Degrees Do Not An Educated Person Make (#RenaissanceMan, RIP)

Education, Human Accomplishment, Technology

Think you’re educated? Think Again. I have.

For a long time, the “Aristotelian ideal of the educated person” was the aim of a Liberal Education. The ideal and idea of the Renaissance Man, however, has been completely lost:

… The Aristotelian ideal of the educated person, “critical” in all or almost all branches of knowledge, survived for centuries as the aim of liberal education. Originally, the student would be taught seven arts or skills, consisting of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The names are antique, but the seven “subjects” were comparable to a modern liberal curriculum of languages, philosophy, mathematics, history, and science. The arts or skills were “liberal” because they were liberating. That is, they freed their possessor from the ignorance that bound the uneducated. … The original belief that an educated person should be “critical” in more fields than his own no longer exists …

(Excerpted from Charles Van Doren’s A history of Knowledge: Past, present, and future, 1991, New York: Ballantine Books, on Dr. Alexander A. Petrov’s blog).

In his discussion of a “humanistic education” (as Sean Gabb terms the liberal arts education of yesteryear), Dr. Gabb mentions our mutual, late, dear friend, Dennis O’Keeffe, who was “famous for his denunciations of what he calls socialist education—this being a denial that there is any value in the traditional curriculum. Such an education means”:

a training in habits of thought and the exercise of general intellectual ability. It may require the acquisition of specific skills—for example, learning at least one of the classical languages and few modern languages, and learning some of the technical aspects of music and the visual arts. It may also require an understanding of mathematics and of the natural sciences. It certainly requires a long study of literature and history and philosophy and law and political economy. But none of this may be useful in any direct financial sense. …

Dr. Gabb does, however, underestimate the mental prowess (albeit maybe not intellect) that goes into completion of advanced degrees of what he calls “technical or professional training.” Most of us are unable to manipulate the laws of nature (physics/mathematics) to create the workable technology that makes life so good.

I often watch “Food Factory.” I’m in awe of the mechanical engineers who design these magnificent robotic assembly lines, even though they may not be witty and entertaining dinner guests (which Sean Gabb most certainly is, as I learned when I attended a Liberty Fund colloquium in the UK).

Designing an assembly line that makes my chocolate slabs materialize is a pretty noble calling.

The #RossUlbricht Outrage

Drug War, Law, Natural Law

Not content with stealing a young man’s life and property, and subjecting him to a Stalinist show trial, during which due process was denied—the federal government has sentenced Ross Ulbricht, innocent in natural law, to life in prison. The operator of Silk Road had been in the business of facilitating voluntary, victimless trade in drugs, online. Via The New York Times:

… Mr. Ulbricht’s novel high-tech drug bazaar operated in a hidden part of the Internet sometimes known as the dark web, which allowed deals to be made anonymously and out of the reach of law enforcement. In Silk Road’s nearly three years of operation, over 1.5 million transactions were carried out involving several thousand seller accounts and more than 100,000 buyer accounts, the authorities have said. Transactions were made using the virtual currency Bitcoin …

Note that the sentencing judge, Federal District Court Katherine B. Forrest, saw fit to deliver a sermon at sentencing: “What you did in connection with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.”

Ask #Bush Why The #IraqiMilitary Won’t Fight

Federalism, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Pseudo-history

“Ask Bush Why The Iraqi Military Won’t Fight” is the current column, now on Praag.org. An excerpt:

… The ineptness of the reconstituted Iraqi Army is nothing new. In 2006, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton demanded to know when the “Iraqi government and the Iraqi Army would step up to the task.” “I have heard over and over again, that the government must do this, the Iraqi Army must do that,” griped Clinton to Gen. John P. Abizaid, then top American military commander in the Middle East. “Can you offer us more than the hope that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Army will step up to the task?”

Indeed, the War Party is in the habit of thrashing about in an ahistorical void—or creating its own reality, as warbot Karl Rove, George Bush’s muse, is notorious for saying. The neoconservative creed as disgorged by Rove deserves repeating:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The lowly “you” Rove reserved for “the reality-based community” (guilty).

Curiously, a military that has done nothing but flee before the opposition ever since the Americans commandeered Iraq, had fought and won a protracted war against Iran, under Saddam Hussein. The thing we currently call the Iraqi military has been unable and unwilling to fight the wars America commands it to fight.

Why?

For one, Bush’s envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, made the decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army and civil service, early in 2003, with the blessing of Bush at whose pleasure Bremer served. Bush’s minions viewed the dissolution of the Iraqi Army as part of the “De-Ba’thification” process. …

… Another dynamic is at play in the region besides the Sunni-Shia divide. It is that between the forces of centralization and the forces of decentralization. …

Read the rest. “Ask Bush Why The Iraqi Military Won’t Fight” is now on Praag.org

#TulsiGabbard Is Not A Total Ass

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military

Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is an Iraq War veteran, who serves on Armed Services Committee. She is also a Democrat, which usually comes with the presumption of asininity. This woman, however, is not a complete ass. Here she touches on some of the themes of my current WND column as to why the Iraqi military would not fight, although she eventually stalls:

WOLF BLITZER: Because you make a good point. There’s – the Kurdish fighters, they have their own separate militia. The Sunni – Iraqi Sunni fighters, they have their own separate militia. There’s the Iraqi Shia. They’re largely backed by Iran. They have their own separate militia. They’re all pretty – pretty dedicated. The weakest link seems to be the central Iraqi army, which the defense secretary of the United States says simply has the – lacks the will to fight, yet the United States keeps supporting that weakest link, the central military of Iraq. That’s a problem from your perspective, isn’t it?

REP. TULSI GABBARD (D), HAWAII:: Yes, Wolf, it is a problem for a few different reasons. One is, this is a strategy that’s proven to have failed, not only recently, but really even through the Bush administration when we had Maliki in charge, we were providing weapons and money and resources to this Shiite-led government that persecuted the Sunnis, completely left them out, and really created the situation that we see today where you have ISIS taking advantage of the oxygen that this policy has created where the Sunni tribes essentially have been driven into the arms of ISIS for protection. This is the problem that I see with the current offensive that’s happening right now heading into Ramadi. This is being led by the Shia militia who named this offensive attack a name that is extremely incendiary and offensive specifically to the Sunni tribes. So this is only going to make the sectarian divides deepen. This will make matters worse. And ultimately, again, this will push the Sunni tribes closer and closer into ISIS’ arms, at the end of the day strengthening ISIS rather than defeating them.

For the rest, she’s an energetic interventionist, so a bit of an ass after all. But then so are most Republicans.

(Source: CNN.)