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Death to America
Maybe I’m too sensitive, but when a foreign autocrat leads his people in chants of “Death to America” I take it personally.
President Obama and Secretary Kerry apparently don’t. The chant, which became a staple of the Islamic Republic during the 1979 revolution, is not a relic of the past. Just last weekend, at a rally in the northern part of the country, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was interrupted by the chant as he was denouncing American “lies” and “arrogance.” He smiled and responded, “Of course yes, death to America, because America is the original source of this pressure.”
Some in Iran have urged that the “Death to America” chant, common after Friday prayers and at political rallies, be downplayed during negotiations over a nuclear deal, but the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) rejects this, insisting, according to the semi-official Fars news agency, that the United States “is still the great Satan and the number one enemy of the (Islamic) revolution, and the Islamic Republic and the Iranian nation…”
Senator Tom Cotton (R., AR) responded that “When someone chants, ‘Yes, certainly, death to America,’ we should take him at his word, and we shouldn’t put him on the path to a nuclear bomb.”
We are left to wonder at the equanimity among high-ranking members of this administration at the unyielding hostility of the Iranian regime. In late February, Iran blew up a full size model of U.S.S. Nimitz, an aircraft carrier, in the Persian Gulf. The Supreme Leader’s representative on the IRGC, Ali Shirazi, recently boasted that, “When we look at the Islamic world, we see that the culture of the Islamic Revolution has reached all countries and all Muslims throughout the world. . . We shall not rest until we raise the flag of Islam over the White House.”
A few days later, President Obama responded by sending Nowruz greetings to the “people and leaders of Iran” quoting a Persian poet “many a flower will bloom while you will be in clay.”
Throughout the protracted negotiations between the P5 plus one and Iran, the Obama Administration has assured congress that “no deal” was “better than a bad deal.” They’ve offered pledges that Iran’s centrifuges would be limited to 500, that the PMDs (possible military dimensions) of its nuclear research would be fully disclosed, that the facility at Fordo (built into a mountain) would be shut down, and that snap inspections would be part of any agreement. “We’re not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid,” Secretary Kerry once assured skeptics.
Congress gave the administration “breathing room” – but U.S. negotiators have backed away steadily from each of their positions. There is now talk of 6,000 centrifuges, or more. The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. negotiators are scaling back their demands for disclosure of PMDs (something the IAEA had also demanded). Without disclosure about military dimensions, inspections (notional in any case) will be hampered. David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security told the Tower magazine that, “A deal that does not include Iran addressing the IAEA’s concerns about the past and possibly on-going military dimensions of its nuclear program would undermine the verifiability of the deal, and thus the credibility of a comprehensive deal.” Fordo will remain open and its centrifuges will spin.
The French government has protested that the U.S. is retreating (think that one over for a minute). France’s foreign minister is reported to have said that “The United States was really ready to sign just about anything with the Iranians.” The French ambassador to the U.S., Gerard Araud, tweeted “For France, any agreement to be acceptable will have to give concrete guarantees on all issues. We won’t bypass any of them.”
Each and every news leak out of Lausanne depicts the U.S. walking back its demands. Just watch the faces of the Iranian negotiators. Their smiles tell the tale.
The administration reasons that in 10 to 15 years, the Iranian regime will improve. It is willing to gamble that once Iran achieves nuclear status, it won’t use nuclear bombs or share them with terrorists. It is willing to gamble that the other unstable nations in the region won’t get nuclear weapons in response. It is willing to gamble that future leaders of Iran won’t be even more radical than those in power now.
It is impossible to recall a more dangerous or foolish set of assumptions by an American president in modern American history. Death to America might become more than a chant.
Does Starbucks Really Want an Honest Conversation?
Starbucks is hoping to lead a national conversation about race. According to a video released by founder Howard Schultz, Starbucks barristas are encouraged to scrawl “race together” on coffee cups before placing them in the hands of customers. This hollow bit of moral exhibitionism is supposed to encourage “compassion,” “honesty,” “empathy,” and “love.” Does Starbucks sell caffeine-free compassion?
Each and every time we’re hectored to engage in an “honest conversation” about race, it’s a sham. What’s wanted is not honesty, but confession of sin by white people and expressions of pain from blacks and others. Decade after decade, despite vastly diminishing levels of white racism (and the rapid growth of non-white populations), we are told that the old stain of racism continues to poison the lives of minorities. By encouraging that fiction, Starbucks is subtracting from racial understanding.
For what it’s worth, here’s my little contribution to the “honest conversation.”
I spent preschool through third grade in mostly black Newark, New Jersey. My friends and my enemies were black. There were only three white students in my third-grade class. I remember deciding with one of my black friends that we were all “colored” – some black, some white. We grinned at our brilliance in solving a vexed national question. Little did we anticipate that Starbucks would one day adopt this as a keen insight.
Our next-door neighbors were black, and their two little sons were about the cutest things you can imagine.
By the time I was 9, I had been beaten up on the way to school, nearly had my bicycle stolen out from under me by a much older girl (some punches were thrown), and been chased through the park by a gang of boys. All of these assailants were black. So was my much-adored second grade teacher.
I have always thought that my intimate experience of growing up in a mixed neighborhood in my early youth (we moved to a suburb when I was in fourth grade) inoculated me from thinking in stereotypes. Unlike many white people, I told myself, I had lived among blacks and accordingly saw them as individuals — not heroes or villains, and not symbols.
But that’s not complete. Want the truth? Despite my knowledge that blacks are just people – good and bad, interesting and dull, trustworthy and deceptive – I have nevertheless spent my whole life being nicer to blacks than to whites. If a black person makes a joke, I laugh harder than I would for a white person’s joke. I hold open doors a fraction longer for blacks than whites. I’m more likely to use the honorific “sir” with a black store clerk than with a white.
I know a woman who adopted two children, one black and one white. Guess what? White strangers fuss and coo over the black child noticeably more than over the white one.
The same impulse that caused me to spend decades being particularly solicitous towards black people (and I very much doubt I’m the only one) has caused this country to move heaven and earth to try to repair the damage done by slavery, Jim Crow, and racism. Our entire system of quotas and set asides, our trillions of dollars in social programs, our “diversity” industry, our carefully designed entertainment, and yes, the election of Barack Hussein Obama all testify to how badly America yearns to prove its racial bona fides.
But for the race racketeers, the enormous racial recompense machine that is American life is as nothing. When an old-fashioned racist is discovered (of course they still exist), the press gaggle shouts choruses of “I told you so’s.” The exceptions are seized upon as the thinly veiled norm. They ache to believe that black problems, like higher rates of crime, poverty, and joblessness, can be laid entirely at white people’s feet. If coffee buyers can only transcend their unloving thoughts, the poor will thrive and peace will descend.
If Howard Schultz truly wanted to alleviate the problems of black Americans – and everyone else as well – he would do better to highlight the key role played by family structure. Only 2 percent of black children raised by their married parents are poor. Most young men who commit crimes are from fatherless homes. In fact, family structure is a far better predictor of poverty, criminality, and a host of other troubles, than race. More than 70 percent of black children are from single parent homes.
Fifty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to have an honest conversation about the black family. He was shouted down.
We haven’t had an honest conversation about race since.
Bombard the College Board
I’m not usually the campaigning type, but I’m making an exception. I’d like to alert Ricochet’s community to an opportunity to influence the College Board about its proposed new standards for Advanced Placement US History. The best students across the US take AP history, and what is taught in AP also affects the teaching of all US history.
Busy busy leftists have taken out their little pencils and begun revising what high schoolers should know about their past. Last fall, Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn Jr. recounted the changes for NRO:
Let’s be clear that a number of the oft-heard criticisms are over the top and ill-informed. The new framework does not remove historic personages like Benjamin Franklin or Martin Luther King; they were not in the old five-page framework and are not in the new 50-page one (both of which focus more on overarching topics than on naming individuals). And the new standards do not ignore the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.
That said, the framework has a full measure of shortcomings, starting with its inattention to America’s motivating ideals. The only acknowledgment that the American Revolution had any historical significance is a clause mentioning that it had “reverberations in France, Haiti, and Latin America.” There is no discussion of the intermediary institutions or civic organizations so central to our culture, society, and government.
…
There’s little about economics that doesn’t feel caricatured or framed in terms of government efforts to combat injustice. Students are introduced to decade after decade of American racism and depravity, with little positive context for the nation’s foreign engagements or its success creating shared prosperity for tens of millions. Little is said of “Manifest Destiny” other than that it was justified by beliefs in “white racial superiority” and “American cultural superiority.” The old framework paid attention to World War II–era “fascism and militarism in Japan, Italy, and Germany.” Featured instead in the new one is the suggestion that sundry U.S. actions during World War II, such as the internment of Japanese Americans, debates over segregation, and dropping the atomic bomb, “raised questions about American values.”
I’ve also described the problem in my column today.
The College Board has requested public comment on the new AP US History standards and has apparently received very little feedback. So let’s feed ’em! You can comment directly through the College Board’s portal, which is also linked in my article.
This is critically important. The deadline is the end of February.
Recipe for Unhappiness?
The always trenchant Brad Wilcox has a piece at National Review analyzing the new Pew research on Millennials. (BTW, this naming and timing of generations is so arbitrary. Why are Baby Boomers stretched over 20 years but other generations are only 15 years long? Bizarre convention). But Wilcox offers some pretty worrying thoughts.
His final paragraph makes a very important point, in my judgment, namely that so many Millennials are rejecting the institutions — family, church, work — that are the foundation of society. More than that, those institutions are the foundation of personal happiness and fulfillment. Wilcox scours the data and finds this:
For instance, 58 percent of Millennial men who were married, employed full-time, and regular religious attendees reported that they are very happy in life; by contrast, only 25 percent of Millennial men who were unmarried, not working full-time, and religiously disengaged reported that they are very happy in life.
You cannot impose religious faith obviously, but we can work harder to make marriage the norm. All of this tolerance for alternative lifestyles has been disastrous for children, but, as this study makes clear, also for the adults involved.
One more worrying possibility Wilcox notes: People who are disconnected from family, church, and employment may be more easily aroused by demagogues when times are bad.
So, am I overreacting? Any thoughts among readers who belong to the Millennial generation?
This Sends Me
Okay, people, Cruz Schmuz. Here’s what makes life worth living. A little girl appeared on Holland’s Got Talent and sang Puccini. I admit to being a sucker for these things. And is there anyone with soul so dead that he can watch this without wonder?
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Miley Cyrus — America’s Sweetheart
Everyone is cringing in response to Miley Cyrus’s porn display at the VMAs, which is something. Thanks Miley, for proving that our decadent culture even retains the capacity to cringe.
We don’t have to examine her motives – cash is a good shorthand. Being shocking worked for others, and it will work for her.
Cyrus’s perhaps unique contribution was the Teddy bear motif. Combined with her former incarnation as a Disney child star, the use of Teddy bear imagery in a disgustingly raunchy dance sequence is a purposeful corruption of the idea of innocence. I imagine it is straight out of child porn, widely viewed on the Internet. Yes, she’s 20. But she’s playing on being the former Disney star gone dirty. Cue the Teddy bears.
This is what liberalism has delivered for girls. Sexual degradation isn’t liberation – it drags every noble impulse and thought and feeling into its bottomless pit.
Sheryl Sandberg: Perfect Media Product
She’s an attractive, liberal billionaire who’s worried about women not taking their share of top corporate and government posts. Naturally, the press is agog. I have a different take.
About the Boys
Christina Hoff Sommers has a great piece in today’s New York Times about how to improve boys’ school performance. Christina was ahead of the curve on this, publishing The War Against Boys in 2001.
Here, she argues that the huge push 20 years ago to help girls with math and science was successful, and that boys, who are struggling compared with girls at every level of education, deserve no less.
She quotes Richard Whitmire, an education writer, and William Brozo, a literacy expert:
The global economic race we read so much about — the marathon to produce the most educated work force, and therefore the most prosperous nation — really comes down to a calculation: whichever nation solves these ‘boy troubles’ wins the race.
Sommers thinks that may be an overstatement, but writes that “boy-averse trends like the decline of recess, zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, the tendency to criminalize minor juvenile misconduct, and the turn away from single-sex schooling” have hurt boys.
There are many reasons to attempt to help boys do better in school, and Sommers touches on many of them. But here’s one that’s a little sensitive: marriage. With women earning 60 percent of bachelor’s and master’s degrees and closing the gap on Ph.D’s, there are many fewer men for those women to marry. Women prefer to marry their equals or superiors. Very few marry “down.” It’s just a fact. Among blacks, women are twice as likely as men to earn a college degree.
Since we know that married people are happier, healthier, and better for society, what Hanna Rosin has too blithely called “The End of Men” is a profound challenge to the happiness of all.
Don’t Let Your Preschooler be a Gentleman
So here’s a priceless example of the wonderful world feminists have created. This mom is dismayed that her preschooler son is being encouraged to let girls go first to the bathroom.
Writing in the New York Times (of course) Lynn Messina complains that” he’s actively being taught to treat girls differently, something I thought we all agreed to stop doing, like, three decades ago.” Later she says, “Letting girls use the bathroom first isn’t a show of respect. It is, rather, the first brick in the super high pedestal that allows men to exalt women out of sight. A true show of respect is paying us equally for the same work, not 77 cents on the dollar, which is the current average.”
That 77 cents canard cannot be killed no matter how many times it’s been shown to be bogus.
But great job, feminists. You have mostly killed chivalry. Now your middle school daughters can be asked for blow jobs by their classmates. And many, with no dads at home to protect and guide them, comply.
When they get to college, the first thing they’ll learn is how to avoid date rape.
But, as I say, great job. Because we don’t want women “exalted out of sight.”
New Podcast: Need to Know with Mona Charen and Jay Nordlinger
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We’re delighted to announce the launch of a new Ricochet podcast. Jay Nordlinger and I — sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with guests — will explain what’s wrong with the world (usually liberals) and how to fix it. Join us! 
Ricochet Podcast subscribers, you’ll get this show automatically. Everyone else, listen in above. Direct link here.
EconTalk — A Confession of Addiction
Thanks to the Ricochet podcast of a couple of weeks ago, I’ve become a fan — ok, maybe an addict — of Russ Roberts and his podcast EconTalk. Actually, there’s a podcast on addiction, as there are on nearly all subjects of interest to intelligent and curious listeners. I’m acquiring an economics education by listening every day. Additionally, the older podcasts are available and downloadable on iTunes.
Thanks so much to Peter, Rob, and James for alerting us to this resource. I’ve got a long car ride today and am loading up my iPod!