Okay, using "you" in that sentence instead of "one" was clearly a bad idea, since it does seem to have given the impression that I was getting personal, and I regret that, because it wasn't what I was trying to do.
The point I was trying to make about the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections was that there was more going on there than the simple reductionist argument about racist Southern white Democrats suddenly changing parties and voting for Nixon would have you believe. Yes, there was a link back to the Wikipedia article, since your argument seems to have become the conventional wisdom, but it doesn't invalidate my main point, which is that both elections were primarily about the Vietnam War and domestic law & order questions. Good luck finding anything in Nixon's record or campaign speeches to indicate that he supported segregation; you won't find it.
As for states' rights, yeah, they've unfortunately become confused with segregation, but there are powers reserved to the states under the Constitution, and is it wrong to be concerned about the Federal government encroaching on those? I'm not trying to defend segregation, mind you. I'm just objecting to it being equated with the term states' rights.
Fonda's a non sequitur, unless you're trying to tell me Byrd has made public apologies for the racist spew he's on the record as having said and written in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. I acknowledge that Fonda probably did do some good to some troops during the war, but the harm she did to the POWs in North Vietnam is a matter of public record as well. How do you balance the one against the other? I don't know.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but sympathy for the teachers in Minneapolis and St. Paul who are trying to teach without the authority to enforce meaningful discipline. It's damn near impossible, especially when the most experienced teachers can duck out to the quieter schools and leave the rookies to take on the tough situations. I lived in Minneapolis the first 20 years that I was here and grew all too familiar with the MPS system. The fact is that the administration works for a school board that's basically elected at the DFL primary, and Education Minnesota (formerly the AFT in Mpls) calls the shots. You won't find too many candidates they don't endorse making it through the primary. Most of the people in my certification classes are substitutes or teachers from other states, so I have a pretty good idea what goes on in a wide spectrum of the public schools. Based on what I hear from my classmates and what I saw in Minneapolis while my kids were in MPS schools, the best thing they could do with those schools is close them down in accordance with NCLB and start all over from ground zero, because as things are now, those schools don't work.
Re: Race, history, and NCLB
The point I was trying to make about the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections was that there was more going on there than the simple reductionist argument about racist Southern white Democrats suddenly changing parties and voting for Nixon would have you believe. Yes, there was a link back to the Wikipedia article, since your argument seems to have become the conventional wisdom, but it doesn't invalidate my main point, which is that both elections were primarily about the Vietnam War and domestic law & order questions. Good luck finding anything in Nixon's record or campaign speeches to indicate that he supported segregation; you won't find it.
As for states' rights, yeah, they've unfortunately become confused with segregation, but there are powers reserved to the states under the Constitution, and is it wrong to be concerned about the Federal government encroaching on those? I'm not trying to defend segregation, mind you. I'm just objecting to it being equated with the term states' rights.
Fonda's a non sequitur, unless you're trying to tell me Byrd has made public apologies for the racist spew he's on the record as having said and written in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. I acknowledge that Fonda probably did do some good to some troops during the war, but the harm she did to the POWs in North Vietnam is a matter of public record as well. How do you balance the one against the other? I don't know.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but sympathy for the teachers in Minneapolis and St. Paul who are trying to teach without the authority to enforce meaningful discipline. It's damn near impossible, especially when the most experienced teachers can duck out to the quieter schools and leave the rookies to take on the tough situations. I lived in Minneapolis the first 20 years that I was here and grew all too familiar with the MPS system. The fact is that the administration works for a school board that's basically elected at the DFL primary, and Education Minnesota (formerly the AFT in Mpls) calls the shots. You won't find too many candidates they don't endorse making it through the primary. Most of the people in my certification classes are substitutes or teachers from other states, so I have a pretty good idea what goes on in a wide spectrum of the public schools. Based on what I hear from my classmates and what I saw in Minneapolis while my kids were in MPS schools, the best thing they could do with those schools is close them down in accordance with NCLB and start all over from ground zero, because as things are now, those schools don't work.