“Parents have become far too disrespectful, and their children are even worse.”
— ABC News (@ABC) April 11, 2018
Frustrated teacher urges parents to stop 'coddling and enabling their children' in viral Facebook post. https://t.co/fKxnxc6N1i pic.twitter.com/y0S2y4hDdD
Ross is the best columnist working at a major daily and I don’t think the second-best is particularly close. https://t.co/OHYQhpTqED
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) April 8, 2018
A few weeks ago, The Washington Post’s deputy editorial page editor, Ruth Marcus, wrote two columns explaining why, had either of her children been diagnosed with Down syndrome in utero, she would have accepted the “ghastly” nature of a second-trimester abortion and terminated the pregnancy. She conceded that people with Down syndrome can be happy and fulfilled, that both they and their parents might be understandably disturbed by the way abortion can effectively cull them from the world. But she concluded with self-acknowledged bluntness: “That was not the child I wanted.”Keep reading.
I know Marcus a little, having chatted with her amiably a few times many years ago. She seemed like a lovely person, like so many of my pro-choice friends; indeed, people who believe firmly in an absolute or near-absolute right to an abortion are effectively my people in a certain tribal way, given that I’m a Connecticut Yankee raised by Bill Clinton-voting boomers and educated in the modern meritocracy. I like these folks; I think they mean well; I try to listen to their arguments with the respect that the sincere and intelligent deserve.
But I also think that they are deceived by a cruel ideology that has licensed the killing of millions of innocents for almost 50 years. In the language that the respectable use to banish views without rebuttal, I regard them — friends and colleagues and faithful readers — as essentially extremists, for whom the distinctive and sometimes awful burdens that pregnancy imposes on women have become an excuse to build a grotesque legal regime in which the most vulnerable human beings can be vacuumed out or dismembered, killed for reasons of eugenics or convenience or any reason at all.
I am sharing these reflections in the context of the latest media war over whether a particular conservative columnist should be hired by a particular establishment publication — in this case Kevin Williamson, a National Review scribe with a brilliant pen and a long paper trail of insults and wild opinions, who was boldly hired by The Atlantic and then quickly jettisoned, after it came to light that he had not only suggested hanging as a penalty for abortion in a since-deleted tweet but also more carefully defended the idea of someday prosecuting women who obtain abortions the way we prosecute other forms of homicide...
Campuses that are overwhelmingly populated by wealthy students amplify the voices that jeer at our higher education system and energize those who seek to destroy it. It would be a tragedy if they succeeded. https://t.co/SamBMZE8ZC
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) April 9, 2018
The wealthy spend tens of thousands each year on private school tuition or property taxes to ensure that their children attend schools that provide a rich, deep college preparatory curriculum. On top of that, many of them spend thousands more on application coaches, test-prep tutors and essay editors. They take their children on elaborate college tours so that their children can “find the right fit” at schools with good names and high graduation rates. Enrollment strategists at these same schools seek applicants from areas where the data they buy confirms that income levels and homeownership are high.RTWT.
The colleges make efforts to open up access to low-income students while at the same time culling applications in ways that give an advantage to the very wealthy — from the persistence of legacy admissions to the back door reserved for young athletes who excel in sports that flourish in rarefied communities like lacrosse, squash, rowing and fencing. Admissions officers don’t talk much about “development” admissions, students whose applications are favored in hopes their parents will eventually endow a new stadium or dorm. Increasing numbers of prospective freshmen apply for early decision, which can give the applicant a stronger chance of getting in but closes doors for middle-income students, who often need to make their college choice by comparing financial aid packages. No wonder, then, that in a group of 38 selective colleges, including five in the Ivy League, more students came from families in the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.
Creating a true meritocracy in higher education would require serious, politically daring changes to our housing policies and the tax code, neither of which seems likely in the current climate. Yet people of means (and I include myself here) are complicit in a system that seems unable to stop itself from extending privileges to the privileged. If your late-model car boasts the sticker of a prestigious college in the back window, you are participating in a system that may be good for your child but bad for our country...
How the Civil War ended tells us a lot about who we were. https://t.co/o5EfzCfwDN
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) April 9, 2018
APPOMATTOX, VA. — On April 9, 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee strode onto the porch of a two-story brick home and stared out at a lawn filled with Union soldiers, his Confederate staff of two, and his horse Traveler.More.
Still wearing full military dress, Lee raised his gloved hands and punched his left fist into his right palm. The sound of leather meeting leather echoed in the unsteady silence.
Then, as Lee mounted Traveler, Major Gen. Ulysses S. Grant emerged from the house onto the porch.
Now facing each other, Grant raised his hat, as did Lee. It wasn’t a salute, but clearly an acknowledgment of the moment.
As Lee turned towards the dirt road and headed east towards his troops, the 198th Pennsylvania Infantry played “Auld Lang Syne.”
The Civil War was over.
“As the sun rose that morning neither man would know by mid-afternoon the war, for all intents and purposes, would end that day,” explained Ernie Price, a park ranger and director of education at Appomattox National Park.
But by mid-morning, Lee knew the Confederate cause was finished. He sent a message to Grant to meet for the purpose of surrender, and the Appomattox home of grocer Wilmer McLean was chosen for the moment.
When they met, Grant was poorly dressed, his uniform rumpled and covered in mud from the ride the night before. Years later in his memoirs, he admitted that he had no idea what he was going to ask from Lee in the surrender.
Yet, once he sat down at a small spindle desk in McLean’s front parlor, words of reconciliation poured out.
“Grant knew that the Confederate soldiers from that moment on were going to be US citizens again,” said Price. “Instead of placing them in prisons in the North he sends them home. His reasoning is: The sooner the South’s economy rebounds, the sooner the country can reconcile, so he paroles them.”
Grant also allowed Lee’s men to keep their personal sidearms and animals, knowing they would desperately need rations to survive.
This week marks the 153rd anniversary of Appomattox, and tourists from around the world still come to the McLean home to remember this singular moment, which kept our nation whole after a bloody, brutal war. When I visited last month, parents, students and children listened to different park rangers tell the story of the two generals, and were surprised by the emotion they felt.
“I wish more people young and old would understand the gravity of this moment and apply that kind of grace in their daily lives,” said 13-year-old Mathilde Colas, with remarkable clarity, as she visited with her family. “It is certainly easier to bring people together if you are generous with your words and actions. That is what I learned most from our visit today.”
The best and the worst of our country’s past sometimes happens side by side. The journey to understand who we once were isn’t always a road to perdition. Sometimes it’s a path toward inspiration...
A must read:— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) February 17, 2018
Iran among the ruins: @vali_nasr on Iran’s regional strategic calculus. https://t.co/WbZyJ6N0YZ
Over the last seven years, social upheavals and civil wars have torn apart the political order that had defined the Middle East ever since World War I. Once solid autocracies have fallen by the wayside, their state institutions battered and broken, and their national borders compromised. Syria and Yemen have descended into bloody civil wars worsened by foreign military interventions. A terrorist group, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), seized vast areas of Iraq and Syria before being pushed back by an international coalition led by the United States.You can see why leftists love this article, heh.
In the eyes of the Trump administration, and those of a range of other observers and officials in Washington and the region, there is one overriding culprit behind the chaos: Iran. They point out that the country has funded terrorist groups, propped up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and aided the anti-Saudi Houthi rebels in Yemen. U.S. President Donald Trump has branded Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” with a “sinister vision of the future,” and dismissed the nuclear agreement reached by it, the United States, and five other world powers in 2015 as “the worst deal ever” (and refused to certify that Iran is complying with its terms). U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has described Iran as “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.” And Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has charged that “Iran is on a rampage.”
Washington seems to believe that rolling back Iranian influence would restore order to the Middle East. But that expectation rests on a faulty understanding of what caused it to break down in the first place. Iran did not cause the collapse, and containing Iran will not bring back stability. There is no question that many aspects of Iran’s behavior pose serious challenges to the United States. Nor is there any doubt that Iran has benefited from the collapse of the old order in the Arab world, which used to contain it. Yet its foreign policy is far more pragmatic than many in the West comprehend. As Iran’s willingness to engage with the United States over its nuclear program showed, it is driven by hardheaded calculations of national interest, not a desire to spread its Islamic Revolution abroad. The Middle East will regain stability only if the United States does more to manage conflict and restore balance there. That will require a nuanced approach, including working with Iran, not reflexively confronting it.
