If you have a problem you want to solve and you insist the solution must contain certain elements, there is a way to do it. Simply set forth your elements and refuse to allow them to change. The world won't end no matter how silly the position you set forth is...and if you have the power to prevent anyone from adjusting or removing what you've set forth then everyone else is simply forced to adjust their position accordingly.
This is the central technique of neocons and cultural reversionists. And it works, sort of. The reality is, the world adjusts to anything you do. But another reality is, you may well not like the adjustment it makes. Iraq stands as the best example of this whole process. To me, the net result of all this in a few years will be a U.S. military presence firmly and permanently based in Iraq with all the resources necessary to defend our national interests...which will need much more defence due to the way we established that presence.
Yin and yang.
This was also the central technique of the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century. Black Americans simply asserted that the rights of citizenship belong to us as well as anyone else. What actually got the mainstream to acquiesce wasn't a recognition of the justice of that claim but embarrassment...the shame Americans felt at seeing how brutally Black folks were treated by Americans, and (most importantly) embarrassment at having that treatment constantly raised in an international context. An amicus curiae brief (pdf, page 9) filed by the feds in the original Brown vs. Board of Ed case explained the federal government's interest this way:
The shamefulness and absurdity of Washington's treatment of Negro Americans is highlighted by the presence of many dark-skinned foreign visitors. Capital custom mot only humiliates colored citizens but is a source of constant embarrassment to these visitors.
Foreign officials are often mistaken for American Negroes and refused food, lodging and entertainment. However, once it is established that they are not Americans, they are accommodated.
It is in the context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny tha the problem of racial discrimination must be viewed. The United States is trying to prove to the people of the world, of every nationality, race, and color, that a free democracy is the most civbilized and most secure form of government yet devised by man. We must set an example for others by showing firm determination to remove existing flaws in our democracy.
The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith.
There's considerably more of interest in the brief (in particular, legal issues that suggest it may not have been necessary to address the "separate but equal" doctrine, that the doctrine should be overruled if necessary but sent back to localities to actually decide how to make things equal). But this is the Federal government's uninterpreted explanation of why they supported the Brown side of Brown v. Board of Ed.
Mind you, the NAACP of the day recognized this. Their own amicus brief included a reference to international opinion. And I doubt they really cared much about it, but in the words of Dr. Gleason Golightly, "A people without power must use deception and guile."
In this regard, little has changed. Right now the nation is divided as it hasn't been since Reconstruction. And we know how the rift was closed in those days...Black southerners were dispossessed and left at the mercy of the KKK and state governments (as though you could slide a sheet of paper between the two at the time). Nowadays, being more civilized, I doubt it will come to a war of secession. There will be negotiations and some of the interests of each side will be sacrificed as a compromise.
Now, who really believes the Republican Party, with their "branding problem," won't drop those interests specific to their Black cohort first?
Probably the same dummies that believe the Democratic Party, with their outreach to white males, won't drop those interests specific to their Black cohort first.
This is not a suggestion that it's all futile...after all, some things have indeed changed. They just haven't done so due to concerns for morality or justice. This is a suggestion that you be up on the real motivation for these changes, and take those motivations into account as you make your plans.
Quote of note:
At a minimum, say party strategists, the shift will mean a more confrontational Democratic Party in battles with President Bush and the Republicans. But some strategists worry that the influence of grass-roots activists could push the party even further to the left, particularly on national security, reinforcing a weakness that Bush exploited in his reelection campaign.
You know, everyone in the media should have my little red motto at the top of the page tattooed on the inside of their eyelids.
Remember what the issues were that shifted the election at the last minute. It was not national security. Democrats are so accustomed explaining that yes, they are willing to use military force (that's what "national security" means, you know) they may be tempted to have a knee-jerk reaction to this analysis. But "national security" was fully discounted months before the actual election.
Don't forget the past has depth. Things happen at a specific time; sequence has impact.
Anyway...
Democrats' Grass Roots Shift the Power
Activists Energized Fundraising, but Some Worry They Could Push Party to Left
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 20, 2005; Page A04
The bloggers have been busy on the Democratic National Committee Web site since Howard Dean was elected party chairman a week ago.
"Paul in OC" and "Steviemo in MN" wrote that they had made their first-ever contributions to the national committee. Someone identified as "J" pleaded with Dean to come to Florida, "home of Baby Bush," to "heal the irritating red and help us become a cool blue state again." "Donna in Evanston" wrote, "It's sad, but it is up to the grassroots to set the example for our representatives in Washington. Howard gets it. Maybe some day the beltway bunch will get it too."
Those sentiments square neatly with Dean's call for "bottom-up reform" of the Democratic Party and the further empowerment of grass-roots activists who flexed their political muscle in his unsuccessful presidential campaign. They later became the backbone of organizing and fundraising efforts by John F. Kerry's campaign and the DNC's election-year efforts.
But the rising of this grass-roots force also signals a shift in the balance of power within the party, one that raises questions about its ultimate impact on a Democratic Party searching for direction and identity after losses in 2002 and 2004.
To begin with, I want to explain present value. Basically, it's the inverse of future value, which is the amount of money you'll have after investing money at the rate of return you expect for the period of time you're considering...present value is amount of money one would have to invest now at your expected rate of return, to get the amount of money you want to end up with at the end of the period of time you want to think about. If the present value of the net of all your cash inflows and outflows over the period of time you are considering is greater than the amount you spend to set it all up, it's a profitable arrangement. Then it's a matter of whether or not the profit is enough to satisfy your needs or expectations or whatever.
A more detailed explanation is here; and here's a net present value calculator you can play with to get a feel for the way the concept works out in real life.
Armed with that information, I ask: on what economic basis would a society set up public education?
Now I quote from Economics Explained : Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works and Where It's Going, page 161:
No society has ever become literate solely based upon private education. Yet nothing pays off economically for a society more than having an educated work force.
The need for education on a social level is an economic enabler. It's the most important a factor in increasing productivity. It's one of the major factors in the consistant increase in the USofA's GDP. It is infrastructure. But there's no way to calculate a net present value for the money spent education.
I've been a little remiss with the Black History Month linkage the last few days. It's partly because there's a certain level of frustration looking at what passes for fact and what needs to be corrected.
And it's not like the things we're talking about happened that long ago. It's been fifty years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott...and maybe 45 years since the misrepresentation of it began. And it's so think you get nonsense like this
In my own experience, a black woman named Rosa Parks was just tired one day of being told to sit in the back of the bus. So she refused to move, and she touched off a revolution of freedom across the American South.
from people who should know better. Nonsense like this
Initiating a protest against these conditions was not on Parks' mind as she stepped aboard a municipal bus on Thursday, December 1, 1955. She had finished her day's work at the Montgomery Fair Store and had boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus as she headed to her home in Cleveland Court. Because the bus was crowded she sat in the middle section. At the third stop, at the Empire Theater, a white male patron boarded the bus and was left standing. The "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" later affirmed that her decision to remain seated was not based on physical fatigue. Parks maintained that her action was the result of long years of anger and frustration over the treatment blacks received under Montgomery's segregationist laws and customs. She was simply tired of blacks being pushed around.
Parks' arrest set in motion long years of planning for such an event by the local civil rights organizations and civic groups.
published by Alabama, when in fact the truth is
The roots of the bus boycott in Montgomery began years before Rosa Parks' arrest. The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses in 1953. In a meeting with Mayor W.A. Gayle in March 1954, the Council's members outlined their wishes: a city law that would make it possible for blacks to sit from back toward front and whites from front toward back until the bus was filled, a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus but go to the rear to enter, and a promise that buses stop at every corner in black residential areas as they did in white communities. When little resulted from this meeting, WPC president Jo Ann Robinson reiterated the Council's requests in a 21 May letter to Mayor Gayle, asking him to "Please consider this plan, and if possible, act favorably upon it, for even now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our buses."
Of course, we don't design the syllabi. What passes for the official Black history is very comforting to the average mainstreamer. We celebrate the first Black this and that, which makes heroes of those whose only desire is to get along...though many of those firsts chose to be first as an act of defiance. I've always thought Black History Month was like being blind for 11 months and trying to see a year's worth of stuff in four weeks. How much of what you see would you remember, be able to use?
How many students know that denying accusations of internal racism from Communist governments was as important (if not more important) a reason for the Brown vs. Board of Ed. decision as any consideration of justice? What would they learn if the "coincidence" by which mainstream recognition of Black American's rights only ever happened when it advanced mainstream interests as well, became common knowledge?
Why would we not teach our kids that the seminal movement of the 20th century was not an outburst keyed by one tired woman, but was instead a long-planned event executed with discipline and determination? Which do you think is the more empowering message: that white folks will listen when you make an emotional scene, or that you can see a problem, make a plan to address it and actually force change?
What do you conclude when you learn the Greatest Generation that has so much more wealth than the Black community was subsidized, and those subsidies specifically excluded Black folks through a combination of law and custom? What do you conclude when you see the numerous instances of Black advancement that were physically destroyed (Red Summer), the lives taken and destroyed...and see that it was necessary to repeat over and over because Black folks just kept overcoming?
And who do you suppose benefits most from the standard education containing only the particular facts it does?