Saturday, March 9, 2013

Multicultural societies don't work

Reflected in the statistics of this article are the irreconcilable differences in the Republican and Democrat parties of today.   By and large R's believe that everyone in our country/nation should be on the same page when it comes to the unifying component of a culture, namely a common language.  On the other hand, D's believe in multicultural societies with as many official state languages as there are ethnicities.  This is why one sees subway signs in New York with instructions in several languages.  History is not on the D's side however, since there are few examples of multicultural empires/societies/nations that survive.  Think of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Soviet Empires and their subsequent break-up into many culturally homogeneous states.


E Pluribus Duo
America is fast becoming two nations—one English-speaking and one Spanish-speaking.
20 February 2013
Last week, Senator Marco Rubio gave the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech in Spanish as well as English, the first spokesman for an opposition party to do so. (In the past, the Spanish response was delivered by a specially designated speaker.) Is this a milestone worth pondering? Correct thought on both Right and Left would say: “Absolutely not; it is bigoted even to mention the growing reach of Spanish, a phenomenon which should be of no concern to anyone.” (The English-speaking audience was likely unaware of Rubio’s Spanish speech, which he had prerecorded and which ran simultaneously on Spanish-language networks. It might have been interesting to see the reaction had he delivered the two versions live and in sequence on the major networks.)
Elite indifference to the spread of Spanish may well be justified, but it would be useful if its rationale were fully articulated. It’s not hard to guess why the Left would celebrate Spanish’s increasing prevalence: it dovetails with the project of replacing a common American culture with multiculturalism. It’s much less obvious why some conservatives apparently believe that we should be serene about the matter. Two conceivable justifications come to mind—though neither is persuasive.
First, they might say, the use of Spanish in the public realm is just a temporary phase that will wane as assimilation marches inevitably forward. It would be nice to see some hints that this is happening. Instead, the trend appears to be overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. Daily experience suggests that the following phenomena are only increasing: “oprima numero dos” options in customer-service calls; Spanish signage in transportation hubs; Spanish packaging on consumer items; billboards and subway posters in Spanish; Spanish-language versions of newspapers; and Spanish-language affiliates of cable networks. Does anyone think that in the future fewer politicians will deliver their remarks in Spanish? The ability to speak Spanish is a “major advantage” for “potential presidential rivals in 2016,” observes the National Journal.
Bilingual candidates will continue to be given a leg up on the political ladder, and non–Spanish speakers, like New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, will desperately seek to master at least a few wooden phrases to demonstrate their empathy. “A politician who can communicate his or her message on Spanish-language television to the fastest-growing minority in this country is increasingly powerful,” Democratic consultant Maria Cardona told the National Journal. “You cannot overstate the power of the emotional connection that is triggered when you hear your own language.” Republican operatives agree: “When you speak to someone in their native language, you are telling them we’re part of the same community,” echoed Republican consultant Alex Castellanos. Arguably, the message is just the opposite: instead of telling them “we’re part of the same community,” you’re telling them that we don’t expect you to communicate in or understand English, which is not your “own” language, in Cardona’s words.
Understanding English is supposedly a precondition for gaining U.S. citizenship. Why, then, is it even necessary for politicians to address voters in Spanish? Either their English skills are not what we have been led to believe, or they simply prefer to use Spanish. Neither possibility is reassuring.
There appears to be no similar stampede of candidates, including Hispanic politicians, beating down the doors of Chinese or Korean Berlitz schools to communicate better with their Asian constituents. The assumption is: Asians and other immigrants will learn English; Hispanics, on the other hand, need to be reached in Spanish. The relative size of the various populations is no excuse: if using someone’s native or legacy language is appropriate and respectful for one language group, why shouldn’t the practice extend to all groups?
Politicians are not the only public officials under pressure to communicate in Spanish, of course. Cops in Santa Ana, California, and Los Angeles report that residents feel entitled to be spoken to in Spanish. The same applies on the other coast. “I have more confidence in their police when they’re speaking Spanish,” a bakery owner in East Haven told the New York Times in January. (Note the use of “their” in “their police.”)
Pro-amnesty conservatives regularly assert that assimilation is proceeding wonderfully, because most second- and third-generation Hispanics allegedly understand English. Is Spanish spreading, then, because the arrival of even more immigrants speaking only Spanish overwhelms this progress, or because Hispanic-Americans themselves prefer Spanish? Again, neither possibility is reassuring. Week after week, the ten most-watched TV shows among Hispanic-Americans are Spanish-language telenovelas on Univision. Univision aims—realistically—to become the top-rated network among 18- to 49-year-olds in a few years; it already regularly logs the most viewers among the 18-to-34 demographic. Even during Super Bowl week this year, when Americans overall, including blacks, gorged on Super Bowl coverage, Hispanic-Americans were still glued to Amores Verdaderos (True Loves).
Open-borders conservatives might cite a second justification for their nonchalance: Yes, the country is becoming bilingual, but so what? Again, such a position well may be right, but one would like to hear the argument. Language is inextricably linked to culture. If politicians felt compelled to speak Arabic to reach Muslims living in the U.S., or if every consumer phone call triggered an Arabic prompt, would conservatives be so sanguine about assimilation? Without question, Americans should learn more foreign languages. But it should not be necessary to do so to communicate with their fellow Americans.
The federal government’s impending immigration-reform plan will legalize an estimated 11 million illegal aliens already in the country. Mexicans account for 58 percent of the illegal population; unauthorized immigrants from the rest of South America (mostly Central America) make up another 23 percent, for a total of well over 9 million Spanish-speaking newly legal residents, who will in turn eventually be able to bring in their spouses, children, siblings, and parents, if those family members are not already here. Half of all illegal aliens have not completed high school; one-third have less than a ninth-grade education, according to Peter Skerry, writing in National Affairs. Twenty-two percent of all U.S. residents without a high school degree are illegal residents. This is not a population we can be confident will quickly adopt English or get ahead economically, though we can be sure that they will swell Democratic ranks: “Poor, working-class immigrants . . . turned out to be very reliable voters for us,” the executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor recently told the New York Times.
Victor Davis Hanson writes powerfully about how California has become “Mexifornia.” There is no reason to think that such a trend will stop at the state’s borders. To the contrary, California offers a window onto the future. Governor Jerry Brown announced earlier this year a plan to redistribute state funding from middle-class schools to those with high proportions of “English learners,” a designation that frequently applies to students who have lived here all their lives but whose academic abilities are so low that they continue to be categorized as non-native speakers into their high school years. The challenge of educating this population is an enormous drain on the state’s coffers, as it is elsewhere. (Tucson has spent an estimated $1 billion trying to improve the performance of Hispanic-American students under a desegregation decree originally targeted at blacks; Hispanics’ high rate of disciplinary and academic problems prompted the creation of Tucson’s controversialMexican-American studies curriculum.)
Conservatives have traditionally stressed the unum rather than thepluribus in our national motto (which originally referred to the unification of the states into a single nation, not to our contemporary notion of “diversity”). If the reality on the ground looks more and more like “E pluribus duo,” shouldn’t we care?

The following from Thomas Sowell:


Yet intellectuals see themselves as friends, allies and defenders of racial minorities, even as they paint them into a corner of cultural stagnation. This allows the intelligentsia to flatter themselves that they are on the side of the angels against the forces of evil that are conspiring to keep minorities down.
When they cannot come up with hard evidence in any particular case to support this theory today, that just proves to the intelligentsia how fiendishly clever and covert these pervasive efforts to hold down minorities are.
Why people with high levels of mental skills and rhetorical talents would tie themselves into knots with such reasoning is a mystery. Perhaps it is just that they cannot give up a social vision that is so flattering to themselves, despite how detrimental it may be to the people they claim to be helping.
Multiculturalism, like the caste system, paints people into the corner where they happened to have been born. But at least the caste system does not claim to benefit those at the bottom.
Multiculturalism not only serves the ego interests of intellectuals, it serves the political interests of elected officials, who have every incentive to promote a sense of victimhood, and even paranoia, among groups whose votes they want, in exchange for both material and psychic support.
The multicultural vision of the world also serves the interests of those in the media, who thrive on moral melodramas. So do whole departments of ethnic "studies" in academia and a whole industry of "diversity" consultants, community organizers and miscellaneous other race hustlers.
The biggest losers in all this are those members of racial minorities who allow themselves to be led into the blind alley of resentment and rage, even when there are broad avenues of opportunity available. And we all lose when society is polarized.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

The demise of the Lakers

The Lakers have the biggest payroll in the NBA largely concentrated on just four players.  The rest of the team is, at best, mediocre, because the management simply cannot afford to pay for a decent supporting cast.  Fan frustration comes from watching the lack of teamwork, lack of cohesion, lack of camaraderie, lack of motivation and lack of leadership on the part of any of the four 20 million per year guys.  This is truly a pathetic example of how not to put together a winning team.  It's not that this formula hasn't been tried before.  Miami assembled three superstars and struggled for two years to get the chemistry right before it finally came together for them and they won a championship.  Ditto Boston.  But the Lakers have an added problem:  they're old.  All their supers with the exception of Howard the center, are well into their thirties and well past their primes.  It doubtful this team will make the playoffs and even if they do its even more doubtful they could survive the first round.  This team is doomed.  Finally, the play of Dwight Howard, presumably the best center in the game today, has been revealing. While a very big body and figure in the middle, he plays more like a big forward with minimal offensive skills than a dominant center say like Kareem Jabbar.  Somewhere along the line he was not taught or did not learn many offensive moves, plus, his ball handling is pathetic.  Throwing the ball into him in the low post yields about a 50% chance of a fumble or misplay of some sort or the other.  He's not a good passer and he's unable to make shots for himself.  He's an effective rebounder but I have yet to see him initiate a fast break out of the low post with any kind of an effective outlet pass.  All in all, this player is not exceptional and will not be an effective leader down the road when Bryant is gone.  As for Bryant, he's still an effective scorer however his turnovers and defensive lapses are costly, plus, he's not making the players around him better since he takes nearly half the team's shots.  Of course the players around him are either long of tooth or not very skilled.  This season will not end any better than it started.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Barone and Bob Woodward

It is very important to note the date of this column by Michael Barone when assessing the facts surrounding the Woodward brouhaha currently preoccupying Washington's media elite.  In short, Barone predicted the very outcome we are now watching enfold as stories of press intimidation leak out.  Sadly, Barone had it exactly right.


The Coming Obama Thugocracy 
Attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals.
By Michael Barone

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‘I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up.
That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign emails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program in Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama’s relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago — papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.

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Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest emails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.
Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were “false.” I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama’s ties to Ayers.
These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can’t abide having citizens hear contrary views.
To their credit, some liberal old-timers — like House Appropriations Chairman David Obey — voted against the “fairness doctrine,” in line with their longstanding support of free speech. But you can expect the “fairness doctrine” to get another vote if Barack Obama wins and Democrats increase their congressional majorities.
Corporate liberals have done their share in shutting down anti-liberal speech, too.Saturday Night Live ran a spoof of the financial crisis that skewered Democrats like House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and liberal contributors Herbert and Marion Sandler, who sold toxic-waste-filled Golden West to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion. Kind of surprising, but not for long. The tape of the broadcast disappeared from NBC’s Website and was replaced with another that omitted the references to Frank and the Sandlers. Evidently NBC and its parent, General Electric, don’t want people to hear speech that attacks liberals.
Then there’s the Democrats’ “card check” legislation, which would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees are represented by unions. The unions’ strategy is obvious: Send a few thugs over to employees’ homes — we know where you live — and get them to sign cards that will trigger a union victory without giving employers a chance to be heard.
Once upon a time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s made the case that they should have access to employees to speak freely to them, and union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment.
Today’s liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.
Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don’t like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.