Category Archives: Human Accomplishment

UPDATE V: ‘The Mainstreaming of Michelle Malkin’

Ann Coulter, Conservatism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Media, Republicans

Given the perpetual parade of “intellectuals” who are not intelligent in our media—Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the “parrot press”—I don’t expect many Americans to be familiar with political philosopher Paul E. Gottfried. Nevertheless, Paul (he’s a friend) is one of the most important intellectuals in the United States. In “The Mainstreaming of Michelle Malkin,” he writes:

“A recent syndicated column by Michelle Malkin indicates what happens to interesting conservative commentators when they sign on as GOP flacks: They become predictable Republican mouthpieces and attack dogs against the Dems. For years I read Michelle with delight as she railed against weak-kneed politicians in both parties. She was murder on Republicans as well as Democrats—indeed, on anyone who truckled to the Hispanic immigration lobby. Even more refreshingly, she never indulged any politicians who caterwauled about victimized minorities. Michelle happily banged around the NAACP and other groups that played the victim card. The fact that she’s Filipino may have allowed her to get away with some of her rhetoric, but I doubt that particular ethnic background has provided her with much benefit. Being a devoutly Catholic Filipino doesn’t bring much in the way of liberal grace. That identity is far less useful than being an angry black woman like Michelle Obama screaming against American white racism.
“Yes, there is corruption in the Democratic Party, but this disease is hardly limited to those who bear the ‘D’ label.”

Then I noticed Michelle editorializing against corruption in the Democratic Party. On December 10, 2008, she began her new career with a long screed for National Review Online on the “Democratic Culture of Corruption.” After a series of polemics against Reid, Pelosi, and Barney Frank on Fox and in the usual GOP venues, Michelle came out with a well-publicized book, The Culture of Corruption, thanks to the tiresomely Republican publishing house Regnery. …”

MORE.

While I agree with Paul—and have expressed similar misgivings, for example here and here— I still harbor some fondness for Malkin and Coulter. Yes, they are of and for the mainstream, but they both have talent.

Next, Paul needs to tackle the second-tier, mezzanine-level, Republican tart brain trust: SE Cupp, Margaret Hoover, and similar heavy hitting idiots, who’ve never uttered an original thought, and whose writing is like Ann Coulter’s vomit (to paraphrase Kevin Michael Grace).

UPDATE I: I have to disagree with Brett Gerasim on the wonderful job Mouths of the Republican mainstream are doing. Someone who spouts half-truths is still a wholesale liar. Moreover, he/she lacks the intellectual wherewithal to grasp the whole picture—of what a devotion to limited authority and republican virtues actually mean.

UPDATE II: Prof. Gottfried replies:

“Like Ilana, I would prefer to listen to Michelle or Ann than someone like Sean Hannity. But that’s not the issue I address in my commentary. What irks me is that perfectly intelligent and highly articulate conservative commentators have turned themselves into GOP hacks to advance their careers. This is not something that Ilana or I, even if we had the opportunity to sell out, would be likely to do. Moreover, Michelle and Ann would hardly be paupers even if they behaved with dignity and stopped kissing up to the GOP. They raked in loads of money before assuming their present abject roles. Although I’ve only heard him a few times, I have a much more positive impression of Mike Savage, who is quite happy to sock it to both of our zombie parties. Savage does not look as if he’s hurting financially because he’s failed to line up.”
Paul

UPDATE III: I think Paul takes for granted his analytical gifts. My good friend imagines that these women are capable of his insights, but are holding back. But anyone with such well-honed herd instincts is not that bright. Both are brighter than average, but that’s not saying much in “Age of the idiot,” as my father has termed the times in which we live.

Coulter is smarter than Malkin. Malkin believes every warring word she’s ever uttered. Ditto Monica Crowley, who is no fool, but is a statist to the core. These ladies are limited in their analytical capacities and in their individualism. Their integrity is also capped.

UPDATE IV (June 24): MONICA MINDLESS? I made a horrible mistake. Prof. Gottfried was kind enough to correct me:

“I agree with your update. By the way, I knew Monica Crowley when she was still serving drinks for Richard Nixon during my visits to the former president’s home in New Jersey. She is far less clever and pretty than Michelle or Ann. Paul.”

UPDATE I: US Engineering & Egalitarian Education

Barack Obama, Bush, Business, Education, Europe, Feminism, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Labor, Technology

I heard it said that in the US there are two types of engineers: overworked or unemployed. A tough economy would indeed force increases in productivity: fewer and fewer workers are doing more and more of work. But there’s something else at play. It comports with what Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, has exposed:

There’s a mismatch between the jobs that are available, at least in our portfolio, and the people that we see out there,” Mr Spiegel told the Financial Times. “There is a shortage (of workers with the right skills.)” … a recent survey from Manpower, the employment agency, found that 52 percent of leading US companies reported difficulties in recruiting essential staff, up from 14 percent in 2010.

German education is known for its rigor and high standards. But more importantly: The Germans run the same sort of schools I attended growing up in Israel, where, because no pedagogue believes all kids are created equal, students are streamed into different tracks.

Wikipedia:

… German secondary education includes five types of school. The Gymnasium is designed to prepare pupils for university education and finishes with the final examination Abitur, after grade 12 or 13. The Realschule has a broader range of emphasis for intermediate pupils and finishes with the final examination Mittlere Reife, after grade 10; the Hauptschule prepares pupils for vocational education and finishes with the final examination Hauptschulabschluss, after grade 9 or 10 and the Realschulabschluss after grade 10. There are two types of grade 10: one is the higher level called type 10b and the lower level is called type 10a; only the higher level type 10b can lead to the Realschule and this finishes with the final examination Mittlere Reife after grade 10b. This new path of achieving the Realschulabschluss at a vocationally-oriented secondary school was changed by the statutory school regulations in 1981 – with a one-year qualifying period. During the one-year qualifying period of the change to the new regulations, pupils could continue with class 10 to fulfil the statutory period of education. After 1982, the new path was compulsory, as explained above. Other than this, there is the Gesamtschule, which combines the approaches. There are also Förderschulen/Sonderschulen. One in 21 pupils attends a Förderschule.[2][3] Nevertheless the Förderschulen/Sonderschulen can also lead, in special circumstances, to a Hauptschulabschluss of both type 10a or type 10b, the latter of which is the Realschulabschluss. German children only attend school in the morning. There is no provision for serving lunch. There is a lot more homework, heavy emphasis on the “three R’s” and very few extracurricular activities.

The secondary school I attended (I grew up in Israel) provided a vocational track, just like German schools do, where kids with no academic aptitude acquired useful skills and graduated with a diploma in woodwork, welding, sewing, etc. The academically inclined were also streamed into grades in accordance with aptitude. You could take math, for example, on different levels of difficulty. We had a special math genius class of 5 kids with super high IQs. Nobody pretended everyone was equal. Kids were kept busy with the kind of work that was best suited to their abilities, not egos.

On the other hand, “evidence of how stupid American students (and teachers) are has been slowly amassing. The creeping cretinism is confirmed by reports like “A Nation at Risk.” Especially indicative are the below-international-average scores of 17-year-olds. One out of four children is dropping out and not graduating. High schools have been so dumbed down that even average students sit bone idle. Fully 50 percent of students with IQs that border on mental retardation manage to pass. Unlike our European counterparts, American universities, colleges and even corporations spend a fortune on teaching students elementary things they should have learned in high school. College professors attest to a decline in the quality of students entering colleges.” (“THE WORM IN THE APPLE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION”)

In the US of Obama’s “Yes We Can” and Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” all kids are treated as equally able. If a subject appeals to a certain cohort—or selects for smarts—why then, we cancel it; make it fun by sucking out the hard work required to master it; make it girl/minority/Deep-Space-alien friendly. New Math replaces eternal math; social studies does away with history, etc.

Look, libertarians, yes, public schools and unions are a big part of the problem. As important, however, is the country’s progressive pedagogic philosophy, which dominates in private schools as well.

We’ve ditched canon and core curriculum. We’re replaced reason with sentimentality and attitude. We’ve manned our schools with females to the exclusion of strong male role models. I would not wish to be the parent of a young, hyper-active boy drawn to the hard sciences, in schools full of females, bent on promoting every mythical, politically correct orthodoxy that pervades the Zeitgeist.

What Herr Spiegel has observed is the end result of decades of these low or no standards.

UPDATE I (June 21): Abelard Lindsey: My sources confirm your point about HR. But you’re wrong about the MBA managers. They are no better: these are technically clueless individuals, hot-housed in America’s pinko business schools, who have no place screening for technical and temperamental competence. However, America’s most famed corporations have screening processes that go on for days and have a candidate interview in front of many higher-ups. One particularly brilliant friend, a genius who works for Apple, was regaled for days with the intellectual equivalent of a special ops training unit. He loved every minute of it. (I would have crumbled.)

Alas, the largest and richest corporation work a lot like government, the connections between private property and profits having been long since loosened. These giants consist of many fiefdoms, layered with deadwood, and governed often by nepotistic hiring practices. It takes massive failures, as Microsoft’s Kin project surely was, to instigate some corrections (but seldom any firings).

The Israel-Kinect Connection

Business, Economy, Education, Family, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Media, Regulation, Science, Socialism, Technology

Who do you think invented Microsoft’s “Kinect,” which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device” ever? Microsoft would like to claim the credit, but it belongs to an Israeli outfit called PrimeSense.

It’s my guess—and CNN’s Zombie Zakaria might wish to investigate this—that, overall, those who invent these silly contraptions are not necessarily the same sort of people who use them obsessively. (I recently watched a boy bob up-and-down and sideways like an automaton for over an hour in front of the Kinect. Back in the day, my own, now-grown girl would have been building Lego, painting, reading, or “inventing” creative games in the yard.)

Yes, the fogies of “60 Minutes” are obsessed with kids; errant American adults cater to, and worship, but never guide, their kids. The outcome of deification without direction is that the current crop of fattened little Buddhas is not that great.

Truth be told, the hybrid, hi-tech workforce—comprised as it is of local and outsourced talent—is manned, generally, by terribly smart, much older people with advanced engineering degrees. (That’s too much like hard work which is hardly “fun.”) The truth is that the people designing gadgets for America’s (face it, dumb) kids are older and highly educated. Some are Americans; others are Asians (South more than East, but both) and Israelis. The hi-tech endeavor is thus all about the older generation—veteran techies—uniting to supply their young, twittering twits with the playthings that keep their brainwaves from flatlining.

Back to the point: Some of my readers refer to Israel’s economy as a socialistic one, a fact that could reflect a general media bias (against Israel, not socialism). Although Israel’s economy is by no means unfettered, it is not much different from Western Europe’s Third-Way, mixed economies, with a respectable per capita GDP. Warren Buffett has invested billions in Israel’s private sector, with good returns. The country’s high-tech industry has certainly been on the cutting edge for sometime.

Significant is the trend. And it is unmistakable: “Emerging markets,” as Israel is, are becoming freer, whereas America is becoming less free. The devil is in this detail.

I am affiliated with the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Those who’re interested in tracking the effort to liberalize Israel’s economy will get a good idea by following JIMS’ remarkable work out of Jerusalem.

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For a third day in a row, my book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot, is Amazon’s #1 in the category on Social Policy. The Publisher (link here) is not charging for shipping. This is valuable for our South African readers. Kindle will be up by, I am told by the best man possible, early this week, probably tomorrow.

The Power of Private Property

Human Accomplishment, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property, The State

“Bat shit crazy” is what Rep. Ron Paul was called when he suggested that “victims of the flooding of the Mississippi River … should be building their own levees.” What do you know? Before evacuating the area of Vicksburg, Miss, reports NPR, “some residents and farmers took matters into their own hands and built personal levees to protect their homes from floodwaters. Some of the levees rise as high as the roof, if not higher.”

Come hell or high water, people will protect what’s theirs; what they’ve worked for. Government, on the other hand, is engaged in the crooked calculus of attempting to minimize overall damage and maximize the common good. Since its agents have no stake in the property managed, the plans and their execution are bound to be shoddy.

“Entrusted with the management and regulation of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of millions of people you don’t know , only pretend to care about, are unaccountable to, and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your performance plummets?

“The root of environmental despoliation is the tragedy of the commons, i.e., the absence of property rights in the resource. One of my favorite running routes wends along miles of lakeside property, all privately owned, and ever so pristine. Where visitors dirty the trail that cleaves to the majestic homes; fastidious owners are quick to pick up after them.

In the absence of private ownership in the means of production, government-controlled resources go to seed. There is simply no one with strong enough a stake in the landmass or waterway to police it before disaster strikes.” (Source: “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann”)