Hillsdale Forum March 2011

8/7/2019 Hillsdale Forum March 2011

1/8

March2011The.Hillsdale.Forum VolumeXI,IssueIIISOUNDBITE

In.this.issue

Chinas Megacity,John Miller

Hillsdales Hotspots

Paul Ryan,Modern Segregation

Pg.4&5

Pg.6&7

Pg.3

HaydenSmith

ThisYearsOscars:ASnoozeHaydenSmith

Great Society CCA

Pg.2

For decades weve seenhigh-speed trains snake theirway through Europe and Asia,but rarely here acrossthe Atlantic. In just afew years, however,the American coun-tryside may feature afew high-speed trainsof its own. The Obamaadministration ispushing forward a

plan that would con-struct rail lines alongten corridors.

Currently, theonly high-speed railin the U.S. is the Am-trak Washington-Bal-timore-New York-Bos-ton rail line. The U.S.government heavilysubsidizes that line,spending some 35 bil-

lion dollars on theventure since 1971.Obama has recently been

pushing to dedicate 53 billiondollars to the construction often new high-speed rail corri-dors, similar to the existing one, -

ministration continues to stress -tion that would result from

such a move. The Presidenthimself claims that this rail net-work could take a million carsoff the road and reduce carbonemissions.

If passed, the proposal

would bring Obamas totalspending on high-speed rail toover $100 billion so far in his

term: The American Recoveryand Reinvestment Act of 2009sent $57 billion in grants to31 states with high-speed railplans.

The new plan has provoked

widespread opposition amongRepublicans concerned about

Wisconsin and Oh iowere withdrawna f t er g o v er n o r sScott Walker andJohn Kasich ex-pressed oppositionto the rail lines, citingit as wasteful spend-ing. The 1.2 billion

dollars involved wasthen split betweenCalifornia, Florida,Washington, andIllinois. Last yearalone, Congress al-located $2.5 billionamong all the states.

Indeed, the eco-nomic costs of sucha project are over-whelming. The costs

i n v o l v ed b a l l o o nto extraordinaryamounts when one looks intothe building expenditures. Nu-merous estimates put the pricetag at 50 million dollars for

Continued on page 8

First of all, he campaigned infavor of [the law]. He is break-ing his word to the Americanpeople.

Second, he swore an oath onthe Bible to become presidentthat he would uphold the Con-stitution and enforce the lawsof the United States. He is not aone-person Supreme Court. The

idea that we now have the ruleof Obama instead of the rule oflaw should frighten everybody.

Imagine that Governor [Sar-ah] Palin had become presi-dent. Imagine that she had an-nounced that Roe versus Wadein her judgment was unconsti-tutional and therefore the Unit-ed States government would nolonger protect anyones rightto have an abortion because

she personally had decided itshould be changed. The newsmedia would have gone crazy.The New York Times wouldhave demanded her impeach-ment.

-Newt Gingrich on Obamasrefusal to uphold the Defense of

Marriage Act

Last Sunday saw the 83rdAcademy Awardstelecast receive thelowest ratings in threeyears. The reasonsbehind the drop arepartly organizationaland partly due theyears weak crop of

The choice forAnne Hathaway

and James Franco tohost aimed to attracta younger viewingaudience to theOscars. Sunday night,however, showed thehosts to have littlechemistry.

Most of the jokes especially the lameones referencing

youth culture. At one pointJustin Timberlake even said

a they must make an app for

that joke. Funny, right?

Anticipation should alwaysplay a major part at the Oscars.

People usually watch because

win, and not for the jokes.Coming into the ceremony,

however, it already felt like a

forgone conclusion that theKings Speech wouldmake a sweep. Andsweep it did.

The reason theKings Speech wasable to dominateso easily was therelatively weak slate this year. Most ofthe Best Picture

nominees were nobut to take home the and usually not ablockbuster. Thismeant Inceptionand the great indie were never really inthe running.

Continued on Page 8


2/8

2March2011

In a series of lecturesthat could only take place atHillsdale College, an eclecticassortment of speakers offereda frank and sobering look at thehistory and legacy of the GreatSociety. The four-day event,comprised of six gentlemenfrom various backgrounds, wasthe third of four CCA seminarsthis year.

From Kennedys Mythto Johnsons Dream, wasgiven by the insightful andentertaining Jonah Goldbergof National Review Online.In his humorous address, Mr.Goldberg gave an account ofhow liberals perverted theassassination of PresidentKennedy into a rallying cry forenacting the set of domesticprograms now known as theGreat Society. The effects of this apparent: in todays cultureof hate, those who question

Matt ColeEditor in Chief

the validity of the Great Societyagenda are considered enemiesof America.

Steven Forbes of Forbes

Magazine spoke regardingThe Great Society and CurrentEconomic Controversies. Hedescribed the great optimismof those who supported theGreat Society and explicatedhow it is that liberals and biggovernment have maintainedpolitical control of Americadespite the failure of the Great Though he outlined the current

problems in our countrythat have resulted from theprograms, he also offered somesteps Americans can take toreclaim their country.

Author Sidney Milkisused his speech, LyndonJohnson, the Great Society,and the Fracturing of theNew Deal State, to describethe development of the GreatSociety and its continuing

legacy. According to Milkis,the Great Society has left

conservatives and liberalsof government policy ratherthan the essential issue of how

America is to be governed. Heleft the audience with a challengeto disregard petty debatesover policy and focus moreon regaining the democratic,limited government on whichour nation was founded.

John Goodman fromthe National Center forPolicy Analysis enlightenedthe audience with his talk,Extending the Great Society:

Grading the 2010 Health CareAct. He offered an in-depthand professional account ofthe political and economicrepercussions of the currenthealthcare law. His descriptionhighlighted the obviousdangers of the ill-conceived andhopelessly overpriced programand offered constructivealternatives to the problemscreated by Great Society

legislation.The Independent Institutes

TheNot-So-GreatSociety:AReviewofCCAIII

Hawaiis new Democratic

governor, Neil Abercrombie, settle once and for all theissue of whether or not he iseligible for the presidency. reignited a controversy thathad been losing traction, thanksto opponents observationsthat we have announcements

of the presidents birth fromHawaiian newspapers, andthat its in Obamas interest tokeep opponents busy chasing aconspiracy theory rather thanfocusing on his policies.

Abercrombie, an old friendof the Obamas, told CNN in lateDecember that he planned toreexamine state health recordsand, if legally permitted,publicly release whatever he

found concerning Obamasbirth. On January 20, however,

he said that he had uncoveredObamas 1961 birth on theHawaiian island of Oahu, but

W h a t s

going on?We dontknow exactlywhat newi n f o r m a t i o nAbercrombiefound, butassuming hestelling thetruth (and if he

isnt, then onewonders whyhe wouldntsimply claimto have foundthe birthc e r t i f i c a t e ) ,its hard toimagine howhandwrit tenrecords from1961 could have been faked. In

all likelihood, Obama is indeeda natural-born American

citizen, but the question Hussein Obama Jr.?

Some insist on sticking to

their belief that Obama was

born in Kenya, but othersspeculate that, if it exists,

own Robert Higgs offered anacademics point of view withhis Economics of the GreatSociety as he investigated

the ideological and economicarguments for the legislation.While the government believedthe right combination offormulate a perfect solution toall of societys problems, historyhas proven with disastrousresults how wrong they were.

The last speaker, CharlesMurray of the AmericanEnterprise Institute, brought

the discussions to culminationwith his address, LosingGround: Update on the War onPoverty. He revealed the not-so-unexpected conclusion thatdespite massive governmentgrowth and increasedexpenditures, all Great Societyprograms have failed toachieve their goals and in manycircumstances have actuallymade society worse.

While each speakerapproached the topic of the

Great Society in his own way,the conclusions drawn werealways the same. Despite thebest intentions of President

Johnson and the liberalpoliticians that carry on histradition, the Great Society wasan utter failure that continuesto harm American politics andeconomics to this day.

In order to repair thedamages done to our nation,we must recall the principleson which our country wasfounded. It is not enoughto merely oppose the most

leviathan of government responsibility regarding others.Instead, we must completelyreject the administrative stateand return to the freedomintended by the Constitution.If we ever hope to truly live inthe Great Society the Foundersintended, we must have arebirth as a nation, rejectingour former ways, casting off

our chains, and embracing theliberty that was always ours.HF

ReturnoftheBirthers:Whereiscate?Calvin FreiburgerStaff Writer

other information that couldpotentially prove embarrassingto the president.

On January 23, a reader of

o r gsubmitteda theoryt h a tE d i t o r -i n - C h i e fK e v i nD u J a n r e a l l yand truly

b e l i e v e ssolve[s]t h eg r e a t e s tm y s t e r yof the 21stcentury sofar. Hereare the

background facts: Obamas

Hussein Obama Sr. in 1964. A

year later, she married LoloSoetoro, who adopted young

theory says that Obamasname would then have beenchanged on all of his publicrecords, including his birth Hawaiian lawmeaning thatAbercrombies handwrittennotations could be the onlyremaining legal traces of

After all the time andenergy spent on the issue, do

Is the big secret that Obamanever bothered to have hislegal name changed back?As DuJan points out, Obamacould certainly have uses for would have had an edge oncollege admission papers,because its exotic soundingand Indonesian and he wantedforeign student grants and

admissions preference, whileContinued on page 6


3/8

School

3

Pennsylania schools experiment with segregation, headlines blaredin January (CNN.com, 1/27/11). Online outrage put a quick end to theexperiment as Americas least favorite s-word conjured up images ofoppressed blacks in separate and very unequal schools. But in a book releasedlast spring, one scholar argues that it was the process of desegregation,which freed black students from such schools, that created the achievement

First, though, some background. The segregation at McCaskey EastHigh School in Lancaster, PA, was a mentoring program that separated

TheHillsdaleForum

Matt ColeCatherine Simmerer

Editors in Chief

Anna WilliamsEditor at Large

Catharine ClaytonCopy Editor

Maria DiodatiOlivia Tilly

Layout Staff

Calvin FreiburgerCatherine SimsJoseph Viviano

Rachael WierengaStaff Writers

Sam SparksBusiness Manager

federal spending, and preventgovernment waste and abuse,while putting forward long-term solutions to our entitle-ment crisis.

Immigration: secure the-

legal immigration, which is anaffront to the rule of law and anunacceptable security risk forall Americans.

Medicare: ensure universalaccess to health insurance, ful- Medicaid, and Social Security,and make these programs per-manently solvent.

War on Terrorism: continueadvancing and supporting Iraqi

forces, supporting reconstruc-tion efforts, and providing thegovernment with the support itneeds, so we can bring our re-maining troops home as quick-ly as possible.

Paul RyanAbortion: ensure that the

most vulnerable among us both unborn children and mothers struggling with unplanned-pregnancies are afforded thecompassion and opportunitiesthey need to choose life.

Budget: place top prior-ity on job creation and control-ling federal spending helpimprove accountability and tomonitor federal spending toprevent government waste andabuse, while putting forwardlong-term solutions to our en-titlement crisis.

Education: allocate our re- manner possible and do not

simply hope that spendingmore money on education with-out adequate planning will improve our educational system.

E n v i r o n m e n t : b a l a n c egrowth with stewardship.

Homeland Security: ensurethat the federal governmenthas the resources to protect ournation from those who wish todo us harm, while eliminatingwaste, fraud, and abuse.

Jobs & Economy: help im-prove accountability, monitor

senior member of the HouseWays and Means Committee,the 41-year-old Ryan has in-spired rumors of a 2012 presi-dential run. Although he wasselected to give the Republican

response to the

2011 State of theUnion Address,and has receivedhigh praises fromSarah Palin, heclaims his headsnot that big, and[his] kids are toosmall for him torun in these elec-tions (abcnews.com/thenote). Of

course, politicianshave been knownto run after say-ing they wont, sothats no guaran-

tee. Whatever he doesin upcoming election cycles,-cant rolein the future of the Re-publican party. Heres a sum-mary of his positions from hiswebsite (paulryan.house.gov).

On these issues, Ryan promisesto

Paul Ryan is famous for hisRoadmap for Americas Fu-ture, a plan to drastically de-crease government spending,pay off national debt, and en-courage economic growth. AsCongress-

man forW i s c o n -sins 1stD i s t r i c t ,C h a i r -man ofthe HouseB u d g e tC o m m i t -tee, and

photo: paulryan.house.gov

March2011

Masthead

students by race, gender, and language for just six minutes a day and20 minutes twice a month. According to LancasterOnline.com, a schoolemployee conceived of the program after learning about the academic advanced levels in reading were earned by 60 percent of whites but justprogram was based on research that shows grouping black students by

gender with a strong role model can help boost their academic achievementand self esteem.

ANewStrategyforClosingtheAchievementGap?

Anna WilliamsEditor Emerita

Catherine SimmererEditor in Chief

Segregation

Continued on page 6


4/8

4March2011

its all in theEnvironment:

Finding the Right S

by Lauren Wierenga GUEST WRITER

Photos by Greg Barry

This is where studying gets serious. Been procrastinating for the past 5 months on that Eng-lish paper due at 5 p.m. tomorrow? No worries, theres always a place that will force youto buckle down and get it done-- either that, or kill you while youre trying. Youre the typewho needs quiet, but youre not cut from the triumphant cloth of those who can survive

the cozy factor of the Heritage Room, especially since youve been stumbling through thepast three weeks on 2.5 hours of sleep a night. 5-hour energy drink in hand, you trudge offbooth in a dark corner. The pain and crappy lighting feed your soul. Its go time, youthink, downing the last two ounces of your energy drink and focusing in on the blue glarefrom your computer. Music and merriment are for the weak. Friends? What friends? Theonly friend I have is the A that Im going to get on that paper tomorrow, you tell your-self. Five hours later, your brain stem has snapped and your tailbone is fractured, but yourpaper is at least somewhat coherentto your exhausted brain, anyway. Good enough,you tell yourself as you pack up your baggage, proud that you resisted the urge to add any

The Old Snack Bar

Generally used during the day for quick study sessions between classes, the Formal Lounge has beenhome to those from all over the studying spectrumin that exceedingly small window of time whensome student organization isnt using it, that is. With perks like its prime location, brighter lighting thanwrong with this quiet, semi-busy study space. You allow yourself some distraction and some procrasti-nation, but you make sure to keep the window on your computer open to whatever you were workingon 5 minutes ago and will return to 15 minutes from now. The only environmental distraction is theconstant opening and closing of the main doorwhich is almost a fatal disturbance to those Formal

Loungers who havent killed their sense of curiosity or acquired the iron will to resist glancing up to seewho just left or entered their study abode. Youll get your work done in your own time, thoughafteryou get a cup of coffee from AJs and make a couple of trips around the union to see if theres anyoneworth talking to. If theres not, youll probably be in there until you need to be somewhere elseor arekicked out by a meeting.

The Formal Lounge


5/8

5March2011

udy Spot for You

leather sofa. Sadly, school policy forbids you to bring pipes to actively smoke while studying, or else youwould already be smoking your home brew. You are the discerning studier- nothing but complete silencebetter, experienced Heritage Room studier. Getting sleepy? Why not bust out some of the newest musicfrom the Vienna Boys Choir to stay awake and help you focus on that Milton? Not cutting it? Well, the kidwho thought nobody saw him eat it on the ice outside should fuel you with enough suppressed laughterto sustain you on your quest to get that A+++. Study on, Heritage Room studier, and dont be too afraid tohead back to your room sometime, either. Your roommate is probably wondering where you are.

The Heritage Room

and kicking several small children. Totally worth it, you say with a smile as you set downyour computer and grande caramel skim-milk latte, looking around you to see if anyonehas spotted your sweet digs. Sure, it might be somewhat distracting as 12 acquaintanceswill probably stop by to chitchat, but you understand that it comes with the territory, andrelish such encounters. Hearing a worker scream EARLY RISER!! every twenty secondsdoesnt even phase your resolve. You gaze about from your dearly-secured throne at thenameless masses around you who wish theyd had the fortune to have secured your booth.Better luck next time, chumps. Youve announced your arrival to the midday college socialclass, or kill that hour you have before you have to head back to Lane with some Facebook-checking and a plate of fries. You dont take your studying very seriously, which is good,

because nobody else in AJs does, either.

The Booths in AJs

Your parents spent a lot of money on all of those classy furnishings for your room. Your hugerug from Linens-n-Things is the talk of your hall, and youre pretty proud of your bedspread,too. This is good, since you spend almost every waking hour in your comfy abode, venturingtimorously out only to go to class orhorror of horrorseat. Sure, the only people you knowwants to admit it, they all wish that they had your GPA, and not just your rug. So, you might

hear some sniggers about calling your mom several times per day, or get jabbed about onlycan just buy friends. Their socialization will probably never get them accepted into grad school.Sure, the campus might think that youre a prospective, not a student, when you appear at Saga,but theyll all know your name when youre on the cover of Forbes.

Your Room


6/8

6March2011

Apparently unwilling torest on its laurels, the countrythat broughtthe worldtoilet paper,g u n p o w -der, and icecream ise n g a g i n gin a bout ofurban plan-ning on ascale of trulyphenomenalproportions.

T h eP e o p l e sRepublic ofChina is nothurting forinhabitantsat the mo-ment: 1 outof every 5people inthe worldis a Chinesecitizen. Withthat in mind, it does not comeas a total surprise that China isin the process of planning theworlds largest megacity in aconcerted effort t o i m p r o v epublic works.

Over the next six years,around 150 major infrastructureprojects will combine the

transport, energy, water, andtelecommunications networksof nine cities in the Pearl Riv-er Delta. This undertaking willcreate an urban area of 16,000square miles and boast a p opu -

lation of 42 million inhabit-ants.

Just to put that in per-spective, this city will betwice the size of Wales andits head count will handilyoutnumber the entire countryof Canada. To ensure that

those millions of people will begetting to work as speedily aspossible, plans are in the worksto add 3100 miles of rail lines.

Turning nine cities into onegigantic mess of metropolitan

interconnectivity does notcome cheap. The estimated costfor this enterprisecomes to 2 trillionyuan, which is over300 billion dollars.As the area in ques-tion accounts for

Catherine SimsStaff Writer

JustBecauseTheyCan:ChinaMakesaMegacity

the blacker-sounding Barack

Obama would fare better inthe world of left-wing Chicagopolitics.

Indeed, as Andy McCarthywrote for National Review On-line on July 30, 2009, Obama hasa record of emphasizing differ-ent aspects of his background(and sometimes changing de-tails outright) for personal gain.Early in the 2008 campaign,Team Obama boasted about

how his middle name, Husse-in, would symbolize a newera of good relations with theMiddle East, but later, they de-clared the very mention of it aracist smear. McCarthy writes:

If Obama wants to strikea connection with graduatingstudents in Moscow, he makesup a story about meeting hisfuture wifein class (Barackand Michelle Obama met at

work). If he wants to postureabout his poverty and strugglein America, he waxes eloquentabout his single mothers sur-viving on food stamps so shecould use every cent to send

him to the bestschools in the coun-try (Obama wasraised by his mater-nal grandparents,who had good jobs

and were able to pullstrings to get himinto an elite Hawai-ian prep school).

If BarackObamas real nameis indeed the long-awaited key toBirthergate, it wouldcertainly be embar-rassing, but Birtherswould do well to set

aside their expecta-tions that the truthwill somehow expelhim from the WhiteHouse. That said, forsuffering the distrustof so many Ameri--cording to a Wash-ington Post/ABCNews poll from May2010), the president

has only himself toblame.HF

Birthers, from page 2

School Segregation, from page 2

So lets give credit wherecredit is due: high school ad-ministrators discovered a realproblem, and rather than throwmoney at it, deny it, or blame it. Thanks to Americas knee-jerk reaction to the word seg-regation, though, they had toabandon the program before its

effectiveness could be testedwhich is unfortunate, since re-cent scholarship suggests thatracial segregation might have

In Acting White: The Iron-ic Legacy of Desegregation,Stuart Buck offers a new per-spective on just what happenedto black communities after theSupreme Court mandated de-segregation in 1954. A sum-

mary from the Amazon.comdescription: Although it arose

almost a tenth of the Chineseeconomy, it is probably safe toassume that the proverbial Pa-goda is not suffering fromany loose shingles and thatthis wi ll actu ally prove to bea cost-effective decision.

Strange-ly, this mam-moth cityhas notearned itselfa monikerand appar-ently thereis no planin the im-m e d i a t efuture to

b e s t o wone uponit. Since Chi-na plans tomove moreand morec i t i z e n si n t o ur -b a n a r e a s ,the trendof denselyconcentrated

p o p u l a -tions innameless locations mightbe on the rise. After all, toi-

let paper became pretty popu-

lar.HF

from noble impulses and was-tion, racial desegregation wasoften implemented in a waythat was devastating to blackcommunities. It frequently de-stroyed black schools, reducedthe numbers of black principalswho could serve as role models,and made school a strange and

uncomfortable environment forblack children, a place manyviewed as quintessentiallywhite.

The law of unintended con-sequences strikes again.

But dont get me wrong.No one is arguing that re-seg-regating schools would solvethe problems that desegrega-tion helped to create. Or thata mentoring program like the

short-lived one at McCaskeyEast would close the racial

achievement gapovernight. Poverty,family breakdown,peer pressure, indif-ferent teachersallthese must contrib-ute to the problem,meaning it will ad-

Nevertheless,

if Americans trulywant to improve theeducation of minori-ties, they would dowell to stop scape-goating the usualsuspects and insteadread Bucks work,admit the complex-ity of the situation,and set out on thelong, arduous path

of effective reform.HF

Chinas proposed megacity: 42 million people in an area of 16,000 square miles.


7/8

7March2011

John Miller, the incomingdirector of the Dow JournalismProgram, is a man of many in-terests. Though a veteran jour-nalist for National Review andother publications, he does not- -plore conservative philanthrop-ic organizations, multicultural-ism, and Americas relationshipwith France; his novel The First -count of the Lincolns assas- Big Scrum: How Teddy Roos- sports history and will appearin April.

The Hillsdale Forum con-ducted a phone interview withhim to learn more about hispersonal history, interests, andplans for the Dow Program.

HF: How did you learn aboutHillsdale?John Miller: My older brotherwent there, class of 77. I wascollege is was formed by visitsto Hillsdale. And so its been apart of my life since then. In the80s wed get Imprimis at home,so Id read it when I was in high

HF: So you knew aboutHillsdale, but you attendedthe University of Michigan?!JM: Michigan was the rightchoice for me at the time, andI didnt apply to Hillsdale. Itwas a good education. Thething about Michigan is this:they dont make you get a goodeducation, but theres one to be-tion, you can get it, but they

HF: Youve been working inWashington, D.C., for almosttwenty years, though youspent your childhood and col-lege years in Michigan. Are

you ready to return to the land

of 6-month winters? Or excit-ed?JM: return to Michigan. I wasntout here [in D.C.], and Ive builta career here. But Larry Arnncalled last summer and we led to another.

for the Dow Journalism Pro-gram yet?JM: First thing: reinstate theserial comma in the Collegian -ber one, as far as Im concerned.But seriously, Im stepping intoa pretty strong program. I havea lot of ideas for doing thingsIve got some notions and Id to get the journalism programmore integrated with WHIP-dents have journalism opportu-nities.

as many people as possible- journalism is a dying industrybecause daily papers are goingthe way of the dinosaurs. Butthe media is a thriving industry,and the Dow Program is a greatway to get started.

HF: On thatnote, do you

have any ad-vice for aspiringwriters?JM: If you wantto write, youneed to write. about being awriter; be one.One of thegreat things atHillsdale is that

journalism is not majors ought tobe in traditionalacademic disci-plines. You canlearn a little bitabout journalismin the classroom,and Hillsdaleprovides that,but you learn it

by doing it. Its you can listen toa teacher tell you

but if you want to be a carpen-ter, you have to start swinginga hammer and pounding thenails.

HF: Your Between the Cov-

ers podcasts for NationalReview Online allow you tointerview a wide variety of au-thorsfrom P.J. ORourke andThomas Sowell to Robert Alter-cially jealous. Whats the mostinteresting interview youveever done?JM: Some are better than oth-ers. Theyre all decent. So muchreally depends on the person

youre interviewing. Theresa performance aspect to this.

a good interview, and for somepeople its an area for improve-ment, let us say. So it really de-pends on the author.their writing. If you get themgoing, its hard to get them tostop. The art of giving an in-terview requires you to givecrisp answers. For a ten-minutepodcast, you dont want to givea lecture. A good interviewerwill draw out from you whatthe audience needs to hear. Agood interview is a conversa-tion. I want these podcasts tobe a forum for interesting writ-minutes.

HF: Youve been in conser-vative political circles for awhile, and politics is one ma-jor topic of your writing. Doyou have any favorites for the2012 Republican presidentialcandidate?JM: The job of conservatives The job of conservatives is tolet these candidates come to usand tell us why they deserveour support. We want this tobe a courtship, not a horse racewhere youre gambling andUltimately any conservativewants to settle on the most con-servative electable candidate,

quite some time.

HF: Your next book, The BigScrum: How Teddy RooseveltSaved Football, comes out inApril. Whats it about?JM: It tells an almost complete-ly untold story about the begin-nings of football. Football wasan incredibly violent sport atthe end of the 19th century, tothe point where young men andboys were dying while playingit. So a prohibition movementemerges to ban footballIn1905, President Roosevelt sum-mons the head coaches of Har-vard, Yale, and Princeton (thebiggest football programs in thecountry at the time) to the WhiteHouse. Roosevelt is a fan ofhes an advocate of the strenu- boys into men. [To the coaches]he essentially says, If you guysdont do something about thisproblem, youre going to losethe sport. And the coachesleave the White House, formthe organization that becomesthe NCAA, and pass a series ofrule-changes, the most impor-tant of which was the forwardpass. And it changes the game;it spreads it out and turns it into that, either football would bevery different or it wouldnt

told at this length. HFPhoto courtesy of John J. Miller

Anna Williams

Editor Emerita

FromSerialCommastotheBigScrum:

THE HILLSDALE FORUM is an independent studentnewspaper published twice a semester. We print news,opinions, editorials, reviews, satire, and whatever else

Interested in...writing? editing? graphic design?

Got opinions? Want to share them?

Then join the Hillsdale Forum! We always need staff writ-ers, copy editors, and graphic designers. Contact Editors in

Chief Matt Cole ([email protected]) or Catherine Sim-merer ([email protected]).


8/8

8March2011

THEHILLSDALEFO

RUM

[email protected]

E-MAIL: [email protected]

Real Hillsdalians of Genius

Heres to you, Mr. HillsdalianSports Fan. You only made itto one basketball game because Saturday mid-afternoon studyto attend the big home game.After ignoring four all-campusone; it said that both teams arehighly ranked nationally, somore interesting than the rest.You found a nice seat in thestudent section and found thegame pleasing. When the refcalled a foul on the Chargers,you tried to listen to the guybehind you explaining therules, but you couldnt hearover those rude boys yellingcompletely disruptive all game:

shouting, clapping, and making they made. You clapped afterone three-point basket, but that Those boys clapped after everypoint is scored. Clearly, none diminishing marginal returns,and besides, all that noise musthave distracted the players. The they remained standing the of the bleacher seats, if not to sitand quietly observe the sportingoh observer of the ancient art of

High-speed rail, from page 1 -ever, is a conservative estimate:many say the bill could be asmuch as 120 million dollars amile in some areas.

Aside from the huge costs,there are many other objectionsto Obamas plan. High-speedrail in the U.S. is not quite as Japan for a variety of factors.

locations in order to reach nec-essary speeds. Because Ameri-ca is so large, a line from, say,Washington, D.C., to Chicagolegal battles to obtain the nec-essary land.

Making it even more dif-

suited transportation routes.This is partly because so many

- that also means that unlesshigh-speed rail costs are sig-have no incentive to stop using

The largest problem of all 200 million more people. Chi-

na equals us in size but boasts people, compared to just ninesuch American cities. A high-density population is necessaryfor high-speed rail systems tocurrently in the states servesour most densely populated re-gion, yet it still relies heavily ongovernment subsidies.

Since high-speed rails

-lic subsidies to be carried into a public needboth staples ofprevious Obama budget pro-posals.

majority in Congress, the railsystem may not materialize. could get it through.

As government subsidies tobusinesses undermine the freemarket and account for vast priority to kill this plan entirely.With the nation facing enor-mous debt problems, they needto look beyond cutting entitle--lion dollars for Planned Parent-hood and start saying no to the

billon-dollar subsidies. HF

Instead the primary

the divisiveness of last yearsHurt Locker vs. Avatar battle.People like to feel passionateabout the things they root for;for Hurt Locker to pull out avictory.

This year I couldnt care none stood head and shoulders

for that matter.

helped by James Francos blas

attitude throughout. In thefuture the producers shouldas hosts. Steve Martin and BillyCrystal have had great success

Actress and dropped anF-bomb. I dont really careabout the language people use, such expletives and I cant help

as a publicity stunt.

Hopefully losing 10 million

Oscars, from page 1

previous years, but more likely

next time. At the very least it

In any case, here are the big

Best Director: Tom Hooper

Best Original Screenplay:

Best Adapted Screenplay:Aaron Sorkin (The Social

Best Actor: Colin Firth (The

Best Actress: Natalie Portman

Best Supporting Actress:

Best Supporting Actor:

Best Cinematography: Wally

HF

Hillsdale Forum March 2011

Documents

Transcript of Hillsdale Forum March 2011