Comments on the Postrel Article on Teacher Quality

The dynamist herself is popularizing the academic work of Sean P. Corcoran, who is now a prof. at California State University, Sacramento. His paper is here. The article states, "Research over the last decade has demonstrated that teachers' aptitude test scores, particularly their verbal scores, are the best predictors of how their students will achieve." Its nice that research validates this intuitively obvious assumption. Teachers convey a lot of information verbally, and the most complex information is often passed on verbally. The better the teacher is verbally, is stands to reason, the better job of passing along information. The research confirms this.

The article conforms that teacher quality has declines as women have been liberated from narrow career choices in nursing and teaching. However, the slip is less pronounced than has been assumed, being largely confined to the best and brightest women, who have the most choices about where to sell their abilities in a much larger marketplace. However, while we attract fewer of the brightest women in the teaching profession, we also recruit fewer of the low aptitude women. Teaching demand has fallen since the 50's and 60's when the Baby Boom had to be schooled. It reached a nadir in the 80's in a gap between the children of boomers and the grandchildren. In fact my own research shows that the vast majority of teachers were certified in the 70's and 90's. Its hard to find a teacher certified in the 80's, because the large number of the 70's to teach my generation left plenty of teachers in the system even as enrollments fell. Not only did hiring fall off, but teacher salaries fell in real terms in the early 80's. Aside from this dip they are stable in real teams over the past 40 years.

So, as one would expect from a free market unencumbered by gender bias inefficiency, the best and brightest are finding better employment elsewhere, the smaller demand has eliminated the need to scrape the bottom of the barrel. So, the average is pretty stable, since the broad middle seems much less effected. The decline, I mentioned was very slight, being confined to the top, and compensated for at the bottom.

The second part of the article explains what specific market forces are at work here. After, all given a free market, teaching might still be better than the alternatives. Given the needs of childcare, for instance, teachers share a similar schedule as their children, often arriving home shortly after the children do if they ride the bus. Children close enough to walk can get home almost an hour earlier than teaching mothers. This is still and hour or more better than 9-5 moms. So, given the notion that teaching offers some advantages, we have to look to the overall balance of the opportunity, and as we should expect, the opportunities for the top in a free market exist at a greater range. A potential teacher with the best scores will tend to seek the most free markets because the reward for her relative advantage will be most accurate. However, just as the market for women's employment became more free, the market for the supply of teachers became less free as unionization and pay-equity laws regulated the market. This constraint at the top of potential incomes are the downside that caused the best women to avoid teaching. They were not getting rewarded for their superior ability in teaching as they were in other fields. Apparently the superior compensation outweighed the other advantages of teaching as a profession, and so the brain drain.

See the paper by Caroline M. Hoxby and Andrew Leighon on incomes and teacher recruitment here. They conclude that 80% of the cause for high performing women to avoid teaching has been the compression of wages in teaching that fail to compensate them as they are able to be in the free market.

Postrel concludes, "In hiring teachers, we get what we pay for: average quality at average wages."

SMSU makes the Volokh Conspiracy

SMS (this is their prefered brand name), has been having a real problem with free speech of late. They have tried to create free speech zones. Now their Office of Thought Police (SMSU's Office of Equal Opportunity) is attacking the school newspaper for perfoming the function of a newspaper. Most outrageous, as far as I am concerned, is President Keiser's contention, "This is not a free speech issue. It's an education issue." I understand that running a large university means you will view the world through the lens of education, but there is this thing called the constitution, and it provides for this thing called Freedom of the Press. Further, this notion totally goes to reveal how much the university has abandoned the spirit of free enquiry in favor of extdending the high school model of in loco parentis by which students are regarded as children rather than citizens of the republic of letters.

Values and Economic Policy

Listening to the last few minutes of yesterday's Hugh Hewitt as I wait for today's show streaming from KRLA's site. Hugh ran the newest Bush commercials and in them Bush talks about how his policies benefit small business. The notion that we want to benefit small business, is a social value. Seeking effeciency is a value. Seeking equity, stability, sustainability, are all values. Its only sensible for Americans to prioritize their values, and they may well pick priorities that conflict with effeciency. In terms of economies globaly, America is more concerned with effeciency than any other industrialized country. Americans may well decided that they will nibble at the edges of effeciency by prefering "mom and pop businesses" while generally favoring effeiency as our overal economic priority. In Bernetein's post referenced below, he observes that, "Much of American antitrust law for many years was based on no economic theory whatsoever." But it is based on social values, and there is no reason to prioritize economic over social interests if that is not the desire of the people.

Anti-Trust critcism misplaced

David Bernstein makes what amounts to an aside, so this amounts to nothing more than a quibble. In a general criticism of anti-trust law, he attributes obe cause of anti-trust action to demogogery and cites Teddy Roosevelt. The achievement of Roosevelt is this: In a situation where the struggle was between unfettered capitalism and syndicalism, Roosevelt found a comprimise solution to eliminate the possibility of a syndicalist victory. His nephew later did much the same thing in so much as FDR's programs prevented worse. Its nice to criticize anti-trust legislation in the abstract, but given the observed fact that Democrats largely don't even bother to nod in the direction of free markets any more. If Republicans seriously started talking about ditching anti-trust legislation it would tend to "prove" the worst fears of the Left. The result would probabaly be sufficient to put anti-market forces in charge of the goverment. I argue that ineffeciencies like anti-trust, and I accept all of Bernstein's claims about them, are the price we pay to avoid the loss of control to those who would put a lower priority on market effeciency than they do for equity, enviromental impact, or other values that would substantially kill the goose. This means that Bernstein's post amounts to an "assume we have a can-opener" kind of speculation into ideal worlds that is utopian.

Jabon Levy on the Peldge

Here is what he has to say, more Lockian goodness, I might add. In the aftermath of 9-11 when the Pledge suddenly appeared in schools from which it had been abandoned, its meaning has renewed importance.

Full Bush Slideshow: White House Election-Year Album at MSNBC Click the launch button.

Local mother files suit over ten commandments plaque at school

The interesting issue here is that even in a small town in the Bible belt, there is no universal acceptance of public displays of religion in pubic institutions.

The Smart Guys discuss the Pledge

The Smart Guys, Erwin Chemerinsky and John Eastman, discussed the Pledge case before the Supream Court today. Typically my sympathies are with Eastman, but today I found Chemerinsky's arguments persuasive and well argued. Eastman made three errors which undermined his argument.

1) Original Meaning: Lawyers tend to make bad historians, and this is certainly the case here. Eastman posed the idea that the solution to the current problem was to return to the original meaning of the Constitution. Under the original meaning, "Congress shall make no law" restricted only Congress, not the states. Jefferson's famous Danbury Letter involved the fact that Congregationalism was an established church in Connecticut and Baptists were looking for assistance from Jefferson. Despite the fact that Congregationalists were usually Federalists, and Baptists were much more likely to be supporters of Jefferson politically, Jefferson refused to help them gain religious freedom, because the 1st Amendment created a wall between Church and State. Last week, Eastman complained about Blain amendments in state constitutions like Washington's, which were upheld in Locke v Davey. Original meaning allows Blain Amendments. Original meaning allows sectarian discrimination as long as the states do it, and not the federal government.

2) Eastman correctly identified the purpose of the 1st Amendment as a principle to prevent sectarian conflict in America. What he fails to see is that athiests are just one more kind of sectarian. Chemerinsky correctly analogized that where "one nation under Jesus" is obviously inappropriate, so is "one nation under God". (See below for me to anticipate a disagreement with Chemerinsky, since I don't think this is sufficient alone to strike the two words.) Atheists, like other Americans, have deeply held views about cosmological questions. Their views are entitled to the same protections as every other variety of philosophical, cosmological set of beliefs. This is, I think the heart of Chemerinsky's example. My own would involve a state mandated Hail Mary. Catholics would find it unobjectionable if applied appropriately, but Protestants would find it a troubling affirmation, since they reject the special nature of Mary held by Catholics. As a result, it is wrong for the state to impose such an affirmation. Likewise it is wrong for the state to impose such an affirmation, especially of children in a school setting.

3) Eastman argues that the line "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights " means that God resides above the state as arbiter of a higher law and that our rights ultimatly come from God. President Bush has argued the same case. I had not heard this argument until moving to the Bible Belt. My understanding of this line is entirely different. I am troubled by this understanding, because of the kinds of things it allows, such as Roy Moore's antics. I also don't believe the author of this line intended this reading, since this kind of expression is at odds with Jefferson's other ideas. Instead, this line should be understood in terms of Locke. Locke, author of the Reasonableness of Christianity is hardly anti-Christian. His role here is several. First, we should look to his notions of toleration. Second, the notion of inalienable rights is one he worked with himself in the Second Treatise. For example, Jefferson's list of inalienable rights, the words follwoing the above phrase, are Locke's in meaning. Jefferson said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; Locke said Life, Liberty, and Property. I have seen it argued and agree that both men would have understood Property and the Pursuit of Happiness to mean the same thing. Consider Jefferson's view of the ideal America of yoeman farmers, individual property holders. He did not believe that we could pursue happiness as wage-earners in a Hamiltonian America. Why did Jefferson write Creator, rather than God? As an Enlightenment figure, and one with a certain hostility to religion, Jefferson prefered a rational creator diety which is often associated with Aristotle's First Cause. In fact the notion of inalienable rights is probabaly articulated first in a mature form by the Stoics, so this connection bears deeper resonance. The Stoics believed that all people had inalienable rights because all men posses reason. This argument would be far more satisfactory to Jefferson than the notion that a personal God interested in his salvation had crafted a specific social order for that purpose. A term like "Creator" should not be seen as an affirmation of the religiousity of the Founders, but rather of their desire to step as far away from a religious based politics in favor of a reason based politics as possible. Of course in there era, those making a religous based politics were monarchists and supported absolutist kings. Certainly its possible to assert that God created us and did not intend for men to have dominion over men. This is not what Jefferson was getting at, at least not the emphasis on God's intention. Chemerinsky argued that 10% of Americans would reject this possition (my guess is he is lumping all non-theists together here, because athiests are a smaller number) on the basis of no belief in God. BTW, Locke argued that athiests could not be trusted to hold office because they would not fear for their immortal souls. He also held that Catholics were not to be trusted because they followed a foriegn prince (the Pope). We have long held that one's American-ness, citizenship, or fitness for office is not basded on one's religious beliefs. While we have had no avowed athiests in high office, its is hardly prohibited. This notion of our rights comming from God is ultimatly not relevant, is not what Jefferson intended, and cannot be the basis of our collective political notions.

So, if we reject Eastman's possition do we adopt Chemerinsky's? No. Chemerinsky came very close the strict seperationist possition. Since the court had agreed with him and he could just defend the court against Eastman, he didn't have to articulate his ideas as completely as Eastman did. Nevertheless, I take Chemerinsky to be a strict seperationist on Establishment issues. For example, we can recall last week's discussion of Locke v Davey. I have no problem with citizens using a general government benefit for religious purposes. I have no problem with free religious expression. My only limitation is for the state. The state has great coercive power, and so it is the state that must be restrained where it can impinge on the happiness of citizens. I understand why people want the government to agree with them on matters of import. But the purpose of the state is limited. There are things it should not do. I don't want a state that looks out for my whole person. I want a state that provides a common defence and looks after the general prosperity. It need make no religious statements in order to achieve these goals.

Hugh Hewitt mentioned at least twice that he would like to see some prayer in schools, when taking callers. I have no problem with prayer in school in principle. But in practice, the state can't get involved, so the ideal solution is the abolution of the public school system in favor of public funding of children's education according to parent's wishes. See my recent post on school choice with a long discussion of the court's establishment cases. What I did not mention in that post was the competing views of what it means to be neutral.

One side says that neutrality means even-handedness. So that a neutral policy with regard to sectarian issues gives equal benefits and restrictions regardless of sect. So that neutrality means athiests, Buddhists, Lutherans, and Greek Orthodox belivers or organizations are treated the same. No favoritism, so special harm. Even for unpopular religious practicing animal sacrifice. I am refering here to Lukumi Babalu Aye Inc v. City of Hialeah, where the court held that this Santaria church could not have its animal sacrifice rituals banned just because people didn't like it.

The other side says that neutrality is impossible. The state will either err too much in one direction or another, so it should just be totally uninvolved in any religious thing. No funding, no cerimonial prayers, nothing. The unintended consequence is that this favors athiests, secular sentiments, and the non-religious in general. This possition strikes me as not being neutral, although I understand the impluse. I will provide an example. In WWI, Sec of State William Jennings Bryan took this notion of neutrality and believed that we could not trade with Britain and Germany because one side would, for whatever reason, trade more with us and we would be inclined to protect our recievables by making sure they won, and that's not neutral. He resigned when Wilson continued to support trade with the Allies. Byran wanted neutrality in thought, word, and deed. He wanted strict non-involvement with any beligerent. And that is the kind of neutrality that strict seperationists want in regards religion.

Since I prefer the even-handedness definition of neutrality, I tend to be an accomodationist, but I am a moderate accomodationist, since I do favor as much non-action by the state as the state can manage without becoming hostile to religion. So in the case of the Pledge, I look to its intentions. Eastman made three suggestions as to the purpose of the phrase "under God". It might be a religious statement, a historical statement, or a cerimonial statement. First off, I must say that anyone who favors religion has a hard time arguing this is not a religious statement. That is so convienient that its fails to pass muster. While Hugh Hewitt may derive social pleasure from fellowship at church, that not the main reason he attends Sunday services. Likewise, you don't see this kind of contraversy in matters only historical or cerimonial. Historical and cerimonial matters only become contraversial when they have implications for contraversial issues like race or religion. So the contraversy itself speaks to a religious meaning. If we look at the addition of these words, and they were added in 1954, we find that their addition was not to redress a historical lapse, it was part of our Red Scare responce to the Godless Communists. To deferentiate ourselves from the Athiest Marxists we established some religion. We added a specific reference to God to a patriotic pledge for no other purpose than to advertise our religiousity. Therefore, those words should be stricken from the pledge required of school children.

How EU will work in practice

If you follow euobserver.com, you have noticed that whatever else the EU organization is doing, there is a meeting of the big 5. This is Brirain, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. See the lastest story. I rather think this is how the EU will operate in practice. The big 5 had a long history of working together, they are the core of NATO in Europe and of the EU, they are the largest states, economies, and militaries, and most importantly, Europe has always been run by her leading powers. The rival system of states that emerged during the Renaissance, and later the Concert of Europe when the Great Powers formally governed through the Congress System all work this way. The big powers expect it, and the little powers seem resigned to it. Regardless of what the EU constitution says, I predict this is how problems will be solved.

Imagine the Governors of California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois sitting down and deciding how their Congressional delegations will vote in order to create a unified policy, in effect to direct policy for the rest of the states. Of course it could not work here. Congressional delegations won't take instructions from governors, and the very structure of the Senate anticipated such a move by the big states, as represented by the New Jersey Plan in the founding debates. The American big 5 I mentioned only have 10 out of 50 Senators. The same influence as North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and West Virgina. Europe lacks a New Jersey Plan sensibility to restrain its Virginia Plan history and impulse.

How do you Print your Digital Pictures?

Registering a digital camera, the manufacturer asked me this question. There was no option to say I never print prictures. In fact, I can't figure out why I'd ever want printed pictures. Pictures are just a way to store the image on paper. Why not just store them digitally? Is this some kind of hard-copy thing? Make backups. While I can understand not wanting to read very long texts on computer (say, books), I can't think of any reason to print pictures. Alright, I can think of reasons (say, Christmas cards), but I've never done these things and I don't forsee it in the future. Since the manufacturer didn't have an expectation that I would answer "I don't" to the above question, how can they ideally serve me?

War on Terror Catagories

The relevant catagories are:
With us willingly
With us unwillingly because you're on the terrorist's list anyway
Against us

The President knows full well that in all the essentials, countries like Russia and France are with us, not because they want to be (they don't), but because they have no choice. They can refuse to participate, but they aren't neutral and more than Belgium was in 1940.

Remember Katie Roiphe pt II

Last August I brought of Katie Roiphe's book The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism. The question about remembrance was apt because I had not heard about Ms Roiphe after the buzz from her book died down. She appeared in annual reviews of thought and culture at the end of the year, but after that I don't recall hearing much. I was reading Slate this morning and came across her name at the bottom of the article: Katie Roiphe is the author of Still She Haunts Me. Stunned by the implications, I scrolled back to the top of the page and there was her byline. A search of her name on Slate reveals she wrote maybe a half dozen things in 2003 and several things in 2002. I'll be going back and catching up through the archive and look forward to more by Ms Roiphe.

Blame America pt 1 Afghanistan

There are those who believe that it was American support for the Mujahideen is the cause for the creation fo the terrorists. Their thinking goes that because America is a bad thing, its actions will have pernicious consequences. But its not American support for the Mujahideen that created Osama or the Taliban, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that did. When the Soviets invaded, Islamists from the whole Muslim world took action to support resistance and coordinate their actions. Networks formed, leaders built organizations, and a lot of Islamists got quite a bit of combat, weapons, and munitions experience. Had America done nothing, all of this would have occured.

Instead, America did get involved and hoped for the best. But as happens so often, American assistance didn't purchase friends. Those who suppose that allegience is for sale think everyone is a mercenary. Our purpose there, after all was not to "buy" friends, but to stop Soviet agression. This explains America's sudden withdrawl after the withdrawl of the Soviets. The forces on the ground were Islamist, we had no friends there to protect or to stay engaged with.

Like the terrorist networks themselves, built by the Soviets as a way to combat the West by other means, the Islamist networks were formed by the Soviets as an unanticipated consequence of their invasion of Afghanistan. The merger of these two Soviet creations, the state sponsorship of international terrorism and the Islamist organizations devoted to establishing Islamic governments and purging Islamic societies of non-Islamic culture proved to be the challenge of our current era.

Strategy Page

James Dunnigan's Strategy Page had posts on ETA on March 6 and 10, and asked "What is Al Qaeda up to," on March 11. During the course of the day we appear to have found out, but in hindsight, these posts suggest that Strategy page is asking the right questions and is on top of what is going on. Keep an eye on Strategy Page.

Students learning the traditional curriculum (mostly) in Social Studies

A press release by the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) suggests students are learning traditional approaches in the social studies. According to their website, "CIRCLE is based in the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs and is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Carnegie Corporation of New York." this study employed a democratic and a republican polster to ask students of middle school and high school, what did their classrooms emphisize in their social studies classes.

• 45% -- The Constitution or the US system of government and how it works
• 30% -- Great American heroes and the virtues of the American system of government
• 25% -- Wars and military battles
• 11% -- Problems facing the country today
• 9% -- Racism and other forms of injustice in the American system
• 5% -- Other, all of the above, or don’t know

Clearly the top three are part of the traditional curiculum, the report says very traditional as though we are teaching aristocracy, patriarchy, and theocracy. Nevertheless we see that 20% of students are getting a problems or a social reconstructionist curiculum. If students get the full range of courses as identified above, I really don't have a problem with them being exposed to the 20%. If they are given a good fact base and start off with some patriotic teaching, I see no problem complicating that understand with probems based teaching. What might well be the case, however is that at many schools, no one really represents the 20%, and at other schools the problems approach and social reconstructionism is the dominant theme, even creeping into the attitudes around the fact based approaches (how the Constitution works and the Wars). Now I doubt this in the case of wars. People who really don't like war coulnd't sustain a curruculum of military history and have students come away and think they learned military history rather than "the problems facing American leaders." As I have mentioned before, lots of social studies teachers are coaches, they embrace winning, competition, struggle, effort, and the rest of those ideas anathema to the social reconstrcutionists. Many times I see that a teacher known to his students as "coach" has no books besides those dedicated to the American Civil War and World War II. So my tendency is not to believe that the 20% is anything more than one fifth of classroom experiences. This poll tends to agree with my own experience and to quantify that experience. Not to worry, I'll be on my guard againt been uncritically accepting just because it confirms my own views.

Madrid

In one of Osama bin Laden's post-9/11 broadcasts, his voice on the tape refered to the "tragedy of al-Andalus." The fall of Grenada in 1492 lead directly to the intolerant Spanish repression of Jews and Moors. Spain demanded conversion. Those who didn't convert were expelled, and those who did were subject to the inquisition. But, for all this, perhaps more important was the end of any Islamic state in Iberia. What precisely constitutes the "tragedy of al-Andalus" I can't say for sure, but I am pretty sure that Spain was assessed for this 500 year old event.

One must wonder, once more, about an ideology that kills commuters and office workers in revenge for a 500 year old injustice. I will suggest that the back and forth between the Moors and Christians in Iberia is not a simple one-sided affair. To propose a "tragedy of al-Analus" is to ignore all of the reasons why Castile and Aragon desired a unified, Christian Spain. We can quibble with the policies of Ferdinand II and Isabella, but what is totally outrageous is planting bombs on commuter rail lines as some kind of revenge against what happened in Andalusia some five centuries ago.

The enemy is terror and let all free peoples stand together against it.

Two Candidates pt II

"I have no intention whatsoever to apologize for my remarks," Kerry said Thursday in front of a group of Democratic senators he just met with. "I think the Republicans need to start talking about the real issues before the country." (FoxNews)

By real issues Kerry means participation in his fantasy world. Apparently to disagree with Kerry is to be a liar and crooked. It would seem, Kerry has taken a page from the Ralph Nader playbook. Its a disappointment really. Solutions to America's problems will be found by the dialectical method of public debate between the two parties. When the Democrat mistakes ad hominem attacks, broad mischaracterizations, and wishful thinking as debate, he offers no benefit to his party, his country, or to the quality of debate. There is indeed someone who should start talking about real issues, and its John Kerry.

Free Markets or pseudo-Free Markets

Eliot Spitzer & Andrew G. Celli, Jr. write in the New Republic about free markets. They play fast an loose with the lables however. It undermines what would be a good DLC argument about the proper place of government regulation.

Dennis Prager makes a mis-step

Prager takes intellectual honesty seriously and I think he does a pretty good job, but today's discussion of the story on virginity pledges fell short of that goal. Prager read the news he wanted to see and ignored the point of the study and the intent of the article. This is what is known as a tortured reading. The concern of the study was rates of STD's are part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health funded by Centers for Disease Control. The article in the NYT spent most of its space on the rates of disease and closely related issues.

Prager is looking for social effects, not public health effects, so he is happy to see delayed sex, younger marriage, and fewer partners. However, since the question being asked was not about social effects but public health, these are extrernal issues. As a method of preventing STD's, pledges are not only worthless, since the rates are exactly the same, but actually pernicious, since pledge takers got the same number of STD's over a shorter period of time, having delayed sex, and with fewer partners. This is because they had a lower rate of preparation for sex, such as lower condom use, and engaged in less testing. Prager ignores this harm for the happy news he wanted to find from the beginning.

As I have argued earlier, the best policy is a true synthesis in which the practice of safe sex and the benefits of delayed sexual activity were both taught is superior. Unfortunately, no one wants both. Pro-chastity people might give lip service to safe sex but emphasize chastity, and the safe-sex people vise versa. Why is it impossible to say, don't have sex until you are married, and here is how as a married person you can prevent pregnancy until you are ready to have a child, and in the event that you give in to temptation, it prevents STD's too. Isn't two lines of defense better than one? Why is this idea so rejected by both sides?

I do know, its because neither side wants to admit the other has a point. Just as Prager refused to admit that the purpose of the NYT and AP articles were that despite the pledges, there is no better record on STD's than among other students. And all of this while patting himself on the back for looking at both sides.

Iraq

Below I talk about the charge that the war in Iraq was dreamed up in Texas as a political product. This is pure fantasy. Clearly as the containment of Iraq dragged on there would be three positions on what to do next: 1) abandon the containment and leave Iraq, 2) continue the containment indefinitely and pursue UN solutions, and 3) the time for continued containment is over, we should overthrow Saddam. See the Summer 1996 article in foreign Affairs by Kristol and Kagan. They later put it together into a book, for 2000. We know that Perle and Wolfowitz had been advocating greater action in Iraq for similar reasons throughout the 90's. Clearly this was a policy position based on a political philosophy now well known under the label of Neo-Conservatism. To charge that the war was conducted for oil, that it was conducted for Halliburton, or that it was conducted as a "political product" ignores this history of this policy advocacy. You can debate the policy as a good one or a bad one, but to pretend that the cause for war is something other than what Perle, Kagan, Wolfowitz, or Kristol had been arguing for some time requires the presentation of some other policy at least as compelling as that argued by Perle and Wolfowitz, who are in the administration, and Kagan and Kristol who are prolific writers on policy in the circles which generates ideas for many Republicans.

Two candidates on the stump

Today in Cleveland Ohio, Bush spoke before a women's business group and defended his record speaking of the worthwhile cause in Iraq, the effect of tax cuts on the economy, and reminding his audience that unemployment remains quite low.

John Kerry accuses Bush and his people of being liars and the most corrupt group of (garbled) that he's seen. The quote at CNN, "Oh yeah, don't worry man. We're going to keep pounding, let me tell you -- we're just beginning to fight here. These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen."

There have been three explanations of this. #1 and most lame, Kerry was refering to talk radio, and aides have mentioned Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Had either of these two said anything particularly scathing in the past couple of days, or had they been hitting him hard on questionable areas, this might have been convincing. I don't listen to Rush and I only listen to Hannity in the car (alas the inferiority of choice on radio), but I do know what Hannity is talking about every day the half hour to an hour I hear every day, and his theme is that Kerry has no core of beliefs because he flip-flops on issues. Today he played clips of Dean attacking Kerry on flip-flops. This constitutes lies and corruption? Its not even a dirty trick, the NYT on Saterday asked, "Kerry's Shifts: Nuanced Ideas or Flip-Flops?" And of course there are the Dean clips. This is a real charge. See also this in Slate by noted anti-Kerry Dem, Mickey Kaus. Frankly, conservatie talk radio hosts need to say something not being said by Democrats to warrent the charge liars and crooked.

#2 and somewhat less lame is the claim that the quote refers to GOP campaign figures. So, perhaps Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. Crooked? You mean the way Terry McAuliffe has been connected to Global Crossing? If Rove or Gillespie had some scandle floating around, this might have legs, but as far as I have seen neither of these two have any taint of corruption or crookedness. If he had just said lies, well, we could put this down as a "stop lying about my record" type of comment.

#3 and most plausible, he means Bush and Cheney. The Left has been making the claims that both have lied and are crooked for some time. Here is David Corn's list. There are the Enron charges, the Halliburton charges, &c, &c. This is the only real plausible target of the quote. Kerry was talking to supporters at a partisan event and make a charge worthy of MoveOn.org. In this Boston Herald op/ed, Kennedy is taken to task for claiming that the war in Iraq was a political product dreamed up in Texas. Kennedy is saying such things as he campaigns for Kerry. Its all part of the campaign plan, its not a slip or a misinterpreted statement. It can be understood right at the center of the Democrats (Bush was AWOL!) campiagn against the president.

On the John Kerry for President blog, under the entry "the 'mother' of all house parties" we find a post that includes this:
"When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: ?Asses of Evil? with ?Bush?, ?Cheney?, ?Rumsfeld? and ?Ashcroft? surrounding it. She met, greeted and talked to a jam-packed room of Kerry supporters and others who came for the MoveOn documentary. Many were curious, others undecided, or belonging to other candidate camps."

This is not your father's war

One of the themes of my military analysis since 1991 has been the difference between modern war and post-modern war. Modern war, just all other phenomena of modern society, are preceeded by the word "mass". So when we speak of mass media, mass production, mass transit, or mass conscription, we are talking modernism. There are no clear boundaries to this period, since it was not ushured in by some revolutionary act, like the atomic age was, nor has it been displaced by some single event. Rather we should understand its rise and fall by analogy to its favorite fuel, coal. Coal was in use for a long time, for limited purposes, before becomming the fuel of mass production. Likewise we still use it a lot, though its importance has been eclipsed by oil. So we should see a gradual rise and fall of modernism in terms of the importance and prevelance of mass institutions. For example, before the modern age, entertainment was found in the home, often around the family piano or in group reading. Modern entertainments were unifying and conforming. We all listened or watched a small number of networks. While we many of us didn't tune in exclusively to the small number of networks, they were dominant culturally. The rise of FM, cable, and home playback (first as VCR's, then as DVD's, now TiVo) gave more power to the consumer and less to the producer, and this shift signals a problem for the modern producer and often heralds a shift to post-modern niche consumption. The Internet is the ultimate post modern media. Its the opposite of a conformity producing and unifying institution in which we all view the same websites. Rather its a huge variety of disparate kinds of experiences, from e-mail to expository sites to blogs written from as many perspectives as their are content producers (and according to PEW that's 44% of us). Without a group of editors responding to the same pressures, trainined in the same fashion, and often reflecting the same background and attitudes, there are few conforming pressures on the internet. Those that do exist tend to be in the nature of format, not content. There are standards, but they are mostly in terms of code, so that my machine can read your video file.

In terms of the military, the Great War is the quintessential modern war. Large numbers of unskilled or semi-skilled soldiers, conscripted in mass, trained in mass, and deployed in mass. By WWII, we see more diversity in the kinds of jobs and the rise of highly trained specialists, like marines, paratroopers, tankers, special forces, and the normal jobs in the plain old infantry got more technical and complicated. Today, the doctrine of combat requires such highly trained soldiers that mass armies are obsolete. I posted on the draft specifically last August. Small highly trained forces are a smaller burden than large mass forces. The draft itself is only one example of this. The use of manpower no longer available to industry (because they are in uniform) is another.

The shift from sail to steam and then to dreadnaughts imposed two radical changes on seapower during the 19th century (which ends in 1914). Twice Britain was forced to rebuild her navy because new powers like Germany and America were able to build the new ships making the older ship's in Britain's fleet obsolete. Today, we have seen radical shifts in military practice, but one of the things that is most obvious is that no one but America is adapting to the new style of war. Where shifts in military technology not only helped challenge British sea power, and create powers who were willing to mobilize mass conscript armies, no one is poised to combine the high tech weapons with the tactical methods developed to produce the recently observed victories. There are no challengers to American military technique. This reinforces the notion that all future war will be asymetrical. The implications of this on American military planning are at least in part unforseen. As America takes the leading role in fighting asymetrical wars, this gap will grow.

Education come full circle

According to a Wednesday NY Times article, New York City is scrapping many of its middle schools for a return to the K-8 grammer school. The add, "Many other districts across the nation have reinstituted kindergarten-to-eighth-grade schools."

The National Association of Middle Schools isn't sure this is a good idea. Perhaps they are just self-interested.

Another quote: "Since 1999, under New York State's tougher academic standards, fourth grade scores have risen sharply on the standardized English and math tests. But eighth grade scores have improved only modestly, reflecting what the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, has described as a lack of focus and mission at many middle schools."

This reflects a serious problem whose ultimate cause I suspect is peer socialization. If the new schools could be arranged to maintain adult authority in the school, those scores might be improved at the higher levels. The drawback is that longer childhood makes the shift to more adult behavior in high school harder. Dealing with the 10-15 year old is vexatious.

Interestingly, the remaining middle schools will be for gifted kids, which is probabaly a good move. By that age, its really counter productive to group them with the mainstream. Brighter kids just tune out and develop bad learning habits. They need more challenge and can handle more academic responsibility if handled right.

They are also experimenting with 6-12 high schools. I'm not sure what to make of that, I've heard nothing of it.

Schools used to be K-8 and then 9-12 at the beginning of the century. Then the junior high school movement came along and argued that upper elemntary kids would benefit from a more high school type of enviroment, the junior high. Organized like high schools by content area and including many of the same kinds of extra-curriculars, the junior highs were typically 6-8 or 7-9. They were replaced by the middle school movement which argued that there should be a school that transitions kids from elementary to high school and occupies a middle place between the central classroom of elementary and the content organized high school. So middle schools had less class movement because kids had a home room where they might spend almost half of the day.

This return to the original model sure casts doubt on the utility of experiment in the first place.

Nader exposed

Jonathan Chait writes in The New Republic about the myth of the "good" Nader. The thesis: "Nader is not a heroic figure tragically overcome by his own flaws; he is a selfish, destructive maniac who, for a brief historical period, happened upon a useful role."

Damning.

Chait doesn't say so explicitlt, but it seems that Nader prefers Republicans because his hatred of them is purer. What should one expect, they are the party of business. Doing their evil is no hypocracy. Nader's hostility to Democrats is based on the notion that they sell out, they betray him, and they aren't worthy because they are tainted by comprimise or some other weakness.