Tag: ideology

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education and schooling government transparency

The Secret Teachings of Our Age

education, school, ideology, politics

The high school course was not “Logic and Semiotics in Western Culture” — or “Eastern.” It was not “Memes for Momes.” Or even “Cartoons from Cave Walls to Bathroom Stalls.”

It was “A History of Ethnic and Gender Studies.”

Do we dare ask what’s in it?

Doesn’t matter. Because we’re not allowed to see what’s in it.

“Michigan parents can’t request some school curricula under public record acts after the Michigan Supreme Court chose not to hear an appeal from a lower court,” explains the Michigan Capitol Confidential.

“On Sept. 25, the state’s top court denied an appeal filed by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy on behalf of a Rochester parent who requested the curriculum for a class held in the Rochester Public Schools district.” Using the “the state’s Freedom of Information Act, Carol Beth Litkouhi in 2022 sought course materials” for the class mentioned above. “Rochester Public Schools refused. The district argued that the law did not require it to provide records held by teachers.”

And so far — and barring a revision of state law — the public schools have won. 

Not a happy story, but even more than bad news for Michigan parents and (by extension) their children (the students in public schools), it demonstrates a mindset we’ve encountered before, and not confined to one school district or one state.

According to educators in public service, they have a right to teach your kids and not tell you what they are doing.

They are committed to doing this.

They are indoctrinators and not on your side.

They must be stopped. Politically. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Roald’s Revenge

Roald Dahl, censorship

Two centuries after the heady days of Elizabethan drama, Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler produced The Family Shakespeare. 

In it they infamously “bowdlerized” the Bard. 

History has accelerated. Roald Dahl, the beloved author of arch children’s books (and more adult fare, too), had been dead only 33 years when it came out that his publisher is sanitizing his books. 

For the children.

For wokeness.

It’s not nice, you know, to call someone fat. Or to suggest that witches wore wigs because they were bald. 

So snip-​snip and a trip to the thesaurus later, and British kids can now read the word “enormous” instead of “fat.” And learn, via addition (something the Bowdlers didn’t dare: they only made careful cuts), that “there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

Salman Rushdie called this “absurd censorship” and said that the culprits, Puffin Books and the Roald Dahl estate, “should be ashamed.”

The backlash has been huge, but the umbrella publishing house, Penguin, insists the unexpurgated Dahl will still be available, in a “Roald Dahl Classic Collection.”

Shades of New Coke versus Classic Coke!

In America, Penguin won’t even try to publish its sanitized editions.

There are several footnotes to the story. 

One: a four-​decades old conversation “has come to light, revealing that [Dahl] was so appalled by the idea that publishers might one day censor his work that he threatened to send the crocodile ‘to gobble them up.’” 

Two: Ian Fleming’s James Bond is getting a similar treatment.

I’m reminded of the all-​too-​hungry crocs in Live and Let Die.

And where Dahl’s gobble-​uppers should be when publishers place their toes in censorious waters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Shut Up, Spouse

Virginia "Ginny" Thomas, Justice Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court

“Stand down and let your better half do the job,” was the specific advice syndicated-​columnist Kathleen Parker recently offered a woman, explaining that this woman’s “biggest mistake is that she thinks she’s important.”

Adding for emphasis: “She is not.”

Parker is not writing about Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, or Dr. Jill Biden. Her subject? Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Recollecting Ginni attending her writing seminar decades ago, Parker describes Ginni then as a “sweet, eager-​to-​learn 40-​something,” who was “quite likable.”  

“But,” claimed Parker, “something has happened to the Ginni Thomas whom I knew then.”

What exactly? 

“Today,” we are told, “she’s entrenched with various hard-​right conservative groups” and is “anti-​feminist, anti-​affirmative action, and, perhaps worst of all to her critics, pro-​Donald Trump.”

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! … seems Ginni Thomas dares to hold opinions with which Parker disagrees.

Moreover, explained the columnist, Ginni “has not been idle in politics, advocating for issues that, importantly, could come before the court on which her husband serves” — as virtually any issue under the sun could. Parker connected Ginni’s political participation to calls “on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases in which his wife has been active.”

Every spouse of a Supreme Court justice has (or arguably should have) political views of his or her own. And the right — and propriety — to act on them. 

Though Parker’s whole column is rich, the cream of the irony has to be first listing Ginni Thomas as an “anti-​feminist” and then suggesting she shut up and leave politics to her husband.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Commie Beyond the Pale

Saule Omarova

President Biden has a funny way of admitting that his nominee for Comptroller of the Currency had to withdraw for being, well, too communist. He says Saule Omarova faced “inappropriate personal attacks that were far beyond the pale.”

Is calling a communist a communist … personal? 

As for “inappropriate” … negative attacks against an appointee are only inapt if groundless or unrelated to prospective performance.

Ominously, Omarova’s paper on Marxism got memory-​holed after she was nominated; she refused to cough it up to the Senate Banking Committee. Written back in her college days in the USSR — was that too long ago to serve as fair evidence?

Fast-​forward.

An undated but recent video clip shows Omarova musing that oil companies should “go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.”

A 2019 Twitter tweet opines: “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’”

Mass murder, mass repression — but hey, no gender pay gap!

In a 2020 paper, “The People’s Ledger,” Omarova proposed “a structural shift at the very core” of the current system. The Fed balance sheet “should be redesigned to operate as . . . the ‘People’s Ledger’: the ultimate public platform for both modulating and allocating the flow of sovereign credit and money in the national system.”

Central bank accounts would “fully replace — rather than uneasily co-​exist with — private bank deposits.”

Not sure what that means, precisely? No wonder: slogging through the paper, we find vagueness — maybe even evasion. My guess: it’s all about massively increasing control over our wallets and lives.

Typical, but not just of Marxists, of the Washington elite more broadly. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies Popular

Bernie and Economic Law

Bernie Sanders, minimum wage,

One of the things Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is known for is his push for a $15 per hour “living wage.” But this is politics — a policy position is never complete until its advocates demonstrate just how idiotic the policy actually is.

As Bernie just did.

His presidential campaign has been embroiled in labor union negotiations and a mini-scandal.

Some staffers have been paid a flat salary, not according to a per-​hour contract, making Bernie’s “living wage” commitment a bit murky. You see, these salaried employees worked longer hours than a typical 40-​hour work week (as is common in political campaigns), dipping their wage breakdown below the $15/​hour “minimum.” 

Now, no one is more deserving of this bit of policy blowback than resplendent millionaire Bernie Sanders.

Yet, it’s his campaign’s response that is especially droll: reduced hours!

So, while in one sense staffers got a pay raise, they did not get more money. Which is, as Matthew Yglesias acknowledged at Vox, “exactly the point that opponents of minimum wage increases are always making — if you force employers to pay more, they’re going to respond by cutting back elsewhere.” 

Ryan McMaken, at mises​.org, dug deeper, noting that there are a number of ways that the new union deal could amount to cuts in real wages. By “cutting worker hours, the Sanders campaign elected to provide fewer ‘services’ in the form of campaign activities. In practice, this will likely mean fewer rallies, less travel, or fewer television ads.” Less chance for growth. And decreased likelihood for increased employment of other workers.

Not exactly shocking. But a lesson. A terrible way to run a business.

Or a campaign. 

Perhaps we should say, “Thanks, Bernie!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Bernie Sanders, minimum wage,

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ideological culture

Upside Down and Inside Out

Brexit, Great Britain, labour, right wing, left wing, ideology,

A YouGov poll of British voters asking who should lead Parliament, conducted a week after Britain’s European Union Parliamentary elections and in advance of Prime Minister Theresa May’s June 7 departure as Tory leader, provides some shocks.

In the poll, Labour and Conservatives trail behind the Liberal Democrats* and something called The Brexit Party. This is, says YouGov’s director of political research for Great Britain, the first time that two “third parties” have polled ahead of both Labour and the Tories.

“The Liberal Democrats held the support of 24 percent of voters, while the Labour and Conservative parties were tied at 19 percent each,” The Hill summarizes. “The far-​right Brexit Party came in second place, with 22 percent of voters’ support.”

In the U.K.’s European elections of the week before, the Brexit Party came out in the lead.

This is the (British) world turned upside down.

What it means for Americans is unclear, but what it means for one American news outlet apparently is crystal: the single-​issue Brexit Party is “far right.”

Really? 

While the traditionally left Labour and traditionally right Tory voters are split on Brexit, The Hill sees this as somehow a left/​right issue. Not obvious.

Nevertheless, The Hill insists on having its American readers see the situation in a way designed to favor one position. Because “far right” is bad, and “far left” is never used** even to label Labour’s egregious, Castro/​Chavez-​loving, Cuba-​Venezelua-​apologetic leader Jeremy Corbyn.

With cues like that, insiders keep outsiders out. 

And perhaps that’s the way to think about Brexit: as literally a matter of Insider/​Outsider, with the outsiders still wanting out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The year was 1922 when last a Prime Minister was not a Tory or Labour.

** I did not see it in my Google search of The Hill, anyway!

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The Obstruction

building a divide, wall, immigration, ideology, Trump, Pelosi

The federal government “shutdown” — now on reprieve — has been and continues to be a rather strange charade. Various political players make motions towards one another, and we, the people, are supposed to guess the real meaning. 

Which is usually conceived as

  1. All about President Trump’s “Wall”;
  2. All about the Pelosi-​Schumer commitment to never letting Trump get away with his Evil Agenda; or
  3. The great huge, honking divide in America that grows every day.

I suspect it is about all these things and more — which is easy to say, since these three issues are intimately related.

 And as if playing a subtle joke on us all, the standoff that appears as obstructionism is about a proposed obstruction at the southern border: literally a “Mexican standoff.”

Meanwhile, a different security measure has received attention.

Americans have, rather spontaneously, been taking canned and packaged foods, and even fresh produce, to unpaid but “forced-​to-​work” TSA agents. A heartwarming story. Sure. But the Transportation Security Agency, cobbled together in the wake of the 9/​11 attacks, is spectacularly ineffective, an example of “security theater.” TSA agents repeatedly fail internal tests.

Congress could, of course, take this opportunity to disband this airport security worker agency. If managed by the airlines or any entity but the federal government, TSA wouldn’t have suffered through the shutdown. 

Tragically, Congress long ago ceased being functional, responsible, or even the eensiest, teensiest bit respectable. And a divided public stands little chance of forcing a change. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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building a divide, wall, immigration, ideology, Trump, Pelosi

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Throwing in (and out) the Towel(s)

symbolism, crying, outrage, Hurricane Irma, gaffe, ideology, Trump

There is a time and a place for everything. Including the truth.

You do not proclaim that Uncle Eben was a skinflint miser and a sour old puss at his funeral. (You wait for the reading of the Will.)

Immediately upon Puerto Ricans coming up for air, after the devastation of Hurricane Irma, President Trump went for a visit. At one point, he threw paper towels out at a crowd, as if he were a sports star throwing … cloth towels. And he noted, after a pro forma expression of regret at loss of life, how shockingly low was the number of deaths.

For these and other such “gaffes” Trump has been roundly, hysterically criticized. 

But a good portion of the American people has ceased to care about such matters. Sure, Trump says some worse-​than-​inelegant things, gives new twists to “photo opp.” But the over-​reaction on the left and in the media (but I repeat myself) seems to have completely inoculated vast hunks of American humanity — who now choose to see the humor in all this.

It’s time, at last, to learn a new lesson: Political Man does not live by symbols alone.

No matter how hard he (she/​zhe?) tries.

In today’s political environment, it might help us all if we gave up the symbolic battles and discussed actual policies and principles. After all, the substantive ideological divide is deep enough.

It seems certain: continued over-​reaction in the Symbolism Department will prove feckless.

Americans increasingly don’t give a feck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies

Reactionary America

Anthony Scaramucci, reactionary, Trump, partisan, ideologue, ideology, "The Mooch", politics,

With the meteoric transit of Anthony Scaramucci — into the Trump Administration and then, in an eye-​blink, out of it — I have never been more convinced of the vital importance of state and local activism.

Yes, it’s been a chaotic week in Trumptown. The new White House Director of Communications vulgarly communicated himself into administrative excommunication. So to speak. 

Everybody’s heard the vulgarisms; we’ve all processed the insanity. It looks like Mr. Scaramucci is one of those professionals who think everybody else is an idiot, and in so thinking it, proves himself to be what he himself despises. @#$%&?!

The man nicknamed “The Mooch” screwed the pooch, as we now say, and we can all shake our heads and …

what?

What is the lesson?

We have long known the worst: our national politics is broken. It has been for a very long time. Is it possible we never recovered from the LBJ and Tricky Dick fiascos of my childhood? The parties have become more ideological and less regional, while the regions have become … less rational. The only word seems to be …

reactionary.

The press reacts to the president’s tweets, and the president tweets in response to media reaction.

Progressives hate progress; conservatives conserve nothing.

“Reactionary” is the apt word, despite all the term’s past Marxist associations, because no one seems able to think forward, independent of partisan oppositionalism.

Don’t drive yourself crazy with this. Look homeward; think locally, act locally, and let’s build on a solid foundation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

The Great Ideological Divide?

Ideology, left, right, conservative, liberal, big government, Common Sense, illustration

When I was a kid, both Democrats and Republicans sported “conservative” and “liberal” wings as well as “moderate” leaders and representatives.

Now, conservatives have pretty much corralled themselves into the GOP, and liberals into the Democratic Party.

Why? Birds of a feather?

Ezra Klein offers some interesting observations in “This is what makes Republicans and Democrats so different”:

  • “Democrats are motivated by specific policy deliverables while Republicans are motivated by broader philosophical principles”;
  • “Democrats rely on more interest groups than Republicans” do;
  • “Democrats prefer politicians who compromise, and Republicans prefer politicians who stick to their principles”;
  • “Policymaking has a liberal bias — even when Republicans do it.”

Klein also draws on research by political scientists Matthew Grossmann and David Hopkins, who in their paper, “Policymaking in Red and Blue,” conclude that “the Republican Party is dominated by ideologues who are committed to small-​government principles, while Democrats represent a coalition of social groups seeking public policies that favor their particular interests.”

Interest groups demanding that their “particular interests” be addressed with more “deliverables” from government would certainly explain a strong Democratic Party bias in favor of more government. Klein seems to be saying that Democrats are led, as if by an invisible hand, in the socialistic direction.

But why does a Republican Party supposedly “dominated” by those with “small-​government principles” also advance policies that grow big government? “New policies usually expand the scope of government responsibility, funding, or regulation,” Grossmann and Hopkins point out.

Perhaps Republican politicians are more influenced by their own position in government than by the views of their base voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ideology, left, right, conservative, liberal, big government, Common Sense, illustration