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.
Public and private universities in the United States are regulated to the nth degree.
Federal, state, and local higher education laws seem to multiply by the hour. Bureaucrats now dictate campus policies regarding academics, sexual assault, athletics, dining, technology, employment, campus construction, and student health, among other areas. Meanwhile, schools devote millions of dollars and valuable resources to comply with those rules—many of which confuse and do little to improve student outcomes.
Unless they happen to be in the tourist trade or the mini-mart business, the Yankee native does not tend to welcome visitors to his corners of the woods. Maybe this applies to all of small-town USA.
You get the feeling that the old families don't welcome out-of-towners, much less furriners. And whenever they see a New York license plate in town, they worry and grumble. I'm sorry, but it's just the way the folks are: "Please respect our space and our ways and we will try to tolerate yours as long as you keep them somewhere else."
City people might term it parochial, but it's actually a strong sense of proprietorship and protectiveness towards something valuable - "Our town."
I guess we like things as they are, or, preferably, as they were. The old-timers still refer to my place as "Peck's farm," even though old Amos Peck, the fourth generation on that land and a member of a founding family of the town, ascended to his reward in 1932 and his kids sold the old chicken and dairy farm to a dairy farmer down the road who was looking to expand his herd. One wonders whether there is a covert message in it: "You don't really belong there - you are just a transient with a mortgage."
It takes two to three generations at minimum, I think, to get past being a newcomer. To be an old family, I'd guess five generations minimum. (That makes sense to me. It is an indication that your family might be committed to the town, and not just passing by the way people often do these days, viewing land as real estate rather than as a place to anchor for your future generations.)
Yes, it's about different views of land and of "place". Ideally, your ancestors would have helped build our simple 1742 Meeting House/Congregational Church, which remains the only place of worship for seven miles.
I have mentioned in the past that our modest place (which is one component of the abstraction which is Maggie's Farm) abuts the Farmington River in north-central CT, whose happy rippling and sighing I can hear from my pool and from my poolside hammock.
We have eagles, ospreys, Wood Duck, trout (mostly stocked but with some sea-run I think), herring, and maybe soon we will have a return of fishable numbers of migratory Atlantic Salmon, thanks to the fish people. We canoe the river all the time, counting the herons and the Kingfishers, and cleaning garbage from the banks when we find it.
But do not come here. We prefer it quiet and private.
Photo above: A classic Yankee front door-mat. It does NOT apply to Maggie's Farm: you are the visitors that we welcome.
Photo below: Fishing on the Farmington in early morning mist.
Trapped in the Community College Remedial Maze - Today, these institutions welcome scores of underprepared students who often have no idea how they ended up behind.
It used to be termed "not college material," but now is more kindly termed "not college-ready." If money is attached, however, somebody will find you a spot.
Liberty means freedom from the power of the State. America's founders grappled mightily with the paradox of assigning the State to preserve freedom form an overly-powerful State.
Reflecting on his American travels, which he hoped would help him better understand the democratic wave he saw sweeping Europe, Tocqueville noticed the buds of a more troubling tyranny—not an intellectual oppression but a gentle though genuine political oppression—that threatens all democratic nations and that later really did come to full flower not just in the European Union but—though much less flamboyantly—even in America. Democratic governments, Tocqueville theorized, have a tendency toward paternalism, which would be untroubling if “its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing”—as with my Soviet acquaintance’s sexual revolution. Such a government, writes Tocqueville, in his most-quoted passage, “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better but a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” Such “gentle . . . servitude,” Tocqueville feared, could easily coexist with “the outward forms of freedom” and arise even “under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.”
Prophetic words, for in fact, America lives under that gentle servitude and has done for decades, without really noticing and without understanding how it happened. Woodrow Wilson, believing that the Founders’ checks and balances merely gummed up the efficiency of government, set out to replace their Constitution and the “nonsense [they] talked about the inalienable rights of the individual” with a “living constitution,” reshaped daily “with boldness and a touch of audacity” by “judicial interpretations” that would be ever “more liberal, not to say more lax.”
There is a veritable truckload of bullshit in science.¹ When I say bullshit, I mean arguments, data, publications, or even the official policies of scientific organizations that give every impression of being perfectly reasonable — of being well-supported by the highest quality of evidence, and so forth — but which don’t hold up when you scrutinize the details. Bullshit has the veneer of truth-like plausibility. It looks good. It sounds right. But when you get right down to it, it stinks.
I have a good bullshit detector. I am skeptical of everything, to a fault.
Why do central bankers care about market moves? Does that have anything to do with their job? For whose benefit do they work? Do central bankers do any good at all?
"We have reached a point of diminishing returns in our public life. Hardly anything actually needs doing. We may in fact be past that point; not only does nothing much need doing, but we'd benefit if much of what has been done were to be undone."
Good grammar is the sign of either a good primary education or a heavy reader. With enough reading, the reader will intuitively get transitive vs intransitive right without even knowing those terms. (The use of the subjunctive works similarly.)
I remember the difference by thinking that a transitive verb transfers the verb's force to something. Intransitives just exist. "I hit the ball" vs. "I exist."
Non-tenured faculty can be easily hired and fired just like any other employee. This works better for higher-ed administrations and may also work better for students.
Any reference to American Indians must be banned. Also, ban spaghetti, tacos, sushi, cornbread...ban everything. Well, not everything. The old totalitarian notion was "Everything which is not forbidden will be mandatory."
So what about Roast Beef? And what about the English language, appropriated from the British isles?
JONATHAN HAIDT: I didn’t even know about that. The president was supposed to be the grown-up in the room. He was supposed to show some wisdom, some balance, and some strength. And so we’ve seen, basically what can really only be called Maoist moral bullying – am we saw it very clearly at Claremont McKenna. The video is really chilling–the students surrounding this nice woman who was trying to help them, and reducing her to tears. As we’ve seen more and more of this, I’ve begun calling it, “the Yale problem,” referring to the way that left-leaning institutions are now cut off from any moral vocabulary that they could use to resist the forces of illiberalism. As far as I’m concerned, “Next Yale” can go find its own “Next Alumni.” I don’t plan to give to Yale ever again, unless it reverses course.
The news focuses on on-campus rape, but proportionately far more rape occurs out in the real world. In either case, prosecution can be difficult.
I know many of our readers agree with me that rape is a matter for the criminal justice system, not for college panels. At the same time, college disciplinary panels do have the task of maintaining decency on their campi and punishing or expelling wrong-doers whether the issue is rape, theft, assault, plagiarism, cheating, etc.
"Success in life" is one of those useless, maybe even insidious terms, like "happiness." Perhaps the rare independent thinkers among us rebel against such hollow terms and follow the beat of their own inner drummers, but most of us accept the default socio-cultural standards of whatever socio-cultural milieu we live in. Fish in water.
As one example, I gave up my delusions of grandeur in late adolescence as most people seem to do when the reality of our limits sinks in. Change the world and all of that. As far as I could tell, I had no rare talents, passions, or bold new ideas but I liked to work and to learn so I pursued the conventional bourgeois format of education, financial security, raising interesting kids, and becoming a member of the gentry like my parents and grandparents. Some comfort, some security, a warm home, lots of hobbies, interests, and friends. I bought into the conventions of my personal background. Is that "success"? Security and comforts seem like lame aspirations, lacking in adventure and risk, but what else can an ordinary person do?
Ah get born, keep warm Short pants, romance, learn to dance Get dressed, get blessed Try to be a success Please her, please him, buy gifts Don’t steal, don’t lift Twenty years of schoolin’ And they put you on the day shift Look out kid They keep it all hid Better jump down a manhole Light yourself a candle Don’t wear sandals Try to avoid the scandals Don’t wanna be a bum You better chew gum The pump don’t work ’Cause the vandals took the handles
In middle age, we reflect on these things. Have I used God's gifts as best I could have? Have I been as benevolent and constructive being as I could have? Sacrificial enough for my conscience? Did I make enough money? Will I leave behind me things and memories of charm and beauty if not a handful of inspiring ideas? Thus far, lived with integrity and to my standards of behavior? Make a lovely, rich- (not money-rich) enough life for my wife and kids? Helped enough people through life messes? Loved my neighbor as myself? Admittedly, these are socio-culturally-determined questions but I think they are typically-American.
Medical advances keep guys in their 70s and 80s on the ski slopes, the basketballs courts, the tennis courts - and at work. The concept of retirement is already obsolete. Obsolete to the point that, in America, men only reluctantly admit that they are retired today.
Our senior partner is 84, and at work every day. He is the Socrates of our firm and he lifts at the gym before work. Last year we voted him 6 wks paid vacation per year, in gratitude. But if he is on a big case, of course he can't and would not go anywhere. We have no retirement age, and offer no retirement benefits. However, we can, and do, vote partners out unless we love them.
Most guys over 65 are working at something, and want to be. Second careers, and third careers, are common today. Defined benefit pensions have disappeared outside of government employees and even there, for many, these are being replaced by IRAs. The short historical period of those 30-40 year retirements is gone outside of government union jobs. Unions still idealize not-working as if that were a wonderful thing. It seems not to be for most people.
It's not just about money, and it's not just men. Women too need to feel productive, contributive, active in the world. The alternative is to feel either dependent or useless.
Overall, it's a good thing. The wise old owls have much to offer the arrogant young bucks and buckettes. The late 1800s Bismarckian notion of a few years of leisurely rest before death is as obsolete as most of the Progressive ideas of the 1920s in the US (mostly borrowed from Bismarck if not from Marx). Mind you, neither Bismarck nor Marx ever held a real job, or could even hammer a nail.
For the "common good," I would set Social Security at 75, and means test it too based on assets and income.
Math educational fads come and go. While all the average Joe needs is practical math (even if that practical math is advanced calculus or statistics), very few have the IQ or interest to go deep into theoretical math. It's too abstract.
Few college applicants even have the IQ to master basic calc or stats, hence Math for Poets and Rocks for Jocks.
Like the New Math in the 1960s (Multiply 2X3 in Base 6 - what?), the math experts want the kids to dig into the mysterious depths of numbers. It will never happen.
Food isn’t about Nutrition Clothes aren’t about Comfort Bedrooms aren’t about Sleep Marriage isn’t about Romance Talk isn’t about Info Laughter isn’t about Jokes Charity isn’t about Helping Church isn’t about God Art isn’t about Insight Medicine isn’t about Health Consulting isn’t about Advice School isn’t about Learning Research isn’t about Progress Politics isn’t about Policy
Is all poetry lyrical poetry? Does it matter? In my view, poetry (and drama) are meant to be heard, not read. I am not, however, a professor of literature.
Gioia writes: “I suspect one thing that hurt poetry was being too well taught.” While professing his admiration for them, Gioia blames the “New Critics” of the mid-20th century — “R.P. Blackmur, Allen Tate, Kenneth Burke, Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, and Yvor Winters” — for inadvertently alienating the public by inspiring generations of teachers to treat poems as difficult texts to be deciphered like the Rosetta Stone, rather than as enjoyable scripts for oral performance. Poetry was less like dance or drama than like philology or philosophy.
City people might term it parochial, but it's actually a strong sense of proprietorship and protectiveness towards something valuable - "Our town."
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