COLORADO SPRINGS - Acknowledging that 20 years and millions of dollars spent loudly and bitterly attacking the liberal leanings of American campuses have failed to make much of a dent in the way undergraduates are educated, some conservatives have decided to try a new strategy.
They are finding like-minded tenured professors and helping them establish academic beachheads for their ideas.
These initiatives, like the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, Austin, or a project at the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs, to publish a book of classic texts, are mostly financed by conservative organizations and donors, run by conservative professors. But they have a decidedly nonpartisan and nonideological face.
Their goal is to restore what conservative and other critics see as leading casualties of the campus culture wars of the 1980s and '90s: the teaching of Western culture and a triumphal interpretation of American history.
From Think Progress: Recently, Tyson Foods said it would drop Labor Day as a paid vacation day and substitute the Muslim holiday Eid as part of a new five-year contract, in order to accommodate Muslim workers. In response, right-wing bloggers were enraged. Mark Krikorian of the National Review, for example, called it a "war on Labor Day." Today, the company backtracked:
[M]any antiimmigrant groups and right-wing bloggers called for a boycott of Tyson, saying the contract betrayed an important American holiday and was an improper concession to Islam.
In a news release on Friday, Tyson said it had asked the union to revise the plant's contract and restore Labor Day as a paid holiday because some Shelbyville employees had expressed concern about the contract's provisions.
The revised contract again makes Labor Day a paid holiday but also keeps Id al-Fitr (pronounced eed-al-FIT-tr) - which marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting - as a paid holiday for those who want it.
From the New York Times: The union that represents workers at a Tyson Foods poultry plant in Tennessee has negotiated a contract that substitutes a Muslim holiday for Labor Day as one of the eight paid holidays at the plant.
The provision, which was proposed by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, has delighted the plant's Somali workers, who account for hundreds of its 1,200 employees. But it has infuriated many outsiders, leading some to denounce Tyson and the union alike.
"You are a union that is proud of achieving a Muslim holiday and prayer room?" one person wrote the union. "A union in the U.S.A., a country based on Christianity. You call yourselves Americans? Have you forgotten 9/11?"
Another wrote: "You had no right to drop Labor Day. Muslim employees must integrate Labor Day into THEIR lives if they are going to live in America."
Stung by the criticism, Stuart Appelbaum, the union's president, said the decision was fully consistent with the spirit of Labor Day.
"We in the labor movement have always understood that unions are only strong when we work to protect the dignity of all faiths, and that includes Muslims," said Mr. Appelbaum, who also serves as president of the Jewish Labor Committee.
"What we negotiated was the will of the workers," said Mr. Appelbaum, who added that his was the first union to negotiate a paid day off for a Muslim holiday and that he was sure Tyson would not be the last employer to agree.
Salaam writes: What is an ACLU-approved Muslim foot-washing bath, and where can I get one?
SPRINGFIELD, Va. -- English First today denounced as "multiculturalism run amok" a decision by a Tennessee Tyson Foods poultry plant to eliminate Labor Day as a paid holiday for employees and replace it with a paid observance of a Muslim holy day.
The Tyson plant which will no longer observe Labor Day is located in Shelbyville. About 700 of its 1,200 employees are Muslim.
"Already we have been told by Barack Obama that it is the duty of our children to learn Spanish," said Jim Boulet Jr., executive director of English First. "Now, an American holiday has been replaced by a Muslim religious festival."
"A new immigrant to America, legal or illegal, enjoys more rights than taxpaying American citizens," Boulet said. "The notion that immigrants should adapt to America is being destroyed one bilingual education class, one 'press one for English,' and one ACLU-approved Muslim foot-washing bath at a time."
Example of one complaining email at Snopes.com shows an obviously conservative/Republican writer characterizing the Labor Day holiday as 'holidays and other symbols that made the United States of America the greatest nation on Earth' as he ominously warns "For the sake of your family, be very careful whom you vote for in November."
Amazing cognitive dissonance coming from the conservative movement to be rallying around Labor Day. Hillarious!
The hardline, confrontational policy the United States has embraced under the Bush administration has inadvertently demonstrated the limits of US power," according to a recent paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "... The rejection of diplomacy has reduced the United States to a condition of self-inflicted powerlessness regarding many problems."
"The vacuum is being filled in part by US adversaries - Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah - and in part by friendly Arab regimes, which seek to find a way forward in situations where US policy has contributed to stalemate," according to the report, entitled "The New Arab Diplomacy: Not With the US and Not Against the US", by Carnegie fellows Marina Ottaway and Mohammed Herzallah.
That has been particularly notable with respect to the gradual detente between Iran, Washington's main regional nemesis since the Iraq war, and Saudi Arabia, traditionally Washington's most important Gulf ally.
A google search for "Tyson, boycott, muslim" reveals thousands of hits in blogs and comments on conservative, righwing websites and news sites to boycott Tyson foods for signing a union contract that allowed Muslims to take a holiday on Eid at the end of Ramadan rather than a Labor Day holiday.
Who would have imagined Republicans taking umbrage about losing the holiday to celebrate Labor in this country. Anyway, here's an excerpt from Michelle Malkin:
Judging from my e-mail, a lot of folks are hopping mad about this weekend's story from the Shelbyville, Tennessee Times-Gazette concerning Tyson Foods' decision to replace the paid Labor Day holiday with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Brian Moselely reports that there are 700 Muslims working at the 1,200-employee plant, including some 250 Somali refugees:
Note--Error of fact: The number of Somali employees at the plant has been estimated at 700, not 250.
"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." --Prophet Muhammed (pbuh)
Excerpted from Ernest Partridge published at The Smirking Chimp blog. Link below excerpt:
"Absence of empathy" is likewise, I submit, "the one characteristic that connects" most of the immoral and misbegotten tenets of Bushism: that dogmatic mix of market absolutism, libertarianism, corporatism and simple greed that falsely describes itself as "conservatism," and which I choose to call "regressivism." "Absence of empathy" is the essence of evil which, if unchecked and unreversed, is certain to bring about the demise of the American republic as we know it, just as it led to the fall of the Third Reich.
In contrast, empathy, the capacity to recognize and cherish in other persons, the experience, emotions and aspirations that one is aware of in oneself, is the moral cornerstone of progressive politics. It is a principle recognized and taught in all the great world religions [1] reiterated by numerous moral philosophers, and validated by the scientific study of human personality [2].
....
In contrast, the regressivism of the Bush/Cheney administration would have us ignore the economic, social and environmental consequences of unregulated commerce, and also have us dismantle Social Security, impoverish public education, tolerate inadequate health care for millions of our fellow citizens, abolish fundamental constitutional rights, and engage in aggressive wars against unthreatening countries, all of this with minimal regard for the human misery caused by these policies. To do all this, requires a deliberate stifling of feelings of empathy, and what David Hume called the "natural moral sentiment" of benevolence: a genuine concern for the well-being of others.
Regressives who support such policies are, at worst, simply amoral: without moral restraint, "rotten to the core." At best, they are profoundly mistaken: possibly fundamentally decent individuals, trustworthy, law-abiding, charming friends, devoted spouses and parents, but bewitched by false dogmas. The former are, by and large, beyond redemption and are best isolated from political influence and from positions of public responsibility. The latter might be amenable to evidence and rational persuasion.
How can such an ideology captivate and take political control of a nation once renowned and admired for its generosity and compassion and for its devotion to democracy and human rights?
In part, the rise and dominance of regressivism is the result of a deliberate and opulently funded public relations campaign, [6] supported for the past forty years by wealthy individuals and corporations. This campaign included the establishment of ideological "think tanks" such as The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the abolition of The Fairness Doctrine and the consolidation of most of the mass media into six "conservative" mega-conglomerates, enormous expansion of corporate lobbying of Congress, and a vastly increased corporate involvement in campaign financing, of both major parties. With conservative Republicans in control of the White House for all but eight of the past twenty-eight years, the federal courts have become dominated by right-wing judges.
With these formidable propaganda resources, the resurgent Right has exploited "natural sentiments" equally fundamental to human nature as empathy; namely, ethnocentrism (identification with and loyalty to "our group") and its negative complement, xenophobia (fear, distrust, and hatred of "outsiders"). The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 intensified these prejudices, objectifying and depersonalizing the new enemy (so-called "Islamo-Fascists") while, at the same time, neutralizing empathetic sentiments toward the residents of these "alien" nations.
With the captive media exploiting and intensifying public fear of "terrorism," the Bush regime formulated, and the intimidated Congress readily assented to, assaults upon our traditional civil liberties such as the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and now the revised FISA Act.
New movement afoot to launch investigations into extent of US domestic surveillance:
A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores -- without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security.
According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community."
....
Main Core may be the contemporary incarnation of a government watch list system that was part of a highly classified "Continuity of Government" program created by the Reagan administration to keep the U.S. government functioning in the event of a nuclear attack. Under a 1982 presidential directive, the outbreak of war could trigger the proclamation of martial law nationwide, giving the military the authority to use its domestic database to round up citizens and residents considered to be threats to national security. The emergency measures for domestic security were to be carried out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Army.
In the late 1980s, reports about a domestic database linked to FEMA and the Continuity of Government program began to appear in the press. For example, in 1986 the Austin American-Statesman uncovered evidence of a large database that authorities were proposing to use to intern Latino dissidents and refugees during a national emergency that might follow a potential U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.
Somehow I get the feeling that alot of people who believe in the need for a legitimate opposition party, or better yet true progressive leadership, have probably wound up on that list. If you're not on the list, you aren't trying hard enough to throw out the destructive radicals of the Republican party.
The Democratic Party is no panacea, but it is a good vehicle for the purpose of true progressive reform in the US if we can throw over the Republican-enabling "moderate" Democrats.
Here's a good website to support Democrats who will be more reliable opponents of the criminal Republican state than many that are in office now.
"Government is not the solution to our problem," President Reagan famously declared in his inaugural address in 1981. "Government is the problem."
Many conservatives have gone far beyond that. Their traditional embrace of small government has been replaced with outright disdain for it. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, doesn't just want to shrink government. To use his words, he wants government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
Once in power, E. coli conservatives shrink government by hamstringing it. They weaken rules that protect people, slash the budgets of consumer agencies and appoint industry friends to oversight commissions. The result: Some government regulatory agencies that we trust to protect us have shrunk to insignificance or serve private industry rather than consumers. [Emphasis added]
