Category Archives: rights

The NAACP is Right on This

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a school district in Prince George’s County, MD (which works out to suburban DC), that’s looking to set up two public (not private) high schools for immigrants and second generation students who don’t speak English—and to teach in their old country language.

The NAACP is objecting, and they’re right on this one, albeit for some wrong reasons. Bob Ross, president of the Prince George’s County branch of the NAACP, had this:

It risks turning Prince George’s County into a segregated school system[.]

He said the setup is a violation of Brown v Board of Education, and he’s close. He’s also worried that this will divert resources from the existing school system, and he’s right here, too. This objection, though, isn’t that important; any effort to add schools will divert those resources.

Tehani Collazo, Senior Director of Casa’s Schools and Community Engagement section, disagreed, also with reason:

If we are saying all [English-language-learning] students must go to these schools, that’s one thing. But we are not.

Like the many that already exist across the country, the International Schools are schools of choice. They are built on an innovative and proven model that will help support the needs of our most struggling group of learners—English Language Learners.

They’re both missing the larger point, though, about American education in this context. The segregation argument is close, but it misses.   Brown was about forced segregation; this is voluntary.

On the other hand, “schools of choice” are appropriate for a lot of things, but not in this context. There can’t be any choice about being taught in English.

Immigrants need to assimilate into American culture; it’s our culture that has created the opportunities we have and that underlie our enormous success. Our culture isn’t learned by students and their families holding themselves apart from it, which is what happens when students go to American schools to learn in their own language instead of in English.

Language is thought, and English is the language of American culture. It’s entirely likely that English needs to be taught with greater emphasis in those of our public schools that have large fractions of their student populations who don’t speak a version of English natively. However, public funds should not be spent on public schools that will teach only in a foreign language. That’s not how American culture will be learned; that’s not how immigrants will assimilate.

A Right Answer

Posted on by
Reply

And a righteous one.

The public schools’ association for religion teachers, Religionslærerforeningen, has today urged that the controversial Mohammed Cartoons, which were first printed in Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, should become part of the public school curriculum as quickly as possible.

The RLF is a Danish teachers’ organization. The Danish government is starting to get on board, too.

And now, several political parties—including Socialdemokraterne, Dansk Folkeparti (DF) and Konservative—have voiced their support for that idea, although the degree of support varies.

“It would be natural for the cartoons to become part of the material that the teachers can choose to use,” [according to Konservative’s spokeswoman Mai Mercado].

DF is a bit more forward in its view of the matter. According to their immigration spokesman, Martin Henriksen,

One of our time’s great challenges is the threat from Islamism and the pressure on freedom rights that have built up over many years.

If they really want to do something right, in terms of making sure that the students—including those with a Muslim background—know which freedom rights we have in Denmark, they should go all the way.

 

h/t The Washington Post.

A Conservative’s View of American Domestic Policy: Some Thoughts

Posted on by
Reply

It’s out.

This is the first of a pair of publications on American policy; the other is concerned with National Policy, which consists of foreign and defense policy.

Domestic Policy both is necessary in its own right and must come before National Policy since a sound policy domestically is absolutely required both for the health of the nation within our borders and to facilitate—indeed, to enable—any form of outward-facing policy at the national level.

Domestic Policy is a combination of social and economic policies. Social Policy consists of these things: the concept of the American nation; American citizenship; the role of faith in our society; the role of immigration and its importance to our society; the importance of consensus; and the role of education.

Economic Policy consists of these things: the nature of a free market and its condition as the most moral system and the one most conducive to generating prosperity for all (even though there always will be some more or less prosperous than others), the role of the Federal government in protecting and enhancing our economy, and the role of Federal regulation in facilitating our economy.

Of course, these two major divisions of Domestic Policy are not truly separate from each other any more than biology, chemistry, and physics are separate from each other within science. Just as we divide scientific disciplines from each other to facilitate inquiry and discussion, I’m separating domestic policy into these divisions to facilitate a similar inquiry and discussion—while remaining fully aware and making occasional use of their very large areas of overlap.

The book is available in eBook form from amazon.com () and

Rule By Law—Spying Edition

Posted on by
Reply

The People’s Republic of China is on the verge of enacting a law that would make legal corporate spying by the PRC government. Of course, the Chinese are couching this as a wholly innocent effort at countering terrorism.

The draft law requires both foreign and domestic telecommunications and Internet service providers to create backdoors in their systems to give Chinese authorities surveillance access, hand over copies of their encryption codes and assist government agencies with decryption when asked, among other provisions. Also, companies would be required to store Chinese users’ data on servers in the Chinese mainland; otherwise, they wouldn’t be allowed to operate in the country.

This sort of thing really should make it impossible for any honest company to do business in the PRC or with a PRC business. They should accept the Chinese offer of not “be[ing] allowed to operate in the country.” The financial gains to be had on the mainland—particularly with the money repatriation restrictions the PRC already has in place—can’t be worth this surrender of control over a legitimate business to the PRC government.

“Missing” IRS Emails

Posted on by
Reply

Investigators said Thursday they have recovered 32,000 emails in backup tapes related to the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative organizations.

But they don’t know how many of them are new, and told a congressional oversight committee that IRS employees had not asked computer technicians for the tapes, as directed by a subpoena from House oversight and other investigating committees.

That admission was in direct contradiction to earlier testimony of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.

Of particular interest, other than Koskinen’s apparent lie, is that

The emails were to and from Lois Lerner, who used to head the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status.

IRS Deputy Inspector General Timothy Camus said, according to Fox News‘ paraphrase at the above link, that

investigators recovered thousands of emails from old computer tapes used to back up the agency’s email system, though he said he believed some tapes had been erased.

It’s early in this batch’s status, though; Camus also said

We recovered quite a number of emails, but until we compare those to what’s already been produced we don’t know if they’re new emails[.]

But it’s not a scandal in any event. This is simply the sort of behavior guys like David Axelrod and Barack Obama think is entirely appropriate.