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.
As anybody graduating from Middle School knows, the US is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. It was cleverly designed to limit government power and to prevent mob rule by majorities.
Government has been trying to change that ever since.
Most school-choice programs offer significant but not revolutionary changes to the traditional educational model. But true educational choice, and the educational market it could help foster, promise to radically improve education for many children. As Milton Friedman observed, “not all ‘schooling’ is ‘education,’ and not all ‘education’ is ‘schooling.’” Charter schools and voucher programs still conflate the two, but education savings accounts embody a more expansive understanding of education.
ESAs offer several key advantages over traditional school-choice programs. Because families can spend ESA funds at multiple providers and can save unspent funds for later, ESAs incentivize families to economize and maximize the value of each dollar spent, in a manner similar to the way they would spend their own money. ESAs also create incentives for education providers to unbundle services and products to better meet students’ individual learning needs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
David J. Theroux, founder and president of The Independent Institute and the C.S. Lewis Society of California, discusses the writings of C.S. Lewis and Lewis's views on liberty, natural law and statism.
Now that we have considered difficulties in the idea of progress, it is time to enter the politics of progress. Progress reduces the scope of politics and thus minimizes the relevance of the common good. The common good tends to become the sum of individual benefits, in which the “common good” is that of individuals similarly benefited, and not sharing and cooperating in a common life. Government promises security—in comfort, of course, not bare survival—for individuals as such; it places this goal above promoting a certain democratic way of life. Americans learn to put their security, meaning each one’s own security, first—ahead of public-spirited thoughts and actions for the whole. Consider Social Security, America’s largest entitlement, which actually individualizes society, rendering security less “social,” by giving each retired worker independent means. Social Security is quite different from the idea of “national security,” which brings Americans together in a whole. The democracy of progressives leads toward the society that Tocqueville described as the soft despotism of “individualism,” in which individuals, out of a sense of their own impotence in the face of vast social change, excuse themselves from pleasures and sacrifices prompted by public-spiritedness.
Employers keep ratcheting up their educational credential demands to sift out people who, on the basis of their lower credential levels are presumably less competent and trainable. It’s not just the business sector that contributes to credential inflation — so does government.
Beechwood fires burn bright and clear If the logs are kept a year Store your beech for Christmastide With new holly laid beside Chestnuts only good they say If for years 'tis stayed away Birch and firwood burn too fast Blaze too bright and do not last Flames from larch will shoot up high Dangerously the sparks will fly But Ashwood green and Ashwood brown Are fit for a Queen with a golden crown
Oaken logs, if dry and old Keep away the winters cold Poplar gives a bitter smoke Fills your eyes and makes you choke Elmwood burns like churchyard mould Even the very flames burn cold Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread So it is in Ireland said Applewood will scent the room Pears wood smells like a flower in bloom But Ashwood wet and Ashwood dry A King may warm his slippers by.
Memorize everything you can which you find worthy. Poetic verse, biblical verses, aphorisms, and song lyrics most lend themselves to it, but so does anything worthwhile.
None of these progressive sociologists would dream of suggesting that the rich are better—but all their solutions for the problems of the poor turn out to be attempts to make the poor act and think more like the rich, and never the other way around.
If the Western establishment were truly moral, it would reject multiculturalism as a deductive, anti-empirical, and illiberal creed. It would demand that critics abroad first put their own house in order before blaming others for their own failures, and remind Western elites that their multicultural fantasies are cheap nostrums designed to deal with their own neuroses.
Finally, it would also not welcome in newcomers who seek to destroy the very institutions that make the West so unlike the homelands they have voted with their feet to utterly abandon.
My impression is that higher ed is an industry today, government-subsidized. They will take almost anybody regardless of IQ, character, academic achievement or curiosity, etc. and run them through their credentialing machine for big bucks.
Sitting in Darkness, Blogging the Light - As the Christmas season draws to a close and the return of regular blogging looms, I’m looking back over this short period of intense religion writing and thinking about how writing on religion is and is not like writing on other controversial topics.
The real point of faith blogging... isn’t to shore up the moral underpinnings of the civil order. It’s to integrate your deepest convictions into the work you do as a writer and thinker. Faith shapes the way I think about the world and the future of our species; I wouldn’t be doing my job as a political and social analyst if I didn’t make that clear. It’s both important to your clarity of thought as well as a part of the transparency you owe to your readers to share or at least to explain the ideals and the beliefs that matter most and allow you to make sense of the world, and to let readers get a better look at the heart of your vision.
However, the reason that is, despite all of the studies showing that most kids benefit little or nothing from college, is because work aptitude tests are now mostly illegal: Thank SCOTUS for Credential Inflation
The best modern book on belief is “My Bright Abyss” by my Yale colleague, Christian Wiman. In it, he writes, “When I hear people say they have no religious impulse whatsoever ... I always want to respond: Really? You have never felt overwhelmed by, and in some way inadequate to, an experience in your life, have never felt something in yourself staking a claim beyond yourself, some wordless mystery straining through word to reach you? Never?”
Most believers seem to have had these magical moments of wonder and clearest consciousness, which suggested a dimension of existence beyond the everyday. Maybe it happened during childbirth, with music, in nature, in love or pain, or during a moment of overwhelming gratitude and exaltation.
These glimmering experiences are not in themselves faith, but they are the seed of faith.
This (Brooks') column resonated with me after this intense experience of writing my Dante book. As I wrote it, I was surprised to discover that the particularly religious aspect of my pilgrimage out of sickness and depression — that is, the role that prayer, confession, and liturgy played in the process — was more important than I had thought (and I knew it was pretty important). And it wasn’t just any religion: it was Orthodox Christianity, with its intense focus on the necessity to do hard inner spiritual work on repentance. And it wasn’t just any Orthodox parish: it was ours, pastored by Father Matthew, a tough-love priest who is compassionate, but who doesn’t let that compassion get in the way of compelling his parishioners to own up to and face down their sins.
He does this, I think, because he was once a police officer, and every day went out on the front lines of sin — that is, where sin leads. After seven years, he burned out. Couldn’t handle it — the violence, the injustice, the constant anger he had inside. He told me that he would stand at the liturgy and cry his eyes out during that time — and if you know Father Matthew, you know he’s a tough guy; the thought of him crying his eyes out is shocking. But that’s how broken he was...
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.
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.
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.
There are 
The (no math)
The often-lame David Brooks has an interesting piece in the NYT: