Soundings, July 1999

"Vice President Al Gore's speech to the Salvation Army on May 24 makes fascinating reading. It purports to be an explanation for why 'ordinary Americans' have been 'turned off to politics.' And it offers a cure. The cure is Christianity. . . . [As for the GOP:] At an intimate prayer breakfast for 1,300 people in Philadelphia last week, Elizabeth Dole confessed that she used to keep God 'neatly compartmentalized.' But now she has submitted to Him totally: 'It was time to submit my resignation as master of my own little universe—and God accepted my resignation. George W. Bush, meanwhile, talking to churchgoers in Houston recently, said that 'something was missing' in his life until an encounter with a Christian prophet enabled him to 'recommit my life to Jesus Christ.'" A.N. Wilson, "God as Running Mate," The New York Times, June 8, 1997.

"British educators have made a startling discovery—that boys like to read adventure stories. In fact, British Education Secretary David Blunkett is proposing that the National Curriculum guidelines include more classic adventure books. The radical idea that young males enjoy reading adventure stories is being put forward at a time when educators in England are concerned that boys lag behind girls in academic achievement.

"Indeed, test administered at the end of primary school show that, while 80 percent of the girls measure up to expected standards, fewer than two-thirds of boys do. Noted a senior government official in a BBC interview: "Robert Louis Stevenson is more likely to appeal to boys, and teachers should be aware of that. . . . The English have always been on the cutting edge." "Eureka!" The Women's Quarterly, Spring 1999.

"As many observers have written, multiculturalism/feminism is a true ideology of the sort defined by Kenneth Minogue in his book, Alien Powers. (I insist on merging them because, as James Kurth has cogently observed, the ethnic lobbies alone would be unable to intimidate American institutions were they not led by the powerful white professional feminist vanguage.) The ideologue clings to a holistic view of the world as an arena of power and conflict between oppressors and oppressed. The object of ideology is to unmask the oppressors and their tactics, raise the consciousness of the oppressed, overthrow the old order, and usher in a utopia ruled by the ideologues in the name of the oppressed. What the multiculturalist/feminist advocates want is precisely to overthrow the culture, hence they take the same view of scholarship as a communist or Nazi; that is, education, religion, art, and all other expressions of culture are mere superstructure, tools of indoctrination and control wielded by the ruling race, class, or [sex]. Culture to them is an artificial, malleable construct that is of no intrinsic importance except for its utility in the struggle for liberation.

Nor is that a paranoid canard, for all one need do is read the multiculralist/feminists' own words. Here is a sample from a journal article entitled 'Teaching History as Part of Diversity Studies," [American Behavioral Scientist, Nov.-Dec. 1996]. The title itself is instructive: cultural diversity is not one legitimate part of historical study, rather history is merely a part of diversity studies.

An interest in history is often hard to justify to today's students. . . .[But] history tells us which individuals and groups are legitimate and which played a role in creating America and in this way defines "us" and "them." . . . Educators also need to understand that the way we present history provides categories, perspectives, and frameworks according to which our students learn to group, order, structure, collect, analyze, understand, and evaluate so-called facts. . . . Students who have learned to use the categories of race, class, and gender [sic] are more likely to identify issues of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and class privilege in the present.

Walter McDougall, "An Ideological Agenda for History," Academic Questions, Winter 1998-99. U