Saturday, November 26, 2016

Trump's Secret? Electoral Realignment Beats Money Every Time

As I learned from E. E. Schattschneider's bookThe Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America, an electoral realignment is the most powerful force in the world. As Trump demonstrated, a political realignment makes up for a lack of money, a lack of a ground game, and a lack of many other things too.

Unfortunately, the wisdom of this eminent political scientist is no where to be seen in the conventional explanations for Trump's outstanding victory. So far, the best approximation I ran across is an article by Whitney Blake at the Weekly Standard that uses the wisdom of hindsight to put the presidential election into a proper perspective.

Her article, "12 Ways in Which Trump Upended Conventional Wisdom," neatly organizes the manner in which Trump reversed virtually all the surefire theories which predicted his failure. Prime examples include his lack of money or a robust enough ground game.

See, http://www.weeklystandard.com/12-ways-in-which-trump-upended-conventional-wisdom/article/2005550#.WDn-IcFyytZ.twitter

Reassuringly, old-fashioned political science outperformed the poll-based election models championed by Nate Silver at http://fivethirtyeight.com/. As Blake reports, the one piece of conventional wisdom which stands tall is the political science variable which asserts it is extremely difficult for an incumbent party to hold the White House for three consecutive terms. The last time this occurred in modern history is when Ronald Reagan handed off the Oval Office to George H. W. Bush.

In contrast to Blake's vision, I think it is simpler and more elegant to assert that the key to Trump's success was his ability to spark a political realignment. He did this, initially, by neatly reversing the Republican party's decision to embrace illegal immigrants and pursue a path toward legalization and potentially voting rights for them. At the time, Trump's anti-illegal immigrant stance was a bold and vivid contrast to the Republican establishment's preferred pro-illegal immigrant stance as articulated by both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Trump's complete rejection of amnesty and willingness to face the ire of Latinos offended by his views represented a rebuke of the establishment which could only have been sustained only by a self-financed Republican primary candidate.

Trump's dramatic redefinition of the battle between Democrats and Republicans was locked in place by the Democrat party's corresponding embrace of white privilege ideology and the excesses of the Black Lives Matter movement. The result of these strategic decisions is that the white working class finally gave up on the Democrat party. Hillary's nearly constant drum beat of white privilege left the white working class with the stark choice of accepting a permanent subservient status or simply withdrawing all support for this nonsense.

See, http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/04/13/hillary-clinton-white-people-need-recognize-our-privilege

Ultimately, I think Hillary's embrace of white privilege ideology doomed her campaign. It turned a key portion of the Obama coalition into enemies of the Democrat party. This was a huge mistake. It was, in fact, an unsupportable thesis to assert that black dysfunction was the result of white working class bias. As I have said elsewhere, it never made sense to me to blame the problems of blacks on innocent whites:
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there. It strikes me as nothing less than ideological blindness to insist that such extraordinary violence is the unfortunate result of peaceful white folks living ordinary lives in our nation’s rural and suburban areas.
Moreover, it was inevitable that the Democrat's stress on identity politics was eventually going to lead to white identity politics - a brand of white nationalism - which suggested it was quite rational for whites to support aggressive action to preserve their majority status. Such action might include a 50 year moratorium on all immigration to the U.S. It might include revising immigration law to limit the number of non-white/non-Christians coming to the U.S. as a means of preserving white majority status and white cultural norms. It should not surprise anyone that there is nothing inevitable about demographic changes -- not if white nationalism takes hold.

In the end, however, I disagree with those who see the alienation of the white working class from the Democrat party as merely a quaint, fleeting nostalgia for an earlier version of America.

You cannot rest a political realignment on such a fragile idea. It makes more sense to me that the Democrats lost the white working class due to a visceral reaction against a political elite which deliberately minimized the significance of black on white crime, the assassination of police officers, the terrorist attacks launched by adherent Muslims or the unspeakable crimes of murderers and rapists who also happened to be illegal immigrants.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND. Pronouns - Master/Commander.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Ten to One Against the Odds: Cashing in on Trump's Magnificient Victory

I really do not have the money to bet. I do not have any interest in it either. Whatever makes compulsive gamblers want to try their luck against a casino seems to have no hold at all on my otherwise fragile neural-system. Nevertheless, I was pressured into a bet on the presidential election.


After Trump locked up the nomination in July, one of my friends at the gym bet me $100.00 that Trump would lose the election. I do not bet, as a rule, so I turned him down: "I don't have that kind of money."

"I'll bet $100.00 to your $10.00 that he will lose," he replied. I was tired from 20 minutes on the elliptical. I shook his hand and took the bet. I could handle paying him $10.00 if Trump bombed out in November.

At any rate, I showed up at the gym this afternoon and my friend discretely handed me the $100.00 bill posted above. I tried to give him his money back. He refused. "Were you surprised?" I asked. "Oh, yes," he exclaimed.

I suppose I learned a little bit about my own political calculus. This summer, I would have accepted a ten to one odds against bet on Trump. I would have and I did. Based on everything I know about polling and presidential elections, I knew in my heart that Trump's chance of winning was well above 10%.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Trump Hyperdrive: Sifting Through the Election Results

I think it is quite clear that Trump comes to office with a powerful mandate for change even though he narrowly lost the popular vote to Hillary. Looking at the big picture, I see powerful evidence of a repudiation of Obama and his policies in the fact that Republicans now control the White House, Senate, House and – in the long-run – the Supreme Court.



Republicans also dominate with 35 governors and a majority of state legislatures. See, http://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov-republicans-add-dominance-state-legislatures.html The bottom line is that The Tea Party movement took away Obama's control of Congress in 2010. Now, Trump has taken away his fragile legacy.

I am also confident in predicting great changes will soon take place. Elections definitely have consequences. Withing a few months, Trump will reverse Obama’s numerous executive orders, change his foreign policy, and dramatically alter immigration patterns into the U.S. This is good news because, as I have argued for a long time, Obama came into office with a radical socialist agenda. See, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/when_exactly_did_barack_obama_renounce_communism.html#.UBwxfAzIFng.google_plusone_share

Moreover, I think it is say to say this new nationalist, populous realignment will be locked in for a long-time once people experience the good things and great improvements that will take place under a skillful Trump administration.

While I am pleased that I called Trump's win correctly, I am disappointed that I completely missed the magnitude of his victory. I relied too heavily on polls. To set things straight, here is a great article that lays out how the Trump data team was looking at the numbers right before the election.

See, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/trump-s-data-team-saw-a-different-america-and-they-were-right

Nevertheless, I think the results illustrate something I have thought for a long-time. It never made sense to me that liberals could get away with blaming rural whites for the problems experienced by inner city minorities.

Finally, I remained startled at how bad the polling was for this election. I suspected that all these media outlets were producing inaccurate polls on purpose in order to actively discourage Trump’s nationalist, populist voter turnout. In retrospect, Nate Silver’s wildly wrong prediction of a Hillary victory will do a lot to sully his reputation. Silver, after all, was consistently wrong about Trump’s chances at every step of the process. Now, Silver appears to be blaming the pollsters without asking whether or not their liberal bias impacted their findings.

See, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-we-asked-pollsters-why/

Silver’s current argument seems to be that there were a lot of shy Trump voters who failed to signal their support for Trump. This was a possibility, however, that the so-called experts dismissed prior to the election. See, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/donald-trump-bradley-effect

I called the election correctly, in part, because I knew enough Republicans who were shy about their support for Trump and I was convinced that the third party vote would eventually decline and that most of those voters would go to Trump rather than Hillary. I think I was also right to assume a Hillary bias among pollsters and to discount their predictions accordingly. I have had enough exposure to academia, the media and journalists to be confident that anti-Trump bias impacts their behavior.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

No Spirit Cooking for Me: Trump Looks Good on Election Day

It looks like things are looking very bright for Trump tonight. To me, the election turns on the extent to which Trump has brought about an electoral realignment around a nationalist/populist agenda of protectionism, anti-illegal immigration and strict regulation of immigrants from countries dominated by Islamic extremists. The key, as always, involves the movement of the white working class.


I have always fought for the white working class, even back in the days when I was a young Marxist socialist, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/10/an_alexis_de_tocqueville_for_our_time.html Coming from a poor family, I was a Democrat deep into my twenties. I think I was among the first to bail on the Democrat party, however, once I figured out its hostility to young white men like me back in the mid-1980s.
Affirmative action was one of the first big hints that Democrats did not care whether I lived or died. Since then, I think it is safe to say that hostility to young whites has increased astronomically since then, even at places like Williams College.
Early signs seem to indicate that there is a surge of white working class voters, a lower than normal turnout for African-Americans and reasonable hope that the Hispanic voters who are turning out are not lock-step in line with Hillary. I do not think, for example, that Hispanic voters will be too pleased to realize that the Clinton crowd is into the whole spirit cooking nonsense.
Trump is ahead in the best poll in the business, IBD/TIPP, which shows Trump ahead by 2 points. See, http://www.investors.com/politics/trump-holds-2-point-lead-over-clinton-as-election-day-arrives-final-ibd-tipp-poll-results/
Their model is weighted by the extra enthusiasm of Trump voters and low enthusiasm for Hillary among Democrats. I’m certainly feeling quite confident this afternoon. As I predicted earlier, the high level of undecided voters in this election would soon come to an end and those undecided voters would most likely break against the incumbent, i.e. Hillary Clinton.
As for the electoral college, Hillary’s advantage there is actually quite slender and should easily be breached by a higher popular vote for Trump.

I guess I’m cautiously bullish on Trump there too. I’m giving him FL, NC and OH. I just don’t think Republicans can ever win in PA. I would love to see him win in MI, but I don’t think he has the votes. I feel like NV is lost. I put him over by giving him NH. I’m expecting 265 electoral votes for Hillary and 272 for Trump. Here’s what my map looks like:
One of the most amazing bright spots for Trump today is that The Democracy Institute, the only public poll to correctly predict Brexit, published a poll on Monday showing Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by five points.
According to their press release, in the survey conducted Nov. 3 to Nov. 6 with 1,390 likely voters, Trump leads Clinton 50 percent to 45 percent. The results have a 2.5 percent margin of error.
The bottom line for me is that the size of the victory, for either Trump or Hillary, matters a lot in terms of setting a mandate for the next president. A big victory for Trump would show a significant electoral realignment. The same would be true for Hillary.
I wish I could be more confident about Trump’s chances, but I’m totally flummoxed by polling right now. The polls showed Romney winning and I totally believed them at the time, as did the Romney campaign. Now, I have less confidence in polling. I’m afraid people don’t even answer their cell phone or landline any more unless they recognize the phone number. Maybe there are going to be better, more reliable ways to predict voting behavior in the future?

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Great News! Donald Trump Has a Copy of Trevor Loudon's New Movie, The Enemies Within

I am pleased to report that Trevor Loudon's new movie, The Enemies Within, has become an important contribution to uncovering the real Hillary Clinton and her ties to Communist sympathizers, Jihadist extremists, and anti-American front groups. I got a note from Loudon earlier today indicating he is selling copies of this movie every couple of minutes.


I'm expecting, eventually, to see it at one of my local theaters too. I am particularly excited to learn today that the director of the movie, Judd Saul, presented Donald Trump, Jr. with a DVD of the film. Trump, Jr. promised Judd that The Enemies Within would be watched and shared with his father Donald Trump before the election. Who knows? Maybe The Enemies Within will be the final bombshell revelation that puts Trump over the top and into the White House?

One of the most shocking things about the film is the revelation of the ties of Huma Abedin - Hillary's closest and now most disgraced aide - to the Muslim Brotherhood through her father. You can see this portion of the movie in the clip below:


As you may know, The Enemies Within, contains a brief interview Loudon did with me containing my description of the young Obama's commitment to a Communist-style revolution in the U.S. Below, I have included links to articles I have written in regards to The Enemies Within and some of the publicity generated by those articles. Enjoy!

American Thinker

"An Alexis de Tocqueville for Our Time," by John Drew
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/10/an_alexis_de_tocqueville_for_our_time.html

Anonymous Political Scientist


"Film Crew at Our House: Trevor Loudon and The Enemies Within," by John Drew
http://anonymouspoliticalscientist.blogspot.com/2016/02/trevor-loudon-and-enemies-within-film.html

"Living History: My First Thoughts on Trevor Loudon's New Movie, The Enemies Within," by John Drew
http://anonymouspoliticalscientist.blogspot.com/2016/10/living-history-my-review-of-trevor.html

WND
'The Enemies Within': New Film Tells of My Old Friend BHO - Marxist Revolutionary," by John Drew
http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/new-film-tells-of-my-old-friend-bho-marxist-revolutionary/#rG37hWxh11rf243L.99

"Election 2016: Hillary's Marxist 'Mentor" Featured in 2 Election-Eve Films"
http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/hillarys-marxist-mentor-featured-in-2-election-eve-films/

YouTube

"Trevor Loudon: John Drew Willing to Die to Get Out Truth About Young Obama," by John Drew
https://youtu.be/p_6X8cPdveg

"Obama's College Years: Former Student Speaks (1/2)"
https://youtu.be/IgOy71oa3hw

I have no idea of whether or not this movie will make a difference in the coming election. I don't see how anyone could watch it and still vote for Hillary Clinton. At the very least, I feel good that I've left everything on the floor this electoral cycle. If you haven't ordered a copy of The Enemies Within, then please do so now by clicking on this link: http://www.enemieswithinmovie.com/?aff=24.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge: Too Violent for Christians?

I saw Mel Gibson's newest movie, Hacksaw Ridge, at a special showing at Biola University on October 26, 2016. The screening was part of an effort lead by Debora Galloway, Head of Grassroots Marketing, to introduce the film to evangelicals and to test their reaction to the movie's level of violence.



As you may already know, Hacksaw Ridge is the true story of WWII conscientious objector, Desmond Doss, a devout adherent of the Seventh Day Adventist Church who refuses meat, alcohol, work on Saturdays and carrying firearms. (He is played by Andrew Garfield.) Despite the hostile treatment Doss received from his fellow soldiers and superiors, he became a medic and saved 75 men over a matter of hours in Okinawa during the messiest battle of WWII.

Galloway seemed concerned that gory violence might turn off potential movie-goers who see violence in film as inconsistent with Christ's message. For me, I was more concerned with being exposed to the sort of torture scenes I have come to expect due to Mel Gibson's earlier work including Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ. My reaction to the torture scenes in these earlier films was so uncomfortable, that I would not care to see either film again. I remember that after watching two hours of The Passion of the Christ, I felt like I had been crucified.


Maybe I am getting jaded, but I was unaffected by the violence in the movie. To squeamish movie-goers, I can report that I was completely unaffected by all the gore. I know that all these scenes of mutilated legs and arms are as phony as a Halloween haunted house. Consequently, I watch these scenes with a large does of psychological detachment, as if I was simply observing Hollywood stage craft.

I watched Ben Affleck shoot a series of bad guys in the head in The Accountant and I felt nothing for the actors who crumpled themselves down after supposedly getting shot. Sometimes, I found the depictions of violence in Hacksaw Ridge as positively comic. I laughed out loud as Doss dragged the wounded, Sergeant Howell, played by Vince Vaughn, to safety on a blanket while Sergeant Howell fires back at the Japanese attackers chasing them. To me, Vaughn looked like Santa Claus on the back of a sleigh shooting at a cabal of dangerous, misfit toys.

On a more serious note, I was pleased to see Hacksaw Ridge illustrate the manner in which religious people often show uncommon courage. As a political scientist, I am sensitive to the fact that such courage was necessary to beat the Japanese in WWII. Accordingly, I was proud to see Mel Gibson did not back off from creating a frank and realistic portrait of Imperial Japanese soldiers (and their commanders) in all their cruelty and stubborn, self-destructive resistance.

All in all, I think this film is worth supporting because it will be one of the few films out there that celebrates the heroic power of Christian faith. I do not think Christians should be put off by Hacksaw Ridge. It is rated R only because of its graphic depictions of war and casualties. The violence in this movie should not rattle anyone with the slightest exposure to Moses, King David or the Book of Revelation. Hacksaw Ridge will be in theaters nationwide starting November 4, 2016.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Living History: My First Thoughts on Trevor Loudon's New Movie, The Enemies Within


Trish and I were honored to attend the southern California premier of Trevor Loudon's new movie, The Enemies Within at a special event hosted by the American Freedom Alliance on October 16, 2016 in Van Nuys, CA.  This movie is the result of Loudon's long-career of carefully collecting available information regarding the ties that public officials in the U.S. have to the Communist party, Communist front groups, jihadist hate groups, and nefarious institutions who oppose the Constitution and our way of life.


I think it always comes as a shock to people with little interest in politics and government (which, I suppose, is most of us) to realize that there are those among us who really do not care for the United States of America, wish it ill, and are eager to see it replaced by some larger, international world order run by efficient, hopefully benevolent bureaucrats.  Even worse, many of the people who see the United States as an evil, exploitative, and dangerous country are happily serving at the highest levels of the federal government including my old friend and acquaintance, President Barack Obama.

I was quite honored to be among those who were selected by Loudon to share their testimony.  As he informed me, I am the only one in the nation willing to verify that the young Barack Obama was looking forward to a Communist-style, potentially violent revolution. Although my recollections represent only a very tiny part of the puzzle, they have been featured in a number of prominent books including Glenn Beck's Liars (2016), Jack Cashill's Deconstructing Obama (2011), Stanley Kurtz' Radical-In-Chief (2010), Paul Kengor's Dupes (2010) and The Communist (2012), and Michael Savages' Trickle Up Poverty (2010).

For my part, I shared my story regarding but it was like to be a young man, committed to Marxist philosophy, who was not so secretly rooting for the victory of the U.S.S.R. and China at the height of the Cold War. My story, I suppose, would not be in the slightest bit spectacular or interesting except for the fact that the young Barack Obama was among my circle of friends between 1980 and 1981. While he was attending Occidental College in Los Angeles, I got to know him closely enough to identify him as a fervent supporter of a Communist-style revolution in the United States. I share this story in the movie. You can read it yourself in the first article I published on this topic in American Thinker, by clicking here.

What is most chilling to me, however, is that Loudon caught me in an off-hand moment talking about my attitude toward mass murder back when I was both an atheist and practicing Marxist intellectual. At a time when down-to-earth people are quick to criticize religious fanatics, I think too many of us underestimate the danger posed by Marxist atheists who can become a physical threat to others because of their potentially lethal mix of secular humanism, Utopian ideology and loose moral strictures. As I admitted during the filming of my interview, I can barely stand the thought of harming a fly - I would rather do a catch and release than kill it - and yet nothing in my consciousness would have prevented me from participating in mass murder as long as it was for the sake of the children or the common good.



The first time I saw myself on a movie screen sharing my earlier Marxist atheist views, I scared myself. I recognized my potential for great evil, cloaked in a matter-of-fact utilitarianism.

As an ex-Communist, I recognize I was enveloped in an exceedingly dangerous and dysfunctional ideology, a tempting perspective which has - in real life - lead to nothing but misery for those who implement it. The all encompassing, consuming nature of my Marxist idealism was so great that I remember the exact time and place when I realized I was no longer a Marxist or a Communist; I was walking down the hallway beneath McGraw Hall at Cornell University in September of 1983, after a bizarre argument with my out-of-touch, Marxist-friendly thesis adviser.

My conversion story was the result of my own exposure to Christian mysticism (largely the Quakers) and my own research into the causes of poverty and the origins of the American welfare state.

For my part, I can vouch for Trevor Loudon's extraordinarily detailed scholarship and commitment to the truth. He got my story right. I can also report that the movie has dramatically improved since I first saw the rough cuts. It is a high-quality, professional, hour and a half production which has benefited from tight editing, striking graphics, stirring music and convincing sound effects.

I think The Enemies Within is a movie that is well-worth seeing on your own or with friends and family. I urge you to purchase it now, prior to election day, at Trevor Loudon's movie website by clicking on this link.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He appears in Loudon's new movie, The Enemies Within.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Dr. Drew's California Voter Guide - 2016

If this year's ballot propositions do not scare the hell out of you, then maybe you deserve to be murdered by the next inmate who evades the death penalty. This season's California ballot propositions display a frightening number of bizarre nanny state regulations guaranteed to wrap all of us in enough red tape to spoil the fun of shopping for groceries.

As I sorted through this mess, I found I'm okay with the suggestions made by the Orange County Lincoln Club, except for Proposition 65, which changes how the state deals with carryout bags. Accordingly, here is my take on the California Statewide Ballot Measures:

Vote No On Proposition 51: School Bonds. Funding For K-12 School And Community College Facilities

Vote Yes On Proposition 52: Medi-Cal Hospital Fee Program. Initiative Constitutional Amendment And Statute

Vote Yes On Proposition 53: Revenue Bonds. Statewide Voter Approval. Initiative Constitutional Amendment

Vote Yes On Proposition 54: Legislature. Legislation And Proceedings. Initiative Constitutional Amendment And Statute

Vote No On Proposition 55: Tax Extension To Fund Education And Healthcare. Initiative Constitutional Amendment

Vote No On Proposition 56: Cigarette Tax To Fund Healthcare, Tobacco Use Prevention, Research, And Law Enforcement. Initiative Constitutional Amendment And Statute

Vote No On Proposition 57: Criminal Sentences. Parole. Juvenile Criminal Proceedings And Sentencing. Initiative Constitutional Amendment And Statute

Vote No On Proposition 58: English Proficiency. Multilingual Education. Initiative Statute

Vote No On Proposition 59: Corporations. Political Spending. Federal Constitutional Protections. Legislative Advisory Question

Vote No On Proposition 60: Adult Films. Condoms. Health Requirements. Initiative Statute

Vote No On Proposition 61: State Prescription Drug Purchases. Pricing Standards. Initiative Statute

Vote No On Proposition 62: Death Penalty. Initiative Statute

Vote No On Proposition 63: Firearms. Ammunition Sales. Initiative Statute

Vote No On Proposition 64: Marijuana Legalization. Initiative Statute

Vote No On Proposition 65: Carryout Bags. Charges. Initiative Statute

Vote Yes On Proposition 66: Death Penalty. Procedures. Initiative Statute

Vote No On Proposition 67: Ban On Single-Use Plastic Bags. Referendum

Here are my local Orange County ballot measure recommendations:





Vote No On Measure M: Capistrano Unified School District, School Facility Improvement District (Sfid) General Obligation Bond

Vote Yes On Measure U: City Of Anaheim, Require 2/3 Vote Of The City Council To Propose Taxes

Vote No On Measure HH: City Of Fountain Valley One-Cent Sales Tax

Vote No On Measure JJ: City Of La Palma One-Cent Sales Tax

Vote Yes On Measure MM: City Of Newport Beach, Require 5 Of 7 Votes Of The City Council To Propose Taxes

Vote Yes On Measure QQ: City Of Stanton One-Cent Sales Tax Repeal

Vote Yes On Measure RR: City Of Stanton Term Limits


Vote No On Measure SS: City Of Westminster One-Cent Sales Tax


John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Not a Rock Star Pastor: My Review of Jason Hanselman's Newest Book


I highly recommend you buy a copy of Jason Hanselman's new book, Not a Rock Star Pastor, if you are considering becoming a pastor or are rapidly burning out in your pastoral role.

This book is particularly useful and compelling for all of us who have been frustrated by the ugly underbelly of professional Christian service: the absolutely horrific way that we train and screen young pastors, launch them with inadequate skills into dysfunctional churches, and then callously look the other way as too many end up quitting the ministry all together.

The book is now available at Amazon.com for the wonderfully affordable price of $4.99 for the Kindle version and 14.99 for the paperback edition. Click here to order your copy now.

Although Hanselman only hints at a solution to this disgrace -- always implementing standard human resource practices, never leaving the top job vacant, and fearlessly broadening the definition of a successful ministry -- he does provide a fresh, original and at times painful to read look at what it is like to endure the less pleasant aspects of professional Christian service as a rural pastor, a bible college president, a mega-church planter.

For full disclosure, I should point out that Hanselman is a former graduate student of mine and that I have been begging him to put his ideas on paper for years. From my perspective, Not a Rock Star Pastor is a beautiful autobiography for a fairly new writer who unflinchingly records telling details, poignant moments with his wife, and heartfelt rage when he recounts a face-to-face confrontation with a former church employer who slandered him in his own community.


Although I had never heard the sad and comic story of him applying for food stamps for his family, I was aware of virtually all the other stories in the book. For the skeptical reader, I can confirm that Hanselman has written a truthful and accurate history of his life. You will have to buy the book, however, to discover how he leverages every tool at his disposal to eventually weave his misfortune, inexperience and just plain bad luck into a transforming personal and spiritual triumph.

Given my respect and affection for him, it pains me to make even the smallest criticisms of this book. Still, I owe him my best work.

If he revises this volume, I wold like to see him put all his stories in exact chronological order. This way the charming story of how he fell in love with his wife will be a terrific foundation for the rest of the book and not a somewhat awkward way to close it. In fact, I noticed that I started losing interest in narrative at about three-quarters of the way through the book when it seemed to me that his stories regarding his job losses seemed to circle back on themselves. At that point, I got confused about which job he was talking about because he was referring to jobs mentioned earlier.

Next, I'd like to see Jason loosen up even more and simply name names and be honest about the people that mislead or harmed him during his rocky pastoral career.

Frankly, I suspect Hanselman is being too cautious since insiders who are familiar with the small world of Christian pastorship will figure out the main character's real names faster than a National Enquirer reporter chasing an Ashley Madison information dump. 

I think Hanselman's use of pseudonyms undermines the clarity of the book and robs the reader of some of its most penetrating insight.Given the state of Christian ministry, I do not think we are going to fix things without a large dose of honesty delivered with little or no compassion for the feelings of those who have made a mess of things.

Just as David Bowie carved out a niche separate from the Beatles, I think this book offers the possibility of opening up a new niche for the non-rock star pastors who will never be the Rick Warren of their generation. Consequently, Hanselman lays out the ground work for the non-rock star pastor by highlighting the value added by pastors who are graduating from lesser schools, working in more isolated areas, or locked into smaller communities where a full-service mega church will only appear by way of large speakers and a theatre style HD television screen.

In my view, Not a Rock Star Pastor should be required reading at Bible colleges, seminaries, and pastor conferences all around the world. Anyone looking to enter the ministry, or stay in the ministry, will benefit from reading about Hanselman's painful, but often comic challenges and the tortured path that led to his right-sized redemption.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Stockholm Syndrome? Two Profs Insist Academia is OK for Nice and Quiet Conservatives

I was startled to read a recent opinion article in the Washington Post by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn, Sr., called "Forget what the right says: Academia isn't so bad for conservative professors." 

Shields is associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and coauthor, with Dunn, of "Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University." Dunn is associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado—Colorado Spring.

The part of their article that ticked me off the most was the idea that we should be encouraged that conservatives can survive in the academic world if they learn to keep their conservatism as secret until they obtain tenure:

First, conservative professors are not helpless victims -- they have become quite skilled at navigating the progressive university. About a third of the professors we interviewed said they concealed their politics prior to earning tenure. Of course, being in the closet is not easy. (One particularly distressed professor told us: "It is dangerous to even think [a conservative thought] when I'm on campus, because it might come out of my mouth.") But it's also a temporary hardship, since nearly all the conservatives whom we interviewed planned to emerge from the ivory tower's shadows after gaining tenure. Once tenured, conservatives are free to express their politics and publish research that reflects right-wing interests and perspectives. As one put it to us: "I don't mind causing trouble now."

As far as I'm concerned, this is an unacceptable reaction to a vicious, profound discrimination against conservative scholars. 

I served for three years at an assistant professor in the political science department at Williams College. At the time, I was one of only three registered Republicans on the staff. I keep an eye on the college and contribute to two of the websites associated with the college that are okay with freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Here are links to two articles regarding my story.



I have never gotten over the way my career as a scholar was gravely wounded due to affirmative action. I am especially bitter about how my doctoral dissertation was belittled by the political science department at Williams College. I developed my thesis while living in poverty, working as a gardener, and surviving without health insurance. 

I’m still immensely proud of it. 

It hurts me to think of all the young conservative professors who are being harmed by our college and university system. There has to be a better way to confront the dominance of the hard left in our college and university system than simply telling young conservatives to be nice and shut up. It is hard to do both when you are confronting a profound level of injustice. 

For some great commentary on this story from another source, I recommend this article by David Henderson called "Academic Conservatives and Survivor Bias." My experience rings true with Henderson's comments that conservatives need to outperform their liberal colleagues in terms of publishing, but the ability to publish is limited by the liberal bias of the journals controlled by the liberals. 

I found this to be a no-win situation and I quickly left to find higher paying work in environments with less outright discrimination. Here's an article from the Williams Record back in January 1989 which captured my mood at the time. See, https://ia802705.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/14/items/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_pdf.zip&file=thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_pdf/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_0284.pdf

This article, of course, reflects my thoughts prior to knowing that my dissertation would win national recognition from the American Political Science Association that summer or that it would be easily published as part of an edited book - almost exactly as I wrote it -- about seven years later. The publisher, Praeger, also published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Nevertheless, I have received some very friendly e-mails from both Dunn and Shields since I drafted this article. My gut feeling is that they needed to play up the cooperation with liberals angle to help get their research published and then the Washington Post distorted their true views to provoke a reaction from their audience. (I guess that worked on me.) I'm looking forward to visiting with Shields sometime soon and sharing my story with him. 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Purple Bruises: Mob Rule at Williams College

As one of the last conservatives to have ever taught at Williams College, I feel vindicated in reporting that this once prestigious school has now devolved into a form of mob rule. Based on the aggressive language used to intimidate students like Zach Wood, it looks to me like the college is now dominated by hard leftists who have more in common with Joseph Stalin than with FDR. Under this radical, threatening regime, we have seen a stunning failure to provide adequate security for anti-feminist speaker Susan Venker, the outright censorship of race realist John Derbyshire, and the inexplicable tolerance of anti-Semitic hate speech from Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi.

Trust me. I understand mob rule and the role of censorship. I’m a former Communist myself. I’m also well informed about the continuing dysfunction and lack of intellectual diversity at Williams College.  As you may know, I was among the first young, white, professors at Williams College to pay a high price for for teaching politically incorrect ideas including how black poverty and inequality would be more efficiently resolved with the improved use of inexpensive condoms than with the wholesale adoption of a socialist economy. Then, as now, my ideas caused howls of indignation and immediate accusations of racism among supposedly liberal folks who --  by tradition, at least -- should have been more concerned about protecting my freedom of speech. As James Lewis writes at American Thinker:

We can never forget that U.S. ‘liberals” of this generation are not liberals at all; they have fallen back into ruthless Leftism, just like the old days of Joe Stalin. This is the Left that threw Lawrence Summers out as president of Harvard for wondering out loud whether some boys are just better in math than girls. This is the Left that keeps imposing ever-harsher speech and behavior codes on college students, with white guys as the official scapegoats. This Left manipulates universities by mob threats. This is the Left that tried to physically attack General David Petraeus at NYU, so he had to run for it. This is the Left that deliberately stirs up race hatred, as in Ferguson and Baltimore. This is the Left that has made common cause with primitive jihadist regimes in Europe and the U.S.

As one of only three Republicans teaching at Williams College in the 1980s, I was quickly marginalized for suggesting that white attitudes and U.S. capitalism inadequately explained why violent crimes are disproportionately committed by blacks. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there. It strikes me as nothing less than ideological blindness to insist that such extraordinary violence is the unfortunate result of peaceful white folks living ordinary lives in our nation’s rural and suburban areas.

In this context, I’m shocked by the sheer ignorance of Williams College’s president, Adam Falk. I don’t think there is a serious person who has studied John Derbyshire who would classify him as either idiotic, a lunatic, or a white supremacist. In my view, Falk’s flippant, juvenile comments are uninformed, and display a profound level of misunderstanding about race realism, political culture studies and alt-right philosophy.

The simplest explanation for his mistreatment of John Derbyshire is that this is the sort of mistake that happens when physicists get involved in political and biological matters for which they have no training or relevant experience. While most faculty members are experts in our own fields, we tend to be hapless amateurs everywhere else.

There is, however, a more complex explanation that goes to the heart at why mob rule is the order of the day at Williams College. If there were more diversity of opinion, and freedom of thought, at Williams College, then someone could have informed Falk that censoring John Derbyshire was a big mistake and a setback for Williams College.

The reason there is no intellectual diversity at Williams College is because conservative, Republican thinkers have long since been pushed out of the full-time faculty.  I should know. While I taught at Williams College, it was said that conservative students were passive and not very active. It was suggested that there was not much interest in conservative thought on the campus. Certainly not enough interest in conservative thought to spend time worrying about the intellectual diversity of the faculty in the political science department.

Nevertheless, in less than a year, the campus saw a veritable renaissance of conservative activities and thought as conservative students – with my support and active encouragement – established a conservative newspaper, a conservative radio show, and a conservative television show on the local cable access channel. We had qualified speakers at the Garfield Republican Club. The conservative students rallied around my office, which I decorated with a large American flag. We went out of our way to tick off the liberal/Communist professors by loudly greeting each other with hearty cries of “Merry Christmas.” Ironically, an independent study conducted of the political science department recommended changes be made to address the department’s lack of ideological diversity.

As far as I can tell, I am the last registered Republican to have ever taught in the political science department at Williams College as a tenured or tenure track professor. I am certainly the last to have ever publicly espoused consistently conservative views from a sincere, heartfelt perspective. I am also, apparently, the first and only assistant professor who was denied the opportunity to continue along the tenure track pathway.

This itself is quite odd, since, in the 1980s, I was one of our nation’s top young scholars. Hired at Williams in 1986, I went on to win national recognition for my doctoral dissertation from the American Political Science Association (APSA). I completed my dissertation during my first year teaching at Williams College. The quality of this work was so great that it has now been published, in book form, almost exactly as I wrote it under the low-ceiling of my tiny, unheated office in Stetson Hall. My thesis was by published by Praeger, the extraordinary house that also published Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Apparently, the study, which documented a lack of ideological diversity at Williams College, has had little impact then or since.

Even as the nation has drifted in a conservative direction -- overwhelmingly electing conservatives to statehouses, governorships and Congress -- Williams College has held tight to teaching a narrow band of truth and lies. It clings to an unrealistic and unsustainable hard left faith that intentions are more important than reality. Accordingly, it will be a long time until we see an end to mirco-aggression monitors who eagerly to hunt down the unwitting first-year student who is stupid enough to tell a joke, have some fun, or say something devastatingly obvious. We are in a dangerous time. The hard left mob feels justified in every possible abuse while truth remains as vulnerable as any bunkmate of Ivan Denisovich.

This article was first published at williamsalternative.com on March 6, 2016. It appears here with the permission of that website’s owner.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Bad Professor: Schooling Derek Catsam of the University of Texas at Permian Basin

While making comments at Ephblog.com, I bumped into the hatred and foul language of Derek Charles Catsam. His most recent comments are particularly unhinged and provide evidence of a rather extraordinary level of anger and bitterness.

He is a tenured associate professor at the University of Texas at Permian Basin (UTPB). This is a school located in one of the most depressing and barren parts of the nation—west Texas. UTPB is low-ranked Tier Two school with a shameful six year graduation rate of 34%. According to public records, he earns about $64,000 a year and yet imagines himself to be something of an extraordinary scholar and a gifted teacher.
Derek Catsam, Associate Professor
University of Texas at Permian Basin.

(In California, for comparison, the starting salary for a tenured professor with a Ph.D. at a community college begins at about $64,000 per year and then moves up to over $100,000 per year.)

I did a little research on this darling of the extreme left. The truth about Derek Catsam is quite different than what he likes to report about himself. For example, I found that the Rate My Professor website indicated that Derek Catsam was one of the lowest ranked professors at UTPB with an embarrassing 2.6 grade. Only two others score lower than him. Ironically, it turns out that Catsam's wife, Ana Martinez, teaches in the same history department as him and she scores a much higher grade of 3.3.
Thankfully, websites like Rate My Professor now provide undergraduates with an opportunity to get out the truth about bad professors like Derek Charles Catsam. Here’s a great comment from one of Dr. Catsam's own students which seems match my impression of him at Ephblog:
“Derrick is an egotistical, arrogant professor who looks like a dork. He was probably picked on growing up and is now taking out his anger and bitterness on his students. No one cares about the idiotic book you wrote Derrick so stop talking about it! Avoid this LAME teacher (he’s not worthy to be called a professor) at all costs if possible!”
Like any normal person, I judge academic performance as a scholar and as a teacher according to the quality of the institution that hires you. At UTPB, Rate My Professor shows Prof. Catsam is under-performing his peers by a large margin. He is literally the worst of the worst compared to other professors on his own campus. Here is a sample of what his students went out of their way to write about him:


“This guy knows his stuff and obviously loves Africa. He is not approachable though and never cared if his students succeed or not. During presentations he wasn’t even paying attention and then proceeded to give most of the class C’s on their work. It’s fine if a prof is hard, but they should be willing to help you succeed too and he is no help.”
“I agree with most of the other raters, he is an egomaniac.”
“Catsam is the epitome of the arrogant prof. He is more interested in telling life stories and supporting his stupid Red Sox book than actually teaching history. And, by the way, missing class so much b/c of A. Martinez or his trips is not cool for us who pay $ for class.”
Sadly, Derek Charles Catsam ranks at the very bottom of the Rate My Professor numbers at University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Out of 20 professors who are rated, he ranks in the bottom 15%.
Clearly, the comments from his own students make him look like an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. If he taught at Williams College, Derek Catsam's Rate My Professor scores would place him in the bottom 7%. In the Williams history department, he would be its lowest ranked faculty member. Ideally, Derek Catsam should ask his wife for help and advice...maybe she could break the news to him gently, saying: "You're a bad professor." 
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Film Crew at Our House: Trevor Loudon and the Enemies Within


Trish and I were honored to receive a visit from Trevor Loudon and his film crew this morning.

As you may know, Trevor Loudon is a New Zealand author, speaker and political activist who maintains a blog at TrevorLoudon.com. He initially got famous here in the U.S. when he was the first to show that there was a connection between Barack Obama and his mentor, U.S. Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Loudon is also the founder and editor of keywiki.org, a website which compiles dossiers on activists and political figures. Like me, he thinks it is important to get out the word that Communists are still among us – often in high positions of authority -- even though they have been discredited by the way in which the USSR lost the Cold War and Communist China has adopted market reforms.

Loudon was mainly interested in how I became a young Communist, how I came to meet and debate young Barack Obama, and how my own views changed later on as I matured. It was a somewhat draining interview that brought back a lot of memories. It was also a remarkable moment to celebrate the way that conservatives have been able to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and alternative websites to bypass the mainstream media and get out stories that are considered too hot or too controversial for the mainstream media...including the folks at Fox News.

No matter what, I feel proud to be part of a small band of brothers who have been willing to risk everything they have to get out the word about the radical roots of President Obama.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Friday, February 19, 2016

As Bad as it Gets: Feeling Blue About Amber Property Management in Mission Viejo, CA

I'm a board member at Del Prado HOA in Laguna Niguel. I cannot begin to convey my frustration with a low-quality, incompetent, family-run property management company called Amber Property Management located in Mission Viejo, CA. 

As I understand it, one of their most dissatisfied customers is planning a lawsuit against them. If you would like to be part of that effort, they are encouraging you to contact them at vusteven.ghr@gmail.com.  

Most recently, they failed to send the required Call for Candidates statement to approximately 10% of our community members. 

To make matters worse, Pam Morris, 73, Amber's CEO, made a decision to send out a letter notifying our members that the annual meeting had been cancelled and that a new election was being scheduled. To my utter shock, she did this prior to obtaining the lawful approval of the board of directors. 

Then, Amber Property Management scheduled an "emergency meeting" for the Del Prado the board of directors. They notified me that I was supposed to participate in a telephone conference, but they sent me the wrong telephone number and the wrong entry code. 

I am so frustrated with Amber Property Management that I have filed two separate complaints against them with the California Associations Institute (CAI) for failing to follow proper ethical standards.  

Right now, about 20% of us live in HOA run communities. I think we are just starting to learn the dangers of these HOAs and the techniques needed to protect ourselves. I think part of the problem is that we expect retail-level customer service from property management companies, but we end up getting government-level customer service instead. Even so, a property management company that provides poor customer service shouldn't make things worse by failing to follow the rules and regulations in the HOA's CC&Rs.


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LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA - MARCH 16, 2016 - I think I'm at my wits end with Amber Property Management. According to our HOA's CC&R's, Amber Property Management is supposed to let our homeowners know exactly the Article and Section of the CC&R which has been broken by the homeowners whenever they send out a violation letter. Amber Property Management has been failing to follow this procedure despite repeated reminders that this behavior is against our regulations. I've found two letters like this signed by Liza Salinas and one letter like this signed by Jamie Hackwith. At the very least, Amber Property Management should follow the law. I don't think anyone is safe when a rogue property management company is in charge of your HOA's most important duties.

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Below, I have included a copy of the two complaints against Amber Property Management that I recently submitted to the CAI for review. I'll keep you informed about what is going on. If you live in an HOA, you might find it useful to review these complaints so you can be on-guard against similar problems in the future.


Narrative Summary of Allegations Against Pam Morris of Amber Property Management
By John C. Drew, Ph.D.

I’m alleging that Pam Morris, CEO, Amber Property Management violated at least three sections of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics. Here is the background.

Staff at Amber Property Management sent out a Call to Candidates for an upcoming election to the Board of Directors of Del Prado HOA. One of the people most interested in running for the Board of Directors, Ashlie Hadley, did not receive a copy of the Call for Candidates documents even though it had been promised to her in the newsletter. Ms. Hadley has attended all board meetings for the last year and a half and was highly interested in running for one of the three open seats. After Ms. Hadley failed to turn in a form announcing her candidacy and her name was not included in the ballot materials sent to her fellow homeowners. After the ballots were mailed out, Ms. Hadley complained that she did not receive a copy of the Call for Candidates documents.

According to Amber Property Management, the reason why Ms. Hadley did not receive a copy of the Call for Candidates documents is that she elected to receive her communications from Amber Property Management by e-mail. Amber Property Management reports that it did not send the Call for Candidates document to any of our members who elected to receive their information by e-mail. By not sending Ms. Hadley a Call for Candidates document, AmberProperty Management violated Section 5 of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “...exercise due care and perform planning and supervision as specified in the written management agreement, job description or duly adopted Board policies.” This lack of due care was so great that at least 42 homeowners or approximately 10% of our members did not receive the Call for Candidate document.

Moreover, Ms. Morris violated Section 8 for the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “Insure that homeowners receive timely notice as required by state statutes or legal documents and protect their right of appeal.”

Without seeking the approval of the full board of directors in either a special meeting or an emergency meeting, Ms. Morris issued a statement announcing the cancellation of the March 8, 2016 Annual Meeting. This statement was postmarked February 16, 2016. I have attached a copy of this document and the envelope it came in. I allege that Ms. Morris violated Section 3 of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics which says she must: “Act in the best interests of the client; refrain from making inaccurate or misleading representations or statements; not knowingly misrepresent facts to benefit the Manager.” Specifically, she violated our Del Prado HOA bylaws which do not allow for the cancellation of the annual meeting at all. In addition, she violated our Del Prado HOA bylaws by sending a 2nd Call for Candidates without obtaining a decision to authorize that mailing from the full Board of Directors of Del Prado HOA.


In summary, I am alleging that Pam Morris gravely her violated the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by 1) failing to properly notify members and provide them with the documents needed to run for a seat on the Board of Directors, 2) announcing the cancellation of the annual meeting in violation of Del Prado HOA bylaws and 3) cancelling the annual meeting prior to obtaining authority from the Board of Directors to take this unprecedented action.

Narrative Summary of Allegations Against Pam Morris of Amber Property Management
March 12, 2016

I’m alleging that Pam Morris, CEO, Amber Property Management violated at least two sections of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics. Here is the background.

Staff at Amber Property Management have sent out violation letters which do not follow the procedures established by the Del Prado HOA Board of Directors. According to the Del Prado Homeowners Association Enforcement and Fine Policy (Adopted by the Board of Directors on February 6, 2003) the property management company is required to do the following:

Upon notification or observation of a violation of the restrictions as set forth in the Declaration of Restrictions, Management will send out a notice of violation citing the actual violation, the article and section of the Declaration of Restrictions being violated and a reasonable time period in which to correct the violation.

Despite repeated warnings, Ms. Morris has disregarded these stipulations by failing to include in our violation letters the “the article and section of the Declaration of Restrictions being violated.” There is some sloppiness in her work since some letters, in the very same batch, will be done correctly while other letters will be done incorrectly.

By failing to follow our Del Prado HOA policies, Ms. Morris has  violated Section 5 of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “...exercise due care and perform planning and supervision as specified in the written management agreement, job description or duly adopted Board policies.”

In addition, she has also violated Section 8 for the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “Insure that homeowners receive timely notice as required by state statutes or legal documents and protect their right of appeal.”

In summary, I am alleging that Pam Morris of Amber Property Management and the CAI certified staff members working for her violated the CAI Code of Ethics by routinely failing to issue violation letters that included the article and section of the Declaration of Restrictions being violated as required by our legal documents. This complaint of an ethics violation has been filed because of the persistence of this unlawful behavior in the face of repeated reminders and warnings from me.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

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