Tony Kushner got one.
He wrote about ethnic cleansing and tried to lie his way into the position that Israel should never have been created.
Someone on the board at CUNY disagreed with giving him an honorary degree. Gosh, Brandeis gave him one in 2006, they're that intelligent, how come CUNY isn't intelligent enough to give him one?
As Prager says, "You can't be too far left."
I was a student at UCLA in the second half of the Seventies. That being the decade after the Sixties, one would think that the acceptability of leftwing thought would have been at its zenith, but no, students incapable of analyzing the intellectual iconoclasm of "question authority" graduated, finished growing up, and became college professors. They settled in nicely to reform the world by passing on their extreme leftism. Their students, the next generation of Americans, graduated around the turn of the century.
I knew this bunch, I was one of them, I lived among them, and despite the desperate measures UCLA took to keep students from meeting, discussing, hashing out, learning from one another, or making friends, I had many many political discussions with many of the roughly forty people who hung around the computer club in the Seventies. Most of them were liberal. I was liberal. We agreed that liberalism was good. We agreed that we were better people because we were liberals. We knew that our opinions were higher and more noble than any other opinions, because they came from around the world as well as from our own liberal roots that we had acquired in high school and even in junior high, though this varied from student to student.
We knew that "share the wealth" was good. We knew that capitalists were greedy bastards who kept other people from sharing in the immense bounties of this country. We knew, too, that this country had within it the resources to make everyone rich if they didn't fight the opportunity. Sure, there were lazy bastards who were just fine with being poor. But these lazy bastards tended to have children, and their children would grow up poor, deprived, malnourished, lacking opportunities, and educated to be like the rest of the Great Unwashed America.
That's right. Everyone else was a great unwashed one. We were the privileged knowledgeable few. That's because we were leftists and leftists always knew better.
This is liberalism. This is the self-aggrandising of all liberal and leftwing opinion. Left is good, conservative is evil. Nazis were right wingers, therefore right wingers are Nazis. Communism was good. Equality of all is what this country was founded on and this is a value we need to enforce today, even if it means legal strictures and the force of law. Inequality means persecution, oppression, and exploitation, all of which are straight from the devil. Therefore conservatives are demons and their ideas are demonic. Repress and suppress them, throw rocks at them, kill them.
My point is, or would have been if I had the energy to finish what I was driving at, that my university was so damned leftist there was no room for dissent or disagreement, and no need for discussion. And that's why today no conservative gets those honorary degrees or speaking engagements on anything like par with the leftist professors, guest authors, opinion wonks, and journalists from any college or university in this country.
Monday, May 9, 2011
"Noam Chomsky thinks Bush is much worse than Bin Laden."
What else do you need?
Chomsky, as a representative of the far left, and unfortunately one whom the press listen to as if he were authoritative on the subject of politics rather than on his field of expertise--linguistics!--is a nut. And he says stupid things like this, and has done all his life. How can you listen to someone from the far left any more than you listen to someone from the far right? It's because you've kidded yourself for years into believing that Leftist thought is normative and right wing thought is just evil. Nothing but evil, and needs to be attacked and degraded whenever possible, such that all right wingers become monsters, demons whom listening to is an act of evil.
This keeps the leftwing mind solidly closed. It's exactly like greeting a Jehovah's Witness at your door.
Chomsky, as a representative of the far left, and unfortunately one whom the press listen to as if he were authoritative on the subject of politics rather than on his field of expertise--linguistics!--is a nut. And he says stupid things like this, and has done all his life. How can you listen to someone from the far left any more than you listen to someone from the far right? It's because you've kidded yourself for years into believing that Leftist thought is normative and right wing thought is just evil. Nothing but evil, and needs to be attacked and degraded whenever possible, such that all right wingers become monsters, demons whom listening to is an act of evil.
This keeps the leftwing mind solidly closed. It's exactly like greeting a Jehovah's Witness at your door.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Idiot talker on Matt Lauer show.
On pathetic guest wants to whine over whether it's okay to cheer when the good guys kill the bad guys. "Is this justice or is it vengeance?" she howls, obviously unable to make any moral discernment. Apparently this product of the public schools, or perhaps of Crossroads School in western Los Angeles, is completely unacquainted with the concept of "justice". For decades (at least since the Sixties), her mentors have supplied her with the notion that all justice is just vengeance, apparently because no justice is allowed ever to be something that is dispensed in order to bring an element of "just (i.e. fair, righteous) consequences" to any action.
"Your children have already seen images of people celebrating the death of someone," says Lauer, to which I add: "Yup, and probably been spared a lifetime of nightmares because of it." When Prager said it was good for children to see good triumph over evil and it was good to see that "good men kill bad men" I remembered my childhood and how those ideas were reinforced by every good-guy/bad-guy show we ever watched. You'll note that even though MacGyver never once used a gun, he still managed to kill bad guys pretty often, almost every episode in fact.
Remember, it's the Left who gave us children who cry at the thought of Global Warming, and before them these children cried at the thought of A-bombs blowing them up in their sleep.
"Your children have already seen images of people celebrating the death of someone," says Lauer, to which I add: "Yup, and probably been spared a lifetime of nightmares because of it." When Prager said it was good for children to see good triumph over evil and it was good to see that "good men kill bad men" I remembered my childhood and how those ideas were reinforced by every good-guy/bad-guy show we ever watched. You'll note that even though MacGyver never once used a gun, he still managed to kill bad guys pretty often, almost every episode in fact.
Remember, it's the Left who gave us children who cry at the thought of Global Warming, and before them these children cried at the thought of A-bombs blowing them up in their sleep.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
"Republicans praise Obama; do you think it would have been the other way around?"
We already have an example, wherein many democrats had already offered some praise for George Bush's actions, but then were apparently instructed in how they ought to hhave twisted the event to the negative and criticized Bush for doing what he did.
I refer specifically to what Bush was doing on the morning of 9-11, reading a book to a kindergarten class. His aide leaned down and whispered the news of the destruction of the twin towers in New York City. Bush only paused for a moment, nodeed to the aide, and went calmly forward and finished the book.
At first the democrats having anything to do with the situation actually commended him for his calmness, praising him for not leaping to a panic, jumping out of his chair, frightening the kids, causing terror all around, and so forth. But within a few days, the song they were singing had acquired quite a few sour notes. Bush SHOULD have stopped reading and rushed off to Air Force One to hurry back to the White House.
This is a plainly idiotic approach to take. What was Bush supposed to do from the White House? He had everything he always takes with him, right there with him. So does Obama. I would be appalled if Obama were stupid enough to jump out of his chair and knock children flying as he rushed off to do NOTHING USEFUL.
But that's always the way with the Left. Ignore the issues, ignore the debate, just attack the person. Shame on you people. Well, at least you're consistently shameful.
I refer specifically to what Bush was doing on the morning of 9-11, reading a book to a kindergarten class. His aide leaned down and whispered the news of the destruction of the twin towers in New York City. Bush only paused for a moment, nodeed to the aide, and went calmly forward and finished the book.
At first the democrats having anything to do with the situation actually commended him for his calmness, praising him for not leaping to a panic, jumping out of his chair, frightening the kids, causing terror all around, and so forth. But within a few days, the song they were singing had acquired quite a few sour notes. Bush SHOULD have stopped reading and rushed off to Air Force One to hurry back to the White House.
This is a plainly idiotic approach to take. What was Bush supposed to do from the White House? He had everything he always takes with him, right there with him. So does Obama. I would be appalled if Obama were stupid enough to jump out of his chair and knock children flying as he rushed off to do NOTHING USEFUL.
But that's always the way with the Left. Ignore the issues, ignore the debate, just attack the person. Shame on you people. Well, at least you're consistently shameful.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Guest David Aaronovitch, author of "Voodoo Histories"
I had to look this up first because I wanted to know who the author was, since I missed his name in the intro.
He's rather interesting, and it would be very nice to silence all the people shrieking "conspiracy! conspiracy!" Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Yes, he sure was a big fat nothing, and for this one big nothing to change history by killing John Kennedy is a bit appalling a thought, but it was the case. This half-wit, failure of a man wanted to impress the KGB so he could get a job with them and become important. That's all there was to it, period.
I do believe in a couple of conspiracies. I don't know whether Vince Foster committed suicide or not, but I do believe the evidence was tampered with and that that his office had evidence removed from it and probably destroyed. His briefcase was on tape being emptied, searched, and even turned upside down on two? occasions before the thirty-two separate pieces of the putative "suicide note" (with one piece missing, very conveniently the one containing his signature) fluttered out of it, which I believe is utterly impossible. The handwriting experts declared that note to be a rather sad forgery. What do I think really happened? I have no idea, but wherever he died, he left no blood or brain spatter in Ft. Marcy Park, and his hand had no powder residue on it.
A fuller version from the documents.
The other conspiracy theory is much more significant. It involves the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. The Soviet government and Armand Hammer and Hammer's little puppetboi doctor, Robert Gale, all conspired to vastly diminish the body count to one or two percent of the actual number. I have it on good authority from the real head of the oncology team, that the dead must have numbered in the four digits as was originally reported by ham radio operators on the scene the first night after the release happened. "Considering that I was doing transplants on truck drivers who had spent just an hour in the area and then driven straight back out again," he said, "the ham reports had to have been much closer to the actual number of dead than the offical number" which claims only 32 dead.
Our press has never questioned the official Soviet statemtent, never delved into the mystery, but our press was then (and still is) full of overgrown hippies who honestly LIKED the Soviet Union and never once suspected its officials of wishing to hide something like a huge body count.
My disclaimer: I am not generally a conspiracy adherent. Rather, I believe in little conspiracies, a couple of people destroying evidence shouldn't stretch your imagination too far. The Foster conspiracy wouldn't have involved more than three or four people, all of them political buddies with much to lose. Apparently someone wanted to protect the Clintons from too careful a scrutiny, of the few people involved, most of the involvement would have been over politics. The left wingers would have been highly motivated to keep silence.
As for the Chernobyl incident, I will say first that I am not a nuclear power opponent; far from it. In fact I pretty much agree with Prager when he says "I would volunteer to store nuclear waste in my back yard." I do believe the Soviet government was unbelievably shoddy in their health and safety practices (we have seen how they will dump toxic waste into rivers, for example) because they didn't care a bit about the safety of their citizens, nor or their workers, any more than they cared about the deaths of six to twelve million Ukrainians during the thirties. The safety measures on that power plant were inadequate and the plant was not kept in good repair. When people died, who cared? Certainly not America. Not enough to expose their shoddiness, anyway, but just enough to halt the construction of more nuclear plants in our own country and across the Third World as well. Very smart.
I'm hearing Aaronovitch list a couple of real conspiracies. Michael Medved believes there are NO conspiracies. Maybe he defines "conspiracy" differently than I do.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Prager: "You don't get lied to by the media, you get filtered news."
Well, yes, that's probably their favorite way to lie to you, by not telling you a big chunk of the news. Want an example? The Clinton Administration decided they could juggle the numbers of unemployed. They quit counting anyone who was still looking for a job after 18 months, later 2 years. The administration shifted its unemployment count from the inner cities, where unemployment was very high, to the suburbs, where it was relatively quite low. They phased in the new numbers over several months so that the unemployment rate would appear to decline. And lazy newspeople just went along with it. So sure, it's the media going along with democrats and presenting only the favorable side of most issues.
But Prager then added, "When the media quote a statistic like 'four million Americans are out of work,' I believe that statistic."
Well, maybe you should reconsider that, then, Prager. They told us, as you mentioned, that thirty thousand women a year DIE of anorexia, when the true number is "perhaps as many as five" given by the Department of Health. Not five thousand, just ... five. Or the other statistic they love to quote, that "women are still earning only seventy cents for every dollar that men earn." Which is only true when read with very narrow definitions. In all other senses, women are doing better than men. Deliberate misconception.
Further, the Old Stream Media will tell you all sorts of b.s., from "Bill Clinton has created 12 million jobs" (one of his campaign themes for 1996) to "Over a hundred murders in the football stadium in the aftermath of Katrina." Sometimes it's just neglect and laziness, but those are still false numbers and if you trust them, you're being fooled.
I'm sure any sentient American who has been reading the papers for more than six months can come up with dozens more examples.
But Prager then added, "When the media quote a statistic like 'four million Americans are out of work,' I believe that statistic."
Well, maybe you should reconsider that, then, Prager. They told us, as you mentioned, that thirty thousand women a year DIE of anorexia, when the true number is "perhaps as many as five" given by the Department of Health. Not five thousand, just ... five. Or the other statistic they love to quote, that "women are still earning only seventy cents for every dollar that men earn." Which is only true when read with very narrow definitions. In all other senses, women are doing better than men. Deliberate misconception.
Further, the Old Stream Media will tell you all sorts of b.s., from "Bill Clinton has created 12 million jobs" (one of his campaign themes for 1996) to "Over a hundred murders in the football stadium in the aftermath of Katrina." Sometimes it's just neglect and laziness, but those are still false numbers and if you trust them, you're being fooled.
I'm sure any sentient American who has been reading the papers for more than six months can come up with dozens more examples.
Why wasn't the war against Ho Chi Minh noble?
Because North Vietnam was communist. Anything anti-communist was bad here in Sixties America.
I haven't heard Prager use the term "anti anti-communist" in a couple of years. It's a very useful term, he should start using it again.
But as I started to say, anything anti-communist was bad here in Sixties America; the hippies redefined our language and took over the goods and bads and evils in our culture, so that eventually even a simple phrase was sufficient to eviscerate the argument, the position, the arguer, all in one two-word phrase. "You're so middle class" would shoot down everything the person had said, was then saying, and ever would say in the entire remainder of his existence. "Don't be so judgemental" would shut them up forever, at least in the presence of the judging anti-judger, who forever owned all arguments and all righteousness.
The judges of righteousness also dismissed capitalism forever as "evil" and "selfish". Discrimination, including discriminating against evil, was bad, though it was certainly okay to discriminate against conservatives and Republicans and against white men (and soon after, against white boys).
They used the same rhetoric to eliminate majority positions all across Western civilization. It became embarrassing to believe in God (Flying Spaghetti Monster or sky fairies) though it was okay to believe in Buddha, Vishnu, Khali, engrams, Allah, chakras, your horoscope, and all sorts of other stupidities. Patriotism was mocked, making money became filthy, opposing high taxes was "racism" (if you don't remember that, you shouldn't vote)--because they assumed in a most racist manner that the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth were all black.
I haven't heard Prager use the term "anti anti-communist" in a couple of years. It's a very useful term, he should start using it again.
But as I started to say, anything anti-communist was bad here in Sixties America; the hippies redefined our language and took over the goods and bads and evils in our culture, so that eventually even a simple phrase was sufficient to eviscerate the argument, the position, the arguer, all in one two-word phrase. "You're so middle class" would shoot down everything the person had said, was then saying, and ever would say in the entire remainder of his existence. "Don't be so judgemental" would shut them up forever, at least in the presence of the judging anti-judger, who forever owned all arguments and all righteousness.
The judges of righteousness also dismissed capitalism forever as "evil" and "selfish". Discrimination, including discriminating against evil, was bad, though it was certainly okay to discriminate against conservatives and Republicans and against white men (and soon after, against white boys).
They used the same rhetoric to eliminate majority positions all across Western civilization. It became embarrassing to believe in God (Flying Spaghetti Monster or sky fairies) though it was okay to believe in Buddha, Vishnu, Khali, engrams, Allah, chakras, your horoscope, and all sorts of other stupidities. Patriotism was mocked, making money became filthy, opposing high taxes was "racism" (if you don't remember that, you shouldn't vote)--because they assumed in a most racist manner that the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth were all black.
Prager to caller: "YOU called the HUGH HEWITT show?!?!"
Oh, shut up. I don't like you belittling other talk show hosts, even if you imagine that he's your friend. Yes, his audience is down; is this a lame attempt by you to drive it down further?
There ya go again, interrupting the caller and stealing the call.
Welp, I complain when Prager interrupts a caller, pounces in the call, and takes it away from them. It's especially bad when he only does it to gloat, "Oh! I know! I've been saying this for twenty years!"
Prager, we already know you're God's gift to intellectual life.
This particular caller was about to tell us when a certain situation (I can't even remember what the issue was because you pounced on it before she could finish her sentence) when a certain situation was especially acute. I wanted to hear her thought because it seemed to be some bad kind of thinking or behavior we have control over and which I could work on if I had that problem too.
You kept me from hearing it, thanks a lot.
Prager, we already know you're God's gift to intellectual life.
This particular caller was about to tell us when a certain situation (I can't even remember what the issue was because you pounced on it before she could finish her sentence) when a certain situation was especially acute. I wanted to hear her thought because it seemed to be some bad kind of thinking or behavior we have control over and which I could work on if I had that problem too.
You kept me from hearing it, thanks a lot.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Oh, the domestic bliss
I am watching "Footsteps in the Dark" on TCM.
This movie was made in 1941. The hero is a banker, therefore he's rich. He's Errol Flynn, in fact. He's sitting downstairs first thing in the morning, at the breakfast table, which is in the morning room and not in the dining room. The morning room is a nice, cheery, bright room, just perfect for sitting at the cloth-covered table and enjoying your morning paper before the wife and mother(-in-law?) arrive for their breakfast. He's wearing a suit.
Here come the ladies. The wife is beautifully dressed in a day dress with a sweater over it, and the mother is similarly dressed for her day. Flynn jumps up and holds the chair for his mother(-in-law?) and then seats his wife as well.
Life is beautiful.
Do I think this is view of living is unrealistic? No, not for their class (clearly upper middle). I think it's unrealistic for the rest of the country but they would have loved to have been thus blessed.
May it be so for me, some day.
This movie was made in 1941. The hero is a banker, therefore he's rich. He's Errol Flynn, in fact. He's sitting downstairs first thing in the morning, at the breakfast table, which is in the morning room and not in the dining room. The morning room is a nice, cheery, bright room, just perfect for sitting at the cloth-covered table and enjoying your morning paper before the wife and mother(-in-law?) arrive for their breakfast. He's wearing a suit.
Here come the ladies. The wife is beautifully dressed in a day dress with a sweater over it, and the mother is similarly dressed for her day. Flynn jumps up and holds the chair for his mother(-in-law?) and then seats his wife as well.
Life is beautiful.
Do I think this is view of living is unrealistic? No, not for their class (clearly upper middle). I think it's unrealistic for the rest of the country but they would have loved to have been thus blessed.
May it be so for me, some day.
Accidentally rich
Fairness, blessings, luck, birth, who knows what makes people rich? It couldn't be hard work. Or planning for your future. Or saving your money. Or investing in yourself. Or investing in an idea you had. Or doing extensive reading outside school. Or training any skill, especially if it takes study or practice. Those are all evil phrases.
I hate to tell you this, Dennis, but all of this is the watchword of the redneck community. There is very little "invest in yourself" or "get an education" or "save for the future" or ANYthing that would make a future for a family richer and better. The rednecks I know either dropped out of high school and made up for their lack of a degree with a GED, or they just shuffled their feet through high school, reading only Harry Potter or vampire stories to feed their minds. They know they're unemployable and are content to get minimum-wage menial jobs at Burger King of Walmart. They don't like the work and they don't care about the income so they quit (without notice) when they tire of the job, usually in just two to six months. They live in trailers provided by their parents on land owned by their parents, but at least they're not paying mortgages. They buy a six-year-old car from that lady they know from church, and then bitch for the rest of the vehicle's life that that rotten woman sold them a rotten car.
They used to vote in a solid block for Democrats, because of the promise of handouts. Most of them are still getting handouts anyway. But they switched to Republican based on conservative values. They hate the "teach a man to fish" message but underneath all their laziness and lack of worrying about their future, there is the knowledge that the republican life plan (get an education, start a business) has a better future possibility for them than the Democrat life plan (put out your hand and we'll put something very small in it). Even though the majority of them have no idea how to live that plan.
An aside quote: The Left love bumper stickers like "War is not the answer". Actually they like to say, "War is never the answer." This bumper sticker fully demonstrates the shallowness of Leftist thinking. Try asking one of them (as Prager frequently does), "So how should we have dealt with Adolf Hitler?"
They have no answer, but they will soon figure out something flippant and shallow, generally attacking the person who asked them that question. "You're on the oil companies' payroll" if nothing else comes to mind.
I hate to tell you this, Dennis, but all of this is the watchword of the redneck community. There is very little "invest in yourself" or "get an education" or "save for the future" or ANYthing that would make a future for a family richer and better. The rednecks I know either dropped out of high school and made up for their lack of a degree with a GED, or they just shuffled their feet through high school, reading only Harry Potter or vampire stories to feed their minds. They know they're unemployable and are content to get minimum-wage menial jobs at Burger King of Walmart. They don't like the work and they don't care about the income so they quit (without notice) when they tire of the job, usually in just two to six months. They live in trailers provided by their parents on land owned by their parents, but at least they're not paying mortgages. They buy a six-year-old car from that lady they know from church, and then bitch for the rest of the vehicle's life that that rotten woman sold them a rotten car.
They used to vote in a solid block for Democrats, because of the promise of handouts. Most of them are still getting handouts anyway. But they switched to Republican based on conservative values. They hate the "teach a man to fish" message but underneath all their laziness and lack of worrying about their future, there is the knowledge that the republican life plan (get an education, start a business) has a better future possibility for them than the Democrat life plan (put out your hand and we'll put something very small in it). Even though the majority of them have no idea how to live that plan.
An aside quote: The Left love bumper stickers like "War is not the answer". Actually they like to say, "War is never the answer." This bumper sticker fully demonstrates the shallowness of Leftist thinking. Try asking one of them (as Prager frequently does), "So how should we have dealt with Adolf Hitler?"
They have no answer, but they will soon figure out something flippant and shallow, generally attacking the person who asked them that question. "You're on the oil companies' payroll" if nothing else comes to mind.
"[Obama] wrote two autobiographies that earned him millions of dollars..."
I'm pretty sure Obama didn't write these. Wasn't there a statement from one of his friends, Chillsomething, Billsomething? that said Ayers had written the books. In fact, I was reading "Dreams" when I heard someone from somebody's radio audience assert that the style of "Dreams" was so radically different that Obama could not possibly have written both books.
Frankly, I don't see Obama as a writer. Or as an anything. His writing style is illiterate, and his handlers would never trust him with such a task.
Frankly, I don't see Obama as a writer. Or as an anything. His writing style is illiterate, and his handlers would never trust him with such a task.
"The Left honors graffiti-ers"
It was the Left who saw the graffitists as poor, oppressed, underprivileged KIDS just trying to express themselves in a way that "society" ("the Man", the oppressors) won't "allow" them to do. Then we romanticized their collective "free spirits" for breaking out of the bondage of "societal rules" * and demanded no punishment for their vandalism and soon we were demanding that our cities set aside legitimate places for the eyesores they liked to put on public places.
Never mind that most of what they spraypainted in plain sight on public walls was full of obscenities and was meant to set apart gang territories, thus giving a new rationale for even more crime. What mattered most was simply that the leftist had given the criminal what he wanted, and more societal chaos had resulted, which made the Leftist feel very good about himself as an "original thinker" and "free spirit".
*(I believe their apologists found high validation in thinking they had "recognized" nobility in their souls whereas society had only seen crime, vandalism, and evil before)
Never mind that most of what they spraypainted in plain sight on public walls was full of obscenities and was meant to set apart gang territories, thus giving a new rationale for even more crime. What mattered most was simply that the leftist had given the criminal what he wanted, and more societal chaos had resulted, which made the Leftist feel very good about himself as an "original thinker" and "free spirit".
*(I believe their apologists found high validation in thinking they had "recognized" nobility in their souls whereas society had only seen crime, vandalism, and evil before)
"Uh, how am I going to make money?"--It's a pretty damn noble thing, how am i going to make money.
"Manliness was, when I was growing up, supporting a family."
How can I argue with this? He's right. When we were growing up, manliness was supporting a family. By the time I got to college, at the great advanced age of 21, and found my way into the Computer Club at the great advanced age of 25, manliness had become focusing on yourself, not worrying about anyone but yourself, if it feels good do it, why should these two people who can't make each other happy any more stay in an unhappy marriage. A man who put other people before himself was a wuss, a giver, a weakling. The bible of righteous human rights included only one commandment: take care of Number One, because if you don't love yourself first, you can't love anyone else.
That's why capitalism is so horrible in post-modern America. Capitalism is all about human needs and wants (in that order) driving supply and demand. Horrible! And I don't understand how our hippies, who were ALL leftists, could make the demand to love yourself first, and on the other hand make the claim that loving one's own needs and wants was an evil thing. I suspect the only difference, that the former is an ideal and the latter is physical, material, based in the real world.
How can I argue with this? He's right. When we were growing up, manliness was supporting a family. By the time I got to college, at the great advanced age of 21, and found my way into the Computer Club at the great advanced age of 25, manliness had become focusing on yourself, not worrying about anyone but yourself, if it feels good do it, why should these two people who can't make each other happy any more stay in an unhappy marriage. A man who put other people before himself was a wuss, a giver, a weakling. The bible of righteous human rights included only one commandment: take care of Number One, because if you don't love yourself first, you can't love anyone else.
That's why capitalism is so horrible in post-modern America. Capitalism is all about human needs and wants (in that order) driving supply and demand. Horrible! And I don't understand how our hippies, who were ALL leftists, could make the demand to love yourself first, and on the other hand make the claim that loving one's own needs and wants was an evil thing. I suspect the only difference, that the former is an ideal and the latter is physical, material, based in the real world.
Guest: Allison Armstrong
I caught the last half of this show when it was live. I regretted missing it. Today I should have known she would be among his "best of" shows, and yet I still managed to miss the first half. She's a magnificent speaker. Both sexes should listen to what she says because she speaks truth to ignorance.
Among the ignorant I count every American woman who has ever listened to her feminist foremothers, and every American male who doesn't know that his wife has been heavily influenced by these harpies posing as women posing as men-without-penises. Man haters. Their battle cry: "We want to be like you but only after we destroy you and everything you are." That is why we have the war on masculinity.
Okay, I caught the repeat broadcast on KHNR.
Just the notes:
Issue one: The eighteen minutes. That's "a quickie" to the rest of us.
Men do this all the time, and women do not understand it at all.
(Well, I do.) I love having a quickie with the man I love, if there's a man to love. I was married 23 years to a piece of garbage who didn't want to get divorced but he still wanted to treat me like crap. He'd ignore me for months at a time, and then out of the blue want a quickie. That was horrible. Had he been affectionate and or attentive during those intervening weeks and months, I'd have been delighted to rush to the bedroom for some fun and some man-pleasing, but since his primary mode was humiliation and hatred and distancing himself from both me and the children, it felt far more abusive than anything else. Yes, I showed him often that I was "on his side". Unfortunately that merely served as a malicious opportunity to kick me and crap on me emotionally.
Problem: the man who is out for days at a time. Her tearful delivery: You don't call, you don't ask, you never want to know how I'm doing, you're not interested, you think I'm nothing, cry cry cry.
Prager's solution: Pick up the damn phone and call, once a day and ask how she is.
Armstrong's advice: Learn ahead of time what she wants to be asked about, even if that means asking her directly. Prager's cautionary: Isn't that like the "what do you want for your birthday" question, that is so often rebuffed with, "you should know without my telling you."
Armstrong: Women have diffuse awareness. We have this enormous data base of preferences. This is how we know what you put in your coffee. This is how we know whether it's a yogurt day or a banana day. Men don't do this. So when YOU don't know whether I like cream in my coffee, we begin with, "you don't love me." Meanwhile, you're focused on catching that deer for the dinner table.
Caller: How do you strengthen your marriage if you're resentful of your husband because he's too busy?
I missed the answer. Something about pride. I would also ask if it's about the power struggle. That's what everything was attributed to by my husband's counselor.
After I got to sit down and talk to that counselor, though, the counselor found herself again and again looking at my husband and asking him, "did you really do that???" After the usual pause, he would give a very unexpected, "she deserved it." Counselor's response, "But Steve, that's abusive!"
Nuff said.
Among the ignorant I count every American woman who has ever listened to her feminist foremothers, and every American male who doesn't know that his wife has been heavily influenced by these harpies posing as women posing as men-without-penises. Man haters. Their battle cry: "We want to be like you but only after we destroy you and everything you are." That is why we have the war on masculinity.
Okay, I caught the repeat broadcast on KHNR.
Just the notes:
Issue one: The eighteen minutes. That's "a quickie" to the rest of us.
Men do this all the time, and women do not understand it at all.
(Well, I do.) I love having a quickie with the man I love, if there's a man to love. I was married 23 years to a piece of garbage who didn't want to get divorced but he still wanted to treat me like crap. He'd ignore me for months at a time, and then out of the blue want a quickie. That was horrible. Had he been affectionate and or attentive during those intervening weeks and months, I'd have been delighted to rush to the bedroom for some fun and some man-pleasing, but since his primary mode was humiliation and hatred and distancing himself from both me and the children, it felt far more abusive than anything else. Yes, I showed him often that I was "on his side". Unfortunately that merely served as a malicious opportunity to kick me and crap on me emotionally.
Problem: the man who is out for days at a time. Her tearful delivery: You don't call, you don't ask, you never want to know how I'm doing, you're not interested, you think I'm nothing, cry cry cry.
Prager's solution: Pick up the damn phone and call, once a day and ask how she is.
Armstrong's advice: Learn ahead of time what she wants to be asked about, even if that means asking her directly. Prager's cautionary: Isn't that like the "what do you want for your birthday" question, that is so often rebuffed with, "you should know without my telling you."
Armstrong: Women have diffuse awareness. We have this enormous data base of preferences. This is how we know what you put in your coffee. This is how we know whether it's a yogurt day or a banana day. Men don't do this. So when YOU don't know whether I like cream in my coffee, we begin with, "you don't love me." Meanwhile, you're focused on catching that deer for the dinner table.
Caller: How do you strengthen your marriage if you're resentful of your husband because he's too busy?
I missed the answer. Something about pride. I would also ask if it's about the power struggle. That's what everything was attributed to by my husband's counselor.
After I got to sit down and talk to that counselor, though, the counselor found herself again and again looking at my husband and asking him, "did you really do that???" After the usual pause, he would give a very unexpected, "she deserved it." Counselor's response, "But Steve, that's abusive!"
Nuff said.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Ultimate Issues Hour. Book: In Defense of Faith, by David Brog
Prager: "This is a desert-island book."
"If you read this, I benefit. Yes, if you read this, the world becomes a better place, so I benefit."
This is on my wish list now.
"If you read this, I benefit. Yes, if you read this, the world becomes a better place, so I benefit."
This is on my wish list now.
Global Warming hysteria
Roy W. Spencer is the principal climate researcher at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
Spencer: "Of the billions that the U.S. Government has poured into climate research, absolutely none has gone into studying the possibility that the warming we have observed over the last hundred years might be natural."
Here is Spencer's most recent book. If you've been stucked in by Al "The Debate is over!!!!" Gore and his ilk, I strongly suggest you read it:
And this one is just awesome:
AND you should go to your Netflix account and search for The Great Global Warming Swindle (or failing that, it's on YouTube) which was made in response to the shoddy science and outright lies contained in "An Inconvenient Truth". I cannot give you a link because whoever posts it, it gets taken down again on copyright violations.
Of course the planet is warming. We're coming out of a great Ice Age that ended less than ten thousand years ago. Earth's average temperature is higher than our average temperature today, and the standard temp is trying to make its way back up to where it belongs. And you want to spend trillions of dollars and sacrifice the standard of living worldwide so that we can keep the globe's temperature artificially low? Even if we could do it, you would be on the wrong side of the issue.
I hope you'll watch that movie all the way to the end. You'll see a mother, her baby on her back, stoking a crappy wood-burning fire to cook the family's dinner. And you'll look into the eyes of a small child who may or may not die from breathing problems from living in that crappy hut while breathing that crappy air. You'll see the country doctor whose village has been forced to go without electricity because their stupid solar panels aren't sufficient to run both the clinic refrigerator and anything else.
That's YOUR doing, you're a fat juicy comfortable overfed American and in spite of your teachers constantly bellyaching about "understanding other societies" you've never been exposed to anything outside your fat, happy society besides teenage sitcoms and funny cartoons. You're content with your life and if you bothered, you could heat ten fat, happy American houses with the solar panels you could afford, but because you know absolutely nothing about science, economics, social science, history, other societies, other ways of life, or anything else, you think it's just fine to make these unwashed, dirty little jungle dwellers live the live you would lead by choice. Only you don't realize you'd be putting all your little greenie energy savings on your nice, insulated airy little American home, instead of on the extremely un-nice, un-airy, uninsulated little third world hovel, and making life fiercely miserable for them. And all in the name of some phony feel-good mission to "save the world", which you actually are arrogant enough to believe you can do.
SHAME ON YOU
Me, I want to stop throwing millions and billions of dollars to crappy dictators who slaughter Hutus, Ethiopians, and anyone else they want to slaughter, and start sending soldiers with construction crews over there to build power plants, nuclear plants, hydroelectric plants, and anything else they need.
Spencer: "Of the billions that the U.S. Government has poured into climate research, absolutely none has gone into studying the possibility that the warming we have observed over the last hundred years might be natural."
Here is Spencer's most recent book. If you've been stucked in by Al "The Debate is over!!!!" Gore and his ilk, I strongly suggest you read it:
And this one is just awesome:
AND you should go to your Netflix account and search for The Great Global Warming Swindle (or failing that, it's on YouTube) which was made in response to the shoddy science and outright lies contained in "An Inconvenient Truth". I cannot give you a link because whoever posts it, it gets taken down again on copyright violations.
Of course the planet is warming. We're coming out of a great Ice Age that ended less than ten thousand years ago. Earth's average temperature is higher than our average temperature today, and the standard temp is trying to make its way back up to where it belongs. And you want to spend trillions of dollars and sacrifice the standard of living worldwide so that we can keep the globe's temperature artificially low? Even if we could do it, you would be on the wrong side of the issue.
I hope you'll watch that movie all the way to the end. You'll see a mother, her baby on her back, stoking a crappy wood-burning fire to cook the family's dinner. And you'll look into the eyes of a small child who may or may not die from breathing problems from living in that crappy hut while breathing that crappy air. You'll see the country doctor whose village has been forced to go without electricity because their stupid solar panels aren't sufficient to run both the clinic refrigerator and anything else.
That's YOUR doing, you're a fat juicy comfortable overfed American and in spite of your teachers constantly bellyaching about "understanding other societies" you've never been exposed to anything outside your fat, happy society besides teenage sitcoms and funny cartoons. You're content with your life and if you bothered, you could heat ten fat, happy American houses with the solar panels you could afford, but because you know absolutely nothing about science, economics, social science, history, other societies, other ways of life, or anything else, you think it's just fine to make these unwashed, dirty little jungle dwellers live the live you would lead by choice. Only you don't realize you'd be putting all your little greenie energy savings on your nice, insulated airy little American home, instead of on the extremely un-nice, un-airy, uninsulated little third world hovel, and making life fiercely miserable for them. And all in the name of some phony feel-good mission to "save the world", which you actually are arrogant enough to believe you can do.
SHAME ON YOU
Me, I want to stop throwing millions and billions of dollars to crappy dictators who slaughter Hutus, Ethiopians, and anyone else they want to slaughter, and start sending soldiers with construction crews over there to build power plants, nuclear plants, hydroelectric plants, and anything else they need.
Friday, April 15, 2011
"And they still say the death penalty isn't a deterrent"
Yes, well, it is just stunning what the Left will say. And that means they will say anything they damn well please, all they have to do is like what they're saying.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Well, my headphones have crashed
I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. My headphones have given out. I hope to get a replacement pair soon. Till then I can't hear Prager's show. Sorry.
"People don't send their kids to college to learn ..."
"...They send their kids to college to have a B.A." Or a B.S., of course.
Holding a bachelor's degree used to be meaningful. It is no longer and that's why holding that degree is also worth so little, and I'm saying "little" in practical terms, not in terms of income.
I entered UCLA at the age of 21 in 1974. As a lover of learning and an avid pursuer of knowledge, I was eagerly looking forward to any and all the classes I could take from such a huge place with fifty thousand students and a catalogue several hundred pages thick, full of classes.
At that university, I found students who were terribly dulled and jaded, just as those in my high school classes had been. Information was to be acquired only for the sake of passing the final exam. The classes meant nothing. Learning interfered with the events of real life, like partying and having fun. And the real goal of taking classes was to get training in a very narrow field, the one you had chosen as your major. Thus, whatever would make you useful as a chem lab tech, those were the only classes you wanted. Or engineering classes or librarian classes. Taking a foreign language was foolish, learning math if you were going to be an English teacher was such a waste of time. Who needed to know history? only the fools who took those useless classes, and on and on.
I took a class I thought would be really exciting, "The history of science." When I arrived in the lecture on the first day, I saw that almost every single student was an Asian male, and was to learn that just about every one of them was a computer major. There was no attempt to teach anything historic about the history of science; rather he wrote formulae on the board. This was a history class and satisfied the breadth requirements for "social sciences" but never did the prof try to tie in any history, thus guaranteeing that these poor ignorant students got NO information outside their majors.
It seemed that eighty percent of the school population was that way. "Just teach me what I have to know for my profession, and then I'm out of here." The liberal arts students were somewhat less restricted in their outlook, but only because they were interested in the liberal arts, which covers a larger range of subjects and fields.
Dorothy Sayers in 1948 delivered a monograph on this problem, titled "The Lost Tools of Learning?" in which she describes how students do not and will not understand how all knowledge is interconnected and why a chemistry major just might be interested in art, an idea which apparently in her day was just as lost as it was in my day, and indeed I believe it still is today, forty years later.
It has to do with critical thinking. But my generation did away with every vestige of respect that Americans had for critical thinking. We told our teachers we didn't want them to tell us what to think, but how to think. And yet our idea of "how to think" was mere leftist propaganda. We bashed American society and the American economic system. We bashed everything that the "old thinkers", like our parents or their parents, had ever believed. We "questioned authority", which invariably meant anything any authority had to say, we dismissed as evil before we ever bothered questioning it. We taught our children that learning history was stupid because it was "past" and "irrelevant to today". We encouraged each other to understand that rules were bad, breaking them was much smarter; that discipline was just a phantom of the old regime (that would be everything America respected that came before rock 'n roll) trying to keep everyone down.
Get Sayers' essay, I have been recommending it to friends for thirty years.
or this version which includes several of her essays:
Creed or Chaos? Including the Lost Tools of Learning
This book, a follow-up to Sayers's theme, has made a big hit among the classical-education advocates:
Holding a bachelor's degree used to be meaningful. It is no longer and that's why holding that degree is also worth so little, and I'm saying "little" in practical terms, not in terms of income.
I entered UCLA at the age of 21 in 1974. As a lover of learning and an avid pursuer of knowledge, I was eagerly looking forward to any and all the classes I could take from such a huge place with fifty thousand students and a catalogue several hundred pages thick, full of classes.
At that university, I found students who were terribly dulled and jaded, just as those in my high school classes had been. Information was to be acquired only for the sake of passing the final exam. The classes meant nothing. Learning interfered with the events of real life, like partying and having fun. And the real goal of taking classes was to get training in a very narrow field, the one you had chosen as your major. Thus, whatever would make you useful as a chem lab tech, those were the only classes you wanted. Or engineering classes or librarian classes. Taking a foreign language was foolish, learning math if you were going to be an English teacher was such a waste of time. Who needed to know history? only the fools who took those useless classes, and on and on.
I took a class I thought would be really exciting, "The history of science." When I arrived in the lecture on the first day, I saw that almost every single student was an Asian male, and was to learn that just about every one of them was a computer major. There was no attempt to teach anything historic about the history of science; rather he wrote formulae on the board. This was a history class and satisfied the breadth requirements for "social sciences" but never did the prof try to tie in any history, thus guaranteeing that these poor ignorant students got NO information outside their majors.
It seemed that eighty percent of the school population was that way. "Just teach me what I have to know for my profession, and then I'm out of here." The liberal arts students were somewhat less restricted in their outlook, but only because they were interested in the liberal arts, which covers a larger range of subjects and fields.
Dorothy Sayers in 1948 delivered a monograph on this problem, titled "The Lost Tools of Learning?" in which she describes how students do not and will not understand how all knowledge is interconnected and why a chemistry major just might be interested in art, an idea which apparently in her day was just as lost as it was in my day, and indeed I believe it still is today, forty years later.
It has to do with critical thinking. But my generation did away with every vestige of respect that Americans had for critical thinking. We told our teachers we didn't want them to tell us what to think, but how to think. And yet our idea of "how to think" was mere leftist propaganda. We bashed American society and the American economic system. We bashed everything that the "old thinkers", like our parents or their parents, had ever believed. We "questioned authority", which invariably meant anything any authority had to say, we dismissed as evil before we ever bothered questioning it. We taught our children that learning history was stupid because it was "past" and "irrelevant to today". We encouraged each other to understand that rules were bad, breaking them was much smarter; that discipline was just a phantom of the old regime (that would be everything America respected that came before rock 'n roll) trying to keep everyone down.
Get Sayers' essay, I have been recommending it to friends for thirty years.
or this version which includes several of her essays:
Creed or Chaos? Including the Lost Tools of Learning
This book, a follow-up to Sayers's theme, has made a big hit among the classical-education advocates:
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
"Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America"
I couldn't take notes from this interview but this guy knows what he's talking about. This book is now on my Amazon wish list.
"The Right has no desire to tell a woman what she can do with her body."
First off, both sides have equal guilt in this area. You can only consider it bad if you think NO ONE should tell anyone what to do with their body but in fact no one minds when we tell MEN what to do with their bodies, unless you belong to that fair sized fraction of people who think drugs should be legal.
At any rate, we want to tell both men and women not to stick drugs in their bodies. We restrict prescription drugs. We try to keep people from committing suicide. We tell people they can't sell their body parts. We try to ban them from collecting money for having sex. No one is allowed to sell his body into slavery.
So the claim that no one has any right to tell a woman what she can do with her own body is hogwash.
But Prager's assertion that the Right has no desire to tell a woman what she can do with her body is also not true. The distinction is that the Left also wants to tell her what to do with her body, but they don't demonize the things the Left want to impose, only what the Right want to impose.
Thus, the Leftist claim is only to want normative things, which aren't worth worrying about and aren't worth demonizing. Those are things from the Right. Thus it's possible, even easy, for the Left to claim that they don't want to tell a woman what she can and can't do with her body, but the Right *cuss mumble* sure do!
At any rate, we want to tell both men and women not to stick drugs in their bodies. We restrict prescription drugs. We try to keep people from committing suicide. We tell people they can't sell their body parts. We try to ban them from collecting money for having sex. No one is allowed to sell his body into slavery.
So the claim that no one has any right to tell a woman what she can do with her own body is hogwash.
But Prager's assertion that the Right has no desire to tell a woman what she can do with her body is also not true. The distinction is that the Left also wants to tell her what to do with her body, but they don't demonize the things the Left want to impose, only what the Right want to impose.
Thus, the Leftist claim is only to want normative things, which aren't worth worrying about and aren't worth demonizing. Those are things from the Right. Thus it's possible, even easy, for the Left to claim that they don't want to tell a woman what she can and can't do with her body, but the Right *cuss mumble* sure do!
"The Left is always angry"
They would dispute this. The Left doesn't know itself.
"The further (you mean 'farther') Left you go the more anger there is."
They thrive on being more ready to spot a problem than the more moderate people in this country, and more ready than anyone on the Right, who are so damn stupid they can't recognize a problem to save their souls. Thus, "Left is smart, smarter than centrists, way smarter than conservatives (who are all imbeciles, of course)."
It goes back to the heirarchy of goodness, on top of which all leftists live and from which all leftists draw their meaning.
"The further (you mean 'farther') Left you go the more anger there is."
They thrive on being more ready to spot a problem than the more moderate people in this country, and more ready than anyone on the Right, who are so damn stupid they can't recognize a problem to save their souls. Thus, "Left is smart, smarter than centrists, way smarter than conservatives (who are all imbeciles, of course)."
It goes back to the heirarchy of goodness, on top of which all leftists live and from which all leftists draw their meaning.
Monday, April 11, 2011
14,000 Votes uncounted
I'm listening to Charlie Sykes's podcast from Friday, 2011-04-08 (yymmdd, always!).
Apparently the leftist judge claimed a clear victory with only 206 votes' margin ahead of her opponent.
Then Kathy Nicholas, a competence-challenged voting official, realized that a clerical error had misreported the number of votes for the more conservative candidate. No "found ballots", no "uh oh, this voting machine had a short in it and the republican gets more votes", it was purely a number that had been written down and relayed incorrectly to the central voting committee.
Needless to say, the left has gone unhinged. Oh, by the way, the seven thousand vote gap in the other direction is now "too close to call." What is the matter with our left, that reality can change so quickly with them? It was not so when I was a liberal back in the Sixties. We were maybe a little nutty but in no way did we alter reality like that.
Want any other examples? Conservative talk radio hosts, back when Clinton was president, used to get a steady stream of callers (they didn't put all of them on air, of course, but it amounted to several a day) demanding that the host "Show respct to the office of the President. I don't care how you feel about Clinton himself, you dis him and you dis the office and you gotta stop that, now!"
They were, of course, seminar callers, or people who had heard other seminar callers and picked it up from them. The goal was to stifle all criticism of the democrat.
And then came G.W. Bush and the democrats who were so harshly demanding "respect for the office" totally vanished and left behind "well, he deserves it."
Totally gone was any idea that "respect for the office" meant anything. Totally gone was the underlying assumption that we're all better off when there's civil discourse instead of criticism.
Gag me with a spoon!
Addendum: Search for Wisconsin Kathy Nicholas election and read the hatred and the spitting and fuming and the calls for lynching and impeachment from places like HuffPo. Do you think these jackasses called for impeachments when Al Franken and his lawyers found four hundred new votes? (I always wondered how they assumed that the fourth count was more accurate than the first count. Answer: because they found more votes for a democrat.)
Apparently the leftist judge claimed a clear victory with only 206 votes' margin ahead of her opponent.
Then Kathy Nicholas, a competence-challenged voting official, realized that a clerical error had misreported the number of votes for the more conservative candidate. No "found ballots", no "uh oh, this voting machine had a short in it and the republican gets more votes", it was purely a number that had been written down and relayed incorrectly to the central voting committee.
Needless to say, the left has gone unhinged. Oh, by the way, the seven thousand vote gap in the other direction is now "too close to call." What is the matter with our left, that reality can change so quickly with them? It was not so when I was a liberal back in the Sixties. We were maybe a little nutty but in no way did we alter reality like that.
Want any other examples? Conservative talk radio hosts, back when Clinton was president, used to get a steady stream of callers (they didn't put all of them on air, of course, but it amounted to several a day) demanding that the host "Show respct to the office of the President. I don't care how you feel about Clinton himself, you dis him and you dis the office and you gotta stop that, now!"
They were, of course, seminar callers, or people who had heard other seminar callers and picked it up from them. The goal was to stifle all criticism of the democrat.
And then came G.W. Bush and the democrats who were so harshly demanding "respect for the office" totally vanished and left behind "well, he deserves it."
Totally gone was any idea that "respect for the office" meant anything. Totally gone was the underlying assumption that we're all better off when there's civil discourse instead of criticism.
Gag me with a spoon!
Addendum: Search for Wisconsin Kathy Nicholas election and read the hatred and the spitting and fuming and the calls for lynching and impeachment from places like HuffPo. Do you think these jackasses called for impeachments when Al Franken and his lawyers found four hundred new votes? (I always wondered how they assumed that the fourth count was more accurate than the first count. Answer: because they found more votes for a democrat.)
The only place to get clarity about America ...
...was in a foreign country that had experienced it.
Poles, Czechs, Cambodians, know about evil, they know what to avoid. They know that "America establishes bases on foreign soil" isn't the most horrific act on earth. France, Germany, England, Canada don't have a clue and that's why they can crap on us for our "evil" and ignore Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao.
And once they have that achievement under their belts, our own "college-educated", self-styled "intelligentsia" start digging in and label us evil. Sadly they carry a lot of weight, because we're so enamored of their certificates and degrees, and the unintelligent middle of this country latch onto "liberalism" to borrow status from the illuminated ones and thus climb the intellectual ladder.
Don't tell me I'm lying. I used to be one of them and I, too, borrowed status from the self-labeled "intelligent" position. "I'm smarter than you and my heart is better than yours: I'm a socialist." Credit by association. It's vacuous.
Poles, Czechs, Cambodians, know about evil, they know what to avoid. They know that "America establishes bases on foreign soil" isn't the most horrific act on earth. France, Germany, England, Canada don't have a clue and that's why they can crap on us for our "evil" and ignore Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao.
And once they have that achievement under their belts, our own "college-educated", self-styled "intelligentsia" start digging in and label us evil. Sadly they carry a lot of weight, because we're so enamored of their certificates and degrees, and the unintelligent middle of this country latch onto "liberalism" to borrow status from the illuminated ones and thus climb the intellectual ladder.
Don't tell me I'm lying. I used to be one of them and I, too, borrowed status from the self-labeled "intelligent" position. "I'm smarter than you and my heart is better than yours: I'm a socialist." Credit by association. It's vacuous.
Bruce Herschensohn
This is important enough to put at the top:
Bruce Herschensohn is no rabid conservative, he's just your everyday conservative. He has put together a book we all need to read, recalling what our then-leftwing Congress did, the part they played, in fluffing up our enemies and abandoning our friends.
Why would any foreign leader want to align with us, given our track record?
As Herschensohn says, "They wouldn't, they would fare much better and get more support by opposing us."
Bruce Herschensohn is no rabid conservative, he's just your everyday conservative. He has put together a book we all need to read, recalling what our then-leftwing Congress did, the part they played, in fluffing up our enemies and abandoning our friends.
Why would any foreign leader want to align with us, given our track record?
As Herschensohn says, "They wouldn't, they would fare much better and get more support by opposing us."
"My Opinion of Great Significance"
This is Prager's label for the opinion he is offering today. Calm down, he is saying it tongue in cheek, a slightly self-deprecating and slightly ironic statement.
You should be so humble.
Yes, yes, I know, he's not particularly humble in other things he's said. I get sick and tired, myself, of him bragging that he's probably one of eleven people in the nation who would be interested in this or that thing. Sorry, Prager, you're not such a rare bird. I admit that where I am now, there are no people within my acquaintance who are interested in things like that. But there are plenty of us anyway, I just don't happen to know any of them any more.
It's more to your shame that you don't, either. If your wife falls asleep when you start to tell her why and when peanuts sprout, that's your problem, and you must have married the wrong woman. But some of us really are interested in such matters and there are a helluvalot more than eleven of us.
Me, I find it fascinating that some of the people here in Kentucky STILL say "hit" when we would say "it", and that that's straight out of Middle English of approximately Chaucer's time. It amazes me that an accent could have survived so long and so far. I'm sure you're intrigued too. And there are a lot more than eleven of us.
So stop it. I know you're joking, the underestimation is deliberate for the sake of humor, but it's annoying.
You should be so humble.
Yes, yes, I know, he's not particularly humble in other things he's said. I get sick and tired, myself, of him bragging that he's probably one of eleven people in the nation who would be interested in this or that thing. Sorry, Prager, you're not such a rare bird. I admit that where I am now, there are no people within my acquaintance who are interested in things like that. But there are plenty of us anyway, I just don't happen to know any of them any more.
It's more to your shame that you don't, either. If your wife falls asleep when you start to tell her why and when peanuts sprout, that's your problem, and you must have married the wrong woman. But some of us really are interested in such matters and there are a helluvalot more than eleven of us.
Me, I find it fascinating that some of the people here in Kentucky STILL say "hit" when we would say "it", and that that's straight out of Middle English of approximately Chaucer's time. It amazes me that an accent could have survived so long and so far. I'm sure you're intrigued too. And there are a lot more than eleven of us.
So stop it. I know you're joking, the underestimation is deliberate for the sake of humor, but it's annoying.
Guest: Charlie Sykes of WTMJ
Charlie Sykes. I had never heard of him till today.
He has been with WTMJ Newsradio AM620 for almost 20 years. His show airs from 8:30 AM till 12:00 noon, Central time (9:30 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern, 6:30 AM to 10:00 AM Pacific).
There is also a podcast available on his page at WTMJ. Link to the podcast.
Sykes was on today to make the point: It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin last week, yet it slid past the Old Stream Media* with barely a whisper.
(*My term, I cannot refer to them as the Mainstream Media because that would be a lie.)
He has been with WTMJ Newsradio AM620 for almost 20 years. His show airs from 8:30 AM till 12:00 noon, Central time (9:30 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern, 6:30 AM to 10:00 AM Pacific).
There is also a podcast available on his page at WTMJ. Link to the podcast.
Sykes was on today to make the point: It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin last week, yet it slid past the Old Stream Media* with barely a whisper.
(*My term, I cannot refer to them as the Mainstream Media because that would be a lie.)
Friday, April 8, 2011
Caller: "Why do you object to abortion?"
The guy seemed utterly without a clue, completely unable to understand why the hell anyone would think the fetus was worth anything or had any value or ought to get any consideration when the mother had decided against it.
To caller: "Your son started to live with his best friend's mother???"
I'm wondering which has shocked you more, the fact that she was related to his best friend (and not as a sister) or the fact that she was undoubtedly a generation older than he was.
I agree, the close-family-and-not-a-sister relationship is somewhat weird. That would leave daughter, mother, or maybe grandmother. All of those are weird.
But I think you're just as weirded out because she's twenty to thirty years his senior. At least it struck me that way from listening to the mother's voice.
I have a friend who is now in her sixties. For the thirty years I've known her, she has consistently dated men in their twenties. I don't see anything wrong with that, I'm sorry you'll all faint over this. She's highly intelligent, well connected, she has a little money, and if any man wanted to benefit from having a mentor with connections and mature wisdom, they would have a tough time finding a better one than my friend. Trust me, if that son were a daughter aged 25 and the older partner were a man aged 52, there might be a few arched eyebrows but no one would be sobbing constantly like that dumb mother.
I agree, the close-family-and-not-a-sister relationship is somewhat weird. That would leave daughter, mother, or maybe grandmother. All of those are weird.
But I think you're just as weirded out because she's twenty to thirty years his senior. At least it struck me that way from listening to the mother's voice.
I have a friend who is now in her sixties. For the thirty years I've known her, she has consistently dated men in their twenties. I don't see anything wrong with that, I'm sorry you'll all faint over this. She's highly intelligent, well connected, she has a little money, and if any man wanted to benefit from having a mentor with connections and mature wisdom, they would have a tough time finding a better one than my friend. Trust me, if that son were a daughter aged 25 and the older partner were a man aged 52, there might be a few arched eyebrows but no one would be sobbing constantly like that dumb mother.
"The Hebrew Bible has absolutely no suggestion of female inferiority"
That depends on your definition of superiority.
Women are not allowed to be priests. That perfectly fits the definition of "female inferiority" as delivered by Sixties feminists. Nuff said.
Women are not allowed to be priests. That perfectly fits the definition of "female inferiority" as delivered by Sixties feminists. Nuff said.
"Differ"
Differ, differ, differ,
Prager, we DISAGREE. DISAGREE, DISAGREE, DISAGREE!!! Differing is something you do and it tends to be out of your control. It is not having a well-reasoned conclusion that contradicts someone else's well-reasoned conclusion. JUST STOP IT.
Prager, we DISAGREE. DISAGREE, DISAGREE, DISAGREE!!! Differing is something you do and it tends to be out of your control. It is not having a well-reasoned conclusion that contradicts someone else's well-reasoned conclusion. JUST STOP IT.
"Do you realise what our culture has become?"
I certainly do.
I was born in the Fifties, which generally means I was a product of the Sixties. But I got my cultural education from TV reruns, which I watched avidly as late as the Seventies. That means I Love Lucy, Ozzie and Harriet, Burns and Allen, Mr. Ed, Green Acres, Leave it to Beaver, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, My Favorite Martian, December Bride, Roy Rogers, Sugarfoot, Maverick, Bat Masterson, Have Gun Will Travel, the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Fury, Lassie, Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, Dragnet, the Untouchables, Perry Mason, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
People said witty things in comedies back then. Today they just say stupid or insulting things. And they say them often. Fathers really did know best and no one portrayed them as idiots. Except for Ozzie, who was somewhat of a bumbler.
Neighbors helped one another. Husbands and wives respected each other and they didn't think cheating was a really hawt idea. Most children respected their parents and mostly did what they were told. There was no cultural push to try to get away with as much as you could. Families ate together. Stay-at-home moms had a job: take care of my family, raise my kids to be good people, make my husband happy. Husbands tried to be good fathers, make their wives happy, and hold honest work to support the family.
Children played in the front yard without the terror that at any moment a total stranger would drive up, drag them into the car, and take them off to torture and death. They knew that if they broke a window with the baseball, they would have to pay for it. Come evenings, America sat in their living rooms in peace and security and didn't take cover when a car backfired. You could go for a walk without the terror of being mugged.
People followed the rules of good behavior. Most people donated time to their church or the Boy Scouts and besides being the right thing to do, it was honored as a good thing.
Then along came my generation. Baby Boomers. Smarter than any other collection of human beings that had ever existed in the history of the universe. Comprehending great profundities and thinking deep thoughts like no philosophers had ever thought before. They hit the colleges in 1964, full of their own importance and, like a plague of locusts, ready to destroy anything in their path. Tune in, turn on, drop out. If it feels good, do it. You can't love anyone else unless you love yourself first. Question authority. The Man is out to get you. That's so typically middle-class of you. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Have you seen the little piggies in their starched-white shirts. Tear down the walls.
When they said "the walls" they were thinking of the walls of "the empire", the American government that was oppressing them and limiting their freedoms so awfully. But though most of them didn't say so, they were also thinking of any rules of good conduct that hemmed them in and limited their hedonistic behavior. Make love not war. Have as many sexual partners as possible; sex has nothing to do with bonding or mating or reproduction. To hell with the consequences of your actions, there is no tomorrow because *whimper* we're all going to die in a nuclear holocaust.
One of the favorite adages of the age was, "There is no such thing as truth." Every fact was now to be called an opinion. What's true for you isn't true for me.
"What if you lived before Columbus, when you'd be burnt at the stake for believing anything but 'the world is flat'. Were you wrong when you said the world was round? Should you be burnt at the stake for saying it?"
"You think it's wrong to steal from JCPenney, but I think it's just fine because they're oppressing me and you and especially black people because they exploit us for our money and take what we have and they don't give anything back." And what's good for you isn't what's good for me.
We destroyed the idea of American society. First we denied there was such a thing, then we labeled it evil. We did away with the rules of decent behavior and with the notion that any individual owed anything to anyone else. Everyone should look after Number One always. Unless that individual owned a company, of course. And in a society where there was now no such thing as good and evil, there were many, many things we labeled "evil", because all our banning of judgements and standards only meant that conservatives weren't allowed to judge while we liberals would re-label the entire world. What was bad in the past is now good. What was good became first ridiculous, then contemptible, and is now evil. Part of a lengthy but obvious process of ruining society.
I don't think the kids who played a part in this had a clue what they were doing. They just thought they were being more clever than anyone before them had been. They were of course the first generation ever to question the existence of Jesus, ever to doubt that racism was a good thing, ever to challenge the rules of the society around them, ever to think about the meaning of life, ever to wonder what was the purpose of life, the first generation ever to understand the profundity of Catcher in the Rye, the first generation ever to understand how to enjoy life, ever to eat healthy foods, ever to think there was deep meaning to existence.
This also meant that their thoughts and judgements were not to be challenged. The rules of logic and reason did not apply; only the relativism of sentiment was to be used. And of course, since their sentiment was nobler than your sentiment, that meant you were wrong from the outset, before you even offered your challenge. But notice all the language I'm using--better, worse, judgement, noble, evil. These are the same distinctions our Sixties liberals were in the habit of making, and 90% of them have yet to realize the problem with their language.
"Thou shalt not make judgements" is in itself a judgement that judgement-making is bad, that the speaker has the right to make such a rule and expects you to agree to behave by it, that there is in fact such a thing as a right, and that this right has been established by the speaker, and that there is also such a thing as good and bad. The speaker is in a twenty-car pile-up and should bail out of thise mess, but has never ever seen the contradiction.
Try this on a Sixties liberal. He says, "There is no such thing as truth." You immediately respond with, "Is that true?"
Silence in the room for a second. He cannot say "yes, it's true" because he would be making your point. He is left with "it is not true" but he doesn't LIKE that sentence so he dodges into another universe. Either it's true for me and not for you or it doesn't mean anything in this universe or maybe since all assertions are only opinions then it's okay for one opiner to believe it and no one else is forced to and blah blah. Quite simply, in anyone's thinking, if they're practiced at thinking clearly, the sentence refutes itself and must be abandoned because you can't live by a self-referentially incoherent law.
I remember once when I was listening to Stand To Reason (str.org), which I strongly recommend to everyone who has a computer as it is broadcast over the internet (and over the radio if you're anywhere near Catalina, CA) Sunday afternoons. Greg Koukl, the host and one of the best-spoken clear thinkers in the U.S., took a call from a woman listener whom I'll call Donna. Donna opened with, "You shouldn't make judgements." Koukl came back with, "So making judgements is wrong?" Poor Donna, she should have curled up into a ball right there, apologizing profusely to Koukl, and dumped her stupid philosophy. She didn't. She couldn't, in fact, because she had lived by this stupidity for thirty years. "Of course," she replied, and went on to tell us how bad judgemental people were making the world. Koukl waited for her to take a breath, and then asked, "So why are you judging me?" Donna now did what all these fuzzy thinkers do, she replied according not to what she thought but by what feeling made her feel good. "I'm not judging you." There it was! Good people don't judge, therefore Donna wasn't judging! Koukl went on to explain how she had made some standards, lined him up against those standards, and decided that he had failed.
But believing something that is self-referentially incoherent poses no problems for liberals.
I was born in the Fifties, which generally means I was a product of the Sixties. But I got my cultural education from TV reruns, which I watched avidly as late as the Seventies. That means I Love Lucy, Ozzie and Harriet, Burns and Allen, Mr. Ed, Green Acres, Leave it to Beaver, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, My Favorite Martian, December Bride, Roy Rogers, Sugarfoot, Maverick, Bat Masterson, Have Gun Will Travel, the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Fury, Lassie, Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, Dragnet, the Untouchables, Perry Mason, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
People said witty things in comedies back then. Today they just say stupid or insulting things. And they say them often. Fathers really did know best and no one portrayed them as idiots. Except for Ozzie, who was somewhat of a bumbler.
Neighbors helped one another. Husbands and wives respected each other and they didn't think cheating was a really hawt idea. Most children respected their parents and mostly did what they were told. There was no cultural push to try to get away with as much as you could. Families ate together. Stay-at-home moms had a job: take care of my family, raise my kids to be good people, make my husband happy. Husbands tried to be good fathers, make their wives happy, and hold honest work to support the family.
Children played in the front yard without the terror that at any moment a total stranger would drive up, drag them into the car, and take them off to torture and death. They knew that if they broke a window with the baseball, they would have to pay for it. Come evenings, America sat in their living rooms in peace and security and didn't take cover when a car backfired. You could go for a walk without the terror of being mugged.
People followed the rules of good behavior. Most people donated time to their church or the Boy Scouts and besides being the right thing to do, it was honored as a good thing.
Then along came my generation. Baby Boomers. Smarter than any other collection of human beings that had ever existed in the history of the universe. Comprehending great profundities and thinking deep thoughts like no philosophers had ever thought before. They hit the colleges in 1964, full of their own importance and, like a plague of locusts, ready to destroy anything in their path. Tune in, turn on, drop out. If it feels good, do it. You can't love anyone else unless you love yourself first. Question authority. The Man is out to get you. That's so typically middle-class of you. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Have you seen the little piggies in their starched-white shirts. Tear down the walls.
When they said "the walls" they were thinking of the walls of "the empire", the American government that was oppressing them and limiting their freedoms so awfully. But though most of them didn't say so, they were also thinking of any rules of good conduct that hemmed them in and limited their hedonistic behavior. Make love not war. Have as many sexual partners as possible; sex has nothing to do with bonding or mating or reproduction. To hell with the consequences of your actions, there is no tomorrow because *whimper* we're all going to die in a nuclear holocaust.
One of the favorite adages of the age was, "There is no such thing as truth." Every fact was now to be called an opinion. What's true for you isn't true for me.
"What if you lived before Columbus, when you'd be burnt at the stake for believing anything but 'the world is flat'. Were you wrong when you said the world was round? Should you be burnt at the stake for saying it?"
"You think it's wrong to steal from JCPenney, but I think it's just fine because they're oppressing me and you and especially black people because they exploit us for our money and take what we have and they don't give anything back." And what's good for you isn't what's good for me.
We destroyed the idea of American society. First we denied there was such a thing, then we labeled it evil. We did away with the rules of decent behavior and with the notion that any individual owed anything to anyone else. Everyone should look after Number One always. Unless that individual owned a company, of course. And in a society where there was now no such thing as good and evil, there were many, many things we labeled "evil", because all our banning of judgements and standards only meant that conservatives weren't allowed to judge while we liberals would re-label the entire world. What was bad in the past is now good. What was good became first ridiculous, then contemptible, and is now evil. Part of a lengthy but obvious process of ruining society.
I don't think the kids who played a part in this had a clue what they were doing. They just thought they were being more clever than anyone before them had been. They were of course the first generation ever to question the existence of Jesus, ever to doubt that racism was a good thing, ever to challenge the rules of the society around them, ever to think about the meaning of life, ever to wonder what was the purpose of life, the first generation ever to understand the profundity of Catcher in the Rye, the first generation ever to understand how to enjoy life, ever to eat healthy foods, ever to think there was deep meaning to existence.
This also meant that their thoughts and judgements were not to be challenged. The rules of logic and reason did not apply; only the relativism of sentiment was to be used. And of course, since their sentiment was nobler than your sentiment, that meant you were wrong from the outset, before you even offered your challenge. But notice all the language I'm using--better, worse, judgement, noble, evil. These are the same distinctions our Sixties liberals were in the habit of making, and 90% of them have yet to realize the problem with their language.
"Thou shalt not make judgements" is in itself a judgement that judgement-making is bad, that the speaker has the right to make such a rule and expects you to agree to behave by it, that there is in fact such a thing as a right, and that this right has been established by the speaker, and that there is also such a thing as good and bad. The speaker is in a twenty-car pile-up and should bail out of thise mess, but has never ever seen the contradiction.
Try this on a Sixties liberal. He says, "There is no such thing as truth." You immediately respond with, "Is that true?"
Silence in the room for a second. He cannot say "yes, it's true" because he would be making your point. He is left with "it is not true" but he doesn't LIKE that sentence so he dodges into another universe. Either it's true for me and not for you or it doesn't mean anything in this universe or maybe since all assertions are only opinions then it's okay for one opiner to believe it and no one else is forced to and blah blah. Quite simply, in anyone's thinking, if they're practiced at thinking clearly, the sentence refutes itself and must be abandoned because you can't live by a self-referentially incoherent law.
I remember once when I was listening to Stand To Reason (str.org), which I strongly recommend to everyone who has a computer as it is broadcast over the internet (and over the radio if you're anywhere near Catalina, CA) Sunday afternoons. Greg Koukl, the host and one of the best-spoken clear thinkers in the U.S., took a call from a woman listener whom I'll call Donna. Donna opened with, "You shouldn't make judgements." Koukl came back with, "So making judgements is wrong?" Poor Donna, she should have curled up into a ball right there, apologizing profusely to Koukl, and dumped her stupid philosophy. She didn't. She couldn't, in fact, because she had lived by this stupidity for thirty years. "Of course," she replied, and went on to tell us how bad judgemental people were making the world. Koukl waited for her to take a breath, and then asked, "So why are you judging me?" Donna now did what all these fuzzy thinkers do, she replied according not to what she thought but by what feeling made her feel good. "I'm not judging you." There it was! Good people don't judge, therefore Donna wasn't judging! Koukl went on to explain how she had made some standards, lined him up against those standards, and decided that he had failed.
But believing something that is self-referentially incoherent poses no problems for liberals.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
"Why is God faring so poorly in Europe and America?"
Very simple explanation: Because it's so easy to paint belief in God as "anti-intellectual" and "hysterical" and "emotional" and "irrational". Sneering at people who "believe" in God is the cheap and easy way to paint yourself as an "intellectual", which is essential to the leftie ego.
You know, I'm constantly in the presence of such people. Their favorite sneer line is, "I don't believe in anything I can't see."
I immediately come back with, "Of course you do. You believe in your great-grandmother, you believe in your husband when he goes around the corner, you believe in polar bears and penguins, you believe in Cleopatra and Abraham Lincoln. You believe in DNA and x-rays. You believe in anger, love, kindness, and charity. You believe in pain and you believe in loneliness. Tell me, how much does a mile of justice weigh?"
Any one of these statements disproves their silly assertion that they don't believe in anything they can't see. You'd think that in the interest of intellectual honesty they would feel obliged to alter their tag line to fit the truth, but what usually happens is they deny that I've disproved their assertion and start calling me names or try to attack me from some other direction. Being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry. Yes, I know there are conservative atheists, but you know this is largely a liberal/conservative issue; that's why you believe all conservatives are Bible-thumping jingoists who cling to their Bibles and their guns, and that to be liberal is to be intelligent, logical, and atheistic.
Prager gave four reasons why he thinks God is faring so poorly. I missed them. I will conclude by saying only that I think it all boils down to that one answer: "I'm an atheist because I'm so smart." Every time I have had a debate or even an argument on this issue, my wonderful reasoning has flummoxed the opposition and they always, ALWAYS fall back on that answer. "I'm too smart to believe in sky fairies," or "You worship some Flying Spaghetti Monster" or some variation thereupon.
Prager once again offered a statement that "sure, of course it's all based on faith" which just makes me angry. When you say "faith" in America, most people think of "blind faith", where you don't know much, you don't have any facts, and you just take a leap into the void and hope that crystal bridge materializes sooner or later beneath your feet. That is NOT faith.
Faith, like "love", is a verb. It's what you do. Greg Koukl defines it as "putting to work your confidence that what you know to be true, works." Thus, when you sit down on a stool, you're exercising your faith that the stool has been properly glued at one time in its life and continues to hold together well enough to support your weight. But it goes deeper even than that. When you marry your sweetie, you're demonstrating your faith in the institution of marriage. When you don't force her to wear a chastity belt, you're exercising your faith in her quality and character. If you've never talked to your wife and have never learnt anything about her character, this could be blind faith, but I hope you've gotten to learn something about who and what quality she is, and your failure to purchase that chastity belt really is an expression of your well-founded (NOT blind) faith in that character.
You know, I'm constantly in the presence of such people. Their favorite sneer line is, "I don't believe in anything I can't see."
I immediately come back with, "Of course you do. You believe in your great-grandmother, you believe in your husband when he goes around the corner, you believe in polar bears and penguins, you believe in Cleopatra and Abraham Lincoln. You believe in DNA and x-rays. You believe in anger, love, kindness, and charity. You believe in pain and you believe in loneliness. Tell me, how much does a mile of justice weigh?"
Any one of these statements disproves their silly assertion that they don't believe in anything they can't see. You'd think that in the interest of intellectual honesty they would feel obliged to alter their tag line to fit the truth, but what usually happens is they deny that I've disproved their assertion and start calling me names or try to attack me from some other direction. Being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry. Yes, I know there are conservative atheists, but you know this is largely a liberal/conservative issue; that's why you believe all conservatives are Bible-thumping jingoists who cling to their Bibles and their guns, and that to be liberal is to be intelligent, logical, and atheistic.
Prager gave four reasons why he thinks God is faring so poorly. I missed them. I will conclude by saying only that I think it all boils down to that one answer: "I'm an atheist because I'm so smart." Every time I have had a debate or even an argument on this issue, my wonderful reasoning has flummoxed the opposition and they always, ALWAYS fall back on that answer. "I'm too smart to believe in sky fairies," or "You worship some Flying Spaghetti Monster" or some variation thereupon.
Prager once again offered a statement that "sure, of course it's all based on faith" which just makes me angry. When you say "faith" in America, most people think of "blind faith", where you don't know much, you don't have any facts, and you just take a leap into the void and hope that crystal bridge materializes sooner or later beneath your feet. That is NOT faith.
Faith, like "love", is a verb. It's what you do. Greg Koukl defines it as "putting to work your confidence that what you know to be true, works." Thus, when you sit down on a stool, you're exercising your faith that the stool has been properly glued at one time in its life and continues to hold together well enough to support your weight. But it goes deeper even than that. When you marry your sweetie, you're demonstrating your faith in the institution of marriage. When you don't force her to wear a chastity belt, you're exercising your faith in her quality and character. If you've never talked to your wife and have never learnt anything about her character, this could be blind faith, but I hope you've gotten to learn something about who and what quality she is, and your failure to purchase that chastity belt really is an expression of your well-founded (NOT blind) faith in that character.
The conservative question is, "Does it work?"
And the liberal questions are, "Does it look good?"
That's why they don't ask, "And did it work?"
Eighteen thousand a year spent on students. That's in NYC and Washington, D.C. and other high-paying states. It hasn't helped. Even the smaller classroom expenditures in California caused zero improvement in student achievement.
Prager asks, "Why do we need the Department of Education?"
We don't. It hasn't done a damned thing for education. As a matter of fact, because the bureaucrats entrenched there have NO CLUE what a good education looks like. However, they do know how to take authority away from the people who are actually looking the children in the face. They do know how to think up stupid, silly, nonsensical "theories", impose them on the children, turn glassy-eyed when they don't work, and pronounce that what we need is more of this stuff.
We need to get rid of this horrible, expensive bureaucracy which has presided over a horrible, horrible decline in the quality of education in this country.
That's why they don't ask, "And did it work?"
Eighteen thousand a year spent on students. That's in NYC and Washington, D.C. and other high-paying states. It hasn't helped. Even the smaller classroom expenditures in California caused zero improvement in student achievement.
Prager asks, "Why do we need the Department of Education?"
We don't. It hasn't done a damned thing for education. As a matter of fact, because the bureaucrats entrenched there have NO CLUE what a good education looks like. However, they do know how to take authority away from the people who are actually looking the children in the face. They do know how to think up stupid, silly, nonsensical "theories", impose them on the children, turn glassy-eyed when they don't work, and pronounce that what we need is more of this stuff.
We need to get rid of this horrible, expensive bureaucracy which has presided over a horrible, horrible decline in the quality of education in this country.
As a result of Obamacare
As a result of Obamacare--not the cutbacks, but the flailing struggle to make Obamacare look as if it will save costs over the old health care "system"--AARP could likely receive about a billion dollars' handout from the US Government. This is because of their medigap insurance, whereby AARP covers what is not covered by Medicare, but since it is directly reimbursed to them because of the cutback, only probably out of another account and not out of Obamacare,
AARP loves nationalized health care. They lobby for it. Democrats, heavily funded by AARP, pass the bill with the accounting trick, the gap that will make it look as if the American taxpayer is saving money.
Millions of older Americans who have not bought plans to cover this gap have to buy insurance to cover the gap from AARP. AARP receives a huge amount of money paid directly to it by the people they advocate for.
AARP's Medigap insurance covers the old folk as they go to their doctors. Younger taxpayers reimburse the doctors. AARP rakes in huge amounts of taxpayer dollars.
Get it?
Start subscribing to AMAC.
AARP loves nationalized health care. They lobby for it. Democrats, heavily funded by AARP, pass the bill with the accounting trick, the gap that will make it look as if the American taxpayer is saving money.
Millions of older Americans who have not bought plans to cover this gap have to buy insurance to cover the gap from AARP. AARP receives a huge amount of money paid directly to it by the people they advocate for.
AARP's Medigap insurance covers the old folk as they go to their doctors. Younger taxpayers reimburse the doctors. AARP rakes in huge amounts of taxpayer dollars.
Get it?
Start subscribing to AMAC.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
"Why would an ox that had gored a human be put to death?"
I had always assumed it had to do with future behavior. A lion can't find any more gazelles, or he gets too old to run after them any more. To him humans are stinky and nasty but they sure are slow. At this stage in his life, they're beginning to look more and more like dinner every day, until finally he's realizes it's the best dinner around for him. He wanders into the village where there are unsuspecting people, adults and children, not paying too much attention because hey, lions just don't eat humans and we have more important tasks to do anyway.
The lion singles out a reasonably-sized critter, one big enough to satisfy his appetite but not too large to carry. He pounces on the man, breaks his neck, the man goes limp, and the lion carries him off. Wow, that was easy, and yeah, they taste like carnivore, not at all like herbivore, but it's still edible. I know what I'm having for dinner next time.
Similarly, a circus elephant has absolutely had enough of being poked and prodded and generally jerked around. All her life she has been docile and quiet like all the other elephants in the circus. Everyone sets a good example for the other elephants and behaves and does what these humans tell them to. Finally this one snaps and stomps the hell out of her trainer. That's it! Begone! Die! And the trainer does. Wow, that's pretty easy, I got what I wanted, finally. If I keep that up, maybe now they'll stop dragging me around and making me do stupid things for them.
The dog who has attacked a human has learned how easy it is to drag them off or tear their throats out or mangle an arm (yummy, that taste of blood). Not every dog will attack people, but dogs that have attacked people ... have attacked people. Just from their past behavior we know that this dog has a people-attacking capability, therefore we have to assume that the thought of attacking people occurred to this dog at least once, and if the thought occurs to this dog again, he is more likely to act on it than is a dog to whom the thought has never occurred.
These animals are capable of doing the same thing again. It may take a year or three before they do so, but they have had one rewarding experience from the day they got angry and took it out on a human being--which is to say, they learned from experience just how easy it is to rise up against a human and win.
And so the best thing to do with these animals is to kill them, before they kill a human.
The lion singles out a reasonably-sized critter, one big enough to satisfy his appetite but not too large to carry. He pounces on the man, breaks his neck, the man goes limp, and the lion carries him off. Wow, that was easy, and yeah, they taste like carnivore, not at all like herbivore, but it's still edible. I know what I'm having for dinner next time.
Similarly, a circus elephant has absolutely had enough of being poked and prodded and generally jerked around. All her life she has been docile and quiet like all the other elephants in the circus. Everyone sets a good example for the other elephants and behaves and does what these humans tell them to. Finally this one snaps and stomps the hell out of her trainer. That's it! Begone! Die! And the trainer does. Wow, that's pretty easy, I got what I wanted, finally. If I keep that up, maybe now they'll stop dragging me around and making me do stupid things for them.
The dog who has attacked a human has learned how easy it is to drag them off or tear their throats out or mangle an arm (yummy, that taste of blood). Not every dog will attack people, but dogs that have attacked people ... have attacked people. Just from their past behavior we know that this dog has a people-attacking capability, therefore we have to assume that the thought of attacking people occurred to this dog at least once, and if the thought occurs to this dog again, he is more likely to act on it than is a dog to whom the thought has never occurred.
These animals are capable of doing the same thing again. It may take a year or three before they do so, but they have had one rewarding experience from the day they got angry and took it out on a human being--which is to say, they learned from experience just how easy it is to rise up against a human and win.
And so the best thing to do with these animals is to kill them, before they kill a human.
"Mockery is not a response"
No, but it is a reaction, which is why I hate it when Prager uses that word. "When we come back, I'll take your reactions." No, I want their repsonses, thanks. Finally, Prager got the right word.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Raising a good child
If you want to raise a good child, you must first decide that goodness is more imporatant than:
Happiness
Success
Intelligence
What's not to agree with? I wanted my children to be intelligent, of course. More than that I wanted them to appreciate their minds and wish very hard to develop them. Sadly their father didn't see the point; he had his hobbies and his laptop and he while he ignored his kids his intellectual laziness set examples for them. It was easier for them to regard roller coasters as the highest plane of existence, just as their dad did. This may be wearing off; I certainly hope so.
They did not, however, go as low as my first husband did, and claim that "all that matters in this life is to enjoy it" by having a good time. Hooray for shallowness.
Success is nice, too. You can be good on your own personal level but there are people who are good on a very grand scale, and those people do a LOT of good. That's what success is for. But if you're Good on a small scale because your resources are small, you're still good. And God bless you.
Happiness
Success
Intelligence
What's not to agree with? I wanted my children to be intelligent, of course. More than that I wanted them to appreciate their minds and wish very hard to develop them. Sadly their father didn't see the point; he had his hobbies and his laptop and he while he ignored his kids his intellectual laziness set examples for them. It was easier for them to regard roller coasters as the highest plane of existence, just as their dad did. This may be wearing off; I certainly hope so.
They did not, however, go as low as my first husband did, and claim that "all that matters in this life is to enjoy it" by having a good time. Hooray for shallowness.
Success is nice, too. You can be good on your own personal level but there are people who are good on a very grand scale, and those people do a LOT of good. That's what success is for. But if you're Good on a small scale because your resources are small, you're still good. And God bless you.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Do people filter reality through the prism of their agenda?
Absolutely! Why do liberals think that only conservatives do this? People also filter issues through the prism of their psyches.
Actually, I think I know why. When a liberal considers ANY issue, he considers his viewpoint as normative. This line, which is way left of center, is to them the center. Everything to the right of that line is "conservative" (which is how they labeled Bill Clinton "conservative", as well as Barack Obama), the line is "Mainstream", and the few things remaining on the left of that line are just "liberal" to them, never are those things "radical" or "nutty".
Actually, I think I know why. When a liberal considers ANY issue, he considers his viewpoint as normative. This line, which is way left of center, is to them the center. Everything to the right of that line is "conservative" (which is how they labeled Bill Clinton "conservative", as well as Barack Obama), the line is "Mainstream", and the few things remaining on the left of that line are just "liberal" to them, never are those things "radical" or "nutty".
"It's a conservative radioactive cloud."
Good one, Dennis. Very clever. And I expect there really are a few bloggers up at the nutty "Huffington Post" who believe this.
"Conservatives dislike being irradiated just as much as liberals do."
I don't know why liberals can't get this through their heads. We don't want to drink dirty water, either, nor breathe dirty air, but they seem to think we do. But because we disagree (NOT "DIFFER") about how to cure the problems, and even disagree on the extent and seriousness of the problem, well, that gives them all the excuse they need to start throwing all the favorite labels.
I'm reminded of a title. No, I have never read this book. You probably have been told that its author is SIXHIRB. I have listened to him for quite a few hours, and I will vouch for it that he is not. Thus, I want some day to read this book. You can read it now, though.
I'm reminded of a title. No, I have never read this book. You probably have been told that its author is SIXHIRB. I have listened to him for quite a few hours, and I will vouch for it that he is not. Thus, I want some day to read this book. You can read it now, though.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Male-Female Hour
He comes in and grabs her bottom. How do you react to this?
I love all the wives who have called in and said, "Woohoo! That's fine with me! It's the first thing on his mind, and though it might not have been the first thing on mine, I can turn in an instant and be ready for him!"
This would have been unthinkable in the Seventies among college women. Of course, if you've ever ready "The Total Woman" or "Fascinating Womanhood", both of which were huge sellers in the Seventies, you know that some women aren't so twisted up and made to be foolish as my college-educated sisters.
I'm glad Prager specified that he is talking about good marriages where there is both love and consideration on both parts.
I fully agree with the proposition that men want a lot of sex and their wives need to know that, accept it, and be ready.
Sadly, my marriage was the worst. My husband refused to pay the slightest attention to me. You may argue that I caused this to happen by being too giving and too accepting and too forgiving. My first marriage was the same way, and I just gave and gave and he started beating me and treating me like hell. I lost twenty pounds in the first three months. But we had sex every single night of the first two and a half years, and it was by my insistence. The second marriage, I tried to do the same thing, but he started turning his back on me, and it wasn't for a back massage, either. Eventually I decided I must be putting him off by trying to initiate it as often as I did, and we found he was only interested once every few months. But, since sex with him hurt, I didn't complain much.
Matters outside the bedroom were particularly telling. He'd come home from work without announcing his entrance. If I happened to be in another part of the house where I couldn't see the front door, he could be home for some time before I even became aware of it. I could speak to him from the kitchen and never hear an answer. I could speak to him across the dinner table and he'd ignore me. I could reach out to him and he would leave the room. I could ask him to change the light bulb that was too high for me to reach and that was a 100% guarantee that I'd be changing the light bulb sooner or later.
Put another dish in the dishwasher? I should be so lucky. I could have been doing the dishes naked and he'd have refused to look at me. Sure, I caused this, by not knowing how to make him put me on that Princess pedestal. By giving and giving and giving and asking nothing in return, I got nothing in return.
So when, after three months of silent treatment, he'd reach for me for sex, it was impossible to feel loved or wanted or thought highly of; it was more like "I'm a wad of hamburger; maybe he should go get himself a blow-up doll. He'd probably treat her better."
I actually recommend the above two titles. They were reviled and belittled in the Seventies, which should be recommendation enough. But if you have had your mind twisted by your college education, as mine was, you ought to read the book I'm linking below. She addresses all that crap. I actually joined a "women's support group" and found all the women in it had been brainwashed with the same tired lines about how everything is her RIGHT and he has none. One was approaching a divorse and kept quoting all the same lines that Schlessinger also quotes. "He said to me, 'I try and I try and I try but nothing's ever good enough for you.'" And this was supposed to be evidence of his meanness.
Read this book or else:
Okay, I forgot about this book by the same author. I haven't read it but would recommend it merely on the strength of her name.
I love all the wives who have called in and said, "Woohoo! That's fine with me! It's the first thing on his mind, and though it might not have been the first thing on mine, I can turn in an instant and be ready for him!"
This would have been unthinkable in the Seventies among college women. Of course, if you've ever ready "The Total Woman" or "Fascinating Womanhood", both of which were huge sellers in the Seventies, you know that some women aren't so twisted up and made to be foolish as my college-educated sisters.
I'm glad Prager specified that he is talking about good marriages where there is both love and consideration on both parts.
I fully agree with the proposition that men want a lot of sex and their wives need to know that, accept it, and be ready.
Sadly, my marriage was the worst. My husband refused to pay the slightest attention to me. You may argue that I caused this to happen by being too giving and too accepting and too forgiving. My first marriage was the same way, and I just gave and gave and he started beating me and treating me like hell. I lost twenty pounds in the first three months. But we had sex every single night of the first two and a half years, and it was by my insistence. The second marriage, I tried to do the same thing, but he started turning his back on me, and it wasn't for a back massage, either. Eventually I decided I must be putting him off by trying to initiate it as often as I did, and we found he was only interested once every few months. But, since sex with him hurt, I didn't complain much.
Matters outside the bedroom were particularly telling. He'd come home from work without announcing his entrance. If I happened to be in another part of the house where I couldn't see the front door, he could be home for some time before I even became aware of it. I could speak to him from the kitchen and never hear an answer. I could speak to him across the dinner table and he'd ignore me. I could reach out to him and he would leave the room. I could ask him to change the light bulb that was too high for me to reach and that was a 100% guarantee that I'd be changing the light bulb sooner or later.
Put another dish in the dishwasher? I should be so lucky. I could have been doing the dishes naked and he'd have refused to look at me. Sure, I caused this, by not knowing how to make him put me on that Princess pedestal. By giving and giving and giving and asking nothing in return, I got nothing in return.
So when, after three months of silent treatment, he'd reach for me for sex, it was impossible to feel loved or wanted or thought highly of; it was more like "I'm a wad of hamburger; maybe he should go get himself a blow-up doll. He'd probably treat her better."
I actually recommend the above two titles. They were reviled and belittled in the Seventies, which should be recommendation enough. But if you have had your mind twisted by your college education, as mine was, you ought to read the book I'm linking below. She addresses all that crap. I actually joined a "women's support group" and found all the women in it had been brainwashed with the same tired lines about how everything is her RIGHT and he has none. One was approaching a divorse and kept quoting all the same lines that Schlessinger also quotes. "He said to me, 'I try and I try and I try but nothing's ever good enough for you.'" And this was supposed to be evidence of his meanness.
Read this book or else:
Okay, I forgot about this book by the same author. I haven't read it but would recommend it merely on the strength of her name.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
"I don't understand anyone who thinks all murderers should live."
I do.
They live by this emotional statement that is spoken daily, axiomatically accepted as one of their higher truths: "A human life is so precious..."
Only a really GOOD person would say such a thing. Only a really evil person would say that that wasn't always true. Only a really evil person would advocate that a human life could legitimately be taken away from the human without his permission.
See, first they say that human life is infinitely precious. But just scratch beneath the surface and you'll learn that humans who are inside another human aren't precious, aren't even meaningful, at all. And then there are the humans whose doctors have made a supernatural judgement on what will happen six months out into the future; their lives aren't precious at all. And let's not forget the target(s) of torture-murderers and axe murderers. They weren't precious enough to arouse any moral outrage on the part of the anti-death penalty people.
There are a lot of things going on there. Many, many unstated presuppositions.
Good people love people, and it takes an even better person to love bad people. The anti-death-penalty person (ADPP) is a better person.
Bad people hate people. Anyone who wants to put murderers to death is morally lazy, doesn't have the energy nor the goodness to force himself to forgive the heinous murderer the way the ADPP has. You and I are thus slavering to see someone get executed. The people who don't want to see that are so much gooder than we are. We are very bad, the ADPP is very good.
You're out for revenge. The ADPP isn't. He's good, you're bad.
You can't forgive. The ADPP has already forgiven all murderers. He's good, you're bad.
As with all liberal beliefs, Prager, believing the good beliefs they believe makes them good, while believing the bad beliefs you believe makes you bad.
They will cherish these beliefs forever, unless you can make a crack in them. How to do that, though is very very difficult.
For further information, see "glazed eyes" or "intentional deafness" or "Jehovah's Witness".
They live by this emotional statement that is spoken daily, axiomatically accepted as one of their higher truths: "A human life is so precious..."
Only a really GOOD person would say such a thing. Only a really evil person would say that that wasn't always true. Only a really evil person would advocate that a human life could legitimately be taken away from the human without his permission.
See, first they say that human life is infinitely precious. But just scratch beneath the surface and you'll learn that humans who are inside another human aren't precious, aren't even meaningful, at all. And then there are the humans whose doctors have made a supernatural judgement on what will happen six months out into the future; their lives aren't precious at all. And let's not forget the target(s) of torture-murderers and axe murderers. They weren't precious enough to arouse any moral outrage on the part of the anti-death penalty people.
There are a lot of things going on there. Many, many unstated presuppositions.
Good people love people, and it takes an even better person to love bad people. The anti-death-penalty person (ADPP) is a better person.
Bad people hate people. Anyone who wants to put murderers to death is morally lazy, doesn't have the energy nor the goodness to force himself to forgive the heinous murderer the way the ADPP has. You and I are thus slavering to see someone get executed. The people who don't want to see that are so much gooder than we are. We are very bad, the ADPP is very good.
You're out for revenge. The ADPP isn't. He's good, you're bad.
You can't forgive. The ADPP has already forgiven all murderers. He's good, you're bad.
As with all liberal beliefs, Prager, believing the good beliefs they believe makes them good, while believing the bad beliefs you believe makes you bad.
They will cherish these beliefs forever, unless you can make a crack in them. How to do that, though is very very difficult.
For further information, see "glazed eyes" or "intentional deafness" or "Jehovah's Witness".
Prager: "There are no old newspapers in this house."
I can beat that. Where I'm living--and it's not my family, it's the family of a friend--there are no NEW newspapers, either.
It's amazing living in a culture where reading just does not happen. They know a little bit about the news because they hear the daily gossip from their friends, and occasionally they pause on ABC News on TV. But read a newspaper article? Subscribe to a newsmagazine? NEVAH!
They do, however, have a favorite place to dump those precious dollars that they don't want to spend on written matter. Tanning beds.
That's right, tanning beds.
When the administration wanted to slap a tax on tanning salons, the media were all over that, trying to label it as a tax on the rich, knowing that the public would forgive them for putting yet another tax on those stinky rich people. Indeed, we normal people can't even imagine paying large amounts of money on something so stupid and otherwise free. It MUST be something rich people do, right?
No, not really. The rich go to the beach, or they get out in the sun and play golf, or sail, or lie beside the pool in their own back yards. They don't pay to share skin fungi and dandruff and crabs and headlice with the common grunts who came to the salon before they did.
There are only two tanning salons in Beverly Hills, outside of private clubs. But right next door, in West Hollywood, there are more than a dozen. But here in the redneck part of this border state, tanning salons are one of the most popular businesses in town.
I don't know why I got off on this tangent. This post should probably be on my "Selfishly Therapeutic Blog".
It's amazing living in a culture where reading just does not happen. They know a little bit about the news because they hear the daily gossip from their friends, and occasionally they pause on ABC News on TV. But read a newspaper article? Subscribe to a newsmagazine? NEVAH!
They do, however, have a favorite place to dump those precious dollars that they don't want to spend on written matter. Tanning beds.
That's right, tanning beds.
When the administration wanted to slap a tax on tanning salons, the media were all over that, trying to label it as a tax on the rich, knowing that the public would forgive them for putting yet another tax on those stinky rich people. Indeed, we normal people can't even imagine paying large amounts of money on something so stupid and otherwise free. It MUST be something rich people do, right?
No, not really. The rich go to the beach, or they get out in the sun and play golf, or sail, or lie beside the pool in their own back yards. They don't pay to share skin fungi and dandruff and crabs and headlice with the common grunts who came to the salon before they did.
There are only two tanning salons in Beverly Hills, outside of private clubs. But right next door, in West Hollywood, there are more than a dozen. But here in the redneck part of this border state, tanning salons are one of the most popular businesses in town.
I don't know why I got off on this tangent. This post should probably be on my "Selfishly Therapeutic Blog".
Friday, March 11, 2011
Caller: "There is a permanent exhibit attached to our Natural History Museum..."
It's on global warming, of course. And it features a clip of a scientist explaining this fact as an emergency and appealing to us to take action in a hurry. If we don't stop it now we're going to turn into the planet Mercury...
And of course Prager butts in to get his little joke inserted, to hear himself make noise, to take the thought away from the caller.
The caller was talking as fast as he could to try to get the rest of his story in. But evidently Prager thought he had said quite as much as he deserved, and cut him off. Frankly I don't think the show was improved by that, Prager. I wanted to hear the rest of what he had to say. Probably something about how proud of her exhibit the curator of the museum was, something like that. Maybe he was going to tell us how he started a movement to get the damn thing out of there and after three months of active campaigning he had succeeded? That would have been worth hearing.
There was time. It was 2:39 and they didn't go to break till 2:42. It wasn't as if he had been hemming and hawing, looking for the right word, taking too long. They shoulda let him speak.
And of course Prager butts in to get his little joke inserted, to hear himself make noise, to take the thought away from the caller.
The caller was talking as fast as he could to try to get the rest of his story in. But evidently Prager thought he had said quite as much as he deserved, and cut him off. Frankly I don't think the show was improved by that, Prager. I wanted to hear the rest of what he had to say. Probably something about how proud of her exhibit the curator of the museum was, something like that. Maybe he was going to tell us how he started a movement to get the damn thing out of there and after three months of active campaigning he had succeeded? That would have been worth hearing.
There was time. It was 2:39 and they didn't go to break till 2:42. It wasn't as if he had been hemming and hawing, looking for the right word, taking too long. They shoulda let him speak.
The Happiness Hour
Having close friends.
Prager defines a close friend as someone to whom you can open up. I dunno, sometimes people will open up to someone who's not close and whom they have no intention of getting close. In fact they'll keep the person distant just because they opened up to them.
Okay, this is a magnificent point: "My friends have made me a much better man."
Sounds to me like, "That's what friends are for."
I have a friend who got invoved with (and is still involved with) a rather crappy woman who wants to control him and treat him horribly. She doesn't know that's what she's doing, it's just how she relates to men and she can't be comfortable with a strong, confident man who trusts himself to make decisions and judgements. She found him in the "pool" of nerds who had never had a date in high school, and boy is he needy and desperate--desperate enough to put up with a constant stream of abuse, criticism, and invective. What's more, she's dumped him three times now, but he keeps crawling back for more.
Almost as soon as she met him she started hinting that his old friends were bad for him, that she was his only good thing going, and that he'd be much better off if he dumped us.
So he did.
Why would she do a thing like that? Were we really "keeping him down" or was it because she didn't want him to have a support structure that could tell him how bad for him she was? She's already kept him from enrolling in college, and made it very evident that he'd better get a job so he can move in with her. For six months she's been promising to get on birth control and has consistently refused to make an appointment to do that. By this time next year she will have forced him into moving in with her, marrying her, and siring a child by her. Because he has no friends, no feedback, no one who can help him see what a stinking low-life bitch she is.
This woman is NEVER going to make any man "a better man", she's only capable of making a man into a pile of crap, pretty much like herself.
Prager defines a close friend as someone to whom you can open up. I dunno, sometimes people will open up to someone who's not close and whom they have no intention of getting close. In fact they'll keep the person distant just because they opened up to them.
Okay, this is a magnificent point: "My friends have made me a much better man."
Sounds to me like, "That's what friends are for."
I have a friend who got invoved with (and is still involved with) a rather crappy woman who wants to control him and treat him horribly. She doesn't know that's what she's doing, it's just how she relates to men and she can't be comfortable with a strong, confident man who trusts himself to make decisions and judgements. She found him in the "pool" of nerds who had never had a date in high school, and boy is he needy and desperate--desperate enough to put up with a constant stream of abuse, criticism, and invective. What's more, she's dumped him three times now, but he keeps crawling back for more.
Almost as soon as she met him she started hinting that his old friends were bad for him, that she was his only good thing going, and that he'd be much better off if he dumped us.
So he did.
Why would she do a thing like that? Were we really "keeping him down" or was it because she didn't want him to have a support structure that could tell him how bad for him she was? She's already kept him from enrolling in college, and made it very evident that he'd better get a job so he can move in with her. For six months she's been promising to get on birth control and has consistently refused to make an appointment to do that. By this time next year she will have forced him into moving in with her, marrying her, and siring a child by her. Because he has no friends, no feedback, no one who can help him see what a stinking low-life bitch she is.
This woman is NEVER going to make any man "a better man", she's only capable of making a man into a pile of crap, pretty much like herself.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Prager: "Who has been made a better person after joining a union?"
Yes, but I'm sure Prager would concede that that's not the point of the union. As for its making people into "me me me me me" monsters, I doubt that it does that to more than a limited degree. It does, however, make the total pool into a pool of "me me me me me" monsters, which is bad. The individuals can be credited with teaching for the love of it, but the pool is a hideous thing. What's more, the pool admits renegades who ARE "me me me me me" monsters. They're the ones sitting in the rubber rooms reading comic books.
One of the great moral puzzles of the twentieth and twenty-first century
Prager asks why the left (communism and socialism, he means) does not wear the label of evil that they have so rightly earned.
Stated simply, it's because the left are the ones doing the labeling.
Then he asks if you can name anyone on the left who has lost credibility because of something they said?
There are a few. Generally whenever someone on the left says something horrible, all that is requested of them is that they apologize. Usually when they apologize, they throw in a few "you blockheads misunderstood my wonderful intentions or misinterpreted my innocent words"-type accusations and then all is well, because now it is clearly demonstrated that it's the right wing's evil core that is to blame in the issue.
But let a right-winger misspeak, and we get out the tar and feathers.
Stated simply, it's because the left are the ones doing the labeling.
Then he asks if you can name anyone on the left who has lost credibility because of something they said?
There are a few. Generally whenever someone on the left says something horrible, all that is requested of them is that they apologize. Usually when they apologize, they throw in a few "you blockheads misunderstood my wonderful intentions or misinterpreted my innocent words"-type accusations and then all is well, because now it is clearly demonstrated that it's the right wing's evil core that is to blame in the issue.
But let a right-winger misspeak, and we get out the tar and feathers.
Liberal demonstrators and conservative demonstrators
Demonstrators in Wisconsin made it impossible for the elected representatives to get into the capitol and do their job.
It is apparently the first time the public has ever succeeded in shutting down the functioning of a state government. Six million dollars worth of violence, vandalism, and damage. Who is surprised at this?
Police said they "pleaded" with the demonstrators to leave. Pleaded? I've never heard a police officer plead. I don't think the spokesman was lying, I believe they really were pleading.
How come no one carried them out of the building? I can remember a time when demonstrators blocked access to a third-trimester-abortions clinic. They were beaten and their arms were broken and they were dragged, broken and bleeding, into the paddy wagons.
As Prager said, there is NO CHANCE that the press will portray these people as the thugs that they were.
**************************
I'm delighted to learn that the interviewee was Charles Sykes. I've read some of his writing, notably this one:
His newer book, released in 2007, should be just as good:
And just based on the excellence of his writing I'm recommending both his other books:
and another of his books for which Prager interviewed him:
He's really good, and I especially recommend the first one above.
It is apparently the first time the public has ever succeeded in shutting down the functioning of a state government. Six million dollars worth of violence, vandalism, and damage. Who is surprised at this?
Police said they "pleaded" with the demonstrators to leave. Pleaded? I've never heard a police officer plead. I don't think the spokesman was lying, I believe they really were pleading.
How come no one carried them out of the building? I can remember a time when demonstrators blocked access to a third-trimester-abortions clinic. They were beaten and their arms were broken and they were dragged, broken and bleeding, into the paddy wagons.
As Prager said, there is NO CHANCE that the press will portray these people as the thugs that they were.
**************************
I'm delighted to learn that the interviewee was Charles Sykes. I've read some of his writing, notably this one:
His newer book, released in 2007, should be just as good:
And just based on the excellence of his writing I'm recommending both his other books:
and another of his books for which Prager interviewed him:
He's really good, and I especially recommend the first one above.
"Love your neighbor as yourself is three thousand years old; do you have a better one than that?"
When the Left apply this to their politics ... er, that's a misstatement right there. They apply their politics to their religion. When they apply what they already presuppose to their religion, they come up with, "The government needs to take your income from you and give it to your neighbor."
It usually doesn't apply to their own income. They shelter that from taxation and hang onto it, and what money they do give away goes most often to sociopolitical causes like Amnesty International or PETA. It's left to the conservatives to give to personal aid like the church food and clothing cupboard or Chrysalis.
By the way, they don't need a better moral statement. They'll quote lines from the Bible just as happily as if they understood what those lines really meant and as if they themselves actually believed them. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," drops from their lips constantly. Of course they mean "support welfare programs" when we conservatives, if we were in our neighbor's shoes, would rather that people teach us how to fish than just throw a pound of fish at us after some sixteen bureaucrats had handled it first.
And we would say we had done more good teaching our neighbor than liberals had done throwing the fish around.
It usually doesn't apply to their own income. They shelter that from taxation and hang onto it, and what money they do give away goes most often to sociopolitical causes like Amnesty International or PETA. It's left to the conservatives to give to personal aid like the church food and clothing cupboard or Chrysalis.
By the way, they don't need a better moral statement. They'll quote lines from the Bible just as happily as if they understood what those lines really meant and as if they themselves actually believed them. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," drops from their lips constantly. Of course they mean "support welfare programs" when we conservatives, if we were in our neighbor's shoes, would rather that people teach us how to fish than just throw a pound of fish at us after some sixteen bureaucrats had handled it first.
And we would say we had done more good teaching our neighbor than liberals had done throwing the fish around.
notes on Crossroads School, just for the record
Prager's caller mentioned three nutty things from Crossroads. Just for the record I'm writing them down:
The school required them to call teachers by their first names.
Every year there was a school-wide "coming out" day when boys were invited to wear dresses to school. Mostly it was boys from the drama dept who did so, and the boys from the athletic teams picked on them as a result. So much for "enlightenment".
His senior year, when he was taking an elective on Marxism, the class had to write a 25-page report on the benefits of Marxism.
***
I just wonder how many of the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austen, Milton, Dryden, Johnson, Swift, Fielding, Twain, Hawthorne, and Dickens they ever ended up reading?
The school required them to call teachers by their first names.
Every year there was a school-wide "coming out" day when boys were invited to wear dresses to school. Mostly it was boys from the drama dept who did so, and the boys from the athletic teams picked on them as a result. So much for "enlightenment".
His senior year, when he was taking an elective on Marxism, the class had to write a 25-page report on the benefits of Marxism.
***
I just wonder how many of the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austen, Milton, Dryden, Johnson, Swift, Fielding, Twain, Hawthorne, and Dickens they ever ended up reading?
Crossroads' narrow-mindedness
Boy, I tell you, when leftists get an idea into their heads, there is nothing they won't stop at to save the world from any of its evil, mistaken notions.
Consider a conservative teacher. Yes, there are actually such creatures. They go into the profession because they love learning and they want to pass on a similar love of learning to the next generation. They are far less focused on passing on their ideas and conclusions.
Now let's step inside the conservative teacher's head. When he imagines the child of a liberal parent, he sees the parent in the evenings teaching his child that Marxism is good and that men and women are essentially the same. The conservative teacher shrugs, dismisses this unfortunate situation as "That's their right" and moves on.
Now let's look at the liberal teacher. He has gone into teaching for the sake of "fundamentally changing the world." When he imagines a conservative parent, he sees a toothless hick with values that are not just not well-intentioned but which are evil. Gun-toting, Bible-hugging, religion-clinging, SIXHIRBer, in a position to pass on these evil values to their kids. Far from shrugging and letting these values be passed on to the next generation, the liberal teacher needs to rescue the next generation from their own idiot parents. The kids must be rescued.
This extends to any school run by liberals. Crossroads is known as the artsyfartsy school in L.A. and no, it does not have a gleaming reputation as one of the best schools in the area; it's known to be a school run by nuts. When you think of Crossroads, you instinctively think of the "Tell them what you did in [your progressive] school today, Patrick" scene from the Rosalind Russell version of "Auntie Mame".
Of course, the parents who send their children to that obscene, anti-education school have a choice; they could have sent them to the Mirman School or the Curtis School or any Catholic School. When they chose Crossroads, they thought they were opting for a curriculum with creativity and intellectual freedom. They were wrong.
Consider a conservative teacher. Yes, there are actually such creatures. They go into the profession because they love learning and they want to pass on a similar love of learning to the next generation. They are far less focused on passing on their ideas and conclusions.
Now let's step inside the conservative teacher's head. When he imagines the child of a liberal parent, he sees the parent in the evenings teaching his child that Marxism is good and that men and women are essentially the same. The conservative teacher shrugs, dismisses this unfortunate situation as "That's their right" and moves on.
Now let's look at the liberal teacher. He has gone into teaching for the sake of "fundamentally changing the world." When he imagines a conservative parent, he sees a toothless hick with values that are not just not well-intentioned but which are evil. Gun-toting, Bible-hugging, religion-clinging, SIXHIRBer, in a position to pass on these evil values to their kids. Far from shrugging and letting these values be passed on to the next generation, the liberal teacher needs to rescue the next generation from their own idiot parents. The kids must be rescued.
This extends to any school run by liberals. Crossroads is known as the artsyfartsy school in L.A. and no, it does not have a gleaming reputation as one of the best schools in the area; it's known to be a school run by nuts. When you think of Crossroads, you instinctively think of the "Tell them what you did in [your progressive] school today, Patrick" scene from the Rosalind Russell version of "Auntie Mame".
Of course, the parents who send their children to that obscene, anti-education school have a choice; they could have sent them to the Mirman School or the Curtis School or any Catholic School. When they chose Crossroads, they thought they were opting for a curriculum with creativity and intellectual freedom. They were wrong.
Prager: "They don't have that view."
Calling the president "Dude" has nothing to do with their lack of respect for the presidency. You evidently don't remember how conservative talk show hosts during the Clinton years would get a caller once a week demanding that whether they liked the man or not, they show respect for the Presidency. It was just amazing how on January 20, 2001 all these people vanished from the face of the planet and not one person was left to demand that conservatives show respect for the President.
Snips 'n snails and double standard, of course; that's what little liberals are made of.
Snips 'n snails and double standard, of course; that's what little liberals are made of.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Meaning of "Hindu Kush"
Wikipedia says it means, "The mountains of Hind".
Either:
1. Prager is making a huge mistake because
-he heard this somewhere from some one he trusts to know, such as someone who speaks the language and
-he never looked it up himself.
or
2. Prager is a liar.
or
3. Prager heard some explanation and mis-remembered the information.
or
4. Someone vandalized the wikipedia page and put false information there so as to shine a softer light on whoever would be judged evil
* * * *
I consider (1) to have a fair degree of probability, maybe 25%. Usually Prager checks his information
(2) is utterly impossible. Remember that the word "lie" doesn't mean "making a mistake, repeating false information" without "directly intending to deceive".
(3) is more like something I would do than Prager.
(4) is by far the most likely, given what I've seen of people with an agenda saying whatever they want on articles.
Either:
1. Prager is making a huge mistake because
-he heard this somewhere from some one he trusts to know, such as someone who speaks the language and
-he never looked it up himself.
or
2. Prager is a liar.
or
3. Prager heard some explanation and mis-remembered the information.
or
4. Someone vandalized the wikipedia page and put false information there so as to shine a softer light on whoever would be judged evil
* * * *
I consider (1) to have a fair degree of probability, maybe 25%. Usually Prager checks his information
(2) is utterly impossible. Remember that the word "lie" doesn't mean "making a mistake, repeating false information" without "directly intending to deceive".
(3) is more like something I would do than Prager.
(4) is by far the most likely, given what I've seen of people with an agenda saying whatever they want on articles.
Pragertopia
I wish I could afford a subscription. A nice lady just called up while I was replying to something earlier. She had a brilliant insight from the GPS lady ... but I don't know what it was. I know it was brilliant because Prager just started shouting "that's brilliant" but I'll never know what it was, unless I stay up till 2:45 AM and catch it on WIND, Chicago.
Sigh.
Prager, it's getting obnoxious hearing you constantly chiding us for not getting a subscription. Some of us just don't have seven dollars a month. I've been trying for two years to get enough money for the drive to Louisville so I can meet other Prager fans but I can't afford that, either. And no, I'm no spendthrift.
Sigh.
Prager, it's getting obnoxious hearing you constantly chiding us for not getting a subscription. Some of us just don't have seven dollars a month. I've been trying for two years to get enough money for the drive to Louisville so I can meet other Prager fans but I can't afford that, either. And no, I'm no spendthrift.
Prager: "It is a moral obligation to cite the source of your ideas."
I have gotten much of my worldview, or possibly it should be characterized as "way of looking at certain issues" from my reading. Often I cite the source because I can remember which book I read it in. But all too often it came from someone I was talking to and I can't even remember where, never mind whom I was talking to.
What do you do then? I just say, "I was chatting with someone I used to know, and she said..." That's often the best I can do.
What do you do then? I just say, "I was chatting with someone I used to know, and she said..." That's often the best I can do.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Caller: "You're telling me that air conditioning is moral?!"
"You're telling me that rich people who have air conditioning are moral."
Yah, well, this is one of the finest examples of a liberal nitwit who refuses to hear ONE SINGLE THING you've said for what you've said, but tries to tie you in knots with red herring after red herring. You started to fall for it, answering his silly statements (more like accusations, really, which is why you fall for it, defending what you've said or trying to straighten the poor fool out).
If you go to youtube and look for names like Chris Matthews paired with any conservative name, the video will often be placed there to show how "Chris Matthews rakes Condoleeza Rice over the coals" and yet the video is of the liberal named in the title, doing exactly the same thing, demonstrating himself to be confused and without a case, but he twists the guest's words and restates them, thinking he's "exposing" the guest as a fool, when to anyone who is precise with thought, debate, reason, and logic, the host is the fool, and the sneering respondents are the dupes.
Yah, well, this is one of the finest examples of a liberal nitwit who refuses to hear ONE SINGLE THING you've said for what you've said, but tries to tie you in knots with red herring after red herring. You started to fall for it, answering his silly statements (more like accusations, really, which is why you fall for it, defending what you've said or trying to straighten the poor fool out).
If you go to youtube and look for names like Chris Matthews paired with any conservative name, the video will often be placed there to show how "Chris Matthews rakes Condoleeza Rice over the coals" and yet the video is of the liberal named in the title, doing exactly the same thing, demonstrating himself to be confused and without a case, but he twists the guest's words and restates them, thinking he's "exposing" the guest as a fool, when to anyone who is precise with thought, debate, reason, and logic, the host is the fool, and the sneering respondents are the dupes.
The millitary practicing affirmative action for women
You see that feminists have still not given up on the notion that a woman is just a short man without a penis. They see no difference between the sexes, because a big woman can surely do more than a small man, so why not hire her as a fire fighter, jackhammer operator, or cannon fodder?
When I got out of college I pretty much had bought into this crap. By the way, when Prager talks about leftwing ideas being promulgated in college, this is one of the more prominent and one of the most dearly cherished ideas. There are leftists who would deny that leftwing ideas are promoted in colleges with few exceptions. They are either leftwing themselves, and faced only ideas that made them happy they assumed they were faced with normative, middle-of-the-road ideas; or they were not paying attention and assumed that these leftwing ideas were merely common sense and that any intelligent person would accept them.
Anyway, back to my experiences at UCLA. Many many many of my classes had literally been handed over to specialty departments, most prominently the women's studies department. The professor would come into the class, climb up to the stages as if to address his class of five hundred students (all of them were at least 300 students), and announce that today's class would be taught by two women from the department of feminist studies, and then repeat the announcement ten or fifteen days in a row. Then we would be indoctrinated in the sameness of women's and men's natures, social pressure, indoctrination, psychological pressure, the gross inequalities between women and men in patriarchal societies, the magnificent glories of matriarchal societies,
I especially absorbed the malarkey that the only reason men and women grew up to be different was that their parents pressured their kids into being that way. Mothers in Sparta did that sort of thing (as did all patriarchal societies) and we their descendants have been following in their footsteps ever since.
We were given numerous anecdotal studies involving little boys who lost or were born without penises and then were brought up as girls, and how thouroughly girlish and happy they were. Never were we told about the endings to the stories, how the boys had always felt "wrong" or "out of place" until their secret was discovered and they decided to be male after all.
Through the Eighties I heard again and again about colleges that were shoving this stuff down their students' throats. Orientation at many colleges involved forcing the incoming male students into seminars where they would be bullied and raged at until they confessed to being "a potential rapist". I don't just mean a dozen oddball colleges that had gone nuts, I mean a huge number of them, so that it was getting harder and harder to find one that might leave you to your own beliefs and not try to rescue you from them.
And that leaves me to a whole different subject area, critical thinking ...
When I got out of college I pretty much had bought into this crap. By the way, when Prager talks about leftwing ideas being promulgated in college, this is one of the more prominent and one of the most dearly cherished ideas. There are leftists who would deny that leftwing ideas are promoted in colleges with few exceptions. They are either leftwing themselves, and faced only ideas that made them happy they assumed they were faced with normative, middle-of-the-road ideas; or they were not paying attention and assumed that these leftwing ideas were merely common sense and that any intelligent person would accept them.
Anyway, back to my experiences at UCLA. Many many many of my classes had literally been handed over to specialty departments, most prominently the women's studies department. The professor would come into the class, climb up to the stages as if to address his class of five hundred students (all of them were at least 300 students), and announce that today's class would be taught by two women from the department of feminist studies, and then repeat the announcement ten or fifteen days in a row. Then we would be indoctrinated in the sameness of women's and men's natures, social pressure, indoctrination, psychological pressure, the gross inequalities between women and men in patriarchal societies, the magnificent glories of matriarchal societies,
I especially absorbed the malarkey that the only reason men and women grew up to be different was that their parents pressured their kids into being that way. Mothers in Sparta did that sort of thing (as did all patriarchal societies) and we their descendants have been following in their footsteps ever since.
We were given numerous anecdotal studies involving little boys who lost or were born without penises and then were brought up as girls, and how thouroughly girlish and happy they were. Never were we told about the endings to the stories, how the boys had always felt "wrong" or "out of place" until their secret was discovered and they decided to be male after all.
Through the Eighties I heard again and again about colleges that were shoving this stuff down their students' throats. Orientation at many colleges involved forcing the incoming male students into seminars where they would be bullied and raged at until they confessed to being "a potential rapist". I don't just mean a dozen oddball colleges that had gone nuts, I mean a huge number of them, so that it was getting harder and harder to find one that might leave you to your own beliefs and not try to rescue you from them.
And that leaves me to a whole different subject area, critical thinking ...
Monday, March 7, 2011
Michael Moore, "We have had it!"
Moore (interpreted): "We can no longer hold up state authorities to force more and more non-teachers' union workers to pay more and more money to support ridiculous state workers' pension plans."
Prager: We admire and respect the people who are represented in this.
Me: I'm not sure we should.
"Moore disputed the claims that Wisconsin is broke." That's the way of the radical left, I don't like what you're saying, therefore it's untrue and you are a vicious liar and destroyer. And you're evil, too.
Moore's answer is OF COURSE to take from the rich.
Prager asks how much the man gives away from his own stash. I know he gives a lot, but like all lefties, it goes to political causes, not to personal causes. I can't name the specific groups he contributes to (I'm sure it can be found on the internet) but it would be groups LIKE moveon.org, planned parenthood, greenpeace, or Amnesty International.
Prager read from the New York Times editorial page:
State Workers and NY's Fiscal Crisis
"At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago."
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Of course we can start out with assuming that the number of state employees has quadrupled. I don't know the real number but I sure do have to make that assumption else I would go on rampage. Then there's a hidden fact, that they just meant that the state was contributing more as a percentage of the pensions because the pensions are suffering from recession-induced shortages. In other words, the state guaranteed the pensions so that the union didn't have to behave responsibly and fire managers who mismanaged funds.
The misery is chronicled further, and since it's the NYTimes doing the chronicling, it must be bad indeed.
Please read the article.
And Michael Moore?
How can he get up there in front of the crowd and chant "We have had it!" as if this is the last of a long string of indignities. What were the previous indignities, insults to the teachers' paychecks or pensions?
Prager: We admire and respect the people who are represented in this.
Me: I'm not sure we should.
"Moore disputed the claims that Wisconsin is broke." That's the way of the radical left, I don't like what you're saying, therefore it's untrue and you are a vicious liar and destroyer. And you're evil, too.
Moore's answer is OF COURSE to take from the rich.
Prager asks how much the man gives away from his own stash. I know he gives a lot, but like all lefties, it goes to political causes, not to personal causes. I can't name the specific groups he contributes to (I'm sure it can be found on the internet) but it would be groups LIKE moveon.org, planned parenthood, greenpeace, or Amnesty International.
Prager read from the New York Times editorial page:
State Workers and NY's Fiscal Crisis
"At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago."
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Of course we can start out with assuming that the number of state employees has quadrupled. I don't know the real number but I sure do have to make that assumption else I would go on rampage. Then there's a hidden fact, that they just meant that the state was contributing more as a percentage of the pensions because the pensions are suffering from recession-induced shortages. In other words, the state guaranteed the pensions so that the union didn't have to behave responsibly and fire managers who mismanaged funds.
The misery is chronicled further, and since it's the NYTimes doing the chronicling, it must be bad indeed.
Please read the article.
And Michael Moore?
How can he get up there in front of the crowd and chant "We have had it!" as if this is the last of a long string of indignities. What were the previous indignities, insults to the teachers' paychecks or pensions?
The Fifty-thousand dollar orgasm and Northwestern University
Prager: This is from their NWU's Human sexuality class. You can graduate NWU without ever having read a line of Shakespeare, but you can get credit for a live sex show.
This is the problem I have with most modern education, the garbage they consider important and the important stuff they've dismissed as garbage.
The decline in modern education didn't begin in the Sixties, though most people think it does. I know in the Twenties a new generation of people calling themselves "Progressives" took over the educational establishment and immediately set to changing the definition of the word. Reaching all the way back to Rousseau, they decided that education should be "child-centered", which is to say, the child's own relationship with his world will determine what his education should consist of.
Thus, a little child's world being little, his educational experiences at this young age will be little ones. He will study his clothing and his family and his pets. Since he's never heard of George Washington, he won't study anything about George Washington. Eventually by the Forties, under the title "expanding horizons", this became enshrined by the educrats as curriculum dogma and every enlightened Teacher's College taught it as the only humane way to educate children.
Not only was George Washington banished from the "social studies" books, but so were the Greek gods and goddesses, the legends of King Arthur and his knights, Robin Hood, Orlando, the Swamp Fox, David and Goliath, and every other hero your grandparents loved and you yourself have never heard of. But for some reason, even though great Western stories were banned, the great non-Western stories were pushed into the curriculum, even though 99% of the students had never heard of them. Anansi, Genji, Siddhartha all will pop into the reading lists. Now, I'm all in favor of adding these to the curriculum, but not when our whiny educrats were busy ripping Western culture out.
It needn't be an either-or issue. In fact it never was. "We only have time to teach 125 historical figures, so we'll throw out these 45 Westerners and add these 45 non-western figures" was NEVER part of the debate. And this is where the hippies got their way as the new Progressives. With them it was much more a matter of, "We've been pushing Western culture down the throats of blacks, Mexicans, Oriental* kids, even the white kids are choking on it. It's good to get rid of so much Western culture** which was seen as a throwback to those evil old patriarchal societies. And thus, we are genuine geniuses because only a real genius could be so enlightened.
There were other Western things on the disposal list. Western lit, for one. On yahoo! answers back in 2010 I posted a question about the "classics" of literature and virtually none of the people who post there, neither students nor teachers, could identify a classic work of literature outside the usual seven: The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Animal Farm, and that racist manifesto, Huckleberry Finn. Out they all went, good riddance! And did we replace them? Well, I'm positive children only read a few books each year now, instead of the dozen they used to read. They don't read poetry and they never memorize it. They barely touch plays, though they'll likely read one by Shakespeare (which is now available in sissified English) and maybe "Our Town" or "Death of a Salesman".
*Yes, back then it was still "Oriental", not the very stupid "Asian" substitute.
**They actually denied and still deny the existence of American culture, much less the value of a kid who belongs to the West actually learning about the West. Color became the be-all of culture. If your skin was very dark, you were an "African" child. If your skin was olive, you were Latino and of course in both cases you'd only be interested in learning about Aztec gods or Congolese farming practices. Never mind that your ancestors came from Spain and Uruguay, or were Ethiopian Jews. And thus the hippies disproved their own case about ancestry determining who you are--but don't let that stop you.
Gone are Music theory, Music appreciation, Art history, Art practicum (drawing and painting used to be taught, and yes, they are teachable subjects, contrary to what the disciples of Rousseau preached), history (unless it's history of a part of the world you have nothing to do with), and even "western" math (math based on facts instead of feelings) is being done away with.
You've heard the usual complaints about what has taken the place of these subjects. "Self esteem" and "conflict resolution" are huge among the flakes controlling the curriculum. Yet no one feels that self esteem can be taught in a classroom except by being given challenges that the student has to overcome, which has also been removed from the classroom. "To challenge" has become synonymous with "to pressurize" and pressure is bad. We replaced it with "cooperative groups", since cooperation is a virtue and competition is bad. Now the groups of four students meet together, the three who don't know what they're doing leave all the work to the one bright kid and do nothing. This is not a good thing for our children.
And this is why you'll find courses like "Human Sexuality" at so expensive a college as Northwestern University. What strikes me as dumb about that one is that if left to their own devices these students would learn about human sexuality awfully well on their own. It's not as if there were a shortage of information out there. It seems that it's important to offer it as a "subject" so that some teacher can impart "the right values" to the students. Sorry but that's a mainstay of the educrat establishment, making sure that the students get the right values taught to them.
This is the problem I have with most modern education, the garbage they consider important and the important stuff they've dismissed as garbage.
The decline in modern education didn't begin in the Sixties, though most people think it does. I know in the Twenties a new generation of people calling themselves "Progressives" took over the educational establishment and immediately set to changing the definition of the word. Reaching all the way back to Rousseau, they decided that education should be "child-centered", which is to say, the child's own relationship with his world will determine what his education should consist of.
Thus, a little child's world being little, his educational experiences at this young age will be little ones. He will study his clothing and his family and his pets. Since he's never heard of George Washington, he won't study anything about George Washington. Eventually by the Forties, under the title "expanding horizons", this became enshrined by the educrats as curriculum dogma and every enlightened Teacher's College taught it as the only humane way to educate children.
Not only was George Washington banished from the "social studies" books, but so were the Greek gods and goddesses, the legends of King Arthur and his knights, Robin Hood, Orlando, the Swamp Fox, David and Goliath, and every other hero your grandparents loved and you yourself have never heard of. But for some reason, even though great Western stories were banned, the great non-Western stories were pushed into the curriculum, even though 99% of the students had never heard of them. Anansi, Genji, Siddhartha all will pop into the reading lists. Now, I'm all in favor of adding these to the curriculum, but not when our whiny educrats were busy ripping Western culture out.
It needn't be an either-or issue. In fact it never was. "We only have time to teach 125 historical figures, so we'll throw out these 45 Westerners and add these 45 non-western figures" was NEVER part of the debate. And this is where the hippies got their way as the new Progressives. With them it was much more a matter of, "We've been pushing Western culture down the throats of blacks, Mexicans, Oriental* kids, even the white kids are choking on it. It's good to get rid of so much Western culture** which was seen as a throwback to those evil old patriarchal societies. And thus, we are genuine geniuses because only a real genius could be so enlightened.
There were other Western things on the disposal list. Western lit, for one. On yahoo! answers back in 2010 I posted a question about the "classics" of literature and virtually none of the people who post there, neither students nor teachers, could identify a classic work of literature outside the usual seven: The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Animal Farm, and that racist manifesto, Huckleberry Finn. Out they all went, good riddance! And did we replace them? Well, I'm positive children only read a few books each year now, instead of the dozen they used to read. They don't read poetry and they never memorize it. They barely touch plays, though they'll likely read one by Shakespeare (which is now available in sissified English) and maybe "Our Town" or "Death of a Salesman".
*Yes, back then it was still "Oriental", not the very stupid "Asian" substitute.
**They actually denied and still deny the existence of American culture, much less the value of a kid who belongs to the West actually learning about the West. Color became the be-all of culture. If your skin was very dark, you were an "African" child. If your skin was olive, you were Latino and of course in both cases you'd only be interested in learning about Aztec gods or Congolese farming practices. Never mind that your ancestors came from Spain and Uruguay, or were Ethiopian Jews. And thus the hippies disproved their own case about ancestry determining who you are--but don't let that stop you.
Gone are Music theory, Music appreciation, Art history, Art practicum (drawing and painting used to be taught, and yes, they are teachable subjects, contrary to what the disciples of Rousseau preached), history (unless it's history of a part of the world you have nothing to do with), and even "western" math (math based on facts instead of feelings) is being done away with.
You've heard the usual complaints about what has taken the place of these subjects. "Self esteem" and "conflict resolution" are huge among the flakes controlling the curriculum. Yet no one feels that self esteem can be taught in a classroom except by being given challenges that the student has to overcome, which has also been removed from the classroom. "To challenge" has become synonymous with "to pressurize" and pressure is bad. We replaced it with "cooperative groups", since cooperation is a virtue and competition is bad. Now the groups of four students meet together, the three who don't know what they're doing leave all the work to the one bright kid and do nothing. This is not a good thing for our children.
And this is why you'll find courses like "Human Sexuality" at so expensive a college as Northwestern University. What strikes me as dumb about that one is that if left to their own devices these students would learn about human sexuality awfully well on their own. It's not as if there were a shortage of information out there. It seems that it's important to offer it as a "subject" so that some teacher can impart "the right values" to the students. Sorry but that's a mainstay of the educrat establishment, making sure that the students get the right values taught to them.
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