Boston Citizens vs. Harvard Faculty

[Mechaman]

I'd trust some Irish Catholics from South Boston to implement a welfare state more than I would the Harvard faculty.

Those are the racist, sexist, horrible accent-having lot that I was referencing.

Something tells me that someday you are going to regret this post.  Needless to say, this is one of the most amazingly hypocritical posts I've seen in my long time here.  Yes maybe I'm judging you harshly, being one of the millions of the Irish "lot" in America, but it is incredible how people like you and more than a few others on this forum hold views that belong in the 19th century and dare pretend a shred of liberalism.

EDIT: Previous wording was more of a "GOTCHA" and was itself kind of hypocritical.  At least I realize that and have changed my ways, can you?

[Mechaman]

Well, now that I have put down our resident WASP supremacist, I might as well comment further on this matter.

Obviously I would go with the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book.  I mean for all we know there might be several Harvard faculty from that kind of selection anyways, whereas the Harvard Faculty only guarantees that the only people who would have input are Harvard faculty.  I believe that having their knowledge is helpful, but that is not the only thing that is needed to run a society.  I feel that having all only Harvard faculty would be bad, for much the reasons that Al said plus it would accomplish nothing more than have an insulated confirmation bias among the leaders that would only end up being harmful in the long run (even the more meek among them might tend towards egotism and thus not be as receptive to the demands of the people).

Recent election results as well as referndum passes suggest that the people of Boston would not be the reactionary neanderthals that some of you suggest.

Which isn't to say there are problems with just selecting the first 2,000 people in the book whose name starts with the letter "A", which would create some resentment of course.

And also, I share a lot of TNF's sentiments on this subject.  The Ivy League's dominance of intellectual achievement and privilege is a pox on the country.  Nationalize it now and make the Blue Bloods and Lace Curtains there have to deal with the dillema of being as equal as the common working man.

[Mechaman]

In the course of our nation's history the people of Boston have rallied bravely whenever the rights of man have been threatened...

yes like their god-given right to not go to school with negroes

Because yes a few bad apples dictates what the whole city of Boston was like during the 1960s. Those people failed at the ballot box (except for maybe a fluke victory by Louise Day Hicks), and for good reason.  Bostonites were very divided over the issue but they more often than not in those days fell on the right side of history.  Your strawmanning is absurd.

If you want to pull out examples from history, however, I can think of a few times in history where the Harvard Faculty would be on the way wrong side of history.  Needless to say, an academic institution that had Jew quotas as late as the 1920s has been on the wrong side of history more than a few times, probably a good deal more so than the Citizens of Boston.  You can criticize the people of Boston for not being quick and zealous in support of equal rights for non-whites, but where the hell was Harvard when the Know Nothings came into power?  Where the hell was Harvard when the state's election laws favored only the wealthy landowning elites?  Where the hell was Harvard when the Robber Barons were running the state's politics?  Where the hell was Harvard when the state police were putting down unions with impunity?

They were on the wrong side of history, of course.  And sure, a lot of this was decades ago (but so was your atrocious strawman), but I know my history enough not to trust a bunch of rich eggheads with the future of society (again, would you have preferred America where only the rich vote?  Because that is what your heroes supported in times past).

[Mechaman]

In the course of our nation's history the people of Boston have rallied bravely whenever the rights of man have been threatened...

yes like their god-given right to not go to school with negroes

Because yes a few bad apples dictates what the whole city of Boston was like during the 1960s. Those people failed at the ballot box (except for maybe a fluke victory by Louise Day Hicks), and for good reason.  Bostonites were very divided over the issue but they more often than not in those days fell on the right side of history.  Your strawmanning is absurd.

If you want to pull out examples from history, however, I can think of a few times in history where the Harvard Faculty would be on the way wrong side of history.  Needless to say, an academic institution that had Jew quotas as late as the 1920s has been on the wrong side of history more than a few times, probably a good deal more so than the Citizens of Boston.  You can criticize the people of Boston for not being quick and zealous in support of equal rights for non-whites, but where the hell was Harvard when the Know Nothings came into power?  Where the hell was Harvard when the state's election laws favored only the wealthy landowning elites?  Where the hell was Harvard when the Robber Barons were running the state's politics?  Where the hell was Harvard when the state police were putting down unions with impunity?

They were on the wrong side of history, of course.  And sure, a lot of this was decades ago (but so was your atrocious strawman), but I know my history enough not to trust a bunch of rich eggheads with the future of society (again, would you have preferred America where only the rich vote?  Because that is what your heroes supported in times past).

Mech, my friend, I agree with just about everything you said here. but the fact remains Boston, was more than "a few bad apples" when it came to race relations in the 60's and 70's. I'm not saying anyone opposed to busing was racist (there were practical reasons to oppose it as a misguided social experiment), but the busing crisis fanned racism among a majority of white Bostonians. The best example was the 1976 Democratic Primary. Who won Boston? Carter? Udall? Jackson?

No. George freakin' Wallace.

I am not completely denying the existence of racism in Boston.  As one of the forums Irish on the board I consider it pretty shameful and unlike the Brahmin loving revisionists in this thread I prefer a historical analysis based in objective truth over feel good elitist bullsheyit.  However, fact of the matter is that the good people in Boston did win out (remind me again who was it that lost a Boston based CD to Joe Moakley in 1972 again?).  And even with the awful racist reaction against busing, let us not act like it was an extraordinarily reaction of its time, given that something like 76% of Americans did not even approve of interracial marriages at the time.

And this is usually where I put in the obligatory mention that white working class hostility towards blacks was largely the indirect result of a society that largely came to be as the result of the elitism of the Harvard Class and other upper crust institutions that couldn't be bothered to help the immigrant "rabble".  But hey, let's completely ignore the historical roots of bigotry against "St. Patrick's Vermin" because it is inconvenient for more than a few peoples' narrative.