The folks over at the Graduate School of Journalism have set up their new blog, Worldandus. The Daily Cal wrote an article describing the project a few days ago. They are going to be blogging on how the rest of the world sees the United States. Here’s a bit from the first post, by project leader Francis Pisani:

Felt all over the world, America’s power and influence fascinate, and trigger opposite reactions of love and hate, often at the same time, often within the same person. To this date there is no satisfactory instrument to gauge how these sentiments manifest themselves, how they evolve in parallel or in diverging manner according to locations and places. Nevertheless, many people think that such a tool would be very useful for Americans who want to know how they are perceived, and for every one interested in understanding today’s world challenges.

I wish them well in their endeavor. It’s great to see blogs entering the world of academia.

Kevin D. Dayaratna discusses the parallels between GWB and JFK.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to read at least one book a week, not counting assigned reading. I’ve already failed, but hopefully I’ll get through a couple each month.

I just finished reading Liberty in Troubled Times: A Libertarian Guide to Laws, Politics and Society in a Terrorized World by James Walsh. I’m pretty confused about the current state of civil liberties and other such things. I don’t know what to make of the Patriot Act, for instance. On one hand… on the other… How does a small government ideology work in the new world we live in? At least on economic issues I know where I firmly stand. So this book looked like it could answer a few questions. The author structured the book so that each topic only has about 10-15 pages of discussion. It really leaves you wanting to know more. Though I suppose that’s a good thing, if you’re looking for a starting point. I’ll probably need to read more on the subject. I give it a 3/5. But I’d rate it higher for a liberal or mainstream conservative; you guys could probably get more out of it than me.

The next book on my list is The Pentagon’s New Map by Thomas P. M. Barnett. (I checked both of these books out from the school library. I’ll have them back by mid-Feburary.) It seems like a good book on new ways to approach foreign policy. The author has short article in the latest Wired, if you want a sample of his worldview.

And here’s something I came across in the Chronicle. It’s a biography of former governor Pat Brown, but it also tries to explain why California is such a blue state today. I might read it, I might not. It could be too depressing. We’ll see.

I have been reading the various reactions to the Iraqi elections. It seems that Iraqis abroad and in Iraq have a different view on the elections.

Election reactions:

I’ve just returned from the polling station. To my surprise, a large number of people have shown up to vote: men and women, Muslims and Christians, Sunnis and Shias. Terrorists have threatened voters in my neighbourhood to choose between their life or election. Still, none of the voters seemed to be afraid. To me and to many Iraqis, I think, it is a matter of life and death to this wounded country. It is the unbending will of man that can never be defeated by terror.
Iraqi Woman, Baghdad, Iraq

I am delighted today to cast my vote and attempt to make a difference for our beloved country. This is only the beginning of the road to democracy. We cannot achieve democracy overnight. If anything this is our vote against Saddam’s tyrannical brutal dictatorship. This is our vote against the Baathists thugs who are trying to use fear and violence as their last resort. And finally a vote to tell our neighbouring countries to stop interfering in our destiny. Iraq is for Iraqis and we shall march to democracy.
Omar Barzanji, Dubai- United Arab Emirates

I am fed up with the stupid analysis of non-Iraqis about the legitimacy of the elections. Yes, the elections in Iraq are legal and representative. If you don’t believe me then look at the happy faces of Iraqis who have voted. The people of Iraq have spoken. Iraq will not be the first country that holds elections under occupation or under the shadow of violence (examples like Palestine, Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor, Germany, Austria, Japan, Sri Lanka and Columbia come to mind) nor will it be the last.
Mohammad al Zubaidy,

But then, there are doubters.

Does Bush think that this will create democracy in Iraq? Do you think the Sunnis will stop this war on the invaders? Well all I can say is that Bush, you made a stupid mistake. This is not creating democracy but forcing democracy.
Jalil Alkozai, Essex, UK

And moonbats.

This is basically a good step for Iraqis but the presence of US occupation only makes this an imperial attempt to show who is boss in the Middle East. “Bushinisation” will never succeed in the world, free or not free.
Reggie Deighton, Englewood Florida USA

This election is a game for Bush administration. It’s success will result to an economic boom for US.
Maical, Paris, France

Yes, an economic boom for America (Says the guy who lives in a paradise riddled with chronic high unemployment, high taxes, and faltering public services).

In honor of the birth of a new democracy in the Middle East, Calpatriot gives its full support to the Iraqis who voted today, and to the American-led Coalition forces and Iraqi armed forces for making this event possible.

Andy R. of Calstuff has begun to organize all of the Berkeley blogs to publicize to the world that there are Berkeley students who want democracy to succeed in the Middle East, and drown out the vocal anti-American voices here on campus.

Kudos to Andy R.

And more pictures and commentary on the Iraqi elections.

Powerline Blog pics

Andrew R. Quinio explains to us why the Democrats need more than just a new chairman.

It’s not too often that I get to read about my favorite thinktank in the student paper. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see this article in the Daily Cal:

Federal Pell Grants, meant to ease booming student fees and tuition, could actually be responsible for growing fees, according to a report released yesterday.

The report, issued by the Cato Institute, a public policy research foundation, concludes that funneling more federal aid to students is increasing the demand for higher education and, in doing so, unintentionally driving up the price of college.

And look who’s on the wrong side of the issue:

The study comes on the heels of President Bush’s effort to boost the maximum Pell Grant by $500 over the next five years.

I also found it ironic to see this article sharing the front page:

A new Berkeley housing and healthcare program got a $1.4 million jump-start Tuesday when nearly $8 million in federal funding for homeless services was allotted to Berkeley agencies.
—
The funds come as part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual Continuum of Care funding, which totalled a record $1.4 billion nationwide.

Look who shows up again:

Bush said the high amount of funding allocated to California is “a credit to the success of many of their programs.”

So in the first case, we see that welfare doesn’t work at all and only serves to make things worse. What we have here is a “welfare feedback loop” where more government money just increases the demand for even more government money. It’s a viscious cycle. And one can argue that it isn’t the role of the government to provide these services in the first place. So cheers to Cato and the Daily Cal for bringing this issue to our attention. Jeers to President Bush for showing his big government tendencies once again (stick to Social Security and tax reform instead).

Bob Chandra has an article on conservative columnist Armstrong Williams entitled “The Witch-hunt of a Black Conservative Columnist.” Read it and you be the judge.

There’s a new paper coming to town, one you might have heard of before:

Executives from The Onion, the much beloved New York-based weekly humor newspaper, were in San Francisco last week interviewing potential sales managers for the paper’s upcoming Bay Area debut. That’s right, The Onion is coming to town — the print edition, that is…

“We just think it’s a great fit culturally,” company prez Sean Mills told Feeder, adding that the online edition already attracts a “huge readership” from San Francisco. Mills says he hopes the paper will debut here in the spring with a circulation of about 70,000. It will mostly be found in Frisco newsracks, though Mills promises that it also will be available in Oakland and Berkeley. The bay edition will have local event listings and show reviews, but the satirical fake news stories will be the same ones that appear online.

Can’t say no to a free paper. This’ll fill the humor niche currently held by the Squelch and LaRouche newsletters. Look for it at a newsstand near you.

I came across a strange story in the latest SF Weekly:

The story of San Francisco State’s College of Ethnic Studies, the first and still the only program of its kind, is a sort of shadow history of America’s latter half-century. In it you’ll find all the familiar blips of the past 40 years. There is student radicalism and campus rebellion; there is hopped-up idealism, followed closely by compromise and a struggle against an encroaching obsolescence.

The article covers so much, I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll just quote random paragraphs:

“As a gay man, in the Castro in San Francisco, and camp such as it is, we refer to ourselves in very gendered terms,” says Tomás Almaguer, who spent 4 1/2 years as dean before resigning this past fall amid accusations that he created a hostile work environment within the college. “You might notice that my e-mail address is ‘tomasa’ — it’s a play. Have I ever referred to myself and my friends as bitches? All the time! I’ve been referred to as Queen Bitch of the Universe! Megabitch! That’s one of my identities.”

I guess this is one of the reasons why Ethnic Studies isn’t taken seriously. There are countless others.

Almaguer says his plan for the college was “bold and provocative and very hard-hitting,” with a management style to match — a “shock-and-awe approach,” he says. He pushed for mixed-race studies, as well as a larger gay, lesbian, and transgender presence in the curriculum; he staffed the graduate ethnic-studies program with full-time faculty; he says he “resurrected” American Indian studies, which “had imploded”; and he reallocated money for recruitment and retention of minority students, infuriating Asian American studies but delighting Raza studies.

So many “studies,” so little time.

Eventually, though, any review of the College of Ethnic Studies will have to confront the uncomfortable possibility of the program’s obsolescence. Berkeley has done it. In 1998, Ling-chi Wang, then the chair of the ethnic studies department and one of its founders, suggested merging ethnic studies with American studies. The proposal was deemed heresy, and it ultimately stalled, but Wang’s argument was and remains convincing. As one Cal professor told the online magazine Salon: “What would it say about the role of ethnic minorities in America to continue to insist that ethnic studies be separate from American studies? The symbolism is very disturbing.”

If something’s obsolete, I say get rid of it.

I still don’t know what this story was all about. But it’s safe to say that my opinion of this “major” remains the same.

Interesting news from Front Page Magazine:

Over the past few days, the media in Israel have reported a scandal at the Hebrew University involving a radical feminist professor who was forced to resign because of alleged gross fabrication and distortion of research results….
—
Meira Weiss was Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Hebrew University, and also was Director of the Leifer Center for Women’s Studies.
—
At Weiss’ initiative, it was decided to allow her to resign in the middle of the academic year, rather than face “prosecution” or probable dismissal in disgrace. She hopped the first plane to California and is now a visiting professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley.

Radical feminist? Sounds redundant to me. You can always trust this university to pick the winners. At least she’ll fit right in:

She has some wacky theories about the “Jewish body” and these seem to be comparable to certain discredited ideas about the “German body”.
—
This racialist nonsense, it goes without saying, has already been picked up by anti-Semitic and neonazi web sites as “evidence” of the depravity and racism of Jews.
—
ANTHROPOLOGY 119: (SPECIAL TOPIC): THE STATE, MEDICINE, and THE MIDDLE-EASTERN BODY

M. Weiss, TuTh 3:30-5, 105 Dwinelle

According to the online schedule, there’s still some spots open. But don’t all go signing up at once, I hear the required reading is a killer.

The 2004 Freshman Survey results are out. Surprise! Apparently, they’re more liberal than ever:

[J]ust 51.2% of first-year respondents think of themselves as liberal. More than a third (36.8%) deem their political views “middle of the road,” while 12% are proud to claim membership in that elusive (but vocal) species, the Berkeley conservative.
—
In fact, students today are a lot more liberal than they were during the 1980s. Back in 1982, when Ronald Reagan was president and it was eternally “Morning in America,” Berkeley conservatives had a respectable market share of 20.8% of freshmen, compared with 32.9% for liberals. And almost a majority, 46.4%, of 1982 Berkeley first-year students lounged comfortably between the left and right political lanes. The pendulum has since swung leftward, and 2004 freshmen are only slightly less liberal than they were in 1972, when 56.5% of freshmen called themselves liberals; the number of conservatives was also in the same ballpark, 10.5%.

Check out the rest of the stats and decide for yourself what to make of this.

Here are some results that I find particularly troubling:

“The federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns,” agreed 88.3% of Berkeley freshmen; 76.5% of U.S. freshmen thought so in 2003

I assume that part of the 12% that considers themselves conservative actually agreed with this proposition. And that national number is way too high for comfort. This doesn’t bode well for the future of the 2nd Amendment.

70.2 percent disagreed that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers. Interestingly, given Berkeley’s history as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, a relatively large group — 23.8% — agreed “somewhat” that such speakers (such as last fall’s controversial visitor Michelle Malkin) should be turned away

Those 30% make me sick. “Tolerant” liberals, for sure.

Again, so much for the Free Speech Movement’s legacy: a slight majority, 54.8%, believed “Colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus”; only slightly more freshmen nationwide, 58.4%, agreed with that statement.

Sigh… Two down, eight to go.

Somewhat surprisingly given the few Berkeley students who identified themselves as “far left,” 72.3% agreed with the statement “Wealthy people should pay a larger share of taxes than they do now.” Only 53.1% of all U.S. freshmen thought so in 2003.

This was the only question regarding economic policy. I wonder how much support would be given to the welfare state, regulation, capitalism, free trade, etc. I’m confident that we’d see an equally ignorant response, exposing the socialist tendencies of so called “middle-of-the-road” students.

While 55.8% of Berkeley freshmen disagreed that marijuana should be legalized, 23.7% strongly opposed legalization, compared with the 12.9% who would push for it. Nationally, 61.2% disagreed.

And all this time I thought at least half of this campus is high on something. The first step to ending the terrible War on Drugs can’t even get a majority on this supposedly “Progressive” campus. Taking something (someone?) out of your body is alright (80% say Abortions are A-OK!), but putting something in it is a no-no. It boggles the mind.

Oh well. Nothing on this campus makes sense to me. Now I have the statistics to prove it.

Today’s Daily Cal… yawn. Read it through Beatle Beat if you’re going to read it at all. Much more tolerable that way. Besides, the big news item was already covered on CalStuff this weekend.

So let’s see what our friends across the bay are talking about. Here’s an article about campus conservatives! Here’s the twist: the author is apparently a disillusioned Republican turned Democrat! David Brock, anyone?

In order to help you get a handle on the latest phenomenon to hit campus — you — we’ve put together a profile of the three types of campus conservatives: whiners, charismatic conservatives and hell-raisers. See which type is the best match for you.

The Whiner:

You feel like the system is stacked against you. From the moment you step onto campus you feel oppressed. People look at you differently. Your perspective isn’t respected in class. You have a hard time finding people like you.
—
If this describes you: Your strategizing about “exposing bias” will get you nowhere. Though you think you’ll be more accepted once you get off campus, if you don’t change now you’ll never be anything more than a whiner.

Sometimes “whining” is warranted. But in some cases, “exposing bias” is just a bad excuse for bad work (JonP gets one right!). Of course, we have whiners from all political persuasions from all walks of life. It’s not surprising to find a few conservatives in this category.

The Charismatic Con:

You’re probably going to end up with a crappy job that makes a lot of money. You’re successful at most things you try, so you’re suspicious of anything that gets in your way — including the government. You probably believe in evolution and don’t think abortion is murder.

If this describes you: The Republican Party is an alliance of libertarians, tycoons, hawks, evangelicals and bigots. You libertarians are being taken for a ride.

The Democratic Party is an alliance of socialists, communists, leftists, peaceniks, and bigots (Jesse Jackson? MEChA?). The country is being taken for a ride.

Actually, as a libertarian, sometimes I do think I’m being taken on a ride by placing my bets with the GOP. If political parties were buses, we’d be in the back of the Republican one talking about capitalism and freedom while the driver takes us to the land of big government and big deficits. The Democrat’s bus (state funded), on the other hand, would pass us by because they need to bus in inner-city youths to public schools to learn how socialism is good and Republicans are bad. Oh yeah, the bus has a quota for underrepresented minorities to fill, so blame your parents if you can’t get a seat.

Let me get back on track. I hope Bush can accomplish all the good things on his agenda during his second term. It’ll be a step back in the right direction for the GOP and more importantly, the country. I’ll stay on for the ride and hope we take the next exit right.

The Hell-raiser

You love the challenge of being on a college campus. You unapologetically oppose affirmative action, think taxation is theft, and / or blame the hippies for losing the war in Vietnam. You are hawkish and patriotic. You know most campus liberals don’t have the facts to support their arguments and relish the chance to point it out to them.
—
If this describes you: You are the reason your party is doing so well. Young far-lefties could learn a lot from you. But race baiting is getting old. Move on to national security. Figure out some elegant way to expose the U.N. or something.

Thanks for the tip. Race baiting… ok.

I don’t know what the author’s intention with this piece is, but I guess this is how Democrats see Republicans. I could categorize the left in the same three categories. Whining idiots, regular people, and hardcore political junkies. We need less of the first type and more of the last two.

The Chronicle has a lengthy article on San Francisco’s “emerging right.” Hat tip to Pejmanesque.

On Nov. 2, 54,079 San Franciscans voted for President Bush, and it may be only a slight exaggeration to say that Mike DeNunzio knows most of them by name.

The chairman of the San Francisco Republican Central Committee has a job so lonely the Maytag repairman would blanch at it: leading political conservatives in a city where politics is dominated by the left wing, where the same-sex-marriage supporting, picket-line-walking, tax-increase-happy Mayor Gavin Newsom may be the most conservative elected official in town, where most politicians’ only complaint with the city’s enormous, intrusive bureaucracy is that it seems to be modeled on Castro’s Cuba.

It’s worth a read if you’re interested in local politics. But it also touches on larger issues, such as the various ideological factions of the right.

San Francisco conservatism comes in a variety of colors, but the dominant hue is fiscal. Although a small bloc of socially conservative voters remains in the city, taxes, regulation, bureaucratic bloat and other constraints on entrepreneurship are the issues that unite young dot-commers with old money conservatives, Stanford economists with the Republican Party.

I especially liked this description of the city:

“San Francisco is the most conservative city in America, by far,” says Auren Hoffman, chairman of the 527 (nonparty political fund raising) group Lead21. “It is the most closed to change, the most closed to innovation, the most closed to new ideas. Not only is the city not a good innovator, it’s not even a good copier. Ideas that have worked well in New York, in Los Angeles, in Chicago, and in many other cities get rejected out of hand in San Francisco. “

Makes you wonder how leftists can get away with calling themselves “Progressive.” Big government, excessive regulation, and an archaic welfare state do nothing but hinder progress.

I’ll end with a joke, as usual:

A thornier question for local conservatives is how public their profile should be. Among GOP leaders, it’s a frequent lament: In San Francisco, the only people in the closet are Republicans.

Great article. Read the entire thing.