Happy Constitution Day! --and a warning

Today marks the anniversary of the formal signing of the U.S. Constitution. As my classes do read the document line-by-line later in the semester (and since I don't have lecture today), we are not part of any formal observance. But I do bring it to everyone's attention, and remind them that to understand everything else that goes on, you need to know the framework on which everything hangs.

Go read it.

But a warning: you may not like everything you see. You may conclude that some parts are just plain stupid. You may think that the government has gone far beyond anything the Philly Fathers envisioned. And you may be right.

I keep a copy of Herbert Storing's What the Anti-Federalists Were For handy. You may want to sit down and read it sometime after you've read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. Those Anti's weren't all paranoid loonies, and many of their most important objections could be literally inserted into today's write-ups of Tea Party quotes.

Technorati Tags: Tea Party protests, U.S. Constitution

I Never Could Get My Mustache As Dapper As His...

Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Veteran Character Actor Harold Gould Dead at 86: I loved him in The Sting.

Someone Alert My Mother

Study Shows Coffee Drinkers Could Have Lower Blood Pressure: this would explain much.

Technorati Tags: News I Can Use

HEE HEE HEE!!!

Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Occupied North Texas:

Technorati Tags: humor

American Thinker: Iraq: The War That Broke Us -- Not

American Thinker: Iraq: The War That Broke Us -- Not:

Read all of it. You'll see this graph there as well. Burn it into your mind. When government spending increased, Very Bad Things Happened. Keynesian multiplier, my hairy backside!

Technorati Tags: anti-Bush, anti-war protests, George W. Bush, revisionism

If George Lucas Had Lived In The Twenties

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

by way of
The Jawa Report: Star Wars Silent Film:

Technorati Tags: humor, Star Wars

Left, Right, But Especially The Left

Marxism vs. the Majority - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Daily:

Class consciousness, says Marx, produces class ideologies. The class ideology provides the class with an interpretation of reality and at the same time teaches the members how to act in order to benefit their class... Of course, not every class comrade is an author and publishes what he has thought. But all writers belonging to the class conceive the same ideas and all other members of the class approve of them. There is no room left in Marxism for the assumption that the various members of the same class could seriously disagree in ideology. There exists for all members of the class only one ideology... If a man expresses opinions at variance with the ideology of a definite class, that is because he does not belong to the class concerned. There is no need to refute his ideas by discursive reasoning. It is enough to unmask his background and class affiliation. This settles the matter. But if a man whose proletarian background and membership in the workers' class cannot be contested diverges from the correct Marxian creed, he is a traitor. It is impossible to assume that he could be sincere in his rejection of Marxism. As a proletarian he must necessarily think like a proletarian. An inner voice tells him in an unmistakable way what the correct proletarian ideology is. He is dishonest in overriding this voice and publicly professing unorthodox opinions. He is a rogue, a Judas, a snake in the grass. In fighting such a betrayer all means are permissible.

And this explains academia in a nutshell. It's more than Kissinger's famous adage about the stakes being so vicious precisely because they are so small. In the minds of academics, to deviate is to be a class traitor. Ostracize! Ostracize!

Technorati Tags: academia

Or, It Could Just Be A Case Of "Taking Care Of Your Own"

Student Loan Bubble :: Accuracy In Academia:

"In tarnishing for-profit schools with a broad brush, the implication is that the noose of federal regulation needs to be tightened on the entire for-profit sector.To Ferguson, this is part of an entirely predictable process. It begins when the Obama administration takes an interest in a particular industry: “If the administration gets its way and the regulatory regime continues to tighten, the for-profit education industry won’t cease to exist. More likely, it will regress into a form of state capitalism, as kind of a government utility: utterly dependent on government subsidy, hence utterly submissive to government authority, which can set prices and profit margins. The health care industry, with the passage of health care reform, is halfway there already.”

Interesting point. But to my mind, there's another factor or two at work here. For-profit colleges tend to be oriented to business or technical degrees. The clientele they attract tend to be more conservative than the norm. Certainly the faculty tend that way. Together they represent a huge potential challenge to the overwhelmingly non-conservative professoriate at bloated non-profit institutions. Stifle the competition while you can! Or better, co-opt them into being another arm of the octopus/leviathan. You can bet Harkin et al. wouldn't be so strident if for-profit faculty were all good members of the AAUP.

Technorati Tags: academia, for-profit colleges, Higher Education Bubble

And On My Very Own Birthday, Another Reminder Of "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi"

Beloit College Mindset List for the matriculating Class of 2013.

***

Last week was a Hell Week. I will not be going into it. But today is my birthday!

Technorati Tags: history, humor, News I Can Use

Good News For Me, Not Necessarily For Thee

By way of Instapundit » Blog Archive » HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE NOISES?, one of Prof. Reynold's readers remarks:

Just having “go to a good college” as a goal isn’t cutting it anymore. Except for the very wealthy, folks just don’t have the money and spending 100K+ for a four-year “experience” isn’t going to cut it...
A lot of students/parents are now looking at getting core classes done at the relatively inexpensive local college and then transferring to a school where one can do the remaining work towards a very specific goal.

Yay! Demand for my services will increase! (At least until the gummint is finally forced to either quit giving out money for higher ed, thus ending the air stream inflating up the bubble; or else advise that student loans will be deducted directly via payroll deduction from future paychecks, which will scare the holy hell out of every one and ending demand.)

Technorati Tags: academia, education and pedagogy, News I Can Use, unintended consequences

I've Never Had Much Use For Howard Zinn.

I mean, even back in Big Midwestern Elite Liberal Arts Grad School, the lefty profs would warn us about the dangers of relying on Howard Zinn. It's simply not good history that he's writing, I was warned.

So go read this: The File on Howard Zinn :: Accuracy In Academia and follow the link to the FBI files and judge ye. As I have noted previously, the big meme in 22nd century historiography will be how corrupted American historians were in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Technorati Tags: academia, Cold War, history, News I Can Use, revisionism, Soviet Union

The Broken Window Fallacy (via the Mises Institute)

Absolutely AWESOME, courtesy of the Mises Institute.

Technorati Tags: bailout, business, economy, history, unintended consequences

Quiet Is Not The Same As Inactive

I tell my students that the prime reason to get a college degree is to be able to land a job where you can work in A/C during the summer months. I was brought up not to be afraid of hard work --I just became averse to sweating on anything other than my own terms.

I am teaching what amounts to beyond-a-full load: six classes. That's a lot for a regular term, so you can imagine how draining it is for the summer, which is compressed into two five-week terms. June and early July saw me teaching non-stop from 8 to 3:30, with no prep period and very little lunch time (plus it was more draining than high school, since there was no time for group work, worksheets, grading, etc. to break the routine). I have it "easier" this part of summer, I don't have to start until 10:30. And don't forget, that does not include time at home on the laptop, doing prep and grading things.

But the money is good, and damn if I don't actually enjoy doing what I do. Little time for blogging, and for that I express my regrets.

Technorati Tags: academia

If Not The Nation, Then The Idea

It's obvious, isn't it? No one "automatically" deserves special treatment. Everyone can live, be free and do what they need to do --and no one can take that away. The whole reason government exists is to make sure of that. And if it can't --or won't-- then it should be changed so that it will, or else eliminated. (Me, in class, just the other day)

It has long been fashionable to criticize --from the Left and from the Right--the nation known as the United States I mean, look at every bad thing under the sun --racism, sexism, statism, classism, corporatism --and inevitably we can say, "it's America's fault!" And I myself am not entirely convinced still that we're ever going to get it completely right.

But the very second we throw out the inspiration --in that instant that we forget those immortal words, we are no longer men. We are the servants of whomever takes command, be they lefties or righties. And our children, too, for ever and ever, and they will damn us for it.

No, the United States hasn't always been great. But the idea behind it is ultimately more powerful than anything else yet mortal man has created. Make very loud noise tonight with pyrotechnics. Give thanks and rejoice. Share the blessings of liberty with your family and friends. And let no one deny the power of these words, the translation into 21st-Century-Studentese I gave above:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Technorati Tags: history

When Next You Obsess About American Obesity, Consider This As One Explanation

CARPE DIEM: As Share of Income, Americans Have the Cheapest Food in History and Cheapest Food on the Planet: and especially consider the point made about wholesale milk prices. Think of how much cheaper still milk would be if we eliminated dairy subsidies! Choke on that, "oh, big agribusiness is horrible for everyone" folks!

[Yes, we can quibble about hormonal additives and genetic engineering of the American diet, very true. But the infrastructure is nonetheless in place: we could be super-groovy-healthy in a matter of years without significant food price increases --thanks to agribusiness]

Technorati Tags: business, history, puppy