"Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?"

What do you think happens when an MSM reporter calls up a political author for an interview on their latest book?  David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times called up Hugh Hewitt’s publisher for an interview about his new book A Mormon In The White House.  It turned out that what he wanted to know was:

if I or any entity related to me had been paid by Mitt Romney or any organization affiliated with him to write the book.

“Absolutely not,” replied Hewitt

Apparently there was a story last fall in the Boston Globe about “Romney’s spreading money around the conservative movement.” 

(Boy, I hope so.  I hope he is spending big money on conservative think tanks and policy analysts.)

But you have to wonder: Was the MSM asking questions in the 1960s about the Kennedys spreading money around to authors to write hagiographies of JFK.  And what about the Clintons?  Who have they paid to write nice things about them?

But somehow those questions never get asked.  Or if they do we never seem to hear about them.

But at least the MSM is passionately interested in the chastity of conservative writers and journalists.  And that has to be a good thing.

Blacks Losing Out As Hispanics Gain Power

After a century of top-down social programs and half a century of enormous immigration, you’d expect that things would not be going too well where immigrants interface with the low-paid and the low skilled in America’s cities.  You’d expect that there would be countless examples of “unintended consequences” of government programs and high-toned reforms laying waste to the poor and the immigrant. 

And you would be right.

And things are going to get worse. The huge Hispanic immigration of the past half-century is about to hit African Americans on the chin, according to Frank Morris and James G. Gimpel.  Of course, the low-paid have always faced competition from immigrants, but to the blacks isolated in the inner cities there is an additional problem.

The instrument of their isolation is, in part, sustained high levels of immigration into adjoining areas, and to areas exhibiting employment growth in the low-skill labor market where employers commonly show a preference for immigrants over African Americans.

Fact is, employers just don’t want to hire African Americans.  For a host of reasons which, in liberal America, we don’t dare to discuss.

Now what would you think that academics Morris and Gimpel propose to deal with this problem?  Of course.  More government. They are concerned that affirmative action didn’t benefit blacks enough.

Arguably, the African American demand for affirmative action benefits other minority groups more than it does African Americans, in spite of the fact that the latter have borne the disproportionate costs of political support.

Oh dear.  What a shock that is.  How could a liberal government program have gone so wrong?  This is amazing.  Has it ever happened before?

Never mind the tsunami of liberal politics that has devasted the African American family.  Never mind the affirmative action in education that has encouraged African American children to slack off in school.  Never mind the tolerance of black racism by liberal elites.  No, what we need is more privilege and quotas.

African Americans have an abiding policy interest in the enforcement of immigration laws; greater public financial support for access to higher education; reduced immigration, especially of the low skilled and less educated; greater support for progressive taxation; federal financial support to increase the supply of affordable housing; and other matters of importance to a majority of African Americans.

The stunning ignorance, we might say “liberal fundamentalism,” of this agenda is breathtaking.

What blacks need to do is take the Road to the Middle Class.  They need to build their own churches; they need to seek out education and build their own schools like the Irish if liberals keep standing in the schoolhouse door; they need to create their own networks of sweat equity and self-help; they need to create a healthy environment of self-government in their neighborhoods and cities.

That is what it takes to succeed in America.  Not more government programs!

Gas-Guzzling Gore

Who can fail to be heartened by the news that Al Gore’s house is a real energy hog. The chaps at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research went through Gore’s electric utility bills and they found that Gore is burning up more than 20 times the average household in his posh Tennessee house.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh&mdashmore than 20 times the national average.

What with natural gas for the house and the pool and the guest house,

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

But what about President Bush?  He’s a Texan, after all, and a friend of the oil companies.  What about his energy usage?

Here’s what free-lance reporter Rob Sullivan found at Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch. It makes him seem like a tree hugger.

• Bush has a heat pump with the heat exchanger deep in the ground—the most efficient way to economize on energy for home heating and cooling.
• “A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern.”
• “There’s a great grove of oak trees to the west that protects [the house] from the late afternoon sun.”

How could this be, Sullivan fumes, when Bush thinks it’s ok to put arsenic in drinking water?  And anyway, how dare he have a 4,000 sq ft house when there are single mothers and Latino immigrants who have to make do with far less.

But isn’t that better than Al Gore, with an energy bill bigger than the salary of a single mother working full time at $15 per hour?  And that’s just on his house.  Forget the energy bill for his private jet travel.

Europe's 200 Year Civil War

It’s no particular secret that the last 200 years has seen a struggle between religious believers and secularists.  On the one side was Voltaire and his cry to erase the infamies of the Church.  And on the other side were the religious who saw the secular world view as “an insurrection against God,” according to  Larry Siedentop.

Over the past hundred years the religious camp has come, by and large, to accept civil liberty and religious pluralism. The anticlericals have -- with the exception of hardline Marxists and writers such as Richard Dawkins -- given up on the attempt to extirpate religious belief.

In fact, Siedentop argues, Christianity and secularism need each other, because there is a “moral logic that joins Christianity and civil liberty.”  Muslims understand that when they talk of “Christian secularism.”  Another way of expressing the idea is the separation of church and state.

And that’s just as well, Siedentop writes, because the European idea is facing a challenge from Islam and cannot afford to be divided.

The question is: Who will make the first move of reconciliation between secular and godly?  The fact is that writers like Richard Dawkins are not an exception.  They represent a large community of secularist believers who think they are doing “humanity’s” work by stamping out religion in the public square.  Because otherwise the fundamentalists might end abortion and persecute homosexuals.

In their dreams.

There is a fundamental lie at the center of the fuss about “theocracy.”  There is no chance, right now, of any political party in the United States or elsewhere in Europe turning into a theocracy and burning abortionists at the stake.  For one thing, it’s in the constitution.  No establishment of religion.  For another, today’s religious believers are private people who don’t understand how to use political power, at least not in the way that secularists do.

We conservatives would be delighted to negotiate a truce with our secular friends.  But we recognize the enormity of the challenge.

What can you do about people who have been raised by their secular parents and educated in a thousand government schools and universities to hate religion?

Call Me a "Civil Societist"

Now that the conservative light is dimming at the end of the Reagan-Bush era, it is time to get back to basics. 

Unlike the coach who bellowed: Let’s get back to basics—this is a football, our basic need is: What do we believe in.  And what we call ourselves.

Are we conservatives?  Libertarians?  Conservative libertarians? Libertarian conservatives?  Names matter.

Arnold Kling has decided what to do. 

Call me a Civil Societarian. I strongly support the institutions of civil society. These include families, corporations, religious groups, private schools, charities, trade associations, and the other peaceful, voluntary collective organizations that promote our individual and collective well-being.

Me too.  But wait.  We are not done yet.

As the structuralists say, don’t forget difference and opposition.  We are opposed to compulsion, political hegemony, government education, government welfare, government healthcare, government subsidies, government privileges, government tenure, and just about everything except a government of laws that defends us against enemies foreign and domestic.

And we also think this.  It is a miracle, a stunning discovery of cosmic proportions, that we should have discovered that in civil society—voluntary cooperation beyond the boundaries of blood kinship—we can build a Great Society, a voluntary collective of all together with all.  And it works.

Not only does it work, but it works better than anything else.

We propose our vision of the Civil Society and its voluntary collective in proud opposition to the idea of the compulsory collective, the mean and cramped vision of our liberal and progressive friends.

But I’m sorry, “Civil Societarian” doesn’t cut it.  We need something shorter: the shorter the better.  What endings are available?  There is conservat-ive, liber-al, social-ist, patri-ot, fight-er, for a start.

I think that the -ist ending is best.  It is modern, as in scient-ist, and is shorter than the three syllables of -ar-i-an.

So let us call ourselves  “Civil Societists.” 

Then liberals can call us neo-socs. (They will, you know.)

Advice to Euros Visiting the US

What should eager young visitors or sojourners in the US do to avoid deal-destroying faux pas? The Global Perspective offers some tips and tricks.  Most are unexceptional, such as: Don’t assume that your understated Euro demeanor will go over in the US.  Good point.  In the US you are expected to be outgoing and open.

But really.  when it comes to politics what kind of advice is this?

In fact, politics is a very good conversation starter in America, so don’t be afraid to ask someone who they are going to vote for at the next election right off the bat.

The best thing to do with politics is to stay out of it.  US politics is very divided at present, and you have to be an expert to avoid stepping on land-mines.  Europeans have a hugely distorted view of US politics, probably because it comes through the double filter of the US MSM and the European lefty media. As a result most Europeans sound terminally left-wing when they venture into political discussion in the US. Best stay out of it and NO LECTURES!

There are lots of comments from readers, many of which are better than the original post.  They advise that the US is a huge and diverse country, and that you should keep out of politics altogether.

After all, would Americans go to a European country and presume to tell them anything about their politics?

Assuming, of course that they weren’t spoiling for a fight...

Tax pledge dodge thrall - Commentary - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Here’s a no-brainer, brought to you by opinion columnist Donald Lambro.

The winner of the Republican presidential nomination will probably be the candidate who most embodies the core principles and beliefs of Ronald Reagan.

 No kidding!  You mean like lowering tax rates and facing up to the nation’s enemies foreign and domestic?

It turns out that the Republican presidential candidates are a bit slow at signing up for Ronald Reagan’s shining agenda.  They have, at least, agreed to make President Bush’s tax rate cuts permanent.

But the front-runners for their party’s nod — Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani — have sent mixed signals on the centerpiece of Reagan’s domestic agenda: tax-rate cuts to achieve maximum economic growth. While both have said President Bush’s across-the-board income tax cuts should be made permanent before expiring in 2010, neither has signed the pledge signed by every Republican presidential nominee since 1988 promising not to raise the tax rates.

What planet are they on?  The record of John McCain is especially troubling. 

[He] was one of only two Republican senators who voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and who voted against accelerating them in 2003. He abruptly flip-flopped last year, voting to extend some of the tax cuts, when he began actively running for president.

Here’s what he said about the tax rate cuts.

I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.

Oh really?  But the president’s tax cuts were designed to reduce the taxes of middle-class Americans by a bigger percentage than the taxes of wealthier Americans.  And the result of the president’s tax cuts is that the top 50 percent of income taxpayers pay 96 percent of all income taxes.

How much is enough, Senator McCain?

If Republicans won’t cut taxes, then who will?

Sexualizing Little Girls

Although any rational observer would note that there are a lot of overweight young girls out there, the sexualizing of little girls means that girls as young a 6 or 7 are experiencing eating disorders.

Mona Charen took a look at a Washington Post article on early sexualization and found that things were worse than she thought. 

"When do little girls start wanting to look good for others?" asks the Post, and quotes a sex educator as guessing that whereas it once began at 6 or 7, it now gets started as early as 4.

 Of course, when it is difficult to get anything but “little tart” clothes for girls of any age, then you know that there’s a problem.

You can see why there’s a problem.  On the one hand, big business can sell more clothes if little girls are worried about their appearance.  On the other hand, Hollywood can sell more commercials with their rude, crude output.

Conservatives draw the line at regulating the free enterprise of the fashion industry, and liberals draw the line at censoring the creativity of filmmakers and TV producers. 

But can’t liberals and conservatives get together on this one, Charen asks?

Perhaps we can now arrange a truce in the name of our daughters. Liberals and conservatives can unite to clean up TV, the music industry and popular culture generally. Liberals can do so believing they are thrashing big business, and conservatives can take satisfaction in confirming family values. Truce, anyone?

But maybe it is more important to posture about the other side than to get anything done.

Criticizing Hillary: Deja Vu All Over Again

Remember the good old days of the 1990s?  When anyone that criticized President Clinton was immediately shamed as a Clinton Hater?

Those days are back, according to Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.  And it is not just opponents of the future president who are forbidden to criticize her. 

Not even supporters of Hillary’s opponents are allowed to disparage her. If they do, the wrath of Hillary surfaces and it is not a pretty sight.
The latest sinner is Hollywood superstar David Geffen. Geffen used to be an avid supporter of the Clintons — he raised over $18 million for them in the past. But no more. Now the Dreamworld founder is backing Obama — and he’s not afraid to say so.

Said Geffen to Maureen Dowd:

I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is -- and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? -- can bring the country together.

Sounds fair, don’t you think?  I mean, this is a presidential campaign.  Powerful people get to brief media bigfeet and use them to communicate their rather superficial notions to the world.

But of course the Clinton War Room is outraged.  Hillary sent out Howard Wolfson, and through him

Hillary demanded that Obama dump Geffen and return the $1.3 million that he raised for Obama because of Geffen’s negative comments about the frontrunner and her husband.

Er, what’s that?  You are not allowed to contribute money to Barack Obama and then voice your deeply felt misgivings about the sainted Hillary Clinton?  This is unethical, or something?

Presumably Hillary Clinton’s spokesman is not saying that contibuting and opining is illegal.  And least, not yet.

Well, if this is how the Clinton campaign is operating in the innocent days a year before the primaries, imagine what it is going to be like in the month or two running up to the elections!

But then it it doesn’t take any imagining.  It all sounds so familiar.  We’ve been here before.

What Went Wrong for Republicans?

Where did the Republicans go wrong and what can they do to regain the trust of the voters?  Columnist Bill Steigerwald asked Genevieve Wood of the Heritage Foundation.

Republicans have now been in the majority for over 10 years in the Congress and they’ve ended up holding the White House. It became about holding on to power, unfortunately, instead of putting into practice conservative principles like limiting government and reducing spending.

The result is that the entire Republicans coalition is disillusioned: libertarians, economic conservatives, and social conservatives.

So what do Republicans do to get back the enthusiasm of their base?

They’ve got to go back to the basics and one of the very basics would be we’ve got to rein in entitlements. It is a huge crisis facing the country — Social Security, Medicare, health care systems — and I think conservatism has answers for those things... And you’re not going to get those answers from the other side...
There’s a chance to sharpen ideas again, and, look, they are being created at The Heritage Foundation and a number of places. But they’ve got to get traction from the political pulpits, if you will. Finding the people who are willing to do that is going to be key.

It’s not that hard: “limited government, traditional values, a strong national defense.”  That is what defines the Republican Party.  That is what its base looks for. 

Now what we need are the leaders to articulate that message and make it ring out across the nation. 

Hagiographers Under Every Rock, Says Publishers Weekly

Every one of us has their obsession.  We just like to interpret the world to fit our prejudices.  The problem is when we let things get a little out of hand, as Reagan biographer Paul Kengor complains:

Though one would never know this from reading Publishers Weekly, the fact is that Ronald Reagan is now consistently rated among the most successful presidents in all of American history—even by liberals who comprise academia and media.

 Even those of us conservatives who came late to Reagan, say in mid 1980, realize that there was a lot more there that we realized.  Reagan was an actor, and he let us see what he wanted us to see.  In retrospect that was not much.

Reagan was a man who had done quite a bit of reading.  But he never felt the need to tell us that.  Reagan was a man who had done quite a bit of thinking.  But he never felt the need to impress us with his learning.

Reagan was quite happy for everyone to think him an “amiable dunce,” in Clark Clifford’s immortal phrase.  And because wise man Clifford thought that many liberals thought that too.  And many liberal writers echoed the idea.

Frances Fitzgerald’s blistering, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War, was reviewed glowingly by Publishers Weekly as a “painstakingly detailed study.” The book portrays Reagan as, indeed, way out there in the blue.

Only Reagan wasn’t way out there.  His policies, foreign and domestic, especially after the jumble of Iraq, look astonishingly precise and focused. He did stand fast while the Federal Reserve painfully squeezed inflation out of the economy.  He did lower tax rates and start a 25 year boom.  He did increase defense spending and twirl the Soviet Union into confusion.

This is not way out there in the blue.  This is political genius of a very high order.

It is such a pity that the anonymous reviewers at Publishers Weekly still don’t get it.

If America Won't Buy Quality Newspapers...

Here it comes.  It was inevitable, really.  We can thank Steven Rattner for giving us a heads-up on it, an early warning so we can head it off at the pass.

Rattner takes a look at the delicate state of the newspaper business today.

The Washington Post has lost 14 percent of its circulation since 2000.  And newspapers have lost half of their young readers.

Perhaps most worrisome is the loss of young readers, who have drifted away steadily since the early 1970s, long before there was an Internet, when more than 70% of 18- to 34-year-old Americans read a daily newspaper. Last year that figure stood at 35%.

Guess where the growth in the newspaper is coming from?

Only two newspapers in the top 25—the two New York tabloids—grew circulation during this period, a statement in itself.

Yes.  That really is nasty.  Americans are turning away from quality newspapers, and what are they reading instead?  Tabloids! 

Of course newspaper reading on the Internet is up.  But most people get their news from the big on-line portals,

which means that they are mostly consuming a bland porridge of wire service stories.

Things are getting so bad that the market soon may not support true quality newspapers.  It is time for action.

[W]e can’t expect the objectives of enterprises that were organized around a for-profit interest to necessarily intersect with the societal value of quality journalism. So perhaps it’s time to think about new models for the news business.

 Ah yes.  Why newspapers might be just like the New York subways, a vital service that nobody wants to pay for.

We could create a pool of money (possibly from a license fee similar to how the BBC is funded). News organizations with an expensive but important project in mind could apply for funding, much the way producers in the public television world have for the last 40 years.

Oh innocent, how reasonable it sounds.

Over my cold, dead body.

 “” 

Secular Dem Candidates Off to Church

The Republican Party is the party of the religious, married, with children.  The Democratic Party is the party of the secular, the single, and the childless.  So much we know.

So then why does the Edwards campaign feel it necessary to separate from blogger Amanda Marcotte, whose blog, according to Mary Eberstadt, is full of

scatological Catholic-baiting rants about "theocracy" marked by leering references to the pope and liberal use of the F-word.

What do they expect from a “a bilious feminist with a potty mouth?”

After all, the whole of America left of center is railing about “theocracy” these days.  When trendspotter Kevin Phillips is out with American Theocracy, you know that there is good money to be made selling theocratic scare stories to book-buying liberals.

But then why are the Democratic presidential candidates crowding into church?

Here is Sen. Barack Obama in California’s Saddleback pulpit at the invitation of mega-selling pastor Rick Warren. There is Sen. Hillary Clinton with downcast eyes in Newsweek, praying before the cameras in New York’s Riverside Church. And there preaches John Edwards, also in Riverside Church, weaving his personal faith into everything from AIDS to the minimum wage.

The answer is, of course, that even though the liberal base is militantly and religiously anti-religious, most Americans are religious.  And the politicians know it.

Sophisticates and secularists have always titillated themselves by despising the Bible Belt. But professional Christian-bashers have never been as "embedded" in the liberal mainstream as they are today. And therein lies a problem for Democrats. More Amanda Marcottes are not what the party needs as it scrambles to re-establish its religious bona fides with wary red-staters. No wonder so many Democratic candidates are in church. Now they really have something to pray about.

So the presidential campaigners have become regular churchgoers.  Just don’t expect the liberal media to complain about the separation of church and state.  At least, not until Republican Mormon Mitt Romney decides to visit a temple of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Oh Good. Michelle Malkin Is "Not a Shill"

Our liberal friends seem unable to deal with people like Michelle Malkin.  Never have, never will.  So Howard Kurtz’s profile in the Washington Post is just par for the course in liberal condescension.  He goes to Andrew Sullivan for a quote:

She may be shrill, but she’s not a shill.

Well, you can certainly say that Andrew Sullivan knows “shrill.”

Actually we should not be offended.  So long as liberals just don’t get people like Michelle Malkin then so long do they just not get it, period.

Imagine, if you will, the Washington Post profiling a young, attractive, passionate liberal activist.  Suppose they quoted her saying:

"They’ll ridicule my looks, ridicule my ethnicity, go after my family," the 36-year-old blogger says of her critics. "They’ve attacked my husband relentlessly. There’s a strong sexist strain among my liberal critics, who think it isn’t possible I could have gotten anywhere without my Svengali husband, or some white man, embedding ideas in my head."

 Why, it would be the central quote on an article all about the nobility and the selflessness of the activist and bristling with outrage towards the cruel bigotry of her critics.

But not when the subject is a female, minority, Catholic, conservative woman.

But we should be understanding.  Our liberal friends just cannot understand such a person.  Their whole scientific, evolutionary world view says it could not happen.

Obviously it is not the liberal world-view that is the problem. So it must be the Svengali husband.  Or something.

Did America Overreact to 9/11?

David A. Bell wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times that the United States overreacted to 9/11.

The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we’re overreacting.

Oh really, writes philosopher Lee Harris?

Now if by this Bell means that they cannot kill us all, or even more than a few thousand at a time, then history seems to have proven him right

But that’s not quite how the world works.

The inmates of any jailhouse know that even mildest acts of aggression must be instantly and firmly challenged. If you are a newcomer and another inmate demands that you give him your candy bar, the worst thing you could possibly do would be to try to put the incident into perspective.

So the question about 9/11 is whether the Islamist terrorists represent any kind of possible threat.  If they do, then we are right to overreact, because underreacting just encourages them. 

If they will never have a chance of bringing power to bear on the United States, then we should do as Bell recommends, and ignore them.

One thing seems fairly certain.  The Islamists firmly believe that they are going to take over the world.

“” 

War on Terror and Cousin Marriage

What in the world has cousin marriage to do with the War on Terror?

Good question senator.  I just so happens that there is one particular part of the world that goes in for men marrying their father’s brother’s daughter.

That is significant because “in-marriage” of this kind promotes very strong clan loyalty.  Whereas “out-marriage,” that is marrying mother’s brother’s daughter or any less close kin all the way out to marrying people unrelated at all, promotes social and cultural adaption and peaceful relations between families.

It is Islam that is the only society in the world that practices “in-marriage.”  That means, of course, that Islam has very strong kinship ties, but also cultural stasis and resistance to change.

Why is this important?  Stanley Kurtz connects the dots.

This means that any a long-term strategy for winning the war on terror will have to undercut, counter-balance, or reverse the functional “advantages” (cultural stasis and isolation) accruing to Muslim society through the ongoing practice of parallel-cousin marriage.

Of course, Kurtz assumes that the cousin marriage of the Muslims really is an advantage.

Arguably, the cultural advantage of “in-marriage” went out with the industrial revolution.  In the agricultural era rigid conservatism was universal, and for a good reason.  If you failed to follow the time-tested ways for food production you were probably going to starve.  But the market revolution of the last two centuries has put a premium on adaptation.

And the pickle in which the Islamic societies find themselves in is presumably related to their cultural resistance to adaptation.

Newt's Full of Ideas

Newt Gingrich is not announced as a candidate for the presidency, but he’s certainly busy doing what he does best—churning out political ideas.

First of all, he’s issued a 21st Century Contract With America, a ten point program like the old 1994 Contract.  As Newt writes: 

In a rapidly changing world with new threats and new competitors, we must implement policies that will ensure America’s leadership, safety, and prosperity. And we must reinvigorate the core values that have made an exceptional civilization.

A quick scan of the ten articles in the Contract show that Newt’s got his heart and his mind in the right place.  It is every conservative’s dream agenda and it even has a nod for the ageing baby boom generation with a proposal for facilitating active retirement.

But Newt is also ready with ideas for improving health care.  He’s proposing a 21st Century Intelligent Health System.  First of all, he writes, let’s go paperless. Yes, but wouldn’t that be kind of expensive?  Actually, no. For you doubters out there, Newt has a suggestion.

I will urge you to contact the North Fulton Family Clinic [in Alpharetta, Ga.], which in 1998 went paperless with a workflow-organized ambulatory electronic health record.
And in the first year, to their shock, they discovered that they were saving $33 per patient visit. Not costing ! saving.

And then, of course, we are all going to go wireless.

But we have to be careful.  We want the federal government to help get this intelligent system off the ground but not dictate its exact form.  That would freeze it in place and stop further development, because, he writes,

whatever standards we set this year will be wrong five years from now, because the technology is going to keep evolving dramatically.

A big challenge for the future is to train people to look after their own health care. Already, in diabetes, the patient is essential in long-term well-being.

If we find out as soon as you become diabetic and learn how to teach you to be able to take care of yourself so that you don’t end up in the emergency room, you don’t end up hospitalized, you don’t end up losing your limbs or going blind or losing your kidneys and needing dialysis or having heart disease.

Doctors can’t do it.  When you get to the emergency room, it is already too late.

Nobody knows what will happen in the presidential race.  But New Gingrich is ready, as always, with ideas.  Lots of them.

Evolution: Not Just God vs. Darwin

Our good freinds in the mainstream media like us vs. them conflict.  It makes for good punchy copy.  That’s why the media like to report the evolution debate as God vs. Darwin, progressives vs. fundamentalists, science vs. religion.  

Not exactly says What Is Enlightenment? magazine.

Between the Neo-Darwinists on one side and the Intelligent Designers on the other are at least ten more "schools" of evolutionary thought.

What are all these schools, and who are their people?  OK, quickly:

• Neo-Darwinists — Richard Dawkins
• Progressive Darwinists — Jablonka/Lamb
• Collectivists — Lynn Margulis
• Complexity Theorists — Stewart Kauffman
• Directionalists — James Gardner
• Transhumanists — Ray Kurzweil
• Intelligent Designers — Michael Behe
• Theistic Evolutionists — Freeman Dyson
• Esoteric Evolutionists — Richard Tarnas
• Process Philosophers — Alfred North Whitehead
• Conscious Evolutionists — Teilhard de Chardin
• Integralists — Ken Wilber 

But really, you should read the whole thing.

Of course, the WIE guys are probably more interested in RMC chappie and Integral theorist Ken Wilber than any other school.  That’s why they have put him in the last slot.

But the list does take us beyond the black-and-white obsession of the media.  For everyone of us is concerned about the meaning of it all.  And that means trying to penetrate the veil of the present to understand what is really going on.

It is more than just a shouting match between Darwin fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists.

Parents Flock to Supplementary Schools

The government schools suck.  That’s true whether you live in the United States or Britain.  And if you are poor, the schools really suck.  So what do you do?

In its December 2006 edition of Civitas Review the British civil society think tank Civitas (pdf) describes its effort to help parents with children trapped in dysfunctional schools.  It is opening “supplementary schools”  A supplementary school is an after-hours school that provides basic 3R instruction.  In fact there are over 5,000 supplementary schools in Britain. 

These families are forced to rely on the resources available within their communities. And these communities are proving innovative and responsive... Civil society has come into its own. So it is social pressure, arising out of the unmet need for better educational opportunities, that has fuelled the burgeoning sector of supplementary schooling.

Civitas first got into the supplementary school business helping Bengali children in London.  But then, according to the Civitas press release, they branched out.

The first two Civitas supplementary schools were thus started for children from ethnic minorities who belong to very strong community groups. However, we would see other youngsters, almost all white, hanging around on the King’s Cross estate, often behaving in an anti-social manner. We were keen to reach out to all these children, regardless of race or religion.

But would their white working-class (British equivalent of white trash) parents be interested?

We were concerned that we might get a poor response from the white working-class parents, but we were amazed by the positive reaction. At the start of the first open evening in October there was a crowd of parents at the community centre gates eager to talk to us. Nearly all expressed great anxieties about their children’s education and were very enthusiastic about the prospect of extra lessons at a low cost.

But now the government is starting to take an interest in supplementary schools.  A charity “ContinYou, a charity that receives most of its funding from the government” has issued recommendations for regulation of supplementary schools.

Civitas wonders: Why does the government have to control everything?

This government, like most governments, regards the voluntary and charitable sector as something to be, if not absorbed or incorporated, at least organised. Governments look out over chaos and wish to regularise and bring order. They do not like the random, transient, associative nature of civil society... Government regulation would bring a premature end to a new and exciting development in civil society. We should do all that we can to make sure this does not happen.

That really is the issue.

But why do we need supplementary schools?  Give us back our schools, government, and we will make them work.

Liberals Trivialize Evil

A constant theme of conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager is clarity.  Let’s agree to disagree, he’ll say, but let’s try to understand exactly why we disagree.

This week Prager is trying to achieve clarity on the meaning of two liberals (or maybe lefties) who have compared their opponents to Nazis.

First, there was Ellen Goodman who in a now famous article compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers.  She writes:

I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

As thousands of conservatives have already noted, to question the authority of a UN panel of experts is not quite the same thing as denying the evil genocide of six million Jews.  Whatever happened to the liberal injunction to “Question Authority?”

Also, there is the little problem that everything with regard to the future is uncertain.  But it is easy to appreciate that a union journalist with lifetime tenure would not understand that.

But Ellen Goodman’s tiresome use of words was mere bagatelle compared to George Soros’s comment up at Davos.  Lefty billionaire Soros said at the World Economic Forum that it was going to be necessary to “de-nazify” the United States.  As reported in the New York Times, he said:

“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” he said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”

More recently he has backed off, writing in The New Republic of a “bad choice of words.”

For clarity, we have to go to Dennis Prager.

[T]he equation of global warming denial to Holocaust denial trivializes Holocaust denial. If questioning global warming is on "a par" with questioning the Holocaust, how bad can questioning the Holocaust really be? The same holds true with regard to Nazism and the George Soros statement. Claiming that America in the Iraq War is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany in World War II trivializes the unparalleled evil of the Nazis.

 The left has enjoyed remarkable access to the public print ever since the middle of the nineteenth century.  It has abused that access in many ways, not the least in its reflexive habit of calling its enemies evil capitalists and evil fascists.

But now with the internet it has become easier to fight back.

But thoughtful counterattack and exposure of everyday calumny is the least of our project. 

What we really intend is to smash the injustice and the cruelty of the progressive project, to give ordinary people the power and the freedom to run their own lives once again.  We wish to restore to them the power and the freedom taken so ruthlessly by the progressive elite—people like Ellen Goodman and George Soros.

Harvard's 'Rebellious Daughter'

The wonderful thing about being a woman, wrote Agatha Christie, is to wonder what is going to happen to you next.

Curiously, the newly appointed President of Harvard, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust. feels the same way.  As Sara Rimer writes:

I’ve always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor — I never would have imagined that. Writing books — I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. — I’m not sure I would even have imagined that. I’ve lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.

As described by Rimer, Dr. Faust fits perfectly into the liberal narrative.  Daughter of white Southern privilege, she rejected her past, marched in civil-rights marches, and became a feminist pioneer in the academy.  You can’t get any better than that.

If life sorta just happened to turn out right for Faust, that’s where happenstance ends.  She is going to make sure that things don’t sort of “just happen” for women at Harvard any more.

Asked Sunday whether her appointment signified the end of sex inequities at the university, Dr. Faust said: “Of course not. There is a lot of work still to be done, especially in the sciences.”

We can be sure that whatever that work is, it will not include “inclusion” for conservatives.  What was true in Boston for the Irish 150 years ago is certainly true in the university today: “Conservatives Need Not Apply.”

School Choice in Sweden: Who Knew?

For the last ten years in Sweden there is only one thing you can say about school choice.  It’s the law.

It must be the best-kept secret in education.  In other words, I never knew about it.  Not until I read about it last week in an article in the London Spectator (reg) that called for liberating schools in Britain.

Naturally, I blogged the article immediately.  But where could I get more information?

Google aside, where would you look?  I know where I would look.  I would look at the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation website.

What a surprise!  The Friedman Foundation has a white paper on the Swedish school-choice reforms, authored by Frederick Bergström and J. Michael Sandström (pdf here).

Here are the basic features of the Swedish reform:

• Independent schools and municipal schools are placed on an equal footing for funding.
• Any group can apply to open an independent school: non-profit, for-profit, religious.
• To get permission to open a new independent school you make an application to the National Agency of Education.  Few applications are turned down.  It is difficult for the local municipality to sustain an objection to a new school.
• No fees may be charged.
• The number of independent schools has quadrupled since 1992/93.  The market share of independent schools is now about 10 percent.
• Competition has improved the municipal schools.
• Teachers are happier in the independent schools.

Teachers are happier in the independent schools.  That could be a very big deal.  As Bersgström and Sandström write:

It should also be clear that teachers have no reason to fear school vouchers. To the contrary, when the choice of employer is not only between different municipalities but also between several independent schools, this seems to benefit teachers. Also, the working conditions in the independent schools appear to be superior to those in the municipal schools. This may be due to a less bureaucratic structure of the former.

 School-choice advocates should pay close attention to this.  We don’t know what is important to US teachers, but the chances are that they would appreciate improvement in working conditions—in the way they are treated—over more material things like money.

Right now teachers are being led by their unions to oppose school reform to the death.

But sooner or later teachers are going to find out from their friends that they might like teaching in an independent school.

Then we will start to see the wall of defiance start to break down.

And then, perhaps, parents in the United States will win the freedom to send their children to the school of their choice.

Profits and People Go Together

You know everything you need to know about Larry Kudlow from his reaction to the recent announcement of ExxonMobil's profits.

ExxonMobil just reported the largest annual profit ever by a U.S. company — a staggering $39.5 billion.

I say congratulations

Well, he would say that wouldn’t he. Kudlow is a Wall Street guy.

You know everything you need to know about Hillary Clinton from her reaction to the news of ExxonMobil’s profits.

At the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee, the senator from New York said, “The oil companies reported the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits and I want to put them in an alternative energy fund.”

Still planning to vote for her?  Think of what she is saying.

“I want to take those profits.” 

Boy oh boy.  After living down her aborted plan to nationalize 14 percent of the nation’s economy she doesn’t seem to have learned anything.

What happened to private property? What happened to limited government?

“I want to put them in an alternative energy fund.”

There’s a lot of malarkey talked about alternative energy.  So far, it is expensive energy favored by, and likely to benefit, only liberals and farmers.  From a practical point of view, just to keep them off our backs, it seems reasonable to give liberals some play money so they can build wind farms in the high Sierras — but not in sight of Ted Kennedy’s compound in Hyannisport.  And why not pay some farmers to grow switchgrass on the High Plains?

But to talk of taking oil company profits and putting them in an alternative energy fund — well, that strips the veil of the alternative energy game.  It reveals it for what it is: Yet another Democratic plan for patronage, privilege, and subsidies.

But let’s get back to ExxonMobil.  As Kudlow points out, ExxonMobil made $377 billion in sales; paid taxes of $100 billion; reported profits of $40 billion.

So, for Hillary Clinton, presumably, taxes of 25 percent of sales isn’t enough.

Still planning to vote for Hillary Clinton?

Let’s get this straight.  A corporation that makes a profit is a corporation that is using resources wisely.  A corporation that reports a loss is a corporation that is wasting valuable natural and human resources.

Hillary Clinton wants to turn ExxonMobil’s profit into a loss.

Richard Feynman, Kantian

Last week there was a bit of a flap over global warming.  The lefty Guardian reported, according to Nick Schulz

"Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study."

 Yes, apparently the American Enterprise Institute had actually offered money for papers by scientists on global warming.  The call for papers didn’t actually say that the scientists were expected to act as global-warming “deniers.”

The call for papers by AEI explicitly states that "The purpose of this project is to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC process, especially as it bears on potential policy responses to climate change."

But hey, you think we lefties are dumb or something?  We can read between the lines and detect a conflict-of-interest better than most!

But Nick Schulz took the opportunity to deliver a little homily about the uncertainty of science.  He quoted Richard Feynman:

All scientific knowledge is uncertain.

Not some knowledge.  Not most knowledge.  All knowledge.  So when we talk about a scientific “consensus” on global warming, how exactly does that mesh with the idea that “all scientific knowledge is uncertain?”

This idea about the uncertainty of knowledge began with the doubting of Descartes and reached its modern fortissimo with Kant, who famously asserted that we could never know “things-in-themselves.”  All we can know is appearances.  And the question Kant raised was: Given the limitation of our human senses, how do we know that we are getting the whole story when we sense an appearance?

Significantly, it was shortly after Kant formulated his radical new philosophy that mankind discovered that the visible light with which we look at the world was a tiny octave in the vast “invisible” electromagnetic spectrum.  Then there was that smart Jewish kid from Ulm.  You know what he came up with.

When discovering something as radical as that, it helps to start with the concept that all knowledge is uncertain.

Let us review the Feynman quotation in full:

All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences. I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right. Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it.

Here’s a bit of uncertainty for you.  It appears that sunspot activity is at a thousand year high right now.  It was at a Maunder minimum, with almost no sunspots, back in the 17th century.  Remember?  That was during the Little Ice Age. 

Yeah.  Go ahead and check it out on Wikipedia.

If School Choice Can Work in Sweden...

While we Yanks and the Brits agonize over school choice last-ditch union leaders like Randi Weingarten hiss about people who don’t care about kids.  But the socialist Swedes have gone ahead on school choice anyway. As Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth write:

Those denouncing the [school-voucher] system as the product of discredited right-wing ideology will have difficulty explaining its success in Sweden, arguably the most socialist country in the developed world. School vouchers were proposed in 1991 by its shortlived Conservative government, yet the scheme proved so popular that it has been preserved and expanded by the Social Democrats.

Sweden’s conservatives had no real plans on how to implement school choice.  But it turned out that they didn’t need to.  But they went ahead anyway.

To their astonishment, take-up was huge. They had unwittingly harnessed one of the strongest forces in civil society: parents’ determination to do what is best for their child.

 And now, of course, every government school principal and every government teacher in Sweden knows that a dissatisfied parent can leave tomorrow.  Just like a dissatisfied customer at Wal-Mart.

Freedom to set up a school is enshrined in the Dutch constitution [no kidding!], and today two in three state-funded schools are privately run. This bottom-up approach means more, smaller schools: the average school roll is 200 in Sweden and 190 in the Netherlands. In England it is 890 and rising: closures are running at the level of 120 schools a year.

Think of that.  Lots of little schools all over the place.  Mothers could walk their kids to the school on the corner, and if they didn’t like the nearest school they could go to another one.  What a concept!

Come on America! What are we waiting for?

Compassionate Democrats Love Lavish

Does it really matter that presidential candidate John Edwards, whose campaign centers on a Two Americas narrative about rich and poor, has just built a lavish mansion reaching the imperial size of 27,000 sq ft?

Not really.  As Mike Baker points out, we are really missing the point. 

After introducing their new home on her husband’s campaign Web site, Elizabeth Edwards explained the couple had taken special precautions to make the house energy efficient &3151; keeping in line with Edwards’ environmental platform.

So that’s all right.  Still, as efficient as it no doubt is, I doubt if I could afford the energy bills.  28,000 sq ft is a lotta space to keep warm in the winter and cool in the sweltering North Carolina summers.

And what about Grandma Nancy Pelosi.  Apparently her needs for air transportation are somewhat larger than former Speaker Denny Hastert.  And according to Fox News she blames the Bush administration for “publicly mischaracterizing her need for a larger military aircraft to travel back and forth from the West coast.”

Old Denny used to tool around in a government C-20.  That’s the military version of a Gulfstream III that seats 10-12 people.  But the C-20 may not have the range to get to California without refueling.  And that would be a security risk.  Anyway how big of a plane does Pelosi want?  According to ABC News:

Various Republican officials in recent days have claimed that Pelosi has requested a C-32 plane for her travels -- a luxurious and specially configured version of the Boeing 757-200 commercial intercontinental airliner. The plane seats 45 passengers with business-class accommodations and a crew of up to 16, depending on the mission. It features a communications center, a fully enclosed stateroom for the primary passenger, a changing area, a conference facility, an entertainment system, and a convertible divan that seats three and folds out to a bed. The C-32 can cost as much as $22,000 an hour to operate. It’s normally used by the first lady, the vice president, Cabinet officials and members of Congress upon request.

There is only one way to characterize the behavior of the various Republican officials: mean-spirited.

Of course it is true that the gas-guzzling house of John Edwards and the gaz-guzzling plane for Speaker Pelosi hardly fit the imaage of a party that believes that Americans are far too wasteful and that global warming is going to put us under water and do for us all.

But the “little people” have never begrudged their leaders a little luxury.  They do draw the line when it comes to businessmen and Republicans, however.

 And rightly so.

The New "A" Word

Who knew?  Be very careful who you call “articulate.”  Because they might be offended.  Or at least their political supporters might be offended.

Certainly someone who feels that they are overdue for a “talking-head” appearance might be offended.

Anyway.  There’s another important thing for you to know so that you can pass as enlightened and bien-pensant.  Here it is:

Don’t call any prominent African American like Senator Barack Obama (or is it person of color, today) “articulate.”  Bad form old chap.  That goes for you Senator Biden and you President Bush.

As you might expect, professional African American Clarence Page is all in a twitter.  He thinks that while average folks might rate the “articulate” firestorm as 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, “with many black Americans, it’s a very strong 2.”  What’s needed is some pompous pundit-speak:

[P]residential campaigns can be teachable moments in the long saga of American history. It is a time for Americans to learn more about their fellow Americans as we choose someone to lead us. We shouldn’t be afraid to talk to each other. Just don’t forget to listen.

That will be the day.

Conservative Jonah Goldberg is just fed up.

I think complaints from elite blacks about the overuse of the word "articulate" are well-taken to a point. However, not only is it not the code word some are making it out to be, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and even Biden himself are routinely described as "articulate," and President Bush is relentlessly dubbed "inarticulate," yet nobody thinks that means he’s being called "black."

 Yeah.  But don’t make the mistake of treating Hillary as just one of the guys, Jonah.  Remember what happened to Rick Lazio?

So Why Is Giuliani Leading the Pack

Everyone knows that Rudy Giuliani is too liberal for the Republican base.  There are his divorces, his support for abortion, and his support for gay marriage.  The theocratic party will never go for that.

Who is that “everyone” by the way?

Then why is Giuliani leading the GOP pack right now, by 31 percent to 26 percent for John McCain.  As John Podhoretz writes:

By the conventional wisdom, this isn’t even possible: The GOP is the party of the social conservatives, while Rudy Giuliani is - or so we’re told - "socially liberal."

 Maybe it’s because Republicans respect Giuliani as a leader.  And maybe something more.

Republicans not only like Rudy, they want to like him. Conservative Republicans want to like him. Socially conservative Republicans want to like him.

That’s quite something, isn’t it.  I guess you would call it curb appeal, or something.

That other chap, John McCain, has done his best to rile up the Republican base over the years.  And we haven’t forgotten.  So with McCain, the sentiment works in the other direction.  We don’t really want to have to vote for him.  Because we really don’t like him.

As Hugh Hewitt says of John McCain:  “Great American. Lousy senator. Terrible Republican.”

But Rudy, now.  Well that’s a different kettle of fish.

What Makes Public School Kids Excel in School

What’s the secret of success?  Specifically, how do public school students from modest homes compete against private school kids who have all the advantages, from educated parents, after-school tutoring, and computers and stuff at home.

Queena Lee-Chua, Filipino college instructor did some research.  Yes, she discovered, the private school kids have plenty of advantages, 

But according to our study, the families of our best public school students have more powerful strategies.

These are their secrets — discipline, goal-setting, self-reliance, strong family bonds and a conducive home environment.

Well, now, that’s a surprise! “You mean to say,” in the words of the immortal Mike Wallace, that positive self-esteem isn’t important?

Er, no. Not really. Here is more.

Ninety-nine percent of the families of public school achievers in the survey agree that “discipline is a responsibility of the parents and an act of love.”

There’s a shocker for you.  So what would the parent do if little Johnny doesn’t want to work hard?

He tells them about people in the community who ended up jobless because they took the easy way out and did not finish school — “Sumunod lang sa agos (They just went with the flow).”

Still want more?

Most of the families in our survey believe that success is achieved through hard work, not luck or fate. They believe in God, but they also know that God helps those who help themselves.

The children are patient, persistent and capable of delaying gratification.

Successful students believe that they can control their lives, while their less successful classmates are ruled by chance, malas (bad luck), or other factors.

This isn’t rocket science, of course.  Why should it be? 

Two Turning Points, says Michael Barone

Democrats, we know, have to play to their base.  And their base believes that violence never solves anything.  Republicans, of course, play to their base.  And that base tends to believe in the vision of the legendary Al Davis: Just Win Baby.  Thus the ongoing domestic conflict over Iraq and the war on terror.

So let us rise above all this and listen to the adult Michael Barone.  There have been, he asserts, two important turning points in the last year.

The first was the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006. This was intended to, and evidently did, spark an upsurge of sectarian violence -- Shias killing Sunnis and vice versa.

 The second was the Hezbollah war in Lebanon.

The Sunni Arab states viewed the Hezbollah attack -- undertaken without even the notification of the Lebanese government, yet putting Lebanon at grave risk -- as an Iranian offensive aimed at establishing something like hegemony over the greater Middle East.

So the question in the Middle East is no longer “winning” in Iraq.  It is, as it has always been since 1979, the problem of revolutionary Iran.

So now, belatedly, we are conducting a “surge” in Iraq which may have as its principal goal the reduction of Iranian influence in that war-torn country.  And there is also this.

Bush appointed an admiral to be the head of CentCom, the regional command in the area, and ordered a second aircraft carrier group sent to the Persian Gulf. This is a hugely significant move, signaling that if necessary we can bring overwhelming military force to bear against Iran, as we did in 1986-88.

Naturally the Democratic Party responded with weakness.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded by demanding that the administration not take action against Iran, and The New York Times condemned Bush for "bullying" poor, sweet little Iran.

Oh please.  The fact is that we have been at war with Iran for nearly 30 years, ever since the Iranians violated the US embassy in 1979.

And as for the idea that violence never solves anything, what about the two civil wars that the US conducted in its teenage years: one against the Brits and one against the South?  That certainly solved something didn’t it?

When Women Rule the World

What with women now outnumbering men in higher education about 60:40, it certainly seems that the writing is on the wall for the patriarchal age.

So this report on mating customs in an island off Guinea-Bissau by Rukmini Callimachi has some salience, as the social scientists say.

On this remote island the women chose their mates.  Have done since the dawn of time.

In this archipelago of 50 islands off the western rim of Africa, it’s women, not men, who choose. They make their proposals public by offering their grooms-to-be a dish of distinctively prepared fish, marinated in red palm oil.

It’s unthinkable to refuse.  Anyway, why would you want to?  But the fish ritual certainly gives a renewed power to the old wives tale that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. 

Listen to this old codger.  Before his wife to be offered him a plate of fish,

"I had no feelings for her," said Nananghe, now 65. "Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her."

Well girls, what do you think of that? 

Bush's "Reading First" Is Working

Everyone is disappointed by the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act.  It was bushwhacked by Sen. Ted Kennedy and the vital school-choice reforms were ripped out.

But don’t forget the phonics reading program, "Reading First."  It is working, and just in the way intended.

In City Journal Sol Stern tells how in a tale of two school districts.

One of the districts, in Richmond, Virginia, is a classic inner-city disaster.

Until 2001, Richmond’s student test scores were among Virginia’s worst. Only five of the district’s 51 schools achieved the status of full state accreditation.

But in 2001, Richmond switched to a phonics-based reading program.

By the time Reading First funds were available in 2002, Richmond was already up and running with a phonics-based reading program called Voyager Universal Literacy. The district channeled the modest $450,000 Reading First grant into a handful of its lowest-performing schools. But the principles of scientific reading instruction took hold throughout the district.

The results were dramatic.  Since switching to a phonics-based reading program in 2001,   

Richmond’s test scores have skyrocketed. By 2003, the number of the district’s schools achieving full state accreditation had climbed to 22. The next year, it rose to 39 and has now reached 44.

 Next door to Richmond is the rich suburban Fairfax school district, but with black students who aren’t doing so well.  Well, who cares about them!  You’d be surprised.

Richmond’s third-grade reading scores are closing in on wealthy Fairfax’s scores for all its students, 79 percent of whom passed the third-grade reading test in 2005. Since enacting its reforms, Richmond has moved from 114th in the state in reading (out of 132 districts) to 50th, compared with Fairfax’s 36th.

Imagine!  The poor kids in Richmond are doing almost as well as the rich kids in Fairfax.  Why is that, do you think? 

Fairfax uses a "whole language" reading method, and people have noticed.  According to activists Maria Casby Allen and Rick Nelson:

“Richmond scores rose dramatically after schools adopted science-based reading programs four years ago,” whereas Fairfax “was eligible for federal and state Reading First funding but objected to the science-based reading component.”

Fairfax, you see, uses a reading instruction system that has absolutely no confirmation in science-based research and is damned if it is going to change its failing reading program for one that been tested in peer-reviewed scientific research.

This tale of two school districts has unfolded something like Reading First’s framers had hoped. One district implementing Reading First principles showed dramatic reading improvement in its low-performing schools. As the good news spread, some parents and teachers in another district wanted to know why their schools weren’t using the methods that were working magic elsewhere. Nelson and Allen failed to convince district officials, but they’re not giving up. “Parents everywhere should compare the performance on third-grade tests of Reading First schools and other schools “then publicize the results,” says Nelson. “Parents should also ask questions such as: ‘What are your state and locality doing to train teachers in science-based reading instruction?’ ”

All this is going on below the media radar, and maybe it’s just as well.  Meanwhile another generation of children is being flushed down the toilet.

A System of Patronage So Vast...

Every three months the excellent Theodore Dalrymple reports on the utter waste and degradation of the welfare state in Britain.  And in the Winter 2007 edition of City Journal he explains how it really works.  For he asks: How is it possible for the welfare state to sustain failure on such a massive scale?

It is simple, really.  Failure is the whole point.  It is failure that justifies the whole system, the pyramid of patronage we call the welfare state.

At the bottom of the heap is the failed underclass. Their failure justifies the vast social service bureaucracy; their continued failure justifies a bigger social service bureaucracy.

But that is just the start.  For the failure concept works inside the bureaucracy.  in his book Wasting Police Time, policeman

[David] Copperfield recounts how, in 1999, a police officer said to a black motorist, who did not answer a question, “Okay, so you’re deaf as well as black.” The report of the official inquiry into the subsequent complaint had 62 pages of attachments, 20 pages of witness statements, and 172 pages of interview transcripts. Legal and disciplinary proceedings took 19 months to complete.

Do you see the beauty of this?  Think of the jobs, the promotions, the careers in that official inquiry.  Think of the jobs, the promotions, the careers spawned by it in programs to combat the crisis of “institutional racism” in the police force.  What’s the point of actually doing policing?  Much better to be doing nice safe internal investigations.

There’s the mystery of why the government education system in both Britain and the United States have insisted on using the ineffective “whole language”" reading system for over a century instead of the proven “phonics.”

It’s simple really.  What is the point of using a system like phonics that teaches children to read in six weeks?  Where are the jobs, the pensions in that?  Much better to use a failed method that requires remedial programs and studies and more funding to compensate for the expensive failures.

Higher up the food chain are the expensive consultants and their massive project failures.

[In] management consultant David Craig’s recent book, Plundering the Public Sector. Craig catalogs what at first sight seems the almost incredible incompetence of the British government in its efforts to “modernize” the public administration.

They have spent $60 billion (yes, billion) on an IT system for the National Health Service that doesn’t work.  But that is not the real source of waste.

Projects routinely get canceled after $400— $500 million has been spent on them. Modernization in Britain’s public sector means delay and inefficiency procured at colossal expense.

But that’s the point, you see.  What does it matter if the system is wasteful and expensive and the system gets canceled.  It all greases the patronage system.  The consultants still get paid, and demonstrate their appreciation in the traditional way.

This is all so obvious, that we should ask ourselves how come it took so long to figure it all out. In the immortal words of fictional silent screen star Lina Lamont: Are We Dumb or Something?  Of course the whole thing is a big patronage system.  That is what politicians do to get elected.  Always have, always will.

The state has become a vast and intricate system of patronage, whose influence very few can entirely escape. It is essentially corporatist: the central government, avid for power, sets itself up as an authority on everything and claims to be omnicompetent both morally and in practice; and by means of taxation, licensing, regulation, and bureaucracy, it destroys the independence of all organizations that intervene between it and the individual citizen. If it can draw enough citizens into dependence on it, the central government can remain in power, if not forever, then for a very long time, at least until a crisis or cataclysm forces change.

 That is a long paragraph.  So let us shorten it.  When you think of the welfare state don’t think of the caring and the compassion.  That is just window dressing.  Think of the power and the patronage.  Then everything starts to make sense.

Climate Change: Government Scientists vs. Deniers

Who are you gonna believe, the government-funded scientists on the UN’s IPCC and their fourth assessment of climate change.  Or is it still possible that the Sun did it?  New York Times reporters Elisabeth Rosenthal and Andrew C. Revkin give us the bad news:

In a bleak and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate change scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

Well, that sounds like it is all over.  Except for one thing.  Should we respond to climate change by adapting to the new climate or should we try to arrest the change?

The international conspiracy of venture socialists are all agreed.  We should sacrifice and change our ways.  But they are the same people who advertise their devotion to science and the adaptive process of natural selection.

But let us give us climate deniers our moment.  Writes Jack Kelly:

Leaks of the IPCC report coincided with publication of two books which link climate change to a long, moderate solar cycle.

What’s he talking about?  Just this:

In "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years," Fred Singer and Dennis Avery present evidence of 600 moderate warmings in the last million years.

In "The Chilling Stars," Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder discuss how cosmic rays amplify small changes in the sun’s irradiance, creating 1-2 degree Centigrade cycles in temperatures on earth.

Then there is the fact that sunspots are running at a 1,000 year high. Remember, they were at a  “Maunder minimum” during the Little Ice Age that the Earth enjoyed for much of the last half millennium.

Who are you gonna believe?

Reading Tea Leaves in Iraq

The big problem for us war-mongers is to know what is really going down in Iraq.  Is Iraq in a civil war?  Is the conflict there a religious war of Sunni vs. Shia?  Is all the violence being orchestrated by Iran? Is everything lost?  Or is everyone posturing for the cameras, cynically manipulated images of violence as the cheapest way to influence US policy?

First of all, writes Iranian Amir Taheri, we should understand that the war is not simply a “sectarian” war.  A sectarian war was what they had in Yugoslavia. And he was there.

You could be sure that almost all Serbs, from the taxi driver that took you from the airport to the hotel to the nation’s leading poet, would be a sectarian - hating the Croats and the Muslims with passion.
...
Nothing of the sort exists in Iraq today. The deadly disease of sectarianism has not contaminated the majority of Iraqis. Shiites and Sunnis both organize on the basis of political affiliations and interests, rather than sectarian loyalties.

So what is going down in Iraq?

What is happening in Iraq, however, is neither a civil nor a sectarian war (although elements of both exist within the broader context). This war is a political one - between those who wish Iraq to succeed as a new democracy and those who want it to fail.

The folks who want Iraq to fail include Saddamites, “death squads financed by Tehran,” not to mention the al-Qaeda foreigners.

The question for the United States is this: What exactly does victory in Iraq mean?

Maybe it is simply this.  Defeat the Saddamites.  Defeat the Iranian death squads.  And defeat the foreign terrorists of al-Qaeda.

New Hope for School Choice

After the reupdiation of the Republican Party in November, you might be forgiven for thinking that all is lost.  But at least where school choice is concerned there are grounds for hope, according to George Will.

The public school lobby, which apparently has little confidence in its product, lives in fear of competition -- the fear that if parents’ choices are expanded, there will be a flight from public schools. But the tide is turning[.]

Of course, the public school lobby is fighting all of this.  And usually, it is fighting again and again as in Arizona where the usual suspects are gearing up for a third challenge to school choice in that state.

In Arizona, some amazingly persistent and mostly liberal people are demonstrating the tenacity with which some interests fight to prevent parents of modest means from having education choices like those available to most Americans.

But maybe, just maybe, the train has left the station. Politicians, eastern politicians are starting to push for school choice.

• Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker, a member of the board of the national Alliance for School Choice, proposes a scholarship program similar to Arizona’s...
• New York’s new Democratic governor, Eliot L. Spitzer, proposes lifting the cap that restricts the state to a mere 100 charter schools...
• Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg... [of] New York City... is dividing large schools into smaller ones, emancipating many principals to be educational entrepreneurs under a system that holds them accountable for cognitive results.

Well, it can’t come too soon. Too many millions of children have already been sacrificed on the altar of teacher tenure and teacher pensions.

Because they just don’t care about kids.

A Revolution in Black Politics

OK, let’s get serious, suggests Kay S. Hymowitz in a major article in City Journal.

What if someone gave a convention called “Black America Today” and Barack Obama, Harold Ford, Cory Booker, Bill Cosby, and Juan Williams starred as the marquee names?

 Er... What about Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the stalwarts of the Congressional Black Caucus?

That’s just the point.  There’s a new generation coming up in black politics, one that doesn’t live by the narrative of the civil rights movement.

And it’s not just in black politics, but in the economy generally.  Rising black professionals and businesspeople just don’t see everything through the lens of racial oppression.

It’s a huge article, so make some time and read the whole thing. The money graf?

For a younger generation of blacks, the symbolic, I-marched-with-Martin politics, not to mention the Jackson-style cronyism that it often degenerated into, doesn’t cut it... Instead of rights activists and ministers, many of these newcomers are lawyers or businessmen. Even though a few grew up poor, they’ve all spent their formative years swimming in the mainstream, including major universities, corporations, and law firms, and they are now solidly middle class.

Here’s how Vanderbilt political science professor Carol Swain (Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress) puts it. 

[The new generation] had white friends; they’ve had white girlfriends. They may still be frustrated by racism at times, but they’re functioning fine in the world they’re living in.

Using the developmental psychology of Clare Graves, we would say here at Road to the Middle Class that many blacks have left the world of red victimhood and power obsession.  Now they are blue purposives and orange achievers.  That makes a difference.