In her words "Ever since Werner Sombart first posed the question in 1905, countless historians have tired to explain why there is no socialism in America. For the most part, this work focused on external factors--on features of American society rather than of American socialist movements" Ms. Kagen's 1981 Senior Thesis at Princeton University. What is relevant about Werner Somart speaking in 1905 and a student writing her senior paper in 1981. Werner Sombart was a German economist and sociologist, the head of the "Youngest Historical School" and one of the leading Continental European social scientist during the first quarter of the 20th century. Sombart lead the school toward a socialist economics model. "A leading member of the last generation of German Historical School, Werner Sombart nonetheless drew the Historical school away from the conservative and normative weight of the Schmoller group. His early Marxian writings (1894, 1896, 1902) - which include two laudatory studies of its founders (1895, 1909) - did much to disengage it from that heritage"
We can conclude from this Kagen embraces a socialist ecomonic model. If a case of government nationalizing an industry Kagen will vote with the government to nationalize. Ms Kagen will be voting on the court for about forty years if the nomination goes through. Forty years of socialist votes NOT liberal.
Another reason to be against the nomination is that one Black scholar, Dr.Boyce Watkins doesn't want to have Elena Kagen on the highest court in the United States of America.-" Kagan didn't hire one single African American professor while serving as dean of Harvard Law School. Yes, my friends, that's racist. Given all the racism in academia (black professors are always passed over for positions for which they are qualified, since the elitism of academia is very Jim Crow-like in nature), it is quite telling that President Obama would be willing to nominate someone who has shown a clear bias against hiring people of color. Ethnic diversity was clearly at the bottom of the Kagan priority list, since you can't convince me that Harvard University isn't receiving scores of applications from top black attorneys and law professors from throughout the nation. According to Duke University Law professor Guy-Uriel Charles, Kagan had 29 hires during her tenure, and none of them were black, Latino or Native American (28 were white and one was Asian). So we can either believe, as Kagan appears to think, that there is no black person on earth qualified to be hired at Harvard Law School or that she sat idly and allowed a racially discriminatory set of hiring practices steal opportunities from promising young legal minds. Given that only Harvard and Yale grads need apply for the Supreme Court under Obama, Kagan (like Thomas) will gladly accept the benefits of affirmative action, and then pull the ladder up behind her. As a black man, it does me no good to support the idea of having yet another Harvard-educated liberal on the Supreme Court who seems to think that black and brown people are second-class citizens. I've seen enough of that." Dr. Watkins said this in his article in the Black Voice
Call your US Senator, PLEASE
Friday, May 21, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Elena Kegan's Socialist Thesis
Politics
Lee Ross
Supreme Court
0
comments Lee Ross wrote this for Fox News Snap Shot
Elena Kagan’s Socialist Thesis
May 17, 2010 - 5:18 PM
by: Lee Ross A 134 page thesis detailing the rise and fall of the American socialist movement is hardly a light read, nor must it have been an easy paper for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to write as a Princeton undergrad in 1981. Yet Kagan produced "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933" as her senior thesis, in the hope, as she wrote, "of clarifying [her] own political ideals."
Unfortunately for politicos intent on discovering more about those ideals, whatever conclusions Kagan reached about her own ideology based on her study of the socialist movement are largely omitted from her final product. In what has become a common description of Kagan, she, even as an undergraduate, displays uncommon intellect but leaves the reader with little understanding of her own deeply-held views.
The research paper was a graduation requirement for Princeton students, who were able to select their own thesis topic. Kagan dedicated the work to her parents, now deceased, and expressed appreciation to her brother Marc, whose participation in radical causes, Kagan says, in part led her to pursue the topic.
The premise of her paper, dated April 15, 1981, is that previously written accounts of the American Socialist Party largely missed the main cause of the party's dissolution in the years following World War I. "Historians have looked everywhere but to the American socialist movement itself for explanations of U.S. socialism's failure," Kagan wrote.
Internal dissention, Kagan argued, was the root of the party's failure to become a significant political force. Her paper examined the dynamics of the Socialist Party's New York chapter, then the largest in the country.
Though Kagan acknowledged the minimal impact the Socialist Party had on electoral politics a century ago, she maintained the influence of the movement exceeded its electoral performance. "It would be absurd to over-estimate the strength of the early twentieth century socialist movement," she wrote, citing the party's presidential favorite, Eugene V. Debs, who never won a single electoral vote in his five bids for the presidency and never earned more than a million popular votes.
Nonetheless, Kagan contends, "[T]he specter of socialism haunted Americans to a far greater extent than the SP's [Socialist Party's] numerical strength might indicate."
Because Kagan's paper focuses on the role of New Yorkers in the evolution of the Socialist Party, she spends a great deal of time discussing the importance of the participation of Jewish immigrants. Of them Kagan writes, "like many other foreigners, Jews arrived at Ellis Island expecting to find 'the promised land.' They found instead the Lower East Side, the most filthy, congested, and unhealthy section of New York."
Kagan is herself Jewish and was born and raised in New York City. It isn't immediately clear if there is a direct familial connection to this time that might have made the topic of unique interest to her.
In her introduction, Kagan thanks Sean Wilentz, still a professor at Princeton, for "painstakingly" reading through her thesis. Wilentz told Fox News via email that Kagan's work is still memorable nearly 30 years later. "[Kagan's thesis] is a very successful study of futility. In short, I remember thinking it was a mature piece of scholarship coming from a college senior," he wrote. Wilentz says the history of early 20th century socialism has long been a subject of interest to scholars, and Kagan wanted to take a fresh look at the subject. "It was something of a classic topic in the field, and Elena had the intellectual fortitude to take it on," wrote Willentz.
Absent from the paper is any overarching sense of personal attachment to the Socialist Party, its views, or the movement itself. There is scant evidence to suggest that Kagan wrote her senior thesis as an opportunity to promote the Socialist Party as a proxy for her political views.
Perhaps the closest she comes in expressing admiration for the Socialist Party and the spirit of liberalism is in her conclusion. She called the party's decline a sad story, "but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America."
"Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe," she wrote. "American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."
Lee Ross
Supreme Court
0
comments Lee Ross wrote this for Fox News Snap Shot
Elena Kagan’s Socialist Thesis
May 17, 2010 - 5:18 PM
by: Lee Ross A 134 page thesis detailing the rise and fall of the American socialist movement is hardly a light read, nor must it have been an easy paper for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to write as a Princeton undergrad in 1981. Yet Kagan produced "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933" as her senior thesis, in the hope, as she wrote, "of clarifying [her] own political ideals."
Unfortunately for politicos intent on discovering more about those ideals, whatever conclusions Kagan reached about her own ideology based on her study of the socialist movement are largely omitted from her final product. In what has become a common description of Kagan, she, even as an undergraduate, displays uncommon intellect but leaves the reader with little understanding of her own deeply-held views.
The research paper was a graduation requirement for Princeton students, who were able to select their own thesis topic. Kagan dedicated the work to her parents, now deceased, and expressed appreciation to her brother Marc, whose participation in radical causes, Kagan says, in part led her to pursue the topic.
The premise of her paper, dated April 15, 1981, is that previously written accounts of the American Socialist Party largely missed the main cause of the party's dissolution in the years following World War I. "Historians have looked everywhere but to the American socialist movement itself for explanations of U.S. socialism's failure," Kagan wrote.
Internal dissention, Kagan argued, was the root of the party's failure to become a significant political force. Her paper examined the dynamics of the Socialist Party's New York chapter, then the largest in the country.
Though Kagan acknowledged the minimal impact the Socialist Party had on electoral politics a century ago, she maintained the influence of the movement exceeded its electoral performance. "It would be absurd to over-estimate the strength of the early twentieth century socialist movement," she wrote, citing the party's presidential favorite, Eugene V. Debs, who never won a single electoral vote in his five bids for the presidency and never earned more than a million popular votes.
Nonetheless, Kagan contends, "[T]he specter of socialism haunted Americans to a far greater extent than the SP's [Socialist Party's] numerical strength might indicate."
Because Kagan's paper focuses on the role of New Yorkers in the evolution of the Socialist Party, she spends a great deal of time discussing the importance of the participation of Jewish immigrants. Of them Kagan writes, "like many other foreigners, Jews arrived at Ellis Island expecting to find 'the promised land.' They found instead the Lower East Side, the most filthy, congested, and unhealthy section of New York."
Kagan is herself Jewish and was born and raised in New York City. It isn't immediately clear if there is a direct familial connection to this time that might have made the topic of unique interest to her.
In her introduction, Kagan thanks Sean Wilentz, still a professor at Princeton, for "painstakingly" reading through her thesis. Wilentz told Fox News via email that Kagan's work is still memorable nearly 30 years later. "[Kagan's thesis] is a very successful study of futility. In short, I remember thinking it was a mature piece of scholarship coming from a college senior," he wrote. Wilentz says the history of early 20th century socialism has long been a subject of interest to scholars, and Kagan wanted to take a fresh look at the subject. "It was something of a classic topic in the field, and Elena had the intellectual fortitude to take it on," wrote Willentz.
Absent from the paper is any overarching sense of personal attachment to the Socialist Party, its views, or the movement itself. There is scant evidence to suggest that Kagan wrote her senior thesis as an opportunity to promote the Socialist Party as a proxy for her political views.
Perhaps the closest she comes in expressing admiration for the Socialist Party and the spirit of liberalism is in her conclusion. She called the party's decline a sad story, "but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America."
"Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe," she wrote. "American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."
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