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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

July 2023

Ukraine Reborn (1 of 2)

A psychological exercise is to look out at an audience from a balcony and ask: How many red hats do you see? Until you pay specific attention, you don?t know. Once asked, all the red hats pop out at you. Thinking about Ukraine is the same sort of thing. Most Americans couldn?t tell you where it is, but that is changing now. We have Ukraine on the brain.

I should say that I have it on the brain. It has been there all along without my being aware of it. I used to think of it as THE more...

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Race-Based Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court Conservative majority has once more overturned previous set law in its latest decisions. They seem set to take things away from people, behavior at odds with popular concerns and at odds with all of these justices declaring at their Senate hearings that they believed in leaving set law alone.

It is becoming clearer every day that the older Republican party was much less ideological than today. Once, the majority of Court decisions were made by either unanimous o more...

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Bigotry?s Sloppy Language

When I hear "Power to the people," I really want to know who "the people" are. This is the sloppiness of references because it implies the people, journalists, intellectuals, Jews, Chinese, Blacks, elites, are all one thing. One does not have to live to a great age to know that there is no "all" of any category that is just one thing.

The most common hate mongers today talk about hating "elites." What kind of elites? Are very rich people elite? Would you include prize fighters or more...

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The New Anarchy (1 of 2)

Anarchy is a fascinating and recurring political philosophy. Anarchists do not believe in government. They believe that after the collapse of governments, the people will live their lives freely, take care of themselves, and eliminate evil from the world. Almost all revolutions (except for the one that founded the United States) follow the anarchist pattern.

The French Revolution in 1789 was supposed to bring about a brave new world in which people called each other "citizen" and more...

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August 2022

Evolution of the State Department

What we now call the State Department began as Foreign Affairs, whose first Ambassadors, even before we were officially a country, were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, with Benjamin Franklin serving as an unofficial Ambassador.

A recent PBS broadcast in the series "American Experience" (Season 34 Ep 2), provided the experience of Black diplomats serving during the Cold War. Their experiences were like those of so many other "non-White Protestant males" who monopolized State Depar more...

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The Good Old Days?



"Originalists" (conservatives who believe that we must follow everything that our founders established in the Constitution) are not alone in their love of the past.

The ugly White Nationalists roiling the country now believe the same thing, with violence replacing intellect. They think they would like this country better if it harkened back to a time when women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans were barred from voting and governance. The most ignoran more...

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The Good Old Days?



"Originalists" (conservatives who believe that we must follow everything that our founders established in the Constitution) are not alone in their love of the past.

The ugly White Nationalists roiling the country now believe the same thing, with violence replacing intellect. They think they would like this country better if it harkened back to a time when women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans were barred from voting and governance. The most ignoran more...

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Critical Race Theory Conspiracy


The Republican "Base," the followers of Donald Trump, are scornful of "elites," by which they mean educated. Elites once included the rich and powerful, but these categories don?t bother the true believers as much as the "intellectuals."

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the product of scholar-advocates in the 1970s and 1980s at university level, who were interested in exploring how law and other forms of public policy could secure and protect civil rights, yet simultaneously more...

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Replacement Theory Conspiracy


The Republican Party has adopted an old chestnut, the fear that demographers have been predicting that the "White Race" will soon lose its status as the majority, and will be replaced by people of color. Yes, "white" people, both in the US and in Europe, are having declining birth rates. Even the most fertile non-white people are beginning to have the same decline in fertility. The decline in birthrates everywhere should be applauded! This means that women are having more autonomy over t more...

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Democracy or Religion?

During our nation?s founding, western Europe, including England, had recently emerged from two centuries of ugly religious wars. The educated elites considered themselves men of reason, not religion, and they were in charge after religious wars ended. The French Revolution went resolutely secular, going so far as to persecute Catholic priests. Eventually, the two factions made peace, and France was never again an overtly Catholic state.

The new United States underwent the same ali more...

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Saving America?s Democracy (2 of 2)

In Reviewing the Index of Democracies for 2022, we can see the difference between Total Democracies and Flawed Democracies, a position that the United States currently holds.

Why do the countries at the top of the list succeed while we flail? We can see that the winning countries are all small and have a single culture that makes governing easy. Political parties are mostly either centrist liberal or centrist conservative, making for less contentious issues. Although most of these more...

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Disgruntled, Hating Everything

April 8, 2022
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian

Perhaps one-third of our population is disgruntled (unhappy, annoyed, and angry). Disgruntled is a word that dates back to the Middle Ages and derives from "to grunt."

We daily see the film clips of the mobs who attacked Congress on January 6. Faces were angry, voices were loud, and intentions were clear: search out elected representatives and kill as many as possible. They shouted profanity and during the more...

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September 2021

Tenacity of Prejudice

An American research group did an interesting experiment. They produced a resume that clicked off all the requirements of many national companies and sent it to them, changing only the name of the applicant. The names were Greg, Lucy, and two names identifiable as African-American men and women.

They found that at least 50% of companies never opened the African-American applicants and a number of them also rejected Lucy! Prejudice against Blacks and women still exist.

more...

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America?s Dilemma: Polarization

We are suffering from one of our nation?s recurring problems: polarization. Our very nation?s birth took place during a phase of polarization: those wanting independence from our British governors, those rejecting this independence (preferred the status quo), and those too ignorant to care.

In those days, our most educated sector opted for creating a new nation, one not ruled by the British king and country. They wanted self-rule, an opportunity for those steeped in the history more...

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An Asylum Issue


Our country has a long history of granting asylum to people in need. It was not usually an issue of compassion, however; it was the pragmatic need to increase the population of this country, particularly the need for inexpensive labor. We took in the Irish, victims of the British-made famine, and they served as domestic help and heavy labor building the railroads.

But they suffered suspicion as Catholics, fearing their loyalty was to the Pope, not the country. They were n more...

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The Long History of Lynch-mobs

History shows that our ancestors began to thrive when they learned to work together, to cooperate. Cooperation was the dominant behavior of human beings, but the lesser aspect of our behavior was domination by force. Modern historians have assessed that we have lived far more years of our lives in in peace, war being the lesser condition. But we tend to focus more on our warfare periods because they are less usual and more horrible.

Despite the predominance of peaceful cooperati more...

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October 2020

Perspective on History of Slavery


Much current discussion of the history of slavery ignores the larger picture. Slavery was universal, still exists in parts of the world, and was only finally abolished in the 19th century by England (1833), Russia (emancipating serfs in 1861), and by the United States in 1864. These emancipations were unique to the West, not the rest of the world, which still practices domestic slavery (women as property) and in some places in the Islamic world, sexual, agricultural, and mining slavery. more...

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August 2020

History in Perspective


We are currently living during a belated focus on history. The Black Lives Matter movement has brought our attention to the systemic racism that has dogged Black communities since the failure of the Reconstruction, after President Lincoln was assassinated.

Formerly considered "historic" statues and memorials firmly planted in countless town squares and courthouses have been revealed to be frauds, not post-Civil War memorials at all. We now know that all of these memorials more...

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Thoughtful Police Reform


Because the last few cases of murder of Black men by police or vigilantes were caught on video, this issue has finally forced those of us who never had such experiences to reconsider how we regard policing. Too few of us can imagine what it must be like to live in this country and be afraid. We do not send our teenage boys out of the house with the awareness that they might not come home unharmed.

My own experience with police, from childhood to today, has been that "the p more...

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Thoughtful Police Reform


Because the last few cases of murder of Black men by police or vigilantes were caught on video, this issue has finally forced those of us who never had such experiences to reconsider how we regard policing. Too few of us can imagine what it must be like to live in this country and be afraid. We do not send our teenage boys out of the house with the awareness that they might not come home unharmed.

My own experience with police, from childhood to today, has been that "the p more...

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August 2019

Sticks and Stones: Words Matter


"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." This saying was aimed at children, to arm them against verbal bullies. It is also linked to our First Amendment, freedom of speech, even when people to say things that we hate, but protect their right to say them.

Such freedom, however, ends with speech that can endanger life: falsely crying "fire" in a crowded theater, or urging riot in the public square. "Let?s go kill the?.aristocrats" during the Fr more...

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June 2017

Where are the University Grownups?



For some years now, we have seen a transformation in university life that does not bode well. These changes are in line with changes in public behavior in our society at large, a general coarsening of language, ideas, and actions.

The university world provides the next leaders, experts, and supposedly informed citizenry. At U. C. Santa Cruz recently, Black students occupied the Administration Building until the university authorities knuckled under to their demand more...

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August 2016

Culture Matters! Part 1 of 2.

When the Black Lives Matter organization adds the word "also," this removes the idea that only Black Lives matter. Those who say All Lives Matter are diminishing the truth of the racial situation in our country. But perhaps it?s less about race than about culture.

Those of us who find "multiculturalism" charming are right that in cosmopolitan cities around the world, many delightful foods are available and one can hear many languages. However, especially a country as ethnically more...

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It Ain't Necessarily So.

Summertime is here, and I find myself humming the song: "It ain't necessarily so." There are some stupid beliefs out there. As a devout centrist, I may make many of my readers unhappy today. But, I suspect there are many more who share my political position: in the thinking middle.

Left-Wing Baloney
? Black Lives Matter. Believers focus on how many police shootings of Black perpetrators there are. However 6,000 blacks are murdered each year, six times the rate of whites ad more...

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November 2015

Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia: a Primer


A reader once called me a racist in response to an article I wrote criticizing Islamism. I was puzzled because Islam is not a race and criticism of its more poisonous aspects is an attack on an ideology, not individuals.

Today, Muslim activists using their legal arm, CAIR, accuse anybody who criticizes Militant Islam of "Islamophobia," hatred of Muslims. They use this term as the equivalent of the anti-Semitism, or hatred of Jews. However, we need to be clearer in our use more...

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Say Goodbye to Clock Boy!


From the moment the news swept the nation that a 14-year-old Texas Muslim boy, Ahmed Mohamed, had been arrested in school for bringing a suspicious device, I smelled a rat. On the face of this issue, it seemed that a very nice nerdy kid had assembled a Radio Shack digital clock that he brought to school to "impress his teachers." He did not impress his engineering teacher, nor several others to whom he showed his handiwork, but he did at last find a teacher to frighten, one who reacted w more...

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August 2015

Racism Has a Forgotten History.


We Americans in our self-centeredness think we invented racism and slavery, but we did not. We were one of the few societies in the world to outlaw it when it was a major part of our economy. Others were England, which outlawed the slave trade in 1772 and Russia in 1861 in freeing their serfs. France abolished Caribbean slavery in the French Revolution in 1794 and Napoleon shamefully reinstated it in 1802.

Slavery has been a human institution from the beginning of civiliz more...

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Human Rights Widen In the West, Vanish Elsewhere.

On June 26, the United States extended its freedoms to one more group of fellow citizens, homosexuals, who now have the equality in marriage. Over many centuries before this, homosexual males were jailed, beaten, tortured, and scorned. Female homosexuals were forced into marriage, institutionalized, or shunned.

In Muslim societies, even today, homosexuality is technically forbidden but socially rampant, particularly practiced against boys by those responsible for them (including more...

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December 2014

Some Thoughts on Ferguson

From the beginning of this terrible incident, I saw a few other things not really mentioned in the journalistic frenzy that was heading for a lynching of a cop; this is very popular at the moment---that every time a cop shoots someone, particularly if the cop is white and the victim a Black "youth," the verdict comes in even before the investigation. The police are always guilty.

Are there some racist cops? Absolutely. But does anyone consider how much police forces have been in more...

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July 2014

Prejudice: Is it Culture or Race?


I have been watching the splendid Cosmos, the successor to the original television series by astronomer Carl Sagan in 1980. That visionary astronomer introduced us to the magical world of space, spurring many young people to consider astronomy as a career. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was one of those youngsters, a Black teen from the Bronx, who was invited to spend a day with Sagan. Now Dyson is returning the favor by producing the new Cosmos, embracing a half-century of incredible progress in more...

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September 2012

When is Cultural Criticism “Racism?”


Mitt Romney is a diplomatic disaster, but I do want to defend one comment he made on his summer travels that has been unjustly attacked. He commented on the cultural differences between the Israelis and the Palestinians that account for their economic disparities. He was immediately called a “racist” by the Palestinians, a cry launched at any who dare do cultural criticism.

A distinguished historian, Tom Holland, just produced a documentary on “The Untold Story of Is more...

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