You Mean it's not Whiteface? You Sure?

What's worst about this movement towards ideological banality is that seemingly older, more responsible people get completely overwhelmed by the need to appear hip and edgy; in compensating for their obvious lack of childish malice towards others, they take on all the verbiage of the "oppressed" without actually realizing what it is they are parading.

Take Phil Kennicott's insane verbal gyrations attempting to fit "urban blackness" onto Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker in 'The Dark Knight.' Regardless of the fact that Ledger is a recently deceased "white" Australian actor, and that the comic book character himself is murderous, psychotic, and (incidentally) white, Phil seems to believe that the "deformed product of urban violence" that the Joker represents (he doesn't, but we'll get to that...) has been deliberately applied to a recent picture of President Obama in an attempt to highlight the "racially charged" undertone of the image, that "[Obama] is black and is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and '70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness."

Let's let Phil try and justify this one: "The Joker's makeup in "Dark Knight" -- the latest film in a long franchise that dramatizes fear of the urban world -- emphasized the wounded nature of the villain, the sense that he was both a product and source of violence. Although Ledger was white, and the Joker is white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic racial typology in America. Urban blacks -- the thinking goes -- don't just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence."

Now, looking at the image myself, it's hard not to ACTUALLY find racism lurking in the image--in the form of whiteface, most often used in European clown and mime tradition, but also the distinctly American tradition of using black actors as a parody of the urban Irish, or as simplistic minstrel characters like the Massa and the Southern Belle, who had to be white. I know--it seems almost perversely racist... making fun of blacks by dressing them up as white women, or for heaven's sake, the Irish? Who would ever think of such a thing? Thankfully, however, Phil tripped all over himself trying to justify such obvious racism that it is a joy to point it out to the world.

Unfortunately, some other lucky poster got there before me; all that's left is the meta-analysis. First off: the Obama/Joker poster's creator is an idiot. The Joker was the embodiment of anarchy in the new film; had he not put the decisions for their deaths into the people's own hands, they would not have become so violent and wicked as Batman believes them to be (the enforcer of justice and order, even at the expense of massive spying and wiretapping). The great irony of the film is that the Joker's desire for lawless insanity results in lawless morality (both parties in the film's massive Prisoner's Dilemma ultimately choose not to rat each other out--spoiler!), while Batman's lawful iron fist is responsible for the death of his gal pal and the ensuing insanity of a once decent (supposedly) government official. I would say that it's a just characterization that all government types are two-faces following the whims of chance regardless of who it hurts or helps, but that's another post. As it stands, Obama would be better served metaphorically as Harvey Dent, with half his face exposed to the skull as a metaphor for his many rhetorical guises, than in Joker makeup. Mixing metaphors is just bad art.

Kennicott, on the other hand, deserves high praise for his ability to simultaneously diss and pander to an entire stereotype--"urban blackness." For the record, Obama is half white, internationally educated, and a recipient of some of the most hoity-toity qualifications America has to offer. Nothing, not his milk chocolate exterior, his custom Hart Schaffner Marx attire, nor his carefully accessorized cufflinks and executive Blackberry, screams Jenny from the Block. As far as stereotypes go, Phil, choose Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson for your Black Knights, because Obama can't hack a convincing Sunday preacher voice even when surrounded by black hotness. But for failing so spectactularly to capture the essence of urban blackness (apparently a "virus," though he neglects to say which one...), Kennicott exposes himself as the worst douchebag of them all--an idiot hurting everybody with good intentions. And we all know where those lead, right?

Garbage In, Garbage Out...

Just as it was true for code monkeys creating the first GUIs, the concept that bad education leads to bad understanding rears its ugly head once more in Gene Healy's recent op-ed piece for the Washington Examiner. Only this time, the coming Revolution is a hydra of youth-core extremists pounding on tables and shouting down dissent in a desperate plea to get someone, anyone to listen.

We often forget that the young voters are, in fact, young; they are headstrong, stubborn, convinced of their righteousness, and unshakeable in their convictions. For today, at least. Tomorrow, the focus may be back on Gossip Girl, who knows. But using this mercurial demographic as a basis for both an election and a party position is extremely dangerous, rather akin to playing with fire in the southern California foothills--ideas that nobody cared about in the first place get passed along so fervently due to insta-media outlets like Twits and MyFace that the "old guard" of people over age 30 are simply taken aback by their ferocity.

Seeing this explosion of effort (which is all actually quite effortless, thanks to said above insta-media), the "fuddy duddies" rally around whatever makes them look the most popular, like the latest starlet with one side of her head shaved--in the pale light of morning, these elder statesmen look simply ridiculous for having followed the whims of children. But oh-hum, these children grow up, and become "activists," angry (and now bitter, thanks to adulthood) partisans who will smear anyone or anything across the information superhighway that gets in the way of "their" candidate. Shock and awe is not just a military campaign, it seems, anymore.

So in reality, what we are dealing with is not the fallout from the miseducation of the American youth, but the radicalization of the American Memory of Youth, that wistful remembrance of better days when all these stuffy concepts and theories about jobs, economic recovery, auto manufacturers and endless option-ARM loans could be boiled down into one single defining statement that few alive today actually spoke--We Shall Overcome. Overcome... what? That's generally never answered.

An Education-Free World at Last...

Jack Hough wrote a cathartic, if ill-researched piece on the end of the Education Bubble in America entitled "Don't Get that College Degree!" While the comments page rips Hough a new one for his bad math and worse assumptions about the earning potential of high-school vs. college-educated individuals, the article nonetheless gropes blindly towards the ultimate point that educators are waiting on pins and needles to reach... the Education Bust.

As Hough points out, there's something rotten in Denmark. Most easily recognizable is the treacherous "adjunct faculty position." Instead of long-term tenure-track stability dependent on successful scholarly publishing, promising young scholars are herded into ballooning class sizes, monotonous "required" courses that teach no skills and "entry level" courses that convey no new knowledge and often don't strain the student beyond a high school education level. Students are cheated out of an education that can expand their skill and knowledge base, while McProfs are last-hired, first-fired mercenary teachers living a shell of an existence teaching whatever will keep them from being sacked--not the best environment for new investigative research.

This race-to-mediocrity extends all the way through the university system: Greg Winter points out in his article "Jacuzzi U" that universities are spending billions of taxpayer dollars specifically NOT on education, but on resources like hot tubs, climbing walls, and endless resort-style amenities that turn college life into a theme park. This is not merely because college administrators are reptilian space-aliens bent on enslaving humankind (that's for another article), but because the business model of the university system has approximated the housing business model pre-2008: the bigger, the better. More stuff supposedly equals more students, which brings in more money, which allows for more stuff, which brings in more students... et cetera, ad nauseam. So where does it end?

From tiny private colleges like Reed to massive universities like Stanford, colleges are increasingly unable to support the students that they have, admit new students who are strapped for cash, and justify the cost-benefit of their supposed skills-training. Meanwhile, online "universities" like the University of Phoenix have become degree-factories admitting anyone regardless of ability (both in teaching and student positions) and graduating almost no one, boasting some of the lowest graduation scores in the country. The blood is most definitely in the water, and the sharks are looming.

Yet all this hassle and pain has been and most likely will continue to be blamed on students (who are just trying to get ahead) and administrators (who just want to make a quick buck), while the real culprits continue to "inspire" us to fritter away any savings we or our parents have gathered together as a bulwark against any unforeseen disasters or debts we might incur. The real culprits are quite simply our teachers, our professors, our parents, and our government officials, all of whom insist that a college education is absolutely essential to success in our lives.

Was this true of our grandfathers' or fathers' generation? Most students I've met as a teacher are first-generation collegiates, so obviously not. In fact, many students from my own former university were double-dipping, spending their Hope scholarship and Daddy's money together, living in palatial apartment complexes and shopping at Wal-Mart, eating Ramen noodles and driving around town in Escalades. "Slumming," it was called, as if it were a fashion trend and not an insult to people who can't afford any better.

In fact, I'd wager that just within my own family, mine will probably be the poorest generation thus far. My grandfathers on both sides were barely high-school educated, but all died wealthy enough to leave substantial inheritances that have afforded me and mine a comfortable life with or without steady work. My parents both attended college, but neither became successful from their degrees; both achieved success not by studying about it but by earning it through daily work and autodidacticism (a GRE word that's both useful and unnecessary--a twofer!). Thanks to their investments and achievements, my brother and I have been able to make it into our early thirties, both college educated single men, and yet neither of us own a business. I have a semi-marketable skill (teaching), but my brother's long-sought degree in political science is about as useful in today's job market as the napkins he knows how to fold expertly. In fact, my brother's finally seeing sense--working towards restaurant management, he might end up carrying my dead academic weight later on in life.

Thus, not having had to obtain a job, I've been essentially paying for the privilege of sitting in drafty rooms and reading long hours--things I could have done for free, on my own time. I like to imagine that I've been interning with successful companies in the hopes of becoming a long-term employee (tenured professor), but that's a fantasy. The reality at many universities is that every year after the mid-nineties tenure-track positions have decreased, even though faculty (including graduate students) hires have been increasing. It's quite devilish, actually--the universities are simply waiting for old tenured faculty to retire, then simply not hiring new tenures to the position, instead opting for an adjunct scab to fill the gap at a quarter of the pay with no benefits or job security.

The system is simply broken: 300 or even 500-person schoolrooms teaching standardized crap that imparts no useful skills... students are graduating at record numbers with degrees in such useless fields as Interior Design, Popular Culture, and the great liberal-arts bastions, History and Social Sciences. What we have as a nation forgotten is that nobody NEEDED a degree for any of these things a hundred years ago--people learned their trades by doing them. For example, if you wanted to be a mason, you apprenticed yourself to a master mason and would work for him like a dog until you became a journeyman with some marketable skill; you would then have to work your way into the good graces of a masonry firm until you achieved enough skill to be a master in your own right, at which point you could hang out your own business shingle and get little apprentice-slaves for yourself and continue the cycle ad infinitum (another latin phrase you'll never need, but which always looks good to employers).

Business has not changed in its capitalistic structure for over 100 years, even though our elites have become too sensitive for hard labor and earnest trade. That's why immigrants are coming to this country and getting richer, faster than us. It's not because they have a desire to debase themselves; they simply don't find work to be debasing. I say let schools be for scholars, and let business be done by businessmen. Car repairmen need liberal-arts degrees like fish need bicycles! Perhaps, when education is no longer required by the government nor desired by the nagging majority, it will become fashionable again to learn on one's own, and be recognized by one's own skills and achievements instead of one's uncanny ability to bore whole parties to death with impromptu lectures on Proust.

Poetry Night: Echoes from the Past...

Behold, the crimes of 2009, writ before us in stately verse by the late Rev. Jonathan Swift:

"The Run Upon the Bankers"

The bold encroachers on the deep
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune, with one general sweep,
Turns all again to barren strand.

The multitude's capricious pranks
Are said to represent the seas,
Breaking the bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.

Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains.

Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.

We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruin'd if he pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;
The birds are met to strip the jays.

"Riches," the wisest monarch sings,
"Make pinions for themselves to fly;"
They fly like bats on parchment wings,
And geese their silver plumes supply.

No money left for squandering heirs!
Bills turn the lenders into debtors:
The wish of Nero now is theirs,
"That they had never known their letters."

Conceive the works of midnight hags,
Tormenting fools behind their backs:
Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags,
Sit squeezing images of wax.

Conceive the whole enchantment broke;
The witches left in open air,
With power no more than other folk,
Exposed with all their magic ware.

So powerful are a banker's bills,
Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counters, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.

Thus when an earthquake lets in light
Upon the god of gold and hell,
Unable to endure the sight,
He hides within his darkest cell.

As when a conjurer takes a lease
From Satan for a term of years,
The tenant's in a dismal case,
Whene'er the bloody bond appears.

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall.

How will the caitiff wretch be scared,
When first he finds himself awake
At the last trumpet, unprepared,
And all his grand account to make!

For in that universal call,
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!"

When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
"Weigh'd in the balance and found light!"

There you have it... fractional-reserve banking described to a T nearly three hundred years before our current crisis (1720).  THESE are the poems we ought to be drumming into our students--poems that invite us to learn more, not less.  Another favorite of mine is the condemnation of nationalistic patriotism by Wilfred Owen:

"Dulce Et Decorum Est"

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

We may not save lives through words or poetry, but at the very least, we ought to be able to save minds.  Jingoism, rapacious imperialism, and other blind desires to cause inhuman death and destruction have to be taught in order to be remembered; they have to be praised, promoted, and upheld as virtuous.  James Garner said it best when he said, "we wear our widows' weaves like nuns, Mrs. Barham, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices."

"It's not war that's insane, it's the morality of it. It's not greed and ambition that makes wars; it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny--always against tyranny and always in the interests of humanity. So far in this war we've managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we'll have to destroy all of man just to preserve his damn dignity."

What use is there in being brave if you're dead?

Vouchers for Private Schools = Threat to America?

Reason.tv has a wonderful Youtube video describing Obama's unceremonious canning of the DC Voucher program that gives a very tiny minority of DC kids the opportunity to escape the miasma of DC public schooling in favor of the many available private school options.  As the lady on the tape asks, why?

Is it failing?  No--it's becoming evermore popular, especially as public school educational numbers circle the drain.  Is it expensive?  No--unless you call $18 million dollars expensive.  Even the Pell Grant additions I mentioned earlier are not so cost-effective as the DC Voucher system.  It seems the only reason one would have to vote against such a cheap-yet-effective measure is found here:  the voucher program takes students out of public education.  Note how I didn't say "students AND money," because that's another hidden benefit of vouchers--in the case of the DC program's video, the cost of one year of public school is $14,000 per student.  The voucher program only offers $7500 per year.  That's a net profit for the government (since funds for public education are taken from the general tax fund) of $13,500 per student per year, and they don't have to use it on the student involved, because he or she is not attending a public institution!  It's like having your cake and eating it too!

So in reality, is there any answer to the lovely lady's question in the video?  Why in the hell cancel the program?  Certainly not from the standpoint of Obama's "whether it works" criterion--if he at least followed his own preachy rhetoric, the program would be totally safe.  Rather, I would like to posit my own possible answer, in line with the hypocrisy of the above-mentioned writer, Jay Mathews.  The key to a docile population is not education, but propaganda; one cannot subjugate a population merely by force of arms, but it is all too easy for a people to subjugate themselves by the force of ideas.  

Independent schooling often leads to independent thinking, as the video above clearly describes; students whose families have control over what is taught invariably get more focused, better-equipped education for a cheaper price than what the government has to spread scattershot on the general-ed pigs at the grant trough.  What I can only describe as "education postponement" is the product of socialized state-approved curricula, where only "grade-appropriate" learning is allowed and all independent thought is curbed behind a sanitized syllabus, a dumbed-down learning curve (for catching up those who don't want to learn), and a constant deferral of basic and necessary learning until just a few grades higher--grade-school prep, middle-school prep, high school prep, college prep, grad school prep, post-doc prep, and finally, unfortunately, shockingly, "real life."  

Students now entering their very first grades will not be taught how to balance a checkbook until high school; they will not be taught how to apply for a job ever, nor how to properly avoid getting STDs; they will not be allowed to ignore subjects that do not interest them even in PhD-level programs, thanks to imbecilic "general education requirements."  They will be given a basic reading test upon entering college, disregarding the fact that successfully entering college while illiterate is both a monumental achievement for the student and a massive indictment for the institution being hoodwinked.  And most tellingly, they will receive little or no realistic job skills, either in on-the-job training, apprenticeships, or simple work.  The term "vocational prep" is universally maligned as a dumb jock idiot course of study, while the "progressive" and "enlightened" Liberal Arts education teaches people to hate whites, go green, cheer on the deaths-by-starvation of 4 billion people, and avoid anything too horribly pedestrian like "communication skills" or "work ethic."  Who needs a work ethic when you can be the most educated coffee-jerk on the planet?

Obama is most certainly correct on one assumption:  this problem is neither "liberal or conservative," mainly because liberals and conservatives agree that socialized education is to the benefit of all, regardless of the detriment to the individual students.  So long as students are forced into "No Child Left Behind" classes that make sure no child bothers to achieve, those same stupid students will agree with them and continue to vote them into office.

Where is all the Pell Grant Money Going?

One of ObamaCo's recent bailout plans, the education bailout, did not initially catch my eye.

As a whore to Academe myself, I have slaved under the yoke of assistantships when burger-flipping would have been a more lucrative (and less stressful) economic venture.  So one would assume that the vast amounts of money already being poured into general and higher education from both government and students, of which I have been a beneficiary, would be more well-known to me, at least.

But the new bailout plan here explains only the additions to the current federal education budget, which are nonetheless blindingly out of proportion.  Take Pell Grants:  "$15.6 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500, from $4850 to $5350."  Does that math sound funny to you--almost $16 BILLION to increase the maximum grant by only $500?  I tried to reason that the author just mistyped "million" for "billion" (such an easy mistake these days!), but FrugalDad already found the House.gov Appropriations Committee press release, and that's Billion with a Big frickin' B.

I know I'm not the greatest math whiz, but let's break that number down a bit for comparison:

306,505,240 (est. population of the US)

6,782,087,301 (est. population of the world)

$15,600,000,000 (est. addition to Pell Grant system)

At the time of the 2007 Census report on education, almost 18 million people (technically, 17.956mil) were enrolled in college or higher education courses.  If EVERY student enrolled in the US received the $500 increase in award money, the result would look similar to this:

 $500

x   18mil

-------

9000mil (9 billion)

$9 billion dollars would give every student enrolled in college $500 to blow on books, beer, or (gods no!) tuition... so where is the other $6.6 billion going?

Remember that the Pell Grant, according to Ed.gov, supports only "low income undergraduates and certain (read: homeless) postbaccalaureate (sic) students," so technically i'm way too generous thinking that the $500 will be going to all of the enrolled US students.  According to a 2007 Enrollment Status census report (Table 6), only 12.656 million students were enrolled at 2 or 4 year colleges, with 626k being graduate students.  Technical schools and online education apparently aren't up to the government's standards!

So in reality, 12 million students would only need $6 billion to get $500 each--and that's not even how many students actually receive the Pell Grant!  According to the study in Table 6, only 6 million students are unemployed during their college career.  This alone is not an indicator of a low income (I only had to take an undergraduate job when I tried private school--mistake!), but considering that most families in poverty already can't send a son or daughter to college, the majority of students in need are not the ones receiving the largest amounts of financial aid--as this tragically well-researched analysis of income vs. grant award amount shows (.pdf).  The facts are clear--even something so small and simple as an increase to the Pell Grant award is riddled with confusion, corruption, and confiscation.  The benefits are nominal at best, being realistically counterproductive to any solution to the problem of subsidizing education at the national level.

If something so simple and straightforward as an increase to the Pell Grant award amount can be so unbalanced as to be BILLIONS of dollars over what's required for the bill's own stated goals, what ought we to do about the TRILLIONS that are going completely undocumented as back-room deals are struck between huge investment firms like AIG and bureaucrats handpicked from the leadership of other investment firms like Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve maintains an open-door policy on forgiving mountains of toxic debt, and Obama shamelessly laments not being able to spend other people's money quickly enough?

It's enough to make a grown man cry... or go libertarian.  It's time to take back the mantle that, for one brief and shining moment, liberals championed:  accountability.  The more libbo bloggers, libbo thinkers, and libbo individuals are calling the pigs on their taxpayer-funded gluttony, the better we will serve our fellow man!  Buy American--but don't buy American B.S.!

Killing Terrorists with Kindness? Jesus Takes on Torture (He Has Experience in the Area)...

A fellow libboblogger by the name of Chet at the Young Americans for Liberty blog (blog.yaliberty.org) commented on the most recent Laurence Vance article, "The Morality of Torture," that got my fingers typing. Specifically, Vance brings up several very interesting points on the difference between hypocritical situational ethics and moral absolutism even in the face of threats or acts of terrorism.

Yet the situation is not so cut-and-dried as either Chet or Vance want to admit: Chet mentions Jesus's commandment to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," and Vance uses a James Payne article entitled "What Do the Terrorists Want" to explain that Osama bin Laden's premeditated attacks on US targets are partially the result of blowback from interventionist foreign policy. Both these points are laudable, but they are misused in their context.

For Jesus, let's not forget, was facing persecution on all sides; both the Pharisaical authority and the (puppet) king of Judea wanted him dead for being, in a manner of speaking, a political insurgent. Jeshua bin Nazaret was attempting to expose the greed and corruption of the Roman Empire who wanted to tax and regulate Judea into submission, and who was turning the Jewish government against the people to achieve its aims. But he was also trying to turn his fellow Jews away from the corruption of the imperialist temple, a position that threatened his movement and his very life so often that he was kicked out of nearly every town he visited--the people were both drawn to his message and threatened by the lethal consequences of going against the powerful Pharisees and Herod Antipas.

Instead of "turning the other cheek," which to my mind sounds more like "please hit the Empire State building this time!", I say look at Matthew 25:35-46, where Jesus points out that those who do good even to the least of mankind do good to Jesus himself; on the other hand, those who do evil to mankind, even to the least member, do evil unto Jesus himself. It is important to recognize that suicide bombers, terrorists, and other wicked folk (rapists, serial murderers, and megalomaniacal tyrants come to mind) think very little of humanity, often de-humanizing innocents as merely targets, collateral damage, or "infidels" not worthy of saving (or involved in some vast conspiracy against the crazy person/group).  Like Augustine said, sin is separation; one cannot underestimate the separation that wicked folk will perpetrate to avoid seeing the humanity in their targets--separating themselves and their victims from reality, logic, and humanity.

There is nothing holy in being a suicide bomber--true martyrs like Jesus were horrified at the thought of any more people dying in the name of politics or religion. They offered themselves up as blood sacrifices to appease the mobs, in the hope that through their willing sacrifice the mobs afterwards would calm down and refocus their efforts on reconciliation. Not so with today's suicide bombers, who more resemble IEDs than ancient martyrs. Their goal is to kill innocent people and cause pain, unimaginable pain to both their victims and society abroad. Their goal is separation--the destruction of the fabric of society as people stop being able to trust anything familiar or simple, like airplane passengers, or unattended backpacks (or tourists, for that matter).

To make a long point short, this is all not to say that I disagree with both Chet and Vance; I simply think their points are not thought through to their fullest extent. Of course we must defend ourselves against terrorists; even Jesus made his disciples carry swords with them when he suspected that Judas Iscariot was going to betray him to the Romans. But we're forgetting that WE'RE also terrorists if we believe that these folk are anything less than the wonderful humans Jesus died for. Terrorists don't need torture--they need to be isolated from all the fruits of western labor, so that everyone around them can see just how twisted and wicked their ideologies really are.  

Only when we are winning converts (not religious, but economic) with our "evil infidel empire" of good healthcare, quality jobs, education for the poor and ::gasp!:: women, not to mention the decidedly NOT holier-than-thou secular rule of law, then we will see the eventual destruction of terrorism from the inside out. Of course, both commentators are correct in pointing out that this will never happen unless the afflicted areas are allowed freedom from western military intervention. But we cannot simply abandon the Middle East to petty tyrants and madmen--we must encourage peaceful reconciliation through our own sacrifice of hard work, enterprise, and common decency to our fellow man. Whoever will take our goods is our friend; otherwise, Jesus tells us to shake the dust off our sandals and head to the next town.

My Journey Didn't Begin with Atlas Shrugged...

For many of the libbo-bloggers that I am reading out there, their journey towards the great mansion of libbo-studies started back in the heady eons of high school or undergraduate collegiate banality--all Tennyson and Civics classes, populated by a mangy assortment of pimply, clique-y, and sometimes stinky juvenile versions of adults who are rightfully mortified by their adolescent selves.

But somewhere in that soup of hormones and Ramones, Ayn Rand's wild black eyes tore through the growing hearts of our fair libbo-bloggers and poured the liquid gold of Objectivism into their cold insides, searing the heroism of rational ethics and moral egoism upon their unwitting bones.  Needless to say, these acolytes of Rand (just general followers; not her actual acolytes, who all suffered under the Randian cult) cut their teeth on libertarian theory through her novels and perhaps even the Objectivist newsletter.  This sparked an interest in laissez-faire capitalism, which leapfrogged onto the Ludwig Von Mises organization promoting the Austrian School of Economics, which is devoted to promoting the most boring and difficult subject in the humanities (economics) as also the subject most necessary for saving both the academic world and the greater world at large.  By the time these libbo-veterans got to Daily Reckoning or LewRockwell.com, they were past masters in the art of libbo-blogging, knowing all the backstories, buzzwords, and (hopefully) masterworks that ensured a lifetime of sublime bravado on the blogging circuits.

I, however, have a well-worn copy of the Tao Te Ching on my nightstand, where it has sat, only to be replaced sporadically by Harry Potter and the New Testament, for the last eight years.  The Tao Te Ching has been a moral comfort for me since before I knew the definition of libertarianism, and it remains untouched only while I leaf through a copy of Rand's "Philosophy: Who Needs It" (a wonderful Christmas gift that I assiduously ignored during my own lamentable social-democrat hippie phase).  To say that the Tao Te Ching forms the basis of my moral, aesthetic, and political value system is an understatement--I have, to date, found more wisdom in the tiny 81-poem volume than in the combined wisdom of all the other religious, moral, and philosophical texts I have digested in my short time on this earth.

However, I must admit my failings:  I use the Gia-Fu Feng/Jane English translation, sometimes offset with the Ellen Chen translation or anything else I can get my hands on, because I simply can't read Chinese.  All props to those who can, but I'm short in that department, so I must rely on whatever approximations to the original that these translators can achieve.  But even in my current studies of Rand's Objectivism in her short essays, I find more parallels to Lao Tzu's work every day.  It boggles my mind that such a simple little text can keep opening up new ideas for me, wholly without the gobbledygook of religious moralizing and sin-baiting.

But what really makes me happy about the TTC is that it contains ALL the dimensions of inquiry you could want:  questions about God, the universe, and man's place in it; questions about men and women, sex, birth and death; and questions about man's role in the government and the government's role in the universe at large.  Yet these are not questions to be answered by rote repetition of dogma, to which most religious philosophers ultimately accede; instead these questions serve as keys to unlock those parts of the mind that are crippled by self-doubt, fear of success or failure, and a false understanding of the world.  The book provides no easy answers--just a lot of food for thought, which is surprisingly calming at the end of the day.

Greater minds than I have already written on the libertarian underpinnings of Lao Tzu's little book.  Murray Rothbard's article about Lao Tzu on the Mises.org website (http://www.mises.org/story/1967) made me very happy, knowing that I wasn't completely off my rocker for seeing the connections between libertarian philosophy and the TTC.  It also jibes very well with my irreligious views, because the TTC in no way resembles the many versions of Taoism in ancient China, populated (as religions often are) by pantheons of gods, ancestor and authority-worship, and a host of wacky folk traditions (astrology, alchemy, etc.).  The same can be said about the philosophy that Jeshua bin Nazaret spread and the cult of Iesu Christ that sprang up after his death, but I won't stoop to denigrating the practice of religion just yet (I'll save that for a later post... :)).

I also won't put any quotes from the book up on here, because it cheapens the effect of each amazing little poem to be showcased like a sideshow freak in some noob's blog.  But I do enjoy this site:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html#63

You can also check out the version I keep by my bed at Amazon.com:

http://tinyurl.com/qvopug

Just consider putting this book (or printing off an online copy) on your nightstand for a week, reading a few poems before bed, and seeing what kinds of things they can unlock inside your mind.  I've found more philosophical understanding in the TTC than reading any psalm, sura, or treatise, and it has even been a help to me when I was at my most naively and proselytizing collectivist.  Just as those who promote Atlas Shrugged will explain until the cows come home how that book helped open their minds to libertarian thought, I hope you receive the same consistent fulfillment from the Tao Te Ching as I continue to do.

Jon Stewart Comes out Against Nationalized Health Care! (Or something like that...)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=228019&title=newt-gingrich-pt.-2

During his chat with Newt Gingrich on Tuesday, Jon Stewart simultaneously shilled for the Obama Administration and managed to become just as befuddled by rhetoric and circular argumentation as his guest, entangling the both of them in an actual clusterf@#$ of fallacies.

Jon begins round two of the bout by being offended that the Obama administration would be called "socialist," even though he is perfectly willing to sling back at Newt that the bailouts began with AIG under Bush II's watch.  When Newt points out that both Geithner and Paulson were in fact architects of that bailout as well as the new administration's bailouts, Jon nervously backtracks and attempts to prove that ObamaCo's socialism is not their fault because it is merely the end result of previous socialist administrations.  Yeah--and I shouldn't be stopped for running a red light because the guy before me ran it as well.  I was merely following in his path!

At 3:33 in the attached video, Jon's shilling hits a fever-pitch of insane logic:  "Wouldn't that be great?" he asks, as Newt describes the potential atrocity of nationalized health care.  When Newt very deftly brings up the fact that small businesses would be taxed into bankruptcy to pay for their "free" health care, Jon retorts that the entire process would be a wash, with no chance of skyrocketing "300% taxes..." "... like California?" Newt responds.  "No, no," Jon says, "let's not get crazy." Yes, Jon... let's.  Because, as Newt points out, "if Albany, NY can't run their state government and Sacramento, CA can't run their state government, why would you believe a Washington-based national health care program would work?"  "Why would you believe," Jon parries, "that a national military program could work and a health care program couldn't?"

Needless to say, neither talking head has an answer for this question, because it relies on a false premise--namely, that the "war" in Iraq (invasion, occupation, perpetual empire, what have you) is "working."  If Ron or Rand Paul, or Mark Sanford, or any of half a dozen thinking individuals in politics were in that chair, the very first response would have been "The war isn't working!!" and Jon would literally have been crushed by his own logic.  Because it is an indisputable fact (very well-documented by the Daily Show itself in its own segment, entitled "Mess O'Potamia") that our actions in the Middle East have made "success" in that arena (defined as catching and prosecuting the 9/11 masterminds and global terrorist leaders) almost impossible.  

Once it is established that NO, the government can't replace the efficacy of the private sector, and YES, national health care will be susceptible to the same failures, waste, and corruption as the Iraq occupation, the Afghani/Paki imperium, and the War on Drugs pandemic, then there is no defending nationalized health care.  It is a fundamentally flawed idea, founded upon false premises and supported by comfortable lies about the power of our government to stop the world from turning.  Jon is perfectly willing elsewhere to grant that the government is wholly incapable of running an efficient military occupation; thus, he is caught in his own logic of having to explain how a health care program would be run any better.

Will Jon still be shilling for the administration when we have been adding yearly trillion-plus dollar deficits to our hyperinflated currency in order to prop up AIG, Chrysler, and the hosts of other unmanageable businesses and unthinking individuals who ask for government handouts over the next 8 years?  Obama's already passed out more money for bailouts in 100 days than Bush spent in 8 years of global cowboy empire-building.  How far are we willing to go to support this redoubled surge of decadent largesse?