To The Trans-National Elite the Nation State is a Dirty Word

Remember this. The folks at the New York Times really don’t buy into all this stuff about nation states and fighting against evil-doers. They belong to the secular trans-national elite that subscribes to a faith that we are beyond atavisms like nationalism. Or at least we soon will be.

For these advanced folks, cycles of violence are caused by roots causes such as oppression. In fact, if you look at any conflict in the world, you will discover that at the root of it is the oppression of some marginalized group, whether people of color, gays, or the Palestinian people.

So we really should not be surprised or even outraged about the revelation of the “secret program of combing through a vast international data base containing banking transactions involving thousands of Americans,” as Eric Lichtblau and Sheryl Gay Stolberg put it.

If you work for the New York Times you probably believe that the War on Terror is a put-up job, a Pentagon plan hatched up with the Religious Right to take over the world.

The outrageous thing is that the disclosures of secret information about tactics and methods used by the United States government in pursuing terrorists makes the task of our fighting men more difficult. Maybe it will even result in people being killed.

The nation state has been a boon to the ordinary people of Europe and North America. It has freed them from the face-to-face community of blood kin, and created a successful, though abstract locus for their loyalty and belonging. And even in the bloody twentieth century only 5 percent of males were killed in wars, as opposed to 20-40 percent in primitive societies.

But the trans-national elite is above all that. They sneer at the miraculous nation state. They want to move on to bigger and better things, a global state without all the mess of democracy, a state that they will control, or think they will.

Ordinary people would do well to resist the plans of the trans-national elite and shame the newspaper that broadcasts to terrorists the operational plans and intelligence methods of the United States government.

Education Myths

Do you believe in myths? Of course you do. Everyone does. Especially if you define myth the way that Eric Voegelin does, as compact knowledge.

But we are talking here about education myths, which means things you know that ain’t so. And probably you know them because some special interest has made sure you know what isn’t so.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Jay Greene has put together some education myths that we have all been carefully taught.

Myth One: Education is Underfunded. Not so. We’ve been putting more and more money into education over the last half century. Fortunately we have an assessment method to tell us if the money we’ve been spending has improved educational outcomes.

For twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP [National Assessment of Education Progress] scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years.

Myth Two: Teachers are Underpaid. No they are not.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor show that in 2002, elementary school teachers averaged $30.75 per hour and high school teachers made $31.01. That is about the same as other professionals like architects, economists, biologists, civil engineers, chemists, physicists and astronomers, and computer systems analysts and scientists.

Of course, teachers only work 7.3 hours per day and have three months off in summer. They therefore have an option that the rest of us do not have. They can work or take the three months off.

Myth Three: Insurmountable Problems. Schools are helpless in the face of social problems. No they are not. Some states punch above their weight, for instance Texas, which does better than you would expect given the social problems in the state. And some states do worse: Louisiana, for example. And then there is accountability and choice. Schools do better when they are held to account and when students have a choice.

Myth Four: Class Size. Research shows that small classes may improve student performance. But according to Greene, the research is difficult to evaluate because of methodology problems. What is clear is that significant class size reduction would be enormously expensive.

Myth Five: Teacher Certification. Everyone wants to make sure that teachers are certified to teach their subject matter. But studies show that certification and masters’ degrees don’t make any difference.

One of the strongest and most consistent findings in the entire body of research on teacher quality is that teaching certificates and master's degrees in education are irrelevant to classroom performance.

Myth Six: Rich Schools. “[P]rivate schools do better than public schools only because they have more money, recruit high-performing students, and expel low-performing students.” Not true.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average private school charged $4,689 per student in tuition for the 1999?2000 school year. That same year, the average public school spent $8,032 per pupil.

Catholic schools, of course, spend even less per student.

Myth Seven: Voucher Don’t Work. The media is reporting the voucher experiment as though the results aren’t yet in. But they are. Vouchers improve student performance. The only question is, by how much?

The truth is that, so long as there is a government education monopoly, there will be education myths. The stakes are too high to let the truth alone. So every one of us is called to witness to the truth. And the truth is: government education stinks.

Are You Boring or Bonkers?

Which would you rather be? Boring or bonkers? According to Peggy Noonan, the Republican Party honchos think their base is boring. But the Democratic Party leaders think their base is bonkers.

She’s probably right. It is probably true that the Republican leaders think that:

They know the higher wisdom on such issues as immigration... have a more nuanced sense of reality. And as for conservative social issues groups, the politicians resent those nagging, whining pushers-for-the-impossible who are always threatening to stay home or go elsewhere. (Where?)

Nothing there that a good sharp blow between the eyes won’t cure. But pity the poor Democratic leadership.

They don't only think they're more sophisticated than their base, more informed and aware of the complexities. I believe they think their base is mad.

OK. So all this makes for a good article when you can’t think of anything else to write about. But let us not be misled by our cynicism. Peggy Noonan is telling us that the system is working.

Despite their annoyance, our political elites have to think about what the people are thinking, they have to keep themselves aligned with the irritating activists in their respective parties. That is good and healthy.

You do not get that impression, for instance, when reading about politics in Britain. In that crime ridden country, the Labour Party has almost completely forgotten its working-class base in its frantic effort to make itself palatable to Middle England. And the Tory Party under David Cameron is steering dangerously far away from its conservative, middle-class base in an effort to woo the upscale professionals who deserted the “nasty” party to vote for Tony Blair.

In Britain, the two major parties take their bases completely for granted. In the US, the two major parties only wish they could.

And that may be as good as it gets.

School Choice, Inch by Inch

There are three million children in America condemned to attending failed schools. Republicans are trying to do something about it. Sometimes even Democratic governors lend a hand.

In Arizona this year, the legislate is “enacting four new or expanded programs allowing disadvantaged children to attend private schools,” according to Clint Bolick of the Alliance for School Choice.

Bolick presents the Arizona gains as representative of a new strategy for the school choice coalition.

Instead of taking the unions and their massive resources head-on, advocates are adopting toe-hold strategies, pursuing small programs addressing specific problems that are difficult for politicians to oppose.

And so inch by inch, school choice is moving the chains up the field.

But what about those three million children in failing schools? Under the No Child Left Behind Act they are supposed to be allowed to transfer to another school within the district. Only there typically aren’t enough places.

For Democrats who truly believe in social justice, that presents a terrible dilemma: Either forcing children to remain in schools where they have little prospect for a bright future, or enlisting private schools in a rescue mission.

Which is, Republicans would say, exactly where we want them. And it is part of the Republican grand strategy: forcing Democrats to choose between social justice, helping kids and poor people, or hanging onto their power and their sinecures.

Brits Look Through "Broken Windows"

Remember “Broken Windows” policing? That’s the approach to policing introduced into New York City by Police Commissioner Joseph Bratton and Mayor Rudi Giuliani a decade ago.

Do you remember the results? Excellent! Murder down by 76 percent from 2,262 to 540 per year. Rapes down by 44 percent. And so on.

And let us not forget to credit the conservative scribblers and foundations that proposed all this: James Q. Wilson. Myron Magnet. Manhattan Institute. City Journal.

So now, as the crime rate in Britain spirals into the stratosphere, now, finally, New Labour under Tony Blair have invited the “Broken Windows” crew to Britain to talk about their experience. Gee. After, all crime has merely increased by 2,300 percent in Britain in the last century. It might be time to do something about it.

The Spectator’s Alistair Heath got to talk to Joseph Bratton. Bratton is now the police chief in Los Angeles.

‘You can do something about crime. You can control it,’ Bratton said. ’The American experience has clearly proven that. In the 1990s we finally got it right. It’s like a doctor dealing with a patient. If you find the right medicines, you can take even the most severely ill patients and make them well. And you’re probably one of the most severely ill patients of the Western world. You need political will. You need smart policing, intelligence-led policing, you need resources. This is not rocket science. Fighting crime is not the most difficult thing in the world.’

Actually, better than fighting crime would be to end the social pathologies in the inner cities introduced by liberal social welfare programs, but that’s too much to ask for.

So what should be done? The first requirement is large numbers of police officers... Officers have to pursue seemingly minor crimes that, if left unattended, soon undermine order, especially ‘quality of life’ offences such as graffiti, litter or vandalism — hence ‘broken windows’ policing. The police must... tap local knowledge and identify the small core of offenders responsible for much of the crime... [L]ocal commanders must be penalised if crime doesn’t fall in their area.

Like they say. This is not rocket science. But it does involve accountability. That could be a problem, for the politicians of the British Labour Party, like politicians generally, are not exactly into accountability.

Republicans and Race

Our national schizophrenia about race is never so blatant than when a columnist wonders what Republicans should do to attract African American voters to the “R” column.

For Clarence Page the answer is simple. Republicans should offer race-conscious policy to blacks.

For instance, he commends former Congressman Jack Kemp for an article in Human Events in which he recommends trolling for black votes by

extending all of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, parts of which are set to expire next year, and "by extending the voting franchise to the residents of District of Columbia

But then Page explains why blacks started voting for Democrats in the first place.

Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater's opposition to that Civil Rights Act turned black voters heavily in favor of Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and simultaneously lost Southern white voters to Johnson's party, as Johnson predicted it would. To black voters, the act of sacrificing political capital is true heroism, especially on behalf of equal rights.

Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act because he thought it was racist. The reward for his principled stand was to be tarred as a racist.

As it turned out, of course, Goldwater was right. Despite the noble intentions of 1964 the Civil Rights Act was used to reinject race and quotas into American politics and poison race relations ever since.

If blacks believe in “equal rights” then by all rights they should oppose the extension of the Voting Rights Act, which had a race-conscious rationale of supervising the election laws of southern states to make sure that they didn’t discriminate against blacks. Maybe a temporary race-conscious act was necessary forty years ago to crack the whip over southern states, but in 2006?

The problem with Republicans is that they persist in looking at Americans as Americans, not as race victims. African Americans won’t start voting Republican until they stop seeing everything through the lens of race.

The uncomfortable fact is that the name for a person whose politics is mostly determined by race is: Racist.

World Community Joins US on Missile Defense

All right-minded people are strongly opposed to rogue states like North Korea and Iran getting nukes, and rightly so.

So all right-thinking people deplore the actions of North Korea in fueling up an intercontinental missile capable of reaching the United States.

But how bad are things, really?

The United States took the opportunity of announcing that it was making operational its ballistic missile interceptors based in Alaska and California, according to Alan W. Dowd.

And of course the bellicosity of North Korea and Iran is influencing other minds. Slowly but surely, the US is building its International Missile Defense (IMD) system, not just in the US, but across the world.

As the technological pieces fall into place, so too does the IMD alliance: The Polish and Czech governments are negotiating with Washington on the deployment of anti-missile bases on their soil, enabling the IMD system to peer deep into Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The Poles have even expressed a willingness to open their territory to missile interceptors.

NATO has just published a report declaring IMD feasible.

And the Japanese are getting up off their Japan knees and joining the IMD coalition too.

[T]he Japanese system already includes a network of new ground-based radars; SM-3 interceptors, which attack incoming missiles at their highest point; missile-tracking Aegis warships, which patrol near rogue countries; and Patriot PAC-3s, which serve as a last line of defense.

It’s odd. The MSM would have us believe that the whole world is united against the US aggression in the Middle East. But here we have everyone signing up to become a part of our missile defense system.

And why not? One fine day, one of these rogue states is actually going to fire off one of their missiles.

It wouldn’t hurt if the US and its allies could shoot it down.