Category Archives: Human Accomplishment

UPDATE II: Jackie Kennedy: enchantress (Style & Substance)

Aesthetics, America, Art, Critique, Etiquette, History, Human Accomplishment, Music, The State

Jacqueline Kennedy’s dowdy daughter Caroline Kennedy has released “never-before-heard audio recordings of interviews conducted with the former first lady in 1964, shortly after her husband’s assassination,” together with a book, “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy.” We know Jackie Kennedy for her style, sophistication, sense of history, and love and knowledge of music and art. We now know something about her well-formulated opinions and astute observations, delivered in dulcet tones and exquisite English. (The other day I used “hermetically sealed,” which was common usage when I was, well, much younger. My husband wanted to know why I was using a term used in engineering!)

Discussions with the late historian Arthur Schlesinger reveal Jackie to be not only a dazzling conversationalist, but a forceful, if ever-so feminine personae.

Especially appreciated is Jacqueline Kennedy’s opinion about the sainted Martin Luther King (whose real worldview I discuss briefly—and unfavorably—in my book). All the more so given how irreverent she is in coming out and dissing a legend in the making. PC was not an issue back then. My book also quotes Kennedy on affirmative action: the man was conservative as few conservatives are today.

From a performance of Pablo Casals in the White House to Beyonce’s bump and grind: how far we’ve fallen. To be fair, Bush was also without class and culture.

UPDATE I (Sept. 16): STYLE & SUBSTANCE. Myron Pauli: Like many a libertarian, you refuse to address issues of culture. A comment such as mine, dealing with an impressive, classy lady—Jackie was certainly mistreated by her husband, but never responded like a tawdry tart, as is the custom nowadays—is reduced to the problem of statism. In a universe in which everything is reduced to the state, is there any place for observations about culture, human accomplishment, personality, etc?

I suggest to you that things would not be so bad if more women today had the class and classical education of a Jackie O. At the very least, women with a similar frame of reference would not feel so obsolete and voiceless.

UPDATE II: “Go, Jackie,” writes Lew Rockwell:

Funny how the media are trotting out Mrs. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, to try to smooth over her mother’s taped views: that LBJ was an integral part of the assassination plot (of course, but not mentioned in this article), that she didn’t admire Martin Luther King, FDR, or Churchill, that she rejected feminism, etc.

UPDATED: Is ‘Multidisciplinary’ the Academic Equivalent of ‘Multiculturalism’?

Ancient History, Education, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Propaganda, The West

Looking over the impressive resume and interests of an academic—an acquaintance of a friend— in the applied sciences, the following occurred to me: In the world of the boffins and scientists of research and development (R&D), “multidisciplinary” education is the equivalent of “multiculturalism.”

“Multidisciplinary” education seems to be the buzzword—key to showing how “relevant” and contextualized you and your field of endeavor really are in a hip and evolving world.

My suspicion was reinforced while watching a C-Span segment in which a leading female head of department at MIT engineering waxed fat about what fun she was having designing “work spaces” that “brought together” just about every other department in the world (social work, education).

The aim of all the fun? Coaxing America’s lazy kids into thinking of science and math as fun. (A better, more-sustainable approach would be to teach America’s already dumbed-down, increasingly dispensable secondary-school students that most things worth learning are never plain fun, but are a function of effort and practice, i.e. a good deal of rote. The fun comes when the tough stuff has been mastered.)

Naturally, engineer and physician will collaborate in the design of a prosthetic limb. But the trend observed goes beyond preaching about practical cooperation in bringing beneficial products to markets, something that already occurs spontaneously in the market.

Like “multiculturalism,” the “multidisciplinary” concept is an ideological construct designed to bring about “change.”

What kind of change?

“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)

The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.

Yet this has been the aim—and, arguably, the signal achievement—of the postmodern tradition: to completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (This is why your fun-addicted kids “study” not history, but so-called “social sciences” or “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary educational institutions.)

Is “Multidisciplinary” yet another one of those clever catchphrases that couches a contempt for the traditional Western notion of an intellectual disciplines?

UPDATE (Aug. 30): CHINA. I’m always amazed that Americans would call China militant, when it is the US that is starting and conducting wars all over the world. Our esteemed reader below sounds a little like Donald Trump, which is not a good thing.

Those Darn Differences

Affirmative Action, Debt, Economy, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Political Correctness, Regulation

“Parity in prosperity and performance can be achieved only playing socialist leveler” (Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, p. page 127). And even then, leveling legislation, such as compulsory preferential hiring or money lending, will eventually fail. Reports the Wall Street Journal:

The wealth gap between whites and each of the nation’s two largest minorities—Hispanics and blacks—has widened to unprecedented levels amid the housing crisis and the recession, according to new research.
The median net worth of white households is 20 times greater than that of black households and 18 times greater than that of Hispanic households, according to an analysis of newly available 2009 government data by the Pew Research Center, an independent think tank.
The disparities are the greatest since the government began tracking such data a quarter-century ago, with the gulf separating whites from other groups twice as wide as it was in the two decades prior to the recession and 2008 financial crisis, according to the study.

UPDATE III: Unflapable, But No ‘Flake’ (‘Winning’)

Elections, Etiquette, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, John McCain, Media, Politics, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin

At last, presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) is deploying a tactic touted by this column in hammering home her own intellectual heft (relative to a politician, that is). She has to. Fox News’ Chris Wallace apparently thinks that asking Bachmann (as opposed to John McCain and progeny) whether she is a flake amounts to hard-hitting journalism.

Then and there, the “seldom fazed” representative replied (paraphrased):

Well, I think that would be insulting, to say something like that, because I’m a serious person. I’m a 55-year-old woman. I’ve been married for 33 years, and I have a post-doctorate [I think she meant post-graduate] degree in federal tax law. I have five children, and have raised 23 foster children and opened a charter school for at-risk youth.

[Note how the Fox News article is written in the passive voice, so as to avoid implicating its hired hand, Wallace.]

As I’ve written repeatedly, Bachmann is nothing like Sarah Palin. Palin is Bush in a bra (with all the implications about brain power that implies).

Rep. Bachmann, on the other hand, as was contended back in September of 2009, is very clever.

Back then , this column had already picked the GOP’s winning ticket: Ron Paul for commander-in-chief; Michele Bachmann as second-in-command.

Bachmann is eloquent and is seldom fazed. As attractive as Sarah, she is also cerebral, a quality poor Palin is without. Bachmann is not yet a libertarian, but neither is she wedded to the warfare state, and is wise enough to recognize the political value of denouncing America’s forays abroad in order to bring moderates and independents into the fold. Given guidance (and a good kick), she is not beyond apologizing for her unforgivable vote for the Patriot Act.
Conversely … Paul has gone from immigration hawk to toying with amnesty (with an asterisk or two). Bachmann will bring Paul back from the brink. Americans inhabit a world of reality TV and other frivolity. To win the GOP nomination in this parallel universe, Ron Paul needs political bling—he will want the punch, pizazz and money bombs a Bachmann can provide.

“Bundle Rand (Paul) and Bachmann—and the opposition, both Republican and Democratic, will be vanquished. But that’s for another day.”

UPDATE I: A Facebook friend wants an analysis of Sarah palin’s unraveling. Okay, here.

UPDATE II: Bill, as I wrote in “Bachmann: Bling For Ron Paul?”, Paul would not take MB on unless it was under his tutelage, after she was, “Given guidance (and a good kick),” and made to “apologize for her unforgivable vote for the Patriot Act.”

Alone, how is Paul to win? We’re in this to win, right?

UPDATE III: (June 29): WINNING. Myron, what is wrong with wanting Paul to win? He can win the nomination if he and MB combine forces. Alone he is unlikely to get anywhere. Defeatism is a luxury only well-funded, spoilt brats (like these) can afford.

Bachmann “has jumped into second place in the New Hampshire Republican primary. … While Bachmann remains well behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has 36 percent support, the other sixteen Republicans included in the survey all had levels of support in the single digits.”

The results of the Gallup poll released on Tuesday showed that Bachmann’s name recognition is up to 69 percent from 52 percent in a poll conducted in late February/early March. With the increase, Bachmann is behind only Romney, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Congressman Ron Paul, R-Texas, in terms of name recognition, Gallup also noted that Bachmann has a positive intensity score of 24, which ties with pizza magnate Herman Cain’s as the highest such score of any candidate