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  • Don’t Like White Privilege? Quit Your Job!

    That’s Bernard Goldberg’s sensible suggestion:

    Here’s the idea: Every white corporate CEO who thinks racism is ingrained in our culture, every white journalist who thinks racism has infected every facet of American life, every politician who thinks this is a fundamentally racist country — all of them should voluntarily give up their jobs, on one condition: that they be replaced by qualified African Americans.

    I’ve said it before: if you want to make an American really vein-bulging mad, tell him or her the obvious.  If you look at the comments, and see the virulent reaction to this idea, you’ll see what I mean.

    Renunciation of any kind is an impossible sell in this country.  Much of the fault for this, beyond ordinary human nature, can be laid at the feet of Protestant Christianity in general and Evangelical Christianity in particular, who have taught that renunciation is unnecessary, even though it’s a central part of Jesus’ message.

    This reaction mirrors a more polite form of this debate I had last summer with a prep schoolmate about a piece he wrote entitled “Renouncing Privilege.”  I actually put forth the idea that renunciation meant what it said, and his reply was as follows:

    Many of the students were, and probably still are wealthy, still privileged. I would not try to make the point that the young men became followers of Gandhi, just that they recognized an abusive power that they had the means to abolish and voted accordingly.

    Maybe that’s why they’re howling to remove Gandhi’s statue…

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  • Minority women can think for themselves — UnHerd

    The backlash against Priti Patel and Munira Mirza has been something to behold. Mirza, recently appointed to run the Government’s new Racial Inequality Review, has been described as a ‘racial gatekeeper’, among other things; Patel has been accused of ‘gaslighting’ by Labour MPs after talking about her own experiences of racism. I feel it especially because…

    via Minority women can think for themselves — UnHerd

  • A Time to Mourn — Stand Firm

    I’ve been slowly reading through JK Rowling’s “Reasons for Speaking Out on Sex and Gender Issues.” If you have time, it is worth the effort—she reiterates many points I’ve run into elsewhere. She clearly and, I must say compassionately, lays out the dilemma for both women and for people suffering from gender dysphoria. Moreover, she…

    via A Time to Mourn — Stand Firm

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  • Harvard Dropping SAT Tests? Why not!

    They say it’s temporary…

    Harvard College has joined peers in a major — albeit temporary — shift in college admissions: It’s dropping the requirement for standardized testing for the class of 2025, as the pandemic has restricted access to the SAT and ACT.

    For these institutions in particular, I think it’s a waste of time.

    I’m not a big fan of testing as the “end all” of educational evaluation.  As my Computational Fluid Dynamics prof noted after a disastrous midterm, testing isn’t ideal but it’s the best we’ve got.  I don’t think that testing is an entire way to evaluate students, which is why I’ve always weighted my homework–with the effort to prevent being Chegged–more than many of my colleagues.

    But really, with their admissions process, standardized testing for any Ivy League school is a waste of time.  That’s because they’re ultimately looking for the “balanced” person, an approach they came up with to trim the number of overachieving Jews they would have otherwise admitted (and one they still use against Asians, now with court approval.)  So why throw in standardized tests, with all of the inequities associated with them, to waste the time of admissions officers when they have more “important” considerations?

  • Being Unpatriotic Slowly Becomes Fashionable

    That’s the finding of this Gallup poll:

    American pride has continued its downward trajectory reaching the lowest point in the two decades of Gallup measurement. The new low comes at a time when the U.S. faces public health and economic crises brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in police custody.

    Patriotism is the glue that holds this country together.  Without it, things will eventually come apart.

    Ever since the 1960’s, when they burned everything–flags, cities, bras, you name it–the message from the left has been that this is an evil country.  Now that they occupy places of power–with the possibility of more–they appeal to our patriotism, thus the wild goose chase re the Russians.

    You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t say that this place was born in fundamental injustice (which is the message of things like the 1619 Project) and then turn around and expect us to look up to the place as the fount of everything beautiful and good when you’re in power.  That’s especially true when Democrats who poll as proud of the country poll in the low 20’s.  They had already gone south of half before Barack Obama left office. Do they expect a solid rebound if they get back into power?

    I don’t, and neither do I think that it’s going to get better on either or both sides before it gets worse.

  • Michael Scanlan’s Amazing Prophecy

    I’ve been puzzled about the spike this week in the stats for this post about Michael Scanlan and the University of Steubenville.  A friend of mine put me on to an email blast from Ralph Martin; a video version of this is below:

    My response to this was as follows:

    Now I understand the major spike in the stats for my piece on Michael Scanlan.

    There were many people in the 1970’s who were looking for/prophesying about a time when Christians would be “at sea” so to speak. But then two things happened.

    The first was the election of John Paul II as Pope in 1978. He managed to set the RCC’s “house in order” as best as possible. The Renewal suffered the consequences of this but it happened.

    The second was the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980. He too put some things in order.

    To some extent these two events with others stalled the collapse foreseen at the time (tbh I was looking for a collapse, too.) But now things have shifted and we’re back facing the abyss again.

    One note: when Ralph Martin speaks of “Christ’s body” he interprets that eucharistically, in a good #straightouttairondale way. I doubt that this is what Scanlan had in mind. The powers that were in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (and that includes Ralph Martin) had a strong remnant theology undertow, which drove the whole covenant community movement. The “body” he was referring to was the group of saints which were not part of the falling away he refers to elsewhere. Irrespective of the merits or demerits of the covenant community system, it goes against some basic Catholic teachings, something that the Church was “looser” about at the time than it was under JPII.

  • Traditional Morning Prayer: 11 June 2020

  • An old Zenith Colour Television Broadcasts the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King

    Just about every television I grew up with was a Zenith.  So I was intrigued when I saw this video of a Zenith colour “roundie.”  We had one in our family room in Palm Beach (I’m not sure whether it was this exact model but it was close.)

    The sample broadcast he chose is riveting, especially these days: Walter Cronkite’s report of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on 4 April 1968.   I doubt we watched CBS (we were NBC, Huntley-Brinkley types) but we certainly watched the reports of this.  It’s interesting to hear Dr. King evoke the Bill of Rights in his speech the night before he was killed; now so many consider those rights to be part of the problem.

    I’ve cued up the video to that broadcast; if you’re interested in the technical aspects of the Zenith he’s looking at, just run it back to the start.

    Our own roundie went on to transmit other tumultuous events of the time, including the Watergate Hearings, as you can see below in photos from its tube.  (I’ve got recordings from that here and here.  I cropped these close, but you can see the rounding in the corners.)

    On the hot seat: John Erlichman, Richard Nixon’s Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs.
    Sen Sam. Ervin (D-NC), the Committee’s Chairman. His questioning of John Erlichman–which turned into a monologue on rights under the Constitution–dominates most of this excerpt.
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  • What can Pentecostals learn from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism? — Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

    This Week in AG History — June 3, 1944 By Darrin J. Rodgers Originally published on AG News, 04 June 2020 What can Pentecostals learn from John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism? Wesley, an Anglican priest in England, helped to lay the foundation for large segments of the evangelical and Pentecostal movements. Despite living […]

    via What can Pentecostals learn from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism? — Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

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  • “All police forces get buffeted from time to time, but they know one thing: through revolutions, political-line changes and the fall of governments, the police are eternal.”

    From John Fraser’s The Chinese: Portrait of a People.

    His observations centred on the Gonganju (Public Security Bureau) in China.  They became enmeshed (and very politicised) with the Great Leap Forward and later the Cultural Revolution, and after Mao’s death the Party began an effort to disentangle the Gonganju from political life (and ultimately involvement in the Party’s own internal affairs.)  About that he noted the following:

    The Communist Party has begun a campaign to reorient the Gonganju from being an enforcer of political thought to being a more effective custodian of law and order, but it’s going to be a long, uphill struggle.  There is every reason to believe that the police establishment will successfully resist too great a change because it knows that a one-party totalitarian state always needs a political thought enforcer eventually.

    Yi Jinping understands this completely.  Given the totalitarian urges out and about in our own society, for us–on the left or the right–to think we’re immune from this, or that we can abolish the police at will, is foolish.  The police exist, among other things, to uphold the existing order, and it’s reasonable to say that, if that existing order were to radically change, whatever replaces it will need the police as much as the one it displaces.

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