Maggie's Farm

It's an election year - the time when politicians and their fellow job-seekers work their butts off trying to convince you that you have big problems and that your life is difficult - and that only they can fix that.

They want to be important and powerful.

Truth is, America has essentially no serious problems. It's quite remarkable, really.

We are the most prosperous nation in the world. We are the most powerful nation in the world. We are materially the best-off people in the world. We have more freedoms than anyone else in the world. We have more opportunity for everyone than anywhere else in the world. We reward effort more than anywhere else in the world. "Tolerance"? We tolerate things and people that few in the world would tolerate. We speak our mind freely, and dispute fervently. We have the lowest unemployment rates in the world, and our work ethic is the envy of every nation (except France, where they do not seem to like to work). Our blue-collar workers have two houses, $100,000 boats, and send their kids to college. Our most unfortunate have hot water, TVs, DVD players, and obesity problems. Our wealthiest are the most generous in the world. Our middle class is the salt of the earth. We are the most charitable nation on earth. We are the most conservation-minded nation in the world (or maybe on a par with England). Our educational systems educate kids who are ambitious about learning as well or better than any other nation. We go to church, and we value things greater than our our comfort and pleasure - but we rightly love the latter. We read books, news and the internets to our heart's content. We believe that every honest citizen deserves respectful behavior, and we do our damndest to provide justice for all. Our medical care is the most advanced in the world, and it takes very little effort for the most unfortunate among us to access it (via Medicaid, Medicare, and simple charity). Our only external enemies are ignorant loonies who hate almost everybody - but if they get the bomb, that would be a real problem - but one we could solve in 15 minutes if we decided to.

What a great country we are blessed with.

We are at the point at which our "problems" are gripes and bitches and minor details (see my recent post on Spencer's law) rather than major structural or institutional problems. Yes, we have an illegal immigration issue - but it's because most of the world wants to come here for freedom and opportunity. So enforce the laws. Gas prices? Gimme a break. A global market issue that pols can do little about. Energy prices? Readily solved by nuke plants. The housing market? Just a healthy bust of a bubble that dinged some reckless risk-takers but which provides cheaper homes for buyers. Iraq? If we can help those folks out, it will be to our credit, and we have fine guys and gals willing to fight and die for the cause. The economy? This normal rhythmic slowdown (not even a true recession except for Wall St. banks) will sort itself out in due time.

The working poor? Everyone who works should earn a living wage, I believe, but nowadays married immigrants will send one to work at WalMart, and one to do landscaping - and they end up with a middle class income of around $35,000 - not poor, and with excellent job benefits. Racism? We have a black guy who could be our next President. Global warming? Gimme another break. Some warming would be good for everybody. Just ask a Minnesotan.

So what change do people want?

Don't have as much money as you want? Who does? Envy the rich folks you read about? Go work for them or sell them something, and benefit from their wealth (and in the meantime, work on your envy problems). Want life to be easeful and totally secure? Get a government job or move to France (but don't decide to try to start a business there: it's almost impossible). Freedom, like religion, is not meant to be easy and stress-free - such things are far too valuable to be easy. Freedom is messy, and freedom requires that people be grown-ups and take responsibility for their lives.

In America in 2008, the only serious problems we face are the problems which our Founders intentionally handed us - the eternal problems which are our proud inheritance: maintaining freedom from the powers of our own government, and protecting our freedom from the external forces which threaten our personal freedom and our country. The former, I believe, is more of a challenge than the latter: we will, in time, always succeed in the latter when we want to.

But how do you run a national campaign on that? (Unless you are Ronnie Reagan.)

Stumbling and Mumbling linked to a site which discusses the two Latin roots of the English word "education:"

Craft (1984) noted that there are two different Latin roots of the English word "education." They are "educare," which means to train or to mold, and "educere," meaning to lead out. While the two meanings are quite different, they are both represented in the word "education." Thus, there is an etymological basis for many of the vociferous debates about education today. The opposing sides often use the same word to denote two very different concepts. One side uses education to mean the preservation and passing down of knowledge and the shaping of youths in the image of their parents. The other side sees education as preparing a new generation for the changes that are to come--readying them to create solutions to problems yet unknown.

Of course, formal education - as opposed to all of the other education life offers - has the job of both "putting stuff in" and "drawing good stuff out."

But people vary widely in intelligence, talent, energy, curiosity, and ingenuity. Simon at Classical Values in Romantic Intellectualism has a fine discussion of American education, and about how PC prevents many from talking honestly about things like No Child Left Behind. (His post highlights  Charles Murray's The Age of Educational Romanticism in The New Criterion). Simon concludes his post thus:

"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." -- John W. Gardner, Saturday Evening Post, December 1, 1962

In other words not every man has equal intelligence. All have equal dignity if they comport themselves in a dignified manner. We owe the maintenance of our civilization (and it takes a lot of maintaining) to our plumbers and garbage men. We owe the advances to our scientists and engineers. What we must never forget is that we are all in this together. The man/woman who is respectful and contributes deserves our respect without qualification. The financial trader or the clerk at the grocery store.

Let me add one final point that the article didn't make that I think is vitally important and not well addressed in many communities. Hard work can make up to a 15 IQ point difference in outcomes (sorry no link). That is one standard deviation. It is not a lot. It is however significant. You can make up for some lack of anything with extra effort. How many times do we hear of the ball player with less than stellar abilities make up for his lack by devoting more time to practice than his team mates? What works in baseball also works in school. You can punch above your weight if you work at it.

Back to the S&M piece, in which Chris Dillow wonders about the differences between the Brit private and state schools. It begins:

The other day I was toiling away when I heard a series of loud bangs. "What idiot is setting off fireworks in the middle of the afternoon?" I wondered. I went out to find out. It was Oakham School's army cadets having shooting practice.

Which set me thinking:  isn't private schooling so good? It's education in the sense of "educere" - drawing out whatever latent talents a student has. If someone doesn't have the aptitude for academe, they are given the chance to excel at something else: the military, or music (Oakham School has a thriving music department) or sport: the school's county-standard facilities has recently helped it produce some fine cricketers.

Contrast this to the Marxian view, which regards (state?) schools as means for moulding people to meet the requirements of capitalism - a view which New Labour, which regards the state as a human resources department, seems to regard not as a criticism but as a policy ideal.

Our younger readers - younger than me, that is - might be interested in the reminiscences of the 60s by six prominent writers and commentators in City Journal.

Let me say that I was there. There is no period of time that is more wrongly romanticized, glorified, and magnified in importance. It was the lunatics trying to run the asylum, and little more. The socio-cultural story of the 60s belongs in the dustbin of history.

Just one quote from Sol Stern's  contribution, to tempt you:

The liberal media’s misunderstanding of what the antiwar radicals were all about continued through 1968, and particularly in the commentary about the year’s two biggest explosions: in May, the student uprising at Columbia University; and in August, the violent street demonstrations at the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago. Tom Hayden was back in action for both events. He happened to be in New York when he heard about students’ seizing buildings and imprisoning a dean to protest Columbia’s decision to build a gymnasium in Harlem. Immediately, he rushed to the campus and joined a student “commune” barricaded in one of the buildings. Most of the Columbia student leaders were SDSers well versed in Hayden’s grand project to “bring the war back home.” The whole point was to provoke a confrontation with the New York police, the closest available surrogates for the U.S. military. In a firsthand report on the uprising for Ramparts, Hayden proudly noted that his younger disciples had scrawled on the walls of the occupied buildings an exhortation to “create two, three, many Columbias,” a play on Che Guevara’s call for “two, three, many Vietnams.” Columbia was merely another battle in the plan, and Hayden fantasized that “the U.S. must either change or send troops to occupy American campuses.”

Whether the Vietnam War was a wise idea or not (debatable, as wars usually are), the cultural news of the time was dominated by nihilists, Communists, the drug-addled, and mixed-up adolescents - all magnified by a press who found a pimply "society-rejecting," pot-smoking "hippie" more intriguing than an upright, straight-arrow kid who volunteered for the Marine Corps.

The only consolation for us in the US is that the press in Europe took this BS far more seriously than ours did. Our press just wanted voyeuristic and disturbing new stories to sell magazines and newspapers. Their press wanted a Communist revolution. (They would have been quite surprised, however, if it did happen, to find that they and their friends were not in charge.)

Photo: The appalling and deluded Tom Hayden - Communist, traitor.