Untangling rampant racial nonsense

Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a man from one of the colonies addressed a London audience. ''Please do not do any more good in my country," he said. "We have suffered too much already from all the good that you have done."

That is essentially the message of an outstanding new book by Jason Riley about blacks in America. Its title is "Please Stop Helping Us."

Its theme is that many policies designed to help blacks are in fact harmful, sometimes devastatingly so. These counterproductive policies range from minimum wage laws to "affirmative action" quotas.

This book untangles the controversies, confusions and irresponsible rhetoric in which issues involving minimum-wage laws are usually discussed.

As someone who has followed these controversies for decades, I must say that I've never seen the subject explained more clearly or more convincingly.

Black teen unemployment rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent have been so common over the past 60 years that many people are unaware that this was not true before there were minimum-wage laws, or even during years when inflation rendered minimum-wage laws ineffective, as in the late 1940s.

Pricing young people out of work deprives them not only of income but also of work experience, which can be even more valuable. Pricing young people out of legal work, when illegal work is always available, is just asking for trouble.

So is having large numbers of idle young males hanging out together on the streets.

When it comes to affirmative action, Riley asks the key question: "Do racial preferences work? What is the track record?" Like many other well-meaning and nice-sounding policies, affirmative action cannot survive factual scrutiny.

Some individuals may get jobs they would not get otherwise but many black students who are quite capable of getting a good college education are admitted, under racial quotas, to institutions whose pace alone is enough to make it unlikely that they'ill graduate.

Studies that show how many artificial failures are created by affirmative-action admissions policies are summarized in "Please Stop Helping Us," in language much easier to understand than in the original studies.

There are many ponderous academic studies of blacks, if you have a few months in which to read them, but there is nothing to match Jason Riley's book as a primer that will quickly bring you up to speed on the complicated subject of race in a week, or perhaps over a weekend.

As an experienced journalist, rather than an academic, Riley knows how to use plain English to get to the point. He also has the integrity to give it to you straight, instead of in the jargon and euphemisms too often found in discussions of race.

The result is a book that provides more knowledge and insight in a couple of hundred pages than are usually found in books twice that length.

Unlike academics who just tell facts, Riley knows which facts are telling.

For example, in response to claims that blacks don't do well academically because the schools use an approach geared to white students, he points out that blacks from foreign, non-English-speaking countries do better in US schools than black, English-speaking American students.

Asian students do better than whites in schools supposedly geared to whites. In three elite New York City public high schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech — there are more than twice as many Asian students as white students.

So much for the theory that non-whites can't do well in schools supposedly geared to whites.

On issue after issue, "Please Stop Helping Us" cites facts to destroy propaganda and puncture inflated rhetoric. It is impossible to do justice to the wide range of racial issues — from crime to family disintegration — explored in this book.

Pick up a copy and open pages at random to see how the author annihilates nonsense.

His brief comments pack a lot of punch. For example, "having a black man in the Oval Office is less important than having one in the home."

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Kids court better teachers

Folks are becoming fed up with the way the school system protects bad teachers.

So just before the July 4th weekend, 11 New York students set off some fireworks of their own with a class-action lawsuit claiming the state's tenure laws are "gross and glaringly inadequate."

Because these laws make it hard to fire bad teachers, the suit contends, New York children are deprived of the right to a "sound education" promised them in the state Constitution.

This was followed Monday in Washington by Education Secretary Arne Duncan's announcement of a new federal initiative designed to get good teachers into the schools where they are needed most.

Though the two are unrelated, the federal initiative confirms the gist of the New York complaint: The existing public school system serves adults at the expense of kids.

The New York City Parents Union filed their suit on behalf of the students. It is the first such lawsuit since last month's stunning decision in California, where a judge found that teacher protections violated the Golden State's constitutional promises of a good education for all.

Here's the bottom line: Whether the argument the 11 students are making will prevail in New York's courts as it did in California's, we can't predict. But when it comes to the moral indictment — that keeping bad teachers makes it harder for kids to get an education — it's no contest.

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What’s behind Chicago’s carnage

For most of the country, July Fourth weekend means hot dogs, fireworks and relaxing time with family. In certain neighborhoods in Chicago, it means something very different.

For the second year running, Chicago saw a spate of violence over the long holiday weekend that would generate headlines if it happened in Kabul.

"It's Groundhog Day here in Chicago" is how Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy put it.

This year, the tally of shame was more than 80 people shot and 14 killed. Last year, a slightly longer July Fourth weekend (the holiday fell on a Thursday) saw 75 people shot and 12 fatalities.

The astonishing numbers underline how Chicago, despite recent progress on crime, is still a byword for gunplay and urban chaos. It is a city where life, at least among young men living in the most dangerous neighborhoods, is cheap.

Chicago's killings can't readily be interpreted through a racial prism, so they don't provoke gales of outrage from the nation's opinion-makers.

Only very rarely do they become national causes, as in the heartbreaking case of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, shot to death shortly after performing at President Barack Obama's inauguration last year.

Chicago saw its homicides soar from roughly 430 in 2011 to more than 500 in 2012, before it got them back down below 2011 levels last year, thanks to more aggressive policing.

They are running slightly lower again this year, although they're still higher than in New York City, even though Chicago is a third of the size.

Why is Chicago the nation's murder capital? Its officials always want to talk about gun laws, and Superintendent McCarthy complained about their laxity after the latest shootings.

This is bizarre, since Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, and has been slapped down in the courts for trampling on the Second Amendment in its zeal to make it all but impossible to own guns.

Chicago is a running illustration of the cliché that if you ban guns, only criminals will own them. Not surprisingly, if you are willing to shoot someone in a meaningless gang dispute, you are willing to disregard laws for the purchase and possession of firearms.

Gun laws are beside the point. The tony Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park could have the same laws as gun-friendly Vermont and it would still be extremely safe. What Chicago is suffering from is not a random citywide phenomenon, but a specific, highly concentrated one.

Overall, according to Chicago magazine, the rate of nonfatal gunshot injury in Chicago was 46.5 per 100,000 from 2006 to 2012. But it was only 1.62 per 100,000 for whites. For blacks, it was 112.83 per 100,000. For black males, 239.77, and for black males aged 18-34, 599.65, or "a staggering one in 200."

A study by sociologist Andrew Papachristos shows that the shootings overwhelmingly occur among a small network of criminal offenders. One of the alleged shooters over the weekend has 21 prior arrests.

Chicago is grappling with the profound social breakdown of certain neighborhoods, where the two-parent family has been obliterated and where, too often, young men consider lawlessness the norm.

It is here, as Heather Mac Donald of City Journal writes, that gang members define themselves not by "family, or academic accomplishments or interests, but ruthless fealty to small, otherwise indistinguishable, pieces of territory."

This breakdown is "the root cause," to use that old catchphrase, of Chicago's violence. It blights the lives of countless young men, hundreds of whom end up in the morgue every year.

You would think that trying to find ways to combat it would be an obsession of liberals who profess to care about the welfare of our cities, but all their energy is devoted to income inequality, global warming and other fashionable causes.

And the drumbeat of murder in a great American city goes on.

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Trendy cupcake shop Crumbs suddenly closes

The trendy New York-based cupcake and coffee shop Crumbs suddenly announced Monday that it would be closing all its stores at the end of the workday.

The bakery chain, which has 48 stores in 10 states, broke the news with a phone call to employees Monday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"It's a real curveball for us," said a manager at the Crumbs in Brooklyn Heights.

Crumbs, 1675 Broadway, between 52nd and 53rd streets "My favorite cupcake store . The white chocolate cupcake is out of this world, knock-your-socks-off good."Photo: Tamara Beckwith

Star Spangeled CupcakePhoto: Crumbs

"Normally, you get two weeks' notice when you're closing down — you don't get one-day notice."

The company, which had already closed a number of its stores in recent months, told the Journal in a statement, "Regrettably, Crumbs has been forced to cease operations."

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Tejada’s single gives Mets win over Braves in extras

Ruben Tejada raised his right hand and pointed to the Mets dugout, officially starting the celebration.

On a night the Mets seemed destined for a crushing defeat after squandering a two-run lead late, it was the resurgent Tejada to the rescue with an RBI single in the 11th inning that led a 4-3 victory over the Braves at Citi Field on Monday.

Tejada slapped a single off Anthony Varvaro to give the Mets a third victory in four games.

The Mets threatened in the ninth, after getting a call overturned by replay. Eric Campbell was originally called out at second base on Juan Lagares' sacrifice-bunt attempt, but replay determined Andrelton Simmons' foot was off the bag. Because Simmons had stretched like a first baseman to receive the throw, it wasn't deemed a "neighborhood play," which can't be reviewed by replay.

But the Mets failed to capitalize, as Lucas Duda, Travis d'Arnaud and Eric Young Jr. all went quietly against Shae Simmons.

Jenrry Mejia allowed a run over 1 ¹/₃ innings and surrendered two big hits in the eighth that helped the Braves take a 3-2 lead. The blown save was Mejia's second in 10 chances this season. Mejia escaped trouble in the ninth by retiring Justin Upton with the go-ahead run at second base.

Curtis Granderson brought the Mets back from the grave with a two-out solo homer against Luis Avilan in the eighth that tied the game at 3-3, after the Braves had scored three runs in the top of the inning.

Granderson's blast was the Mets' first hit since the second inning. Lefty Mike Minor had dominated the Mets from that point and finished with two runs allowed on two hits over seven innings in the no-decision.

Christian Bethancourt delivered an RBI single in the eighth against Mejia that gave the Braves their first lead at 3-2, after Vic Black and Josh Edgin failed earlier in the inning.

Freddie Freeman doubled with one out in the eighth against Black to start the go-ahead rally. After Justin Upton was retired, with Freeman moving to third, Edgin entered and unloaded a wild pitch for the Braves' first run.

Jason Heyward then singled — snapping Edgin's franchise-record streak of 23 first batters retired to begin the season — before Mejia entered and allowed an RBI double to Chris Johnson that tied the game. Tommy La Stella was then intentionally walked and Bethancourt's single followed.

Daisuke Matsuzaka fired a six-hitter over seven shutout innings to carry the Mets. D'Arnaud's RBI double and David Wright's homer accounted for the early runs.

It was a rebound performance for Matsuzaka, who allowed five earned runs on seven hits and three walks over five innings in a loss to the Braves last Tuesday at Turner Field.

Matsuzaka was tested in the sixth, when Justin Upton smacked a leadoff double, but the right-hander recovered to retire the next three batters he faced. He then worked a perfect seventh.

Wright, who wasn't selected to the All-Star team for only the second time since 2005, hit a solo homer in the third that gave the Mets a 2-0 lead. The blast was Wright's seventh of the season and gave him 42 RBIs.

D'Arnaud's RBI double in the second gave the Mets a 1-0 lead. Campbell walked leading off the inning, and with two outs, d'Arnaud delivered. It extended the rookie catcher's streak of reaching base to 11 games since returning from Triple-A Las Vegas on June 24.

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The landmark struggle to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Last week marked not only the 238th anniversary of the founding of our nation, but also the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The principles contained in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, took nearly 200 years to find their fulfillment in the Civil Rights Act.

The declaration that "all men are created equal" was a radical one, more aspirational than real at a time when slavery was not only practiced but would soon be legitimated in our Constitution.

It took a Civil War, with its 750,000 dead, and decades of legal and political struggle and more deaths for those words to be given full meaning. But on July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the hard-fought legislation that would turn an abstract principle into the law of the land.

We take for granted now that anyone can take a seat at a lunch counter or register at a hotel of his or her choosing, regardless of skin color. We don't think twice about women being admitted to medical or law school or joining the police force. There are no ads for men's jobs or women's jobs, and employers cannot choose to pay whites more than non-whites who perform the same work.

Yet these practices are relatively new in our nation's history and certainly would not have become the rule were it not for the legislation that banned discrimination on the basis of race, sex and national origin.

At a time when legislation has grown increasingly lengthy and obtuse, the 1964 Civil Rights Act is concise and clear, if not always in the interpretations that have followed.

It covers several areas, most prominently public accommodations, school desegregation, federal funding and employment. Ironically, equal access to public accommodations, which seems totally uncontroversial today, sparked the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. In 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, Ala., refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the city's segregated bus system. Her arrest sparked protests that led to a bus boycott, from which a then little-known leader emerged, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the years immediately preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act, protests spread throughout the South. Through King's leadership, those who wanted to test segregation laws and customs did so by practicing nonviolent civil disobedience. "Freedom riders," whites and blacks committed to civil rights, rode buses into the South to engage in sit-ins at lunch counters and marches through the streets to protest segregation.

When these peaceful demonstrators were met with increasing violence — beaten, drenched and driven back with powerful fire hoses — the pictures that filled evening newscasts throughout the nation helped create the public momentum that led Congress to act.

By 1963, more than 1,000 major protests had taken place in more than 200 American cities, spreading from the South, where segregation and unequal treatment were enshrined in law, to the North, where discrimination was widely practiced if not given legal justification.

President John Kennedy proposed a new civil-rights law in a nationally televised speech in June 1963. He didn't live to see legislation passed, because he was assassinated less than six months later. But on Feb. 10, 1964, the House passed its version of the bill, with a far higher proportion of Republicans voting in favor than Democrats: 138-34 Republicans to 152-96 Democrats.

The Senate followed suit only after a filibuster held up the bill for two months. The vote to end the filibuster, which required two-thirds of senators to vote to cut off debate, again had stronger support among Republicans than Democrats.

We are a better country today for the efforts of those who sought to outlaw discrimination. It is worth remembering their struggles.

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To stop ISIS, help the Syrian rebels that America has forsaken

Jamal Maarouf was a construction worker before the Syrian Revolution. When protests began, he organized large demonstrations in the mountain villages near his hometown. He later took up arms to battle regime forces, and soon commanded a battalion of 7,000 fighters. This January, Maarouf led a coalition of moderate Syrian rebels that routed the extremist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, from his province.

Six months later, ISIS has gone on to seize Iraq's second city of Mosul. Iraqi Army troops that were trained for years by US forces simply fled the battlefield, leaving ISIS in control of advanced military hardware and vast weapons stores. Now ISIS is consolidating its control west of Baghdad, and could soon threaten the Iraqi capital or the oil-rich areas further south.

President Obama recently dismissed as "fantasy" the idea that Syrian "farmers, dentists and folks who have never fought before" could defeat both Syria's Assad regime and the extremists like ISIS. Yet Syrians like Jamal Maarouf, who never fought before the revolution, have a better record against ISIS than US-trained Iraqi forces.

You see, Syria's revolutionary farmers and dentists have a secret weapon, one that has allowed them to fight both Assad and the extremists even without sufficient arms: motivation.

Before the January offensive against ISIS, ordinary residents across rebel areas held massive anti-ISIS protests, inspiring mainstream Syrian rebels to form new coalitions that took the fight to the extremists. These outgunned rebels succeeded where well-armed Iraqi troops failed because they're fighting for a cause widely supported by the civilians behind them, and they're fighting for their own land.

Had the Obama administration armed these rebels at their peak, instead of merely declaring repeatedly that Bashar al-Assad's fall was inevitable, there would likely be no ISIS today. Two years ago, Syrian rebels were making gains against the regime by the day. ISIS didn't exist, and Syrian al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Nusra claimed at most 1,500 combatants.

But global al Qaeda supporters gave Nusra superior weapons and funding, a step Obama has yet to truly take on behalf of mainstream rebels. As a consequence, Nusra grew stronger, and was later surpassed by the even more radical ISIS.

Syrian rebels are fighting a true two-front war. As they threatened ISIS' main headquarters in January, Assad launched a vicious campaign of air raids on them that virtually emptied the largest city in northern Syria of civilians. That assault saved ISIS.

Now, after the fall of Mosul, regime bombers have finally launched air raids on the ISIS headquarters — but air power alone can't really threaten it. Assad's move is just a public-relations ploy — an effort to get Washington to support the regime as the best hope of stopping ISIS.

More relevant are events in eastern Syria: The ISIS attack on Mosul was launched from eastern Syria, in particular from the banks of the Khabur River, which was in Syrian rebel hands as recently as three months ago.

Now ISIS has returned to Syria with the US-made weapons it looted from Mosul, and threatens the city of Deir Ezzor, the largest population center in eastern Syria and a longtime rebel stronghold. If ISIS takes Deir Ezzor, it could launch an ever more catastrophic assault on Baghdad or southern Iraq without fear of attacks from its rear. Deir Ezzor City is now under a de facto joint siege by ISIS forces in the north and Assad forces in the south.

ISIS is also gaining in other rebel areas. On June 20, a man named Slah al-Quseir al-Musa was killed defending the strategic town of Mohassan from ISIS.

A university student when the revolution began, al-Musa left his studies to become a top protest leader and then rebel commander in Deir Ezzor. He died alongside four senior commanders of the US-endorsed Free Syrian Army, after refusing ISIS' surrender terms.

Many other rebel leaders across eastern Syria have made the same calculation: They would rather die than see ISIS in their hometowns. As many as 7,000 Syrians have been killed since January fighting against ISIS.

Though more outgunned than ever, these rebels rely on motivation — that secret weapon of Syrian farmers, dentists and students — to bring victory despite impossible odds. They shouldn't have to.

President Obama recently announced a $500 million "train-and-equip" program for moderate Syrian rebels, and this is most welcome. But rebels might be long gone from eastern Syria before the program clears Congress. Commanders tell me that the weapons most needed are what the United States has already provided on a very limited basis, such as TOW missiles.

If the president is serious about stopping ISIS, let alone aiding moderate Syrian rebels, he should use his executive authority to get these weapons now to the farmers, dentists, and students of eastern Syria.

Mohammed Alaa Ghanem is senior political adviser for the Syrian American Council, a board member of the Coalition for a Democratic Syria and a fellow at the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Twitter: @MhdAGhanem

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From ‘Bell Jar’ to ‘Friendship’– NYC in three novels over 50 years

'Friendship," Emily Gould's debut novel, tells us a lot about today's New York City. Just look at how its characters use the subways — rather than let the subways use them.

Amy, one of the book's two 30-year-old heroines, can't drive. "Fifteen years had passed" since she last tried. "To be fair," Gould writes, "Amy had spent 10 of them in New York City" as a blogger, "pretty much the last city in America where relying entirely on public transportation didn't automatically mean that you were poor."

That's a big change from the subways in Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City," which came out three decades ago, with a similarly low-level media worker at its center. "You wait 15 minutes on the downtown platform," McInerney's protagonist narrates. "An announcement is made that the express is out of service . . . The voice comes over the speaker again to say that the local will be delayed 20 minutes because of a fire."

When "Bright Lights" subways do work, crazy things happen on them — making it hard to tell who's really nuts, the man or his city. When a stranger sits on a lady in a subway car, we watch as "the woman is quietly sobbing . . . You keep hoping the man will stand up and leave her alone. You imagine the headline in The Post: GRANNY CRUSHED BY NUT WHILE WIMPS WATCH."

Three decades before that, in summer 1953, Sylvia Plath's "Bell Jar" heroine, Esther doesn't consider the subway to be a credible transportation choice. Sure, the subways are there. Esther passes each station's "fusty, peanut-smelling mouth."

But she knows they are not for nice single girls.

Esther and her fellow magazine interns take cabs. They sit in traffic — "nothing moved" — and see a crash. ("There was a terrible shriek of brakes followed by a dull thump-thump," and "we could see the four girls inside waving and struggling and scrambling up off the floor.")

Already in the '50s, the city's below-ground infrastructure is not to be trusted — and above ground is chaos that will make you crazy, too.

Photo:

More than half a century later, the subways in Gould's "Friendship" are notable because nothing happens on them.

In one scene, Amy's friend Bev (the other heroine) tries to fill out her temp-agency application "on the subway . . . but the train was so crowded that it was impossible even to reach into her bag." No one sits on her.

The subways are so reliable, Bev notes that "I have to be on the subway platform exactly 11 minutes from now" to get to work.

The girls can live cheaply and safely in Brooklyn — whereas McInerney's and Plath's characters never stray from Manhattan. The "Bright Lights, Big City" guy has a cousin who "would not accompany you below Fourteenth Street because . . . he didn't have a lowlife visa."

In "Friendship," Amy lives (alone) "in an apartment under the BQE." The girls eat sushi and drink wine "on a little ledge," watching Manhattan skyscrapers "wastefully twinkling." The traffic on the highway is just scenery — someone else's problem.

Yes, "Friendship," like other coming-of-age novels, is supposed to be about youthful angst. But a functional city attracts functional people.

The difference between "Friendship" and its predecessors is (spoiler alert!) that Amy and Bev solve their problems rather than succumbing to them. New York is a useful tool rather than an incubator of psychosis.

When Bev gets pregnant after a one-night stand, she doesn't fall to pieces. She decides to become a single mother. As her pregnancy advances, a steady retail-management job (at a Brooklyn maternity boutique, natch) helps her recover from a grad-school stint that led to massive debt.

When Amy finds herself broke and near homelessness, she decides not to return to her high-paying celebrity-blog job. The gig would solve her financial woes, but it would force her to sacrifice dignity for money. She moves in with her parents "until she could afford to move back to New York."

The penalty for failing in literary New York used to be high.

"Bright Lights, Big City" ends with its hero nursing a cocaine nosebleed as he walks home from an all-night party, making a not-very-credible vow to repent.

Sylvia Plath committed suicide in London. New York surely didn't cause her mental illness — or that of her "Bell Jar" stand-in — but it was a handy mirror.

"Friendship" may make for a less glamorous crack-up novel. But New York has come a long way if the going fictional punishment for failure isn't death or drug-induced stupor but having to learn how to drive, as Amy must, so that she can temporarily survive the 'burbs.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

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The liberal problem with liking America

You wouldn't think, five years into the Obama presidency, that so many liberal Americans wouldn't like America.

A new Pew survey found that 44 percent of Americans don't often feel pride in being an American, and only 28 percent said that America is the greatest country in the world.

Respondents who "often feel proud to be American" were overwhelmingly conservative (from 72 percent to 81 percent depending on the kind of conservative). A majority (60 percent) of "solid liberals" said they don't often feel proud to be an American.

The polling data only proves what has been obvious for a while.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) recently said that, "If the Civil Rights Act was before the Congress today, it would not pass, it would probably never make it to the floor for a vote." In fairness, he was primarily condemning congressional gridlock, not GOP racism. Primarily.

A legitimate hero of the civil-rights era, Lewis has adopted the liberal habit of suggesting that his political opponents have a burning desire to return to the era of Jim Crow. At the 2012 Democratic Convention, for instance, he gave a thundering speech that equated a vote for Mitt Romney with going back to the era of segregation.

Contrary to what you hear daily on MSNBC, Republicans don't want to force Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Tim Scott or any other African-American to the back of the bus.

Lewis isn't the only leading Democrat incapable of giving the American people some credit. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case, Hillary Clinton insisted we are following in the footsteps of anti-democratic Middle Eastern theocracies.

According to Clinton, the majority on the court were like Iranian mullahs, behaving "in ways that are disadvantageous to women but which prop up them because of their religion, their sect, their tribe, whatever." The shocking, inarticulate stupidity of this analysis is only outdone by the stunning ease with which Clinton offered it.

She's not alone. From some of the hysterical responses to the court's ruling, you'd think the government in Washington is the only thing thwarting the desire of millions of businessmen to drape female employees in burqas.

This glib anti-Americanism manifests itself most readily when issues of race and gender are in the headlines, but it hardly ends there. MSNBC's Chris Hayes celebrated soccer's growing US popularity because it strikes a blow against "anti-soccer trolls" who believe in American exceptionalism.

It's ironic. In 2009, conservatives (myself included) pounced when President Obama seemed to dismiss American exceptionalism as an empty platitude. "I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama explained, "just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

By this standard, American exceptionalism isn't exceptional, it's a vague and meaningless form of national self-esteem, rather than a complex concept describing the uniqueness of the American founding and American character.

Liberals angrily defended Obama, saying none should dare question his patriotism, and of course he believes America is special. In May, he took another stab, telling West Point graduates that he believes in American exceptionlism "with every fiber of my being." But he immediately qualified what he meant by insisting that "What makes us exceptional is not flouting international norms and the rule of law; it's our willingness to affirm them through our actions."

Translation: We prove we're exceptional by playing just like everyone else — just like playing soccer!

Why liberals have become so comfortable running down America is no doubt complicated, but I think one part of the answer is obvious. Liberals tend to equate patriotism with the government. Obama was supposed to usher in a glorious new era of European-style big government. He's failed, though alas not entirely.

But in the attempt he aroused a populist movement — the tea parties — full of people who wore their traditional patriotism on their sleeves and tricorn hats. The forces of American exceptionalism proved formidable, taking advantage of our exceptional constitutional structure to thwart European social democracy.

And liberal resentment over that fact is palpable.

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Mets can thank the catcher for the win — and it’s not d’Arnaud

Life as a backup catcher isn't easy.

There are some weeks when you may be lucky to get one start. If the starting catcher is on a hot streak, forget it — the team's manager may ride him for a while.

But with Sunday being a day game after a night game, manager Terry Collins gave Anthony Recker the start behind the plate, and the 30-year-old made the most of the opportunity.

Making his first appearance in more than a week, the Mets' backup catcher slugged a three-run homer in the first inning that gave the Mets a 5-0 lead, and from there, it was mostly smooth sailing, as the Mets won the rubber game of their series with the Rangers, 8-4.

"It's always good to get off to a good start in any game," he said. "To put five up in the first inning's pretty cool. It definitely helped a lot, and [I'm] just happy we got the win."

In addition to helping the Mets with his bat, Recker also called a strong game for Zack Wheeler, who allowed only one run in 6 ¹/₃ innings and recorded his first victory at Citi Field this season.

"He threw the ball really well," he said. "He kept the ball down in the zone and honestly, he threw his off-speed [pitches] really well — curveballs and sliders, [especially]. We used the slider a lot."

In the wake of Travis d'Arnaud's demotion to Triple-A Las Vegas last month, Recker had been splitting time behind the plate with Taylor Teagarden. But d'Arnaud was recalled two weeks ago — a move that restored Recker to being a full-fledged backup.

A backup catcher's opportunities are few and far between, and Recker was satisfied with his performance on Sunday.

"It always feels good to produce," he said. "Anytime I can come in and help the team win a game is obviously all I'm here for. I'm just glad I was able to."

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