Golden Dawn Wins Seats in Greek Parliment

Golden Dawn (Χρυσή Αυγή), a far-right neo-fascist organization in Greece, has garnered enough support in this weekend's election to earn seats in parliament. Here are a few links related to the group.

A recent NYT piece about the group. A look at the books for sale on the group's website tells you everything you need to know about their ideology and agenda, with works such as "The Story of White Power Music" and "Hitler's Thousand Years" openly advertised and sold.

An interview conducted by Vice Magazine with the group's spokesperson.



And here we have Golden Dawn members demanding that journalists stand when their leader enters the room.

Schools Need the Right to Say "No" - Part 2

This is part 2 in a series on education reform. Read part 1 here.

When I advocate a policy that allows schools to remove a student from its ranks if they are antagonistic to the process, I am always met with “where will they go?” from detractors. There are a litany of solutions, all of which are superior to the current system that treats our schools like prisons. The most obvious solution is to provide education that actually provides a skill set to a young student that allows them to make money in our economy. Our current instruction system, while excelling in many ways, does not provide an education of value to those who will not succeed in higher education. Even at a middle school, many students realize that the skill sets being taught are ones they will never excel in and thus, reject the process until they can be set free at the age of 18.

By creating a tiered education system like they have in Germany, the United States can reverse the perverse effects of forcing the liberal education model on all of its citizens. Hilmar Schneider, when discussing the low rate of unemployment within the German youth class compared to their counterparts throughout Europe, argues:

“In Germany, more than half of each age-group graduate from dual training programs in which they simultaneously earn academic credentials along with gaining work experience, rather than attending classes alone like in many other countries. This style of training brings future job applicants in closer contact with the job market and generates more reliability when it comes to qualification standards. It also offers a long period in which employers can get to know young employees, offering managers a relatively reliable insight into trainees' skills and potential for development. That limits employers' risks when taking on young workers.”

Hilmar fails to make clear that this system results in a percentage of students receiving an education that prepares them for the rigors of the university system, and a significant portion that do not. This type of tiered, or “tracking” system as it is referred to in America, has its detractors. My mother, coming from a working class household that did not hold an important position in her community, was often directed to trade based education throughout her childhood. She feels this system did not give her the means of seeing beyond her immediate opportunities, and undermined her potential abilities to shine in more academic fields. I don’t have an easy answer to this problem, but I do think a system can be put in place that does not punish working class children by forcing them into trade-based education while funneling simpletons in the middle and upper class towards higher level liberal arts education due to money and influence.

In my classroom, I have a slew of students who are simply not given a real opportunity to succeed in a field that is applicable to their abilities and interests. Worst of all, we have created a climate in our education system that treats the jobs they wish to partake in as second-class and less worthy than those that require a college education. In a recent conversation with The New Centrist, he brought up an important point:

“I read an interesting article in the “American Educator” that talked about the role of the educator in all of this. The author mentioned sitting in on a high-school class where the students were talking about the jobs they were interested in and the colleges/training they needed to complete. When a student mentioned they wanted to be a nurse, the educator responded “why not a doctor?” This, at a time when the need for nurses in the US is incredibly high. I understand the teacher’s question. It’s a way of asking “why limit yourself?” But that’s the problem. Why see the nurse as “less than” the doctor”? Nurses are highly-paid, receive excellent benefits, and the educational process takes a significantly shorter period of time than becoming a doctor. Perhaps getting school out of the way and getting into the workforce is a priority for this student?”

I assume that many of the people who read this blog and engage in debates regarding this topic are the type that have enjoyed higher education, and are likely the folks who participate in “education for education’s sake.” The evident reality is that not everyone does. There is no reason for an individual to feel guilt or failure for pursuing nursing and not an MD. The same goes for a student who wishes to be an electrician and not a historian. Worse yet, we have established an entire culture that requires that its citizens get a liberal arts education (often at an expense that hardly seems justified and is borrowed to achieve) to compete for jobs that do not require such instruction. We have only placed expensive, unnecessary barriers on our young people who just want an opportunity to make a living and live the life they desire.  

Part 3 later this week.

Schools Need the Right to Say "No" - Part 1

 In the debate involving school choice, rarely is one of the key elements of choice actually discussed: the right of a student to reject school, and the ability for schools to let said student go.

The very core of our education system has been hotly debated for decades now, and it seems as if everyone has an opinion related to how our schools should be run. I suppose it has to do with the fact we have all spent time in classrooms during our lives, and have seen some that work while others failed. We have all been inspired by some educator along the way, and been discouraged by others. There is general consensus that something must be done to change our public education system, but the path forward lacks even the faintest trace of concurrence.  Being a teacher myself, I feel I can provide additional insight into the problems facing our school system, and reiterate some of the whispered concerns made by teachers in every school I have been a part of. 

President Obama made a statement during his State of the Union address that, while being met with applause from the politicians before him, would push our schools in the wrong direction. Obama declared the following:

“We also know that when students don’t walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma.  When students are not allowed to drop out, they do better.  So tonight, I am proposing that every state — every state — requires that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.”

As a wholehearted Obama supporter this election, I found myself floored hearing him utter these words. After talking to other teachers, I realized I was not the only one.

School discipline is a major problem, and is not the result of “poorly trained” teachers as some may suggest.  If anything, the newest crop of teachers has been far better trained in classroom management than those that came into the profession in the 50s and 60s. Large portions of my teacher training program, both academically and within the classroom, revolved around handling difficult students in our current cultural environment. 

Having grown up in California, I have seen pedagogical fads, funding structures, and various teaching approaches come and go. Educating our children costs more than it did in the past, and yet it appears our nation is receiving a lower quality education than it did 40 years back. 

Not a day goes by that a major newspaper does not publish an op-ed bemoaning or defending the state of our education system. Fellow travelers like Henry Levin and Cecilia Rouse, both supporters of the President’s plan to require students to stay in school, argue:

“High school completion is, of course, the most significant requirement for entering college. While our economic competitors are rapidly increasing graduation rates at both levels, we continue to fall behind. Educated workers are the basis of economic growth — they are especially critical as sources of innovation and productivity given the pace and nature of technological progress. 

If we could reduce the current number of dropouts by just half, we would yield almost 700,000 new graduates a year, and it would more than pay for itself. Studies show that the typical high school graduate will obtain higher employment and earnings — an astonishing 50 percent to 100 percent increase in lifetime income — and will be less likely to draw on public money for health care and welfare and less likely to be involved in the criminal justice system. Further, because of the increased income, the typical graduate will contribute more in tax revenues over his lifetime than if he’d dropped out.”

Other than the facts themselves, just about everything else is wrong with Levin and Rouse’s argument. It is not the degree or diploma that makes financially successful individuals, rather the type of individual that works to gain such credentials are those that possess the work ethic to succeed in the modern workplace environment. Simply forcing more young people to “earn” a diploma will not improve their chances of succeeding in the marketplace; it will only demean the credential and undermine its value to those who have actually worked towards achieving.

Ask most teachers, and they will tell you that the problem with our school system is the reluctance (or inability) to remove students from the classroom environment that are antagonistic to the process and disrupt the operation, thus hurting other student’s attempts at learning the curriculum. Forcing schools and teachers to keep students who have no interest in the process is the main problem facing our schools today. For President Obama to make it a requirement that they stay in the school system, to the detriment of the taxpayer, our society, and more importantly the students in those schools, would be a tragedy of Titanic proportions.

Read Part 2.

Interview with the Social Democrats, USA - Part 2

This is the second part of an interview conducted between myself and the newly reformed Social Democrats, USA and their spokesperson Glenn King. The first portion of this interview can be found here.  

Roland Dodds: The organization Penn Kemble ran had a significant influence within foreign policy circles. Joshua Muravchik wrote a glowing obituary to Penn in 2005 in Commentary magazine, and many of the organization’s members ended up in significant government positions. Does this new SDUSA feel they are following in Kimble’s footsteps?  

Glenn King: No. The simple fact is that the current SDUSA does not have the same level of strength that the organization had in the '80s and 90s. Therefore we can not continue that policy. However if we did have those resources that strategy would certainly be considered.  

Roland Dodds: “Neoconservative” is a dirty word in some political circles. Do you feel there is anything worth defending regarding the aforementioned persuasion, or does the new SDUSA reject the framework in its entirety?  

Glenn King: Neoconservatism developed in the '70s as an ideology of Cold War liberals who strongly resisted the rapprochement with Communism that became dominant within the Democratic party during the Vietnam era. Early Neoconservatives were liberal and progressive on domestic issues and strictly anti-communist in foreign policy. Those are the same values that have always motivated the SDUSA. Thus during the '70s and '80s many leaders of the SD moved into political positions that were very similar to that of the Neoconservative movement. The commitments of leaders such as Penn Kemble and others were to broadly social democratic goals in domestic policies and to a defense of democracy and free labor union movements on the international level. Kemble and company believed that the movement of international communism was inherently totalitarian in nature and thus was the primary enemy of both American liberal democracy and democracy around the world. Therefore the interests of the SDUSA and early forms of Neoconservatism tended to converge.

Unfortunately Neoconservativism has moved from the more realist positions of persons such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick in the '80s who argued that you can't build democracy in societies not prepared by their histories for it toward being an ideology that had the hubris to believe that the United States could export democracy by military means to nations such as Iraq which had little concrete experience of it. Unfortunately these neoconservatives dominated the thinking President George Bush after 9/11. It was also unfortunate that Penn Kemble who led a fossilized SD from the '90s to his death in 2005 also bought into the hubris of latter neoconservatism.

 I would say therefore that the modern SDUSA relates to the aspects of its Neocon-like past ambiguously. While some within the SD seem ready to reject that past entirely, many do not. We believe that people such as Carl Gershman and Penn Kemble were sincerely motivated by the ideal of supporting liberal democracy in a world which seemed to be moving toward a totalitarianism guised as communism. These people genuinely supported the cause of free labor movements and liberal democratic institutions. Thus they were willing cold warriors. Many of us do not believe that they were wrong in their general outlook this even if we believe that some of the details of their specific positions may have been flawed in the past.

We furthermore feel that the same passion for the defense of human rights and democracy in the world of the old SDUSA is still relevant in a world such as ours where genocide or extreme crimes against humanity are regularly practiced by regimes such as Assad's Syria and Bashir's Sudan. The SDUSA while recognizing that America does not have the financial means to engage in countless military interventions around the world, does believe in a vigorous American foreign policy that to a great degree is centered on opposing these kinds of brutality in the world. In this I think we honor that which was best in the old SD.  

Roland Dodds: Social Currents has published pieces spanning the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as Israeli foreign policy. What can this new organization add to debate on the left in America? Is there a specific voice that is not being aired that requires a new organization?  

Glenn King: Now regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement in particular, I do not think that we have anything unique to contribute to that movement beyond that of some other groups. One of the problems with the Occupy Movement was its early adaptation of anarchist and consensus forms of decision making. This has contributed to its failure to develop more specific and concrete positions beyond those attitudes that it expounds. The head of the Young Social Democrats the youth organization of the SDUSA, Michael Mottern has been deeply involved in a highly successful Occupy Buffalo Movement. However given the general situation of the SDUSA vis a vis the Occupy movement we do not see ourselves as being a major player in determining the future of that movement. But then of course I may be surprised.

Now regarding what role the "new" SDUSA might play within the left and what voice it might have? Part of the answer to that might be related to the question of what voice any specifically left ideological parties and organizations might have in 21st century America. The fact is that even the most numerous of significant socialist organizations such as the Democratic Socialist of America are terribly weak and play only very limited roles in realist American politics. Many other organizations such as the small Marxist Leninist sects certainly will have no long term political influence.

So what of the SD? Well historically the SD has been the most pragmatic and least counter cultural organization of the Left. It has been the party that has been least affected by the cynicism about American society and policies that has infected the American left for decades. Furthermore, the SDUSA has historically been the one organization which continually has said No! to the totalitarianism and antisemitism that has often expressed itself in the Left through out the world. So in many ways the Social Democrats USA has been the organization that one would think would have had the best chance of appealing to constituencies such as the Reagan democrats and more realo / centrist forces within the Democratic Party and the American labor movement.

Unfortunately these potentials were not realized during past decades. In fact the SD's potential strengths helped isolate it from the mainstream of the Left. However in spite of its past problems I believe that there can still be a dynamic role for the SDUSA within American politics. The current organization is certainly more vital than the fossilized organization of the "90s and the early years of this century. We still have all the advantages that we have always had, what we need to do is to learn how to develop them to their full potential.

Interview with the Social Democrats, USA - Part 1

The Social Democrats, USA was a small but influential organization in American politics. They were one of the many offshoots of the Socialist Party split, but found an important niche for themselves between the totalitarian apologists on the left and the more conservative elements on their right. They stood for labour rights, a social welfare state, and international solidarity. The group disintegrated after its leading member and organizer, Penn Kemble, died in 2005.


I recently had the opportunity to speak with Glenn King, spokesperson for the newly reformed SD-USA via email. The following questions are unabridged.

Roland Dodds - What is the SDUSA, and how do you define the organization’s legacy?

Glenn King- The Social Democrats USA is the remnant of the 110 year organization founded by Eugene Debs and others in 1901 as the Socialist Party of America. The party in the first decades of the 20th Century represented the high point of Socialist organizational strength in America electing hundreds of candidates to local, city, state, and even national offices. Prominent members of the party have been such persons as J Philip Randolph, Helen Keller, Norman Thomas, and Max Shachtman. At the party's National Convention in December 1972 the party after years of debate over the issues of the Vietnam War and participation within the Democratic Party changed its name to the Social Democrats USA.

As far the heritage of the SDUSA goes I hope that we are able to continue creating it. However as of this time the heritage has still been significant. The SDUSA has been one of the few organizations of the American left which simultaneously has supported a broadly social democratic domestic agenda while simultaneously opposing totalitarianism often in the form of communism internationally. SD leaders such as Penn Kemble and Tom Kahn, were able to through their roles in government and organized labor to contribute mightily to those struggles. The SD has also had significant role in the civil rights and gay rights movement particularly through one of its first co-chairs Bayard Rustin who was the dominant figure in organizing the historical March on Washington for jobs and freedom in 1963.


Roland Dodds - "In short, how would you describe the new SDUSA’s outlook towards domestic and foreign policy?"

Glenn King - On the issue of domestic policy I believe that the practical changes in the basic direction of SD politics have been modest. We still follow the realignment policy of working within the Democratic Party to support broad social democratic tendencies that was adopted in 1972. We still believe that a growing and healthy organized labor movement is central to the movement toward social democracy and democratic socialism in the United States. We still tend toward a pragmatic politics which supports realistic political goals as opposed to rejecting the good for the sake of the impossibly better as is often done in progressive political circles. The SDUSA is not the kind of organization to go off on tangents and support left insurgencies to against President Obama within the DP nor third party candidates during important election years.

Furthermore, we have continued the more moderate polices of the old SDUSA on what are normally termed "social issues." Thus while we support the human rights of gays and lesbians to civil unions we have not yet moved in the direction of support for gay marriage. Neither does the organization have any position opposing it. Of course individual members of the SD are free to take more radical stands on this and other issues. We support the full rights of women to to broad political, social, and economic equality, but have refused to take a stand on the issue of abortion. We believe that these "social issues" tend to divide people when what needs to be done is to unite them. Thus we would rather work to develop a full social democratic agenda to unite people as opposed to support measures that divide. This is very much in line with the old SD Thinking.

The current SDUSA direction on issues of foreign policy is both a continuation and rejection of the policies of the old SD. Thus while there may be much to criticize in some of the foreign policy positions of the old SD, there is much to admire as well. So yes there is probably a consensus in the current SD that the old SD support of the anti-Sandinista Contra movement in the early '80s and the support given to the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 by Penn Kemble were mistaken. Conversely, our strong political support for Polish Solidarity was a shining moment for the SD and demonstrated a convergence of labor rights and anti-communism. However We think that the broad anti-communist and pro-democracy stance of the SD during past decades was often sound.

For the most part, the current SDUSA follows many of the same policies as the old. Thus we continue to support the right of Israel to exist as a nation state while at the same time reserving the right to criticize the polices of its government. The SDUSA also supports the right of the Palestinian people to have a nation state of their own. That may be a change. The SD is also one of the few left organizations that whole heartedly supported the NATO no fly zone in Libya and to support President Obama's undeclared policy of regime change. To summarize the SDUSA attempts to support US foreign policies that it feel reflects the legitimate interests of this nation and which are both humane and moral. The SDUSA does not generally share the attitude of many that the United States is some sort of evil empire (the center of world imperialism) that is the major enemy of the world's peoples.

Part 2 of this interview, coming later this week...

Amoung the Righteous

PBS has an interesting documentary related to the Holocaust in North Africa, and the relationship between the Jews and the Arabs at the time. Well worth a watch.

Watch Among the Righteous on PBS. See more from Among the Righteous.

Street Fighter 4 Life

Having spent my fair share of time in pizza parlors, arcades, and comic shops as a kid (and as an adult for that matter), I played many a fighting game in my day. Claiming to be the best at Street Fighter or King of Fighters became a bragging right that had to be earned by defeating other kids from school on an arcade cabinet and in public. I was pretty good. Not great, but better than most in my area.

It wasn't until I moved up to Northern California that I came across professional Street Fighter players, and I then realized how inadequate my skills were. I Got Next is a documentary that focuses on the competitive Street Fighter community, and some of its most recognizable individuals.

God's Song

From Randy Newman.