1 Sarah, I miss your comments on the news. I'm glad you linked to this piece. Although Molly Norris wouldn't like us, we can't let her be forgotten.

Steyn wrote,

But Molly Norris is merely the latest squishy liberal to learn that, when the chips are down, your fellow lefties won't be there for you.

Look at who is there for her. People like Steyn. Ironic, isn't it?

2 I love that he called Obama a "craven squish".  It made me giggle.

And that was a FANTASTIC article!  I agree wholeheartedly.  I can't wait till we get a MAN in office again, who'll look these evil killers in the eye and say, "Go ahead.  Make my day!"

3 I'll say the same thing I said on this on another site- I don't recall Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji going into hiding and changing their names.

4 AFW, I don't know what you are trying to get at. That Molly Norris should have been courageous enough to retain her name and remain in the public eye? Yes, it would have been far better if Norris had been heroic, but I am hesitant to judge those who are in life-threatening circumstances, particularly since I myself use a pseudonym. I reserve my condemnation for Anwar al-Awlaki and those who agree with him.

5 I also don't think much of Irshad Manji. She wants Islam to revert to its "fun-loving roots". This is either an incredibly naive statement or something far worse. Read a biography of Mohammed to understand why.

6 I use an online pseudo as well, Amritas (although it's pretty easy to find out who I am in real life as well).  So it's not that I think people should never use a pseudonym.  Or that people should all be like Ayaan Hirsi Ali (there are many things Manji says I don't agree with, but I can't question her courage.  She regularly gets death threats and is often treated quite horribly by the Muslim community). 

My disagreement with Molly's particular actions is that she decided on a course of action that she should have 100% understood the ramifications of, and then first backtracked, then hid - and all the while has not seen fit to mention the differences in her safety levels between making fun of Islam and making fun of other religions.  Given the furor over the Mohammed cartoons, she could not have been so blind as to not realize what would happen.  Unless she is claiming a psychotic fugue or something. 

I get that she just wants it all to go away.  I do understand that.  But we don't always get the choice - we don't get to wish away diseases that affect us, we don't get to wish away personal hardships. 

Salman Rushdie was in hiding for years as well, but he continued to put out the very things he was in hiding for producing in the first place.  He is another person I do not always agree with, for that matter. 

I do have more of a point to this, but I'm having a hard time collecting my thoughts into something coherent at the moment.  I will do so later after a bit more coffee and probably a sandwich.    I did not want to give the impression I was ignoring valid points, though.

7 AFW, you are now discussing some different though related issues. Your original comment came off as a criticism of Norris changing her name and hiding unlike Ali or Manji. Now you are also talking about the foolishness of Norris' actions. She was utterly naive. Her biggest mistake was backing down. Too late. At no point would I describe her as being heroic. And I do not know if I'd behave that much differently if I were in her shoes at this point. Terror and clear thinking often don't mix.

When I say, "Remember Molly Norris," I don't mean to make her a role model. Rather, I intend to make people think about free speech. What I think of Norris or Manji or Rushdie (not much) is irrelevant; what matters is that they have a right to free speech. Saying dumb things should not be a capital crime. Who is worse, the speakers or their would-be slayers? Let's not lose sight of who the real bad guys are and what their ideology is.

"For someone to feel they have to go into witness protection because of making such a mild gesture, frankly, is beyond appalling. Her freedoms and rights are being trampled on. We really can’t let this kind of thing stand or the fanatics will try to intimidate everyone to bowing before their faith."

- James Hudnall

8 Apparently, during the late 1930s there was considerable pressure on writers/journalists in Britain to avoid saying anything that might offend Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill spoke of the unendurable..sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure…In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands” which “may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty.” A “policy of submission” would entail “restrictions” upon freedom of speech and the press. “Indeed, I hear it said sometimes now that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians.

Churchill’s concern was not just a theoretical one. Following the German takeover of Czechoslovakia, photographs were available showing the plight of Czech Jews, dispossessed by the Nazis and wandering the roads of eastern Europe. Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, refused to run any of them: it wouldn’t help the victims, he told his staff, and if they were published, Hitler would be offended.

In my view, a very hard line should be taken against those who threaten Americans, including arrest for those within our borders, pressure for extradition or local trial for those residing in friendly countries, and Hellfire missile attacks (or whatever works best) for those being protected by rogue regimes. Obama, of course, is much more likely to focus on restricting the speech of Americans.

9 David, you reminded me of this article by Iranian ex-Moslem Ali Sina:

Charlie Chaplin knew the great power of ridicule. A strong opponent of racism, in 1937 Chaplin decided to make a film on the dangers of fascism. As Chaplin pointed out in his autobiography, attempts were made to stop the film being made: “Halfway through making The Great Dictator I began receiving alarming messages from United Artists. They had been advised by the Hays Office that I would run into censorship trouble. Also the English office was very concerned about an anti-Hitler picture and doubted whether it could be shown in  Britain. But I was determined to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at.” (Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography, 1964)  

Just like in the thirties, today there are many useful idiots who defend Islam, apply censorship and try to silence its critics. These fools must be put to shame too.

1

So it'd be better to lose come Nov. ??? Brilliant.

2 Tim, the point is not to lose. It's to

"adopt a principled platform that mainly cuts entitlements and other federal spending. They [Republicans] should do that whether or not it is a winning formula for 2010. If they win on that platform, they have a mandate to cut which will head off the disaster. If, as I expect, the public is not ready for that, let the Democrats keep control of the Congress. Federal spending is a runaway train. Let it fly the Democrat flag as it runs off a cliff if the American people will not support fiscally responsible Republican Party."

Simply winning isn't enough. Being the other brand only gets you so far.

3 The Democratic Party in its current state is a threat not only to the American economy, but to the civil liberties of all Americans and to the democratic process itself. We cannot afford to have a Dem-controlled Congress combined with a Dem-controlled White House for another two years.

4 Members of the Democratic Party were elected by "the democratic process." There is no guarantee that what the majority wants is good for them - or for us.  Many Americans do not understand economics and do not care about "civil liberties." They just want "freebies" that we pay for. So they vote Democratic. Willingly. Happily. Obama, Pelosi, et al. did not just walk into Washington and take over. They won elections because Americans want socialism. Conservatives focus their frustration on Washington partly because they cannot face the hard reality that their fellow Americans in fifty states - not just a handful of Alinsky and Ayers types, but millions and millions of regular people - are socialists. Just as 9/11 did not open the eyes of Americans blind to jihad, the fall of the USSR did not open the eyes of Americans blinded by the glare of the red star. 69 million Americans voted for Obama. Not 69 radicals from Berkeley, not 690 tenured professors of Victim Studies, but 69 million people, including co-workers, neighbors, friends, family, and yes, even Republicans and libertarians voted for the One. And many will vote for him again. Or for some other redistributive candidate. They empower those who would ruin their country. They feel no regrets. They feel only the bliss of superiority over bitter gun-clingers ... and our cash in their pockets. Can they ever be converted to capitalism? We must face the possibility - the probability - that they cannot. What then?

5 Amritas, remember that many of those 69 million people are still totally dependent on the old media for their news and analysis. I am constantly amazed when talking with people who are not blog readers about *how much they just don't know.* Seems to me our odds of survival would be a lot better if we could  break the stranglehold that TV and Hollywood film has on the minds of so many people. (It's very odd, by the way, to see university professors and subliterate entertainers on the same side of so many issues)

Also, I think Obama's economic views, although heavily influenced by socialism, differ from it in important ways. Under socialism, the government actually *runs* factories, oil drilling platforms, etc, and hence can be held accountable for  their performance. Accountability is something that is utterly alien to this man: he would much rather have authority to badger and complain but have someone else actually be responsible. Really closer to economic fascism or "corporatism" than to socialism per se.

1 I should have mentioned that I got it from David Foster who linked to it in this post. My apologies to David.

2 That is a GREAT post!  

1

I think infant mortality rates might actually increase. The US has more pre-term births than many other countries, and we have a lower mortality rate than most European countries for babies born before 37 weeks.

The argument is that preterm births are the cause of our higher infant mortality rate, and these can be avoided by improved prenatal care.

They may or may not. But I wonder if any cuts will be made to how preterm babies are cared for. I remember finding the blog of a woman who gave birth at 25 weeks while on vacation in FL. She was thanking her lucky stars that she went to one hospital's ER over another one, because the other hospital had a non-intervention clause/rule if the baby was born before 26 weeks. Luckily the hospital she went to didn't....and he received all the medical care he needed. And fast forward a few years later, he had no deficiencies at all, no hearing issues, no sight issues, no internal issues. Nada. But the other hospital wouldn't have tried to keep him alive. Crazy.

There will be some rules made, and I doubt it will be a carte blanche to do whatever is necessary.

2 Sarah, I'm glad you've been able to find time to read. What was the other article? CVG, I agree that "here will be some rules made." The government is all about adding rules. The 3,000-page bill is just the beginning.

1 I'm linking to this. Thanks for passing it on. 

1 I like how Chris Edwards didn't pull any punches with Bush: e.g,

I can't think of a single crisis that occurred on President Bush's watch that the Bush-Rove team didn't have an interventionist and big-spending response to.

I'm surprised that spending didn't skyrocket after 9/11 and the early years of the Afghan and Iraq Wars. The steepest climb is in 2008 - bigger than under Obama in 2009.

As for the other article, it's one thing to read about the phenomenon it deals with, but it's another to see it. Is there any country in the Muslim world where women have become freer in recent years? Here's a quick example of the opposite trend from Afghanistan:

Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance

There's more, but I'll stop there.

The article says the law contradicts the Afghan constitution .... or does it? It's a religious law "backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni" and the constitution says,

No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam in Afghanistan.

1 More crazy facts:

From 2004 through 2008, the [law] field grew less than 1% per year on average, going from 735,000 people making a living as attorneys to just 760,000, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics postulating that the field will grow at the same rate through 2016. Taking into account retirements, deaths and that the bureau's data is pre-recession, the number of new positions is likely to be fewer than 30,000 per year. That is far fewer than what's needed to accommodate the 45,000 juris doctors graduating from U.S. law schools each year.

This jobs gap is even more problematic given the rising cost of tuition [...] a recent Law School Survey of Student Engagement found that nearly one-third of respondents said they would owe about $120,000.

Such debt would be manageable if a world of lucrative jobs awaited the newly minted attorneys, but this is not the case.

What is the attraction of law?

1. Power. How many wannabe Obamas, Hillarys, or even Bidens are among "the 45,000 juris doctors graduating from U.S. law schools each year"?

2. Money. Ilya Somin posted a rebuttal to the above article:

Even if lawyers’ pay were to go down significantly, they would still be near the top of the income distribution, and would still be making more money than liberal arts graduates without science, engineering, or math skills could earn in most other fields.

Words = power and money! Obama is the epitome of our rule-by-lawyer society. I was going to say that smooth talking can lead to success, but he doesn't even have to talk all that well!

After all, the demand for lawyers is driven by the scope and complexity of law. Given the growth of government, the expansion of regulation of many types, and the increasing complexity of most areas of law, it is likely that the clients will have more need of legal services over time.

In short, lawyer-rulers make more laws. And you wonder why bills are so long and unreadable.

Let's have million-page-long bills to stimulate the economy!

Here's our future. A caste of lawyers saying nonsense to make the masses vote for them. Oh wait, that's what we already have now. Never mind.

2 One of the first comments under the Somin article expands on my points. Only one of the 59 comments after it addresses it:

And, by some strange coincidence, the complexity of the law is driven by the scope of the laws written by...lawyers.

And, based on a post a couple days ago, they’ve apparently found a perfect, politically correct means to do so, by denying the politically incorrect ones the ability to get licensed.

You guys are in the perfect catbird’s position. You can generate your own demand by having your compatriots in the legislatures write more incomprehensible and likely unnecessary laws, and the left gets the added bonus of being able to stop anyone with differing worldviews from being in on the game.

And you wonder why lawyers rank near the bottom in the public’s perceptions of their ethics? Interestingly, there are a number of categories made up mostly of lawyers that were ranked the same as or even lower than the generic “lawyer” category; state and local officeholders, congress, and lobbyists.

I found the "post a couple of days ago" that Geokstr was referring to:

Many law students (not all, but very many) are already widely known to be very cautious about expressing views that they think the majority of their classmates, or even a vocal minority, may find offensive. The threat of social ostracism and subtle but career-jeopardizing retaliation by professors and even classmates, who will soon become potential colleagues and employers, is quite powerful. (Some such threat of retaliation through social pressure may even be good, though it always has potential costs to open discussion.) But when a few comments — whether deliberate or said in the heat of debate — can lead to the denial of a bar card (after you’ve taken out $150,000+ in student loans), how many students would feel safe [...] How many would feel sure, with their professional futures on the line, that of course no hostile low-profile university committee would treat the comments as “outrageous,” “smearing,” or “harass[ing]”?

The ruling caste must maintain its purity.

3

I agree with much of what he says; however, the $5 trillion number sounds wrong. Try some simple math:

Say there are a million lawyers in the country and the average billing is $200K/year (which is probably high, because there are a lot of lawyers who don't do all that well, financially speaking)...that would be "only" $200 million, which is 1/5 of $1 trillion.

Similar logic could be applied to consultants.

In any event, there are way too many people engaged in unproductive and what economists call "rent-seeking" activities...and a lot of them supported Obama because they knew, consciously or subconsciously, that it was in their financial self-interest to do so. See my post <a href="http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_photoncourier_archive.html#4394955345069278791">paying higher taxes can be very profitable</a>.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

Sorry for ugly link..should have previewed. Try this:

Paying Higher Taxes Can Be Very Profitable:

http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_photoncourier_archive.html#4394955345069278791

 

5 david, your post reinforces my comments. One of my favorite passages is

Many of the individuals making $100-$170K in government probably couldn’t learn to control air traffic or develop new drugs if their lives depended on it…rather, their skill is in manipulating language, in constructing verbal formulations along the approved patterns [cf. Geokstr above on PC in law], and their activity is primarily about the transferring and absorption of wealth.

I wrote that "smooth talking can lead to success" - but success at what? You answered that question: "transferring and absorption of wealth."

I wrote that the attraction of law is power and money, and you wrote,

By tightly coupling the pursuit of money to the pursuit of political influence and power, Obama/Pelosi/Reid are doing great harm to the spirit of America as well as to its economy.

But it's not just those three individuals. The spirit of America is the sum of our spirits, and an entire class believes in - and benefits from - this coupling.

6

Amritas..."smooth talking can lead to success"...you might enjoy this old post on The Smart-Talk Trap:

http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_photoncourier_archive.html#112214675699901548

...also this more recent post on The Smart-People Crowd:

http://rwcg.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/the-smart-people-crowd/

 

 

 

7 And then, there are those of us who have a uterus and responsibilities outside a job & are, apparently, too old to practice law for money--unless we want to be a solo practitioner.  Thank goodness for pro bono work or my $90,000 law degree would be worth $0.  /sarcasm

Maybe all those 'overlawyers' could back the hell off & give some of us who just want to write wills & help people adopt kids some room.

1 I wonder why he didn't open with this episode. Maybe Ayn Rand and Atlas aren't as well known as I think they are.

Although I may not be able to see his show, I can see his site which includes blog posts and columns. But I can't see the video clips!

2 Amritas -- He said on his blog that they decided to go with global warming first since it was a few days before Copenhagen.

3 Ah, Copenhagen. The ultimate moment of climate justice. I had already forgotten about it. 1,200 limos and 140 private planes for ... what exactly?

I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Denmark this morning is the attack on Kurt Westergaard.

4   Oh, cool -- living at my parents' house, we actually have cable!  And our own VCR!  What news station is Stossel on?

1 Very insightful. Well, actually just common sense, but that's pretty novel anymore.

Thanks for the link, I appreciate it.

Nicki

1 Surprising to see this from someone like Bob Herbert.

2 Shelby Steele wrote (emphasis mine):

I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there—all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.

Willful blindness is a form of stupidity. And giving Obama a pass because of his race is racist.

He aspires to be "post-ideological," "post-racial" and "post-partisan," which is to say that he defines himself by a series of "nots"—thus implying that being nothing is better than being something.

Perfect for a nihilist populace.

He always wore the bargainer's mask—winning the loyalty and gratitude of whites by flattering them with his racial trust: I will presume that you are not a racist if you will not hold my race against me.

Racial 'bargains' are bogus.

Many whites still love Mr. Cosby, but they worry now that expressing their affection openly may identify them with his ideas, thus putting them at risk of being seen as racist.

This is the depth of Omerican insanity: whites agreeing with a black man about how to uplift blacks is 'racist'.

david, I agree. I didn't expect to see Sarah linking to Herbert! He asked,

Can you believe it?

I can't believe he wrote this. Is this the beginning of a liberal revolt against Obama? Nah.

3 "Willful blindness is a form of stupidity. And giving Obama a pass because of his race is racist."

They weren't worried about being stupid, they were worried about appearing stupid. Likewise to racist.

4 David, you're right to specify that they are more interested in appearance. In whether other people think they are right as opposed to actually being right. Ayn Rand described their world in The Fountainhead (emphasis mine):

A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no thought – and so on, Peter, around the globe. Since all must agree with all. [Notice how Leftists love the word 'consensus'.] [...]  A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money, but for that headless monster – prestige. The approval of his fellows – their good opinion – the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to hold no opinion [of their own].

[...]

A world with its motor cut off and a single heart, pumped by hand. My hand – and the hands of a few, a very few other men like me [fictional MSM icon Ellsworth Toohey].

Whose hands pump the heart of our PC world?

1 Who but the Mindless indeed!

2

If mindlessness were a power source, perpetual motion would be a reality ... unless the government were in charge of an alternative energy program. Then we'd hear demands to fund a noble cause, even if the program produced no results.

The government is a virus for wealth and productivity. It wastes and wastes and wastes, and then it expects you to celebrate it for doing so.

- onlyaliberal.com

Why would you entrust your health to a virus?

3 From the link article about Obama (FOXNews.com): Obama's first-year budget, adjusted for inflation, is about five times that. - I hope Obama knows what he is doing right now. First year budget, five times more than his predecessors, that a huge number. So, I just hope he not just waste the money for nothing. If not, something like gggsss will be more meaningful than what he is doing. Btw, Merry Christmas...

1 cut Medicare by $470 billion but use that money to fund a new entitlement rather than to fix Medicare itself

I find it sad that conservatives criticize one socialist program by saying that it hurts another socialist program. Even Kristol didn't dare to criticize the third rail (via an earlier post of yours):

So less access and lower quality is a very real possible consequence of this legislation [due to reductions in Medicare spending]. This is a point critics of the bill cannot allow to be lost in all the hubbub.

If even Republicans dread Medicare cuts, who will cut it?

If any Republican gives the slightest hint of reforming Medicare, the Democrats immediately smirk and ask, “So you’re going to cut Medicare?” The Republican instantly swears eternal allegiance to never cutting Medicare.

Medicare will be cut all right, but by the domestic and international bond markets who are currently financing it, not Congress or Obama.

2 I like how the comments bar on the right fails to distinguish italic for nonitalic text. Right now it says,

"Amritas cut Medicare by $470 billion"

If only I had such power!

John T. Reed proposed that

All government health care programs should be ended including Medicare, Medicaid, VA [even VA!? - but see below], Congress, and so on. Why? The government does not have enough money to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. They have enough money to pay for the VA and Congress, but those are unfair to the taxpayers. The VA should only pay for line-of-duty veteran injuries or illnesses, not all veteran medical care [so I guess he wants to mend, not end VA]. The government is even more inefficient—far more inefficient—than insurance companies and private hospitals.

People should pay for procedures other than major ones out of their own pocket. That is how we handle other necessities like food, clothing, cars, pets, farm animals, and shelter. It will result in the lowest costs because when people pay out of their own pocket, they shop around for the best prices thereby triggering downward competitive pressures on prices. The current high cost problem stems from costs being paid by people other than the patients. The system I am advocating is approximately the way Americans got health care in the 1950s, early 1960s, and before. It was not the intolerable disaster advocates of Obama care claim. I was there. So were you or your ancestors unless you emigrated here since then.

1 Based on the article, I observed that they were dealing with college students.  Undergrads aren't exactly known for their decision making skills.

Especially in an ever-increasing competitive environment like computer science, with far more jobs being shipped abroad, and 22% unemployment at home, I'd venture to say that the majority of the unemployed female computer science majors wouldn't care if they worked in an office decorated with inflatable penises.  Most would be thrilled to have a job, even if that meant when they watched "the Office" they thought of it longingly as a Dream Job.

As far as morons--no.  Wimmin are way smarter than that.  Superficial... well, there's a reason the fairer sex prefers jewelry and other shiny baubles as gifts and signs of love.  Cost=ability to provide, shiny=demonstrates that ability to others. 

I'll stick to phasers and canned bacon, sociology and psychology aren't real science, anyway.

2

I can see the day coming where my Darth Tater will be considered a sign of a hostile work environment.

As long as they don't come after my red Swingline...

3 Code Monkey, staplers are Europpressive and must go!

Seriously, the story has Leftist premises:

Geeks drive girls out of computer science

The title makes it sound as if sexist (male) geeks are telling women to not get into computer science and spoil their boys' club. But it is actually the attitudes of the women that are at fault. A more accurate title might be "Women dislike geekery and avoid computer science". But that doesn't fit the script:

- men are eeeevil

- women's (anti-geek) attitudes are a given

Let's turn the tables. Suppose there is a 'feminine' profession with few men. Most men think the environment associated with that profession is too 'girly'. Would that situation be described as "Women drive men away from (profession)"? I doubt it.

All the above assumes that gender parity is the ideal. Is it? Does everything have to be split 50/50?

Nature is unbalanced. Diverse. We are not all the same. We are all good at different things, like different things, etc. Conservatives recognize the way things are and are reluctant to change it.

Leftists reject the status quo and want to impose unnatural equality through redistribution. More females must do male things, and vice versa. Since Leftists can't win against nature, Big Brother must become even bigger to battle our biology.

4 Amritas -- I think there are professions like your turned-tables hypothetical, namely nursing and being a kindergarten teacher.  Few males do those jobs.

5 Sarah, both nursing and school teaching came to mind when I wrote my comment, but I didn't use those examples because I don't think of hospitals and schools as 'girly' places. Male doctors work in the same environment as mostly female nurses. And elementary schools don't look like life-size Barbie houses, though I haven't been in one since the early 80s. Maybe they're all painted pink now. So yes, those professions are mostly female, but their environments lack an equivalent of the geek factor that turns off the opposite sex.

6 Amritas -- True, which is why I jokingly wrote that women are "superficial morons."  If you will turn down a career field simply because someone might have a Star Trek figurine in the cubicle next to you, you are a moron. 

1 What's the opposite of progress? Congress. 

2 David, the best humor is the most truthful.

If approving a federal budget is Congress' "most important function", shouldn't taxpayers demand that Congresspeople have economic expertise? Almost half of Congress consists of lawyers. Understandable, since lawyers by definition are legal experts, and Congress makes laws. But how many Congresspeople have expertise in both economics and law? What does expertise mean?

I define expertise very broadly as simply knowing specific inputs that produce certain outputs. That is, if you do X, Y will happen.

The world is one gigantic economics lab. Has Congress studied it? Do they understand what Y will result from X? What if X is a 2,000-page health care bill? What if the input is so massive that it is beyond human comprehension? This is the danger of socialism. Incomprehensible input times elite decisions in the name of the people equals disaster. Capitalism empowers the individual to make decisions based on smaller amounts of data that he can understand. There will always be error, so we must aim for error reduction, not error magnification. The state is the ultimate error multiplier.

1 This issue is one that Neal Boortz and I never differ on--government schools & their founding mission statement of creating people who would not be great thinkers, just good workers.

And, we're far enough into this that the teachers aren't even really that literate in history unless they have educated themselves.

2 To put this into perspective, how many Americans would have done well on this test in previous decades or the last century?

My guess is that knowledge of facts has only slightly declined (in other words, it's never been high) whereas values have become more socialist. Somebody a century ago wouldn't have known a whole lot about the American Revolution, but he might not think "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" had anything to do with its principles (even if he had never even heard of Marx).

Given a choice, I would rather have someone with American principles and without historical knowledge than the reverse. There are Leftists who know about the American Revolution and American history in general in great detail. Yet they voted for Obama. Rightists do not have a monopoly on Revolutionary knowledge. Shared knowledge of facts does not necessarily lead to shared interpretations of those facts.

Results also revealed that 90 percent of Americans think that knowledge of the American Revolution and its principles is very important

I don't think piety on paper is meaningful. People say whatever they think the tester wants to hear. In real life, nearly all of these people get along just fine without knowing anything about the American Revolution despite their claims to the contrary. The remaining 10 percent may be honest.

If Americans were really "yearning to know", the commercial networks would be showing Revolutionary War shows, RW books would outsell Harry Potter and The Secret, etc.

89 percent of Americans expected to pass a test on basic knowledge of the American Revolution, but scored an average of 44 percent.

Inflated self-esteem is a major product of American 'education'.

Joanne Jacobs' comments section has further discussion.

1 So here we are at my house, sitting at our separate computers calling back and forth to each other, have you seen this, or this? and sending links that get more and more outrageous. Such as this
http://lacoastpost.com/blog/?p=16802 
And if you link and read that it takes you to this from the latest Nature.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Oh, the arrogance of it all, the condescension is embarrassing.

2 Ruth -- Here's another one, called The Dog Ate Global Warming:

*****
So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.

Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.
*****

3 The original article on The Dog Ate Global Warming: was dated Sept 23, and has been amended but it tells me more and more that this was a whistle blower.  There has to be someone with a conscience in there somewhere. That would have been around the time someone was shopping those emails around to reporters who took no action.