Blog Spectrum

To the Causal Observer

2006-05-27T13:43:00.000-04:00

By strict count you seem to have made it. But!!!! I just can't count the two sentence post as significant enough. While I am definitely a fan of pithiness that is taking it to an extreme.

Caohaoim

Gay Marriage

2005-08-04T12:40:00.000-04:00

In short, I am against the legal sanctioning of gay marriage.

I'll get right to the point. I am against gay marriage for two basic reasons. First, allowing gay marriage destroys marriage's special place in our society. In my opinion, the ideal family includes a loving mother and father raising children. By opening up the definition of marriage to include anything other than one man and one woman flies in the face of (an estimated) 99.999% of the tradition of marriage in our Western, Jeudo/Christian culture.

Second, allowing gay marriage opens the floodgates to all sorts of other 'marital arrangements' including polygamy and incest. After all, if we cannot 'discriminate' based on the gender of two people wishing to enter into 'matrimony' then why can we exclude a man and three women, four women and two men or even brother and sister? For those of you who think this argument is ridiculous I implore you to read Matthew Franck's piece at NRO.

Many people will counter by asserting that is not 'fair' to homosexuals that they are not allowed to enter into a legal contract to express their love, gain the tax benefits, etc. To those people I say, sorry. I am honestly sorry that you find the situation unfair. If there were some way to compromise, I would be happy to consider it. I do not think, however, that there is an acceptable compromise simply because any compromise leads inevitably not to a slippery slope but rather directly to the proverbial cliff. Anyone who supports gay marriage has no standing to oppose any other 'marital arrangement' someone might propose. That is a road I will not willingly travel.

Topic of the week: Gay marriage

2005-08-01T01:55:00.000-04:00

Topic: I support/am against same sex marriage because...

To Whom Does The Constitution Apply?

2005-07-26T13:15:00.000-04:00

The protections guaranteed and Rights recognized by the Constitution and its amendments apply to everyone who has entered into the contract that is the Constitution. There are two groups who have done so: 1) Natural born citizens and 2) Naturalized citizens.

The commenter to the original post suggests that the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment indicates that the entire Constitution applies to everyone in the country whether they are here legally or not. Let's take a quick look to see if that stands up. Here's Section 1 of the 14 amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

What I get from this is, first, that states cannot make or enforce laws that infringe upon "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States". To me, that sounds like the amendment is directing that states will not abridge my free speech just because that particular right is not recognized in my state's constitution.

Second, no state is allowed to "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." That, obviously, means that even illegal immigrants are guaranteed a fair trial before being jailed or deported.

Finally, no state is allowed to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That does not, however imply that the rights recognized, or the privileges granted, to individuals in the Constitution apply to non-citizens/illegal immigrants. And, of course, you don't get to pick and choose which laws you'd like applied to an illegal immigrant (or anyone else for that matter). So laws regarding illegal immigration still count.

While this may sound cold hearted and just plain mean I think it is important for two reasons. First, to say that the Constitution applies fully to anyone who happens to be standing on American soil leads to all sorts of problems. Are POWs guaranteed due process if brought to the US? The answer is, and must be, and emphatic 'no'. How about invading enemy soldiers? Or perhaps just a bunch of thugs in some 3rd world hell hole that manage to breech the physical defenses of an American embassy?

Second, if one applies to the rights recognized and protections granted in the Constitution to those who enter the country illegally, then what is the incentive for following our laws in the first place. It's the same old (yet valid) argument that by not punishing those who break laws you are actively encouraging others to break more laws.

The Constitution is a contract that one enters into by right of birth (unfair, maybe...but that's just the way it is) or by choice via legal immigration (a difficult process surely, but again...too bad, that's just the way it is). Anyone who chooses to enter our country while choosing to not enter into the contract as proscribed by law is not worthy of its protections.

Meaty

2005-07-26T12:10:00.000-04:00

Who is protected by the US Constitution? It is a difficult question to answer because it isn’t quite spelled out in the text, yet it isn’t quite open to interpretation. As Elliot Essam noted in his comment to the Question of the Week, the 14th Amendment provides that no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

That seems pretty straight forward, but the obvious test is obviously staring us all in the face (though we’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring it). That test would be the detainees at GITMO. Those detainees, while on US soil, aren’t in any particular state. From a moral stand point that distinction is a pretty thin dodge, but as much as we might prefer otherwise, the law means what it says, not what it ought to mean. Indeed, the provisions of the 14th Amendment regarding human rights are actually encompassed by the 9th Amendment. The fact that the 14th had to be enshrined in our highest law is , in essence, proof that a law must say what it means to be effective. A further example would be the “Schiavo Special” cooked up for the famed Florida case. Based on the law, as written, in conjunction with the words of that law’s framers, the Federal courts correctly ruled that they could choose not to intervene, in spite of the obvious (after the fact) truth that the law was meant to compel the court to do so. Why bring up the morass of the Shiavo Incident? Because that particular case provides a useful distinction. One of the primary deciding factors used by the federal court was the “intent” of the law’s framers. Not their actual intent, per se, but the intent they admitted to in the official record, i.e. the words the spoke on the floor of the Congress.

IANAL, but I do play one on TV*. Keep that in mind as up examine the following. While it can be debated that the equal protection clause is a limit to the states, and not binding on the Federal government, there’s no need to look at the intent of those framers to answer our question. The first 10 Amendments were specifically binding upon the federal government and the same concepts that are enshrined in the clause are distributed through the Bill of rights. The 14th Amendment, among other things, overturned interpretational precedent that had been constructed in an attempt to preserve the Union against the specter of civil war.

In the Bill of Rights, only the 5th through the 8th can be unambiguously stated to apply to any person in the jurisdiction of the United States. The other enumerated rights are specific to “the people” or the States. Since the Preamble has been supported as defining law, one can reasonably suggest that ‘the people” are defined by the phrase, “We the People of the United States…”

This seems to imply that the full protection of the U.S. Constitution need only be applied to citizens of the United States. However, that test alone would be weak basis for argument. One would be forced to turn to the “official record” seeking the words of the framers, in order to divine their intent. Lacking a legal team to pour through the wealth of information left to us by the founders, I turn to the document that ranks beside the Constitution in the heart and minds of many Americans. In the Declaration of Independence many of the Constitution’s framers signed off on the simple statement, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed…”

The Preamble, and the Bill of Rights both echo the sentiments of that simple statement, that opening justification for rebellion. It would be difficult to argue that this statement did not provide insight into the intent of the framers. The key phrases being “all men” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

What does this mean for our detainees at GITMO? Nothing, really. Amendment V provides for and exception for capital or otherwise infamous crimes during time of War. Futher, those detainees aren’t necessarily being held for criminal justice reason. They are Enemy combatants and thus can be treated, in some ways, like POWs. Certainly POWs can be held for the duration of a conflict. Of course they aren’t POWs, They are illegal and irregular forces. Historically, the prescription for such was execution.

For the other obvious segment of non-citizens, illegal aliens, the Constitution does appear to extend the full legal protection of the law. That does not mean they are entitled to the services of the state, only that they enjoy the same protections under US law as a citizen. The 14th Amendment does provide that level of protection to non-citizen in the jurisdiction of the several states. From that standpoint, the Constitution does belong to everyone.

* I don't really play a Laywer on TV.

A question of who

2005-07-25T08:15:00.000-04:00

This weeks question of the week brought to you by Morgen.

Who does the US Constitution, and all its rights belong to? Everybody in the US or just to citizens and legal residents?

Content Restrictions

2005-07-21T23:35:00.000-04:00

Restrictions on content of entertainment clearly violates the first amendment. Advisories do not violate this. And I have no legal, or philosophical argument against them, save maybe the belief that people might actually put some effort into finding out on their own what they have in their hands before they buy it and whine later. It's after all pretty simple. No one has to buy any given book, movie, music video, or song. No one is required to watch any TV, movie or stages. You can't be hauled out and forced to listen to a particular radio station. Deal with it folks, other people have different views and tastes, but don't worry, one day you'll die and won't have to worry about it.

Plame Name Game

2005-07-21T17:26:00.000-04:00

I had, honestly, meant to tackle last week's question, but I found myself rather short on free time. Additionally, I had found myself with no clear opinion on what to say about the whole mess. Obviously Rove did something he shouldn't have. Whether he should stay or go would (in a perfect world) depend on his motive, and on his knowledge of the situation.

One of the points of contention being batted about is whether Rove identified Ms. Plame by name. Examination of the relevant statute suggests that point is irrelevant. It is a criminal offense for an official with access to classified information to provide ANY data that leads to the identification of a covert operative. Rove, in identifying Ambasador Wilson's wife as some one "who works for the CIA on WMD", Rove provided more than enough information for anyone to find out who Plame really was, as this report demonstrates.

Rove's story neatly circumvents that problem, however. The White House Advisor claims that he didn't come by Plame's identity via priveleged info, but from yet another reporter. It is an American ideal that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, so we'll assume that Rove's story is true (lacking evidence to the contrary). That still doesn't satify the question of intent. If, as Wilson suggests, Rove was acting in retribution it is obvious he should be asked to step down. Not because retribution is an ignoble motive, but due to the consequences of his actions. Rove was used as a point of confirmation about Plame's identity which makes him an unwitting accessory to a crime. On the other hand, Rove may have had a ligitamate interest in demonstrating that Wilson was lying about the circumstances surround his fact finding mission to Niger.

All of that hinges on events occuring in a perfect world. The world is far from perfect. Rove has friends in the higest places. It is likely that we'll never know exactly what happened and how he was involved, so it's unliked--baring seriously damaging evidence, that Rove would ever face criminal charges. Rove is an icon of everything the opposition finds wrong with the present administration, so it is unlikely that he'd ever get a fair and honest hearing in the court of public opinion. In the end, that court is the only one likely to matter. So long as Karl Rove remains no more a liability to the administration than he already is there's no reason for him to be removed from his post. Firing him, or accepting his resignation, would be a sign of weakness.

Pissing into the Wind

2005-07-21T16:45:00.000-04:00

Content restrictions are, at best, of dubious value. This is not an opinion formed due to a desire to protect my "freedom" to make copies of the stuff I buy. In a certain sense I believe I have that freedom, but I rarely make those copies. From a practical standpoint it is a non-issue, for me. The value of DRM and content control depends on whether or not they actually protect the profits of the content providers. I don't think these technologies do that.

What they do is dissuade the casual copier. They keep the average American from easily running off a duplicate of a movie or album for his or her friends, in the way that the cassette tape had during its heyday. The true pirates are only mildly hindered by this stuff. Protections can be bypassed, encryptions can be broken, and the "hackers" of the world are itching for the chance to do so. One DRM's original proponents, Microsoft, has been beaten in an arena it claimed it was unbeatable. If a researcher can do it, a team of motivated hackers can copy the feat.

Efforts to beat those hackers can only result in an arms race, funded (of course) by cost increases passed on to the honest consumer. Why all this trouble? Largely to fight the age old menace of second and third world pirates selling the content to second and thrived world customers who can't afford the real deal, or the increased costs associated with the DRM war.

Of course, they don't pay those costs, the American consumer does. There is, reasonably, the specter of mass digital file sharing. Certainly a valid danger, but not (I think) a pressing one. Americans have, time and again, proven that they will pay for something convenient even if a little work would get them the same thing free. The growth of piracy in the first world is partly (dare I say 'largely') a result of overpriced entertainment.

And of course, DRM is annoying for some. It can cause certain issues. Even a leading proponent of DRM has had a few problems.

Entertainment Laws/Restrictions

2005-07-20T08:47:00.000-04:00

Call me a Libertarian, but I think there should be no (zero, zilch) restrictions on the content of video games, movies, books, TV or any other form of entertainment. I'm not opposed to the rating system to give people a relatively standard heads up on what they might be getting into, but to actually restrict what can or cannot be presented as entertainment is totally outside the power of the government.

Who is responsible for protecting The Children^TM? Parents.

Any questions?

Question of the Week

2005-07-18T08:48:00.000-04:00

And the Question of the week:

Are content restrictions on entertainment such as video games, music, and movies helpful, or do they simply create more legislation, restrictions on freedom and glorify what ever they are trying to restrict by making it taboo?

More Rove-ian Knights

2005-07-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

Should Rove stay or go?

Its actually pretty easy to answer: It depends.

It looks pretty clearly as if he did leak this information, and intentionally so from the scattered info I've read, to the news. Why he did so is of course open for debate, but that it was done is not in question at all. If he did do so, he needs to be removed swiftly from office. His 'alleged' leak is dangerous, and destructive to US intelligence gathering ability. While I could go on, and on, and on about the potential risk to the life of Plame and her family, that is almost secondary, and has been done before by others with bigger axes to grind. Outing an operative, for whatever reason, is clearly criminal. It risks the life of someone every bit as expensively trained as one of our frontline troops, and every bit as vitally needed to protect American lives.

If on the other hand he's not actually guilty, and this is simply another "Rathergate", let the man get back to pulling Pinocchio's strings.

Topic: Should he stay or should he go

2005-07-11T21:24:00.000-04:00

Since i managed to forget a topic, I'll steal Ryan's.

Should Rove stay or go?

Karl Rove: Whats Your Thoughts

2005-07-11T19:45:00.000-04:00

I know this isn't a topic for this week, but with the recent chatter about the role Rove played in the leaked cover of a CIA agent. This was a letter I received through the JohnKerry.com newsletter written by Kerry himself:

Dear Ryan,
Less than two weeks ago, you signed a petition joining members of the johnkerry.com community in calling for Karl Rove to be fired for his deliberate attempt to, once again, use the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to divide America. Now Karl Rove is embroiled in another controversy concerning the leaked identity of a covert CIA agent, which Bush Administration senior officials said was done to punish her husband, a man who had the courage to tell the truth about manipulated intelligence in Iraq.
Karl Rove is the President's top advisor in the White House and what he has admitted doing has deep and troubling consequences for our national security.
Just today the President spoke at Quantico praising our soldiers and the employees of the FBI, CIA, and DEA for their work rooting out terrorism.
He told them, "Your work is difficult. It is dangerous. I want you to know how much your country appreciates you, and so do I."
But at the same time the President was saying these words, it was becoming clear that his top advisor was involved in exposing a CIA agent in the name of politics by telling reporters about her work - making her already dangerous job that much more dangerous.
In order to do what the President called on us to do today - "continue to take the fight to the enemy" - the White House and Karl Rove must stop taking it to their so-called political enemies here at home.
It's perfectly clear that Rove - the person at the center of the slash and burn, smear and divide tactics that have come to characterize the Bush Administration - has to go.
http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php
The problem is that, instead of protecting the American people from real threats to our security, this Administration spends its time protecting Karl Rove. That's not leadership.
They're doing their best to brush off this new Rove controversy as just another political story, but this time they are having a harder time getting away with it. That's why, if we raise our voices now, we can really make a difference. Please ask all your friends to sign our "Fire Rove" petition today:
http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php
Despite carefully worded denials, it is now apparent that Karl Rove discussed the identity of an undercover CIA agent with a reporter. His clear aim was to discredit that agent's husband who had dared to challenge the Administration in the buildup to the war.
There appears to be no limit to the lengths to which Rove - and this Administration - will go. But, there is a limit to the patience of the American people - and we have reached it. President Bush has a choice to make: Spend the months ahead focused on protecting Karl Rove's job security or spend them focused on protecting America's national security.
We are asking the President and the White House to do what they promised. When the scandal first broke, here's what the President's spokesman, Scott McClellan, said:
"If anyone in this Administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this Administration." (9/29/03, White House press briefing). Now we will find out if the Administration is good to its word. Call on President Bush to keep his word and fire Rove now:
http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php
It's as simple as this: We need President Bush and his White House staff to focus on finally taking action necessary to avoid a quagmire in Iraq. The American people can't afford to wait while the White House spends its time and energy defending a top presidential aide's dangerous political shenanigans.
What the President does in the days ahead will speak volumes. He'll either make good on his promise to hold accountable those who shared the identity of a secret soldier in the war on terror - or he'll prove that promise hollow.
We now know that Karl Rove "was involved" in a breach of national security. Decency - and the interests of the American people - demand an end to Karl Rove's days in the White House. It's time for you to demand it as well.
http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php
I urge you to take action right now.
Sincerely,
John Kerry

I was interested to see if any of you agree or disagree with this?

The Death Penalty

2005-07-07T19:45:00.000-04:00

What crimes are horrific enough to warrant the death penalty?

Rape.
Serial molestation of children.
Murder (1st degree)
Treason.

Those four in my opinion are non negotiable. The penalty should be applied to the convicted only in the event of DNA or other hard evidence that is very difficult to tamper with. Other crimes may warrant the death penalty, but I'm not going to push for them. I do also think that executions should be public, hanging, firing squads or quick methods of beheading like a guillotine or axe.

Question of the week.

2005-07-04T19:44:00.000-04:00

There are so many sides to this issue I'm hoping we'll get a great discussion this week.

When, if ever, should the death penalty be applied?

For example should it be applied in cases of rape? Armed robbery? First degree murder? Inventing a reality show?

Eminent Domain

2005-07-03T02:07:00.000-04:00

The question of 'when' is not a simple one. How does one define 'public good'? Is getting rid of a single family home on four acres of land 'good' if one putting up a strip mall, how about a hospital? For me, I'm not really comfortable with any use of eminent domain. Using it to line the pockets of a developer for a project that is not a public works undertaking is wrong. For a municipally owned hospital, for a utility facility, public school, city infrastructure such as police or fire department, those are acceptable, if regrettable, but those things do actually benefit more than just the person building them, and the person whose palms the builder crosses with some silver.

Eminent Domain

2005-06-30T15:44:00.000-04:00

I'll keep my response brief, mostly because I've pretty much exhausted my blogging energy when it comes to this topic (a partial list of my posts on this topic can be found at the bottom of this post).

The 5th amendment's closing clause states: nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Over the past few days worth of reading every conceivable article on this topic I have learned (second hand) that over the past few decades various courts in this country have tended to interpret "public use" pretty broadly. However, I still think that the Kelo decision crosses a line and is extremely significant if for no other reason than it gives the official stamp of approval from the nation's highest court for local governments to take whatever land they want from anyone, anywhere, anytime. If you don't believe that, just wait.

Of course, all this can be avoided quite easily. How, you ask? Pass laws against the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private party to another. You know, sort of like a Republic is freaking supposed to act (as opposed to our current system where law is made by unelected egotistical smucks in black robes).

So, to answer the question, I think that eminent domain should be used very infrequently and only after passing some sort of universal test that has been passed into law by a state's legislature. Among the requirements for invoking eminent domain to seize an individual's property should be:

1) The seized land must be used for the "public good" in the sense that either a) the public will have physical access to it (e.g., public school (if they're not done away with first =)), highway, police station, etc.) or b) will serve a pubic service that is not compatible with physical public access such as a jail.

2) The seized land must not be used such a way that any private entity gains any profit aside from actual construction.

3) Land can only be seized after some painfully onerous process of consensus is undertaken by the appropriate governing body (I'm thinking something analogous to a super majority in Congress).

4) "Just compensation" is defined as the highest value of the property over the past decade. Value would be defined as either tax assessment or actual selling price, whichever is higher. Additionally, a surcharge of 20% would be added to the "just compensation" to cover moving costs and emotional issues involved with losing one's property.

I'll leave it at 4 for now, but only because I'm tired and I don't feel like coming up with any more requirements.

Now, you might be thinking that it sounds like I'm trying to render impotent the very intention the closing clause of the 5th amendment. Maybe I am. Regardless, whom would you rather be impotent, the government...or you?

---

And I thought I was being tough. Check out this exercise in the open-source writing an amendment.

This weeks question

2005-06-27T10:52:00.000-04:00

This weeks question is on eminent domain, that supreme court case, and acceptable uses of emminent domain.

It incidents like this

2005-06-25T10:01:00.000-04:00

It's incidents like this that make the carpet bombing of the entire middle east, even the so called "moderate" nations seem so attractive, even to me. I'm while not a Wiccan I do find their creed of "Do what thou will so long as it shall harm no other." to be a very reasonable, and attainable goal. People who run about killing their daughters, their adult daughters, for shaming the family name by either refusing to marry, or 'worse' marrying outside their faith, disgust me to the point where I'm glad I don't have to worry about wishing ill, or encouraging ill of people like this.

Maher Shakirat summoned three of his sisters to discuss a family uproar after one of them, Rudaina, was thrown out by her husband for an alleged affair. Maher listened to Rudaina's denials, and her sisters' pleas that they were not covering up the affair. Then he forced the three women to drink bleach before strangling Rudaina, who was eight months pregnant. The other sisters tried to flee but Maher caught and strangled Amani, 20. The third, Leila, escaped but was badly injured by the bleach.

I'm pretty sure I can come up with a few pithy phrases to accurately describe these type of people, but it would do my blood pressure no good.

UN Sec Council

2005-06-24T09:25:00.000-04:00

I'm unastonished to find a good bit of the Spectrum in agreement with me. What I did find surprising is that apparently some of the nice Congress Critters agree as well. We do need to either break the UN down to the bedrock and rebuild it, or simply leave it. Unfortunately, neither of those things is going to happen anytime soon. We do pay in dues twenty-two percent of the UN's general budget, which is by far a larger share than any other nation. Sadly, the Security Council is simply to important to ignore, after the vaccination and educational suborganizations of the UN, it maybe the only part worth paying attention to. So who do I pick for the role? Japan has to be considered a strong favorite. However much it would antagonize China, they do make vast contributions to the UN, and are stable country with a much better human rights history than places like Mexico, Iran, China or Zimbabwe. India doesn't appear to do much outside their borders and I don't see that changing. Brazil is another possibility, but again, they don't do much and don't have an economic pot to piss in. What I'd like to see is a seat with veto powers that rotated between a few nations, specifically: Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Israel, and perhaps one or two others every 18 months. I really hold very little respect for most of the UN's activities, but this is one of the slots we can't ignore.

A mild correction

2005-06-23T23:22:00.000-04:00

Oh dear gentle beings,

While I agree in almost every particular with what has been written. Which is why I have not posted my own post calling for the demolition of the UN building through the use of the newly found expansion of emminent domain. I'm sure somone in the private sector would be willing to put a shopping mall in Manhattan. I however must rebuke you in not doing some very very basic research. China is a PERMANENT member of the Security council.

Your most truly,

Caohaoim

S.O.S. - D.D.

2005-06-23T10:26:00.000-04:00

Who, if anyone, deserves a seat on the UN Security Council?

I think I have a better question. What does it matter?

The United Nations has become increasingly irrelevant. At the end of the Cold War, the common anti-UN fear was of the dreaded One World Government. Now the complaint is simple graft and corruption, not unlike a local coucilman stealing money from the municiple coffers. Wherever there is a large and powerful organization there is ambition and greed. Representative systems are meant to function on the balance of competing "enlightened" self-interest. The representaive are supposed to act in the interests of the districts, states/provinces or nations they stand for. As with most such assemblies today, the members of the UN self-interest is neighter enlightened or national in character.

What purpose would it serve to add another chair to the council? This body only holds a nation to its treaty obligations if there's no monetary draw back for the ambassadors in the chairs. What good would it do to expand the circle of permanent members? Yet another potential veto? Could we make this body less effective?

Perhaps one could assume the question meant "Which nation would make the Security Council more effective, if it were added?" Then my counter question becomes "More effective for whom?" More effective for America? I can't think of anyone who isn't generally against American interests, one of the major reasons the US tends to walk apart from the UN. If such a member could be found and such a balance shift made, how would it be different from the state of things now? American unilateralism with the UN seal of approval?

I aknowledge the possibility that I'm not giving the UN enough credit. It could be better, or more threatening than I think. It might have the potential to become something imortant in the future. I realize that the UN has more impact beyond the borders of my country. In the end, I just don't care.

There are enough fires to worry over at home. I can't spare much thought for the UN. In the spirit of the original question, however, I will name my number one choice for a spot on the SC.

The Principality of Liechtenstein.

Why? Why not?

UN Security Council

2005-06-21T13:35:00.000-04:00

I will make this short because I dont want to bog down everyone in facts and rhetoric. I think a case could be made for China, Japan, and India to all join the security council, alot of people hold inhibitions about these countries, mainly China, but I think the time has come when we need to recognize that over a third of the worlds population...almost a half!!!...is in these three countries...we need to recognize that and acknowledge their need for participation in events that directly affect them.

The Chinese human rights record needs a great deal of improvement, numerous problems exist not limited to religious persecution by the government, agressively inforced 1 child rule (forcing abortions), and stranglehold on the media. One could also question Russia and their media but that is another story. Once these problems are addressed then China can take the next step towards participation on a larger platform.

UN Security Council

2005-06-21T13:00:00.000-04:00

What can I say, bring on the cheerios.

In all honesty, I think that the current members of the UN Security Council should be removed and replaced by Zimbabwe, Sudan, Cuba and North Korea. No, I am not being facetious. I am, however, willing to consider any proposal that leads to the destruction (real or defacto) of the UN as a global organization.

My reasoning is simple.

First, I do not think that UN serves any useful purpose. Even the best-case scenario involves a country surrendering some of its sovereignty. Nations can talk to each other without the red tape (and endless debates and resolutions) of the UN.

Second, the UN's current structure is incompatible with peace, let alone simple morals. There is literally no mechanism for the UN to differentiate between free countries and those ruled by dictators. Any organization lacking this ability is incapable of correct action (and inaction), as the UN has shown time and again, and so is not worth time, money or even the occasional drifting thought.

Since the UN is worse than useless, it should be disbanded (I do not believe that a sufficiently radical overhaul is a realistic possibility). Short of an actual dissolution of the UN, I would settle for its defacto destruction by making its flaws so painfully obvious that no one would take them seriously...hence, my selections for the new Security Council.

Question of the Week.

2005-06-20T08:49:00.000-04:00

Who, if anyone deserves a future seat on the UN security council.

Anyone who makes a case for Zimbabwe, Sudan, Cuba, or North Korea will be raped with cheerios and then committed for life to a mental health facility.

Funding The Arts

2005-06-19T09:57:00.000-04:00

Should the government fund arts programs, museums, and similar programs? And of course, why?

No...depending on what, exactly, The CO meant by the question.

In terms of school curricula, yes. If we are going to fund public education (which I'm not convinced we should) then we should provide a complete education that includes the arts, sciences and 'everything else'. However, if the question was addressed to non-academic arts only (e.g., museums and such) then no, I do not think that the government should be funding them.

Before everyone jumps down my throat, consider this. While some attempt to define objective criteria for judging the quality/significance of art, the very nature of artistic expression makes it necessarily highly subjective. So, in deciding which art is 'good' and which is 'not good' someone must make a value judgment. While I, of course, fully support individuals making such decisions with their own money, I sure as you-know-what do not condone some government bureaucratic making a value judgment with my money.

This is yet another example of a position I will defend to the bitter end because I think that the discourse of what is within our government's power needs to be recalibrated. Take a look at the Constitution of the United States of America and show me where it grants the government the power to take money from one person and give it to another. (Hint: If you're not up for wasting your time you can take my word...there is no such power enumerated in the Constitution).

I will end with a final question for you to ponder: If the government stopped funding art, museums, etc., do you believe that we would not have museums?

---

The CO's response.

Funding the Arts

2005-06-15T12:26:00.001-04:00

Should the government be funding arts programs, museums, and similar programs? And of course, why?

The answer is: Yes, in a limited manner.

Children who go through school exposed to arts, music and the type of cultural and historic displays in their regular classes. Specifically in math, which translates into easier understanding of science. The exposure tends generate interest in reading about the history of recently seen things improving their knowledge in both of those fields.

While I don't feel funding should be one hundred percent, I do feel it is money well spend funding things like school music and art programs, library's, and museums.

Funding the Arts

2005-06-15T12:26:00.000-04:00

Question

2005-06-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

The question of the week:

Should the government be funding arts programs, museums, and similar programs? And of course, why.

Duties Of An American

2005-06-11T10:43:00.000-04:00

Uphold the principles of the Constitution as it is written.

There are many ways to go about doing one's part to uphold the principles enshrined in the Constitution, and certainly no one has the time to do them all. At the very least all Americans should be expected to do nothing that runs contrary to the principles set forth in the Constitution. At most, Americans should be expected to take as active a part as they are able in upholding our founding principles.

I will briefly mention a few of the basic ways in which each of us might go about fulfilling our most fundamental obligations.

There are at least three categories of action (and inaction) by which one can uphold the Constitution.

The first category is intellectual in nature. Simply put, defend the ideals and freedoms recognized by the Founders in the Constitution in the arena of ideas (Rushism^TM). How? Vote, argue and maybe even run for office in such a way that our fundamental freedoms are upheld. This second part is perhaps more important even than the first. It seems that many people (including those who submitted their thoughts before me in this forum) would tell others that he or she is fulfilling a major obligation as an American by simply voting in an informed manner. That is simply false. Being "informed" does not mean that you're voting for the right people (the "right people" being defined as those who would uphold our freedoms as protected by the Constitution and so on). For example, voting for someone who advocates restricting the Freedom of Speech does not count as doing your duty correctly. Voting is simply a means by which Americans are able to fulfill their fundamental duty as citizens.

The second category of upholding the Constitution is in the physical realm. While the pen may be mightier than the sword, a latter can render the former useless by severing the hand holding it. The most obvious way to physically uphold the Constitution is to join some branch of the Armed Forces...but this is not the only option. Civilians can also be prepared to do their part by acquiring the means to act as the last line of defense against a physical assault on this country and its founding principles. The willingness (and ability) to use physical force in defense of our freedoms is something of which nearly all citizens are capable but relatively few consider, let alone actually exhibit.

The final category I will mention here could be considered a subset of #1 above, but it's important enough that to warrant its own category: Leave others alone, and expect the same in return. Simply put, I have a reasonable expectation that I will be left alone by my neighbors (and my government) to live life as I see fit. So long as I don't set on anyone's toes, my toes will remain likewise un-stepped-upon.

This is not to suggest that we should all live like hermits, never interacting with anyone. Much to the contrary, we most certainly should reach out to each other...but no one should be forced to do so. Along these lines, I think it is our duty, as US citizens, to demand the defeat, and repeal, of any law that imposes on us without absolute and definable necessity. To do otherwise is to allow our rights to be trampled by those who would subvert our government and country to their own ends (which is invariably the quest for power).

Our country that was founded on the principle of personal freedom and it falls to each individual citizen to do his or her part to ensure that our children will enjoy the same (and more) freedom that exists today.

A republic is only as strong as its people...and the abstraction of the "people" is only as strong as you and me as individuals.

Stay strong. Stay true.

Duties

2005-06-10T08:10:00.000-04:00

What are the duties of American Citizenship?

Vote. Preferably in an informed fashion. But definitely vote, in any political landscape if you don't speak up you don't count.
Uphold and defend the Constitution. This doesn't mean everyone needs to join the military. This just means we need vote not only against laws that are unconstitutional, but we need to eradicate the presence of those who propose unconstitutional laws from our government.
Self sufficiency. When ever possible you should count on yourself and do as much for yourself as possible. This include settling disputes without involving the police if it can be done, it includes raising your children so that they don't become wards of the state or common criminals, and it also includes working if you can. Not if it's convenient, not if you want to but if you can. Man, woman, black, white, latino, asian, immigrant, native or extra terrestrial.]
Non Harm. This is both a simple and complex one. Some people seem to think they are harmed by legal life styles they don't agree with being mentioned, ever. In my opinion they need to grow up. Non harm means don't steal, don't molest children, break peoples windows, or lie about them to cause them difficulties among other things. In short don't physically, financially, or legally cause others damage, there are some levels of emotional harm that can be avoided, but since a joke that J'Myle might laugh hysterically might make Derek go all foamy about the mouth this is a hard one to quantify.

And that's just about it for duties, beyond these anything else is purely up to the individual.

A short list

2005-06-10T02:06:00.000-04:00

Vote

Watch out for your neighbor without getting into their business.

Always vote

Protect children from themselves and others

Vote more for character than ideology. If you wouldn't leave your kids with them for week, re-examine that vote

Care more for the rights of strangers than your own

Vote in every election and every race

Pay attention to what is going on around you

Vote

Stand up to evil and spit in it's eye

Vote with your eyes open

Feed people

This weeks question

2005-06-07T13:01:00.000-04:00

This weeks question:

What are the duties of an American Citizen?

Sorry for the delay.

New rule:

If I fail to get the question posted, feel free to post responses anytime after Monday morning.

Even More Dafur

2005-06-07T10:33:00.000-04:00

More on Dafur, from our voices in the wilderness, Democracy Arsenal and Nicholas Kristof. Kristof has another editorial in the New York Times:

A desert town that used to hold about 25,000 people, Labado was attacked in December by the Sudanese military and the militia known as the janjaweed. For several days, the army burned huts, looted shops, killed men and raped women.

For months, Labado was completely deserted and appeared destined to become a ghost town. But then African Union forces, soldiers from across Africa who have been dispatched to stop the slaughter, set up a small security outpost of 50 troops here. Almost immediately, refugees began returning to Labado, followed by international aid groups.

Today there are perhaps 5,000 people living in the town again, building new thatch roofs over their scorched mud huts. The revival of Labado underscores how little it takes to make a huge difference on the ground. If Western governments help the African Union establish security, if we lean hard on both the government and the rebels to reach a peace agreement, then by the end of this year Darfur might see peace breaking out...

In 1999, Madeleine Albright traveled to Sierra Leone and met child amputees there, wrenching the hearts of American television viewers and making that crisis a priority in a way that eventually helped resolve it. Ms. Rice could do the same for Darfur if she would only bother to go.

Meanwhile, Derek Chollet writes, on Arsenal, of the growing movement to get colleges, universities, and states to divest their interest in companies that do business in Sudan:

Harvard [divested] earlier this year, and other major universities are being pressured to follow suit. Last month, ICG’s John Prendergast and Harvard’s Samantha Power sent a letter to 100 university presidents urging them to examine their portfolios for links to Sudan and divest. Student groups have sprouted up and have done good work (the group STAND — Students Taking Action Now: Darfur — has 80 chapters nationwide), but with school out for the summer, progressives should work to pick up the slack.

And a few weeks ago, the Illinois legislature took this one step further: it passed a law to make Illinois the first state to prohibit doing business with Sudan. Illinois’ five pension systems have about $1 billion invested in 32 companies that work in Sudan, which this bill will put an end to. It will also prohibit the state from investing in foreign government bonds of Sudan and investing in companies doing business in or with Sudan.

Illinois might be the first, but it is not alone: A related measure has passed the New Jersey House but is bottled up in the Senate, California’s legislature has a version bouncing around, and just last week, legislation was offered in Ohio’s state Senate proposing something similar.

There's more work to do if we're going to stop this thing.

2005-06-06T12:06:00.000-04:00

Following the discussion on Dafur, there were two important pieces this weekend. First, Nicholas Kristof explains why Dafur is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world right now (a sadly competitive title).

Doctors Without Borders issued an excellent report in March noting that it alone treated almost 500 rapes in a four-and-a-half-month period. Sudan finally reacted to the report a few days ago - by arresting an Englishman and a Dutchman working for Doctors Without Borders.

Then, Suzanne Nossel writes Top 10 Things To Do for Darfur Short of U.S. Military Intervention.

Dafur

2005-06-03T09:18:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year, one of my oldest friends came to D.C. with her college's chapter of Amnesty International for a conference on Dafur. Two days of workshops and lectures in the labyrinthine basements of the Holocaust Museum. (Then, when she finally gets an evening off, she drags me to see “Hotel Rowanda.” I'm trying to get her help.) My point of course is that while Dafur is only just beginning to enter the public conciousness, it's been on the agenda of those rare creatures, the liberal foreign policy wonks, for quite some time.

For the best writing on the subject, check out Democracy Arsenal, here. The authors are a collection of liberal FP wonks, mostly from think tanks and beltway firms; several former Clinton appointees, including his foreign policy speechwriter and a deputy ambassador to the UN. The blog has no less than six entries on Dafur in the last week.

Right now, the concensus seems to be that what's needed in the Dafur is NATO involvement.

The Darfur mission is highlighting the AU's weaknesses in terms of capabilities, equipment and funding. The most obvious short-term solution is a hefty NATO backstop to an AU force, likely going beyond the logistics, transport and training they are providing today to include actual troops in country (over the long-term, we ought to be thinking about measures like those outlined here, including a long-term investment in developing capable military leadership for a standing AU force). This is what Derek, Madeleine Albright and others have been urging. A large amount of U.S. energy has been expended over the last decade in sustaining and expanding NATO in preparation for a post-Cold War role. With Europe chaotic but essential secure and peaceful, right now its hard to imagine a better use of the capabilities amassed than Darfur. It's also a chance for the many European countries that are not entangled in Iraq to share some of the burden of keeping the global peace, something they profess willingness to do. Building consensus for a robust NATO mission won't be easy, but the U.S. is obligated to try.

But putting troops on the ground in Dafur—AU, UN, or NATO—is not going to resolve the central issue. Dafur is part of a larger problem. I'm not just talking about the Sudanese Civil War, which has been rolling damn near longer than I've been alive. I'm talking about Rwanda, where Hutu and Tutsi kill each other over what is literally school-yard name calling. I'm talking about hospitals that do not have clean bandages and pencillin, let alone treatment for Ebola Ziere. I'm talking about Robert Mugabe, who is quite possibly the single worst human being alive right now. I am talking about thirty million people—30,000,000 people—who will die from AIDS before the decade is out.

The disease, poverty, and violence throughout Africa is the greatest challenge the world faces right now.

The Sudan

2005-06-01T15:40:00.000-04:00

What should the US role in Sudan's Darfur situation be?

Whatever our role is, our approach should be cautious. I would honestly like to see us give the honest elements of the Sudan Government a shove in the right direction without sending in the troops we currently don't have to spare. Much as I see potential for this cesspit as the next breeding ground for terrorist attacks on America and her citizens interests, they aren't there, yet. Further their government is at least making attempts to clean up their own nest, unlike Saddam, and the Taliban. If we are forced to go in with military assets, I would like to see the nations we've most recently reformed with the sword contribute troops that we led, and supplied as part of the repayment for our efforts aid them. This would serve multiple purposes: Introduce the new governments and militaries of Iraq and Afghanistan to the world as legitimate and allow us not to lose as many lives.

And where should we stand on outside intervention? With the United Nations, with the African Union, or should we just leave it alone?

The UN's record is so sad that I don't think its the proper group to intervene in a tavern brawl, much less the longest running civil war in Africa. The African Union on the other hand has no real track record. They are historically speaking brand spanking new. Speaking as someone who finds our presence in the UN objectionable, I'd rather side with the AU if there is going to be an outsider at the table. At best we'll find they can handle it without us pushy Americans, at worst we'll know we can't trust them either.

What the blank should we do about the Sudan?

2005-05-31T18:40:00.000-04:00

The Saints preserve me, I don't know.

I know what I want to do. I want to give every retired farmer with even a modicum of teaching skills who understands the concept and actually practiced crop rotation a rifle company, a dozen small tractors, sufficient seed for a quarter section for three planting seasons and enough logistical support and ancillary equipment to do the job and last that long.
For every four farmers I would send a mortar company. For every eight farmers I would send a company of cannon cockers. For every 32 farmers I would send a tank platoon. For every 128 an engineering battalion. For ever 512 I would send a medical unit sufficient for a division under heavy continuous fire. For every 1024 I would send a wing of A10s. For every 4096 I would send a carrier task force. For every 16,384 I would have to start worrying as all we have left to defend the US is the Coasties and and part of the Air Force.

If we can't do that send in sufficient SF and sniper squads to cap the 100 worst people in the Sudan Simultaneously every month. An hour before they are scheduled to die do a huge leaflet drop announcing their names from a wing of Buffasaurases. repeat every month until a modicum peace falls over the land. Then bring in the food and farm equipment.

I don't lay any hope for diplomatic and philanthropic solutions for Africa. It doesn't last and usually ends up in the hands of the villains.

I wish there were better solutions.

Question of the week

2005-05-30T09:26:00.000-04:00

What should the US role in Sudan's Darfur situation be? And where should we stand on outside intervention? With the United Nations, with the African Union, or should we just leave it alone?

The Moyers Strikes Back

2005-05-29T19:28:00.000-04:00

Bill Moyers, journalist, commentator and liberal, has been under fire from the Bush administration, at least according to Mr. Moyers. Make of that what you will, I have no interest in attacking the man's character. He's been doing what he does, and what the CO invited me here to do for as long as I have been alive. You have to respect the man's success and longevity if not his opinion. My interest is in the content of his response to these attacks he's described. Nothing more.

It's my opinion that those who can't look at themselves through the eyes of their opposition are doomed to ultimate failure, regardless of whatever short term success they may achieve. With that in mind I suggest you read Moyers's speech if you haven't. It can also be found here where I first encountered it.

Whatever else one may say about Moyers, he comes across as a reasonable man. If for no other reason, I find his descriptions plausible simply because of that. Nothing is threatening to either party as a well spoken and reasonable seeming opposition. It's hard to demonize or ostracize such a person because they are so damn reasonable. People want to believe such a speaker. Finding consensus with a person like that tends to validate the human need to seem a part of something, to be in some way important and above the masses. Moyers is certainly that.

I alluded to this post as "sympathy for the Opposition" and that is what it's about. Moyers starts off by building the background of his tale, and naturally that background is about him. He captures my attention as the kind of liberal I think the country needs. A man who is standing up not because it's the thing his crowd does, or because he's got a bone to pick. He stands up because his principle demand it of him. And those principle demand he not simply claim to be right, but BE RIGHT. He comes across as a man who questions his course, and the course of his political affiliation. In short, he comes across as a man who would question his own party were it controlling the government.

More over, his description of PBS is exactly what I think it should be. His description of PBS news is the model I want out of so many news organizations and don't get. So I'm sympathetic to what he has to say.

I never watched NOW, so I don't know if he's telling the truth. TV is my enemy. I simply have no respect for television news. I regret that in as much as it prevented me from seeking out NOW and find out for myself if it met the standard I believe the news should aspire to.

Moyers pulls no punches. He doesn't trust the administration, and he believes he has reason not to. I don't expect conservative to come away happy with what he has to say. I certainly didn't.

Yet he summed up my feelings nicely when he said "I've always thought the American eagle needed a left wing and a right wing. The right wing would see to it that economic interests had their legitimate concerns addressed. The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. Both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it's no longer an eagle and it's going to crash." Perhaps he describes the Left as too people centric, too saintly, but the core idea is there. We need dynamic tension in the country for a number of reasons, and it seems the Neo-Conservative agenda is stomp that out.

---No matter where you go, there you are.

Next Time: “Another Fine Mess”

The worlds oldest profession

2005-05-26T23:22:00.000-04:00

Why is Prostitution illegal?

That is probably the easiest part of this weeks question. Sex for sale is illegal simply because the founders of the colonies that became America a few centuries ago were religious extremists. While for the most part they were mildly so for their day, and ours and were certainly not of the radical variety like Al-Queda, Hamas, or the IRA, they still had an unwarranted killing or two on their dossiers. They believed not in freedom of religions, but freedom of their religion. Part and parcel of this was that law and church doctrine should mirror each other. This was unfortunately the only way they could see to protect their religion. But extremists they were none the less. The Bible is not very approving of scarlet women so neither were their laws. We're stuck with the legacy of this today.

Should it (prostitution) be legal?

Yes. It should be, in accordance either with the labor or consent laws of each state which ever sets the higher age, or perhaps just a federally ordained eighteen years of age. Beyond that and strict regulations requiring frequent STD testing for industry workers, and the trade being taxed at no higher a rate than any other service industry, leave it alone. I do think however that unlike our German friends we should allow people to not take jobs in this field of dubious virtue and negotiable affections and retain their unemployment benefits. Somepeople are simply unfit for the profession just as some are unfit to be police officers.

Should Prostitution Be Legal?

2005-05-26T11:21:00.000-04:00

This is obviously a question that "most" people would not bother considering. The default answer is that prostitution is immoral and illegal. As to my own opinion, I think it should be legal and regulated. This is not to say that I think prostitution is morally correct, much to the contrary, the selling (and buying, why is it no one ever mentions that end of the bargain?) of sex is morally repugnant and quite offensive to my own religious believes.

So why should we legalize and regulate prostitution? I would argue that prostitution is analogous to our illegal drug problem in at least two ways. First, in each case the act in question hurts only those who choose to engage in it. Neither sex between a prostitute and a "John" nor someone smoking crack hurts anyone else. The problem, for me, arises when the higher-order consequences of these two acts are considered. Taking harmful (illegal) drugs is not a "victimless" crime. Innocent children get caught in the crossfire of drug-related gang wars. Similarly, young girls (and to a lesser extent, in this country, boys) are sometimes forced into a life of prostitution and diseases are more easily spread (as, I would think, prostitutes will are generally less picky about their partners than the general population). Second, neither the illegal drug problem nor prostitution are going away. The tighter we clamp down, the more slips through our fingers.

Since prostitution is here to stay (it is, after all, the oldest profession), we really have no choice but to regulate it. In that way, we can at least protect some of those who would otherwise be vulnerable to STDs and exploitation by pimps, et al. None of this is to suggest that legalizing and regulating (the 'acceptable' forms of) prostitution will squash the market for other ('unacceptable') classes of prostitutes. Any form of prostitution that remains illegal (say, that conducted by 12 year olds) will continue as before: illegal, unregulated and dangerous. However, there are moral lines in the sand that cannot be crossed and battles worth fighting to the death.

Do I think any of this is actually going to happen? Not a chance. Why? For whatever reason America is relatively prude when it comes to sex. We're more than willing to watch sexually explicit movies, TV shows and, of course, fill forests worth of tabloids on the topic of celebrity sex. However, when it comes down to sex and 'real people' (and then throw in $$), people get very uncomfortable. The bottom line is that no politician (who wishes to remain so) is likely to bring anything like a Legalize Prostitution bill to the floor.

Update:

How topical.

I'll Take Missionary with the Option of Light Oral

2005-05-25T22:38:00.000-04:00

Prostitution. It's an ugly, ugly word. Why? I don't know. It could have something to do with the American taboo on sex, but that's just a guess. I know it's ugly word. How would you feel if someone told you you were prostituting yourself to your job?

There is simply no way to begin a discussion on the question without bring in moral and emotional baggage. There is no politically correct term for prostitute that isn't, itself, offensive to those with moral objections.

That happens to be the way I like my politics. No sugar coatings, please. Let's face the issue in the harsh light, face our emotional reactions and get past them, so we can deal with the issue, instead of trading venom and insult.

Is there a good reason that prostitution should be a crime? That's difficult to answer without resting on a moralization. I'm a practical man, and I want practical answers. To get practical answers, I break the issue down. What is prostitution? In the context of this question it is selling sex.

We live in a free market economy. Selling is perfectly legal. Sex is also legal, as long as it is private. Could selling sex be consider public activity? It depends on your definition of public. From an economic stand point, it's definitely private activity, but economics isn't the only definer of what is public.

Still, private entities can't sell just anything. They have to take care to prevent distribution of materials or services that are dangerous. Such things should be regulated for public protection. Is sex dangerous?

AIDS, syphilis, herpes... I'd say yes. Like anything else, sex without a form of moderation is exceedingly dangerous.

So, I can certainly answer the second question. If prostitution were legal it would have to be regulated, for the protection of the public and the prostitutes. How one would go about doing that is somewhat beyond the scope of my abilities, and seems less of political and more of procedural question. In my view procedure only becomes political when political hacks wrestle over it for voter brownie points. I believe prostitution is legal and regulated in parts of Nevada. Certainly those places can provide some idea of how it might be done.

At the last I still don't know if prostitution should be legal. This has been a very narrow analysis that focused on the easy parts of the question. To determine if it should be legal one has to tackle the difficult question of whether the problems related to prostitution—violence, extortion, drugs—are connected to the act or to the fact that the act is illegal. Further one would have to determine if the savings in public expense on enforcement would be eaten by the expense of regulation and dealing with the inevitable breakouts of the problems the regulations were meant to prevent. There would be problems, as with any other regulated system devised by humans, something always slip through the cracks.

I would guess, from a practical stand point, that there is no reason prostitution should be illegal. But I must admit, that it really is less a political and more a moral question. I believe there is a difference between the two. The moral debate doesn't particularly interest me, so I leave that to you.

---No matter where you go, there you are.

Next Time: “Sympathy for the Opposition”

Introducing...The Greatest Man Alive

2005-05-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am not James Brown. I am a fellow who has been invited to present his opinion, and perhaps challenge you. Should I happen to provoke you, try to remember; it's all about opinions. Like an oft mentioned part of the anatomy, everyone has got one.

I am not a Republican, nor am I a Democrat. I've been labeled Libertarian, but judging by the reactions of Libertarians I'm not one of those either. I consider myself a conservative. Sometimes I feel as though I'm the only one left.

I'm for human rights, national defense, globalization, fiscal responsibility, equal opportunity, small government, global dominance, and clean energy. I believe politicians should be pimp slapped for every obfuscation they utter, and I was really hoping Frist would use the “nuclear/constitutional option”. Any fan of small government has got to like the idea of the Senate being forced to actually read through every law it considers.

I can honestly look at the above and still call myself a conservative. Change is inevitable. Those who work to prevent it, get left behind. Change for the sake of change is foolishness and the way to destruction (make your time).

I am many things, but most of all, I'm late. This was supposed to be up weeks ago.

---No matter where you go, there you are.

Next Time: “Selling is legal. F***ing is legal. Why isn't selling f***ing legal?”

This weeks Spectrum Perspective

2005-05-23T13:20:00.000-04:00

Why is prostitution illegal in most of the country?

Should it be legal, and if so how should it be regulated?

Happy posting.

Immigration responces

2005-05-23T00:36:00.000-04:00

First it's one of the new folks. MM said:

The question posed by CO introduces the subject by unintentionally (I hope) framing the issue, thereby inadvertently establishing the parameters for the discourse.

Yes i did frame the question specifically so that we could have this conversation. We'll probably do other specific facets of immigration in the coming weeks.

More MM:

Do we know there is a problem? By whose definition?

Yes, there is a problem. Immigration enforcement is so weak as to be non existent. Corporations that hire millions of illegals are at most given a slap on the wrist. Further you mentioned the Mexican issue, yes that is part of the problem and while Canada is an equally porus border i haven't seen a single report of the Canadian military crossing the border in pursuit of people, nor seen the Canadian government publish pamphletes on how to circument US law and enter illegally.

Still more:

I’ve reviewed the arguments on the site; most are the standard issues related to the idea of “foreigners” arriving into a “home” country; it is difficult to escape xenophobia, I suffer from it myself at times.

It's not xenophobia, its simply that i don't have nearly as much responsability to someone from Darfur, Mecca or Mexico City as i do to someone from Detroit, Atlanta or Boston. The people from the latter trio of cities are my countrymen and women. This is why when i donate to charities i start by giving my money to those that help Americans first. This is also why i would cheerfully adopt a Cambodian child, or a Russian one, but only after all the American children in need of homes are fitted with them. Plain and simple my neighbor be he ever so obnoxious is my fellow American, and i'll help him first because he is such. Someone who comes here legally will be helped if they need it, but for the most part unless they are a direct threat to me and mine the rest of the world will have to wait until America solves its internal problems in my opinion.

MM:

I could point out however, that the majority of the terrorists responsible for 9/11 were here legally and the Bush administration recently relaxed the visa standards for Saudis

Bush is an Idiot, this is well known.

MM:

The idea that America is home to the “huddled masses” should not be forgotten. I doubt any of the readers here would qualify as aboriginal

If you could find that phrase in any immigration law you're arguement would have a leg to stand on, as it happens i think i should be offering your arguement a wheel chair.

MM:

It is clear that completely closed borders are not an option, so we must find a way to address what we perceive are the problems.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that, i know i'm not. I simply want higher standards for who comes in and under what conditions they are allowed to stay. I also want fair even handed application of those standards.

On to J'Myle:

That is true, and it has been true since America first became appealing to the huddled masses in the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Poet's, the French, and other dillente's have shouted this for a long time. I'm happier with an older line "if you don't eat you don't work". This country was started by those with a work ethic, it has to keep that ethic alive in order to contine the extrodinary efforts we put into helping other nations. We can't do much about the idiots who refuse to work that are born here, we can and should exclude those who attempt to come here to suck on the public teat. This is not a large percentage of immigrants, but they are there and they should be gone.

J'Myle:

If we did not saddle our children with a fourth-rate educational system, they wouldn't have to compete with Mexican immigrants for jobs at McDonalds while we run desperately short of nurses and computer technicians.

Amen and Halleluiah, at least three times. But improving our education system won't shore up the borders, or x-ray hulls, or deport the illegals we do catch.

J'Myle:

But most importantly, we need to remember the promise of America. There is a children's book about my great-grandmother's arrival at Ellis Island which was read to me as a boy. I know, at least a little, what that seven-year-old girl felt when she saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time.

Someone who arrives legally, and is willing to at least attempt to become enough of an American to help their family suceed is a whole different kettle of fish from the immigrants who move here and continue two to three generations later to barely speak english and co-opt their children into living in the same thrid world psuedo-reality they supposedly came here to escape but seem to be working hard at recreating.

J'Myle:

Some of us don't have such a book, and cannot remember who crossed the ocean or why. They have the luxury of thinking of themselves as “real Americans” and of seen the Latino aliens as, well, alien. For me, it's not that easy.

Your ancestors chose to come here, not everyones did. Choice is a big, big part of what we are talking about. And when it comes to illegals, and those who are trying to turn the nation into the next Somalia, Egypt, or Chekeslovakia, they can head elsewhere.

What IS The Problem Definition Here?

2005-05-21T12:17:00.000-04:00

The question posed by CO introduces the subject by unintentionally (I hope) framing the issue, thereby inadvertently establishing the parameters for the discourse. It may have been better to simply state “what is your opinion on the immigration laws of the U.S.?” I mention this because this issue simply cannot be encapsulated into a one-size-fits-all answer; the multiple dimensions of our national immigration policy are far too many and exceptionally complex. Are we discussing Canadian border issues? Mexican? International boundary lines at sea? Are we discussing trade? Workers? Students? Diplomats? Visitors? There are many reasons for, and routes of, entry into our country and we as a nation utilize differing approaches for each of them because of political, economic and cultural nuances.
I suspect very few of us have ever read U.S. immigration policy (The Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA, arose out of the McCarran-Walter bill of 1952, Public Law No. 82-414). I certainly haven’t but I know it’s been around since 1952 and it’s been amended a good many times to address the changing face of immigration (no pun intended) needs and issues in this country. Do we know there is a problem? By whose definition? Where is the quantitative data? The only numbers I’ve seen on this issue—although I must confess, I haven’t looked real hard—arise from an article written by Jason Ackleson, Ph.D, from the American Immigration Law Foundation. His article, “Fencing in Failure: Effective Border Control is Not Achieved by Building More Fences” provides some empirical evidence about our efforts at controlling the Mexican border “problem,” and I suspect this is the area of focus most have had as they have responded to CO’s initial question. Ackleson data illustrates that the peak of border arrests actually occurred in 1999, with approximately 1,600 individuals; by 2004, this number had dropped to around 1,200, and this is not because of a lack of money or personnel. Indeed, from 1994 through 2004, border patrol agents increased by about 1,000 agents per year, from 4,200 to about 11,000 during that time. There was a dip in the funding for INS in the latter half of 2001, from about $400 million to about $350 million, but this was because a boatload of additional money was given directly to Customs & Border Protection--$600 million to about $650 million at the end of 2004.
I’ve reviewed the arguments on the site; most are the standard issues related to the idea of “foreigners” arriving into a “home” country; it is difficult to escape xenophobia, I suffer from it myself at times. We can debate whether foreign labor adversely impacts the citizen’s ability to find employment (NAFTA created an economic system that chiefly serves the interests of large U.S.-based multinational firms such as agribusinesses). Conversely, we can argue that business owners—especially those who make their living off agriculture—would be run out of business if we were to stop their supply of inexpensive labor (I picked apples for a summer once when I was 17, in Empire, Michigan to earn some spending money. I can unequivocally state that I would never ever do it again, especially not for the pittance I was paid, and I’ll bet there isn’t one person on this board who would do it, either).
We can claim that national security is an issue and that we must stop terrorists from easy access. I could point out however, that the majority of the terrorists responsible for 9/11 were here legally and the Bush administration recently relaxed the visa standards for Saudis. I would also add that visas and closed borders wouldn’t have stopped Tim McVeigh.
No, we’re approaching the immigration issue from too many angles and attaching far too many problems that arise from other policies onto the back of immigration.
The idea that America is home to the “huddled masses” should not be forgotten. I doubt any of the readers here would qualify as aboriginal, but one has to keep in mind that we’re looking at the problem from a very narrow, ethnocentric and ignorant point of view, no offense intended. I doubt anyone—even those who specialize in immigration issues—are able to fully grasp all the issues related to this subject. It is clear that completely closed borders are not an option, so we must find a way to address what we perceive are the problems. For that, we must first turn to those who can do something about it and second, we’ll need decent data and a good problem definition.
Once we have that, for governmental policymakers, there are three methods of approach; regulate it, tax it, or spend on it—and that’s it. When we debate how to correct the policy, we’ve got to keep these restrictions and parameters in mind. Ackleson points out that policymakers should be reviewing alternate approaches that; “take into account the transnational nature of trade and migration, as well as terrorism.” His suggestions here are good ones: “This could be accomplished through a revised version of NAFTA that includes three additional elements. First, an agreement on security cooperation should be implemented among the United States, Mexico and Canada which approaches terrorism as a North American, rather than simply a national, issue. Second, migration must be addressed in a humane way that acknowledges the contributions of migrants and the economic needs of all three NAFTA partners. Finally, an investment fund should be created that builds infrastructure, protects the environment and encourages economic development in Mexico. Re-evaluating U.S. border security policy does not mean abandoning important counterterrorism and homeland defense priorities. To strengthen these efforts, policymakers should consider a more intelligence-driven approach that builds a trilateral security relationship between Mexico, Canada and the United States. This would involve sharing key information on threats, additional law-enforcement cooperation and the establishment of “virtual borders” away from the physical frontier, where inspections would take place and goods or people would be pre-cleared to cross. Counterterrorism policy is most effective before a terrorist hits the vast mix of people and commodities trying to expeditiously cross into the United States. There has been some progress on these issues – the meeting of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, U.S. President George W. Bush, and Mexican President Vicente Fox on March 23, 2005, was positive – but much remains to be done. The three leaders, for instance, did not address migration. An accord on migration would allow law enforcement agencies to focus their attention on the very small proportion of non-migrants with criminal objectives in the United States” (2005).
I know this doesn't answer the original question posed by CO, but how can we answer what hasn't been defined as a problem in the first place?

Nativists and Tammany Hall

2005-05-20T15:04:00.000-04:00

So the spectrum's general consensus is that American immigration policy is looser than a sorority girl at a party with an open bar.

That is true, and it has been true since America first became appealing to the huddled masses in the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Then, there were the nativists, who argued that immigrants didn't have “American values” and that they would slowly erode the country from within. They argued that a flood of uneducated immigrants would never become a useful part of the American society and economy. What the nativist leaders were really worried about was losing their next election to hostile immigrant voters.

Then, there were the immigrant leaders, who argued for the dignity and humanity of the immigrants, and for every effort to be made to accept these immigrants into our rich national heritage. These leaders, such as Boss Tweed, were just as corrupt as the nativists, and were mostly opportunistic Americans interested in riding the tide of immigration to power.

Two hundred years later, not much has changed. Those who benefit from the immigrant vote want guest worker programs; those who do not want more Border Patrol agents. It's still really about politics.

Since 9/11, today's nativists talk about national security. Caohaoim claims, “there is an urgent need to control our borders...driven by our need for increased security.” This is a red herring. First, many of the hijackers were in the country legally. Second, of those who were not, not one slipped across the Rio Grande with the gentleman cleaning the toilets at your local multiplex. Third, the key to preventing another hijacking was simply to lock the cockpit door and beef up security at the airports. Finally, the most important national security concern today is to begin X-rays on the cargo containers arriving daily at our ports.

But what of our economy? Ryan fears “the negative effects immigration is starting to have on the economy. When cheaper labor comes in from Mexico, U.S. citizens loose their jobs.” Another red herring, and not only because the illegal immigrants usually take service jobs Americans refuse to do. If we did not saddle our children with a fourth-rate educational system, they wouldn't have to compete with Mexican immigrants for jobs at McDonalds while we run desperately short of nurses and computer technicians. As for Ryan's claim that the illegal immigrants “*usually* take the money back home and the U.S. ends up loosing the money that would have been spent in its borders,” that statement is completely without meaning in today's economy. The U.S. “looses” most of the money you spend at the mall, because the shareholders in all those corporations are Saudi holding companies, Japanese conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch, and Wall Street tycoons with their own private islands—all of whom turn right around and pay the salary of anyone who doesn't own their own business or work for the government. Welcome to capitalism.

Look: Today's pro-immigration activists are often just as exploitative as Tammany Hall was. But they have a point when they say that immigrant labor is essential to our economy and that we will be more secure by working with these illegals to weed out the truly dangerous and assimilate the vast majority who come simply for a paycheck. And they have another point when they say that, in this century of corporate power and trchnological marvels, we cannot afford to think of ourselves as a sovereign nation separate from the globe.

But most importantly, we need to remember the promise of America. There is a children's book about my great-grandmother's arrival at Ellis Island which was read to me as a boy. I know, at least a little, what that seven-year-old girl felt when she saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time.

Some of us don't have such a book, and cannot remember who crossed the ocean or why. They have the luxury of thinking of themselves as “real Americans” and of seen the Latino aliens as, well, alien. For me, it's not that easy.

Relaxation of Immigration Standards: Not My Cup of Tea

2005-05-18T20:44:00.000-04:00

First of all let me preface anything I say by noting that we are all immigrants, even if your heritage is Native American, your family would have immigrated from Asia across the Berring Straight. I feel with this said, the issue of restricting someone else's access to this country becomes difficult...because what if your ancestors had been restricted?

I think as of late, Democrats and Republicans alike are pressing for tighter immigration policies and tightening the actual borders themselves. Personally, I am for this, because of the negative effects immigration is starting to have on the economy. When cheaper labor comes in from Mexico, U.S. citizens loose their jobs and are placed on welfare and S.S. for their children which ultimately takes money out of other Americans Pockets. These cheap laborers *usually* take the money back home and the U.S. ends up loosing the money that would have been spend in its borders.

I think recently with the terrorist attacks occuring and the questions revolving around global terrorism, that it is time we shut the doors. I feel quotas would help protect the United States' economic and national security concerns by limiting the number of immigrants to the county. I am apalled that some of the 9/11 terrorists actually were here in the United States on expired Visas and a few even held driver's liscenses in the States of New Jersey and New York. Hopefully I am not the only person who feels that someone who is not a legal U.S. Citizen should not have the right to have a drivers liscense. And when a visa expires...shouldnt these people be forced to either have the visa renewed or leave the country? Why are there so many cases of people being in limbo as to their status in this country. My Proposal: Totally Revamp Immigration Policies and create a deparment in the governmen that overseas Immigration and Naturalization Policy and Legislation. I am not sure as to which department this falls under but with the recent problems with these issues, I feel it needs to have a larger light in gov't.

Immigration

2005-05-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

The path we are currently treading with respect to immigration leads, literally, to the de facto destruction of the United States as a country. We have laws regulating immigration and naturalization, but we are not enforcing them. All sorts of crazy rulings from dictators in black robes have not made the situation any better. Combine that with the Bush administration’s apparent unwillingness to enforce our current laws and we are on a trajectory to losing our very country. A country that cannot (or does not) control its borders is simply not a country.

So what needs to be done? As has been stated in the two previous responses, enforce the existing laws. If they are too restrictive, have an open and public debate in both Houses of Congress and, if need be, change the laws.

This will only happen, however, if politicians find enough backbone to take the chance that they might piss of people in this country of Mexican descent (or Latino descent in general). They're so afraid of losing votes to the other side that they are willing to keep our borders dangerously porous.

Since I have no particular faith that our pols are going to suddenly calcify vertebrae, the alternative is that we need to have a serious swing in public opinion/culture. Currently we are turning into a country of wimpy crybabies. Somehow many people have gotten to thinking that simply by being born they are entitled to something for nothing. They think that money grows on the Tree of Government and that there's plenty, not only for them as citizens of the US but also for anyone who wants to break our laws and sneak across the border. It absolutely floors me that anyone who is legally a citizen of the United States of America would be angry at a politician for securing our borders. That is not discrimination against Mexicans. That is fulfilling their oath.

What will it take to affect this swing in public opinion? I used to think that it would take a horrendous attack within the borders of our country. 3,000 dead didn't do the trick for more than a week or so. I shudder to think what it might actually take.

Immigration Policy is an Act of Will.

2005-05-18T02:23:00.000-04:00

There are already laws on the books. They do no good if they are not enforced in a strong and consistent manner. This has been the case for generations.

Today there is a great and urgent need to control our borders. The urgency is driven by our need for increased security. The greater need is driven by a more subtle reason. We are a nation of laws and when a large percentage of the resident population is living in defiance of those laws and there is no effective enforcement of the laws they are defying it diminishes our ability to enforce all other laws.

Immigration: Casually done

2005-05-17T12:10:00.000-04:00

While there is no doubt America’s immigration condition is flawed. One must ask where and how is it flawed?

Immigration is flawed in the intent. The intent of immigration should be to keep America vital by allowing in hardworking, honest, productive law abiding people who want to become Americanized. This does not preclude harboring refugees who one day intend to return to their own nations. It does not and should not keep us from allowing people to come to America on work visa’s or for educational purposes. This is America, we and our ancestors built a nation that if here built to our ideals. If you like it, live with it. If you don’t like it, Canada, the United Kingdom and other places have relatively open cultures and you might find a better fit there.

Immigration is further flawed in execution. One example, and by now means the only is our southern border. Not only do we have a southern border that is virtually unguarded, we have a President who while simultaneously claiming to be tough on terrorism and committed to security has worked against funding the additional men, women, and equipment that are desperately needed to protect our southern border and keep illegal immigrants out. We have a former Secretary of State who authorized armed INS agents to storm the house of a family in order to retrieve a child who’s mother died to get him here, but again failed to protect our borders properly.

Many people assume that if you are strongly nationalistic you must be some sort of racist or xenophobe, in some cases this is true, in mine it most certainly is not. There are a lot of reasons to wish for stricter immigration controls. The first is simply that no one who can not respect the laws of this nation enough to enter it legally belongs here, period. The second is national security. With the events of 9/11 and the “War on Terror” unfolding around the world, as terrorist organizations lose the ability to strike back in a military fashion, strikes within the country similar to what is seen in other countries will rise if we don’t do something now. The third reason is to protect these people. There are unscrupulous, and downright evil people ‘helping’ them get across the border. Often at the cost of thousands of dollars, which they will have to come up with in advance or work off at jobs where they have none or few of the protections legal immigrants and Americans enjoy, they will in effect be chattel or slaves. They will not have medical benefits, and if they do so much as get a parking ticked they could end up getting deported and possibly have to leave their family behind here without one, or perhaps the only bread winner. There are other reasons, but those are the most important ones to enter legally.

So while there are certainly people in the Immigration and Naturalization Services who could probably have found their spiritual homes under Pot Pol, Stalin, or Andrew Johnson the majority are simply hard working Americans doing a job in a flawed system. What needs to be done is an overhaul of the agencies focus, and this top to bottom emphasis needs to cover directives from the President, Congress, and Supreme Court down to the newest police officer or under strength border patrol trainee.

We're Back!

2005-05-13T07:11:00.000-04:00

Well ladies and gents, it begins again.

Week 9 after some time off is here.

This weeks (5/16-22) question: What is wrong with US immigration policy?

posting starts Monday.

A Most Stubborn Man

2005-04-26T00:55:00.000-04:00

It seems that I have been invited to join this illustrious band. The Casual Observer has obviously not been taking his meds. Since I do value him and the invite I shall endeavour not to embarrass him for his medically influenced decision making process. I shall also endeavour to be at least remotely lucid and grammatical in all of my postings.

Kevin

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

2005-04-16T19:38:00.000-04:00

Hello to all. I’m Miserable Fornow (Mis) and Casual Observer has asked me to join in on what sounds like wonderful fun, exploring the limits of the mental faculties possessed by those who enjoy political/social analysis, well-sourced arguments, punditry and occasional humor within the political/cultural/social realm, so please allow me to provide you with a short bio in order to establish my modest credentials—or lack thereof, depending upon your point of view.
I’m 45 and live within a boulder’s throw of Lake Tahoe. I am a graduate of the country’s “greatest party school” (according to Playboy magazine), receiving my BA in Sociology (the ever-popular “would you like fries with that?” degree) and my Master’s in Political Science/Public Administration at California State University, Chico. Currently I perform independent program audits and specialize in government compliance issues for healthcare higher education and nonprofit organizations.
I began studying political science in earnest about eight years ago and recently started a blog—A Political Misery—about a month ago to vent some pent-up anger and extreme frustration while also voicing my opinion about our current political situation here and abroad. A quick perusal of that blog may provide the distinct impression that I am an acerbic, hard-left liberal who doesn’t much care for our current political situation or those who have initiated it, and that opinion would be more than partially correct. I will not be quite as…”acidly outspoken” here but would also point out that while I do indeed exhibit numerous liberal tendencies, because I have spent a great deal of time studying and working within our federal (and occasionally the California and Nevada state) government, I’m not so idealistic, ignorant and naive as to think all things can be corrected by spending more money and adding additional heft to government entities. Although I may disagree with a large portion of the Republican/conservative platform, they, and most other parties, all have individual elements that appeal to me and no one party is even close to having all the answers, at least in my humble opinion.
I analyze, critique and vote with my conscience and my mind, and I am not committed to any one political group in particular, although the Green Party probably has the ideals and goals I would most closely identify with, at least right this moment. I am absolutely a moral/ethical relativist who subscribes to the concept of utilitarianism, tempered with Kant’s concept of the categorical imperative; in essence, I allow others to do as they please so long as it doesn’t infringe upon my own right to do the same, and I try to conduct myself in a manner that best reflects how I would like to be treated in a reverse situation (this doesn’t always occur as much as it should, but I try).
Frankly, like so many others, I am simply sick and tired of being lied to, manipulated, and deceived by those who pretend to represent us, and I believe we’ve got major social, political and global issues that will take all of us, progressives, conservatives, and everyone else in-between, to both identify and rectify.
I look forward to participating with individuals holding all points of view because, after all, that is what makes America such a great place, yes? I expect to be called on mistakes if I make them and have no problem in admitting I’m wrong—when I am.
One final note: I too have a large dose of “real-life” responsibilities currently absorbing the majority of my free time, and the remaining seconds are reserved for my lovely and wonderful partner, who is exceptionally considerate of my work demands. She is far less considerate of my “chatting” on the internet when my plate is as full as it currently is, so for about the next two weeks I’ll be less active here in the forum than I would perhaps like to be.
After that, well… Let the fun begin.
Mis

Two new faces

2005-04-14T13:39:00.000-04:00

Well, i've tracked down to more posters, and we should be getting ready to launch in a week or two.

Reorganization

2005-03-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

Hello,

This blog has gone quite sometime without being updated. For which i appologize. Several of the bloggers have been living in ways that prove why "life" is a four letter word, and i've not been far off. We will be relaunching with more new faces and perspectives soon. If you know of anyone who would be a good fit, or think you might be, email me, or drop a message in the comments here.

While we were waiting...

2005-02-15T01:51:00.000-05:00

The House was debating.

And unfortunately it appears that the US House is populated by "those who would give up an essential freedom...". Let's hope the Senate has a little more vision.

Week 8: 2/7

2005-02-07T13:28:00.000-05:00

Are National ID cards, or standardizing of drivers licenses a good measure to take towards security, or merely one more case of allowing the camel to get its nose into your tent?

One of our members contributed this a bit back:

This issue is definitely one I would like to take a closer look at in the near to semi-near
future. The article is about the national regulations for driver's licenses that is in the
intelligence bill Bush just signed.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20041220-9999-1n20licenses.html

--

Week Seven: When

2005-02-04T01:51:00.000-05:00

Much as I would like to see all our men and women in uniform home in time for Valentines Day, even if it were practical, or indeed possible, it would not be ethical. We collectively took on the responsibility for Iraq’s security until the new Government has not just been selected, but until its cut its teeth and has the military and police organs to protect its citizens. This is the first attempt at nation building in decades, and it needs to be done right, I don’t expect the US will pull out most of its troops for four or more years.

Week Seven

2005-01-31T06:31:00.000-05:00

Now that the Iraqi's have voted, what should our next step be? Should we draw down our troops? Do nothing for a time? Start leaving immediately?

Week 6: Censorship

2005-01-30T22:06:00.000-05:00

I generally agree with both the CO and J'myle. There should be absolutely zero censorship so long as a particular exercise of the Freedom of Speech does not directly hurt someone (i.e., shouting 'Theatre' in a crowded fire (I like that =)) and so long as I have a reasonable opportunity to avoid the exercise of Speech that I find offensive. So...TV, Radio, Movies, etc. are all free game as far as I'm concerned. The issues that we all own the airwaves and so the FCC can regulate what travels upon them is quickly becoming moot. With cable and satellite the wackos have ever more medium to ply their often offensive trades (need I even mention the internet?) and I have ever more opportunity to avoid them and find things that suit me. Hence...a Free Market complete with wide selection and consumer freedom will determine what society wants far faster, cheaper and more accurately than the Government ever could.

So, the only things I would suggest that should be rightly censored are truly public spaces. We should not be subjected to images of situations put so delicately by the CO (he does have a way with words, doesn't he =)) on a billboard in Times Square. Nor should we be auditorally assaulted by profanity-laced tirades amplified by a megaphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

How, exactly, we are going to decide which Speech gets censored in public places is difficult. In the end the decision must come down to common sense. If someone is offended by another's legitimate ideas, too bad. If, on the other hand, someone is offended by another's insulting language...then maybe something needs to be done (e.g., do we really want to defend my right to spew profanity while standing on Lincoln's head?). Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules and each case needs to be judged individually. If you don't like that answer then -phetwe-. I spit on you. Be gone from my sight!

Anyway...Before signing off, I would like to point out that I used two examples of truly public spaces: A city street and the Mall in DC. Inside a privately owned store or even within your local mall are a completely different manner. If Sacks 5th Ave. wants to allow CO-esque acts of carnal playtime or if the Mall of America ownership don't mind having those profanity-laced-megaphone-enhanced-tirades on their private property, there is absolutely nothing that gives any government the right to interfere. Which brings me to my pet peeve: smoking bans in "public places" that just happen to be privately owned restaurants and bars. Related...maybe...but we'll leave such things until another time.

----

All right, I also just noticed a comment left at J'myle's post by Tefran and I would like to briefly respond. What we are suggesting here is that Speech should not be constrained by the government unless it's going to harm someone else or (as I suggest) it is being exercised in a public place. Speech that fits these criteria has nothing in common with taxes, murder or theft. All three of those hurt people (in various ways and to different degrees) and so can be rightly outlawed or constrained depending on the circumstances.

Week Six: Censorship

2005-01-26T14:02:00.000-05:00

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ...

Except.

There is supposed to be one reason to censor speech in this country: you cannot harm others. You cannot shout “Theatre!” in a crowded fire. You cannot sell a cure for cancer by claiming it's snake-oil. When demonstratable harm is done to others, speech can be censored.

That's the idea, anyway. And it's not a bad idea. If the last words I hear are “jump off the bridge—there's a bomb!” then I'd certainly hope there really was a bomb. However, the ‘demonstratable harm’ theory quickly gives way to a second, more pernicious theory: that speech can be censored when demonstratable harm is done to the common good.

We say ‘the common good’ because if we said ‘the people,’ we'd look like communists. But the theory is the same: that the people, as a group, have rights of some sort. Obscenity law comes from this reasoning. So do flag-burning amendments. So did the arrests of newspaper editors critical of the government during the first world war and the civil war. So did the Alien and Sedition acts. So do many other things. Sometimes people argue that certain specific groups are endangered by certain types of speech. This is especially true of obsencity laws, which are there to protect ‘the children.’ (“Censorship,” Mark Twain once said, “is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”) But still these laws place the rights of a group above those of an indivdual.

That's called ‘collectivism.’ It is antithetical to freedom, and to the ideals this country was founded on. And it is where the line, in censorship, and most other things as well, needs to be drawn.

TheCO does week six

2005-01-26T01:09:00.000-05:00

I was going to make this a short and snarky: With a guillotine across the throat of anyone suggesting it. Unfortunately, since everyone else is being mute, it’s my duty to stir the pot just a bit.

Censoring starts, and should end at home. It is neither the job, nor the right of government to decide what I can and can’t see, hear, read, or wear. If I choose to get on TV and sing about a sexual encounter I had in an airliner bathroom with two flight attendants, and I happen to have video of it playing, so be it. If you are offended by it, it is your TV you can turn it off. You can change the channel. If someone writes a book that depicts carnal acts involving six men a goat four pints of ice dream and enough leather to upholster a car, you have the right not to read it, you have the right to be offended. You can choose for yourself, and for your minor children, in your home. However, your rights end there. America is not supposed to have thought police, or a Synod of Censors. And yet in all violation of the first amendment there is the FCC.

Week Six Question

2005-01-23T22:24:00.000-05:00

With Michael Powell stepping down, this question seems natural.

Where does the line for censorship need to be drawn?

Just a Jump to the Left

2005-01-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

The CO says:

On social issues, [the Republican Party] has steadily drifted further and further right.

No it hasn't. The Republican Party is more liberal than it's ever been. True conservatives, which used to make up the bulk of the Republican Party, were crying for the dismantling of the Department of Education twenty years ago. Now it's not even considered, and "No Child Left Behind" is a centerpiece of the Bush presidency.

Look ahead to '08: The leading presidential possibilities for the Republican Party-- Giuliani, Rice, and Schwarzenegger (assuming the little matter of the Constitution is addressed)--are all pro-aborts. That's a drift to the right?

The Democratic Party's wild tilt to the radical left fringe beginning in the late '60s has allowed the Republicans move left with them to occupy the deserted middle. Without any real conservative running, though, religious conservatives like me have little choice. It comes down to a big government, pro-interventionist, pro-abort or a big government, pro-interventionist, pro-lifer.

The biggest difference between the parties is in the area of religious faith. Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News wrote a fascinating piece on this trend:

Survey data from the 1992 national conventions show how thoroughly polarized the parties had by that time become around religious orientation. Only 20 percent of white Democratic delegates ... went to religious services at least once a month, while over three times that number of white Republican delegates did.

Until that trend changes, which will require some major changes in the Democratic Party platform, the Democrats are going to find it increasingly difficult to put a candidate in the White House.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are free to continue aggravating true conservatives, behaving like Roosevelt Democrats and spending us into eternal debt service.

Home Schooling - The CO's findings

2005-01-19T14:28:00.000-05:00

Home Schooling

Roughly two percent of American children are home schooled. Or about 1.1 million children. This figure actually surprised me with all the attention given to it; I fully expected the number to be closer be up over 5% and edging in on ten. That said, nearly one million children in absolute terms is still a lot.

According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, there are four basic levels of state oversight and regulation in regards to home schooling:
“State with high regulation: State requires parents to send notification or achievement test scores and/or professional evaluation, plus other requirements (e.g. curriculum approval by the state, teacher qualification of parents, or home visits by state officials).” Some of the states in this group include MA, UT, ME, WA, WV.
“States with moderate regulation: State requires parents to send notification, test scores, and/or professional evaluation of student progress.” Some of the states in this group include FL, GA, HI, SD, CO, NH
“States with low regulation: State requires parental notification only.” Some of the states in this group include MT, CA, MS, NV, WY, and KS.
“States requiring no notice: No state requirement for parents to initiate any contact.” TX, CT, OK, MO, ID, NJ.

Requiring no notice to me seems like a recipe for child abuse. True, it does allow the parent the most freedom, and maybe it is just a product of my up bringing that I automatically suspect poor parenting when parents behave in erratic ways. On the flip side, getting a child out of a school where there is staff abuse, or peer violence is a good thing. According to every study, I have heard of, home schooled children regardless of race, family income, or geography scored higher on the same standardized testing as public school children. Moreover, the longer a child was home schooled, the better they did.

Academically, although the results are still scanty I think that home schools may just be the best choice. It remains to be seen how well home schooled children are equipped in a social manner. I’m not aware of any study that tracks crime, pregnancy, or other indicators based on home, private, public and charter school education.

Please not that at this time of the day, my ability to edit at all complely evaporates.

Quick Response To The CO

2005-01-19T10:20:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note on the CO's post.

You bring up the fact that Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill, and that he is the first President in a very long time to do so. I don't think this is necessarily indicative of the Republican Party coming apart. Consider the opposite situation: The Republican Party controls the House, Senate and Presidency and Bush vetoed 50% of the spending bills (or if you don't like 50%, pick a number). I my mind that would indicate that the Party was fractured because the President would be unable to work with his own party.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that 0% is a good rate of vetoing, but only that I don't think it's as big a deal as some want to make it.

As for social issues, I don't think that the Republican Party has drifted uniformly to the Right. Evidence: immigration, education (which Ted Kennedy had a large (ham handed) role in writing) and medicare. These are huge issues that Bush is being way more liberal on than I would like (as a cold-hearted Conservative, of course =)). While I suppose these issues could be used as evidence that the Republican Party is fracturing, there is some amount of disagreement that is necessary for a health Party.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts.

Reply to Derek wk 3 spinoff

2005-01-18T21:14:00.000-05:00

Derek aired this:

Think carefully about this one. You can't deny the Democratic Party is not what it was 40 years ago. Since 1972, the party has actively driven away voters who lean conservative. That's why the South has gone Republican.

I think what we are really seeing is the Republican Party pulling itself apart. On social issues, it has steadily drifted further and further right. In its current incarnation with Dubya as the party figurehead, it has crested breaker after breaker deeper into the Sea of Financial Woe. Yes, any war is going to build a debt, but Bush is almost certainly the only holder of the Oval Office in at least a century not to have vetoed a single spending bill. The GOP is not the party it was even 20 years ago. The elder Bush was a conservative; Dubya is a Neo-Con. Care to guess which one I respect more?

Casual Responses

2005-01-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

The CO opines:

Derek (not quite in order)
The Democrats--well, they're lost. The Republican drift to the left has pushed Democrats somewhere to the far side of George McGovern.
Oh Boy is that one for another day...

Think carefully about this one. You can't deny the Democratic Party is not what it was 40 years ago. Since 1972, the party has actively driven away voters who lean conservative. That's why the South has gone Republican.

At the same time, the Republican Party has gone from opposing big government and foreign entanglements to welcoming them with open arms. The party today looks like the Democratic Party of FDR.

I’m not a huge fan of government sponsored education, however, it does have a much better chance of getting people all on the same playing field than each city block having its own privately run school.

I'm not arguing for doing away with public education. But local control is key. No organization, corporate or political, is more efficient when it's centrally controlled.

Week Five!

2005-01-16T23:08:00.000-05:00

We're going to keep the education ball rolling.

Responce to Week 3 posts - The CO

2005-01-15T11:17:00.000-05:00

First TCL

Perhaps if we spend more money on things like education and tools for education (libraries, museums, art, music and culture), we might get more kids interested in learning on their own. Back in Illinois, my school took us on field trips to Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. It got me interested in learning about things outside of school, and instead of sitting in class, staring at the chalkboard for 6 hours a day, we got to watch SCUBA divers feed sharks, and look at rocks that fell from space! I became extremely interested in geology for a number of years, all because of trips to museums. In turn, I went to the library to learn more about xeolinths, lava flows and geologic faults, which nurtured an interest about natural disasters and the earth in general, which is a hobby that I still pursue to this day.

I do agree that more hands on and participatory education is needed in the form of field trips, unfortunately with this you are again running into a nasty area. America, as I touched on is as much or more a fear ruled society as it is reason ruled one. The odds of a terrorist attack, or even ‘ordinary’ accidents are miniscule, yet many if not most schools have either severely curtailed or eliminated such trip since 9/11.

Now James

Our CO and the Cunning Linguist try very hard to escape the gravitational pull of this huge planet, this personal experience, but in the end they, too, crash and burn.

I beg to differ. My driving has got to be the closest thing to wingless flight one can accomplish, and I’ve not had an accident in oh, hours.

That is the genius of public education in America. We did have something in common back then, and we still do, no matter what academic track we were on, no matter what occupational destination we shared. Not because we came from the same class or race or gender, but because we were taught—not necessarily by our teachers--to negotiate our differences by reference to the inheritances we call American history and literature. (For some of us, yes, by reference to Mathematics, as well, a universal language, to be sure, but the fissures and consequences were narrower in that domain.)

While there is something to be said for shared experience in school, and I do believe to some experience it is needed, it is not the be all end all of education, not even close. Teaching children the mislabeled “three r’s” is the responsibility of the education system. Teaching children to be sociable like providing religious and or personal philosophical guidance is, and should remain the job of the parents.

The CO and Sidial agree on the need for what we used to call tracking. "Separate out the kids according to ability, intelligence, and zeal for learning," as the latter puts it. I wonder. My most boring moments in high shool came in my "honors" classes, and my most electrifying moments came after I was kicked out of them, after my junior year.

Doesn’t this go back to the personal responsibility that you were preaching about a few paragraphs ago? I reveled in my advanced classes. I could read on a high school level by fourth grade, and a college level by sixth. If you failed to learn in the more challenging classes it presents one of three major problems and their associated subsets:
1) The ‘advanced’ classes were nothing of the sort and only dubbed that way to stroke the ego’s of parents and some students.
2) You did not appreciate the challenge of the advanced classes and were content getting “easy A’s” in the mainstream classes.
3) You were on the borderline between ‘average’ and ‘advanced’

Of these problems number three is by far the murkiest, if that is for the sake of discussion the best answer it immediately raises several questions: “Could you have done better if you stuck to books and not sports?”, “Should students be enrolled in ‘advanced’ classes on a course by course level and not on an all or nothing basis?”, “Were you really motivated to be there, and did you understand enough of what being a part of those classes could mean to your future?” the list goes on and on, and varies quite widely from student to student. I for example excelled at English, history, and science but struggled with math classes, my brother was just the opposite, he did wonderful in math and hated English and history. There are differences including how people learn: visual, auditory and the other variations, that effect the outcome of how much people learn more than simple “IQ” explains.

Tom's responce to TCL

The only way to fix this problem is to create a societal situation where the consequences of having more children than you can support (from both the male and female prespective, of course) are unacceptable. How do we do that, you ask? We first warn everyone that we're about to take some drastic action. Then we give them a chance to shape up with continued warnings. Then, we follow through with our drastic action, namely we stop supporting them beyond what we are already giving away.

This one you are going to need to explain carefully. What kind of consequences? Not helping the kids? And if so isn’t that punishing the children at best, and potentially negligent homicide at worst? Taking the kids away? Sure, our foster care system is a lot better than the lack of safety net in a lot of countries but its already overburdened. Further we need to stop the revolving door that some judges and policy makers have put into place where the birth family is by default the best place for the all parties concerned. Not to be too crass, but I don’t give a $@#% about the parents, grandparents or the ninety-some cousins. They can all fall off the end of the planet. Putting a child back with a child molester is inexcusable, putting them back with people who have failed to complete alcohol and drug counseling likewise.

Derek (not quite in order)

The Democrats--well, they're lost. The Republican drift to the left has pushed Democrats somewhere to the far side of George McGovern.

Oh Boy is that one for another day...

I am no expert on education. I do, however, have a little insight into human nature. Those in power tend to consolidate power. Controlling the system of education is a goal of every despotic regime; if you lead them while they're young, they'll willingly follow you as adults.

I’m not a huge fan of government sponsored education, however, it does have a much better chance of getting people all on the same playing field than each city block having its own privately run school. Also, if for no other reason than making sure people are being educated there needs to be someone saying ‘the standard is here’. I happen to think that for a lot of things the standard is set to low in the public system.

Some of the friends I admire most teach in public schools, and our daughter has attended the local schools since kindergarten. I assure you, though, that we've been very aware of what's been taught, especially in the early grades. My wife used to volunteer at the school during the day and was on a first-name basis with the principals of the elementary and middle school.

It is good to see their are parents who pay attention. I work with a youth group where half the parents drop their children off and disappear, i think most of the parents have only met myself or the club leader once and yet they leave their kids there for 3-4 hours.

J'Myle

That touches on what the answer should be. Schools, above all else, should attempt to equip our children with the ability to think critically, with the ability to reason. All else follows. James' goals—literacy, social mobility, civic discourse—can only be achieved in schools whose pupils are able to think critically. Solving every problem on Sidal's laundry list is meaningless if students are still unable to think for themselves. Find students who can do that, and solving those problems becomes much easier, because the students will be right there with you.

Again this goes back to ours being a society of fear. No it is not to the extent of North Korea, China, or a few other hellholes, but one where fear is the preferred motivator. There are a lot of parents who want their parents to learn what to think, not how. I personally have several very, very good idea’s where this comes from, but I’ll leave that for later. Where it comes from is important, getting rid of it, is more important.

...enough cash to keep the student:teacher ratio at no more than 20:1—twenty-five, tops. A bad teacher with twelve students will teacher better than a great teacher with fifty-four. If any of you doubt that for a second, I will give you a tour of my old high school and prove it.

I think, that if public school alternatives got enough (non financial) support that this could go a long way towards shrinking class sizes.

And that folks is all i have time for right now, more later.

Tom Responds To TLC

2005-01-14T13:53:00.000-05:00

TLC, you asked how I think the breakdown of the family can be fixed. The short answer (without getting to far afield of the education question) is exactly what I suggested would fix education: Personal responsibility. For too long we have subsidized behaviors that are contributing to the problem. Although Welfare reform is now in place, it used to be that we had a bit of Communism (or at the very least, Socialism) running amok. The deal was: Have more babies, you get more money. Humm...I wonder that's going to work out...

The only way to fix this problem is to create a societal situation where the consequences of having more children than you can support (from both the male and female prespective, of course) are unacceptable. How do we do that, you ask? We first warn everyone that we're about to take some drastic action. Then we give them a chance to shape up with continued warnings. Then, we follow through with our drastic action, namely we stop supporting them beyond what we are already giving away.

[Warning-Preemptive Strike Imminent] Before anyone levels the nasty charge of racism at yours truly, this sort of thing applies to everyone. I have no problem with short-term safety nets (we don't want children starving in the streets); they are at least less noxious, harmful (and, might I add slightly 'less unconstitutional' (if such a thing exists)) than what we had been doing in the past.

TCL replies to BS members (Part 1).

2005-01-13T18:47:00.000-05:00

To James:

I begin in this confessional mode because I notice that all of us fall back on our personal experience in explicating the issue of education in our time—me included, mind you. Our CO and the Cunning Linguist try very hard to escape the gravitational pull of this huge planet, this personal experience, but in the end they, too, crash and burn.

Why? Why does the most serious empiricist among us, TCL, finally fall back on this kind of analysis, this form of first-person narrative? “Back in Illinois,” he says, in wrapping up, bearing witness, speaking the truth.

Having never been called an "empiricist" before, I don't know whether to take that as a compliment, or an insult. I've been called "dangerously liberal", "stubborn", "heretical" and "ignorant", so I'm not overly offended (gotta love that thick skin), but I do think that it's a tad strange that you would think that about me, especially if you're just going by the few posts that I have contributed to this site. Either way, I don't think that it is a very apt description of myself.

Although I do believe that personal experience trumps hearsay and conjecture, I don't base my opinions and beliefs solely on events that have happened in my presence. If that were true, I would be one of those nutjobs who thinks that the moon landing was faked (I've never been to the moon, how can I be sure?!?), or that all New Yorkers are assholes (never been to The Big Apple, but I read about it on the internets, so it must be true!) That type of thinking leads to a very close-minded mentality, and that's one of the things that I try hardest NOT to have. I just find that anecdotes are a good way to cut through all the jargon and technobabble that is sometimes used to smartify (yes, I know that's not a real word) posts.

Like you said, school is something that we all have in common, so sometimes using past experience and anecdotal tales, however pretentious they may be, is a better way to get others to understand and visualize the point that is being made. I used my grade-school experiences back in Illinois as an example of secondary education in order to show that there is more to this issue than simple statistics and raw data collected from various organizations. So, no offense taken, but next time it's a caning! WHACK!! =)

That being said, I strongly agree with this statement:

"Events from the past are significant for us Americans not because they happened in the past, but because we can, and do, and must, continue to argue about their significance in the present."

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Perhaps I just took your quote out of context, but the quote above is the first thing that popped into my mind when I read your post. I feel that this applies to many, many issues that are relevant in modern day life. The most notable example being the Bill of Rights. Free Speech, The Right to Bear Arms (or Arm Bears, watch out, Yogi!), etc. The war in Iraq. Ohio 2004 vs. Florida 2000. Even things such as tsunami warning systems. I don't want to get sidetracked into ranting about something off topic, but I just wanted to let you know that your statement rang true (for me, at least).

Of course, I could be missing the point entirely...

Tom:

Great post, I find your thoughts and ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

"With respect to social matters, the most pressing is the structure of the family. Without painting with too broad a brush, the family structure in the inner city (primarily black families) is in an abysmal state relative to other racial/social groups with nearly 70% of children being born out of wedlock. Until that changes it’s going to be very difficult to effect positive changes in any aspect of life, including education."

That is something I noticed as well, when doing my weekly "stat hunt." Any ideas on how this can be changed? As I mentioned in my post, there is a surprisingly small amount of the budget going to black colleges, but that is a moot point. What good is funding historically black colleges if a large amount of black children aren't even graduating from high school? I'd be quite interested to hear any ideas you may have regarding this topic.

"Whom do we care about more; the good kids being deprived of learning time or bad kids causing the deprivation?"

Good point. One of the reasons that I am glad I left high school after 3 years is because it opened a door for someone who wanted to learn. My slacking off in class was (I realize in hindsight) depriving others of their opportunity to receive a proper education. The teachers weren't just wasting their time trying to teach me, they were wasting the time of other students who wanted that education, who had plans to attend college immediately after high school and who deserved the attention of a teacher much more than I did. As crass as it may sound, I feel that we need to focus more on the children who truly desire to be educated, instead of the ones who use school as a social event to hang out with friends, or go only because they have no choice. If I may make an analogy:

Chinese food is great when you get it from a restaurant that serves nothing but chinese food. But a place that serves both chinese and mexican food is more likely to have food that isn't as great. A restaurant that serves chinese, mexican and indian food will usually be even worse. You sacrifice quality for quantity. It's sort of like that with education. If you try to introduce too many factors into the system (for instance, teaching 35 kids, 10 of which are so bright that they become easily bored, 15 average students who have no problems in class, and 10 not-so-bright students who end up holding back the rest of the class, due to excessive amounts of classtime being spent trying to get them up to speed with everyone else) the overall quality will decline. Would you rather have a smaller group of students who are smart, and a few that aren't so bright, or an entire class of students whose educational level is sub-par?

Something to mull over... or not. *shrug*

J'myle:

"Schools, above all else, should attempt to equip our children with the ability to think critically, with the ability to reason. All else follows."

*golf clap*

Exactly. What good is knowing when the Bill of Rights was written, when you can't even name specific rights, or interpret what they mean? Other examples:

Drug education: Sure, I know that drugs are bad, but WHY?
Sex education: The mantra sexisbadsexisbadsexisbad is oft repeated. But WHY is sex bad?
History: I know of the American Civil War, but other than memorizing dates, battles and names, why not tell me how I am still affected by it today?

Applied knowledge is the key.

"Well, we must shift the focus from high school to elementary school. The basic ability to reason must be done in the first few grades at the latest."

Again, I agree. Sorry, James, here's another personal experience that I need to share:

From third to fifth grade, I was part of a program called AGATE (Aurora Gifted And Talented Education). Once a week, 30 kids from my school got bussed to an elementary school just down the street, and we would spend the day doing puzzles, brain teasers, anagrams, free-thinking exercises and discuss/debate certain subjects. Because of this, I am a sucker for wordplay, debate and self-education. I actually find it fun to spend an hour or two each night browsing through Wikipedia, going to debate sites and playing Devil's Advocate just to get an idea of what other people think, and even (as nerdish as it sounds) reading the dictionary.

I don't think that this program would have had the same effect on me if I had been enrolled 3 or 4 years later. A young mind is pliable, we should try to take advantage of it while we have the chance.

That's all I have for now. Sidial, Derek and Casual, I'll get to you in good time, as well as post up my Week 4 article.

Local Control

2005-01-12T21:01:00.001-05:00

In theory, public schools are controlled at the local level. Yes, the bulk of their funds come from local property taxes. But don't assume that this means the federal government is not asserting control through the Department of Education and the NEA. Comes word today that the president plans to broaden the scope of "No Child Left Behind". Every nickel from the feds comes with a high-tensile string attached.

Are there options? Sure, but as was noted elsewhere, most Americans either can't afford private school tuitions or don't feel up to the challenge of home schooling. My point, which I didn't make sufficiently clear in my initial post, was that parents with children in public school must stay involved in their childrens' education--something most teachers welcome.

We're blessed to live in an area where about 95% of the parents show up for conferences with their kids' teachers. We're happy with the education our daughter is getting. But don't think for a minute we wouldn't have pulled her out of the government school in a heartbeat if we felt otherwise.

That's not paranoia. That's taking responsibility for my child instead of leaving her education to the government.

Response To James

2005-01-12T18:21:00.000-05:00

Here’s my response to James (related posts by me, James 1 and 2).

I realize very well that “the” government does not directly run public schools. I also realize, however, that government money (by which I mean my money and your money) always comes with strings attached. On top of that, the government’s unwillingness to face down “the” Teachers’ Union has lead to a noncompetitive situation. Why? Well, as you say the Teachers’ Union is a private institution. The problem is that it is a private institution that has a goal that is not the education of children. Rather, their goal is the continued and ever-improving employment of teachers. I have no problem with the concept of a Teachers’ Union. There are lots of unions in the country and they all have various benefits and drawbacks. This one has a particular advantage in that they have gained so much power by lobbying “the” government, who controls the $$, that they are causing harm. If the Teachers’ Union were dealing with a private business then the situation would be no different than that of other unions.

I’ve got no problem paying for my (future) children’s’ education. I’m not asking “the” government to give me a thing. I’m only asking that I not have money taken from me (under threat of jail) to subsidize the education of other parent’s children if I’m going to opt out of the system.

Markets and Politics

2005-01-12T16:34:00.000-05:00

Herewith a kinder, gentler response to our fellow contributor Tom than I was able to muster without the editorial supervision of our CO. My thanks to the latter for reminding me that civility is crucial this experiment. Following this response, I try to address the issues raised by other contributors.

Tom first. He seems to share with Derek the idea that “the” government controls education, and should be removed from this office. “We need to get the government out of the business of educating our children,” says Tom. Derek is more oblique: “The phrase ‘government school’ has ominous overtones. . .” I agree with Derek, notwithstanding the fact that I teach at a state university. But is there such a thing as a government school? Is “the” government in the business of educating our children?

In a word, no. Local governments fund and supervise elementary/ secondary school districts, in cooperation and consultation with private institutions such as teacher’s unions, PTAs, etc. State governments fund and supervise higher education in and through state university systems, in cooperation with private institutions such as faculty councils, teachers’ unions, and alumni organizations. Since 1862, with the creation of the land-grant colleges and the public universities (such as those in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois), the federal government has sponsored the expansion of higher education, and, through grants and other devices in the 20th century, it has created demand for education at lower levels. What else is new?

Yes, No Child Left Behind is a new phase in the relation of states and school districts. But let’s stop acting, and declaiming, as if “the” government runs this show. It doesn’t. Like most institutions in the USA, education is a weird hybrid of public and private enterprise--it's a collaboration of public and private, not one or the other. That's its signature advantage over other systems elsewhere. The neither/nor makes local control of school districts more than an ideal, but it also allows for federal funding of education.

Tom concludes by saying, “What it all comes down to is individualism and capitalism.” Let me quote what precedes this pronouncement because I'm not sure I get it. For now I think he's saying that if we get government out of education, it is "simply easier to identify the problem," but that problem, by his own specification, is that government is in the business of educating our children. And his solution, as far as I can tell, is to abolish (public) education. But read with me.

Here we go. "[T]he argument in favor of government-run schools is that everybody gets an education. But let me ask you which is worse, geting absolutely no education and knowing that you got absolutely no education or getting essentially no education . . . while being convinced that you got an education? I think the former is far better for a simple reason. It is simply easier to identify the problem."

Some excruciatingly obvious questions. It's bad that everybody gets an education under public auspices? It's even worse that this education is labelled as such? Is there neither "competition" nor "individual accountablity" in American education? Is there no market--no capitalism--at work in the ecumenical educational system Americans inhabit?

Tom, the market is working just fine in education. There are THOUSANDS of PRIVATE SCHOOLS in the good old USA--prep schools, parochial schools, yeshivas. They compete with public schools for the tuitions and attentions of parents everywhere, although more so in the Northeast because the tradition of private education was established early there, by the early 18th century, and was not challenged by the public universities of the Midwest until very late in the 19th century. What are you complaining about?

You, Tom, are “free to choose,” as the earnest knucklehead Milton Friedman said. You are free to send your kid to a very expensive private school. Why don’t you just do it and stop blaming “the” government for screwing up education in the USA?

Here's my guess. Like most reactionary critics of public education--there are lots of them in Kansas and Texas--you can’t afford the private school freight, so you want the federal government to subsidize your abstention from the public schools by means of vouchers and other bizarre devices.

If "what it all comes down to is individualism and capitalism," then you should accept the choices a “free market” makes available to you. Instead of telling us that "the" government is the problem with education, you should go get yourself a job that pays you enough to send your kids to a private school. You should work hard, acquire some character (as well as the requisite income), lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.

I imagine you’ve heard or delivered this sermon before. Probably directed at somebody else, though.

Let me now turn to TCL, Derek, Sidial, J'myle. Derek first, because the relation between the government and the teachers' unions is not anywhere near as cozy as you're supposing. I have some experience with this here at Rutgers, and my relatives back in the land of Shedd Aquarium do, too. Believe me, it ain't cozy--it's as combative and consequential as the labor struggles of the 1930s and 40s (suggesting that the public sector is the current scene of class struggle, labor unrest, union organizing, etc.) The "political class" of which you speak is not a species I know, but if I did I would surmise that it is not an ally of the NEA.

Sidial and J'myle agree that class size is the key to good teaching and a good education, and boy, do I concur. They also agree, if implicitly, that some public agency has to manipulate or administer markets if we want to reduce class size and increase the supply of teachers. Structural changes are essential--changes that the market can't make on its own, David Brooks notwithstanding.

The CO and Sidial agree on the need for what we used to call tracking. "Separate out the kids according to ability, intelligence, and zeal for learning," as the latter puts it. I wonder. My most boring moments in high shool came in my "honors" classes, and my most electrifying moments came after I was kicked out of them, after my junior year. Teaching to a diverse audience trains you to reach, to look for metaphors, methods, ideas, images, that cross any one category or constituency. That's what good thinking and great writing does, too. Why should we want to talk to ourselves? But then here we are doing just that.

Ah, the Linguist. You begin by saying "American education is riddled with problems," and end by saying "Public education is in need of a major overhaul." Can we turn these statements into questions? I agree that we don't spend enough on education. But I do wonder whether those math scores, or the lack of names and dates in the heads of sophomores, mean as much as we think. "A man knowes no more of righteousness than he hath power to act," said Gerrard Winstanley in 1650, and I tend to agree with him. You want people to know where Costa Rica is, or know when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued? Explain to them why it matters right now. I don't mean "relevance," as that word got corrupted back then, in the cruel 1960s and 70s.

Here's another way of turning the declarative into the interrogative. I take it for granted that you're right about the ratio between spending for the V-22 Osprey and the NEH, etc. But what if we treat the post-Vietnam military as a huge educational enterprise, through which mostly working class and black kids are given skills and monies that make them citizens in the most visible and powerful sense?

Questions for now.

Education Still the Issue

2005-01-11T23:16:00.000-05:00

Full disclosure. Education ‘R’ Us. I teach American History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Normally I’d withhold such information from this cyberspace, but what would be the point? You all could figure it out in about five minutes by clicking on the “Team Sites” our CO has assembled.

I begin in this confessional mode because I notice that all of us fall back on our personal experience in explicating the issue of education in our time—me included, mind you. Our CO and the Cunning Linguist try very hard to escape the gravitational pull of this huge planet, this personal experience, but in the end they, too, crash and burn.

Why? Why does the most serious empiricist among us, TCL, finally fall back on this kind of analysis, this form of first-person narrative? “Back in Illinois,” he says, in wrapping up, bearing witness, speaking the truth. Even the pleasingly paranoid Derek invokes the local school system, where his wife volunteers, as he intones about government control of young minds. J’myle as well: Ms. Sharp and her worms are convincing. Why? No offense, Sidial, you are a fast and ferocious fact hound, but you, too, begin and end with educational autobiography. Why?

We’re not writing fiction here. So why did we all choose the pretentious preterite of the short-story writer, saying, “Once upon a time, if you let me explain it right, my life made sense of yours”? Notice that none of us bothered to set up or sustain the story with the kind of detail and texture which we would expect from a nominally competent story-teller. We just plunged in, knowing that you knew what we’re talking about.

Again, why? Because we correctly assume that everyone will recognize themselves in the stories we tell about grade school and high school, that weird, prolonged, excruciating moment when we were all thrown together as if we had something in common.

That is the genius of public education in America. We did have something in common back then, and we still do, no matter what academic track we were on, no matter what occupational destination we shared. Not because we came from the same class or race or gender, but because we were taught—not necessarily by our teachers--to negotiate our differences by reference to the inheritances we call American history and literature. (For some of us, yes, by reference to Mathematics, as well, a universal language, to be sure, but the fissures and consequences were narrower in that domain.)

This is not some rant about what is missing from the curriculum. There has never been any lasting agreement about the content of American history and literature. In fact, it has always been the unending argument about what belongs in this sprawling table of contents that has provided the common ground Americans can take for granted, for now. Events from the past are significant for us Americans not because they happened in the past, but because we can, and do, and must, continue to argue about their significance in the present.

Public education has long been the key site of the argument. Learning the terms of debate, deciding how to join the argument—this is what education as such, private or public, is all about. Like it or not, we’re all involved, because there we are, all of us, arguing about what it is, what it means, and where our hopes for it might reside. The antecedent?

Don’t ask. Until tomorrow. When I get responsive to all by close reading of each.

But for tonight, here’s a little authenticating autobiography of an educator. I did fine in high school, being a semi-competent jock with secret dreams of becoming a writer, and then failed to figure out college—got expelled after three years, then worked construction (fell off a building, broke my elbow is all), at a gas station (reading Soul on Ice between customers), in a hospital as a janitor, landed at a place that was still being radicalized, found mentors, went to graduate school, finished those degrees. And so here I am, blogging between preparation of syllabi. What we call lesson plans in those other venues.

How did this happen to me? A persuasive answer is to be found in the democratization of higher education in the USA after 1945. But more anon, er, tomorrow.

Week 3: School Reform

2005-01-11T14:43:00.000-05:00

The question: What in school changes need to me made to our educational system?

The answer is simple. We need to get the government out of the business of educating our children. I could go on and on berating the government for its terrible handling of education, but the problems are obvious. There are certainly those who would try to make the argument that without government-run schools poor children will not get an education. The answer to that contention is two-part.

First, we already know that children in poor sections of town get, on average, an inferior education to those in more affluent neighborhoods. This is a function both of local resources and social matters. Whether schools are run by the government or private organizations, local resources will be what they are. Currently, tax dollars do come from outside of a local school district to help out, but they are either insufficient or being squandered. More on that later. With respect to social matters, the most pressing is the structure of the family. Without painting with too broad a brush, the family structure in the inner city (primarily black families) is in an abysmal state relative to other racial/social groups with nearly 70% of children being born out of wedlock. Until that changes it’s going to be very difficult to effect positive changes in any aspect of life, including education.

That being said, there are steps that we can take to improve the educational situation…which brings me to the second part of my answer. As I mentioned above, the argument in favor of government-run schools is that everyone gets an education. But let me ask you which is worse, getting absolutely no education and knowing that you got absolutely no education or getting essentially no education (i.e., you can’t read after graduating from high school) while being convinced that you got an education? I think that former is far better for a simple reason. It is simply easier to identify the problem. If everyone could see that inner city children were not being provided any education at all, then we could perhaps doing something about it. On the other hand, the current situation of sub-sub-sub-par education is that we can say, at least they’re getting an education, which is a lie, but one that is all too easy to swallow. The only way to fix the situation is to rock the boat. We must remove government from the classroom. While it is tempting to suggest all sorts of reforms we must remember who got us here in the first place and realize that huge bureaucracies are nearly impossible to change in significant ways.

Aside from the typical bureaucratic problems with government-run schools, there is a more basic reason why they cannot work. Well, perhaps they can work (here I sit), but they cannot work as well as a private system. The reason is that the purpose of the government-run school system is educate children…but there is no way to make them do it. Add to that the fact that the teachers’ union's reason for existing is to keep teachers employed (as opposed to educating children) and you have a recipe for disaster.

A privately run school system, on the other hand, would incorporate all the aspects of a free-market system…both the good and the ‘bad.’ First the good: competition. Assuming that parents actually care about their children’s education (which is a social issue outside education reform’s sphere of influence), schools will either sink or swim based on the quality of the education they provide. That means that the purpose of these schools is to educate children. If a teacher is not performing, s/he is fired and replaced with a more effect individual. This would be a huge improvement over the current system focused on keep teachers happy regardless of student performance.

Now on to the ‘bad.’ I say ‘bad’ for a reason that I hope will become clear as we move long. One aspect of a free-market system is inevitable failure. This failure is necessary to keep a market running efficiently. Failure is accepted as a matter of course when speaking about small businesses (as we know, nearly 60% of them fail), but people recoil at the idea of failure in education because we’re supposed to be protecting The Children^TM.

Let’s take a quick look at failure in education. We all know that currently it takes quite a bit to expel a student. There has to be a long-running history of extreme behavior problems recalcitrant to adjustment measures before s/he is removed from school permanently. In the meantime, that expulsion-deserving student is typically causing disruptions in class, acting as bully outside of class, etc. Our first societal instinct these days is to see that child as a victim of his/her environment and not responsible for his/her actions (until s/he turns 18…then all bets are off). Therefore, we reason, we cannot deprive him/her of an education. Of course, in a privately run school (where there is competition for good students) such a troublemaker would be tossed out as a matter of course. This is one of the ‘bad’ consequences envisioned by adversaries of school choice etc. Such situations are a societal gut check. Whom do we care about more; the good kids being deprived of learning time or bad kids causing the deprivation? The answer will greatly effect the outcome of the debate.

Finally, one of the most common objections brought to bear against a completely private education model is that there will not be equal access to education. Since it’s obvious that this is already the case, I don’t quite see how this is an issue. However, do we believe that things would get worse or better by kicking government out of the classroom entirely? Well, let’s see. Americans have found a way to make money at just about everything imaginable. Why not education? Do you honestly believe that there are not individuals out there with the ability to run a school for a profit? Are there no people who grew up in the inner city, made a bundle of money and might be willing to invest in a school…especially if they see a total lack of educational opportunities otherwise?

What it all comes down to is individualism and capitalism. To maul one of my favorite Churchill quotes: Capitalism is the worst economic system…except all the other ones that have been tried. Inject competition and individual accountability into anything and watch people and intuitions flourish. There will surely be some left behind…but is that any worse than what we’re currently doing: leaving everyone behind.

Three quick searches on this weeks topic

2005-01-11T11:50:00.000-05:00

And three links for each search

Education Reform 2005
CER
CTER
EdWeek.org

Charter School performance
Rand.org
DC Charter School
TopSchools.com

Homeschool rates
HomeSchoolyellowpages
ActsChristian
HomeEducation

Week 3: The Education of J'myle Koretz

2005-01-10T11:36:00.000-05:00

“Education would be much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every student should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.”
—Sir William Haley

It seems to me that James got closest to the root of the matter when he reminded us that “the current educational system...Appeared only about a century ago” and asked “What are the goals of education?”

I am always in favor of radical solutions, because “radical” means “to get to the root of the matter” and we should, when addressing an issue, go to the root of the matter and ask ourselves the Fundamental Questions about what a school system or religion or new speed bump on Grover Street is all about. And James has asked a Fundamental Question when he asks, what do we want from our educational system?

Since no one asks that question, it's not often answered. But when you ask the party operatives what the GOP or Democrat stance on education is, you get the sense that both are interested in identical outcomes. On the Republican side, they want every student to be able to pass the same test and memorize the same facts, and generally bring every public school a little bit closer to being what Derek called a “factory for turning out happy little worker bees.” The Democrats often scare me even more, because they don't want kids to be able to regurgitate facts without thinking; they want our children to regurgitate ideas without thinking. While these ideas liberals want to indoctrinate are good ideas—tolerance, diversity and so on—to simply repeat an idea without understanding it is worse than useless.

Even James doesn't quite get there when he tries to answer the Fundamental Question:

Historically speaking, the goals of education in this country are to (1) equip everyone with the skills necessary to appropriate the texts once decipherable only to the literate minority; (2) offer everyone the possibility of social mobility by virtue of their access to education...; (3) teach everyone that the only thing we have in common as Americans is our ability to argue about what it means to be American.

Having thus summed up the traditional answers to the Fundamental Question, James moves on to evaluate how well we're accomplishing those goals without asking if they're good goals, or if they're flawed or simply incomplete. At the end of his post, he even suggests that there is a better answer to the fundamental question, when tell us that the best teachers say “I am here to show these kids how to think, not what to think.”

That touches on what the answer should be. Schools, above all else, should attempt to equip our children with the ability to think critically, with the ability to reason. All else follows. James' goals—literacy, social mobility, civic discourse—can only be achieved in schools whose pupils are able to think critically. Solving every problem on Sidal's laundry list is meaningless if students are still unable to think for themselves. Find students who can do that, and solving those problems becomes much easier, because the students will be right there with you.

Even the most stubborn problems in our schools disappear when the students are able to think critically. A student with the ability to reason can be safely taught evolution and creationism, because that student will figure out which one is science and which one is “science” all on her own. Don't try and teach which side of any controversial issue is “right”—a student who can reason needs only a quick overview and some op-eds from different sides, and he can make up his own mind.

So how exactly do we do this, how to we teach children to reason? Well, we must shift the focus from high school to elementary school. The basic ability to reason must be done in the first few grades at the latest. By seventh grade you need only a few vigilant parents to try and keep Principal “Barbie-Wannabe” on her toes (maybe even get her fired, if you're lucky) and enough cash to keep the student:teacher ratio at no more than 20:1—twenty-five, tops. A bad teacher with twelve students will teacher better than a great teacher with fifty-four. If any of you doubt that for a second, I will give you a tour of my old high school and prove it.

Okay, so, we're thinking about kids still in their formative years. Now what? Consider that TCL reminisces about field trips to museums as kindling his interest in learning. I, too, credit something outside the schools: the weekly story-time at my local library. By taking me every week until I was nine or ten, my mother almost single-handedly gave me my love of reading.

In school, my best teacher was Ms. Sharp, who, as a third-grade teacher, repeatedly ditched the curricula and would take us outside on a warm spring day to mess around in the shrubbery all afternoon. Years later, I found out later that our bureaucratic principal took her aside to complain about that. Ms. Sharp grabbed two of my classmates and proceeded to have them prove that they knew far more than our principal did about worms.

We learned more than just worms. We learned that facts don't just exist in a book, they exist in the real world, all round us. That what we get in our classes can sometimes mean more than just a good grade. In high school, a lot of kids from my elementary school were in the AP and IB classes. You could still tell which ones had Ms. Sharp in third grade, and which ones had someone else.

My point with these examples? Well, everyone is different and will respond to different things. Different “sparks” will light the flame of reason in each child's mind. And this has nothing to with innate intelligence or ability. Putting the advanced kids in their own program (G&T for Sidal was ELP [Extended Learning Program] in my district) doesn't help a lot until kids are ten or eleven. What we need for four and five year olds is something the GOP values: local control.

Local control is looked down on by liberals, and for good reason. Too often it means allowing a small group of local busybodies and Protectors of Decency to hijack control of your children's school. Utah was a lighting rod for such inanity. A teacher was suspended for not allowing a girl to read the Book of Mormon during free reading time. My drama teacher nearly got pay docked simply for attending an independent-from-the-school show put on by some of his students because it had profanity in it. My father's best friend was in a band that wrote a song about another incident—guess why the Protectors of Decency tried to get this teacher fired: “Spanish Fork High School took back Wendy Weaver/Wouldn't she be happier/teaching in Beaver?”

But what local control can and should be is an acknowledgement that before you can have standardized tests and achievement expectations, you must first get those “sparks” I talked about. As many as possible, to help as many students as possible. And because every community is different, they all need as much no-strings money and—more importantly—curricula-free days as possible to take the first graders and Head Start kids out to do the unique things that only a on-the-ground teacher can know about. Kids in semi-rural areas of South Eastern Pennsylvania are close enough to Philly's Regional Rail that a teacher with some cash and time can take them downtown to see skyscrapers for the first time. A teacher at P.S. 608 in Brooklyn can take her class to a community garden no Washington bureaucrat will ever know exists. And, of course, a particularly Sharp teacher needs only the time to take her class outside to play in the dirt.

Week 3: A Few Suggested Changes to the School System

2005-01-09T15:27:00.000-05:00

The current education system in the United States varies widely between states, and, indeed, school districts. Typically, standards exist at the state level for individual school districts to conform to... but how they conform is left up to the district itself. Now, President Bush has advocated "No Child Left Behind", without realizing that's a very nice idea, but ultimately damaging to some of the students.

I don't have numerical proof, here. What I have is personal experience, and the experience of family friends to go on.

Some of the changes needed for our education system are relatively simple. Some are far more difficult, and are based on society-wide problems.

For the simple ones:

1) This will set some people to howling, I'm sure, but I've lived through it, dealt with it, and stand by it. Separate out the kids according to ability, intelligence, and zeal for learning. I'm an honors kid, what my mother calls "A-Rail" (a misnomer, in my opinion). From the time I was in fifth grade, I was in a program called "Gifted & Talented". This gave everyone in it a chance to learn more than our classmates -- learn what we were capable of learning, instead of throwing paper wads at each other and getting perfect 100s on our tests in all classes (although all of us were pretty bad about turning our homework in).

And this gets to the crux of why I say the honors kids SHOULD be segregated, for at least some of our classes. We easily got bored while in with the normal kids, and also tended to intimidate the normal kids, by showing off too much. Mind, I'm calling them "normal", instead of "average". Several of them were as intelligent as we were ... but weren't as zealous about learning, didn't find it fun to be challenged, and by the time we were in eighth grade, we had lost several kids to the normal classes, because of the workload differences. (This loss increased as we got closer to graduation.)

For seventh grade, we had a GT English class. We went through everything faster, more thoroughly, and covered things the normal classes didn't. The class size was smaller than the normal kids had to deal with (a plus for ANY class "level"), which did help. But we did things like learn some Latin roots so we could figure out unfamiliar words faster and easier, work on brainteasers, and several other things. We did debates, too.

For eighth grade, some moron at the either the state level or district level decided that everyone should spend all of their core classes together. We survived like that for one semester, barely. I remember trying to read stories in class. The GT kids would all have the 10-page story read in 10 minutes tops, and we'd spend another 10-20 minutes waiting for everyone else to finish reading. It drove every one of us absolutely bonkers. The GT teacher managed to wrangle us all into the same "team", and mostly into the same English class, for our sanity. And we also had our GT class (which was no longer associated with a core class, which messed a bunch of us up on electives). I would say we learned a third of what we did while we were separated out.

In the classes we had no GT or Honors or (in high school) AP options, we generally pulled 100s, more or less sleeping though class. And while that may sound good, in the long run it wasn't. Why? The answer is one word.

College.

You see, we never really learned what homework was. We always did it in class between notes, or while we'd otherwise be twiddling our thumbs and chatting. Even with the AP classes in high school, with a few exceptions, we never were so completely challenged we HAD to do homework. In fact, the most college-like Advanced Placement class we had was American History under Mr. Beck. There's a reason he is viewed by a lot of the kids who had his class as a minor deity. Even Calculus wasn't that bad. I had to do homework for it, but only because it was part of the grade. Not because I needed to.

And the normal English classes, oy! the curriculum solely focused on getting everyone to pass the 10th grade TASS test (now the TASP, and supposedly slightly harder), but my younger sisters took it, and have assured me it's still nothing.

And then, I get to college.

A lot of things remained the same. But what killed me is where I previously didn't have to do the homework, I now had to. And that was hell, trying to learn that.

But in the classes where my imagination was caught and kept, I did outstandingly better than I did in the average, run of the mill classes. I pulled nothing less than an “A” in any of my honors level classes. (And I still sing the praises of said classes, every chance I get. Among the U of H Honors kids, you find two types – those who absolutely hated Human Situation, and those who utterly miss that class. I fall into the second category. I wanted to take it again, as a TA/upper level, but never could work it into my schedule.) My regular classes are actually what murdered my GPA… because I was so unchallenged, I didn’t even bother doing the work. Didn’t feel like it was worth expending the effort, GPA be damned (and it was).

2) The current socio-economic culture of the US workforce does not tend towards ensuring that enough teachers exist in the work force. And, just as often as not, the ones who are there can’t teach, whether they lack in knowledge in the field they’re supposedly teaching, or just have no teaching skills.

For example, despite disliking any chemistry more involved than “KaBOOM!”, I took Chem 2, which came in one flavor, Advanced Placement, two different class periods. A couple of the students figured out quickly that asking our teacher about the oilfields had him side-tracked all class, and we never had to take notes that way. Not that he ever had notes for us to take, he just tended to suddenly decide it was time for a test, over things he hadn’t even attempted to talk about, or even told us to read about in the book. And, on one of these tests, my class got grades ranging from 15 to 97. The other class period all managed, somehow, to get a 93 on the test (all twenty odd of the students). And we were the ones accused of cheating. Never did figure that one out.

Then there was the glorified typing class, where I ended up having to teach the teacher, on multiple occasions. (I also ended up competing in “Computer Applications” (glorified typing, and “can you use Excel?”) and placing first in the district to go to state by some four or five hundred points. I went on the band trip instead, since it was my senior year, and I’d never been able to go on the band trip before.) Another “computer applications” teacher, for the eighth grade, spent most of her time IMming her long distance boyfriends, in the middle of class. But because they had “degrees” in this stuff, they had the jobs.

Math and science teachers are hard to come by, as a general rule. If I could stand kids more, I would be trying to be a biology teacher, because the school districts around here need decent ones so badly. Of course, I took Calculus 3, so I’d also probably be fought over to teach algebra I/II, as well.

I won’t go into my rant over the English department teachers, because at least two of them were more than marginally competent. It’s just politics that ensured it was the nitwits who ended up in charge. Administration has to feel superior to the department heads, after all.

Which leads me to the next set of problems.

3) At least at my school district, it was Decided that because the new principal performed quite well on her back, and had had enough plastic surgery to pass for Barbie (faint plastic sheen and all), that her ideas of a) a trimester and b) a dress code were absolutely wonderful. (I have to admit that I only ever had scuttlebug as "proof" for her real behavior. But she sure acted like that's how she "got things done". I, personally, found her behavior disgusting.)

Can you say “disaster”? Good. Knew you could. However, she, and the entire school board, apparently could not.

For those of you not introduced to the joy and raptures of the trimester system, let me explain. It is the false idea that lengthening classes by about 35-50 minutes and decreasing the number of classes per day (by a whole two classes), while shortening the “semester” into approximately one-third of the school year, permits students to have the same amount of class time/note taking time/teacher time as shorter classes, every day, for an entire semester. In fact, supposedly, it permits more class time.

Not.

We suffered horribly, particularly the AP students. The AP tests were held about mid-third tri. So we had to have all our AP classes during the first two trimesters, so we’d’ve gotten through 75-85% of the material on the AP test… the remaining 15-25%, we spent cramming in during after school study sessions, with all our various teachers. It was murder.

Then, they had to increase the number of “credits” required to graduate high school, because the trimester system permitted students to graduate a year or more early – and can’t permit that to happen! The school district looses money when students graduate a year early.

And there is a maximum limit to how much attention even a teacher can spend on their subject, with any given class, before wandering off into Never-Neverland. Truly, there is a finite amount of calculus, chemistry, and suffering in the English classes that can be survived, per day. 90-100 minutes at a go just doesn’t work. I promise. We didn’t mind having that long per day for band, but a brass player’s lips only last for so long before you can’t make a squeak, let alone bust out a high D on pitch.

And then there was the Dress Code, which everyone called a “uniform”, including the superintendent, principals, school board, teachers, parents, and students. Mind you, according to the laws (as they read then), it wasn’t legal for it to be a uniform without having an exemption policy. So, in the wordage, there was a way to petition to be exempted. On paper, it existed. There was even a group from the school board and administrators that “reviewed” the petitions.

No petitions were approved. None of them (mine and my sisters’ among them). Doesn’t sound like much of an exemption policy, to me.

Now, let me explain the reason this “dress code” came into being.

Ms. Barbie-Wannabe I’m-Going-To-Wear-Mini-Skirts-To-Work-Around-The-Teenage-Boys couldn’t control the students. So the dress code was supposed to make the students easier to control, by increasing the punishments for not following it, while drastically limiting what the students could wear. (There was a “zero-tolerance policy”, for the dress code as well as the normal “zero-tolerance policy” crap.)

And then she simpered and whined, and made her mascara run, when – GASP – the number of students being disciplined increased tenfold. Who would have thought that by increasing what students could get disciplined for, you’d also increase how many you disciplined?? Just the increase in paper being used to write up detention slips must have cost the school district a whopping bit of money.

So, what do all these personal antecedents boil down to, as suggestions?

Divvy up the kids according to zeal, ability, and desire to learn. Don’t make the distinctions permanent sortings a la Hogwarts Sorting Hat; some kids are later bloomers, others burn out. But make the distinctions. For everyone’s sakes. It may not be “politically correct”, but it’s a much more efficient use of the teacher’s and students’ time, if everyone in a classroom is roughly equal in ability.

Start imprinting onto the next generation that there’s no shame in being a teacher. Start figuring out how to pay good wages to teachers, so that more of the bright minds not inclined to research don’t end up working in an office for the rest of their days, but go on to teach. And the administration needs to be sure that new teachers are being evaluated on a very regular basis, to ensure that their students are getting anything out of the class. Test scores may not be the best reflection of this – but if the students like going to the class because it’s interesting (not because they can catch up on their sleep), it’s likely the teacher’s at least doing a halfway decent job.

Research sweeping policy changes thoroughly before applying them in a live situation. All programmers test their code before they present it to the public, and people still complain when a bug or thirty slip through something that complex. So don’t assume that a “great plan” to change “how we’ve always done it” is automatically going to succeed. And even if it succeeds elsewhere, it does not mean it succeeds in that particular environment. Rural kids need to be able to wear jeans, there’s simply too much mud to wear only khakis!

I could list more, I’m sure. But you’ve waded through this much, so for now, I’ll close my post. I’ll have a bit more to rant on/about for week four’s related question (I haven’t even touched on those experiences yet).

TCL Presents: Publik Edjakayshun - Round 1

2005-01-09T03:40:00.000-05:00

School is teachers who don't know, teaching facts that aren't true to kids who don't care.
-Matt Groening - Life in Hell-

There you go. That's my article in a nutshell. See you all next week!

aside: "What do you mean, make it longer? What ever happened to Keep It Simple, Stupid?"

*sigh*

Well, I guess I should attempt to elaborate. American education is riddled with problems. According to a December 17th, 2003 study by the NAEP, in fourth grade math, in only three of the ten jurisdictions polled did the percentage of kids scoring in NAEP's "proficient" range rise above the teens—and in just one did it beat the national average. In eighth-grade reading, at least two-fifths of the students were "below basic" in seven cities. In the six lowest-scoring cities, the percentages of reading-proficient eighth graders were grim: Chicago - 15 percent, Houston - 14 percent, Atlanta - 11 percent, Los Angeles - 11 percent, District of Columbia - 10 percent, Cleveland - 10 percent.

Professors Diane Ravitch and Chester E. Finn, Jr. did some research, and published their findings in an book called, What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?. They found that three quarters of the students polled did not know that Columbus discovered the New World before 1750. One third did not know that the phrase, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" comes from the Declaration of Independence; some attributed it to the Gettysburg Address. Seventy percent could not identify the Magna Carta. Forty percent are ignorant of the fact that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred between 1939 and 1943. Almost 75 percent can not place Lincoln's presidency within the correct twenty-year span. Almost 50 percent can not place Franklin Roosevelt's presidency in the years between 1929 and 1946.

All this erroneous information eventually leads to things like 41 percent of the public believing that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, or 37 percent of them believing that some of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi. Then we wonder why other countries label us "stupid Americans."

Internationally, how does our country rank when it comes to education? Well, we scored just above Lithuania when it came to math, but the Slovak Republic, Latvia, Estonia and Hungary all do better. Kids in high school today aren't much smarter than they were 10 years ago. We're a 'C' average nation. Mediocre is better than lousy, right? We may not be the brightest, but hey! We're not Mexico!

Part of the problem can be attributed to the money (or lack of) that we spend on education. Consider, for a moment, the 2004 Federal Discretionary Budget. Our budget was 782 billion dollars. Of that 782 billion dollars, The Department of Education only received 53.137 billion. We gave more money to the FCC (2.81b) than we did to Historically Black Colleges (2.77b). We spent 3 times as much money on funding for the V-22 Osprey Aircraft (30 deaths and counting!), as we did for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Museum and Library Services combined (.511b). How about Reading First programs (1.15b)? Nah, let's spend it on Foreign Military Financing (4.14b) instead.

Perhaps if we spend more money on things like education and tools for education (libraries, museums, art, music and culture), we might get more kids interested in learning on their own. Back in Illinois, my school took us on field trips to Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. It got me interested in learning about things outside of school, and instead of sitting in class, staring at the chalkboard for 6 hours a day, we got to watch SCUBA divers feed sharks, and look at rocks that fell from space! I became extremely interested in geology for a number of years, all because of trips to museums. In turn, I went to the library to learn more about xeolinths, lava flows and geologic faults, which nurtured an interest about natural disasters and the earth in general, which is a hobby that I still pursue to this day.

In fact, I learned so very little in high school, that I got incredibly bored and left after 3 years, took my GED (Good Enough Diploma), and scored in the upper 90th percentile in every subject but math. Even though I enjoyed most of my classes, I was bored stiff when it came to robotically memorizing facts that, in some cases, were completely erroneous. Watered down textbooks, reading assignments like "Go Ask Alice (outdated anti-drug propoganda), and authoritarian rules (I got in trouble for finding a few security holes in our school computer system, and suggesting how they be fixed. Punished for attempting to educate others, imagine that...) lead to me ditching school and avoiding any and all classes that didn't interest me. I learned more from my Science Fiction and Fantasy class by reading Bradbury, Asimov and Orwell, than I did from any of the other classes I took.

Public education is in need of a major overhaul. We can't continue on with things the way they are now. I'll get more into how things could be changed with my next article about private and home-schools.

On second thought, to hell with educating our children. Let's pick up a few TRIDENT II Ballistic Missiles instead.

American Education

2005-01-08T01:39:00.000-05:00

The phrase "government school" has ominous overtones, calling to mind an oppressive, gray cinder-block room where young minds are dulled, ground up, and processed into fodder for the ruling elite. It's the sort of place you connect with the old Soviet Russia, or maybe North Korea.

It's time we realize that the involuntary shudder at the sound of that phrase is our better judgment trying to tell us something.

I am no expert on education. I do, however, have a little insight into human nature. Those in power tend to consolidate power. Controlling the system of education is a goal of every despotic regime; if you lead them while they're young, they'll willingly follow you as adults.

Now, I don't necessarily accuse this president of being a despot. I do think it's telling, however, that the Republican Party, which 20 years ago called for the elimination of the unconstitutional Department of Education, has pushed through Congress the biggest expansion of federal control over public education in the nation's history. Republicans don't even pretend to favor a smaller federal government any more; in fact, they look a lot like the Democrats of my grandfather's day.

The Democrats--well, they're lost. The Republican drift to the left has pushed Democrats somewhere to the far side of George McGovern.

Obviously, not every public school is a factory for turning out happy little worker bees for the New World Order. Some of the friends I admire most teach in public schools, and our daughter has attended the local schools since kindergarten. I assure you, though, that we've been very aware of what's been taught, especially in the early grades. My wife used to volunteer at the school during the day and was on a first-name basis with the principals of the elementary and middle school.

Not every parent has that opportunity, and that's too bad. Coupled with the National Education Association's power as the union representing about 2/3 of America's public school teachers, we have what amounts to a federally mandated monopoly of education. It's a cozy arrangement in which government and the teachers union have little incentive to buck the status quo. Parents can yell, but the biggest threat to the sweet deal enjoyed by legislators and educators are engaged, informed voters who are able and willing to think critically.

In other words, it's not in the best interests of the entrenched political class to truly educate our children. It's why we see more tax money flow to Washington every year with no real improvement in how our kids are taught.

It's why parents need to be aware of the real purpose of government schools.

The Fissures in Americas Education System

2005-01-06T20:05:00.000-05:00

As with most issues that are part of Americana, education is a very difficult thing to quantify. What should be focused on? What should be ignored? I’ll leave most of that for others. What I’ll focus on this week is where reality checks and just plain common sense need to be inserted.

Common sense is not so common. Voltaire

Integrated class rooms:

The logic and sentiment behind these is that they do help with socialization. The belief is that if you can get children to realize that even though other kids may be more advanced in a subject than they are, they will be better able to understand other people. Which is an idea with merit, in some cases. However, having sixth graders who breeze through Shakespeare shackled to the pace of the children who are reading at grade level, much less the ones who still struggle with “Little Golden Books”? It makes no sense, and is a lose – lose situation for the children, the students and America as a whole.

The kids working at the highest proficiency rates get bored and either become disinterested in education and cause problems or begin slacking off and become mediocre.
The kids in the middle who might only need a bit of attention be it someone to restate an oddly phrased sentence, or just a definition of an unfamiliar word will not get the right level of attention most often.
The children with serious problems either actual disabilities (and no I won’t use the term ‘differently abled’) or who have been poorly educated thus far, end up either monopolizing the attention of the teacher through genuine need, through frustration because the teacher is paying attention to the other children trying to get the lesson across to as many children as possible.

Not good for anyone involved.

Next is the lack of integrated teaching. If one teacher is teaching a class all their lessons, why don’t they do sensible things with their time? Instead of assigning one project for composition that is nothing more than make work, and another for history or literature/reading, make the paper the child hands in count for both grades and allow the child to focus more time and energy on the assignment instead of fragmenting their attention to do a lesser job on more work. This will also allow teachers, and parents to give better feedback on each assignment as the teacher will spend less time grading papers.

The above two would work greatly towards helping the third problem. Homework overload. I know of children who are good students who test out at well above grade level but are still spending four, five and six hours a night doing homework. Homework is supposed reinforce the classroom lesson, not the other way around. It should also be meaning full to the lessons, and tests on a consistent basis. Having the children (or adults for that matter) read something that is never going to be touched on is asinine, and demonstrates that there are assignments and assignments.

Certainly, the most controversial is politics in the classroom. They don’t belong there. Whether it’s college professors who constantly prattle on about the idiocy of one religion or another, or school boards being pressured into putting labels on books that say things like “Evolution is just a theory.”, because some group of ‘concerned parents’ are worried their children might see some other view of the world. I’ve seen a few science text books that state evolution is a theory. It is however backed by research, further it is presented as theory. Outside of a Religions focused course, there is not much place for religious discourse in public schools unless it falls into the realm of historical or literary analysis perspective. Passing along the values of a family or religious institution are the jobs of those two social edifices, not the public schools. This does extend to the area of sexual education. I personally wish that it were (physically) safe for society as a whole to leave this topic strictly to parents. Unfortunately, it is not. Some religions are virulently against pre-marital sex. Which is fine; but expecting people to abstain from sex simply because it displeases you is at best naïve, and at worst a colossal megalomania. People behave in a contrary manner all the time. Sex education classes should present all the issues with having sex, for which ever configuration of participants. They should also present the real dangers of disease, pregnancy, and death along with the measures one can take against the repercussions. Presenting “Abstinence only” or “Just pregnancy prevention” is silly, absurd and a disservice to the children as well as a waste of tax payer money.

Expectations. Despite nearly every parents avowed belief that their little angel is the brightest, most talented child on the face of the planet: this just can’t be true in all or even most cases. Changing curriculums so that more children get high grades is vulgar, not all children are capable of earning a slot on the Deans List. It’s a simple and unavoidable fact of life that not only are some people smarter than others are, some people work hard to make up for the intelligence gap.

Finally, there is the matter of presentation. A teacher job is to get the information across to the children as fully as possible. To do this they should engage the children in their lesson. Pure lectures are fine for college level chemistry classes, but to get the message across to a younger audience so that they retain the information past when ever the test is requires more. This means teachers will occasionally have to make jokes, possibly even of themselves, they will have to be creative and reach out to and get to know their students as much as possible.

Despite the serious faults I see in the American education system, we have a huge well of strength in the field. Despite huge inflows of immigrants, and transient students we have a literacy rate of ninety seven percent. That’s over ninety seven percent and our education system is open to anyone without discrimination. We have men, women and children coming from all over the world to use our education system. Some of them stay here and settle permanently, some of them go home with very good memories of their time in America and that is public relations you just can’t buy.

The Casual Observer, future educator.

Thank you to David

2005-01-04T01:44:00.000-05:00

David of Hawkenblog has been our guest blogger this week and we want to thank him for his unique viewpoint and unswerving belief in what he says. Hopefully we'll get him to come back in the near future for more dynamic conversation.

Week 2: Response to David (#2)

2005-01-04T01:33:00.000-05:00

1) a·nal·o·gy
n. pl. a·nal·o·gies

a) Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
b) A comparison based on such similarity. See Synonyms at likeness.
Biology. Correspondence in function or position between organs of dissimilar evolutionary origin or structure.
A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects.
Linguistics. The process by which words or morphemes are re-formed or created on the model of existing grammatical patterns in a language, often leading to greater regularity in paradigms, as evidenced by helped replacing holp and holpen as the past tense and past participle of help on the model of verbs such as yelp, yelped, yelped.

Analogies are also used by the higher intelligence brackets to explain concepts, beyond the reach of those being talked to, in terms more likely to be understood. I proposed an analogy (hence the word “like”, did you miss that fourth grade English class?) of the Presidential election being akin to a pizza party. A non-sequitur (an inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premises or evidence) would have been to suddenly say the sky is purple.

2) In 1960, John F. Kennedy won 303 Electoral College votes, as well as 34, 227, 096 (49.7%) of the popular vote.

Richard Nixon won 219 E.C. votes, and 34,107,646 (49.5%) of the popular vote.

The “other party”/third candidates won a whopping total of .8% of the popular vote. Less than 1%. (1)

Tell me again what the problem is here?

Oh, yes. Voter fraud. Again, something actually more damaging to the popular vote system than the Electoral College system. In this particular case, all the E.C. votes did was mimic the “popular” vote. The political scientists and historians who have studied the issue can’t even agree how many votes were really cast, and thus, cannot determine what the “real” result could was. (2) Fraudulent results will always be fraudulent results. Remind me what significance this has to the current debate?

3) My original argument has remained the same: The Electoral College is, was, and shall remain the most fair to the entire country because large population centers are inherently more likely to vote as blocks. That’s why up until the 1960s (when the parties changed to the primary system) the political machines were so effective. Because those in charge of the political machines could bring entire cities together to vote as more-or-less the same thing, whether by just extremely good propaganda, or other methods. A purely popular vote destroys the chances of those in rural areas to have their voices heard, if they’re the slightest bit not in tune with the big cities. Again, it was the political machine that Daley controlled in the largest population center of Illinois which caused the problems with the 1960 election. Now, stretch your brain, and contemplate what a similar thing would do, if a purely popular voting system occurred. Wouldn’t it be terribly easy to distort – country wide – the results of the election?

Let me let you in on a little secret:

I live in Texas, which will, no matter which system, popular vote or Electoral College, the voting system ever is using, will remain a large demographic area, and isn’t really affected either way by the issue. In 2000, I voted for Bush all right … I voted for him to stay Governor. I consider myself to be an independent with democratic leanings on most issues. But I’m also a rural girl, a farm girl, have been for over half my life, although I started out as a city kid. And I know, first hand, how the stuff that affects Houston Metro normally screws us over, because it’s what everyone in the city wants, whether or not it is logical.

This argument is not a hypothetical one, for me. It is daily life, the stuff I deal with day in and day out. I learned quickly to not trust what the larger demographics want, because it often means the smaller demographics are about to get shafted. And, on a national scale, for the only two elected offices which are national offices, the only way to ensure that the President and Vice President represent the largest spread of people and the interests of those people possible is to ensure that the packing behavior large cities encourage doesn’t run roughshod over the interests of the little guys too.

Quite frankly, the only way anyone can support a purely popular vote for the only two national offices, is because they have not understood the purpose, nor spirit, behind the Electoral College.

4) You have yet to show any documentation or relevant links to support your arguments. I have looked at statistics, crunched numbers, and done fact checking. Links to your personal blog do not count, and until you bother to read the BlogSpectrum rules regarding citing sources for facts and manage to find some hard numbers, I am not going to bother to attempt to continue this debate, no matter how much you snivel.

5) Oh yes. And John Kerry is an acquired taste. But I for one cringe at the idea of eating a fish whole, and can’t help but think your analogy of him being something gross and icky is entirely accurate. Thank you for pointing that out! :) (*Note: My distaste for Kerry is purely for personal reasons, and involves the family members of mine who were in Vietnam. One of who now lives in France, because the French treated him better than Kerry-and-Co.) Fungi beat whole fish hands down. Waiter! Extra mushrooms on that pizza!

Questions for weeks three and four

2005-01-03T13:03:00.000-05:00

Why do two weeks questions at once? It's a two part question, on education.

Week Three is:

What in school changes need to be made to our current education system?

Week Four is:

What is the case for or against charter and or home schools? Are home schools just a way for parents to rubber stamp their child’s education? Are charter schools just a way for parents to practice intolerance in whom their children go to school with? Does either or both actually work?

Whip-cracking can be so tiring ...

2005-01-03T01:39:00.000-05:00

... So I'm going to bed. I have an interview this afternoon, January 3rd, for a programming position. I've only got 13 hours and 22 minutes before I have it, I'm a nervous wreck, and I haven't slept.

But at least now the posts are mostly readable in the FireFox browser, as well as perfect in Internet Explorer. I will be breaking out the whip again once I'm home from my interview, and trying to whip the template into complete shape. (I hate DIV overruns. And browsers which don't support CSS properly. *coughMozillacough*)

So, for the next day or two, expect it to be randomly having problems. I'm still tweaking and fussing. And it's all TheCO's fault, 'cause I said so.

Your Friendly Web Dominatrix,

Sidial the TechnoPest

Education the Issue

2005-01-02T01:28:00.000-05:00

I want to quote the questions our CO, our esteemed and acrobatic convener of bloggedness, posed, because I want to be clear about that we’re up to here:

(1) “What in school changes need to be made to our current educational system?” (2) “What is the case for or against charter schools? Are home schools just a way for parents to rubber stamp their children’s education? Are charter schools just a way for parents to practice intolerance in whom their children go to school with? Does either or both actually work?”

To answer these questions, we have to take at least one step back and ask two prior questions. What are the goals of education as such? In view of those goals, what is the best education we can provide to the most people?

And before answering, we should remind ourselves that the educational system as we know it, from kindergarten to college, appeared only about a century ago. Its appearance was yet another symptom--and attempted cure--of the failure of the family at the end of the 19th century. Education as we now know it supplies most of what families did in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the content of what we still call morality and character. That is why our debates about the obligations and purposes of students and teachers—about public education--always sound like arguments about the functions of families. When we talk about schools, we’re talking about what we can and should do for our children. No wonder it sounds personal. Also political.

Failure is perhaps too strong a word. But right around the 1890s, the family stopped doing everything it was supposed to do, according to the expectations inherited from the 18th and 19th centuries. Let me quote Jessie Taft, whose 1915 dissertation was published by the University of Chicago Press as “The Woman Movement for the Point of View of Social Consciousness,” to illustrate the point:

“Its [the family’s] center of gravity has been shifted to the factory, the brewery, the bakery, the delicatessen shop, the school, the kindergarten, the department store, the municipal department of health and sanitation, the hospital, the library, the social centers and playgrounds, and dozens of similar institutions.”

There weren’t a whole lot of people who denied this basic fact back then. In fact the story of the family’s collapse became a popular genre, in fiction as well as in social science, ca. 1890-1930. But there were a lot of people, then as now, who want(ed) to reinstate the inherited expectations—that is, to treat the family as if it could, as if it can, serve all those purposes, personal and political, listed by Taft in her gravitational peroration.

That is why, once again, the personal is political. That is why we talk about something supposedly private, families, when we talk about something supposedly public--education.

So let’s get serious when we talk about it, let's ask the questions that are ultimately unavoidable. What are the goals of education? And what’s the best education we can offer our children, and the world?

Historically speaking, the goals of education in this country are to (1) equip everyone with the skills necessary to appropriate the texts once decipherable only to the literate minority; (2) offer everyone the possibility of social mobility by virtue of their access to education [in the 19th century, this meant that “mechanics’ institutes” and apprenticeship programs gave way to public schools]; (3) teach everyone that the only thing we have in common as Americans is our ability to argue about what it means to be American. In our own time, we have also tried to give students “emotional intelligence” as well as test-taking skills. This has taken a lot of time and effort. But then we have the summers off.

If you agree with me on the GOALS of education, you cannot believe that the way to fix public schools is to introduce “market competition” in the form of charter schools. If you want to “privatize” education in view of these goals, you are demented. Because the only way to accomplish all three goals is through public education, top to bottom.

You want to send your kid to private school, OK. I did, too, when he was flunking out of the high-rent public school a mile away, and I paid the higher rent because I thought it would cure him. But don’t tell me that this alternative is anything more than a stopgap—except for the very wealthy, of course.

The best education we can offer our children, I’m afraid, is the education they, and the rest of the world, now get. That is why higher education in this country is still the most amazing bargain available, and why Europeans and Asians keep sending their kids here (the top ten from their standpoint includes Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford, and it excludes Yale, but we’re not engineers of computers or, for that matter, bridges).

But you will say, what about secondary education, what about what happens before everybody goes off to the college of their choice, more or less, and stumbles upon those brilliant bastards, those unassuming professors, who have been just standing around, waiting for them?

And I will say, take a look. At the before. I know three people who teach and observe closely at this level—in high schools—and they do things that are unimaginable to me. They spend the kind of time with students which comes with a sense of mission, or with a diagnosis of obsession.

OK, two of the three are my brother and my sister-in-law. The third is an old friend I don’t talk to anymore, but I’ve read his books (it’s true, I don’t like him, but his book entitled The Call to Teach is worth reading by anyone who has taught or who has considered a career in this strange field).

These people are teachers. You won’t find them in a private school because they believe in public education. They believe in diversity—hell, my sister-in-law teaches in the public high school from which I graduated, a place that, back then, was 99% white and all managerial except for those pesky working-class punks who beat the shit out of us, and is now about 35% Asian, still managerial but with a nice postmodern twist—and they believe in their students, and they believe in their capacity to shape the curriculum.

To make such beliefs effective, they have joined and led unions, and they’ve gone on strike, and they’ve lost jobs.

So I would insist that the best education available to American kids is the one made available by teachers who know that they should control the point of production—who have enough confidence, and courage, to say that the interests of teachers and students converge more often than not, to say that tests are necessary but not sufficient to the measurement of effort or achievement, to say, finally, that I am here to show these kids how to think, not what to think.

Week 2: Response to Sidial

2005-01-02T01:20:00.000-05:00

My, how quickly your argument has descended into a) non sequitors, b) repeating what I say but suggesting it’s evidence for your argument, and c) defending the EC’s unfair favoritism of small states without explaining why that is good for the country or even good for those states. At the risk of being kicked off your blog (or you just disliking me personally), it’s going to be impossible for me to not ridicule your pizza party analogy… right now:

The anchovies stand for what now, abortion rights is it? And whether the person who doesn’t like anchovies can eat an entire pizza symbolizes that they have a large number of electoral votes, right? Or does it mean that the person is actually several small states banded together like individual pieces of mozzarella cheese melt together with themselves and the taste of subsequently removed anchovies? Are you simply implying that Sen. Kerry is an acquired taste, like anchovies? I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry. Your analogy makes no sense.

Back to the serious issues at hand…. You wrote: “The only two people in the entire country to be voted on by the entire country are the President and the Vice President. They should be more the representative of the ENTIRE country, instead of a select few areas.” I couldn’t agree more, but that’s my argument, and you have no right to it. I define the “entire country” as every eligible voter in all 50 states. The system you advocate favors a select few areas, which are the dozen or so swing states in any given election.

Speaking of the president being decided in a select few areas…. I'm sorry you didn't understand the point I was making about Ohio, so I'll make it again. I was saying that many liberals and Democrats in this country seem to be upset specifically with Ohioans who voted for Bush, or at so-called “Red States” in general, which to me is a divisive way of thinking. Nonetheless, due to the EC, the election did ultimately come down to the result in Ohio. You’re correct, a direct system would not have prevented any fraud that may have happened in Ohio. But the point is that people wouldn’t be upset specifically with Ohioans (or because their vote in California or Wyoming didn’t mean anything); people would feel that the majority’s will resulted in the outcome, and hence the direct system would reduce divisiveness and encourage unity. Why, in your estimation, does it make less sense to have the election decided largely, although by no means entirely, in the major population centers all across the country as opposed to in an arbitrarily selected few areas, which in 2004 were various places in Ohio?

Your first link doesn’t address the 1960 or 2000 results. The second link addresses 2000, but concludes that it was okay on the basis that 30 of the 50 states voted for Bush, therefore he should have won the election. This argument is basically that electoral votes should be apportioned one to each state (like when the House determines a winner when a majority of EVs are not reached) so that whoever wins a greater number of states wins overall. The author writes: “To decide the election purely on the basis of the popular vote would place many of these small states at the mercy of the more populated urban areas, thus issues of a local importance would likely be ignored.” Therefore, the minority (defined, apparently, as small states and nothing more) should win on the basis that if they didn’t, their issues would likely be ignored, unlike what would happen to the issues important to large population centers if they lost. That is illogical.

In a popular vote system, the minority has a chance to give their input. In fact, their input is better registered under a direct system, because EV outcomes tend to distort the outcome of an election by making it look like the winner won by a much greater percentage than (s)he actually did in the popular vote. But, if the voters for a particular candidate are in the minority, their candidate doesn’t win. In your system, you say the minority can overrule the majority? What determines when they should do that? Why is the current weighting the correct weighting? Why can’t you explain why it makes more sense to unfairly weight small states than it would to unfairly weight rural votes? The latter makes ten times more sense to me, although anything times zero is still zero.

I ask you again, what is it about small states that make their interests more important than those of all other states? What is it that bands the small states together to create a critical, unified interest that the majority would just as soon bury? And, why is it in the interest of small states to support the EC, when under a direct system they, on the whole, would receive far more attention from the candidates in terms of visits and advertising? The sole aspect of your original argument that you are still defending is that small states require special rights when voting for president. Yet, you have not clearly put forth a single reason why this is the case. You’ll see when the smallest states ratify the pending Amendment (assuming the major parties will let it get that far) that this is because there simply is no such reason.

2005 The year of the Spectrum

2005-01-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

As we enter our first full year, we look forward to the challenge of keeping this a fresh blog, with interesting team members and guest posting all the time. We here at BlogSpectrum look forward to meeting that challenge. We aim to exceed your expectations. In the next few weeks, we will add more members, more side issues, and more content. Our aim is to make this the first blog you read everyday. How can you help? Tell friends. Send comments and suggestions. Read often. Suggest additions to the team. Have a safe and happy New Year, from The Blog Spectrum Team.

The Casual Observer on behalf of:
Politikat
Michael Z Williamson
Morgen
Sidial (aka Pest)
The Cunning Linguist
J'Myle
Eddie
James
Quilly
Walt

2005-01-01T17:06:00.000-05:00

1) I am not infected with the Blog-o-Virus (as I call it), and have little interest in going to anyone else's blog. Quite frankly, I'm posting here under threats sufficient to convince me to, threats, I will add, only a friend can make and get away without me pushing the issue. All arguments should be posted here, rather than elsewhere, for ease of access, among other reasons.

2) Electoral Vote VS. Popular Vote

Electoral College critics point out the elections of 1824, 1876, and 1888 in their arguments to prove the system doesn't work. In those three elections
the candidate who won the Electoral College vote, did not win the popular vote. Besides forgetting the 50 other elections where the Electoral College agrees with the popular vote, critics conveniently ignore the factors that caused these three situations.

The link goes on to explain the factors which played into the first three points where the popular vote and the Electoral College do not agree. The next link deals with the fourth one.

3) Election 2000 (Article)

Quote from that link, which is likely a better phrasing of what I've been trying to say:

In this most recent election [2000], we have seen a candidate win a majority of the popular vote, but his faction failed to kindle a nationwide base. The voting base for the party came from 21 of the 51 available states. With the exception
of New Mexico, all of the states were highly urban with large populations. In terms of sheer numbers, these states possess the numbers to oppress the others in matters resolved by popular vote. Clearly our founding fathers set out to guard against just this type of majority rule, whether the issue is taxation, national defense, or the election of the chief executive, the rights of the smaller states must be protected. This protection, offered by a representative republic, has helped to ensure the strength and survival of our nation by reducing the amount of interstate conflict that marred the original Articles of Confederation.

This is what I have been attempting to say. Does it decrease the per-person value in the more populous states? Yes. That IS the idea, you know. To make it so the smaller states/population centers have a chance to have equal rights, equal representation in the president. Do you remember what I said about "Majority Rule, Minority Rights"? The Electoral College is fundamental to preserving that aspect of American representational democracy. The country is too diverse to let a single topic determine the next president -- so the president-elect must have gotten an across the board support, instead of support from high population centers only. By forcing the issue to those without the population weight, it means there is a more equal application of the end result.

What you advocate is like saying that, at a pizza party, if someone doesn't like anchovies on their pizza, and everyone else does, it should be wrong for them to order a pizza without anchovies just for that person. They should be glad all they get to do is pull off the anchovies, and still contend with the taste of it having been cooked on there. After all, that would be being "completely equal", right? Does it really work that way? Is that even truly fair?

Perhaps the difference in opinion stems from a difference in the usage of "equal". I am referring to equitable, and you are referring to equality. Whereas I am referring to the end result of it being fair in terms of the end result being less biased than a popular vote would cause, you are referring to precise exactness of the method.

But the existance of "Majority Rule, Minority Rights" means that we cannot let the majority dictate the rules without the minority having a chance to have input. The Electoral College is the best option we have at evening out the heft of voting blocks. It's the most fair option.

As you continually are harping on, the President is the representative of the people. The only two people in the entire country to be voted on by the entire country are the President and the Vice President. They should be more the representative of the ENTIRE country, instead of a select few areas.

As for Ohio -- is that the fault of the Electoral College? I think not. It is the fault of poor planning, poor resources distribution, and would have existed no matter what voting system was being used. Votes UNCAST are still votes UNCAST, no matter how you try to phrase it, and it would have been just as detrimental to the popular vote as to the Electoral College. The candidates have no control over that side of things, no one does except for the state at fault.

Week 2: Response to Sidial on the EC

2005-01-01T15:22:00.000-05:00

I apologize for my blatant disregard of your blog’s word limit. If this poses a problem, we’d be more than happy to host the debate over at Hawkenblog.

It’s true that in the history of US presidential elections, the winner of the EC has won without winning the popular vote 3 or 4 times (depending on your interpretation of how voting directly for electors in Alabama affected the popular vote in Kennedy-Nixon). You say that’s “very rare,” hence good enough. I say it’s not good enough, but I suppose this disagreement, relative to most of the other ones, is simply a difference in opinion. However, I think it’s worth noting that we nearly had two consecutive elections where the winner of the EC was the loser of the popular vote, which shows how likely it is any time there’s a close election. If Ohio state voting officials had provided an adequate number of voting machines for all citizens, this may well have been the case. Furthermore, why would you defend a system that has failed several times and is liable to fail during any close election when you could replace it with a better system that would always correspond to the will of the majority? Another point I made on Hawkenblog is that the current system disenfranchises millions of voters in the 2/3 to 4/5 of states whose winner-take-all outcomes are all-but-certain weeks before the election. So, under the current system, the popular vote always must be taken with a grain of salt, because there are millions of people out there who, like me, could have decided to just stay home on the basis that their vote would be worth infinitely less to the outcome than someone’s in a swing state.

It’s true that the EC was developed in part to satisfy the concerns of large states, slave states, and small states. In the beginning, those entities were able to argue that they might need a special boost in national elections. I think it speaks for itself that you’re not arguing for what the value of that boost might be today, you’re simply advocating the preservation of unfair weighting. You’re saying that the vote of people in small states must count for more—much more—than the vote of someone in one of the largest states. Why is that good? I’ve already stated why I believe each vote should be equal. The onus is on you to explain to us why some people’s vote should be worth much more others’.

Even if you wanted one group’s vote to be more valuable than another’s, why would you want the arbitrary distinctions created by state lines to determine the groups? Wouldn’t you want a more meaningful demographic distinction? Let’s take your figures that 80% of the population is “urban” and the other 20% is “rural.” That seems like a pretty big disparity, and most farmers are surely in the rural category, and farming is essential to the livelihood of our country. Let’s change it so that instead of someone in Wyoming having a vote that’s worth four times more than mine in California, which really doesn’t seem to be for any reason anyway, and let’s make it so we multiply the value of a rural vote by four times instead. Okay, so now rural voters have as much of a say as urban voters. First of all, this would never happen, because the majority of the country—the 80% in so-called urban areas—would never allow their congresspersons and states to go along with it. Secondly, it would give the reigns of the country’s highest office to a minority group, and there’s no telling how much this would offset the balance of power in the US, most likely, I would guess, for the worse. Can we agree that we shouldn’t do something like that? You say the EC, “evens out some of the gross inequalities a purely popular vote method incurs.” Does it not, in fact, create gross inequalities that a purely popular vote method would eliminate?

I agree with you that we are not a single entity all across the US. But the president (and the vice president) is the single person in the US who is elected to preside over all Americans. We have senators and representatives to represent the geographically-determined minority interests. Your argument that the diversity of this country requires that some people should be given more of an ability to determine the president is an egregious affront to the concept of Majority Rules, Minority Rights.

Why would it take longer to count the votes in a direct election than through the EC? Obviously, it took several weeks to call the election in Florida in 2000 (and proper recounting by an independent commission didn’t conclude for more than a year, if I recall), and if the margin had been, say, 50,000 votes instead of 130,000 in Ohio (which, as I said, it easily could have been, if people in “minority areas” in that state had been given approximately equal access to voting machinery), it would have taken at least two more weeks to count all the provisional, absentee, military, and oversees ballots, because Kerry would not have conceded on November 3. Sometimes it’s just going to take a while to get a winner, and I hope we can agree that in this case correctness is a higher virtue than quickness. If we made it through the aftermath of the 2000 election (and Kerry quickly conceding the 2004 election despite lingering questions in Ohio) without inciting anything even resembling civil war, it’s not going to happen over presidential elections. Also, under a direct vote system, taking additional time (at least beyond the time when all provisional, absentee, military, and oversees ballots are counted) to determine a winner would be rarer.

What you’re failing to consider is that the more votes there are, the less likely it is that the outcome will be very close. Consider how close it was in the EC in 2000 and in 2004: differences of 537 and about 120,000 votes, respectively. Then consider how close it wasn’t in the popular votes in 2000 and in 2004: differences of about 500,000 and 3,500,000, respectively. Historically, the margins in the closest states are much closer than the margin in the popular vote. It’s mathematically less probable for an election to be meaningfully close in the popular vote than for it to be so in the key swing states. So, if someone wanted to commit fraud in Florida in 2000 (assuming the actual outcome would have been determined before the Supreme Court stopped the dispute), they ended up only needing to switch 537 votes to change the outcome of the entire national election. In Ohio in 2004, someone wanting to commit fraud would have had to impact what turned out to be about 120,000 votes (something which, arguably, Secretary of State Blackwell indirectly did by not providing adequate voting machines in minority areas), as opposed to 3.5 million on the national scale. Most if not all cases throughout the history of presidential elections will confirm this effect. So, while supporters of the EC say it quarantines fraud in just one or two states as opposed to on a national level, when fraud does happen in the critical state(s), it’s result is grossly magnified into a national result. Whereas, it would be prohibitively difficult to cause, say, 500,000 votes worth of fraud on a national level without getting caught, which is what you’d have to do to overturn an entire direct election. So, the EC actually makes the outcome much more susceptible to fraud.

You go on to argue for “the illusion of semi-unity between states.” (This seems ironic, because you were just saying that a, “purely popular vote would be treating everyone like they all lived just down the road from each other,” as if that would be objectionable.) Don’t you think lot’s of liberals in this country are still pissed specifically at rural Ohioans, the people of Columbus and Cincinatti, and Mr. Blackwell for putting their enemy back into office? I’m not sure they’re justified, but I get the sense that it’s the reality of the situation. It seems to me that breaking things up by state in a way that doesn’t ensure that the majority determines the victor actually makes it much easier for people to say the election was decided by people in “Red states” or “Blue states” (which can be highly divisive) and, even, that the election was a sham (as many people are saying, considering the problems in Ohio in 2004 and the illegal way the recount there has been handled). I think perceived unity is a good thing, and I think direct voting would encourage that by making every eligible voter equally responsible for electing the president.

Presumably, you were talking in the following quote about how EC results tend to magnify the outcome to give the illusion that the winner won by more than the popular vote indicates: “It has the chance at making those who are going to go out and vote anyhow feel more like they’re part of a national group.” Believe me, nothing would make people feel more like they were voting as a group than if everyone went out and knew that their vote counted equally toward the majority election of a candidate. My vote for president in 2004 was utterly and completely arbitrary, whereas the votes of hundreds of people I knew back home in Ohio were arguably the most meaningful of the election.

You and I both believe in representational democracy for this country. Pure democracy is perhaps a useful thing with certain issues, as in 2004 when there was a strong response to initiatives on banning gay marriage in many states and approving $3b for stem-cell research in California, among many others. But, for the most part, our system is representational. Let’s remember that we elect our national and state congresspersons by direct vote, and yet they are still our representatives in the democratic process that occurs in state capitals and in Washington. Just the same, whether the EC or a direct vote is used to elect the president, he is still the nation’s representative—the people don’t get a chance to vote whether (s)he goes to war or whether (s)he proposes or repeals any initiative (s)he wants.

The proposed change of divying up EVs on the basis of a state’s popular vote does not do anything to invalidate the fact that some individuals’ votes count a lot more than others under the EC, nor does it effectively address most of the criticisms I have leveled at the EC, either here or on Hawkenblog (although it could encourage candidates to actively campaign in more states, if it was uniformly implemented). If states were gradually to move to such a system, those who did it first would be committing suicide with their power in the EC, because no candidate would campaign heavily in their state for the difference of just 1 or 2 votes (as we learned in the debate on Colorado’s initiative to do this in 2004). For example, if Florida were to do that, no matter how close it might be there, candidates would give no more attention than any of the smallest swing states, like Nevada or New Hampshire, because both candidates would be virtually guaranteed of getting almost half their votes regardless. So, for such a system to be implemented it would have to be a Constitutional Amendment to ensure that it would go into effect everywhere at once. If we’re going to pass an Amendment on voting for president (as a senator and a representative soon hope to do), then why pass one that just fixes part of it when we could pass one that would improve the system in virtually every way without any negative consequences for the vast majority of the nation’s population?

Week 2: Response to David

2005-01-01T02:22:00.000-05:00

This originally started out as a commented-reply to David's reply to my original post. The CO made me post it as a regular post, and said he'd add "flowery honorifics" if he had to do it himself. So I'm doing what he asked. At approximately 15 times the length.

Sidial the TechnoPest

Politicians may ignore some states during a campaign, but those states' electoral votes still can make a difference. Remember how everyone was biting nails over which way Nevada would fall, just two months ago(ish), now? One "little" (small population) state can tip the election either way. Without the Electoral College, that state may as well not go to the polls at all, because their votes are a drop in the bucket compared to Texas' or California's pure popular vote. In a way, it adds weight to the vote of the smaller states/population centers, compared to the much larger population centers.

Let me put this into historical perspective:

A) The popular vote and the Electoral College vote results are very rarely at odds. The percentages may not be exactly correct, but if you look at the history books, it's actually noted when the popular vote and the E.C. vote do not jibe, not when they say the same thing. Which means this argument is more or less pointless, except once every fiftyish years. (I don't have exact numbers and dates, but I can only vaguely recall three or four times where the E.C. vote and popular vote didn't come out to the same result.)

B) The Electoral College IS the Great Compromise that enabled the delegates from the 13 original states to come to the agreement that is our Constitution. It is the voting side of the two house Congress, designed to give equal weight to all states, and still give weight to the states by population.

Back then, the plantation states had a very real concern: nothing would ever go their way, if they didn't have equal say in what goes on.

The North, which was far more industrialized, and thus more populous, wanted to be able to use its population heft to get things that the South didn't want to happen to go through.

The Great Compromise, as we now call it, called for both ways of doing things. The Senate -- more removed from the concerns of the public, less focused on getting re-elected in just two years -- gives equal weight to all of the states, and has comparable powers to that of the House. The Senate is supposed to be the "calm older advisor" to the House. The House, on the other hand, is supposed to be something of a dynamic firebrand, much more closely linked to the public because of voting turnovers, hence, why it is also based on population (and handles things like the money).

The Electoral College voting system is based on the number of Senators plus Representatives each state has. So each state is guaranteed a minimum of three votes. Now, compare this to the population differences. California ranks #1 in the country as of April 1, 2000, with 33,871,648 people. Wyoming ranks #51 (counting the District of Columbia, which ranks as #50) with 493,782 people. In other words, Wyoming has 1.46% of California's population. To put this into another perspective: the nine smallest states by population (New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming) plus the District of Columbia, have a grand total of 8,880,081 people. Which is only 26.22% of California’s population (1).

By contrast, those ten population centers have a combined total of 36 electoral votes, with New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Rhode Island having four apiece, the other seven divisions having three apiece – which is more than what Texas has alone, and 65.46% of what California has (2). This gives their vote more weight per person, and help cancels out the sheer number of people California has. But, mind you, the popular vote is NOT totally left out to sea. As I said in my previous post, most states apportion their Electoral College votes on a “winner takes all” system – but it still goes to the winner of the state’s popular vote.

The Electoral College manages both things needed for the writers of the Constitution to come to an agreement: it gives weight by population, but also evens out some of the gross inequalities a purely popular vote method incurs. We are NOT a single entity across this country. There are countries in Europe that are smaller than Texas, let alone the rest of the country. There are vast cultural differences between NYC, Houston, and LA, I can bloody well guarantee it. Are a bunch of things the same? Sure! But we are not a homogenous society, and a purely popular vote would be treating everyone like they all lived just down the road from each other.

Another variant of the perspective: 241, 395, 996 people in this country live in urban centers. 49, 413,781 people are rural (3). So just 20.47% of the population is rural – and not all of those are involved with the food production for the other 80% of the country. What about their votes? I, being a farm girl myself, can definitely tell you that what you city folk think is important isn’t precisely what’s important out here in the sticks. (Sorry about the slight drawl on that.)

There is another part of the Electoral College voting system you are failing to take into consideration, however.

Right now, we have a very clear idea of what constitutes a President-Elect: 270 of 538 Electoral College votes declares our winner. Now, our latest estimates for the population of the United States is 290,809,777 (at the end of 2003) (4). How many of those are of voting age? How many are registered to vote? How many are going to vote? We never know for sure, until the last vote is counted on Election Day. At what point can we guess reasonably close as to which candidate has been elected, if we’re doing a purely popular vote? If it’s close enough of a popular vote, even just the slightest bit of voting fraud could throw the vote. Online, many of the polls are voted in by robots, not real people, and can totally throw the real demographics and information those polls gather.

Consider what happened with Florida in 2000. Consider that the Democratic Underground was raring to go off to Ohio at the drop of a hatpin, if Kerry chose to fight those electoral votes being called for Bush. Consider how many fraudulent voter registrations were being done, and how out-and-out dirty this past election was. The Electoral College minimizes the ability to have widespread voting fraud, as well as minimizing the overall impact such can have. I’m sure that was an unintended side effect of the whole thing, but it works. It’s a bit like an isolation ward: keep the infection from spreading outside of these areas.

One last comment on the Electoral College:

It provides an illusion of semi-unity between states which otherwise might not feel like they have that much in common.

You may scoff at how bad of an idea that is, but is it really? From a purely psychological viewpoint, this country is so bloody diverse that feeling more unified is not a bad thing. It has the chance at making those who are going to go out and vote anyhow feel more like they’re part of a national group. (Which they are, a very important group, voting is the easiest and most important civic duty any American can perform.)

Do I believe in democracy? Hell yes. But I believe in a representational democracy, rather than a pure democracy. In small groups, pure democracy is functional. In a country as large as ours, a representational democracy is what is needed instead. And, yes, I believe that extends to the Electoral College. There’s a quote inscribed on the side of one of the buildings (E. Cullen, I believe) at the University of Houston, which goes something along the lines of this: The only aristocracy that democracy should embrace is that of intellect.

Take it as you will. But the Electoral College is, was, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the best compromise between calm-and-collected and public sentiment, rural and urban, small state and big state. Until there is a completely fool proof method for preventing voter fraud (which there never will be – someone will always be smart enough to hack the technology), it remains the best way to minimize the possibility of widespread fraud in ways that a purely popular voting system would actively encourage. And it also remains the best way to have a good benchmark for who is the “winner”, so it doesn’t take forever and a day to declare the winner – that would be a fast way to incite civil war.

Again, don’t wish for the abolishment of the Electoral College system. Campaign in your state to have the state divvy up its Electoral College votes according to the percentages of public opinion within the state itself. That would be a good “perfecting” touch on the best system possible for our kind of democracy.

References:

1. US States (Plus Washington D.C.) Population and Ranking.

2. Electoral Votes.

3. State Fact Sheets: United States.

4. ibid.

Please

2004-12-31T23:58:00.000-05:00

Excuse the irregularities in this blog while its being tinkered with. I've been assured its all my fault.

Electoral College Debate

2004-12-31T22:11:00.000-05:00

Thanks, TheCO, for extending guest posting privileges to me. I've posted my thoughts on why the Electoral College (EC) should be abolished over at Hawkenblog, if you'd like to get a more comprehensive analysis. Here I am responding to commentary made by Sidial regarding his/her recent post on the American electoral process. Please refer to that post and comments attached to it for the background on the points here expressed.

I'll tell you what's quite simple: the fact that in our country we claim to support the concept that all humans are created equal, be this a self-evidency or philosophically-derived, such as by Objectivism. If you believe that--and it's really quite difficult, or at least not socially acceptable, to disagree with--then among the population of those who are eligible to vote in this country, all people should have a vote that is of equal value to everybody's else's. That's very simple logic, and it's the heart of the argument for a direct, popular vote for president.

You wrote: "Remove the Electoral College, and all a presidential candidate would have to do to win is campaign in the big cities such as NYC, LA, Chicago, and a couple of others. The rural, outlying areas ? including some entire states! ? could be ignored completely, in a purely popular vote situation. The Electoral College was designed for exactly that reason, to prevent exactly that scenario." It is untrue that the EC was developed primarily, or even secondarily, for this purpose. Furthermore, your argument that all a candidate has to do is win key cities is logically flawed. In any given election, the majority of the people in those cities, as well as in rural areas, are likely to have made up their mind before the candidates are even determined. It's infinitely easier for the Democratic candidate to win all the electoral votes from New York and California than it would be for him/her to win even 75% of the votes in either NYC, LA, San Francisco, or San Diego. Anyway, to address this issue, I wrote the following on Hawkenblog:

"Some people who support the EC have suggested that eliminating it would put the focus of candidates only on large urban areas where there are the highest concentrations of voters, effectively taking the emphasis away from the concerns of people in less-populated areas. So far as I can tell, this argument doesn't make sense. Obviously candidates are going to go to areas where there are more votes, but candidates are also always going to try to appeal to a representative cross-section of Americans. Under the EC, Bush and Kerry spent more time in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania than they did in New Hampshire, Nevada, and New Mexico specifically because they had more to gain in the states with more electoral votes (EVs). But, in all those states, the candidates when to and catered to rural areas, in addition to suburban and urban areas. There?s no reason candidates should care more about those people than about urban voters?after all, urban citizens make up the majority of the people in the US. But regardless of whether candidates focus on 10 states or 50, the amount that they focus on different demographics isn't likely to change significantly. Now, someone in a rural area of a perennial swing state, like Ohio or Missouri, may be opposed to going to a direct voting system, because under the EC a presidential candidate is, say, five times more likely to visit them. But, with the rapid improvements in technology, people can watch events in areas like their own (such as a downtrodden farming community) on cable or the Internetz instead."

The central problem with your reasoning--which concludes that citizens of small states may as well not even vote--is that you think a person in a small state should have a vote that counts for more than a person in a big state, especially in a big city. How can you possibly support that? That is minority rule, and that is not a principle upon which our country claims to be founded and governed. In a popular vote system, everyone's vote would be equal, so in a close election my vote (as a San Diegan) would count as much as my brother's (as a rural Ohioan) as much as some illiterate guy in Wyoming as much as former President Clinton's as much as yours as much as Carrot Top's. If popular vote becomes the method, why would a person decide not to vote just because they live in a particular state that doesn't have a large population? Their state's population is rendered meaningless in the context a direct voting system. As I pointed out on Hawkenblog, as the system is right now, I know that as a Californian my vote is many orders of magnitude less likely to affect the outcome of an election than that of someone in a swing state, particularly one with a low voter turnout and a high number of EVs. That is disenfranchisement. But, why should it matter where you live? The president doesn't (or at least shouldn't) serve the states' special interests - that's the job of the US Congress, Governors, and the state legislature. The president serves the American people. The will of the majority of the American people (who are eligible to vote) is the only thing worth considering when determining the president, and the EC is in direct violation of that.

Best,
David

Huh....

2004-12-31T02:25:00.000-05:00

Well our left most poster has finally arrived after some technical difficulties. But it appears the right of center posters are just too over awed by the quality of the center and left to post. That or they agree with us.... Any righties out there that aren't afraid to post? Drop me an email...

I think I've arrived

2004-12-30T01:35:00.000-05:00

Well, goddamn, I think I just made it into your cyberspace. I'm here to tell you that we cannot continue to think of ourselves as somehow smarter, or better, or whatever, than the rest of the electorate, the people, however you want to call them, no matter how old, or young, or educated--or not--we are. How about our fellow citizens?

It's comforting to think of them (voters, viewers, voyeurs, voldemortians) as stupid, as most of my fellow bloghounds want to, but where does that leave us? Yeah, we're superior. Who cares? Does the power of numbers matter any less, or more, than the power of [your] intellect, weapons, or money? I hope not. Otherwise popular government is impossible.

And do we, can we, believe in democracy? You ask if the electoral system is broken. Yes and no. Abolish the Electoral College, let ANY kind of state identification function as voter registration. BUT!

The elephant in the room is the other kind of politics, the kind that gets done "out of doors," the kind that Abraham Lincoln conducted. "Our government rests in public opinion," he insisted. "Whoever can change opublic opinion, can change the government, practically just so much."

First debate with Douglas, back in 1858, he says, and we should be repeating after me, "In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed."

Notice what Lincoln said about public opinion. He was almost an abolitionist, but he didn't think his fellow citizens were stupid because they didn't, and couldn't, agree with him. He knew that public opinion was the practical embodiment of CONSENT, the principle that underlies and animates the Declaration of Independence and, not accidentally, that makes us Americans.

You can't assume your fellow citizens are stupid and try to move them. If they're stupid, there's nothing to be done about them, for them, with them. If you begin where Lincoln did, with the Declaration in mind, your question is, what happened here, why did a people "conceived in liberty" fall so far? He knew, and he said many times, that American political debate had coarsened in the years he came to maturity.

What was to be done? He could have said, these fucking peope are stupid. I know I would have. He didn't. Good thing, too. What he tried to say was, We've lost our way, here's how, here's why. We should try, too.

I know I'm late on the electoral question. Shoot, I'm late on the impending question, which I assume is unknown as yet.