The best embodiment of the arrogance and the tragedy of our colleges in Massachusetts is Wellesley College.

Back in 1899, the famous president of Harvard, Charles William Eliot, challenged the school to prove that women were as capable as men. He told them they were beginning a whole new era for women. But 100 years later, the college has failed miserably in meeting that challenge.

The gainsayers said back in 1899 that Eliot was wrong. They argued that women are too emotional and illogical to be trained intellectually. The college appears determined in 2000 to prove that the gainsayers were correct.

They have twisted Eliot’s words of encouragement and his challenge in a grotesque and illogical manner to prove that Eliot did not want women to succeed. What an emotional and illogical position!

Worse, they do not seem to realize that their emotional, illogical position is there in writing for everyone to see.

And Smith College is also deeply involved because a professor at that school (and an alumna of Wellesley) wrote the article. (See Wellesley, Winter 1995.)

Another woman has shown how illogical and emotional these colleges are in her new book, The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men by Prof. Christina Hoff-Sommers.

This woman has not lived in a rarified atmosphere where women speak only to other women. It has to make one wonder whether an all-women’s institution is viable in this age. Wellesley College expresses great outrage that President Eliot did not immediately jump to make Harvard into a coed school a century ago. But how can they logically criticize him for that decision when they are doing exactly the same thing over 100 years later? They are still separating the sexes, even today.

And it obviously is not working.

We Still Don’t Get It About Elian

When Elian went back to Cuba, the Boston Globe carried a big "happy" picture on the front page with the boy and his father. However, Elian wasn’t smiling.

Don’t forget that since Easter, over 100 days ago, no one has spoken to Elian except those chosen by President Clinton’s lawyer, Gregory Craig. No others have spoken to the boy. He has not been allowed to talk. He was surrounded by Cuban nationalists, including doctors who were carrying powerful drugs when they entered the U.S.

We were told a few days later that Elian hadn’t wanted to leave the states. It wasn’t exactly headline news. It was hidden in the back of a story with the happy headline, "A father and son, united in healing." Underneath the happy headline, it was reported that on the day of departure for Cuba, the father "told his son to get his khaki pants ironed or change them, and Elian refused. Instead a defiant Elian plopped on a chair, grabbed the TV remote and switched from CNN to cartoons."

This story was not written by a Boston Globe reporter. It was written by the Knight Ridder syndicate or else we wouldn’t have learned that much. Since the story was told to the reporter by the lawyer, Gregory Craig, it is surprising that we learned this much about Elian’s rebellion against leaving.

But it is obvious that he was not a happy boy and there were good reasons they are keeping him from seeing the public. Even the Globe reported on Elian’s arrival in Cuba that although he was accustomed to TV cameras, he "appeared far more shy as he waved tentatively to the crowd in Havana."

He was taken to his hometown for a visit a week later but quickly returned to Havana where he is "catching up on lost classes."

Does anyone doubt that most of his teachers are psychiatrists who are desperately trying to change this little boy back into the smiling, happy little child that we saw in Miami so that they can allow him to be "free" once again?

This causes us to wonder whether our teenage soldiers did die in vain in Korea.

The saga of Elian indicates that they did.

They were sent to Korea by liberal Harry Truman in 1950 to "contain communism." That’s what the soldiers were told as they were drafted out of their homes.

Later, President Kennedy took us to the brink of nuclear war with Russia in 1962 to "contain communism" and to prevent Fidel Castro from putting missiles in Cuba.

Then the liberal Lyndon Johnson foolishly sent soldiers to Vietnam to "contain communism."

Have we completely forgotten those enormous sacrifices?

It is quite clear that the American people believe nowadays that Cuba is just another resort island for them to visit in the Caribbean.

There’s no doubt that the trade sanctions against Cuba were a bad idea of President Kennedy’s and have only hurt the people there. But is this the way to end them?

The entire Elian saga was orchestrated by the Archer Daniels Midland company (as we explained in great detail in our June issue) which wants to build a food refinery in Cuba. All of the players, including the lawyer who managed everything, Gregory Craig, and the National Council of Churches, are admitted agents of ADM, the company that was convicted in 1988 of criminal antitrust violations and is one of the largest contributors to both political parties and is a large advertiser in all media.

It’s now documented through email messages recovered under the Freedom of Information Act that the White House was in close, probably daily, contact with the Cuban government. These messages show that the INS decided to return Elian to Cuba and then sought to find a legal justification for its actions. Initially, if you will remember, they said that the question of custody should be resolved by a family court in Florida. On January 1, it said in a press release, "We have discussed this case with State of Florida officials who have confirmed that the issue of legal custody must be decided by its state court."

Even Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe, both liberal professors at Harvard Law School, were shocked by the raid. If the average person of Massachusetts is not outraged when over 100 armed, federal agents are sent to a private home where people are gassed, we have reached a sad state indeed.

This is also a matter of bigotry and intolerance. The Cubans in Miami are seen by many as former landlords who abused the people and wanted to regain their power. How can we castigate an entire race? Should we have said that about people who fled the Nazis or the Russians? Why are we picking on these people?

If a boy came from East Germany, would we have sent him back? We will live to regret this decision the same as we did the day we sent our troops to Vietnam.

If this affair bothers you, you may want to contribute to the organization that is working to uncover this scandal, Judicial Watch, 501 School St. SW, Washington, DC 20024 or at <www. judicialwatch.org>.

Some People Want Families to Fail

Jeanine Graf had an excellent show about DSS last month. After listening to her discussion with Nev Moore, President of Justice for Families, I suddenly realized that there are many people out there who are happy to see families fail. These people want to see a lot of single mothers out there struggling away because it helps their far left, political agenda.

The more single mothers we have on welfare and dependent upon government, the better it is for them.

Do you remember when the American Psychological Association printed an article last year which said that fathers are not "essential" for children?

It said that fathers may even be detrimental because of the male tendency to consume "resources in terms of gambling, purchasing alcohol, cigarettes, or other nonessential commodities," which "increase women’s workload and stress."

The authors admitted they have a strong political agenda saying, "We acknowledge that our reading of the scientific literature supports our political agenda." Their "agenda" is to create a socialist state such as exists in Sweden.

They believe that any attempt to reintroduce the father into the American culture through the use of marriage is, "an attempt to reassert the cultural hegemony traditional values, such as heterocentrism, Judeo-Christian marriage, and male power and privilege."

The article was the lead story in the June 1999 issue of the American Psychologist, which is the only publication sent to every member of the organization and which is used routinely to espouse the viewpoint of the APA leadership. The authors were Louise B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach, both of Yeshiva University.

The article appeared immediately after the APA apologized for an earlier article in another one of its magazines, which stated that the sexual molestation of children could be beneficial to children in many cases.

They even gave their "Blueprint for Social Change," with the following statement. "Our final recommendation relates to an overall governmental family policy. The United States cultural ideology of rugged individualism continues to assume that individual families can and should balance the stress of work and family without the benefits of large-scale government supports. The United States remains one of the few industrialized countries without a comprehensive family policy that provides paid parental leave, governmentally financed day care, and economic subsidies for all families with children. Without these benefits, the responsibility for child care continues to fall largely on women."

Then they said we should emulate Sweden. However, they failed to note that Sweden is having serious social problems as well large debt burdens. Until 1970, that country had little public debt but by the early 1990s, their per capita debt was one of the largest in the world and nearly three times that of the United States. In 1990, the interest paid on public debt exceeded expenditures on family and child welfare, health costs, and old age pensions. In Norway, where the money from oil has provided revenues, the Chief Justice of its Supreme Court told last year about his country where the crime rate has quadrupled since 1960, with doubling of divorce and youth suicide, large problems with alcoholism, and sharply rising rates of mental and eating disorders, particularly among women, etc.

The arguments in the article are not new to feminists. Their goal has always been to advocate socialism with everyone, men and women, going to work with the children being taken care of by the government.

They were very blunt in the 1970’s and the President of the New York chapter of NOW told the New York Times, "Any real change in the status of women would be a fundamental assault on marriage and the family." Betty Friedan was a little more circumspect, "Whether we will finally have to challenge the institutions, the concepts of marriage and the nuclear family – I don’t know. I just don’t know."

What is new, according to some observers, is the obvious penetration of the APA by the feminist thinkers.

Another example of this type of thinking occurred when the Vermont Supreme Court ruled on the issue of homosexual marriage. One of its judges wrote that to say that a father is necessary in a family is "discrimination." She said, "The State’s implicit assertion otherwise [that a child will do better if it has both a mother and a father] is sex stereotyping of the most retrograde sort."

Even Jeff Jacoby Doesn’t Understand

Apparently, we will never understand that the Boston Globe does not intend to "play nice." They do not want to discuss the issues and decide what is best for the citizens and for the world. They follow a scorched earth policy. They will "triumph."

We have seen that in the case of Jeff Jacoby.

It bears repeating that back in 1997, the ombudsman of the Globe, Jack Thomas, said that a piece that Jacoby had written was "offensive," a "high price to pay for freedom of the press" and that his future columns would be judged "case by case." Jacoby wrote at the time that such an attack had a "chilling" effect on him.

Obviously, the powers at the Globe have been waiting for any excuse to pounce on him. Yet, Jacoby apparently believes that he can coexist in such an atmosphere.

He says he was "effectively invited to resign." and "I was put on notice that if I do choose to return in four months, there would have to be a ‘serious rethink’ of the kind of column I write."

An argument can be made that there is some merit in having one person with a sense of rationality on the opinion pages of the most important newspaper in New England, but on the other hand, this helps them to pretend to be "inclusive." And there are people who buy the paper just to read Jeff’s columns. Maybe it would be better to let this rotting anachronism continue its rot without being helped by Jeff.
 

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