48 thoughts on “How Freaking WeirdEntertaining Would It Be…”
Why would I give a rat’s ass about some idiot who keeps Michelle Malkins hate site in his blogroll?
Thanks for letting us know you feel comradeship with a right wing nutter like this guy. We’ll try to keep that in mind next time you claim to support liberal causes.
Calvin, you must be *this tall* to come play here, and people who confuse Michelle Malkin’s sometimes controversial positions with real hate speech probably aren’t.
You’re defending Michelle Malkin as “controversial”?
I’d love to get your impressions of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity or the Bush families favorite hatemonger, Rush Limbaugh.
Because anyone who links to or defends a site where comments like this are allowed to stand is of questionable character and motive. She clearly has a big problems with African and Muslim Americans:
On July 12th, 2007 at 5:47 pm, gayle said:
Whites have become the suppressed society in the South.
I wish the Charlotte mayor would run for Governor or better yet, the Senate.
He’d get my vote!
Black, black, black, Afro American, gangster, rap,…..blah, blah, blah,
WHO CARES? Call me cracker, I am not offended. Most of them in this area want a free ride…welfare, babies out of wedlock, walking the streets, wearing designer duds, selling drugs, crime, – it’s sickening!
I hope they compete with all the illegals. Fun to watch that unfold!
White; the new minority in NC
So, as I said, it’s interesting to note that you link favorably to a site where her’s is prominently linked to. Perhaps it inadvertantly has revealed something about your own racial attitudes as well, after all, tolerance is support.
That’s a cute one. Who told you that? Convince me that if you walk by a vandalized building on the way to work every day for a month, you are supporting vandals.
A passerby might even say “nice building — I sure wish the owner had more time to maintain it to my standards…”
AL points to that passerby, so he’s a bigot? Great.
It’s tough to be a supporter of the idea that the cure for bad speech is better speech *and* of the idea that blogs are like bars, and eventually you have to throw the riff raff out. Thus my problem with a total “tolerance equals support”.
Let’s not forget Michelle Malkin on the internment of Japanese-Americans.
Myself, I’m annoyed at her slamming Teresa Heinz Kerry for not always using the same surname. Now check the copyright notice on one of Ms. Malkin’s books—at least in 2004, it was still in her maiden name. Don’t you guys ever tire of IOKIYAR?
Oh, Calvin … how about a dig into the comments sections of Kos or Huffpo? Most sites aren’t lucky enough (or small enough) to maintain great comments sections like the one here.
AJL – her position on internment is absolutely controversial (I don’t agree with it). But as someone married to a Japanese American, I’ve been exposed to enough of the particular history to understand the moment the policy sprung from. And while that will never excuse it. it does help me understand it. And it’s certainly not much different – to me – than your – to me controversial – economic accounting for slavery.
A.L., Michelle Malkin isn’t in the business of understanding or excusing the internment of Japanese-Americans based on the morés of the time. She thinks, today, that it was a positively good, thoroughly justifiable act that prevented acts of sabotage.
I do agree with you that hunting through site’s comment sections can be unfair. In Malkin’s case, it is also unnecessary.
Malkin’s sites (or lgf, redstate for that matter) aren’t filled with hateful posts because the owners are “unlucky” or they’re too large to police them. Lots of sites bigger and smaller do this routinely.
The problem is that their posts are intended to elicit these reactions purposefully. They are endorsing these ideas by leaving them up, precisely because they’re in the business of inciting hate, mostly against fellow Americans. Now if that’s the kind of behavior you call “controversial” I’m wondering whether you have the capacity to recognize these deeply troubling and corrosive views. Leading me to question yours.
I don’t think your approach will change anyones mind. It’s pretty clear that you don’t read this site often enough to grasp why this post was put up in the first place.
I’d take your comment #1 to be a simply poor troll, that sadly has elicited a response. Odd how you use the word “tolerance” yet appear to not have any yourself.
Now back to the thrust of the post, I personally would think it would be pretty sweet to be Iowahawks kid. How killer would it be to go down and see the Orbitron in person and hang with CooP.
AJL – We’ve got an interesting problem in this time, because retrospective mining of the old intelligence documents shows that there was some rational basis for concern. Just as retroactive minimg of the Verona documents shows that there was some basis for McCarthy’s concerns.
But the values today would never support – gladly, from my point of view – the kinds of reactions that FDR and Truman and Eisenhower made into policies based on the concerns that were evident at the time.
I don’t read Malkin a lot, so I’m prepared to be told I’m wrong here, but my interpretation of her comments on internment were that a) there was some basis for the concern (which I don’t think is arguable); b) given the racial mores of the time, those concerns got overinflated; and c) that given the real concerns and the racist context of the time, the reaction was understandable and therefore OK. As much as I can support a) b) and much of c) – I still think that she’s deeply wrong in her conclusion.
But I don’t think that it rises to the level of error that someone could in good faith call racist itself.
Well, another thread hi-jacked. (sigh) I was prepared to make some (hopefully) pithy–to use one of O’Reilly”s favorite words–comments about Iowahawk. But…….if one consideres the Japanese internment question, put yourselves in FDR’s shoes. What if he had not issued the order and subsequently there was significant sabotage traced to the Japanese American community? Firstly, FDR would have come under heavy attack personally for leaving this group free to the extent it probably would have affected his chances for re-election, and secondly, it probably saved many Japanese-Americans/Japanese in America from grievous harm from vigilante action had such sabotage indeed occurred. And as practically everyone involved believed America to be engaged in a life or death struggle with the fate of the Republic hanging in the balance, such actions are more than understandable. In short, it was the _Zeitgeist_ of the times.
To truly appreciate how much the national mood can influence decision-makers one only need compare the way in which the Supreme Court upheld a popular President’s actions in the internment cases(which is still good law today), to the contra decision slapping Truman on the wrist in the Youngstown Steel and Tube case a few short years later. Here was essentially the same court feeling free to limit the power of an unpopular President in an unpopular war for the exact same reason the steel workers felt it safe to strike, i.e.,the fate of the Republic was not hanging in the balance. N.Korea didn’t even have a Navy and the ICBM hadn’t been invented yet. American soil was not threatened. By contrast, no steelworker would have ever entertained the thought of striking during WWII. The temper of the times is everything. I am not impressed with the moralistic monday-morning quarter-backing of today’s critics of the Internment program any more than I am with the _au currant_ revisionist histories regarding Truman’s decision to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan.
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bq. I’m curious why Iowa Hawk apparently pixelated his and his wives faces in the images but not the kids.
bq. Not very hawkish.
I disagree. It is perfectly in keeping with the modern brand of Right wing neo-conservative Hawks who are more than happy to risk other people’s lives and spend other people’s money to further their own warped warmongering causes.
Once again I take it as a revelation that the Armed Liberal thinks highly of such a person.
Calvin, how long did you have to practice to get so good at jumping the shark? I’d ask Davebo, but he’s not so new around here, and he might have been using irony or something.
Let me be brief in respect of Malkin, given that it isn’t the point of the thread. I would suggest this link for a fuller understanding of her claims, and why the alleged new MAGIC evidence doesn’t support internment. (While the Japanese were all for recruiting spies, they were generally employing Caucasian traitors for the purpose when they found anyone at all.) Your reading of Malkin is excessively generous. As you can see, I’m all for some charity in looking at acts of less enlightened ages. Malkin justifies the internment even in the light of what we know now. To be honest, flat-out anti-Japanese bigotry in a Pinay doesn’t much shock me.
As far as the main point of the thread, I must say that although it’s better than the alternaitve that Iowahawk does great things with his children, I think many people with utterly appalling political views are fine parents.
I reject Malkin’s views on Japanese internment completely. If I were of Filipino descent myself I might feel differently, but in that case I would still be wrong.
Fortunately, I can disagree with Malkin without hating her. And without having other non-liberals turn on me like a pack of mad dogs.
And I don’t have to walk around with a little bitch list in my head, like Calvin, so I don’t have to remember things like “A.L. linked to Iowahawk who linked to Malkin, therefore I must hate him.”
Calvin, note that while you came in guns blazing and are treating this as an open thread, the WoC “comments guidelines”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/003367.php exist quite independent of your sense of righteousness.
You’re all over the page here (in both senses), and your output thus far doesn’t mark you as having much promise as a civil participant at WoC.
Perhaps that is not why you are here. Perhaps you are merely here to stick a finger in the eye of the bad guys.
You have the benefit of the doubt: you are cordially invited to stick around and post your viewpoints on entries that actually correlate to the points you seem to have strong feelings about making.
Keep the other thing up long enough, in enough cases, and you will eventually be invited to have a nice day somewhere else. [You’re skating really close to that already.]
No Winds Marshal will get joy from issuing that invitation, should it come to that.
Calvin: Also, let it be known that we had another contributor here who liked anonymizers as much as you seem to. Should I ask you if you are the same person? Would you answer truthfully if I did?
Calvin, Calvin, Calvin…you’ve been here less than a week and you think you can lecture me on my poor character?
Look, you’re a troll. I’ll go a step further than Nort and suggest that a) you need to answer his question frankly; and b) you need to make something resembling an argument before you wave your innate superiority in our faces any more – or you can just vanish.
I’m not holding my breath waiting to see what you decide…
Calvin: Are you someone we’ve banned here already, posting under a new nick? Please answer yes or no, and please speak truthfully. Failure to answer this question convincingly, in a timely manner, is grounds for a ban (vide AL’s comment supra). Thanks for your attention to this matter.
My take on Malkin and internment is roughly parallel to AJL’s if more charitable. At the time, I followed much of the debate memorialized in the link in AJL’s comment #21.
In my opinion, Malkin took a serious look at the events leading up to the USG’s decision to intern Japanese-Americans, including some relatively new information on American decrypts of Japanese radio traffic. Her book was an exercise in trying to understand things as American policy-makers did at the time. Malkin’s conclusion was that internment was an understandable and to some extent justified reaction to the threats posed by the Japanese.
Everybody (well, not everybody, Calvin) likes an underdog, and the idea of an amateur showing up the dogma of the professional historians’ consensus was well-received… certainly in those quarters that were predisposed to doubt another lesson from the America-always-bad reader.
Unfortunately for Malkin, she had misread some key documents and had gotten some of the chronology wrong. Historian Eric Muller blogged about these mistakes and how they undermined Malkin’s revisionist view; he was later joined in his debunking by Greg Robinson. Malkin, as I recollect it, wasn’t able to take a fresh look, admit error, and back off. Instead, she doubled down, and ended up looking both mistaken and foolish to many onlookers.
I see this as an ordinary human failing, not as evidence of hideous moral corruption. It’s hard to say “what I thought was black and white turns out to have shades of gray.” Far less, “I was wrong.”
Does the whole imbroglio make me more skeptical when Malkin opines on other issues? Yes. Does it place her beyond the border of civil society? If that standard was to be applied in an ideology-free way, she’d have a fair amount of company. Including, of course, the renowned sock-puppeteer who counts himself as one of Malkin’s worst nightmares.
Back on topic: Yeah, it would be cool to be in Iowahawk’s family.
I’m with Texan99. Iowahawk will simply water your eyes at times.
Following on AMac on Malkin, and reflecting on my earlier post, I wish to clarify my point somewhat–or rather add things previously unsaid. The thrust of my remarks was not to defend Malkin’s scholarship, but rather to caution that such actions as were taken must be put in the context of the temper of the times. Were such times racist? Were there bigots at all levels of government? The answer is obviously yes–although probably most of them would not have thought so. Group-think is a quite common phenomenon. The song “Dixie” used to be played at the start of every college football game in the South until the mid-sixties–and most who sang along would not have been considered bad people by any other standard.
I would also caution on depending overmuch on the written record alone. The historian Fawn Brodie was once quoted by Graham T. Allison as saying that if she had to choose between written memorandums, memos and other official documents and the oral histories provided by the participants themselves that she would have to go with the oral histories. By this she meant, Allison explained, that while memories are indeed fallible, the tendency of key players and decision-makers to _cya_ with memos written for the record with their version of history in mind as much as accuracy; the omission of much in the official record that would reflect poorly on themselves and the tendency to issue the most controversial orders verbally so as to cloak or obscure one’s actions means that the written record, taken alone, may often be highly misleading.
To sum up, one does not have to deny the racism of the 40’s to defend FDR’s decision. The fact of pro-German sentiment on the East Coast (an interesting phenomenom in itself, as previously in WWI a huge anti-German sentiment sweep the land) obviously influenced FDR in doing nothing about the German/Italian community–as did the anti-Japanese sentiments on the West Coast. The fact that nothing was done about Japanese-Americans in Hawaii on practical grounds of numbers
and their role in the economy only further demonstrates the
extent to which politicians will play to prevailing majority sentiments so as to be seen as “doing something” to solve
problems. Not FDR’s or Americas finest hour–but understandable nonetheless.
Had FDR not acted as he did and any kind of major sabotage occurred from whatever source–caucasian recruited saboteurs or Japanese infiltrated directly from Japan, FDR and his administration would have likely faced a firestorm of protests–with all the possible negative political consequences that could prove so disasterous both to his party and the overall war effort. For FDR, the lesser of two evils was the course of action he took, as if sabotage then did occur, he could say that he had taken every precaution humanly possible.
It’s like IT managers buying Big Blue (in the days it dominated) even in the face of better alternate products–they can defend against critics if things go wrong by saying they went with the industry leader. Internment was the safe political choice.
Except for the fact, that there were less systemic roundups of German and Italians on the East Coast. Many fault Gen. Dewitt for
the events after Ex. Order 1066, but what of Biddle, and McCloy and Bendetsen; for that matter, FDR’s
own strong antipathy to Japanese
immigration going back to the 20s.
Malkin, is one of out how many links on the blog roll; So if someone has Kos (who cursed the stilling charred bodies of the Fallujah contractors, which regularly post Holocaust and even 9/11 /truthers on it’s page,)should I dismiss their blog entirely;along with Huff Po, DU,
and FDL; home of the “Blackface
Lieberman, tribute)
narciso: Except for the fact, that there were less systemic roundups of German and Italians on the East Coast.
Perhaps less systematic, but not nonexistent. I worked in Latin America with a German national whose uncle had been interned in the US during WW2. His uncle had nothing but praise for his treatment in internment camp.
Another potential reason for the difference between German/Japanese treatment during WW2 was that the US had undergone a wave of anti-Hun hysteria during WW1, and having seen its excesses, was less likely to repeat it. A farmer neighbor of my East coast childhood told me that as the child of German immigrants during WW1, the anti-Hun hysteria she was subjected to in school resulted in her dropping out.
BENTONITE….I’m a little late to the party on this, but the must-read blog post of the weekend is Glenn Greenwald on bentonite.
Bento-what? Glenn’s post is long, and you should read the whole thing (and while you’re at it, check out his previous two posts on the subject as well), but it boils down to this: in September 2001, shortly after the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that four separate “well-placed” anonymous sources had told him that government tests showed traces of bentonite in the anthrax. Since bentonite had previously been connected to Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program, this was taken as evidence that Iraq might be behind the anthrax attacks.
As it turned out, this was wrong. There was no bentonite in the anthrax at all. But this wasn’t just a mistake:
It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein.
Glenn would like to know who fed ABC this deliberate misinformation. Was one of their sources Bruce Ivins, the Ft. Detrick scientist who the FBI now believes was the source of the anthrax attacks? This question is especially significant in light of today’s LA Times story suggesting that Ivins held patents on an anthrax vaccine and stood to make a fair bit of money in the event of a nationwide anthrax panic.
Will we ever find out? In practice, most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it’s clear that those sources deliberately lied to them. But should that be the standard? Or is the profession — and the rest of us — better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right? I’d say the latter.
At a guess, Brian Ross is re-reporting this story as we speak. I’d be shocked if he were doing anything else — and I’d say that part of that re-reporting ought to include a full explanation of exactly who was peddling the bentonite lie in the first place, and why they were doing it.
[Broken link format repaired. No other formatting changes made. –NM]
bq. most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it’s clear that those sources deliberately lied to them. But should that be the standard? Or is the profession — and the rest of us — better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right? I’d say the latter.
Amen to that! Sometimes it seems as though there is little enough that Left and Right can agree on, but this ought to be one of those things. Instead of fawning over journalists pushing for state and federal shield laws to protect journalists no matter what, how about a code of responsibility–when sources turn out to have lied, unmasking becomes the ethical default position.
As far as Drum’s theory about bentonite and anthrax, the excerpt make him sound like another contestant in the Half-Baked Speculation Sweepstakes. This is a complex story, and it’s all too easy to cherry-pick facts and factoids to highlight the villiany of those you already knew were the bad guys.
At this point, the Bruce Ivins narrative has as many question marks attached to it as previous ones. We need more facts. Actually, in the absence of indictments, trials, and courtroom proceedings, we need a process for bringing facts and theories to light, and skeptically evaluating them. The Hatfield fiasco showed the institutional imperative to affix blame to somebody/anybody.
… when sources turn out to have lied, unmasking becomes the ethical default position.
Who’s going to say who’s lying? Or to use Drum’s terms, who’s going to decide when the mendacity has gotten too egregious?
Reporters are supposed to know that the world is full of people who stand to benefit from having their anonymous lies printed. And the liars know that they can rely on an ever-worsening standard of bias and credulity in the media to ensure that their lies get into print, as surely as a nuisance litigator can find a skunky lawyer.
A central myth of MSM “insider” journalism is that information that comes from nameless lurkers is somehow more credible than information from people who openly put their names and reputations on the line. Because another central myth of the MSM is that everything official is a lie. The real story is always being covered up, and the anonymous sources have to be anonymous or the Big Conspiracy will get them. That is almost taken as proof that they’re telling the truth.
The Argument from Anonymous Sources goes something like this: “I’m a reputable journalist – Columbia SOJ, no less – and I believe the person who told me this. And my editor believes me. And my editor and I work for the Blah Blah Times, which you absolutely trust to tell the unbiased truth. Unlike the government, the military, and the corporations (other than our parent corporation, of course) – which is why you need us to tell you what’s really going on.”
Good points. But as far as I can tell, journalists’ default ethical position now is “we have the sacred duty to protect our anonymous sources, irrespective of whether they were truth-telling or lying.” In fact, we need Shield Laws to get Society to lessen this weighty journalistic burden. (Recent drearily typical Establishment editorial on this subject “here.)”:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-ed.shield25jul25,0,2393907.story
“Hey there, Woodward-Bernstein Jr., remember that if your deep-cover source turns out to be lying, then we’ll have to expose him to our readers” would at least be a step in the right direction.
Sorry Vista, color me unimpressed. Drum sounds like he should be broadcasting on Art Bell. Odd that I tend to recall the White House disputing publicly the bentonite link in the US Anthrax attacks as early as October. Of course the fever swamp will always say that it was the evil Chimperor who ordered Karl Rove to push for the Saddam anthrax link, yadda yadda yadda. All of this is pretty much an exercise in futility because no one in the press is going to fess up to being duped.
The medias reliance on anonymous sources has been its ruin, that the practice still exists is somewhat of a mystery to me. Whole stories where anonymous sources are used (ala most of Sy Hersh’s reporting) continue to bring trouble for the MSM’s credibility.
Following on Gringo@34 about WWI anti-Hun hysteria, I would point out that because of such sentiments the Germania Life Insurance Company felt compelled to change it’s name to Guardian Life(which still exists today). Street names all over the US that reflected German names were changed. Here in New Orleans Berlin St. was re-named General Pershing; the Grunwald Hotel went into decline as a result of anti-German sentiments and was renamed the Roosevelt (of Blue Room fame, named after TR) by the new owners in late 20’s for another example that comes readily to mind. The US is full of such examples of distaste of all things German that manifested itself due to heavy anti-German propaganda concerning what proved to be mostly non-existent “atrocities” ginned up by, in the main, the British during the “Great War.”
I would point out that because of such sentiments the Germania Life Insurance Company felt compelled to change it’s name to Guardian Life.
Ironic, because up until WWII the German insurance industry was the largest in the world. Entire cities like San Francisco were underwritten by German insurers.
The Nazis seized insurance company records, which gave them very detailed information about foreign shipping routes, factories, even the location of fire stations in major cities. The U-boats wreaked havoc with this intel. German troops were able to quickly locate French factories, and they even brought insurance adjusters along with them.
People should have worried less about their German or Japanese neighbor, and worried a little more about their country doing intimate business with hostile regimes. A lesson still unlearned, I think.
But as for the notion that somehow, 7 years later, Greenwald has stumbled on some extraordiary revelation or that the false claims of a linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks spurred the case for war – this is pure nonsense. What’s worse, Greenwald darkly hints at the the unsubstantiated notion that government officials, linked to the Bush Administration, were somehow involved in the anthrax attacks. Now, in fairness Greenwald doesn’t make this assertion directly; but he comes pretty close. And for an individual who seems obsessed with the notion of journalistic impropriety – this is the height of impropriety itself; and one Greenwald should either offer evidence of, or retract immediately.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
An honorable guy – I’ll follow his work more closely.
virgil xenophon, as I recall there was a German-American that passed information to German u-boats in New Orleans. His house was at about the 3000 block of St. Charles.
From my p.o.v., the concerns were legitimate, but without suitable remedy.
If you read into the messages in the link you posted, there is the suggestion that Cohen and Greenwald have a little blogspat going on. I think there may be some anti-Greenwald animus in this post. Especially since it largely avoids the substance of the issue, as does your post, and rather focuses on whether Greenwald is accusing anyone of anything without due evidence, a point that to me seems debatable but peripheral.
The questions that Greenwald and many others are now raising are important to get to the bottom of, regardless of the implications.
Who injected the Bentonite lie into the public discussion, and why?
Glen Wishard@42: I might add that you are right concerning worries about American business “selling our enemies the rope with which to hang ourselves” as Lenin is claimed to have said. During WWII we have the instance of IBM selling their punch-card sorting systems to Nazi Germany at a time just pre-Pearl Harbor when such a decision could best charitably be described as naive; the fact not to be forgotten (and little known by the public at large) that AT&T kept the trans-Atlantic cables to Germany open for almost a year after we were at war with Germany and only cut off traffic when FDR threatened to shame them by going public.
Present-day sordid deals include Panasonic(if I remember right) selling US restricted “dual-use” technology for manufacturing super quiet submarine propeller blades to the Soviet Union; and, of course, the more widely publicized help Loral gave to the PRC in improving their rocket launching soft-ware that skirted both DOD and State Dept restrictions–all under the guise of helping launch “peaceful” commercial satalites
in which Loral held a financial interest.
In light of the above examples (and a million more that we probably will never know about) I am of the opinion that, as major corporations move their HQ’s out of the US because of high corporate taxes; and as the majority of corporate profits increasingly come from overseas; and with leading US corporate officers increasingly being non-US nationals, we will see much more of this. Add to the mix that so much of the scientists developing weapons and electronics for America are dual-citizen naturalized Chinese, many of whom have been shown to have divided loyalties, and one has a real problem.
And of course all of such worries devolve down to the dumbing-down of the American educational system. Don’t even get me started on that score–except to say one classic example is the pre-eminent University in the nation for Chemistry–the Univ. of Illinois–where over 90% of faculty and students in both grad and undergrad school majoring in chemistry are Chinese. (The LA-based performance artist Sandra Singh-Loh, for example, was born in Champaign, Ill., where her father was a chemistry professor–a bit of ephemera for the Armed Liberal.)
Why would I give a rat’s ass about some idiot who keeps Michelle Malkins hate site in his blogroll?
Thanks for letting us know you feel comradeship with a right wing nutter like this guy. We’ll try to keep that in mind next time you claim to support liberal causes.
Thanks for the drive-by, Calvin. Be sure to brush your teeth tonight to get the taste of both Iowahawk’s and this site out of your mouth, won’t you?
Calvin, you must be *this tall* to come play here, and people who confuse Michelle Malkin’s sometimes controversial positions with real hate speech probably aren’t.
A.L.
You’re defending Michelle Malkin as “controversial”?
I’d love to get your impressions of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity or the Bush families favorite hatemonger, Rush Limbaugh.
Because anyone who links to or defends a site where comments like this are allowed to stand is of questionable character and motive. She clearly has a big problems with African and Muslim Americans:
On July 12th, 2007 at 5:47 pm, gayle said:
Whites have become the suppressed society in the South.
I wish the Charlotte mayor would run for Governor or better yet, the Senate.
He’d get my vote!
Black, black, black, Afro American, gangster, rap,…..blah, blah, blah,
WHO CARES? Call me cracker, I am not offended. Most of them in this area want a free ride…welfare, babies out of wedlock, walking the streets, wearing designer duds, selling drugs, crime, – it’s sickening!
I hope they compete with all the illegals. Fun to watch that unfold!
White; the new minority in NC
“Heres a link”:http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/07/25/malkin/index.html
to a whole juicy collection of posts she’s initiated on problems with Muslims and Blacks in American Society.
So, as I said, it’s interesting to note that you link favorably to a site where her’s is prominently linked to. Perhaps it inadvertantly has revealed something about your own racial attitudes as well, after all, tolerance is support.
bq. tolerance is support
That’s a cute one. Who told you that? Convince me that if you walk by a vandalized building on the way to work every day for a month, you are supporting vandals.
A passerby might even say “nice building — I sure wish the owner had more time to maintain it to my standards…”
AL points to that passerby, so he’s a bigot? Great.
It’s tough to be a supporter of the idea that the cure for bad speech is better speech *and* of the idea that blogs are like bars, and eventually you have to throw the riff raff out. Thus my problem with a total “tolerance equals support”.
These are all heuristics.
Let’s not forget Michelle Malkin on the internment of Japanese-Americans.
Myself, I’m annoyed at her slamming Teresa Heinz Kerry for not always using the same surname. Now check the copyright notice on one of Ms. Malkin’s books—at least in 2004, it was still in her maiden name. Don’t you guys ever tire of IOKIYAR?
I get tired of IOKIYA{X}, but the very tiredness makes me appear tolerant. Or even biased. Quelle surprise.
Oh, Calvin … how about a dig into the comments sections of Kos or Huffpo? Most sites aren’t lucky enough (or small enough) to maintain great comments sections like the one here.
AJL – her position on internment is absolutely controversial (I don’t agree with it). But as someone married to a Japanese American, I’ve been exposed to enough of the particular history to understand the moment the policy sprung from. And while that will never excuse it. it does help me understand it. And it’s certainly not much different – to me – than your – to me controversial – economic accounting for slavery.
A>L.
A.L., Michelle Malkin isn’t in the business of understanding or excusing the internment of Japanese-Americans based on the morés of the time. She thinks, today, that it was a positively good, thoroughly justifiable act that prevented acts of sabotage.
I do agree with you that hunting through site’s comment sections can be unfair. In Malkin’s case, it is also unnecessary.
Malkin’s sites (or lgf, redstate for that matter) aren’t filled with hateful posts because the owners are “unlucky” or they’re too large to police them. Lots of sites bigger and smaller do this routinely.
The problem is that their posts are intended to elicit these reactions purposefully. They are endorsing these ideas by leaving them up, precisely because they’re in the business of inciting hate, mostly against fellow Americans. Now if that’s the kind of behavior you call “controversial” I’m wondering whether you have the capacity to recognize these deeply troubling and corrosive views. Leading me to question yours.
Calvin:
I don’t think your approach will change anyones mind. It’s pretty clear that you don’t read this site often enough to grasp why this post was put up in the first place.
I’d take your comment #1 to be a simply poor troll, that sadly has elicited a response. Odd how you use the word “tolerance” yet appear to not have any yourself.
Now back to the thrust of the post, I personally would think it would be pretty sweet to be Iowahawks kid. How killer would it be to go down and see the Orbitron in person and hang with CooP.
I’m curious why Iowa Hawk apparently pixelated his and his wives faces in the images but not the kids.
Not very hawkish.
AJL – We’ve got an interesting problem in this time, because retrospective mining of the old intelligence documents shows that there was some rational basis for concern. Just as retroactive minimg of the Verona documents shows that there was some basis for McCarthy’s concerns.
But the values today would never support – gladly, from my point of view – the kinds of reactions that FDR and Truman and Eisenhower made into policies based on the concerns that were evident at the time.
I don’t read Malkin a lot, so I’m prepared to be told I’m wrong here, but my interpretation of her comments on internment were that a) there was some basis for the concern (which I don’t think is arguable); b) given the racial mores of the time, those concerns got overinflated; and c) that given the real concerns and the racist context of the time, the reaction was understandable and therefore OK. As much as I can support a) b) and much of c) – I still think that she’s deeply wrong in her conclusion.
But I don’t think that it rises to the level of error that someone could in good faith call racist itself.
A.L.
Oh, and Calvin? You ought to do something about that log in your eye…
A.L.
Well, another thread hi-jacked. (sigh) I was prepared to make some (hopefully) pithy–to use one of O’Reilly”s favorite words–comments about Iowahawk. But…….if one consideres the Japanese internment question, put yourselves in FDR’s shoes. What if he had not issued the order and subsequently there was significant sabotage traced to the Japanese American community? Firstly, FDR would have come under heavy attack personally for leaving this group free to the extent it probably would have affected his chances for re-election, and secondly, it probably saved many Japanese-Americans/Japanese in America from grievous harm from vigilante action had such sabotage indeed occurred. And as practically everyone involved believed America to be engaged in a life or death struggle with the fate of the Republic hanging in the balance, such actions are more than understandable. In short, it was the _Zeitgeist_ of the times.
To truly appreciate how much the national mood can influence decision-makers one only need compare the way in which the Supreme Court upheld a popular President’s actions in the internment cases(which is still good law today), to the contra decision slapping Truman on the wrist in the Youngstown Steel and Tube case a few short years later. Here was essentially the same court feeling free to limit the power of an unpopular President in an unpopular war for the exact same reason the steel workers felt it safe to strike, i.e.,the fate of the Republic was not hanging in the balance. N.Korea didn’t even have a Navy and the ICBM hadn’t been invented yet. American soil was not threatened. By contrast, no steelworker would have ever entertained the thought of striking during WWII. The temper of the times is everything. I am not impressed with the moralistic monday-morning quarter-backing of today’s critics of the Internment program any more than I am with the _au currant_ revisionist histories regarding Truman’s decision to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan.
.
bq. I’m curious why Iowa Hawk apparently pixelated his and his wives faces in the images but not the kids.
bq. Not very hawkish.
I disagree. It is perfectly in keeping with the modern brand of Right wing neo-conservative Hawks who are more than happy to risk other people’s lives and spend other people’s money to further their own warped warmongering causes.
Once again I take it as a revelation that the Armed Liberal thinks highly of such a person.
Because I do agree with the contention that one’s choice of associates and friends says a lot about your own character.
I’m sure this viewpoint is not new to people on this site.
Ah, a good-old fashion shaming from the p.c. crowd. I’m sure A.L. will repent shortly.
Calvin, how long did you have to practice to get so good at jumping the shark? I’d ask Davebo, but he’s not so new around here, and he might have been using irony or something.
So Calvin, will you be voting for Obama?
Let me be brief in respect of Malkin, given that it isn’t the point of the thread. I would suggest this link for a fuller understanding of her claims, and why the alleged new MAGIC evidence doesn’t support internment. (While the Japanese were all for recruiting spies, they were generally employing Caucasian traitors for the purpose when they found anyone at all.) Your reading of Malkin is excessively generous. As you can see, I’m all for some charity in looking at acts of less enlightened ages. Malkin justifies the internment even in the light of what we know now. To be honest, flat-out anti-Japanese bigotry in a Pinay doesn’t much shock me.
As far as the main point of the thread, I must say that although it’s better than the alternaitve that Iowahawk does great things with his children, I think many people with utterly appalling political views are fine parents.
I reject Malkin’s views on Japanese internment completely. If I were of Filipino descent myself I might feel differently, but in that case I would still be wrong.
Fortunately, I can disagree with Malkin without hating her. And without having other non-liberals turn on me like a pack of mad dogs.
And I don’t have to walk around with a little bitch list in my head, like Calvin, so I don’t have to remember things like “A.L. linked to Iowahawk who linked to Malkin, therefore I must hate him.”
The advantages of being me are therefore great. Those who can’t handle being me could be “David Mamet.”:http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-03-11/news/why-i-am-no-longer-a-brain-dead-liberal/2
PS to Calvin – remember to hate the Village Voice for the rest of your life for printing this article.
Oh, sorry, I seem to have derailed the thread for a bit of an exploration into A.L.’s poor character.
To get back to the point of the thread:
bq. How Freaking Weird/Entertaining Would It Be…
…to think that I voted for the people who would use terrorism “against their own people?”:http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html
You actually linked to the king of the sock puppets. How quaint. Whats next, an article by Glass or Jayson Blair?
Calvin, note that while you came in guns blazing and are treating this as an open thread, the WoC “comments guidelines”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/003367.php exist quite independent of your sense of righteousness.
You’re all over the page here (in both senses), and your output thus far doesn’t mark you as having much promise as a civil participant at WoC.
Perhaps that is not why you are here. Perhaps you are merely here to stick a finger in the eye of the bad guys.
You have the benefit of the doubt: you are cordially invited to stick around and post your viewpoints on entries that actually correlate to the points you seem to have strong feelings about making.
Keep the other thing up long enough, in enough cases, and you will eventually be invited to have a nice day somewhere else. [You’re skating really close to that already.]
No Winds Marshal will get joy from issuing that invitation, should it come to that.
[Edited for slightly-improved clarity]
Calvin: Also, let it be known that we had another contributor here who liked anonymizers as much as you seem to. Should I ask you if you are the same person? Would you answer truthfully if I did?
Calvin, Calvin, Calvin…you’ve been here less than a week and you think you can lecture me on my poor character?
Look, you’re a troll. I’ll go a step further than Nort and suggest that a) you need to answer his question frankly; and b) you need to make something resembling an argument before you wave your innate superiority in our faces any more – or you can just vanish.
I’m not holding my breath waiting to see what you decide…
A.L.
Thanks Andrew, it’s in the reading queue…
A.L.
OK, per AL at 27, his point A:
Calvin: Are you someone we’ve banned here already, posting under a new nick? Please answer yes or no, and please speak truthfully. Failure to answer this question convincingly, in a timely manner, is grounds for a ban (vide AL’s comment supra). Thanks for your attention to this matter.
My take on Malkin and internment is roughly parallel to AJL’s if more charitable. At the time, I followed much of the debate memorialized in the link in AJL’s comment #21.
In my opinion, Malkin took a serious look at the events leading up to the USG’s decision to intern Japanese-Americans, including some relatively new information on American decrypts of Japanese radio traffic. Her book was an exercise in trying to understand things as American policy-makers did at the time. Malkin’s conclusion was that internment was an understandable and to some extent justified reaction to the threats posed by the Japanese.
Everybody (well, not everybody, Calvin) likes an underdog, and the idea of an amateur showing up the dogma of the professional historians’ consensus was well-received… certainly in those quarters that were predisposed to doubt another lesson from the America-always-bad reader.
Unfortunately for Malkin, she had misread some key documents and had gotten some of the chronology wrong. Historian Eric Muller blogged about these mistakes and how they undermined Malkin’s revisionist view; he was later joined in his debunking by Greg Robinson. Malkin, as I recollect it, wasn’t able to take a fresh look, admit error, and back off. Instead, she doubled down, and ended up looking both mistaken and foolish to many onlookers.
I see this as an ordinary human failing, not as evidence of hideous moral corruption. It’s hard to say “what I thought was black and white turns out to have shades of gray.” Far less, “I was wrong.”
Does the whole imbroglio make me more skeptical when Malkin opines on other issues? Yes. Does it place her beyond the border of civil society? If that standard was to be applied in an ideology-free way, she’d have a fair amount of company. Including, of course, the renowned sock-puppeteer who counts himself as one of Malkin’s worst nightmares.
Back on topic: Yeah, it would be cool to be in Iowahawk’s family.
I’m sorry if this makes me a bad person, but I find Iowahawk routinely, viciously hilarious.
I’m with Texan99. Iowahawk will simply water your eyes at times.
Following on AMac on Malkin, and reflecting on my earlier post, I wish to clarify my point somewhat–or rather add things previously unsaid. The thrust of my remarks was not to defend Malkin’s scholarship, but rather to caution that such actions as were taken must be put in the context of the temper of the times. Were such times racist? Were there bigots at all levels of government? The answer is obviously yes–although probably most of them would not have thought so. Group-think is a quite common phenomenon. The song “Dixie” used to be played at the start of every college football game in the South until the mid-sixties–and most who sang along would not have been considered bad people by any other standard.
I would also caution on depending overmuch on the written record alone. The historian Fawn Brodie was once quoted by Graham T. Allison as saying that if she had to choose between written memorandums, memos and other official documents and the oral histories provided by the participants themselves that she would have to go with the oral histories. By this she meant, Allison explained, that while memories are indeed fallible, the tendency of key players and decision-makers to _cya_ with memos written for the record with their version of history in mind as much as accuracy; the omission of much in the official record that would reflect poorly on themselves and the tendency to issue the most controversial orders verbally so as to cloak or obscure one’s actions means that the written record, taken alone, may often be highly misleading.
To sum up, one does not have to deny the racism of the 40’s to defend FDR’s decision. The fact of pro-German sentiment on the East Coast (an interesting phenomenom in itself, as previously in WWI a huge anti-German sentiment sweep the land) obviously influenced FDR in doing nothing about the German/Italian community–as did the anti-Japanese sentiments on the West Coast. The fact that nothing was done about Japanese-Americans in Hawaii on practical grounds of numbers
and their role in the economy only further demonstrates the
extent to which politicians will play to prevailing majority sentiments so as to be seen as “doing something” to solve
problems. Not FDR’s or Americas finest hour–but understandable nonetheless.
Had FDR not acted as he did and any kind of major sabotage occurred from whatever source–caucasian recruited saboteurs or Japanese infiltrated directly from Japan, FDR and his administration would have likely faced a firestorm of protests–with all the possible negative political consequences that could prove so disasterous both to his party and the overall war effort. For FDR, the lesser of two evils was the course of action he took, as if sabotage then did occur, he could say that he had taken every precaution humanly possible.
It’s like IT managers buying Big Blue (in the days it dominated) even in the face of better alternate products–they can defend against critics if things go wrong by saying they went with the industry leader. Internment was the safe political choice.
Except for the fact, that there were less systemic roundups of German and Italians on the East Coast. Many fault Gen. Dewitt for
the events after Ex. Order 1066, but what of Biddle, and McCloy and Bendetsen; for that matter, FDR’s
own strong antipathy to Japanese
immigration going back to the 20s.
Malkin, is one of out how many links on the blog roll; So if someone has Kos (who cursed the stilling charred bodies of the Fallujah contractors, which regularly post Holocaust and even 9/11 /truthers on it’s page,)should I dismiss their blog entirely;along with Huff Po, DU,
and FDL; home of the “Blackface
Lieberman, tribute)
narciso:
Except for the fact, that there were less systemic roundups of German and Italians on the East Coast.
Perhaps less systematic, but not nonexistent. I worked in Latin America with a German national whose uncle had been interned in the US during WW2. His uncle had nothing but praise for his treatment in internment camp.
Another potential reason for the difference between German/Japanese treatment during WW2 was that the US had undergone a wave of anti-Hun hysteria during WW1, and having seen its excesses, was less likely to repeat it. A farmer neighbor of my East coast childhood told me that as the child of German immigrants during WW1, the anti-Hun hysteria she was subjected to in school resulted in her dropping out.
“You actually linked to the king of the sock puppets. How quaint. Whats next, an article by Glass or Jayson Blair?”
Is “Kevin Drum”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014218.php also a “sock puppet”?
BENTONITE….I’m a little late to the party on this, but the must-read blog post of the weekend is Glenn Greenwald on bentonite.
Bento-what? Glenn’s post is long, and you should read the whole thing (and while you’re at it, check out his previous two posts on the subject as well), but it boils down to this: in September 2001, shortly after the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that four separate “well-placed” anonymous sources had told him that government tests showed traces of bentonite in the anthrax. Since bentonite had previously been connected to Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program, this was taken as evidence that Iraq might be behind the anthrax attacks.
As it turned out, this was wrong. There was no bentonite in the anthrax at all. But this wasn’t just a mistake:
It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein.
Glenn would like to know who fed ABC this deliberate misinformation. Was one of their sources Bruce Ivins, the Ft. Detrick scientist who the FBI now believes was the source of the anthrax attacks? This question is especially significant in light of today’s LA Times story suggesting that Ivins held patents on an anthrax vaccine and stood to make a fair bit of money in the event of a nationwide anthrax panic.
Will we ever find out? In practice, most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it’s clear that those sources deliberately lied to them. But should that be the standard? Or is the profession — and the rest of us — better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right? I’d say the latter.
At a guess, Brian Ross is re-reporting this story as we speak. I’d be shocked if he were doing anything else — and I’d say that part of that re-reporting ought to include a full explanation of exactly who was peddling the bentonite lie in the first place, and why they were doing it.
[Broken link format repaired. No other formatting changes made. –NM]
bq. most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it’s clear that those sources deliberately lied to them. But should that be the standard? Or is the profession — and the rest of us — better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right? I’d say the latter.
Amen to that! Sometimes it seems as though there is little enough that Left and Right can agree on, but this ought to be one of those things. Instead of fawning over journalists pushing for state and federal shield laws to protect journalists no matter what, how about a code of responsibility–when sources turn out to have lied, unmasking becomes the ethical default position.
As far as Drum’s theory about bentonite and anthrax, the excerpt make him sound like another contestant in the Half-Baked Speculation Sweepstakes. This is a complex story, and it’s all too easy to cherry-pick facts and factoids to highlight the villiany of those you already knew were the bad guys.
At this point, the Bruce Ivins narrative has as many question marks attached to it as previous ones. We need more facts. Actually, in the absence of indictments, trials, and courtroom proceedings, we need a process for bringing facts and theories to light, and skeptically evaluating them. The Hatfield fiasco showed the institutional imperative to affix blame to somebody/anybody.
AMac:
Who’s going to say who’s lying? Or to use Drum’s terms, who’s going to decide when the mendacity has gotten too egregious?
Reporters are supposed to know that the world is full of people who stand to benefit from having their anonymous lies printed. And the liars know that they can rely on an ever-worsening standard of bias and credulity in the media to ensure that their lies get into print, as surely as a nuisance litigator can find a skunky lawyer.
A central myth of MSM “insider” journalism is that information that comes from nameless lurkers is somehow more credible than information from people who openly put their names and reputations on the line. Because another central myth of the MSM is that everything official is a lie. The real story is always being covered up, and the anonymous sources have to be anonymous or the Big Conspiracy will get them. That is almost taken as proof that they’re telling the truth.
The Argument from Anonymous Sources goes something like this: “I’m a reputable journalist – Columbia SOJ, no less – and I believe the person who told me this. And my editor believes me. And my editor and I work for the Blah Blah Times, which you absolutely trust to tell the unbiased truth. Unlike the government, the military, and the corporations (other than our parent corporation, of course) – which is why you need us to tell you what’s really going on.”
Glen Wishard —
Good points. But as far as I can tell, journalists’ default ethical position now is “we have the sacred duty to protect our anonymous sources, irrespective of whether they were truth-telling or lying.” In fact, we need Shield Laws to get Society to lessen this weighty journalistic burden. (Recent drearily typical Establishment editorial on this subject “here.)”:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-ed.shield25jul25,0,2393907.story
“Hey there, Woodward-Bernstein Jr., remember that if your deep-cover source turns out to be lying, then we’ll have to expose him to our readers” would at least be a step in the right direction.
Probably it was Alexis DeBat, the french political analyst who talked up all sorts of leads, like
the alleged Us support of Baluchi
warlord Jundallah
Sorry Vista, color me unimpressed. Drum sounds like he should be broadcasting on Art Bell. Odd that I tend to recall the White House disputing publicly the bentonite link in the US Anthrax attacks as early as October. Of course the fever swamp will always say that it was the evil Chimperor who ordered Karl Rove to push for the Saddam anthrax link, yadda yadda yadda. All of this is pretty much an exercise in futility because no one in the press is going to fess up to being duped.
The medias reliance on anonymous sources has been its ruin, that the practice still exists is somewhat of a mystery to me. Whole stories where anonymous sources are used (ala most of Sy Hersh’s reporting) continue to bring trouble for the MSM’s credibility.
Following on Gringo@34 about WWI anti-Hun hysteria, I would point out that because of such sentiments the Germania Life Insurance Company felt compelled to change it’s name to Guardian Life(which still exists today). Street names all over the US that reflected German names were changed. Here in New Orleans Berlin St. was re-named General Pershing; the Grunwald Hotel went into decline as a result of anti-German sentiments and was renamed the Roosevelt (of Blue Room fame, named after TR) by the new owners in late 20’s for another example that comes readily to mind. The US is full of such examples of distaste of all things German that manifested itself due to heavy anti-German propaganda concerning what proved to be mostly non-existent “atrocities” ginned up by, in the main, the British during the “Great War.”
Ironic, because up until WWII the German insurance industry was the largest in the world. Entire cities like San Francisco were underwritten by German insurers.
The Nazis seized insurance company records, which gave them very detailed information about foreign shipping routes, factories, even the location of fire stations in major cities. The U-boats wreaked havoc with this intel. German troops were able to quickly locate French factories, and they even brought insurance adjusters along with them.
People should have worried less about their German or Japanese neighbor, and worried a little more about their country doing intimate business with hostile regimes. A lesson still unlearned, I think.
Here’s “Michael Cohen over at lefty blog Democracy Arsenal”:http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2008/08/anthrax-and-the.html –
An honorable guy – I’ll follow his work more closely.
A.L.
virgil xenophon, as I recall there was a German-American that passed information to German u-boats in New Orleans. His house was at about the 3000 block of St. Charles.
From my p.o.v., the concerns were legitimate, but without suitable remedy.
#43
If you read into the messages in the link you posted, there is the suggestion that Cohen and Greenwald have a little blogspat going on. I think there may be some anti-Greenwald animus in this post. Especially since it largely avoids the substance of the issue, as does your post, and rather focuses on whether Greenwald is accusing anyone of anything without due evidence, a point that to me seems debatable but peripheral.
The questions that Greenwald and many others are now raising are important to get to the bottom of, regardless of the implications.
Who injected the Bentonite lie into the public discussion, and why?
Well, Vista, if you have some data I’d be interested in seeing it – and if not, investigate away!
A.L.
Glen Wishard@42: I might add that you are right concerning worries about American business “selling our enemies the rope with which to hang ourselves” as Lenin is claimed to have said. During WWII we have the instance of IBM selling their punch-card sorting systems to Nazi Germany at a time just pre-Pearl Harbor when such a decision could best charitably be described as naive; the fact not to be forgotten (and little known by the public at large) that AT&T kept the trans-Atlantic cables to Germany open for almost a year after we were at war with Germany and only cut off traffic when FDR threatened to shame them by going public.
Present-day sordid deals include Panasonic(if I remember right) selling US restricted “dual-use” technology for manufacturing super quiet submarine propeller blades to the Soviet Union; and, of course, the more widely publicized help Loral gave to the PRC in improving their rocket launching soft-ware that skirted both DOD and State Dept restrictions–all under the guise of helping launch “peaceful” commercial satalites
in which Loral held a financial interest.
In light of the above examples (and a million more that we probably will never know about) I am of the opinion that, as major corporations move their HQ’s out of the US because of high corporate taxes; and as the majority of corporate profits increasingly come from overseas; and with leading US corporate officers increasingly being non-US nationals, we will see much more of this. Add to the mix that so much of the scientists developing weapons and electronics for America are dual-citizen naturalized Chinese, many of whom have been shown to have divided loyalties, and one has a real problem.
And of course all of such worries devolve down to the dumbing-down of the American educational system. Don’t even get me started on that score–except to say one classic example is the pre-eminent University in the nation for Chemistry–the Univ. of Illinois–where over 90% of faculty and students in both grad and undergrad school majoring in chemistry are Chinese. (The LA-based performance artist Sandra Singh-Loh, for example, was born in Champaign, Ill., where her father was a chemistry professor–a bit of ephemera for the Armed Liberal.)
PS: “Y’all” (as in _All_ Y’all) ought to read Ms. Singh-Loh–a really intelligent, creative and truly funny author.