“Not much different to what came out of the warped mind of Josef Goebbels” is how Barely a Blog contributor Myron Robert Pauli assesses the “PC pseudo-history” instruction your kids are receiving in the nation’s schools. And with good reason.

Myron Pauli, incidentally, is related to Wolfgang Pauli, who was a pioneer in quantum mechanics. A new book about J. Robert Oppenheimer notes that The Other Pauli was an “outspoken critic of shoddy thought who faulted Oppenheimer for his lack of perseverance and thoroughness” (The Times Literary Supplement, April 19, 2013). Sounds a little like Our Pauli. If you enjoy the musings of BAB’s resident physicist, do consider a one-time contribution or a regular monthly contribution to BAB. Read more about our pal and patron below. (To your right you’ll find the PayPal buttons.)

History Teachers Who’re As Good As Goebbels
By Myron Pauli

I recently went over my daughter’s “history” book with her about World War II, to discover what political correctness has done to education. Apparently, the war was fought primarily by women, Navahos, Mexicans, blacks, and Japanese-Americans. A small number of white guys and perhaps even a few Russians (Soviets) may have also fought against the Nazis as well. Not that the “facts” are wrong but, in my humble opinion, history also needs PERSPECTIVE. The textbook spends time on the Zoot Suit Riots but ignores trivial piffle like the Battle of Kursk! It is bad enough that America’s “D students” know nothing about history while the “A students” are trained to be morons with facts.

Undoubtedly, for the next textbook edition, they will have discovered a transgendered Muslim who grew some carrots in a Victory Garden to have single-handedly won World War II. “Fatima the Riveter’s” carrots mean far more than the million people who starved in Leningrad or the millions starved in Asia.

However, this PC pseudo-history is, in fact, as racist as any garbage that came out of the warped mind of Josef Goebbels.

The PC world is built on a hierarchy of victimization where the top of the “good” chain is a poor, black lesbian atheist and the bottom – e.g. the most “evil” is a rich, white, male, heterosexual Christian. In this world, Jews, for example, are ambidextrous – being virtuous in the presence of Christians and evil in the presence of Muslims.

Not that this narcissistic PC actually cares about most minorities per se. I was on one of my “Pauli rants” about 5 million people slaughtered by genocide in the Congo while watching my uber-PC friend nearly dozing off. So, I decided to wake him up by saying “but the world doesn’t give a damn when n**gers kill n**gers”. Of course, he snapped to attention immediately to state his disgust – not at the genocide, of course, but at me using the BAD WORD. I pointed out that he cared more about my “bad language” than of mass murder – but that only illustrates one of the fundamental laws of PC victimization: namely that “black people do not exist except in the presence of white People”.

Examples abound. Out of every nine black pregnancies in America, five get aborted, three are born out of wedlock, and one “abnormal” one gets born to a married black couple. Does Obama care? NO. What is, instead, of national concern is a two minute verbal altercation between a black Harvard Professor and a white Cambridge Cop! Three drunk guys leaving a bachelor party in Queens were riddled with 50 bullets by cops which would have been a major incident; however, the trigger-happy cops were black – so fuggedaboutit.

When George Zimmerman killed Travon Martin, some defenders of Zimmerman tried to use a “self-defense justified manslaughter” argument which, naturally, had no credibility with the media. They then switched to the fact that Zimmerman was a “dark-skinned Hispanic.” Albedo equals justification!

Even Ron Paul tried to get credibility in his attacks on the War on Drugs by pointing out their “racist” effects. Does that mean that warrantless SWAT teams locking up 1,000,000 blue-eyed blondes for smoking pot would be OK?

To sum, the Gospel of Victimization is merely a mirror image of Goebbels Nazi ideology. History is viewed entirely through the lens of race, sexual preference, religion, or whatever the Fad-of-the-Month club dictates from the Ivy- League-Media axis. If a gay man kills his gay lover or infects him with AIDS – yawn. But a fist fight in a bar with a hetero is reason to pass five new hate crime laws. Separate drinking fountains trump genocide any day of the week.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

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Whereas America’s media will shed mostly darkness on the “apparently” mysterious motivation behind the ruthless, savage attack committed, in Boston, last week by two naturalized American Muslims—a Chechen leader has some interesting thoughts about these homegrown terrorists:

[The] Tsarnaevs … were raised in the United States, and their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. It is necessary to seek the roots of this evil in America.

The man has a point: A liberal, lax progressive education, emphasizing the wickedness of the West, the hollowness of its ways, and the righteousness of its “victims” does tend to breed rootless, hostile ignoramuses.

On the other hand, the US’s aggressive, unjust foreign policy doesn’t exactly encourage patriotism in the rudderless young people churned out by the public schools.

Barack Obama, naturally, had no qualms about following his instincts. These were to implicate anti-tax patriots for the slaughter in Boston.

Also to crumble was the storyline floated by media—faithful as it is to fact and evidence (NOT)—about white supremacists. The “White supremacist’ narrative has collapsed in the Texas DA murder case.” Likewise it has proven baseless vis-à-vis Boston. Yet the president’s un-American little helpers had no qualms about having fun with it:

Witness your tax-supported, trusted NPR Journalist who felt no compunction about suggesting that the Boston terrorist attack was the handiwork of “right-wingers celebrating Columbine or Hitler’s birthday.”

UPDATE I: “Some immigrants kill.” Lloyd Green with the standard equivocating one can expect from a Bush baby:

America has digested newcomers from all over the world. It is our history and one of our strengths. It would be tragic if we made one of our virtues a vice and weakness when caution should be our guide.

UPDATE II: “The Economist” embarrassed itself before the fact, implicating “patriot groups” that have proliferated since their Good Guy got back in office:

“Mr Obama’s re-election and his support for immigration reform and gun-control legislation, however ill-fated, have enraged this extremist fringe. The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), a civil-rights organisation that tracks and exposes the activities of right-wing extremists, says that outfits of this kind have proliferated during his presidency, from around 150 in 2008 to an all-time record of 1,360 last year (see chart).
The SPLC estimates that of those about 1,000 could be classified as “hard-core”, and thus by implication capable of violence. Among recent incidents, it points to the murder of six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin by a neo-Nazi gunman last August and the rounding up, also last year, of a murderous militia group based in Georgia, which included several active-duty soldiers. According to prosecutors, the group, which called itself FEAR (Forever Enduring, Always Ready), had stockpiled $87,000 worth of weapons and explosives, and was plotting to overthrow the government through a campaign of terror and assassinations.”

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The one and only Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, passed away today of a stroke. She was 87. CNN led its piss-poor hourly programing—activism, really—with news about the death of mouseketeer Annette Funicello.

What comes immediately to my mind is that Margaret Thatcher stood for the gradualism of Ronald Reagan, when it came to delivering South Africa to the sainted Nelson Mandela’s communists. As noted on page 147 of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”:

…public intellectuals … thought nothing of delivering South Africa into the hands of professed radical Marxist terrorists. Any one suggesting such folly to the wise Margaret Thatcher risked taking a handbagging. The Iron Lady ventured that grooming the ANC as South Africa’s government-in-waiting was tantamount to ‘living in cloud-cuckoo land.’

Tell me that fools are not attempting to redefine, à la postmodernism, the very definition of news. And why not? Academics have similarly broken down the ancient concept of the intellectual discipline.

“Intellectual disciplines,” historian Keith Windschuttle has written, “were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

Failing to lead the news with coverage of Mrs. Thatcher’s passing is in-itself big news.

UPDATE I: MSNBC’s odious Martin Bashir, a Briton, is dismembering Thatcher. His correspondent’s source of analysis: Meryl Creep’s depiction in “The Iron Lady.”

As I said, disciplinary breakdown.

Of course, many of Thatcher’s moves I‘d oppose, however it is undeniable that she was perhaps the only true great female leader other than old Golda Meir. I cannot think of a woman with a Thatcher-like intellect in international politics. Golda didn’t have that intellect, but she was quite the character. Both were nothing like today’s whiny, idiot fems.

UPDATE II: Don’t bother searching the articles penned by the presstitutes in the UK and the US, about Baroness Thatcher. Her remarkable oratory they call simple—to these cretins plain-spoken reason is counter-intuitive and hence, simplistic. The so-called 10 best quotes from Mrs. Thatcher’s are really stupid things said about her by her intellectual inferiors in Labor.

Here is Mrs. Thatcher displaying that incisive intellect of hers:

“…What the honorable member is saying is that he would rather the poorer were poorer, provided the rich were less rich.”

Watch the above bit of parliamentary flyting as only the British can do, and tell me the woman was not brilliant. Even her opponent delights in her retort.

“I detest every one of her domestic policies,” the Member tells the PM. To which she replies without flinching, in that crisp beautiful English:

“The honorable gentleman knows that I have the same contempt for his socialist policies as the people of East Europe who’ve experienced it have.”

On the famous U-Turn:

“For those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catch phrase the U-Turn, I have only one thing to say: ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.’”

The exchange below with the pompous Peter Mansbridge of CBC is particularly relevant to the empty talk about “compromise” infesting current debates:

What perturbs Peter Mansbridge, a Canadian institution in his own right—a stuffy, ossified, yet rather able lefty journo—is what he calls “the uncompromising style of Thatcherism.” A liberal doesn’t like a debate about substance, for it demands intellectual argument. Rather, the liberal is compelled to make silly points about style for those allow for an emotional approach (“Baroness, you make me feel bad; you hurt my self-esteem”).

Mrs. Thatcher offers up a gorgeous metaphor for the pursuit of truth: “When you’re starting a journey over the seas, you steer by stars that are always the same in the heavens. If you haven’t any stars to steer by, then it’s a pretty nondescript journey. …consensus doesn’t seem to be a very good star to steer by.”

Exquisite.

And Mrs. Thatcher’s coup de grâce: “Why are you so interested in compromise and consensus? Why are you not interested in having clear objectives; and having been elected on clear objectives, knowing full-well that the difficulties would emerge first and the benefits later?”

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In “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable,” it was observed that, while “Hollywood and the rest of the glitterati and literati make abundantly clear in all their tired scripts and messages that the older generation has nothing on the youth, especially when it comes to technology smarts—this is manifestly false. The electronic toys our dim, attention-deficient darlings depend on to sustain brain-wave activity are made, for the most, by ‘older people’ with advanced engineering degrees.”

In my opinion, the reason highly creative individuals in hi-tech are able to create for The Kids is that they have enjoyed the benefits of a less laissez faire, more traditional education, involving a core curriculum—and if lucky a literary canon—the hardest of sciences, discipline, all coupled with parental moral instruction and guidance.

Now it appears that these hi-tech elites are designing gadgets that stunt an already stunted generation.

WARNING. This NYT article about the effects of time spent interacting with electronics on socialization and intellectual development is itself a product of a disorganized mind. The writer seems incapable of deciding—and developing a systematic argument—as to whether a child’s focus on these passive, quick-fix electronic stimuli detracts from overall healthy socialization or stunts the ability to be alone.

Missing is a line or two as to the two states-of-being—solitude vs. togetherness—being facets of a healthy psyche.

I live with an individual who is intimately involved in the design of some wonderful gadgets. Yet he himself hardly uses them in the little spare time he steals for himself. They frustrate him; they don’t seem to satisfy his creativity or sate his intellect. His greatest pleasure is found in composing and playing complex thematic pieces of music in his home studio. To do so he follows eternal, timeless rules of composition. Low-tech, if you like.

Myself, I have no interest in hand-held devices. I use my well-appointed PC for work. Away from the PC—during a jog, for instance—I think. Ideas flood my mind during physical exertion and solitude. On the rare occasions that we both go away on vacation, we do not take our work along.

More @:

“Your Brain on Computers.”

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Rand Paul’s Tea party State of the Union 2013 rebuttal was the only speech worth listening to on that day. Even so, I found myself bristling at Rand’s philosophical compromises, as I went down the page and distilled the facts for you.

Rand Paul’s rose-tinted unemployment number: The junior United States Senator for Kentucky cited “official” unemployment figures, rather than real joblessness, which not even the U6 statistic covers.

Another bum note Rand sounded was on the “Balanced Budget Amendment”:

To begin with, we absolutely must pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution!

It’s the sort of philosophical compromise his father would not have made. As this column observed in “Dead-End Debt Debate,” “what a balanced-budget requirement implies is that the government has the right to spend as much as it can take in; that it should be permitted to squander however much revenue—now there’s a nice word for taxes—it can extract from its enslaved wealth producers.”

Ron Paul would have demanded that entire departments be shuttered, not that the bums merely bring into balance what was stolen (taxes) and what is squandered (spending).

Another misstep saw Paul call for “ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and chanting death to America.”

No. End foreign aid, period.

As for “another downgrade of America’s credit rating”: It is not a bad thing because it is well-deserved. A downgrade is a must, as no serious spending cuts have been forthcoming.

Oy! And Rand Paul supports charter schools. Educational vouchers and charter schools are a species of the publicly funded system.

In any case, certain facts presented in Rand’s rebuttal should be pretty humdrum by now:

• “The US government is borrowing $50,000 per second.”

• “Over the past four years [BHO] has added over $6 trillion in new debt.”

• “Every debate in Washington is about how much to increase spending – a little or a lot.”

• “T]he $1.2 trillion sequester that [BHO] endorsed and signed into law … “doesn’t even cut any spending. It just slows the rate of growth.”

• “Even with the sequester, government will grow over $7 trillion over the next decade.”

• In essence, and “increase of $7 trillion in spending over a decade” is being “called a cut.”

• “[B]ig government and debt are not a friend to the poor and the elderly. Big-government debt keeps the poor poor and saps the savings of the elderly. This massive expansion of the debt destroys savings and steals the value of your wages. Big government makes it more expensive to put food on the table. Big government is not your friend. The President offers you free stuff but his policies keep you poor.”

• “Under President Obama, the ranks of America’s poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year.”

• “Only through lower taxes, less regulation and more freedom will the economy begin to grow again.”

MORE.

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Bill O’Reilly has a ludicrous segment on The Factor, where he pretends to introduce his listeners to English words that he supposedly uses.

Last week he introduced the word “chimera,” in which he pronounced the “ch” as you would in “chimp.”

Having actually used this lovely word before I was convinced that the “ch” was pronounced as a “k.” And so it is.

Oh, BO also habitually conjugates incorrectly, saying “laying around” instead of “lying around” in his “Talking Points.” A lot of American writers do that.

I recall that when he was on WND, in the early 2000s, O’Reilly would make this same conjugation error (it drives me to drink), and I’d drop him a polite note. He never replied, but he quickly fixed the mistake. (Myself, I thank my readers profusely when they save me from myself, as they often do, and request that they keep their eyes peeled for any future faux pas.)

Another common error, in enunciation, this time, is “macabre.” The Americanized dictionary support the locals’ hideous habit of saying “macabra.” Sorry. The “re” in “macabre” is silent.

Still on enunciation: “PundiNts.” Even Hillary Clinton inserts an “n” between the “i” and the “t” when pronouncing the word “pundit.” Why?

“Flaunting” laws instead of “flouting” them is especially infuriating. When a politician uses “flaunt” instead of “flout,” as Colin Powell once did, the ultimate penalty should be exerted.

Today (1/3/213) I ran for cover as Bob Costa, National Review’s youthful editor, spoke about a GOP revolt against House Speaker John Boehner. Costa said the following on the Kudlow Report:

“… if he lost 17 Republican votes that means he would have went to a second ballot.”

Costa should have been flogged for not saying, “He would have GONE.” (Although nobody would know why he was being flogged.)

Together, let’s conjugate the verb to “go,” Mr. Costa. “I am going. I will go. I went. I have previously gone. I had gone. I would have gone.”

My first language is Hebrew. However, I like to think that thanks to the drilling I was given, in Israel, by my old English teacher (a Yekke), I can conjugate my verbs.

When it comes to spelling, however, I am lost without Windows.

UPDATE I (Jan. 3): MERCER MISTAKES. One of my wonderful readers has already corrected my TV mistakes in the article, now on RT. He writes: “You had a typo.
Jon Hamm, not John Han. Also, ‘Mad Men’ is an AMC show, not HBO.”

UPDATE II (Jan. 6): RICHARD BURTON. The great Richard Burton, both chivalrous and brilliant, said: “I am as thrilled by the English language as I am by a lovely woman.”

UPDATE III (May 15): ANOTHER NO-NO. “Creative” is not a noun. Don’t call yourself a “creative.” You will stand out not for your creativity (a noun), but for your pretentiousness.

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