Kenney's postion is the right one.

Racial discrimination by government institutions [which schools are] is wrong. Always. Everywhere. And without exception. It is no less constitutionally impermissible to tell a white student he or she cannot go to a particular school because he or she is white than it was or is to tell a black student that he or she cannot go to a particular school because he or she is black. Constitutionally, there is and ought to be no distinction between the two instances. Kennedy's position on this was constitutionally [and historically] correct. School boards are and ought to be completely free to use methods to encourage integrated schools that do not involve the school boards in racial discrimination. Kennedy mentioned some, like school locations and magnet programs. There are others. But on the question of assigning [which inevitably involves denying] access to public schools on the basis of race, the decision recently handed down was correct, and Kennedy's reasoning was correct.

Before the pouncing starts: the above position, mine, is from a dyed in the wool Yellow Dog New York City New Deal liberal Democrat. We seem to have lost our way as a party on this one. We seem to have adopted the notion that racial discrimination by government bodies is bad if it's for bad ends, but ok if it's for good ends.

To repeat: racial discrimination by government schools is and ought to be constitutionally impermissible --- always, everywhere and without exception.

Posted at June 28, 2007 1:26 PM in response to Supreme Court Undermines Racial Integration- What's Left?

  Oh, just great.

   A Democrat who thinks his word should be good for something, who isn't afraid to call a spade a spade, who says what he thinks and the party pundits be damned is forced out so that yet another of our  wet finger in the air "Oh, should I run? No, I think not. Oh, wait, my polls have changed. So I will run. Oh,  should I take a shit?  Wait, let me see if the polls say the voters want me to" wet noodle "leaders" can run instead.

   Jesus. We don't deserve to govern.
 

Posted at February 14, 2006 12:00 PM in response to Statement from Paul Hackett

Passion, or enthusiasm is a necessary condition for changing the world, or the nation, or the East Overshoe County School Board.  But it is far from being a sufficient condition to achieve those ends.   My suggestion was not that passion over politics is not a good thing, but that, by itself, it is  not nearly good enough.

  As  for universities and colleges not being the "real world,"  forgive me, but that is  nonsense born, I suspect, of too many viewings of Animal House .   They are as real, and as unreal, as their inmates [faculty and students alike] choose to make them.   Try telling some of my present students [teaching as retired adjunct at a mid-sized undergraduate public university] who are holding down full time jobs, with families, and attending the the U.  as well that they are not "in the real world."    I haven't seen the latest numbers, but when last I checked some years ago, the number of HS graduates who attend at least some college was nudging fifty percent. 

   Finally,  I think you can make a reasonable case for the notion that many young people have their ideas about politics, about "the public good," about citizenship, about what roles they will [or will not] play for at least the next period of their adulthood, shaped in and by their experiences at college. More goes into the mix, of course, but their experiences on campus are not a trivial part of that mix.  Given that, what happens at public forums on campuses does matter, and does have consequences down the line, possibily for years.  The YRs seem to know this and to act on campuses on that knowledge.  I suspect YDs do not.  And as long as progressives [broadly speaking] tend to dismiss the experience of students... all kinds of students on all kinds of campuses.... as somehow not "real world" experience and living in a cacoon, then I suspect the YR types will continue to be more and more effective on and, later, off the campus.

Posted at July 1, 2005 8:50 AM in response to Observations about College Democrats

Observations from a life-long Yellow Dog New Deal  Democrat, now semi-retired at 62.  From my days in undergraduate school, through grad school and  as a professor of history at what Tank McNamarra called an ESU [Enormous State University]  for  a little more than three decades, watching YDs get clobbered in public forums by YRs, I have sadly concluded that the major problem was, is, and continues to be simply this:  YRs do their homework and YDs don't.  YRs come to such forums armed with references from history, statistics from the economy, and a grasp of legislation and judicial decisions that is extensive, detailed and on-call for them to apply as the need arrises.  Often what they bring up, especially with respect to history and the economy is flawed and occasionally downright wrong and certainly can be effectively countered, but the YDs don't have at their finger-tips the knowledge,  the grasp of the evidence [fact, illustration, example] necessary to do it.   Earnestness and really, really, really believing in the goodness of their cause are not sufficient substitutes for the work needed to become an effective debater or discussant in a public forum.  So, sad to say,  the problem seems relatively easy to understand:  YRs do their homework for public appearances, YDs don't.   Yes, there are exceptions. But, sadly, in my experience, not many of them.

Posted at July 1, 2005 6:42 AM in response to Observations about College Democrats

Ah... I don't care who Tom Cruise hangs with, who he is sleeping with,  whether he's proposed or where, what fringe "relgious" organization he belongs to, or whether he makes nice-nice with interviewers or not.    What I don't understand is why the hell anyone else who does not get his or her news from the tabloid racks at the supermarket gives a damn and wants to keep on talking about all this.

   Enough already!  Let it go.   If you're annoyed, go see "War of the Worlds" and root for the Martians.  But give the rest of us a break. 

Posted at June 30, 2005 6:20 AM in response to A Uniter, Not a Divider

Hard to believe we got this far down in the list before someone mentioned "The Last Hurrah" and "All the King's Men."  I was scanning looking for them and wondered if they'd ever come up. They'd have been on my top five list.

Posted at June 15, 2005 10:38 PM in response to Manchurian Candidate et al.

Look into adjunct teaching at a local community college or jr. college, possibly in basic or business accounting.   You might well qualify. It won't pay much, but it's work. 

Posted at June 14, 2005 11:11 PM in response to Greed Versus Sloth

Sticking [as many above have not] with strictly narrative history, here's my personal winners list  [top six].  Note that good narrative history also, by definition, has to qualify simultaneously as "history as literature."  Purely analytic works which may be, and often are, of immense importance, rarely qualify as "history as literature."  Fogel and Engerman's Time on the Cross comes to mind.  So, caveats laid out, here's my personal best list of the top six narrative histories [in no particular order]:

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters

Garret Mattingly, The Armada

Bernard DeVoto,  The Course of Empire

D. H. Fisher, Paul Revere's Ride

Bruce Caton, Glory Road

R. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb 

Posted at June 9, 2005 7:25 AM in response to History