Nullifying Brimelow’s Seminal Work On Unions?

Education, Film, Hollywood, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race

Steve Sailer has an interesting take on “the media-celebrated documentary ‘Waiting for ‘Superman,'” and by extension, on the “Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions” (the title of my new, WND column). “Davis Guggenheim, white liberal dad, winner of an Oscar for the Al Gore documentary,” writes Sailer, “drives past three public schools in Venice every morning to get to a private school in Santa Monica. He muses on the narration that he felt he was ‘betraying the ideals I thought I lived by.'”

Why, then, doesn’t he send them to public school? Well, the obvious reason is because public schools in Venice are full of Hispanics and blacks (one of them is 95 percent Non-Asian Minority), and, privately, Guggenheim doesn’t think his kids will get as good an education in a classroom that has to cater to NAM needs. But, no way no how is he ever going to say that in public. He’d never get another Oscar.

[Read “Hoist By Their Own Petard In Wisconsin”]

Is Steve implying that the thesis of “The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education,” a pathbreaking book by VDARE.COM editor Peter Brimelow, no longer obtains? In “The Worm,” Brimelow mounted a devastating case against the monopolistic nature of public education as the root of most of this system’s evils. He did so by analyzing “the efficiency of the education system, as expressed in its output and input.”

I would say that both the liberal director of “Waiting for Superman” and Steve Sailer are resorting to reductionism. There is more to the colossal failure of American schooling than the aggregate racial achievement gap in schools that are increasingly dominated by minorities. Conversely, government unions are not the whole story.

From my perspective, the film “Idiocracy” offered the most multifaceted treatment of creeping cretinism in America. The best of social science (kidding, of course).

Ilana Is Humbled …

Classical Liberalism, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism

To see herself featured as one of the “People Who Inspire” Kerry Crowel Jr., a young paleolibertarian friend on Facebook.

I’ve noticed that Facebookers often refer to themselves in the third person. I thought I’d try it just this once. (Glenn Beck of the not-so-Beautiful Mind does it too. Oh dear…)

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UPDATED: Have Sexual Abuse Will Travel

Celebrity, Politics, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Republicans, Sex

The therapeutic creed is often used to coerce people into conformity. A central tenet of that creed is the idea that any trauma suffered will fester unless excavated, in public, if at all possible; on Oprah if you belong to the gilded elites. Research does not support the idea that beavering at—and broadcasting—past pain; picking at those scars and digging in them wounds, makes for a better adjusted individual. Still, an individual will pay a cruel price if he dares to challenge this convention.

Of course, there is nothing heroic about sharing the intimate details of your life. This state of affairs is the norm in a society that abhors boundaries between what is private and what is public, and encourages a state of flux between these spheres. If anything, hero status is granted to the conformist who lives by the precepts of pop-psychology, and manages a showy demonstration of therapeutic ‘self-knowledge.’

Thus, Sen. Scott Brown, a liberal, Massachusetts Republican, made a smart move by coming out with his torrid tale of childhood sexual abuse.

The silent and steely type is out. A country run by women (some of them with the Chromosome Y) wants its men to let it all hang out. Or at least to be a metrosexual like Barack Obama (who, to his credit, is more discreet than Scott). Brown’s “book,” grandiosely titled “Against All Odds,” might even be an attempt, like that of Republican Tim Pawlenty’s, to grease the skids for a presidential run.

Excellent strategy. Ask Oprah; she knows a thing or two about helping to elect a president.

UPDATE: On FAcebook, Michael Barnett expresses surprise that there is a “market for this stuff. Why do people want to hear about other people’s sexual abuse? I sure don’t.” I replied: “Michael, you are not yet a properly ‘evolved’ man. You haven’t got good ’emotional intelligence.'”

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Why Won’t Tea Party Congress Tackle The TSA?

Democrats, Homeland Security, Republicans, Terrorism

For a while, the natives were restless over being manhandled at the nation’s federally controlled airports. But American travelers (or reporters) seem to have relaxed. At least, one hardly hears much complaining about the home-grown terrorists of the TSA.

The triumphant Republican majority in Congress claims to have a new-found affinity for freedom. If this was so, their first order of business ought to have been the stopping of the en masse molestation at the country’s airports. So far nothing has been done about the ongoing violations of the individual’s constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches without probable cause.

Back on terra firma, the TSA riffraff continue to feel-up the cancer ravaged chests of women like Alaska State representative Sharon Cissna. “We will need to see and touch your prosthetic device, cast or support brace as part of the screening process,” a goon informed the poor woman. “Cissna, who had been in Seattle for medical treatment,” chose to return to Alaska via ferry.

Alas, she’s a Democrats, so she probably has even less of an incentive than the Republicans to act honestly and help tag, collar, and impound The Transportation Security Administration attack dogs.