George Rebane
“Did you know that the moon is 1/49 the size of the earth, even though it is further away?” was a memorable entry in an early issue of Mad Magazine many years ago. I was reminded of it when reading George Boardman’s regular column in the 13mar17 Union this morning (here). For readers unfamiliar, Mr Boardman is a left-of-center commentator, a public persona possessing some progressive propensities, one of our community’s prominent observers of the human condition, a gentleman, and a favorite local columnist of mine.
His contribution today makes a mighty attempt to show how conservatives – led hereabouts by Congressman LaMalfa - have an incoherent, even hypocritical, ideology when it comes to wealth redistribution through food stamps. The Mad Magazine simile launches his piece with, “Some people have portrayed Rep. Doug LaMalfa as a heartless ogre for campaigning to reduce the number of people eligible for food stamps, even though 12 percent of the families in his district fall below the poverty line. … Other people suggest LaMalfa's a hypocrite for taking food out of the mouths of people while his family farm collected almost $5.3 million in rice and wheat subsidies from 1995 through 2013.”
Given the widespread abuse of the federal food stamp program, one would think that a prudent reduction of the number of food stamp recipients, as sought by LaMalfa, would be a laudable and proper effort for our MoC. But the real question is what does LaMalfa’s seeking to refine the eligibility of food stamp recipients have to do with a particular level of poverty in his district? And then the gratuitous charge, later unabashedly contradicted, of “taking food out of the mouths of people” is somehow connected with LaMalfa’s qualification for receiving federal farm subsidies. (My opposition to corporate subsidies, including agricultural, is a matter of record.)
As Mr Boardman later makes clear, Congressman LaMalfa seeks only to restrict the use of food stamps by the poor and destitute so as to obtain the maximum amount of wholesome and nutritious food items possible. However, even that is a sin according to our intrepid critic of conservatives as he quotes another progressive MoC – "You can't deny (food stamp recipients) their freedoms to make choices without violating their pursuit of happiness." And this brings us to the crux of the matter that now transcends food stamps.
I have yet to meet a progressive who can parse the nuances of welfare in a liberal democracy like ours used to be. The progressive holds firmly to the belief that those who pay the piper have no more right to call the tune than those who merely listen. Specifically, that people have the equal right to pursue their happiness no matter whether they themselves or someone else underwrites their pursuit. Unfortunately, that is not the way the world works, nor is it the way that our Founders fashioned the workings of our democratic republic. Gifts from others come with a purpose, and almost always with some proviso as to how the gift is to be used. And that is doubly so if such ‘gifts’ from the giver are extracted at the point of a gun.
We all know that every dollar dispensed by the state comes with a user’s manual. It was ever thus, and the progressives’ desire to selectively abrogate such restrictions in order to curry a compliant and grateful voter is the prime cause of the social rot in our inner cities and rural hinterlands.
Finally, Mr Boardman almost understands conservatives when he writes “conservatives have particular scorn for programs like food stamps, which they view as populated by freeloaders who are too lazy to work, and they see as another means of getting people to rely on a government check.” To buttress this blanket assessment, he quotes my observation that liberals want to “promote raw democracy through increasing the size of compliant, ignorant, and powerless electorates (e.g. through … expanded wealth transfers …)”
For the record, the above was drawn from my comment on the liberals’ desire to extend the voting franchise to all residents including illegal aliens which reads, “(We) recall that for years RR has called out such culture killing, vote buying practices here and elsewhere. The Left's two-fisted approach to global autocracy is 1) grow governments of elite central planners by promoting fraudulent societal needs (e.g. 'climate change'), and 2) promote raw democracy through increasing the size of compliant, ignorant, and powerless electorates (e.g. through politicized education, expanded wealth transfers, and now franchising non-citizen migrants). … The Left can do nothing save repeat their strong denials in the face of overwhelming evidence. But as Lenin has shown, that works.”
In citing me, Mr Boardman totally miscommunicates my clear and oft-repeated position on the necessity of national wealth redistribution as we approach the Singularity, and as AI, along with globally competing labor, continues to grow America’s pool of the systemically unemployed. If nothing else, I do wish that the gentleman would append a future codicil to make that clear.
The Depth of Dumbth (updated 1apr17)
George Rebane
Evidence continues to pour in that the most recent generation of Americans – the so-called millennials – have turned out to be the dumbest in our history. Specifically, their literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills hover above the barely adequate levels to conduct modern life according to diverse sources ranging from America’s employers to our National Center for Educational Statistics (more here) What makes it worse is the fully functioning, concerted effort to deny any of this that is delivered daily by the nation’s progressive lamestream media piled on by our local leftwing lackeys. The latter take it upon themselves to confuse the critiques of this state of national ignorance with an ignoble and gratuitous denigration of the ignorant, thereby firmly establishing their own membership in this cohort.
The situation has gotten so bad that a currently popular form of easy entertainment are videos of reporters – e.g. Jesse Watters and Mark Dice - encountering people on sidewalks to engage them on topics ranging from current events, through popular history and geography, to common sense. Watching the respondents either flail in their ignorance or unwittingly exhibit confidence where none is warranted illustrates the more formally published statistics (many reported here over the years).
The problem caused by these people who don’t know the difference between a million and a billion, or the structure of our government, or the role of our Constitution, or …, is that way too many of them vote. And they vote on topics about which they have neither the slightest clue nor even basic knowledge. From our common past we can still hear Will Rogers’ paraphrasing Mark Twain - ‘It ain’t what you know that troubles me, it’s what you know that ain’t so.’ (more here)
This generation’s state of knowledge was most vividly illustrated during the ‘women’s marches’ after President Trump’s inauguration. When asked why they were marching, their answers ranged from the incoherent to the inane. When ‘diversity’, one of the millennials’ main memes, is brought up, their inability to define or discuss it surpasses high comedy. The source of their malady is the education that they have been denied since their parents first enrolled them in their neighborhood public school. From there through the halls of higher academia, their ability to think critically about diverse ideas was carefully expunged, and replaced by a memorized catalog of politically correct progressive notions which in the past were known as politicized slogans (the very embodiment of Orwell's 'newthink').
Classics professor Anthony Esolen of Providence College has been studying and writing about the whys and wherefores of today’s ‘diversitarians’. For this revelatory work he has been mercilessly pilloried by the Left. To get a sense of our educational decline I recommend his latest essay ‘Ut Plures Sint’ (May Be More) in which he focuses on the constricted (mis)understandings about the diversity of cultures – today a topic that so much exercises the progressive mind.
I offer this little update to further buttress RR’s contention that the damage to our national mind is both deep and done; there is no feasible way to fix it or fill the educational chasm. This generation will embrace progressive policies wherever they are encountered, and cement them in the voting booth. At this late stage of their development they have no choice; they are forced to consume information in the only way they have been taught – in small bite-sized, standalone pieces that describe a very simple and simplistic world that simply ain’t so. The only solution remaining from this side of the long-passed tipping point is to wish us both ‘Vaya con Dios’, and work for a peaceful Great Divide.
[1apr17 update] “Shaky numerical literacy can undermine our sense of issues like the federal budget that deal in millions and billions” says Jo Craven McGinty (here) as she adds to the evidence of our national dumbth. She points out that the overwhelming percentage of Americans have no idea about how to deal with the very large and the very small numbers that are supposed to inform us about everything from government budgets, borrowings, and taxes to temperature and pollution levels impacting (or not) our environment. Our innumerate citizenry continues making nationally impacting policies in the voting booths without a clue as to what is big, small, or significant. Therefore demagoguery and pandering politicians abetted by their local echo chambers rule the day.
On a more hopeful note, the eleventh annual TechTest was administered today by the Nevada Joint Union High School District in the NUHS Science Lecture Hall. Taking the four-hour merit scholarship exam were some of the county’s best and brightest students. The exam attracts qualified students who plan to pursue STEM careers after completing their post-high school studies. The exam is sponsored by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation which also sponsors TechTestJr (completing its fourth year) to motivate fifth through eighth graders to take STEM qualifying classes in high school. Scholarship monies and prizes are provided through the generous support of SESF donors and local high-tech businesses who have made possible awards totaling over $150,000.
As a sad footnote to these programs benefitting our youth, our local (now called) Alt-Left started politicizing and denigrating this scholarship program years ago solely on the basis that the test is written, sponsored, and administered by people some of whom hold conservative political views. (e.g. I write the TTs and give the seminars.) The tests and related seminars are and have always been ideologically neutral, however that has not made any impact on people who have a history of looking at everything through correctly polished political lenses. And if your politics don’t pass their muster, then they relentlessly demand that you withdraw from the public forum. Only those approved should be visible in our community and allowed to contribute. The portents of this dreadful worldview has long been dealt with in these pages.
Posted at 12:52 PM in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Culture Comments, Great Divide, Our Country, The Liberal Mind, We the iSheeple | Permalink | Comments (47)
Reblog (0) | |