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Ivan Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2008, All articles, text, web pages property of
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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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Page
2, Disassemble the House Page
3, Media Bias Page
4, Book Reviews Page
5, War and Their Costs Page
6, Broken Congress |
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Letter
to the editor; Morning Sun, 11/20/2004 Parker had correct assessment of what's wrong with
Democrats Kathleen Parker was "right on" with her
column in the Sunday, Nov. 14, edition, "Voters want sincerity, not fake
values." In 1968, a year that I voted for the Democrat
presidential candidate (my seventh and last instance of doing that), the
party split badly over the war in Vietnam. After losing that election,
party leaders chose Senator McGovern to head a reformation of their
"unfair" nominating process. Shortly before the next
nominating convention, THE U.S. NEWS on 6/12/72 reported a Gallup poll
disclosing some results of the changes. Of 13 categories (by region,
race, job, education and age), Senator McGovern was the choice of Democrat
voters in only one, those with more than four years of college.
Humphrey won 11 and tied with Wallace for the 13th. But the reformed
nominating process chose McGovern, who was an ex-professor and a Ph.D.
Nixon won that election by the largest popular plurality and one of the
largest majorities in our history. Since 1972, Democrat presidential successes have been
Carter, with 50.1 percent of the vote, and Clinton, the third man in our
history to win twice without a majority either time. (The other two
were also Democrats, Cleveland and Wilson.) Shouldn't that history offer to America's
self-anointed intellectual elite an alternative to blaming
"mindless" followers of traditional values for election failures? A foot note: Hubert Humphrey, whose nomination for
President in 1968, some people thought was so “unfair,” had led most opinion polls of Democrats in that
year . Most showed him getting about
two-thirds of those who identified with the party, about the same as his
initial delegate count in the Chicago Convention. I.W. Parkins 5/08 |
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Front Page |
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Dividing America By Ivan W. Parkins (The following article was originally published in the
Daily Times-News, 10/06/1971). You will notice some language usages at the
time which were acceptable, but currently are not used due to cultural
sensitivities.-Ed.) The Kerner Commission on civil disorders
in its final report stated that, “Our nation is moving toward two societies,
one black, one white – separate and unequal.”
That evaluation has been quoted again and again. Both the Johnson and the Nixon
Administrations have been castigated for a lack of enthusiasm in accepting
and implementing the report. The implication of the report and the
charge bluntly levied by a militant minority of Americans, is that racial
bigotry prevailing in the American public and intransigence existing in
American institutions makes reductions of our racial tensions unlikely. I am reminded that when I moved to
Michigan, just after the Detroit riots of 1967, the more specific prediction
, then popular in the press, was that more and bigger riots would soon
follow. I required one of my classes
to write a brief paper discussing the capacity of the American political
system to cope with the problem over the next five years. To my chagrin, I discovered that very few
of my own suggestions had been accepted by my students. Almost unanimously, they echoed predictions
of a holocaust borrowed from the news media. Arguing against “liberals” that a few
riots did not foreshadow a race war was a new role for me. I had moved from the South, where my
arguments were chiefly with segregationists, many of whom cited sporadic
violence and threats of violence as a reason why the civil rights movements
should be halted. Neither group seemed
to be aware that race relations during much of American history, especially
in the late nineteenth century, were more violent than during the recent
civil rights movement. Apparently, few
people considered race relations in the perspective of violence which
accompanied other great changes, such as the rise of labor unions. The violence of the civil rights
movement thus far has been moderate, when taken in the perspective of history
and considering the magnitude of the change.
Furthermore, there is growing
evidence of progress. Economic
gains, especially for the younger and more educated Negroes, are
substantial. Negro voting, and
successes in winning political offices, have multiplied. It is largely in the more subtle area of
white-black attitudes toward one another that some people still claim to find
bases for pessimism. Several major opinions polls in recent
years have produced results suggesting that white attitudes are less bigoted
and intransigent, and black expectations more moderate, than some journalists
and intellectuals would have us believe.
Recently, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research,
probably the foremost center in attitudinal survey in the world has published
confirmation that white and black attitudes are converging. The quiet progress of school
busing for integration purposes in most of the South is a visible refutation
of the pessimistic evaluations of our people and our institutions. The failure of most pessimists to support
their arguments with solid evidence does not mean that there is no racial
problem in America. Samuel Lubell’s Hidden Crisis in American Politics provides both reasons
for concern and some grounds for hope .
Lubell has been interviewing representative Americans in their homes
while too many other journalists and academics were populating the country
with Archie Bunkers, fictitious characters whose principal virtue is making
intellectuals feel smugly superior.
Lubell found, not attitudinal bigotry, but specific problems of
competition for housing and job opportunities, and fears for personal safety
to be the roots of tension. He
attributed much of this to population mobility (southern farms to northern
cities, cities to suburbs). Such
material problems pose difficult problems to American society; they do not
imply degeneracy in the American character. Senator Fred Harris, himself a member of
the Kerner Commission, referred in LOOK magazine (3/18/1969) to racism as
“the number one mental health problem in America.” Considering the failure of attitudinal
surveys to support such evaluations, it is fair to inquire whether views such
as those of Harris may not be both and impediment to racial understanding and
an additional major cause of division in America. |
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Institutional
Bias Some decades ago, I pointed out to my American Government
classes that the text we were using (the one most widely used in American
colleges) gave very different treatments to two ex-governors who had recently
been nationally prominent. Otto
Kerner, Democrat of Illinois, headed a commission that investigated urban
violence and became famous for the statement that: “American is dividing into
two nations, one black and one white, separate and unequal. Kerner was appointed Judge of a U.S. Court
of Appeals. Our text treated Kerner
and his work quite favorably. Vice President Agnew, Republican, and
former Governor of Maryland, had made several public statements very critical
of mass media new treatments and of campus demonstrations. The text treated him much more severely. Soon after, both men were charged with
corruption felonies committed during the times that they had been
governors. Agnew was forced to resign
the Vice Presidency, accepted a plea bargain, and went to prison. Kerner pled “not guilty” to more than a
dozen charges, was convicted of them all, and also went to prison. Kerner’s was a first for Judges of the U.S.
Court of Appeals. On matters of race relations there was
some room for debate. Regarding equal
treatment for high ranking white officials, the publicity at least, was not
equal. How much of recent confusion vis-à-vis
racial matters is actually, a product of the same disinformation system that
evaluated Kerner and Agnew so differently?
Also, the late Senator Daniel Moynihan noted at the Kerner Commission
had delayed publication of its own racial attitudes survey; it did not fit
with the Commission’s conclusion. I.W.
Parkins, 5/08 |
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Ahead of the Curve, My History in Institutional Bias by Ivan W. Parkins From 1948 to 1955, I was an instructor in
the political science department of the University of Akron. Our department head was also Director of a,
two-semester required “Introduction to Social Science”. It was not popular with students and
Professor Sherman, who had done most of the work including the lecturing
himself, was tired of it. He allowed
me to take over nearly everything, including selecting text material, lecturing
and examining. One element that I
inserted was a week of study on American race relations, it’s history, trends
and continuing problems. That, and
some other issues, produced criticism by the Dean. I responded by citing my sources for the
racial portions, but was interrupted.
He was not questioning the material, he said, but such a topic was
“too mature’ for young college students.
The course and I were both replaced by the University. In the early 1960’s at Jacksonville
University, where I had become a tenured professor. I engaged, with the
President’s approval, in public discussions and debates of several
controversial subjects. Race was
probably the most heated one. My
continuance and pay there, along with those of other faculty, were approved
for 1962-3 by a mere majority of the board of trustees. And, that was after my three administrative
superiors bet their jobs on it; also, after I had twice been interviewed by
lawyers representing members of the board.
When I learned that all three of the administrators were leaving, I
left too. For me, being a little “ahead of the
curve” on matters of race was not a key to success. |
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Dividing America, Progressive Taxation By Ivan W. Parkins Another of the greatest sources of social
division in America, both historically and now, is differences between rich
and poor. Actually, American society
is unusual for the now well-documented evidence of large and rapid changes as
individuals move from one economic level to another- mainly upward, but also
some down. And most opinion polls do
not show massive dissatisfaction with that system. Meanwhile, recent national economic
studies, both here and abroad, demonstrate that cuts in taxes, especially
those on gains from investments made in the economy, usually produce
additions to both the total economy and to government revenue. It is revealing therefore, that so
many of our politicians, especially leading Democrats favor tax
increases. Senator Obama has even
commented that, regardless of economic merit, higher taxation of wealth is
needed for reasons of justice. I was
once a supporter of such taxation, but for reasons that I
believed to be, mainly, economic. In
today’s America, I can only view such a policy as crudely judgmental and
divisive. Coming from a candidate for
the Presidency, especially from one claiming to be a unifier, I regard it as blatantly naïve and/or
deceptive. |
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Establishment Clause Ideological Applications I agree with
Theodore Roosevelt that when businesses or laborers combine into vast
organizations it becomes the duty of government to see that they do not
overpower small organizations and individuals. By a somewhat similar line of reasoning, I
approve of the First Amendment’s ban on establishment of a religion. But, I also note that today, many
educational, journalistic, and political action organizations are both huge
and aggressive. Furthermore, some of
them foster ideological indoctrination that is not much different in its
general nature from that of traditional churches. Shouldn’t the Establishment Clause, as well
as those words that guarantee free speech, press, etc, be applied to
ideological organizations that claim not to be religious? |
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(The
following “Letter to the Editor” appeared in the St. Petersburg Times, Jan.
1997, and is a part of an ongoing illustration of the “Dividing of America”
series of articles published over the last 40 years-Ed.) Fearing the Future By Ivan Parkins To John Tierney’s excellent discussion, “Futurephobia”, the
Times, Dec. 29, I would add two points of interpretation and one possible
conclusion. First, intellectuals, especially
the more literary types, have experienced in the 20th Century a technological
displacement similar to that which the advent of photography visited upon
painters a few decades earlier. Until
quite recently, most of humanity had little contact with the world beyond
those communities in which they lived.
With few exceptions, literacy and a literate minority held the keys to
knowledge of the larger world. But, in
this century, public education, easy travel and population mobility, plus
television and other burgeoning communication technologies, are depriving the
literary intelligentsia of much of their once exclusive status-even
as they gain wider audiences for their ideas. Second, the revolution in communication
has encouraged in many people what I call a sophomoric illusion. When first made aware of a world in which
there are numerous unfamiliar hazards, we are all prone to believe that the
world is becoming more dangerous.
Further study will usually help us to recognize that it is our vision
and not the larger world that has changed most precipitously. But many of our literary and opinion
leaders encourage more passionate reactions rather than more careful
inquiries. Why is phobia regarding the future so
widespread? Does not a
literary-intellectual minority have a selfish interest in promoting fear of
the real world, a world in which knowledge is increasingly available, and
from a widening variety of sources? |
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Dividing America (The following articles are part of
an ongoing series addressing the divisive nature of Democrat policies over
the last few decades) |