|
To order
Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
|
©Ivan W. Parkins 2008, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author and can be obtained by contacting info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
|
About
Ivan W. Parkins: Dr.
Parkins is a retired professor of Political Science from Central Michigan
University. He received his PhD from
the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval
officer during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama. He is a recent widower with three
daughters, 3 grand children and 2 great grand children. Dr. Parkins has written extensively, having
authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column for many years. |
|
Front Page |
|
Inside This Issue
Front Page
Archive 2008
Archive 2009 Page
2, Disassemble the House Page
3, Media Bias Page
4, Book Reviews Page
5, War and Their Costs Page
6, Broken Congress Page
7, Dividing America Page
8, Dividing America, Part two Page
9, Disinformation, Liberal Ideology Page
10, The Supreme Court and Judiciary COMMENTS |
|
REAL, CONSTITUTIONAL, CHANGE A REVIEW AND COMMENTARY OF NEWT GINGRICH’S NEW BOOK, REAL CHANGE By Ivan W. Parkins REAL CHANGE is the title of Newt
Gingrich’s new book. I agree with most
of the policies that he proposes; I also agreed with most of what he did as
Speaker of the House. But, I have
grave doubts about the means by which he expects to accomplish so much. Mr. Gingrich himself cites an old axiom of
Albert Einstein’s that doing more by the same methods that have failed
repeatedly and expecting a different result is a sign of insanity. Except for some other quotes that he cites,
I might think Gingrich insane. He also
cites Eisenhower and Peter Drucker to the effect that often the answer to
tough problems is to consider them as mere symptoms and attack the underlying
cause. That, I believe, is the way to
real change in the performance of our government. Electing some other persons as Senators
and Representatives and discarding a few dilatory rules of congressional
procedure will only suppress a few symptoms.
The cancer has grown slowly and from causes that were largely
obvious. Huge growth in the population
of the United States, even greater increase in our worldly economic and
military power, and a transformation in the locus and focus of our
information system have made Congress, especially the House of
Representatives, dysfunctional. A growing separation between
Representatives and the people whom they are expected to represent is
obvious. There is no way that a
Representative can be “close” to more people than there are minutes in a
year. The almost year-around sessions
allow congress persons fewer and fewer minutes to spend with
constituents. They have little
practical choice but to cater to those who have the most to contribute to
their reelections. Meanwhile, there is more public notice to
be had by defying presidential leadership and partisan compromises than by
cooperation in service to the nation.
That is especially damaging to national morale and to long-term policy
formation. Also more often than not
destructive are numerous sensational investigations of the past, and often no
longer significant, actions of the Executive and Judicial Branches. The necessary solution will be
difficult, and its personal or partisan rewards will be remote. Failing to take the hard course will assure
that events will control us more and that we will control the events less.
I.W. Parkins/70808 |
|
MY
ENVIRONMENTS: 1939-2008 By Ivan W. Parkins The tiny conservation organization that I
helped to establish, and headed, in my pre-WWII high school caused me no
grief. We were only cooperating with
an adult group to maintain game bird and fish populations in our part of
Indiana. Hungry “sportsmen” in the
1930s had decimated those populations. Following the war, my initiation into
college teaching was different. I came
to it with some background from Professor Rex Tugwell, who had been prominent
as a New Deal environmental planner.
Also, I read RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE, the report of President
Truman’s commission on that subject.
It appeared to me that beginning students, as part of an introduction
to social sciences, should be made aware of how technological and industrial
advances had altered, but not eliminated, man’s dependence on his
environment. That produced no
complaints from students or administration.
But, in the small and informal faculty discussion group, to which I
had been admitted as the junior member, better established “intellectuals”
informed me that such stuff belonged in high school civics. As the university’s leading classicist put
it, “Nature leaves me cold.” By the time that I retreated from
teaching, I was unhappy with the growing “environmentalism movement.” It seemed to me that it was becoming,
primarily, another of those avenues by which higher education was “coaching”
college students, not how to be more thoughtful and responsible individuals,
but how to win over and direct the larger American public. In nearly every matter of great public
interest today the total information available is so complex and voluminous
as to require severe selection before any practical use can be made of it. That is what makes disinformation so
dangerous. And environmentalism has
become a frightening channel of disinformation. I.W.Parkins 7/2008 |
|
GREAT AWAKENING? By Ivan W. Parkins Is environmentalism a third manifestation
of the Great Awakening phenomenon that American historians have
identified? The first, in the
eighteenth century, was mainly religious and educationally focused, a wave of
enthusiasm that contributed to America’s sense of identity and desire for
independence. The second, in the
nineteenth century, was religious and academic, and it contributed to the
anti-slavery movement. Now, Iain
Murray contends,” . . environmentalism [has] begun to replace liberal
Christianity as the Left’s motivating religious force.” He further asserts
that environmentalism, in the fashion of Martin Luther, values “faith” more
than good works. Murray’s book, “The Really Inconvenient
Truths,” carries the subtitle “Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals
Don’t Want You To Know About—Because They Helped Cause Them.” The first and most gross catastrophe is the
ban on DDT, with its huge, and continuing, toll of human lives, especially
among Earth’s poorest people. I had not remembered that a DDT ban was
enacted in Michigan the year that I moved here. That preceded the international ban by five
years. And, Dutch elm disease is a
continuing problem. Murray refers to research that shows
sexually mutilated and declining fish populations suffer far more from the
traces of birth-control chemicals in urban sewage than they do from
industrial wastes. Environmentalists
remain much more interested in attacking industry than in the real problem. One especially interesting passage in the
book describes the history of a natural wonder, identified, purchased, and
preserved (with public access) for more than two centuries. It is Natural Bridge in Virginia, and its
original “warden” was Thomas Jefferson. Not only is environmentalism now highly
organized, its top organizations pay their CEOs annual salaries ranging from
$125,000 to $700,000. Murray cites ten
such organizations with recently reported top salaries averaging just over
$200,000. Most significant of his criticisms is the
contention that environmentalist work and money is focused, not directly upon
protection of the environment, but indirectly, into lobbying and law suits
directing governments to behave in ways that the environmentalists favor,
largely towards socialism. Is environmentalism, today, a third Great
Awakening, or is it a larger edition of THE BIG SLEEP—confusing, corrupt, and
deadly? |
|
ENVIRONMENTALISM THE NEW RELIGION OF THE LEFT The following series of articles
have been compiled to illustrate how the left has used environmentalism
through disinformation. |
|
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring Or How Misinformation Has
Destroyed Many Lives Recently, it was
the birthday of Rachel Carson. Her SILENT
SPRING inspired the ban on
DDT. In just fifteen months we will have Lyndon Johnson's
centennial. He escalated the Vietnam War.
Should we now have? Buzz, buzz, and fatal sting,
To go
with:
Hey, hey, LBJ, What's so gross
about this?
Several African countries have reintroduced DDT to combat mosquitoes.
That again is helping to curb malaria. Meanwhile the post-ban increase
is estimated to have taken a million lives per year, or some tens of millions
total. I.W.Parkins,
7/07 |
|
PARKINS POINTS TO PONDER: The First Amendment to our Constitution is
not what the First Congress proposed for that spot. Partisan divisions of Congress and the
Presidency in the second half of the twentieth century differed extremely
from those in the first half. Since 1930, no Republican President has
enjoyed a partisan congressional division as favorable as Clinton’s was in
1993-1994, but all other Democrat Presidents have fared better than Clinton. If the average Representative were to spend
1000 hours per year meeting face-to-face with individual constituents, it
would not be possible to spend 10 seconds with each constituent. In just 5 weeks of 2006, Israel lost
approximately twice (as a percentage of its population) as many soldiers in
Lebanon as our military fatalities in five years of the “War on Terror”. Just the increase of
violent deaths domestically, among American youths in the 1960’s and ‘70’s,
exceeded our combat fatalities in Vietnam. According to the World Health
Organization’s calculations of increased malaria deaths following the ban on
DDT, that policy has already been more deadly than Hitler’s “final solution”. The pension funds held by state and local
governments, and by corporations, for their employees exceed the “National
Debt”. None of the above is a secret, but none is
emphasized in the mass media. See
attached link for more
information.
American
Politics |