Drudge holds a grudge?
Matt Drudge called Miller and asked for some explanation for Miller's mockery of Rush Limbaugh some years ago. Miller replied that Limbaugh is iconic and that he occasionally rubs him the wrong way, hence as a professional comedian he converted this into some humor. It seems that some conservatives will welcome Miller, others will find him less than idelogicaly pure. Miller and Schwarzenegger can comisarate at a fine LA eatery.
One curisity from my point of view is the seeming reverence for Limbaugh. I listen to as much talk radio as I can get, but ultimatly I am a text person, and would attach far more reverence for a writer than for a talker. This may be nothing more than a matter of preference, but its my analysis that the most complex thought requires writing (even if only later to be spoken). Limbaugh, like Miller, is at least part entertainer, and the rise of infotainment means most talk radio hosts are at least partially entertainers, and Ben Stein reveals you can wear multiple hats, but Stein is a substantial thinker who can also entertain. Limbaugh is less so, and so I cannot rever him.
Friday, August 29, 2003
Dennis Miller guest hosting for Sean Hannity
When O'Reilly ended at 2pm local, it took me a few minutes to get to the radio (cooking) and lo and behold, when the next program in the broadcast array hit my reciever the voice of Dennis Miller appeared. I had heard that one of his rants defended John Ashcroft (local boy, by the way, the AG attended high school here in town, as did Brad Pitt) so I was intrigued. The first segment was a hilarious introduction of his political views and his drift rightward. I am certainly enjoying this show and looking forward to the next two and a half hours.
Miller's transformation as an explicit conservative comic has attracted quite a bit of commentary. Criticism in the Boston Phoenix. The blog one good move is not happy. Here is the rant on civil liberties. Dennis on Norman Mailer in the WSJ.
When O'Reilly ended at 2pm local, it took me a few minutes to get to the radio (cooking) and lo and behold, when the next program in the broadcast array hit my reciever the voice of Dennis Miller appeared. I had heard that one of his rants defended John Ashcroft (local boy, by the way, the AG attended high school here in town, as did Brad Pitt) so I was intrigued. The first segment was a hilarious introduction of his political views and his drift rightward. I am certainly enjoying this show and looking forward to the next two and a half hours.
Miller's transformation as an explicit conservative comic has attracted quite a bit of commentary. Criticism in the Boston Phoenix. The blog one good move is not happy. Here is the rant on civil liberties. Dennis on Norman Mailer in the WSJ.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
To Protect and Take Care of the Force
The New Republic has a good article by Lawrence Kaplan. Such analysis confirms my own contention that we have returned to the values of the highly trained professional service. We have invested a lot into these soldiers, and we don't want to lose them. Welcome to warfare in the age of lace. Read 19th century (post Napoleonic) criticism of 18th century warfare to understand our current era.
The New Republic has a good article by Lawrence Kaplan. Such analysis confirms my own contention that we have returned to the values of the highly trained professional service. We have invested a lot into these soldiers, and we don't want to lose them. Welcome to warfare in the age of lace. Read 19th century (post Napoleonic) criticism of 18th century warfare to understand our current era.
Rice urges a "generational commitment"
Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan elaborate on Rice's summons at the Weekly Standard. They are concerned that sufficient effort is not being made, given the stakes. Success in Iraq is essential, and we must make the commitment to get it right. Take a look.
Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan elaborate on Rice's summons at the Weekly Standard. They are concerned that sufficient effort is not being made, given the stakes. Success in Iraq is essential, and we must make the commitment to get it right. Take a look.
Numbers of male teachers continues decline
According to the NYTimes, "Men made up one-third of the teaching force in the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Their numbers slid through the 90's and hit 21 percent, a low point, in 2001." When I look at the faculty of schools, I see that nearly everyone got their degrees and certification in the 70's or the 90's. Very few teachers teaching today started in the 80's. Part of this was the relative teacher glut of the 80's. What I think these statistics hide is the fact that an even larger decline has taken place in the number of male teachers entering the profession in the 90s'. Counting practicing teachers still includes male teachers who started teaching in the 70's. What I want to see
The article also said, "Six in 10 teachers said they would choose teaching again if they could go back to their college days and start over." Again, consider this in light of another statistic that, "About one-third quit during their first three years, and almost half leave within five years," according to this CNN item. Is the 4 in 10 who would not choose to teach again the new teachers who are still about to leave?
The NEA puts a more positive spin on these statistics, and provides some more from the base report, as well as linking to that report as a pdf.
According to the NYTimes, "Men made up one-third of the teaching force in the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Their numbers slid through the 90's and hit 21 percent, a low point, in 2001." When I look at the faculty of schools, I see that nearly everyone got their degrees and certification in the 70's or the 90's. Very few teachers teaching today started in the 80's. Part of this was the relative teacher glut of the 80's. What I think these statistics hide is the fact that an even larger decline has taken place in the number of male teachers entering the profession in the 90s'. Counting practicing teachers still includes male teachers who started teaching in the 70's. What I want to see
The article also said, "Six in 10 teachers said they would choose teaching again if they could go back to their college days and start over." Again, consider this in light of another statistic that, "About one-third quit during their first three years, and almost half leave within five years," according to this CNN item. Is the 4 in 10 who would not choose to teach again the new teachers who are still about to leave?
The NEA puts a more positive spin on these statistics, and provides some more from the base report, as well as linking to that report as a pdf.
Neocon 101
Nice explanation of the Neocon position at the Christian Science Monitor. There are several links to follow and a quiz to see if you're a Neocon too.
Nice explanation of the Neocon position at the Christian Science Monitor. There are several links to follow and a quiz to see if you're a Neocon too.
Dare the School Build a New Social Order?
Two days ago I commented on the Farmington high school international affairs class. I thought it might be profitable to write more generally on progressive education. The headline above is the title of collection of three papers written by George Counts. Counts began as a student of John Dewey, and advocated shifting the focus of education from the curriculum to the student. In 1931, his examinations of foriegn (non-American) school systems led him to Soviet Russia. That year he wrote The New Russian Primer, Soviet Challenge to America and, A Ford Crosses Soviet Russia. It is the following year that he presented Dare the School Build a New Social Order? where ever he could get a hearing. It was an age in which many idealists where infatuated with the Soviet experiment, and many continued to be despite growing evidence of Soviet totalitarianism. Counts had become commited to social reform on the Marxist model. Dewey's own 1920 book, Reconstruction in Philosophy had advocated a role for the schools in progress, but his emphasis had been on democratization of teaching methods, not social revolution.
A whole group, known as the "Frontier Thinkers" (click here for a somewhat alarmist account) formulated a social reconstructionist model of education and set about advocating using to schools to create a new social order. Needless to say, it didn't take. The Frontier Thinkers had their hayday when interest in and acceptance of the Soviet experiment was at its hight. When the WWII alliance collapsed and America fell into its second Red Scare, the communists, their sympathizers, and fellow travelers went under ground. As support for the 1948 candicacy of Henry Wallace reveal, there was a small, determined minority who wanted to continue to learn from the Soviet experience. More importantly, perhaps, similar thinkers in Europe in the Frankfurt School continued to carry the torch. They felt free to modify Marxism, rejected direct obedience to Moscow, but kept historical materialism central to their thinking. European radicals took education as indoctrination much more seriously than Americans did.
As the New Left took hold in both America and Europe in the mid to late sixties, there was a resurgence of social reconstructionism as a vogue in American education. A nice description can be found in The New Republic's article "The Passion of Joschka Fischer" (scroll down about half way) of such a venture in Germany. As resistance to the Reagan military build-up and both Gulf Wars have revealed, the New Left destroyed itself electorally, but not as a social movement. The New Left included in its ideology the notion that revolutionaries belonged in schools, welfare offices, and advocacy groups advancing the revolution even when not in the street. As the New Left lost the Vietnam War as a cause, it embraced enviromentalism and consumer protection as causes. Both had the advantage of being easily used for anti-capitalist purposes. It is no coincidence, for example, that Earth Day is Lenin's birthday.
The social reconstructionists as educators take the whole New Left agenda into the classroom. Fundamentally distrustful of bourgeois society, anti-capitalist, sure that the foriegn policy of capitalist countries is 19th century Imperialism with a new set of clothes, sympathetic to the under-dog like the PLO, Vietcong, Black Panthers, or IRA, and therefore fundamentally at odds with most Americans who never really embraced to socialism, even as practiced by western Europeans. Social reconstructionists want to vote for Dennis Kucinich, but might feel the weight of pragmatism and go with Howard Dean. If Dean doesn't get the nomination, or if pragmatism doesn't bite, its the Green party that gets their vote. They see the schools as a fundamental part of their social reconstruction, and have no difficulty pushing their own view on students despite the fact that their views are distinctly unpopular. In subjects like math and science, their influence is mostly, like Dewey, in the form of teaching methods and classroom enviroment. In literature, they select the polar opposite of the "great books" looking for the voices of the disenfranchised. Women, people of color, the poor, and authors from outside the country are sought out. However, it is in the social studies where the social reconstructionists have the most to alter in the classroom. History and social analysis are taught from a hard left or new left perspective, again the indiginous people are celebrated and the Europeans are condemed (until they lose their empires and embrace socialism), capitalism is portrayed as a poverty creating earth destroying system, and the American political system is described a corrupt and controlled by malevolent elites.
A great deal of such teachers are "soft" social reconstructionists. They picked up their ideology in college, and colleges of education are often more social reconstructionist than public schools are - indoctrinate the indoctrinators. They haven't examined their assumptions with rigor, and can generously be seen as the character from the Alicia Silverstone movie Clueless, Miss Toby Geist, who is always shown trying to get the students involved in various causes. A small minority of teachers are "hard" social reconstructionists, who are committed and can usually point to some defining moment when they realized the system was corrupt and embraced social reconstruction. Here is an example.
Given the rather abundant evidence that the examples of socities admired by social reconstructionists are failures on a variety of measures, this can be regarded as a pernicious philosophy of education. Society can improve itself, and a certain awareness of the social issues raised by this philosophy is appropriate to a classroom. However, if teachers were ever successful in undermining student's broader commitment to American institutions, to republican government (rule by elected representatives), and capitalism, the consequences globally would be catastrophic. Parents and community leaders need to pay closer attention to what goes on in the classroom. A large number of the "soft" social reconstructionists would do little harm, would probabaly do some good, and would not need to be purged, if parents and community leaders simply held them accountable to present broader values (community, state, and national) along side their own agendas in a fair and balanced way. Some of the more extream stuff needs to be saved for college, and some soft, and probabaly all hard social reconstructionists would be unwilling to make these changes. They are more than just a "fifth column" of European style social democrats. They are to the left of the social democrats, and represent a greater danger to the progress and prosperity produced by American capitalism and democracy.
Update: See a libertarian view of Counts here.
Two days ago I commented on the Farmington high school international affairs class. I thought it might be profitable to write more generally on progressive education. The headline above is the title of collection of three papers written by George Counts. Counts began as a student of John Dewey, and advocated shifting the focus of education from the curriculum to the student. In 1931, his examinations of foriegn (non-American) school systems led him to Soviet Russia. That year he wrote The New Russian Primer, Soviet Challenge to America and, A Ford Crosses Soviet Russia. It is the following year that he presented Dare the School Build a New Social Order? where ever he could get a hearing. It was an age in which many idealists where infatuated with the Soviet experiment, and many continued to be despite growing evidence of Soviet totalitarianism. Counts had become commited to social reform on the Marxist model. Dewey's own 1920 book, Reconstruction in Philosophy had advocated a role for the schools in progress, but his emphasis had been on democratization of teaching methods, not social revolution.
A whole group, known as the "Frontier Thinkers" (click here for a somewhat alarmist account) formulated a social reconstructionist model of education and set about advocating using to schools to create a new social order. Needless to say, it didn't take. The Frontier Thinkers had their hayday when interest in and acceptance of the Soviet experiment was at its hight. When the WWII alliance collapsed and America fell into its second Red Scare, the communists, their sympathizers, and fellow travelers went under ground. As support for the 1948 candicacy of Henry Wallace reveal, there was a small, determined minority who wanted to continue to learn from the Soviet experience. More importantly, perhaps, similar thinkers in Europe in the Frankfurt School continued to carry the torch. They felt free to modify Marxism, rejected direct obedience to Moscow, but kept historical materialism central to their thinking. European radicals took education as indoctrination much more seriously than Americans did.
As the New Left took hold in both America and Europe in the mid to late sixties, there was a resurgence of social reconstructionism as a vogue in American education. A nice description can be found in The New Republic's article "The Passion of Joschka Fischer" (scroll down about half way) of such a venture in Germany. As resistance to the Reagan military build-up and both Gulf Wars have revealed, the New Left destroyed itself electorally, but not as a social movement. The New Left included in its ideology the notion that revolutionaries belonged in schools, welfare offices, and advocacy groups advancing the revolution even when not in the street. As the New Left lost the Vietnam War as a cause, it embraced enviromentalism and consumer protection as causes. Both had the advantage of being easily used for anti-capitalist purposes. It is no coincidence, for example, that Earth Day is Lenin's birthday.
The social reconstructionists as educators take the whole New Left agenda into the classroom. Fundamentally distrustful of bourgeois society, anti-capitalist, sure that the foriegn policy of capitalist countries is 19th century Imperialism with a new set of clothes, sympathetic to the under-dog like the PLO, Vietcong, Black Panthers, or IRA, and therefore fundamentally at odds with most Americans who never really embraced to socialism, even as practiced by western Europeans. Social reconstructionists want to vote for Dennis Kucinich, but might feel the weight of pragmatism and go with Howard Dean. If Dean doesn't get the nomination, or if pragmatism doesn't bite, its the Green party that gets their vote. They see the schools as a fundamental part of their social reconstruction, and have no difficulty pushing their own view on students despite the fact that their views are distinctly unpopular. In subjects like math and science, their influence is mostly, like Dewey, in the form of teaching methods and classroom enviroment. In literature, they select the polar opposite of the "great books" looking for the voices of the disenfranchised. Women, people of color, the poor, and authors from outside the country are sought out. However, it is in the social studies where the social reconstructionists have the most to alter in the classroom. History and social analysis are taught from a hard left or new left perspective, again the indiginous people are celebrated and the Europeans are condemed (until they lose their empires and embrace socialism), capitalism is portrayed as a poverty creating earth destroying system, and the American political system is described a corrupt and controlled by malevolent elites.
A great deal of such teachers are "soft" social reconstructionists. They picked up their ideology in college, and colleges of education are often more social reconstructionist than public schools are - indoctrinate the indoctrinators. They haven't examined their assumptions with rigor, and can generously be seen as the character from the Alicia Silverstone movie Clueless, Miss Toby Geist, who is always shown trying to get the students involved in various causes. A small minority of teachers are "hard" social reconstructionists, who are committed and can usually point to some defining moment when they realized the system was corrupt and embraced social reconstruction. Here is an example.
Given the rather abundant evidence that the examples of socities admired by social reconstructionists are failures on a variety of measures, this can be regarded as a pernicious philosophy of education. Society can improve itself, and a certain awareness of the social issues raised by this philosophy is appropriate to a classroom. However, if teachers were ever successful in undermining student's broader commitment to American institutions, to republican government (rule by elected representatives), and capitalism, the consequences globally would be catastrophic. Parents and community leaders need to pay closer attention to what goes on in the classroom. A large number of the "soft" social reconstructionists would do little harm, would probabaly do some good, and would not need to be purged, if parents and community leaders simply held them accountable to present broader values (community, state, and national) along side their own agendas in a fair and balanced way. Some of the more extream stuff needs to be saved for college, and some soft, and probabaly all hard social reconstructionists would be unwilling to make these changes. They are more than just a "fifth column" of European style social democrats. They are to the left of the social democrats, and represent a greater danger to the progress and prosperity produced by American capitalism and democracy.
Update: See a libertarian view of Counts here.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Hugh Hewitt comes to Branson Radio
Since first mentioning Hewitt in early may, I have become attached to KPLA streaming audio. Prager, Medved, and Hewitt consitiute a fine nine hours of radio, generally enough to fill any day by any computer. Any by streaming, I can start listening after work and hear it at my convinience. But a new convinience has entered. Hewitt is now on KIDS AM 1340 in Branson. This means I have Hewitt in the car as well in the afternoon. The only thing left on KTTS is Bill O'Rielly and before noon the libertarian Neal Boortz. The fact that I can stream Dennis Prager during the Savage Nation on KRLA means I listen to O'Rielly on the radio, otherwise its all streaming all the time. Still, its great to be able to get into the car and listen to talk without being driven to the FM side of the spectrum.
Since first mentioning Hewitt in early may, I have become attached to KPLA streaming audio. Prager, Medved, and Hewitt consitiute a fine nine hours of radio, generally enough to fill any day by any computer. Any by streaming, I can start listening after work and hear it at my convinience. But a new convinience has entered. Hewitt is now on KIDS AM 1340 in Branson. This means I have Hewitt in the car as well in the afternoon. The only thing left on KTTS is Bill O'Rielly and before noon the libertarian Neal Boortz. The fact that I can stream Dennis Prager during the Savage Nation on KRLA means I listen to O'Rielly on the radio, otherwise its all streaming all the time. Still, its great to be able to get into the car and listen to talk without being driven to the FM side of the spectrum.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Nation Review misguided in its attacks on Specter
In this latest installment in the NR's attacks on Arlen Specter, John J. Miller makes the mistake of focusing only on Specter's lack of support for the party's agenda. First off, I'm not inclined to engage in purges until we have ideological purity. Second, Specter is better than democrats because he doesn't pander to the left. In a two party system, predominatly liberal states will produce liberal republicans as an alternative to leftist democrats. Just as in predominantly conservative states, we will find conservative democrats and right-wing republicans. Being a northerner living in a border state, I am acutely aware that where left and right exist from state to state vary's considerably.
In this latest installment in the NR's attacks on Arlen Specter, John J. Miller makes the mistake of focusing only on Specter's lack of support for the party's agenda. First off, I'm not inclined to engage in purges until we have ideological purity. Second, Specter is better than democrats because he doesn't pander to the left. In a two party system, predominatly liberal states will produce liberal republicans as an alternative to leftist democrats. Just as in predominantly conservative states, we will find conservative democrats and right-wing republicans. Being a northerner living in a border state, I am acutely aware that where left and right exist from state to state vary's considerably.
High School Teaches anti-Americanism
Little Green Footballs links to this Fox News story about a High School class promoting an anti-American agenda. Lets have a close look, shall we?
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Some parents in Farmington, Mich., are crying "anti-Americanism" over a high school international affairs class.
The course is offered to juniors and seniors in the Farmington School District and focuses on America's role in the Middle East. But it's not the topic that's angered some students' parents. It's the class readings, many of which come from left-wing Web sites like Alternet.org, Indymedia.org, Progressive.org and War-times.org, that vigorously attack the Bush administration.
As LGF writes, "who’s who of the radical left." Two issues are here, one is balance, the other is the extream nature of these tests. There are two theories of education. One is that education should transfer the tradition of society to the children, so that they share the same body of knowledge and values as the previous (lets say taxpaying) generation. Another is that children should be taught to be able to correct the errors of previous generations, to overthrow their old assumptions and create progress. Such sites will strongly tend to favor the later theory. Lets call the first theory Traditional Education because its purpose is to transmit the cultural tradition, and the second theory Progressive edcuation because its purpose is human progress.
"This belief that we have to show that every concept out of that society can be understood and excused is really a problem across the country," said Farmington father Don Cohen. "We are bending over backwards and by doing so, we're misrepresenting and misinforming our children and our society." Cohen and other parents banded together to press the school board to hold off on the new elective. But the school year has officially begun and the class is on the roster. The board approved it by a narrow four-to-three vote.
I would suggest to Mr. Cohen that the question is not the coverage of a very wide range of ideas, but rather the amount of time given to them. I have, in the classroom, had to explain the rise of the New Left in terms of the anti-Vietnam war movement. My classroom would never be taught from a New Left perspective. Given a full semester in an upper level high school class, you can cover quite a lot. But, that doesn't mean you should privledge a political point of view inconsistant with community standards, that is unless you are a progressive.
Farmington superintendent of schools, Robert Maxfield, defended the course, saying high school juniors and seniors should be critical thinkers and should be exposed to many points of view.
This sounds nice, but is really an excuse to teach racism, sexism, ludditism, creationism, marxism, paganism, fascism, or whatever wacky thing you want to under the guise of exposing them to new ideas. It ignores the fact that a critical thinker first needs a critical apparatus, then afterward is capable of invalidating false ideas when exposed to many points of view. Without a critical apparatus, too much information is just bewildering. I would suggest to Mr. Maxfield that high school students do not possess a critical apparatus capable of heavy lifting. A few have a relativly strong critical apparatus, but the fact that it will develop and flurish so much in college demonstrates how undeveloped it is in high school. Part of this defect is an insufficiently broad base of study. How can one's critical faculties be prepared for any critique of economics without a full economic preperation? Part of a critical thinker is the ability to employ a wide range of tools in the service of a particular inquiry. The tool box of well prepared high school students is very shallow indeed. The best and brightest of students are only begining a process toward critical thinking with anything remotely like rigor. Too many students still form their moral reasoning by trying to please others, whether their peers, their teachers, or their families. The fact that my teacher is a socialist doesn't qualify as a reason for me to emrace socialism from a critical thinking perspective.
"You can never teach kids the facts about everything," Maxfield said. "What you can teach kids is how to recognize points of view, how to understand sources of conflict, how to understand that there are forces that have driven world affairs for hundreds of years."
This is an excuse not to do what I have just described as neccesary for critical thinking, followed by an inflated claim of what they have accomplished. What they have taught is a single theoretical approach (or maybe nothing at all). Focusing on a single theoretcial approach may really be something best left to graduate school, when hopefully so much water has passed under the bridge that students won't buy the swamp. That may not work as well as we would like, but if not graduate school, when?
And he believes kids should know about how some people feel about the U.S. "They need to understand that people hate Americans," Maxfield said. "They need to understand that sometimes there are reasons for that."
Somehow this seems like its going to be a critique of US action, not foreign reaction. I suspect that resentment of our success, hatred of our freedom, fear of our modernity, and resistance to reform of anti-democratic institutions won't get much coverage. Of course, "You can never teach kids the facts about everything."
Pro-Bush materials, such as government Web sites like WhiteHouse.gov, were added to the class' reading list — only after parents complained that the course was an exercise in political correctness. The extra sources help balance the course's curriculum and offer support to President Bush's policies and America's role in the Middle East. "That's on the media every day," said parent Susan Kahn, referring to the defense of Bush administration policies. "We hear that all the time and I think that's perfectly OK for them to hear as long as we balance it."
What this reveals is that these lefties don't even know where to look for a point of view other than the government or their own lefty circles. No libertarians, no neoconservatives, no realists? Where are sources like The Weekly Standard or The National Review? What they have set up is a target that Alternet.org and Progressive.org are going to attack. Of course no one will suggest that the official government sites don't bother attacking the radical fringe. No one will suggest the relative weight that these points of view reprsent. I very much doubt even the so-called teachers have ever done serious voting analysis with statistics. And by avoiding sites that argue different points of view ouside the Red-Green alliance, students recieve an impoverished edcuation, something that amounts to indoctrination.
Still, the school board stopped short of removing author Noam Chomsky's controversial book "9-11" — in which he writes about why he thinks the U.S. is a terrorist state — from the list of course materials. "That's the bias inbred into this curriculum," Cohen fumed.
I'm sure Ann Coulter's reply, Treason, isn't part of that reading list. Why anyone would foist Chomsky or Coulter on students I could never fathom, but Mr. Cohen is right about the fact that too many educators are too far to the left.
Too many teachers are too far to the Progressive side, thinking that the taxpayers who support them are not fit to shape policy. You see the taxpayers all generally agree with the teachers, but are duped by corporatist advertising.
Little Green Footballs links to this Fox News story about a High School class promoting an anti-American agenda. Lets have a close look, shall we?
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Some parents in Farmington, Mich., are crying "anti-Americanism" over a high school international affairs class.
The course is offered to juniors and seniors in the Farmington School District and focuses on America's role in the Middle East. But it's not the topic that's angered some students' parents. It's the class readings, many of which come from left-wing Web sites like Alternet.org, Indymedia.org, Progressive.org and War-times.org, that vigorously attack the Bush administration.
As LGF writes, "who’s who of the radical left." Two issues are here, one is balance, the other is the extream nature of these tests. There are two theories of education. One is that education should transfer the tradition of society to the children, so that they share the same body of knowledge and values as the previous (lets say taxpaying) generation. Another is that children should be taught to be able to correct the errors of previous generations, to overthrow their old assumptions and create progress. Such sites will strongly tend to favor the later theory. Lets call the first theory Traditional Education because its purpose is to transmit the cultural tradition, and the second theory Progressive edcuation because its purpose is human progress.
"This belief that we have to show that every concept out of that society can be understood and excused is really a problem across the country," said Farmington father Don Cohen. "We are bending over backwards and by doing so, we're misrepresenting and misinforming our children and our society." Cohen and other parents banded together to press the school board to hold off on the new elective. But the school year has officially begun and the class is on the roster. The board approved it by a narrow four-to-three vote.
I would suggest to Mr. Cohen that the question is not the coverage of a very wide range of ideas, but rather the amount of time given to them. I have, in the classroom, had to explain the rise of the New Left in terms of the anti-Vietnam war movement. My classroom would never be taught from a New Left perspective. Given a full semester in an upper level high school class, you can cover quite a lot. But, that doesn't mean you should privledge a political point of view inconsistant with community standards, that is unless you are a progressive.
Farmington superintendent of schools, Robert Maxfield, defended the course, saying high school juniors and seniors should be critical thinkers and should be exposed to many points of view.
This sounds nice, but is really an excuse to teach racism, sexism, ludditism, creationism, marxism, paganism, fascism, or whatever wacky thing you want to under the guise of exposing them to new ideas. It ignores the fact that a critical thinker first needs a critical apparatus, then afterward is capable of invalidating false ideas when exposed to many points of view. Without a critical apparatus, too much information is just bewildering. I would suggest to Mr. Maxfield that high school students do not possess a critical apparatus capable of heavy lifting. A few have a relativly strong critical apparatus, but the fact that it will develop and flurish so much in college demonstrates how undeveloped it is in high school. Part of this defect is an insufficiently broad base of study. How can one's critical faculties be prepared for any critique of economics without a full economic preperation? Part of a critical thinker is the ability to employ a wide range of tools in the service of a particular inquiry. The tool box of well prepared high school students is very shallow indeed. The best and brightest of students are only begining a process toward critical thinking with anything remotely like rigor. Too many students still form their moral reasoning by trying to please others, whether their peers, their teachers, or their families. The fact that my teacher is a socialist doesn't qualify as a reason for me to emrace socialism from a critical thinking perspective.
"You can never teach kids the facts about everything," Maxfield said. "What you can teach kids is how to recognize points of view, how to understand sources of conflict, how to understand that there are forces that have driven world affairs for hundreds of years."
This is an excuse not to do what I have just described as neccesary for critical thinking, followed by an inflated claim of what they have accomplished. What they have taught is a single theoretical approach (or maybe nothing at all). Focusing on a single theoretcial approach may really be something best left to graduate school, when hopefully so much water has passed under the bridge that students won't buy the swamp. That may not work as well as we would like, but if not graduate school, when?
And he believes kids should know about how some people feel about the U.S. "They need to understand that people hate Americans," Maxfield said. "They need to understand that sometimes there are reasons for that."
Somehow this seems like its going to be a critique of US action, not foreign reaction. I suspect that resentment of our success, hatred of our freedom, fear of our modernity, and resistance to reform of anti-democratic institutions won't get much coverage. Of course, "You can never teach kids the facts about everything."
Pro-Bush materials, such as government Web sites like WhiteHouse.gov, were added to the class' reading list — only after parents complained that the course was an exercise in political correctness. The extra sources help balance the course's curriculum and offer support to President Bush's policies and America's role in the Middle East. "That's on the media every day," said parent Susan Kahn, referring to the defense of Bush administration policies. "We hear that all the time and I think that's perfectly OK for them to hear as long as we balance it."
What this reveals is that these lefties don't even know where to look for a point of view other than the government or their own lefty circles. No libertarians, no neoconservatives, no realists? Where are sources like The Weekly Standard or The National Review? What they have set up is a target that Alternet.org and Progressive.org are going to attack. Of course no one will suggest that the official government sites don't bother attacking the radical fringe. No one will suggest the relative weight that these points of view reprsent. I very much doubt even the so-called teachers have ever done serious voting analysis with statistics. And by avoiding sites that argue different points of view ouside the Red-Green alliance, students recieve an impoverished edcuation, something that amounts to indoctrination.
Still, the school board stopped short of removing author Noam Chomsky's controversial book "9-11" — in which he writes about why he thinks the U.S. is a terrorist state — from the list of course materials. "That's the bias inbred into this curriculum," Cohen fumed.
I'm sure Ann Coulter's reply, Treason, isn't part of that reading list. Why anyone would foist Chomsky or Coulter on students I could never fathom, but Mr. Cohen is right about the fact that too many educators are too far to the left.
Too many teachers are too far to the Progressive side, thinking that the taxpayers who support them are not fit to shape policy. You see the taxpayers all generally agree with the teachers, but are duped by corporatist advertising.
Saturday, August 23, 2003
NYTimes restricts archives
Not too long ago, the Times Archive was free out to 30 days for registered users. Now the free period is 7 days. On the other hand the price for access to an article seems of have fallen. Unfortunatly, I too frequently want to go back into the deeper history of a story and that was often within the 7-30 days window which I seem to have lost free access too. More evidence that more often change is unwelcome than its reverse?
Not too long ago, the Times Archive was free out to 30 days for registered users. Now the free period is 7 days. On the other hand the price for access to an article seems of have fallen. Unfortunatly, I too frequently want to go back into the deeper history of a story and that was often within the 7-30 days window which I seem to have lost free access too. More evidence that more often change is unwelcome than its reverse?
More on Religion: Justice Moore and the Ten Commandments
Yesterday I mentioned the strict monotheism of early Jews and Christians. I'll mention another in more detail with an eye towards my take on the Ten Commandments contraversy, and another opportunty to point out Sean Hannity's simple mindedness. Pontius Pilate is known for three things. He introduced Roman military standards bearing the Roman eagle into Jerusalem. The eagle signified not only Rome, but also Jupiter, one of the city's patrons. He used temple funds to build an aqueduct, a situation used for humorous effect in Life of Brian. And he presided over the crusifixion of Jesus the Nazorean. Its the introduction of the Roman standards that interests me here. Pilate took it for granted that a display of the dominant Roman iconography was a good thing to do in Jerusalem. For a Roman, such an act said that Rome provided peace, justice, and protection here, all of the benefits of proper to a state. But the Jews were canny in teasing out the embeded religious meaning in such acts and recognized that the standards themselves bore the eagle, a symbol of Jupiter, a god whose aspects included those of the soveriegn function, providing peace, justice, and protection. Who precisely was providing this peace? Was it Rome or Jupiter. Ultimatly this was a muddled question for the Romans who though they might be drifting towards indifference toward their Indo-European pantheon, would have still conflated the state and the state religion. That the soveriegn symbol of the state should be a symbol of the god of soveriegnty seemed natural. In the case of America (or Germany) the use of an eagle as its symbol does not reflect our belief in Jupiter as the source of a good polity, but the traditional meaning of the symbol as a soveriegn icon. How does a state like Rome respect the religious sensibilities of minorities like the Jews when its public iconography is intertwined with a specific religious interpretation? Pilate found the Jews in protest, brought in troops, but the Jews refused to yield. Unwilling to massacre the protesters over this, Pilate withdrew the standards. In doing so, he respected the religious sensibilities of the locals.
The United States in this respect is like Rome, as it is in so many other ways. We have a dominant religion, closely associated with our founding, which has a privleged place in the public square, or should I say forum. Prayers by clergy open legislative sessions, our money professes our trust in the monotheistic God of Abraham, and the Decalogue graces many a public building. As such we occasionally offend those citizens not subscribing to the majority faith, and so the state gives offence to its citizens. Should a moden Pilate coerce acceptance, as Justice Moore intends to do, or should that modern Pilate withdraw such symbols? The question is comlicated by two fundamental changes in the relationship of the state to its people since the founding. First, the American people have become more diverse. Second, the role of the state has become more ubiquitous. The American religious sensibility has grown more eccumenical in responce to that growing diversity, shifting from a Protestant sensibility to a Christian sensibility to a Judeo-Christian sensibility. One might resonably conclude that it would be possible to include Muslims one day in this formulation. But, diversity has grown faster and reached farther than simply diverging interpretations of the God of Abraham. Further, it is probabale that this trend will continue and that future American generations will see more citizens who do not derive a spiritual sense from the Bible. All of which suggests that the very presence of the our Judeo-Christian assumptions (actually the assumptions are more of a Christianity which sees its roots in Judaism, and which Jews find sufficiently welcoming) in state iconography will continue to give effence.
Meanwhile the role of the state has grown considerably since the founding. If the state did as little as it once did, and was strictly purged of all religious entanglements, sufficient to satisfy the most prickly atheist, Christians could hardly say that the public square had been shorn of its religiosity because the state occupied so little of the public square. For a long time, the public square was in a small town, and the three institutions of town, school, and church cooperated toward common goals under a broad consensus. See a fabulous description of this and the changes being wrought in this article by Peter Beinart. The state was remote, and communities opperated according to community standards, reflecting local sensibilities somewhat imperfectly, but always locally. Enter the mighty state as provider of an interstate highway system, federal welfare programs, money for education, and a the federalization of many crimes which brings more and more people before federal courts. The great federal government does a far poorer job of respecting local sensibilities. This was intended to be one of the strengths of a federal system of government, by which each level of government would attend to the concerns that manifest at its own level. But, the federalization of so much of state and local life has brought in the national sensibility to every local community. Since the government at the federal level is most encumbered by the 1st ammendment's establishment clause, the intrusion of the federal government into so many spheres of public life means that the sensibilities of the whole nation must be respected in every community. A diversity of community approach to religious sensibility is lost when the public square is dominated by the federal government. One approach is demanded, a national approach. Just as we have a national approach to drug policy which can be imposed on states that consider alternatives, we have a national approach to religous displays.
How the do we treat the question of mixed symbols, like the Roman eagles, a symbol that has a religious and secular meaning? As Slate has produced in a slideshow, we have generally adopted two related tests. Does the display have secular intent, and is it presented as special, or one of many sources of law. As Judge Napolitano said while guest hosting on the Radio Factor on the 21st of this month, when asked why he installed the Decalogue, Justice Moore could have replied that it forms a basis for our law, but instead replied that it was his religion. This is the wrong answer, and Judge Napolitano was right to suggest that in doing so, Moore was looking for a fight. Sean Hannity, on the other hand confuses these two, or perhaps just recognizes no distinction between a secular and a religious purpose. He argued that the country was founded on a Judeo-Christian basis, and so should feel no difficulty violating the establishment clause if we remain inoffensive within that tradition. Or, to return to my Pilate example, the eagles will be imposed by the coersion of the majority, and the minority can just lump it. This misreads the purpose of the Bill of Rights, the establishment clause, and the founders fear of a majority which does not respect the minority. I take the position of John Adams and respond that the best way for me to enjoy the Free Excercise clause of the 1st Amendment is not for government to assist me by placing a decalogue at my courthouse (though I have no objection to a decalogue enjoying display for its historical purpose) but to get out of the way so I can enjoy my own choice of religious sensibility unencumbered. This means the state should not be encouraging me towards a majoritarian religious sensibility, it should be silent.
That said, the state should not silence anyone either. That vilolates the free excercise clause. If a quote from Stonewall Jackson praises God for a victory at a battle in northern Virginia, its a historical statement by an important figure making a comment on an important occassion. We are not obligated to agree with Jackson any more on his attribution of victory than we are on his ideas of greater loyalty to a state than to the union, or on slavery, or any other topic. The statement allows us to understand the past, past actors, and past situations. It does not require our agreement. Likewise statements made about the Grand Canyon, the Gettysburg Address, or any other usage or invoication of the Christian God. They are not violations of the establishment clause, they are part of the historical record. If their purpose in being posted, plaqued, or carved is to tell us about our history, they serve a good and noble public purpose. If their purpose is to advance Justice Moore's own ideas abouthis religion, they do violate the establishment clause and should be withdrawn.
Yesterday I mentioned the strict monotheism of early Jews and Christians. I'll mention another in more detail with an eye towards my take on the Ten Commandments contraversy, and another opportunty to point out Sean Hannity's simple mindedness. Pontius Pilate is known for three things. He introduced Roman military standards bearing the Roman eagle into Jerusalem. The eagle signified not only Rome, but also Jupiter, one of the city's patrons. He used temple funds to build an aqueduct, a situation used for humorous effect in Life of Brian. And he presided over the crusifixion of Jesus the Nazorean. Its the introduction of the Roman standards that interests me here. Pilate took it for granted that a display of the dominant Roman iconography was a good thing to do in Jerusalem. For a Roman, such an act said that Rome provided peace, justice, and protection here, all of the benefits of proper to a state. But the Jews were canny in teasing out the embeded religious meaning in such acts and recognized that the standards themselves bore the eagle, a symbol of Jupiter, a god whose aspects included those of the soveriegn function, providing peace, justice, and protection. Who precisely was providing this peace? Was it Rome or Jupiter. Ultimatly this was a muddled question for the Romans who though they might be drifting towards indifference toward their Indo-European pantheon, would have still conflated the state and the state religion. That the soveriegn symbol of the state should be a symbol of the god of soveriegnty seemed natural. In the case of America (or Germany) the use of an eagle as its symbol does not reflect our belief in Jupiter as the source of a good polity, but the traditional meaning of the symbol as a soveriegn icon. How does a state like Rome respect the religious sensibilities of minorities like the Jews when its public iconography is intertwined with a specific religious interpretation? Pilate found the Jews in protest, brought in troops, but the Jews refused to yield. Unwilling to massacre the protesters over this, Pilate withdrew the standards. In doing so, he respected the religious sensibilities of the locals.
The United States in this respect is like Rome, as it is in so many other ways. We have a dominant religion, closely associated with our founding, which has a privleged place in the public square, or should I say forum. Prayers by clergy open legislative sessions, our money professes our trust in the monotheistic God of Abraham, and the Decalogue graces many a public building. As such we occasionally offend those citizens not subscribing to the majority faith, and so the state gives offence to its citizens. Should a moden Pilate coerce acceptance, as Justice Moore intends to do, or should that modern Pilate withdraw such symbols? The question is comlicated by two fundamental changes in the relationship of the state to its people since the founding. First, the American people have become more diverse. Second, the role of the state has become more ubiquitous. The American religious sensibility has grown more eccumenical in responce to that growing diversity, shifting from a Protestant sensibility to a Christian sensibility to a Judeo-Christian sensibility. One might resonably conclude that it would be possible to include Muslims one day in this formulation. But, diversity has grown faster and reached farther than simply diverging interpretations of the God of Abraham. Further, it is probabale that this trend will continue and that future American generations will see more citizens who do not derive a spiritual sense from the Bible. All of which suggests that the very presence of the our Judeo-Christian assumptions (actually the assumptions are more of a Christianity which sees its roots in Judaism, and which Jews find sufficiently welcoming) in state iconography will continue to give effence.
Meanwhile the role of the state has grown considerably since the founding. If the state did as little as it once did, and was strictly purged of all religious entanglements, sufficient to satisfy the most prickly atheist, Christians could hardly say that the public square had been shorn of its religiosity because the state occupied so little of the public square. For a long time, the public square was in a small town, and the three institutions of town, school, and church cooperated toward common goals under a broad consensus. See a fabulous description of this and the changes being wrought in this article by Peter Beinart. The state was remote, and communities opperated according to community standards, reflecting local sensibilities somewhat imperfectly, but always locally. Enter the mighty state as provider of an interstate highway system, federal welfare programs, money for education, and a the federalization of many crimes which brings more and more people before federal courts. The great federal government does a far poorer job of respecting local sensibilities. This was intended to be one of the strengths of a federal system of government, by which each level of government would attend to the concerns that manifest at its own level. But, the federalization of so much of state and local life has brought in the national sensibility to every local community. Since the government at the federal level is most encumbered by the 1st ammendment's establishment clause, the intrusion of the federal government into so many spheres of public life means that the sensibilities of the whole nation must be respected in every community. A diversity of community approach to religious sensibility is lost when the public square is dominated by the federal government. One approach is demanded, a national approach. Just as we have a national approach to drug policy which can be imposed on states that consider alternatives, we have a national approach to religous displays.
How the do we treat the question of mixed symbols, like the Roman eagles, a symbol that has a religious and secular meaning? As Slate has produced in a slideshow, we have generally adopted two related tests. Does the display have secular intent, and is it presented as special, or one of many sources of law. As Judge Napolitano said while guest hosting on the Radio Factor on the 21st of this month, when asked why he installed the Decalogue, Justice Moore could have replied that it forms a basis for our law, but instead replied that it was his religion. This is the wrong answer, and Judge Napolitano was right to suggest that in doing so, Moore was looking for a fight. Sean Hannity, on the other hand confuses these two, or perhaps just recognizes no distinction between a secular and a religious purpose. He argued that the country was founded on a Judeo-Christian basis, and so should feel no difficulty violating the establishment clause if we remain inoffensive within that tradition. Or, to return to my Pilate example, the eagles will be imposed by the coersion of the majority, and the minority can just lump it. This misreads the purpose of the Bill of Rights, the establishment clause, and the founders fear of a majority which does not respect the minority. I take the position of John Adams and respond that the best way for me to enjoy the Free Excercise clause of the 1st Amendment is not for government to assist me by placing a decalogue at my courthouse (though I have no objection to a decalogue enjoying display for its historical purpose) but to get out of the way so I can enjoy my own choice of religious sensibility unencumbered. This means the state should not be encouraging me towards a majoritarian religious sensibility, it should be silent.
That said, the state should not silence anyone either. That vilolates the free excercise clause. If a quote from Stonewall Jackson praises God for a victory at a battle in northern Virginia, its a historical statement by an important figure making a comment on an important occassion. We are not obligated to agree with Jackson any more on his attribution of victory than we are on his ideas of greater loyalty to a state than to the union, or on slavery, or any other topic. The statement allows us to understand the past, past actors, and past situations. It does not require our agreement. Likewise statements made about the Grand Canyon, the Gettysburg Address, or any other usage or invoication of the Christian God. They are not violations of the establishment clause, they are part of the historical record. If their purpose in being posted, plaqued, or carved is to tell us about our history, they serve a good and noble public purpose. If their purpose is to advance Justice Moore's own ideas abouthis religion, they do violate the establishment clause and should be withdrawn.
Friday, August 22, 2003
The Bible and homosexuality
A good portion over the debate on homosexual clergy and the church's acceptance of homosexuality in general is going to revolve around Bible's teaching on the matter. As I mentioned on Aug 6, there are those who argue that the the core texts of Christianity are not generally applicable to the modern world. I'm not quite sure what these people mean when they call themselves Christians. There are, however, two important readings of the Bible which stake out two opposing sides on the issue of homosexuality. First off, I don't have a dog in this fight. I regard the Bible as a source of ancient wisdom and have studied it for that wisdom. I don't hold it to be a better source than Aristotle, Confucius, Seneca, Zeno, Diogenes, or a host of other sources of ancient wisdom. If it doesn't agree with me I am OK with that. I do want to know what the book says for its own sake, and that's how I present it here. I rather think that many disputants on this issue will tend to select the outcome they want and then select the interpretation that agrees with their desired outcome.
One interpretation holds that what appear to be injunctions against homosexuality are in fact attacks on temple prostitution in foreign religions. Being strictly monotheist, neither the early Jews nor Christians get along well with those worshiping other gods or people as gods. It was the early Christians refusal to humor the emperors that got them condemned to the lions, you may recall. Likewise with eating meat with gentiles, fashioning golden calves, and marrying foreign women. Early Jews had observed that in a sufficient number of cases, adopting foreign customs led to worshiping foreign gods. So an injunction against behaving like they do in cult X or temple Y is not a criticism of homosexuality itself, but in adopting the customs of those who worshiped false gods.
The other interpretation is that we are commanded to be procreative. Certainly there are texts that fit this case. But are they specific or general? Its one thing to be fruitful and multiply in a frontier area like 19th century Utah or 2nd millennium BCE Galilee. Its another thing to be pro-natal all the time. If we are commanded by the deity to have children, then at best homosexuality is not proscribed conduct, at worst it is against the right order of things. Then again so is a celibate priesthood.
Which of these interpretations is primary? I'm willing to grant that both have some truth. What is harder to discern, and will take further reading is how general are these principles, does one have primacy over the other? Possibilities logically incude the following:
1) Both are general rules, we must not be homosexual and we must procreate
2) We must not be homosexual, procreation is optional (the Catholic anti-sex position, sex is a product of the fall, its an easy route to sin, unless procreatuve)
3) Procreation is mandatory, homosexuality is acceptable as long as it doesn't prevent procreation (or bisexuality is OK, exclusive homosexuality isn't)
4) Procreation is not required, but is good, homosexuality is fine, unless it leads to the worship of false gods.
What is most important in terms of the text is to know what the text actually says. Pretending it says what you want it to day is intellectually dishonest, even if you regard it as no more sacred than Sapho's poetry.
A good portion over the debate on homosexual clergy and the church's acceptance of homosexuality in general is going to revolve around Bible's teaching on the matter. As I mentioned on Aug 6, there are those who argue that the the core texts of Christianity are not generally applicable to the modern world. I'm not quite sure what these people mean when they call themselves Christians. There are, however, two important readings of the Bible which stake out two opposing sides on the issue of homosexuality. First off, I don't have a dog in this fight. I regard the Bible as a source of ancient wisdom and have studied it for that wisdom. I don't hold it to be a better source than Aristotle, Confucius, Seneca, Zeno, Diogenes, or a host of other sources of ancient wisdom. If it doesn't agree with me I am OK with that. I do want to know what the book says for its own sake, and that's how I present it here. I rather think that many disputants on this issue will tend to select the outcome they want and then select the interpretation that agrees with their desired outcome.
One interpretation holds that what appear to be injunctions against homosexuality are in fact attacks on temple prostitution in foreign religions. Being strictly monotheist, neither the early Jews nor Christians get along well with those worshiping other gods or people as gods. It was the early Christians refusal to humor the emperors that got them condemned to the lions, you may recall. Likewise with eating meat with gentiles, fashioning golden calves, and marrying foreign women. Early Jews had observed that in a sufficient number of cases, adopting foreign customs led to worshiping foreign gods. So an injunction against behaving like they do in cult X or temple Y is not a criticism of homosexuality itself, but in adopting the customs of those who worshiped false gods.
The other interpretation is that we are commanded to be procreative. Certainly there are texts that fit this case. But are they specific or general? Its one thing to be fruitful and multiply in a frontier area like 19th century Utah or 2nd millennium BCE Galilee. Its another thing to be pro-natal all the time. If we are commanded by the deity to have children, then at best homosexuality is not proscribed conduct, at worst it is against the right order of things. Then again so is a celibate priesthood.
Which of these interpretations is primary? I'm willing to grant that both have some truth. What is harder to discern, and will take further reading is how general are these principles, does one have primacy over the other? Possibilities logically incude the following:
1) Both are general rules, we must not be homosexual and we must procreate
2) We must not be homosexual, procreation is optional (the Catholic anti-sex position, sex is a product of the fall, its an easy route to sin, unless procreatuve)
3) Procreation is mandatory, homosexuality is acceptable as long as it doesn't prevent procreation (or bisexuality is OK, exclusive homosexuality isn't)
4) Procreation is not required, but is good, homosexuality is fine, unless it leads to the worship of false gods.
What is most important in terms of the text is to know what the text actually says. Pretending it says what you want it to day is intellectually dishonest, even if you regard it as no more sacred than Sapho's poetry.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
President Bush gets it
Reading his website I quickly clicked the National Security tab, and the President there promices to defend, preserve, and extend the peace. His description of defending the peace involves, "seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe." That linkage of freedom and prosperity is key in actually accomplishing the objective at hand. One does not take firm root without the other. When both are in place, both flurish. The recipe for them are democracy and capitalism, what I have refered to as free societies and free markets.
Reading his website I quickly clicked the National Security tab, and the President there promices to defend, preserve, and extend the peace. His description of defending the peace involves, "seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe." That linkage of freedom and prosperity is key in actually accomplishing the objective at hand. One does not take firm root without the other. When both are in place, both flurish. The recipe for them are democracy and capitalism, what I have refered to as free societies and free markets.
Monday, August 18, 2003
EU warns of sanctions against Germany
Well there is a bizzare headine if I ever saw one. Germany, one of the great economic engines of the gloabal, not to mention the Eurpoean economies is not vibrant enough for its neighbors. Germany has lost control over its currency and cannot use the same tight money policies for which the Bundesbank was so famed in pre-Euro decades, and so she adopts basic Keynesian strategies to encourage growth. Having lost the levers of monaterism (broadly) she is sanctioned for trying Keynes. Aparently Germany should be realizing that it should be extending its own recession by adopting a contractionary spending policy. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is pushing for through structural reforms, and I would hope that the Christian Democrats (the center right party) find a Thatcherite, or Reaganite, reconsideration of the generous social programs. Such ideas have made the press in France. For years it had been assumed that without the set-back of the 70's (Germany mostly dodged that bullet) Germans never had any inclination to turn to a Thacherite reconsieration of creeping socialism. This may well be that reconsideration. I do wonder whether the Social Democrats (center left), leading a Red-Green coalition, can do this.
Well there is a bizzare headine if I ever saw one. Germany, one of the great economic engines of the gloabal, not to mention the Eurpoean economies is not vibrant enough for its neighbors. Germany has lost control over its currency and cannot use the same tight money policies for which the Bundesbank was so famed in pre-Euro decades, and so she adopts basic Keynesian strategies to encourage growth. Having lost the levers of monaterism (broadly) she is sanctioned for trying Keynes. Aparently Germany should be realizing that it should be extending its own recession by adopting a contractionary spending policy. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is pushing for through structural reforms, and I would hope that the Christian Democrats (the center right party) find a Thatcherite, or Reaganite, reconsideration of the generous social programs. Such ideas have made the press in France. For years it had been assumed that without the set-back of the 70's (Germany mostly dodged that bullet) Germans never had any inclination to turn to a Thacherite reconsieration of creeping socialism. This may well be that reconsideration. I do wonder whether the Social Democrats (center left), leading a Red-Green coalition, can do this.
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Foreign Policy Immaculately Conceived
Adam Garfinkle writes an article in Policy Review Online on what he called the immaculate conception theory of foriegn policy. He defines it in this paragraf. Take a look.
"The immaculate conception theory of U.S. foreign policy operates from three central premises. The first is that foreign policy decisions always involve one and only one major interest or principle at a time. The second is that it is always possible to know the direct and peripheral impact of crisis-driven decisions several months or years into the future. The third is that U.S. foreign policy decisions are always taken with all principals in agreement and are implemented down the line as those principals intend — in short, they are logically coherent."
Adam Garfinkle writes an article in Policy Review Online on what he called the immaculate conception theory of foriegn policy. He defines it in this paragraf. Take a look.
"The immaculate conception theory of U.S. foreign policy operates from three central premises. The first is that foreign policy decisions always involve one and only one major interest or principle at a time. The second is that it is always possible to know the direct and peripheral impact of crisis-driven decisions several months or years into the future. The third is that U.S. foreign policy decisions are always taken with all principals in agreement and are implemented down the line as those principals intend — in short, they are logically coherent."
Francis Fukuyama offers best explanation so far of WMD absence
Noted political economist Francis Fukuyama provides a compelling case at OpinionJournal.com. He argues that in an effort to avoid an intelligence lapse, the intelligence community produced a false positive. Given the surprise at the extent of the WMD programs found after the First Gulf War, inspectors and intelligence analysts were convinced that there was in Iraq a will to produce WMD's. In a closed society it is diffiuclt to percieve what is really going on, so there was a question about what was really going on there. They proceeded from an assumption of "better safe than sorry", a reasonable proposition. What happened over the past decade is that this assumption became mistaken for a truth. There are two reasons for this. One is that any assumption acted upon for a long period of time, especially by a succession of individuals will tend to harden into a presumption. Second, Saddam Hussein acted like he had WMD's and wanted more. Fukuyama provides a good argument that a lot of internal lying in Iraq took place as scientists and bureaucrats avoided telling the dictator and his two mad sons that they could not get what they wanted. Also, it makes sense for Saddam to pretend to have more in his hand than he did, even while denying there was anything there at all.
Fukuyama goes on to argue that the media fixation with the supposed "lie" about the Iraqi WMD's is misplaced. The President followed the intelligence estimates as well as the assumptions of his predecessor. Clinton's defence of Bush on the Larry King show on the matter of the 16 words reinforces this. The real problem, Fukuyama argues, is the intelligence failure. How could we have been so wrong about these matters?
This raises an interesting question, addressed excellently in the book Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch. They argue that there are failures to learn, to anticipate, and to adapt and that are the cause of institutional failure. Fukuyama claims, "The failure is not one of dishonest politicians and officials, but of a broader institutional process involving multiple intelligence agencies and the U.N." This kind of analysis is exactly what Cohen and Gooch provide. There was clearly a failure to learn, in this case learning what was real and what was presumed. Assumptions need to be tested rigorously, not adopted blindly. There was plenty of evidence about the nature of things and yes the wrong conclusions were drawn. Second there was a failure to anticipate that this could be a ruse to make Saddam look stronger than he was, or to anticipate that the Iraqi regime was so disfunctional as to be able to decieve itself, perhaps completely. This produces, according the Cohen and Gooch, aggregate failure. The failures described in Military Misfortune lead to great military defeats, not great military successes as happened in Iraq, but the instituions in question here is not the military, but the intelligence community.
That said, there remains no doubt that the regime in Iraq wanted WMD's and so the international community could never have turned away from its rigorous containment of Iraq, and rigorous containment was becoming politically less viable as countries like France and Russia wanted to do business in Iraq. That terrorism is the product of tyranny and failure in the Arab world and that reform had to be imposed on a significant part of the region to tip the scales in favor of general reform and liberalization. The status quo was going to produce the status quo. In a war on terrorism, the heart of terrorism, dysfunctional muslim states, had to be, and still need to be compeled to change. In a happy world, the mere example of Iraq would be sufficient to complete this process of reform in the Arab and broader muslim world. See Thomas Friedman's column today for good news in that direction. Most probabaly more will have to be done. One hopes that this "more" will be something less than more fighting, that it will be limited to persuasion, pressure, and support for the right ideas. As I wrote last week, we need to employ the assumption that we might have to fight again, because we are better safe than sorry. This time, let's remember that that is an assumption and that further war is not inevitable to see reform in the muslim world. The war was neccesary. What emerges as a cruel irony is that it was probabaly not possible without the UN's own assumptions that WMD's and WMD programs still existed in Iraq. This speaks, I think, to the dysfunction of that organization. See this post from the same day last week.
Noted political economist Francis Fukuyama provides a compelling case at OpinionJournal.com. He argues that in an effort to avoid an intelligence lapse, the intelligence community produced a false positive. Given the surprise at the extent of the WMD programs found after the First Gulf War, inspectors and intelligence analysts were convinced that there was in Iraq a will to produce WMD's. In a closed society it is diffiuclt to percieve what is really going on, so there was a question about what was really going on there. They proceeded from an assumption of "better safe than sorry", a reasonable proposition. What happened over the past decade is that this assumption became mistaken for a truth. There are two reasons for this. One is that any assumption acted upon for a long period of time, especially by a succession of individuals will tend to harden into a presumption. Second, Saddam Hussein acted like he had WMD's and wanted more. Fukuyama provides a good argument that a lot of internal lying in Iraq took place as scientists and bureaucrats avoided telling the dictator and his two mad sons that they could not get what they wanted. Also, it makes sense for Saddam to pretend to have more in his hand than he did, even while denying there was anything there at all.
Fukuyama goes on to argue that the media fixation with the supposed "lie" about the Iraqi WMD's is misplaced. The President followed the intelligence estimates as well as the assumptions of his predecessor. Clinton's defence of Bush on the Larry King show on the matter of the 16 words reinforces this. The real problem, Fukuyama argues, is the intelligence failure. How could we have been so wrong about these matters?
This raises an interesting question, addressed excellently in the book Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch. They argue that there are failures to learn, to anticipate, and to adapt and that are the cause of institutional failure. Fukuyama claims, "The failure is not one of dishonest politicians and officials, but of a broader institutional process involving multiple intelligence agencies and the U.N." This kind of analysis is exactly what Cohen and Gooch provide. There was clearly a failure to learn, in this case learning what was real and what was presumed. Assumptions need to be tested rigorously, not adopted blindly. There was plenty of evidence about the nature of things and yes the wrong conclusions were drawn. Second there was a failure to anticipate that this could be a ruse to make Saddam look stronger than he was, or to anticipate that the Iraqi regime was so disfunctional as to be able to decieve itself, perhaps completely. This produces, according the Cohen and Gooch, aggregate failure. The failures described in Military Misfortune lead to great military defeats, not great military successes as happened in Iraq, but the instituions in question here is not the military, but the intelligence community.
That said, there remains no doubt that the regime in Iraq wanted WMD's and so the international community could never have turned away from its rigorous containment of Iraq, and rigorous containment was becoming politically less viable as countries like France and Russia wanted to do business in Iraq. That terrorism is the product of tyranny and failure in the Arab world and that reform had to be imposed on a significant part of the region to tip the scales in favor of general reform and liberalization. The status quo was going to produce the status quo. In a war on terrorism, the heart of terrorism, dysfunctional muslim states, had to be, and still need to be compeled to change. In a happy world, the mere example of Iraq would be sufficient to complete this process of reform in the Arab and broader muslim world. See Thomas Friedman's column today for good news in that direction. Most probabaly more will have to be done. One hopes that this "more" will be something less than more fighting, that it will be limited to persuasion, pressure, and support for the right ideas. As I wrote last week, we need to employ the assumption that we might have to fight again, because we are better safe than sorry. This time, let's remember that that is an assumption and that further war is not inevitable to see reform in the muslim world. The war was neccesary. What emerges as a cruel irony is that it was probabaly not possible without the UN's own assumptions that WMD's and WMD programs still existed in Iraq. This speaks, I think, to the dysfunction of that organization. See this post from the same day last week.
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Remember Katie Roiphe?
Katie Roiphe is a year younger than I, and I suspect our mothers grew up before some critical watershed. I identified with the kind of feminism she describes that she was raised with. My mother was a professional woman and expected to have the same opportunities as men, she didn't want to be a man and she didn't fear men. Reading Roiphe's 1994 book, The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism was both familiar to me and a moment in which I became aware of a change in my own thinking. Along with other books of the time I formed my opinions on the sexual comming of age of my generation. And here I am talking about something that happens at 27, not 17. Its the formulation of ideas about things. Reflections on observations, not impulses or the acting upon them. Wendy Shalit's book on the new modesty, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, in many ways was the completion of that journey. It will hardly surprise anyone to learn that we who abandoned our youth in the 90's concluded that our parents and the their world had left us with a pretty screwy sexual culture. For those of us a bit older, our parents seemed to have been at the beginings of that change, incompletly reflecting it, sympathizing with it, but lacking the characteristics of its excesses.
Those reading James Lileks' bleat on a regular basis will recogize his comments on the selling of sexuality to younger and younger people. Stuff like this:
"All I ask is that Old Navy not sell thongs for three year olds. If they want to put gigantic Calvin Klein underwear ads in Times Square, go right ahead - that’s what Times Square is for. But don’t put up big pictures of half-naked 13 year olds; that’s not what this culture is about. Yet. And don't make every square inch of America what Times Square used to be."
I also minored in anthropology and find evolutionart psychology or socio-biology persuasive. Helen Fisher or E.O.Wilson make sense to me. Men insure their fitness by spreading their genes as widely as possible. Women insure their fitness by insuring that their considerable investment in offspring bears its own. So male sexual culture has a bit more of the drive for promescuity. Women are more selective.
But fallout from women's liberation and the sexual revolution, two related but different social movements, has led some women to think that being equal to men means being like men, including in their approach to sex. As Barbara Kay put it in the Canadian newspaper the National Post, (link from Innocents Abroad):
"[The] lesson was that women, in order to be truly equal in value to men, must assimilate a man's sexual behaviours and instincts. Are men obsessed with sex? Great. We're there. Are men aggressive in pursuit of sex, promiscuous, and emotionally detached from their conquests?"
Advocates of the new modesty argued that this left women feeling empty. It also leads to raising the stakes to obtain the pursued goal. Kay's article concerns this embrace of a sexual culture long associated with adult males with young girls. For a good bit of history people have been torn between resignation and condemnation over male sexual culture. For the good of society it was best that man devote themselves to his children, and that was best accomplished by way of their mother, his mate. Now we find a creeping of this pattern of behavior, no longer confined to adult males, working its way to younger and younger girls. The precise consequences will take years to be seen in full, but I am certain that one prediction will bear fruit, and that is that some young girl today will go on to write a book as important as The Morning After in the next dozen years.
Katie Roiphe is a year younger than I, and I suspect our mothers grew up before some critical watershed. I identified with the kind of feminism she describes that she was raised with. My mother was a professional woman and expected to have the same opportunities as men, she didn't want to be a man and she didn't fear men. Reading Roiphe's 1994 book, The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism was both familiar to me and a moment in which I became aware of a change in my own thinking. Along with other books of the time I formed my opinions on the sexual comming of age of my generation. And here I am talking about something that happens at 27, not 17. Its the formulation of ideas about things. Reflections on observations, not impulses or the acting upon them. Wendy Shalit's book on the new modesty, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, in many ways was the completion of that journey. It will hardly surprise anyone to learn that we who abandoned our youth in the 90's concluded that our parents and the their world had left us with a pretty screwy sexual culture. For those of us a bit older, our parents seemed to have been at the beginings of that change, incompletly reflecting it, sympathizing with it, but lacking the characteristics of its excesses.
Those reading James Lileks' bleat on a regular basis will recogize his comments on the selling of sexuality to younger and younger people. Stuff like this:
"All I ask is that Old Navy not sell thongs for three year olds. If they want to put gigantic Calvin Klein underwear ads in Times Square, go right ahead - that’s what Times Square is for. But don’t put up big pictures of half-naked 13 year olds; that’s not what this culture is about. Yet. And don't make every square inch of America what Times Square used to be."
I also minored in anthropology and find evolutionart psychology or socio-biology persuasive. Helen Fisher or E.O.Wilson make sense to me. Men insure their fitness by spreading their genes as widely as possible. Women insure their fitness by insuring that their considerable investment in offspring bears its own. So male sexual culture has a bit more of the drive for promescuity. Women are more selective.
But fallout from women's liberation and the sexual revolution, two related but different social movements, has led some women to think that being equal to men means being like men, including in their approach to sex. As Barbara Kay put it in the Canadian newspaper the National Post, (link from Innocents Abroad):
"[The] lesson was that women, in order to be truly equal in value to men, must assimilate a man's sexual behaviours and instincts. Are men obsessed with sex? Great. We're there. Are men aggressive in pursuit of sex, promiscuous, and emotionally detached from their conquests?"
Advocates of the new modesty argued that this left women feeling empty. It also leads to raising the stakes to obtain the pursued goal. Kay's article concerns this embrace of a sexual culture long associated with adult males with young girls. For a good bit of history people have been torn between resignation and condemnation over male sexual culture. For the good of society it was best that man devote themselves to his children, and that was best accomplished by way of their mother, his mate. Now we find a creeping of this pattern of behavior, no longer confined to adult males, working its way to younger and younger girls. The precise consequences will take years to be seen in full, but I am certain that one prediction will bear fruit, and that is that some young girl today will go on to write a book as important as The Morning After in the next dozen years.
Neo-Conservatism reviewed by Innocents Abroad
John Coumarianos produces an interesting review of Irving Kristol's book, Neo-Conservatism. Those interested in the neo-conservative movement as I am should take a look both at the review and the book.
John Coumarianos produces an interesting review of Irving Kristol's book, Neo-Conservatism. Those interested in the neo-conservative movement as I am should take a look both at the review and the book.
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