Take a look at the picture on the upper left of this page of the L.A. Times (go ahead, sign in using ‘laexaminer’/’laexaminer’, it’s worth it).
Notice anything?? Look closely at the U.S. soldier’s hand.
It’s a woman soldier.
Look at the expressions on the faces of all the boys standing around her.
Tell me their views of the world won’t be damn different different five years from now, because of this.
(fixed dumb error…’ago’ should have been ‘from now’)
Two truly depressing articles in today’s L.A. Times (intrusive registration required, just use ‘laexaminer’/’laexaminer’). The first one on schools in St. Louis, and the reaction to change.
ST. LOUIS – The school district was broke – and failing. Half of all high school freshmen quit before graduation. Fewer than 7% of juniors scored “proficient” on a state reading and writing test.
In desperation, the school board took a radical route: They handed control of public education here to a corporate turnaround firm from New York.
Alvarez & Marsal has a 20-year track record of restructuring companies in crisis, from clothing manufacturer London Fog to the Trump Casinos, from Liquor Barn retail stores to Arthur Andersen accounting. But its experts had never applied their business models to public education. The school board here gave them a $4.8-million contract to try.
No other urban school district has ever offered itself up for such an overhaul.
The result has been dramatic change and fierce public anger.
Why the anger? From here, it sounds like he’s doing a good job:
The management consultants put William V. Roberti, a former Brooks Brothers chief executive, in charge of the district, with the title of acting superintendent. He can’t fathom why his reforms have provoked such rage.
Districts across the nation have let teachers go and class sizes swell, but here, Roberti has cut $60 million from the budget without laying off a single classroom teacher. He has made sure that kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers have no more than 23 students – down from 25 last year. He’s also hired 94 “literacy coaches” to work full time on reading.
In short, he’s doing just what he did in the private sector: helping his client focus on what counts. For Brooks Brothers, that was selling suits. For the St. Louis Public Schools, it’s educating kids. Anything not directly related to that mission goes.
Before Roberti took over, the district ran a warehouse to distribute books, a property management division to tend to 40 unused buildings, even a greenhouse to grow plants for classrooms. He swiftly dismantled those operations.
Sounds good so far, right?
But many in St. Louis have made it clear they don’t want their schools run like a corporation. They want their schools to be community anchors.
“If there is such a budget crisis in this district, why are they spending all this money for an outside firm to come in and bulldoze our community?” asked the Rev. Timothy Tyler, who decided to send his daughter to a suburban district this year rather than face the turmoil here.
It might make business sense to shut down 16 schools with declining enrollment. To parents, though, those schools were often the only safe, stable haven in their neighborhoods.
It might make business sense to privatize food service and custodial work. But to parents, that means hundreds of neighbors will lose jobs with benefits. It means that lunch ladies and janitors who had worked in the same school for decades will be replaced by a rotating cast of minimum-wage contract workers.
…
“It’s no good for kids and it’s not fair to taxpayers,” said Eric Thomas, 41, a machine operator. He will keep his son, Shawn, home in protest on Monday – and if need be, for weeks to come, until the district is in new hands. “As long as it takes,” he said.
Roberti finds such criticism exasperating. When he took over, the school district had a $90-million deficit out of a $450-million budget. Substitutes were running hundreds of classrooms due to a shortage of credentialed teachers. Test scores were so bad that the district has only provisional state accreditation.
Financial oversight in recent years has been so lax that the district was spending $50,000 a year insuring vehicles it no longer owned. Last year, the district spent nearly $450,000, the equivalent of a dozen teacher salaries, to cater banquets for meetings often attended by just a handful of staff. “The facts are, this place was a mess,” Roberti said. “People in St. Louis have to decide: Do we want to have a great system to educate our kids, or do we want a bloated system that gives a lot of people jobs?”
There, in a nutshell, is the issue that will face anyone who, like me, wants to support government social programs. What is the program for? Is it there to really deliver a service, or to provide stable jobs for people in the communities – a good thing – and political patronage for the powerful – a not-so-good thing. How do you impose the kind of controls that any enterprise needs – which imply a kind of centralization – with the demands of public service?
Before you answer, take a look at another story in today’s Times, and make the contrast:
Born out of the Watts riots and embattled throughout its 31-year history, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center this week faces one of its greatest challenges yet – saving its ability to train new doctors.
On Tuesday, King/Drew and its medical school will attempt to convince an outside reviewer that they have corrected myriad problems in programs that prepare doctors to specialize in everything from delivering babies to operating on gunshot victims.
The hospital, owned by Los Angeles County, depends heavily on its group of 331 trainees to care for its patients, most of whom are impoverished African Americans or Latinos. Without those physicians, it is unclear how King/Drew would serve this population.
In 2000, the last time the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education reviewed how King/Drew trains residents overall, the council gave the hospital a rare “unfavorable” rating. Nationwide, of the 374 institutions with more than one residency program, only 13 have an unfavorable designation.
And it looks like that designation may well be coming, barring political pressure to change it.
* Six of King/Drew’s 18 residency programs recently have received sanctions from the council conducting this week’s site visit. The radiology program is slated to lose its accreditation in June, meaning it must be closed. Revocation also has been proposed for the surgery program, although the university plans to seek a reconsideration within the allotted 30 days.The anesthesiology, family medicine, neonatal-perinatal and internal medicine departments either have been placed on probation or received warnings in the last two years. The accrediting council has cited problems ranging from inadequate supervision to insufficient medical research by the faculty.
* Far more King/Drew-trained residents fail the exams required to become certified as medical specialists than at other institutions nationally. Of the 25 King/Drew pediatric residents who took the boards between 2000 and 2002, for example, only 36% passed on their first try – tied for the second-lowest in the country, according to the American Board of Pediatrics.
* The amount of work available for residents has decreased markedly. The number of admissions at the hospital has dropped 40% in the last 10 years and the number of births more than 85%. The accrediting council requires that residents perform a certain number of procedures to practice safely and independently upon completing the program.
But the management team is in denial.
“Of course, we are concerned that the possibility exists that we might not be able to have residencies, but this is something that we have to deal with,” said Dr. Charles Francis, president of Drew University. “We have, I think, successfully responded to every challenge that we’ve been faced with.”
During the last institutional review, the accrediting group cited King/Drew for a lack of commitment, insufficient supervision of residents, overworking residents and using them for inappropriate chores, according to a summary provided by the county.
Here’s a case of a failing institution – failing not only the students who train there but the sick and helpless who come there for treatment.
And it raises a broader question for the communities effected: What’s important to you? And for those of us who fund these institutions, and must deal with the consequences, What’s important to us?
Clearly, something’s got to change. We can’t afford more St. Louis schools or more King/Drew hospitals. And we can’t afford the kids who come out of the schools or the patients who come out – or don’t – of the hospital.
I’ve followed the Pauline Hanson story recently with a bit of interest, and have some questions I thought I’d toss into the luminiferous ether to see what floats back.
For those who don’t use Google News as a homepage (you all do, right?) there was a brief flurry of stories a few weeks back about a right-wing populist MP in Oz who’d been charged with and imprisoned for electoral fraud (here’s a good overview).Now there’s something in me that rejoices when politicians go to jail, because it shows that we all stand more-or-less equal before the law. But usually it’s for more venal things than this seemed. the base of the charge seemed kind of sketchy. It appears that she turned in petitions with the names of supporters, rather than party members, to get her party chartered. First, I can’t vouch of the exactitude of the charge (it’s only vaguely described in several of the articles I’ve seen). But if it is accurate, it’s potentially kind of alarming; this is the kind of dodgy paperwork that candidates do all the time (I should know, I’ve been an officer in several campaigns, and spent a lot of time cleaning up these kind of messes) and are typically fined for.
So, out there in browserland, I’m wondering. What’s the story here? because the one thing that makes me damn uncomfortable is the thought that a politician unpopular with the authorities may wind up in jail for something others would get a ‘pass’ on. Note: I’m not in any way suggesting that that’s the case here. What I’m trying to do is see if anyone knows more about it and can enlighten me.
Browsing Norman Geras’ excellent blog, I was referred to a Guardian column by leftist UK MP Michael Meacher that manages to approach Hollywood standards of integrity in speech (“Hello,” he lied being the classic example).
Meacher explains it all for us. It’s titled This war on terrorism is bogus, and contends that the 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination. Go read it now, and then come on back for some comments.
“Massive attention has now been given – and rightly so – to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.
We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush’s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Go read the actual document here.
The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”. It refers to key allies such as the UK as “the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership”. It describes peacekeeping missions as “demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN”. It says “even should Saddam pass from the scene”, US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently… as “Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has”. It spotlights China for “regime change”, saying “it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia”.
Note that the earlier document is unsourced by Meacher; it appears to be from the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, excepts of which can be found here.
Meacher then goes on to discuss the current document:
The document also calls for the creation of “US space forces” to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent “enemies” using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons “that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.
I especially love the last part, which if true would convict the U.S. of a genocidal policy (which we’ve discussed ad nauseam here; interesting to note the reference in a serious document which I believe we all missed at the time). Unfortunately, the document doesn’t remotely say that. What it says instead is:
Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes. Air warfare may no longer be fought by pilots manning tactical fighter aircraft sweeping the skies of opposing fighters, but a regime dominated by long-range, stealthy unmanned craft. On land, the clash of massive, combined-arms armored forces may be replaced by the dashes of much lighter, stealthier and information-intensive forces, augmented by fleets of robots, some small enough to fit in soldiers’ pockets. Control of the sea could be largely determined not by fleets of surface combatants and aircraft carriers, but from land- and space-based systems, forcing navies to maneuver and fight underwater. Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and noncombatants – will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.
The report is obviously dealing with the environment U.S. force planners will have to respond to, not the one they will necessarily create. Nowhere in the document does it contemplate a U.S. effort to develop biological weapons; just to respond to their use by others.
He goes to on explain that the 9/11 attacks must have been deliberately accepted by the Bush administration as a lever to move U.S. and world opinion to accept the coming Middle East war.
I tend to avoid the more conspiratorial side of the web, but for now, I’ll just box this claim as a “Bush Knew” claim and set it aside. He explains the theory that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor, and then says:
Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into “tomorrow’s dominant force” is likely to be a long one in the absence of “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the “go” button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.
Let’s go back to the document:
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval. Likewise, systems entering production today – the F-22 fighter, for example – will be in service inventories for decades to come. Wise management of this process will consist in large measure of figuring out the right moments to halt production of current-paradigm weapons and shift to radically new designs. interests or that of its allies in space or the “infosphere” will find it difficult to exert global political leadership.
In Meacher’s world, it sounds deadly and sinister, In reality, it sounds like the kind of disclaimer analysts make continually (ceteris paribus – if everything stays the same).
His explanation for the war is simple. It’s all about the oiiiiilll…we want Iraq for the oil and gas, and we want Afghanistan for … the pipeline.
On one hand, he’s right…a stable Middle East is an important guarantor of a stable world economy, and in fact that alone is enough to give the West a strategic interest there. But I’ll point out the obvious fact that Saddam was willing to sell all the oil he could to anyone, and certainly would have welcomed U.S. interest in exploiting his resources for cash to build more palaces. There are much more economical and effective ways of guaranteeing a supply of oil from people who want to sell it to us than invading them.
He concludes:
The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the “global war on terrorism” has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda – the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.
Personally, I’d start at the next by-election. He’s an embarrassment to the U.K. and to the left in general.
Right about now, Biggest Guy is signing the paperwork to join the Air Force ROTC. As I understand it (looks like I probably won’t see the docs until they’re signed), he’s one step away from the six-year commitment – apparently ten if you’re pilot-trained.
But he’s all happy about the fact that out of the 2002 class, 22 UVA grads applied for pilot training slots and 21 got them.
And if he’s happy, I guess I ought to be too.
But I’m still kinda anxious about the whole thing…
I followed the referrer logs (as I do obsessively) over to Donald Sensing’s, and got a present. He writes about the nature of poverty in the U.S. and the world, and talks about a couple of hours he spent lessening the burden on one specific poor person he met as she walked down the highway away from her flat-tired car. If you haven’t read it yet, go read it now. He manages in one post to do three things:
* He illuminates what the life of the struggling poor looks like here in the U.S.;
* He compares it effectively with what it looks like in the rest of the world, and talks about the hopeful changes that are happening with little notice (linking to M. Simon’s piece below);
* And most of all, he lets you see what goodness looks like from the inside, and the cascade effect that one good act can have in inducing others to do good.
“She was en route from Murfreesboro, 30 miles distant, to my town of Franklin to appear in court appearance for a non-traffic misdemeanor charge. She was late, so I took her to the court and went in to verify her reason for lateness to the judge if necessary. It wasn’t, but I hung around anyway.
Rhonda was in her mid-thirties, a single, welfare mom with a four-year-old daughter. She had no family in Tennessee, nor any real friends, being a fairly new resident to the area. She had lost her job last week (she had been a restaurant hostess) because no child care was available for her evening shift. She had been taking her daughter to work but management had let her go for that reason.
I had called the sheriff’s dispatch and asked them not to tow her car if possible, but when thunderstorm moved in the deputy on patrol decided it had to go. Knowing the road, I can’t blame him. But the tow charge would cost Rhonda $75, which she didn’t have, and she’d still have to fix her tire.
The judge threw out the legal charge. Her public defender wrangled a deal with the tow operator and the sheriff’s department that if the department called that tow company for the next tow, they’d not charge Rhonda. Everyone agreed, so that was a relief. The tow lot hosed enough air into her tire to get up the road a stretch to a a Marathon gas station that had a garage.”
Now I know that things like this happen almost every day. I make it a habit to stop and help people – I’m a first responder. To be honest, I’m also somewhat less vulnerable than the average highway user, so it’s pretty safe for me. And I’m forever in the debt of people who’ve stopped to help me and mine; Miguel, who stopped his pickup truck and offered his cell phone – mine, being digital, of course had no signal – when Tenacious G had her motorcycle crash outside Bakersfield two years ago, and others over the years as well.
I’ll also toss in a (doubtless controversial) policy suggestion we can take where the French actually do something right: My ex – sister in law runs a creche in Paris. The French have a system of public childcare that plugs directly into the public school system, and can deal with children as young as 18 months.
Sensing commented: “That’s the nutshell problem: babysitting or child care, low wages and generally unreliable transportation.” The leg of this tripod that can best b dealt with is childcare. While in an ideal world, a parent would stay home with children, for low wage workers this isn’t remotely an option.
And while I’m not thrilled with the job our public school systems are doing, they’re nonetheless doing a pretty good job as I can directly testify from the experience of my three sons.
I’ve been lucky (and hardworking and disciplined) enough that childcare for my sons was never an issue, and been able to be at jobs where I could walk off for a day to take care of a sick child without feeling my job was at risk. Rhonda, and the millions like her in the U.S. aren’t.
I’m glad beyond belief that Donald was there to help, and that he’s the kind of man he obviously is.
I’d hope that I, and those of you reading this, might think to do the same.
And, in case you wonder why I’m a liberal, it’s because I’d love to see if there is anything we can do to lighten the burden and smooth the path of all the Rhondas out there.
Libertarian Arthur Silber’s rant about the review of the Bush Administration’s conduct of the war (from an article in the Democratic Washington Times) took me to Stanley Kurtz’s (his e-mail) lame defense of today’s actions in The National Review. I know it’s bad form to Fisk in 2003, but sometimes life just hands you a hanging curveball and you have to swing away:
The president’s decision to turn to the United Nations for assistance in the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq makes a great deal of sense. It certainly isn’t the ideal approach, but given the divisions within our country, and our general unwillingness to enlarge our military, the president’s decision is reasonable.
I’m sorry, I thought the President was the one who made decisions about the size of the military; it is after all, his Constitutional legal (under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921) duty to propose a budget. I wasn’t aware that it was a consensus activity; no one’s asked me, for example.
[Update: Bush to mount ‘very aggressive’ campaign to explain U.S. mission in Iraq. About freaking time.For one thing, it might actually work out. To the extent that we can make use of United Nations troops, while continuing to exercise control, the move will have been a success. But of course, the French and Germans, and the United Nations as a whole, will do their best to wrest control from the United States.
If you believe in fairies, clap your hands now…(and as in “What’s Up, Tiger Lily,” the hero’s gun will be magically reloaded…)
The real point is that politically, this was the least bad option. As I pointed out a year ago in “Supersize It,” http://nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz080202.asp our too small military put the president in a political trap. The choice was either to break the budget, eliminate domestic spending and lose the claim to a compassionate conservatism, or repeal the tax cut.
Damn right. Can’t let national security get in the way of a tax cut!! Can’t make any demands on the American people, or lead us in any way whatsoever. Let the other generations sacrifice, we’re on Atkins.
All of these are politically unacceptable. So the alternative was to hand off at least some control of Iraq to the U.N.
No, there were a number of other alternatives, among which was carefully weighing the costs before invading and making sure we had the assets in hand to succeed. We could have done a better job isolating the French and Germans before the war. We could have tried to split the Russians off from the French and Germans after we invaded. Those are three reasonable alternatives, and I’m only a voter.
That actually has the political upside of taking an issue away from the Democrats, who had hoped to run on the claim that the Bush administration was dangerously unilateralist.
Who was it who criticized the Democrats for creating defense policy by worrying about how it would play, and not how it would work?
Is this the best foreign policy? No. The best foreign policy requires not the United Nations, but a united nation. Unfortunately, our nation is not united. The occupation of Iraq is not the occupation of Japan or Germany. This is even more because of the fact that we are different than we were back then than the fact that Iraq is not Japan or Germany.
What kills me is that the victim mentality has, according to this, reached the Oval Office. Bush isn’t a leader, and isn’t to be judged by his success as a leader; he’s just the helpless captive of forces beyond his control. Hang on, I’m going to go rewrite Lincoln’s speeches in that light…
A house divided against itself cannot stand. A nation where the political opposition stands against our foreign policy, and even secretly (and not so secretly) hopes for its failure, cannot reform a region as recalcitrant as the Middle East.
Well, Bush had the opportunity to take that political opposition and weld their feet to a set of policies. He chose short-term political advantage instead. Sorry ’bout that.
A nation where…even after an event like 9/11…a draft can be offered as a political tactic against the hawks, is a nation unready to manage social transformation on the other side of the world. Our culture war is real. Now it has taken its toll.
That’s because the hawks did a piss-poor job of selling the reasons for this war to the general public.
In many ways we are strong. Yet disunited we are weak. Our turning to the U.N. is not necessarily a disaster. But it is a sign that our internal divisions have finally exacted a cost.
He gets paid for this? He’s one of the leading neo-con commentators and he can summarize his argument with this pablum? “…is not necessarily a disaster?” “…have finally exacted a cost?” I’m sorry, I thought the destruction of the WTC and damage to the Pentagon was a disaster. I thought that our incoherent foreign policy over twenty years, which tolerated Wahabbism and radical Islamist institutions, and helped create Al Queida exacted a cost. Bush’s weakness at a critical moment is what’s exacting a cost.
MORE UPDATES:
* In a great post extending this and the post below, Porphy busted me on a point of law; the Constitution says nothing about the President submitting a budget. I will stamp my feet and insist he’s wrong about my use of ‘crowing’ however…it may not be OED, but it’s current usage). See also his follow-up post.
I’m really unhappy about the Administration’s new approach to the U.N. in search of troops, financial support, and legitimacy for the Iraq occupation.
I’m unhappy for four reasons.
First, and foremost, I’m unhappy because I think that the U.N. as presently constituted is damn unlikely to be a positive force in Iraq. The forces within Germany and France that traded oil for weapons with Saddam will see this as a way to avoid the scrutiny they deserve, and the dysfunctional U.N. will itself see this as a shot in the arm, keeping it from going through the changes it needs to become a truly effective and legitimate international organization, as opposed to what it is…a corrupt debating club, that is used to provide diplomatic cover for oligarchs, kleptocrats, and the corporate and political bureaucrats who serve them.Second, I’m unhappy because the one thing I know we need to succeed in this war is an iron butt…the patience and solidity to just stick it out long after it stops being comfortable. And this feels to me like a demonstration that the anticipation of discomfort is backing us way up on the positions we’ve taken up to now.
Third, I’m unhappy because we’ve wasted what should have been a political and diplomatic opportunity to create a new set of ad hoc international structures more to our liking and, more important, more likely to be effective in the current conflict; whether the alliances would have been with Russia or Brazil, India or Norway. Instead of sticking it out and doing the diplomatic horsetrading that we should have done…and I’m hard pressed to believe that there weren’t horses to trade…we looked our opponents in the eyes, raised big, and then folded at the next opportunity.
Finally, I’m unhappy because this will make any followup to Iraq…whether it involves pressure on Iran or Syria…vastly more difficult, as we’ll be dependent on the goodwill…if such a thing exists…of the U.N.
I think there is a chance to reform the U.N. and the existing international organizations. That slim chance will only exist if there is a real threat to the organizations, and they see their only options as reform or irrelevance – because irrelevance will be followed by defunding, and the cushy, tax-free jobs will vanish.
I don’t see how this gets spun as anything but what it is, which is Rage, Rage, Against the Dying of the Light” and “Clarification“. But thanks to Chirac et. al., within 48 hours “Happy Days Are Here Again“.
* Michael Ubaldi comments: “Nerves Fail, A Little Bit.”
* Cold Fury comments: “Guzzling the U.N. Kool-Aid”
* Caerdroia comments: “Why the U.N.? Why Now?”
* Flame Turns Blue comments: “U.S. Seeks U.N. Resolution“
One of the problems with blogging is the ‘scrum’ nature of it; ideas circulate, everyone piles on, trying to add their $0.02 before the ball squirts away and you start all over.
It also means that sometimes if you wait a little bit, someone else will write your blog post for you.
In my case, I’ve spent the weekend doing house maintenance and kid stuff, while thinking about a post on MEChA and Bustamante. Then Ted Barlow went and wrote my post for me, posted over at ‘Crooked Timber’. Go take a look…I’ll wait.Now in the traditional political spectrum, the average reader of this blog is more than a wee bit to my right, I’ll hazard. And that makes them quite a bit to Ted’s right. So you’ll forgive me if I make some assumptions about what your reaction might be:
1. It is not a ‘bullshit issue’, Bustamante was a part of a secretive organization which as recently as 2001 reaffirmed it’s intention to pull the Southwest states out of the U.S.!!
First, and foremost, let’s talk about MEChA. It’s a campus organization, formed in the late 60’s, with the express intent of creating a support network and advocacy group for Latino students. It has never done anything else. The rhetoric in which that group was wrapped – and still is wrapped – is rhetoric which I heard day in and day out as a politics student and student politician in California universities in the early 70’s and again as a grad student in the late 70’s.
There’s a funny thing about historical perspective. On one hand, you look at things and say, “Jefferson and Washington owned slaves,” and you agree “yeah, that was wrong, but that’s what gentlemen did back in that era.” Do you judge them – and their era – entirely by today’s values, or do you judge them by the values – however appropriate or inappropriate – that were in force at that time and in that place? Or, better still, do you meld the two and understand them in the context of what was, and judge them both for who they were in that context and outside it?
At every American university in the late 1960’s, radical left politics became the framework within which most issues were viewed, analyzed, and acted upon. Not by everyone, certainly. And not to the same extent in every case. But the language…the metaphors and the means of description…changed.
And language like that of the MEChA constitution became common.
Now part of what’s always been interesting to me about the New Left is how shallow the beliefs really have always been. It was what kept me out of it then and what makes me look on it now more as a kind of affectation. I’ve always felt that the underlying corrosive beliefs were far more dangerous than the actions of the self-styled radicals, who were acting out their adolescent rebellion using the political excuses the ideology gave them. I always felt (and feel I was right) that they would slot neatly into their white-collar career tracks as soon as they got through the “rebellion, sex and drugs” experimentation to which their new liberty entitled them.
And, similarly, in looking at the reality of MEChA – the actual organization and the behavior of its members, it is an ethnic advocacy group, neatly bound within the confines of typical interest group university politics. It’s interesting to me that in all the brouhaha over MEChA, that there are no concrete examples of antiwhite, deeply radical, dangerous behavior on the part of all these MEChA chapters. And that everyone who has direct experience with the organization is dismissive of the claims that it is a subversive or radical organization – or even a racist one, outside the current standard of ‘ethnic correctness’ and minority empowerment. Note that I’m not happy with those standards, and that I tend to share Erin O’Connor’s views of many of them. But to raise an organization which has no existence outside campuses to the level of the KKK – which murdered and lynched people into the 1960’s – is itself rhetorical bullshit of the highest order.
2. Bustamante should have disavowed his membership! Yes, if in fact MEChA was some secretive group of nightriders, he should have. But much of the Latino political leadership of California – as well as other states’ – is a product of MEChA. The problem lies much in the same vein as the problem politicians who are members of exclusive clubs had in the 80’s, in which their clubs tended not to include minorities and women but did tend to include much of your power base – if you repudiate the club, you are by extension isolating yourself from the key players on whom you rely for your power.
And I tend to think that the problem is going to be solved in much the same way. I think that like the University Club and the California Club, MEChA will change because it will otherwise be a liability to the Latinos who are already taking power within the larger institutions.
I think that this “crisis,” as minor as it may be – will force MEChA and the politically ambitious young Latinos who make up it’s membership today to confront the contradiction between their charter documents – which are an empty expression of adolescent ethnic pride – and their desire to succeed on the larger scale.
I have teenage sons, and so I’m used to the exaggerated rhetoric that youth uses to define itself against age; that’s part of the process of standing up for oneself and becoming an adult.
Similarly, I’ve come to the personal conclusion that the kind of rhetoric and exaggerated ethnic nationalism were appropriate for that first crop of Latino kids who got into the universities through affirmative action, and who had a thin field of Latino mentors and role models to look up to.
But in an adult, teenage behavior is both tiresome and counterproductive. And it’s time for MEChA to put aside the things of its youth – to look at them, if they choose, as historical artifacts, and to acknowledge that the Latino experience has moved far past the point where Aztlan – as a place or a state of mind – is worth pursuing. Because it’s not needed any more and because there’s something better out there.
UPDATES:
* Porphy comments
* Juan non-Volokh of Volokh Conspiracy comments
In response to the Alabama/10 Commandments flap which I blogged in “God and Man In Alabama” and “Moses Supposes“, Donald Sensing put up 2 thoughtful posts.
In the first, he challenges the parties to the decision to answer a set of thought questions designed to explore the boundaries of whether the State can honor God. In the second, he challenges the supposition that no state-favored display of religion is possible by pointing to the statue of Athena placed in a park.
I’m going to leave the first alone as more of an issue for Lawrence Solum or one of the Volokhs; but I do want to talk about the second.
In one of my comments to ‘Moses Supposes‘, I said:
I’ve always been irked at people who challenge Nativity displays or menorahs in parks, because I find that to be well within the tradition of ‘reverence’ I talk about above. Other, similarly celebratory expressions don’t bother me at all.
But to put it in the courthouse (or the legislative chamber) says to me that this law isn’t the law of the State, but the law of God, and at that point I start to itch pretty badly.
And that pretty neatly wraps my position; I think we should encourage public displays of reverence … of all kinds, including the occasional statue of Gautama and even Ganesha. Clearly there are some lines; I’d rather followers of the houdoun don’t slaughter goats in public parks, and believers in Bacchus hold their bacchanals on private property.
Now, in truth, some of these have become secularized through use over the years – Athena in most architectural art represents a generalized ‘wisdom symbol’, and there are no living worshippers at her temples as far as I know.
But displays tied to living religions must be carefully separated from the power of the state. I don’t want to walk into a courtroom and see a Torah, or a Gohonzon. Judges are certainly free to keep them in their chambers, or keep them on their person, but to display them as a part of the fabric of the building, or of the institution, is to imply that the fabric of the law is tightly bound with a religious – as opposed to cultural – doctrine. That is to me deeply offensive.
Believers and nonbelievers may come to the state capital and do business. Animists and Episcopalians alike may come to City Hall and get their zoning ordinances, and I think that anything that suggests otherwise needs to go.
So parks and public squares – sure! Courthouses, legislative chambers, city halls – nope. To me, there is a clear difference, in that there are many parks, which may embrace many historic or cultural or religious themes. I’m free to work to get my hero, god, or symbol incorporated into one.
But the instruments of state power cannot be escaped. And anything that suggests that they favor one religion or culture or group over another – that we are not all equal before the majesty of the law – is wrong.