When enough media outlets pound us enough with the message that someone is odious or venal or stupid one starts to believe the propaganda. “Oh man sure hope Michele Bachmann does not become the Republican presidential candidate because she’s crazy and dumb too”. Enter Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online who boils it down for us in “Bachmann Smart, Media Dumb”:

Seems like only yesterday when Michele Bachmann was supposed to be dumb… [L]ate last year, when I heard her speak at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend. I was sitting at a table full of professor types. We kept turning to each other and saying, “This woman is sharp, not at all the dunce she’s been portrayed as.”

Liberalism nowadays may be the last great holdout of old-fashioned prejudice. By telling themselves they’re against group hatreds of all kinds, and dismissing their opponents’ arguments as nothing but bigotry in disguise, liberals grant themselves license to despise. They swear, mock, and hate with a clean conscience, never guessing they’re turning liberalism itself into an outpost of bigotry in reverse. The flip side of liberal guilt is this hidden license to hate.

Same thing applies to Sarah Palin. Came across an article about the recent efforts to go through thousands of her emails. Some people leave comments along the lines of “she is still stupid” with no supporting evidence whatsoever. Just naked prejudicial assertion. I frankly am increasingly tired of being told whom we should like.

Walter Russell Mead has made significant contributions to our national social-political conversation with “The Death of the American Dream I” and “The Death of the American Dream II”.

The one thing I do know is that change is on its way — more fundamental, more challenging, and also perhaps more exhilarating than many of us are ready for. The health of the American economy is going to require us to move away from the credit card economics of the consumer republic.  The health of American society and democracy require that we move beyond the life of the last eighty years.  We should be looking at new ideals in which domestic partners are enterprise partners, the home is more frequently a place of business, and education moves away from big box buildings and toward forms of community schooling somewhere between home schooling and charter academies.

One way to summarize the kind of change we need.  During the farm era the focus of American domestic policy was to create the most favorable possible environment for millions of ordinary Americans to launch flourishing small businesses.  Rather that focusing on home ownership, American social policy should probably be looking at small business formation as the key to mass middle class prosperity in the next fifty years.

The American Dream is not in the last analysis a farm or a home and a good job.  It is the dream that through hard work and good choices the average American can be prosperous and independent, and that ordinary people with these life experiences can govern themselves wisely and well without the ‘guidance’ of their ‘betters’.

Even many so-called/self-proclaimed conservatives might not get this. That they confuse “progressivism Lite” with true classical liberalism and the American Dream before the vision of Thomas Jefferson lost out to that of Alexander Hamilton. Mead’s important articles remind me strongly of an important and interesting podcast by Clark Carlton on “My Two Cents on Capitalism”:

Capitalism is a modernist economic system and progressivism is a modernist palliative—not an alternative.

The only real alternative to capitalism is something along the lines of what Jefferson envisioned. This is similar to the vision of the Catholic distributivists, such as Belloc and Chesterton, and to the third way of the Protestant economist Wilhelm Röpke. The foundation of such a system is widespread property ownership and decentralized government.

I should point out here that the Greek word economia means household management.

Even if we disagree with an idea – even find it repellent – we must try to understand it on its own terms. In other words understand it as the person who holds that idea understands it. Otherwise we are engaging in not much more than a kind of solipsism. Reality is not much more than a projection of our own minds.

There is a lot of solipsism going on right now.

Victory Davis Hanson offers his usual perceptive and insightful brilliance in his recent article “The American Soviet”.

We are living in another Soviet, a 21st-century sort in which we nod to official pieties and mouth politically correct banalities while in our private lives, for our safety, well-being — and sanity — we conduct ourselves according to altogether different premises.

…

In the American Soviet, only two questions remain. Do these double lives of ours make a sort of sense: Is it that the official utopian rhetoric about love among the masses offers psychological compensation for our private self-interested skepticism about the nature of man? Or is the daily lie a modern Western rather than an enduring human phenomenon — our 21st-century leisure and affluence infecting us with intellectual and moral boredom, in which we long ago outsourced our collective morality to our bureaucratic overseers as we busied ourselves with far more enjoyable private indulgences?

Much is being made lately of high gas prices. And we need to keep in mind that while the Obama administration is not (solely) responsible for this it has done nothing to improve the situation. And this administration and its defenders are engaging in rank demagoguery.

*(For the record the price of gas began to drop from a high of about $4.00 in mid-2008 during the Bush administration and continued to drop after Barack Obama was elected president. It began to climb again pretty much right at the beginning of 2009. It remained steady in the $2.40-2.80 range for a while. And then began to spike in early 2011. Take a look.)

Check out “Are Sky-High Gas Prices Good?” again by Victor Davis Hanson.

And “The Media Don’t Get Economics” by Conrad Black:

The Treasury and Federal Reserve are playing with dynamite, running unheard-of deficits like this. All decent people hope it works, but anyone who has proceeded determinedly and with sure step from Grade 2 to Grade 3 arithmetic can see the risk. Even the existing measurements, which assume that these trillions of dollars of new debt will somehow be retired, confirm a 20 percent rise in the money supply — but the media, which are rarely slow to unload on public personalities in tight corners, have given this wild monetary rise a relatively free pass, to the enhanced peril of almost everyone in the world.

And “Why Isn’t Obama Celebrating High Oil Prices?” by David Harsanyi:

The administration, of course, isn’t at fault when oil prices spike; it just seems to make matters worse. Or better, if you happen to be an environmentalist. So why isn’t it celebrating? Though the left may be wary of the political consequences, it has been pining for high fuel costs for decades. So here they are. Let’s see how the economy responds.

And when some would demonize petroleum companies Larry Kudlow brings the noise in “The Left Hates Oil Companies”:

I read somewhere that either Exxon or the whole oil industry pays more in taxes than the bottom 50 percent of the whole income-tax system. So while president Obama is out there ragging on oil companies to remove so-called tax subsidies, it’s odd that he doesn’t mention how much in taxes the energy firms actually pay to Uncle Sam.

And so on. Dear readers will recall my views on energy and the environment. I support wholeheartedly(?) efforts to find alternative renewable sources of energy. But (a) we need to be honest and realistic about some of these alternatives currently being promoted and (b) a ruined economy – which is where we are heading – is unlikely to develop any of these.

Oh and speaking of solipsism and understanding the motivation for something repellent I decided not to go there in this post. Too dangerous.

Aw shucks let’s go there. But others will do the talking for me.

H/T Ace of Spades HQ

I was impressed by the astute observations Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times makes in his recent article “The increasingly odd political optics of Barack Obama”.

The former state senator may, in fact, be slaving away on 18-hour policy days. But much of that is closed out of sight. So the public is left to focus on Obama’s frequent vacations, golf outings, celebrity gatherings and proclivity to give a speech at the first whiff of trouble.

With no real opposition, Chicago’s Democrat pols care little about how insensitive things look.

Any one of these apparent missteps is inconsequential. However, accumulated over his 118 weeks in office, they create the impression of carelessness at best or, worse, arrogance.

Read the whole thing especially the series of “it’s one thing… it’s another” paragraphs.

Although Malcolm appears to be criticizing President Obama in a small way he is defending him. In that his observations could be interpreted to mean “Look actually President Obama is working hard and doing a great job. But for some bizarre reason whoever is in charge of managing his public image is making him look like a lazy self-centered arrogant twit”.

One would think it is all about him and not the United States of America. To which I respond ding ding ding.

What I struggle to understand is how some people continue to defend this president. Are we looking at the same reality here?

H/T Ace of Spades HQ

And once again Veronica De Rugy of both George Mason University and Reason magazine lays down some reality for those more inclined to believe demagogy in her recent piece “The truth about taxes and redistribution: Do the rich pay their fair share?”

The four myths she tackles with truth are:

Myth 1: The wealthy aren’t paying their fair share.
Fact 1: The wealthy disproportionately fund the United States federal government.

Myth 2:  Top earners in the United States are millionaires.
Fact 2: Only 2% of the top 10% of earners are millionaires.

Myth 3:  All Americans pay income taxes.
Fact 3:  An estimated 45% of Americans will pay no federal income taxes this year.

Myth 4: The key to our deficit problems rests in our ability to increasing the top marginal tax rates leads to increased tax revenues
Fact 4: From 1930 to 2010, tax revenue collection in the United States has never topped 20.9 percent, averaging 16.5 percent of GDP over these 80 years – despite drastic fluctuations in the rate of taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

With all respect to Professor de Rugy I wonder if anyone is attempting to claim “all Americans pay income taxes”. But the point is still well taken.

By the way that last Myth/Fact is important. When protesters in Wisconsin shout “tax the rich!” and when President Obama says the wealthy need to “pay their fair share” (fair?!?!? I do not think that word means what you think it means) they speak from a space-time continuum in which Hauser’s Law does not apply.

“Left alone [Melkor/Morgoth] could only have gone raging on till all was levelled again into a formless chaos” – J. R. R. Tolkien (Morgoth’s Ring, 396)

“The spirit in revolt consequently acquires a hatred of being, a frenzy to destroy, a thirst for an impossible nothingness” -Vladimir Lossky (Orthodox Theology, 82)

“Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” – Romans 5:12 (Revised Standard Version)

The apostle Paul says it simply and clearly. How did death enter the world? Through sin. And how did sin enter the world? Through Adam.

(Not Eve. Which is interesting. And sheds some light on how Paul uses the Old Testament.)

So is death punishment from God for sin? In my opinion no. Although death puts a limit on human rebellion. It is one thing to have a free personal being in revolt against God. It is entirely another if that free personal being in revolt against God is immortal and/or indestructible. Consider Balor from the Space:1999 episode “End of Eternity”.

Rather the first human beings in Genesis 2-3 were not immortal. At least not yet. Perhaps if Adam and Eve had chosen for God and not against they would have been permitted to eat of the tree of life.

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” — 23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. (RSV)

It is only after the man knows good and evil – has arrogated unto himself the authority to decide what is good and evil? – that God decides it is necessary to send the human beings out of the garden so that they cannot eat from the tree of life and live for ever. Death is a response/consequence of the revolt.

There is another way to look at this. Consider the psychology of evil. If God is the source of life and we choose against God there is a sense in which we have chosen death. Sin is inherently a movement toward death. Again not so much in terms of punishment. But (a) result/consequence and (b) direction away from God who is the source of life.

Why is this important? Because lately I have begun to notice more clearly the relationship between sin and death. By which I mean how much of what we recognize as sin somehow a movement toward death? How much of what we recognize as sin is destructive or self-destructive or even both? I am beginning to wonder if we can discern a pattern.

Now here is where I might step on some toes. Including my own. Because I would rather not discuss Christian theology and politics together in the same post.

I have been struggling to understand why generally speaking certain social-political-cultural views and practices seem to cluster. For example why people who reject the Christian faith – notice how I phrased that not merely faithful members of other religions – are so obsessed with sex. By which I mean it seems to terribly important that people not constrain or restrain themselves in any way. Do it when you want with whom you want. And while they are at it who needs that oppressive institution known as marriage?

(Most of my undergraduate and graduate studies focused on ancient West Asian aka Near/Middle Eastern civilizations such as the Sumerians Akkadians Egyptians Hebrews and so on. I have read and/or collated dozens of ancient marriage contracts. My point being that for thousands of years people who were not Christian or Jewish have thought the legal-cultural institution known as marriage is a great thing.)

And on top of that sex without producing children. So everybody needs to use contraception. And when contraception fails – or was never used – legal elective abortion.

Now do not misunderstand me. I acknowledge that some Christians support and some atheists oppose legal elective abortion. And many Christians have no problems with birth control. And I am not saying anything for or against either of these – neither am I judging anyone who supports or has done either of these. But the hard cold biological fact is that the primary function of sexual intercourse is reproduction – or if you will the creation of new life.

So one the one hand we have people who adamantly oppose any – or at least most surely they would draw the line somewhere – restraints on sexual behavior. On an activity whose original primary function is (a) to create new life and/or (b) to overcome death. (On the latter aspect see Orthodox Theology by Vladimir Lossky p ???.)

And on the other hand they want to make sure that this activity never – or rarely – results in the creation of new life. Either by prevention the creation of new life – contraception. Or by destroying the preborn life that this activity creates – elective abortion.

(For the record there is a reason my wife and I have two children. Without going into detail yes we have used different methods of birth control.)

What prompted me to make this mental connection(?) is something Tony Rossi wrote recently about the movie and more importantly the novel Children of Men by P D James:

Recalling the evolution of the infertility problem, Theo says, “We thought that we knew the reasons — that the fall was deliberate, a result of more liberal attitudes to birth control and abortion, the postponement of pregnancy by professional women, the wish of families for a higher standard of living . . . Most of us thought the fall was desirable, even necessary. We were polluting the planet with our numbers . . . When Omega came it came with dramatic suddenness and was received with incredulity.”

Described in these terms, the story seems like an all too plausible scenario. In a society that has largely divorced sex from procreation, no one ever followed that attitude about reproductive choice to its logical if unlikely conclusion. Now, Omega has arrived and the despair is overwhelming.

There is a marked increase in suicides by middle-aged people who would “bear the brunt of an ageing and decaying society’s humiliating but insistent needs.” Also, every reminder of children (schools, toys, playgrounds) has been removed from the public landscape “except for the dolls, which have become for some half-demented women a substitute for children.”

People’s attitudes toward sex have also changed in an unexpected way. Theo says, “Sex has become among the least important of man’s sensory pleasures. One might have imagined that with the fear of pregnancy permanently removed, and the unerotic paraphernalia of pills, rubber and ovulation arithmetic no longer necessary, sex would be freed for new and imaginative delights. The opposite has happened. Even those men and women who would normally have no wish to breed apparently need the assurance that they could have a child if they wished. Sex totally divorced from procreation has become almost meaninglessly acrobatic.” (emphasis added)

According to P D James in The Children of Men what is the logical conclusion of unrestrained sex without procreation? Death. And despair.

Drugs and other addictions. Consider the misery and destruction caused by people who grow/make and sell drugs. Consider the self-destructive nature of drug use and alcohol addiction. Is that significant aspect of modern life largely an attempt to achieve non-existence?

Violence and oppression. What is Moammar Gadaffi doing right now if not attempting to destroy those he cannot control? Communism – in the Soviet Union in China in Cambodia and elsewhere – has killed more human beings that any religion.

And this is where I might really cross a line or two.

Why does the political-cultural left seem to ally itself with radical Islam? Could it be the movement toward death is something they share in common?

The recent turmoil in Wisconsin. Which of course is only an opening skirmish in the period of soft civil war which the United States may be entering. I understand not wanting to lose money and benefits. Been there done that myself and members of my family. But what we have is an entirely unsustainable trend. Spending/committing more and more money we simply do not and will not have. So why not tax the rich? Well first of all if we appropriate every dollar made by the rich – defined how exactly? – we still would not have enough for the obligations facing us. Second many of the rich would change their behavior and make it more difficult to take their money. Third of all eventually we would run out of money period. Total economic collapse. Anarchy. Chaos. Greece anyone?

There is a sense in which one group that lives off another group – fairly or unfairly or both – may eventually kill its host. Even our current political and economic policies are – when you scratch beneath the surface – taking us inevitably toward death.

I am greatly distressed by the apparent movement toward mob rule in Wisconsin. Do these protesters stop and wonder what would happen if everyone behaved the way they do and took that behavior and rhetoric to their logical conclusions? Can you imagine? Can they imagine?

Well we should care about the poor right? Yes indeed. And keep transferring money to them right? Perhaps it matters how we do that. Because consider the circumstances in which millions of poor African-Americans – and others – live in many of our cities. Are they not surrounded by the threat the fear the reality of death?

Let me conclude with a few qualifying remarks.

First this is a work in progress. I could be wrong. I could be very wrong about some or much or all of the above. But I am attempting to figure out the pattern that unites things I observe that otherwise do not seem to make sense.

Wright’s First Rule of Epistemology.

In any given set of data the anomalous elements are the key to understanding the whole.

Second I want to be careful about how this applies to the conscious motivations of real people. I am sure most people are not consciously trying to destroy themselves or other people. What I suggest is that even when we do not consciously realize it sinful behavior might at some level be an attempt to embrace death/deny life.

Which leads to third I am sure many people who (a) are not Christians and/or (b) are atheists are consciously(?) trying to embrace and nurture life. I am sure many people who are doctors who research new medicines who develop new technologies – or who just plain work to pay the bills and take care of their families you know? – as far as they are aware are trying to live and preserve life.

H/T The Anchoress for the Children of Men article

My wife is a teacher and former state worker. Many relatives on my mother’s side of the family are teachers and public/state workers. For some reason almost no one on my father’s side is a teacher or public/state/government worker. And when University Baptist Church two years ago began to offer/provide medical insurance for ministerial staff – read that again – our family declined. Would it save some money each year? Yes. But (1) the insurance my wife is able to provide is much better and (2) if we stay with her insurance then the state of Louisiana will provide medical insurance when we retire. If we go with insurance through the church we save a little now and lose a lot later.

By the way my wife (a) contributes to her retirement and (b) pays part of the cost of our medical insurance. Because she provides nearly all insurance for our family she takes home about 2/3 of her salary. No fooling.

So on the one hand we are a family that is counting on the type of pension and insurance coverage after retirement that is bankrupting states. On the other hand we contribute now to that pension and insurance coverage later.

There is a great deal one can say about the political battles taking place in states such as Wisconsin Ohio Indiana and New Jersey. What frosts my mug is summarized well by James Taranto:

It’s quite striking the way almost every lie the left ever told about the Tea Party has turned out to be true of the government unionists in Wisconsin and their supporters.

The Mainstream Media is doing everything it can to mislead and misinform/underinform the American people. I commend to you “Wisconsin Myths and Facts” by Matthew Shaffer that refutes about 90% of the propaganda we are being asked to believe about the situation in Wisconsin.

Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote an excellent piece comparing teachers to other workers. What I appreciate is he does not run down or denigrate teachers. No nonsense about how teachers have cushy jobs or only work ten months a year and so on. Only that they have it better than they used to. And better than most of the American workers whose taxes pay for teacher salaries and benefits:

So, yes, teaching is a noble profession upon which the future of our youth rests. It is not easy, and it is not as lucrative as the law or medicine. No doubt day-traders and the architects of hedge funds can make more in an hour than a sixth-grade social-studies teacher earns in a year, without either the caring or the commensurate work. Yet in comparison to most workers in the private sector, teachers are, in terms of working conditions and compensation, blessed — which is why we are told of Wisconsin that the problem is not really one of renegotiating wages, benefits, and pensions.

In these lean times, amid the furor and name-calling, we forget that teachers are not the wretched of the earth. They are often noble sorts, and that is reflected by what they make, how long they work, and the conditions under which they toil. If you doubt that, ask the almond farmer, roofer, or welder whose taxes pay their salaries.

Nicely put.

President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget. Wow.

There are at least ten ways one can criticize it for its irresponsibility and its calculated cynicism. Let me focus on one – which is the effort to portray Republicans as cruel and heartless for attempting to cut some federal programs.

A parable

Once upon a time there was a family in Louisiana. They make $100,000 a year because that is a nice round number. Husband wife and two children. The children go to private school. Because of this they are not quite making ends meet. So the husband takes out a loan for $50,000.

Wife: Dear husband – we need to live within our means. We can’t keep increasing out debt. We already pay a nice chunk of our family income on the interest payments for our mortgage and car loans. Maybe we need to take the kids out of private school. Maybe we need to get rid of some monthly expenses like cable television and health club memberships. Maybe you need to take lunch to work more and eat out less often. Maybe you need to stop buying expensive suits.

Husband: It may sound strange but we need to do this. It will help us in the long run. The suits and lunches? That’s part of rounding up business for my company. The kids get a better education and will get into a better college and graduate and have good paying jobs – they can help pay off some of these loans. By going to the health club we stay in good shape and don’t spend money on doctors and prescriptions. Some of the loan will be for me to work on my business degree at night school. And some of it will be to make our home more energy efficient. Better windows. Solar panels. Better insulation. So in the long run it will save us money. In fact we will be making more money and can afford to do more and buy more – you just need to give it some time.

Wife: Well okay. I don’t like it. But maybe we need to borrow some now to save more later. I’ll trust  you on this.

One year later

Wife: I’ve been going over our household finances dear and I have some concerns. I noticed that your business didn’t make any more money this year than last year – and that’s with all the power lunches and the new car and nice suits. We also didn’t go to the doctor any less. We spent just as much on prescriptions. The solar panels don’t work but we can’t get our money back. We sent the check to the window people but they still haven’t come buy to install them. I don’t see how the business classes are helping your company do any better. And the kids are getting the same offers from colleges that their friends in public schools are getting. Plus we have doubled the amount we have to shell out each year on interest payments – we do have to pay the bank back for this last loan you know. So if anything our finances are worse and we have less to spend on regular things like food and gas.

Husband: No – actually we saved tens of thousands of dollars in business and medical expenses. Because if we hadn’t spent all that money on clients and friends we would have lost a whole bunch of orders and sales. If we hadn’t been going to the health club we would have spent even more on medicine. The new car doesn’t require as much maintenance. And it just takes time for the business classes to start showing an effect. They’re making a difference right now but you can’t measure that for at least another year or two.

Wife: Are you serious? How on earth can you measure what would have happened if it didn’t actually happen? All we can measure is what did happen. And what did happen is that true we didn’t spend any more but we sure didn’t make any more and all our expenses look the same. As far as I can tell some of these potential customers got a bunch of free lunches and you don’t have anything to show for it.  And some of these house improvements – it was like flushing money down the toilet.

Husband: Not according to my spreadsheet. See? We would have been down here but instead we’re up here.

Wife: Rubbish. But right now that’s beside the point. Right now we have to figure out our budget for the new year.

Husband: I’ve already drawn it up. We need to borrow another $50,000.

Wife: What?!? When are we ever going to get our expenses under control?

Husband: These aren’t expenses. They are investments. And they will pay off in about 3 years. We’ll be saving money in some areas. And we’ll be making a whole lot more so that we’ll have no problem paying off the loans. Hey one thing we can look forward to is the kids helping us out when they start getting jobs.

Wife: I completely disagree. This is insane.  I understand that when we first got married we had to take out some students loans so you could finish your degree. I even supported you when you wanted to take out that business loan to get your company started. But when is it going to end? And now our kids are going to be paying us back on top of trying to support themselves. I have to do something to save money somewhere if you insist on spending more than we make. Let’s see. I know. We’ll have to spend less eating out. Less on new clothes for the kids. We can run the air conditioning less this summer – turn the thermostat up. And right now we can turn the thermostat down – run the heat no so much. And the kids will have to take their lunch to school from now on. Six bucks a day for the two of them starts to add up. We can cut that in half.

Kids: You’re mean. Dad – mommy’s cruel. She doesn’t care about us.

Husband: Well some of these cuts are things I believe in. I want you to have decent lunches. I don’t want you to get sick because it’s so cold in here during the winter. But we have to do it.

Wife: Kids – if you think I’m the mean one why don’t you ask your father why he spent so much last year taking his customers to lunch? Eating out? Buying new suits? The new car? If he hadn’t spent so much last year that we can’t afford maybe this year we wouldn’t have to cancel our cable television or your school trip to London next year.

Husband’s sister (who happens to be visiting): Well I think this shows what you really care about. And don’t care about. You don’t care about your kids.

Wife: Who do you think you are? Why don’t you talk to your brother and ask him why he doesn’t cut back on some of his own expenses? Maybe he doesn’t need to send flowers every month to his mother in Florida. Maybe he needs to take classes at the community college instead of the university. And maybe – just maybe – he shouldn’t have blown so much money last year. And then maybe we wouldn’t be having to cut back so much this year. You say I’m mean and stingy? I wouldn’t have to do these things if my husband wasn’t so totally irresponsible and spends money like it grows on trees! And if your brother cares so much – if you care so much – about our children then ask why he spends far more on himself and his friends and his customers than he spends on our children!

End parable

I was listening to National Public Radio a few evenings ago (yeah yeah I know – change of pace) and heard the report about some of the cuts being proposed by the Republicans in Congress and/or by President Obama. One of them – and I just cannot find the correct broadcast/transcript on their website sorry – was how community block grants to help poor people are being cut in half. They said these grants help about 10 million poor Americans every year. Keep that number in mind.

For the record I believe in the concept of the safety net. Heating assistance for poor families caught off guard by unusually cold winters? Yeah okay. Block grants to help people learn new job skills and find work? Probably a good thing to do. Yes we can debate whether and to what extent these programs to “help the poor / help reduce poverty” actually help. Is that money well spent? Are there better ways to assist those who are struggling financially for whatever reason? Set that aside for the moment.

How much was the deficit last year? I know this number is not entirely correct but let us go with $1.5 trillion. That includes the so-called stimulus spending as well as just spending too much on the regular stuff. And Republicans are cruel heartless and mean because they think we need to reduce some program by a few hundred million dollars. For the record I just might agree that some of these programs are the wrong place to cut – especially cuts that don’t seem to make much of a dent in a budget measured in trillions.

$1.5 trillion. Grants to help 10 million poor people. Hmm. $1.5 trillion divided by 10 million is $150,000. We could have taken that money and just written checks and given 10 million poor Americans $150,000 each.

Not saying we should. But when Nancy Pelosi complains about how Republicans reveal their true values in the cuts they propose we do well to ask and what were your priorities during the last couple years? and what are they now? $58 billion for high speed rail. Compared to how much for programs intended to aid the poor?

Who has benefited from the hundreds of billions we have been spending beyond our means during the last years? The poor? Or the ruling elite and the federal bureaucracy and those corporations favored by the federal government?

During deacon ordination service last Sunday was talking with someone who works at Louisiana State University. How are things? Grim. She then talked about how they(? who exactly?) are looking at cutting degree programs that have fewer numbers of students/graduates. Which often means the arts and humanities. She expressed the concern that we need to graduate well rounded people. People who do not just know math and science and engineering. But who know something about beauty and meaning and all that good stuff.

I half agree.

But why is it necessary to wait until college to become well rounded? Especially when we are talking about colleges/universities which are expensive? Especially if they are private? Why spend $100,000 over four years when you can spend $50,000 over two and be just as well prepared for a job and career? Save the four year degrees for those who really need it.*

*(Granted there are plenty of bargains out there. One of which is right up the road from me. Louisiana State University. Solid undergraduate education for a fraction of what it costs at many private colleges and universities. Especially if you qualify for TOPS.)

From Bloomberg:

The U.S. is focusing too much attention on helping students pursue four-year college degrees, when two-year and occupational programs may better prepare them for the job market, a Harvard University report said.

Frequently on this website I have argued that we need less four year academic institutions/degrees and more junior and community and vocational colleges. There are positive and negative reasons. Reasons we need less of one and reasons we need more of the other.

Recently I came across a disturbing statistic. More than 26% of college graduates in China are unemployed. Many Chinese people with undergraduate degrees or higher are looking for jobs that are “beneath” their level of education.

This is an awkward position for me to take. I do not want to see anyone lose their jobs. Especially jobs that require as much education and are as difficult to find as tenured academic positions. But the hard cold fact of the matter is we cannot afford/support all the campuses – and programs and positions – that we have right now in Louisiana. Personally I think the best approach is consolidation. If there are 6 identical programs with small numbers of students and faculty combine them into 2-3 programs. More specialized programs might be offered only at one or two schools. Convert some of our state universities into community colleges and/or vocational schools. People can save time and money getting their undergraduate requirements at the local community college. And/or they choose to get a two year vocational degree and not bother with going any further.

H/T Ace of Spades HQ who makes several fine points – such as why do people assume they can only be well rounded by going to college? and is that really what happens to most people who go through the time and expense of a four year academic degree?

Oh noes! Not another political post!

Yeah yeah but how can I not take the opportunity to say something positive about someone I often have criticized?

Was listening to National Public Radio yesterday afternoon. [ed - why?!?] Report about the presidential procession through South Asia. I was genuinely impressed by what President Obama had to say about free trade and about strengthening political and economic relations with India.

I thought “wow – preach it brother!”

Part of me does wonder “how much of that is carefully crafted National Progressive Radio propaganda?” And one could cynically note that presidents who are having trouble with their domestic agenda often look for success internationally.

But others who are not on the political left have also noticed. Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal writes:

Barack Obama gave a terrific speech yesterday to India’s parliament, perhaps the best one of his presidency and potentially a true compass for the rest of it.

…

The president gave a terrific speech. Not that it was particularly eloquent. But for all my cavilling, he stood up for free trade, free markets and free societies. He also finally beat an honorable and unequivocal retreat from his July 2011 withdrawal deadline from Afghanistan.

Yes. Well done and well said Mister President. Thank you!

Addendum: Do not fail to read the last paragraph of the piece by Stephens.

Boy was he right. About nearly everything. And he had the guts to say it.

My own mild critique is his use of the term “liberalism”. We need to reclaim that term. The term liberalism does not belong to the left. It belongs to those who believe in liberty rather than statist collectivism. Not all but many we call conservatives are the true liberals.

Yeah yeah not another politics post. But this was huge. Many others have made similar arguments. But not in the Washington Post.

Kudos to the Washington Post - not normally a bastion of classical liberalism aka “conservatism”* – for publishing “Conservatism does not equal racism. So why do many liberals assume it does?” by Gerard Alexander who is a professor at the University of Virginia.

The whole piece is trenchant – well reasoned and bolstered with hard facts that counter the prevailing leftist narrative. Two paragraphs in particular stand out.

These policy positions remain central to the conservative domestic agenda, but calling them racist, the third assumption, presumes something very strange: that conservatives do not mean what they say about them. Welfare reform is deliberately anti-black (or anti-minority or anti-poor) only if conservatives secretly believe that welfare actually does help its beneficiaries and are being deceitful when they argue that long-term dependency devastates inner-city communities. Tax cuts are part of a racist agenda only if conservatives do not believe that lower taxes will enhance economic growth and social mobility for all. Conservative opposition to raising the minimum wage is anti-poor only if free-marketeers are feigning concern that increases will price less-skilled people out of the workforce (as when Milton Friedman called the minimum wage “one of the most . . . anti-black laws on the statute books”) and secretly agree with liberals that increases will benefit the working poor over the long term.

Subtle. But how many of us have thought through the implications like this? Basically the above paragraph presents leftists with an awkward dichotomy. Either conservatives do not really believe in welfare reform and/or lower taxes and/or abolishing the minimum wage and so on – or they are racists.

But not both. That is not a menu option. Because the two options are contradictory.

I also commend to dear readers one of the closing paragraphs:

But most conservatives have been less concerned with the “hardware” of people’s race or ethnicity and more concerned with the “software” of their values or culture. This is why the white Protestant core of the modern conservative movement has not merely integrated Catholic “ethnics” but also rallied behind the Irish American William F. Buckley and the Italian American Antonin Scalia. Jews, women and Hispanics have been similarly integrated into both its ranks and leadership; indeed, many white conservatives swoon when members of minority groups proudly share their values. This explains why, in the 2008 campaign, conservatives were at least as roused by Obama’s ties to the white former radical William Ayers as the black Jeremiah Wright, both of whom seemed to make a living out of damning America. [emphasis added]

Thank you Professor Alexander.

While we are at it – I consider this article important enough to promote it on this website. But am afraid to link it on Facebook. There are people who would give me major grief. That is unfortunate – when we have reached the point where a large segment of the American population is just plain afraid to say publicly what they think.