Waging War Against the Dead
    
The 21st century is in danger of becoming an era of statue smashing and historical erasure. Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past.

In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam.

In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Muhammad.

The West prides itself in the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.

In the last two years there has been a rash of statue toppling throughout the American South, aimed at wiping out memorialization of Confederate heroes. The pretense is that the Civil War can only be regarded as tragic in terms of the present oppression of the descendants of Southern slaves — 154 years after the extinction of the Confederate states.

There is also a renewed crusade to erase the memory of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Los Angeles removed a Columbus statue in November based on the premise that his 1492 discovery of the Americas began a disastrous genocide in the Western Hemisphere.

Last month, the Northern California town of Arcata did away with a statue of former president William McKinley because he supposedly pushed policies detrimental to Native Americans.

There have been some unfortunate lessons from such vendettas against the images and names of the past.

One, such attacks usually revealed a lack of confidence. The general insecurity of the present could supposedly be remedied by destroying mute statutes or the legacies of the dead, who could offer no rebuttal.

The subtext of most current name changing and icon toppling is that particular victimized groups blame their current plight on the past. They assume that by destroying long-dead supposed enemies, they will be liberated — or at least feel better in the present.

Yet knocking down images of Columbus will not change the fact that millions of indigenous people in Central America and Mexico are currently abandoning their ancestral homelands and emigrating northward to quite different landscapes that reflect European and American traditions and political, economic and cultural values.

Two, opportunism, not logic, always seems to determine the targets of destruction.

This remains true today. If mass slaughter in the past offered a reason to obliterate remembrance of the guilty, then certainly sports teams should drop brand names such as “Aztecs.” Likewise, communities should topple statues honoring various Aztec gods, including the one in my own hometown: Selma, Calif.

After all, the Aztec Empire annually butchered thousands of innocent women and children captives on the altars of their hungry gods. The Aztecs were certainly far crueler conquerors, imperialists and colonialists than was former President McKinley. Yet apparently the Aztecs, as indigenous peoples, earn a pass on the systematic mass murder of their enslaved indigenous subjects.

Stanford University has changed the name of two buildings and a mall that had been named for Father Junipero Serra, the heroic 18th century Spanish founder of the California missions. Serra was reputed to be unkind to the indigenous people whom he sought to convert to Christianity.

Stanford students and faculty could have found a much easier target in their war against the dead: the eponymous founder of their university, Leland Stanford himself. Stanford was a 19th century railroad robber baron who brutally imported and exploited Asian labor and was explicit in his low regard for non-white peoples.

Yet it is one thing to virtue-signal by renaming a building and quite another for progressive students to rebrand their university — and thereby lose the prestigious Stanford trademark that is seen as their gateway to career advancement.

Third, in the past there usually has been a cowardly element to historical erasure. Destruction was often done at night by roving vandals, or was sanctioned by extremist groups who bullied objectors.

So too in the present. Many Confederate statues were torn down or defaced at night. City councils voted to change names or remove icons after being bullied by small pressure groups and media hysteria. They rarely referred the issue to referenda.

Four, ignorance both accompanies and explains the arrogance of historical erasure, past and present.

Recently, vandals in North Carolina set fire to a statue of General Lee. But they got the wrong Lee. Their target was not a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, but a statue of World War II Maj. Gen. William C. Lee, who campaigned for the creation of a U.S. Army airborne division and helped plan the invasion of Normandy.

The past is not a melodrama but more often a tragedy. Destroying history will not make you feel good about the present. Studying and learning from it might.

SOURCE







Abortion: New Mexico Exposes Big Canyons on Left

New Mexico’s bill was supposed to be a slam dunk. But after New York, nothing on abortion is a sure thing — not anymore. In a country that saw a 17-point jump in the number of pro-lifers since January, it’s no wonder that state Democrats are taking a good hard look at their positions, especially on late-term abortion. Americans have changed — and it looks like smart politicians are changing with them.

No one was more surprised by Thursday night’s vote than Governor (and abortion extremist) Michelle Lujan Grisham (D). After the House had sent the bill on with a 40-29 vote, the Democrats’ stranglehold on the Senate was supposed to mean that the New York-style H.B. 51 was a done deal. But despite the party’s 26-16 edge, the vote fell far from party lines. In a stunning victory for pro-lifers, eight Democrats crossed over — killing a bill that would have legalized infanticide and given abortionists the right to destroy babies up to the moment of birth.

Governor Grisham, who hadn’t counted on the intense lobbying from pastors and state conservatives, was astounded. “That… it was even a debate, much less a difficult vote for some senators, is inexplicable to me,” she told reporters. By a 24-18 tally, Democratic Senators Pete Campos, Carlos Cisneros, Richard Martinez, George Muñoz, Senate President Pro Tem Mary Kay Papen, Ramos, Clemente “Meme” Sanchez, and John Arthur Smith proved what a complicated issue abortion is becoming — even in liberal states.

During an emotional debate, some Democrats struggled to come up with a reason why New Mexico should leave perfectly healthy babies on a hospital table to die. Senator Ramos of Silver City told his chamber, “This is one of the toughest decisions any of us will ever have to make.” But, he went on, “I stand unified against legislation that weakens the defense of life and threatens the dignity of the human being.” While others sometimes spoke through tears, the tension inside the Democratic caucus was obvious.

In one strained exchange, two Democrats squared off against each other. Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque quoted St. Antoninus to justify why Catholics should feel free to vote for the bill. “The importance of individual choice is what the church has always taught,” he said. Senator Ramos demanded to know which Catholic Church he was talking about. “Mine does not approve of abortion,” Ramos said. Then, to his colleagues he said simply, “Vote your conscience.”

Thank goodness many did. Their courage dealt one of the most significant blows of the year to the extreme abortion camp. When she was asked, one dazed senator could only say, “We did expect more to be voting in favor — and it didn’t turn out that way.” Deep blue states like Maryland and Virginia share her surprise. There, similar proposals have been shelved because of the intense divides on late-term abortion. Even in Illinois, whose governor is vying to be the “pro-abortion state in the union,” a New York-style measure stalled after four cosponsors asked to be removed from the bill.

The landscape is shifting — and fast. In a country where outlawing third-trimester abortion is a 70-percent issue for pro-choicers, it would appear that Hill Democrats aren’t just outside the mainstream. They’re in no man’s land. These Members of Congress need to hear from you! Check out EndBirthdayAbortion.com and tell them to take action.

SOURCE






Public policy should support mothers who choose to stay at home

BY PATRICK T. BROWN

LET’S start behind a veil of ignorance, knowing nothing about the resources, abilities, or social position of your children. You must pick, based on nothing but your knowledge of a country’s economic and political system, one of the world’s 196 nations in which to bring up a family. Is the United States the country where you would choose to be a parent? Through much of the 20th century, I suspect, the answer would have been a quick yes. But the threads of our economic system, based on an outmoded male-breadwinner model, are becoming worn.

We see the strain everywhere, from the dual earners in the exurbs trying to keep up with the Joneses to the worker who could never dream of supporting a family on his stagnant paycheck. America, as we frequently hear bemoaned, is the only OECD country without a federal paid-leave program. The average cost of child care here now exceeds that of in-state college tuition in many states. Universal pre-K has been rolled out from New York City to Washington, D.C., with more cities and states interested in following suit.

These ideas, and others like them, often focus on the needs of working parents who are trying to balance the competing demands of workplace and children. As a result, our discussions often seem unsatisfyingly one-size-fits-all. People who set the agendas at think tanks or cable networks tend to be the kind of hard-charging types who did well in school and then found a career they derive meaning from; they try their best to advance professionally while being there for children on the home front.

But for most American parents—those who have a job, not a career, those who scrape to make ends meet but wish they didn’t have to—paid leave and child-care subsidies are answers to questions they’re not asking. Our political class studiously contemplates how to help women “have it all.” What if we made it easier for moms to lean out?

AS of the 20th century, the percentage of stay-at-home moms concurrently dropped before leveling off in the early 1990s. Since then, Census Bureau statistics show that the fraction of households with a mom at home has stayed fairly steady, perhaps even increasing over the past decade. Today, 5 million moms (just under a quarter of married mothers in America, and about 11 percent of all mothers) meet the traditional definition of a stay-at-home mom—out of the work force while their spouse works as the breadwinner.

(There are also 209,000 stay-at-home dads. In the interest of full disclosure: I was one myself for a year. But such fathers are, in effect, a rounding error, so throughout this piece I’ll refer to stay-at-home moms.)

These mothers tend to be white, with a high-school diploma or less, but they’re not homogeneous; Hispanic moms are more likely be at home, and roughly a quarter of stay-at-home moms in 2012 were college graduates. They tend to be younger—42 percent are younger than 35. And they have younger kids—60 percent of married mothers with children under three are in the labor force, compared with 76 percent of those with children ages six to 17.

In 2014, Pew found that fully one-third of stay-at-home moms live in poverty, though as NATIONAL REVIEW’s Robert Verbruggen and Wendy Wang have pointed out for the Institute for Family Studies, that is partially a consequence of having only one income to support the family.

Verbruggen and Wang find a “U-shaped curve between a mother’s chances of being out of the labor force and her husband’s earned income,” so families with male earnings that are both higher and lower than the median have higher rates of moms staying at home.

Some of this is probably due to what sociologists call “assortative mating,” with individuals marrying partners who have similar potential earnings in the labor market. Women married to high earners might stay at home at higher rates because additional income is not vital for the household to make ends meet, just as moms weighing a low-wage job might decide the work’s not worth it when they calculate the crippling cost of child care.

But the high fraction of moms in the work force at the middle of the income distribution could be a result of our economic system’s forcing parents into what some have called a “two-income trap,” in which both must work if they are to maintain their desired standard of living.

BELTWAY and Wall Street types seem to believe that it’s best for a family to have two working parents. Surveys of the general population tell a much different story. In a 2015 Gallup poll, 56 percent of women with a child younger than 18 said they would ideally like to stay home and care for their house and family. Even among mothers who were currently working full- or part-time, 54 percent wished they could stay home, but couldn’t. In a 2013 Pew poll, only 7 percent of mothers of young kids said they believed that the “ideal situation” was for mothers in their position to work full-time, and nearly half of working moms (47 percent) said their “ideal” would be to work part-time.

Most Americans agree that kids would do best with a parent at home. Clearly, there are many moms whose vision of “having it all” does not include a full-time job, although they are forced into the work force through economic necessity. In our economic system, continuous employment is expected, full-time work is prioritized, and benefits are tied to unbroken longevity.

That arrangement is uniquely unsuited to the desire of women—and some men—who want to balance the demands of early parenthood with career advancement or with just putting bread on the table. Many women are pursuing both a high-power career and a meaningful family life, and they deserve more support from industry and society.

More HERE






Australia. At last! Scott Morrison is set to slash Australia's immigration intake by 30,000 people a year

Still too high

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is preparing to slash Australia's immigration intake. A cap of 160,000 people per year is expected to be introduced, setting an official limit for the first time and dropping the average annual intake from 190,000.

The government's Expenditure Review Committee has approved the Coalition's broader population policies, The Australian reported.

Mr Morrison has also defended reviving the population debate so soon after the Christchurch terror attacks, where the alleged gunman is accused of harbouring hate against Muslim immigrants.  

The prime minister said discussions about population should not be 'hijacked' by other debates on race or tolerance.  

Mr Morrison said he did not agree with people calling for less migration because of fears about immigrants causing terrorist attacks. 'This debate about population growth and migration has nothing to do with those other issues that have been the subject of recent focus.'

The prime minister said discussions about population should not be 'hijacked' by other debates on race or tolerance. 'We've seen what happens when these important practical debates are hijacked by these other extremist views, which occur from both the right and from the left,' he said.

'I'm determined to not see the serious population growth management issues taken off course, to be hijacked by those who want to push other agendas. 'I have no purchase in those agendas, I have no truck with those agendas, and I denounce them absolutely.'  

'The worst example being the despicable appropriation of concerns about immigration as a justification for a terrorist atrocity,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

However, he also said calling for limits on immigration levels did not make someone a racist. 'Such views have rightly been denounced. But equally, so too must the imputation that the motivation for supporting moderated immigration levels is racial hatred,' he said. 

Mr Morrison said debate about the number of migrants moving to Australia each year was not related to the value of immigration to the country.

'Just because Australians are frustrated about traffic jams and population pressures encroaching on their quality of life, especially in this city, does not mean they are anti-migrant or racist,' he said.

A regional settlement policy - which will require people in the general skilled migrant scheme to live in cities other than Sydney and Melbourne for at least five years - has also been approved by cabinet.  

Labor frontbencher Mark Butler said the policy appeared to be the status quo. 'If Scott Morrison has some detail he wants to show to us or the Australian community, obviously we'd be willing to look at it,' he told ABC Radio National.

The government has also been hinting at spreading migrants across the states and territories to ease pressure on infrastructure, without outlining any concrete details about how this would work.

Its policies are expected to centre on forcing skilled migrants to live for at least five years in cities other than Sydney or Melbourne, and enticing university students into regional towns.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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