Page 26 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • April 7, 2010 never actually worked except in retrospect. Read your Thucydides, fans of democracy. The United States of Mexico, the French Third Republic, and the German Weimar Republic all based their constitutions on the Constitution of the United States, but they all flopped because of too many idealists on the one hand and too many crooks on the other hand – and too small a reliance on skilled labor as opposed to government-subsidized bureaucracy. American sports coaches masquerading as history teachers may indeed attempt to blame the failure of education for the failure of responsible government in Europe before World War II, but they are talking through their collective hat. France and Germany both notoriously produced a huge surplus of college-graduate equivalents, and these people, educated to a standard that makes American “soft-college” graduates look preposterous, were attracted to the far left or the far right because the center could not provide them with meaningful work. Attempts to provide economic equality for all citizens without regard to intellect or thrift crashed into the private financial empires of a handful of oligarchs, and the ordinary decent people were caught in the middle and opted for flashy, dangerous extremists who offered what looked like easy answers. We want to make sure this does not happen in the United States. We need to understand that it could. Most people cover themselves by whatever means necessary. They care little or nothing for their fellow humans. The American Indians often helped the first European settlers because they had no concept of how many Europeans there were, or how many might come to the New World. The Pilgrims gave Indians scholarships to Harvard and made sure the Indians were sober when they signed away their land. After that, it all went downhill fast. Slave traders knew they were in it for the money, but slave owners sometimes convinced themselves they were doing the slaves a “favor.” When the Turks came down on the Armenians, the Kurds joined in plundering and murdering them. It was a rotten thing to do, but a great way to steal from people who had a work ethic. Very few “Aryan” German academics refused university teaching or bureaucratic positions because the Jewish professors who had previously held the jobs had been fired and driven into exile by Darwinian Nazi thugs who were not smart enough to fill these positions themselves. One exception was physicist and Christian Max Planck, who opposed anti-Semitism to such an extent that Nazi genealogists were delighted to discover that he was one-sixteenth Jewish. That explained it! Germany’s artistic community and the churches had a far better record on trying to protect Jews, or at least to prevent them from being murdered, than did the learned professions. Conrad Veidt told people he was Jewish out of sheer defiance, even though his father was a Lutheran pastor, and Gert Frobe – “Goldfinger” – hid a Jewish friend in his apartment. Ferdinand Marian, whose lover was part Jewish, drank himself to death after being ordered to act in a Nazi propaganda film. Oddly enough, the niece of the film’s producer, Veit Harlan, later married Stanley Kubrick. While the artists connived to save their Jewish friends, the academics and bureaucrats clicked their heels and extolled Hitler as the hope of Europe. Right here in the United States, it was the conservatives – FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Attorney General Nicholas Biddle, and Republican Presidential hopeful Robert Taft – who argued that the relocation of Japanese-Americans who were not plausible suspects was a terrible idea. Japanese-American Relocation was unconstitutional and resulted in what the American Civil Liberties Union very belatedly called the greatest violation of the U.S. Constitution in American history, except for slavery. The ACLU did nothing at the time, and neither did the liberal community. The people who promulgated relocation were not fusty old-money Republicans who traced their ancestry back to the Mayflower and slammed the door of the country club to more recent immigrants. They were ultra-liberals and, in some cases, closet communists. The first person to propose wholesale relocation was Henry Morgenthau Jr., third generation immigrant, a rich dunce whose brain transplant was Harry Dexter White, second-generation immigrant. White later turned out to be an agent of the NKVD (KGB) who kept the Soviets informed about cabinet-level politics. The future Supreme Court liberal Earl Warren, attorney general of California, was also a strong supporter. So was “Doctor Seuss” – Theodore Geisel. When the U.S. won the war through massive bombing of Japanese women and children, Geisel made a film called “Decision for Death,” in which he blamed Japanese culture rather than the Stalinist intrigue that dragged the United States into a war the Japanese didn’t want because they knew they couldn’t possibly win. When a public school teacher showed up at a local council meeting to extol “Doctor Seuss” for the reading program, I showed her some of the cartoons Geisel had drawn defaming Jews, Africans, and Japanese-Americans. She was horrified, but she went through with the presentation. If she extolled Seuss after that, she should not be in a classroom influencing young Americans who need to learn that racism is bad and scapegoating is worse. Fire every teacher who is incapable. Fire every public official whose job is not vital. Believe me when I say, with the progressive collapse of the economy, the people who cannot do their jobs will not be hard to replace. We need to get back to a world that rewards thrift and intelligence. The school system in particular, and the public sector in general, are the best places to start. The infrastructure is broken. Using money from the State of New Jersey to save programs that were in any way dubious is a dead issue. This hits me right in the gut because the phenomenal library services I have experienced in both Ridgewood and Glen Rock could be threatened, and that is a personal problem. Glenn Hoefler in Glen Rock and Mike Shinn in Ridgewood were big players in the research team that helped produce my most recent book. While I cannot say I could not have done it without them, the work might not have been cost-effective. I cannot see any reason to curtail library research at an affordable cost, and I cannot see why the state would see this either – unless that state believes all serious scholars live in Greenwich Village. New York City is a write-off in economic terms since the stock market tanked, but that is not our problem. As far as New Jersey is concerned, New York can survive on bridge and tunnel tolls. The Metropolitan Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, the Frick Museum, and the Museum of the American Indian, really do not have any counterparts on this side of the river. Even Staten Island has a far better collection of old houses than anything in New Jersey. So does Museum Village in New York State, still a magnet for students from better schools because Roscoe Smith had the foresight to cluster everything from a log cabin, an early church, and a schoolhouse to a blacksmith’s forge and a broom-makers’ shop around a village green when land in southern New York State was still affordable. Historic Speedwell in Morris County is similar. My kids learned about the origins of the telegraph and Morse Code from this rustic museum. I heartily recommend Museum Village and Historic Speedwell to people who want their children to understand the rudiments of what made the United States a great nation. These two simulated settlements have as their theme a notion that needs to be revisited: For most of their history, the people of the United States made a living and built a great nation by working with their hands and producing useful goods that someone wanted to buy. Some folks seem to be allergic to the idea that anybody might make a living with his or her hands. They are stuck on the notion that the United States somehow became a great nation because everybody who lives here has multiple college diplomas paid for by the taxpayers if their families could not pay. That is not what’s playing. The United States became a great economic power because we landed on some of the planet’s best farmland and resources of timber, fur, coal, iron, copper, gold, and silver, and because the people who wrote the United States Constitution struck a unique balance between personal selfishness and political idealism. This came about because most of them, religious or otherwise, had a strong grounding in Calvinist theology and a strong background in reading about what went wrong with the Roman Republic, as opposed to the Athenian democracy often cited by public speakers, which Time to think: Let’s save what we can Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: I am writing in support of Lynn Budd’s candidacy for the Ramapo Indian Hills Board of Education. I have known Lynn for 16 years, first as a neighbor and then as a friend. I had the opportunity to work with Lynn on a sewer project in our neighborhood. Lynn spearheaded the project, always cognizant of the fact that there are two sides to every issue, and worked with all of us to achieve the desired result. She is extraordinarily bright and extremely motivated. She worked tirelessly on every aspect of the project, demonstrating strong character and fiscal responsibility. Her leadership and counsel led to a spirit of cooperation and cohesiveness in the neighborhood, which resulted in an improvement in the quality of the neighborhood and property values. Lynn Budd is the right person for the job on the Ramapo Indian Hills Board of Education. She is an intelligent, thoughtful leader. She would be an asset to any organization, and we are fortunate to have an individual of her caliber running for the board. Diane Grassi Wyckoff Dear Editor: The current situation confronting the public schools of Wyckoff has motivated me to declare myself as a writein candidate for the Wyckoff Board of Education. Having already served two terms in the 1980s has given me the experience and knowledge necessary to quality as an excel- Supports Budd for BOE lent candidate. Additionally, my 35 years of experience as a practicing educator will enable me to make intelligent decisions about school-related matters. My family has lived in Wyckoff for 37 years. We have participated in many township activities. Our three children, now grown, attended the Wyckoff schools. They can attest to the quality of our community. I have shared in the writing of many of the board of education’s policies, making these policies reasonably familiar to me. Citizens of the Township of Wyckoff are fortunate to call it home. They are also aware of many current challenges. My broad spectrum of community activities reflects the ability to maintain quality at a reasonable cost. Please write in my name, Thomas F. Rousseau, as your choice on Election Day, April 20. Thomas F. Rousseau Wyckoff Dear Editor: You would have to be sleeping under a rock not to notice that Governor Christie has imposed sweeping changes and has taken away more than $1 million in funding from the Midland Park school district. The board of education has proposed its 2010-11 budget based on these cuts, and, as expected, the cuts are painful. Even with teacher and administration concessions to take a zero percent raise and to make payments toward their health benefits, programs and positions will still need to be cut. This is a very (continued on page 28) Urges support for budget Candidacy declared