Critical Mass

On the political forums of my school network reside some of the most idiotic, unthinking people that academia has likely ever had the pleasure to educate. Take the following example: One student (we'll call him Joe) asserted that "North Korea is a horrible place"--not something anyone but Kim Jong-ill would disagree with, right? Not quite. Another student looked up the domestic violence stats of Joe's hometown and observed that there were 35 complaints of domestic violence this week. His conclusion:

be careful with your blanket statements. Korea has far less domestic violence than America. As an ICS [Inter-Cultural Studies] major you should realize that I am at college to learn how to educate the racially naieve [sic] and work on eliminating problems related to statements like that.

Later on he wonders whether Joe's "value for others and their cultural heritage is close to nonexistent." Um, there are about a million reasons why North Korea is a decidedly worse place than the U.S. Fortunately there were some other people on the forums that day who could form a coherent, rational argument, and they set the guy straight.

To quote C.S. Lewis' Digory Kirke: "What are they teaching in these schools?"
 

Frank A. Schaeffer, co-author of the book AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes From Military Service - and How It Hurts Our Country, has a column in the New York Daily News about the absence of upper class citizens' children in Iraq.  Well educated or not, Schaeffer says, Kerry's botched joke was correct in the sense that "The rich and powerful - Democrats and Republicans alike - just don't send their children to war anymore. And the price we pay for them sitting on the sidelines is far greater than either party is willing to admit."  Schaeffer elaborates:

Just how deep is the divide? The number of congressmen and congresswomen who are veterans themselves is about one-third of what it was a generation ago, and almost none have children in uniform. In the 1950s, about half the graduating classes of the Ivy Leagues served - while today less than one-third of 1% do. Military recruitment programs are virtually invisible on elite college campuses.

Schaeffer argues that mandatory military service might fix the problem, but something needs to be done to get upper class kids in there:

The point is that, just as we cannot expect our public schools to magically improve when everyone in power has an escape hatch, we cannot expect our military strategy to be smart, effective and responsive when men and women in uniform are always political pawns - and almost never members of the family.

The Washington Times reported Saturday that a federal judge dismissed the case against the Academy "that contended evangelical Christian values were illegally pushed on Air Force Academy cadets."  However, this row mostly likely isn't over:

U.S. District Judge James A. Parker said the academy graduates who filed suit could not claim their First Amendment rights were violated because they no longer attended the academy.
Moreover, the judge in Albuquerque, N.M., said the group failed to give specific examples of which cadets were harmed or when. 

So now we'll just have to wait for some currently enrolled cadet to start a case, and this whole thing will get picked up again.