Letters
Editors : In "The Ends of Ideology" review [of Norberto Bobbin's Left and Right] (Dissent, Summer 1998), Jeffrey Scheuer creates an olla podrida jumbling together Francis Fukuyama, myself, the...
...and my further agreement with Bobbio that, in this sense, ideology has no foreseeable end...
...The "end of ideology" argument was that this great historic crossover was now finished...
...The reason they gave some years ago was that the California legislature was discussing a bill requiring state universities to graduate minority students in accordance with their proportion in the California population...
...To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...DISSENT / Fall 1998 n 143...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...My position on affirmative action— that it's a weak, flawed tool but one I hesitate to give up until we have something better—hasn't changed...
...My article describes at length how Nathan Glazer has crusaded for decades on behalf of the color-blind principle and now deviates only for blacks applying to universities...
...Glazer is worried about the absence of blacks at the most elite universities ("the Harvards, the Berkeleys, and the Amhersts...
...In the Harvard University Press re-issue of my End of Ideology, in 1998, I wrote that many books are known for their title, not for their content...
...Quite a difference from what Mr...
...The catalyst for all three is the passage of Proposition 209 in California last year...
...The cause of the misery is the failure of the Clinton administration to grasp the unique opportunity of 199, when, with control of both houses of Congress, it failed to concentrate its efforts on passing a universal health plan...
...I would add that I think his objection buttresses a larger point in the review: that the term has always been used in divergent and even radically different ways...
...We are unable to acknowledge letters...
...Third, K. Barkin says he has "news" for me, Glazer, and Loury: "the result of [Proposition] 209 has not been as drastic as the New York Times claimed" because overall minority admissions for the eight campuses of the University of California declined only slightly...
...the fact that blacks rejected by Berkeley can attend San Diego and Irvine does not speak to his concerns at all...
...This is why I had called Marxism a "secular religion...
...Ironically, more minority students may graduate in four years because of the changed distribution of students...
...While the HMO situation remains gloomy, there is hope for improvement in the related question of Social Security, related via Medicare, even in the present political environment...
...I read it in the New York Times on April 1, 1998, the day after the university announced its admissions figures...
...I recount how Glenn Loury has spent a good part of his life as a public intellectual campaigning against lower standards for minorities...
...The solution is as clear as it is fair: return taxes derived from Social Security benefits to the Social Security fund...
...In the English civil war, for example, the struggle of Cromwell and the Puritans (and the Fifth Monarchy Men, to which Cromwell had once belonged), was carried out in religious terms, though the political interests were evident underneath...
...I wrote about Nathan Glazer's and Glenn Loury's second thoughts...
...Nobody has asked why two California State University professors ever proposed 209...
...But, I have news for all three...
...I will leave a first-year graduate student to sort out all the confusions...
...Joanne Barkan Replies: Kenneth Barkin squeezes many a misconception into his brief letter...
...The results will haunt us for a long time...
...Scheuer has written...
...Editors : In "The Ends of Ideology" review [of Norberto Bobbin's Left and Right] (Dissent, Summer 1998), Jeffrey Scheuer creates an olla podrida jumbling together Francis Fukuyama, myself, the "proud (but naive) American tradition of pragmatism [Richard Rorty?]," "neutral solutions," "no immutable values at stake," and so on...
...That's news...
...The expression "second thoughts" refers to a reconsideration or revised opinion...
...JOSEPH M. DIAMOND Brooklyn, N.Y...
...The shocking decline in minority admissions at Berkeley and UCLA after 209 went into effect was unsettling...
...It's a safe bet that his news comes as no news to Glazer or Loury either...
...DANIEL BELL Cambridge, Mass...
...I enumerate my own objections to creating diversity artificially by means of preferential treatment...
...Beginning with the French Revolution and carried through in the Russian Revolution, the conflicts were carried out in ideological terms, though the religious passions were evident underneath...
...DISSENT / Fall 1 998 • 141 LETTERS Also, the graduation rate at the smaller UC campuses is higher than at Berkeley and UCLA...
...That possibility is connected with the taxation of Social Security benefits...
...Good grief...
...He begins: "Joanne Barkan writes of her second thoughts on affirmative action...
...Second, K. Barkin calls the decline in minority admissions at Berkeley and UCLA "shocking...
...I'm afraid there are more confusions here than most first-year graduate students could sort out...
...Instead, its real effort went to pushing NAFTA through...
...The university administration has not rushed these figures into print and I noticed them on internal university memos...
...if Professor Bell means the end of politics as a vehicle of religious revolution, the Taliban might challenge that view...
...I argued the same position in the Fall 1995 issue of Dissent...
...I'm still not clear as to which sense of "ideology" has ended...
...Like Loury, I argue for reordering society's priorities and redistributing resources so that blacks will have substantial equality of opportunity and can compete on merit...
...This is something that was not true of the 1997 or earlier classes...
...but perhaps I still don't do him justice...
...But when benefits are taxed, depending on income level, the proceeds are diverted to the government's general fund— a clear substitution of a regressive tax for the more-orless progressive income tax...
...I find K. Barkin's shock (he's a member of the history department at UC Riverside) as unwarranted as Glazer's...
...What would the thoughts of our three agonizing intellectuals be to such a proposal...
...Finally, K. Barkin asks what the "three agonizing intellectuals" would think about a proposal to require California's state universities "to graduate minority students in accordance with their proportion in the California population...
...But as to myself, no, no, no...
...How to Save Social Security Editors: In "The HMO Revolution" (Dissent, Spring 1998), Rashi Fein describes the worsening health care situation in this country, determined as it is largely by for-profit organizations...
...Besides correcting an outrageous situation, the change would secure Social Security's future, even undermining much of the corrosive cynicism connected with that future...
...JEFFREY SCHEUER New York, N.Y Affirmative Action Editors: Joanne Barkan writes of her second thoughts on affirmative action as well as those of Nathan Glazer and Glenn Loury ("Affirmative Action: Second Thoughts," Dissent, Summer 1998...
...But since I also said that ideology, in my formulation, was a mobilization to commit people to action and to justify these in normative terms, I stated, in 1960, that new social movements would create their own ideologies, such as those of "Pan-Arabism, color and nationalism," and that in the distinctive differences between the older and newer ideologies "lie the great political problems of the second half of the twentieth century...
...Minority students turned down by the two elite campuses have gone to the not undistinguished San Diego, Irvine, Santa Cruz, or Riverside campuses...
...Jeffrey Scheuer Replies: I don't know what an "olla podrida" is or how many of them I have unwittingly created, but I appreciate the point of Daniel Bell's letter and sincerely apologize for having shortchanged his complex and interesting conception of ideology...
...I hope at least to have conveyed my support for Bobbio's clear and widely accepted (but not exclusive) sense of "ideology" as the rubric of normative, left-right political debate in democratic societies...
...At best it was lazy of me not to distinguish his use of the term from others...
...because the system is indispensable, we put up with its regressive character...
...Loury, too, wants blacks at Berkeley and UCLA, but he wants them to get there without admission preferences...
...KENNETH BARKIN Riverside, Calif...
...The University of California embraces eight campuses, all of which are rated among the top seventy-five research universities in America...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelopes...
...As I note in my article, for years social scientists and university administrators have been predicting a "white-out" with the end of affirmative action...
...The minorities have always done better on the smaller campuses...
...Given these figures, one of the results of 209 is that minorities in the entering class of 1998 can all take pride in their admission, which was achieved in competition with Asian and Anglo students...
...the result of 209 has not been as drastic as the New York Times claims...
...Kenneth Barkin's letter hasn't provided information or insight, but it has given me something else to agonize about: the level of reading that's going on at the universities...
...Letters must be kept to about 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...regrettably, mine is often one of them...
...But because we have a long "lead time" for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...
...Fourth (and most important), K. Barkin seems to have missed the substance of all our positions on affirmative action...
...The Times published the complete racial breakdown of stu142 n DISSENT / Fall 1998 dents admitted to all eight campuses in its lengthy article...
...And Scheuer shows this again...
...Unlike Loury, I'll accept preferences until we get something better...
...certainly there is more than one useful conception of ideology...
...The argument that I put forth was that in the past three hundred years, a great "historic crossover" had occurred in the nature of revolutionary movements...
...Social Security benefits ultimately derive from the LETTERS regressive Social Security tax...
...The change in minority admissions for the eight is -2.3 percent, a figure that is statistically insignificant...
Vol. 45 • September 1998 • No. 4
