A is for Average: footnotes from chapter 7
51) Here’s the link to the letter deconstructing in detail the extremely thin evidence that is cited about the benefits of ethnic studies. It is very much worth your time, simply because any well-reasoned arguments against any aspect of ethnic studies get absolutely zero press coverage. Only the most hyperbolic arguments are given any media attention.
52) Here’s a link His Excellency George Washington, by Joseph Ellis. The book does the deep dive but is also very readable and engaging. I highly recommend it!
53) Here’s a link to John Adams, by David McCullough. John and Abigail Adams are my favorite presidential couple. Enough of their letters to each other have survived that we have an excellent window into the richness of their relationship.
As a side note, if you enjoy reading about history, you should just read everything David McCullough has ever written. You won’t regret doing that.
54) Here’s the link to the page with the Ethnic Studies model curriculum. If you’re especially masochistic, try reading it in its entirety.
55) Here’s the link to the page on the California Department of Education’s website where you can look up the standards for History and Social Studies.
56) Here’s the link to the CalMatters letter complaining that “capitalism” had been replaced by “exploitative economic systems,” thereby, in view of the authors, obscuring the fact that Capitalism Is Bad.
57) My students sometimes ask me about capitalism; I use the analogy of a river. A river will always seek the fastest path to the sea. It is concerned neither with helping nor hurting people, but it can do either one as it pursues its one singleminded goal.
Similarly, capitalism has just one goal: to take an input, which is capital, and produce an output, which is more capital. It is concerned neither with helping nor hurting people, but it can do either one as it pursues its one singleminded goal. Public policy’s goal should be to place the minimum number of guardrails on the economy to keep capitalism’s impact firmly in the “helping” zone and not the “hurting” zone.
58) Here are the links to the quotes I gave presenting the conservative Latino view of the border:
Here’s the link to the article with the Salcedo quote.
Here’s the link to the article with the Torres quote.
Here’s the link to the article with the Gallego article.
Bonus: I forgot to footnote that I used estimated world GDP data from the Maddison Project to create the graph of world GDP per capita over the last 2000 years. It’s a real labor of love, compiling the kinds of statistics it would take to make those estimates, so kudos to the team over at Maddsion. Here’s a link that will get you to the source data if you’d like to play around with it.