Maggie's Farm

Super Bowl Sunday. Why not Super Duper Bowl?  For you furriners, it's a very big deal in the US, as big as the World Cup is to you. These guys are skilled and very strong gladiators if, like gladiators of old, not always model citizens.

Super Bowl is an American excuse for a winter party, and pretty much everybody in America goes to one regardless of football interest. By tradition, Super Bowl party food ranges from disgusting to just plain fattening. For me, I'd be happy to never see any more guacamole in my life. Beer is the required libation, sometimes supplemented by better stuff. Often, people drink and eat a little too much just to endure the forced fun. Games take hours due to the advertising interruptions.

Most importantly, the Super Bowl is about gambling. Therefore, Go, Pats! I put in a bet, Pats by 6, but I won't watch the game and will socialize instead. Football has become too slow and too boring for my ADD.

By the way, why do taxpayers pay for stadiums? 

It's my alma mater, so I think it's a good place. Tough but supportive sort-of: they will certainly toss you if you don't want to get with the program.  Many claim that Andover has smarter, more competition-minded kids, but a colder atmosphere. A visit to Phillips Exeter Academy.

The Exeter Harkness table. You can't hide. 

By coincidence, Jeb Bush at Andover. 

In my view, most of the elite New England prep schools are extremely demanding academically, socially, athletically, and emotionally. The stress and frequent misery and humiliation are part of their mission, like boot camp. Nobody gets As. These schools feel that if one kid gets an A, that is just proof they are not pushing the kids hard enough. I got 2 As in four years, and I worked my butt off. The mandatory 3-hour study hall every evening helped me learn, and the mandatory chapel, formal meals, lights-out, no TV or radios, and other structures helped center me. After class on Saturday mornings we had choir practice, then sports. Sundays, sleep late, then required church, formal lunch, 2 hrs study hall - then free for the rest of the day but you had better be ready to be called on, on Monday morning: "You read the essay, yes? And Madison's paper? So defend Madison's position on ... in light of the new Constitution."

Sad to say, these academies are not as structured these days but remain academically rigorous.  

Caught with tobacco, drugs, drink? Sent home for good in shame, immediately. Sports required for 3 hours every afternoon, regardless of ability. Sex? We were not coed quite yet, which helped concentration enormously. 

Are we witnessing an epidemic of PC bullying? Of course, and the contagion has spread out of academia to the real world. People have become fearful of what and how they talk, as if we were in the old East Germany. Fact is, you can pass yourself off as a victim, you can bully and intimidate all you want.

The argument is that only certain (usually academic) elites can be rational, so it is the job of our moral and intellectual superiors to protect us from bad ideas, bad words, and unhindered speech. Good, concise piece: Yes, Political Correctness Really Exists - Social media gives new muscle to German Marxist Herbert Marcuse's arguments against free discourse.

The(se) tensions in (John Stuart) Mill’s defense of intellectual freedom were recognized in the 19th century. What we now call political correctness was first articulated in the 1960s by the brilliant German-born philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse’s achievement was to turn Mill’s argument for free discussion, at least in a modern Western society, against its explicit conclusion.

Marcuse undertakes this inversion, worthy a black belt in dialectical reasoning, in the 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance.” In it, Marcuse argues that the marketplace of ideas can’t function as Mill expected, because the game in rigged in favor of those who are already powerful. Some ideas enjoy underserved appeal due to tradition or the prestige of their advocates. And “consumers” are not really free to chose, given the influence of advertising and the pressures of social and economic need. Thus the outcome of formally free debate is actually predetermined. The ideas that win will generally be those justify the existing order; those that lose will be those that challenge the structure.

There is truth in that notion that the biggest megaphones are loudest, but this concern  misunderestimates people - even the benighted hoi polloi like us who believe everything on NPR. As you might expect, here at Maggie's we take some amusement from a world full of loony-tunes and liberal fascists -regardless of the size of their megaphones -  because we have faith that good old American common sense and resourcefulness will endure and see through the insanity.

Indeed, I believe the Left would be happy to hinder my free speech. I have no desire to hinder theirs, even though I sometimes feel it is fundamentally malevolent. As we often claim here, the desire to control others is a form of mental illness.

CS Lewis: Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

For an amusing take on the topic, Another Progressive Self-Excommunicates Over Political Correctness Thugsquads

I have experienced several somewhat extreme forms of multicultural Americans: Amish and Mennonites, Hasidic Jews, neighborhoods entirely made up of Latino immigrants or Korean immigrants and even, in some wards, neighborhoods which are Italian-dominant. Some want to assimilate, some do not. The Mennonites and the Hasidim definitely do not, and just want to be left alone.

In 1880, I suppose my WASP culture (and it is a culture) was still the core, dominant Americanism. Now, for better or worse, it's just one tribe of many.

Eugene Volokh discusses The American tradition of multiculturalism

There are several ways, all good.

A nice cashmere scarf like that one from Paul Stuart is fine, but one knitted by one's Mom, girlfriend, or wife is better no matter what it looks like.

Hat, scarf, gloves - ready to go do anything.