Understanding Progressives
Posted by strugatsky 7 years ago to Politics
Today, I had accidentally gone to a meeting of Liberals/Progressives, about 20 of them, on the subject of healthcare. The topic was intentionally advertised so as to conceal its aim and I, in a state of bliss, took the bait. Disappointed at first, I ended up almost enjoying it, for this was not the typical college uneducated crowd of children (per Obamacare, childhood has now been officially defined as 0-26), but a geriatric congregation where some of the patients may have gone to real schools back then. So I stayed. What I learned was quite interesting. The presenter was a retired medical doctor, whose medical expertise I won't question (though he seemingly retired at an earlier age than most), but whose lack of understanding of economics and other subjects which he proclaimed to champion was astounding. It was like listening to a NFL player or a Hollywood star. But most interesting was the reaction of the audience, who approvingly nodded their heads to every unsubstantiated claim. Even a claim that doctor visit deductibles are evil, as, he claimed, that a $5 deductible prevents patients from seeing a doctor – regardless of the fact that these same patients spent that on cigarettes every day. I thought that I was in a middle of circus seals, only these were too weak to clasp. As the level of bull rose above my tolerance level (quickly, actually) and I began to politely challenge with facts, the audience became most uncomfortable and their leader asked me to be quiet (of course, I did not). My main take away was the amazing shallowness of these people – every attempt at analysis, delving even a little deeper, caused them pain and anguish. I have seen this before – from the teenagers going onto 30-something, but these were supposedly adults in their 60's and 70's. Had American education failed us that long ago?
Second takeaway – the Progressives actually believe that the US economy, prior to Obama, was pure capitalism! I was and remain, at a total loss how to confront such a deviation from reality. Can anyone here help?
Second takeaway – the Progressives actually believe that the US economy, prior to Obama, was pure capitalism! I was and remain, at a total loss how to confront such a deviation from reality. Can anyone here help?
1) We have a Living Constitution
2) Judges must apply current moral norms (therefore are magical and have even higher authority)
3) Judges are apolitical by their very nature
4) Prayer in school is bad (Watched a teacher get canned for a morning prayer of thanks, she would not stop)
5) You cant fight City Hall (Teaching us to become sheep!)
6) Get out of line, your future can be DESTROYED by these people(teachers).
7) Learning is about regurgitating what the teacher wants to hear
8) We obscure things in nomenclature (rubric anyone?) so your parents can't help you, we are the only true path forward...
(we change this nomenclature: New Math (then), Common Core (now), because we are SO CLEVER)
9) We are TOO STUPID to switch to Metric...
In my daughters lifetime (she's 18):
A) Kwanza OVER Christmas
B) No Child Gets ahead
C) No Winners: All Losers
D) No bullying, UNLESS it is to pick on a kid who gets 100% all the time, then look the other way
E) Time Magazine Weekly Reader (How to calculate your carbon footprint, How Capitalism Destroys, etc)
F) Only ONE side of a conversation is REALLY allowed.
G) A teacher calls ME out because I tutored someone in her math class (who aced the class now), because having
the kid pre-read the material was giving this UNTALENTED child an advantage over the better kids!
Schools do NOT Teach HOW to learn, How to think, How to solve problems, or How to ENJOY learning. They
treat school like work, and kids don't want a job, they want to feed their creativity and grow.
By comparison, I almost learned truth...only I was too hyper and bored to tears to pay much attention...but, believe it or not, I did better in college as if all that didn't matter and had a AS degree before my high school class graduated...laughing...all because of a chick I liked a lot.
Go Figure.
1) Constitution - It was presented without comment on how it should be interpreted. We learned it was important but not much about what's in it.
2+3) Judges applying moral norms or judges being apolitical - We just learned about "checks and balances" of three branches. I heard no comment on moral norms.
4) Prayer - I learned the gov't can't establish a religion, but I never saw any sign of someone wanting to pray and being told no or someone in the school wanting to lead a prayer, which would obviously be totally inappropriate.
5) " You cant fight City Hall " - I remember learning the exact opposite. Maybe I had particularly progressive teachers, but I actually remember learning about people who protested and changed society for the better.
6) "your future can be DESTROYED by these people" - I didn't see any of this until I was at private school. They taught that your "high school career" was key to success in life.
7) "Learning is about regurgitating what the teacher wants to hear" - I remember hearing "don't read and regurgitate." It was at the private school, but I recall them giving us something to comment on, and the correct answer was to reject it because all the footnotes pointed to sources with an agenda.
8) "We obscure things in nomenclature " - I never even heard of this in any school.
9) "We are TOO STUPID to switch to Metric.." I think I remember learning mostly metric, but they certainly never called us stupid. I think they just taught us metric without comment.
For my kids:
A) "Kwanza OVER Christmas" - I am certain they don't teach some holidays as being superior to others.
B) No Child Gets ahead - There's nothing like that.
C) No Winners: All Losers - They do teach this. They go way overboard on it too.
D) No bullying - I'm for no bullying, but they've turned bullying into almost a catchall for any behavior they don't like. We're working with them on this. Bullying is a word with a specific meaning to me, but they use it very broadly.
E) Time Magazine Weekly Reader (How to calculate your carbon footprint) - We teach them this, at least in terms elementary school kids can understand. I'm not sure if they're learning in school yet.
E2) "How Capitalism Destroys" - They've done nothing like this so far, but I wouldn't put it past them. The kids might hide it from us if they taught something like that because they're afraid we'd pull them out of the school.
F) Only ONE side of a conversation is REALLY allowed.- I don't know what this means.
G) A teacher calls ME out because I tutored someone in her math class - I've never heard anything like that. It sounds bizarre.
One thing not on your list is what I consider being neurotic about safety. It's not just the school. Our whole world is scared to let kids take any action or any responsibility.
I know the people who work at the school and run it. Some of them when to school with my wife or me. They don't do all this bizarre stuff. More and more I wonder if I live in a bubble.
Constitution – the current version, very lightly studied, in some instances within the public school system, has been intentionally perverting the Second Amendment (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/.... But the most egregious evil, is the one of omission – very lightly studied.
Prayer – I went to private schools which had prayers. I completely agree that they do not belong in public schools.
"Learning is about regurgitating what the teacher wants to hear" – I don't know if this "feature" is by design or simply the result of ever growing incompetence of the teachers. I can present one example that speaks volumes (happened to my coworker). His daughter, in HS, was doing a science project. She set up an experiment to demonstrate that water boils at different temperatures with an addition of salt (this should have been an elementary school project in my days). The teacher gave her a "C" because, the teacher said, "everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C." And if your kid even attempts to question "Global Warming," the teachers will literary foam at the mouth and your kid will be public enemy number one. Tried that already; it would have been fun to watch, if it wasn't so tragic.
"We obscure things in nomenclature " - that applies to everything the Party does; this is not specific to schools. Like the Affordable Care Act, the Democratic Republic of North Korea, institutions of higher learning, etc. They're good at it.
"Kwanza OVER Christmas" - I am certain they don't teach some holidays as being superior to others. - No, they don't. And that is the problem. When everything is equally good, then nothing is good.
No Child Gets ahead - There's nothing like that. No Child Left Behind is exactly the same as no child gets ahead. By definition. Do we even need to discuss it? And "No Winners: All Losers" proves the point. Everyone gets a participation trophy. If only the real world was so generous.
No bullying – At first glance, what parent wouldn't want to protect their child from bullies? But what will these children, after they reach the age of 26 and start venturing out on their own from their parents' basements, do when they face the real world? Get a 6 digit micro-aggression counter and run back into the basement? After all, they would have never learned to deal with bullies and wouldn't know how to survive without a nearby safe-space.
Time Magazine Weekly Reader (How to calculate your carbon footprint) – No doubt that we all know that the Green-Green propaganda starts early. This is a self-evident issue for anyone that has kids in school. As I said above, causes the teachers to foam at the mouth at any attempt to challenge it.
How Capitalism Destroys – Oh, yeah! The preaching of sharing, donations, food drives, the evils of unequal distribution – starting in kindergarten. I've cleansed my kids' brains on this subject very early. When they came home asking me to donate to their class causes, I graciously offered them to make the donations themselves – from their piggy banks. That stopped it cold.
Only ONE side of a conversation is REALLY allowed.- I don't know what this means. - Most evident on the subject of the environment and Global Warming. Whenever facts are absent, the teachers get nervous and cut off the conversation. That I've seen multiple times. Wouldn't be surprised if that includes Common Core math.
You have rightfully mentioned safety as another issue. Back when I was 10 years old, I rode the city bus across half of Manhattan to go to school. Now, we have 17 year-old's being bused across the road and the traffic stopped in both direction while the imbeciles walk home. No wonder they're still adulting at 36!
About 20 years ago I taught a Civics class in a public school in St. Louis. 8th grade. The classroom walls were completely covered with posters on two subject, exclusively - slavery and outstanding Black Americans (most long dead). About a third did not know who their fathers were and on the subject of the role of the government, almost half said that it was to assign/distribute jobs, salaries, work and income. Naturally, the results couldn't have been different.
I understand what you mean, but I think it has more to do with that particular group than public education in the US.
"I was so appalled by what I saw that I immediately removed my children from the public school. "
My wife says, half jokingly, that that point is coming for us.
"the most egregious evil, is the one of omission"
I have not seen them pervert the 2nd Amendment, but I agree they completely steer clear of it-- an evil of omission, as you say. We have to teach them. When it comes to gun rights, maybe the best thing we can do is teach them to shoot and use guns responsibly, so they won't believe stereotypes about guns. That's not the same as teaching the Constitutional issue, but it's one important thing.
"everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C."
Is that bad? I do not know. I think they want you to come up with a hypothesis, like less ionic things affect boiling point less. I always found it hard b/c for a HS science project, you will be replicating others' research no matter what.
"No, they don't [teach the relative merits of holidays]. And that is the problem"
I am confused. I don't think the notion of holidays among different religions having relative merits makes sense. It almost sounds like something my 7 y/o would come up with: Which is better Easter, Yom Kippur, or Ramadan?
"Everyone gets a participation trophy. If only the real world was so generous."
This is a real problem. I don't know what to do about it. I don't find it generous or un-generous but just wrong. My kid plays all kinds of sports, but the adults can't admit which team won. That's crazy. At least the kids know.
Not keeping score would be just a little quirk, but it's part of a larger trend of trying to protect kids from even the most trivial disappointments.
"Get a 6 digit micro-aggression counter "
I know. I want to protect them from real use of force. If I didn't know any better, I would think you just want to tolerate bullying, but I don't think that's the case. We've gone overboard calling all kinds of normal behavior bullying.
" No doubt that we all know that the Green-Green propaganda starts early."
We haven't seen this. They teach the facts about human activities causing global warming and other changes to environment that will be costly to humans, but at least from what they tell me they never teach them "mother Earth" is more important than people.
"The preaching of sharing, donations, food drives, the evils of unequal distribution"
I don't want the school to teach it, but I think giving voluntarily to the poor is generally a good thing, but I don't like the way the school asks for food. Use MONEY. And I completely agree it should be money from their piggy bank that they earned through work. And if they don't want to, that's totally fine. I think giving to charity is a good thing, but it's not a moral thing where you're bad if you don't want to.
BTW, they share all the school supplies. I can't stand that. It has a real communist feel to it. I encourage them to flout the policy and keep their own stash of supplies and share only when they feel the desire to.
"[One side of a conversation being allowed is ] most evident on the subject of the environment and Global Warming. "
I think there only is one side. The evidence says what it says, and talking about "sides" is a rhetorical trick by people who want to deny the problem, similar to creationists saying "at least teach the controversy." There is no controversy.
"we have 17 year-old's being bused across the road "
I know. It's INSANE! I see insanity. I see kids who are at an age when my wife was a crossing guard with a badge who now literally cannot go behind a tree out of sight of an adult, who literally cannot cross a street even with an adult Madison Police Dept crossing guard!! It's no wonder they need "comfort flufflies" to deal with life in their 20s.
"almost half said that it was to assign/distribute jobs, salaries, work and income."
Damn. They're only 12, so it was not too late. Hopefully some of them rolling their eyes at you remembered something of what you said. They're 32 now. Maybe some of them remembered something you said in response that may have sounded like a rant at the time.
The problem with teaching Kwanza with Christmas as no better is that it is multiculturalist egalitarian ethnicity versus an American individualist joyous and mostly secular holiday. They are pushing ethnicity over the American sense of life to children who cannot possibly understand the philosophical implications but who are being taught wrong values inculcated for life.
Green propaganda does start early. The climate hysteria pushed in schools is now down to the lowest grades in the form of pure propaganda with posters and slogans pushed on children who cannot possibly understand the issues, let alone the political and scientific controversy. Rejecting the climate hysteria movement blaming natural climate cycles on industry while packaging it with the concept of harmful pollution is not like "creationism". The viros "proving" their enviro-chondria by contriving "experiments" to demonstrate what they accept on faith is like creationism.
The same goes for the rest of environmentalist ideology and it's "mother earth" imagery denigrating private land use, development and industry. On top of that the children are being inculcated with the belief that the emotionalism and dogma of the viros represents "science" before the children can appreciate what science is and what it requires. The whole notion of indoctrinating the idea of sacrificing human values to nature as a supreme value is misanthropic, nihilistic, and pre-science, yet it is being inculcated at the emotional level that is very difficult to break out of later in an uphill battle, surrounded by society that shares the same religious belief.
WOW. That's kind of mind boggling, if you're right. That kind of thing would have our kids in a different school.
Our kids are lobbying to stay at their public school b/c they like their friends, but I would definitely draw the line there.
Encourage their friends to leave, too.
My wife says, half jokingly, that that point is coming for us. -- I highly recommend sitting in the class during a lesson. You are permitted to do so. The schools often don't like it and often try to discourage it, which is a sign of a problem. There are good schools that welcome parents sitting in. Typically, after insisting, you will be allowed to sit it on one or two lessons (that is enough) with an assistant principal there with you. Obviously, you are to be a fly on the wall and sit quietly in the back. Well worth the experience.
When it comes to gun rights, maybe the best thing we can do is teach them to shoot and use guns responsibly, so they won't believe stereotypes about guns. -- Completely agree. I taught my kids to respect guns, safety and shooting at kindergarten age. I think that is much more difficult for those living in large cities.
"everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C." -- no need to whitewash stupidity. The girl explained everything properly. This is a level of experiments that we did in elementary school. The teacher was (and remains) too stupid to know basic physics and too moronic to be able to learn.
"No, they don't [teach the relative merits of holidays]. And that is the problem"
I am confused. -- What I am trying to point out here is that there is an intentional effort to remove our historical symbols – holidays, icons, statues, items and people of value, the bedrock of our culture and civilization. This is not unique to the American Progressives; this is exactly the same as happened in the Soviet Union, where every pillar of society was intentionally uprooted and destroyed. This is the continuation of the Lenin-Stalin-Alinsky policy.
"The preaching of sharing, donations, food drives, the evils of unequal distribution"
I don't want the school to teach it, but I think giving voluntarily to the poor is generally a good thing... - I am not against charity or help. I am against charity at someone else expense. If you want to give – by all means, everything that is yours. The school teaches the kids to give that which belongs to others, starting with the parents.
Global Warming. -- I've addressed this in another comment, but to ease of reading, will copy and paste here: When we talk about religion, we give examples of the hypocrisy and lies surrounding it. That in itself is enough for a thoughtful person to question the dogma. It is a well demonstrated fact that Global Warming claims are riddled with intentional lies and falsification of data. For a thoughtful person, that in itself should be enough to question the dogma.
To touch again on the safety, busing and bullying issue – we are in agreement, but I want to reiterate as it is so important. These issues are related in the sense that the system prevents children to grow up into adults. It is as if we are making eunuchs. They can't make decisions, can't take responsibility, run for cover at a mere sight of a micro-aggression and, most importantly, look up to the government for everything, from jobs to housing to healthcare.
Alinsky influenced the New Left in the 1960s and its current successors, but also left nothing intellectual to follow: he was a nihilist who overtly specialized in local disruptive activism for the purpose of wreckage as such, with no idea of what to replace it with. He had no ideals. He couldn't even articulate the bad ideological premises he inherited. You can see first hand how utterly negative he was in his Rules for Radicals (without paying for it) at https://www.historyofsocialwork.org/1...
The radical political progressives today follow and build on his methods but have an ideology based on over a century of American Pragmatism as a means to think about and follow altruism and collectivism to replace America with.
I can't tell what's going on, but to me it feels more like I imagine the Roman Republic-- decadent, considering success a birthright, becoming and empire, and corrupt. I'm sure there are people who are anti-capitalist and anti-individual, but I don't sense they have broad support. I also don't sense people appreciating/understanding capitalism and individualism. It's more like "wait, success is a birthright, so let's give whoever's in charge broad authority to do whatever it takes to stop these tragic anomalies of absence of easy success." Along the way, they may accept socialism, but I don't sense a broad movement that starts with a theory on economics and the individual.
I wonder if one day I'll see the world radically different, but right now the whole thing looks like a professional wrestling. I see no plan whatsoever. Certainly mainstream politicians aren't communist or fascist. No one's pressuring you at mainstream stores. I find it bizarre to read. I travel a lot, so I don't think I live in a bubble. I see none of this crap anywhere I go.
I hear what you're saying, but it does not sound remotely true. I don't believe in "a left" or any of that. I think you're overthinking the motivations of the citizens of a somewhat decadent empire.
A big example was Obamacare. It is obvious what it is in the form it was rammed through Congress, as the most they could get at the time, and Obama was caught in a recording saying he intended it as a step to complete government control -- euphemistically called "single payer" since they know better than to use the "S" word now. The overt collectivist premises are all over the Democrats now in a more extreme form of admission than ever and there are many more examples from Obama.
Obama, in his own words, has grown up as a paranoid racist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Jlq...
Then, of course, there's Alinsky's influence (Obama holds him in high regard) and his friends from the Weather Underground.
If that is not sufficient, then I don't know what kind of proof you would believe.
I have not listened to the whole thing, so maybe there's a bombshell hidden in there. It all seems pretty standard.
It feels to me like there's this whole world of politicians making absurd claims about one another, and I keep listening as if there's some hidden secret to make their claims makes sense. But it seems like there's hyperbole inflation. In addition to blaming random criminal acts on President Trump, for the first time I heard the claim he won't leave office and is planning some kind of coup. I heard that about Bush and Obama. It seems like the Internet has hastened the inflation. I should stop listening to this crap, and if we do get a president staging a coup, I won't know it until it's too late.
There many more references by Obama himself to Davis' teaching.
The other segment from his book describes a very angry young man who blames the White Man and colonialism for almost all of the problems in the world, or at least around him. Is that not racism?
You support Hitlery and Obama, and you still don't recognize the anti-freedom, facism in their actions.
Your eyes are closed when your undeserving heroes act like mobsters.
The fact that you call it crap is just more proof of your irrational bias.
You have to open your eyes to see.
[Sarcasm]Clinton and Obama are my heroes![/Sarcasm] They're not.
"call it crap is just more proof of your irrational bias"
Let's call it very bad stuff then. By it I mean a plot to undermine freedom.
I thought you were saying teacher was saying it's too simple and widely known. You're saying the teacher didn't even understand the experiment.
"there is an intentional effort to remove our historical symbols"
I don't see it. I know what you're talking about with Stalin destroying all symbols and institutions outside the party, but I don't see that happening here at all. It's more that they do a decent albeit sometimes clumsy job of having people from all walks of life come together. My kids school is decent about this.
"They can't make decisions, can't take responsibility, run for cover at a mere sight of a micro-aggression and, most importantly, look up to the government for everything, from jobs to housing to healthcare."
That's about it. I hear the pendulum is swinging back the other way on the Coasts, teaching kids to have "grit". It's not here. They grow up much slower. There's the idea an authority should handle even the slightest little problems. I've heard stories of people at West Point with their mothers still wanting to mediate their minor issues with peers and teachers.
I was on this message board a few years ago saying I didn't believe it was true. I've seen it first-hand now that my kids are older, in forms that I would have thought too absurd to believe.
I hope you're wrong. If you're right, we're in trouble.
And when did your private school start? (You can't compare a private school to the public schools fairly, IMO. Their teachers can be fired. We had only a few good ones. The really good ones moved to nicer neighborhoods!)
I was about 35 miles outside of Detroit, in a relatively poor school district. But most of the schools were the same, and got worse over time.
But the lettered stuff was witnessed here in South Florida.
Some of the teachers are really good. They also say they like it. But we'll probably move them to Catholic school, even though we're atheists, for high school, maybe middle school.
Do you review your kids books/lessons? (I always reviewed what me daughter was learning, she took her SAT when she was 11, so she might have been a little ahead of the curve, but I taught her to question things, to strive for understanding/mastery, not A's.) I started reviewing things in Kindergarten, and was surprised by second grade. In just over a year, she should have 2 degrees, both from Honors Colleges. (While Ice skating, Yoga (or Tai Chi), Student Government, etc).
She said the tactic she hates most is when the teacher "Throws out" some comment, making clear her beliefs, but also clear that it is NOT to be challenged (e.g. "So Trump doesn't believe in Global Warming, because he can't comprehend simple science, and we are all going to pay the price for his ignorance... Moving on..." And then starts the lecture. BTW, in an unrelated business class!).
This is at a University, of course. NOT every teacher, but too many of them. She says the more tech/mathy the classes are, the far less this happens, which she finds interesting.
Anyways... If your kids are getting a decent education... why move them out? I refused to private school our daughter, and I am glad I did not. Education starts at home. If we can tweak what she really takes away, WHILE teaching her to do the same for herself... She will not be prepared, otherwise.
I get similar from my ultra-lib neighbors. We meet, have a dialog regarding the goings on in the neighborhood. As I am leaving, Linda chimes in with her 2 cents on regarding how the latest tax cuts only profit the rich corporations, or how blacks are being targeted by police, or how we need more money for schools (99 million dollar bond got passed in my area, but no, we need more). After tossing a highly biased bit out there vocally, she adds "But I don't want to talk about politics... have a nice day!"
I walk away scratching my head... What? But you just did talk about politics, you did bring it up? I suspect that folks take this approach - the blind shotgun - because they cannot defend their assertion or would choose not to. Another idea is that they just lack self-awareness. I have thought about trying this tactic myself, but I just don't speak that language.
We have both taught them about climate change and carbon impact. I don't know what white hate is, but I'm almost sure they haven't.
Regarding sexuality, they do have a social worker who teaches them to report sexual molestation to the school. They have a lot of troubled neighborhoods feeding into the school, and I think they're honestly trying to help legitimately troubled people. I don't think there's anything Orwellian about it. They teach them stranger danger, which I think is wrong. Strangers are good. Play in the park and turn to strangers for help. Just never ever go off alone with a stranger b/c bad guys hide. You're more likely to encounter a creep at a friend's house than out at the park.
So I am not satisfied with the way they teach the kids to avoid child molesters.
"Do you review your kids books/lessons?"
Yes, and we ask them probing questions. It's still possible they slip stuff in that we miss.
"In just over a year, she should have 2 degrees, both from Honors Colleges. (While Ice skating, Yoga (or Tai Chi), Student Government, etc)."
I admire that, but I see so many parents pushing their kids. She's old enough to decide for herself if she's in college. It's her life. I hope my kids have similar accomplishments, but also hang out with others, watch some TV, go to msg board like this, smoke some pot, or whatever.
Teacher says: "So Trump doesn't believe in Global Warming"
People are wrong in this world. I think this teacher is wrong. I think President Trump knows that scientific opinion says global warming is caused by human activities and will be costly, but his focus is getting people fired up. He doesn't care. He's not trying to comprehend science. Future generations will indeed play the price for our failing to act quickly to address global warming. I would be frustrated by a class giving any time to crackpot global warming denier theories, but within reason you have to tolerate people being wrong about stuff.
"If your kids are getting a decent education... why move them out? "
1) I'm concerned in older grades the behavior issues are worse and the teacher can't even kick the kids out of the classroom.
2) I think formal instruction at early ages is mostly socialization and learning to go to a place on time and deal with different people. At this age they really need to play more. As they get older, they need more sitting and studying, but at ages 7 and 9, it's more about playing with other kids and learning to resolve minor disagreements on their own. I am very deeply concerned with their schools philosophy that a teacher should resolve all disputes and they should never have even the most minor issue with other students. This is a red flag that makes me think we'll need to take them out at some point.
3) I sense a bureaucratic mentality that I don't like.
The kids urge us not to take them out, though. I probably won't take them out of a school they get up and say they're happy to go to.
I think dogma should be ignored altogether. Do not question it or engage it.
Except I think you're calling accepting the science on global warming the dogma, and I see accepting science as fundamentally not dogma. We even use the word accept instead of believe as with dogma because in science we're excited to find evidence that overturns how we previously understood the world.
I agree completely. I'm not talking about people who deny the science. I'm talking about the science itself.
Right. Science does not call things "settled". (Maybe you say that when something becomes a law, like the law of thermodyamics.) Science is always looking for a surprising breakthrough. Being open to new evidence does not mean we do not know anything now. We'd love to find shocking evidence that ESP exists in some form, but the current scientific evidence says it does not. People who really want it to be true may say to avoid being dogmatic we must consider "both sides of the controversy". But there is no real controversy. The sides are science and ESP woo.
I see all unscientific and pseudo-scientific things people would like to believe in like this: climate change denial, homeopathy, organic food being more healthful than GMOs, creationism, the Bermuda Triangle, gods/religion. I categorically reject the choice of dogma vs "at least consider the controversy". I have to accept what we know now. There may be some shocking breakthrough changing how we see those things. I'll be thrilled. True believers will laugh at science for not picking one desirable answer and sticking too it.
About a year ago there was a good article in the Gulch (can't find it now) explaining how CO2, which is the evil greenhouse gas, absorbs only 10% of radiant energy per mass compared to water vapor, while constituting something on the order of less than 1/2 of 1 percent of vapor, of which only 20 - 30 % are caused by human activity. Basically, you have an elephant in a china shop, but you are concerned with a butterfly turning over the dishes. If you really want to affect climate change, start combating water vapor from the oceans, seas and rivers - declare war on the clouds!
I hope someone finds new models/evidence, not just because it would be favorable to humankind but also because it's good to learn new things. It could break either way; the new evidence could show human activities are more or less costly than we thought. I love the notion that you're (or someone like you) working in this field with obscure models that turn out to be right. I don't think you're saying you're a climatologist. You're saying you read some politicalized commentary outside your field and convinced yourself there's a conspiracy to suppress a discovery that almost everyone would welcome. I don't get it.
There are a lot of psychological and political motives for hysteria other than money, not that they aren't riding an institutionalized gravy train.
You can certainly calculate the value of things to humans and calculate the impact of things changing. For example, you can compare rents in similar areas that have and do not have some form of pollution. If you're considering doing something that causes that pollution, you can work out the human impact (cost to human beings, whatever we want to call it) of that act. Then you can calculate if the activity still makes sense after you make those people whole for the lost value. It's not vague. Apocalyptic hysterics is a straw man that has nothing whatsoever to do with this discussion.
There is the original Pilgrims who tried COMMUNAL (communism) to work the land. EVERYONE felt cheated, and therefore did as little as possible, and every year, people starved. Until he divided the land up by family and let them reap what they sow.
Suddenly, they were up early, planting early, and working hard (serving their self-interests). The complaints stopped.
And that was the first year they not only had enough food, they had excess. And celebrated.
BTW, it is MY BELIEF the the number of side dishes was really the side effect of CANNING their foods. They had a little bit of everything they canned, left over (probably ran out of jars!). That is not mentioned in the diary, but it makes sense to me.
Anyways, when you start STRIPPING that one lesson from our schools.
Then, NEVER require reading the constitution. Oh we learned the bill of rights. Because RIGHTS would become a talking point, I guess!
BTW I grew up just outside of Detroit, as a Democrat until I opened my eyes and used my talents to LEARN!
"These military methods failed. In about a decade the Virginia Company realized profits would come only after the pioneers had a stake in their own fate, soon after, the colonists asked for a voice in government." -Eyewitness to America, David Colbert
I guess I would have asked what the goals of the leader/participants were? Did they want everyone to have access to quality healthcare? Then eliminating bureaucracy would be helpful; having a huge deductible system (again minimizing interference between patient and doctor, Almost every "answer" they propose has tons of data noting such has the opposite effect from what is stated as the goal (O-care resulted in huge premium increases, unaffordable deductibles, reductions in the numbers of healthcare providers available. Urge them to follow the data and ignore what they want reality to be. The laws of human behavior are pretty simple and straightforward and look nothing like what the typical politician believes they look like.
Hope this helps....
As to healthcare, its funny that a medicare for everyone supporter thinks
1) that HE is going to get free medical care that OTHERS pay for; forgetting that the others will get "free" medical care that HE is going to pay for.
2) that "free" medical care will continually expand into more and more "care" options.
3) that the current tax structure supports only retired people over 65 basically, but the costs will increase quite a bit when everyone is covered and the base of people (working people) who will pay for it essentially doesnt increase
They count on people sharing some version of it, accepted through prior indoctrination, to induce guilt, for example, or try to reinterpret or redefine better common values to mean their opposite in collectivism -- which we see all the time in their redefinitions of common words: tax cuts as a "cost to government", "investment" as government spending, etc. They count on positive reactions to the vocabulary but not thinking of the meaning. Their premises and methods are much deeper and more explicit than just emotions.
The left emotionally manipulating people counts on people not thinking through their own concepts and principles. The emphasis everywhere downplays reason and objectivity. In that sense of epistemology, irrationalism leaves only emotional thinking, but beliefs still have a content. Even the principles of thinking have content: as epistemology. The basis of progressivism is collectivism and altruism in ethics and politics, not pure emotion, but the "basis" of all of it in terms of method of thinking is a mixture of reason and emotion. The philosophical form of that for progressives is Pragmatism, with its truth is what "works", what is true today need not be tomorrow, evolutionary concepts, etc. That is what the collectivism and altruism cash in on.
They became influential in the establishment because they were the product of establishment education. There wasn't anything new about any of it. It came from the European counter-Enlightenment over a hundred years old, applied to current politics.
All the Jews could do in Europe was to get out while they could, as many did in the 1930s when the tyranny was still limited geographically and exits were still open. The victims who were left were not fighting with words, they were huddled in despair wondering what had happened; it was for them too late for words.
Had several hundred thousand Jews in Germany, along with others, been armed (and had the mentality of armed self-defense), it is not entirely clear if the Nazis would have acquired power in the late '20's and early '30's in the first place.
A must watch.
2. Deviation from reality requires replacing it with fact. You need to find some individual or organization with expertise that has focused on the complex history of government intervention in US health care, which you can use as a source, covering its many decades of growing statist intervention before Obama. Obama was only the latest cashing in of what was already underway. So was Hillary care before that. Both were consciously intended to lead to complete government control in the phony name of a simpler "utopian" "single payer", but they were not the beginning.
When unaffordable Affordable Healthcare Act became,as Harry Reed would bray, "The law of the land," I recall critics being called racist due to the socialist in the White House being Obamacare's driving force.
Do you propose bombing Washington DC and taking over with overwhelming force to set back the progress of collectivism -- so it will continue on the same downward trend that brought us to where we are now?
The modern history of Germany was similar. They understood enough to not vote for Hitlerian fascists again, which kept the worst oppression out, but not enough to stop the socialist trend. The US poured enormous funding into Germany mostly to stop communism from spreading, which had shown a strong influence in Germany. That propped up its recovering economy and reduced the pressure from fear following appealing-sounding communist slogans. They took the money, enjoyed the improved economy and the relative freedom, and continued to pursue socialist trends more gradually.
In Russia the people never liked what they experienced under communism but did not know what to replace it with even if they could have overthrown the overwhelming power of the Communists. They literally had no concept of how to live in freedom. They retained the traditional Russian mysticism and dark sense of life, and when the Communists fell they wound up with a corrupt fascist state, less totalitarian but still brutal, not individualism.
There is a range of what a country might do with its government and what it does within the ideas dominating the culture. But it doesn't change abruptly on its own onto a different track within the range. Where it is within that range depends on political momentum, whatever the entrenched powers are, what the people will generally tolerate, and what certain individuals can do and the choices they make as leaders in the circumstances they find themselves in.
But the overall trend still depends on the ideas that people follow, just like it did in the difference between the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment. Today few in America would tolerate an outright theocracy, just as capitalism, freedom and the pursuit of happiness on earth would have been impossible in a culture that lived in superstition and other-wordliness.
In 18th century America a unique group of exceptional individuals acting in very different circumstances than those in England created much better results than in the slowly moving entrenched status quo of England under the same Enlightenment influences. The role of ideas does not mean that certain basic premises varying across the population uniquely determine a particular government without regard to anything else, including how it got to where it is, the forces keeping it there, and the kind of choices made by those who become leaders. But statism and collectivism will not turn to individualism when people are clamoring for and willing to accept strong government controls under the influence of their basic ideas. The American individualistic sense of life has kept the country going despite the ideas spread by the intellectuals and increasingly accepted, but that cannot continue as the bad ideas become adhered to more explicitly and change the dominant sense of life. Lashing out and punching someone in the face won't change that.
World War II is not a lesson in how to reform the country by punching people in the face and ignoring the role of ideas that guide people's thinking and action. Dramatic slogans exhorting to 'follow the patriots' is not an explanation or answer to anything.
This country was made possible by the dominance of Enlightenment ideas of reason and individualism, not the repetition of countless wars over centuries. Without the dominant Enlightenment values an American Revolution against Britain would not have resulted in an improved government. If you tried it today you and five like-minded others would be squashed and that would be the end of you.
If a nation attacks us we fight back as a nation to put an end to it, requiring in the duration putting up with the deprivation of the loss of civilization with a lot of death and destruction. That is not a temporary physical restraining of a criminal within the context of civilization.
Cheering about wars in the name of punching someone in the face will not change the internal direction of this country. Have you read Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels? That will tell you a lot about the nature of the problem and the solution.
Restoring the country requires the spread of the proper ideas to replace the progressive collectivism that is increasingly dominating, not dramatic calls to stand up to bullies. Your website and posts invoke all kinds of imagery about 'patriots' and courageous battles of the past; they do not address how to restore the required ideas that must dominate a culture.
Exactly who do you propose to fight whom and by what means, and how do you propose that it change what people think about the nature of government they have accepted and pursued? Blowing up the Korean peninsula is expected to replace progressivism here? Fighting for ideas is an intellectual battle that begins with identifying the proper concepts and principles, not emotional imagery about patriotic wars and fighting bullies.
The goal of raising a man requires first and foremost developing rational thought, the essence of man. More often than not, standing up for your self as an adult requires moral self confidence, thinking, and persuading those who can make a difference, not physical swaggering. Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged to portray in fiction her view of the ideal man, not individualism as being a 'tough guy'.
"every attempt at analysis, delving even a little deeper, caused them pain and anguish." - This is a majority of Americans. I admire your efforts to help them. But, I stopped wasting my time trying to help people. Most actually enjoy being wrong and getting terrible results and acting like they just have bad luck...LOL
It had often been said that we should stick to facts to promote our views and ideas. I think not. Facts make these creatures tired and cause alienation. Perhaps it is better to use the language they understand - hyperbole, exaggeration and fear mongering. Repeated continuously. This is the language that the Party has used successfully for over a century on every continent; maybe there something to this technique, since it achieves its goals everywhere it has been tried.
In terms of going Galt...I'm in a version of it - no longer voting, no longer taking part in any conversations about things that the masses treat as religion (medicine, politics, firearms, global warming, etc...) I just sit by now and watch people come unglued being wrong. It was a tough transition for me, but has been rewarding. My next move is getting more separation between me and the addled masses...
Ayn Rand had a convenient cop-out - a secret place in the mountains. If it only existed in reality... I tried in the past, on this site and elsewhere, promoting an idea of collaboration on actually creating a physical Gulch, starting with a theoretical (paper) design. No one was interested. So, mooching it is...
You have not "joined the moochers" by living in the only world there is. You still live in spite of them.
I agree that strugatsky did not join the moochers.
You ask what this says about generational traits, education during the 60s and 70s, political philosophy, President Obama's impact on economic freedoms. Unfortunately I think you are way overthinking this. He's talking to providers struggling to get customers. All the philosophical stuff is window dressing around the idea of taking from unwilling customers and giving it to him.
As you say, that's easy for him to say since he's retired. Other thoughts:
1) It's easy to say this. The devil is in the details of who's poor and how many pro bono customers he'll take.
2) If you can't find customers and you make a deal to treat some for free and others "for free" to the customer but actually using, their money, then you come out ahead of someone trying and failing to get people to part with their money voluntarily.
At a networking event a doctor once said to my wife and me, "Wow. I can see how hard that is for you as an attorney and engineer. You can't bill insurance. You have to convince the customer to write a check with their own money."
That's partly fundraiser networking small talk, but I sensed it was true. I sensed a lot of doctors in my area would find it daunting to have to find customers and convince them the service is worth the price.
In terms of economics, this doctor was way out of his breadth, but with supreme confidence kept making unsubstantiated assertions. And even when I factually pointed out his errors and incorrect assumptions, with actual examples, no one wanted to hear their fantasy crumble. It was easier to shut up the messenger. They refused to even consider an analysis, as it was way too difficult. Reminded me of Winnie the Pooh - “I’m a bear with a very simple mind; big words confuse me.”