Hello, what's this? I thought the Know-Nothing Party disbanded in the early 1850's. Steve Schear wrote:
The following is from pages 300-307 of Robert Bork's brilliant book, "Slouching Towards Gomorrah". This is a book which should be read by everyone--and especially by liberals. I'll pick it out of the library when I'm done with Mein Kampf. I don't feel inclined to subsidize this ignorant kook with my money.
He isn't an ignorant kook--unfortunately. He is a very intelligent facist. Don't dismiss him so lightly--would you turn your back on a man with a gun?
immigrants to be Americans. The schools were agents of cultural unification. They taught patriotism and standards derived from European cultures. What do any of those standards have to do with "European cultures"? Europe, like every other continent (save Antarctica), has a history of conflict among ideas and groups. Tell me, who embodies "European <snip> de Man? The mark of a bigot is that he reads history selectively to find "good" values in his own group, and "bad" values in some other group. In fact "culture" is a fractal landscape. This isn't a
I don't recally him stating that the values from other groups were "bad", but rather that a nation should have a common base set of values to avoid just the kind of fractionalization that we see occuring right now.
Part of our national lore, and glory, is the fact that youngsters speaking not a word of English were placed in public schools where only English was used and very shortly were proficient in the language.
Immigrants to the US today learn English twice as fast as did immigrants to the US at the turn of the century. Greater access to
You don't say what percentage of Immigrants learn english v.s. the past. I'd bet that they learn twice as fast today only because the motivated ones bother, the rest just try to force us to learn their language.
There is far less regional differentiation in English dialects around the country today than there was at the turn of the century. Nearly all well-educated and socially mobile Americans under age 40 speak a common "broadcast TV english."
All three of them.
Southern and Brooklyn accents are less pronounced than they were.
Well, I can't speak for Brooklyn, but having just come back from trip thru the south (Tn. Ms. Ga. Al. Fl.) I can say that their accents are as thick as a brick.
That was crucial to the formation of an American identity Now, however, the educational system has become the weapon of choice for modern liberals in their project of dismantling American culture. Yup, that's us. It's all a conspiracy to drag America into the gutter.
Deeper into the gutter.
Our egalitarians view every culture (other than European) as equal. Nope. There is no "European culture." Only idiot collectivists of the nationalist type group people like this.
The cultural differences in Europe are minor compared to the differences between European and Asian for instance. Think of it like Operating Systems. Germany is like SCO, France is AT&T, Italy is BSD, China is Vax/VMS. Turkey is Dos/Windows (well, things do blow up a lot there...), Libya is running CM/VMS on an 3090. Iran is using OS/2 v1. Yes, there are differences between Germanic and French culture, but no where near the difference that exists between French and Libyain.
Vietnamese and Polish children were put into English-speaking classes and were competent into English long before the Hispanics in bilingual schools. No evidence for this assertion exists.
Do you live in a large city? Tell you what, Next time you are in chicago let me know, and I'll introduce you to my wife. Her mother was born in poland. My wife speaks standard middle class english. I'll introduce you to her cousins children, their father _still_ has trouble speaking english, yet the children speak standard english, as well as polish. They speak english with almost no accent. Next we'll take a trip to the barrio, and interview as many children as we can find. Want to take bets on how many hispanic children so as well? Hell, those kids (wife's family) go to a neighborhood Catholic School that is mixed polish and hispanic--the polish kids ALL learn english as a primary language (well, almost all) where the hispanic children learn it as a secondary language. Now, I have met hispanic people who do speak good english, but they--or at least their parents--made a commitment to being _american_ rather than expatriots waiting to go "home".
No. I choose to call you on the bullshit assertion that Hispanic children don't learn English. This prejudice is rooted in the small but visible segment of the Hispanic population that comprises recent immigrants. It is indubitably true that illegal immigrants doing odd jobs and domestic work -- the segment of the Hispanic population most visible to sensitive anglos -- tend not to speak English. Extrapolations from this population, though, are invalid.
Or the vocal segment who claims that they should have to "give up their cultural heritage" to "fit in with the rest of society". In cities with large hispanic populations sometimes third and fourth generations speak heavily accented spanglish.
Note the only evidence offered by Bork to bolster this straw man he's building is a similar slew of bald, unsupported assertions by a friend of his. He might as well be quoting himself.
Where as you are just overflowing with statistics and evidence to convince us that he is wrong, rather than leveling ad hominiem attacks on the him.
in Washington, D.C., in its 1992 'Curriculum Guidelines for Mul- ticultural Education.' "It too often demands self-denial, self-hatred, I see. "Pathetic whine" name-calling in reference to a one-sentence quote is the best you can do. At least you give a verifiable reference so that people can see what it really says.
He did. More of a reference than is usually found on this list.
Public dissatisfaction with the linguistic fracturing of society that need be done is the abolition of bilingual education and the repeal of the Voting Rights Act's requirement of different language ballots.
You'd better hurry, too, so that you can disenfranchise people before they know about it.
How does that disenfrachise people? It just says that if you want to vote (intelligently is left out) you have to have passable english language skills. It is already the case that you must have these skills to vote with any sort of integrity. Most of the debate on national and state issues is conducted in english--in the papers, on radio and tv (what debate there is--your franchise means less than ever when your choices are reduced)--if you can't understand the debate, how can you pick a side? (o.b. crypto-- RNG simulating a coin toss?)
once they begin to see its results. Immigrant parents want their children to learn English and become Americans. The opposition to that, manifested in bilingual education, comes from American elites who form an adversarial culture, alienated from the culture of the West and wishing to weaken it. Who are these "American elites"? Who's in on the conspiracy? What's in it for them?
Division of the "masses" into groups that can be played off one another. Less competition at the upper levels for them and their children (who you can be sure don't attend public schools). (Ok, never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity so--) It is even possible that these people truely believe that what they are doing is ethically correct, that they truely believe that American culture is evil, and that it needs to be changed or destroyed. I would go so far as to agree with them. I just don't think they are heading in the right direction.
"Less candid"? It's always a sign of trouble when you impugn the motives and honesty of your opponent without providing contrary evidence.
Yup. Preach it brother.
serious college-level audience that favored "uncritical adulation" of Columbus. What I believe happened was that the horrors of the two World Wars woke people up to the dangers of propaganda myths (on all sides; the anti-German "Hun" stuff from WWI is really disgusting), and
Then how do you explain the shit shoveled out of D.C. (and other National Capitols) on a regular basis?
teachers stopped lying to their pupils. Every real historian always
No, they haven't.
knew that Columbus was a complex figure. "Loathing and condemnation" is certainly a tad strong, but Bork and Bernstein are welcome to their rhetorical excess.
These days Columbus _is_ treated to loathing and condemnation. Kids are taught that he treated people like slaves--and not taught that this was common in his time. That he "plundered" the "new world", and not taught a damn thing about the historical context that this "plundering" took place in.
emphasis on white males, may be seen from the curriculum it favors. A curriculum designed to foster understanding of other cultures would study those cultures. Multiculturalism does not. Courses are not offered on the cultures of China or India or Brazil or Nigeria, nor does the curriculum require the study of languages without which foreign cultures cannot be fully understood.
This is bunk. The straw man grows.
Which part? In the last two colleges that I attended there were "Black" studies (later renamed to "Africa-America") and _some_ Chinese (at the last college there was also "latino") In the case of the "latino" and "Black" or "African American" it was more a study of that those two groups accomplished _here in america_ than in their "home lands". I should note that the last school I attened was an Art School, and these "muti-cultural" classes were taught from the Art History prespective. And yes, there was (IME) a bit of white male bashing in many of the courses.
Hence it is that multiculturalists have turned Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream into a nightmare. He asked that his children "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," which, as Bernstein says, is the "essential ideal of liberalism:' But multiculturalists say, "Judge me by the color of my skin for therein lies my identity and my place in the world."
They're projecting again. Sure some nonwhite racists call themselves multicultural. Reasonable people see through that. Old bigots who harken back to a nonexistent "European culture" are just as bad.
Look at the fight surrounding Proposition 209 in california. The claim has been made that it is unconstitutional because it seeks to prevent ANY bias in either direction in the basis of race. The "minority" "leaders" are the ones seeking to prevent it's enactment.
Typical BS from someone who doesn't know what he's talking about. So now, as a result of the "radicals' attack on Stanford's Western Culture program," what do Stanford students study? Shakespeare, Dante, Locke, etc. Also Equiano and Buddha. We only gain.
Are they studied to the depth that they were before? I doubt it.
What is this "inheritors of a tradition" notion? Who died and left me Shakespeare, and why?
Wether you like it or not, wether you acknowlege it or not, a second rate bullshit artist from the 1400's _has_ worked to shape the character of English Culture, and hence to a lesser degree American culture. Shakespear basically invented the Sit-com. Great huh?
have been "traditionally excluded" must now reject inclusion. There is no such teaching.
You know what many black peoples objection to Clarence Thomas was? That he was "In the House".
Damn, Bork and Bernstein are projecting *again*. It's not modern multiculturalist scholarchip that does this, but a bigoted rooting
It does it just as much as European history.