American, anti-white, threatening or subversive. . . . If you can't nail your opponent with the truth, send rumors.

This is the tradition of the old story about the wolf in the hen-house, who cried out "there's nobody in here but us chickens." To see for yourself about the Rev. Wright's sermon, read pages 291-295 of Dreams from My Father.

For reasons that should be apparent, it is rather urgent that all thinking Americans read this book. It will long be ranked as one of the pinnacles of black literature.

--Dwight D. Murphey

Dwight D. Murphey has for many years contributed writings to The St. Croix Review. He is the associate editor of The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, and the author of several books and many articles and book reviews, all of which appear at www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info.

Harry Neuwirth

Harry Neuwirth writes from Salem, Oregon.

People have endured centuries of poverty and repression at the hands of tyrants as they struggled toward ill-defined conditions of liberty. Then hope became reality in the 18th century: ". . . to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the Governed . . ." The Union was challenged in the 19th:

. . . our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal." Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation . . . can long endure.

Eighty-seven years before Abe Lincoln's famous speech a courageous congregation of immigrant men and women had animated his proposition with blood, sacrifice, and self-reliance, liberating themselves from the domination of the old world. Under conditions of liberty, America steadily rose in greatness to inspire the world.

Somewhere in mid-20th century America began falling from greatness. A scapegoat needed, politicians became the easiest targets for contempt. Willing accomplices though they've been, lawmakers and the opportunists who press in on them from all sides respond diligently to the demands from the precincts; the demands we put before them. Certainly there is blame to be laid, but most of it is ours, the constituents, and misplaced blame tends to absolve the guilty.

It has fallen to us, the fortunate descendants of the Founders and of our sixteenth president, not simply to embrace liberty, but to determine ". . . whether that nation . . . can long endure." We seem to have no idea of how to keep liberty alive, many of us not even suspecting that we are losing it! We venerate the sacrifice and self-reliance of the Founding Fathers while pursuing policies of comfort and convenience for ourselves, seeing no disconnect between their sacrifice and our privilege. Yet the Founders assigned authority to the people in the Founding documents in an obvious, pleading attempt to remind us that we must prevent power from consolidating into the hands of the power hungry who are always among us. Authority is moving quickly to centers of power because we've abdicated our responsibility as citizens. It's time for the people to resume their sovereignty.

Guilt needs to be properly assigned: Congress and the bureaucracy are merely accessories, not the perpetrators.

Can we moderate and reverse that slide? What can I do; what can my neighbors do to reverse the trend?

A good beginning would be for many millions of us to become serious citizens, informed citizens; muscular citizens; no more voting our emotions in response to salesman-candidates whose only interest is in winning office and fame. From the president to the lowliest clerk, the overwhelming advantage government functionaries have had over us is ignorance. Not stupidity, but ignorance of how things work -- or why they don't work, where responsibility lies, and how to make things right.

Armed with knowledge about the affairs of government, we can begin in earnest to inform functionaries that we want good government, not something for nothing: Provide us with a stable economic and social environment and we can take care of the rest ourselves. We want to be self-reliant again! We are not villeins. We want and need personal responsibility. Life is empty without it. We recognize that depression and ennui that are emerging are the result of their having nothing significant to do; responsibility has been drained from our lives.

To respond maturely to political jabber, we need to become familiar with the fundamentals of government, of economics, of world affairs and the many, many issues that are the legitimate policy issues of a government of free men. In that vein, Hillsdale, a small college in Michigan, has adopted the slogan, "Educating for Liberty," capturing the essence of what would be a fitting slogan for Americans and their broad educational establishment.

But there will be no return to maturity in America without a massive restructuring of the monolithic school system that now reaches into every corner, teaching our children the propriety of dependence and rights. The failure of our schools to inspire us -- and now our children -- into responsible citizenship as those kids drift through the K-12 schools is outrageous. The challenge for adults is to recognize failure, and to work to end it. We have friends and relatives functioning in the public schools whom we hate to offend or drive from our side, but the adults among them are as aware as we are that it's the system that's flawed. Is it rational to demand that children in La Mesa, California, be forced to attend a school paid for by their parents that is micro-managed by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., 2,750 miles away, when the intelligent people who care most about those kids live right next door to the school?

Finally, we must accept citizenship for what it is: A demanding responsibility. We can rely only on ourselves to restore government to what it was meant to be, a stabilizing agency for a self-reliant constituency. *

"It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world . . ." --Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Thomas Martin

Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The University of Nebraska at Kearney is committed to the academic value of a diverse university community. A quality university experience must provide students with opportunities to have contact with the broadest possible range of people and cultures. Additionally, we believe that recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce will enhance both the recruitment and retention of a diverse student body.

To this end, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, utilizing the Recruitment and Hiring guidelines, will make specific good faith efforts to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse work force.

I came upon this statement of purpose for the University of Nebraska at Kearney while surfing the web, and this question immediately appeared before my mind: how do the adjectives diverse and university modify community?

Our language, the 20th century philosopher Wittgenstein noted, "can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods . . ."

The word "university," for example, houses an idea that comes from the Latin universum, which in turn grew from the neuter of universus, the base from which the word "universe" evolved, meaning the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated. Similar in meaning is the word "cosmos," a systemic whole created and maintained by the direct intervention of divine power.

The university was founded in the Middle Ages when God created and maintained the universe. All the students and faculty were members of the same body on their pilgrimage through the world. A common inscription over a scriptorium or monastic library succinctly summarizes this, Tota Bibliotheca unus liberest, in capite velatus, in fine manifestus (The whole Library is one book, in the beginning veiled, in the end manifest).

Also excavated from the houses in the old city, the word "academic" is from the Latin academus, referring to the Greek akademos, the groves of Academus where Plato taught and founded his academy. In this academy, wisdom was defined as good judgment in the pursuit of learning the truth about oneself and the world. Thus, it is that an academic is a member of the academy.

This being our beginning, let us examine the claim that "The University of Nebraska at Kearney is committed to the academic value of a diverse university community."

The word "community" is from the Latin communis, which means a unified body of individuals, from which we also get the word "communion," an act of sharing, which, when capitalized, is the Christian sacrament of man's spiritual union in the body of Christ. Thus, we can shorten this statement of purpose by starting at the end and eliminating the word "community." Given that the heart and soul of a university is a unified body of scholars, teachers and students committed to the development of the intellect (known in the middle Ages as Studium; we call it "the pursuit of learning), it is redundant that the word "university" be used as an adjective to modify community.

Thus, we the faculty of the University, are housed by respective colleges like books in a library. We are not spread about the world but are on one campus and are devoted to a particular branch of study. The trunk of the tree, the liberal arts, is fundamental in the development of an ordered intellect. The university is open to students who desire to study the academic subjects to which we subject ourselves as masters and doctors.

The word "doctor" is from the Latin docere, meaning to teach, as in the teacher of a doctrine, a dogma, a definite authoritative tenet. The highest degree in a university is a Ph.D., a doctor of philosophy, a lover of knowledge who seeks universal truth in a specific doctrine, such as Chemistry, Biology, English, Psychology, Philosophy, Mathematics, Music, and the like.

So, how does the adjective diverse modify university?

The word "diverse" comes from the Latin, diversus, as in different in character or quality; not of the same kind; not alike in nature or qualities. So, how ought the faculty be committed to teaching at a different university?

I continued tracking our diverse university through the web and found the "Diversity Guide:"

Diversity may be defined as "otherness" or those human qualities that are different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong, yet are present in other individuals and groups. Dimensions of diversity may include, but are not limited to, age, ethnicity, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, color, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic locations, income, marital status, military experience, parental status, religious beliefs, and work experience.

May be defined? The word "diversity" is the condition of being diverse which means different from one another, as in unlike. In origin, it was identical with divers, more immediately associated with Latin dversus as in adverse, inverse, obverse, perverse, reverse. Since circa 1700, however, diverse is no longer used in the merely vague numerical sense of divers, but always distinctly associated with diversity.

Thus, we are told to believe that our diverse university is committed to being a community of unlike people, in which students will have contact with the broadest possible range of people and cultures who are unlike themselves. This, in turn, exemplifies "otherness" which somehow is a sign of a quality university experience for our students. Reverse U!

Should this be valued? Each student and faculty member attending the Diversity of Nebraska at Kearney already knows that he is different from everyone else. This is the principle of self-identity: I am I. Each person is an individual who can and does discriminate when opening his eyes upon the world from the seat of self-awareness in which the faculty of reason is housed. From within that house, each person differentiates and sees everyone and everything as other than himself. Thus, in the jargon of the administrators who are committed to creating a diverse university and to hiring as many adverse, inverse, obverse, perverse, and reverse people as possible, anyone can recognize I am in a state of Iness, you are in a state of youness, and everyone else is a state of otherness.

What is further puzzling about the fuzzy-headed definition of "otherness" is that it starts by acknowledging human qualities that are different from our own and then promptly classifies each person as belonging to a group [ga thunk], which has:

. . . [d]imensions of diversity [which] may include, but are not limited to, age, ethnicity, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, color, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic locations, income, marital status, military experience, parental status, religious beliefs, and work experience.

The dimensions of "otherness" are then like the Hydra, the many-headed monster in Greek mythology whose head, when cut off, instantly became two heads, dividing ad infinitum.

The descent of the mind into "otherness" is the state of a soul that lacks the ability to make qualitative judgments. Here we are reminded of Plato's allegory of the cave where Socrates is showing Glaucon, Adeimantus, Polemarchus, and any student who will pay attention, the effects on a mind encouraged to gaze at the diversity in front of it:

Next, I said, compare the effect of education and of the lack of it on our nature to an experience like this: Imagine human beings living in an underground, cave-like dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is open to the light and as wide as the cave itself. They've been there, since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also, behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screens in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets. . . . Then also imagine that there are people along the wall, carrying all kinds of artifacts that project above it -- statues of people and other animals, made out of stone, wood, and every material. . . . Do you suppose, first of all, that these prisoners see anything of themselves and one another besides the shadows that the fire cast on the wall in front of them?

Here is an education [or the lack thereof] for a student who is not required to discriminate between the changing patterns passing before him. All he knows is the shadows flitting before his eyes; he lacks the ability to classify and therefore to judge. The diverse mind cannot discriminate between what is higher or lower, good or bad, just or unjust on that fluctuating wall of his mind. He treats everything as equally different. He has no ability for the classification necessary for science, a systematic study of minerals, plants, and animals, nor the ability to grasp a moral principle necessary for a virtuous life and relationships with neighbors who could never agree to see beyond their differences. His mind is a splatter that can move neither from nor towards a point.

Fortunately, one of the prisoners in the allegory of the cave is mysteriously released from the shadow-land of the senses, rising to the realm of an intellect that is capable of qualitative judgment. The first subject he learns on his way out of ignorance is to calculate with numbers. Here Socrates notes:

You know what those who are clever in these matters are like: If, in the course of the argument, someone tries to divide the one itself, they laugh and won't permit it. If you divide it, they multiply it, taking care that one thing never be found to be many parts rather than one.

In other words, the students began their elementary education by learning numbers, starting with one, as in uni, from which the word 'universe' is derived. If a person cannot grasp one point, everything remains in flux before his eyes, in a state of "otherness," constantly dividing people into parts, by age, ethnicity, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, color, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic locations, income, marital status, military experience, parental status, religious beliefs, and work experience, ad infinitum.

Now the prisoners, "who are like us," have transcended the realm of sensory perception and have begun to develop a mind, and with it a love of learning in pursuit of the truths in a variety of different subjects which are universal. [Imagine trying to study animals without biology or minerals without chemistry.]

In conclusion, it is troubling, as you have seen, when the administrators of the University of Nebraska at Kearney are committed to emphasizing the darkness, the unenlightened, ordinary physical qualities as a diversity to be celebrated rather than the intellectual qualities in diverse academic subject matters that unite us. It is equally disturbing when diversity -- otherness! -- takes priority over ability as a criterion for employment in the academy: as though the accidental qualities of birth are superior to what a faculty member knows and is able to teach about the subject matter at hand.

And so it goes. *

"It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as folly." --Winston Churchill