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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2008, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
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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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Inside This Issue
Front Page
Archive 2008
Archive 2009 Disassemble
the House The
Political Long View Media
Bias Book
Reviews War
and Their Costs Broken
Congress Dividing
America Dividing
America, Part two Disinformation,
Liberal Ideology The
Supreme Court and Judiciary Environmentalism
The
Presidency, Part One The
Presidency, Part Two Failure
of the People’s House The
Republic in Danger |
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MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE
GLORY OF . . . .? Only a few years late, a New Century,
promised by the 1960s and ‘70s, is blossoming in America. Thanks to the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now and its former officer Obama, its many
congressional funders, and the generous oversight, or overlook, provided by
traditional mass media, this nation will be free again! The millennia of human struggle against
moldering ethical and legal concepts is nearing victory. Someday is here, and we have overcome! No mere “City on a Hill,” America, the
truly humane, will usher in a lasting and world-wide era of peace. Equality and justice will prevail. A new miracle of chemistry will lift the
toll of death from malaria for millions of black babies. (We’ve
already saved millions of birds.)
Dirty and degrading technologies will fade away—succeeded by tall and
attractive windmills. (The cost may be a moderate number splattered of
birds.) Everyone will have a home, and live in
the sunshine. A new Age of Enlightenment is dawning! The requisite voting of the 2008
elections has already begun in the United States of America.
I.W. Parkins 10/08 |
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THE 2008 ELECTION Has the Democrat (Liberal) use of
race prejudiced the election? |
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Letter to: THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL, September 6, 2008 (not published) Professor Alan Brinkley’s THE
PARTY’S OVER, featured in WEEKEND JOURNAL, September 6-7, deserves a high
grade for the facts and trends summarized and a poor mark for the related
facts and trends neglected. Among the neglected are: In 1956 President Eisenhower,
reelected in a landslide, became the first President in American history to
have won office with a popular majority and to face a new Congress controlled
by the other party. The traditional partisan unity
of the three elected branches continued after that for Democrat Presidents
who won popular majorities, but for none of the several Republicans
(including landslide winners Nixon ‘72 and Reagan’ 84) – until George W. Bush
in 2004. Democrat Carter, winner by
50.1% in ’76, got larger congressional majorities, both houses, than any
Republican President has ever had.
Clinton, winner in ’92 with 43% of the popular vote, got larger
congressional majorities (’93-94) than any Republican President has had since
the 1920s. Clinton was also
distinguished by becoming the third President, since popular election of
Electors became common, to win two terms without a popular majority either
time. Since Franklin Roosevelt
entered the Presidency, Congress has shared the party of Republican
Presidents in only six years, and all of those were by narrow margins. My conclusions: without great
and somewhat balanced attention to both sides, as in most presidential races,
the party favored by the media of information, academic as well as
journalistic, dominates. Thus, the
House is now practically a Democrat precinct; the Senate leans Democrat;
Presidents, especially popular ones, are soon greatly diminished in office. I.W. Parkins, 90608 |
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VERY DANGEROUS PERSONS By Ivan W. Parkins Hitler was a very dangerous
person. He was an outspoken racist and
militarist; he was clearly responsible for death camps and military
operations that killed several tens of millions. And, he is not credited with any sign of
regretting those outcomes. So, how
would he feel if he could know that others, mostly anti-racist and
anti-militarist, have rivaled, perhaps exceeded, his genocides? And, their “accomplishment” is not even
widely noticed. That’s history. Our problem is do we now want people who
appear to be similar to those who secured the ban on DDT to control the
World’s largest economy and most powerful government? Certainly they will not emulate
Hitler. But, as the horrendous toll
from the DDT ban should warn us, the “good deeds” born of amateurish
enthusiasms are not guaranteed to have beautiful consequences. I fear Obama and his enthusiastic
following, for much the same reason that I insist we should remember to
compare Rachel Carson and her following with Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot as
Very Dangerous. Hitler promised and
produced change, much of it what he intended.
Carson’s most significant result was no doubt unintended. One reason for favoring leaders with
substantial records of service is that they are seldom Very Dangerous. They try to base changes upon the best of
what we have already. I spent the 1960s-“70s on college campuses in Florida,
North Carolina, and Michigan. I began
as a “liberal” Democrat and ended as a Republican, mostly because I began to
see many of my colleagues and students as dangerous people. In that period, there was an obvious
shift of political opinions from an historical basis to great emphasis upon
“relevance.” The latter being mostly a
matter of matching with the mass media, especially television. And, when that sort of emphasis is combined
with events by which white people, who pride themselves on their hatred of
racism, can then fail to acknowledge clearly, acts that contributed heavily
to the malaria deaths of millions of black babies, there is reason to fear
for our republic. It is too late for my life to be greatly
affected by the coming elections, but I will leave progeny. And I deeply
desire that they and their America will serve one another at least as well as
I and my America have. I will vote for John McCain and
Republicans. |
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WHO’S
WORD? --- WHO’S ELECTION? By Ivan W. Parkins How do
Democrats imply that Republicans are mainly responsible for both government
deficits and the state of our economy? Answer: A pro-Democrat
information system does not make clear the facts, available in any public
library, that, for the past forty years, Democrats have dominated most
Congresses, even under Republican Presidents. How do you
tag American conservatives with the “racist” label? Answer: They keep
secret (almost) the fact that liberal environmentalists, with their ban of
DDT, contributed to the malaria deaths of millions of black babies—perhaps
the greatest racial genocide in history. How do you
maintain that the Youth Rebellion of the ‘60s and ‘70s was humane and
progressive? Answer: They don’t do the math; population of
the youth group times the increase in violent deaths among them,
domestically, exceeded our combat deaths overseas in those decades. How do you
win the next election—maybe? Answer: Democrats
campaign against America’s recent history, as it has been represented
(falsely) in our Democrat leaning information media. |
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BETTER THAN
GROWING MONEY ON TREES!? Given an Internal Revenue Code that
already defies the intellectual grasp of almost everyone, why not add to it
one huge delusional graft? Most people
recognize that growing money on trees takes a good deal of skill and a lot of
hard work, but how many know that it is not easy to do it with the Internal
Revenue Code? Indeed, it does seem to
be possible for at least a few to do just that. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL this morning,
October 13, 2008, provides what may be THE legendary October surprise, an
editorial “Obama’s 95% Illusion.” The
illusory part, according to the Journal’s account, is that much of what Obama
calls “tax cuts” is actually just welfare or transfer payments made via
changes in the tax code. The “money tree” part of this is my
translation. It is the unlikely
prospect that, even disguised as a mere change in our tax code, a grand move
toward socialism will produce a major improvement in the economic well-being
of most Americans. I.W. Parkins 10/08 |
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IN 2008, A DOUBLE WHAMMY By Ivan W. Parkins Race appears to me as an especially
perverted issue in this year’s election.
Mostly, I believe that it obscures real issues of Barack Obama’s
talents and experience. One of my earliest impressions of Obama
was that in appearance and poise he resembled a black president of
student-body when I was first in the University of Chicago, just after WWII. A second impression was that he seemed to
have charms similar to those of Jock.
Jock was very African, and very black.
He was a pre-med student sponsored by my M.D. brother-in-law and was
present for several gatherings of our very white family. So far as I can recall, all members of our
family found him to be both interesting and intelligent company. My point with such personal things is to
try and establish why I reject, totally and with some malice, the frequent
implications of “liberals” that simple racial prejudice plays a major part in
the views of conservatives. I
sacrificed two of my first three teaching positions, partially at least,
because some of my “superiors” found me to be too liberal in matters of
race. In the third instance (1957), my
two-year contract in a southern university was not renewed, for reasons that
the dean refused to discuss. Much of the “liberal” response to Civil
Rights Laws in the 1960s was, I believe, selfish and malicious. Younger colleagues especially were inclined
to seek credits for rising above the bigots.
Mostly, they tried to blame earlier practices on a very broad range
of conservatives. This nation’s efforts to achieve real
social adjustments and unity were confused, if not thwarted, by the selfish
and vindictive attitudes of people, many of
whom had experienced little of the real problems. I contend that the ‘60s and ‘70s
attitudes have been hugely destructive in their effects. They contributed to an increase of domestic
violence, especially among young blacks, that exceeded our sacrifices in
military efforts abroad. The ban
obtained by environmentalists on DDT, has probably killed more blacks than
died in all the colonial and slavery violence of the past three centuries. For America, and especially blacks, recent
liberalism has been a double--whammy!
Liberals made integration and unity more difficult to accept and more
difficult for many whites to support. I.W.Parkins 1008 |