Maggie's Farm

h/t to Moonbattery:

In the WSJ: "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege - America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all 'people of color' are unfair. They should end."

America owes no special debt to its black citizens - or to any of its citizens. If any American does not feel fortunate as hell to be here, they should depart - while bearing in mind that half the world would move here if they could. Maybe Webb, an accidental Senator (due to macaca) felt he had to say that for political purposes.

But although Webb, a Dem, does not vote in ways with which I agree, I give him credit for his thought crimes in his op-ed: He seems to believe that all Americans ought to be regarded equally in law and government regardless of the vagaries of skin tone or ethnic background. I agree with that radical postition.

The Other McCain has a more cynical, and probably more savvy, view.

Rhee fires 226 teachers.

This is only a big deal because public school teachers are so often unionized. Pre-teachers unions, they were professionals - meaning that their work was subject to their own conscience, honor, best reasonable effort, etc., - and the judgement of those paying the salary. Today, only private school teachers can be regarded as true professionals, even though I acknowledge the vast numbers of utterly dedicated public school teachers (including many who bemoan the industrialization of their chosen field).

Why should teachers get tenure anyway? Nobody else does, not even pastors.

As in the post below about medical insurance, teaching should be opened up. Throw out those worthless teaching degrees and let the marketplace decide. I'd bet there are plenty of retired guys who would love to teach math or literature or history, and could do a better job than kids just out of their education degrees.

The best English teacher two of my kids had (in private school) was a retired Sports Illustrated writer and editor. He knew his way around choice of words and the construction of sentences, but the "idea" and the "image" were keys. Essay structure had to be perfect, Francis Bacon-style.

And with grammar, he would have ripped my posts to shreds (but I "fly casual" at Maggie's, conversational English - and it is a relief for me to do so).

From the article:

Some recent surveys have calculated there could be as many as 100 million Chinese Protestants. That would mean that China has more Christians than Communist Party members, which now number 75 million.

Perhaps governments cannot really replace God - as much as they might like to.

Insty's link says it has some, but I very much doubt it. Internet legs maybe, but does anybody expect the MSM itself to take on an expose of itself?

This is like Climategate - just some silly emails. Isn't it?

Add: What a fine "conversation about race" the country is having. I want people to shut up about race. It's a dumb topic. I see no improvement in the level of political discourse.

From Applebaum's A government of the people's every wish? which we linked this morning:

Americans -- with their lawsuit culture, their safety obsession and, above all, their addiction to government spending programs -- demand more from their government than just about anybody else in the world. They don't simply want the government to keep the peace and create a level playing field. They want the government to ensure that every accident and every piece of bad luck is prevented, or that they are fully compensated in the event something goes wrong. And if the price of their house drops, they will hold the government responsible for that, too.

They may be, but nobody else is.

Off topic, but these are fine smokes. Ashton Lonsdales:

Some Ashton reviews here (including that one, which is not just for breakfast).

From the Telegraph:

America has learned, thanks to Barack Obama's crash course in European-style government, about the titanic force of class differences. The president's determination to transform the US into a social democracy, complete with a centrally run healthcare programme and a redistributive tax system, has collided rather magnificently with America's history as a nation of displaced people who were prepared to risk their futures on a bid to be free from the power of the state.

They are talking a lot about this in the US now.

Money is just a type of information, a pattern that, once digitized, becomes subject to persistent programmatic hacking by the mathematically skilled.

Kelly, at Wired

A quote from "Harnessing the Earthworm" by Dr. Thomas J. Barrett, Humphries, 1947, with an Introduction by Eve Balfour; Wedgewood Press, Boston, 1959:

For more than sixty years these 160 acres had been farmed without a single crop failure. My grandfather was known far and wide for the unequalled excellence of his corn and other grain, and a large part of his surplus was disposed of at top prices for seed purposes. The farm combined general farming and stock raising; my grandfather's hobby, for pleasure and profit, was the breeding and training of fine saddle horses and matched Hambletonian teams. He maintained a herd of about fifty horses, including stud, brood mares, and colts in all stages of development. In addition to horses, he had cattle, sheep, hogs, and a variety of fowl, including a flock of about five hundred chickens which had the run of the barnyard,with a flock of ducks. Usually about three hundred head of stock were wintered. The hired help consisted of three or four men, according to the season, with additional help at rush seasons. This establishment was maintained in prosperity and plenty, and my grandfather attributed his unvarying success as a farmer to his utilization of earthworms in maintaining and rebuilding the fertility of the soil in an unbroken cycle. The heart of the farming technique was the compost pit.

It takes you back in time. Read the whole essay, My Grandfather's Earthworm Farm

VDH nails it, from our link last night to The Psychology of Recession. It is what I am hearing from everybody on Main St. around here. One quote to encourage reading of his post:

Obama, past and present, seems always to talk of how someone else’s money should be spent, dispersed, and redistributed, but never to worry about how it can be made in the first place.

So, fairly or not, when the president talks, business people do not gain confidence that he knows, or cares, much about them or what they do. If he thinks even surgeons are greedy profiteers, who then escapes presidential disdain?

Rainbow ponies do not create jobs or careers. Politicians can create temporary make-work - with our money and our kids' money - but that's all.

It is one you cannot do drunk, and other fun topics.

My job, like journalism and electricianism and professorism, is famous for being done by daytime drunks, so I guess it's not a real job. It is, in a sense, parasitic on the producers, makers, and builders - the wealth-creators. I do try to help people with their problems, but my main contribution to the important things is my investing (which has not worked out too well for me during the past decade).

Whenever I am invested in a growing biz, the Dems try to tear it down. What's up with that?

Washington is talking about raising the "retirement" age, whatever that means. Since when did the US have a "retirement age"? Most Americans like to work hard: it's part of being an American. 

In fact, most (non-unionized) Americans are willing to work harder and longer if their compensation is commensurate with their time, effort, and skills.

Still, re Social Security, that might be a good idea, since people live longer and healthier, and the golf courses around here are getting too crowded with totally functional codgers while other guys their age are still making a useful contribution to society and to themselves.

Plus they are talking about income-adjusting, ie means-testing, Social Security. Should be done. What bugs me about the notion of government income-based entitlements is that they disregard wealth. Why should I be working to pay the Social Security payments for people with a paid-off condo in Vero Beach and a house in Granby, CT - and a state government pension or a hefty IRA or an old-time corporate pension, just because their retirement fixed-income is relatively low in retirement?

Go ahead, argue this with me if you wish (but I can anticipate all of the historical arguments).

This is sort of brilliant, at Phi Beta Cons. Want to learn Math? Hire a Math teacher. 

h/t, Theo

A review of E.D. Hirsch's new book, The Making of an Educational Conservative, at Claremont. Hirsch is politically liberal, but he believes that people should know things. One quote from the review:

Hirsch holds out too much hope of converting the Left while not welcoming his natural supporters on the Right. He underestimates the education establishment's fear and hostility towards knowledge and rigor, presenting the past "sixty years without a curriculum" as a well-meaning and forgivable misunderstanding. But Progressive education must be understood as an anti-teaching movement as much as an anti-curriculum movement. Anyone who suggests American education should be different from what it is now is subject to merciless attack by those who claim they would teach children even if they didn't get paid, while their unions push one demand: higher salaries for less work.

It's in the air, isn't it? The Lefties are in despair that people do not like the dog food they are selling, and Conservatives feel that their mission is hopeless. And everybody feels that the economy sucks.

What's the point of caring if nobody is delivering your jollies? The old line goes "The pessimist says, “Things can't get any worse.” The optimist says, "Yes they can..."

Repubs and Dems: both Socialist

McCarthy wonders whether it really matters who wins elections

Don't count me out yet, because I'd like my grandkids to taste the American freedom of past days.

At Globe and Mail:

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb,” Benjamin Franklin reputedly said, “voting on what to have for lunch.”

The article is mostly about Italy, as an example.

It's about the difficulty in knowing what you don't know, and the limits of self-observation. From this site (h/t, Coyote's Arrogant Ignorance):

…people who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. We attribute this lack of awareness to a deficit in metacognitive skill. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s.

What's a "metacognitive skill"? It's about "the ability to reflect and assess ones' own thinking and understanding."

If I did not suffer from a mild case of Dunning-Kruger, I would not be able to post anything on Maggie's Farm because "I don't know anything, I never did know anything, but now I know that I don't know...":

Thanks to a reader for pointing out this remarkable piece by Woodrow Wilson, Socialism and Democracy. A brief sample:

In face of such circumstances, must not government lay aside all timid scruple and boldly make itself an agency for social reform as well as for political control?

'Yes,' says the democrat, 'perhaps it must."

Wilson's short essay, in which he claims that democracy and socialism are inseparable, is certainly relevant to Kesler's Friday post, Demonization Does You In.

A discussion of Wilson's progressivism here.

Ed. comment:  Interesting. It is an antique view of the world, indeed. I believe Wilson wrote that blog post essay in the 1880s. As we always ask here, 1. What about freedom? and, 2. Where's the money and wealth gonna come from? I am with CS Lewis, who preferred that people aspire to wealth than to power if they must aspire to worldly goals. Wealth is harmless, and often beneficial. Power is scarey.

Double addendum, Goldberg via Driscoll:

...it is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying. But it is definitely totalitarian–or ‘holistic,’ if you prefer–in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists.

If politicians had more common sense than my plumber or Tom Jefferson, it might almost be a debatable argument. One which Aristotle settled long ago, however.

Prelutsky.

Same here, and I am not as old as he is. He is an old guy.

If you have money, that is. Story in the WSJ. (Thanks)

It is happening. A good thing, indeed. Monopolies are bad policy, especially government monopolies. Monopolies do not respond to market demand.

However, I am an extremist. I do not believe in government education in any form. We did better before we had any of that. See John Adams and Abe Lincoln...

As I repeat ad nauseum, education cannot be "delivered." It can only be grabbed by those who wish to grab it. I also believe Harvard or Yale (your choice) diplomas should be an entitlement for all American kids on reaching age 21. Like the Wizard of Oz did.

Let's face it: How many Ivy grads know Fermat's last theorem, today? Or can translate Caesar or Plutarch? The education industry today is a giant rip-off and nothing more than a credential sales scam.

There is no truth, so what about "Climate Change"?

In Critical Land, it is difficult to make any case based on data - I mean "data." If you claim that all facts are political, how can you argue anything on facts?

And WTF is "science studies"? Is that like Rocks for Jocks? Learning "about something" instead of learning the thing itself?

Learning "about things" isn't education. It's Edutainment. Same way the MSM news is Propatainment.