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.
You would think that a free society would give full expression to the intelligentsia’s virtues. Yet, somehow our own intelligentsia, lacking any serious need for moral courage, has managed to concentrate in itself the worst aspects of its Russian cousins: sanctimony without sacrifice; obsession with egalitarian social justice that “paralyzes the love of and interest in truth”; hatred of its own history and the confusion of that hatred with a “passionate ethical impulse”; an exaggerated sense of its own rights and entitlements; contempt for the views of ordinary people; a transparently false, pretentious pose of acting only on the basis of undisputed facts and disinterested principle. If in the Soviet case we see a servile intelligentsia crouching defensively against an all-powerful totalitarian police state, in the United States we see a different dynamic: a powerful, self-assured intelligentsia increasingly at odds with the workings of democracy.
There is a lot of college marketing going on. At some point, colleges realized that they were an industry with a large social and entertainment component.
A note to you people who walk on the side of the road, or cross the road, between dusk and dawn in black coats, dark pants, and dark hats: One of these days I will hit you with my car, and it will ruin both of our lives.
Please stop it. You are invisible to me. When I am driving, I am not looking for people in the road. You road people have to make yourselves obvious to me. Cars have rear lights for a reason. I have already had a couple of close calls this winter and when roads are slippery it is even more dangerous. If you must wear black, all it takes is a strip of reflector tape or one of those light things to keep yourself safe and to keep me from a mess.
Pic is Gorsuch with Scalia in Colorado. Gorsuch is a gentle, warm, refined outdoorsman, a Christian, with a crushing resume. He is 49 years old. A remarkable individual, superstar intellectual. We are fortunate that he is willing to do this job.
That isn't news. However, the egalitarian fantasy which nobody truly believes hangs over much of America's educational industry.
Efficient primary education for the masses probably does work best for the most according to the Prussian model which American schools adopted during the 1800s as primary ed became government-run. One-size-fits-all authoritarian ed is in fact efficient, if terrible for boys, to learn the basics of readin, ritin, and rithmetic that any citizen needs to function in the world. The fundamentals are not much fun unless there is competition added to the mix.
When the primary school basics are not achieved, I tend not to blame the school because there are too many external variables at play.
When it comes to post-primary ed, the external variables increase. Native curiosity plays a larger role, as does family support and structure, IQ, etc. etc. However, the Prussian model begins to work less well for boys as they grow up. But I am wandering from the topic: According to Albert Jay Nock, America's theory of education is off.
Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in Three Generations. Family wealth usually doesn't last very long unless it is vast and managed by people with the job to maintain it: Kennedys keep their wealth offshore and untaxed, and Rockefellers have a huge family office to protect and build the family $ - but by three generations ordinary wealth tends to be spent/wasted/diluted/frittered away by generations which are less effective at, or less interested in, wealth accumulation. Thus downward mobility.
In my work, I see as much downward financial mobility as upward. Naturally, the upward is more rewarding for me and the downward more painful to watch. I just tell myself "Regression to the mean is a law of nature."
Social class, which is more about culture than about wealth, but still implies a little loose cash, continues to be of value because of relationships, manners, life experiences, sophistication, etc. Nowadays, though, life in America is far more democratic than a generation or two or three ago when your family clubs, prep school, summer communities, and Ivy colleges guaranteed you social and occupational entree. No more pedigree in the USA, if there ever was because here "old money" was always rather new. America is far more meritocratic than it once was, but it has always been more meritocratic than Euroland or other places in general. The American Dream and all that. Andrew Carnegie: penniless Scottish immigrant makes good.
Financial mobility works both ways, goes up and down. The medium-prosperous naturally want to maintain their family traditions of perquisites and cultural advantages, but that is difficult to do for most people if they do not dodge estate taxes (which many do). Better off to have scrappy kids and if they can golf, sail, play tennis, can tell a Breughel from a Rembrandt, and have perfect dinner party manners with snappy repartee, so much the better. They can set an example for others and get on with the program.
Lefties (although McArdle is not one, really) love to focus on money and income mobility: So, What Do Your Parents Do? And Your Great-Grandparents? There are advantages that come with genes, manner of upbringing, and social background. It's the rare black ghetto kid in Baltimore or Hartford who has a prayer to escape his background. Some do, but it takes more drive and brains than for the middle class white kid in central Ohio whose dream is to get off the farm and go to New York to start a business with his or her algorithm.
The vast majority of middle-class Americans do not care much about such things and just want to build some security and comfort for their families. Many, however, are ambitious wealth-builders too. They are necessary, the job and wealth-creators. Everybody else is a parasite. Including me.
People tend to forget that many if not most jobs are learned "on the job," if effect, in apprenticeship. Formal education does not teach you how to be a litigator or to be an orthopedic surgeon. They are learned by working under supervision.
How to be a good citizen, and how government works, seems long out of fashion. Civics was sort-of replaced by something called Social Studies, whatever that is. Peter Wood: THE DANGEROUS RISE OF ‘THE NEW CIVICS’
It's not easy to be a good and worthy citizen of a town, a state or a nation, but it is one measure by which we all judge others.
I do not blame tiny minorities of obnoxious, noisy bullies. I blame spineless, castrati administrators. In recent years, even comedians have been barred from some campi. Indeed, Milo is more entertainer than anything else. Reminds me of the equally-charismatic and anti-establishment Lenny Bruce, also banned in Boston.
Not many ballsy people make careers as college administrators.
I am happy to see him go because he was foolish, naive, and deluded about so many things. I will give him credit for being an effective campaigner, though. "Articulate," as Biden said. An engaging talker (who could do either black-talk or white-talk), if entirely self-centered which I suppose can happen if both your mother and father abandon you in childhood.
Via an Insty link, Obama talking brilliantly and content-free in South Carolina:
As we were taught yesterday here, even the government doesn't know how many federal criminal laws there are, but it's over 10,000.
Nobody knows all the federal criminal laws, much less all of the state and local laws. And we are not even talking about civil laws and regulations and administrative rules. They can always get you on something if they want to, and that's the problem.
