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Show AS GUEST OPINION swar : Journo' Eton i . . owidays, "bock to schooTmeans back to dassroomsr les' ions and textbooks permeated by multiculturalism and its (nampioning of diversity." Many i as an indispensable educational supplement, a salu- tary influence that "enriches" the curriculum. But is it? ' With the world's continents bridged by the Internet and global commerce, multiculturalism v claims to offer a real value: a cos- mopolitan rather than a provincial Understanding of the world be-- y, yond the student's immediate sur- roundings. But it is a peculiar kind of "broadening," Multiculturalists would rather have students ad-- ... mire the primitive patterns of Na- vajo blankets, say, than leam why Medieval golden age of scientific progress was replaced ; by fervent piety and centuries of Stagnation. Leaf through a school textbook and voull find that there fa a definite pattern behind mult icuKur- alisms reshaping of the curriculum.. What multiculturalists seek is not the goal they .advertise, but something else entirely. Consider, for in- stance, the teaching of history. .One text acclaims the inhabitants of West Africa in times for having prosperous economies and for establishing a university, in Timbuktu; but it ignores their brutal trade in slaves and the prolifi tun of far more consequents institutions of learning in Paris, ; Oxford and elsewhere in Europe. Some books routinely lionize the architecture of the Aztecs, but purposely overlook or underplay that they practiced human sacrifices. A few textbooks seek .. to portray Islam as peaceful, in part by presenting the concept of "jihad ("sacred war") to mean an internal struggle to surmount temptation and evil, while playing down Islam's actual wars of reb-- . eious connuest. Whatthese textbooks reveal is a concerted effort to portray .the most backward, impover- ished and murderous cultures ' as advanced, prosperous and Multiculturalism's goal is not to teach about other cultures, but to promote by nieans of distortions and half-trutthe notion that cultures are as good as, cul- if not better tore. Far from "broadening" the curriculum, what multicultural-;- . ism seeks is to diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students. But, given all the facts, the objective superiority of Western culture is apparent, so . .. . : . non-Weste-rn than,-Wester- n . multiculturalists must artificially elevate other cultures and depre-'-dat- e ' the West. If students were to learn the truth of the hardscrabble life of primitive farming in,say, India, they would recognize that subsistence living is far inferior to life on any mechanized farm in Kansas, which demands so Bttle In manpower, yet yields so much in crops. An informed, rational student would not swallow the ; "politically correct" conclusions he fa fed by multiculturalism. If. he were given the actual facts. he could men are West, they can cally; that science and technology are superior to superstition; that man's life is far longer, happier and safer in the West today than in any other culture in history, The ideals, achievements and history of Western culture in gen-Isberal, and of America in particular, are therefore purposely given short shrift by muhiculturalfam. Tint the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age were born and flourished in Western nations; that the preponderance of I ! rooei prizes in science have been awarded tor , : . It's time to reopen detainment camps . . . 15, 2007, shows that every unskilled worker in America will cost the tax- payem, an average SL1 minion over his lifetimAfof the government services he uses. The report shows the average , federal, state and local expenditure of $32,138, less their paying $9,689 in taxes, will provide them a $22,449 sub- sidy each year. Since half of a adult megal immigrants have not completed high school, amnesty for illegal immigrants is not acceptable. We pay our congressmen big bucks. They need to get busy and . resolve the fllegal immigrant problem. ' They need to do more to educate our schooL youth through high . V wMh little elaboration. The history" that students do lram is rewritten to fit mukicul- turalism's agenda. Consider the birth of the United States. Some n texts would have believe the base-- less claim that Ameri ca's Founders modeled the Constitution on a ; : confederation of Indian tribes. This is part of a wider drive to portray the United States as a product or the "convergence of three traditions Native Indian, African and European. But the American republic, with an ,. elected government limited by individual rights, was born not of stone-ag- e peoples, but primarily of the European Enlightenment. It is a product of the ideas of such thinkers as John Locke, a British philosopher, and his intellectual heirs in colonial America, such as Thomas Jefferson. It is a gross misconception to view multiculturalism as an effort to enrich education. By reshaping , the curriculum, the purveyors of "diversity" in the classroom calcu-laled- ly seek to prevent students from grasping the objective value to human life of Western culture, a culture whose magnificent achievements have brought man from mud huts to moon landings. Multiculturalism is no boon to education, but an agent of given the problem were having it y would be cheaper for the taxpayer. Herd them up and send them back to . their, country of origin. Why woukbit . During World War II the govern- a rational congressman consider such ment, under Roosevelt, imprisoned ' Japanese American citizens in concen- an idea? Could it be due to financial and busitration camps such as Topaz in Utah. ness considerations linked to special .: They called the Japanese Americans detainees and told herded interest groups? Better still, are these up they than this confinement was to protect samecongressmentrying tolay the them. Give me a break. legislative framework for a North We also picked up German spies American Union between the United and Operatives, putting them on troop . States, Canada and Mexico? Wake up trains that kept on the mova throughAmerica! out the war. An uncle, through mar- I Vincent Jack, riage, was assigned to one of these y trains. There wasnt a mass collection American. Fork of German American citizens herded into concentration camps. Doing more to If this could be done to American educate America citizens, why cant the same logic be ' The used with illegal aliens. I would think Heritage Foundation study May . . ; .. chil-dre- . : .. Provo . CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER .. convergence . anti-Weste- rn ideology. . I Elsa Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Randlnstitute, months of surreahty, the dent pointedly refused to contradict him. debate has quite abruptly a relationship to real- This convergence about the actual situation in Baghdad will take some of My. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican 7 the drama out the highly anticipated senators began rifling the thesaurus Petraeus moment next month. We . to find exactly the right phrase to know what the general and Ambas-sador Ryan Oocker are going to say express exactly the right nuance to when they testify before Congress exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while because multiple sources have already Murtha Democrats searched for ex-taldus what is happening on the actly the right legislative ruse to force ground. a retreat from Iraq wMhout appearing There win, of course, be the Harry to do so. Reids and those on the far left who will . In the last month, however, as a deny inconvenient reality. Reid will consensus has emerged about realities continue to call the surge a failure, as he has since even before M began. And in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun, A number of the left will continue to portray Gen. observers, both critics and supporters of the war, .David Petraeus as an unscrupulous commander quite prepared to send his agree that the surge has yielded con- siderable military progress, while at troops into a hopeless battle in order national political level the Maliki to advance his political ambitions (al- though exactly how that works fa not government remains a disaster. The latest report from the battle- clear). field is from Carl Levin, Democratic Bid the serious voices will prevail. chairman of the Senate Armed Ser-When the Democratic presidential front-runnvices Committee and a strong critic concedes that the surge is working" (albeit very late) against of the Iraq war. He returned saying the insurgency, and when Petraeus essentially what we have heard from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pol- himself concedes that the surge cannot continue indefinitely, making inevi- lack of the Brookings Institution and various liberal congressmen, the latest table a drawdown of troops sometime in the middle of next year, the terms being Brian Baird of the Iraq debate become narrow and has been seriously set back as Sunni the policy question simple: What do we tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala and other provinces switched from the in-- do right now continue the surge or cut it short and begin withdraws? surgency to our side. As critics acknow ledge military Serious people like Levin argue that improvement, the administration is fi-- with a nonfunctional and sectarian nally beginning to concede the political Baghdad government, we can never that the Maliki government is ... achieve national reconciliation. Thus hopeless. Bush's own national security the current military successes will ' adviser had said as much in a leaked ... prove ephemeraL The problem with this argument is memo back in November. I and others have been arguing that for months. .. that M confuses long term and short And when Levin returned and openly term, In the longer run, there must called for the Iraqi parliament to vote be a national unity government. But out the Maliki government, the presi-- . in the shorter term, our assumption After . . d . MEDIA VOICES : er The uninformed From . the Dallas Morning News. edly said that the future of Iraq August 23, 2007 Oont know much about affair? Join the A new Harris poll s of American finds that adults admit to knowing very little about overseas politics. Fifty-seve-n percent of those polled say they don't like learning about political issues in other lands; 32 percent fed the same way about U.S. politics. Thats foolish, especially at a time like this. , U.S. commanders have repeat two-third- I John H. Adams, depends on whether Iraqi political factions can settle their differences. The lives of American soldiers ara directly related to Iraq's politics and, as our leaders assess the viability of continued U.S. involvement there, to our own. .. In addition, the future of this region is vital to US. economic and national security interests. In a democracy, information is power; none are as weak as the uniformed. And none are more pitiful than those who are ignorant by choice. D00NESBURY .) . 7 . MALLARD FILLMORE Garry Trudeau JA V&pM mmz Cn&tofr that a national unity government is re-quired to pacify the Sunni insurgency turned out to be false. The Sunnis have turned against and are grad-ually switching rida in the absence of sny oil, federalism or deal coming out of Baghdad, In the interim, the surge is advanc-estabbing our two immediate objectives in in Iraq ahd Iraq: (a) to defeat prevent the emergence of an akQinda ministate, and (b) to pacify the Sunni insurgency, which began the post-lib- : , eration downward spiral of sectarian bloodshed, economic stagnation and aborted reconstruction, Levin is right that we require a truly national government in Baghdad to obtain our ultimate objective of what ' O'Hanlon and Pollack call "sustainable stability." The administration had vain-th- e ly hoped that the surge would provide a window for the MaGki government to reform and become that kind of government. It win not. We should have given up on Nouri long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi porha-ment to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections, ' The choice fa difficult because re- placing the Maliki government will take time and because there fa no guarantee of ultimate political success, Nonetheless, continuing the surge while finally frying to change the cen- tral government fa the most rational choice because the only available alter-realinative fa defeat a defeat that fa not at all inevitable and that would be both catastrophic and sh . . ty d. - I diaries Krauthammer is a columnist with The Washington Post He can be contacted at letters&charleslirau thammer.com Bruce Tinsley Wax HE " : m&McRSNr jMcrt, lARSflyflA CKAfflflfce toTAf WHil A |