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June 30, 2005
Last Nail In Woody's Coffin (For Me)
Via Pam at Blogmeister USA I find Woody Allen has obliterated the last scrap of respect I had for him. From Page Six of the New York Post:
WOODY ALLEN thinks 9/11 is like, so yesterday! The neurotic New Yorker tells Teutonic title Der Spiegel:"As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11 . . . it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again."
My mind is reeling over the last two days from the staggering ability of rich, spoiled Americans to forget what happened on 9/11. And Woody Allen is the ultimate New Yorker! "History is the same thing over and over again." Yes--if you're too stupid not to heed its lessons.
Sheesh.
Posted at 01:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)June 29, 2005
Stretching The Limits Of Believability
The desperation of the Dems to find an effective cudgel with which to smite GWB has gone beyond comic into the unbelievable:
Democrats are criticizing President Bush for raising the Sept. 11 attacks while he defends his plan to keep U.S. troops in Iraq as long as it takes to ensure peace in the country.
Does anyone really believe that we would be in Iraq if 9/11 hadn't occured? Have Reid and Pelosi really failed to understand that Islamic fascism is a movement that isn't based in one single country? Other explanations for their behavior are even more depressing.
In any event I hope they keep it up.
UPDATE: JustOneMinute puts it succinctly:
Will the Democrats be able to continue looking forward, and actually contribute to a debate about what to do next? I wonder if they can avoid the temptation of staring in the rear view mirror. [...]
Talking about the future will force Democrats to deal with the same ongoing split in their party that crippled Kerry's candidacy - is this a party committed to seeing Iraq through to a successful resolution, or is it the party of cut and run?
Well-intentioned Dems (like Fargus) will probably protest, but judging by the pronouncements of the party leadership (Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy and Dean), I'd say the definite answer is "cut and run".
MORE: Mark Levin over at The Corner:
How soon some of our liberal friends forget. Among others, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, Chris Dodd, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Jay Rockefeller voted for the October 11, 2002 congressional joint resolution authorizing the president, on his discretion, to go to war. Here, in part, is what the resolution said:
"Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq[...]
Our liberal friends also happened to be in the White House when the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 was signed by Bill Clinton:
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.
Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.
The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.
My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.
It truly boggles the mind that the Dem leaders can so brazenly contradict themselves.
June 28, 2005
Eyes On The Prize?
Mitch Evans writing in Human Events Online surveys evidence of the fault lines running through the Democratic party:
The assault by liberal advocacy groups on Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, for his trimming of the state healthcare behemoth known as TennCare has sent out a message to all Red State governors eyeing the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination: You can’t pragmatically address your state’s problems and get away with it.
I'm very interested in the Dem's ongoing internal struggle between the aging Vietnam war radicals and those who want to return the party to the ideas of FDR, Truman, and Kennedy.
But as our Democratic friends will be quick to point out, the Republicans also include a faction with an idealogical hair-trigger: the so called religious right. As Robert Novak recently reported, Alberto Gonzales could be GWB's first choice as a SCOTUS nominee; but because of his previous record as a Texas Supreme Court justice, Gonzales might well alienate those to whom the abortion issue is central, which would include most of those with a religious connection to the Republican party.
So the question, as ever, remains: which faction has the most influence, the most votes, and the most irrationality? By irrationality I mean the practice of voting against one's party (and thus for the opposition) solely because of a narrow ideological postion.
I happen to think that the presumed fanaticism and motives of the "religious right" has been exaggerated to a great degree by the left, and amplified by their reliable friends in the MSM.
But the coming political battles are exceedingly complex equations with many variables, and only one result. I think focusing too much on just one of those variables can backfire.
Posted at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)June 27, 2005
More Good Stuff On Literary Theory
Mark Bauerlein writing at butterfliesandwheels.com has a must-read review of a new anthology of literary and cultural theory: Theory’s Empire, edited by Daphne Patai and Will Corral and published by Columbia University Press.
I'll write more on this soon, but here's a quote that is very nearly an exact copy of a gripe I have made many times:
[the race/gender/sexuality/anti-imperialism/anti-bourgeois resentments...raise] another discrepancy between Theory’s intellectual content and its institutional standing. Theory in its political versions claimed to be subversive, egalitarian, anti-hegemonic, and ruthlessly self-critical, but in their actual working conditions theorists presided over one of the most hierarchical, prestige-ridden, and complacent professional spaces in our society.
Emphasis is mine. I'm not an academic, but I'm very close to several. The viciousness of the back-biting and ladder climbing can approach Enron-like proportions.
Posted at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 26, 2005
The History Of Nighttime
In the Houston Chronicle this morning I found a review of a new book that looks intriguing: AT DAY'S CLOSE: Night in Times Past by A. Roger Ekirch. Reviewer Fritz Lanham writes that Ekirch
argues that before the Industrial Revolution nighttime wasn't merely a tenebrous version of day. Nighttime was an "alternate reign," in the words of one English poet, a different reality to a far greater extent than is true today. Social encounters, attitudes toward authority and law, dress, travel, work rhythms — all these changed dramatically when the sun went down on our candle-lit ancestors.
One of Ekirch's most intriguing observations is that murder rates in the 16th century were dramatically higher than those today--effective urban police forces did not exist until the 19th century. Combined with the unavoidable darkness, it's easy to see why most people barricaded themselves in at sundown.
This is the kind of history that is extremely valuable: it sets off in sharp relief the fundamental differences between our world and the world of our ancestors, differences that we all take for granted, if indeed we are even aware of them.
It also illustrates the continual danger of judging past actions by current standards. Shakespeare's Hamlet, Newton's laws of gravity, and the Declaration of Independence all are timeless and universal works; they are as valid today as they were when created or discovered. But the daily context of Shakespeare's, Newton's, and Jefferson's lives were unimaginably different than ours, and we make a mistake when we treat these historical figures as if they live next door.
June 25, 2005
More Critical Theory In Our Elementary Schools
John Hudock over at Commonsense & Wonder highlights this piece by the wonderful Diane Ravitch on the woeful state of mathematics education (hat tip: Dr. Sanity). Ravitch:
In the early 1990s, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued standards that disparaged basic skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, since all of these could be easily performed on a calculator. The council preferred real life problem solving, using everyday situations. Attempts to solve problems without basic skills caused some critics, especially professional mathematicians, to deride the "new, new math" as "rainforest algebra."
In a comparison of a 1973 algebra textbook and a 1998 "contemporary mathematics" textbook, Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton found a dramatic change in topics. In the 1973 book, for example, the index for the letter "F" included "factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions, and functions." In the 1998 book, the index listed "families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in fast food, feasibility study, feeding tours, ferris wheel, fish, fishing, flags, flight, floor plan, flower beds, food, football, Ford Mustang, franchises, and fund-raising carnival."
Those were the days of innocent dumbing-down. Now mathematics is being nudged into a specifically political direction by educators who call themselves "critical theorists." They advocate using mathematics as a tool to advance social justice. Social justice math relies on political and cultural relevance to guide math instruction.
The fact that "critical theorists" are influencing elementary education is disturbing proof that most of our school-age children are victims of massive fraud and injustice. Critical theory, formulated in the upper reaches of the liberal arts academy, is fundamentally Marxist-based and is a dedicated enemy of knowable truth and the use of reasoned debate.
Posted at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack (1)June 24, 2005
Buckyballs And The Precautionary Principle
There was an article yesterday on the front page of the Houston Chronicle entitled "Caution flag raised on buckyballs; harm to the environment possible". I immediately made a bet with myself on how far I would get into the piece before someone invoked the precautionary principle, which is a concept most of us are familiar with in practice, if not perhaps by name. One of the more quoted definitions of the principle states:
When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.
Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle
This sounds nice and logical, but there are profound hidden dangers in adopting this edict--chiefly, we are asked to curb actions on the basis of what we do not know. It essentially embodies a rationalist view over an empirical one, in that by invoking the precautionary principle we are striving for the establishment of absolute certainty that a new process or product will not (and will never) be harmful before it should be allowed into the marketplace.
This of course is nonsense--every waking minute of our lives is fraught with risk: we may die of an aneurysm, or be killed by a drunk red-light runner, or slice off a thumb on the table saw. We unconsciously accept a risk level driving on the freeway that would be unacceptable to a lieutenant planning a patrol in Iraq.
Back to buckyballs: To his credit, Chronicle author Eric Gerber wrote a quite well-balanced piece; on the whole it is more favorable the nanotech side.
No scientists or government regulators have called for stopping the research and commercialization of nanotechnology, a rapidly expanding field of specialized materials that encompasses everything from novel medical approaches to bulletproof vests. Nor are many likely to call for a ban now.
But sure enough, one of Gerber's sources spouts the inevitable:
In a nanotechnology report for the United Kingdom's government last year, The Royal Society concluded: "Until more is known about the environmental impacts of nanoparticles and nanotubes, we recommend that the release of manufactured nanoparticles and nanotubes into the environment be avoided as far as possible."
Notice the European connection. And the usual environmental groups have started parroting the EU line. The Chronicle article goes on to note, however, that here in the US researchers have been reacting with an appropriate degree of caution:
Rice scientists have also developed a method for neutralizing the toxic effects of buckyballs, and they believe it will be possible to safely work with buckyballs and other nanomaterials in all manner of applications.
Certainly, caution should be employed...but it should be caution that informs our further research, not a "sky-is-falling" excuse to turn our backs on truly valuable innovation.
Posted at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)June 23, 2005
Anderson Cooper Needs A History Lesson
RDS at The Ten O'Clock Scholar delivers a sharp smack to Anderson Cooper of CNN over Anderson's outcome-based "interview" with Franklin Graham. Graham and Anderson's exchange turned to the question of Islam vs. Christianity, and Anderson turned reverse rhetorical somersaults in his attempt to deny the obvious about the fundatmental differences in the two religions:
For example, [Anderson] pointed out that "Christians" have done bad things too -- which is a dumb argument in the first place, as it doesn't address th eunderlying philosphy, but merely demonstrates people are fallible, which we already know. That misses the point entirely about judging the utility of the philosophy.
But worse, he used the example of "Christians performed the Holocaust." And Graham didn't correct his historical error.
Hitler was not a Christian. Nazis were not Christians! [...]
Naziism embraced a crackpot pagan mysticism drawn from Teutonic pre-Christian myths.
As I said yesterday, the MSM is relentless and insidious in its bias, and subtle, too. The slant of a headline, a tone of voice in questioning, information not falsified but merely omitted--all these add up over time to the establishment of "truths" that have never been subjected to a rigorous test of logic and reason.
Posted at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)Iraq-Kuwait Diplomacy
During the run up to the first gulf war, I remember one of my dear left wing friends repeating Saddam's assertiong that Kuwait was stealing oil that rightfully belonged to Iraq.
Now it looks like democtratic diplomacy might solve this long-standing disagreement. Via Chrenkoff:
A joint Kuwaiti-Iraqi commission is studying ways to regulate production from a large oilfield that extends into the two neighbouring Arab nations, the emirate's energy minister has said.[...]
The oilfield is known as Rumaila in Iraq and Ritqa in Kuwait. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein accused the emirate of stealing oil from the Iraqi field and used that as a pretext to invade and occupy Kuwait in August 1990.
I'm not naive enought to think this will be solved with a nice group hug, but diplomatic negotiations are obviously preferrable to turning loose the armored divisions.
Posted at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)June 22, 2005
What The People Think About Gitmo
Just when the MSM--in spite of the blogosphere, in spite of the election results--has started to grind me into depression, we get this poll from Rasmussen (via Powerlne):
June 22, 2005--A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 20% of Americans believe prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been treated unfairly. Seven-out-of-ten adults believe the prisoners are being treated "better than they deserve" (36%) or "about right" (34%).
The survey also found that just 14% agree with people who say that prisoner treatment at Guantanamo Bay is similar to Nazi tactics. Sixty-nine percent disagree with that comparison. This helps explain why Illinois Senator Dick Durbin apologized for making such a comparison.
Leaving aside whether Durbin's bleating qualifies as an "apology", this so illustrates the way in which the MSM continues to act as an amplifying conduit for the screeds of a bitter and disenfranchised left wing. The ongoing problem is that the MSM is entrenched, wealthy, and relentless--if they're defeated on one front (Rathergate and Easongate, for instance) they simply press on with dozens of other distortions and shell-games. They are masters of relentless incremental repetition, a human-wave assualt of bias and disinformation.
Re: Apologies
If you come across someone on TV (a politician, movie star, sports idol--it doesn't matter), and they are offering an apology that starts with, "I'm sorry if..."--change the channel immediately.
Posted at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)Bono: A Rarity Among Celebrities
Mark Coffey at Decision '08 highlights one celebrity activist who is actually making himself useful, at least relatively. Bono, lead singer for the great rock band U2, has displayed the ability to avoid the blindness induced by extreme emotion-driven partisanship. This ability has actually allowed him to further his causes, because he can thus support any effort that has proven effective--including those originating from the Bush administration. Mark writes:
Bono has wined and dined with Pat Robertson, Jesse Helms, Billy Graham, and other figures on the right, instead of staying in the comfortable liberal celebrity cocoon, a sign of his seriousness. And he's found an ally in the Bush administration, which is doing more for debt relief and the fight against Aids in Africa than any previous administration by a wide margin.
As I've often said, for me to take an opponent (or ally for that matter) seriously, they must display the ability to admit the other side is right if presented with verifiable evidence that warrants that conclusion. My respect for such a person goes up immensely, and they are altogether too rare these days.
Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)June 21, 2005
Mental Disorder Of The Day
Jacob Sullum writing over at Townhall.com wonders about the proliferation of named mental disorders:
According to a new government-sponsored survey, most Americans qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis at some point in their lives.[...]
As the psychiatric iconoclast Thomas Szasz has been arguing for many years, mental illness is a literalized metaphor that conceals more than it reveals. Although their training and billing practices suggest that psychiatrists deal with medical problems, it seems unlikely that many of them truly believe all the myriad sins and foibles listed in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) are in fact brain diseases.
If they did, why would they cling to the deliberately ambiguous term "mental disorder"? Why would the diagnostic criteria for so many psychiatric conditions include ruling out, as opposed to confirming, an organic cause? And how could psychiatry be justified as a discipline distinct from neurology?
Sullum goes on to note that at least a few psychiatrists are admitting that their profession is not exactly shot through with scientific rigor:
"The problem is that the diagnostic manual we are using in psychiatry is like a field guide, and it just keeps expanding and expanding," Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Paul McHugh told the Times. "Pretty soon, we'll have a syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with a Boston accent, and I'll be mentally ill."
I think in general the research and categorization of mental disorders does represent progress; but the problems arise from how the new knowledge is used and abused by both the medical profession and the general public. As usual, the pendulum has swung too hard to the other side--we've gone from ignoring severely depressed individuals ("Just work through it...") to handing out Ritalin like candy.
Posted at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)June 20, 2005
Is The Left/Lib Blogosphere Overtaking the Right?
Jonathan V. Last in the latest Weekly Standard Newsletter notes that the liberal/left blogosphere is apparently outstripping the conservative side in readership. Last refers to liberal blogger Chris Bowers at MyDD, who has done some interesting analysis of the readership patterns in the blogosphere over the last few months. Bowers:
[In comparing] the national liberal blogosphere to the national conservative blogosphere, I would like to discuss a new phenomenon I see emerging. The left-wing blogosphere is beginning to decidedly pull away from the right wing blogosphere in terms of traffic. This is largely a result of the open embrace of community blogging on the left and the stagnant, anti-meritorious nature of the right-wing blogosphere that pushes new, emerging voices to the margins.
There's been some interesting discussion on this topic previously, and it's still not clear what Bowers' numbers mean. Does the fact that a lot of lib/left blogs allow posting of diaries and articles explain the increase in readership? And if it does, what is the actual effectiveness of that increase. I still place a lot of faith in the explanation that the lib/left side already has a voice...has had multiple voices, as a matter of fact--in the MSM and academia for example.
I'm not sure if I agree with Bowers' assertion that the main conservative blogs' lack of comments is stifling new conservative blog voices. From my own low perch, I have observed bloggers such as Decision '08, The Anchoress, and The Strata-Sphere garner very significant traffic in a short time, traffic that I think is based solely on the quality and consistency of their analysis.
In short, I continue to believe that blogs have effectively done much more for conservatives than lib/leftists.
Posted at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (1)Pathetic, Even For Berkeley
Catching up on email this morning, I found this in the weekly "communique" published by Mike Antonucci's Education Intelligence Agency (scroll down to #4):
On June 22, the school board of the Berkeley Unified School District will vote on whether to change the name of Jefferson Elementary School to Sequoia Elementary. "Debate over the name of the school has continued for more than two years after several teachers, including an African American mother of three former Jefferson students, said Jefferson's name offended them," reported the San Francisco Chronicle. A group of teachers and parents had circulated a petition that read, in part, "A school name which fails to acknowledge or respect the depth and importance of their people's collective sorrow is personally offensive." The name change was ultimately supported by vote of staff, students and parents.
Mike points out a couple of crushing ironies about this ludicrous stunt: 1) The city of Berkeley was named after bishop George Berkeley, who purchased and worked slaves on his Rhode Island plantation; and 2) the most accepted history of the name sequoia as given to redwoods claims that the name derives from the revered Cherokee figure Sequoya, whose benefactor also owned hundreds of slaves.
Posted at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)June 16, 2005
Time To Chill...The Other Kind
I'll be out for the next few days. It's time for our annual vacation in the Texas Hill country.
See ya Monday!
Posted at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)June 15, 2005
Ms. Albright's Priorities
Baldilocks is kind enough to give Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright a refresher course on recent history, a lesson Ms. Albright ovbiously needs in light of her recent comments implying that our liberation of Iraq was a waste of time.
What a gasbag. I've had direct experience with extremely selective memory--from a four-year-old. It is not impressive coming from an ex-Secretary of State.
Posted at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Our Increasingly Isolated Military Culture
RantingProfs has a very interesting post up on the increasing isolation of our military culture from mainstream America.
I've read somewhere that, back in the 30's or so, almost every boy could read and interpret the service ribbons worn by military personnel. That's astonishing to consider. Now, with a all-volunteer services, most of us don't have any contact whatsoever with military life. This in no small part drives the current conflict between the media and the military, not to mention the public's general misunderstanding of the problems our armed services face in doing their job.
Posted at 01:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 14, 2005
Mike Adams Smokes The Leftist Academy
I went through a phase during which I smoked a cigar about once every two months. I hate cigarettes and don't have a history of smoking, but I did enjoy the occasion cigar.
Now Mike Adams has made me want to fire one up again.
Posted at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)Blogroll Addition...
I'm adding The Strata-Sphere to my blogroll. AJStrata blogs with a lot of originality and energy, and he's already received an Instalanche as a result. Check him out.
Posted at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)June 13, 2005
Our Ailing Univesities, Our Ailing Culture
Dr. Sanity read her copy of the new Policy Review before I had a chance to, and she has a post up on this review of a new book by Donald Alexander Downs entitled Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus.
By way of introduction, reviewer Peter Berkowitz notes how an academy ostensibly dedicated to multiculturalism has nonetheless failed, for instance, to graduate students who have a knowledge of any foreign language; and he correctly observes that the transmission of the collected knowledge of our civilization, along with the practice of free and open inquiry, has been vigorously suppressed, usually with contempt:
The last 25 years have witnessed the return of what Downs calls the “proprietary university,” which sees its central mission not as the transmission of knowledge and the pursuit of truth but rather as the inculcation of a specific — in this case ostensibly progressive — moral and political agenda. Another involves a transformation in the progressive sensibility itself. As late as the mid-1960s, the dominant opinion on the left was that free speech and due process were essential to the creation of a more inclusive and just society. But belief in the progressive character of liberal principles has been under intense attack by influential scholars since the glory days of Martin Luther King Jr.
The emphasis is mine. Of course the difference, as Roger Kimball has shown, is that the academy has aggressively promoted postmodern relativism and the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt school at the expense of the ideas of knowable truth and certainty of knowledge.
Meanwhile, postmodern critics, believing themselves to be following Nietzsche, argued that individual rights were fictions invented by the strong to control the weak (never mind that Nietzsche decried modern liberalism as an invention of the weak to tyrannize the strong). Taken together, these opinions encouraged the idea of “progressive censorship,” the policing of speech to ensure that it conformed to standards deemed necessary to lift up and liberate the oppressed.
But Professor Downs' intent is not to explore the philosophical tectonics of the progressive movement, but rather to catalog concrete examples of the egregious suppression of speech and expression on our campuses.
Berkowitz note that Downs argues convincingly that our universities will continue to decay unless there is 1) a return to an appreciation of truly free speech--speech that is the result of honest skeptical inquiry; and 2) a reevaluation of the real intent of a university education. Berkowitz:
Universities can start by reestablishing — or establishing — the teaching of a solid core of learning that defines an educated person. The alternative, which has been widely adopted and involves “distribution requirements,” or special courses that focus on “methods of knowing” or “approaches to knowledge,” does not work and should be replaced.
Here is the key--"a solid core of learning". As I have said before, this should not be a politically polarized topic. It is as vital to the Democrats as it is to Republicans. That is, the Democrats of the traditional two-party US system.
I think the Very Important Point of this review is: the postmodern academics who remain in control of our universities are not interested in traditional Democratic/Republican politics. They are dedicated to advancing the cause of cultural Marxism--and the first phase of this campaign has been to attack the Western canon with its attendant principles of disinterested inquiry and established truths. They have been successful beyond their wildest dreams.
June 12, 2005
Al-Reuters, On The Ball As Usual...
I followed the AOL headline story to this little gem by Randall Mikkelsen of Reuters (emphases emphatically mine):
Some Bush administration officials want to close the facility to end a debate over allegations of prisoner abuse, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, told "Fox News Sunday."
The military detention camp for terrorism suspects has been criticized as a modern "gulag" by Amnesty International, and it has become a hated symbol for many Muslims.
"I think they're divided. I think ... some members of the White House have come to the conclusion that the legend is different than the fact," said Hunter, a California Republican.
"And when that's the case, you go with the legend that somehow Guantanamo has been a place of abuse. And you close it down and you shorten the stories, you shorten the heated debate and you get if off the table and you move on," he said.
So Mr. Mikkelsen is repeating the scurrilous assertion that Gitmo is a "gulag", with a straight face I gather. This is ludicrous on the face of it; I'm not going to bother with linking to all the refutations of this impotent claim.
Now we find that Rep. Hunter "thinks"...what? That "they're divided"? Exactly what is the basis for your "thinking"? And from this rather liquid assertion we get the conclusion, "And when that's the case [is it really?], you go with the legend that somehow Guantanomo has been a place of abuse." Oh really? Who says, "...you go with the legend"? And how are you defining abuse? Repeat after me: Forcing these bastards into uncomfortable situations is not torture. Fraternity initiations, not to mention Marine Corps boot camp undoubtedly feature the same, if not worse.
As usual the question is: "Whose side are you on?"
This piece is like crashing on your mountain bike off a rocky trail into poison ivy: you lose a lot of skin, and on top of the scrapes you get an ugly rash. Rep. Hunter seems to not have a clue, and with material like that, our Reuters correspondent was thankful for an easy day's work.
Posted at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)June 10, 2005
Greatest Americans
In a response of sorts to the Discovery Channel's upcoming show on the 100 Greatest Americans, Right Wing News has solicited his own lists from blogs both right and left.
The comparison between the righties and lefties is especially interesting, and pretty encouraging, I must say. I certainly wouldn't rate MLK first (he's certainly top ten), but I'm glad to see our liberal friends still appreciate Lincoln, Washington, Franklin, and both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt.
One name that pops up on both lists is pleasantly surprising: Ulysses Grant. I read Jean Edward Smith's biography of Grant when I was in one of my cyclical Cival War phases; Smith persuaded me to recognize Grant not only as a great general, but a great American.
I'll try and come up with my own list tomorrow.
Posted at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)June 09, 2005
Milton Friedman On School Choice
Milton Friedman is a long-time supporter of the free market in education for fifty years, and in today's WSJ OpinionJournal, he provides a succinct recap of the progress and defeats that the school voucher movement has experienced over the last fifty years. He notes how the landmark 1983 study "A Nation at Risk" stimulated many major reform efforts and much intellectual gnashing of teeth--with negligible effect (emphases are mine throughout):
Though spending per pupil has more than doubled since 1970 after allowing for inflation, students continue to rank low in international comparisons; dropout rates are high; scores on SATs and the like have fallen and remain flat. Simple literacy, let alone functional literacy, in the United States is almost surely lower at the beginning of the 21st century than it was a century earlier. And all this is despite a major increase in real spending per student since "A Nation at Risk" was published.
So, why no improvement? Friedman points to the transformation of the National Education Association from a professional organization into a trade union. I believe that this established on corner of the unholy triangle that habitually blocks effective reform. The other two corners are: one, the liberal arts academy; and two, their little sisters and brothers in the education colleges. The liberal arts academy stokes the postmodern theory engine, producing the ideology which is then disseminated by the teachers' colleges. Of course, conservative free market ideas are virtually nonexistent during the training years of a teacher's career; and when teachers take their place in the real world, it's easy for the unions to maintain their "progressive" hegemony.
Throughout this long period, we have been repeatedly frustrated by the gulf between the clear and present need, the burning desire of parents to have more control over the schooling of their children, on the one hand, and the adamant and effective opposition of trade union leaders and educational administrators to any change that would in any way reduce their control of the educational system.
It's the old story--reformers always have to fight the entrenched holders of power, and Friedman goes on to relate the infuriating but predictable tactics of the opposition: TV ads that misrepresent budget concerns, propaganda sent home with children, and so on.
Friedman feels, as do I, that sooner or later, as the quality of public school education continues to erode, school vouchers will be given a fair and universal trial. And then the free market will demonstrate its power.
I just hope it's not too late.
Posted at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 08, 2005
"An Unhealthy Certainty"
Via Logical Meme I found this unsurprisingly irresistible article on moral relativism by Charles Krauthammer:
The Op-Ed pages are filled with jeremiads about believers--principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics--bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong--indeed, deeply un-American--about fearing people simply because they believe. It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order. [...]
Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty or, even worse, unseemly religiosity.
I wrote a couple days ago about Richard Thompson's incredible CD 1000 Years of Popular Music, in which he performs songs ranging from paeans to King Henry V to songs by Prince. He also springs a surprise: a cover of pop queen Britney Spears' hit "Oops, I Did It Again". My wife (who has a very sophisticated pop sense--Beatles, Costello, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, etc.)--was charmed by the shift in context: Thompson is about as far from Britney as is possible. And my six year old son loves the catchy melody.
But I despise the tune--as I told my wife, "It's a catchy, bouncy celebration of chickenshitedness." The song is really a pop culture ode to moral relativism. There is no consideration of the other person's feelings; an abject admission that the singer is shallow; and it portryas a general breezy disinterest in anything other than the singer's immediate selfish desires.
As I pounded out the miles on my bike today, I had imaginary conversations with some of my liberal friends about this subject. They would probably think I am overreacting to a pop song: "Why are you being so judgmental?" My reply would be to ask, "What do you think of Ken Lay?" Plenty of strong judgement there. And of course this returns to Krauthammer's point that the left loves relativism when it's employed by themselves. It's fine to condemn the Enron henchmen (as indeed they should be) and Gitmo guards who may or may not have mishandled a Koran; but in our day to day lives "everyone is has their own truth, you know?". Sorry, don't think so.
I recall the great golfer Bobby Jones, who once called a penalty on himself during a tournament. No one was near him when the infraction occurred, but nonetheless he docked himself the penalty stroke. When quizzed by an amazed press corps about his altruistic behavior, he replied, "You might as well thank a man for not robbing a bank."
I wonder what's happened to that kind of behavior?
Caterpillar's Got Competition
Little Green Footballs has a post that cheered me right up. (My cycling workout today left me hammered--the heat index here in Houston was 105 degrees today.) Caterpillar now has some competition for the title of Heavy Equipment Company Most Hated By Leftists. That company is Trencor--they make a massive trenching machine that the Israelis are using to cut deep channels along the Egypt-Gaza border, thus exposing the illegal tunnels that the Palestinians have habitually used to smuggle armaments and supplies into Gaza.
I feel something more than a "heh" is in order. How about a "haha"?
Posted at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Kerry And The SF-180: Not Quite Off The Hook?
John Kerry may not have put an end to the speculation about his military record. An emailer to Powerline makes some interesting assertions:
The SF 180 is actually a request for "Report of Separation" and all such documents are in the sole custody of the National Personnel Records Center, in St. Louis - not the branch in which the veteran served (in this case the Navy). And the character of Kerry's "separation" (discharge) from the Navy is obviously the document(s) that are hot.
Speculation continues--either 1) Kerry's record was indeed clean and he was uncomprehensibly stupid in not releasing them earlier; or 2) there is indeed something suspect about his military service, and Kerry has been working the military bureaucracy to shuffle the paper trail.
Jonah Goldberg: Multi-Takes
Jonah Goldberg had a good day at The Corner yesterday.
On the new book about Hillary:
The new Hillary book is probably a dud. ... The sad part is that books which don't advance the argument against Hillary -- either intellectually or factually -- will only serve to innoculate her.
This is absolutely on target--Hillary has the entire support of the liberal MSM, and together they will spin any mis-step by the opposition into a home run for their side. It bears repeating: the mainstream media will be relentless in its support of Hillary.
On Howard Dean's latest implosion:
He pleases only those people who represent the parties problems and he further alienates precisely those people it needs to attract. It wasn't completely obvious this was going to be the case when they picked Dean, but it is now. He's turning away donors rather than attracting them and he's accentuating stereotypes while trying to rebut them.
Howard Dean is a pathetic joke; he is a boon to the Republican party.
On Clinton's legacy:
A couple things stand out. First there's how completely meaningless popularity in the polls is when it comes to historical verdicts. Many great presidents were very popular when they left office, and many were not. [...] Often, popularity and greatness are at odds. This was always why Clinton was destined to be a third tier president at best. He valued popularity more than accomplishment.
I have many times pronounced to my liberal friends, "Clinton could have been a great president it he had actally used his considerable intelligence, instead of commissioning a new poll to tell him when he should go to the bathroom."
Posted at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 07, 2005
Chillin' Those Frist Critics
Tim Chapman at Townhall.com's C-log lays out how Bill Frist could come out looking like a winner after all. Chapman first recalls the early criticism of Frist as being a "weak" leader, and then writes:
But as time has worn on a different picture of Frist's role leading up to the so-called compromise is emerging. Frist was quoted in yesterday's New York Times characterizing the aftermath of the deal as such: "The short-term evaluations, I believe, will prove to be shortsighted and wrong after we get judge after judge after judge after judge through, plus at least one Supreme Court nominee..." After the Senate this week builds on the Owen success by confirming Brown and Pryor, this statement from Frist will seem legit. And if the Majority Leader pushes a large set of nominees through in coming months as he has indicated he will, then his argument that his critics were shortsighted will carry even more weight.
Chapman then notes that Byron York, writing in Nation Review, say that Frist has known all along that this was all about Supreme Court nominees, and that Frist is determined to see a real conservative confirmed.
Again, I've always tried to evaluate the deal based on what we didn't give away (the possibility of invoking the Constitutional option), combined with the concrete gains we received in-hand (the now-confirmed "extremist" judges). And I agree with Chapman and York: Conservatives are going into the SC fight holding a good hand.
Posted at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Hitchens vs. Hitchens
Neo-neocon has a great overview of the crackling rivalry between the brothers Hitchens. Most of us are familiar with Christopher, who combines in his writing relentless logic and intellectual honesty with a scathing prose style. Brother Peter writes for the British Daily Mail, and is more of a proper conservative, although the term "proper" may never be appropriate with these two. Neo-neocon:
Peter Hitchens is a socialist turned Tory, while Christopher, of course, is a socialist turned hawk. Peter seems to have become far more conservative than his brother Christopher, and he "turned" earlier, too.
The metamorphosis of liberal/leftists/socialists into conservatives or libertarians is endlessly fascinating--especially when said socialists are a pair highly-educated brothers with an abundance of sardonic British wit.
Check out Neo-neocon's post for some great links.
Posted at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 06, 2005
Is Howard Dean A Republican Mole?
Howard Dean continues his campaign to make the Democratic party a refuge for wild-eyed extremists (thanks to BronxPundit):
[DNC chairman] Dean, who inspired a passionate following when he ran for president in 2003-04 and showed the potential of Internet fundraising, has been as unpredictable with his public remarks since becoming party chairman in mid-February as his Republican counterpart, Ken Mehlman, has been on message.
It seems to me that Dean has been preaching to the choir--he shows up for safe audiences like the recent Campaign for America's Future annual gathering, and gets a big ego boost by letting loose with a fusilade of sure-bet soundbites. But others in his party are actually thinking about how to get more votes next time around:
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) distanced themselves over the weekend from remarks by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who is facing criticism for the pace of the party's fundraising.
But here's the kicker:
Dean, who portrays himself as a fighter, clarified his comment a day later to say that he was referring to the Republican leadership, not to ordinary Republicans.
Oh, bloody hell. This is as tired and worn-out as a bad sitcom plot. How many times have you heard something like this: "Our fight is not against the American people, it's against the American government"? It's a passive-agressive shell game, and it's just pathetic.
It's so pathetic that I'm just loving it to death--let's hear more, Howard!
Posted at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)Big Props To Mark
Mark Coffey at Decision '08 continues to gain recognition for his consistently excellent work.
Posted at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)1000 Years of Popular Music
As I get older, I find my musical tastes have changed--no big surprise there. (If a person's tastes don't change at least a little over time, there's probably something wrong, but that's a subject for another post.)
The name of Richard Thompson may not be familiar to younger fans of popular music, but for the last thirty years or so, he's accumulated a fanatical set of fans--and many of them are guitarists themselves.
In addition to his prodigious talent as a guitarist, songwriter, and singer he's also built a reputation for an encyclopedic knowledge of folk music--especially English, Celtic and American blues. So it is no surprise that he would be solicited by a major publication for his opinion on the greatest pop music ever made; and that, in turn, led to the CD I finally received over the weekend: 1000 Years Of Popular Music. Here's Richard in his own words, describing how the CD came about:
"The idea for this project came from Playboy Magazine - I was asked to submit a list, in late 1999, of the ten greatest songs of the Millenium. Hah! I thought, hypocrites - they don't mean millennium, they mean twenty years - I'll call their bluff and do a real thousand-year selection. My list was similar to the choices here on this CD, starting in about 1068, and winding slowly up to 2001. That they failed to print my list among others submitted by rock's luminaries, is but a slight wound - it gave me the idea for this show, which has been performed occasionally, and will hopefully receive a few more airings. The idea is that Popular Music comes in many forms, through many ages, and as older forms get superceded, sometimes the baby is thrown out with the bathwater - great ideas, tunes, rhythms, styles, get left in the dust of history, so let's have a look at what's back there, and see if still does the trick. ..." Richard Thompson
This is a live CD, recorded at a small club--the show starts with "the oldest known round in the English language" and progresses through traditional English miners' songs, Stephen Foster, Gilbert and Sullivan(!), Hoagy Carmichael (oh yeah!), a Jerry Lee Lewis cover, Pete Townshend, Prince, and finishing up with Lennon-McCartney. All performed by only three musicians: Richard on solo acoustic guitar and vocal; Michael Jerome on percussion; the incredible Judith Owen on vocals.
It's astonishing, unique, wonderful. And highly recommended.
June 05, 2005
Disney "Gay Days": Vacation Or Oppression?
The Anchoress has a post up in which she recalls the dishonest slant of questioning Bill Pryor had to face during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Pryor had cancelled his family's scheduled vacation to Disney World after discovering that their visit was to coincide with Disney's annual "Gay Days". The some members of the committee were unimpressed with his explanation, which was that he simply didn't want to spend his vacation answering his children's questions about human sexuality.
The Anchoress goes on to highlight an article by a writer (who happens to be gay) that displays an uncommon level of well-adjusted common sense:
I’ve always believed the best way we, as gay men and lesbians, could further our cause was to simply live our lives openly, and with dignity. Not hide in shame, and not force our beliefs or lifestyle down anyone elses throat. I don’t like it when I hear pompous windbags telling me I’m going to burn in hell for being gay, and I’m sure most of the free world would appreciate a visit to Disney World that did not include the vision of grown men in go-go shorts...
Well said. This is just another example of the instant-transfer-of-blame syndrome: If I protest against my six year old son having to witness "two queens frenching outside Cinderella castle", then it must immediately follow that I despise gays and want them stoned to death. Nonsense.
Core Curriculum...What's That?
Well, this follows just perfectly. Speaking of the legacy of John Dewyey, and the "progressive" crusade against a traditional liberal education that emphasizes knowledge over process, this post at Powerline is worth repeating in its entirety:
Core Curriculum, Anyone?
The new issue of the Dartmouth Review is out. It includes the full text of the Review's interviews with newly elected trustees Peter Robinson and Todd Zywicki. In addition, the Review reports on an unscientific survey it conducted to test Dartmouth students' basic knowledge about western civilization. Less than half of the students surveyed knew that Gutenberg invented the printing press; less than half knew who wrote Don Quixote; less than a twenty percent knew who wrote Democracy in America; only ten percent could name the four American presidents who were assassinated.
This is not a new revelation, of course. I remember a Jay Leno segment from a few years ago; he would go out and pose basic questions to young college-age kids on the street. On one segment he went to a local liberal-arts college commencement ceremony. He asked a robed graduate, "How many moons does the Earth have?"
Blank look. "Four?"
Leno: "Four?"
Graduate: "Hey, it's been a long time since I took astronomy!"
Posted at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)June 03, 2005
The Long Shadow Of John Dewey
Micheal J. Totten reviews a list of books compiled for Human Events by 15 conservative intellectuals. Topic: The 15 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries. Michael takes particular issue with one of the choices (emphases are mine):
Here’s the complaint against Democracy and Education by John Dewey (a book I admittedly have not read).
John Dewey, who lived from 1859 until 1952, was a “progressive” philosopher and leading advocate for secular humanism in American life, who taught at the University of Chicago and at Columbia. He signed the Humanist Manifesto and rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes. In Democracy and Education, in pompous and opaque prose, he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking “skills” instead. His views had great influence on the direction of American education--particularly in public schools--and helped nurture the Clinton generation.
Well, Lord help us. Someone wrote a book that “nurtured the Clinton generation.” Better lump that in with Mein Kampf. Bush doesn’t = Hitler. But a Clinton influence apparently ranks with him.
Michael's a smart guy, but he's being led astray here by the Clinton reference (a rather silly one that should have been left out of the critique). John Dewey and his "progressive" ilk have created a huge block of barely-educated Americans who have neither the basic knowledge of our society's important ideas nor the critical reasoning skills necessary to be of any use to either political side.
I haven't read Dewey's book either. But I have read E.D. Hirsch and Diane Ravitch, and I have a six year old starting first grade next year. And I know the damage that "progressive" educational ideas have caused. The "progressives" saw in education the possibility of reforming society (indeed this is also the very same malady afflicting journalism profession--teachers/journalists as instigators of social change); merely imparting the accumulated wisdom of the previous thousands of years of the human race was denigrated and ridiculed.
As the peerless Ms. Ravitch says in her conclusion to Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform:
The three great errors demonstrated in these pages are, first, the belief that schools should be expected to solve all of society's problems; second, the belief that only a portion of children need access to a high-quality academic education; and third, the belief that schools should emphasize students' immediate experiences and minimize (or even ignore) the transmission of knowledge. The first of these assumptions leads to a loss of focus, diverting the schools from their most basic mission; the second contributes to low achievement and anti-democratic policies; the third deprives youngsters of the intellectual power that derives from learning about the experiences of others and prevents them from standing on the shoulders of giants in every field of thought and action.
Diane Ravitch, Left Back, 1st paperback edition, p. 465
Combine this preference for process over hard knowledge with the postmodern rejection of the value of empirical evidence (which makes test results--indeed the very idea of testing itself--unworthy of consideration) and you have the basis for the disaster that is public education.
And one of many crucial points to draw from this is: this should be an apolitical topic. If you call yourself a progressive, and you don't know what the Port Huron statement is; or anything about John L. Lewis; or indeed who John Dewey himself was--how can you successfully argue your position? There are thousands of young Democrats who voted for John Kerry and supported his stance against the Vietnam war who never heard of William Westmoreland or the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
The acquisition of knowledge is vital to both sides of the political spectrum: a knowledge of our history informs our current debates. Yet it is a matter of fact that our colleges of education, taking their cues from their big brothers and sisters in the liberal arts academy proper, have institutionalized the preference of "learning how to learn" over the accumulated knowledge of our civilization.
June 02, 2005
Ben Stein Turns On A Hanging Curveball
Ben Stein lays it on the line about Deep Throat, Watergate and Richard Nixon (thanks to Little Green Footballs):
Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable.[...]
When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:
1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.
2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.
The emphases are mine. I've long believed that the true tragedy of Watergate was that it allowed the backlash of the 1974 elections--landslide victories for the Democrats in Congress. As David Horowitz notes:
When the fires of Watergate consumed the Nixon presidency in 1974, the left's newly won control of the Democratic Party produced the exact result that Hayden and his comrades had worked so hard to achieve. In 1974, a new class of Democrats was elected to congress, which included anti-war activists like Ron Dellums, Pat Schroeder, David Bonior, and Bella Abzug. Their politics were traditionally left as opposed to the anti-Communist liberalism of the Daleys and the Humphreys (Abzug had even been a Communist). Their first act was to cut off economic aid and military supplies to the regimes in Cambodia and South Vietnam