Category: Uncategorized

Gene sees progress:

I have been watching schooling related threads and articles for a couple years. There used to be a couple of passionate “schooling” fans or “educators” who would show up and defend “schooling”, but no one this time.

Does anyone think there has been progress in getting Holt’s, Gatto’s, et al’s ideas to the public?

In terms of this blog, certainly. I know at least one former public school proponent who is now homeschooling his children. This was as a direct result of his child’s initial exposure to the public school, not the ongoing debate, but I suspect that he was much more open to the homeschooling option than he would have been had he not participated in the discussion.

And so it grows, one child at a time.

Lightning Aura jumps in very late:

I have not been reading this blog for very long, so I dont know what happened between you two. If you really wanted to ‘eviscerate’ him why not have an intellectual debate?

Because a debate takes two. Mr. Shapiro is too scared and self-important to do what he declares is everyone else’s sacred duty; like Michelle Malkin he is also too frightened to respond to a very public calling-out in the very place he is published. This failure to respond in any way is particularly egregious in Mr. Shapiro’s case since I wrote in response to two weeks’ worth of Shapiro columns written in preemptive self-defense.

Vox’s Third Law of Scorn: If you refuse to respond to legitimate criticism, you deserve all subsequent criticism, legitimate and illegitimate.

PC badly misplaces his trust:

I pray to God that it gets ever louder and eventually, when they take over the helm of the world from the the lost generation that are their parents, the likes of Shapiro will be representative of the majority of their fellow, contemporary citizens. Because if that is not the case they will standing at the helm of a cultural ship heading for oblivion to be listed as just another shipwreck of history. What is your beef against Ben Shapiro?

For God’s sake give the kid room. He is not long out of his teens.

Yes, leadership by short-sighted, self-declared imperialists too self-important to perform what they declare to be duty on the part of others is just what this country needs. I’m not a big fan of Ivy League lawyers in the first place, much less those yearning for a career in politics.

Like most hawks innocent of history, Shapiro fails to understand that empire is a sign of incipient decline and weakness, not strength and vitality. Empires are hollow at the core, which is why they tend to come crashing down so quickly. And hollow at the core is an excellent summation of latter-day America.

As for slack, if you wish to run with the big dogs, then how can you complain about getting knocked down when someone takes exception to your barking? And surely a mainstream syndicated columnist, picked out from the masses for his talent, insight and intelligence, will have no trouble responding to the substance of a critique from a mere Internet columnist like my humble self.

Jay Nordlinger in NRO’s Corner:

It seems the battle for “Turin” has been lost. By that I mean, I’m afraid we’re going to have the “Torino Olympics,” not the “Turin Olympics,” starting February 10.

I started whining about this, here in this column, way back in 2002, when we had the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Then, Katie Couric et al. were saying, “See you four years from now in Torino!” I wanted to start a “Torino Watch,” nipping this dismaying trend in the bud. “Torino” figured in my piece “‘Gutter’ Politics,” about the pronunciation of place names and personal names.

I think we’ll be able to keep “The Shroud of Turin” — I don’t think we’ll have to say, or hear, “The Shroud of Torino.” And we’ll be able to say Florence, not Firenze; Rome, not Roma; Naples, not Napoli; Venice, not Venezia. But have you noticed that a certain type of American likes to say “Milano,” instead of “Milan”?

Well, yeah. Perche Milan e’ la bella squadra, Milano e’ la citta’. Forza Milan!

Why I’m skipping the Oscars this year
Every year since I was old enough to stay up late, I’ve watched the Academy Awards….

Remember when I wrote that one column? And remember when some people got really mad about an insinuation that someone might not be that interested in the opposite sex? And remember when I didn’t care? And remember, remember when some people thought that was pretty bad but it was actually pretty funny?

That was awesome.

Sam Blumenfeld notes how worthless the pieces of paper have become:

Stunned, shocked and appalled are American educators as they study the recent report from the National Center of Education Statistics, which reveals that only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. “It’s really astounding,” said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association. “That’s not saying much for the remainder,” he added, meaning that 69 percent of our college graduates cannot read at or above a “proficient” level.

Absolutely appalled by the results of the survey was Mark S. Schneider, commissioner of education statistics, who remarked, “The declining impact of education on our adult population was the biggest surprise for us, and we just don’t have a good explanation. What’s disturbing is that the assessment is not designed to test your understanding of Proust, but to test your ability to read labels.”

The Boston Globe (Dec. 26, 2005) explained that the test measured how well adults handled basic reading tasks – such as figuring out costs per ounce of food items, comparing viewpoints on two editorials, and reading prescription labels. Of graduate students tested in 2003, 41 percent were classified as “proficient” in prose – able to read and understand information in short texts – down 10 percent since 1992. As for college graduates, only 31 percent were classified as proficient – compared with 40 percent in 1992.

I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense to go into debt in order to attend a place that will give you a degree that doesn’t even guarantee you can read. At this point, not going to college is a sign of intelligence… and no, that’s not sour grapes, I have a degree from a university that is supposedly better than most. I’ve yet to see any real value from it, although my admittedly snazzy ring has led some to mistakenly believe that I’ve actually won a fantasy football championship, so I’ve got that going for me. (Yes, the alumni-hitter-uppers just LOVE talking to me… they haven’t even bothered sending me a letter, much less giving me a call, in years now.)

Men might as well let women have the universities, they’re going to be completely useless in another twenty years. Are they going to be pissed when they learn how little good it will do them, or what?

“Why don’t you want to take me out?”
“I don’t know, probably your appeal rates around the level of a decomposing rhinocerous carcass. No offense.”
“But I have three doctoral degrees!”
“Yes, and I have more than three pieces of paper in this book right here! Perhaps with all those degrees you can tell me if any man in the recorded history of Man has ever thought ‘She’s nice and she’s beautiful, but if only she was a surgeon, she’d be perfect’?”
“You’re just afraid of a strong, independent woman!”
“You know, I suspect I may have overrated your appeal.”

Any four-year old child who is not mentally retarded can learn how to read in a matter of months. This destructive transformation of education into maleducation is not mere happenstance.

Mr. “Faster please” suddenly sees things my way:

The basic sermon remains as true as ever: We are playing a sucker’s game in Iraq, because we are fighting in a single country even though we are engaged in a regional war. This guarantees we cannot win the broader war. Administration officials have struggled mightily to avoid this hard truth, because they want to be able to declare “victory” in Iraq as soon as possible, and then get out.

This is the essence of why our strategery in Iraq is so wildly off the mark. As I wrote over a year ago, attempting to win a “war on Islam terror” by occupying Iraq is like expecting to defeat the Third Reich by occupying Alsace. It’s NEVER going to work.

This leads the defenders of the administration to argue that the strategery is justified and secretly brilliant because the president has been lying to the American people all along and his real goal is the conquest of the entire Middle East. I wonder how they’ll argue that Congress actually approved the declaration of that war? Thus is the president damned by his own defense.

Note – My beginning conclusion about the justification for the war was incorrect in the column of April 2004 mentioned above. The invasion was not justified on that basis, as I subsequently learned that there was no ceasefire agreement between the USA and Iraq, only a peace agreement between Iraq and the UN.

The presidential buffoon burnishes his anti-constitutional credentials:

It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

I have already directed my lawyer to take fake names and harass ISPs preparatory to filing charges against people annoying me. I’m particularly interested in nailing some of those very annoying Hollywood “stars” who post on the Huffer Puffer under names that are manifestly not their legal names.

Freedom of speech? What freedom of speech? How would I know what’s free speech? It’s now official. Even being an extreme skeptic of the compassionate conservative I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but George Bush is a worse president than Bill Clinton. Despite reading Juvenal, I hadn’t truly realized that the breakdown of a civilization could prove so massively entertaining.

Embrace the lunacy of latter-day America! Feel the incipient madness! And laugh, laugh like a hyena on crack, because the mighty are falling and they don’t even know it yet.

JB isn’t exactly a classicist… or logician:

Dear Mr. Libertine:

Iraq was not neutral. They were allies of the USSR ever since Sodom Insane took over the place. The USSR was the prime supporter of raghead terrorism during the last 40 years. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. You can go back to sucking your Libertine Donkey dicks now.

KD fails to grok as well:

I have not read any of Victor David Hanson’s books, but I am a fan of his from regular appearances on Hugh Hewitt’s show. In found your review interesting but must take two issues with your closing paragraphs 1) Bush would never change sides in the war, but if a Democrat is elected in 2008, the presidency will. 2) Iraq was not, of course, democratic, nor was it neutral, so the invasion of Sicily does not apply.

Let’s review. The exact sentence from VDH was: “In the last analysis, one does not defeat the proximate oligarchic enemy by sailing 800 miles distant to attack a democratic neutral.”

The Pelopponesian War was no more fought over democracy than the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Iraq, like the USA, was a secular state, not a jihadist one, and it was certainly neutral with regards to the global jihad. Iraq had ties to terrorism, to be sure, but so does the USA – just where do you think all that money that went to the Palestinian Authority ended up? And do remember just who was sitting outside the Oval Office when Monica was performing her namesake function.

I’m guessing that the mention of historic democracy that is confusing people. But democracy does not equal democracy in the analogy. If you can surmount this bit of potential confusion, you will see that the Athenian war against Syracuse was actually pursued for very similar reasons now used to defend the Iraqi Occupation. Athenian hawks even argued that if the Spartans made common cause with the Syracusans, the rich grainfields of Sicily would seriously impeded the Athenian war effort. The analogy runs thusly:

Athens = America
Pelopponesian League = Global Jihad
Syracuse = Iraq
Oligarchic = Religious
Democratic = Secular
Grain = Oil

One might rewrite the sentence like so: “In the last analysis, one does not defeat the proximate religious enemy by flying to the Middle East to attack a secular neutral.”

And no, this was not a sign that I’m running out of ideas. Quite the contrary, it was an opportunity to bring an innovative and well-written book to my readers’ attention plus develop further some thoughts I’ve been having about the intermediate term fate of America. As for ideas, some would rightly shudder at some column concepts I’ve been having. And there were those who thought Ron Mexico was out there….

Kim defends her right to be here:

Didn’t VD write about other blogs that threw little hissy fits when people with dissenting opinions showed up? Why yes yes he did. Go back and read it. The bitching found on the other blogs seems rather similar to the bitching showing up here.

I tend to agree. While I would not necessarily want to be dependent upon the argumentative skills of La Kim for the defense of my life, liberty or property, she’s never done anything but abide by the rules I’ve laid down while sticking to her guns.

I find it ironic that people manage to complain about how certain subject matters happen to draw interest while simultaneously ignoring other posts on other subjects themselves. This happens every time that a subject becomes a theme for more than three days running; the same complaints were made about All Malkin All The Time before they mutated into All WWII All The Time.

And while I’m at it, how on Earth do some of you manage to conflate Kim and Renee? Aside from their sex, nominial feminism and scheduled play date with the Blogger Blaster Harem Master, Kim is so conventionally feminine in her thinking as to be an archetype, while Renee comes off as being one operation away from being a man.

I’m not interested in an echo chamber and I already have a fan club that one would hesitate to wish on one’s worst enemy. So enjoy the dissent and honor the dissenters. People change, but only over time. Who would have thought that both Shrub and Cedarford would not only become regulars, but respected ones, in their first months here. Anyhow, if the occasional beating of dead horses bores you, you’re probably in the wrong place.

The Elder directs our attention to Oprah’s latest exercise in self-parody:

While reading this incredible story on the way that James Frey conned Oprah (and millions of other women), I realized that it was, to use an overused sports cliche, right in your wheelhouse. It’s a long piece, but well worth the read. Enjoy.

Do women just not have a BS detector? I often used to wonder that when watching some wide-eyed beauty swallowing one of my sketchier friend’s wildly absurd fictions whole. Now, I’m sure that they don’t. This guy is so obviously full of it that you’d have to be careful about lighting a match within ten yards of him for fear of igniting the methane.