In the Centre for Independent Studies quarterly Policy magazine.
EXTRACTS
DE Soto. Only about 5 per cent of Peruvians belong to labour unions and more than 60 per cent are operating as entrepreneurs in the informal or black ecoqomy. Informal operators do not regard themselves as either the private or the public sector because they see the former as the beneficiary of privileges handed out by the latter.
Hook. Serious moves are under way to politicise the study of the humanities in the United States. These tendencies are reflected in the social studies texts proposed by some education reformers. Traditional texts are to be replaced or supplemented with books composed by women, coloured people and other representatives of the ‘oppressed classes’. Special courses will be provided by members of these disadvantaged groups. This amounts to a massive program of historical revisionism and cultural affirmative action.
The debate hinges on a blatant extension of the term ‘political’ to include any difference of opinion whatever. Consequently, people who suggest that
history and literature texts do not need to be studied as essentially political documents are accused of covering up their own political interests in the status quo. Hook identifies this as a part of a sinister tendency to politicise the truth itself, as though truth were decided by power and influence. Unfortunately, corrective action will need to have a political dimension the radical reformers have successfully captured positions of political power and influence.http://www.the-rathouse.com/Rafe_s_Roundup_1989-91.pdf
Michael Novak. Novak identifies several valuable moral traditions that were called forth by democratic capitalist institutions in the early American colonies. These include civic responsibility, personal economic enterprise, creativity and a certain kind of communitarian living embodied in a myriad of voluntary associations. On a more sombre note, he reminds us that capitalism depends on a moral framework that is under threat from relativism in the intellectual realm and from social engineers in the political and social arena. ‘It would only, take a generation of citizens who have forgotten their founding principles and all the lessons of experience to set in motion a precipitous and calamitous slide’.
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