Education vs. Family

In the sleeper movie hit “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” the heroine Toula breaks away from her imprisonment in the family Greek restaurant by getting some computer classes at the local college.

That’s a common pattern, a liberal friend told me. Children who don’t get an education are stuck in the ghetto of their family and don’t “get on.”

But for me, a light went off. For if the mission of the university is to break children away from their traditional family community, then isn’t the mission of every liberal program the same? Whether it’s education, health care, or welfare, every government dollar loosens a woman’s tie (and it’s usually a woman) to her family.

Isn’t that just what liberals want?

The question is: how much of a good thing is this, really? We westerners may all agree that it’s important to free women from patriarchal domination. But when does a government program get to the point of breaking up family ties so much that children grow up stunted from lack of parental attention, as Minette Marrin argues.

Increasingly it seems parents can’t or won’t spend time and care on their children. Increasingly both parents are working; increasingly single parents are anxious, harried and time-poor; increasingly children are consigned to inadequate day care and nurseries; increasingly they are offered wraparound educare (promoted by Gordon Brown [and Hillary Clinton]). Increasingly we see the results.

Many of us take it for granted that it is a good idea for adults to have independent fulfilling careers and consign their children to the care of help professionals. But there seems to be a cost.

[H]alf of all toddlers arrive at primary school unable to speak properly for their age. Their numbers are growing. To say this suggests a widespread failure of socialisation is surely an understatement.

When you take people away from their families and put them into institutional settings, be it childcare, school, factory, or office park, you lose something.

And we did not just get here by accident. We got here because the progressive class wanted us here.

The job of conservatives in the next few years is to develop a compelling critique of the liberal world in which we live. Then we should offer the American people a way out of this death spiral. We should offer them family and hope.

How Could This Happen, Say Libs

You gotta love our liberal friends. Here we should be wiping the floor with the Republicans, say the folks at the New Republic in Bush’s Last Laugh. Instead the situation “verges on the apocalyptic” for the Democrats.

Where it once looked like Bill Clinton and Al Gore had helped purge the party of the lame identity politics that had ruined Democratic candidates for a generation, discussions of race and gender have returned with a vengeance. Supporters of Clinton and Obama compete to prove who is the bigger victim—opponents are casually tarred as sexist or racist.

Oh yeah? Since when did Clinton and Gore do anything but use identity politics in the 1990s, appointing tons of people to administration positions because of their race or gender?

What Bill Clinton did in the 1990s was keep a low profile on race and gender. Above the radar, he was the president of the soccer moms. But below the radar he was a full-on practitioner of identity politics, careful to keep feminists and blacks on side and eager, with the Motor Voter law, to make it easy for anyone with a driver’s license (i.e. Mexican nationals) to register to vote.

And when Al Gore ran for the presidency in 2000 he ran a class warfare campaign, “fighting for the people against the powerful.”

Last time I looked, race and identity politics was going as strong as ever in the nation’s schools and universities, as Mike S. Adams experiences on a daily basis. Recently he’s been trying to get the University of North Carolina to help publicize a talk given by a notorious Christian creationist, and the university keeps losing his emails. Wrong identity, you see.

Let’s face it, the Democrats have done a land office business with race, class, and gender identity politics. But, as the good book says, those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

Just One Day In The News

Over on the right at Road to the Middle Class we run a ticker of “Readings.” Today, Friday March 28, 2008, they look like this:

• The "100-Year " Lie, how Democrats are jumping all over John McCain for saying that we could be in Iraq for 100 years.
  
• Kangaroo court is now in session, Mark Steyn’s story about the Canadian Human Rights Commissions that have nothing to do except troll for trouble in neo_nazi websites.
  
• Obama’s Former Pastor’s $1.6M Home, about the rather upper-class home that Rev. Jeremiah Wright is building in suburban Chicago.
  
• Toyota Prius proves a gas guzzler, about a Beemer diesel getting better gas mileage than a Toyota Prius.
  
• The Polar Bear Ambush, about environmentalists trying to get the polar bear listed as an endangered species so that they can get the courts to impose their global warming agenda.
  

What is the common denominator in all these news items? Liberal hypocrisy. One rule for me and one for thee.

That’s why I’m looking for a Democratic sweep this November. The American people have kinda forgotten what Democratic governance looks like. I think they need a reminder, and I think that conservatives need a vacation, a pause to get their thinking caps on and start developing a real agenda for reform.

All you need to do is go over to usgovernmentspending.com if you want to get the message about what ails this country. In fact, you don’t have to do anything. We’ll bring the details to you.

There’s where we need to go to work. Almost a trillion dollars a year in government pensions. Almost a trillion dollars a year in government health care. Almost a trillion dollars a year in government education. And what do we get for it?

Benedict XVI Baptizes a Muslim

What are we to think of the provocative act consummated by Pope Benedict XVI during Holy Week?

Here’s what the New York Times thought in a piece by Ian Fisher.

Days after Osama bin Laden issued a threat against Europe that included an accusation that the pope was involved in a “new Crusade” against Islam, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born writer protected by Italian bodyguards because of his criticism of radical Islam, was baptized by the pope Saturday night and received his first holy communion.

You can see the liberal line here. Osama was right! The pope is leading a “new Crusade” against Islam.

You really wonder about these liberals sometimes. It’s OK for liberals to evangelize for liberalism in the schools and universities. It’s all right for 90 percent of journalists to be liberals and to be advancing their world-view every day in the media.

But God forbid that the pope should try to advance Christianity!

Of course the mysterious writer who calls himself “Spengler” got right on the case.

A self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man. He is the Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam, whom Pope Benedict XVI baptized during the Easter Vigil at St Peter’s. Allam’s renunciation of Islam as a religion of violence and his embrace of Christianity denotes the point at which the so-called global "war on terror" becomes a divergence of two irreconcilable modes of life: the Western way of faith supported by reason, against the Muslim world of fatalism and submission.

Well, you certainly wouldn’t read stuff like that in the New York Times!

Now why do you think that Magdi Cristiano decided to convert? According to Spengler, he said that:

[T]he challenge that Pope Benedict XVI offered to Islam in his September 2006 address at Regensburg was "undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert".

So the media campaign to discredit the pope’s Regensburg address was less than a complete success.

Spengler is naturally pleased with all this.

Before Benedict’s election, I summarized his position as "I have a mustard seed and I’m not afraid to use it." Now the mustard seed has earned pride of place in global affairs.

The thing to remember in trying to understand all this is this fact. Two-thirds of the global adherents to Christianity in the Global South are women. What, you may ask, is the particular attraction of Christianity for women? After all, it’s a patriarchal religion that wants to keep women in their place, right?

That’s the liberal line, but like most liberal notions, I suspect it is wrong. No, I think that women are attracted to Christianity because it is a religion of love. God loves you, and he wants you to love him back.

For women, we know, the most important thing in their lives is relationships. That’s a silly way of saying that women live for love: love for their children, love for their mothers, love for their “best friend,” even love for their husbands. Lord Byron:

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

’Tis woman’s whole existence.

And it’s not just me saying this. Go read the pope’s two encyclicals: “Deus Caritas Est,” or God is Love, and “Spe Salvi,” In Hope We are Saved. You will find they are both absolutely drenched in love and hope. Girl stuff, right?

When women are confronted by a choice between a religion of love and a religion of world conquest, what you you think they would choose?

Back in the days immediately after the Cold War wise heads recognized that the war was conducted on two fronts, the political/military front led by the United States and the religious front led by John Paul II, the Polish pope.

Now we are in the war against Islamic extremism, and we have once again the United Staes leading on the political/military front. This time there’s a new pope, Benedict XVI, the German pope, leading on the religious front.

With an alliance like that, I’d say that something’s got to give.

Obama Ain't No Jackie Robinson

Back in 1947, relates Walter Williams, Jackie Robinson became the first black player in the major leagues.

He encountered open racist taunts and slurs from fans, opposing team players and even some players on his own team. Despite that, his first year batting average was .297. He led the National League in stolen bases and won the first-ever Rookie of the Year Award.

Jackie Robinson was the best. As the “first black player, he had to be.” Today it doesn’t much matter that there are a lot of average stumble-bum black players in the major leagues. But it would have mattered with Jackie Robinson in 1947.

Unfortunately Barack Obama, writes Williams, is no Jackie Robinson.

Barack Obama has charisma and charm but in terms of character, values and understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson.

And in the view of Williams, the first black president ought to be as good as Jackie Robinson.

The fact of Obama’s successful candidacy, Williams continues, is a tribute to the goodness of Americans and that the civil rights battle is won. Yes there are problems on the discrimination front, but the battle is won. If you want to talk about the major problems confronting the black community, they are not civil rights problems.

The major problems are: family breakdown, illegitimacy, fraudulent education and a high rate of criminality. To confront these problems, that are not the fault of the larger society, requires political courage and that’s an attribute that Obama and most other politicians lack.

The message of Barack Obama’s speech a week ago was: Don’t look for me to work on those problems. I just want to be president.

Bernanke's ARM Assist

TV personality and Wall Street man Larrry Kudlow is pleased. Ben Bernanke is my man, he writes.

I just got my latest adjustable-rate mortgage statement from the bank. When I originally refinanced this loan, it was 5.75 percent. And last summer my ARM soared to 8.25 percent. But guess what? Through February it has round-tripped all the way back to 6 percent.

So I’m now saving $2,000 a month, or $24,000 a year, because Gentle Ben has slashed the fed funds target rate to 2.25 percent from 5.25 percent last fall.

Who wouldn’t be pleased with a present like that? And with house prices plunging and home sales perking up a little, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. The law of supply and demand to the rescue.

Larry also notes that the gold price is down from its peak at around $1,000 per ounce and the dollar is up a bit. The Treasury yield curve is now positive, with the lowest yield on the shortest term debt.

So is the Mortgage Meltdown over? Is it time to pile into the stock market, the real-estate market, and every other kind of market?

You never know. You never know untill the fear and trembling is all over, the market is up 20 percent, and all the good deals have been snapped up. But then it’s too late!

Kudlow has this good advice. Don’t try to time the market turn. All you can do is say this to yourself. Hmm. Looks like stocks, or real estate, or Miami condos are on sale right now. Maybe I should pick myself up a deal.

As the salesmen say: There’ll never be a better time to buy than right now.

Meanwhile I am kicking myself. The Dell outlet store had some dual-core Pentiums with 2GB on sale for $259 last week. Now they are up to $299.

Democrats and Race

One of the things we conservatives constantly try to do is step out of the default liberal mindset.

It’s hard to do, even as a conservative, because liberalthink defines reality in America. To think another way requires real effort, especially for a social animal like homo sapiens.

Liberals all seem to think that Barack Obama’s speech last week was at the least a fine and principled contribution to America’s conversation on race and maybe much more. Conservatives tend to be disappointed. We wonder if Obama couldn’t have seized the opportunity and really declared for a post-racist America.

But maybe the big issue is what Obama’s candidacy is doing for race relations within the Democratic Party. The Washington Post’s Krissah Williams writes about veterans hanging out at two American Legion posts in Pennsylvania, one predominantly black, and one predominantly white.

[I]n the two worlds of these veterans, Obama’s speech was one more dividing point. Rather than bringing the men in Post 733 and Post 420 closer together, it seemed to highlight the gap between them.

White Air Force veteran Dan Dowett talks about Obama backing “a preacher that to me sounds like a treasonous person.” Black Army veteran Ross Mounds says “the controversy over Wright is just the excuse some whites are looking for not to vote for a qualified black man.”

Then there’s the view from other voters. Victor Davis Hanson asked several non-black voters what they thought of Obama’s speech last week. The reaction was significant.

“Forget the speech. I would never vote for Obama after listening to Wright.” In some cases, the reaction was not mild disappointment, but unprintable outrage.

The question is whether the liberal narrative on race really matters any more. Obama’s speech, to one liberal acquaintance, was

the best from a politician on race in a generation. He dispansionately [sic] examined interiors and exteriors of both whites and blacks.

As a conservative I would say that Obama mouthed liberal pieties, trashing the white working class and excusing black racism.

It is, of course, the white working class that has been asked to pay the most for the liberal race politics of the last half century, whether it was forced busing, integration of ethnic neighborhoods, or affirmative action at the firehouse. Educated whites might get knocked around a bit by the lefty profs in university, but they could always escape from liberal race politics by going into business and living in white middle-class suburbs.

Suppose that Rev. Wright turns out to be the last straw for the white working class?