We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
...it appears that our massive “investments” in education have produced no measurable economic return. Should we be surprised by this? No. Average scores on standardized tests have not risen, despite the fact that we are “investing” seven times as much in real terms in each student than we did six decades ago. So, even by the measures used by the educational establishment, it is clear that the higher spending has not created any additional human capital.
I do not overrate learning. I think we overrate spending on the education industry which protects a monopoly on credentialing. Learning and education are not the same thing. Learning is for adults (over 16); education is for children.
In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America on a per capita income basis. Today, the Census Bureau reports that it is the nation's 2nd poorest major city, just "edging out" Cleveland.
Meet the ObamaCare Mandate Committee - Think the contraception decision was bad? Wait until bureaucrats start telling your insurer which cancer screenings to cover.
People of all stripes will go to lengths to hold onto their preferred views of things. Re-thinking is difficult and often upsetting to one's equilibrium. But facing reality generally is more effective in life - however painful at times. Upsetting a comfortable equilibrium can also sometimes lead to better things, open up new vistas.
Dr. Sanity has a detailed essay on the topic: DOES THE LEFT UNDERSTAND PSYCHOLOGICAL DENIAL? Even if you overlook the political aspects of her essay, it's a good overview of the points at which psychological defenses and logical error frequently intersect.
I have been posting about the value of a rigorous high school education, and the frequently minimal value-added of college for many kids. I forget the average number of study hours of American college kids these days, but it is low. High school can prepare anybody for a lifetime of learning. Maybe you can't take a class with Jacques Barzun, but anybody can read his books.
So here's my question for my readers: Let's hear about people you have known who have led interesting and challenging lives without a college degree, including yourselves if applicable.
I'll start with a few:
- The omniscient, cynical, whiskey-breathed City Editor of an urban newspaper where I worked summers during college - The guy in town who started his plumbing contracting company and now has 50 employees - Bill Gates (I don't really know him) - Our Shakespeare scholar electrician - my Master Gunsmith
I do my own interior design, and I ain't got no license. When guilds conspire with government, things go nuts. I think I'll just go move my sofa, for the sake of rebellion.
I graduated from Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin's students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods — such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived — but there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. There were occasional after-school fights — rumbles, we called them — but within the school, there was order. Students didn't use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.
How might one explain the greater civility of Philadelphia and other big-city, predominantly black schools during earlier periods compared with today?
By a clear majority, Americans support getting free stuff over not getting free stuff. And once established, getting free stuff becomes a basic right, and a part of the Democratic Party platform. We cannot win the free stuff war.
Seeking to avoid a politically toxic vote, Congress has failed to pass a federal budget for three years. This year's new twist? Congress might not even try.
His perspective on cultural history is so wide as to view history as a series of births, flowering, decay and finally decadence. “When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label. A decadent culture offers opportunity mainly to the satirist…”4 which describes our time perfectly. But just as in the natural world, the cultural world holds the seeds of rebirth within.
Kevin Carey in The Wilson Quarterly makes the case for college - or at least some college - for all. Naturally, I think that is insane, and for more reasons than I have time to list.
A rigorous high school degree can still provide all that is needed to continue one's education on one's own, if wanted; all that is needed to be a good citizen, and all that is needed to perform 90% of the work out there.
We all know that a college degree can mean a great deal, or next to nothing - same as a high school degree.
A couple more education links:
Are Colleges Ripping Us Off? Half of all college students make no learning gains in their first two years, and 36 percent show no significant intellectual growth even after four years.
Eyes that gaze into mine, A smile that is lost on his lips— That is the unretouched portrait Of the man to whom I belong.
When he takes me in his arms And speaks softly to me, I see life in rosy hues. He tells me words of love, Words of every day, And in them I become something. He has entered my heart, A part of happiness Whereof I understand the reason. It’s he for me and I for him, throughout life, He has told me, he has sworn to me, for life. And from the things that I sense, Now I can feel within me My heart that beats.
In endless nights of love, A great delight that comes about, The pains and bothers are banished, Happy, happy to die of love.
When he takes me in his arms And speaks softly to me, I see life in rosy hues. He tells me words of love, Words of every day, And in them I become something. He has entered my heart, A part of happiness Whereof I understand the reason. It’s he for me and I for him, throughout life, He has told me, he has sworn to me, for life. And from the things that I sense, Now I can feel within me My heart that beats.
His first is to ask, what about, say, Muslim patients who refuse to see other-sex doctors (and but hey - what about the nurses and the gay docs?)
Second, he considers whether it is up to the government, via the Big Government payors Medicaid and Medicare or (slightly indirectly) Obamacare, to decide what they want to pay for.
As for the first question, no problem. They should get their care from whomever they choose in whatever form they choose (unless trying to die in the ER). It's called freedom. (Last I read, however, Muslims may be waivered from ObamaCare anyway because it's not Sharia or whatever reason.)
As for the second question, of course government payors can decide what to be willing pay for, given whatever Congress, the bureaucracy, and etc decides. However, that does not, or should not, require that it be provided. The requirement is the rub, and it constitutes a federal takeover, an overreach, an intrusion into choice.
Of course, the larger issue is the politicization and governmentalization of medical care, which promises to create endless explosions if ObamaCare proceeds. Dr. X is quite right that we are headed towards turning the corner where medical coverage is no longer insurance, but plain payment with the feds as the Grand Medical Commission in DC.
Rather than ObamaCare, I would have liked to have seen a wide-open, nation-wide market for private (including charitable) medical coverage of every size, shape, and sort with no federal involvement, and subsidies for the poor of any age - old or young. (Medicare was a giant error, since the elderly, statistically, are wealthier than the young who pay those bills with their taxes.) Muslim policies for Muslims if they want them, Muslim clinics and hospitals if they want them, Catholic policies if Catholics want to buy them, etc. etc. If unrestrained by government, the market would be providing for every individual or family want. Unfortunately, we never had a wide-open market for medical insurance due to the state insurance commissions' protectionism, or whatever it has been.
She wants one of these (the convertible, please) to show the love:
I want this pair:
However, back in reality, what I am going to do is to make dinner for She Who Must Be Obeyed: Cherrystone clams on the half-shell with lemon slices, then a steamed 3 lb. lobster with home-made horseradish mayo, cucumber slaw and potato salad, with champagne or maybe a nice Meursault. Valentine cupcakes for dessert.
Brooks' naivete is usually depressing for me. He needs to spend a month on the streets of Waterville, Maine (no, not in the pot smoke-infused glades of the Colby campus) if he wants to get it. Academics cannot inform him. He needs to chat with the single 22 year-old chickie with a nose ring and tats, on disability for ADD and substance abuse, with three out-of-control kids, with an entrepreneur brother who has a meth lab, a Dad in jail, and an obese 42 year-old mother on "disability" with a "bad back." This is a choice of "life-style" that even Murray cannot comprehend. "Free To Be You and Me." People "find themselves" in different ways...and these folks have "social capital" - just not the sort Murray and Brooks have. They know how to survive, how to have fun, and how to work the system to their advantage.
Barack’s Smug Assault on Freedom of Religion Isn’t Just Anti-American—It’s Unforgivable
MacDonald: California’s Demographic Revolution - If the upward mobility of the impending Hispanic majority doesn’t improve, the state’s economic future is in peril.
Progressives, would assent, that is, to one side of the equation, the side that deployed all those nice-sounding words: Life! Liberty! Happiness! Even the Acquisition of Property (so long as it wasn’t too much). What’s not to like?
What guaranteed all those lovely things was the other side of the equation, limited government, i.e., government that did some few things but expressly did not do other things, not because they weren’t worth doing but because 1) they were outside the scope of a government that was limited by design to foster freedom and 2) to unchain government would be to undermine freedom. It was just this, Mr. Rahe points out, that “the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church forgot.
That's an argument for government control of churches? Christianity 101, Mrs. S: We are all sinners, and we all disappoint God (and ourselves) with our choices and our thoughts. Otherwise, no need for salvation. I think she is an idiot.
I've lived in the New York City metropolitan area for 26 years. I take many things about New York for granted. I still haven't been up to the top of the Empire State Building, and I haven't been to the Statue of Liberty. I did (back in 1982, when I was in college) get to the World Trade Center, and I've been to Windows on World for dinner. I've also been to the Top of the Rock and the Rainbow Room (which I preferred to Windows on the World).
None of these really compare to Central Park, though. It's just a great place to hang out, and thankfully is very close to my office.
We mentioned that theme here yesterday. Compassion without discernment is generally moral vanity or spiritual-ish pride; often foolish, often counterproductive or destructive, and often humiliating to the recipient. It reminded me of this well-known speech by Ivan Illich (not Ivan Ilyich, who died) on the topic of paternalistic "help." The intro:
An address by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968. In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service "mission." Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request.
I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.
I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.
The Fed has kept interest rates at an historic low in an attempt to help 'heal' the economy. Fed Governors have no fear of dead weight in assets, in the form of declining values and poor potential returns. The assumption is that with economic expectations so low, inflation is not a risk, and that rates can be used to 'fix' things by keeping rates low indefinitely.
This artificial approach to soothing our economic woes is a dangerous game. The economy has, in many respects, become unlinked from the stock market. In pursuing the current path, the Fed has gambled on some concepts which have been tried before, though in different conditions and with varying results.
Does this sound familiar? Because if it doesn't, remember that the current situation was caused, in part, by the creation of bundled mortgages, an existing tool which was utilized to try something new, with the assumption of safety baked in. In theory, the level of risk was limited. The problem with them was related to the nature of the individual loans themselves. Each bundled group offered had varying degrees of risk involved. Despite the levels of risk, many high risk assets were given very good ratings. In the end some failed, which put all at risk.
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I have been posting about the value of a rigorous high school education, and the frequently minimal value-added of college for many kids. I forget the average number of study hours of American college kids these days, but it is low. High school can prepare anybody for a lifetime of learning. Maybe you can't take a class with Jacques Barzun, but anybody can read his books.
Hazard of the Trade: 
See the dog show last night? Lots of wonderful sporting breeds, including the
Don’t Be Dissin’ the Bohr Model!
Writing about Attraction to Professors 
