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Issues and Answers 2.3: The Enstupiation of America

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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AWL Monday

Absent WITH Leave today. Too much else on my plate. Play nicely while I’m out, ‘K?

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Issues and Answers 2.01

Energy policy. No matter how much we work to reform tax policy to get the “feddle gummint” out of savings/investment policy and level the international trade playing field a bit, with the energy lashup that passes for “feddle gummint” policy we now have in place, our economy is hamstrung, our billions are being sent OUT of this country, largely to third world thugs, and we face a future of spiraling inflation.

The answer is complex but can start with one simple thing: learn some commonsense steps we can take NOW… and take them.

See American Solutions for more.

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Issues and Answers 1.02

Yesterday, I posted a video intro to The FairTax as an intro to the idea that real tax reform can have the single greatest ameliorative effect on our economic woes by introducing The FairTax. Today, part two:

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Issues and Answers 1.01

Of the many issues facing citizens nowadays, it’s easy to say that the answer to “What’s toward the top of your current concerns?” would be “It’s the economy, stupid.”

And, beyond simple concerns about oil/gasoline proices and the closely related rise in costs of concumer goods, that’s a very good answer. But it’s important that we understand that our economic problems go far beyond percieved consumer pain caused by rising costs and relatively stagnant wages. Think of several even more important, deeply embedded issues:

The primary “weapon” with which the U.S. used to bring down the Soviet Union was to sucker the soviets into attempting to compete with our economy. And still today, our best largely unused weapon against enemies such as Islamic terrorism is our economy. That’s something even a noncom fighting in Afganistan recognizes (a long read, and the economic observations are buried well down, but a read wll worth your time. h.t. Rosenary’s Thoughts).

Suffice it to say, every effort made by our politicians *spit* to weaken our economy both in obvious ways and in obscure, structural ways, is working. The dollar is at its weakest in decades; our trade imbalance is growing; our indebtedness as a nation is worsening. What to do?

Let’s start with some common sense steps. Step number 1 (even more important than Drill Here-Drill Now): Embrace the FairTax.

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Tell the Saudis to Drink Their Oil

Found via Hotair (via Pursuing Holiness):

Go Here. Now.

While nuclear energy would make a good near-mid term addendum to our energy needs, we have enough oil in our own back yard to be able to stop paying the Saudi (and other Middle Eastern) thugs for our oil. All we lack is congresscritters who aren’t bought and paid for by those whose real desire is to “Sink America First!”

Also via Hotair:

Yep.

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Monday, Monday… and Monday

Arose this A.M. to the sounds of more rain. OK, I like rain, but really. We’ve had enough, thank you. I see the animals are lining up two-by-two…(At least it’s cooler than normal.)

OK, so it’s raining. And… left my driver’s side window down last night. *sigh* So I get wet as I drive this A.M. So?

So… I go out to roll window up anyway and… the horn on my car’s blowing and will NOT shut off. *sigh* Pull battery cable, cos can’t find fuse puller and fingers too fat to pull fuse.

Drop cable nut.

It’s one of those days already.

Need. More. Coffee.

*heh*

[UPDATE: Of course, once I had early A.M. out of the way and could get back to third world county central, I was able to a.) Locate the cable nut, b.) determine that it was actually the switch in the steering column–shorted out from rain– and c.) detach the horn from the circuit then d.) connect the charger to the battery *sigh*, all in the continuing rain, of course. Car now starts and horn doesn’t “blow (although the tinny thing always did “blow”–*heh*), but now I need to get a hair dryer on my steering column to see if I can effect a “repair” that way, cos I really, really do NOT want to have to disassemble the steering column… All’s well, though. Lotsa stuff canceled cos I didn’t know how long the horn “repair” would take, so… twc central projects and “remote support” the rest of today.]

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A Primer on Global Warming

[N.B., now that the dire predictions of global warmists are proving to be less than accurate, the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming now uses “climate change” in place of their long-trumpeted “global warming” but it’s all just sleight of hand.]

Freeman Dyson is smarter than you or I. Heck, he’s probably smarter than you and I put together. So, when he speaks on the subject of global warming/climate change, even in something so brief as a review of a couple of books, he’s worth listening to, at the very least. For example, writing about A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies, by William Nordhaus:

For the benefit of those who are mathematically illiterate or uninterested in numerical details, Nordhaus has put a nonmathematical chapter at the beginning with the title “Summary for the Concerned Citizen.” This first chapter contains an admirably clear summary of his results and their practical consequences, digested so as to be read by busy politicians and ordinary people who may vote the politicians into office. He believes that the most important concern of any policy that aims to address climate change should be how to set the most efficient “carbon price,” which he defines as “the market price or penalty that would be paid by those who use fossil fuels and thereby generate CO2 emissions.” He writes:

Whether someone is serious about tackling the global-warming problem can be readily gauged by listening to what he or she says about the carbon price. Suppose you hear a public figure who speaks eloquently of the perils of global warming and proposes that the nation should move urgently to slow climate change. Suppose that person proposes regulating the fuel efficiency of cars, or requiring high-efficiency lightbulbs, or subsidizing ethanol, or providing research support for solar power—but nowhere does the proposal raise the price of carbon. You should conclude that the proposal is not really serious and does not recognize the central economic message about how to slow climate change. To a first approximation, raising the price of carbon is a necessary and sufficient step for tackling global warming. The rest is at best rhetoric and may actually be harmful in inducing economic inefficiencies.

If this chapter were widely read, the public understanding of global warming and possible responses to it would be greatly improved.

Indeed. Of course, the several assumptions (apparent assumptions; I have not yet got my hands on a copy) of the Nordhaus comment above are large assumptions indeed, but the public’s understanding of the costs of dealing with carbon dioxide–whether such a thing needs to be done or not–would indeed be a great step forward in opening the dialog on “climate change” to other than True Believers in AGW (more rationally known as Reality-Based Fantasists, IMO).

But it is the assumption Dyson makes that is truly frightening. He’s a really, really smart man, but it looks like he misses the critical factor in his approach to the material above. To repeat:

For the benefit of those who are mathematically illiterate or uninterested in numerical details, Nordhaus has put a nonmathematical chapter at the beginning with the title “Summary for the Concerned Citizen.” This first chapter contains an admirably clear summary of his results and their practical consequences, digested so as to be read by busy politicians and ordinary people who may vote the politicians into office.

The “busy politicians” and the “ordinary people who vote them into office” are both likely to be not only mathematically illiterate but functionally illiterate as well. Heck, neither of those facts matter, because neither class would read it anyway, even if they could read or understand the book–or even Dyson’s review of it. And there lies the crux of the problem: politicians only listen to their flappers (review your Swift for the reference) and “ordinary people” are brain-sludged (not brainwashed) by the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind and self-lobotomized to the point that they’d never even pick the book up.

Or any other book that might challenge them beyond the level of People Magazine or Sports Illustrated.

The second book reviewed in the Dyson article is, Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, Ernesto Zedillo, ed. Although it, too, suffers from the same “It’s not People Magazine or Sports Illustrated” lack of appeal to ordinary citizens, it nevertheless sounds rather interesting to me. *heh* (Yeh, you’ve picked up on the fact that I don’t read People Magazine or Sports Illustrated, right?) For example, as Dyson notes,

Zedillo in his introduction summarizes the arguments of each contributor in turn. He maintains the neutrality appropriate to a conference chairman, and gives equal space to Lindzen and to Rahmstorf. He betrays his own opinion only in a single sentence with a short parenthesis: “Climate change may not be the world’s most pressing problem (as I am convinced it is not), but it could still prove to be the most complex challenge the world has ever faced.”

Later in the article, Dyson gets to the meat of the review,

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Should we be environmentally responsible? Yes, of course we should, for any number of reasons. But the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming, in attempting, with great success, to shut down all dialog, all debate on its dogma is performing a serious disservice to everyone. Heck, the pagan religion they practice is not even well-qualified as religions go: “redemtion” in the Church of AGW means essentially killing off most of mankind. In that, AGWers are hardly better than Islamics.

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Bob Doles Out a Slap Upside the Head to Scott

Bob Dole v. Scott MCClellan: Junkyard Dog v. “Step-on-it” Chihuahua.

Dole:

“If all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job.

“That would have taken integrity and courage, but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?”

Of course, McClellan will have the full force of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind behind him when he responds with, “Waaaaah!”

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Why Was Stonehenge Built?

You know, once upon a time, long, long ago, when I was very young and very, very stupid (yes, even more stupid than I am now), I subscribed to the aphorism that there are no stupid questions.

Time, experience and some sometimes very painful lessons have proven the stupidity of that aphorism.

And so, I have come to realize that some questions, especially some posed archly by those who suppose they have answers to offer, are stupid questions.

“Why was Stonehenge built?”–offered by yet another dumbass supposing they have discovered “the” answer, is one such stupid question.

Look, the only way we can know why Stonehenge was built is to ask the people who built it, because no one left us any written statement of purpose for the place. We may infer certain hypotheses from whatever information is there, but absent a clear, unequivocal statement from the builders, any supposition about why it was built is simply that: supposition.

So, go back in time and ask the builders. Oh, while you are traveling back in time to ask, be sure to travel back in space to where the Earth was at the time, since it’s moving away from its present position in our galaxy (along with the sun, the moon and all the stars we can see in their respective places) at an enormous rate of speed. (One of the problems with “time travel” as posited in science fiction is suspending disbelief in order to read/watch the stuff when time travel is mentioned, cos even if the position in time problem is solved, the position in space problem is almost never dealt with in any way, shape, fashion of form.)

And “Why was Stonehenge built?” is only one of numerous stupid questions asked–and that’s just in the class of “Stupid questions that cannot be answered” class. Another obvious class of stupid questions is the political class, containing such questions as, “Why do politicians feel the need to assuage the feelings of and otherwise pander to criminals?” Why is that a stupid question you ask? ( Now THAT’S a stupid question! :-)) Because the answer’s so obvious, of course. Politicians *spit* pandering to criminals has two very, very obvious reasons:

1. Most politicians *spit* are simply a subclass of criminal and
2. Law-abiding citizens strike no fear into political poltroons, whereas other fellow-members of the criminal class are indeed often powers to fear, because another aphorism of my youth is true: there is no honor among thieves (though there may be a cameraderie of like minds, of a sort, e.g., a congresscriter’s disingenuous reference to an “opponent” as “My esteemed colleague… ” instead of the more honest, “My partner in crime… “).

So, BOLO for stupid questions and their even stupider answers. You can most easily filter for stupid questions by asking yourself who is posing it. For example, stupid questions are most often posed by

politicians *spit*
Mass Media Podpeople
Academia Nut Fruitcakes

And other pompous gasbags.

This has been a public service announcement from America’s Third World County.

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