Elsewhere (63)
Stephen Hayes on Wisconsin, high passions and the caring, compassionate left:
Unions and other Walker opponents have certainly shown a willingness to do anything to win. Walker and his family have been harassed regularly. Unions and their backers have marched on Walker’s personal residence in Wauwatosa. His wife has been subjected to repeated verbal harassment. His sons have been targeted on Facebook. Walker himself has been compared to a variety of terrorists and, of course, to Adolf Hitler. He long ago stopped eating out at restaurants and has stepped up security for all of his public appearances.
Kristi LaCroix, a Kenosha teacher who appeared in a pro-Walker ad supporting the reforms, received so many threats that she later said she wished she’d never done the ad. When a student at Two Rivers High School showed up at school wearing a pro-Walker T-shirt, the head of the school’s technical education program, who is also the chairman of the local teachers’ union, sent an email to the business that produced the T-shirt noting that the company does business with the school and threatening a “loss of profits.” A reporter for a liberal Madison newspaper telephoned Ciara Matthews, communications director for the Walker campaign, and expanded the definition of “news” by publishing an entire article about the fact that she worked at Hooters to put herself through college. Another Walker staffer returned home one day to find his dog defecating blood. The veterinarian who treated the dog – at a cost of $1,500 – told him the most likely culprit was a high dose of rat poison, something he doesn’t have in his house.
John Aziz highlights the even more charming sentiments of Finnish eco-radical Pentti Linkola:
The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom… Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economic growth… A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organised on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her… Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.
It’s for our own good, obviously. Yes, Mr Linkola is rather, er, hardcore, but he’s far from alone in the nature of his fantasies.
And Thomas Sowell on when a person’s race gets reported and when it doesn’t:
Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls, or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles, and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug. […] A wave of such attacks in Chicago was reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims. Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal-justice system.
On which, Heather Mac Donald is worth revisiting:
In fact, the race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data. As long ago as 1978, a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests – a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes. No one has ever come up with a plausible argument as to why crime victims would be biased in their reports.
Apparently there are even significant racial variations in speeding offences.
By all means add your own links in the comments.
Do the Pentti Linkolas of the world ever countenance the possibility of a dictatorship where the Pentti Linkolas of the world are gassed like badgers?
“By virtually every objective measure, Walker has been an extraordinarily successful governor. In just 16 months, the state has erased a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and according to figures released this month by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, it will have a $154.5 million surplus on June 30, 2013. Property taxes, which had risen by more than 40 percent since 1998, are down for the first time in years… Last week, the state’s Department of Workforce Development released numbers showing that Wisconsin had gained some 23,000 jobs in 2011… A survey by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce that found only 10 percent of business owners thought the state was headed in the right direction in 2010, while an eye-popping 94 percent think so today.”
The unions hate Walker because his policies work.
I think it is time for Pentti Linkola to have an appointment with one of Saddam Hussain’s industrial strength shredders. They’re not in much use these days.
Linkola has been active in this field for half a century – I recall a profile of him as fisherman and eco-Fascist about 25 years ago. He comes from a posh and well-connected background, as ecowarriors sometimes do – his father was Rector of Helsinki University. He is perhaps useful in showing where extreme environmentalism leads – not just to total misanthropy, but also, bizarrely, to an aversion to adult education. He’s not above a bit of special pleading, though; his Finnish Wikipedia entry says that he takes medication for diabetes and depression so that he can carry on his work of preventing other people from destroying nature. To some extent he has become a Finnish national treasure: He came 18th in the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s “Greatest Finns” series a few years back.
What bias in high school?
http://www.salisburypost.com/News/051912-North-teacher-on-video-qcd
Video here:
http://twitter.com/#!/iowahawkblog/status/204234987199934464
I’m sure Linkola’s attitude would be that if the state decided he needed to die then he would go gladly, because the state could never be wrong and therefore it must be important for him to die. Also two plus two equaled five and Oceania had *always* been at war with Eurasia.
Does anyone remember when only the extensive government planning and the strong guiding hand of a central government could properly manage an economy towards wealth and success?
Today it is : “Central planning leads to inefficiency, limited choice and poverty? Um, yeah, we meant for that to happen. It’s totally on purpose.”
One could almost come to the conclusion that some people are mostly interested in the power to control other people and everything else was just a MacGuffin.
svh,
“What bias in high school?”
Given how difficult it can be to fire incompetent teachers, this doesn’t surprise me. And I suppose that’s what’s so irksome. It’s not just the obvious and rather crass political bias, which we’ve seen so many times, or even the censorious screeching. It’s that she’s so absurdly ill-informed.
Col. Milquetoast,
“Um, yeah, we meant for that to happen. It’s totally on purpose.”
Heh. Quite.
Richard Powell,
“He’s not above a bit of special pleading, though.”
Ain’t it always so? The gist of his argument seems to be, “There are way too many of you people. Someone pious ought to crush you.” It goes without saying that Linkola might at least have the decency to volunteer his own friends and family first, starting with any children. Otherwise people might think him just another sadist with serious mental health problems.
‘some people are mostly interested in the power to control other people and everything else was just a MacGuffin’ (Col. Milquetoast)
To be fair, Linkola really does want humanity either extinct or failing that, massively culled. He’s never been a socialist, has made the argument about inefficient socialism being better than efficient capitalism well before the fall of the USSR, and now that he’s old he’s willing to make a case for the Nazis, embarrassing some of his lefty fanboys in the process. (Of course they come up with some postmodernist shit about how he really does not mean to praise the Nazis for killing millions and wish they’d killed more. Because taking the man at his word is so very unsophisticated.)
I hate to repeat myself, but that Salisbury teacher story shows once again that when it comes to bullying, the State is the biggest bully of them all.
What bias in high school?
So the ranting leftist teacher doesn’t face any disciplinary action and it’s the student who ends up moving to another school.
And it’s the people who are sick of this crap and go private that we should hate, right?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/10/michael-gove-private-school-social-justice
Sam,
“And it’s the people who are sick of this crap and go private that we should hate, right?”
According to the Guardian’s foremost socialist thinkers, yes. George Monbiot, Polly Toynbee, Zoe Williams, Kevin McKenna, et al, all seem to believe that even if you had a grim and frustrating experience at a state comprehensive, you should still want to inflict that same grim and frustrating experience on your children, and on the children of your neighbours. Robbing them of the chance to escape is what kind people do, apparently.
And then there’s fellow Guardianista Nina Power, who thinks teachers needn’t be competent at all. “Shared ignorance” is where it’s at.
Nice fisking of ‘privilege’ bollocks.
http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/shades-of-privilege
Non-Western performers who have voluntarily travelled to Britain to take part in the World Shakespeare Festival are being oppressed by the cultural imperialism of it all:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/21/shakespeare-universal-cultural-imperialism
How do we know? Well a Western woman who has decided to speak on their behalf without their prompting, consent or any regard as to their actual thoughts or wishes on the matter tells us so.
Bart,
Heh. Ms O’Toole has learned to get upset on behalf of other (unspecified) people, especially if she can lead us to believe that those unspecified people think exactly as she does. Though of course we can’t be sure, as the article is chiefly about her displaying her own absurd guilt credentials. And then she does it so badly that even Guardian readers find it whiny and affected.
And she doesn’t seem to grasp the logic of her own pretensions. Ms O’Toole gets very upset about colonialism, imperialism and “our sense of cultural superiority” – a sense of superiority that has been “disavowed by all but the crazies.” But how did a tiny, damp, rather chilly island get and then maintain a vast global empire if its culture had no aspects that were in any way superior by the standards of the day? When 19th century Englishmen began to colonise New Zealand they encountered the Maori locals, whose lifestyle was effectively prehistoric. Most of the natives died by the age of thirty and they ate rival tribes – along with many white people, including young women, who fell within their power. The Maoris had no discernible law, literature or science and were cannibals. Was it wrong for the English of the period to feel themselves a little more… culturally advanced?
“What bias in high school?”
Incidentally, regarding Tonya Dixon-Neely, the screeching idiot employed to teach high school students, the online coverage has apparently had some effect: “The teacher is still employed but has been suspended with pay. An employee at the Rowan-Salisbury School System said they have been flooded with calls from around the country on Monday.”
I particularly enjoyed this own goal: “Universal my toe. Shakespeare is full of classism, sexism, racism and defunct social mores.”
Shakespeare being full of (what a Guardian columnist would condsider) classism, sexism, racism and (especially) defunct social mores is exactly what would make him universal. Traditional storytelling of any culture tends to be choc full of hugely un-pc topics and curiously silent on themes such as student-worker solidarity, social justice and challenging heteronormativity.
Bart,
Ms O’Toole’s previous contributions to human knowledge include her belief that not shaving one’s armpits is “the necessary and important work of challenging stupid, arbitrary, gendered bullshit.” She also tells us, several times, that her boyfriends have thought her “brave” for daring to have armpit hair. And that “feminist heaven” will feature Judith Butler, a woman who thinks students should show solidarity with Hamas and Hizballah. And who then lied about it, despite being caught on camera.
So, a moral titan for our times.
‘…especially if she can lead us to believe that those unspecified people think exactly as she does.’
It’s just ‘false consciousness’ again, isn’t it? Millions of people all over the world innocently enjoying Shakespeare – including, of course, in lots of places never colonised by the British – really needing our Emer to put them straight and tell them that they only *think* they like him. If they’d only listen to the much cleverer and better-educated Ms O’Toole, they’d realise that he’s rubbish really.
David, you can’t fight stupid with logic.
Re O’Tooles guardian piece: there’s a good deal of the familiar hatred of ‘Dead White European Males’ there (apparently she’s unable to appreciate the Bard’s written english). But also the leftist anti-patriotic slant, where use of the word ‘imperialist’ tells us precisely what we are supposed to think of something.
What worries me is the extent to which this thinking has taken hold in education. The decision has been taken – on behalf of parents, that kids should be taught not patriotic feeling, but post-imperialist guilt.
That and some rather odd paeans to dubious heroines like Diane Abbott
Henry,
“That and some rather odd paeans to dubious heroines like Diane Abbott.”
Or Dear Leader, as I believe she likes to be known.
“What worries me is the extent to which this thinking has taken hold in education.”
Indeed. Standard leftist boilerplate is remarkably common in state school history lessons. A few years ago I mentioned the Institute of Education Researchers, which doesn’t want to affirm “a sense of belonging” [i.e., national belonging] among students, or to affirm British national identity and the history of these islands: “Teachers should not instil pride in what they consider great moments of British history, as more shameful episodes could be downplayed or excluded.” Anything remotely favourable or approaching patriotic sentiment should, they claim, be regarded as “corrupting.” (I suspect that even the BBC radio series This Sceptred Isle would be considered jingoistic.) And so what we often get instead is anhedonic, boring and framed by a kind of pretentious, genealogical guilt. Hardly an improvement. Fostering disaffection with – and alienation from – British history (warts and all) doesn’t seem likely to make anyone feel a sense of citizenship, or shared values, or even welcome.
And so we get dismal moments like this, which echo my own experience:
One Emer O’Toole is easy enough to mock. A classroom full of them is more of a problem. A generation schooled in the same kind of thinking, or rather unthinking, is truly hazardous.
‘According to the Guardian’s foremost socialist thinkers, yes. George Monbiot, Polly Toynbee, Zoe Williams, Kevin McKenna, et al, all seem to believe that even if you had a grim and frustrating experience at a state comprehensive, you should still want to inflict that same grim and frustrating experience on your children, and on the children of your neighbours’.
It’s odd that Monbiot’s rant against Gove followed these comments by the latter:
http://order-order.com/2012/05/10/gove-goes-for-the-old-boys-in-the-media/
‘Indeed it’s in the media that the public school stranglehold is strongest. The Chairman of the BBC and its Director-General are public school boys. And it’s not just the Evening Standard which has a privately-educated editor. My old paper The Times is edited by an old boy of St Pauls and its sister paper the Sunday Times by an old Bedfordian. The new editor of the Mail on Sunday is an old Etonian, the editor of the Financial Times is an old Alleynian and the editor of the Guardian is an Old Cranleighan. Indeed the Guardian has been edited by privately educated men for the last sixty years… But then many of our most prominent contemporary radical and activist writers are also privately educated.
George Monbiot of the Guardian was at Stowe, Seumas Milne of the Guardian was at Winchester and perhaps the most radical new voice of all Laurie Penny of the Independent – was educated here at Brighton College. Now I record these achievements not because I wish to either decry the individuals concerned or criticise the schools they attended. Far from it. It is undeniable that the individuals I have named are hugely talented and the schools they attended are premier league institutions.”’
I assume Gove’s tongue is firmly in his cheek when he describes Monbiot, Milne and Penny as ‘hugely talented’ rather than ‘well-connected members of an incestuous clique’.
Here’s a list of all the Guardian journos who were either privately educated, or went to grammar schools:
http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/guardian-journalists-who-went-to-private-schools/
And so what we often get instead is anhedonic, boring and framed by a kind of pretentious, genealogical guilt.
My U.S. history textbooks preceded Howard Zinn’s “proctologist’s view of America” [Dennis Prager], but they WERE chock full of information about tariffs. Lots and lots of tariffs. And also something about a teapot dome.
They made it boring on purpose and took out all the good stuff, such as the way Woodrow Wilson arrested people for dissent or how he segregated the armed forces. They also removed the story of James Armistead, a Virginia slave who volunteered to spy on Benedict Arnold (having turned traitor) and became a double-agent, and of Benjamin Banneker, an autodidact genius also born to slavery, who carved a wooden clock from memory after studying a pocket watch and who also surveyed Washington DC.
Because we can’t let the kids know that the blacks did pretty well by themselves until the progressive eugenicists came along and tamped them down, then came to their rescue during The Great Society.
Nope. We Can’t Have That.
More ‘progressive’ education:
‘Teaching staff are not to highlight any more than three incorrect spellings on any piece of work. This is in order that the children’s self-confidence is not damaged.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142547/Schools-deliberately-failing-correct-spelling-mistakes-avoid-damaging-pupils-self-esteem.html
You have to give lefties some credit though, turning something as interesting as British history into something so unfathomably dull is a stunning achievement.
I can’t describe how sad it makes me that a generation will come of age not being even remotely aware of what a great cultural inheritance they have. I truly hope a day comes when the left will pay for what they have done, not that I believe such a day will come but it is a nice thought nonetheless.
http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Nurse-refuses-student-inhaler-during-asthma-attack/-/1637132/13560430/-/wm13uaz/-/index.html
For the bureaucratically minded the process is always more important than the outcome (or the people it affects). I’ve always suspected there’s a great deal of covering up sociopathy involved in being in the “caring” sector…
AC1,
Well, if you were someone who enjoys the suffering of others, or having power over others, what kind of careers would present plenty of opportunities to indulge those urges?
AC1, what a wonderful little story.
I’d see this as a clear parallel to the moral hazard in modern banking – when risking other-peoples money, the bankers get to keep a cut of the gains, but are not subject to the losses. Their incentives are skewed to take risks, as the gains would be great, but they are not exposed to the results of bad risks. Over time, this results in the current bailout scenarios, where bankers grow rich when their risks pay off, and need to be rescued when they blow up.
Here, the incentives for the nurse are skewed the same way – in a bureaucratic position, she’ll have no incentive to perform ‘better’ than what her procedures dictate (this, like any fault that follows from following procedures is the result of a bad procedure, not the person following it), while if she diverts from her procedure, she’ll be sued and fired the first time her own decision is wrong. So, a kind of moral hazard.
Of course, to the benefit of all involved – parents at the school will from now on be very sure to check that the children are allowed to take their vital meds, and will go to great lengths to make sure all forms are correctly filled in.
-S