Search Results for: scholarly

Black Styles, White Racism, and the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright Controversy

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(Excerpt): I was raised to think that fidgeting, shouting and mopping one’s brow when speaking in public was unrefined. My mom only meant to teach me how to act, but her instructions left me judgmental of other cultures and styles. I squirmed with her when Elvis Presley gyrated and grunted and sweated. Together we hated Hitler’s rants, and shrank in dismay from Khrushchev’s noisy shoe. Loud, angry, confrontive voices still do nothing for me. They feel rude and threatening. And I’m not alone in this.
Maybe it’s my Calvinist streak, but I like my leaders calm, cool, and collected, like my man Barack Obama…. Continue reading →

Bill Gates and the End of High School As We Know It

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(excerpt): What do we stand to lose when we make such radical changes?
Our children's dangerous daily swim in the over-stimulating hormonal soup we now call high school, where the lowest cultural common denominators too often prevail…. The wasted time our children interminably spend transitioning–coming and going, changing and starting classes, standing in lines, waiting, waiting, waiting for something to start, something to happen…. Our children's sense of being anonymously factory-processed, instead of compellingly involved in their own highly-desired learning goals, outcomes, and futures…. Anger, rebellion, and desperation among too many students (and their teachers….) Pointless and harmful man-hours spent credentializing…. Proms…. Debilitating, expensive, space and energy-inefficient, exclusive competitive school sports systems which, themselves, create health and emotional problems, and primarily provide fodder for the sports industry…. Lost lives and liability suits from the inevitable violence arising from our contemporary culture's too many unnecessary school pressures…. Lost time for learning due to shootings, mercury, guns, drugs, viruses, terrorism, prank calls, snow (etc!)….
We stand to lose, in other words, nothing of any great value.
And what do we stand to gain? A better education and a better future for our children and our country. (That is, everything. Priceless!) Continue reading →

Can’t We Just All Get Along?

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(Excerpt:) Why don’t we all just humbly accept that we are all destined to live and die with great mysteries and uncertainties, and that we aren’t meant to know very many things with any great deal of clarity? We can still pursue understanding, but it's more fun when we realize that whatever it is that God intends for us to do and be and have and believe on this earth—if there is indeed a God even of each of our personal understandings, and Whoever or whatever we each choose to mean by that Name—it is very evidently not likely that we will ever clearly understand everything, or anything, and will certainly never all come to the same conclusions. (Excerpt:) Especially in religious, philosophical, and political discourse, we can spend less time divided among our many differences, and instead celebrate and focus upon our many commonalities—all the universal truths upon which we can all agree, all that unites us, such as love, hope, faith (wherever we choose to put that faith), respect, responsibility, honesty, fairness, hard work, spiritual practice, community, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, purity, selflessness, peacefulness…and the rest of the long list of good things we can all agree upon which goes on forever. These ecumenical values, in all their various positive permutations and versions, can always be communally embraced, taught, admired, built upon, and warmly shared among people of all faiths and ideologies, or of no faith or ideology. Then, instead of forever being self-righteously “right”–that is, wrong–we can celebrate and embrace one another's uniqueness, and…just get along. Continue reading →

Today’s Muslims: More “christian” Than Christians?

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EXCERPT: For the first time, Americans are experiencing the christian spirits of this exotic and unfamiliar culture which devoutly prays many times daily, is devoted to family, and which, just like Christians, exhorts its children at home, mosque and school to acts of goodness, kindness, generosity, and peace. EXCERPT: When we choose to see them through christian-spirited eyes, we’ll see a gentle people who have suffered greatly during a century of relentless violence from outsiders, simply because oil was discovered on the land of their ancestors, who yet still reach out hospitably to all who come, not as occupiers and invaders, but as peaceful, respectful visitors and citizens. EXCERPT: Most Muslims, like most Christians, have “christian” spirits, wanting to raise families in a compassionate culture which nurtures universal values. Yet most Americans today agree that, somewhere along the way, America has lost many of her ‘christian’ ways. Continue reading →

Sanctimonious History Overthrown in Stephen Kinzer’s OVERTHROW: AMERICA'S CENTURY OF REGIME CHANGE FROM HAWAII TO IRAQ

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Excerpt: People like to feel good about themselves, and Americans are no exception; so only a relative handful of scholarly Americans are even aware of their government’s direct historical responsibility for a century of violent regime changes in fourteen countries from Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Honduras, to South Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Excerpt: Kinzer’s brilliant decision to summarize the colorful particulars of who-what-when-where-how leading up to, during, and following each overthrow, give range to his best journalistic talents, while reducing his biographer’s breadth and historian’s bounty of facts, figures, places, and times into fourteen short, lively, memorable tales of derring-do, intrigue, overreaching, ignorance, prejudice, greed, and mayhem.
Excerpt: Reading Overthrow brought to mind the darker aspects of Margaret Meade’s assertion, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,” while adding credibility to the mounting evidence that the tragedy of today’s Middle East is indeed directly traceable to the benighted machinations of a few dedicated, powerful, and sorely misguided neocons in Washington, D.C. For each case of regime change, Kinzer implicates a small group of daring individuals usually acting for corporate interests and always with presidential authority. Continue reading →

What About All Those Pesky Missing WMDs in Iraq…?

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Excerpt: I wish a researcher would list who and when and what each war critic wrote at that time, to answer all those who now say, “Everyone worldwide thought there were WMDs.” This assertion is simply blatantly false–”everyone” did not believe that. A multitude of spot-on pre-war critics were writing frantically, in both U.S. and international periodicals and newspapers, offering scholarly, articulate, and perfectly reasonable rationales against WMDs and invasion, although by then, most Americans–including, unfortunately, many in government leadership roles–were so terrified by the steady drumbeat of pro-war, pro-fear propaganda that their minds were made up, and they never even bothered to read about or consider such warnings…. Continue reading →

Coulda Been, Woulda Been, Shoulda Been….Sad Lessons in 20/20 Foresight

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A few weeks after 9/11, my local newspaper published my (pre-blog) “solutions” and comments about “what we should do next/now….” Excerpt: I would figure out which American foreign policies have resulted in so much global hatred and criticism, and change them….I would not assume that everyone wants us to come over and tell them how to live….I would offer help to others in reaching whatever goals are important to them….I would give no support to government policies and decisions that legitimize treating non-Americans in ways we Americans would not wish to be treated….I would use this terrible, tragic attack as an opening to form global alliances based in respect and love for human life, human freedom, and human interests everywhere….I would not use the arguments of “stablity” or “American interests” or protection of our citizenry to legitimize unjustly invading, occupying, imposing on, or exploiting any other peoples, or to create or support undemocratic governments favorable to American interests….If some of the money we spend on military and intelligence were spent on kindness, diplomacy, and sharing, we'd be a safer, richer, happier country….I pray in the name of (9/11's) most direct sufferers that their memory will not be disrespected by using them as an excuse to start World War III…. Continue reading →