love of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealousy of the state governments toward the general government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debts, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed jealousy of the patronage of the President — John Randolph of Roanoke
On my professional bivocational side I’ve been doing some corporate work. Since I doubt any of my readers are lookng for medmal issues, they probably missed a couple of issues that shoul interest any blogger–because they are about blogging:
I replay the classic footage:
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I’ve been waiting for my favorite new political blog to mention this, but I guess I will have to do this myself. Other than youtube.com, does Ron Paul have any greater campaigner and promoter that Rudy Giuliani? Giuliani actually heard what Ron Paul said and decided to demonstrate what sort of uber-“patriotic” grandstanding Paul is standing against.
Could not he simply have said, “While we always need to be careful about what we do, I think Mr. Paul’s description of American policy is way to simplistic. In any case, it doesn’t matter. We have been attacked and we have become responsible for Iraq and while many understandably regret this, it is still irresponsible to act like we can simply ignore it and revert to a policy that may or may not have worked at different times.”
If he had said that or something like it in a dismissive but non-rancorous tone, he would have cut Paul off at the knees in terms of public debating. If he had said nothing at all, he would have still prevented a huge swell of interest in Paul.
(In fact, I wonder if the Ron Paul campaign paid off the Republicans who tried to bar him from future debates. What else could possibly explain such behavior guaranteed to garner both coverage and sympathy for Paul?)
What I’m trying to say is that Giuliani’s behavior shows an amazing lack of judgment due to a misreading of the American people or a desire to grandstand. He could be right in policy (which isn’t remotely the case, but save that for others to argue) and still this should mean that he has real problems in leadership.
Well, since I’m posting video, I must do more. Tucker Carlson is so much better than anyone at Foxnews, in my opinion, so here is a double treat.
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Oh, and who can be surprised at this reaction on the part of Giuliani:
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Related: Corporations love Environmentia
See also today’s Cato Institute podcast: audio.
By the way it was the “anarchy button” that has now made me fearsome with video. 🙂
This column about getting into (or not) Harvard, is exceptional. It reminds me of this excellent video by Sir Ken, which I blogged about here.
Hat Tip: Chris
Somewhere maybe someone has perfectly formulated how it should all come together in wisdom. But I haven’t found it yet. It seems obvious to me that, while it takes effort to better oneself, that doesn’t mean it does any good to try to turn yourself (or your children) into someone else. Yeah, they need to be encouraged to run, but in their own direction.
Gun Control Isn’t Crime Control by John Stossel.
Read the whole thing but here are a couple of highlights:
After the 1997 shooting of 16 kids in Dunblane, England, the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns. Britain seemed to get safer by the minute, as 162,000 newly-illegal firearms were forked over to British officials by law-abiding citizens.
But this didn’t decrease the amount of gun-related crime in the U.K. In fact, gun-related crime has nearly doubled in the U.K. since the ban was enacted.
Might stricter gun laws result in more gun crime? It seems counterintuitive but makes sense if we consider one simple fact: Criminals don’t obey the law. Strict gun laws, like the ban in Britain, probably only affect the actions of people who wouldn’t commit crimes in the first place.
…
In January 2006, a bill was proposed in the Virginia State Assembly that would have forced Virginia Tech to change its current policy and allow students and faculty members to legally carry weapons on campus. Teenage college students carrying guns makes me nervous, but shouldn’t adults be able to decide if they want to arm themselves — just in case? When the bill was defeated, a Virginia Tech spokesman cheered the action, saying, “This will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
However, one gun rights advocate lamented the bill’s failure with chilling accuracy: “You never know when evil will pop up.”
Back in 2002, evil arrived at Virginia’s Appalachian School of Law. A disgruntled student opened fire on the school’s campus, killing three and wounding more. The law school also prohibited guns on campus, but fortunately two students happened to have firearms in their cars. When the pair heard gunshots, they retrieved their weapons and trained them on the killer, helping restrain him until authorities arrived.
I’ll add to John’s argument here by reminding readers that, so far, there have been no accidental deaths or crimes of anger at University of Utah.
What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.
— F W Nietzsche (1889)
We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.
— From the Democratic National Platform of 1892 (in opposition to compulsory attendance laws)
We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
— Mark Twain
Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still posses.
—C.S. Lewis
The purpose of education is not to make men carpenters, but to make carpenters men.
— W.E.B. DuBois
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
— Albert Einstein
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
— Albert Einstein
In both ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, Miller’s moral is: the brutes are right. To cope with the world as it is, you have to be brutal. The way to deal with the Russian bastards (ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN was created when there still was a Soviet Union) is to scare them to death. (And consider the significnce of the fact that this story, which implicitly suggested that America was losing to Russia because democratically elected politicians were either gutless or in league with the Devil, was created and published under Ronald Reagan.) By the same token, the way to deal with social disaster is to organize a vigilante committee led by the Batman. Everybody else loses: psychologists are pap-minded incompetents, big business is corrupt (one characteristic of the genuine Fascist and Nazi is his intense distaste for big business) and elected politicians – well, in Frank Miller’s ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN, elected politicians are the Devil. Quite literally the Devil. The Devil enters the world through the electoral process, and the country and the world are saved by a Strong Man with a military background, who insinuates himself into a position of supreme power without anybody voting for him, and proceeds to strong-arm everybody else into doing what’s good for them under threat of machine-guns. It is impossible to miss the tone of exultation in the last page of the maxi-series – damn straight!
It becomes clear that Miller resents all the slow work of compromise, negotiation, backtracking, law enforcement, discussion, opposition and sheer bloody-mindedness that is a fundamental part of democracy. He has no patience with civilized measures. Behind the work of conviction that any elected politician must carry out to take the masses with him, there is only the smile of the Beast.
Just saw this entry from Dr. Helen.
SALT LAKE CITY – Brent Tenney says he feels pretty safe when he goes to class at the University of Utah, but he takes no chances. He brings a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic with him every day.
A friend sent Jennifer and I this video of Sir Ken Robinson. Despite the odious Gore reference at the end, we watched it quite intently and I’m feeling pretty convicted about some of the educational values I’ve been pushing for my children.
And I can’t help but think there is something to learn here about theology and theological education. I’m tempted to say that a lot of the controversy of over emerg-stuff is, at bottom, very much related to the issues Sir Robinson [Oops, I’m informed that is incorrect: Sir Ken] raises…..
(And does anyone else find it impossible to get Milne cadences out of their head? Brave, brave, Sir Robinson…)