sábado, 17 de maio de 2014

Segregacao escolar nos EUA: 60 anos de uma decisao da Suprema Corte

Ao adotar esse ruling, em 1954, a Suprema Corte corrigia seu erro monumental de mais ou menos 60 anos antes.
Leiam toda a matéria, para vocês terem consciência do horror que foi a segregação oficial nos EUA, nos estados e mesmo na União.
Depois desse ruling, dois estados do Sul declararam que preferiam acabar com as escolas públicas a terminar com a segregação, tal o ódio das populações brancas contra os negros.
Não surpreende, assim, que os negros tenham desenvolvido uma cultura particular, separada e à parte da cultura geral da sociedade americana, majoritariamente branca e protestante.
Esse tipo de Apartheid mental nunca existiu no Brasil.
Mas os militantes negros estão se esforçando para criá-lo no Brasil. Com a ajuda do governo federal.
Ambos racistas, a favor do Apartheid racial.
Uma vergonha...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

On This Day: May 17

The New York Times, May 17, 2014
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, which declared that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal.
Go to article »

High Court Bans School Segregation; 9-to-0 Decision Grants Time to Comply



1896 Ruling Upset

'Separate but Equal' Doctrine Held Out of Place in Education

By LUTHER A. HUSTON
Special to The New York Times
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Washington, May 17 -- The Supreme Court unanimously outlawed today racial segregation in public schools.
Chief Justice Earl Warren read two opinions that put the stamp of unconstitutionality on school systems in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia where segregation is permissive or mandatory.
The court, taking cognizance of the problems involved in the integration of the school systems concerned, put over until the next term, beginning October, the formulation of decrees to effectuate its 9-to-0 decision.
The opinions set aside the 'separate but equal' doctrine laid down by the Supreme Court in 1896.
"In the field of public education," Chief Justice Warren said, "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
He stated the question and supplied the answer as follows:
"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does."
States Stressed Rights
The court's opinion does not apply to private schools. It is directed entirely at public schools. It does not affect the "separate but equal doctrine" as applied on railroads and other public carriers entirely within states that have such restrictions.
The principal ruling of the court was in four cases involving state laws. The states' right to operate separated schools had been argued before the court on two occasions by representatives of South Carolina, Virginia, Kansas and Delaware.
In these cases, consolidated in one opinion, the high court held that school segregation deprived Negroes of "the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment."
The other opinion involved the District of Columbia. Here schools have been segregated since Civil War days under laws passed by Congress.
"In view of our decision that the Constitution prohibits the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools," the Chief Justice said, "it would be unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government.
"We hold that racial segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia is a denial of the due process of law guaranteeing by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution."
The Fourteenth Amendment provides that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Fifth Amendment says that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
The seventeen states having mandatory segregation are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Kansas, New Mexico, Arizona and Wyoming have permissive statutes, although Wyoming never has exercised it.
South Carolina and Georgia have announced plans to abolish public schools if segregation were banned.
Although the decision with regard to the constitutionality of school segregation was unequivocal, the court set the cases down for reargument in the fall on questions that previously were argued last December. These deal with the power of the court to permit an effective gradual readjustment to school systems not based on color distinctions.
Other questions include whether the court itself should formulate detailed decrees and what issues should be dealt with. Also whether the cases should be remanded to the lower courts to frame decrees, and what general directions the Supreme Court should give the lesser tribunals if this were done.
Cases Argued Twice
The cases first came to the high court in 1952 on appeal from rulings of lower Federal courts, handed down in 1951 and 1952. Arguments were heard on Dec. 9-10, 1952.
Unable to reach a decision, the Supreme Court ordered rearguments in the present term and heard the cases for the second time on Dec. 7-8 last year.
Since then, each decision day has seen the courtroom packed with spectators awaiting the ruling. That was true today, though none except the justices themselves knew it was coming down. Reporters were told before the court convened that it "looked like a quiet day."
Three minor opinions had been announced, and those in the press room had begun to believe the prophesy when Banning E. Whittington, the court's press information officer, started putting on his coat.
"Reading of the segregation decisions is about to begin in the court room," he said. "You will get the opinions up there."
The courtroom is one floor up, reached by a long flight of marble steps. Mr. Whittington led a fast moving exodus. In the court room, Chief Justice Warren had just begun reading.
Each of the Associate Justices listened intently. They obviously were aware that no court since the Dred Scott decision of March 6, 1857, had ruled on so vital an issue in the field of racial relations.
Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom on the ground that he had lived in a territory where slavery was forbidden. The territory was the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase, from which slavery was excluded under the terms of the Missouri Compromise.
The Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott was not a citizen who had a right to sue in the Federal courts, and that Congress had no constitutional power to pass the Missouri Compromise.
Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer who led the fight for racial equality in the public schools, predicted that there would be no disorder and no organized resistance to the Supreme Court's dictum.
He said that the people of the South, the region most heavily affected, were law-abiding and would not "resist the Supreme Court."
Association Calls Meetings
Mr. Marshall said that the state presidents of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, would meet next week-end in Atlanta to discuss further procedures.
The Supreme Court adopted two of the major premises advanced by the Negroes in briefs and arguments presented in support of their cases.
Their main thesis was that segregation, of itself, was unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted July 28, 1868, was intended to wipe out the last vestige of inequality between the races, the Negro side argued.
Against this, lawyers representing the states argued that since there was no specific constitutional prohibition against segregation in the schools, it was a matter for the states, under their police powers, to decide.
The Supreme Court rejected the "states rights" doctrine, however, and found all laws ordering or permitting segregation in the schools to be in conflict with the Federal Constitution.
The Negroes also asserted that segregation had a psychological effect on pupils of the Negro race and was detrimental to the educational system as a whole. The court agreed.
"Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments," Chief Justice Warren wrote. "Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education in our democratic society. It is the very foundation of good citizenship.
"In these days it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, must be made available to all on equal terms."
As to the psychological factor, the high court adopted the language of a Kansas court in which the lower bench held:
"Segregation with the sanction of the law, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system."
1896 Doctrine Demolished
The "separate but equal" doctrine, demolished by the Supreme Court today, involved transportation, not education. It was the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, decided in 1896. The court then held that segregation was not unconstitutional if equal facilities were provided for each race.
Since that ruling six cases have been before the Supreme Court, applying the doctrine to public education. In several cases, the court has ordered the admission to colleges and universities of Negro students on the ground that equal facilities were not available in segregated institutions.
Today, however, the court held the doctrine inapplicable under any circumstances to public education.
This means that the court may extend its ruling from primary and secondary schools to include state-supported colleges and universities. Two cases involving Negroes who wish to enter white colleges in Texas and Florida are pending before the court.
The question of "due process," also a clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, had been raised in connection with the state cases as well as the District of Columbia.
The High Court held, however, that since it had ruled in the state cases that segregation was unconstitutional under the "equal protection" clause, it was unnecessary to discuss "whether such segregation also violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."
However, the "due process" clause of the Fifth Amendment was the core of the ruling in the District of Columbia case. "Equal protection" and "due process," the court noted, were not always interchangeable phrases.
Liberty Held Deprived
"Liberty under law extends to the full range of conduct which an individual is free to pursue, and it cannot be restricted except for a proper governmental objective," Chief Justice Warren asserted.
"Segregation in public education is not reasonably related to any proper governmental objective, and thus it imposes on Negro children of the District of Columbia a burden that constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of their liberty in violation of the due process clause."
Two principal surprises attended the announcement of the decision. One was its unanimity. There had been reports that the court was sharply divided and might not be able to get an agreement this term. Very few major rulings of the court have been unanimous.
The second was the appearance with his colleagues of Justice Robert H. Jackson. He suffered a mild heart attack on March 30. He left the hospital last week-end and had not been expected to return to the bench this term, which will end on June 7.
Perhaps to emphasize the unanimity of the court, perhaps from a desire to be present when the history-making verdict was anounced, Justice Jackson was in his accustomed seat when the court convened.

Adolfo Sachsida: um homem de opinioes: aqui uma Grande Opiniao, com a qual concordo...

Adolfo Sachsida, um economista de Brasília, que conto entre meus amigos, é um homem de opiniões, tanto que seu blog tem exatamente esse nome: Adolfo Sachsida - Opiniões.
Dentre as frases do frontspício, esta de Edmund Burke, o pai dos conservadores:

"A única condição para o triunfo do mal é que os homens de bem não façam nada." (Edmund Burke).

E esta outra, logo em seguida, de um famoso liberal inglês:

"E, lembre-se, quando se tem uma concentração de poder em poucas mãos, freqüentemente homens com mentalidade de gangsters detêm o controle. A história provou isso. Todo o poder corrompe: o poder absoluto corrompe absolutamente.”
(Lord Acton).


Não me considero um conservador, sequer um liberal, pois sou absolutamente contrário a qualquer rótulo, classificações pré-estabelecidas, ou categorias estanques, dessas que se reúnem em clubes, tribos, partidos, agremiações, enfim, associações fechadas, pois não pretendo pertencer a nenhuma delas.
Mas tenho convicções explícitas, todas a favor das liberdades, da livre iniciativa, contra o Estado opressor, contra os gangsters que ocupam a política, agora e talvez no futuro, se não nos mobilizarmos contra a máfia que domina a política brasileira.
Por isso concordo inteiramente com ele, na opinião abaixo transcrita.
Não apenas concordo, como atuo de modo consequente. Nunca escondi de ninguém o que pensava, aliás desde o início deste governo celerado, amigo das ditaduras, fraudador da verdade histórica, mentiroso quanto a seus objetivos últimos, enganador da maioria dos brasileiros. Paguei um alto preço por isso. Mas estou em paz com minha consciência, algo inútil para certas pessoas.
Aqui segue uma GRANDE OPINIÃO.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

SEXTA-FEIRA, 2 DE MAIO DE 2014

Papai, é verdade que se você ficasse quieto ganharia mais?

Blog do Adolfo Sachsida
Hoje minha filha me surpreendeu com essa pergunta "Papai, é verdade que se você ficasse quieto ganharia mais?".

Foi uma conversa importante, expliquei a minha filha que na vida existem valores inegociáveis. Expliquei a ela que todos temos obrigações morais, e quanto mais capazes somos maiores são tais responsabilidades. Mostrei a ela o desastre que foi o nazismo, e se ela iria querer que o papai se calasse caso vivesse naquela época. Menina inteligente, ela logo concluiu que no Brasil atual muitos estão deixando de trabalhar e de estudar para aderir ao puxa-saquismo, ao discurso fácil e que agrada os que estão no poder.

Sim minha filha, papai ganharia mais dinheiro se ficasse calado. Mas esse silêncio seria comprado a custa de um futuro pior para nosso país. Um futuro que reconheceria cada vez mais a filiação partidária, e não o mérito. Futuro esse que nenhum pai em sã consciência quer deixar a seu filho.

Não minha filha, papai não ganharia mais se ficasse calado. Dinheiro nenhum desse mundo pode pagar o sacrifício da próxima geração. Dinheiro nenhum desse mundo pode pagar a vergonha de deixar a você um pais pior do que recebi de meu pai. Dinheiro algum pode pagar um pai que vende sua alma para deixar de presente o inferno na terra para seu filho.

Sei que muitos colegas leem meu blog, e sei que vários de vocês tem filhos. Hoje minha filha me fez essa pergunta, e tivemos uma conversa agradável e honrosa. Sabe o que realmente me assusta? Me assustaria se minha filha tivesse perguntado "Papai, o que você fez para impedir que o mérito fosse substituído pelo partido? Onde você estava? Por que se calou? Você se calou frente a injustiça apenas para ganhar mais?".

Sabe amigos, alguns de vocês irão ouvir isso de seus filhos. Tem certeza de que vale a pena? Eu fiz a minha escolha.

A India sob nova direcao: vai dar certo? - Le Monde

En Inde, les défis qui attendent Narendra Modi

Le Monde.fr | Par 
Narendra Modi est assuré de devenir le prochain premier ministre indien, à l'issue des législatives qui se sont tenues du 7 avril au 12 mai.

Narendra Modi, le leader du parti nationaliste hindou est en passe de devenir le nouveau premier ministre de l'Inde.

Son parti, le Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a remporté une victoire écrasante au terme de « la plus grande élection du monde », qui a mobilisé près de 551 millions d'électeurs après cinq semaines de vote, du 7 avril au 12 mai. Son triomphe met fin à la dynastie usée de Manmohan Singh et le parti du Congrès, au pouvoir depuis dix ans. 
  • Qui est Narendra Modi ?
A la tête du BJP, le parti du peuple indien donné vainqueur selon les premiers décomptes effectués vendredi 16 mai, Narendra Modi s’apprête à remporter une victoire écrasante aux législatives. Son parti dépasserait la majorité absolue des 272 sièges sur 543 à la chambre basse du parlement, la « Lok Sabha ».
Modi est issu d’une famille pauvre de la communauté des ghanchis, groupe hindoue située au bas de l’échelle sociale. Adepte du yoga et végétarien strict, il a été imprégné de l'idéologie nationaliste hindoue lors de sa jeunesse passée au sein du Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), une organisation aux méthodes paramilitaires.
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Le RSS, qui défend une conception intransigeante de l’hindouisme, a été interdit plusieurs fois depuis l'indépendance et ses cadres font souvent preuve d'hostilité envers les musulmans, la plus grande minorité religieuse de l’Inde (14 % de lapopulation, contre 80 % d’hindous).
Lire notre portrait de Narendra Modi, hindou à l'extrême ?
  • Pourquoi une victoire aussi nette ?
Face à l'arrogance des élites, Modi représente l'homme du peuple s'imposant par son seul labeur. Sa campagne repose essentiellement sur le bilan économique de son Etat du Gujarat, grâce auquel il s'est constitué une force de soutien chez les entrepreneurs et les chefs des grandes entreprises, leur promettant de relancerl'économie tout en réduisant la corruption.
Au-delà des nationalistes hindous, il a aussi rallié les classes moyennes et une partie des plus pauvres qui votaient traditionnellement pour le Congrès et ses programmes sociaux.
En face, le jeune candidat du Parti du Congrès, Rahul Gandhi, héritier de la dynastie Nehru-Gandhi, a subi une défaite cuisante en payant par les votes son manque de charisme et d’expérience, usé par des scandales de corruption à répétition et incapable de relancer la croissance du pays. La victoire du parti nationaliste marque donc un profond changement et une « nouvelle ère » après dix ans de pouvoir du Parti du Congrès.
  • Pourquoi inspire-t-il des inquiétudes ?
A 63 ans, Narendra Modi incarne l'aile dure de son parti, suscitant la méfiance y compris dans son propre camp. Son arrivée au pouvoir fait d’ailleurs craindre une montée du nationalisme et la fin du pluralisme religieux, tout en ravivant le souvenirdes émeutes antimusulmanes orchestrées par des extrémistes hindous.
Le Parti du Congrès accuse notamment Narendra Modi de l’absence de réaction des forces de l’ordre dans les sanglantes émeutes intercommunautaires qui avaient secoué son Etat du Gujarat en 2002. Plus d'un millier de personnes, essentiellement des musulmans, avaient été tuées. L'Inde est officiellement un Etat laïc qui reconnaît et respecte toutes les religions, mais avec Modi au pouvoir, il faut s'attendre à ce que « l’hindouisation de l’Etat » s’accélère aux dépens des minorités religieuses.
  • Quels défis attendent le nouveau régime ?
Dans un contexte de ralentissement de la croissance économique – après une décennie à plus de 9 %, elle a atteint 4,6 % en 2013 – et de hausse des prix, Modi devra faire à de nombreux défis hérités de l’ancienne coalition : sur le plan économique, il aura d’abord la lourde tâche de relancer la machine économique en espérant que son passé de dirigeant nationaliste hindou controversé ne la mette pas en péril.
Lire notre enquête (en édition abonnés) : Narendra Modi, une énigme indienne
Il héritera également de problèmes en matière de politique étrangère, notamment avec le Pakistan, dont le premier ministre Nawaz Sharif a pourtant salué sa« victoire impressionnante ».
Depuis leur indépendance en 1947, l'Inde et le Pakistan se sont affrontés à trois reprises, notamment pour le contrôle du Cachemire, région himalayenne revendiquée par les deux puissances voisines désormais dotées de l’armenucléaire.
Les relations entre les deux pays s'étaient encore détériorées après l'attaque contre un grand hôtel de Bombay en 2008 qui avait fait 166 morts, l'Inde imputant cette tragédie à des islamistes armés pakistanais.
Le décryptage du chercheur Christophe Jaffrelot : L'Inde face au péril nationaliste
Après plusieurs années de boycott par l’Europe et étant lui-même interdit de visa aux Etats-Unis, Modi devra enfin éclaircir ses relations avec l’Occident : convenance diplomatique oblige, l'arrivée de Narendra Modi au pouvoir devrait lui valoirfélicitations et promesses de coopération de la part des Etats-Unis comme de l’Europe, qui ne peut s'autoriser à bouder le nouveau dirigeant de ce poids lourd d'Asie du Sud, économie émergente de 1,2 milliard d'habitants.

O americano medio ja cansou de guerras? - Ron Paul (Mises Institute)


Why They Hate Peace
by Ron Paul 
Mises Institute, May 17, 2014

[Editor’s Note: This is a selection from the last chapter of Ron Paul’s A Foreign Policy of Freedom.]

The most succinct statement about how governments get their people to support war came from Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials after World War II:
Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
It is rather frightening that a convicted Nazi war criminal latched onto an eternal truth!
It should be harder to promote war, especially when there are so many regrets in the end. In the last 60 years, the American people have had little say over decisions to wage war. We have allowed a succession of presidents and the United Nations to decide when and if we go to war, without an express congressional declaration as the Constitution mandates.
Since 1945, our country has been involved in over 70 active or covert foreign engagements. On numerous occasions we have provided weapons and funds to both sides in a conflict. It is not unusual for our so-called allies to turn on us and use these weapons against American troops. In recent decades we have been both allies and enemies of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and the Islamists in Iran. And where has it gotten us? The endless costs resulting from our foolish policies, in human lives, injuries, tax dollars, inflation, and deficits, will burden generations to come. For civilization to advance, we must reduce the number of wars fought. Two conditions must be met if we hope to achieve this.
First, all military (and covert paramilitary) personnel worldwide must refuse to initiate offensive wars beyond their borders. This must become a matter of personal honor for every individual. Switzerland is an example of a nation that stands strongly prepared to defend herself, yet refuses to send troops abroad looking for trouble.
Second, the true nature of war must be laid bare, and the glorification must end. Instead of promoting war heroes with parades and medals for wars not fought in the true defense of our country, we should more honestly contemplate the real results of war: death, destruction, horrible wounds, civilian casualties, economic costs, and the loss of liberty at home.
The neoconservative belief that war is inherently patriotic, beneficial, manly, and necessary for human progress must be debunked. These war promoters never send themselves or their own children off to fight.
Some believe economic sanctions and blockades are acceptable alternatives to invasion and occupation. But these too are acts of war, and those on the receiving end rarely capitulate to the pressure. More likely they remain bitter enemies, and resort to terrorism when unable to confront us in a conventional military fashion.
Inflation, sanctions, and military threats all distort international trade and hurt average people in all countries involved, while usually not really hurting the targeted dictators themselves. Our bellicose approach encourages protectionism, authoritarianism, militant nationalism, and go-it-alone isolationism. Our government preaches free trade and commerce, yet condemns those who want any restraints on the use of our military worldwide. We refuse to see how isolated we have become. Our loyal allies are few, and while the UN does our bidding only when we buy the votes we need, our enemies multiply. A billion Muslims around the world now see the US as a pariah.
Our military is more often used to protect private capital overseas, such as oil and natural resources, than it is to protect our own borders. Protecting ourselves from real outside threats is no longer the focus of defense policy, as globalists become more influential inside and outside our government.
The weapons industry never actually advocates killing to enhance its profits, but a policy of endless war and eternal enemies benefits it greatly. Some advocate cold war strategies, like those used against the Soviets, against the unnamed “terrorists.” It’s good for business!
Many neoconservatives are not bashful about this:

Thus, paradoxically, peace increases our peril, by making discipline less urgent, encouraging some of our worst instincts, and depriving us of some of our best leaders. The great Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke knew whereof he spoke when he wrote a friend, “Everlasting peace is a dream, not even a pleasant one; war is a necessary part of God’s arrangement of the world. ... Without war the world would deteriorate into materialism.” As usual, Machiavelli dots his i’s and crosses the t’s: it’s not just that peace undermines discipline and thereby gives the destructive vices greater sway. If we actually achieved peace, “Indolence would either make (the state) effeminate or shatter her unity; and two things together, or each by itself, would be the cause of her ruin ...” This is Machiavelli’s variation on a theme by Mitterrand: the absence of movement is the beginning of defeat. (Michael Ledeen, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership)

Those like Ledeen who approvingly believe in “perpetual struggle” generally are globalists, uninterested in national sovereignty and borders. True national defense is of little concern to them. That’s why military bases are closed in the United States regardless of their strategic value, while several new bases are built in the Persian Gulf, even though they provoke our enemies to declare jihad against us. The new Cold War justifies everything.
War, and the threat of war, are big government’s best friend. Liberals support big government social programs, and conservatives support big government war policies, thus satisfying two major special interest groups. And when push comes to shove, the two groups cooperate and support big government across the board — always at the expense of personal liberty. Both sides pay lip service to freedom, but neither stands against the welfare/warfare state and its promises of unlimited entitlements and endless war.
Note: The views expressed in Daily Articles on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Comment on this article. When commenting, please post a concise, civil, and informative comment. Comment Policy.

Dr. Ron Paul is a former member of Congress and a Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute. See Ron Paul's article archives.

Oliveira Lima: um salto nas estatisticas de visita deste blog; o que houve com ele?

Por acaso repassando estatísticas de visitas a temas deste blog, deparei-me com esta coisa surpreendente: centenas de clicks em torno do nome do nosso diplomata-historiador de um século atrás.
Não sei a que se deve este interesse repentino...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

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A Era dos Desconvites: o politicamente correto infesta as universidades americanas

Na verdade, mais o pensamento de esquerda, aqui chamado de ultra-liberal, do que propriamente politicamente correto, mas este é também afetado pela praga do multiculturalismo, do relativismo, do anti-Ocidentalismo, anti-imperialismo e outras bobagens.
Só falta chamarem o nosso colecionador de "horroris causae" para passar a fazer "commencement speeches" nas universidades americanas. Retrocesso mental atinge todo mundo...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 


After Protests, I.M.F. Chief Withdraws as Smith College’s Commencement Speaker


A week before she was to speak at theSmith College commencement,Christine Lagarde, chief of theInternational Monetary Fund, has withdrawn from the event, citing protests against her and the fund, the college said Monday.
Her withdrawal comes after Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, withdrew from speaking at the Rutgers University commencement in the face of protests against her role in Bush administration foreign policy, and weeks after Brandeis University rescinded its invitation to the rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at its commencement, after protests over her anti-Islam statements.
Such reversals have become more common in recent years, said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, referring to this time of year as “disinvitation season.” What has changed is not so much the protests themselves, but the willingness of colleges and speakers to give in, adding that many apparently voluntary withdrawals are made at the college’s urging.
For years, critics of the I.M.F. have charged that in providing economic aid to poor nations, it has imposed conditions that favor Western nations and businesses, and propped up oppressive governments.


“The I.M.F. has been a primary culprit in the failed developmental policies implanted in some of the world’s poorest countries,” said an online petitionagainst Ms. Lagarde’s appearance at Smith, a women’s college. “This has led directly to the strengthening of imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.”
In a statement posted online, Kathleen McCartney, the president of Smith, said Ms. Lagarde had told her over the weekend that she would bow out, so that protests would not detract from the celebration. Ruth J. Simmons, a former president of both Smith and Brown University, has agreed to take Ms. Lagarde’s place.
Ms. McCartney, who is in her first year as Smith’s president, wrote that she and many others had been looking forward to hearing Ms. Lagarde, adding that the protesters had gotten what they wanted, “but at what cost to Smith College?”
“An invitation to speak at a commencement is not an endorsement of all views or policies of an individual or the institution she or he leads,” Ms. McCartney wrote. “Such a test would preclude virtually anyone in public office or position of influence. Moreover, such a test would seem anathema to our core values of free thought and diversity of opinion.”
Last year, in the face of protests, Robert Zoellick, a former World Bank president, Goldman Sachs executive and Bush administration official, withdrew from the Swarthmore College commencement, and Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon and pundit who has spoken against gay marriage and evolution, pulled out of the Johns Hopkins University commencement.
There have been several other cases of rescinded invitations or speaker withdrawals involving campus events less august than graduation, and even more cases of speeches going ahead despite protests.
Most of the incidents have involved complaints from the left, usually aimed at conservative figures, but not all. Last year, Providence College, a Catholic school, withdrew a speaking invitation to John Corvino, a writer and advocate of gay rights.

50 anos da Great Society nos EUA: crescimento da dependencia e preservacao da pobreza

A criação de programas de assistência aos desprovidos nos EUA, em 1964, representou uma dramática alteração dos comportamentos sociais, com a preservação, não a eliminação, da pobreza. 
40 anos depois, o Brasil também tomava o mesmo caminho. 10 anos depois da criação do curral eleitoral do Bolsa Família, já se conseguiu consolidar um exército de assistidos significativamente maior: um terço da população vive da caridade pública.
 É essa a nação que gostaríamos de ter?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

The slow decline of America since LBJ launched the Great Society
George F. Will
The Washington Post, May 16 at 7:34 PM

Standing on his presidential limousine, Lyndon Johnson, campaigning in Providence, R.I., in September 1964, bellowed through a bullhorn: “We’re in favor of a lot of things and we’re against mighty few.” This was a synopsis of what he had said four months earlier.
Fifty years ago this Thursday, at the University of Michigan, Johnson had proposed legislating into existence a Great Society. It would end poverty and racial injustice, “but that is just the beginning.” It would “rebuild the entire urban United States” while fending off “boredom and restlessness,” slaking “the hunger for community” and enhancing “the meaning of our lives” — all by assembling “the best thought and the broadest knowledge.”
In 1964, 76 percent of Americanstrusted government to do the right thing “just about always or most of the time”; today, 19 percent do. The former number is one reason Johnson did so much; the latter is one consequence of his doing so.
Barry Goldwater, Johnson’s 1964 opponent who assumed that Americans would vote to have a third president in 14 months, suffered a landslide defeat. After voters rebuked FDR in 1938 for attempting to “pack” the Supreme Court, Republicans and Southern Democrats prevented any liberal legislating majority in Congress until 1965. That year, however, when 68 senators and 295 representatives were Democrats, Johnson was unfettered.
He remains, regarding government’s role, much the most consequential 20th-century president. Indeed, the American Enterprise Institute’s Nicholas Eberstadt, in his measured new booklet “The Great Society at Fifty: The Triumph and the Tragedy,” says LBJ, more than FDR, “profoundly recast the common understanding of the ends of governance.”
When Johnson became president in 1963, Social Security was America’s only nationwide social program. His programs and those they subsequently legitimated put the nation on the path to the present, in which changed social norms — dependency on government has been destigmatized — have changed America’s national character.
Between 1959 and 1966 — before the War on Poverty was implemented — the percentage of Americans living in poverty plunged by about one-third, from 22.4 to 14.7, slightly lower than in 2012. But, Eberstadt cautions, the poverty rate is “incorrigibly misleading” because government transfer payments have made income levels and consumption levels significantly different. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, disability payments, heating assistance and other entitlements have, Eberstadt says, made income “a poor predictor of spending power for lower-income groups.” Stark material deprivation is now rare:
“By 2011 . . . average per capita housing space for people in poverty was higher than the U.S. average for 1980. . . . [Many] appliances were more common in officially impoverished homes in 2011 than in the typical American home of 1980.. . . DVD players, personal computers, and home Internet access are now typical in them — amenities not even the richest U.S. households could avail themselves of at the start of the War on Poverty.”
But the institutionalization of anti-poverty policy has been, Eberstadt says carefully, “attended” by the dramatic spread of a “tangle of pathologies.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined that phrase in his 1965 report calling attention to family disintegration among African Americans. The tangle, which now ensnares all races and ethnicities, includes welfare dependency and “flight from work.”
Twenty-nine percent of Americans — about 47 percent of blacks and 48 percent of Hispanics — live in households receiving means-tested benefits. And “the proportion of men 20 and older who are employed has dramatically and almost steadily dropped since the start of the War on Poverty, falling from 80.6 percent in January 1964 to 67.6 percent 50 years later.” Because work — independence, self-reliance — is essential to the culture of freedom, ominous developments have coincided with Great Society policies:
For every adult man ages 20 to 64 who is between jobs and looking for work, more than three are neither working nor seeking work, a trend that began with the Great Society. And what Eberstadt calls “the earthquake that shook family structure in the era of expansive anti-poverty policies” has seen out-of-wedlock births increase from 7.7 percent in 1965 to more than 40 percent in 2012, including 72 percent of black babies.
LBJ’s starkly bifurcated legacy includes the triumphant Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 — and the tragic aftermath of much of his other works. Eberstadt asks: Is it “simply a coincidence” that male flight from work and family breakdown have coincided with Great Society policies, and that dependence on government is more widespread and perhaps more habitual than ever? Goldwater’s insistent 1964 question is increasingly pertinent: “What’s happening to this country of ours?”
Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook. 

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