[April 8, 2024] Finally! Springtime is here, and the trees are budding, the flowers are blooming, and the pollen is putting my sinuses in overdrive. Yet, I must say that I do love spring, for it represents hope, and it is hope that allows us to hang onto the future for our families. There is always a need to be good men and good women, to support our communities and nation, and to have the discipline to learn the skills and attitudes necessary to do well by them. I’ve always believed that nothing is free, and I don’t want a handout or to be treated as special by others just because of who I am or even what I earned. A recent visit to the car dealership to get my car worked on and not getting appropriately treated did not have me asking for special treatment even though I knew the dealership manager and owner. I spent my time with a salesman and looked at the new cars. Oh boy, if only my wife would allow me to get another car. I can hear her now, “We don’t need a new car,” and she would be right.
When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, Heather MacDonald, 2023
Heather MacDonald is one of my favorite contemporary authors who can see cultural trends and put together a good argument for why some are destructive to culture and everyone in the West. She focuses her book on America, but you can see this trend of the government placing its hand on the scale in every aspect of life, benefiting some races over others. This has invaded the thinking in prestigious American institutions as well, from the medical profession to the fine arts; those in positions of power plead guilty to “systematic racism.” Of course, how else can we explain why “blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in C-suites and faculty lounges.” The official answer is “disparate impact,” an obscure legal theory, now transformed into a bludgeon to skewer anyone who professes the sane position that behavior determines our position in society.
Ms. MacDonald provides an alternative explanation for those racial disparities. It is large academic skills gaps that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most meritocratic organizations and large differences in criminal offending that account for the racially disproportionate prison population. The book is controversial because it breaks the current narrative of our most highly placed leaders, from the nation’s President to academic and scientific leaders and down to teachers in kindergarten. This insidious use of race as the primary factor for hiring and firing people is put into place as policy; it destroys public order, poisons the arts and culture, and hinders scientific progress. In her book, MacDonald is articulate and describes the damage this ideology is having as it divides us by race and ethnic group. Those who chose to speak out, like her, risk being labeled as hate-mongers and subject to criminal repercussions. Her book is a wake-up call.
Highly recommended.
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Please read my books:
- “55 Rules for a Good Life,” on Amazon (link here).
- “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).
Side Note: Please remember and take a look at Tom Copeland’s reading blog. His website, which I highly recommend, can be found here: https://militaryreadinglists.com/map
Powerful book. I got my copy a few months ago off Amazon. I’m going back now to re-read parts of it to make sure I’ve got the right info in my head.
👍👍👍👍👍
Because Author Heather Lynn Mac Donald is an American conservative political commentator, essayist, attorney, and writer, you may think that she has a political agenda. Which is a classic argument to make you believe her work is somehow flawed terribly. But that is not the case. Read the book and find out that she backs up her thinking with facts and, yes, sometimes the book suffers from it. But the book is a wake up call for those who are sane and wish that Western civilization, the bright beacon of light for the world, is not harmed by the anti-Western ideas so prevalent today.
Go here on Amazon to see all her books:
https://www.amazon.ca/stores/Heather-Mac-Donald/author/B001JS2UW8/
Right! And you can get more about her here at the Manhattan Institute.
https://manhattan.institute/person/heather-mac-donald
We love her in the UK too.
In medicine, the arts and law enforcement, the notion of merit has been discarded for the sake of “diversity.” Standards have been set aside in order to hire less qualified–if not unqualified–POCs in hopes that the alligator will eat them last.
“This book by Heather MacDonald would deserve praise and a wide audience if for only this: it clearly and unambiguously identifies the noxious concept of “disparate impact” as the driving force behind the racial insanity currently guiding our nation. First developed in the law through the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision by the Supreme Court, which held that color-blind standards in employment could still be found to violate civil rights law if they disproportionately affected minorities, the concept has escaped to the wider society and now is the prism through which race is viewed. As MacDonald documents, this view is now not only predominant, but unquestionable, in sectors of our society that actually matter.” from an Amazon book reviewer Dash Manchette. Thank you sir for your thoughts. I just wnated to share them with our good folks on Gen. Satterfield’s website.
Yes, thanks for sharing Dash’s comments, Emmanuel T.
Thanks Gen. Satterfield. We were due another Book Review and here we go.
Gen. Satterfield, good to see another book review of yours and how your thinking parallels much of what Heather MacDonald has written. Freedom of speech is ingrained into the American psyche but I’m afraid that will not last much longer under the Biden Administration which both weaponizes law enforcement agencies against political opponents and saddles up to social media companies that censor free speech to Biden’s wishes. Too bad the US SUpreme Court doesn’t have the balls to step in and say, hey, there is a such thing as the First Amendment to the US Constitution Duh. Where are good people when you need them. Biden needs to go to an old folks home where nurses can take care of him.
ROFL, Max!!!! You da man. Love your writing. Maybe consider writing an article for Gen. Satterfield. Thanks.
LIZZY, Max has always been this way. He has some great insights too and adds a bit to Gen. Satterfield’s take on the world. I would add, LIZZY, if you’ve not had a chance yet to read Gen. S’s “55 Rules for a Good Life,” you might want to consider it. In that book you can see more about where Gen. S. is coming from and these comments here are a compliment to them. Definitely not woke.
HA HA HA HA…. great comments here this early Monday morning. 😊
I’m a big fan of Heather MacDonald.
READ: “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe” 2017
https://www.amazon.com/War-Cops-Attack-Order-Everyone/dp/1594039682/
This is my favorite book she has written.
YES! This is my favorite too. ❤
Important, articulate, and unassailable. But mostly very, very sad. Mac Donald is chronicling the slow death of American and western culture.