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Just as the Dems stood in the school house door fighting
integration, they now stand in the way of education reform. Here’s the story of
one South Carolina Democrat who is fighting for
school choice.
Getting arrested doesn’t normally bolster a politician’s
credibility. But when South Carolina state Sen. Robert Ford told me recently
that he saw the inside of a jail cell 73 times, he did so to make a point. As a
youth, Mr. Ford cut his political teeth in tumultuous 1960s civil-rights
protests.Today this black Democrat says the new civil-rights struggle
is about the quality of instruction in public schools, and that to receive a
decent education African-Americans need school choice. He wants the president’s
help. “We need choice like Obama has. He can send his kids to any school
he wants.”Mr. Ford was once like many Democrats on education — a
reliable vote against reforms that would upend the system. But over the past
three and a half years he’s studied how school choice works and he’s now
advocating tax credits and scholarships that parents can spend on public or
private schools.He’s not alone. …
When he was president of Washington College,
Robert E. Lee admonished the staff for planting neat rows of trees on the
grounds saying nature did not organize planting that way. David
Warren votes for chaos too.
Call me an anarchist, but I don’t like books to be all the
same size. They aren’t, of course, but there are people who would like them to
be. I don’t want them to be all the same colour, or smell. I can handle a
fairly long set, here or there, but not the prospect of interminable rows. I am
inflamed by the sight of matching spines on the shelves in the offices of
lawyers.I don’t like envelopes to be in standard sizes, or
notepaper, either; or magazines. …… And as readers who have followed me over the years may
recall, I do not like the metric system, which, among its other notorious
evils, is the mother and father of innumerable standardization schemes. It is a
quirkless system, and must therefore be condemned.All these things are a source of irritation, though I must
boast that Nature is on my side, and that she may be relied upon to put an end
to all projects of regimentation, in due course; and in the meantime, to be a
constant source of sabotage. …
Mark
Steyn Corner post on Britain in the ’70′s.
Bill
Kristol says the Sotomayor confirmation process will get very interesting
when the Court rules on the New Haven firefighters’ case.
… we will have an unusual moment in the Sotomayor
confirmation process–one that will stand out from the customary small-bore
senatorial back-and-forth during judicial confirmations. We’ll have a
high-profile Supreme Court ruling highlighting a very questionable judicial
decision by the president’s nominee. Most Court observers expect the judgment
in which Sotomayor joined to be reversed. But even if it isn’t, there will be a
closely observed decision by a probably closely divided Supreme Court that will
bring home the importance of the Sotomayor nomination for jurisprudence in this
area. The public will have occasion to see how a nominee, herself picked for
identity-politics reasons, was unempathetic, one might say, and unjust to the
victims of identity politics, the firefighters of New Haven who were denied
promotions.Sotomayor will probably be confirmed. But nothing is
certain. And a Ricci-focused debate over her confirmation will serve to remind
Americans of the unseemliness and injustice of the Constitution-corrupting,
identity-politics-driven agenda so dear to the hearts of the modern Democratic
party, the Obama administration, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Jennifer
Rubin has thoughts on the subject.
… That is what this will boil down to: does Sotomayor (and
by implication, the president) believe in trying to get it right, trying to set
an impartial standard of justice for all Americans? Conservatives suspect by
word and deed (her perfunctory dismissal of Ricci (New Haven), for
example) on the bench she does not. Whether she does or not, she’ll need
to convince the Senate that she does — or face a very rocky road to
confirmation. Average Americans, unlike law professors and liberal pundits,
like to think “equal justice under the law” means something and judges
aren’t merely surrogates for special interest groups.
Michael
Barone thinks the GOP should run against the center.
… So I think Republicans today should be less interested
in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center.
Here I mean a different “center” — not a midpoint on an opinion
spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and
strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions
fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets.This center includes the Treasury, with its $700 billion of
TARP funds voted last fall to purchase toxic assets from financial institutions
and used instead to quasi-nationalize banks and preserve union benefits for
employees and retirees of bankrupt auto companies. It includes the Federal
Reserve, which has been vastly increasing the money supply. It includes a
federal government whose $787 billion economic stimulus has so far failed to
lower the unemployment rate from where the government projected it would be
without the stimulus package. …
Bill McGurn
tells us how Hillsdale College beats Harvard.
David
Brooks looks at GM and sees six reasons for the quagmire ahead.
… First, the Obama plan will reduce the influence of
commercial outsiders. The best place for fresh thinking could come from outside
private investors. But the Obama plan rides roughshod over the current private
investors and so discourages future investors. G.M. is now a pariah on Wall
Street. Say farewell to a potentially powerful source of external commercial
pressure.Second, the Obama plan entrenches the ancien régime. The old
C.E.O. is gone, but he’s been replaced by a veteran insider and similar
executive coterie. Meanwhile, the U.A.W. has been given a bigger leadership
role. This is the union that fought for job banks, where employees get paid for
doing nothing. This is the organization that championed retirement with full
benefits at around age 50. This is not an organization that represents
fundamental cultural change. …
Interesting piece of food
Americana from the Economist. Seems a depression era WPA project on
American food was never published until now.
… The attack on Pearl Harbour, and America’s subsequent
entry into the second world war, meant that “America Eats” was never completed.
Now, however, Mr Kurlansky has dusted off the files from the FWP archive and
chosen the best morsels from a huge amount of raw material. They range from an
essay on maple-syrup production in Vermont to squirrel recipes from Arkansas, a
poem about Nebraskans’ enthusiasm for frankfurter sausages and a description of
how Sioux Indians prepared buffalo meat. As well as providing an introduction,
Mr Kurlansky adds his own commentary and sprinkles in the occasional modern
reference point: alongside the 1940 Christmas dinner menu from the Brown Hotel
in Louisville, Kentucky, for example, the 2007 menu from the same hotel is
provided for comparison. (The modern menu includes antipasti and sushi; the
1940 menu mentions neither.) …
Brown University has become a caricature of the politically
correct. The type of place ABC’s new Show The Goode Family makes fun of on
Wednesday night at 9:00. National
Review Corner posts have more.
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