But W. E. B. Dubois shared many of the eugenic views held by white progressives. His “talented tenth” was itself a eugenically weighted term. He defined members of the Talented Tenth as “exceptional men” and the “best of the race.” He complained that “the negro has not been breeding for an object” and that he must begin to “train and breed for brains, for efficiency, for beauty.” Over his long career he time and again returned to his concern that the worst blacks were overbreeding while the best were underbreeding. Indeed, he supported Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project,” which sought to sharply curtail reproduction among “inferior” stocks of the black population.

Dialog from 'The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson': His guest was Lee Marvin  Johnny said,    

'Lee, I'll bet a lot of people are  unaware that you were a Marine in the initial landing at Iwo Jima ...and that during the course of that action you earned the Navy Cross and were severely wounded.' 'Yeah, yeah... I got shot square in the bottom and they gave me the Cross for securing a hot spot about halfway up Suribachi... But, Johnny, at  Iwo  I served under the bravest man I ever knew... We both got the Cross the same day, but what he did for his Cross made mine look cheap in comparison. That dumb guy actually stood up on Red beach and directed his troops to move forward and get the hell off the beach.   Bullets flying by, with mortar rounds landing everywhere and he stood there as the main target of gunfire so that he could get his men to safety. He did this on more than one occasion because his men's safety was more important than his own life.

 That Sergeant and I have been lifelong friends. When they brought me off Suribachi we passed the Sergeant and he lit a smoke and passed it to me, lying on my belly on the litter and said, 'Where'd they get you Lee?'  'Well Bob... if you make it home before me, tell Mom to sell the outhouse!'  Johnny, I'm not lying,  Sergeant Keeshan was the bravest man I ever knew.  The Sergeant's name is Bob Keeshan. You and the world know him as Captain Kangaroo.'  

 On another note, there was this wimpy little man (who just passed away) on PBS, gentle and quiet. Mr. Rogers is another of those you would least suspect of being anything but what he now portrays to our youth. But Mr. Rogers was a  U.S.  Navy Seal, combat-proven in Vietnam  with over twenty-five confirmed kills to his name.  He wore a long-sleeved sweater on TV, to cover the many tattoos on his forearm and biceps.  He was a master in small arms and hand-to-hand combat, able to disarm or kill in a heartbeat

Well this isn't exactly true.  Lee Marvin did indeed serve in the Marine Corps, however he was wounded on Saipan eight months prior to the Iwo Jima landings.  Marvin was awarded the Purple Heart not the the Navy Cross, and discharged from the service.  Captain Kangaroo did enlist in the Marine Corps, but he enlisted too late to see combat in World War II.  The rumors are a fabrication of  faux secret society The Sons of Lee Marvin.  Lee Marvin in addition to starring in great films as The Dirty Dozen, The Big Red One, and Donovans Reef is buried at Arlinton National Cemetery.

As for Mister Rogers he never served in the military at all. 

Seriously, does this guy look like he has 25 confirmed kills!

Howver, there are other examples of real life celebrity soldiers who saw combat. 

Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier in World War II ,and became a movie star after the war.  Murphy earned the Medal of Honor along with 32 other medals. He starred in the movie about his life To Hell and Back,  and appeared in over 40 movies until his death in a tragic plane crash.

Then there is my personal hero, Ted Williams: The Splendid Splinter, The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.  In addition to being the last major leaguer to hit over .400 (.406), Williams was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. During World War II he served as a flight instuctor. Williams saw combat in the Korean War.  Williams nearly died when his plane took  AA fire over a target in North Korea.  He had to limp the plane back to base where it nearly exploded on landing. Williams flew 38 combat missions in Korea before being pulled from service.  Williams' military service came in the middle of his baseball career, which severely curtailed his career stats. 

Ted Williams did in real life what John Wayne only acted on screen.

Thanks to Joan Rumenap for the pics.

Marine JRTOC Color Guard.

USS Constellation's Marine Detachment in period uniforms.

World War II veteran and kamikaze survivor Joe Rumenap. Joe fired a different kind of cannon on the USS Langely in the Pacific.

United States Seagoing Marine Association President Bob Vanderveen and Joe Rumenap present Constellation Museum Director Christopher Rowsom with the commemorative plaque.

Well my old job to be more accurate. I had to draw you in right! Here's my Op/Ed from this weekend's Examiner to explain it all.

An unrepentant terrorist heads a key division of a leading U.S. education research association that has immense influence over what our children's teachers study in education school.

William Ayers, the unrepentant former SDS Weather Underground bomber of the 1960s, was recently elected by the American Education Research Association (AERA) as vice president and head of its division of curriculum studies.

Apparently, AERA members have no qualms about selecting Ayers, a man who to this day remains dedicated to destroying America, to lead one of their organization's most important divisions.

Perhaps they think Ayers is merely a "professor of English," as Democratic presidential contender and Ayers friend Sen. Barack Obama would have us believe. Or maybe AERA members don't know Ayers simply transferred his revolutionary fervor from the streets to the classroom where he indoctrinates our nation's teachers.

Possibly Ayers' influence is an aberration in an organization that bills itself as "the most prominent international professional organization, with the primary goal of advancing educational research and its practical application."

Wrong. Sadly, Ayers' radical worldview permeates AERA. I know, because I am a former AERA employee. I worked in AERA's national office in Washington, D.C. from 2002-2004.

Among my duties were managing production of AERA publications, including its flagship journal Educational Researcher. Educational Researcher published deep scholarly work like UCLA education professor Peter McLaren's love song to totalitarianism, Reconsidering Marx in post-Marxist Times: A Requiem for Post Modernism. McLaren's webpage is a sick testimonial to murderous thug Ché Guevera, and a totalitarian communist ideology responsible for the murder of more than 90 million people.

I had the arduous task of editing manuscripts with titles like "So When It Comes Out, They Aren't That Surprised That It Is There": Using Critical Race Theory as a Tool of Analysis of Race and Racism in Education, and Critical Social Theory and Transformative Knowledge: The Functions of Criticism in Quality Education.

Forget for a moment the unwieldy titles, copyediting their manuscripts revealed that the authors showed a disturbingly low grasp of the English language, and its rules of grammar and punctuation. Furthermore, the manuscripts contained so much pseudo-academic jargon that after every sentence I had stop and ask myself, "What the hell did that mean?"

This leftwing radicalism is not strictly limited to AERA publications. Its annual meetings, which draw tens of thousands, offer participants such fare as: "Resisting Resistance: Using Eco-Justice and Eco-Racism to Awaken Mindfulness, Compassion, and Wisdom in Preservice Teachers."

Then, of course, there is Ayers' own 2005 presentation "Shut Up and March: Patriotism and the Threat to Democracy in America's Schools."

The "scholars" who generate such mediocrity may seem like a joke to the general public however, their ersatz scholarship perniciously affects our culture. Their kitschy Marxism, which paints America as the main source of the world's racism and oppression, is rampant in our schools of education.

Our teachers' colleges are becoming indoctrination camps for fringe left wing radicalism, which is in turn passed on to our elementary, middle and high school students.

One would think that election of a terrorist who said of his violent past "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough," plus the rank ideological bent of its publications and conference offerings, would spark some concern or at least a response from AERA leadership.

It hasn't. Where are AERA's president and executive director? Are they silent because they sub rosa approve Ayers' agenda for his new position, and the indoctrination of American teachers and students in radical left wing ideology?

The truth is that Ayers has been a leading light in AERA for years. In fact, radical AERA members specifically requested that Ayers present their objections to AERA's governing council's refusal to oppose the National Council for Accreditation for Teacher Certification's elimination of "social justice" from its list of standards in 2007.

Now in his new perch as a divisional vice president, Ayers can continue his long march through academia further radicalizing our teachers and our students.

Mark Newgent is the Baltimore History Examiner and blogs for Red Maryland. He can be reached at marknewgent@comcast.net

Today, the Examiner editorial page offer us this gem:

What’s clear is that shedding private-sector jobs while adding public-sector jobs is unsustainable — without tax increases. Government jobs do not produce money, they merely redistribute revenue produced by those in the private sector. So as the proportion of those working for the government increases, a smaller group of wealth producers must support a bigger group of redistributors. That means less money for everyone...

It means expanding government may help reduce unemployment numbers initially, but it will not help the economy.

 This coming just a day after I pointed out:

Through his intimidating tactics and rhetoric, FDR essentially bullied business and the private sector and turned government into a competitor with which they could not compete... Did the New Deal create millions of jobs? Sure it did. However, they were government created public works jobs designed to serve political ends, and they lasted only months at a time. They were not the type of private sector jobs that could have spurred real economic growth that could have pulled the rest of the economy through. 

 What was it that George Santayana said about forgetting the past?

Yes that's right .  According to Reason Magazine editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch,  JR Ewing, the hard drinking , womanizing, Texas oil tycoon from the CBS series Dallas deserves credit for the downfall of communism. 

 

 

 

Gillespie and Welch write:

Joseph Stalin is said to have screened the 1940 movie "The Grapes of Wrath" in the Soviet Union to showcase the depredations of life under capitalism. Russian audiences watched the final scenes of the Okies' westward trek aboard overladen, broken-down jalopies -- and marveled that in the United States, even poor people had cars. "Dallas" functioned similarly.

"I think we were directly or indirectly responsible for the fall of the [Soviet] empire," Hagman told the Associated Press a decade ago. "They would see the wealthy Ewings and say, 'Hey, we don't have all this stuff.' I think it was good old-fashioned greed that got them to question their authority."

In Romania, "Dallas" was the last Western show allowed during the nightmare 1980s because President Nicolae Ceausescu was persuaded that it was sufficiently anti-capitalistic. By the time he changed his mind, it was already too late -- he had paid for the full run in precious hard currency. Meanwhile, the show provided a luxuriant alternative to a communism that was forcing people to wait more than a decade to buy the most rattletrap Romanian car....

The impact of "Dallas" on people's worldviews reminds us that the "vulgar" popular culture that left-wing highbrows and right-wing cultural conservatives love to hate is every bit as important as chin-stroking politics in fomenting real social change. Whether it's the junkie-rock band Velvet Underground inspiring anti-communist dissidents in Prague, or the movie "Titanic" inspiring subversive haircut styles in Taliban Afghanistan (the theocrats' Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice regularly rounded up would-be Leonardo DiCaprios), throwaway cultural products influence far-flung cultures in ways that are impossible to predict or control, even (or especially) by the artists themselves.

As a child of the 1980s I remember watching Dallas and wondering along with the rest of the nation "Who shot JR."  That question was of such import that the Turksih Parliament adjourned early so members could get home to watch the conclusion of the cliff hanger.  The Dallas cliff hanger ranks second in the history of all time TV cliff hangers, above Twin Peaks' "Who killed Laura Palmer?" and below The Simpsons' "Who shot Mr. Burns?"

My family was a fan of the show, even though we booed it every episode.  Being a family of Redskin fans we couldn't stand the sight of the Dallas Cowboys endzone in the overhead shot of Texas Stadium during the opening credits.

Hat Tip to Mr. Reason at WBAL