Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam

Douthat, Ross, and Reihan Salam. 2008. "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream." New York: Doubleday.

6 - Frank's central agrument, in particular, is appealing but flat wrong: The poorest Americans haven't turned right over recent decades, under the influence of "hallucinatory" culture war issues. Instead, they've turned left, voting for Democrats more reliably than even in the heyday of the Great Society. But this turn hasn't delivered liberals a majority, because most working-class voters aren't poor. They're relatively prosperous, in spote of left-wing claims about their supposed immiseration.
The problem for Frank and like-minded liberals is that they imagine the working class as it was sixty years ago--a mix of Joad-like farmers and unionized industrial workers, bound together by their antagonistic relationship to big business and dependent on redistributionist policies for their economic security. In reality, if you're a Sam's Club voter today, you're far more likely to be working in education or health care, office administration or business services than on a farm or an assembly line. You're more likely to belong to a family that makes $60,000 a year than one that makes $30,000. You probably own an array of electronics that would have dazzled your parents and grandparents; [. . .] and thanks to Wal-Mart and all its big-box peers, you spend less of your income on the necessities of life than any generation before you. (It's worth noting, too, that just about all of these advances can be attributed to the very same "job-killing trade agreements" so often described as the natural enemy of lower-income Americans.)
None of this means that the working class no longer exists, or that class politics no longer resonate. But it means that the

7- working class of today is defined less by income or wealth than by education--by the lack of a college degree and the cultural capital associated with it. a diploma isn't a prerequisite for individual success: Many men and women in the Sam's club demographic become quite comfortable, even rich, without graduating from college. But these individuals are the exception, and the larger non-college-educated demographic is enduring a slow-burning crisis, just as Frank argues [. . .] But it's not a crisis created by wicked plutocrats and their Republican enablers, and it's unlikely to be solved by stronger unions, more food stamps, a war on Wal-Mart, or the nationalization of a major industry or two. It's a crisis of insecurity and immobility, not poverty, and it's a crisis that has as much to do with culture as with economics.
The economic trends are important, certainly. Globalization and the rise of the knowledge-based economy, growing outsourcing and the demise of lifetime employment, the expansion of credit card debt, the decline of retirement and health-care security, the pressure from below created by unprecedented illegal immigration--all of these developments of the last trhee decades have made American workers feel more insecure, even though they're materially better off than ever before. And there's no question that the Republican Party has failed to adequately address these concerns, or that the GOP's emphasis on economic growth over economic security has made working-class life more unstable than it otherwise would have been.
But the "social issues," from abortion and marriage law to the death penalty and immigration, aren't just red herrings distracting the working classs from the economic struggles, as liberal have insisted for the better part of forty years. Rather, they're at the root of working-class insecurity. Safe streets, successful marriages, cultural solidarity, and vibrant religious and civic

8 - institutions make working-class Americans more likely to be wealthy, healthy, and upwardly mobile. Public disorder, family disintegration, cultural fragmentation, and civic and religious disaffection, on the other hand, breed downward mobility and financial strain--which in turn breeds further social dislocation, in a vi9cious cycle that threatens to transform a working class into an underclass.
Sam's Club voters have been wobbling on the edge of this abyss ever since the social revolution of the sixties, whichwas a liberation for those equipped to deal with its freedoms but a slow-motion disaster for those Americans who lacked the resources and social capital to rebound from illegitimacy, broken homes and failed marriages. Over the last thirty years, familial stability has gone from being a near-universal feature of American life to a privlege reserved for the mass upper class, whose wealth and education protect them from the disruptions that create divorce and single parenthood, and who have the social capital to pass these advantages on to the next generation. The result has been a persistently stratified America, in which working-class voters lack both personal and professional stability--and lack, as well, a way to rise in a country where success is increasingly tied to education, and education is tied to stable families, and both are out of reach.

[. . .]
9 - [. . .] Given these perils, where are Sam's Club voters to turn? The populist Left is responsive to their economic difficulties but allergic to moralism in public policy, and deeply resistant to any cultural critique of post-sixties America. Worse, its immediate wish list of economic "solutions" [. . .] often seem designed to take money out of the average Sam's Club voter. The moderate middle, meanwhile, is defined by its support for the status quo--free trade and cultural progressivism, secularism or a liberral religiousity, fiscal responsibility and continued large-scale immigration. These are the politics, allowing for certain variations, of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, the mass media and the business class. They aren't the worst set of ideas to dominate American politics, but they're inadequate to the challenges facing working-class America and the country as a whole.
[. . .]

11 - [. . .]conservatives have become confused about the legacy of the greatest conservative president of the modern era, Ronald Wilson Reagan. To hear today's conservatives tell it, Reagan was a man of unbending libertarian purity, whose domestic policy consisted of heroic tax cutting and little else. Cut taxes the Gipper surely did, but he was fare more flexible and innovative in his pursuit of reform than his admirers [. . .] would have you believe. Reagan was a president who cut income taxes dramatically but also closed corporate loopholes and raised taxes on gasoline; who slashed welfare spending but also midwifed the working poor-friendly Earned Income Tax Credit into being; who proposed reforming Social Security but also floated a plan for catastrophic health-care coverage; who attacked big government

12 - but also insisted, in his first inaugural, that his mission was not "to do away with government" but "to make it work--work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back."

19 - The contrast with how Europe's governments treated the working class during the same period [ 18th and 19th centuries, as compared the U.S.-JH] is instructive. Both continents extended the franchise, but Europe's nations did so out of fear: As British prime minister Earl Grey put it with admirable

20 - honesty in 1831, "The Principle of my reform is to proevent the necessity of revolution"--the nonmetaphorical kind of revolution in which elites get their heads chopped off. America, on the other hand, did so out of hope--the hope of attracting settlers, as states competed to offer the most expansive definition of political freedom, the better to lure enterprising pioneers. Similarly, Bismarck's Germany adopted the most ambitious program of social insurance in the world, the better to keep the factories running smoothly, but German elites were far less inclined to expand access to education. The goal was to create a docile working class, not an educated and ambitious one. America, in contrast, expanded schooling fist and adopted social insurance programs only in the twentieth century. In each case, America's leaders wanted self-sufficiency and independence; Europe's wanted conformity and obedience.

62 - [. . .] In theory, at least, the Democrats have had as many chances as the Republicans to ride anti-elitism to a political majority by attacking those aspects of the elite consesnus--free trade, deregulation, privatization--that dovetailed with the GOP's positions and often cost working-class voters their jobs. The emerging mass upper class included plenty of juicy Republican targets for blue-collar ire: Ken Lay was part of the new transnational elite; so was Michael Milken. As David Brooks pointed out, the political divide of 2006 pitted a "ranch-owning millionaire Republican like George Bush" against a "vineyard-owning millionaire Democrat like Nancy Pelosi," in a "clash of the rival elites, with the dollars from Brookline battling dollars from Dallas." In this landscape, poulism could easily cut both ways.
But in practice, the overclass's public face--academics and actors, journalists and bureaucrats, scientists and filmmakers and social workers--was liberal and Democratic, and try as it might, liberalism couldn't escape its identification with the elitist side of an increasingly polarized culture.

133 - The most important thing to understand about today's stratification--economic, social, and cultural-- is that it starts at home, where working-class Americans are far less lilely than their better-educated peers to enjoy the benefits that flow from stable families. In the fifties as we have seen, mariage rates, divorce rates, and illegitimacy varied only a little by class and education. In the sevenites, that began to change imperceptibly at first, and then dramatically. The divorce rate exploded across all classes in the late 1960s, but among the college educated it leveled off quickly and then began to drop.

134 - [. . .]
As with divorce, so with illegitimacy [. . .]In the early 1960s, the rate of out-of-wedlock births was 5 percent among the best-educated third of the population and just 7 percent among the least-educated third. Over the next forty years, the illegitimacy rate would triple for the least-educated third,w hile barely budging among the best-educated segment of the population.

135 - [. . .]
Where do these tendencies come from? In her invaluable book on the stratification of family life, Marriage and Caste in America, Kay Hymowitz points out the paradox of the Sexual Revolution--namely, that the very women who have benefited the most from their newfound freedoms, the well-off and well educated, are also the most likely to embrace the kind of bourgeois lifestyle that predominated before the birth control poll changed the world forever. It's not exactly the same, of course; they're more likely to have sex and cohabit before marriage than their mothers were, more likely to delay childbearing into their thirties, and more likely to stop at one or two children rather than pushing on to three or four. But at a fundamental level, they're accepting a conservative understanding of what marriage is and ought to be--a lifelong commitment that predates childbearing and exists in large part for the benefit of the children.
They do so, Hymowitz argues, out of the abiding practicality that has defined upper-middle-class life in America ever since the sixties ran out of steam. "Educated middle-class mothers," she writes, "tend to be dedicated to the Mission--the careful

136 - nurturing of their children's cognitive, emotional, and social development, which, if all goes according to plan, will lead to the honor rool and a spot on the debate team, which will in turn lead to a good college, then ... eventually to a fulfilling career, a big house in a posh suburb, and a sense of meaningful accomplishment." Ideologically, they may believe that marriage should be optional, just one lifestyle choice among many; they accept adultery in their politicians and unwed motherhood from their movie stars; and they have no interest in anything so harsh as bringing back the stigma that used to apply to illegitimacy, divorce, and cohabitation. But "like high-status women since status began, they are preparing their offspring to carry on their way of life," and an old-fashioned marriage offers as good a guarantee of stability and prosperity as you're likely to get.
Working-class women, on the other hand, may actually be more idealistic about marriage, in a sense. But this means that they tend to either rush into impulsive unions that don't end well or place marriage on a pedestal, often putting it off till after they've had children with a man they love but may not quite trust to provide for them permanently. (In a more skill-based economy [. . .] the typical working-class man isn't as good a catcdh as he was in the age of lifetime employment.) As Kathryn Edin and Andrew Cherlin have argued, these women often regard marriage as the capstone, rather than the foundation, of family life. And this, in turn, creates a sexual climate in which nobody--not women, not men, not grandparents, and not even children--quite understands what their obligations are, in which a pervasive mistrust clouds every relationship. Women feel used for sexd by men who don't want to get married; men feel used for money, "valued only for their not-so-deep pockets," as Hymowitz puts it.
All of this instability is intimately linked to both emotional and economic stress.

140 - [. . .] Liberal pundits get a great deal of mileage out of the fact that the so-called Red states, in spite of their piety and social conservatism, have higher rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, and out-of-wedlock births than their Blue counterparts. But this isn't evidence of Red American hypocrisy, or stupidity; rather, it's evidence that lower-income Americans (Red states are generally poorer than Blue states) have been adversely affected by the dislocations and disarray that followed the Sexual Revolution, and have responded by embracing a conservative politics that promises to shore up the institutions that provide stability and support--their families, their churches, and their neighborhoods.

How Race Survived U.S. History by David R. Roediger

Roediger, David R. 2008. How Race Survived U.S. History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon. New York: Verso.

175 - This sort of coercion from Southern Democrats occured repeatedly, a particularly striking example being the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938.

176 - That bill began by serving Southern planter interests in laying out wages and hours provisions, which, it stipulated, would not apply to agricultural workers--who in the South and Southwest were overwhelmingly black and Mexican. As the legislation proceeded, Dixiecrats wanted and won still more, forcing no fewer than five Senate roll calls to expand exemptions to those trucking farm produce or packaging and preparing fesh fruits and vegetables; in each case, they held Northern liberal' feet to the fire, and the whole law hostage.

181 - In a fascinating mid-1960s speech at Howard University, President Lyndon Johnson retrospectively acknowledged that thirty-five years previously "the rate of unemployment for Negroes and whites was about the same." He continued, "Tonight the Negro rate is twice as high." Johsnon might have added that the origins of this pattern lay in the New Deal, during which black women suffered especially great losses in job opportunities, and reformers either ignored or contributed to the problem. Such differentials in employment solidified the notion that African Americans sought handouts rather than work. That notion, developing decisively outside as well as within the South, was driven by racist fantasies but also by specific national policies contributing to job loss and to discrimination in the provision of welfare. In much of the North, where African Americans voted and could successfuly demand access to welfare but not to good jobs, ADC payments, in the words of the historian of welfare Michael Brown "coercively substitute[d] for jobs." Denied training, the black poor could get a measure of cash relief, fueling yet again the notion that they were among the undeserving poor. [. . .]
New Deal housing policy similarly showed that national failures to address racial justice stemmed from more than simply Southern racism. The post-World War I campaigns to enforce residential segregation through the mass signing of restrictive covenants by whites had left the real estate industry, and many homeowners, convinced that stable property values required Jim Crow practices everywhere. While the New Deal never began to budget enough money for housing to address the needs of the third of all Americans whom Roosevelt counted as "ill-housed," its housing

182 - policies did manage to set pernicious precedents where race was concerned. Initiatives took place on two tracks.
One set of programs funded highly unequal, overwhelmingly segregated, public housing: the very shoddiness of the structures and crowding of the units could unfairly identify residents as undeserving recipients of welfare. The other track of federal housing policy subsidized and stabilized private homebuyers' loans, the overwhelmingly white recipients of which were cast as embodiments of an American Dream based on individualism, rather than as welfare recipients. Using realty indistry guidelines on the quality of neighborhoods, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) from 1933 to 1935 and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) set up in 1934 developed metrics to "grade" the desirability of neighborhoods partly based on their racial composition. The color-coding of FHA maps of the neighborhoods outlined the often African American and/or diverse neighborhoods graded as least desirable in red. Since the lowest grade meant the denial of loans, the term "redline" came into the language to mean the identifying of a neighborhood for unfavorable treatment. The "color line" defined the state-sponsored "redline" more than any other factor. "Segregation," fair housing activist Charles Abrams wrote in 1955, "was not only practiced. . .but openly exhorted" in the federal home loan programs. Rating neighborhoods, the FHA grouped "racial occupancy alongside pollutants like smoke and odors." It offered a model restrictive covenant enforcing segregation and extolled such devices as the "surest possible protection against undesirable encroachment."

205 - Affirmative action, the main "wedge issue" dividing voters over race since 1969, took shape during a moment when the Nixon adminsitration posed itself as a liberalizing force. [ . . .] "quotas" themselves had already been found legally untenable in a series of rulings growing out of the language on "preferential treatment" in Title 7 Section J of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So strong was the wording of that passage, and so explicit the denail of any intent of racial preferences by Democratic leader Senator Hubert Humphrey in debates on the bill, that

206 - those in the Johnson administration wanting to attach firm numbers to plans to desegregate the skilled construction trades had to abandon such plans in cities like St. Louis, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. [ . . .]
But Nixon, on taking office in 1969, subverted the OeO even as he resurrected Johsnon's abandoned Philadelphia Plan to desegregate the building trades in that city, finding language to circumvent explicit reference to quotas. Although applying to just hundreds of jobs initially, the plan had great symbolic impact--the building trades so expressed craft-union racism as to make James Baldwin doubt that there was a labor movement in the US at all--and effectively divided trade-union and African American Democratic constituencies. Some Nixon scholars find evidence that the Philadelphia Plan expressed a longstanding and continuing commitment by the president to a dying strain of moderate Republican anti-racism. This certainly was the case with Arthur Flectcher, the dynamic black liberal Republican who provided much of the plan's language and who spoke of it as a continuation of Dr. King's work. But the larger truth is that Nixonian affirmative action matured in the thrall of a presidency committed to a Southern strategy of coded racism and to dividing and conquering his enemies. Moreover, by 1970, Nixon's Democratic adviser, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, urged a period of "benign neglect" of supposedly overly polarizing questions of racial justice. [. . .] The Philadelphia Plan and Fletcher were both gone by 1973. Affirmative action thus implied at best a return to a gradualist approach to racial justice and an atmosphere of partisan angling for advantage.

207 - Liberal Democrats soon became the reluctant cusodians of affirmative action, as Republicans turned increasingly against the initiatives that Nixon had helped to instigate, branding them forms of "reverse racism." Reagan was an especially effective and insistent enemy of largely non-existent "quotas."

The Bell Curve Wars

Fraser, Steven, editor. The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America. 1995. New York: BasicBooks.


Jeffrey Rosen and Charles Lane, 'The Sources of The Bell Curve'

60 - Murray and Herrnstein also introduce readers to the work of J. Phillipe Ruston, a Canadian psychologist. Rushton has argued that Asians are more intelligent that Caucasians, have larger brains for their body size, smaller penises, lower sex drive, are less fertile, work harder, and are more readily socialized; and Caucasians have the same relationship to blacks. [. . .]
In a gratuitous two-page appendix, Murray and Herrnstein go out of their way to say that "Rushton's work is not that of a crackpot or a bigot." But in an interview with Rolling Stone, Rushton colloquially summarized his research agenda: "Even if you take things like athletic ability or sexuality--not to reinforce stereotypes--but it's atrade-off: more brain or more penis. You can't have everything." And in a 1986 article in Politics and Life Sciences, Rushton suggested that Nazi Germany's military prowess was connected to the purity of its gene pool, and warned that egalitarian ideas endangered "North European civilization."

Andrew Hacker, 'Caste, Crime, and Precocity'

97 - It will save time if I aver my full agreement with Howard Gardner, who reminds us that there are many kinds of intelligences. (The Bell Curve never explores the nuances of Gardner's position.) Indeed, there are many skills and aptitudes that do not even get this designation. We hardly ever speak of an "intelligent poet" Or an "intelligent sculptor" or, for that matter, an "intelligent chef." Nor do we often hear someone described as an "intelligent lover." Nor am I sure that we percieve a bootstrap entrepreneur as being an "intelligent businessman." (Some polished corporate types may win that appellation.) These and other talents tend to be regarded as intuitive traits, perhaps having their sources in the torso rather than the cerebrum.
Indeed, what is usually thought of as "intelligence" is more an academic concern than in the working world. To continue with an example just cited, men and women who have proved themselves in

98 - business are often suspicious of people who own more than one degree. This is why Adam Smith, the philosopher of a free economy, was an egalitarian in the matter of mental endowments. The people he saw bulding enterprises had seldom done well on schoolmasters' tests. In his view, even savants like himself were essentially like other people, save for a verbal veneer. [. . .]
The principle source for The Bell Curve's finding and conclusions is the National Longitidinal Survey of Youth, which has tracked a sample of Americans from the time they left high school through their middle thirties. As part of the project, its participants were given a series of questions taken from the Armed Forces Qualification Test. [. . .]
[. . .] What do these tests test? There is, of course, the issue of whether even supposedly simple questions can be culturally biased or favor a certain social stratum.

99 - While the aim may be to measure inborn aptitudes, all tests call for substantive amounts of acquired knowledge.
Moreover, high scores have a strong correlation with whether individuals were raised in a setting which habituated them to the kinds of mental processes the tests assess. [. . .] The very format of the test determines who will do well. Given that one must produce the answers at just about a one-a-minute rate, doing well demands that you have a matrix in your mind that mirrors the multiple-choice format. In part, this can be assisted through schooling. But some people also seem to possess an instinctive capacity for unsnarling these kinds of questions, indeed getting their gist in the first twenty seconds. This said, wan can grant that what is being tested are cer-

100 - tain modes of mental functioning. And what is being rated is the degree to which an individual has this one kind of intelligence.
Those who score well readily gain admission to colleges like Amherst and Stanford, from which they move on to Yale Law School and fellowships at Rockefeller University. These institutions require and reward this bookish form of intelligence, one better suited to seminar problem-solving rather than the rough-and-tumble of an unruly world. So I do not accept Murray and Herrnstein's forecast that a caste of high scorers will come to predominate in positions of power. On the whole, most such persons will peak during their academic years, or perhaps during an initial job they receive on the strength of test results. However, after that they will soon be surpassed by individuals who possess more applied forms of intelligence that are not revealed by tests taken while sitting at desks. People like George Patton, Lee Iacocca, and Newt Gingrich come to mind.
At best, The Bell Curve authors have identified not a generic meritocracy, but what could be called a testocracy: individuals possessed of a specialized skill which, on further examination, has little relation or relevance to most human endeavors.


John B. Judis, 'Hearts of Darkness'

126 - Murray has also denied that he approves of a society stratified according to intelligence, or simply IQ. In speeches, he has assured his fellow conservatives, many of whom fancy themselves to be populists, that he wants to curb the cognitive elite and "return control of daily life to the people who live it." But The Bell Curve is a brief for a society divided along exactly these lines. Murray deplores court rulings forbidding the use of IQ tests in hiring. He wants school funds shifted from the "disadvantaged" toward the "gifted." He wants a voucher program that will reward elite private schools. The result of these policies will be still greater segregation of society along the lines of income and of achievement in standardized tests.

Mickey Kaus, 'The "It-Matters-Little" Gambit'

130 - In Losing Ground, the 1984 book that made his name, Charles Murray pooh-poohed the role of race in America's social pathology. Instead, Murray blamed liberal welfare programs that trapped black and white alike in poverty. "Focusing on blacks cripples progress," he declared in a 1986 op-ed piece (entitled "Not a Matter of Race"),

because explanations of the special problems facing blacks nearly all begin with the assumption that blacks are different from everyone else, whether because of racism (as the apologists argue) or because of inherent traits (as the racists argue).

But that was then. Now, it turns out, Murray indeed thinks blacks face problems because they "are different from everyone else," and they are different "because of inherent traits (as the racists argue)" or, at any rate, because of immutable traits.

Que Tal, Essay? More Hippie Shit

Kaufman, Alan, editor. The Outlaw Bible of American Essays. Compilation copyright 2006. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.


Paul Krassner, The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book

113 - An executive in the publishing industry, who obviously must remain anonymous, has made available to The Realist a photostatic copy of the original manuscript of William Manchester's book, The Death of a President.
Those passages printed here were marked for deletion months before Harper & Row sold the serialization rights to Look magazine; hence they do not appear even in the "complete" version published by the German magazine Stern.

115 - Gore Vidal [. . .] On a television program in London, he explained why Jacqueline Kennedy will never relate to Lyndon Johnson. During that tense flight from Dallas to Washington after the assassination, she inadvertently walked in on Johnson as he was standing over the casket of his predecessor and chuckling. This disclosure was the talk of London, but did not reach these shores.

116 - Of course, President Johnson is often given to inappropriate responses--witness the puzzled timing of his smile when he speaks of grave matters--but we must also assume that Mrs. Kennedy had been traumatized that day and her perception was likely to have been colored by the tragedy. This state of shock must have underlain an incident on Air Force One that this writer conceives to be delirium, but which Mrs. Kennedy insists she actually saw.
[. . .]
She corroborated Gore Videl's story about Lyndon JOhnson, continuing, "that man was crouching over the corpse, no longer chuckling but breathing hard and moving his body rhythmically. At first I thought he must be performing some mysterious symbolic rite he'd learned from Mexicans or Indians as a boy. And then I realize--there is only one way to say this--he was literally fucking my husband in the throat. In the bullet wound in the front of his throat. He reached a climax and dismounted. I froze. The next thing I remember, he was being sworn in as the new president."
[Handwritten marginal notes: 1. Check with Rankin--did secret autopsy show semen in throat wound? 2. Is this simply necrophilia or was LBJ trying to change entry wound from grassy knoll into exit wound from Book Depository by enlarging it?]
The glaze lifted from Jacqueline Kennedy's eyes.
"I don't believe that Lyndon Johnson had anything to do with a conspracy, but I do know this--my husband taught me about the nuances of power--if Jack were miraculously to come back to life and sudenly appear in front of Johnson, the first thing Johnson would do now is kill him." She smiled sardonically, adding, "Unless Bobby beat him to it."


Eldrige Cleaver, The Courage To Kill: Meeting the Panthers [blog note: compare this essay to the bell hooks essay below - JH]

124 - Suddenly the room fell silent. [. . .] From the tension showing on the faces of the people before me, I thought the cops were invading the meeting, but there was a deep female gleam leaping out of one of the women's eyes that no cop who ever lived could elicit. I recognized that gleam out of the recesses of my soul, even though I had never seen it before in my life: the total admiration of a black woman for a black man. I spun round in my seat and asw the most beautiful sight I had ever seen: four black men wearing black berets, powder-blue shirts, black leather jackets, black trousers, shiny black shoes--and each with a gun!



bell hooks, Love as the Practice of Freedom

317 - Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our political visionand our radical aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into continued allegiance to systems of domination--imperialism, sexism, racism, classism. It has always puzzled me that women and men who spend a lifetime working to resist and oppose one form of domination can be systematically supporting another. I have been puzzled by powerful visionary black male leaders who can speak and act passionately in resistance to racial domination and accept and embrace sexist domination of women, by feminist white women who work daily to eradicate sexism but who have major blind spots when it comes to acknowledging and resisting racism and white-supremacist domination of the planet. Critically examining these blind spots, I conlcude that many of us are motivated to move against domination solely when we feel our self-interest directly threatened. Often, then, the longing is not for a collective transformation of society, and end to politics of dominations, but rather simply for an end to what we feel is hurting us. This is why we desperately need an ethic of love to intervene in our self-centered longing for change. [. . .]

318 - [. . .] The civil rights movement transformed society in the United States because it was fundamentally rooted in a love ethic. No leader has emphasized this ethic more than Martin Luther King Jr. He had the prophetic insight to recognize that a revolution built on any other foundation would fail. Again and again, King testified that he had "decided to love" because he believed deeply that if we are "seeking the highest good," we "find it through love," because this is "the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality." And the point of being in touch with a transcendent reality is that we struggle for justice, all the while realizing that we are always more than our race, class, or sex. When I look back at the civil rights movement, which was in many ways limited because it was a reformist movement, I see that it had the power to move masses of people to act in the interest of racial justice--and because it was proufoundly rooted in a love ethic.
The sixties black power movement shifted away from that love ethic. The emphasis was now more on power. and it is not surpirising that the sexism that had always undermined the black liberation struggle intensified, that a misogynist approach to women became a norm among black political leaders, almost all of whom were male. Indeed, the new militancy of masculinist black power equated love with weakness, announcing that the quinessential expression of freedom would be the willingness to coerce, do violence, terrorize, indeed, utilize the weapons of domination. This was the crudest embodiment of Malcolm X's bold credo "by any means necessary."
On the positive side, the Black Power movement shifted the focus of black liberation struggle from reform to revolution. This was an important political development, bringing with it a stronger anti-imperialist, global perspective. However, masculinist sexist biases in leadership led to the suppression of the love ethic. Hence progess was made even as something valuable was lost. While King had focused on loving our enemies, Malcolm called us back to ourselves, acknowledging that taking care of blackness was our central responsibility. Even though King talked about the importance of black self-love, he talked more about loving our enemies. Ultimately,

319 - neither he nor Malcolm loved long enough to fully integrate the love ethic into a vision of political decolonization that would provide a blueprint for the eradication of black self-hatred.

320 - M. Scott Peck's self-help book The Road Less Traveled is enormously popular [. . .]
Peck offers a working definition for love that is useful for those of us who would like to make a love ethic the core of all human interaction. He defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." [. . .]
His words echo Martin Luther King's declaration, "I have decided to love," which also emphasizes choice.

Big Hippie Book

The Outlaw Bible of American Literature. Edited Alan Kaufman, Neil Ortenburg and Barney Rosset. Collection copyright 2004. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press

Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, "Please Kill Me"

Iggy Pop: Once I heard the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, and even Chuck Berry playing his own tune, I couldn't go back and listen to the British Invasion, you know, a band like the Kinks. I'm sorry, the Kinks are great, but when you're a young guy and you're trying to find out where your balls are, you go, "Those guys sound like pussies!"
[. . .] I went to Chicago with nineteen cents.
{. . .] I went out to Sam's neighborhood. I really was the only white guy there. [. . .]
So I hooked up with Sam Lay. He was playing with Jimmy cotton and I'd go see them play and learned what I could. And very occasionally, I would get to sit in [. . .]
It was a thrill, you know? It was a thrill to be really close to some of those guys--they all had an attitude, like jive motherfuckers, you know? What I noticed about these black guys was that their music was like honey off their fingers. Real childlike and charming in its simplicity. It was just a very natural mode of expression and life-style. [. . .]
I realized that these guys were way over my head, and that what they were doing was so natural to them that it was ridiculous for me to make a studious copy of it, which is what most white blues bands did.
[. . .]

164 - [. . .] then it hit me.
I thought, What you gotta do is play your own simple blues. I could describe my experience based on the way those guys are describing theirs...
So that's what I did. I appropriated a lot of their vocal forms, and also their turns of phrase--either heard or misheard or twisted from blues songs. So "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is probably my mishearing of "Baby Please Don't Go."

Meridel Le Sueur, "Ripening"

Minneapolis, 1934

181 - I HAVE NEVER BEEN in a strike before. It is like looking at something that is happening for the first time and there are no thoughts and no words yet accrued to it. If you come from the middle class, words are likely to mean more than an event. You are likely to think about a thing, and the happening will be the size of a pin point and the words around the happening very large, distorting it queerly. It's a case of "Remembrance of Things Past." When you are in the event, you are likely to have a distinctly individualistic attitude, to be only partly there, and to care more for the happening afterwards than when it is happening. That is why it is hard for a person like myself and others to be in a strike.
Besides, in American life, you hear things happening in a far and muffled way, One thing is said and another happens. Our merchant society has been built upon a huge hypocrisy, a cut-throat competition which sets one man against another and at the same time an ideology mouthing such words as "Humanity," "Truth," the "Golden Rule," and such. Now in a crisis the word falls away and the skeleton of that actions shows in terrific movement.

Emma Goldman, "Living My Life"

211 - ["] Cardinal Manning long ago proclaimed that 'necessity knows no law' and that 'the starving man has a right to a share of his neighbor's bread.' Cardinal Manning was an ecclesiastic steeped in the traditions of the Church, which was always been on the side of the rich against the poor. But he had some humanity, and he knew that hunger is a compelling force. You, too, will have to hearn that you have a right to share your neighbor's bread. Your neighbors--they have not only stolen your bread, but they are sapping your blood. they will go on robbing you, your children, and your children's children, unless you wake up, unless you become daring enough to demand your rights. Well, then, demonstrate before the palaces of the rich, demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right!"

Tom Wolfe, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"

258- The news spread around intellectual-hip circles in the San Francisco-Berkeley area like a legend. In these circles, anyway, it once and for all put Kesey and the Pranksters up above the category of just another weirdo intellectual group. They had broken through the worst hangup that intellectuals know--the real-life hangup. Intellectuals were always hung up with the feeling that they weren't coming to grips with real life. Real life belonged to all those funky spades and prize fighters and bullfighters and dock workers and grape pickers and wetbacks. Nostalgie de la boue. Well, the hell's Angels were real life. It didn't get any realer than that, and Kesey had pulled it off.


Paul Beatty, "The White Boy Shuffle"

298 - In the middle of the throng stood a commemorative sculpture. A slightly abstract cast-iron flick of birds in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., who received his doctorate in theology from Boston University. "Do you see that sculpture?" I asked, [. . .] I was speaking to the Negroes, but the white folks were listening in, their ears pressed to my breast, listening to my heart. "Who knows what it says on the plaque at the base of the sculpture?" [. . .]
"[. . .] I saw what the plaque said. It says, 'If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live. Martin Luther King, Jr.' How many of you motherfuckers are ready to die for black rule in Sout Africa--and I mean black rule, not black superintendence?"
Yells and whistles shot through the air.
"You lying motherfuckers, I talked to Harriet Velakazi, the ANC lieutenant you heard speak earlier, and she's willing to die for South Africa. She don't give a fuck about King's sexist language, she ready to kill her daddy and

299 - if need be kill her mama for South Africa. Now don't get me wrong, I want them [. . .] to get theirs, but I am not willing to die for South Africa, and you ain't either."
[. . .] "So I asked mysself, what am I willing to die for? The day when white people treat me with respect and see my life as equally valuable to theirs? no, I ain't willing to die for that, because if they don't know that by now, then they ain't never going to know it. Matter of fact, I ain't ready to die for anything, so I guess I'm just not fit to live. In other words, I'm just ready to die. I'm just ready to die."

The Afghanistan situation Is Even More Fucked Up than I Knew

Whoa. Check this out:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston

Links on Vegitarian and Vegan Weightlifting

[for the record: I am not now a vegitarian or vegan, although I tried it once - jlhart7]


From http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mahler21.htm

What To Eat To Gain Weight?

One of the biggest problems that people tell me about on a vegan diet is the difficulty in gaining muscle. They usually state that they could not find enough high calorie sources to consume to put on weight rapidly and got discouraged. The bottom line is that they were not consuming enough protein and fat. To gain weight rapidly, eat 1-1.5 grams of protein for each lb of lean bodyweight. Thus, if you weigh 200lbs and have 10% bodyfat, eat 190 to 285 grams of protein per day, every day. Start off on the lower end of the scale and work your way up.

Next, get an ample supply of quality fats in your diet. Almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and pistachios, are all high quality sources and are loaded with both protein and fat. Also, add a tablespoon of flaxseed oil to your salads and protein shakes. Next, unlike the weight loss advice, eat several servings of rice, potatoes, and bread. The key to gaining weight rapidly is an abundance of calories. Thus, do not hold back and have 6-7 high quality meals a day. Also consider having a protein shake before and after workout as well as before bedtime. When you go shopping load up on tofu, tempeh, lentils, avocadoes, nuts and seeds, and high calorie fruits such as bananas, tropical fruits, and try adding some coconut milk to your routine as well.

What I Do?

I have tried many diets in the past that have all worked to some degree. For example, to lose weight, I once tried substituting a few meals with protein shakes and then having a few moderate meals throughout the day. Combined with an effective exercise regimen, this worked pretty well. However, I was not fond of the calorie counting and feeling like I needed to eat something every 2-3 hours. Also, to gain weight I have tried eating several moderate meals during the day, with protein shakes and bars in between meals and then a large meal at night. This worked very well for putting on size. However, again it was not convenient and I did not like having my whole day revolving around eating food.


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from http://www.grapplearts.com/Vegan-diet-for-size.htm

The number one thing that people always ask me is where do I get my protein. Many vegans that I have met make the mistake of thinking that you do not need much protein at all. I even had one guy tell me that only 5% of one’s diet should come from protein. Of course this guy looked like Don Knots and would be blown off like kite if a strong wind came by. I had another guy tell me that I can get protein from a cucumber and that I should not even worry about it. Of course, this guy was not in shape either and was in no position to give me nutrition advice. We have to be much more sensible than that. Especially, if we expect anyone to give up meat and adopt a vegetarian diet. Telling people that they can get all of the protein that they need from eating spinach and leafy green vegetables is impractical. Just because it works for the gorillas does not mean that it will work for us. Not getting enough protein and thinking that only 5% of your diet needs to be comprised of protein are sure-fire ways to be spindly and weak for the rest of your life.

Now I am not saying that you need two grams of protein per pound of bodyweight like the bodybuilding magazines state. That is way too much protein and a case of overkill. For athletes, 0.7 to 1 gram of protein per pound of lean muscle is optimal for increasing strength and size. For example, if you weigh 180lb and have ten percent bodyfat, then you should shoot for 150-160 grams of protein to build more muscle. If you want to maintain your size, then 100-120 will probably be sufficient.

Next, vegans like anyone else need to load up on healthy sources of fat. Without enough fat in your diet, your skin will dry up, your energy will plummet, and you will look like death. Getting 20-30% of your calories from fat is a good way to go. Load up on healthy fats such as: flaxseed oil, olive oil, almonds, walnuts, almond butter, and avocadoes. Also, vegan diets are free of all saturated fats, which is great for the most part. However, some saturated fat is required for optimal health, so get some coconut oil or coconut milk in you diet as well.

Finally, make sure that you eat a variety of food to get a full array of muscle building amino acids. Some examples of good combinations include: black beans and quinoa, lentils and brown rice, almond butter sandwich, Rice protein/soy milk shake, green peas and almonds. Have some veggie burgers and other fake meat products from time to time, but make sure that the majority of your diet comes from fresh organic food.

Here is a sample of my diet:
Breakfast
3 tablespoons of Rice Protein Powder (nutribiotic brand) with 8oz of almond milk and 8oz of soy milk. I add ½ cup of frozen mango or strawberries to the mix and one tablespoon of coconut oil. I also add in two teaspoons of Vitamineral Green (www.healthforce.com)

Mid afternoon snack
½ cup of almonds and ½ cup of raisins

Late afternoon snack
Two Veggie burgers with olive oil and some sprouted bread (“Ezekial” or "Man's Bread)

Post Workout Shake
3 scoops of Rice Protein Powder with 8oz of oat or rice milk. I throw in
1 tablespoons of flaxseed oil and ½ cup of frozen fruit.

Dinner
Mixed Green Salad with 1 tablespoon of olive oil or one avocado.
One cup of lentils steamed with squash, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms, and some tofu. One tablespoon of olive oil is added to the mix.
One cup of quinoa
A pear or apple
Some dark chocolate for dessert and some ginger cookies
Glass of red wine

Late Night snack
Peanut butter or almond butter sandwich and a cup of berries


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from http://www.musclemonthly.com/bodybuilding-vegetarian-diet.htm

There are different types of vegetarians, some will eat only vegetable, beans, lentils e.t.c, while some are lacto-ovo and will eat eggs and drink milk, pesco vegetarians will eat fish and drink milk. The biggest problem is getting enough protein into the diet when you are a vegetarian, obviously if you are a lacto-ovo veggie then you can get protein from the eggs, cheese and milk, while fish is a great source of protein for the pesco vegetarian.

One very important point to remember that while you can get protein from vegetables they are of a lower quality than those found in animal proteins; therefore you will have to be careful to take protein from as many different sources as possible. You need to make sure you take in enough protein for the strict workout you are giving your body.

Carbohydrates also help you to gain that much needed weight and are low in fat, examples of these foods are beans, Soya, coconut, hummus, oat milk and rice milk. A vitamin B supplement may also be advisable for the vegetarian because without meat in the diet you could be lacking this vital vitamin, an alternative to taking a supplement is eating seaweed in your diet.

Drinking plenty of water throughout the day is essential for anyone on a high intake of protein and carbohydrates; this will help to displace the substances of your diet to where your body needs them.

Example bodybuilding diet

Meal 1 - oatmeal made with rice or soya milk.

Meal 2 - soya protein drink.

Meal 3 - peanut butter sandwich.

Meal 4 - fruit.

Meal 5 - soya burger, potatoes and vegetables.

Meal 6 - soya protein drink.

Always make sure you drink plenty of water with your meals and drink 100% fruit juices, there are also plenty of meal replacement drinks available from your health store which are rich in soya protein. Soya protein is not only good for your muscles but is also good for the heart in particular; 25g of soya protein can help reduce the risk of heart disease

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from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FDE/is_4_22/ai_110805469/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1

MANY WEIGHTLIFTERS THINK A VEGAN DIET might be detrimental to their efforts because of the lower protein content of a typical vegan diet. Other weightlifters feel that a vegan diet enhances their training regimen by reducing fatigue and improving general health. Unfortunately, there are no studies looking directly at vegan weightlifters, but there is a fair amount of research that can be used to extrapolate to vegans.

While reading this article, keep in mind that weightlifting can be divided into two types:

* BODYBUILDING to achieve the most noticeable muscles.

* POWERLIFTING to produce the largest amounts of strength.

ENERGY

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Project Management Standard Program Carbohydrates, fat, protein, and alcohol all provide energy. Resistance training, exercises where muscles push or pull against some force, is used to develop and maintain muscular strength and requires an increase in energy above that of sedentary individuals. The amounts vary depending upon training regimen, as well as other factors, including exercise efficiency, gender, non-exercise habits, and genetics. Because of the variation in needs, there is no one easy formula for caloric requirements; it is a matter of experimentation.

It is important to note that not eating enough calories to meet needs will tend to reduce muscle mass. Eating adequate calories spares muscle protein that would otherwise be used for energy. Paying attention to hunger signals can be a good guide in knowing whether you are eating enough energy. For a general ballpark figure, novice male weightlifters increased muscle mass and size, and lowered body fat, on a diet of about 18 calories/lb of body weight per day (3240 calories/day for a 180-lb person). (1) In another study, highly trained male bodybuilders ate 22.7 calories/lb (4,086 calories/day for a 180-lb person). (2)

PROTEIN

Depending on the source, protein needs among weightlifters are reported at values equal to the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) to values as high as four times the RDA (Table 1). During the 1800s, it was believed that protein was the main fuel used during exercise. But work in the early part of the 1900s indicated that exercise did not change protein needs and, until the 1970s, was accepted without further research. (3) Recently, there has been more research on protein requirements of athletes, with varying interpretations.

Determining how much protein a person needs is often done by using nitrogen balance studies. Nitrogen is a component of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, and can serve as a marker for protein metabolism. Positive nitrogen balance means that the person is taking in more nitrogen than he or she is excreting, and is therefore using that nitrogen to build muscle. Negative nitrogen balance means more nitrogen is being excreted than consumed, and thus muscle is breaking down. When looking solely at athletic performance, nitrogen balance is an indirect method of measuring protein needs; what really matters is whether the person increases muscle mass, strength, or speed.

Two studies are particularly relevant. Lemon et al. studied 12 men starting an intensive weight training program of 1.5 hours, six days a week. (1) They compared one month of supplementing with carbohydrates (on a diet of 1.4 g/kg of protein per day) to one month of supplementing with protein (for a total of 2.6 g/kg of protein per day) for the same people. They determined that a protein intake of 1.6 to 1.7 g/kg was needed to achieve nitrogen balance. However, muscle size and strength increased the same amount on both regimens. The authors thought that extra amino acids for the muscle-building during the carbohydrate treatment were coming from amino acid pools found in the digestive tract, kidneys, or liver. These sources are small and will eventually be depleted.

The second study was conducted by Tarnopolsky et al. on six lacto-ovo vegetarian bodybuilders who had been training intensively for at least three years. (2) The bodybuilders normally ate 2.77 g/kg of protein. Upon reducing their protein "intake to 1.05 g/kg, the group remained in nitrogen balance and changes in lean (non-fat) body mass did not occur. Two individuals, however, were found to have a negative nitrogen balance while eating 1.05 g/kg of protein. These results indicated that protein needs for the majority of advanced bodybuilders are fairly close to 1.05 g/kg but that some may have higher requirements.

Taken together, these studies on a small number of athletes imply that protein needs (per body weight) may be greater in the beginning stages of training (when muscles are making larger increases and protein is deposited) than when muscle mass has plateaued.

The Food and Nutrition Board, which sets the RDA, reviewed Lemon et al.'s study and others and concluded there is no sufficient evidence to support that resistance training increases the protein RDA of .80 g/kg for healthy adults.

Some vegan health professionals have recommended slightly higher protein intakes (.9-1.0 g/kg of body weight) than the RDA for vegans in general. (5,6) However, the Food and Nutrition Board recently said that if complementary sources of protein are used (generally mixing beans and grains throughout the day), vegetarians' protein needs are no greater than non-vegetarians. (4) It should be noted that the RDA for protein has a margin of safety such that many sedentary adults meeting the RDA will actually get more protein than they need. Considering the information reviewed above and the lack of other specific research, it seems reasonable to conclude that the protein needs of most vegan bodybuilders are somewhere between .8 and 1.5 g/kg (.36 and .68 g/lb) of body weight.

study of vegans to date shows that they consume about .9 g of protein/kg of body weight and obtain 13 percent of their energy from protein. (7) Thus, if a vegan eats 18 calories/lb, which seems to be on the lower end for serious weightlifters, he or she will naturally consume 1.3 g of protein/kg of body weight, likely meeting protein needs. However, if more carbohydrates, such as pasta, are primarily chosen to increase caloric intake, the percentage of protein may be less.

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Project Management Standard Program For this reason, vegan weightlifters should make an effort to also select high protein foods. Legumes, soyfoods, and wheat gluten (seitan) are the typical vegan foods highest in protein (Table 2). It is also possible for vegans to take a protein supplement, though this is not necessary. If vegans do supplement on occasion, Naturade makes a number of vegan protein supplements, including a soy-free protein supplement for those allergic to soy or who do not want more soy in their diet. Most health foods stores can order these if they do not carry them.

FAT

Based on studies of endurance athletes, some researchers believe that fat is an important part of the athlete's diet. Diets that are too low in fat (15 percent or less fat) may compromise immunity, reduce intramuscular fat stores (which could spare muscle protein), and reduce energy intake. (8) While this has not been studied in bodybuilders, the novice bodybuilders in Lemon et al.'s study received about 31 percent of their calories from fat and succeeded in increasing strength and muscle size. (1) Higher intakes might also reduce the chances of irregular menstrual cycles in women from low body fat.

Average fat intake for vegans is about 28 percent of calories. (9) Some weightlifters try to avoid fats to lose body fat, but this is inadvisable for vegans who already eat relatively lowfat diets. A good estimate of optimal fat intake for vegan weightlifters is about 20 to 28 percent of calories.

Fried foods and hydrogenated oils (such as in many margarines) should not be used to increase fat intake. They have a high trans-fatty acid content, which increases the risk of heart disease. Avocados, nuts, flaxseed oil, olive oil, canola oil, vegan "mayonnaises" (such as Vegenaise), tofu, and chocolate are better choices.

All vegans should pay attention to omega-3 fatty acid intake. As an essential amino acid, omega-3 helps to conduct nerve impulses; to form the membranes around the brain, heart, muscles, and other organs; and to maintain optimum cardiovascular health. These needs can generally be satisfied by taking a teaspoon of flaxseed oil per day. Ground flaxseeds, canola oil, and walnuts are also good sources of omega-3 fats.