My Beauty Best Teacher

Really. Well here's what becoming a DC Principal gets you : FIRED ! Hart middle school is the subject of controversy in DC Public Schools. First an article appeared in the Sunday Post which told an all too familiar tale of DC teachers being assaulted, teachers teaching outside of their certification area, substitutes covering classes, overcrowded classes, unruly students, possession of handguns, violence and a lack of supports promised by Rhee's office to a school being restructured. Hart is a school which merged with P.R. Harris Educational Center this school year against the advice of parents and community activists. Here is today's article written by Post Reporter Bill Turque (page B 1) in its entirety. My question is who is to blame ? Is Chancellor Rhee firing her way to a better school system ? You be the judge.

D.C. Fires Principal After Surge Of Violence Educator Says She Was 'Set Up' at Hart Middle School

"The principal of Hart Middle School was fired by District officials yesterday after two months of disorder and violence that included assaults on at least three teachers. Kisha Webster was informed of her dismissal at a morning meeting with Lisa Ruda, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's chief of staff.

Dena Iverson, Rhee's spokeswoman, declined to answer questions and referred instead to a letter over Rhee's signature that was sent to Hart parents yesterday. The letter, which did not mention the school's problems, said Webster would be replaced by a central office administrator, Billy Kearney, who had been serving as the school system's director of principal recruitment. Kearney was a key figure in the filling of more than principal 40 vacancies over the summer, about half of which were created when Rhee fired people for poor performance.

Webster, 37, a former assistant principal at MacArthur Middle School in Anne Arundel County, is the third principal to be replaced since the beginning of the school year. Galeet BenZion, principal at Shepherd Elementary, was fired last month, and the principal at Shadd Transition Academy was reassigned to other duties.

In a phone interview yesterday evening, Webster said she had been "set up" by District officials. She said she was put in charge of the Anacostia middle school without the resources made available to other struggling schools. Hart was one of nearly two dozen D.C. schools placed in federally mandated restructuring for failing to meet benchmarks for math and English test scores. Last year, just 17 percent of Hart students read at proficiency level.

Webster said publicity about the situation at Hart also played a role in her dismissal. On Sunday, The Washington Post published an article that described a school in disarray, with students fighting, roaming the halls and disrupting classes, according to parents, teachers and police. One student was arrested for possession of a shotgun."If I had been able to keep things quiet, I'd still be there," Webster said.

Webster had been hired as principal of Roosevelt STAY, an evening program at Roosevelt High School for people 15 or older who want to complete work on a diploma. She said she was reassigned to Hart after the principal who had been hired decided not to accept the post.
Hart's disciplinary problems did not begin this year. A review team that evaluated the school last year for Rhee noted many of the same conditions that contributed to Webster's ouster.

The school was a shambles when she took over in late July, Webster said. Summer renovations had barely begun, and the school had 21 teacher vacancies. With the summer hiring process winding down, she said, she was "forced to grab whatever was left" from a pool of teachers "excessed" by schools that had closed or experienced enrollment declines. At meetings of principals, she said, colleagues told her that she had teachers they were happy to be rid of. Webster said principals at some other schools that were being restructured under the federal No Child Left Behind law had more latitude in hiring teachers. Brian Betts, the new principal at Shaw at Garnet-Patterson Middle School, was able to replace more than 30 of the 37 teachers who finished the 2007-08 school year.

Webster also said academic programs and social services promised by Rhee as part of the restructuring never got off the ground. Many of the people involved are still in training, she said. Only one instructor is available for an accelerated reading program. Webster said she tried to avoid suspensions when discipline deteriorated because they are counterproductive. "They come back worse than when they left," she said. "They come back with this swagger. It's 'I was suspended, now what?' "Eventually, however, the suspensions mounted, and there were nearly 80 in one week in October, she said.

There is plenty of blame to go around for Hart's predicament, Webster said. She acknowledged that she probably alienated staff members by coming in with an attitude that was too hard-edged -- an attitude she said was influenced by her superior's judgment that the school was in terrible shape. "I will tell you, when you come into a building where you are told everyone is crap, you come in hard," she said. In retrospect, she said, she should have taken time to form her own opinions. But others also shoulder responsibility, including an administration that didn't understand, or care to acknowledge, the depth of Hart's needs. "I would say that everyone is responsible," she said. "The community, the administrators, the teachers, the central office." Courtesy of washingtonpost.com. (Posted by The Washington Teacher).

Over the last several days, I have been battling with liberals on the internet who want to score political points with the awful tragedy in Arizona. I have been trolling on many different sites, commenting and battling comments on my comments, trying to communicate that it is wrong to try to politicize this awful tragedy- that it was not a conservative who committed it, that it wasn't Sarah Palin, that it wasn't tea party people, etc. Today, I finally felt that the conversation was changing and that those who had made those arguments had lost credibility and respect such that they would cease and desist with using the killings of innocent people to engage in character assassinations of people they don't agree with politically, and then I read the following article in Slate from Jacob Weisberg that was published today.

In The Tea Party and the Tucson Tragedy: How anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism made the Giffords shooting more likely Weisberg writes:

There's something offensive, as well as pointless, about the politically charged inquiry into what might have been swirling inside the head of Jared Loughner. We hear that the accused shooter read The Communist Manifesto and liked flag-burning videos—good news for the right. Wait—he was a devotee of Ayn Rand and favored the gold standard, so he was a right-winger after all. Some assassinations embody an ideology, however twisted. Based on what we know so far, the Tucson killings look like more like politically tinged schizophrenia.

Let's start with this paragraph. Weisberg first establishes that Loughner has a lot of typical liberal views, such as his belief in wealth redistribution and  supporting free speech over honoring the American flag, to which I could add that the sicko also bought other views associated with liberals like the 9/11 Truther argument and opposition to drug control, and we should probably add to that list that in high school he was characterized as being very much liberal, and apparently enthusiastically supported Democrat Obama in the 2008 election.

But then Weisberg submits as evidence that the sicko was 'right wing' that he read Ayn Rand and favored the gold standard. Is that indeed evidence of 'right-wing' views- the wringings of a libertarian who disliked the traditional social structure and supported abortion? And apparently the nutjob shooter's preference for a gold standard wasn't because he wanted a more stable and solid fiscal system, but was because he thought that elites in the government (likely right-wing elites) really controlled the monetary supply in our nation and he wanted to fight against that. The evidence is not very strong at all that the nutjob was a conservative- the evidence that he is a liberal is considerably stronger. But for now I'm going to be nice and just go with what he registered as and call him an 'Independent'. Let's continue with the article that Slate published...

It is appropriate, however, to consider what was swirling outside Loughner's head. To call his crime an attempted assassination is to acknowledge that it appears to have had a political and not merely a personal context. That context wasn't Islamic radicalism, Puerto Rican independence, or anarcho-syndicalism. It was the anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism that flourishes in the dry and angry climate of Arizona. Extremist shouters didn't program Loughner, in some mechanistic way, to shoot Gabrielle Giffords. But the Tea Party movement did make it appreciably more likely that a disturbed person like Loughner would react, would be able to react, and would not be prevented from reacting, in the crazy way he did.

Here is where the utter derangement of liberal bloggers like Weisberg is demonstrated. Weisberg says that since what was going on inside Loughner's head wasn't important (which I disagree with), we should instead blame what was going on inside of his head. To do so though would be beyond foolish though, because by all accounts, Loughberg was increasingly withdrawing from the world around him (the world that Weisberg characterizes as increasingly conservative) and was focusing more on his dreaming and sleeping and philosophizing and smoking pot. As he became increasingly isolated and along and unconnected to the world around him, the world around him returned to conservative values- based on that information, you could definitively assert that it was not the increasingly conservative views of Arizona that affected him, but rather his past liberal views and the liberal environment of 2006-2009 that shaped and formed him and then left him to float away and disconnect from a world that went conservative in 2010. Let's continue with the article though, since this liberal blogger just gets more and more wrong with each statement that he writes...

At the core of the far right's culpability is its ongoing attack on the legitimacy of U.S. government—a venomous campaign not so different from the backdrop to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Then it was focused on "government bureaucrats" and the ATF. This time it has been more about Obama's birth certificate and health care reform. In either case, it expresses the dangerous idea that the federal government lacks valid authority. It is this, rather than violent rhetoric per se, that is the most dangerous aspect of right-wing extremism.

Often the two issues are blurred together, because if government is illegitimate, rebellion is an appropriate response (hence the Colonial costumes). Conservative entertainers like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin like to titillate their audiences with hints of justified violence, including frequent reminders that they are armed and dangerous. Palin went so far as to put a target on someone who subsequently got shot. Whether or not the man who fired the gun was inspired by Palin isn't the point. The point is that you shouldn't paint targets on people, even in metaphor, or jest.

Did you all follow the logic for this liberal? Oklahoma bombing to birth certificate to climate of violence to assassination of Congresswomen? Really? That's what he is committing to? I would contend that he is simply grabbing unrelated examples that he cherry-picks from history to prove his point, rather than evidence pointing him towards a conclusion.

On a related note, I play a game with my US history students where I ask them to time-travel back to 1776 and pick which side of the US Revolution they would be on- the Colonists or the British. Myself, seeing how much I love liberty and freedom, I'd side with the Colonists. Weisberg and other liberals though would likely side with the British- look at how he constructed his argument above- he thinks that rebelling against government is an illegitimate response to misuse of government power and that the Colonists were examples of this. He's a Loyalist! I'd suggest tar and feathering the guy if it wasn't now frowned on to joke about violence.

The next parts of his editorial are simply reasons why the government should take our guns from us- we'll skip over that for now and simply go to his conclusion-

Again, none of this says that Tea Party caused the Tucson tragedy, only that its politics increased the odds of something like it happening. It was in criticizing writers on his own side for their naivete about communism that George Orwell wrote, "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot." Today it is the right that amuses itself with violent chat and proclaims an injured innocence when its flammable words blow up.

Again, in his editorial that was published by Slate he didn't write any even slightly convincing arguments that connects the Tucson tragedy with anything related to conservative politics, the tea party, the right-wing, or anything related to those. Orwell's quote is a great one to bring up here, because much of what left-wing Weisburg wrote was simply baseless accusations that sounded good (ie, fire) being thrown around by someone who don't even have a clue what they are writing about.

I knew I was different than other teachers when during my student teaching, I substituted for a 9th Grade 'US History' and 10th Grade 'Political and Economic Systems' teacher at nearby High School in a local public school. This event really struck home to me how different I was as a teacher from the majority (50%+) of teachers in public schools, in particular social studies teachers- they were mostly liberal and some were very liberal teachers, and I was a very conservative teacher.

The teacher that I subbed for had so many inappropriate left leaning liberal communist Democrat pieces of propaganda and teaching materials in her room that I was immediately frightened for the students of this teacher. These students were surrounded by slogans and images that assaulted them continuously, especially if they were conservative, Republican, libertarian, or moderate. For example, there was a sticker on her desk that had in large letters "Hey Congress, Don't let Bush Ruin Social Security." What purpose does displaying this sticker to a classroom of students have? You put stickers like that where students can view them for the purposes of teaching students that that phrase or thought or idea is acceptable, desired, and to be believed.

Another sticker (covering up the fire alarm) read "Kerry for President." You know, that's okay- a lot of social studies teachers collect stickers and slogans and show them as an example of the types of thought that go through American society- as long as they are historical, meaningful, and balanced, there is nothing wrong with that particular sticker. So, seeking parity or equality in political representation in the room, I looked around the room. I immediately saw another large poster displayed that read "Kerry/Edwards", but had to keep looking before I eventually found a Bush poster in the room. There it was, a big picture of Bush- and tacked over it were dozens of editorials printed from the teacher's computer that criticized Bush and attacked him- so many angry attacking editorials were taped over Bush's picture that it was almost entirely covered.

Also up in her room, tacked to the front board, was a print-out of an article calling Bush a dummy, a poster that advocated car pooling with the slogan on it "collectivism beats individualism!", and a big poster against peace through strength and against a strong nuclear policy (good thing people like her had no power in government during the Cold War, or we'd all be speaking Russian or dead) (bad thing people like her have power over students education on the Cold War).

Skin still crawling and almost in shock at the liberal leftist overload that this room assaulted students with, I browsed through some of her teaching materials (there were no students yet- I had gotten to school early to prepare myself for the days lessons).

One eternal truth that I now know is that a liberal left teacher does not seek to enlighten and educate students, but rather seeks to indoctrinate and brainwash students. Critical thinking and opposing viewpoints are not welcome in a liberal teacher's classroom, only affirmations of their beliefs to satisfy a liberals lack of self-worth. Because of this truth, once a liberal left teacher is spotted, their teaching materials will obviously be slanted as well, as they seek to warp students to their viewpoints.

This liberal teacher's unit on WWII was a good example of the type of liberal indoctrination that goes on too frequently in the public schools of the United States. It was liberally slanted- for example, there were long discussions in the class 'debating' whether to drop the atomic bombs- but debate is a weak word, since the discussion prompts were designed to point students toward being against dropping the atomic bombs, and in the teacher's notes she herself wrote down many more arguments against dropping the bombs than for, so in reality, there was no real 'debate' with this issue (and from my later questioning of students, they told me that there was little education behind the debate as well, as this teacher felt that military theory and tactics and strategy was un-politically correct to mention in a classroom).

Another key part of this liberal teacher's WWII lesson focused on a long talk on the Japanese internment, had several days planned on the Holocaust, there was a lecture on how WWII ended the Great Depression, there was a lesson on how rationing and state control of the economy helped to win the war, and lastly there was an article written by a German that criticized the US for bombing civilians. All of these items were in the "WWII" unit. This was all that was in the unit on WWII (I looked through many folders in this teacher's closet trying to find more).

Lacking from this liberal teacher's WWII unit were discussions on opening a second front, war aims of the various countries, strategy and tactics of battle, stories from GI's of individual courage, sacrifice, or heroism, "Saving Private Ryan" type stuff displaying real qualities of people in the war, or anything at all that was moderate or critical of liberal ways of thinking. A student, after spending a week or two learning about WWII in this teacher's class, would be ill-prepared for anything but a shockingly liberal and incomplete view of WWII.  This liberal teacher, like many more all over the nation, choose to have a discussion about how price controls helped us win WWII rather than discuss the individual heroism of our ancestors in WWII.

Another example from this one teacher's files was her lesson on rating the Presidents. As she taught it, the Presidents could be rated as FDR 2, Clinton 20, Reagan 40, Bush 25, etc the list was liberally and Democratic slanted.  Her unit on political cartoons was filled with cartoon after cartoon that ripped into conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans- and had not a single cartoon that ripped Democrats or liberals. This teacher had a book on her desk almost burned my hands- it was called "A Necessary Evil" and here is a quote from it 'antigovernment sentiment is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of history...' and the book goes on to defend big statist government. This is the type of material that inspired her and that she passed on tot he students in her classroom.

I sat and thought about the situation I was in a little more, and suddenly it occurred to me- it was no surprise that the district had hired, employed, and supported a teacher such as this to teach "Political and Economic Systems." This class, mandated by the school district, had a syllabus that should have read "Attacking Capitalism and the American Way of Life." The whole class and semester of learning was just a series of liberal leftist attacks on conservatives, limited government, freedom, individuality, and libertarianism. From looking through all of her materials, it became apparent that every discussion about economics was focused on obligations the employer owed the voluntarily employed employee, and were heavily pro-union.

This liberal teacher's Progressive Era test actually had the following as the 'right' answer- Rockefeller's description was 'wealthy industrialist who ran standard oil, and was asked about his duty to the public, replied 'public be damned.'" The one thing this teacher wants students to take away about an innovative and brilliant industrialist such as Rockefeller is that he said 'public be damned,' thereby creating a whole new batch of people who hate Rockefeller and 'industrialist's'. Her 'Progressive Era' test and teaching materials were interesting- I assumed she meant the time period, and thus other things that occurred during this time, but instead the unit should have been called "Why Progressive’s were Right". According to students who studied in her class, from 1870 to 1910, the only thing that occurred were Progressives people saying the right things.

The capstone of this class was for students to watch and discuss Michael Moore's controversial film "Roger and Me." Again, it's not necessarily wrong to show this film, if it will serve as a basis for a critical discussion, bring up contrary arguments, and expose different viewpoints to the students, and is matched by some sort of conservative film. But not in a liberal's class- in this class, it was shown as fact. There was to be no criticism of his methods, beliefs, or agenda allowed. Oh, students did have to get a permission slip signed for this movie- but not because most parents would not want their child learning about this guy and his sick methods and agenda, but because in the movie there is shown "violence against animals." Rudeness, violence, foul language, heavily slanted viewpoint- no permission slip needed, but "Violence against animals" needs a permission slip.

Liberal students feel encouraged and safe in an environment such as this, while non liberal students are threatened and made to feel unsafe- emotionally they are belittled and told how evil they are, and intellectually they are attacked daily. And it was after seeing this teacher's classroom and teaching materials that I knew in my heart that I was different than other teachers, and was a heavily conservative teacher, and would have to struggle against the education system the whole time as such. But I don't care- if I can do even a little bit to counter what this teacher is doing in her classroom through my conservative teacher philosophy of teaching students critical thinking and individual responsibility and real knowledge, I will have made the world a better place.

UPDATE: The level of detail in this post should convince readers of the depth of liberal indoctrination that can occur in government skools.

Along the lines of Ushaidi, Sokwanele maps the Zimbabwean crisis:

On March 29th 2008 Zimbabweans went to the polls and changed history. For the first time since Independence in 1980, the Zanu PF party lost its majority in parliament and Robert Mugabe lost the Presidential vote. The regime immediately embarked on a campaign of violence and reprisal attacks against the civilian population.This map aims to convey some sense of the scale of the violence and it also tries to locate responsibility in relation to key perpetrator groups

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In today's Detroit News, there was a story about the police breaking up protests at a recent World Trade Organization meeting. The WTO is a group that is determined to make a more peaceful and prosperous world by lowering tariffs and removing barriers to trade, and there are people out there that do not like peace and prosperity, instead preferring anarchism and nationalism, and so every time the WTO has a meeting, there are protests.

These protesters typically pull themselves into what is called a Black Bloc. A black bloc is a tactic for protests and marches, whereby individuals wear black clothing, ski masks and motorcycle helmets with padding, steel-toed boots and often carrying their own shields and truncheons. The clothing is used to avoid being identified, and to theoretically, appear as one large mass, promoting solidarity, and creating a clear revolutionary presence. Tactics of a black bloc can include vandalism, rioting and street fighting, demonstrating without a permit, misleading the authorities, assisting in the escape of people arrested by the police, building barricades, and attacking police.

In Geneva, these 'peaceful protesters' set fire to cars, broke shop windows and committed other acts of violence. An 80-year-old women was knocked over and fell and had to be hospitalized, police said. These are the tactics of these 'far left' or 'far right' or 'middle way' groups who demonstrate against the WTO.

You can tell the quality of a person by the company they keep. These Black Bloc groups oppose lower tariffs, oppose capitalism, oppose the war in Iraq, and support Earth Day. Do you?

These anti-WTO protester's are an interesting mix of left-wing groups ranging from the outright communist (Autonomism) to the clearly fascist (National-Anarchism). Many of the issues and causes these groups promote are very close to the causes and issues that the Democrats support today- the main difference is in the methods used, not the goals. These left wing fascist and communist groups blame the United States for being at the root of most bad things in the world, want the US to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan and let the terrorists win, want to have the government play a larger and larger role in 'combating global warming' and 'supporting gay rights,' and even believe in free state-provided healthcare for everyone.

Yes indeed, there are many similarities between these Black Bloc groups and the Democratic Party. What there isn't is any similarities between the goals, methods, and agenda of this blog and those who support Black Blocs. We are clearly different in our agenda's, as I am a conservative teacher who supports lower tariffs, loves capitalism, supports the War on Terror, opposes government control to fight the myth of global warming, and loves freedom and liberty more than violence and revolutionary zeal.

Change might live on the left, but so does the Black Bloc. Pick your side.

Amengeo Amengeo writing in Business in Focus about the South African "anti immigrant" crisis states that:

Since the ‘end’ of apartheid [and this is moot since whites still control the economy, the courts and the land] South Africa has experienced unparalleled levels of violence, much of it directed inwardly. The people’s rage like an unstoppable river had to find its way and it fell back on itself. The late African-Martinician revolutionary Franz Fanon warned that a people, denied outlets for their anger will turn this rage inward, teetering on a pre-revolutionary precipice.
The anger and horrific brutality expressed in South African violence and crime are not the acts of mad people, but the acts of people made mad by the denial of justice and closure against those who oppressed them for so long. These people have been placed out of reach by the insane generosity of ‘forgiveness’ and ‘reconciliation’ offered without the consent of the people. The unfortunate ‘immigrants’ who have every right to be in South Africa, since without their unswerving support and solidarity apartheid could never have been toppled, are convenient scapegoats subjected to ‘xenophobia’ –destined to be the new divisive buzzword- while the government stands aghast, caught off guard by a situation they should have seen coming. This is a very, very dangerous time not just for South Africa, but the entire Continent.

While African Shirts insists that the countries "Rainbow Nation" image is phony and an example of faux liberalism:

The truth is that SA has a liberal/progressive constitution, but this liberalism isn't a reflection of actual South African society. See William Gumede's article in yesterday's Guardian. And I've always been suspicious of it. I never thought South Africa's adoption of gay marriage was a genuine reflection of what people thought.

via Benin Epilogue etc

The Economist reports:

Nigeria’s university system used to be the finest in west Africa, but today’s classes are overcrowded, buildings are crumbling and the curriculum has remained unchanged for years. The cults emerged from the shambles. Having started life as confraternities for the most academic students, they have deteriorated into gang violence. The Exam Ethics Project, a lobby group, says that inter-cult violence killed 115 students and teachers between 1993 and 2003. The real number may be much higher...[continue reading]

Over at the Corner at National Review Online, Andy McCarthy writes an interesting piece commenting on Obama's surprising connection with Kenyan strongman Raila Odinga. Mark Levin also wrote about this (link here), and McCarthy draws heavily on a post from Mark Hyman of the Washington Times (link here).

The connection is very troubling between these two people. Once again, Obama has a connection to an anti-American thug willing to do violence, much like Ayers. Obama again has questions raised about his views on religion, as he supported for President in Kenya a Muslim whose followers slaughtered many Christians. Again, Obama has questions raised about his 'citizen of the world status'- why would he support the enemy of a government friendly to the US? Again we see Obama willing to associate himself willingly with socialists. And again Obama connects himself to someone pushing policies of division.

Here is how Odinga is linked to Obama:

Odinga evidently has a very close relationship with Obama. He is native of Kenya's Luo tribe, the same one to which Obama's father belonged. In fact, in early 2008, Odinga told the BBC he is Obama's cousin (i.e., that Obama's father was Odinga's "maternal uncle").

Odinga sought the presidency in Kenya's December 2007 election. In 2006, Obama came to Kenya and campaigned for him, simultaneously voicing sharp criticism of the pro-American government. His comments will sound familiar to Americans. As Hyman writes, Obama declared, "The [Kenyan] people have to suffer over corruption perpetrated by government officials[.]... Kenyans are now yearning for change." Obama's visit, the culmination of consultations with Odinga that had gone on for years, vaulted Odinga's candidacy.(ACM — the outraged Kenyan government issued a rebuttal, greatly disturbed that Obama had represented that he was coming to Kenya to nurture Kenya/U.S. relations but, in fact, had used the trip as a platform to lecture to Kenya about social justice. Obama's interference in a foreign election, transparently designed to topple a government cooperative with the United States, comes close, to say the least, to violating the Logan Act, 18 U.S.C. 953.)

Linking Obama to Odinga is not 'racist' (in reality, I have no idea what race Odigna is), it is not trying to district people from the 'real issues,' and it isn't 'pushing McCain propaganda.' I'm mentioned Obama's troubling links to Odinga to point out that the man who wants to be our next President has a pattern of associating and supporting people who hate America. I'm point out the connection between a socialist strongman in Kenya and Obama because Obama wants to be a socialist strongman in the US. I'm posting about how Obama supports Odinga because Obama supports Odinga's policies of violence, division, socialism, and change.

Read for yourself this information- hopefully it isn't an indication of the scary stuff to come in the US once this guy gets in power.

Bret Stephens writing in the WSJ thinks its time to invoke the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine in Zimbabwe:

A solution for Zimbabwe's crisis isn't hard to come by: Someone – ideally the British(better still the AU...they did it in Comoros) – must remove Mr. Mugabe by force, install Mr. Tsvangirai as president, arm his supporters, prevent any rampages, and leave. "Saving Darfur" is a somewhat different story, but it also involves applying Western military force to whatever degree is necessary to get Khartoum to come to terms with an independent or autonomous Darfur. Burma? Same deal.

International relations theorists, including prominent Obama adviser Susan Rice, justify these sorts of interventions under the rubric of a "Responsibility to Protect" – a concept that comes oddly close to Kipling's White Man's Burden. So close, in fact, that its inherent paternalism has hitherto inhibited many liberals from endorsing the kinds of interventions toward which they are now tip-toeing, thousands of deaths too late.

"...The Responsibility to Protect describes an evolving concept about the duties of governments to prevent and end unconscionable acts of violence against the people of the world, wherever they occur.
The international community has a responsibility to protect the world’s populations from genocide, massive human rights abuses and other humanitarian crises. This responsibility to prevent, react to and rebuild following such crises rests first and foremost with each individual state. When states manifestly fail to protect their populations, the international community shares a collective responsibility to respond. This response should be the exercise of first peaceful, and then, if necessary, coercive, including forceful, steps to protect civilians..."-Responsibilitytoprotect.org

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Tesfaye Habisso writes in Friends of Ethiopia:

It must also be understood by all that elections alone will not produce democracy and do not necessarily bring about democratic culture. Authoritarian traditions take a long time to wash away. Creating a democracy in poverty -stricken and illiterate societies such as ours itself takes a long time and exacts huge costs, and is often accompanied by violence, disorder, and a period of uncertainty, even chaos. After all, democracies do not at a stroke make societies more civil and stable; they require strong civil institutions and a long period of time. It is only those who are committed to the values of democracy, rule of law, civil liberties and are prepared for the long-haul, and support less than perfect results as long as the efforts are sincere, who will succeed in realizing democracy and development, peace and stability

.More here

Edward Miguel discusses Nation Building in his Boston Review article about Africa's Prospects:

It should not be surprising that it is taking a full generation or more for real nationhood to take root in these infant countries. Everything started from scratch after independence. Politicians had to figure out how to forge political compromises across class, regional, gender, linguistic, tribal, and religious lines. History and civics textbooks needed to be written. Citizens had to come up with their own national narratives and heroes. Creating new identities and institutions is not something that foreign colonizers, aid donors, or the IMF and World Bank are willing or able to do. That kind of transformation demands visionary leaders, who have too often been lacking in Africa, or have themselves been victims of political violence. Further complicating matters, leaders and citizens trying to assemble structures of civic life must contend with the immediate economic imperatives of boosting agricultural productivity, educating the workforce, and building a modern transportation infrastructure.

via 3 Quarks Daily
Photo Courtesy of Christopher Herwig/herwigphoto.com

The NYTimes writes:

Under Mr. Mbeki’s leadership, the fruits of the nation’s hard-fought victory over apartheid have gone mainly to officials and former officials of the ruling African National Congress, not to the millions of poor people in the townships who faced down the dogs, the bullets and the pass laws and still must live without adequate jobs, education, housing or health services.
The resulting frustration and anger helps explain, though it cannot justify, this week’s outbreak of xenophobic violence in the shantytowns. At least 42 victims have been killed — many beaten, stabbed, hacked or burned to death — and some 25,000 have been chased from their homes.

Time travel back to 5 short years ago. The Democratic Party was frantically doing everything possible to pull our troops out of Iraq. Leaders in the party demanded an immediate withdrawal from the unwinnable war. Political lines in the sand were drawn, reputations were staked, bitter battles were fought, all by Democrats who were all against the War in Iraq. Our President, supported by angry demonstrators, regularly shouted about how bad the War in Iraq was. So what happened?

This question has importance, and is not asked simply to dwell on the past. It speaks to the credibility, the experience, the ability to accurately judge and predict events, of our current leadership. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Peters- they all had the same position on Iraq, and time has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that on that very very important issue, they were very very wrong.

Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote a great article called So What Happened to Iraq? that analyzed this very question:

Six years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Ayad Allawi, then prime minister of the appointed Iraqi Interim Government, was a puppet of the United States. Last month, though, the Allawi-led Iraqiya alliance won, by a narrow margin, more parliamentary seats than any other coalition in national elections -- and he may become the country's next prime minister.

The secular Allawi successfully campaigned on the message of curbing religious interference in government -- countering the often-argued charge that the U.S. has created a radical Islamic republic in Iraq.

Indeed, as we look back at our years in Iraq, almost all of what once passed for conventional wisdom has been proven wrong.

Yes, there is still terrorist violence in Iraq -- especially recently as the leadership of the country's next government remains in doubt. And, yes, there are still around 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. But in the first three months of 2010, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq was about equal to those murdered in Fresno, Calif.

Meanwhile, Iraq's democracy has for some time now proven itself independent from the U.S. -- and that old anti-war accusations that we entered the war to control Iraqi oil were false. Last June, the representative Iraqi government held its first oil auction -- featuring transparent negotiations in which no American oil company was awarded an oil concession.

Instead, Chinese, Russian, British, French and other national oil consortia were given the awards. These were legitimate contracts, too -- not the sweetheart deals Saddam Hussein used to make with other governments in exchange for international political cover.

After the U.S. removed the monstrous Saddam, many argued that we were only empowering neighboring Iran -- and thus that the U.S. and the region were better off when he was in power. Putting aside the morality of playing one dictatorship off against another, has theocratic Iran really benefited from the emergence of a constitutional democracy in Iraq?

Currently, the Iranian theocracy is far more unpopular among Iranians than the Iraqi democracy is among Iraqis. Ending Saddam Hussein's reign in the short-term might have been welcome to the ruling Iranian mullahs, but a nearby functioning secular constitutional state -- with a Shiite majority -- is becoming its worst nightmare. Millions of restless Iranians must now wonder, "If Iraqi Shiites can talk freely on television, why can't we?"

Given Iraq's progress these last years, it's hard to find anyone who still argues -- as the current troika now directing U.S. foreign policy, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, once did -- that President Bush's 2007 troop surge was a mistake.

To a then-Sen. Clinton, the surge's purported success required a "suspension of disbelief." But, as we now know, the surge saved Iraq and provided a blueprint of sorts for operations in Afghanistan.

Finally, there was the assertion that anti-war protests were all genuinely based on opposition to the American presence in Iraq rather than fueled, in large part, by partisan politics. But since January 2009, when Obama was sworn into office, there have been almost no anti-war demonstrations against the still-sizable American presence there. Popular demonstrations in the U.S. now oppose excessive government, not the war.

And Hollywood has ceased making its usual, unpopular anti-war movies like "In the Valley of Elah," "Redacted," "The Kingdom," "Rendition," "Lions for Lambs" and "Home of the Brave."

Many on the left no longer oppose the Bush-Petraeus plan of slow, graduated withdrawal from Iraq, as this strategy is now sanctioned by President Obama. In the words of Vice President Biden, Iraq may well become one of the Obama administration's "greatest achievements."

It's true that many original supporters of the three-week removal of Saddam Hussein underestimated the ordeal of establishing a constitutional state in his absence. But it's also evident that many who damned the war did so mainly to embarrass then-President George Bush.

We see all of this mostly in hindsight. Dire assertions about Iraq did not come to pass. Anti-war passion cooled once war-critic Barack Obama was no longer a presidential candidate but became president -- and commander-in-chief. And, most importantly, a successful democracy finally did arise after the fall of Saddam.

From Foreign Policy Magazine comes this article "The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2009". It has pictures and in depth analysis, but here is a handy summary of the top five stories for you:

1. The Northeast Passage Opens for Business. Good (lower cost of transporting goods around the world) or bad (an omen of the mystical cult of Global Warming), this does raise the importance of the Arctic Ocean, which is now accessible to exploration and development. This may be the cause of rising tensions between Russia and the US.
2. Iraq's New Flashpoint. Iraq's Arab and Kurdish populations are at odds with one another in the Nineveh region, not because of oil, but because of a large Kurdish population in this area, which is outside of the autonomous Kurdish region. Neither side has turned to violence- yet.
3. A Hotline for China and India. You only put in a hotline between world leaders when you are afraid that miscommunication may result and someone may make an unwise decision to nuke the other. The key to this conflict is the Himalayan region of Tawang, which is in India but China claims was part of Tibet (which is now part of China). The area has been increasingly militarized, and the Indian military documented 270 border violations and almost 2,300 cases of "aggressive border patrolling" by the Chinese in 2008.
4. A New Housing Bubble? More than any other factor, ill-advised speculation on U.S. real estate set off the global financial crisis. But even after millions of foreclosures and secondary effects ripped through economies around the world, a new housing bubble is forming again, for the same reasons the first did- Democratic pressure on banks to give everyone a home loan, Democratic pressure on banks to be nice about credit scores, Democratic 'stimulus' money for home sales, and Democratic pressure on banks to keep interest rates low and print money. Be prepared for Democratic policies such as these destroying the world's economies again sometime soon.
5. The ‘Civilian Surge' Fizzles. A major part of the strategy in dealing with terrorism and failed states was a surge in civilian personal from the State Department and USAID, but it turns out, those agencies have failed to deliver, and now the military is trying to meet that commitment too.

G. Pascal Zachary writes in FP:

Obamania in Kenya has gone on for years now, but the hype isn’t just about the president-elect’s roots. Rather, Kenya’s Obama fixation seems to represent a kind of escapist fantasy for an African country beset by political dysfunctionality. Still raw with the memory of the electoral violence that left hundreds dead last spring, Kenya is thirsty for exactly the sort of change Obama represents. Indeed, the Illinois senator seems to possess everything that Kenya’s political leaders lack: youthfulness, a conciliatory image, and the hope of transcending narrow ethnic identities in favor of a common national interest...[continue reading]

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• Andrew Willard: Kenya in denial

Via theblogprof, there is this interesting article From World Net Daily today:

A newly unclassified Department of Homeland Security report warns against the possibility of violence by unnamed "right-wing extremists" concerned about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty and singles out returning war veterans as particular threats.

The report from DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines right-wing extremism in the U.S. as "divided into those groups, movements and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups) and those that are mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."

Those of you attending the Tea Parties, here is what you stand for: America, federalism, 2nd amendment, pro-life, and the military. Here is who opposes your views: the US government, particularly bureaucrats.

This is getting weird- it is almost as if these tea parties were being held back in the pre-revolutionary days, when King George and his bureaucrats and their anti-freedom, anti-liberty, pro-bureaucracy policies were the norm. King George wanted you to stay home and sit out the pro-freedom events like this one- he didn't support federalism, gun ownership, and America. King George is the bad guy.

Today, it is King Obama- to be honest, it's not just Obama and it's not just the Democrats- it's also the big government Republicans and liberal RINO's who collaborate with those who would take our freedom. It is those out there who do not believe that I was given by God the right to own property (as much property as I want and it's a good thing!), that I was given by God the right to liberty, and that God gave me and others the right to live. Liberals and those who oppose these tea parties do not believe that governments were created by men to protect those rights, and that whenever they no longer protect those rights, they are no longer moral, they are no longer good, and they deserve to be changed.

Those of you who are going to Tea Parties this Wednesday- and here is the information you need for that- you are the good guys, you are the freedom fights, you are the right in this world. You are the ancestors of those who fought in our Revolution, you are the sons and daughters of the Revolution, and cheer with pride in knowing that by attending these Tea Parties, forget what the Department of Homeland Security says, you are doing the right thing.

UPDATE: Hot Air has a good story about the DHS report and other issues. Check it out, but don't be too worried- remember, aim to misbehave.