Prager: The Left asks, "How do we screw the rich?" and the Right asks, "What's better for society?"
This is largely true, but Prager needs to understand these questions don't come first. The underlying assumptions do.
With the Left, the underlying assumption is that "wishing to see people be equal is good." No one is "gooder" than anyone else, no one is more deserving than anyone else. If A has money and B does not, then the world is out of fairness, and society must take away from A and give to B. Of course, by "society" they mean "the government". The poor, they assume, cannot be responsible for themselves; if they could they wouldn't be poor, therefore they need a savior to take wealth away from the nasty ugly part of society who never worked for wealth and don't deserve it--which isn't limited to people who inherited wealth, but also to the Gordon Gekkos of the world who got rich by cheating everyone around them. Equally evil are the people who own successful businesses and got rich by cheating everyone under them, both the employees and the consumers. And then we can ask, how do we get them? How can we hurt these people and make things even between the privileged and the oppressed? These are all underlying assumptions, unstated but accepted. If you don't believe it, just start listening to the rhetoric about issues and you'll soon begin seeing and understanding these assumptions.
Now, it happens that the Left have decided that the Right is not to be understood in any light but evil. If you ask most leftists you will be told that the right wing hate poor people and want to starve them all to death, want to consign them all permanently to poverty, want to take all their money away and give it to the rich. In fact, we'd like to see them in chains, pickin' cotton in some field, and living under a lean-to made of car doors. We hate the poor and we dance with glee when children go to bed hungry. You can't deny that's how the Left portrays us. If you've never seen Howard Dean making this claim you need to see the video. "Our moral values, in contradistinction to the Republicans, is, we don't think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night." And Republicans do think that. Nice, Howard.
For the Right, the underlying assumption also covers the idea that doing good is good. It's harder to define because it doesn't focus on a central often-repeated line like equality of wealth. It aims at the individuals, at giving us the chance to do our best, and then leaves us on our own to work hard to get to that place. It doesn't make any promises about getting goodness without trying.
I remember the angst that came from the Left about Reagan and the Republicans. "They think you should pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." I heard this over and over again while I was still a liberal. It was a mark of right-wing viciousness, a description of how much they despised the poor, then oppressed, the disadvantaged. And no one ever challenged it, not even those on the right wing.
One day I heard a woman giving a speech. I don't think she was anyone famous, but for some reason I got to hear her. I must have seen her on the TV or else I wouldn't have known she was African-American. She was a great speaker and a strong representative of the conservative position on this issue. "There are people who complain that conservatives want us to pull ourselves up by our own boot straps," she said. "Well, honey, there is NO OTHER WAY TO PULL YOURSELF UP."
That said it all. If you hand someone a lump of money, they will lie back and stick their hand out and demand more. If you don't respond with the more, you will be accused of meanness. If you had gone to the person and handed them a business, even one they asked for, they would destroy it overnight from not knowing or caring how to run it. No good can come of streaming cash to poor people this way, as they almost always just start looking forward to next month's bit of cash. And if you'll stop to think about it, you'll see that society cannot afford for very many people to fail to be or refuse to be productive.
Had this wonderful woman been white I probably would have written her off as a selfish middle-class Republican s.o.b. but I knew when she said "there is no other way to pull yourself up" she had the best interests of "oppressed" and disadvantaged people at heart. I began asking myself about the sense in what amounts to "tough love" from the right wing, and eventually allowed myself to vote Republican and even to call myself a conservative. Loving someone means keeping their best interests at heart; it doesn't always mean stealing from someone else to give them a handout.
Now, in case you think otherwise, both my parents came from very tough backgrounds and managed as a pair to build some wealth. I was born to poor parents but by the time they divorced, when I was seventeen, they had grown fairly wealthy, and then lost it all. As for myself, for some reason they never taught me to focus, train, prepare, work, earn, build, save, and achieve. I managed to learn some of that from my first husband but right now, I've been severely compromised by my health, my loved ones, and my situation. I have had nothing for a couple of years now, I could probably get a hand-out from the government, but I'm going to go to work or build a business (more likely both) and try to get back on my feet.
The Left would like to see the government just hand me some money, but to be honest I know if they did that I'd never get around to getting a job. It's not that I'm afraid of work (I've always worked like a dog when I get a job) but that I can't stand the thought of looking for work.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Tonal systems (languages)
The truth is that English is also very tonal. You can give a sentence two completely different meanings simply by emphasizing a different word in the sentence.
A simple example:
Where did you come from?
Try saying that with a slight emphasis on "where" and none on any of the other words. It simply asks the person where they used to be. Now say it with a heavy emphasis on "where". It turns into an accusation of insanity, as if the answer to "where?" were Pluto or something. Now try saying it with the emphasis on "you", and you hear it become an accusation that the You had been skulking around, listening and spying on Me.
Yes, yes, there is a difference between tone and inflection making the difference, but Americans shouldn't get so patronizing about how "silly" Chinese (or any other tonal language) is. We get pretty close ourselves, and if prospective students of Chinese weren't handed a mental block to start out with, they probably wouldn't think much of it.
A simple example:
Where did you come from?
Try saying that with a slight emphasis on "where" and none on any of the other words. It simply asks the person where they used to be. Now say it with a heavy emphasis on "where". It turns into an accusation of insanity, as if the answer to "where?" were Pluto or something. Now try saying it with the emphasis on "you", and you hear it become an accusation that the You had been skulking around, listening and spying on Me.
Yes, yes, there is a difference between tone and inflection making the difference, but Americans shouldn't get so patronizing about how "silly" Chinese (or any other tonal language) is. We get pretty close ourselves, and if prospective students of Chinese weren't handed a mental block to start out with, they probably wouldn't think much of it.
A hundred million a year for bad teachers
This isn't a new story by any means, it was exposed and discussed at length a year ago.
Someone determines that a certain teacher should not be leading or teaching any more. Occasionally the reason is incompetence but it is far more likely to be something rather ugly, such as sexual abuse of students. The union has made sure that these teachers cannot be fired. Dick Morris whips out a chart of the steps that have to be gone through just to get rid of them--and it unfolds to something ridiculous like twenty pages long.
And so they report to work every day they want to get paid (which, coincidentally, is every day) but since they're not allowed to teach, they sit in a reading room or the teachers' lounge. For some unknown reason they don't get put to work typing, filing, or shipping things. This amazes the rest of the country, but never seems to amaze the educrats. It would be "demeaning" to put these bums to work when they had been hired as teachers.
Someone determines that a certain teacher should not be leading or teaching any more. Occasionally the reason is incompetence but it is far more likely to be something rather ugly, such as sexual abuse of students. The union has made sure that these teachers cannot be fired. Dick Morris whips out a chart of the steps that have to be gone through just to get rid of them--and it unfolds to something ridiculous like twenty pages long.
And so they report to work every day they want to get paid (which, coincidentally, is every day) but since they're not allowed to teach, they sit in a reading room or the teachers' lounge. For some unknown reason they don't get put to work typing, filing, or shipping things. This amazes the rest of the country, but never seems to amaze the educrats. It would be "demeaning" to put these bums to work when they had been hired as teachers.
The Left's enthusiasm exceeds inconvenient realities
Ten million dollars' worth of solar panels supply juice to 128 laptops.
How long would it take 128 laptops to burn ten million dollars' worth of petroleum-powered electricity? Exactly the problem with green people. They don't know enough math to figure out the worth of this program; it just satisfies them to know that it's a good thing to do, and in this case "good" means "no carbon dioxide."
Once they've started with "it's good", then the next step is to make up reasons why it's good. That usually means resorting to a cliche. "Since there is so little demand for green energy, there is too little activity going on in developing various forms. Our making solar panels is part of the process."
Sorry, folks, it's not. It's a stupid step in the wrong direction. The contamination garnered by the manufacture of this junk is nasty, durable, carcinogenic, poisonous, and the process of protecting man and nature from it far exceeds the pitiful little gains (mainly existing only in the imaginations of green supporters) that arise from substituting filthy energy sources for our standard sources. But that's another argument I'm not going to deal with. You can look it up at junkscience.com, and in fact I strongly recommend that you do.
Green people are full of chicken-little presuppositions that the sky is falling. It is not. Then they adopt "I'm good because I care; you're bad because you don't care" attitudes. It's not that they made up these attitudes to bolster arguments so much as that they already had this attitude from the first moment they heard about the issue. It's more of an underlying supposition about what's good and what's not, and keeping everyone terrified about an impending disaster is a very good way to separate the sheep from the goats. Sheep care, evil goats want to destroy the world, or kill babies, or keep the poor downtrodden, or trash the planet; you choose your issue.
How long would it take 128 laptops to burn ten million dollars' worth of petroleum-powered electricity? Exactly the problem with green people. They don't know enough math to figure out the worth of this program; it just satisfies them to know that it's a good thing to do, and in this case "good" means "no carbon dioxide."
Once they've started with "it's good", then the next step is to make up reasons why it's good. That usually means resorting to a cliche. "Since there is so little demand for green energy, there is too little activity going on in developing various forms. Our making solar panels is part of the process."
Sorry, folks, it's not. It's a stupid step in the wrong direction. The contamination garnered by the manufacture of this junk is nasty, durable, carcinogenic, poisonous, and the process of protecting man and nature from it far exceeds the pitiful little gains (mainly existing only in the imaginations of green supporters) that arise from substituting filthy energy sources for our standard sources. But that's another argument I'm not going to deal with. You can look it up at junkscience.com, and in fact I strongly recommend that you do.
Green people are full of chicken-little presuppositions that the sky is falling. It is not. Then they adopt "I'm good because I care; you're bad because you don't care" attitudes. It's not that they made up these attitudes to bolster arguments so much as that they already had this attitude from the first moment they heard about the issue. It's more of an underlying supposition about what's good and what's not, and keeping everyone terrified about an impending disaster is a very good way to separate the sheep from the goats. Sheep care, evil goats want to destroy the world, or kill babies, or keep the poor downtrodden, or trash the planet; you choose your issue.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Been out looking for lodging and a job
Prager's show, where I live, comes in the middle of the afternoon and exhausts the 2PM to 5PM time slot. I've been out looking for work and looking for lodging and it has kept me rather busy and unable to post. I've been just busy enough that the show that comes on at midnight my time (WIND in Chicago) is beyond my reach, as I keep falling asleep at 10 or 11.
I'll be back soon.
I'll be back soon.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Male/female hour
I don't comment on this hour every week. I feel I'm handicapped. I'm a woman whose thinking is in the left brain, unlike the majority of women, who are right-brained.
Barbara De Angelis, in her book Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know, said that couples should start by asking themselves, "Do you want to be respected for your thoughts or cherished for your feelings?" and that 90% of men answer "respected for my thoughts" and the same percentage of women answer, "cherished for my feelings."
I'm not sure what that has to do with thinking. Years ago I was astonished when a fiftyish man told me, "men think logically, women use their feelings." It seemed so alien to me, having been a university fmeinist, to hear a man admit to such a prejudicial over-generalization. Eventually, though, I actually took a second look at the women I knew. Some of them seemed to be analytical and logical. The rest seemed to be ... "emotional" is too simplistic. But many of them certainly were counter-logical.
There is a reason why women don't become car mechanics at the same rate men do. Our feminists thought the answer was more counseling for girls--in other words, put pressure on them to become chemists, mathematicians, and mechanics, whether they want to or not. One of my roommates, though, has never once bent down to see what that tube in the dishwasher is for, and so she keeps covering it up because it seems to be a nice bowl holder. In fact it's the pipe that delivers water to the upper fan blade and MUST be left free. She's not just an idiot, she's a female who won't deal with a machine on ITS terms.
I can't explain it. Sadly, I also can't relate to it. The upshot is that I have a very hard time relating to most women. Prager has criticized women who don't have at least a few female friends. I'm one of them.
Barbara De Angelis, in her book Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know, said that couples should start by asking themselves, "Do you want to be respected for your thoughts or cherished for your feelings?" and that 90% of men answer "respected for my thoughts" and the same percentage of women answer, "cherished for my feelings."
I'm not sure what that has to do with thinking. Years ago I was astonished when a fiftyish man told me, "men think logically, women use their feelings." It seemed so alien to me, having been a university fmeinist, to hear a man admit to such a prejudicial over-generalization. Eventually, though, I actually took a second look at the women I knew. Some of them seemed to be analytical and logical. The rest seemed to be ... "emotional" is too simplistic. But many of them certainly were counter-logical.
There is a reason why women don't become car mechanics at the same rate men do. Our feminists thought the answer was more counseling for girls--in other words, put pressure on them to become chemists, mathematicians, and mechanics, whether they want to or not. One of my roommates, though, has never once bent down to see what that tube in the dishwasher is for, and so she keeps covering it up because it seems to be a nice bowl holder. In fact it's the pipe that delivers water to the upper fan blade and MUST be left free. She's not just an idiot, she's a female who won't deal with a machine on ITS terms.
I can't explain it. Sadly, I also can't relate to it. The upshot is that I have a very hard time relating to most women. Prager has criticized women who don't have at least a few female friends. I'm one of them.
ACLU and students' freedom of speech
Yes, well, students are allowed only some freedoms of speech.
If the speech offends the left, it's bad and it's okay to ban it.
If the speech offends the right or offends Christians, that's fine.
"Big Pecker" written on a teeshirt is nearly guaranteed to offend a conservative and would never offend a liberal, so it's protected. However, "Jesus loves you" or "Your Che shirt sucks" will offend liberals on principle, and if the ACLU themselves don't act to sue the school that allows those sayings, it will at least refuse to take a case to defend a kid's right to put up pictures of six-month-old fetuses on the "student issues" bulletin board.
If you don't believe me, please post three examples of the ACLU taking such cases and disprove my assertion that they don't.
Jay Sekulow is a lawyer who runs an organization called the ACLJ and has a radio program during which he takes calls from families about their problems with government violating their rights unequally. Very often they will tell him "We called the ACLU about our kid getting expelled for taking a Bible to school but they refused to help us. They told us, 'We don't take Christian cases.' Can you help us?"
Sekulow had opposed the ACLU before the Supreme Court something like 55 times, or maybe it was 85 times--I haven't listened to his show in years and am telling you in advance that I don't remember the number--before he lost a decision.
On the other hand, I am aware of hundreds of "Protect this atheist student's/Muslim student's/foreign student's rights" that the ACLU has handled. Are they really interested in human rights, or are they only interested in certain rights?
If the speech offends the left, it's bad and it's okay to ban it.
If the speech offends the right or offends Christians, that's fine.
"Big Pecker" written on a teeshirt is nearly guaranteed to offend a conservative and would never offend a liberal, so it's protected. However, "Jesus loves you" or "Your Che shirt sucks" will offend liberals on principle, and if the ACLU themselves don't act to sue the school that allows those sayings, it will at least refuse to take a case to defend a kid's right to put up pictures of six-month-old fetuses on the "student issues" bulletin board.
If you don't believe me, please post three examples of the ACLU taking such cases and disprove my assertion that they don't.
Jay Sekulow is a lawyer who runs an organization called the ACLJ and has a radio program during which he takes calls from families about their problems with government violating their rights unequally. Very often they will tell him "We called the ACLU about our kid getting expelled for taking a Bible to school but they refused to help us. They told us, 'We don't take Christian cases.' Can you help us?"
Sekulow had opposed the ACLU before the Supreme Court something like 55 times, or maybe it was 85 times--I haven't listened to his show in years and am telling you in advance that I don't remember the number--before he lost a decision.
On the other hand, I am aware of hundreds of "Protect this atheist student's/Muslim student's/foreign student's rights" that the ACLU has handled. Are they really interested in human rights, or are they only interested in certain rights?
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