Entries by Craig J. Cantoni

DARFUR GENOCIDE: Cherry-Picking History on College Campuses

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: The author is spot on about the genocide in Darfur and selection bias in the outrage of campus leftists. We could also add the Islamic slaughter of their own as in Syria, the oppression by Hamas of all opposition in Gaza, and the killing of Black Christians throughout sub-Saharan Africa. If it does […]

As the University of Arizona Goes, so Goes Tucson

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

As the University of Arizona goes, so goes Tucson, the city where the university is located. As Tucson goes, so goes the University of Arizona (UA). Things haven’t been going very well for either of them. Both have been operating well below their potential for a long time, and both are suffering from problems that […]

A Pulitzer Awaits the Arizona Daily Star

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A recent Wall Street Journal column on the scam of the federal student-loan program brought to mind the financial, governance, and ethical mess at the University of Arizona (UA). The Arizona Daily Star’s coverage of the UA mess has been commendable, thanks to reporter Ellie Wolfe.  A Pulitzer Prize awaits her if she ties UA’s […]

Am I Male?

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

In advance of an upcoming elective surgery, I have been on the phone with personnel from a local Tucson hospital to provide my medical history, insurance coverage, and other required information. The hospital does a great job and its employees are personable, professional, and thorough. A charming woman asked me on one of the calls […]

Questions for UA’s Provost Candidate

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

It’s almost a certainty that he wasn’t asked penetrating questions when he spoke the party line about diversity. Two news stories on March 27 exposed what is wrong at the University of Arizona (UA), and, by extension, the Tucson metropolis. The first was a story in the Arizona Daily Star about a presentation by Fouad […]

Somersaulting Over Sonoran Hot Dogs

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The human capacity for inconsistency, contradiction, hypocrisy, double standards, and cognitive dissonance fascinates me—especially my own large capacity for such intellectual somersaults. Somersaults were on display in a recent news story in the Arizona Daily Star. The story was about “Sonoran hot dog king” Daniel Contreras being in intensive care in a Tucson hospital. (“Family […]

The Willis-Wade Effect

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

As non-Whites rise to positions of power, they can be just as corrupt and self-dealing as Whites who abuse their power. Contrary to what is conveyed by critical race theory and other intellectual hogwash, all humans are inherently the same when pickled in similar circumstances and cultures, regardless of race, ethnicity, or skin color. The […]

Weekend Read: Still Spiraling Down

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

The state of American society and culture 30 years after the publication of “Defining Deviancy Down.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” was published in the 1993-1994 Winter edition of The American Scholar. It was certainly scholarly. It was also accurate, prescient, courageous, politically incorrect, and subsequently ignored by policymakers, social justice activists, media, […]

Weekend Read: CRT and DEI – Vacuous but Entrenched

Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

The fatuous thinking behind critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The recent Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament showed that CRT and DEI are not passing fads. The tournament was held in Torrey Pines, California, overlooking the ocean. The winner, a Frenchman, took home $1.62 million of the $9 million purse. Near the end […]

Is the US Following Britain Downhill?

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Maybe not in all respects but certainly socially and culturally. Great Britain lost its empire very quickly in the twentieth century, after becoming overextended militarily and economically, especially with the cost of the two world wars of that century. It turned left after the second of those wars, largely retreated to its island home, and […]

Pima County Should Listen to Elvis Presley

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

“Don’t be cruel” was good advice that should have been heeded long ago. Elvis Presley released “Don’t Be Cruel” in 1956. Within a couple of decades, Pima County and the City of Tucson began adopting cruel political systems, economic policies, industrial policies, and social policies that set the Tucson metropolis on a course to be […]

Another Dumbass White Guy

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Why do White people keep falling for tropes and fallacies about diversity, equity, and inclusion? In a recent essay in City Journal about the brouhaha over the congressional testimony of Ivy League presidents, Heather Mac Donald wrote the following about Bill Ackman, a donor to Harvard and a billionaire investor: “Ackman, who has taken the […]

Pima County Is to Prosperity What N. Korea Is to Democracy

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The county’s 13-point Prosperity Initiative won’t reduce the poverty that it and the City of Tucson have caused. The Pima County Board of Supervisors recently passed a 13-point Prosperity Initiative to increase prosperity and reduce poverty and its effects in metro Tucson. The initiative calls for the county to work with the City of Tucson […]

Exposing America’s Cultural Revolutionaries

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

A review of The Canceling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, 2023, Simon & Schuster, New York, 443 pages. The Canceling of the American Mind appears to have been written in a hurry and could’ve used some editing and wordsmithing.  But it’s worth reading for its many examples of how colleges […]

What Is Racism?

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

“Racism” is one of the many catchall words that are bandied about without definition or much thought. Anyone with the temerity to question the meaning of “racism” or to ask for a definition of the word risks being called a racist. Well, so be it. Given that “racism” has become one of the most ubiquitous […]

The Epitome of Privilege, Inequality, Racism, and Injustice

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

A review of The Sister, by Sung-Yoon Lee, 2023, Hachette Book Group, New York, 289 pages. The Sister is a book about privilege, inequality, racism, and injustice. Sorry to disappoint American wokesters, but it’s not about the United States or White people. It’s about North Korea, a nation that, by comparison, makes America’s racial, economic, […]

Hamas Repeats History

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

At the same time, increasing numbers of Americans don’t know history or cherry-pick history for political purposes. The massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas brought me back to eighth grade in parochial school, where something happened that changed how I saw the world and human nature. What happened was that the nuns showed a shocking […]

A Test of Your Understanding of Diversity

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A one-question test reveals that diversity is as much about exclusion as it is about inclusion. The purpose of this paper is to test your understanding of diversity and its related movements of equity and inclusion.  We’ll begin with the five precepts of diversity and then turn to a one-question test. The precepts: The greater […]

Institutional Racism: Fact or Fiction?

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The wrong answer has resulted in the wrong public policies.   A popular narrative is that institutional racism explains why African Americans, as a group, on average, experience higher poverty rates, lower test scores, fewer advancement opportunities, worse health outcomes, higher arrest rates, longer prison sentences, fewer housing options, and higher rates of being victims […]

A Fashion Question about Tattoos

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

What’s the dividing line between fashionable and unfashionable tattoos?   Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is fashion. Being neither beautiful nor fashionable, I have a burning question:  At what point do tattoos go from being fashionably attractive to being unfashionably ugly? I need to know in case I ever decide to […]

Locked in Password Prison

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

To make it worse, the only way out is with a Microsoft key.   Despite remarkable advances in computer technology and artificial intelligence, American productivity has either flatlined or declined.  No doubt, a contributing factor is that Americans are wasting too much time keeping track of their passwords, security codes, PINs, user IDs, and user […]

The Existential Threat of Bob Iger’s Yacht

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

If climate change is an existential threat, should the government ban yachts, mansions, Disney cruises, Disney World, and green phonies? In 2021, the Disney Company issued its 183-page Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which included a section on environmental sustainability.  Disney CEO Bob Iger is currently having a superyacht built for himself that is 210 feet […]

When Democrats Were Violent Election Deniers

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The reaction of Trump and his loyalists to losing the 2020 presidential election was namby-pamby compared to how Democrats reacted to losing the 1876 election.   History not only repeats itself but reveals how the Democrat and Republican parties have switched roles over time.  What each one accuses the other of doing, each has done […]

The U.S. Is Ruled by Heinerscheids

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

They won’t rest until they get their fellow Heinerscheid, Donald Trump.   Heinerscheids on the left and right dominate the top of government, industry and media. What is a Heinerscheid (high-nur-shide)? A Heinerscheid is an upper-caste American from the Ivy League who has been hoodwinked to believe that a degree from a top-ranked school brings […]

Race is Fluid, not Fixed

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Fixed or fluid, the argument is made more interesting because while there are very little DNA differences among racial categories, there are immense differences between the two sexes.  Such differences lead among other factors to different hormones and subsequent physical and mental development.  Yet these immense differences are considered fluid, while minute differences are considered […]

A Debt Ceiling Saga: Americans Devour Their Marshmallows

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The debt ceiling agreement brings to mind the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment in deferred gratification.   In 1972, an experiment in deferred gratification was conducted at Stanford Univ.  Children were given the choice of eating one marshmallow immediately or waiting a period of time for two marshmallows.  When the test subjects were followed later in […]

A DEI Meeting You’ll Never See

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Would the discussion leader be applauded or booed for citing uncomfortable facts about DEI?   TUCSON – A nonprofit foundation recently held a national conference at an expensive resort near my house.  Since the foundation is headquartered on the East Coast, this means that the attendees flew across the country to attend the conference. One […]

What Racial and Gender Spoils Have Wrought

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program is an example of the downside of race- and gender-based federal assistance. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial detailed the pervasive fraud with the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program. The DBE program is just one of the scores of programs that dole out loans, preferences, and set-asides based on […]

The McCarthyism of Democrats: Woodrow Wilson’s WW1 AG and the January 6th Committee

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

The McCarthyism of Democrats is largely unknown, because they are much better than Republicans at scrubbing history of negatives about themselves. The odds are pretty good that you’ve heard of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts, which began in the late 1940s to uncover communists in the US government, Hollywood, and elsewhere.  After […]

The Ultimate Cancel Culture and Equality

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

A review of Mao’s Great Famine:  The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, by Frank Dikotter (Bloomberg Publishing, Hardback Edition, 2010; Paperback Edition, 2017, 420 pages). It is seen as gauche, hateful, and unenlightened on college campuses and like-minded places to quote Winston Churchill because he was an imperialist and colonialist. Okay, so go […]

DEI in Historical Context

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are euphemisms for discrimination, enmity, and injustice.  The cycle is as old as Homo sapiens. Members of a dominant race, ethnic group, religion, ideology, nationality, social class, tribe, or clan inflict injustices on members of a different race, ethnic group, religion, ideology, nationality, social class, tribe, or clan. Driven by understandable […]

McCarthyism On The Left

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

The McCarthyism of Democrats is largely unknown because they are much better than Republicans at scrubbing the history of negatives about themselves. The odds are pretty good that you’ve heard of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts, which began in the late 1940s to uncover communists in the US government, Hollywood, and elsewhere.  […]

The Folly of Equity

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

“Equity” has replaced “equality” as the latest buzzword in America’s never-ending game of Victimology, which in turn has replaced the board game of Monopoly in popularity. As Vice President Kamala Harris has said, “Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place.”  In other words, equity means equal outcomes, not equality under the […]

Our Smart but Stupid Economic Masters

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

A review of The Lords of Easy Money:  How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy, by Christopher Leonard, Paperback Edition, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2023, 373 pages. Your neighbors might object to you reading The Lords of Easy Money.  That’s because it’s a book that will make you want to go outside and howl at the moon, given […]

An Intellectual Feast for Contrarians

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

A new book questions the conventional wisdom about immigration, diversity, assimilation, and the causes of prosperity. Caution!  Don’t be seen reading the following book in public. The Culture Transplant:  How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot like the Ones They Left, by Garett Jones, 2023, Stanford Business Books, 213 pages. There is not a […]

Weekend Read: Racial Roulette

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

A review of Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, by David E. Bernstein, Bombardier Books, 2022, 186 pages. Early in my professional career a long time ago, I was tasked by my employer, an international insurance company based in Chicago, with three responsibilities in addition to other duties:  one, to head the […]

A Paean to Passbook Savings Accounts

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal got me thinking about the passbook savings accounts of my long-ago youth. The article said that kids today don’t want their parents to give them cash for allowances and doing chores. They want to be paid in Robux, which is an online currency from Roblox Corp. Kids […]

Taiwan Semiconductor’s Travails in Phoenix

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Lessons about American education and bureaucracy. A recent Wall Street Journal news story detailed the problems encountered by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in getting a $12 billion plant up and running in Phoenix.  The company is planning to produce state-of-the-art 3-nanometer chips at the plant. The company cited federal regulatory requirements, construction roadblocks, and additional […]

The Skunk at the Grand Old Party (GOP)

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: Several fault lines have been present in the Republican Party and some new ones are forming. They have become wide enough that both sides are blaming each other for the poor performance during the recent mid-term elections. And, each has a point. The most obvious is the rift between the party establishment and […]

SCOTUS Should End Racial Categories

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

For justification, the Supreme Court of the United States should look at the discriminatory consequences of a 1922 Supreme Court ruling that attempted to define “white.”    The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the constitutionality of racial preferences in college admissions. The case was brought on behalf of Asians but applies to all “races.” The […]

White and Woke Supremacy

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The forgotten white supremacists whose descendants pretend to be woke and virtuous.    Below are vile, racist comments spoken by white supremacists about minorities. The supremacists and minorities will be identified after the comments. These races have “crooked faces, coarse mouths, bad noses, heavy jaws, and low foreheads.” They “lack the conveniences for thinking” and are […]

Hispanic Brilliance and Blather

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

A self-identified Hispanic reveals the speciousness of today’s racial/ethnic labels but then falls into the same trap.   A reader of the Wall Street Journal with the surname of Flores had me cheering enthusiastically over part of what he wrote in the Reader Comments of the online edition of the newspaper. He initially showed greater […]

Racial Alchemy

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Editors’ Note: Lest anyone think we don’t have a problem today, just look at the recent remarks of the rap singer Kayne West. Or for that matter, the University of California at Berkeley and its antisemitic agenda. Or, Harvard and its admission discrimination against Asians. Culturally, we see a new regime of discrimination coming from […]

BOOK REVIEW: Easy Money and Hard Economic Times

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Editors’ Note: As the article below indicates, a new magisterial history of interest rates and central banking has been published. The author, Edward Chancellor wrote a previous book just before the last great financial crash called Devil Take the Hindmost, which was extremely timely if not prescient. This new book is extremely critical of current […]

Carbon Lifestyles of the Rich, Famous and Hypocritical

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

If global warming is truly an existential threat, then the nation’s elites are a threat and should be dealt with accordingly.   Of all the varieties of hypocrites, carbon hypocrites are among the worse, because they harm poor people the most. You’ve heard about the two-faced archetypes: Uber-wealthy and powerful, they say that global warming is […]

Students Can’t Read but Know Their Pronouns and Genders

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Test Scores are abysmal for Amber, Chase, Juanita, and Jamal, but their woke scores are off the charts.   You’ve no doubt heard about the abysmal reading and math scores of America’s youth. Meanwhile, teachers are learning how to teach students all of the politically-correct genders and pronouns.   In San Francisco, for example, teacher training […]

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