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Is diversity all it’s cracked up to be?

  12/27/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

After about four decades of hearing people declare diversity to be our greatest strength, I have to ask how that works out. What are the (Continue Reading)

Basics
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Do we have to hold together?

  09/22/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I usually don’t combine Basics and Politics but a book just came out surveying empires across the world and suggesting the collaps of the Roman (Continue Reading)

Basics, Politics

We the Who?

  07/10/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

“It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the (Continue Reading)

Basics, Pat's World View

Building blocks of society

  11/24/2019       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Rather than a death by a thousand cuts, the sabre is better. You can either dodge, deflect, or be quicker with your saber. Or, you (Continue Reading)

Basics

A historian describes my city in the 1950s

  07/20/2019       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Like many emerging American cities at the time, Phoenix’s spectacular growth did not occur evenly. It largely took place on the city’s north side, a (Continue Reading)

African Diaspora, Basics

Start with the basics – a history lesson

  07/14/2019       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

U.S. History, First Semester, first day of class We start with documents, the stuff of history. We have foundational documents. One is the Declaration of (Continue Reading)

Basics, Pat's World View

Essence of clear thinking based on science

  06/07/2019       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

From Nadine Burke-Harris’ The Deepest Well, p. 171: “Toxic stress is a result of a disruption to the stress response. This is a fundamental biological (Continue Reading)

Basics, Pat's World View

So you think you’re not prejudiced?

  04/10/2019       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Being married to a Black woman for 55 years about often gains me a pass on racial prejudice as a White man. Wrong. Just today (Continue Reading)

Basics, Culture

Down to basics, KIng

  01/11/2019       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Once in a while, a public figure makes a bold statement that tears away the veil of gentility and exposes what one might call “deep (Continue Reading)

Basics

How history class dumbs us down

  10/21/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Lies My Teacher Told Me is filled with eye-opening vignettes of how textbooks for high school students distort the history of our country. Faced with (Continue Reading)

Basics, What I'm Reading Now

The Grand Theory

  10/05/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Francis Fukuyama was on C-SPAN the other day talking about his book on identity politics and I started reading an article by him on the (Continue Reading)

Basics

How Our Government Works

  09/11/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

This title sounds like the title of a high school civics textbook. It should because a basic civics lesson is missing in the minds of (Continue Reading)

Basics, Politics

Here’s what I wanted to write……

  08/09/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

My friend who is knowledgeable about international politics gave me his copy of May/June Foreign Affairs. It’s Board of Advisors has one of my favorite (Continue Reading)

Basics

I’m struggling with something

  08/06/2018       Pat Barrett      2 Comments

I’ve started reading Lies My Teacher Told Me. I’ve experienced a perspective shift. Others, according to the preface to the book, experienced the same sort (Continue Reading)

Basics, Magnum Opus, Pat's World View, What I'm Reading Now

Limited thinking

  08/02/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Here’s an example of limited thinking on the part of educated people. Supposedly “uncivilized” people were barbaric and given to violent warfare. The evidence is (Continue Reading)

Basics

What are we dealing with? Why counselors for kids?

  07/23/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The local newspaper has an article on services for students as they return to school. Some are new and some are extensions of existing programs (Continue Reading)

Basics, Pat's World View

Is there even a trace of Russian left in you?

  07/07/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

An ancient human conceit is that we inherit our behaviors from our forebearers, including language. There is a belief that if someone has Greek heritage, (Continue Reading)

Basics

Difference = disorder

  07/04/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Reading Chris Hayes’ book, A Colony in a Nation, my attention was drawn to his formulation of the disturbance generated by disorder. For some people, (Continue Reading)

Basics

Magnum Opus Secundum

  06/16/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

So many themes, they get scattered and lose impact. It seems time to pull some threads together and knit a rope, or rather a hawser. (Continue Reading)

Basics, Magnum Opus redux, View from under the Bus

Why Didn’t the American colonists pay the f**** tariff?

  05/12/2018       Pat Barrett      2 Comments

Chris Hayes writes about how the common slogan regarding police violence against Blacks is, “Why don’t they just do what the cop says?” The tariff (Continue Reading)

Basics, Magnum Opus, View from under the Bus

Who learns what how?

  04/15/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I’ve written about my wife’s cousin’s experiences learning Italian and Japanese. Tonight he revealed that in English he never could comprehend what he reads. He (Continue Reading)

Basics, Teaching & Learning

To post in every courthouse and school room in the country

  04/10/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

From Steve Schmidt, the McCain-Palin campaign chairman, on what it means to be a fidelitist (new word for me). [on the MSNBC show The Eleventh (Continue Reading)

Basics, Magnum Opus, View from under the Bus

What looms ahead?

  02/28/2018       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The entry Hate and Special Status discusses a little of Pankaj Mishra’s talk at A.S.U. The rise of anger (his talk and book are Global (Continue Reading)

Basics, Running commentary
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