Pat’s Polemics

My understanding of the mechanics of economic exploitation in this country were as good as any other citizen’s; what I lacked was an understanding of (Continue Reading)

When we recall that a young woman could walk the streets of Moscow at 2 in the morning unmolested under the Soviet Regime, we condemn (Continue Reading)

Many years ago I came out of my White liberal stupor and realized what was at the heart of the separate existence of White and (Continue Reading)

I am a private intellectual. A public intellectual is one who is widely known and publicized; an institutional intellectual is one affiliated with an institution (Continue Reading)

What is stupid? For us liberals, it’s the person who attacks an Iranian or Cuban because of something the Ayatollah or Castro did, being too (Continue Reading)

A major weakness in the arguments I hear about personal development is that the focus is always on success stories, the person with true grit (Continue Reading)

On reading the preface to a book of Haitian Kweyol poetry, I was a bit overwhelmed by the leftist, Marxist, revolutionary rhetoric. Anyone would be (Continue Reading)

The social studies classes at my school had students put on skits dramatizing the major features of a decade. I tried to attend these when (Continue Reading)

Lest you think I am “just” a fl teacher, let me remind you I worked 20 years as a social worker/counselor/therapist, 2 of which were (Continue Reading)

That darn book by Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Social Order, made me realize how many seminal works in anthropology I’ve had on my shelf (Continue Reading)

All this talk of same-sex marriage got me to thinking about my standard response when the issue comes up in conversation, which is that I’ve (Continue Reading)

When we try to understand how things got to be the way they are, we rely on our historians. Sadly, they come at their chosen (Continue Reading)

What is David Coleman’s point? Here’s another person telling us we don’t know what we’re doing and then he lets loose with the same small-minded (Continue Reading)

Not long ago on a listserv, someone questioned what I meant by the Puritan Ethic. This was in connection with teacher attitudes toward poverty. Recently, (Continue Reading)

I know it dark, but you have to understand that conservatives see themselves in the past in an inspirational way. If you are really old, (Continue Reading)

An example of something “I believe”. The word belief and its verb, believe, have become freighted with religious overtones even though belief requiring faith and (Continue Reading)

I’ve told the story often of the two teachers sitting in front of me at a fl meeting where someone was presenting something on tprs. (Continue Reading)

The great weakness of people who tell us evolution is “only a theory” is that they offer no alternative explanation for how we breed animals, (Continue Reading)

Some time ago I put an item on my blog in which I quoted several people saying that the difference in viewpoint between prescriptivists and (Continue Reading)

Reading about the debt ceiling fiasco with the Tea Party folks and reading about Reconstruction and the White South’s attempt to undo the Federal victory (Continue Reading)

Reading Francis Fukuyama’s new book, The Origins of Political Order, the comparisons to today are just too easy to make. A jumble of people latching (Continue Reading)

Pardon the cliched title. I want to go back to an entry from a couple of years ago but I can’t find it. I’m pretty (Continue Reading)

Response to Washington Post article on Zero tolerance It derives from a number of factors, including overworked and underresourced administrations, incompetent administrators, lawyers with no interest in (Continue Reading)