Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JBTFD who wrote (126454)

3/15/2012 10:30:16 AM

From: longnshort

2 Recommendations Respond to of 224755

Racial Quota Fallout

Many years ago, I learned of an episode in the life of a promising young black man that is relevant to things happening now. He had been educated at a good school, and went on to receive degrees at good colleges and universities. Then he went for a Ph.D. in mathematics at one of the leading departments in that field.

When he encountered difficulties, his professors essentially wrote his doctoral thesis for him. No doubt they felt good about doing something to help a promising young black man, and perhaps took pride in doing so. But what about his pride?

This young man ended up joining an extremist group that hated white people.

Would it have been worse if he had not gotten a Ph.D. in math? Probably 99 percent of the people in this country, regardless of race, could not get a Ph.D. in math — and yet they can still live happy and fulfilling lives.

What recalled this episode from long ago was the current flurry of interest in a video of a young Barack Obama at the Harvard law school praising Derrick Bell, a black professor there, whose writings on "critical race theory" promoted an extremist hostility to white people.

Derrick Bell was for years a civil rights lawyer, but not an academic legal scholar of the sort who gets appointed as a full professor at one of the leading law schools. Yet he became a visiting professor at the Stanford law school and was a full professor at the Harvard law school.

It was transparently obvious in both cases that his appointment was because he was black, not because he had the qualifications that got other people appointed to these faculties. At Stanford, his students complained that his course on constitutional law was not up to the standards of the other courses they were taking.

Stanford at that time had one of the leading scholars in constitutional law, Professor Gerald Gunther — and Derrick Bell was no Gerald Gunther. A hastily created program of study of constitutional law was then used to teach that subject to students who were not getting what they needed in Professor Bell's course.

When this clever finessing of the problem came to light, the administration apologized — to Derrick Bell for the embarrassment this caused him.

They should have apologized to the law students for short-changing them with a professor who was not up to the job — and to those who donated money to the university to advance the cause of education, not to allow administrators to play racial quota politics on campus.

As a full professor at the Harvard law school, Derrick Bell was also surrounded by colleagues who were out of his league as academic scholars.

[iframe marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://fw.adsafeprotected.com/rjsi/adsfac.us/11815/270665/ag.asp?cc=AEM044.319483.0&source=iframe&ord=[timestamp%3E&clk=http://exch.quantserve.com/r?a=p-f7MvjOgLvXZ_w;labels=_qc.clk,_click.adserver.rtb,_click.rand.64289;rtbip=216.52.116.32;rtbdata2=EAQaGkFldG5hTWVkaWNhcmVfTVBBRF9KYW4yMDEyIJijBiiHRjDTqB86F2h0dHA6Ly9pbnRlcm1hcmtldHMuY29tQgcIsrciEPcBUAFaKExya2I1U0xxVDdjMzd4cTNlZTBENGlqclQtTTM1aGV3Zk9qSm9JdE9oG3UAaAm_gAHwvILwDZABjc4ioAEBqAGGniCwAQK6AShMcmtiNVNMcVQ3YzM3eHEzZWUwRDRpanJULU0zNWhld2ZPakpvSXRPwAHT-0vIAf_hibbhJtUBAAAAP9oBKDI2OTc3YjdlNjc5MTFiY2Q5M2UwOTk5MWQ2NzgxNTc4MDFmNGFjYTnoAV8;redirecturl2=" ]="" frameborder="0" height="250" scrolling="no" width="300"][/iframe]

[iframe src="http://tap2-cdn.rubiconproject.com/partner/scripts/rubicon/emily.html?rtb_ext=1&pc=6005/12301&geo=na" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" style="height: 0px; width: 0px;" frameborder="0" height="0" scrolling="NO" width="0"][/iframe]

AD FEEDBACK

What were his options at this point? If he played it straight, he could not expect to command the respect of either faculty or students at the Harvard law school — or, more important, his own self-respect. Bell himself admitted that he did not have the scholarly credentials that most full professors at the Harvard law school have.

There were no doubt other law schools where he would have been a respected colleague, but these were not Stanford or Harvard. Yet it is worth remembering that millions of people have led happy and fulfilling lives without ever being at Harvard or Stanford.

Derrick Bell's options were to be a nobody, living in the shadow of more accomplished legal scholars — or to go off on some wild tangent of his own, and appeal to a radical racial constituency on campus and beyond.

His writings showed clearly that the latter was the path he chose. His previous writings had been those of a sensible man saying sensible things about civil rights issues that he understood from his years of experience as an attorney. But now he wrote all sorts of incoherent speculations and pronouncements, the main drift of which was that white people were the cause of black people's problems.

Bell even said that he took it as his mission to say things to annoy white people. Perhaps he thought that was better than being insignificant in his academic setting. But it was in fact far worse, because the real damage was to impressionable young blacks who took him seriously, including one who went on to become President of the United States.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

To: JBTFD who wrote (126454)	3/15/2012 10:44:46 AM
From: TideGlider	3 Recommendations Respond to of 224755

Your place for social trends that matter now msnNOW is a new way to stay in the know on the topics people are talking about, searching for, and sharing the most. msnNOW is the only place that looks at the hottest trends from Facebook, Twitter, Bing and Breakingnews.com. We give you the inside scoop so you always know about what's trending, if it's true, and why you should care. And we're constantly checking the latest buzz, so just look for links with the gray speech bubble on MSN.com to make msnNOW part of your daily routine. Check it out now Find us @msnNOW, Facebook and mobile. Florida veterans call Obama flag 'a disgrace' 12 hrs ago Lake County, Fla., veterans don't cotton to any tampering with Old Glory. Anyone who dares remove the stars from the flag does so at their own peril - in this case, the Lake County Democratic Party, which decided to hoist a flag with President Obama's image in place of the traditional stars over their headquarters. Veterans called the reconfigured banner "a disgrace," reports Fox News. "It's absolutely disrespectful," said Jim Bradford, 71-year-old veteran who served during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Bradford sent pictures of the flag to fellow veterans and delivered a copy of the federal flag code to Nancy Hurlbert, chairwoman of the Lake County Democratic Party. Hurlbert apologized and removed the flag. Want to read more trends like this? Check out the msnNOW home page. Share 2.4k [iframe style="WIDTH: 110px; HEIGHT: 20px" class=twitter-share-button src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html?original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fnow.msn.com%2Fnow%2F0314-obama-mug-on-flag.aspx&counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fnow.msn.com%2Fnow%2F0314-obama-mug-on-flag.aspx&url=http%3A%2F%2Fon-msn.com%2FzISOoe&text=Florida%20veterans%20call%20Obama%20flag%20'a%20disgrace'%20&count=horizontal&lang=en" frameBorder=0 allowTransparency scrolling=no][/iframe] [iframe style="WIDTH: 90px; HEIGHT: 21px" id=f3cebba88d119ec class=fb_ltr title="Like this content on Facebook." src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?action=like&api_key=272748242772306&channel_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs-static.ak.fbcdn.net%2Fconnect%2Fxd_proxy.php%23cb%3Df1a608770089c81%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnow.msn.com%252Ff2a7523ad676304%26relation%3Dparent.parent%26transport%3Dpostmessage&colorscheme=light&extended_social_context=false&font=arial&href=http%3A%2F%2Fnow.msn.com%2Fnow%2F0314-obama-mug-on-flag.aspx&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&node_type=link&ref=scptmf&sdk=joey&send=false&show_faces=false&width=90" frameBorder=0 allowTransparency name=f3013eebb5d179c scrolling=no][/iframe] 2.5k Share with Friends 2.4k Share Did veterans overreact to Obama's face on the flag? Sign in Add a comment Sign in with your Windows Live ID, or create a new one. 2502Comments Newest Oldest Best Worst Controversial of 126 rennaissanceman 1 seconds ago As a former Marine and military spouse I do find this offensive, but then again I also find the Confederate flag offensive and yet some people choose to fly it despite the fact it's not the American flag. And before you try to argue that displaying the Confederate flag being an expression of free speech, let me say the same argument could be made for this flag, or for burning the American flag. 1 0 Report Spam Someone 10 seconds ago It looks a bit like Lenin doesn't it ?? or Stalin ? naahh no mustashe (yet..) 1 0 Report Spam wt1947 10 seconds ago The military is a disgrace to America...baby killers, murderers and urinaters in public 0 1 Report Spam Idaho mom 16 seconds ago I don't feel this has anything to do with race. There are good and bad in all races we are all human but I do feel this flag should be taken down it ndoes not show respect for our flag or country. 1 0 Report Spam Birdy1964 17 seconds ago When you have spent 10 months in a VA hospital, discovered that you will be 40% disabled, fought for your country "WITHOUT REGRET" you can't help but get pi$$d off that our flag is being used as a piece of political literature. 1 0 Report Spam Thank you for reporting. Dave H89 21 seconds ago I was smarter than that when I was seventeen years old. Anyone that s----- should not be in charge of anything. Obviously we are in trouble 0 0 Report Spam Lanny Virden 23 seconds ago Hell no they didn't overreact. 1 0 Report Spam WishIWonAMillionToo 25 seconds ago If you ask me this loos like the flag of a dictatorship forming... And if you think this or any other idiot president is going to be allowed to form a dictatorship in my F**in' country... you got another thing coming!!!! And then people want to know if we find that kind of SHT offensive... you damn straight!!! Form a dictatorship, go ahead... in the mean time, let me go get my guns... cuz buddy thems fightin' words!!!!! 1 0 Report Spam Fred Stinocher (ranger20010) 26 seconds ago Peabrane: You eat s---, chase rabbits and bark at the moon. Obama is out to destroy this country!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 0 Report Spam john hayward (44useyes) 28 seconds ago Okay, all you veterans who allowed yourselves to be used on Veterans Day, I'd like to hear your responses. What did Sarah Palin do except to advance her own agenda on Veterans Day? Did you like being used? Why don't you have something to say about this? You have plenty to say about this flag incident! Where's your national pride now? 0 1 Report Spam kanic23 29 seconds ago If all the liberal left wing democrats want a dictator, please leave America alone and leave this country. Go live in a country where they do have dictators. The reason we are America and settled this country was to have freedom away from dictatorship. To put a picture of Obama on the flag is of the utmost disrespect to the people in this country who are true Americans and to the people who died for this country. It is disgusting and what even more disgusting is the people who voted this vile person into office. He has disgraced our country. He is an embarrassment to our country and we are being laughed at by the world. Commandment #2-Thy shalt not worship false gods-all you left wingers for some reason believe this man is God. What fools you are! What fools you are to put his face on our beloved flag-shame on you! 1 0 Report Spam averageperson747 34 seconds ago They have every right to be upset. All Americans should be. I would never want to see anything on that flag except the stars. This is our flag and we love what it stands for. He has no respect for anything American. 2 0 Report Spam TOM PETTIGREW (gfhgfhjdfshggs) 35 seconds ago Hey John, how about some proof? All you liberals spew lies over and over. Try living in the real world. Obama is a douche bag and is the worst President to ever sit in office... although he is not LEGALLY able to be President since he has a FAKE birth certificate and Selectice Service card that was forged. The only place deserving of his mug shot is the wall of a post office. 1 0 Report Spam Someone 39 seconds ago Obama did not burn the koran but he apologized for doing it, so he should apologize to the American people for his people putting a picture of him on Our Flag. 1 0 Report Spam no gov cont 43 seconds ago no us veterans fought for the flag what the hell as he done that was the worst thing i have seen done to our flag so how do we know that wasnt his idea to have his picture on it his predecessor tried to do his thing only his way also no more presidents the country ran by business people looks a lot better 1 0 Report Spam RICHARD WARRELL 49 seconds ago Hell NO! The veterans did not overreact to Obama's face on the flag. This idiot Nancy Huribert, chairwoman of the Lake County Democratic Party should step down from her post as she doesn't understand the most basic principles of what the American flag stands for and the generations of Americans since Betsy Ross have proudly and honorably carried this flag into battle. She is an excellent example of what is WRONG with the DEMOCRATIC party. I wish we would bring back the DRAFT and start with her to SERVE this country as did the millions of veterans. 1 0 Report Spam wt1947 59 seconds ago The military has disgraced the flag. Urinating on utude while wearing a uniform with a flag on it. Also, killing babies in Afghanistan . The military is disgraceful. Taken any pictures of a solder goggle eye over a naked Arab lately military? 0 1 Report Spam thats a disgrace to america bw 1 minute ago that is a disgrace to america 2 0 Report Spam Wickeder_Tree 1 minute ago No the Veterans did not over react. He is not Hitler, he is only a man that most of this country Voted in for President and Not another Hitler. The Flag should never be altered in any way shape or form. And a fine, jail term and or prison should be in place for such a disgrace of our American Flag. Any one who votes for him now is not worth two hoots in a hollow. And all who votes for him or knows of a person that votes for him in the next election should be shunned by Americans. The Stars on our flag represent the States. The States represent the people. This Nation was formed to be a Nation of the people, by the people and for the people. This is not a Nation with a dictator. 2 0 Report Spam of 126