"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Branford Marsalis speaks some hard truth:
If you don’t like plain talk that uses appropriate vulgarity, tough.
h.t. Chaos Manor
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Allie is Wired, Political Byline, and CORSARI D’ITALIA, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Written in the 1870s, the poem below is a good illustration of just why a literate citizenry is essential to a representative republic, such as the United States of America are supposed to be. (Note well that I wrote, as was proper during the Founders’ day, before Emperor Lincoln’s War, “ARE supposed to be”.) The lessons it gently but firmly articulates are lessons that responsible citizens must take to heart… but, of course, to do so such citizens must first be aware that those lessons, those principles, exist. Sadly, the wealth of history and literature that could aid in inculcating such ideas in young minds is far, far from the agenda of todays “public schools” (better called “prisons for kids”). Tell me, if you will, what lessons for citizens do you infer from Longfellow’s words. Please limit answers to no more than 1,000 words per comment. *heh* (Don’t stop at the most famous lines–“Pride goeth forth on horseback grand and gay… ” but look for underlying principles, please.)
The Bell of Atri
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowAt Atri in Abruzzo, a small town
Of ancient Roman date, but scant renown,
One of those little places that have run
Half up the hill, beneath a blazing sun,
And then sat down to rest, as if to say,
“I climb no farther upward, come what may,” —
The Re Giovanni, now unknown to fame,
So many monarchs since have borne the name,
Had a great bell hung in the market-place,
Beneath a roof, projecting some small space
By way of shelter from the sun and rain.
Then rode he through the streets with all his train,
And, with the blast of trumpets loud and long,
Made proclamation, that whenever wrong
Was done to any man, he should but ring
The great bell in the square, and he, the King,
Would cause the Syndic to decide thereon.
Such was the proclamation of King John.How swift the happy days in Atri sped,
What wrongs were righted, need not here be said.
Suffice it that, as all things must decay,
The hempen rope at length was worn away,
Unraveled at the end, and, strand by strand,
Loosened and wasted in the ringer’s hand,
Till one, who noted this in passing by,
Mended the rope with braids of briony,
So that the leaves and tendrils of the vine
Hung like a votive garland at a shrine.By chance it happened that in Atri dwelt
A knight, with spur on heel and sword in belt,
Who loved to hunt the wild-boar in the woods,
Who loved his falcons with their crimson hoods,
Who loved his hounds and horses, and all sports
And prodigalities of camps and courts; —
Loved, or had loved them; for at last, grown old,
His only passion was the love of gold.He sold his horses, sold his hawks and hounds,
Rented his vineyards and his garden-grounds
Kept but one steed, his favorite steed of all,
To starve and shiver in a naked stall,
And day by day sat brooding in his chair,
Devising plans how best to hoard and spare.At length he said: “What is the use or need
To keep at my own cost this lazy steed,
Eating his head off in my stables here,
When rents are low and provender is dear?
Let him go feed upon the public ways;
I want him only for the holidays.”
So the old steed was turned into the heat;
Of the long, lonely, silent, shadeless street;
And wandered in suburban lanes forlorn,
Barked at by dogs, and torn by brier and thorn.One afternoon, as in that sultry clime
It is the custom in the summer time,
With bolted doors and window-shutters closed,
The inhabitants of Atri slept or dozed;
When suddenly upon their senses fell
The loud alarm of the accusing bell!
The Syndic started from his deep repose,
Turned on his couch, and listened, and then rose
And donned his robes, and with reluctant pace
Went panting forth into the market-place,
Where the great bell upon its cross-beams swung,
Reiterating with persistent tongue,
In half-articulate jargon, the old song:
“Some one hath done a wrong, hath done a wrong!”But ere he reached the belfry’s light arcade
He saw, or thought he saw, beneath its shade,
No shape of human form of woman born,
But a poor steed dejected and forlorn,
Who with uplifted head and eager eye
Was tugging at the vines of briony.
“Domeneddio!” cried the Syndic straight,
“This is the Knight of Atri’s steed of state!
He calls for justice, being sore distressed,
And pleads his cause as loudly as the best.”Meanwhile from street and land a noisy crowd
Had rolled together like a summer cloud,
And told the story of the wretched beast
In five-and-twenty different ways at least,
With much gesticulation and appeal
To heathen gods, in their excessive zeal.
The Knight was called and questioned; in reply
Did not confess the fact, did not deny;
Treated the matter as a pleasant jest,
And set at naught the Syndic and the rest,
Maintaining, in an angry undertone,
That he should do what pleased him with his own.And thereupon the Syndic gravely read
The proclamation of the King; then said:
“Pride goeth forth on horseback grand and gay,
But cometh back on foot, and begs its way;
Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds,
Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds!
These are familiar proverbs; but I fear
They never yet have reached your knightly ear.
What fair renown, what honor, what repute
Can come to you from starving this poor brute?
He who serves well and speaks not, merits more
Than they who clamor loudest at the door.
Therefore the law decrees that as this steed
Served you in youth, henceforth you shall take heed
To comfort his old age, and to provide
Shelter in stall, and food and field beside.”The Knight withdrew abashed; the people all
Led home the steed in triumph to his stall.
The King heard and approved, and laughed in glee,
And cried aloud: “Right well it pleaseth me!
Church-bells at best but ring us to the door;
But go not in to mass; my bell doth more:
It cometh into court and pleads the cause
Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws;
And this shall make, in every Christian clime,
The Bell of Atri famous for all time.”
Nah, of course I can’t dock your grade for not doing the assignment. I don’t have to. Life and time will do that well enough without me. But do note well that Proverbs 16:18 (Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall) is not the only lesson this poem seeks to impart; it is but one of several that are useful in instruction of responsible citizens… and governors.
Aside: (Now, this may seem to be a really offbeat rabbit trail :-)) Note also, for “extra credit” the poetic construction of the original proverb and compare/contrast it to Longfellow’s treatment. (Ancient middle eastern poetic convention was different to 19th century English/American poetic convention in many ways, but there are similarities–mostly in how the latter echoes the former in broad strokes expanded from the minimalist original. Fun, and noting such things can be useful to development of citizenship in ways other than Longfellow’s primary message(s).)
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Allie is Wired, Political Byline, and Democrat=Socialist, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Crappy voters. Seriously. Perri Nelson referred recently to an online civics quiz that’s simply an online form of the quiz given to a random sampling of Americans last Spring. Here’s the report card:
Now, folks, having taken the quiz myself and having scored considerably better than the average, I’m prepared to say that the ONLY reasons for any citizens of these (dis)United States to fail this lil quiz are laziness, wilfull stupidity or both. Seriously. And the fact that,
Among the 2,508 respondents, 164 say they have been elected to a government office at least once. This sub-sample of officeholders yields a startling result: elected officials score lower than the general public. Those who have held elective office earn an average score of 44% on the civic literacy test, which is five percentage points lower than the average score of 49% for those who have never been elected... 1[emphasis added]
…leads me to assert that holders of political office who can’t do better than that should be put out of our misery forever. But that can only be accomplished by voters who know which end of a boot to pour piss out of… and even then they’d probably have to buy a clue to know they’d wet themselves, given the performance on this lil survey, and given the economy nowadays, I doubt any of ’em would spend the money on a cluebat to hit themselves over the head with.
(Am I livid? Absolutely. NO ONE who fails such a simple exam ought to be let within a mile of a voting booth, let alone be allowed to “serve” as an elected [addendum: or even UNelected] official in ANY capacity.)
Look, people, it’s just a silly little multiple choice quiz that’s not even as detailed as a citizenship exam for someone from another country seeking citizenship in this country, and yet 71% of the survey participants couldn’t pass the thing even with an extremely lenient 60% passing grade!
*feh* If that’s all Americans know about their own country then we deserve to be tossed in the ash heap of history. “It was a noble experiment, but The People proved they didn’t deserve the liberties generations of their forefathers bled and died to give them. Tough. Next?”
Lazy-assed bums. Don’t tell me the education system failed them. The “education system” sucks dead bunnies through a straw, slowly, laboriously and poorly, but only lazy-assed bums would be satisfied to KNOW NOTHING about their country’s history and forms of civil government, or worse, be satisfied with the horse manure illiterate boobs who “teach” civics and history in our schools dump in the black holes that are their vacuous heads.
And historical literacy in more than just American history and government is critical for voters nowadays given the outright lies of Mass Media Podpeople and politicians on issues of importance. One of the most serious issues facing our society today is the attempt to wreck (even further) our economy and way of life via the lie of anthropogenic global warming/climate change. One of the central arguments of the warmists/changists is made by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph showing the latter 20th Century to be the warmest period in more than a thousand years. Heck, simple historical literacy is all it would take to have Mann and his ilk run out of town on a rail (after a good tarring and feathering)–no need for elaborate mathematical analyses proving Mann cooked the books (although that has been done). Why? Just ask Mann and his disciples why, if the latter part of the 20th Century was the hottest in 1,000 years, didn’t Greenland have as big a net export of dairy products then as it did during the Medieval Climate Optimum from 800-1300 AD, when temperatures were higher than at ANY time during the 20th Century? (Apparently, Mann just couldn’t be bothered to do his homework–or else his math skills are considerably worse than one might imagine. 20th Century-14th Century is 600 years, Mike, not 1,000.)
OK, maybe even if folks knew that Leif Erikson Erik the Red (that’s a persistent braine pharte of mine) didn’t scam folks into moving to a bitterly cold Greenland (because it really WAS warm and green–dairy exports, remember? From farms that are NOW under glacial ice… ) that wouldn’t have helped combat Mann’s lies. They’d have to be numerate enough to be able to do simple subtraction.
So, yes, either we begin telling the illiterate boobs that are our fellow voters that they ARE illiterate boobs (and then do everything in our power to convert them to minimal historical literacy) or we will fall as a nation.
Note well the quote in the header of this blog:
“In a democracy (”rule by mob”), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom
That’s just one of the reasons that, historically, democracies fail (and one of the reasons the Founders designed our federal government to NOT be a democracy!). As this country regresses ever more steadily into democratic rule, we begin to see the results of democraticization (mob rule): illiterate, lazy-assed boobs decide how the country will go.
Down the toilet.
Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Pink Flamingo, Woman Honor Thyself, Democrat=Socialist, Adam’s Blog, Right Voices, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
The really scary thing about the presidential race this year is that Obama’s managing to do two things:
1. Attract a LOT of enthusiam from idiots who are too stupid to actually parse his poorly-spoken, halting utterances (which, being idiots, they think are examples of great public speaking *feh* Ya can hear better from po’ boy country preachers any Sunday ya wanna wander out into the sticks) and realize that the only substantive content that can be educed or torturously exegeted from them is: “More government, taking more of productive folks’ money to give to slackers”; “I’ll deny playing the race card every single time I play it”; “America sucks, and so do you.”
2. Almost make Juan Mexicain look good. Almost.
Now aren’t either one of those things enough to make you fear for the restoration of the republic?
Compgeeky stuff: As much as I like the simpicity of its interface, ease of configuration and ease of installation as compared to VMWare’s offerings, I’ve finally had to admit that VirtualBox just isn’t up to snuff. The killer? This box has two 64-bit processors. The VirtualBox app installed is for 64-bit processors. When attempting to install 64-bit WinXPP, the install fails with an error message that I’m attempting to install a 64-bit OS on a 32-bit computer. *feh* Mouse/keyboard capture is more elegant in VB, and its fullscreen mode is nicer, but not being able to install the legal copy (as in, “fully licensed, unused anywhere else copy) of XP available to me right now (XPP-64-bit) is too much. Oh, I think I’ll still keep it around to try out various Linux/BSD distros in a VM, but since one of my essential uses for a VM is havin g an XP machine around to use as a reference–w/o having to dedicate extra space, etc. to actually having an XP machine phyysically on my desktop or use a KVM switch, etc.–VirtualBox just won’t do.
VMPlayer seems “good enough” for now for having an XP reference machine available for those times I need to walk someone through some dialog boxes or use Logmein instead of VNC to actually access a remote computer (depends on the remote user as to which option will work :-)).
Of curse (yeh, I feel like cursing), some bugaboos simply must rear their heaqds… *sigh* My NIC, which was “seen” by XP running in VirtualBox is unusable in XP running in VMWare Player… so far. And there’s no sound, either–not from either sound card. But at least everything else works well enough for its primary purpose: walking folks through dialog boxes in XP acurately via remote whatever. The network card would make Logmein easier, though (if for no reason other than continued experience with the “host” end). Well, I’ll either find an answer or not. *heh*
It must just be me, but the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind hagiography of deceased Mass Media Podpeople (Russert, Snow most recently) strikes me as more than just kinda smarmy and self-serving. Heck, I’m sure Russert and Snow were decent enough guys, although Russert lost my respect in recent times with his softball approach interviewing some politicians and Snow lost me completely with his disengenuous defense of the Bush/Kennedy/McCain amnesty bill as “not an amnesty bill”. Sure, it was the guy’s job to parrot the party line, but I used to think he had some integrity.
And I’m sure he did have some. But. The fawning of Mass Media Podpeople whenever one of their own passes away is a more than a little repugnant. Maybe it’s just me. Yeh, I’m sure it’s just me, right?
And Russert and Snow will certainly be missed by their families. R.I.P., guys.
At least Michelle’s left Barry his d*^% to step on. No balls for Jesse to “cut out,” but he sure can make outrageous statements (the “Learn Spanish” response to folks who assert English ought to be confirmed as the official language of the U.S. as a recent example) and then step on his own d*^% in an even more outrageous (and completely dsingenuous) defense of his “outrageosity” *heh*. What? WE ought to learn Spanish, but HE doesn’t speak a foreign language? Well, of course. Just as WE should be taxed to starvation but not HE and his “class,” right? (BTW, Barry, while I’m not fluent in Spanish, French, German, Italian or Greek, I can at least read those languages–albeit not fluently and with a bit of struggle from long disuse. Where were you when foreign language classes were offered, bubba? Dumbass. )
Oh, and speaking of Obamassiah’s dumbass comments, what about his energy/oil remarks, recently? What?!? Because (he says–although he apparently knows little or is flat-out lying about the effects of new drilling/production on oil prices) oil/gasoline prices might not be immediately affected by lifting bans on drilling for oil in our own known reserves, lifting those bans ought not to be done at all? Hmmm, isn’t that consonant with the Clintoonista argument ten years ago? The Dhimmicrappic argument for the past 5-7 years? What if… what if those known reserves had been tapped in the past 5-10 years making the U.S. NOW independant of foreign oil? What kind of barrel would the Saudis and other terrorist supporters have us over now? None, of course.
Barry’s argument is like saying, “Starting a savings/investment account/stragegy now won’t pay off for retirement for 20 years or more, so why start one at all?”
Idiot. And the idiots who listen to him and shout their agreement from the amen corner of The Church of the Obamassiah are even bigger idiots than he is.
And he knows it and is counting on it that they are idiots.
Because he knows if idiots weren’t allowed to vote 90% of our elected officials would be out of work. Including, very obviously, Barry Hussein Obama.
At the very least.
For alla you Star Wars fans (and not-so-fans *heh*), this:
h.t., Windows Secrets “Wacky Web.”
And lastly, an ironic look at the mindset of pseudo-liberals poking fun at legitimate concerns about the Obamassiah’s love of Islamic terrorists, he and his wife’s distinct and well-documented “blame America first!” attitudes, etc.
h.t. STACLU.
Hmmm, The Obamassiah and his acolytes are offering far too many easy shots recently, aren’t they?
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This issue is far, far too big to do more in a blog post than simply point in a couple of directions for answers. But one thing is absolutely rock solid certain: Americans are becoming stupider by the minute.
(Doubt the “absolutely rock solid certain” nature of increasing estupiation? I’ve blogged before on genuine illiteracy, innumeracy and other aspects of increasing enstupiation of the American populace before. Search my site (or just google around for yourself) for previous posts linking such things before arguing with me about enstupiated Americans. Heck, in all the posts I’ve done in the past on the topic, I’ve no more than scratched the surface.)
“If a foreign nation had imposed this system of education on the United States we would rightly consider it an act of war.”–the 1983 National Commission on Education, Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman
Hmmm, not much has changed for mthe better in the last 25 years…
Let’s first simply take as demonstrable fact that “public education” (more properly called “prisons for kids” nowadays) in America is broken beyond repair and ought to be scrapped and rebuilt from the bottom up. Sure, there are a few sterling examples of public education working well, but
a. the instances are too few and far between to offer any redemption of public education in general and
b. the methods of successful schools–schools that have as their product productive citizens from ALL educable or trainable portions of the bell curve –WILL NOT BE ALLOWED in schools controlled by remote educrats/politicians.
So, to turn the tide of enstupiation, we must first radically change public education. The first step? Take a page from those who mis-quote Falstaff and “kill all the pubschool administrators.” OK, not actually, but at least metaphorically. Remove those who are arguably the stupidest class of people in public education from any position of inluence (administrators” and give them something useful to do in stead, say, making little rocks out of big ones.
(Yes, here are those rare pubschool administrators who are both competent and focused on truly serving as an aid to the teaching/learning process. But they are so few as to be dismissed as nonexistant for the purposes of cleaning houses. *heh*)
Then do the same thing for professors of education–you know, the wackos who come up with another theory to use in experimenting on your kids every year, theories that always seem to make kids dumber, not smarter. Heck, from the consistency of educational theories coming out of schools of edcucation over the past 40-50 years, one might almost think that there were a vast conspiracy aimed at making the American citizen into Amercan sheeple. But, as has been attributed to Napoleon, “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity”–and the twc corrollary: “Never underestimate the stupidity quotient of really smart people.”
(But then, schools of education aren’t even populated by very bright people to begin with. Heck, most of the social “sciences” are populated by people too dumb or too lazy to do anything creative. Double that for English and graphic arts departments on most college and university campuses, which goes a long way toward explaining the works considered “great art” in the 20th Century… )
Next: get the feds OUT of education. Period. Check your copy of the Constitution. There is NO (zip, zero, zilch) Constitutional justification whatsoever for a federal Department of Education. If you find one, go tar and feather the person(s) who “taught” you to “read” and misunderstand the English language.
And then slap yourself upside the head for being so stupid as to not learn on your own.
Then: place the responsibility for children’s education firmly where it belongs. If Johnnie or Janie can’t read, write and do arithmetic, then blame the parents. Oh, you think we ought to blame the teachers? Sure, go ahead. Who ought to make sure the teachers are teaching their children properly? The question answers itself. And if Johnnie and Janie can’t read, write and do arithmetic and end up being unenployable, then let their parents be responsible for their support. Why should you and I have to take up the slack because lazy, stupid parents refused top BE parents and make sure their children learn what they need to learn to be productive citizens?
But parents’ respnsibilities do not begin and end with formal schooling. Actually, the most destructive lessons are taught by the time kids enter kindergarten (an horrific intellectual/social charnal house I and most of my generation was spared). While there are many destructive lessons “GRUP” parents* are teaching their children nowadays, the most destructive is the idolization of the child.
Parents who are their children’s buddies or servants or “facilitators” (*yech!*) are NOT offering their children the single most valuable lesson of all: a model of adulthood that celebrates maturity. In fact, it’s difficult to think of any place most children might look to find a real adult to model themselves after.
Thus we have “parents” who go ballistic (complete with explosions, firey immolations and childish temper tantrums) if funding for school sports is reduced in favor of *shudder* academics; “parents” who would rather see an academically demanding teacher fired than have little Johnnir or Janie actually, well, learn anything. (Yes, you do too know such parents.); “parents” who will excuse any of their own child’s misbehavior and fight tooth and nail to avert any actual consequences coming to bear on the child.
“Parents” who refuse their own responsibility for raising their children and shelter their children from the consequences of the chldren’s behavior: growing stupid, irresponsible citizens who will stupidly and irresponsibly
spend themselves into debt slavery for things they’ll just throw out tomorrow
elect politicians who will contin ue to sell our progeny down the river for a few more votes from enstupiated, greedy sheeple today
never see the hammer fall when it all comes to its inevitable end
Oh, gee. And I haven’t even touched on that other Great Enstupiator: The Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind…
*GRUPs are childish people who are chronologically adult but emotionally immature, clinging to youth, worshipping, adoring, seeking to emulate the immature behaviors of young people. The antithesis of maturity and wisdom, they seek to deny their advancing years. Dumbasses, one and all.
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Trackposted to nuke gingrich, Allie is Wired, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, , , The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
I’ve commented before about the availability of really high-quality reads on the internet–for free, no less.
There are things like Project Gutenberg, where one can freely read or download for offline reading any of thousands of public domain works–literally a lifetime of reading if one wishes.
Then there is “MIT OpenCourseWare [which] makes the course materials that are used in the … all MIT’s undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge…” FREE courses. From MIT. Wonderful!
And I’ve also mentioned before that one can read many of the books available from the Chicago University Press for free online, books like The Founders’ Constitution which retails for $475 (and can be bought for anywhere from $80 for a not so good used copy all the way up to retail). For free, though… online. (And once again, I HIGHLY recommend The Founders’ Constitution for all American citizens and citizen wannabes. Highly recommended. Very highly. Seriously.)
Other books available there as well, such as biographies (a great book on Fred Hoyle, for example), history, and more, much more.
And then there are singular finds sprinkled all over the web. One such is find number 1,546,328 (approx. :-)): Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset, an amazingly prescient work written in 1930 (from lectures/essays dating earlier). Consider this extremely short excerpt from Ortega y Gasset’s introduction to the work:
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this “everybody” is not “everybody.” “Everybody” was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialised minorities. Nowadays, “everybody” is the mass alone. Here we have the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.
“…the brutality of its features” indeed.
May I seriously commend this book to your attention? Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset may be a dense read for those not enamored of the rather pedantic tone it sometimes assumes, and Ortega y Gasset’s view of the accomplishments of the common man may shock contemporary American sensibilities, but in this day and age where the democratic urges the Founders rightly feared are wreaking havoc on our society as a whole, it’s a very important read.
And it’s available for free on the web. Amazing. Dontcha just love the internet?
Trackposted to Maggie’s Notebook, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, , CORSARI D’ITALIA, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
*heh*
Well, either him or his clone, thinking exactly as he does.
Example, a snippet dealing with education, Darwinism and Intelligent Design:
“So long as the idea of scientific method — the generation and testing of falsifiable hypotheses — is shown, I don’t have any great worries that bright kids won’t figure out their own answers to matters like intelligent design; and I don’t really care if my auto mechanic believes in his heart of hearts that he was divinely created and endowed by his creators with certain inalienable rights as opposed to his having evolved from bonobos without attention from his creator. I do worry that he knows how to read the output of the computer test equipment, and that he can figure out what the funny squeak is…
“…Mandating the “correct” position and requiring local schools to adopt that is a more dangerous principle than teaching an alternative to Darwin, without regard to whether Darwin is “really true” and belief in Darwin is so fragile that teaching an alternative would undermine belief in Natural Selection. I am not convinced that there is a school district that would teach “flat earth” as an alternative to the conventional wisdom, but if there were, I do not think the republic would fall if that were allowed. There would be ridicule and merriment and mirth, but I doubt the consequences would be much greater than that.”
Read more at the link and here as well.
Heck, go a little further than Dr. Pournelle’s very calm and reasonable argument and (BUY AND) read James P. Hogan’s, Kicking the Sacred Cow. Hogan may go to extremes at times in his aversion for Dogmatic Science practiced as a religion, not science, but he marshalls his facts pretty convincingly in an accessible presentation for laymen.
Similarly to Hogan, it really chaps my gizzard to see purely religious views presented as “science”–and conversely to see religious views denigrated because they are not scientific. As my old chemistry prof was wont to say, the two manners of approaching reality deal with entirely different sets of questions and using the thinking of “blind faith” in science is just as stupid as attempting to use scientific reasoning to prove/disprove matters of faith.
Science cannot ultimately even ask or answer real “why” questions, just as religion cannot deal satisfactorily with “how” questions. ANd people who cannot see the differences in the two manners of thinking and the sets of questions they can effectively deal with are just dumber than a bag of hammers, no matter how high their IQ may test or how much alphabet soup they may string after their names.
Trackposted to Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, D equals S, McCain Blogs, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Celebrity Smack, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Yes, both “us” and “US”. This will be short (relatively), and I will provide zero supporting elements. Any comments resulting from readers doing their own homework on the elements below are welcome. Comments that demonstrate absolutely no knowledge of the elements below will be mocked. Do your own homework. I will NOT provide links here. You can type “google.com” as easily as I can.
Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey floats a lot of hot air about “hope” and “change” (yeh, he hopes to change the US into a completely socialist society filled with grievance groups of “victims” leeching off producers–and he has a good chance of success). Well, unless we, as an electorate, take steps to knock a few politicians *spit*, bureaucraps and assorted other leeches on the head (metaphorically, you understand) in order to change the direction our coutry is headed, I hold out little hope for a future U.S. with any resemblance to the City Set on a Hill envisioned by the Founders.
What must be done (apart from throwing the bums out of office–darned near every elected official we can find)? Several things would stem the tide–perhaps even roll it back.
1. Don’t take this lightly. Every person I’ve presented this to so far (and I’ve been talking this up in the RW for years *sigh* so far w/o much movement) has expressed a positive response–even those who view themselves as “lefties”:
Each State of the Union needs an amendment to its State constitution providing that
a. every elective position on each ballot include “none of the
above” as a choice on the ballot
b. if “none of the above” recieves a plurality of votes, then ALL
candidates listed for that ballot position are disqualified from
seeking that office in the future and
c. a new election must be held for that position with new
candidates.
Frankly, I could see “none of the above” winning in a landslide in the upcoming presidential election…
2. Get the feds OUT of public education, at ALL levels. Out. No influence, no monies, no diktats. Nada, zilch, a big zero with the rim kicked off. Then work on reducing State influence on local schools. Make local school boards and parents completely responsible for their children’s education. With around 2/3 of recent college graduates functional illiterates, largely as a result of early intervention by “feddle gummint” busybodies’ stupid policies, we need to get the fedgov out of education.
It’d be a start.
3. Do some commonsense things to get our economy back on track. No, I’m not talking here about the recent Chicken Little wails about recession. I’m talking here about the fact that we’ve been strongly encouraged (in large part by stupid fedgov meddling) to become a nation of consumers surrendering more and more of our nation’s producing capabilities. “Line jobs”–factory work, even low-to-medium skill work–is dropping off, and this suits socialists just fine (more dependents for government handouts) but does nothing for a republic of free folk. Look, by definition, half our population is “below average” in intellectual potential. What are you going to do for productive, meaningful work for thse folks as more and more real goods manufacturing is moved offshore? Put ’em all in call centers making telemarketing annoyances of themselves?
Or maybe they can all go to work for McDonalds. Ya want fries with that?
To stem the tide of manufacturing jobs bleeding from our society (mixing metaphors is what metas are for, IMO :-)), two simple things would make a huge difference. (Do remember Clausewitz’s admonition that “everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult” and remember that we The People must recognize that we are in a sort of war with our political buffoons *cough* leaders.)
a. despite the opposition of politicians who do NOT want to
reliquish the power over your life that the IRS and the income
tax gives them, we must press for The Fair Tax.
Do your own homework. I’ve posted enough FACTS here at twc in the past to demolish most of the disingenuous arguments against the plan, so any comments demonstrating you have not done your homewoprk will be roundly raspberried. Rational argument demonstrating you’ve done your homework will be welcome, though. (*crickets chirping*)
b. a 10% accross-the-board tarrif on ALL imports from
EVERYWHERE, no exceptions whatsoever. Period.
These two things alone would do much to restore America’s competitiveness in manufacturing, create more jobs for the average joe (and josephine :-)), strengthen the dollar and encourage thrift (more investment capital–of the right kind).
4. Get a handle on illegal immigrants who are stealing American jobs, stressing American health and social services, Close our borders. Period. Make sure we facilitate LEGAL immigration, but close our borders, seriously police them–like Mexico does its Southern border (complete with shoot to kill orders, exactly as Mexico does). And aggressively go after ALL employers of illegal aliens (are you listening, Tyson?). Shut down the jobs and social services (all social services except for legitimate health emergencies–provide emergency health care and then a free ride to the border) and watch the flood of illegals make their way to the borders. And make no mistake, of the 20,000,000 or more ilegals in this country, much more than 75% of them will head south… Eisenhower accomplished similar results in the 1950s, and what man has done, man can aspire to do… It ain’t rocket science.
Reminder: any arguments with assertions made above should show you’ve done your homework.
5. Make some commonsense decisions about energy policy. Right now, energy policy is being made by stupid, short-sighted politicians who’re either afraid of their shadows (eco-whackos) or bought and paid for lackeys of oil companies, OR by greedy, short-sighted energy company execs who just want to cash in now without serious thought for the future.
a. eliminate our need for fossil fuels for electricity production.
E-lim-in-ate.
MIT has put plans for a modular pebble bed reactor in the public domain. China likes it. Although China is now leading the world in oil imports (actually, energy imports of all kinds), it plans on being a net exporter of energy within the next decade, relying largely on pebble bed reactors. Now, admittedly, PBRs are not the most technically advanced possibilities for nuclear energy production, but the technology is here, now, and is safer than any other energy production method, save possibly hydro-generation, that can approach its ability to provide large-scale electricity production. Safe. (Do your homework. Oh, and include readings on radioactivity, hormesis and what actually happens when Cobalt60 is accidentally introduced into the building materials for a large apartment complex… yeh, you get one link from me to start you off. It’s a PDF file. :-).) And please, no cries of “What to do with nuclear waste?” That problem’s been solved, solved and solved again. Take your pick of safe, eficient and easy methods. It’s 19th Century engineering.
But oil for other uses? Why the heck is the U.S. importing oil at all? We already have enough reserves for short-to-medium term oil production. If the fedgov would get out of the way, that is. And technologies like thermal depolymnerization manufacturing of oil are proven technologies. Heck, if every lil burg simply contracted with a TDP company to process its raw sewage, the lil burgs would have their clean water as a “by-product” and the contracting company could sell the oil. Everybody wins. And the odor some folks complain about from TDP plants? Not any worse than raw sewage, my friends, and the odor from TDP plants has this advantage: it smells like money. Talk about win-win-win-win: lower costs could be assessed on citizens for water treatment, city has a new business to tax (*feh*), the Saudis and Hugo Chavez take it on the chin, and the TDP business makes money.
And nuclear energy, available proven reserves and TDP plants are just three of many things we could be doing right now to wean ourselves of foreign oil. No pie in the sky technology leaps necessary, just political will.
There you have it: the twc five-point plan. It’s not exhaustive (I’ve not mentioned, for example, annual meetings of Mass Media Podpeople with Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether or many of the other things that would benefit our society), but you get the picture.
Argument welcome, but remember the warning above: comments that demonstrate the commenter hasn’t bothered to do his/her homework will be mocked.
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For want of a nail
the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe
the horse was lost.
For want of a horse
the rider was lost.
For want of a rider
the battle was lost.
For want of a battle
the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want
of a horseshoe nail.
It’s always the little things. But little things are often very, very large.
Take one of three very, very large things that are dragging the U.S. over the face of a precipice and down to ruin: illiteracy. No, I’m not just talking about the lack of what Mass Media Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes, edu/bureaucraps, and politicians *spit* that are the Conspiracy of Dunces intent on bringing the U.S. to ruin have redefined literacy to mean (a simple ability to laboriously decode words from print).
No, literacy is much, much more than simply being able to decode the printed page or sign ones name, as the dumbed down version our wonderful Conspiracy of Dunces would have it. It is at the very least the ability to decode those words, make sense of them and use their meaning to make rational decisions or come to an understanding of things beyond ones personal experience.
That’s simple functional literacy. And functional literacy is on the decline in the U.S. Witness all the idiots who in 2000 were too stupid to be able to follow directions in voting and caused such a brouhaha in the Florida vote count.
Worse, college graduates who are unable to understand simple directions for taking prescription meds or a newspaper editorial written to a theoretical eighth-grade level. College graduates.
But the simple, little thing of functional literacy is essential to a democratic representative republic, for when voters are too stupid to make sound choices, the government they get will be… what we have.
It’s a little thing. Continue reading “It’s the little things…”
…we’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.
And about time! Cringely’s of my generation (well a little younger) and makes his point well about the chasm between technology use by different generations. While I may sometimes chuckle and wrying shake my head when my octogenarian father describes his (do note: successful) struggles to master his computer and make it a useful part of his lifestyle, my children, I’m sure, chuckle to themselves and wryly shake their heads at my abandonment of my cell phone and lack of any desire whatsoever to “text”.
But Cringely goes beyond the obvious divide in different generations’ integration of new technologies as genuinely useful parts of their lives and notes a specific impact of the effect on education.
These are kids who have never known life without personal computers and cell phones. But far more important, there is emerging a class of students whose PARENTS have never known life without personal computers and cell phones. The Big Kahuna in educational discipline isn’t the school, it is the parent. Ward Cleaver rules. But what if Ward puts down his pipe and starts texting? Well he has.
Speaking about the shift from knowing stuff to Googling stuff–yeh, who hasn’t “put down” that eBook to do a quick search on “Albegensian” or whatever? *heh* I picked that because I already knew a bunch about that word’s historical implications from “old guy” stuff rattling around in my head… and still did a search on the term some months ago. Google is sometimes better than memory, you know–Cringely notes:
This is, of course, a huge threat to the education establishment, which tends to have a very deterministic view of how knowledge and accomplishment are obtained – a view that doesn’t work well in the search economy. At the same time K-12 educators are being pulled back by No Child Left Behind, they are being pulled forward (they probably see it as pulled askew) by kids abetted by their high-tech Generation Y (yes, we’re getting well into Y) parents who are using their Ward Cleaver power not to maintain the status quo but to challenge it.
Read the whole thing for a twist you might not see coming… 😉
h.t. Jerry Pournelle’s Mail. Drop by. Read. And wish Dr. Pournelle well.
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