Hey, I might agree that "hastening that happy, inevitable outcome" was poorly written, but it still makes sense if you overlook the poor wording. The part I think is poorly worded is that it implies that a catastrophic collapse with lots of death would be okay, which I disagree with-- but some empires collapse catastrophically (the Mayans, the Aztecs) and some collapse quietly to the benefit of the home population (Britain). I for one would be very much in favor of it collapsing like the British Empire-- that is to say, turning back to spending its money on maintaining its domestic, …
All 9 comments by...
davelwhite
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I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that the armed force's recruitment tactics are atrocious, misleading, manipulative, etc. But I really wonder whether declaring that being 18 is a brain disease is the best expression of our liberal selves. I mean, you mention the army lying to mothers and manipulating teachers too. Maybe the problem isn't "impressionable youth" (although some youth certainly are), but the fact that all of us are impressionable sometimes and that is why lying and manipulating are bad behaviors across the board. I'm 35, and I remember well the decisions I made when I was 18. They were …
Posted to America's Child Soldier Problem
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"You will know them by their fruits" -- Matthew 7:16. Therefore, as a non-Christian, I went to the Woodland Hills Church home page (the one in St. Paul, Minnesota, since I live in Minneapolis) to see how they act on their revolutionary impulses. The sermon you mentioned was reported in July, according to the NY Times, so maybe they need more time to put up revolutionary activities on their web page. Or maybe they have to go under the radar, like the pastor telling high-income members to pay their workers more or something. That having been said, Wooddale Hills Church's home …
Posted to Preaching Revolution
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I have a mixed reaction to this article. On the one hand, I definitely believe that the Internet relationship is one more step Americans are taking in distancing ourselves from everyone, with the possible exception of the One True Life-Partner whom we are encouraged to invest our entire emotional selves into. Did you know that the *dictionary definition* of friendship in 1755 was "the highest form of intimacy"? Or that today's American Heritage Dictionary, in its word history for the word friend, says "a friend is a lover, literally" because it was derived from a form of an Old English verb …
Posted to In You More Than Yourself
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If individuals within the military enjoy celebrating New Years' with cute kids and handing out food to the hungry, and that is why they joined the Army (as suggested by another article I read in Harpers a few weeks ago), and they were simply unable to do peacetime public service because all the slots were taken by middle-class progressives, then we need to expand Vista/Americorps and the Peace Corps with all deliberate speed. They must be really desperate to do charity work overseas if they're willing to take the risk not only of being killed but also of being ordered to …
Posted to Love the Warrior, Hate the War
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Whatever the advantages of reparations for slavery, it seems politically unlikely to be implemented due to the standard objections people have along the lines of "it was so long ago." For that reason I have always wondered what the result would be if some reparations advocates focused instead on the much more recent redlining by the FHA and other federal government agencies during the building of the automobile suburbs (in the first half of the twentieth century). The government-backed mortgage programs, along with the highway programs that built the suburbs, gave millions of American white families access to wealth in the …
Posted to The Reparations Bandwagon
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Thank you for an important article on the disconnect between progressive ideas and actions in some of our lefty organizations. As someone who has worked in progressive nonprofits since 1993, I have to say that this is a very important and difficult problem for a lot of nonprofit managers, and I have seen my share of poor fiscal management, fudging of reports to funders, nepotism, and other types of mismanagement. Meanwhile, liberal nonprofits, including the anti-poverty nonprofits I have mostly worked for, are almost invariably not unionized; one department in an organization I worked for even functioned as basically a "scab …
Posted to Do You Have a Minute for ?
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>> We have seen what such mandates mean in Mass., where a book about 2 princes who marry was trotted out immediately to be read to kindergartners. Parents who protested were told they had no right to do so. Someone wrote that this happened in Mass.; I don't know if it's true or not, but here's the interesting part: What if some of those parents were liberal, or, indeed, queer themselves?! We like to think that only the Republicans have a party line that they push each other into like sheep, but the truth is, we do too, and gay rights …
Posted to Curriculum Wars
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I want to say something about this apparent demonization of Mr. Wolf's comments. I am a lifelong progressive, anti-war person who has worked in a battered women's shelter since 1998 (in administration). My values were strongly inspired by my own experience of domestic violence growing up, as a child witness to my mother being abused. I remember my dad going on rages where he would tear around the house, or cross the double line on a two-lane highway with a gleam in his eye if he was driving at the time. He hung me upside down over a stairway when I …
Posted to Bad Girls
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