I have long held the opinion that college degrees, excepting specific branded-schools and technical professional schools, are vastly overvalued on the East Coast. James has sharpened the contention by labelling to our current university economics a "Bubble". Here is published support: http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/04/higher_education?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fmt%2Fthelatestbubble
(At the recommendation of a seventeen year old with better understanding of internet usage, I have also posted this on my Facebook page. Let me know how the experience compares)
Monday, April 18, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Great Contemporary Republican Writer
P. J. O'Rourke:
"The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things–war and hunger and date rape–liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong, or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal."
"The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things–war and hunger and date rape–liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong, or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal."
Friday, February 4, 2011
Response to Mark Steyn
Today at Assembly, Exonians had the opportunity to hear from conservative Mark Steyn. While he critiqued partisanship and said he had problems with both parties, he only mentioned what Obama has done to increase the debt and not what Bush did before him to exacerbate the problem. Steyn was correct in introducing himself as a de-motivational speaker. His speech focused on self-indulgence in society, how education is overrated, the debt, and multiculturalism.
In his critique of multiculturalism, he discussed how Muslim morality police are trying to control women in France. While there are downsides to multiculturalism, he ignored the benefits of multiculturalism choosing instead to say that coexist bumper stickers aren’t applicable to real life due to a few isolated problems with multiculturalism. The movement allows integration of different cultures and effectively reduces prejudice. It seems odd to me that Steyn would argue against appreciating other cultures.
Steyn was right in criticizing self-indulgence and overspending by American citizens and their government. I agree with him that prosperity isn’t ensured forever and that his crowd spent our money. He seemed a bit confused though by Obama’s promise to Joe the Plumber to redistribute wealth. This had nothing to do with taking money from the future and using it for the present. Obama cut taxes for the majority of Americans. It seems disingenuous to me for Steyn to say that Obama’s redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the Robin Hood model of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.
His critique of higher education was spurious and based on the idea that people with low level educations achieved a lot after World War II. This model simply doesn’t apply nowadays though given the necessity of at least a high school diploma to find any sort of work in the US. Steyn critiqued world poverty and saving the planet as overly lofty causes, but isn’t reducing the debt an equally lofty cause? Besides, just because a cause is lofty doesn’t make it not worth fighting for.
Steyn was downright apocalyptic in the closing parts of his speech, saying that America is doomed. He predicted total societal collapse because of the debt. This idea is more than a little alarmist. Every generation faces great problems. The Greatest Generation faced World War II, the Baby Boomers were up against Vietnam, and now we face the debt. That doesn’t mean we’re on the brink of societal collapse.
In his critique of multiculturalism, he discussed how Muslim morality police are trying to control women in France. While there are downsides to multiculturalism, he ignored the benefits of multiculturalism choosing instead to say that coexist bumper stickers aren’t applicable to real life due to a few isolated problems with multiculturalism. The movement allows integration of different cultures and effectively reduces prejudice. It seems odd to me that Steyn would argue against appreciating other cultures.
Steyn was right in criticizing self-indulgence and overspending by American citizens and their government. I agree with him that prosperity isn’t ensured forever and that his crowd spent our money. He seemed a bit confused though by Obama’s promise to Joe the Plumber to redistribute wealth. This had nothing to do with taking money from the future and using it for the present. Obama cut taxes for the majority of Americans. It seems disingenuous to me for Steyn to say that Obama’s redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the Robin Hood model of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.
His critique of higher education was spurious and based on the idea that people with low level educations achieved a lot after World War II. This model simply doesn’t apply nowadays though given the necessity of at least a high school diploma to find any sort of work in the US. Steyn critiqued world poverty and saving the planet as overly lofty causes, but isn’t reducing the debt an equally lofty cause? Besides, just because a cause is lofty doesn’t make it not worth fighting for.
Steyn was downright apocalyptic in the closing parts of his speech, saying that America is doomed. He predicted total societal collapse because of the debt. This idea is more than a little alarmist. Every generation faces great problems. The Greatest Generation faced World War II, the Baby Boomers were up against Vietnam, and now we face the debt. That doesn’t mean we’re on the brink of societal collapse.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Perils of Political Correctness
Previously published in The Exonian
On January 6th before a Republican Club meeting, Dr. Philip Tisdall made a comment to the Multicultural Affairs intern that the intern found racially offensive. By January 15th, the remark had been reported to the administration and Dr. Tisdall, the guiding force behind the club, had been banned from campus. The fact that it was an uncalculated remark made about the “nice rhythm” in the intern’s voice, according to Upper Dean Walsh (the sole witness to the event), is important, but is not the crux of the issue. While it was, at worst, a mildly offensive remark, the more important lesson to take away from this situation is that you should try really hard not to offend anybody at all, or you might get kicked off of campus. This is political correctness taken to a new extreme here at the Academy.
While a comparable penalty exists for hazing, which the E-Book defines in part as an action with the “result of embarrassment, disturbance, or humiliation,” the Discipline Process provides the opportunity for a thorough investigation of the incident, and includes advocacy for the student by representatives from the groups that would be affected by the student’s requirement to withdraw, including the student themselves. In the case of Dr. Tisdall’s expulsion from campus, this process was minimal. To say that a single unfortunate—but by no means egregious—comment outweighs his six years of mentorship to students at the Academy is irresponsible and shows little compassion for the many students that have learned and grown because of him, quite apart from diminishing the voice of another minority group on campus that deserves the Academy’s respect: Republicans.
The response to a comment that Sarah Palin made in the days after the Tucson Tragedy, in which she used the term “blood libel” to label the accusations that gun metaphors that she and other Tea Party politicians caused Jared Loughner’s shooting spree, provide another example of the perils of political correctness. I am no Sarah Palin fan, but while using the term may have been a bad decision, it is hardly worse than some articles I have seen that claim that Chicago Bears’ Quarterback Jay Cutler is being “crucified” by fans for his decision to leave this Sunday’s NFC Championship game because of injury. Indeed, Palin’s comment is much more appropriate as she is being accused of causing the death of six innocent people. No, she is not a Jewish woman being accused of murdering Christian kids and draining their blood to make matzah, which is the historical origin of the term “blood libel”, but neither is Jay Cutler actually being nailed to a cross. They are figures of speech and should be taken as such.
Political correctness is the antithesis of much that Exeter claims to stand for. The Harkness method succeeds when it fosters an environment of open, honest communication. When students are unable to speak their mind because of fear of reprisal from their peers, many of the best insights are left unsaid, which ends up hurting everybody. Academia itself relies on the ability of professors and students to expand their intellectual horizons without restrictions on what they can study or publish. Unpopular views are often the ones that turn out to be right in the long run, and should be protected, except in cases of outrageous offense or inappropriateness. Dr. Tisdall’s views, along with the views of many in Republican Club, may be unpopular in this liberal institution, but they, along with Dr. Tisdall himself, deserve a place here at the Academy. Out-of-control political correctness does not.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Advertising
Dear friends,
It has come to my attention that I can allow advertisements to appear on the sidebar of the blog. I do not expect to make very much money, but I figure if I can, why wouldn't I? However, as I have neither a U. S. mailing address nor a bank to cash the cheques at, I am sending the proceeds to the Animal Control Officer of my father's hometown of Falmouth. He is a family friend and the Town Hall bureaucrat's tend to not give him much credit. I have no qualms with allowing a few advertisements if the profits go to a good man. Here is a picture of his dog:
[Update: I did not like the advertisements. They are gone now. Godspeed, Sunny.]
[Second Update: Disregard first update.]
It has come to my attention that I can allow advertisements to appear on the sidebar of the blog. I do not expect to make very much money, but I figure if I can, why wouldn't I? However, as I have neither a U. S. mailing address nor a bank to cash the cheques at, I am sending the proceeds to the Animal Control Officer of my father's hometown of Falmouth. He is a family friend and the Town Hall bureaucrat's tend to not give him much credit. I have no qualms with allowing a few advertisements if the profits go to a good man. Here is a picture of his dog:
Sunny-Dog, still somewhat shell-shocked since the budget cut.
[Update: I did not like the advertisements. They are gone now. Godspeed, Sunny.]
[Second Update: Disregard first update.]
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Response to Dr. Tisdall's Banning from Campus
On January 7th, Dr. Philip Tisdall arrived at the Elm Street Mezzanine to find a few early bird students and a new comer, a young adult male of African descent with very formal posture and dress. The man introduced himself as Mr. Islam, a member of faculty recently hired in a multicultural capacity related to Muslim students, himself being Muslim. As they chatted, it struck Dr. Tisdall that Mr. Islam had a unique rhythm to his speech. This being the Academy, with its international student body, and Islam being a recent addition to America’s religions, Dr. Tisdall asked Mr. Islam where he was from. Mr. Islam drew himself up and pronounced he was from Philadelphia. Dr. Tisdall told him that he would not have guessed that from his speech pattern, and they discussed his error. Mr. Islam noted that he had come from a long line of preachers, which made sense to Dr. Tisdall, as African-American churches had always struck him as a unique subset of American culture. By this time everyone had arrived and the meeting had started. Knowing that Mr. Islam was new, Dr. Tisdall made a very clear announcement of the Club’s only rule: Don’t be offended.
By January 15th Dr. Tisdall had been officially banned from campus, courtesy of Dr. Curwen, the Academy’s Dean of Faculty, on the premise that he had told Mr. Islam something to the effect of that he had never heard a black from the Philadelphia projects speak so eloquently before. From the accounts I have been given by Dr. Tisdall and Dean Walsh, the only student present throughout the entire encounter, there appears to have been a gross distortion of what actually happened. Despite these unsettled details, within a week the de facto nucleus of the Republican Club – a man who had voluntarily served for six years as our teacher, mentor, and friend, had quietly slipped off into the dark. As anyone who has sat through a frustrated round of Harkness knows, there comes a time when you must tear off your mask and call people out on their shit. I believe that our administrators have crossed the line. Yes, the school is theirs and they have the right to run it as they see fit. But as long as I am able to evade Room 101 I intend to use whatever powers I have as a student to stand against what I see as wrong.
Club members often say that they have a difficult time commenting on race at the Academy because they feel that their views are externally defined by liberal stereotypes about Republicans. In this way, we live with dualistic conceptions of self: one that is produced and interpreted by ourselves, and another, a “myth” forced upon us by an oppressive society that produces and interprets its own perception.
I believe that a multicultural school must accept that we are different. Culture is everything that does not need to be explained. What is the purpose of subsidizing the $73,000/year tuitions of youth from every quarter if asking them about their different cultural axioms is deplored as taboo? Did I misinterpret the phrase “embrace our differences?” Treating everyone equally is quite different than treating everyone as though they are the same. Culture matters. When the foremost indicator of poverty is the absence of one’s biological father, how can we so swiftly ignore the plight of the inner-city African American family unit? Why is it so terribly inappropriate to question the effectiveness of welfare cheques funded by coercive taxation when such programs have been in effect since LBJ’s 1964 War on Poverty? Why must functional questions be consistently misconstrued as discriminatory? Is there really nothing to be learned from our African Americans, Koreans, and Indians, our Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, our rich and our poor? I do not know Mr. Islam well enough to pass any judgment on him personally, but why, when asked how his community viewed caring for its elders in the midst of a social security discussion, did Dr. Tisdall have to practically go through a thesaurus to find the right synonym for “community?” Why was Mr. Islam’s immediate response, “What do you mean by my community?”
When the sincere interest in other cultures is co-opted by a group of self-important intellectuals absorbed in a self-affirming, “I’ve done my part” circle jerk, what has been won? Tolerance is a one-way deal for liberals – they have all of the rights and none of the responsibilities. It’s tacitly engineered that way. At some point, all this cannot go on, and we will have the academic version of September 2008 — as parents no longer choose to spend $200,000 to send their children to a 4-year prep school in which they will be likely indoctrinated that they should oppose the very American institutions that created the wealth and freedom that fuel our endowment and pay our faculty. The “best of the best” seem to be unaware that after some 2,500 years of both experience with and abstract thought about Western national economies, we know that a free, private sector increases the general wealth of a nation, while a statist redistributive state results in a general impoverishment of the population.
The Republican Club was never really about being Republicans, it was about having a safe haven where we could be honest and know that our intentions, however clumsy our expression, would not be mistaken. Will we ever feel safe there again? Who cares what it is called if the Thought Police are there – will we ever feel free to speak our minds? What then is left? Over the past years, that's years, the Club was always a place we could feel free to say the things that were on our hearts, but punishable by our liberal teachers if said in class. The Club was about trust. If Dr. Tisdall can be "banned" for something he didn't say and isn't true, that Club has ended. The Academy has done irreparable damage to its claim of being an institution of intellectual openness, multiculturalism, and diversity by stifling discussion of diversity and acting punitively toward an intellectual minority.
Of his childhood surroundings, David Lynch recalled, “It was a dream world, those droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees – Middle America the way it was supposed to be. But then on this cherry tree would be this pitch oozing out, some of it black, some of it yellow, and there were millions of red ants racing all over the sticky pitch, all over the tree. So you see, there’s this beautiful world and you just look a little bit closer, and it’s all red ants.”
– Jimmy
By January 15th Dr. Tisdall had been officially banned from campus, courtesy of Dr. Curwen, the Academy’s Dean of Faculty, on the premise that he had told Mr. Islam something to the effect of that he had never heard a black from the Philadelphia projects speak so eloquently before. From the accounts I have been given by Dr. Tisdall and Dean Walsh, the only student present throughout the entire encounter, there appears to have been a gross distortion of what actually happened. Despite these unsettled details, within a week the de facto nucleus of the Republican Club – a man who had voluntarily served for six years as our teacher, mentor, and friend, had quietly slipped off into the dark. As anyone who has sat through a frustrated round of Harkness knows, there comes a time when you must tear off your mask and call people out on their shit. I believe that our administrators have crossed the line. Yes, the school is theirs and they have the right to run it as they see fit. But as long as I am able to evade Room 101 I intend to use whatever powers I have as a student to stand against what I see as wrong.
Club members often say that they have a difficult time commenting on race at the Academy because they feel that their views are externally defined by liberal stereotypes about Republicans. In this way, we live with dualistic conceptions of self: one that is produced and interpreted by ourselves, and another, a “myth” forced upon us by an oppressive society that produces and interprets its own perception.
I believe that a multicultural school must accept that we are different. Culture is everything that does not need to be explained. What is the purpose of subsidizing the $73,000/year tuitions of youth from every quarter if asking them about their different cultural axioms is deplored as taboo? Did I misinterpret the phrase “embrace our differences?” Treating everyone equally is quite different than treating everyone as though they are the same. Culture matters. When the foremost indicator of poverty is the absence of one’s biological father, how can we so swiftly ignore the plight of the inner-city African American family unit? Why is it so terribly inappropriate to question the effectiveness of welfare cheques funded by coercive taxation when such programs have been in effect since LBJ’s 1964 War on Poverty? Why must functional questions be consistently misconstrued as discriminatory? Is there really nothing to be learned from our African Americans, Koreans, and Indians, our Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, our rich and our poor? I do not know Mr. Islam well enough to pass any judgment on him personally, but why, when asked how his community viewed caring for its elders in the midst of a social security discussion, did Dr. Tisdall have to practically go through a thesaurus to find the right synonym for “community?” Why was Mr. Islam’s immediate response, “What do you mean by my community?”
When the sincere interest in other cultures is co-opted by a group of self-important intellectuals absorbed in a self-affirming, “I’ve done my part” circle jerk, what has been won? Tolerance is a one-way deal for liberals – they have all of the rights and none of the responsibilities. It’s tacitly engineered that way. At some point, all this cannot go on, and we will have the academic version of September 2008 — as parents no longer choose to spend $200,000 to send their children to a 4-year prep school in which they will be likely indoctrinated that they should oppose the very American institutions that created the wealth and freedom that fuel our endowment and pay our faculty. The “best of the best” seem to be unaware that after some 2,500 years of both experience with and abstract thought about Western national economies, we know that a free, private sector increases the general wealth of a nation, while a statist redistributive state results in a general impoverishment of the population.
The Republican Club was never really about being Republicans, it was about having a safe haven where we could be honest and know that our intentions, however clumsy our expression, would not be mistaken. Will we ever feel safe there again? Who cares what it is called if the Thought Police are there – will we ever feel free to speak our minds? What then is left? Over the past years, that's years, the Club was always a place we could feel free to say the things that were on our hearts, but punishable by our liberal teachers if said in class. The Club was about trust. If Dr. Tisdall can be "banned" for something he didn't say and isn't true, that Club has ended. The Academy has done irreparable damage to its claim of being an institution of intellectual openness, multiculturalism, and diversity by stifling discussion of diversity and acting punitively toward an intellectual minority.
Of his childhood surroundings, David Lynch recalled, “It was a dream world, those droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees – Middle America the way it was supposed to be. But then on this cherry tree would be this pitch oozing out, some of it black, some of it yellow, and there were millions of red ants racing all over the sticky pitch, all over the tree. So you see, there’s this beautiful world and you just look a little bit closer, and it’s all red ants.”
– Jimmy
Sunday, January 16, 2011
More Notes from Previous Club Meetings
[Quite a few of us jot down notes during meetings. Try to post them here is you get the chance, especially since most of us view different things as worthy and miss a lot.]
Note: These are mostly fragments because I just use my phone's notepad.
Sputnik was different, because you could walk out onto your lawn and say, "Fuck, the Russians are up there!"
Soviets and Americans stealing German intellectual property at end of WW2. V2 rocket engineers were divvied up between the two superpowers, and during the Korean War both sides had almost identical fighter planes.
Nazi rocket scientists in Alabama.
If you can steal intellectual property, you can leap a culture centuries forward.
Judeo-Christian Greeks vs. Confucians
Egypt is still pretty much Pharaonic. (Example of middle class which has not tried to gain political power)
Performance = Talent X Effort^2 X Directed Effort^3
Ignorance = Not knowing
Incompetence = Not knowing that you don't know
I am comfortable, and I fear success not failure (Tisdall's psychoanalysis of me)
Stock value = Profit X Social Construct
The difference between good people and bad people is that good people figure out how to solve their problems.
Whenever there is government which brings about an unequal distribution of power between groups and individuals within a state [definition of politics], special interest groups will always focus their energies on capturing its power. The greater the power of government, the more energy special interests will spend trying to capture it.
Don't worry about your car not meeting environmental standards. Because oil is fungible , any less gas your car uses will simply make it cheaper for everyone else by the law of supply/ demand. The truth is that all of the oil is going to be burned up.
Mitigation
The only monopolies ever to exist were biological: Chinese tea, Brazilian rubber, and Dutch nutmeg. They did not last for very long.
Rent Seeking
Happiness is mostly correlated to hope
Happiness is only seen in hindsight
You say that you want my money because you will use it to help them. I don't trust you're intent. I think you just want my money. If you needed it, why didn't you offer to shovel snow off my driveway?
Willingness to perform simple manual labor is a good indicator of need vs want
The greatest inequality brings the greatest growth. See: USA 1890, at paradigm.
Anything you are given that you have not earned corrupts you. But you cannot tax inheritance and trust society to solve the corruption.
The Wire (show)
Note: These are mostly fragments because I just use my phone's notepad.
Sputnik was different, because you could walk out onto your lawn and say, "Fuck, the Russians are up there!"
Soviets and Americans stealing German intellectual property at end of WW2. V2 rocket engineers were divvied up between the two superpowers, and during the Korean War both sides had almost identical fighter planes.
Nazi rocket scientists in Alabama.
If you can steal intellectual property, you can leap a culture centuries forward.
Judeo-Christian Greeks vs. Confucians
Egypt is still pretty much Pharaonic. (Example of middle class which has not tried to gain political power)
Performance = Talent X Effort^2 X Directed Effort^3
Ignorance = Not knowing
Incompetence = Not knowing that you don't know
I am comfortable, and I fear success not failure (Tisdall's psychoanalysis of me)
Stock value = Profit X Social Construct
The difference between good people and bad people is that good people figure out how to solve their problems.
Whenever there is government which brings about an unequal distribution of power between groups and individuals within a state [definition of politics], special interest groups will always focus their energies on capturing its power. The greater the power of government, the more energy special interests will spend trying to capture it.
Don't worry about your car not meeting environmental standards. Because oil is fungible , any less gas your car uses will simply make it cheaper for everyone else by the law of supply/ demand. The truth is that all of the oil is going to be burned up.
Mitigation
The only monopolies ever to exist were biological: Chinese tea, Brazilian rubber, and Dutch nutmeg. They did not last for very long.
Rent Seeking
Happiness is mostly correlated to hope
Happiness is only seen in hindsight
You say that you want my money because you will use it to help them. I don't trust you're intent. I think you just want my money. If you needed it, why didn't you offer to shovel snow off my driveway?
Willingness to perform simple manual labor is a good indicator of need vs want
The greatest inequality brings the greatest growth. See: USA 1890, at paradigm.
Anything you are given that you have not earned corrupts you. But you cannot tax inheritance and trust society to solve the corruption.
The Wire (show)
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