Current Events

A Libertarian Moment in the US?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , , , ,

I think you’re seeing a growth of self-conscious libertarianism. The end of the Bush years and the beginning of the Obama years really lit a fire under the always-simmering small-government attitudes in America. The TARP, the bailouts, the stimulus, Obamacare, all of that sort of inspired the Tea Party. Meanwhile, you’ve simultaneously got libertarian movements going on in regard to gay marriage and marijuana. And I’ll tell you something else that I think is always there. The national media were convinced that we would be getting a gun-control bill this year, that surely the Newtown shooting would overcome the general American belief in the Second Amendment right to bear arms. And then they pushed on the string and it didn’t go anywhere. Support for gun control is lower today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I think that’s another sign of America’s innate libertarianism.

This is from David Boaz, who is being interviewed by Molly Ball for the Atlantic. Read the whole interview. There is stuff on Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marxism, the politics of welfare and some recent SCOTUS rulings.

There is a lot to be pessimistic about, but I can see a more libertarian US in 15 or 20 years, provided we do something about ObamaCare and Social Security. One thing we must be very vigilant about is the inevitable push for a more isolated society. Protectionist tendencies are probably going to get stronger if the economy continues to perform as dismally as it has been, and protectionism is the bane of prosperity and cooperation.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , ,
  1. On the Problematic Political Authority of Property Rights; Kevin Vallier, a philosopher, reviews a recent book on market anarchism (be sure to check out the ‘comments’ thread as well)
  2. Compton as the Bellwether for Urban America; interesting article from a graduate student at UCSD
  3. Rand Paul is no “isolationist,” contrary to the opinion of the ill-informed
  4. Liberty’s lost decade; the Economist decides that enough is enough
  5. Tyler Cowen’s ‘international trade’ reading list

A Cheaper, Stronger Army?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , ,

How can this be so? Doesn’t a “strong defense” for a hegemonic power necessarily entail a large military budget and the capacity to police potential rivals?

Of course not. I’ve argued as much here before (numerous times), but it appears that more and more people on the American Right are beginning to come around to my view. The latest example comes from an op-ed by a conglomerate of retired and still-serving military officers in the pages of the National Interest.

It appears that only neoconservatives (former Democrats) and most Democrats still cling to the notion that our military needs to be large in order to be strong. I don’t agree with everything the op-ed recommends. I think the Army should be liquidated entirely and that the special forces components of the Army should be shuffled into the other branches of the military. There is no need to occupy foreign lands these days and hence no need for an Army.

Nevertheless, it is very refreshing to see members of the military embrace the inevitable and start proposing solutions that deal with budget cuts and the post-Cold War world.

Update: what is very interesting to note is that the various Right-wings in states that depend on American protection are very opposed to notion of a leaner, meaner American military. The notion that Right-wings tend to be a bit more nationalistic than their counterparts on the Left is, it would appear, a rather superficial one. After all, how can one really be more chauvinist in his social beliefs when he actively calls for another polity to protect his lands?

The Obama Presidency as the Pinnacle of Progressivism

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Recently, I have been seeing a lot of libertarians tsk tsking  progressives for pinning their hopes on somebody like President Obama. For example, in a thread initiated by this article by Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic, an anonymous libertarian stated that Obama was “no progressive at all.”

Yet this is untrue. If anything, the Obama administration represents the pinnacle of Progressivism: “big” government taking care of the forgotten man in all aspects of his life. Self-styled progressives feigning disgust in the current administration’s dirty laundry need not do so. Either they implicitly endorse the authoritarianism of the Obama administration and pretend not to in polite company, or they don’t fully understand the moral and intellectual foundations of the ideology they purport to adhere to.

The Arab Crack-Up: Are New States on the Way?

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , ,

Let us hope so, but I won’t hold my breath. Sharmine Narwani thinks otherwise. She argues that both Western states and “the locals” are now looking at more decentralization in the Middle East as a viable option:

The Mideast will one day need to make region-wide border corrections, but to be successful, it must do so entirely within an indigenously determined process. The battles heating up in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere are a manifestation of a larger fight between two “blocs” that seek entirely different regional outcomes – one of these being the borders of a new Middle East.

The rest of the article is fairly atrocious, but it goes without saying that she should read (ha ha) my musings on how to go about decentralizing in a cool, calm and collected manner. Here is the shorter version of my argument: the West should emphatically not go around breaking up the states of the Middle East into smaller ones, but it should recognize breakaway regions as soon as they, uh, break away. This’ll give these states a little bit of breathing room on the international scene and deter older states from trying to reclaim their old territory.

Не все так просто в сказочной стране

Evgenii Grigorev Current Events , , ,

Привет друзья! У меня для вас, пусть и с некоторым запозданием, феерические новости с родины водки, медведей и балалаек. Как известно, в каждой нормальной стране есть Правительство и Оппозиция. Те, кто согласен, и те, кто против. Наша страна ничуть не хуже всех прочих стран мира, так что недовольные текущим политическим режимом есть и в России. Наиболее популярный деятель, как многие наверно знают (его имя довольно известное и часто мелькает в зарубежных газетах как “лидера сопротивления” и “последнего оплота демократического общества без жуликов и воров”) – это Навальный. Лицо и двигатель оппозиции и сопротивления текущему политическому курсу. Так вот, его осудили на пять лет по какой-то статье о воровстве, которое он совершил много лет назад. Фактически, нашему оппозиционному движению отрубили голову. А всадник без головы существует только в сказках! Многие будут утверждать, мол, осудили за дело, так как действительно украл заготовленный лес на большую сумму денег. Но уж больно силен политический аромат у всей этой каши. Безусловно, осудить лидера оппозиции на длительный срок – это выгодно текущему правительству, особенно учитывая, что Навальный помимо своей оппозиционной деятельности баллотировался в мэры Москвы. Параллельно выяснилось, что предвыборная кампания Навального финансируется из каких-то странных источников, не имеющих отношения к России. Дело в том, что в нашей стране есть закон, по которому все те, кто участвуют в выборах на какой-нибудь руководящий государственный пост не должны иметь источников финансирования предвыборной кампании из-за границы. А тут получается, что весь наш чистый, непорочный и “несправедливо осужденный” оппозиционер, пример для подражания, не такой уж и чистый перед законом.

В общем, совершенно все перепуталось. Какая сейчас в нашей стране ситуация по факту:

1. Полумертвая оппозиция во главе с осужденным Навальным

2. Охлаждение отношений с Америкой по причине бегства Сноудена

3. Несколько сомнительных приговоров по резонансным уголовным делам

Таким образом, разброд и шатание в стране. Я не знаю, что из всего этого может произойти. Народ сомневается в правильности решений правительства, сопротивляться уже вроде как нечем. Есть замечательная русская поговорка: “беда никогда не приходит одна”. Вот так и есть все на самом деле.

Foreign Languages and Self-Delusion in America

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , , ,

I was going to write a book about the topic of foreign language acquisition and about the false stories connected to it. At least, I was going to write a longish essay. It does not look like it’s going to happen: I am too old; I have too many unwritten books already; I am slow; and there are too many women needing my attention.*

First, the context, I believe that every nation has its own specific, common form of mental health challenge. I don’t mean a kind of mental health problem unknown elsewhere; I mean a kind of mental health problem more common in the country of focus than elsewhere. Usually, it’s not a severe mental illness because, if it were, the nation would not have survived. It’s more like a neurosis than a form of psychosis.

So, as an example taken at random, the French form of insanity is the widespread belief that their nation is important in the world. Note that there is a sort of germ of truth in this delusion: France was an important country in the eighteenth century. Then, came the Revolution and then came Napoleon and then, the s— hit the fan and it has never stopped since.

There are several such American delusions. The most important – because it is so widespread as to be nearly universal among the US-born – concerns the mastery of foreign languages: Native-born Americans who were nearly all monolingual, or semi-lingual, until recently**, strongly believe that the world is full of people who know many languages. On the heels of this, they also secretly believe that- had they been given a fair chance – they too would be multilingual.

In support of my allegation, I bring the fact that popular authors, best-selling writers, take it for granted that American readers will not experience as a bump in the road of story telling any absurd assertion concerning language mastery. Below, an illustrative anecdote.

On p. 30 of his popular action novel Choke Point, best-selling author Ridley Pearson shows us a Chinese heroine who speaks routinely in Dutch and who, he mentions casually, also speaks “better than she write”: Italian, Russian and Arabic. Fortunately, she is also “fluent” in German. Count them; that’s six languages. In the remainder of the novel, she communicates quickly in English with one of her buddies. That’s seven language, which seems to be, somehow, the magic number.

There is no such person anywhere in the world. There is no one who is at ease speaking seven languages. There is no one who speaks seven languages even moderately well. It’s an urban myth. (That is, “speak” beyond saying, “Bring me more beer, please.” I can learn to say that in nearly any language in ten minutes. This makes me multilingual?)

On the next page of the same book, an Egyptian overhears someone say something in Farsi and reports it to the police.

Here is the problem: The Egyptian’s native language has to be Arabic. He might understand Farsi, but he is no more likely to than I. In fact, he is a little less likely than I am to understand Farsi. Farsi is related to English, and to French (and to Icelandic and to Bengali). It would be easier for me to learn Farsi than it would be for the Egyptian. Farsi is related to Arabic only in the trivial sense that all human languages are related, somewhere. I suspect that what confused Ridley is the fact that Farsi is written in a modified Arabic script. It does not mean that the languages sound alike at all. Vietnamese is written in a modified Roman alphabet. It does not sound like Latin (or like French, or like Italian). And, by the way, modern Turkish is written in a modified Swedish version of the pan-European Roman alphabet. This does not imply that Swedes can eavesdrop on conversations between Istanbul rug salesmen.

Of course, it’s easy to forgive this novelist for his rank and deep linguistic ignorance (which he spreads, by the way, to his millions of receptive, unwary readers). The question is: Why does he go there at all? The statement about “Italian, Russian, and Arabic” plays no further part in the novel. He uses it only to paint a portrait. It’s a false portrait. Does this big-time, rich novelist not know that he knows nothing or little on the topic of languages? And why does he want to pretend that he does ? Does he pretend to himself or only to his readers. My guess is: to himself. It’s only a guess but I have been around the likes of him. Incidentally, the book is well written is most other respects. The author is no slouch in his own language, English.

This American false belief is contagious. Once, at a social function, another guest insisted on sitting near me during dinner. He wanted to speak French to me. He spoke to me throughout the dinner. Soon, I tried to get away but I failed. The sounds he made resembled French. However, I had no idea what he was saying. I was like a make-believe language children invent among themselves. The strange thing about this self-deluded middle-aged man is that I am sure he was at least bilingual.

He was a Hungarian who had lived in the US for forty years. He spoke Hungarian (Magyar) as a matter of course. His occupation required that he write at least simple English. He spoke English well but with an accent (as do I). When he advertised his electrician’s services on the radio, he mentioned that he was “fluent in six languages.” He did this although multilingualism was not relevant to the services he offered. (In my area, English and Spanish are relevant, and little else.) As a bilingual, he should have known better. His belief belied common sense and it reflected his environment. This immigrant was so well assimilated into American culture that he had made his silly beliefs against which his own life history should have vaccinated him.

Mastery of several languages had become a part of the Hungarian immigrant’s persona. He was so deeply self-deluded that he had no fear of getting caught in a lie (as when he spoke “French” to me for more than an hour.) I am positive this man’s delusion grew here, in America. It does not seem to exist in Europe. On the contrary, Europeans tend to deprecate heir knowledge of foreign languages. I remember going to a pharmacy in Helsinki, Finland. The pharmacist wore a little British flag and a German flag on his white smock. He detected my accent in English and soon switched to quite serviceable French. The point of this nearly pointless anecdote is that he did not wear a French flag on his lapel. He did not think he deserved to.

Yet, he gave me the right medication. At least, I am here.

In America, otherwise honest people routinely lie about their knowledge of foreign languages. I patronize a very middle-class coffee shop where the barristas and I play light flirtatious games involving the French language. I will say, “Bonjour, Liz; tu es si belle aujourd’hui.” (“Good morning, Liz, you are so beautiful today.”) After a while, the whole thing becomes predictable to the girl behind the counter who answers without missing a step, “Ah, merci.” Often, guys in the line – apparently challenged in their manhood – will volunteer that they don’t know French, “only Spanish.” (Hey, this is California!) Being retired, I have time to act the bitch so, usually, I engage them in Spanish. Invariably, they muter and actually step back as if in physical retreat, as if I were threatening them, as if I was about to bitch-slap them too! An astounding percentage of the time, they declare that their Spanish is “rusty.” Apparently, they prefer a stock, accepted answer to being caught in a childish lie about one’s knowledge.

I am describing here. I am not sure of the causes of this peculiarly American form of collective insanity. And remember what you read above: I have not faulted anyone for his ignorance of foreign languages. That would be another topic altogether. I have not even come near it. The present topic is a form of mild but persistent collective insanity. And keep in mind that simple incompetence does not come close to explaining the falsehoods: I couldn’t bat against a Little League dropout but I don’t go around pretending my batting is pretty good though a little rusty. And I don’t pretend I know a bunch of Gitanes-smoking Frenchmen who can bat the hell out of the ballpark.

There is a sort of mystery there.

THIS WAS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

*Some readers will wonder what my qualifications are to discuss this subject and be too polite to ask. Here they are:

I am able to work in French as well as in English. This includes writing. (I am a sociologist by training and a short story writer by avocation.) Some of my work is published in French, most is in English. I speak Spanish convincingly so long as a the conversation is simple and concrete. I would be unable to teach anything in Spanish without further training. I write in Spanish but badly. I read that language with no trouble. Like all well-educated French speakers with some aplomb, I guess easily at written Portuguese and Italian. Speaking either is touch-and-go. Writing either is not even a no-go. (People with “some aplomb” are those who know what “aplomb “ means.) Like many French-born men, I know enough German so that I might be appointed kapo and so, get double rations if the need arose.

**“Until recently” because there are now many America-born children of Spanish-speaking immigrants with various levels of competence in Spanish (Most can speak, few can read; the number who can write seems to me minuscule.)

US Allies in Egypt: Economically Adept or Not?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics ,

It also isn’t clear that the secular crowd is economically more adept than the Muslim faithful. Socialism has been a hard-to-kick drug for Egypt’s legions of nominally college-educated youth, who came of age expecting government jobs. Capitalism has probably got firmer roots among devout Muslims, where Islamic law teaches a certain respect for private property.

This comes from Reuel Marc Gerecht in the Wall Street Journal. This is something that hawks in Washington (and Santa Cruz) have yet to confront. Interventionists – advocates of robust government programs in foreign affairs – want democracy in the Middle East, though they have yet to define democracy for those of us who are skeptics of overseas intervention.

What we do know is that there are two major currents of thought about governance in the Middle East today: national socialism and Islamism. The national socialists get their education from the universities. The Islamists from religious schools. None are friendly towards democracy.

Here is the upside though: democracy is not the end all be all. Liberty is. In fact, democracy is a byproduct of liberty. By liberty I mean, of course, a regime that protects individual rights (including private property), adheres to a system of checks and balances, and is generally favorable towards free trade. By trying to form alliances with various national socialist or Islamist regimes over the past three or four decades, the United States has continually shot itself in the foot. This is because Washington has made the simple mistake of confusing democracy for freedom.

If hawks are really concerned with helping other people (and it is not clear that they are), then it would be wise on their part to slow down and actually start looking at the factions of the Middle East and what they advocate. One thing has become crystal clear over the past 25 years, though, and that is that virtually no political faction in the Middle East – from Rabat to Tel Aviv to Tehran – is friendly to liberalism. This does not bode well for anybody.

Bombing these regions, and supporting dictators in these regions – in the name of liberalism to boot – only makes this hostility that much worse.

Words are Deeds for Young Americans

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , ,

I keep wondering why I don’t see or hear young people react to the burden newly imposed on them – and forever – by the implementation of Obamacare. It seems to me that, by and large, they don’t know about it. In addition, they tend to harbor an all-around cynicism of such completeness that they deliberately tune out anything negative as if it were completely expected. I except young Christians from this generalization.

To raise this question is to ask why president Obama continues at such a high level of popularity. (Although his ratings are sinking, they are till high by most standards.) The best answer I can give to this question is so simple, it took me an embarrassingly long time to grasp it. It is that the young, and many others who are not young, think that words are deeds.

Recently, I spent a little talk time with two young women I knew not to be on my side on much of anything. They told me that they supported Obama because he is “pro-women.” They assured me that he resisted the Republicans’ many attempts to abolish “contraception.” (NOT abortion.) They couldn’t name any successful Republican venture against contraception. I interpret this to mean that they may have heard of some speech by some extremist somewhere and considered it a done deed. Both were insensitive to my argument that if they mean by “pro-women,” defending contraception, most relevant decisions belonged to states and are therefore not within Mr Obama’s realm of decision-making.

I am not here dumping on the young and feeble. I was having a meal with these young women because one is a sometimes reading buddy of mine. (A “reading budding” is like a drinking buddy without the hangovers.) The other has a quick intelligence that is so obvious it invades the room she is in like a strong perfume. Neither is a dummy and I am always charmed by their company. But they are preoccupied by many other issues, more personal ones. They satisfy themselves that listening to words makes them politically conscious enough and good citizens, I suspect. And, of course, even in the absence of confirmation bias, they would hear ten of Mr Obama’s well-delivered speeches for one speech from any Republican at all. (“Confirmation bias” is the well-studied tendency to pay more attention to items of information that conform with one’s opinions than with those that diverge from it.)

So, when Mr Obama speaks of improving the economy (five years later and some), his young supporters consider it done. Difficulties finding jobs, or good jobs, stagnating wages, irresponsibly mounting college tuition, rising and absurd mountains of college debts, must come from somewhere else. The more frightening prospect is that the bad economy – started elsewhere but continued by the Obama administration – is becoming the normal state of things for young people who have little memory of happier times.

Here is a tangible example of the new normal. Some dispositions of Obamacare law 2,000 pages-plus drive companies to limit employment to thirty hours a week. Now, consider a reasonably well paid young worker taking home $13/hr. (Taking home). With the new limited work-week, this young worker has to manage to live on about $20,000/year. It can be done, easily in some rural areas , with difficulty in most American cities (except Detroit, of course). In my town of Santa Cruz, rent and utilities would easily eat half of this amount.
Of course, depending on where you live, with that kind of income, you might be eligible for food stamps.

I have seen something like this happen in France. We may have a French disease.

I try hard to think back and I suspect I did the same when I was young. I mean that I confused words with deeds. That plus a strong sense of justice may explain why I was a leftist. It took years and a really good education to get into the habit of looking at the facts behind and after the words. That new custom turned me into a conservative libertarian quickly.

This analysis is all bad news. I hope the young of today are smarter than I was, and quicker. They surely know more than I did; they are closer to the facts if they want to be. I hope I am wrong about mistaking words for facts. Please, tell me that I am.

Quentin Skinner on Liberty and Security

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , ,

I think it very important that the mere fact of there being surveillance takes away liberty. The response of those who are worried about surveillance has so far been too much couched, it seems to me, in terms of the violation of the right to privacy. Of course it’s true that my privacy has been violated if someone is reading my emails without my knowledge. But my point is that my liberty is also being violated, and not merely by the fact that someone is reading my emails but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose. We have to insist that this in itself takes away liberty because it leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power. It’s no use those who have possession of this power promising that they won’t necessarily use it, or will use it only for the common good. What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.

Read the whole interview. Dr Skinner is an eminent scholar in the history of Western thought, particularly liberal thought (though I seem to remember reading a book by him on Marx…). Although I don’t think he is an outright libertarian, he is definitely a civil libertarian and in the interview he seems to hold the same view of corporations that most libertarians have.

I guess it’s worth noting here that liberalism and libertarianism are basically the same thing (liber is a Latin word that means ‘free not slave’). In the US, conservatives are actually conserving one branch of liberal thought, and liberals are holding down another branch of liberal thought. This is true in Canada and Australia/New Zealand as well, but in much of the rest of the world, conservatives are monarchists and Leftists are fascists of one stripe or another.

Does this make sense? If not, you know where the ‘comments’ section is!

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. Why Are Some People So Smart? The Answer Could Spawn a Generation of Superbabies
  2. Bayes, Stereotyping Muslims and Rare Events. Especially pertinent given our discussions here at the consortium over Islam’s mythical penchant for violence.
  3. The (Mormon) Church You Doubt, The (Mormon) Church You Love
  4. When The Beautiful Game Turns Ugly: A journey into the world of Italy’s racist soccer thugs
  5. A Conservative Nightmare: In China and Iran, Western values are bringing about real change
  6. From the Comments: Longtime reader –Rick has a thoughtful take (as usual) on American foreign policy

From the Comments: Are Imperialists Just Winging It?

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, Liberty

The 2011 disaggregated dialogue between myself and Dr Delacroix on foreign policy has produced a number of thoughtful responses. Here is Dr Amburgey, a prestigious scholar at the U of Toronto’s business school, on one of Dr Delacroix’s many imperial myths:

@Jacques
Is there a word for someone who just makes stuff up? You claim

“[…] the following simple fact: 95% of all terrorist acts in the world in the past twenty years have been committed by people who call themselves Muslims and most often, in the name of Islam.”

If you’ll pardon the technical jargon, I think that claim is b.s. It’s easy enough to prove me wrong.

The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2011 (with additional annual updates planned for the future). Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as transnational and international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period and now includes more than 104,000 cases. For each GTD incident, information is available on the date and location of the incident, the weapons used and nature of the target, the number of casualties, and–when identifiable–the group or individual responsible.

Statistical information contained in the Global Terrorism Database is based on reports from a variety of open media sources. Information is not added to the GTD unless and until we have determined the sources are credible. Users should not infer any additional actions or results beyond what is presented in a GTD entry and specifically, users should not infer an individual associated with a particular incident was tried and convicted of terrorism or any other criminal offense. If new documentation about an event becomes available, an entry may be modified, as necessary and appropriate.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) makes the GTD available via this online interface in an effort to increase understanding of terrorist violence so that it can be more readily studied and defeated.

Characteristics of the GTD
•Contains information on over 104,000 terrorist attacks
•Currently the most comprehensive unclassified data base on terrorist events in the world
•Includes information on more than 47,000 bombings, 14,000 assassinations, and 5,300 kidnappings since 1970
•Includes information on at least 45 variables for each case, with more recent incidents including information on more than 120 variables
•Supervised by an advisory panel of 12 terrorism research experts
•Over 3,500,000 news articles and 25,000 news sources were reviewed to collect incident data from 1998 to 2011 alone.

http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/about/

How about some real facts instead of just making stuff up as you go along.

Indeed. My own critique of Dr Delacroix’s made-up numbers will be up soon. Stay tuned, and as always, thanks for your comments.

Feds File Charges Against SAC Capital

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, Law , , ,

Thanks to Dr Gibson for alerting me to this. He’s also got a piece on insider trading that was first published in the Freeman in December of 2010. We’ve been able to reproduce it here at NOL. He writes:

Insider trading is restricted but not entirely forbidden. Just what constitutes the “bad” kind of insider trading? This is generally understood to be trading on information originating within a company that could have a material effect on the share price had it been publicly known. The law applies not only to insiders—employees and directors—but also to any outsiders to whom inside information is disclosed […]

We see that insider-trading regulations are subjective and arbitrary, rivaling antitrust laws in this respect. It is no wonder that Congress never defined insider trading and that the SEC resisted defining it for many years; the courts have had to make up the rules as cases arose. Every so often someone like Martha Stewart is thrown to the lions, drawing cheers from the jealous and spreading fear to successful and therefore high-profile managers.

Dr Gibson’s suggestions for alternatives to government regulation are, by themselves, worth the price of admission.

Update: this piece, also by Dr Gibson, explaining what hedge funds are is well worth your time, too.

A Compulsory Education Abolitionist’s Thoughts on Common Core

henrymoore Current Events , , , , , ,

I was homeschooled since the fourth grade for religious, political, and practical reasons. I know quite a bit about public education “bugaboos” (Nixon’s term when referring to national standardized testing). These were the types of things I heard discussed growing up. So naturally, all this recent commotion about Common Core has grabbed my attention.

It is prominent in the news lately because of the backlash from libertarians, social conservatives, local communities, state legislatures, and their strange bedfellows, the teachers unions and the Republican National Committee. Unfortunately, much of this reaction has happened only after the adoption of Common Core standards in all but a few states. Prior to this backlash not very many people knew much about Common Core, what with it having been pushed through without asking the opinion of those most likely to be effected. Indoctrination without representation, you might call it.

My home state (Montana) adopted the Initiative in 2011 but I was only made aware of it for the first time a couple months ago. A good friend of mine had asked me to work with him for several hours that week. He’s very enthusiastic about limited-government and pro-family causes and doesn’t shy away from opportunities to advance them. So he invited me to a gathering of parents and educators who oppose the Common Core Initiative being held at a local social club and suggested that I write something about it. I couldn’t as I had plans that particular evening, but we continued to talk while we worked.

During our conversation he raised a very important point that many are overlooking:

Our schools are already too far gone to be changed for the better, from within, in any meaningful way.

My friend’s interest in Common Core had less to do with opposing further implementation and more to do with using it to convince others to take their kids out of school and be truly responsible for their children’s education. He had his doubts about actually getting through to people. After all, most of their kids are doing alright at the moment, so why should they change their habits, let alone their lifestyles?

Their kids may, in fact, be doing alright. And most of them may continue to do so. But what’s the objective? So they can become cogs and levers in a giant machine? So there can be yet another generation of untroubled, disengaged tax-serfs devoid of any hope or ambition or purpose? Surely it isn’t so they can become critically thinking, personally responsible, successful, free individuals.

And what about the ones who do sometimes slip through the cracks? Are they just statistics? Or, to appropriate the motto of British anti-slavery advocate Josiah Wedgewood: is such a person (flunkee, dropout, victim of bullying/addiction/depression/suicide) “not a man and a brother?”

Then there are all the rest; everyone else harmed by public schooling. The taxpayer. The employer. The parent. The teacher, even.

What of them? What of you?

Consider: before the Common Core Initiative was even a glint in the National Governor’s Association’s eye,

You were robbed via taxation to pay for “free” education, whether you had children in school or not. And even if you did have children in school you had little more say in how they were educated as people who didn’t have children in school.

Your kids were alternately indoctrinated and neglected for 7 hours a day, 180 days a year, for 13 or more years, often by complete strangers. Any actual learning that managed to get past these impediments had far more to do with individual teachers, students, and parents than it did with curriculums, tests, and classrooms.

Your kids were forcibly segregated by age. The foolishness specific to a given age group was multiplied and reinforced by peer pressure and collectivist thinking. These things alienated your children from any social arrangement not conforming to this norm. Any ability a child had to make it in the real world was attributable to a reaction against these trends by exceptional teachers and good parents. And where these were lacking, to the child’s own rebelliousness and obstinacy.

Your cities and states were on the fast track to bankruptcy and insolvency. Increased taxation or federal funding with strings attached were not permanent solutions and caused much harm in the interim.

You, as a parent, had no role or duty or obligation or authority in any of this, save what the state deemed fit for you to have, to be revoked at a moment’s notice.

Many things beside.

Competitive federalism or not, this is the way it already is and too few dispute that it is the way it ought to be. The mere implementation or repudiation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative changes none of this. With, as Lenore Early puts it, the cartel federalism of the CCSSI, the things I listed are likely only to get worse. That’s reason enough to oppose it, even within the system, but at best it addresses symptoms, not root causes. The problem is the entire concept of progressive, compulsory education, the sole purpose of which is to create compliant citizens for public service and an increasingly subservient, stagnant private sector (if we’re lucky).

But these are all concerns for the parents of children in public school, so us homeschool types have little cause for alarm. Right?

Wrong. As is often the case with standards pertaining to public schooling in America, there are those states that also impose them on parents who have already chosen to opt out of state-indoctrination.

This really shouldn’t surprise. Children belong to the community.

So, just homeschooling (or private schooling) is not the whole answer. It takes more than simply removing your children from the state-run institutions to escape them. That is why I advocate they be (gradually, but permanently) abolished. It’s for the children.

Around the Web: The Failure of Detroit and the Demagogue of Vienna

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History, Links, Politics , , , , ,
  1. Ilya Somin argues that Detroit’s aggressive use of eminent domain needs to be incorporated into any discussion of Detroit’s failure (be sure to read through the ‘comments’ section, too).
  2. Richard Wolff blames “capitalism” for Detroit’s failure. No seriously.
  3. Historian Andrei Znamenski has a great piece in the Independent Review on the political life of Karl Lueger, a socialist who became mayor of Vienna in the late 19th century.

Ultimately, I think that Detroit’s failure can be chalked up to bad fiscal policy, cronyism (at the local, regional and federal levels) and freer trade (which lets me drive a high-quality Toyota rather than some clunker from Detroit).

Lueger was an advocate of social justice and consequently of national socialism. Znamenski found that he had a profound influence on the thinking of an impressionable young artist living in Vienna at the time.