Who Decides? Part 2

A Reprint

originally posted 1/18/07

In my introduction to education and homeschooling I discussed my conversation with Prof. Rob Reich, who is seen as an opponent by most homeschoolers, and his view that parents should not have sole control of the education of their children. His opinion was echoed in comments by Elliot, who feels that the government should determine what is taught to all children. These two people, along with many others outside homeschooling who discuss how to ‘limit’ it, or structure it, or regulate it, etc. all seem to touch on the core topic involved without quite realizing what that core topic really is. Even Prof. Reich, with a Ph.D. in Political Science, at first didn’t realize that regulation of homeschooling is about the power of the state to control or eliminate pluralism.

Pluralism is, briefly, the concept that in a democratic society there will exist people and groups that disagree with each other and that this is OK. In deed, some argue that this disagreement is good and that the resulting dialogue can lead to discovery. Yes, multiculturalism is part of this idea of pluralism, but pluralism is more of a realpolitik acceptance of reality than an attempt to make a ‘rainbow coalition’ of enforced diversity.

In other words, pluralism is the acceptance of the fact that there are people who think electricity and automobiles are potentially sources of personal character erosion, there are other people who hope and plan for the transformation of mankind into technological creatures with little remaining attachment to their human roots, and that these two groups coexist, already, in the world. While the Amish and Transhumanist have little in common, they are both elements of American society (and world society, for that matter). I don’t know Prof. Reich that well, but I suspect that if I told him I planned to create a program that would convince the Amish that their lifestyle was backwards, mistaken, ‘wrong’, etc. he would at least be disturbed. After all, the Amish, although small, are part of what makes the world a rich, interesting place. They both reflect and raise interesting questions about the role of technology in human culture and how we can and should react to change.

At the same time, if I were to tell Elliot that ‘the State’ has guidelines that would force transhumanists to tell their kids (or, uh, whatever they consider their progeny) that posthumanist ideas are immoral, unnatural, or too fantastic to be believed, he would likewise be disturbed. While a fringe movement in as many ways as the Amish, transhumanists also raise questions about man and machine and how they can and should affect each other. The Amish and the transhumanists have radically different concepts of the nature of man and nearly-opposite views of the role of technology, views that they will likely never reconcile – and that is OK. Even if their differences in outlook and belief add nothing to the ‘greater good’ of the society around them, they are equal in their rights to hold their beliefs as they do – if we do, indeed, live in a free and pluralistic society.

I always become concerned when I hear discussion of what is good for ‘the state’ or for ‘society’, especially when discussing education. What if ‘the state’ we are talking about it, oh, Nazi Germany? Or Castro’s Cuba? Or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge? All of these ‘states’ had clear ideas of what was good for ‘the state’ and made education a keystone in their creation of their vision of a better ‘state’, didn’t they? During the American Civil War the Confederacy had laws forbidding the teaching of literacy to slaves – once again, for the good of ‘the state’. When we look at the parents who taught their children that fascism was not perfect and Jews not inherently evil in the Austria of 1939, or the parents who teach modern Cuban children that speaking out against the ruler-for-life is not immoral, or Cambodians that insisted to their kids that a better life didn’t require the extermination of 1/3 of their fellow citizens, or the person who taught the children of slaves to read and write, we do not see someone who is working against the Good, do we?

No, what we see in these situations is people want to pass on their own values, despite what intentions or convictions ‘the state’ may have, and that the most powerful way of passing on those values is through teaching them to their own children. This is something so important, so central to the very concept of being a parent that we really can’t imagine it being separated from the very nature of parenthood. It is also the primary method that beliefs and values are passed down through generations. Groups as varied as the Assyrians and some American Indian tribes knew that the most effective way to eliminate an opposed group was to force their children to be raised in your own group. This forced assimilation was accomplished by simply taking these potential enemies while they were children and teaching them that your own ways were the best, even the only, methods and beliefs. In no more than a few generations the former opponents would vanish, absorbed into your own group and holding your own beliefs.

Remember all those feel-good examples of iconoclast parents breaking the rules to teach their kids in defiance of ‘the state’? Here’s the deal – in order to allow those sorts of heroes, you must also allow the other sort of hero – you know, the people who teach things you disagree with. Right now in Sweden, kids are being taught not to trust ‘the Jew’; in London, parents are teaching their children that Blacks are shiftless and lazy; in China kids are being told that Americans are all greedy and lazy; in San Francisco kids are being told that homosexuals are deviants; in Canada children are being taught that that Hitler fellow may have been right about a few things. You may disagree with every one of those positions (in fact, I hope you do), but if you think you can ban parent’s from teaching those things to their kids, what makes you different from the Nazi’s who wanted to ban the idea that Jews are just people? Why are you superior to the Klansmen of Indiana? In what substantial way do you differ from the faculty of Bob Jones University in 1968?

Plurality and a free society demand that for free speech to really be free, we must, and I mean must, tolerate the speech we like least. Most importantly, it means that we must allow the transmission of beliefs across the generations. You don’t like fascists? Fine, teach your kids to not like fascists, too. But does that mean that a grandson of someone who fought for the Royalists in the Spanish Civil War can’t teach his own kids that Franco was fighting for the life and future of Spain? Can he not teach them that the Falangists were the good guys and made the nation a better place?

Or, for an argument closer to home and the American homeschooling movement, can you demand that a homeschooler teach their child that evolution is “right”? If so, why? Here’s another step; a fair number of homeschoolers, especially the earliest, were radical Leftists, not Christian Fundamentalists. Can you demand that they teach their children that Capitalism is “right”? After all, Communism is a total failure as an economic system (see: the Soviet Union, pre-economic-reform China, Cuba, Cambodia, etc., etc.) and Capitalism is the system that runs the Western economy. It is obvious that those narrow-minded, doctrinaire Marxist parents are doing their kids no favors by giving them a sheltered, even blinkered, view of the world. I say that the government should demand that they be taught the truth about Communism being wrong and Capitalism being right; after all, it is in the best interests of the children…. Right?

Still not a clear example? State after state after state has passed bans on gay marriage. The concensus is obviously that the average American is opposed to gay marriage – does that mean that homeschoolers should instruct their kids that gay marriage is ‘wrong’? No? OK, then why should it teach that gay marriage is ‘right’? Because you think it is?

The list of contentious issues is a long one with these just a starting point. It is important that the contentious issues raised by opponents of homeschooling are not about math, or spelling, or handwriting.

Prof. Reich mentioned during our discussion that he was concerned that homeschooled kids could grow up so sheltered, so narrowly educated, so focused on the ideology of their own parents, that they were literally unable to interact with people from a different religion in a meaningful way (I find it telling that he discussed this in the context of religious belief, not politics or some other cultural element). He wanted to ensure that homeschooled children receive enough education about other points of view that they can interact with them. I asked him if he was aware of kids so narrowly indoctrinated and he admitted that he does not, even anecdotally. He also admitted when I asked that public school doesn’t really educate kids for this, either. I think that this attitude is more important than Prof. Reich realizes. There are no standards for comparative religion studies in the public school systems that I am aware of – why have higher standards for homeschooled kids?

The NEA’s stated opposition (well, at least in the situation mentioned) is about kids ‘not being exposed to people from a range of cultural and economic strata’ (to paraphrase). Now, I have no idea who diverse the students are in, say, Blake Elementary (with 11 students) or Russell High School, but if this exposure is so very critical (and I think that remains to be proven), then why must homeschoolers ensure it when it is so very absent from many public schools? Indeed, a great deal of the NEA’s focus in recent years seems to be beyond traditional education.

Prof. Reich’s example was not about kids unable to do enough math to make change, or unable to read well enough to fill out a job application (topics we will touch on next time), but about the cultural outlook of children and young adults. Indeed, all of these hot button topics about homeschooling are not about reading (homeschoolers are better), or writing (homeschoolers are better), or mathematics (homeschoolers are better) [again, the next article will be in academic performance, so be patient]. Nope, even the ‘socialization’ bugbear is really not the main issue. The issues, the hot buttons, all the things that get opponents of homeschooling frothed boil down to cultural outlook.

This is why many on both sides focus on evolution/creationism. Those homeschoolers who leave public schools because of evolution clearly state that they feel the public schools are being used to subvert the beliefs and values that parents want their children to develop and support. While many who want to force all children to learn evolution claim that understanding evolution is a pre-requisite for being a functional adult, let’s be honest – how many public-school educated adults (or high school seniors) can state what the definition of evolution is? [If you think that evolution is defined as “a change in allele frequency over time”, you got the question right. If not, maybe your education was lacking….]. Just as importantly, since many of the arguments for an imposed curricula is because it is for ‘the good of the child’ or ‘the good of the society’ or ‘the state’ – how important is an in-depth understanding of evolutionary theory to you?

I assume that it isn’t very important to your life at all. Unless you wish a career in evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology you really don’t have any need for an in-depth understanding of evolutionary theory. If you have a career outside of certain branches of biology, you might not need to know (or believe) anything about evolution at all. Isaac Newton developed calculus while quite ignorant of evolution, John Locke published his ideas that the legitimacy of government exists only with the consent of the governed 70 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species, the Bill of Rights for the United States was written and adopted also more than six decades before Darwin published on evolution, and the rules of logic, reason, and rational deduction were developed in ancient Greece by men who explicitly believed in the spontaneous generation of life.

In short, those ideas seen as cornerstones of democracy (natural rights, the nature of government, equality of people, etc.) and of science (rational deduction, logic, mathematics, etc.) can, have, and do, flourish even in the direct rejection of evolutionary theory. The claim that a child must be taught evolution to be a ‘good citizen’ is ludicrous and the claim that a child must have an in-depth understanding in and acceptance of evolution to be prepared for a career is only true if that child must have a career in evolutionary biology.

Is there any wonder than many homeschool advocates, even ones with degrees in biology and a deep understanding of evolutionary theory, suspect that the advocates of mandatory evolution education may have, shall we say, a deeper agenda? The public debate between the religious and secular elements of society has largely been centered around evolution since about, oh, 1859 or so. While many believers in religion accept evolution as a scientific fact in varying degrees, some (especially Fundamentalists) do not. Despite the rather broad acceptance of evolution among the general body of believers, it cannot be denied that evolution is still a primary tool of opponents of religion who attempt to portray religious belief as inherently wrong. While some proponents of demands that evolution be taught to children are honestly only interested in a well-rounded science education, to deny that some are motivated by anti-religious prejudice is, at best, naïve.

This, again, cuts to the cultural basis of this debate. While the most often stated reason homeschoolers cite for their decision to teach their own kids is to give their children a better education, over 38% cite religious reasons and over 12% state that they object to what the local/available public school teaches. These parents obviously want to control the cultural, moral, and ethical education of their children. I do not see how this can be opposed without opponents admitting that they want control of the moral, ethical, and social education of children to be taken, in whole or in part, from parents. Prof. Reich was kind enough to simply state that as his own position. Elliot simply states that parents have no such control if ‘the state’ decides that certain morals, ethics, etc. are ‘minimum requirements’.

Remember those examples of parents bucking the trends and teaching their children their own morality I gave above? This is because in any society there will be people who disagree with one another – that’s just the way it is. When those people are a minority or distrust/disagree with some element of society they will attempt to avoid it and/or replace it with their own version of it. One example from the American education experience is the Catholic school system. When Catholic immigrants began to reach America in large numbers they found that the existing public schools were anti-Catholic with explicitly anti-Catholic sentiments expressed by teachers and textbooks. This attempt by the mainstream to forcibly assimilate Catholics was met with the creation of a separate network of schools built, maintained, and funded by Catholics. These schools were opposed by the Know Nothing Party, a group that also wanted to mandate minimums in education for all children – mainly to make sure they were taught the ‘proper’ (read ‘Protestant’) version of the bible.

Do any readers wish to argue that Catholics were wrong to want to preserve their culture and beliefs in the face of this hostility? If you think that they were, what do you have to say about the history of mandatory public schools as a tool to purposefully destroy American Indian culture? After all, the intent of those who determined that American Indian children would be forbidden to speak their language and taught that their religion was superstitious nonsense had, at heart, the very best interests of those children. Did the parents of those children have any right to reject public schools and the ‘minimums’ the state had determined? To insist that they, the parents, could determine what their children should learn, thank you? According to Elliot – no, they didn’t. If ‘the state’ determines that all kids must learn that animism is silliness, irrationality, and superstitious; well, that’s a minimum to get by in the modern world, isn’t it? And Prof. Reich with his concern that parent’s not be allowed to completely determine what their children learn is just a few steps back, in my opinion.

How about today, when public school curricula actively promote stances that conflict directly with Catholic beliefs? If parents concerned with these issues can send their kids to Catholic schools, why not homeschool them? The Amish won a long court battle that allows them to have their own schools so that their children can be taught as their parents wish – including not following the compulsory education laws. Why are the legitimate desires of the Amish to pass on their beliefs and culture worthy of being honored, but not homeschooling parents who happen to be, say, pagans?

This desire to strip parents of their authority over their children or to claim that the interests of ‘the state’ trump the interests of parents in their own children are, at heart, anti-democratic. The essence of democracy is that each person is inherently valuable and all are equal before the law. The natural rights that we pre-suppose when we discuss democracy include the rights to think, speak, and believe as we wish. Our children are, ultimately, the most powerful agent of change that exists in any society, especially in a democracy. After all, our children will continue to work, vote, and act within a democracy long after we are dead. People do not work hard to pass on frivolities to their children, and they do not sacrifice their time, money, and opportunities to educate their kids in things that they, the parents themselves, find unimportant. Homeschoolers do what they do not only to provide a superior education for their children, but to attempt to preserve and spread their own beliefs – in effect, to preserve their own culture.

Limiting this ability is, in the end, limiting the speech and beliefs of the parents in a very critical manner. Prof. Reich is stating, implicitly, that parents do not have an unfettered right to exercise their beliefs or to express in speech their heart-felt thoughts. Elliot is saying that ‘the state’ (which is, after all, the people in a democracy) trumps the desires of its citizens. In each case, the underlying statement is ‘you can believe whatever you like, I guess, but don’t expect us to allow you to promulgate it’.

In many ways, the desire to determine what homeschoolers can and cannot, must and must not, teach their children is just a shade of the Know Nothings and the Indian Office. It is someone determining that they know best, or at least better. It is the belief that someone, either yourself or an ‘expert’, is better/smarter/better educated/more ‘mainstream’ than a parent and that you need to intervene in how they raise their child – for the good of the children, of course! Eventually, with enough education, you can finally get the population all thinking the right things, believing the right truths, and acting in the proper manner….

You ever read Brave New World?

Who Decides? Part 1

A Reprint from my other blog experiment

Originally Posted 1/18/2007

Just last week the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program on PBS had a segment on homeschooling. As you might expect from that paragon of not-being-Leftist-no-matter-what-content-we-actually-show called PBS, it was terribly narrow in its focus, skewing the presentation into a very anti-homeschooling stance.

As usual, the focus of the report by the mainstream media was on two areas – 1) they’re crazy! And, 2) they are making their kids crazy, too! No matter how many homeschooled kids are Liberal and go to Evergreen State College (a rookery for the far Left), no matter how many homeschool magazines and blogs discuss evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology so that parents can discuss it with and teach it to their homeschooled kids, no mater how many homeschooling parents have a degree in biology or are professionals in fields such as Cell and Developmental Biology, and no matter how many homeschooled kids go on to be accepted at a major university to study biology, the money quote for any, and I mean any, mainstream media discussion of homeschooling is where a parent avows “we don’t teach evolution” and at least one child chimes in with “I don’t believe evolution”.

This is obviously meant to paint homeschooling in a negative light.

The program also refers to homeschoolers’ higher performance in reading, math, college GPA, SAT and ACT scores, but quotes Prof. Reich of Stanford (a professor of Political Science and Education) as, well, dismissing them. I was intrigued by this, did some research, and spoke with Prof. Reich via phone. Mr. Reich was very generous with his time and opinions, especially since I caught him with an unsolicited phone call on a national holiday. In short, I believe that this particular article and several others I have found that quote Mr. Reich do a poor job of explaining his objections.

In the almost 20 minutes that we spoke, Mr. Reich explained that he felt that current measures of homeschoolers’ performance are lacking for a simple reason – we don’t know how many kids are homeschooled. Therefore, we have no real idea what percentage take the ACT, go to college, etc. He even rejects the fact that homeschoolers perform substantially better on the ACT over traditionally schooled students because we have no idea what percentage of homeschoolers take the test – although he did admit that the self-selection to skew the results so much would need to be severe.

Personally, I find this a bit tough to swallow. After all, the ACT is administered to more than 50% of high school graduates in only 25 states, meaning that the ACT average for traditionally educated students is heavily self-selected, too. If the SAT or ACT was a universally-administered test for traditionally-educated students, but not for homeschoolers, he might have a point. As it is, he seems to accept the self-selected ACT scores for one group and to dismiss the self-selected scores of the other.

He went on to state that most information about homeschooling is anecdotal; that for every ‘a homeschooler won the national spelling bee’ story there is an ‘a homeschooler was kept at home to hide abuse’ story, and neither type of tale really told the entire story. He wants, he says, comprehensive data on all homeschoolers, akin to a drivers license for drivers.

With just a touch of prompting he elaborated that his true concern is that some homeschooled kids will grow up so isolated from outside influences that they will be unable to interact with other citizens with different beliefs which is, he states, a problem. In a pluralistic society like the modern world, I would tend to agree that such person could be a problem. When I asked if he knew of any homeschooled people with such narrow outlooks, he admitted he only really knew of… anecdotes.

During our discussion he was adamant that he felt parents have a right to pass on their own beliefs to their children, but was worried that they would not make their children aware of alternatives. At the end, I asked if a fair summary of his concern is,

“Who determines what homeschooled children are taught?”

He demurred, stating he felt a better summary would be.

“Parents should not have unchecked authority over their children’s education, nor should the government.”

Since I did catch him with a surprise call and a pop quiz, I will gently point out that he probably did not realize that his position is, indeed, a discussion of who determines what homeschooled children are taught.

Indeed, in my experience the entire debate about homeschooling always gets down to that bedrock question – who has the authority to determine how children are educated and what they learn?

Those Who Cannot Look in the Mirror

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to write about population and demographics from time to time. I am not alone, of course; there are a number of Conservative and Moderate people discussing birth rates and such out there. There is also a strain of commentary on Liberal blogs - especially Feminist blogs, mainly mocking Conservatives that want kids.

I have noted again and again that these Feminists seem to think that Conservatives are racists. I have covered many of the ways that the facts of racial violence show that these stereotypes are wrong, but this lumping of “Conservatives are racist” and “wanting large families is about racial supremacy” stuff is getting so ludicrous that I figured I’d take a look.

First, we find that our erstwhile source of all things Feminist - as long as they are radical things - Amanda at Pandagon points out that not only are people who want large families racist… they are genocidal (actually, see ascribes a genocidal motive to all those who oppose abortion, but we‘ll help her out by focusing on just proponents of large families). Reading the comments on Amanda’s post will reveal an echo-chamber of people more than willing to proclaim that all who want large families are racist, genocidal, and (by strong implication) fascist. They also refer to a commenter who posted that he was interested in ‘preserving his own culture’ as a ‘racist misogynist’ whom the moderator called on the others to ignore. Now, far be it from me to claim that Liberals/Feminists must act a certain way, but - isn’t this commenter right to value his own culture?

I visited a number of quiver full sites online. You can see many of them for yourself and a search can find you more. I searched pretty carefully and I found that these sites have quite a bit in common; they tend to advocate large families (no surprise), they love kids (no surprise), and they don’t talk about race. At all. The only reference I found at all related to race was one mention of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt when Teddy, not the author, spoke of declining fertility in White women in the early 1900’s. That’s it. I do admit, if you google ‘+quiver full +supremacy’ and look at the religious/quiver full sites that result, there is a discussion of supremacy. But it is the Supremacy of Christ, not a race.

Some of the “Progressive” sites you find, though, do speak of race. An article in The Nation(not the most Right-leaning of papers, of course) speaks of the quiver full movement and, as it does so, mentions race twice; first by claiming that “race suicide” is a subtext to the quiver full movement (with no citation, naturally); and, once again, a reference to a quote by Teddy Roosevelt about White birth rates over a century ago. From this article you get the Pandagon bit, mentioned above, and a few related posts from the Left side of the blogs, all claiming having many children for religious reasons is racist, almost all pointing to the Nation article or to Amanda’s post. Some even claim being pro-large families at all is evil. There is also a Newsweek article on the quiver full movement, but it makes no leaps as far as racial motivations.

The quiver full movement almost completely dismisses the Leftist claims that they are racist, only pausing occasionally to point out that Christianity has a lot of non-White members and that the quiver full movement calls on all Christians to have children as a blessing of God.

While we have some fairly prominent Feminist bloggers making the charge that wanting a large family is racist, even genocidal, the movement they point to this time is pretty obviously race-blind. Pandagon and the other Feminist blogs like to paint the Catholic Church as racist, but of course, the Church is very multi-ethnic and always has been. So where is this hateful accusation coming from? Well, I have a theory.

It is, in short, projection. The Left, always quick to dodge reality when it suits them, is projecting their own biases onto their ideological opponents. I’ve already gone into detail about how people in the North and West deride Southerners as racist bigots when, in fact, the North and West have much higher rates of race-motivated crime. I have also discussed how Liberals denounce Conservatives as racist and discriminatory despite the fact that studies show Conservatives to be race-blind while Liberals favor Whites over minorities. In both cases, Liberals accuse others of the actions that Liberals, themselves, exhibit. They cling to these notions of how ‘the other’ acts despite the evidence to the contrary. So why is Amanda of Pandagon and her comrades so eager to point to the Right and claim that people who refuse to use contraception are genocidal? That’s a rather simple one, really.

Its because the origins of modern contraception use, especially the founding of Planned Parenthood and the development of the birth control pill, were covertly and overtly racist and genocidal, with a strong underpinning of elitism thrown in. The founder of Planned Parenthood and primary source of funds for the research that culminated in the birth control pill was Margaret Sanger. Ms. Sanger’s support of eugenics is widely known, as are the many statements she made disparaging the mentally ill, the retarded, and the ‘unfit’, Of course, she also said the same things about Blacks and the poor, too. While some try to distance Ms. Sanger from the horrors of Nazi Germany, they have great trouble doing so since her support of Fascists was fairly evident. Her defenders are in the rather uncomfortable position of admitting that she worked closely with, supported, and was supported by racists and fascists, she made a lot of comments that might seem racist or fascist, but you can’t pin her down to a definitively racist or fascist quote. That’s pretty shaky. She hoped that incentives would work to reduce the population of ‘undesirables’, but advocated coercion and force if incentives failed. Showing that she certainly believed that she and other experts knew what was best for everyone and was willing to use force to impose it.

“OK,” you say, “Sanger was a eugenicists and, possibly, a racist and, maybe, a support of fascism. So what? That was years ago!”

Really? Who is the primary focus of Planned Parenthood today? The same groups Sanger targeted - minorities and the poor. Analysts noted in the 1980’s that Planned Parenthood focused its efforts on poor urban minority areas, resulting in 33% of abortions being performed on minority women who made up less than 20% of the total population. Contemporary advocates of contraception and abortion continue to see these two things as means of eliminating the poor, the ignorant and the unhealthy - and these same advocates are intimately involved in groups that advocate policies of government-promoted and funded contraception and abortion. A list of proponents of eugenics reveals a broad group, to be sure, but a group with a bias toward the Left with some rather prominent names as large boosters of contraception and family planning

The end result is that we see that the birth of the ‘family planning’ movement was in the midst of Liberal eugenicists. Planned Parenthood and related groups flourished under the umbrella of eugenics and ‘racial improvement’. Abortion was as much a part of the eugenicists’ arsenal as forced sterilization (and, often, more prominent). To this day groups that advocate ‘family planning’ specifically target the poor and minorities, resulting in a much higher incidence of abortions in those same groups. Call it what you will, but the end result of contemporary family planning is virtually identical to the planned results of the eugenics movements of the pre-WWII era.

Access to abortion and contraception combined with the attitude that children are a financial burden has resulted in plummeting birthrates in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and North Africa with indicators that the rest of Africa will rapidly join in. In a number of countries abortion is being used to eliminate women before they are even born. All these facts reveal why Feminists must denigrate women who want large families. For if they were to admit the possibility of merit in large families, they must examine the consequences of their own attitudes and actions. Such an examination would reveal that, regardless of their stated motives, the end results of Feminists’ advocacy for ‘family planning’ are indistinguishable from the hopes and dreams of the ‘racial hygienists’ of the late 1800’s.

Meanings of Words

This morning I heard Jackie Northam on NPR slip from journalism into opinion (not that uncommon on NPR) as she explained that what is going on in Iraq must be called a ‘civil war’ because, well, Webster defines it as “a war between geographical or political factions of the same country“ [Please note: I am using a transcription of what she said on the air, not the actual quote from the online Webster’s] and she (and the experts she likes) thinks it fits. Of course, she points to the Shi’a, the Sunni, and the Kurds and the factions fighting this ‘civil war’.

Big problem already, isn’t there? After all, Shi’a and Sunni are not geographically- or politically- defined, are they? They are religious groups, or “sects”, meaning that violence between such groups should be described as ‘sectarian violence’ – the very phrase dismissed by Miss Northam in an offhand manner in the radio piece I linked to, above. The Kurds are also not involved in the waves of violence we hear so much about – the geographically and politically (and racially) identified Kurdish regions are wonderfully violence-free.

In short, Miss Northam proves that she is capable of reading a dictionary, but also shows that she has trouble understanding the meanings of the definitions she finds. By her own statements of what 'civil war' means and her own description of who is doing the fighting, Iraq is suffering not from a civil war, but from sectarian violence. Her piece descends from journalism into unannounced opinion-spouting in a fairly-blatant attempt to paint anyone who doesn't call it a civil war as being dishonest.

I don’t even need to get into the definition of ‘foreigner’ and how it relates to the definition of ‘civil war’ that she uses in this context to render this piece moot.