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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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To order Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
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and can be obtained by contacting,
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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. |
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Front Page |
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Editors Note: Dr.
Parkins’s Grandson, Breton W. Hinkle, passed away unexpectedly on Feb. 14,
2009. He leaves his wife Jen, parents
Ray and Susan Hinkle, sister, Gretchen Hinkle, Richard and Kathy Bourque,
Father and Mother in law, brother in laws Kevin and Brian and sister in law,
Kelly. He was a graduate of Michigan
State University. Bret was a United
States Marine and had faithfully served his country with honor and
distinction. He will be terribly
missed by family and friends. He was loved by all who knew him. He was
buried with military honors in Holland, MI. See Bret’s life story at
http://www.lifestorynet.com/memories/45526/ |
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GREAT LEAP! WHAT DIRECTION? Or has the so called “progressivism” pushed by the Democrat’s new elite of the 1970’s
led us down the wrong path? By Ivan W. Parkins
By the early 1960s major and significant political changes regarding
race and equal representation were already mandated by the U.S. Supreme
Court. The public school decisions of
1954 and 1955 were, as anyone then teaching American Constitutional Law could
see, little more than a gravestone for the already nearly buried “separation
in public facilities can be equal” doctrine. Several earlier, but more limited,
decisions made that outcome virtually certain. Then, in Baker v. Carr, 1962,
the Court extended it’s own jurisdiction in a direction, unequal and
gerrymandered districting, that assured greater equality in voting for
representatives.
The elections of 1960 would, as David Pietrusza notes in his recent
book on that subject, shape the Presidency for nearly two decades. In 1960, however, all of the top contenders
were identified mainly with the old system, in both the sources of their
strength and the major issues. That
alignment would not be seriously threatened until 1968, or changed until the
1970s.
But, the bitter conflict in Chicago in 1968, and Nixon’s record
setting popular plurality in 1972: followed, as they were by that President’s
forced resignation, suggest something closely akin to a coup. The Democrat’s push
floundered in the late 1970s. It was
substantially reversed by the twelve years (1981-92) of Reagan/ Bush
leadership. One thing that persisted
throughout was control of the House of Representatives by substantial to huge
Democrat majorities.
The Democrat majorities in the House, combined with Senate majorities
throughout the late 1970s, enacted several measures of a new “progressivism”
that are of major significance to our politics, even now. They repeatedly cut in half our aide to S.
Vietnam and forced our withdrawal from there; they supported a ban on DDT;
they passed the Communities Reinvestment Act (early source of our present
economic crisis); they restricted our intelligence and our military services;
and they assumed for themselves a greater role in the nation’s budgeting
process.
Meanwhile, prominent academics, previously great admirers of executive
leadership (under Democrat Presidents), became sworn enemies of ‘The
Imperial Presidency’ once that office fell into the hands of
leaders less friendly to academic political aspirations. Harvard Law supplied most of the key players in the
legal case against President Nixon;
Yale Law supplied the Clintons; Harvard |
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Letters To the Editor: U.S.NEWS,
2/21/94 Good News on Race: Thanks for John Leo’s excellent column “A
Sunny Side on Race” (January 24).
Unfortunately, the charge of racism has become one of the instruments
by which a new elite asserts its intellectual and moral superiority over
traditional America. Burgeoning numbers of “liberally educated” persons, plus
advances in communication, have provided opportunities for the new elite to
contend for power with old elites and popular majorities. Until that contest is resolved, the common
decency of most Americans is unlikely to prevail. “Ordinary politics,” in racial and other
important matters, is not an option. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 7/21/2000 Mr.
Owen’s piece contrasts with a less publicized story that
is well supported by statistics.
Suicide and homicide rates among young American civilians rose sharply
in the 1960s and ’70s.
That increase alone cost more lives than did combat in Vietnam. The total of youthful homicides and
suicides in those two decades was about three times our fatalities in military
combat. |
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MILITARY, MORBIDITY, MALARIA, AND THE MEDIA The ongoing Deceit of the “Information Media” By Ivan W. Parkins
Much of America’s post-WWII confusion, not just the ‘60s and ‘70s, can
be traced to our information media. By
publishing and exaggerating some aspects of issues while neglecting others,
the media have often given most of the public a distorted view of
reality. Let’s look at three
examples. One example is the view of
casualties, both our own and those of our enemy, in Vietnam. Another is domestic violence in the 1960s
and ‘70s. The third is malaria deaths
before and after DDT was banned. Those
were all very real events with substantial casualties, and with considerable
information on both sides now available.
Our media, and the public, demanded details of our military casualties
in Vietnam. Those casualties are now
individually recorded in stone on the monument in Washington. Errors, if any, are minor and
technical.
During that war our military, at first gave estimates of enemy
fatalities. Our media demanded body
counts, an impossibility where skirmishes and indirect fire, including bombing,
occurred in jungle. By the end of the
war our military estimated enemy losses at around 600,000. Critics of the war attack that as
exaggeration. Since then the enemy’s
own reports are approximately twice as high as our military had claimed. Those latter figures have had little media
notice.
Domestic violence in the 1960s and ‘70s was a major news item. Most of the emphasis was on anti-war and
racial protests, a few of which cost dozens of lives. Totals from such events are measured in the
hundreds. Then, in the early 1980s,
the National Center for Health Statistics published interesting figures on
domestic deaths, by age from Census groupings, and for various causes. One point of their report produced a small
news story, all but one age group had had falling death rates in the two
decades included. Deaths among 15 to
24 year olds rose. Vietnam, you
say? No these were domestic deaths
only. But, they exceeded those in
Vietnam! My extrapolations from tables not designed to feature such figures
show that just the increase of suicides and homicides among youths
domestically exceeded our losses from combat abroad. Wasn’t it grand to have so much agitation
for love and peace?
All of the above looks small beside the World Health Organization’s
reports of deaths from malaria, before and after the ban of DDT took
effect. Protecting our troops from
insect born diseases was the prime original use of DDT, and it is believed to
have saved thousands of lives. After
WWII, that chemical had been widely used, and deaths from what had long been
one of mankind’s greatest killers were declining rapidly. Then came Rachel Carson’s book SILENT
SPRING, and the charge (now disputed) that DDT was killing great numbers of
birds. Environmentalists secured a ban
on DDT. Precise figures are difficult
to assemble, but even allowing for large margins of error the increase in
malaria deaths, especially among the very young in remote Third World
countries, has been huge. It almost
certainly exceeds all of our combat deaths from wars since WWII, and it may
exceed the totals of such deaths among our enemies too!
Students in your teens and early twenties: avoid the military; become an
environmentalist! Our information
media, many of them, will then applaud your progressive attitudes and your
sensitivity! |
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THE ROAD TO DOMESTIC CONFLICT Or a short historical review of the emergent elite of the 1970’s By Ivan W. Parkins
Much of the conflict of the 1960s and 1970s has been little
understood, and is with us still. It
was primarily the struggle of an emergent elite for political dominance.
Following the Civil War of the 1860s, manufacturing and
finance displaced agriculture as the dominant economic element in America and
the one most influential in Washington.
The first half of the twentieth century, and two world wars,
established the government in
Washington as a truly national government with nationwide authority. But, industry and finance had grown
too. What was shaping up was a new
distribution of political influence or power among the sectors of our
society.
Prior to WWII the total enrollment in American higher education was
quite limited. Furthermore, many of
the colleges and universities still reflected their religious origins as they
began evolving into larger and more inclusive institutions. Often, they were overseen by boards of
directors notable chiefly for their prominence in local business. Meanwhile, a few of the larger and more
prestigious institutions had modeled themselves after European institutions,
with a classical emphasis. Faculty
members in those often prided themselves on their “freedom” from both
religious origins and the commercialism of
most American life. It
was especially the “Arts” faculties, and professionals from fields such as
law and journalism, that fostered and transmitted to students a militant and
separate attitude and a sense of superiority.
All of this was fed by The G. I. Bill, with huge increases in other
financing close behind. Also, in the
1950s, a particularly invasive and almost omnipresent new communications
technology, television, speeded and enlarged the warming stew. I. W. Parkins 032209 |