The Experts Can't Read

The problem with our glorious empire of experts, where experts pronounce, and we the people genuflect, is this. What if the experts are wrong, and fails to teach about 20 percent of kids to read? What if they have pronounced a one-size-fits-all regime of “whole language” reading for every schoolkid, and it turns out their program is wrong?

Don’t think about it. Just praise the lord that the experts and their political masters have
finally seen the light, as Minette Marrin does. Britain’s Labour Party has finally agreed that “whole language” reading is a disaster and now they are going to change the entire British education system to teach phonics.

But enquiring minds are bound to ask the deeper question here. Aren’t we progressive types supposed to believe in diversity, and hate monoculture? Yes, of course we do, when it comes to fields of monoculture wheat and forests of monoculture Douglas-firs. But we seem to have a blind spot when it comes to humans.

Surely, if it means anything, diversity means no one-size-fits-all programs for our nation’s children. For what if the expert designers of the one-size-fits-all program are wrong?

The trouble is, you are not allowed to tell liberals they are wrong. When liberals hear criticism, they label it hate speech.

The End of the Expert

Experts gave us the defined-benefit pension, now dying in the bankruptcies
of the steel companies and the airlines. Experts gave us Social Security
with its promise that is not a promise.
Michael Barone sees that we are moving away from all that
stuff.

But some people haven’t got the message. Democrats attacking the
president’s reform of Social Security fail to see that there is a risk
in Social Security just as there is a risk in personal retirement accounts.
But there is one difference. You can control the risk in your own
retirement account. But Social Security is different. With
Social Security you are dependent on the government. Who knows where that will end up.

Forget the Dieting!

Nutritionist Sandy Szwarc has been telling this story for some time. Studies show that dieting doesn’t work. In fact, women that diet experience worse health outcomes that women that don’t diet. Scientists conducted a randomized clinical trial of two groups of women:

For six months, half of the women participated in a traditional diet and weight loss program, complete with social support; standard nutritional guidance to moderately restrict calories, on how to count calories and fat, read food labels and shop, maintain food diaries, and monitor their weight; and were given information of the benefits of exercise and behavioral strategies for successful dieting. The other women were instructed to let go of restrictive eating habits and not weigh themselves, were counseled to eat according to their natural appetites, given standard nutritional information about healthful foods, and participated in a support group designed to help them become more accepting of their larger bodies, develop a positive self image, and enjoy their bodies.

Guess what. “While the dieting group that had initially lost weight, it had regained almost all of it two years later, while the nondieters’ weights had remained stable.” And the non-dieters showed healthier blood pressure and lower cholesterol levels.

Go on. Read it all.

Ryanair's Cost-cutting Frenzy

Did you know that Mike O’Leary, boss of Europe’s Ryanair, has now stopped employees charging
their mobiles (cellphones to you) at the office? And that they have to cadge pens
and highlighters? There’s worse. Ryanair is now charging for checked baggage. The idea is not to
make baggage a revenue item. Oh no. The idea is that
if nobody checks baggage then Ryanair can cut costs because they don’t need to pay for baggage-handling at the airport. Still not impressed?

The Scotsman, quoting Ryanair’s own figures, writes that the carrier handles 10,000 passengers per employee, compared to no-frills rivals EasyJet’s 6,300 and British Airways’ 760.

Go on. Read the whole thing, written by
Val McQueen.

Right Wing Noise Machine

Now it is John Kerry that is complaining about the right-wing message machine that is drowning out the liberal message, according to Jeff Jacoby:

’’Several times a day, their message is amplified," grumbled the former Democratic standard-bearer.`’We don’t have anything like that."

This is absurd, as Jacoby writes. Sure there is Fox and Rush Limbaugh and The Washington Times. But there is also CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, etc.

But the question is: do the Democrats really believe this stuff, or are they just blowing smoke to rile up their supporters? It is beginning to appear that they really believe their own propaganda. And that is not good. Not for them, and not for America. The worst lies are the lies that we tell to ourselves.

America's Polarized Politics

Used to be that liberals were liberals before they were Democrats, and conservatives were conservatives
before they were Republicans. Not any more. The extinction of the Southern Democrats means that
all the conservatives live in the Republican Party, according to
Bruce Bartlett.

On top of that is the little problem for the Democrats that the middle class votes for the Republican Party.
The moderate Democrats are trying to understand what is going on, writes
Stephen Dinan.
They have found that, viewed from the
perspective of family income, the Republican Party gets a majority a mere $5,000 above the poverty line.

Among white voters, President Bush got a majority of support beginning at an income threshold of $23,300 -- about $5,000 above the poverty level for a family of four.

Only African American voters do not trend Republican as income rises to middle-class levels.

Reacting to Globalization

Tony Blankley puts the French “non” in the context of
“globalization and its reaction.” Everyone is putting their
own spin on the event, just as everyone put their spin on the results
of the presidential election last fall. But
Blankley
asks us to step back a little
and think more generally.

But globalization and its reaction are the big facts of our era. The Islamist insurgency and terror is part of that reaction. Pat Buchanan’s protectionism and America Firstism is part of that reaction. And Europe’s vote Sunday is another form of the Great Reaction to globalization. In ways either benign or malignant, peaceful or violent, conservative or radical, the peoples of the world are beginning to defend their cultures against the cold, soulless intrusion of the globalizing leviathan. The struggle is only beginning. It will, in the end, transform our ways of life.

Actually, we could paint an even broader canvas. Globalization has
been going on for the last 500 years. And everywhere it has been it has extinguished
comfortable, face-to-face society with the challenge of indirect, contractual
and market relations. Let’s see now, it all seems very familiar:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Thanks Chuck. We needed that.