Tag Archives: Left

News

New study: college freshmen reading lists contain no conservative books

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Lots of leftist books, though. Here’s the post about the study from The College Fix.

Excerpt:

Young America’s Foundation has surveyed the required reading programs for incoming college freshmen nationwide and found that, over the past three years, none of the colleges have assigned a conservative-leaning book.

None of them.

Young America’s Foundation surveyed the top 50 schools as noted by Forbes, and “found that many of the ‘required’ books only offered left-wing perspectives on topics such as race, feminism, socialism, inequality, and wealth redistribution.”

[…]“Young America’s Foundation believes young people should be exposed to a true liberal education-one that includes both liberal and conservative ideas, but there appears to be no balance in these readings that are required by colleges and universities,” YAF states. “From the moment students enroll in college through graduation day, they are exposed to liberal themes-and few, if any, will read a conservative book or heard from a conservative professor.”

That’s not all, check this out from National Review.

Excerpt:

Although it has barely registered yet in our public debates, the teaching of American history in our high schools has just been seized in what a few sharp-eyed critics rightly call a “curricular coup.” The College Board, the private company that creates the SAT test and the various Advance Placement tests, has issued a new set of guidelines that is about to turn the teaching of American history into exactly the sort of grievance-based pedagogy that D’Souza decries in his film.

Leftist academics have finally figured out a way to circumvent state and local control over America’s schools and effectively impose progressive political indoctrination on the entire country. Once the AP U.S. History test demands blame-America-first answers, public and private schools alike will be forced to construct an American history curriculum that “teaches to the test.”

Up until the last few months, the College Board has provided high school teachers with only a brief topical outline for the AP U.S. History test. The brevity of this outline has permitted states, school districts, and teachers across the country to approach American history in their own way.  Now, however, the College Board has created a lengthy and detailed “framework” for their AP U.S. History test.  That framework effectively forces teachers to adopt an ideologically left-leaning approach to American history, heavily emphasizing our country’s failings while giving short shrift to our founding principles.

If you’re going to send your kids to college, try to keep them in a STEM field. If not STEM, then trade school. Non-STEM programs are just swimming in left-wing propaganda. You don’t went to go 30K into debt just to pay for brainwashing by narrow-minded academics.

Commentary

Dennis Prager: why the left doesn’t care about bad economic news

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This was posted last night on Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Almost everywhere the left is in control — in California, for example — the economic news is awful. But this has no effect on the ruling Democrats, the Los Angeles Times editorial page, New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman or others on the left.

There is one overriding philosophical reason and one political reason for this.

He lists a number of the economic problems in California – a state that is controlled top to bottom by Democrats.

Why doesn’t it bother Democrats that economies decline when they are in control?

He writes:

Why do these state-crushing economic statistics — nearly every one of which is the result of left-wing policies — have no effect on California’s Democrats, the Los Angeles Times editorial page, New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman or almost anyone else on the left?

The answer is that they don’t care.

Yes, of course, as individuals with a heart, most people, right and left, care about people losing their jobs.

But in terms of what matters to the left and the policies they pursue, they don’t care. The left and the political party it controls do not care if their policies force companies to leave the state (or the country).

They don’t care about the coming high inflation caused by quantitative easing (printing money) — Krugman calls it the inflation obsession — or the job-depressing effects of high taxes or energy prices that hurt the middle class or compelling businesses to leave.

They don’t care because the left is not interested in prosperity; the left is interested in inequality and in the environment.

Furthermore, the worse the economic situation, the more voters are likely to vote Democrat. The worse the economic situation, the greater the number of people receiving government assistance; the greater the number of people receiving government assistance, the greater the number of people who will vote Democrat.

Therefore, both philosophically and politically, the left has no reason to be troubled by bad economic news. And it isn’t. It is troubled by inequality and carbon emissions.

He could have done the same analysis in Detroit, where Democrats govern unopposed by Republicans, and have for years.

The main problem of the left is “inequality”. If they put in place policies that make everyone earn minimum wage, regardless of what they do, that would be a great victory for them. If the price of prosperity is “economic inequality”, then so much the worse for prosperity. If you tax people who produce more value than a minimum wage worker so that they make the same as a minimum wage worker, you can forget about the kinds of businesses that produce cars, computers and appliances. People invent these things and start businesses in order to make a profit. That’s why they spend their savings and take the risk to start a business. But if everything they earn is taxed away, then we will have to do without new products and services. This is understood in the private sector, but not by the government, nor by the low-information voters who vote for bigger government.

We have to stop allowing the Left to pain themselves as saints because they talk about the poor. What they don’t like about the poor is the rich. If everyone were poor, they wouldn’t talk about the poor – because everyone would be equal. That’s their goal.

Polemics

Should you marry someone who promises you that “there will be no divorce”?

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I was having a chat with a friend of mine who just got out of a serious relationship and I was trying to pick his brain to find out everything about the woman he was intending to marry so I could see why things went wrong. He told me that she had told him over and over that “there would be no divorce” and that he found that very convincing, despite very obvious warning signs in the area of respect (which I wrote about yesterday).

Well. I was very surprised to hear this, and so I asked him whether he thought it was enough that this woman told him that “three will be no divorce”. He said yes. This woman had experienced the divorce of her own parents and she was resolved (by act of will) never to let that happen to her. He found that acceptable, but I didn’t because I know the numbers on this, and I know that children of divorced parents are more likely to divorce themselves. So the pain of divorce is no deterrent here.

So should we believe that people can avoid a divorce just by saying they will? I told him no. And for an example, I offered a thought experiment. I said to imagine two runners on a track who are charged with completing 10 laps. One runner is a Navy SEAL like Mike Murphy, who has been trained to run miles and miles carrying a 60 pound load. In the mountains. The other is a 300-lb couch potato whose idea of exercise is reaching for the TV remote control. Suppose I ask both runners: do you intend to finish the 10 laps? Should I believe them if they both say yes?

Look, marriage is like building a house. People can say whatever they want about their prospects for success, but the will doesn’t decide here. You have to certain skills, you have to have a certain amount of money, you have to have a plan, you have to be able to read blueprints, you have to be able to hire specialists, you understand the differences between materials, etc. When you think about it, no long-term enterprise can be accomplished by act of will. Piano recitals, math exams, investing for retirement… nothing can be done by sheer act of will.

Now with that being said, let’s take a look at an example.

An example

I found this article in the Wall Street Journal way back in 2011, but it fits my conversation with my friend.

The author, Susan Gregory Thomas, lists some of the mistakes she made that led her to get a divorce in her first marriage.

This is the first thing I saw that caught my eye:

“Whatever happens, we’re never going to get divorced.” Over the course of 16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children were born.

So she is trying to express an intention here, repeatedly, to her husband. I think the point here is that she did have good intentions but as we shall see that was not enough to prevent the divorce. That’s a warning to others that good intentions are not enough.

Here is the second thing:

I believed that I had married my best friend as fervently as I believed that I’d never get divorced. No marital scenario, I told myself, could become so bleak or hopeless as to compel me to embed my children in the torture of a split family. And I wasn’t the only one with strong personal reasons to make this commitment.

I noticed that a lot of people seem to think that being compatible is very important to marriage. But I don’t think that it is the most important thing. For example, you would not expect two cocaine addicts or two gambling addicts, etc. to have a stable marriage. I think marriage is more like a job interview where there are specific things that each person has to be able to do in order to make it work. So again, she’s giving a warning to others that compatibility is not a guarantee of marriage success.

And there’s more:

My husband and I were as obvious as points on a graph in a Generation X marriage study. We were together for nearly eight years before we got married, and even though statistics show that divorce rates are 48% higher for those who have lived together previously, we paid no heed.

We also paid no heed to his Catholic parents, who comprised one of the rare reassuringly unified couples I’d ever met, when they warned us that we should wait until we were married to live together. As they put it, being pals and roommates is different from being husband and wife. How bizarrely old-fashioned and sexist! We didn’t need anything so naïve or retro as “marriage.” Please. We were best friends.

Sociologists, anthropologists and other cultural observers tell us that members of Generation X are more emotionally invested in our spouses than previous generations were. We are best friends; our marriages are genuine partnerships. Many studies have found that Generation X family men help around the house a good deal more than their forefathers. We depend on each other and work together.

So here I am seeing that she rejected sex roles, parental advice, or the moral guidelines of Christianity. Again, she is discussing some of the factors that I at least think contribute to divorce. I think that she is right to highlight the fact that she was wrong to disregard the statistics on cohabitation.

So here are some of the mistakes:

  • reject advice from parents
  • avoid chastity
  • cohabitate for EIGHT YEARS
  • embrace feminism, reject complementarian sex roles
  • thinking that good intentions would overcome every challenge

So, what does the research show works to have a stable marriage?

  • chastity
  • rejection of feminism
  • regular church attendance
  • parental involvement in the courting
  • parents of both spouses married
  • no previous divorces

Guess what? You can’t break all the rules and still succeed by sheer force of will.  If you break all the rules like that woman in the story, you can’t have a working marriage. Not without repudiating everything you believed, and taking steps to undo all the damage from everything you’ve done. You can’t keep all the bad beliefs and bad habits you’ve built up and marry them to a marriage that will stand the test of time.

A good marriage is an enterprise, and it requires that your character be changed to fit the requirements. There is no way to short-circuit the preparation / selection processes by act of will. And just because your friends are getting married, that’s no reason for you to rush into it unprepared. The best way to prepare for marriage is pick people of the opposite sex and practice marriage behaviors (e.g. – listening, helping) with them – even with people you don’t intend to marry. Take an interest in their lives and practice denying yourself to help them with their problems. That’s better than making idle promises you’re not able to keep. And this works the same for men and for women. Both people need to get this right.