Paramount Theatre
Ventura Needs to Get More Sleep
RECEIVED Tue., July 13, 2004
Dear Editor,
Michael Ventura sympathizes with the self-absorbed, whiny, narcissistic students who complain "It's Not My Country" ("Letters @ 3am," July 9), because students identify only with "their" own language and area, but he offers no criticism of schools' multicultural, multilingual, diversity dogma which cultivates the segregation and balkanization he and the students resent.
So, he lapses back into the old liberal mantra as he jabs at the white imperialistic culture, yet his nostalgia begrudges and flirts with his own marginal, excluded, and derided immigrant upbringing and its basic values of stern teachers and the melting pot; but now assimilation into one culture would be discrimination. He falls back on the old worthless and wasteful nostrum of "education" and the need for politicians to "forge policies adequate to the changes." Schools are a national disaster and more money (from Iraq War?) will not decrease the decline of values and a common culture.
Students do have a chance at being Americans if they get beyond their pampered self-esteem and self-centered egos and their taught hatred for the American experience. They need to pledge allegiance to us all (including them) rather than allegiance to themselves. Ventura insists they are "smart enough not to care for a country that doesn't care for them." I don't agree with everything in the Chronicle, but it is part of our city and community and communication.
Michael insists "no one knows" if "America's very fabric (is) being torn apart." Perhaps he would be more persuasive if he got more sleep and wrote at 3pm rather than composed his "Letters @ 3am."
Michael Ventura sympathizes with the self-absorbed, whiny, narcissistic students who complain "It's Not My Country" ("Letters @ 3am," July 9), because students identify only with "their" own language and area, but he offers no criticism of schools' multicultural, multilingual, diversity dogma which cultivates the segregation and balkanization he and the students resent.
So, he lapses back into the old liberal mantra as he jabs at the white imperialistic culture, yet his nostalgia begrudges and flirts with his own marginal, excluded, and derided immigrant upbringing and its basic values of stern teachers and the melting pot; but now assimilation into one culture would be discrimination. He falls back on the old worthless and wasteful nostrum of "education" and the need for politicians to "forge policies adequate to the changes." Schools are a national disaster and more money (from Iraq War?) will not decrease the decline of values and a common culture.
Students do have a chance at being Americans if they get beyond their pampered self-esteem and self-centered egos and their taught hatred for the American experience. They need to pledge allegiance to us all (including them) rather than allegiance to themselves. Ventura insists they are "smart enough not to care for a country that doesn't care for them." I don't agree with everything in the Chronicle, but it is part of our city and community and communication.
Michael insists "no one knows" if "America's very fabric (is) being torn apart." Perhaps he would be more persuasive if he got more sleep and wrote at 3pm rather than composed his "Letters @ 3am."
Gene Burd