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THE MORNING’S RECOMMENDED READING

I have quite a task at hand in replying to Dan of tdaxp before me tonight but there are a few things that you need to see first:

The always great and too seldom blogging Geitner Simmons examined the concerted and irrationalist attack on History as a discipline by the usual crew of academic barbarians. ( hat tip Austin Bay ).

The Adventures of Chester scored an interview with Andrew Bacevich on his book The New American Militarism.

Rick Shenkman, HNN’s editor, on Saudi Arabia’s Doomsday Plan. A good one for Collounsbury to put his two cents in on.

Peter Lavelle ‘s round-up of experts on Russia commenting on the VE-Day celebrations.

IN PRAISE OF PUNDITA

I have to direct you to two of Pundita’s posts, both of which are well done and, frankly are illuminating, though in different ways:

First, is her post ( forgive the self-referential nature here) that follows up on EMPs. Not so much because of the importance of EMP weapons which were being overhyped but in Pundita’s superb advice on being a critical consumer of news as she dissects the trajectory of the EMP ” story”:

“So what does it all mean? It means that the consumer of news has to learn to think like an old-school reporter–a reporter well-trained in ferreting out the traditional Four W’s of a story:

Who (said or did it)?
What (what was said or done)?
Where (where was it said or done)?
When (when was it said or done)?

There is also the “H” (How did it come about?) if the reporter has space for it in the report.But given the skill of today’s disinformation specialists and the general low quality of reporting, I insert an “I” in my list:

Who?
What?
In What Context?
Where?
When?
How?

Asking yourself in what context something is said helps you quickly spot where in the story you’ve been napping.”

One of my mentors as a historian was an old and crusty, toughminded, Social-Democrat. He never thought that Stalin was anything but a bastard and that the Revisionist New Left historians, most of whom he knew personally, were fooling themselves to some extent. I recall his curt admonishment to a young, zealous, graduate student who was going a tad overboard in reporting on an author whose conclusions he, and most likely my mentor, agreed with politically.

” Be the careful when you read something that makes you feel good…because that’s when we have a tendency to stop thinking “.

Pundita’s second post concerns the very complicated causation driving mass migration from Mexico to the United States. I’m a student here – my knowledge of Latin American history is, by my standards, weak. Pundita begins to untangle the driver of illegal immigration from the surrounding verbiage that beclouds this issue:

“And because of the knowledge deficit, Americans can’t argue to Mexicans who have been unwitting pawns of Fox’s human export program that they are pawns. Mexico’s ruling class has long encouraged the export of their ‘troublemakers’ –the Mexicans who have the strongest opposition to corruption and inertia in their government. This set in motion a vicious cycle: the more the really outraged Mexicans flee to the US, the fewer troublemakers left in Mexico to contest bad government. This makes conditions in Mexico worse by further weakening opposition to bad government. This causes yet more Mexicans to flee. …

…But the World Bank and the IMF have dug in their heels. They’ve said in effect to Fox’s government: Fix the blasted tax code and go ahead with structural adjustments, or forget getting more megabucks WPA-type project loans that we know Mexico will default on anyway.

So what we have is a Mexican Standoff. Is there any way to break the standoff? Yes; there are two ways that I’ve seen. But much depends on Mexico’s political parties and the Fox and Bush administration seeing Americans awakened from their long slumber about Mexican affairs. As with so many other problematical situations around the world, the “illegals problem” has flourished in the darkness of inattention. “

During my time as a blogger, Dave Schuyler has functioned for me not only as an always interesting and perceptive voice in his own right but also as a formidible talent-spotter in the blogosphere. It was he who steered me to Pundita’s blog in the first place.

Good work Dave, she’s a gem !

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK

I have a ” pure” blogging question for all the readers and fellow bloggers out there.

What is your reasonable expectation, in general, for the frequency of new blog postings ? I’ve always been an erratic poster and frankly do not expect that to change given my temperment, esoteric interests and hectic schedule. I write in spurts and the type of posts I tend to do varies in length and analytical depth so I fit neither into the bi-weekly long essay format, of say, the Belmont Club or the news of the hour blogging of a Glenn Reynolds. Nevertheless, I’d find your input helpful.

What is best in ( this blogospheric) life ?

THE HANDIWORK OF DIVERSITY FUNDAMENTALISTS – AN APTITUDE TEST THAT REWARDS INEPTITUDE

Under intense pressure from the radical leftists who control admissions to the University of California system, the nation’s largest and most prestigious state schools, the SAT I had been revised significantly over the years, supposedly to advantage minorities and women by dramatically lowering the performance bar to receive a ” perfect” score. In addition, the test structure itself was dramatically altered to include an essay so subjectivity can be used to ” fudge” the overall test results enough to get the ” correct” aggregate results.

Apparently, the SAT now also rewards ignorance so long as you go on at length about what you don’t really know. ( Hat Tip Eide Neurolearning Blog )

“SAT graders are told to read an essay just once and spend two to three minutes per essay, and Dr. Perelman is now adept at rapid-fire SAT grading. This reporter held up a sample essay far enough away so it could not be read, and he was still able to guess the correct grade by its bulk and shape. “That’s a 4,” he said. “It looks like a 4.”

Our universities are in the hands of people dedicated to destroying the idea of a university.

COLONEL DAVID HACKWORTH, R.I.P.

I caught the death of the highly decorated, iconoclastic, Colonel David Hackworth over at the Glittering Eye yesterday. Hackworth, who continued his involvement in military affairs in retirement as an analyst, commentator and advocate had succumbed to bladder cancer at age 74. I had been impressed with Colonel Hackworth ever since I had read his memoirs, About Face, years ago, and continued to read him occasionally in the MSM ever since.

I set out to write a reflective piece on Hackworth but I find that Armchair Generalist has done an excellent one already that requires no improvement from me. The full post is here but I have excerpted a section:

“Hackworth got under people’s skin because he focused on the soldier first and military protocol last. He authored several books, of which I read the first two:”About Face” and “Hazardous Duty.” The first book covered a good bit of his career through and after the military, focusing on the Korean War and Vietnam war, his leadership of combat units, and the real nature of war, up close and personal. The second book held his reviews of the military’s more current conflicts in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Korea and his frustration with the “perfumed princes” in the Pentagon. He has a unique point of view that focuses almost entirely on the art of combat and sneers at the art of military-industrial business in the Beltway. I have to say I enjoyed the first book the most, although the second book was valuable in and of itself as well. His other books, in my opinion only, got a little too critical without offering much in the way of recommendations for me to want to own.

Anyone that has followed the good colonel knows about his web site “Soldiers for the Truth.” Its mission statement says it all: “SFTT believes it is crucial that our men and women of the Armed Forces have an independent voice working on their behalf to hold the pentagon, congress and the media accountable in matters that effect their missions and their lives. We are dedicated to fighting these battles on every front.” Hackworth knew that there were ignorant and malignant sources in the Pentagon, Congress and the media that worked against the soldiers’ best interest, and he was intent on revealing them to the public.

I have only a minor complaint with the great man – he wasn’t really sharp on NBC warfare – but then again, what infantry man is? They really don’t like the bugs and gas and the gear we give them for protection. Back in February 2003, he was featured in a “60 Minutes” hack job on the DOD CB Defense Program, specifically attacking Dr. Anna Johnson-Winegar for the troops’ readiness to engage Iraq and deal with the possible threat of CB warfare. During the episode, he referred to NBC defense as “No Body Cares.” That rankled me personally because I got really tired of hearing that all through my short career in the military. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand that many combat soldiers, DOD civilian leaders, and Congressmen don’t care about NBC defense. However, we had been really working hard to prepare our forces for that possibility, and our overall capability to survive and sustain combat operations in a CBRN-contaminated environment was pretty damn good. He wasn’t up to snuff on the current state of the art, but that didn’t stop him from commenting on how the Army used to deal with NBC defense in the 1980s. No one could tell Hack to stay quiet.

Here died a giant. Let the warriors of Valhalla make room for a brother.”

Godspeed, Colonel Hackworth.