Polarization and Politics

A friend recently resigned from her teaching position at a public high school. The students were having intercourse in the classroom while she was teaching. I assume this is a rare and extreme case; at the local blue-ribbon, top-rated public high school, the students show restraint, saving sex until they can get to the restroom.

I live in a cave, but I am not naive. People of reproductive age will in fact reproduce. What alarms is that the public school administrators are both persuaded they are unable to enforce a no-copulation zone, and also that they do not feel any obligation to attempt it.

These are public schools, so there are facts that don’t apply to, say, your local bar or brothel:

We taxpayers are required by law to send our money to these schools, under pain of fines, imprisonment, and forfeiture of assets.
Parents are required by law to send their children to these schools. If they do not do so, their children can be taken from them.

Most parents do not have an alternative public school available. Most parents cannot afford private school tuition. Homeschooling is daunting for most and impossible for many; appeasing the authorities is an on-going problem.

But what stands out most about this problem: No one really seems to care.

Why isn’t this in the news? Why isn’t this a hot topic at school board and superintendent elections? How can a school be top-ranked, or a county promote itself as “A Great Place For Families”, when this is the atmosphere in which students are expected to learn?

Apparently there is a vast gulf between those who feel these sorts of things are a serious problem, and those who feel they are no big deal*.

I keeping hearing all these complaints that American politics is so “polarized”. This is why.

*I don’t think this is a left-right divide. Not at all.

What use a Classics Degree?

Darwin answers the question:

This isn’t because a degree in the humanities is “useless”. I believe that learning Greek, Latin, history and philosophy was very useful to me. But it was useful to me in the sense that a liberal art is meant to be useful — in allowing one to think like a “free man”. It is not useful in the sense of providing instant and easy employment. I think that it would be helpful if colleges and departments were a little more honest about this. It would also be very, very helpful if people took it into account before blithely borrowing large amounts of money. (And if people were less blithe about borrowing so much money in order to fund college degrees, perhaps the absurd rate of tuition increase would slow down. You may be assured that one of the things allowing universities to make off like bandits is that people have the illusion that having a degree, any degree, is an automatic ticket to a “good job”.)

He also confirms that Rush Limbaugh is not a classicist. Apparently people were confused on that point.

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Meanwhile, Archbishop Chaput demonstrates how to use such an education. From his “On Being Human in an Age of Unbelief”:

That leads to my fourth and final point. The pro-life movement needs to be understood and respected for what it is: part of a much larger, consistent, and morally worthy vision of the dignity of the human person. You don’t need to be Christian or even religious to be “pro-life.” Common sense alone is enough to make a reasonable person uneasy about what actually happens in an abortion. The natural reaction, the sane and healthy response, is repugnance.

The whole thing is excellent, and eminently readable. Print it out and read it on paper, because it merits sitting down and giving it your full attention. Great essay to discuss with your high school or college student.

Logic, Criticism, & the 99%

There are two critiques of the 99% movement that I’ve seen floating around, that I wanted to address. The first is this:

“You are criticizing capitalism, but you own a __[insert name of product manufactured by said capitalists]___”

There’s a little bit of truth in this criticism: Obviously someone who owns a smart phone isn’t secretly longing to run away and join the Amish. (Who are capitalists, by the way. They just aren’t no-holds-barred, if-I-can-than-it-is-good capitalists.)

But I think the criticism also points to a bigger problem: Consumers do not bear the primary responsibility for the behavior of their suppliers. It is the job of the supplier to be a responsible employer and manufacturer. A boycott is a useful tool, but it is one that only works at the extremes, when there is a known, egregious violation. I can’t possibly know the inner workings of every manufacturer whose products I consume. It is too big a task. And to simply Boycott Everything and go be Amish is not the solution (unless you just want to be Amish, a worthy pursuit but not a universal vocation); boycotting every manufactured good also hurts honest employers and employees.

And then there’s the question of how evil is too evil? Again, boycotting is a great tool for serious, longstanding, public offenses. But it would be entirely reasonable, say, for someone who hired me to both say, “Jen, you need to come to work on time and get your projects done by deadline,” and at the same time, not fire me because I was five minutes late. Or ten minutes. Or an hour. It’s up to the judgment of my employer to choose what combination of actions are the best way to deal with my transgression. Entirely reasonable to both reprimand me severely, and keep me in their employ a little longer. Public protest is the reprimand, boycott is the layoff.

–> In the case of the OWS, since protestors do not themselves have the authority to step in and oversee corporate operations, it is reasonable to insist that the proper authorities do what is necessary.

(We can agree or not on whether those demands have merit. No one claims the OWS people even agree on these matters. And I certainly don’t hold with violent protest of any kind. I only argue here that our criticism of the criticizers ought to stick to logical arguments.)

UPDATE: Darwin points out in the combox that some OWS protesters really do want to dismantle capitalism. So he is correct, to criticize that portion of the group for using the fruits of capitalism is a legitimate argument.

The second criticism I’m hearing:

“You aren’t poor. You have all this great stuff like running water and cell phones. Quit complaining.”

What is the logic behind this kind of accusation:

If you aren’t the victim, you aren’t allowed to protest injustice?
If the robber is leaving you with all the stuff you really need, it’s okay if he just slips in and takes off with a few trinkets?
If your pimp / master / feudal lord sees that your basic needs are met, therefore sex-trafficking / slavery / serfdom are acceptable social structures?
You aren’t being pimped / enslaved / bound to the land, quit griping that you can’t afford the surgery you need?

Again, this is not a defense of any particular item on the all-purpose protest agenda of the OWS folk. Only an observation that if you are going to critique someone’s arguments, critique their arguments. Is there nothing to protest? Then show that in fact our government is run fairly and efficiently, the needs of the poor are tended to adequately, workers are paid reasonable wages, and there is therefore no need for change of this or that type.

It is both fun and helpful to debate actual economic questions. So do that.

Health Insurance Regulations – Go Comment

The Impractical Catholic has a very practical link to how to submit your comments on the new health insurance regulations. Click on his link, it is very easy from there. You can scroll through the regulations to make sure you know what you are talking about, and then submit the comment of your choice.

Naturally I forgot to copy mine for posterity before it submitted, by my talking points were this:

I quoted the bit about how the goal of the religious exemption was to protect houses of worship.
I observed this was too narrow a view of “religious institution”, that did not represent the reality of religious institutions such as hospitals, schools, and other benevolent works.
I proposed a compromise, in which employees of such institutions could choose either to accept the employer-provided plan, or use a cash allowance of the same value to purchase the plan of their choice from another source.
In that way, the religious employer is not required to directly fund a health care plan that includes treatments contrary to its religious tenets, but employees remain free to choose some other plan as they see fit.

I didn’t say it, but it’s a bit like the difference between saying, “every employee shall be given a per-diem allowance to pay for travel expenses at a hotel or brothel”, versus specifying a per diem amount per day, and leaving it to the employee to decide where he wishes to lodge.

So that’s what I wrote. Go write something yourself. It is so easy and fast. Really, it is.

Okay, here’s the link directly to regulations.gov that I followed from Impractical Catholic’s post. Go. Now. Seriously.

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Also: Reconsider giving your nine-year-old a blog on the same blogging program you yourself use. I almost posted this on a hot-pink ProudKittyCat blog. That woulda made the grandparents raise an eyebrow.

Higher Ed

Darwin writes here about how everyone’s getting a college degree these days, and the economic consequences. I was going to leave a comment, but I finally just decided to hit the ‘like’ button and be done with it.

Mr. Magundi laments the consequences of collegization for communities, but offers a hopeful solution:

We have raised the price of higher education to the point where it may simply be ruinous even for comfortably well-off families. And so we may end up abandoning the university system as we’ve built it up, in favor of a system where we stay home for most of our higher education, perhaps in community colleges, or in some similar institution we haven’t thought of yet. Educated people might get in the habit of thinking of the place where they grew up as home. And in spite of the disadvantages to Harvard and Cornell, I think that might be a very good thing.”

Am I the only one horrified that you can’t get a decent catholic college education without taking out a mortgage on your life? Though I think charities such as Mater Ecclesiae Fund have their hearts (and wallets) in the right place, I find it frankly predatory that catholic colleges will load students up with such levels of debt to begin with.

Yes, I meant that.

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Meanwhile, Public Discourse is running this essay. The gist: the political science education offered in the Ivy League in the 1990’s let ideology get in the way of reliable scholarship — to the detriment of the State Department today. Well, funny about that. Because those of us getting our int’l poly-sci degrees from Backwater State U, we were studying under some of these guys. Taking courses like “Islam, Politics and Revolution”.

–> And happily for the State Department, some our grads found their way to Washington. So not all is lost. Most of us local-U grads grow up to be, well, locals. But we let loose a tithe of our debt-free adventurers, to go assist our better-~~indoctrinated~~ educated brethren up north.

So if our government should get something right, you know who to thank.

Just kidding. Sort of.

Wake up! Hey, Wake up!

That’s what my then two-year-old used to shout at his baby sister in the next seat when we arrived at our destination. The parents were not amused.

These two articles might not amuse you, either. But if you need to be really grumpy, these’ll do it.

–> I’m continuing with the regular-life-requires-my-attention-theme, so outsourcing my invective to ‘things that showed up in my inbox’.

From Christian LeBlanc, interesting link to an essay on contraception and the fall of the west.

The West lasted from AD 732, when Charles Martel defeated the Muslims at Tours, until 1960, where it fell without a battle. In 1960, the birth control pill became widely available. Many think of it as heaven, sexual nirvana, the route to self-expression, wish fulfillment, and liberation for millions of women. I think of it as Auschwitz in a bottle. It was and is genocide, as, using it, the women of my generation happily traded off 1,200 years of unparalleled growth, wealth, security, stability, scientific and ethical progress for a second BMW in the garage.

I’m not persuaded of author’s provocative conclusion (“Islam is the only way”), but the irony is there. In the 19th century the French quit reproducing — yes, before effective contraception became widely available — and by the late 20th were wringing their hands over the cultural impact of all the muslims they’d imported to do the labor of the children they’d never had. Germany has followed suit, and the US isn’t far behind.

(Though, luckily for our culture, we are importing truckloads of macho catholics with their awesome mariachi masses. Maybe God does love us more? Kidding. Really. The French have Brie — if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. But yes, I do like a rousing Spanish mass now and again. Perks up the excessively-somber soul. And as much as I am moved by the beauty and devotion of faithful muslims at worship, no, I can’t slip down to the corner mosque for a mini-revival.)

Anyhow, key point of link for me is this: You can’t refuse to bear children, then get all shocked and horrified at the presence of the people you imported to do the work of the offspring you never had. You want someone t0 mow your lawn and do your dishes? Either rear yourself a pair of middle-schoolers, or hire someone else’s.

[Teenagers everywhere are now saying aha! You really did raise me to be a slave! The mother points out that she does a thing or two for her own children that she doesn’t do for the random low-wage stranger. Indeed, here may lie a bit of the problem: rather than a steady flow of youngsters who do the grunt work for a decade and then move on to greater work, we attempt to create a society divided between perpetual overlords and perpetual economic-teenagers. And then are shocked, just shocked, when the daring, hard-working, self-sacrificing immigrants turn out to be just like our own children — ready to move up in the world after a spell.]

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Your other link is this article from the HSLDA, from Swedish parents who moved to Finland in order to homeschool. I will use this as my cue to get off the internet educate a few fresh faces of my own.

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PS, castle news: We got a new roof. Looks a lot like the old one, only much, much younger.

Meekness

I was pleased to see that in addition to Chelsea Zimmerman (put me in a paragraph with her any day), John Hathaway is on the undecided couch. He ponders here and here, and then finally takes action in this letter. This is one thing that I admire about John, even when it terrifies me: the man is not shy. Just not.

But I’m definitely leaning toward the Tollefsen-Shea camp, not a surprise. It fits too well.

Am I so meek? I wish. My specialty is doing things exactly the wrong way (even when I know better), and I’ve failed out of Meekness 101 more times than I care to count. Despite this, I have been wanting to write about Meekness for a while now, because if you’re a poly-sci/history type, you eventually figure out that the meek really do inherit the earth.

Here’s the tough part in making sense of it: In your brain when you hear the word “meek”, do you just swap in “weak” and think it means the same thing? And maybe something about “shy as a mouse”, since mice are small and the word “mouse” starts with “m”?

[And maybe you add in something about being a peasant or something, because you think “humble” = “poor”. Doesn’t work. St. Thomas More was meek. Wealthy, opinionated, but ultimately meek.]

What it really means is “mild of temper” (that’s not me) “long-suffering” (more not) and “patient under injuries” (nope, not that either). And then we think of the Amish, who are famously meek. So we think, oh, okay, meek = pacifist? Maybe sometimes. But a really good soldier is massively meek. How else do you hold up under confusing orders, dangerous conditions, constant hardship, and just do what is asked no matter the personal cost? That’s meek.

Public, peaceful resistance to brutal dictatorships? That’s hardcore meekness. (And not forgetting that yes there is a time and place to bear arms. But remember those just war criteria? “Some chance of success”? Though it is just as bloody, sometimes peaceful resistance is the only moral option. But much harder. All the pain and suffering, maybe more, and none of the gratification of sticking it to your enemy, no matter how futile the effort.)

Anyhow, saying all that, the way I think it ties in to the recent internet excitement, is that maybe shy, weak, pro-lifers like myself need to work on our meekness a little more? Not the fake-meekness that means ‘doing nothing’, but the real kind, which is doing what is right and what is necessary, no matter the cost.

I hate it when I post things like this.

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