Michael Shedlock, Stupid In America; What's Wrong with the U.S. Education System?
(Deliberate Dumbing Down)
Monday, March 15, 2010
Time: Sexism and the Navy's Female Captain Bligh By Mark Thompson / Washington
Who chose the title for the piece, the author? At the end of the article the author offers as an explanation of how she was able to rise through the ranks, despite her record, excessive PC sensitivity bordering on reverse sexism. (My characterization, not his.)
Who chose the title for the piece, the author? At the end of the article the author offers as an explanation of how she was able to rise through the ranks, despite her record, excessive PC sensitivity bordering on reverse sexism. (My characterization, not his.)
History and America's wars
US executive producer and director Steven Spielberg (3rd-R), actor Tom Hanks (4th-L), US Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Scott Gould (2nd R), and former US Senator Elizabeth Dole (3rd-L) pose with others after laying a wreath during ceremony at the National WWII Memorial in Washington, DC, on March 11, 2010. The ceremony was organized to honor and pay tribute to WWII veterans who served in the Pacific. (Reuters/Daylife)
WASHINGTON - MARCH 11: Actor Tom Hanks poses for a photo with Marines after a World War II Memorial ceremony to pay tribute to World War II veterans of the Pacific on March 11, 2010 in Washington, DC. HBO is premiering this month a ten part miniseries 'The Pacific,' based on the true stories of World War II Marines who fought in the Pacific Theater. (Getty/Daylife)
Two from VFR: How do you get yourself made into a national icon on the cover of Time … and The Pacific.
The Time article
Mr. Hanks may be rightly criticized for his understanding of the United States, the virtue of patriotism, and of history, and for his anti-American attitude, which impacts his history-telling. (What else should we expect from a big Hollywood star?) But we can appreciate the courage and sacrifice of the Greatest Generation and still be critical of the way the war was waged and how the United States was maneuvered into entering the war. Or at least ask questions about what happened?
The Japanese were aggressors seeking to expand their empire; their attacks on American territories warranted war and a military response. We should seek to have a better understanding of the causes of the war and form appropriate moral judgments of the actions of all those involved, not just the Japanese. Traditional conservatives denounce jingoism and wars of aggression by the American government, and we seek a more accurate history, especially of World War II. But we do not accept the judgment offered to us by liberals who have no real patriotism, just love of their own moral superiority.
At the end of the first episode of The Pacific, in the aftermath of the big battle, the Americans torture the surviving Japanese officer. This is after an injured Japanese soldier uses a grenade and kills the Navy corpsman and marine attending to him. At first, the Americans shoot around him, preventing his escape and playing with his head, and then they shoot at his limbs, wounding him but not killing him. One of the main characters kills him, to end the sport and the officer's suffering. We witness the descent into savagery, and a kind of madness takes over which we would not see in everyday life.
We can recognize the virtue of those who served and yet also realize that war can be very brutal, which has an enormous psychological impact on everyone present and can be carried around by those who survive. In extreme situations, our emotions can become very powerful. And of course the anger of the common man can lead to racism and ethnic hatreds. These emotions may have poisoned some and become an act of the will, malice, but for many others they are not the sum of their personality, even if the emotions may have lingered for a long time. Dehumanization is necessary for normal men to get the job of killing other men done -- it is probably not the reason why most normal Americans volunteered to serve. (Whether racism played any role in the souls of those in the Roosevelt administration, God knows.) Mr. Hanks's problem is his simplifying of a complex reality and the reductionism of the causes of war in the name of a liberalism that stands apart from and in judgment of all these facts of life, without comprehending them. How easy it is for a liberal, who has never served in the military, to judge those who have. Without fully subscribing to "You had to be there to fully understand," I do believe that experience with war can help us to ruck a mile in the boots of the American soldier or marine, and civilians do those in the military a disservice when they pretend to know what it is like.
Zenit: Pope's World Youth Day Message
"Good Teacher, What Must I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?"
Cardinal Kung Still Seen as Example 10 Years Later
Why isn't the Secretary of State listening to Cardinal Zen more?
"Good Teacher, What Must I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?"
Cardinal Kung Still Seen as Example 10 Years Later
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun offered a memorial Mass on Friday in memory of Cardinal Kung. The cardinal, who was the bishop of Shanghai, died March 12, 2000, in the United States. About 40 people attended the Mass in the Salesian chapel, some of them Shanghai natives.
Cardinal Zen proposed the late cardinal as a model for those Chinese bishops now facing temptations.
“Almost all of the Chinese bishops from the open communities have been recognized by the Pope … but some of them have not returned, and some of them have even declared their support for an independent and self-governed church," Cardinal Zen reflected. "Some of them are struggling, are hesitating, under temptations and pressure."
While recognizing that these bishops cannot be judged or criticized and acknowledging that "we have not lived their difficulties," the cardinal encouraged prayer for the Chinese bishops, that they "might follow the model of Cardinal Kung.”
Why isn't the Secretary of State listening to Cardinal Zen more?
No authority before the Fall, except that of God?
The Thinking Housewife makes the following claims in On Equality and Chastity:
The first claim is that Eve's rebellion is more significant because she suffers more as a result of her disobedience. But Adam's rebellion is more significant because he is the head of the human race, and as a result of his disobedience, all are deprived of the gift of original justice.
As for the second claim, some may interpret Pope John Paul II as supporting this position, that Adam had no authority over Eve before the Fall, or that she was not subordinate to his authority. I do not think this is a tenable understanding of John Paul II's writings: see The Authority of the Husband according to the Magisterium, by Paul N. Check. It may be that some Christian personalists make this claim, however. Just as St. Augustine argued that government was an artifact of the Fall and not an institution that existed before it, so some would claim that the authority of the husband over the wife is a result of the Fall, and is not ordained by God through the very nature of things.
However, if we follow St. Thomas's reasoning, then just as government is natural to man living in a group with other men, since there must be some principle which directs them to the common good, so there must be some authority which directs the family to its proper good.
Since Genesis does not speak of civil government, it could be argued that there is a greater scriptural foundation for the claim that the husband has no authority over the wife in the Garden of Eden: Genesis 3. But what is translated by the English "rule" is dominare, not imperare or regere, and we see that various authorities, including Pope John Paul II (see Fr. Check's essay), have understood this to mean "dominate," not "rule." As a result of sin, the husband is prone to lording his authority over the wife, just as the Gentiles lord their authority over others (in this passage dominare is used once again).
A more feasible claim might be that this authority was shared equally between husband and wife, but there is nothing within Tradition to indicate that this is the case, and I do not believe that any Church Father ever supported this position.
In a response to her original post, the Thinking Housewife adds: "The temptation of Eve, this legendary event that symbolizes a real moment in history, does speak of the greater impulsiveness of women as well as their immense influence over men. Face it. Men are less often taken in. Women tend to be more trusting."
But Eve's problem wasn't that she was trusting or impulsive -- rather, it was the sin of pride. Concupiscence was not a factor since this was before the Fall, not after. From the Genesis account we do read that Eve sought the forbidden fruit not for herself, but also for her husband, sharing it with him, thus acting as the helpmate and wife, even if in a disordered and sinful way.
Latin Dictionary
Verbix
Let’s start with revealed truth. Here we know that God sees men and women as absolutely equal in dignity. They are both made in His image and have free will. This is what makes human nature partly divine, what distinguishes a human being from the rest of creation: the human soul and free will. Genesis makes this equality unshakably clear from the beginning of our sacred history, which is why the Judeo-Christian view is so momentous and superior to that of cultures that do not explicitly define male and female or that view either women or men as spiritually inferior.
Some argue that the symbolism of Genesis implies male superiority. There is no basis for this claim. It is feminist gobbledy-gook. The fact that Eve was made last could more reasonably indicate her superiority than her inferiority (in light of the whole, it obviously indicates neither). After all, Adam was made after lower forms of creation. That Eve was made from Adam’s rib could also point to her superiority; after all, Adam was made from the dust of the earth. That she is a “help meet” does not signify servitude but worthiness. No, in the most important sense they are the same, of equal status, created to love and to know God, to rule over the rest of creation, to choose obedience to God or rebellion.
Eve’s rebellion is not less significant than Adam’s; it is more. Look at this. See what it says of the power of women, about the implications of their freedom. She succumbed to evil first and must take on a heavy share of suffering, more so than man:
”I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
God did not make Eve to be ruled. It is only when we grasp this essential idea, that the necessary submission of women to men is not what God intended and not what He wished, nor is it in accord with their ultimate destiny, that we can make sense of human history.
The first claim is that Eve's rebellion is more significant because she suffers more as a result of her disobedience. But Adam's rebellion is more significant because he is the head of the human race, and as a result of his disobedience, all are deprived of the gift of original justice.
As for the second claim, some may interpret Pope John Paul II as supporting this position, that Adam had no authority over Eve before the Fall, or that she was not subordinate to his authority. I do not think this is a tenable understanding of John Paul II's writings: see The Authority of the Husband according to the Magisterium, by Paul N. Check. It may be that some Christian personalists make this claim, however. Just as St. Augustine argued that government was an artifact of the Fall and not an institution that existed before it, so some would claim that the authority of the husband over the wife is a result of the Fall, and is not ordained by God through the very nature of things.
However, if we follow St. Thomas's reasoning, then just as government is natural to man living in a group with other men, since there must be some principle which directs them to the common good, so there must be some authority which directs the family to its proper good.
Since Genesis does not speak of civil government, it could be argued that there is a greater scriptural foundation for the claim that the husband has no authority over the wife in the Garden of Eden: Genesis 3. But what is translated by the English "rule" is dominare, not imperare or regere, and we see that various authorities, including Pope John Paul II (see Fr. Check's essay), have understood this to mean "dominate," not "rule." As a result of sin, the husband is prone to lording his authority over the wife, just as the Gentiles lord their authority over others (in this passage dominare is used once again).
A more feasible claim might be that this authority was shared equally between husband and wife, but there is nothing within Tradition to indicate that this is the case, and I do not believe that any Church Father ever supported this position.
In a response to her original post, the Thinking Housewife adds: "The temptation of Eve, this legendary event that symbolizes a real moment in history, does speak of the greater impulsiveness of women as well as their immense influence over men. Face it. Men are less often taken in. Women tend to be more trusting."
But Eve's problem wasn't that she was trusting or impulsive -- rather, it was the sin of pride. Concupiscence was not a factor since this was before the Fall, not after. From the Genesis account we do read that Eve sought the forbidden fruit not for herself, but also for her husband, sharing it with him, thus acting as the helpmate and wife, even if in a disordered and sinful way.
Latin Dictionary
Verbix
Selective Energy Bulletin roundup for March 15, 2010
Ponzi Nation (original)
The Economic Potential of Local Building Materials
Plastics Keep Coming after You: a Comprehensive Report and a Call to Action
The Survival Mindset (original)
Interview with David Shields—update on Mexico and oil
Andy Kroll, TomDispatch.com
Every great American boom and bust makes and breaks its share of crooks. The past decade -- call it the Ponzi Era -- has been no different, except for the gargantuan scale of white-collar crime. A vast wave of financial fraud swelled in the first years of the new century. Then, in 2008, with the subprime mortgage collapse, it crashed on the shore as a full-scale global economic meltdown. As that wave receded, it left hundreds of Ponzi and pyramid schemes, as well as other get-rich-quick rackets that helped fuel our recent economic frenzy, flopping on the beach.
The Economic Potential of Local Building Materials
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand. You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon. I mention it today because I want to draw your attention to the report launched at the conference, Sustainable Supply Chains that Support Local Economic Development, available to download here.
(original)Plastics Keep Coming after You: a Comprehensive Report and a Call to Action
Jan Lundberg, Culture Change
"Coming after You" means both your legacy of non-biodegradable plastics and that they are out to kill you. Now that the hilarious double entendre is out of the way, we can go on to our patient heroines. The nurturing, brave journalists about to be presented are patient as heroines and they succor untold numbers of unknown patients suffering from plastic-caused diseases.
(original)The Survival Mindset
Kathy McMahon, Peak Oil Blues
But lately I’ve been asking myself a different question. What are the best mental patterns of thinking for surviving tough times? There are a variety of ways to look at this issue, and one is looking at who survives when bad things happen in the wilderness, or in dangerous recreational pursuits and why. I’ve taken some of the ideas outlined by Gonzales and added some of my own here.
Interview with David Shields—update on Mexico and oil
Steve Andrews, ASPO-USA
David Shields is a journalist and independent oil industry analyst based in Mexico City. Steve Andrews caught up with him yesterday and posed a few questions.
(original)
Lehman Brothers Scandal Rocks the Fed By MIKE WHITNEY
Geithner and Bernanke's Possibly Criminal Roles
Geithner and Bernanke's Possibly Criminal Roles
After a year-long investigation, court-appointed bank examiner Anton Valukas has produced a deadly 2,200 page report which details the activities that led to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The report is a keg of dynamite. The question now is whether anyone in government has the nerve to light the fuse. Valukas provides powerful evidence that Lehman executives were involved in “balance sheet manipulation” by implementing an arcane accounting procedure called “Repo 105” which masked the bank's true financial condition from investors and regulators.
According to Valukas, Lehman was “Unable to find a United States law firm that would provide it with an opinion letter permitting the true sale accounting treatment" using Repo 105. So, Lehman executives went outside of the country in an effort to enlist the support of a London law firm that would approve the procedure.
It is impossible to overstate the significance of Valugas's findings. The report exposes the opaque but central role of the repo market which provides essential short-term loans for financial institutions. (Lehman used repos to conceal the full extent of its collapse, by dint of the amount of leverage it was using, meaning the pitiful asset anchor tethered to a vast zeppelin of debt) More importantly, it shows the cozy and, very probably criminal relationship between the country's main regulatory bodies and the Wall Street behemoths. The activities of the New York Fed (NYFRB), which at the time was headed by Timothy Geithner, is particularly suspect in this regard. The report should trigger an immediate Congressional investigation, probing the whole affair and most importantly the role of the Fed.
Welmer, UK Gyms face Prosecution if they Warn Women about Heavy Weights
Her website. Twitter.
wiki
Guardian
Harriet Harman: you can't trust men in power - Times Online
Harriet Harman: Britain's most deluded woman? - Telegraph
Ministry for Women and Equality
[Sweden: Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality]
We may call the Europeans are sheep, but what would Americans do to prevent the same thing from happening in the United States?
Harriet Harman, Britain’s top equality commissar, is pushing an “Equality Bill” that would criminalize stereotyping based on gender, even when accurate.
Her website. Twitter.
wiki
Guardian
Harriet Harman: you can't trust men in power - Times Online
Harriet Harman: Britain's most deluded woman? - Telegraph
Ministry for Women and Equality
[Sweden: Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality]
We may call the Europeans are sheep, but what would Americans do to prevent the same thing from happening in the United States?
Watch Episode 1 of The Pacific online! (Registration required. Took me a couple of hours to receive the confirmation e-mail.)
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Femivore
Via EB:
The Femivore’s Dilemma
Peggy Orenstein, New York Times
Four women I know — none of whom know one another — are building chicken coops in their backyards. It goes without saying that they already raise organic produce: my town, Berkeley, Calif., is the Vatican of locavorism, the high church of Alice Waters. Kitchen gardens are as much a given here as indoor plumbing. But chickens? That ups the ante. Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird.
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
Rod Dreher
Shannon Hayes, Radical Homemakers
The Femivore’s Dilemma
Peggy Orenstein, New York Times
Four women I know — none of whom know one another — are building chicken coops in their backyards. It goes without saying that they already raise organic produce: my town, Berkeley, Calif., is the Vatican of locavorism, the high church of Alice Waters. Kitchen gardens are as much a given here as indoor plumbing. But chickens? That ups the ante. Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird.
All of these gals — these chicks with chicks — are stay-at-home moms, highly educated women who left the work force to care for kith and kin. I don’t think that’s a coincidence: the omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper. “Prior to this, I felt like my choices were either to break the glass ceiling or to accept the gilded cage,” says Shannon Hayes, a grass-fed-livestock farmer in upstate New York and author of “Radical Homemakers,” a manifesto for “tomato-canning feminists,” which was published last month.
(11 March 2010)
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
Rod Dreher
Shannon Hayes, Radical Homemakers
A Russian comments on the United States
Dmitry Orlov supplies an English translation in Corn Madness.
The blogger page of the author of this letter.
In the talk you gave at the conference in Ireland you mentioned that there are certain regions of the US where the common people only eat garbage food from places like Walmart, which consists of artificial colors and flavors and corn, and that such a diet makes them "a little bit crazy." To my utter disappointment, I have to entirely agree with you. Various witty Russian commentators love to heap ridicule on the "dumb Americans" and on the USA as a generally stupid country. But if they spent a bit of time living here and paid closer attention, they would realize that it is not the low cultural level that distinguishes Americans from, say, Russians: both are, on average, quite beastly. But even when I've visited here before, as a student, my first impression was of a country that is full of madmen, ranging from somewhat mentally competent to total lunatics. And the further south I traveled, the more obvious this became. At first I even marveled at this, thinking, look at how intoxicating the spirit of liberty can be! But now I understand that this is a catastrophe, that American society is brainwashed and alienated in the extreme, and that all that's left for Americans to do is to play each other for the suckers that they have become.
Unfortunately, I feel the pernicious influence of all this on my own family right here and now. You don't have to be a brilliant visionary to realize that in the current situation all these endless suburbs, built on the North American model, are slowly but surely turning into mass graves for the millions of former members of the middle class. Those that do not turn into mass graves will become nature preserves - stocked with wild animals that were once human. My family is turning feral under my very eyes. Lack of resources has forced us to live according to the Soviet model - three generations under one roof. There are six of us, of which only one works, who is, consequently, exasperated and embittered. The rest of the household is gradually going insane from idleness and boredom. The television is never turned off. The female side of the family has been sucked into social networks and associated toys. Everyone is cultivating their own special psychosis, and periodically turns vicious. In these suburbs, a person without a car is as if without legs, and joblessness does not allow any of us to earn money for gas, and so the house is almost completely isolated from the outside world. The only information that seeps in comes from the lying mass media. And I understand that millions of families throughout America live this way! This is how people turn into "teabaggers," while their children join street gangs.
The blogger page of the author of this letter.
Peter Hitchens, We live in a Marxoid college of crime
Peter Hitchens, We live in a Marxoid college of crime
‘Rehabilitation’ is a flatulent fantasy. Under our current system, miscreants are incorrigible long before they serve their first prison sentence. They have learned over many years of ‘cautions’, ‘community service’, unpaid fines and unserved ‘suspended sentences’ that authority has no guts and is not to be feared. When at last they get to prison, they will be among friends, and in control.
It is not our prisons which are ‘colleges of crime’. It is modern Britain which is a college of crime, rewarding the wrongdoer and abandoning the children of the poor.
Chief Constables are like First World War generals, donkeys repeatedly doing the wrong thing, in the hope that one day it might work – but never questioning the dud social-worker theories which have had them in their grip for the past half-century.
But that is not to say that ‘public feeling’ is much better. Crude mob rage against paedophiles, the ugly foam-flecked crowds that smack their fists on prison vans as culprits are driven away after horrific trials, the ready acceptance that criminals should be allowed, even encouraged, to punish each other behind bars, the current strange frenzy about Jon Venables, offer no civilised or effective answer.
Our crisis of crime is mainly the result of the mistaken and discredited theories of socialism together with the decisive triumph of selfishness over selflessness which took place in the Sixties. The problem is that socialism, and selfish Sixties ideology, have all the major political parties in their grip.
So the remedy, though fairly simple, will not be tried unless this country has a political, moral and social counter-revolution as great as the upheaval it experienced 50 years ago – but in the opposite direction. This is what I argue for, week after week, wherever I can.
Discussion of distributism at WWWTW.
If politics is the art of the possible, then can a sustainable solution to many of the problems affecting fundamental goods be implemented? It seems no, so long as the oligarchy remains in power -- there can be no sustainability, no decentralization of power, no building up of local economies. Instead of claiming that a "distributist" solution is impracticable, we'd be better off informing others about peak oil, soil degradation, loss of freshwater, the evils of corporatism, and so on, and trying to convince others in the community to take a more active part in localization and the restoration of republicanism. Those who defend the current political economy are either ignorant of the ecological toll that it takes or thinks that these problems can be solved through "progress" and "free enterprise." Such blind faith in the system. For political goals to be achieved, there must be sufficient power to bring them about; libertarians and anarchists can maintain that the a powerless or absent state is the ideal, but power will be exercised somehow.
If politics is the art of the possible, then can a sustainable solution to many of the problems affecting fundamental goods be implemented? It seems no, so long as the oligarchy remains in power -- there can be no sustainability, no decentralization of power, no building up of local economies. Instead of claiming that a "distributist" solution is impracticable, we'd be better off informing others about peak oil, soil degradation, loss of freshwater, the evils of corporatism, and so on, and trying to convince others in the community to take a more active part in localization and the restoration of republicanism. Those who defend the current political economy are either ignorant of the ecological toll that it takes or thinks that these problems can be solved through "progress" and "free enterprise." Such blind faith in the system. For political goals to be achieved, there must be sufficient power to bring them about; libertarians and anarchists can maintain that the a powerless or absent state is the ideal, but power will be exercised somehow.
The Pacific premieres tonight
on HBO. I don't have cable, so I'll have to wait until the miniseries is released on DVD.
From the AICN review:
It also suggests the atom bomb couldn’t have been invented a minute too soon.
Were the Japanese savage fighters? Or just willing to fight to the death in defense of their homeland? I don't think the miniseries will be trying to justify the use of the atom bombs on two Japanese cities, but those who defend the bombings may use it as a visual illustration to strengthen their case.
Related links:
Yahoo! TV
What HBO's The Pacific Means For America Today
HBO's 'The Pacific' is real deal for veterans of World War II
The Pacific Fansite
2 items from Fr. Z
Interview with the CDF’s “prosecutor” of priests who commit “graviora delicta”
WDTPRS POLL: length of Sunday sermons
I tend to think the shorter and the more concise the better -- but a homily should also be well-organized. Given the memory deficit and attention span of us moderns, homilies, as a form of catechesis, cannot be too exacting? It is different with the length of the liturgy as a whole, since the purpose of the liturgy is different from that of a homily?
WDTPRS POLL: length of Sunday sermons
I tend to think the shorter and the more concise the better -- but a homily should also be well-organized. Given the memory deficit and attention span of us moderns, homilies, as a form of catechesis, cannot be too exacting? It is different with the length of the liturgy as a whole, since the purpose of the liturgy is different from that of a homily?
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