Posts
I have in the past posited on this blog that current programs of teacher education probably have negative effects—that someone with subject knowledge and common sense would do better at teaching than someone with specific training in “Education.” But are there any statistics available to bear this out?
There are. An ongoing teacher shortage in the US has prompted many states to set up “alternative certification programs,” to partly bypass teachers' colleges. The program called “Teach For America,” meets this teacher shortage by signing on university grads with strong academic records or records of extracurricular leadership but without teaching credentials and placing them in inner-city schools for two years, in return for a scholarship.
The result: according to several studies, “Teach For America” teachers acheive better results for their students than fully-credentialed teachers. If the evidence is not entirely clear, at worst, there seems to be no case left for the value of a degree in Education.
According to Wikipedia:
“In a study published by the Urban Institute and the Calder Center in March 2008, the authors found 'that TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers .... Such effects exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in math and science.'"
“Mathematica Policy Research also addressed this question in a study published in June 2004. The study compared the gains in reading and math achievement made by students randomly assigned to TFA teachers or other teachers in the same school. The results showed that, on average, students with TFA teachers raised their mathematics test scores 0.15 standard deviations more than the gains made by other students. This is equivalent to students having received one extra month of instruction. ...”
- Wikipedia, “Teach for America”
This latter study is cited by “Education Next” as having particularly sound methodology—at least as education studies go. This study also suggested that starting TFA instructors did better than Education grads with years of classroom experience.
Unfortunately, the data are not as clean-cut as they might be. States still require some form of “alternative certification” for TFA participants, and these certification processes remain largely controlled by the Ed. Schools. So the most we can really say is that less exposure to Education Schools seems better than more.
TFA has also, interestingly enough, lost its federal funding.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Benedict on Gender
"That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator."
- Benedict XVI, address to the curia, this week.
Well put. The term "gender" is nonsense. The above comment has inspired rage and curses from homosexual lobby groups; nobody seems to have noticed that it also, and more directly, puts paid to feminism. "Gender" in the illiterate non-grammatical sense was originally a feminist notion.
Male and female created He them.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
No Comment Necessary
“The Illiterate Digest has always saltued Illiteracy...”
http://www.ahalenia.com/id/id11/illiterati.html
http://www.ahalenia.com/id/id11/illiterati.html
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Operation Follow Through
You may have never heard of “Operation Follow Through.” It was the largest educational experiment ever performed. It cost a billion dollars. It involved 700,000 students. Yet it remains obscure, and none of its recommendations have been implemented.
Part of Lyndon Johnson's “War on Poverty,” the idea for Follow Through was to test all of the popular theories of education at that time—the mid-sixties—to discover which would best boost the scores of disadvantaged children in the early school years. Saving them, ultimately, from a life of poverty.
A wide range of test schools were assigned nine different teaching approaches. Each also had a “control” school with similar demographics and in which no trial was being held. Eleven different measures of outcome were used, grouped into three categories: improvements in basic skills (the three Rs), improvements in cognitive skills (i.e., ability to reason), and improvements in affective skills (e.g., good old “self-esteem” and ability to cooperate with others). This was by mutual agreement of the advocates of the various systems: of the approaches, three broadly stressed basic skills, three stressed cognitive skills, and three took an affective approach.
The results were, surprisingly, quite clear. All three approaches stressing affective skills scored poorly—worse than the controls. They scored worse even on affective skills. Stressing self-esteem simply doesn't work—least of all to build self-esteem. Two of the three approaches stressing cognitive skills also scored worse than the controls—including on developing cognitive skills. One just about broke even—still no better than letting the average classroom teacher do his or her own thing. Two of the three approaches stressing basic skills similarly about broke even—they did well on affective measures, badly on cognitive, and were a wash on basic skills.
This is already rather alarming—the best that all the educational theorists in America seem able to do is no worse than the average classroom teacher. And that's the exception.
But that is not the end of the story. One basic skills approach was clearly superior—superior on all measures. It did better than any other approach, and the control, for teaching basic skills. It did better for developing cognitive skills. It did better for developing affective skills.
It was called “direct instruction.”
We must be careful here—all data from the social sciences is shaky. We know from the study only that this approach works best with most disadvantaged children in the early grades. It does not follow that it would work best with students in the later grades, or with advanced students, or even that it would work best with all disadvantaged students. In fact, one striking result of this study was that the success of all methods varied widely by school.
However, it is still remarkable that this study has resulted in no change in public policy, no change in educational theory, no change in teacher education, and no general move to adopt the winning technique.
There are, I believe, two reasons for this. First, Direct Instruction was the only model tested that did not come from a Faculty of Education. It did not even come from a trained teacher. It was developed by an ad executive who originally created it to teach his own children.
This was pretty embarassing for all the education experts. It also threatened their livelihoods.
But more importantly, with Direct Instruction, trained teachers were not necessary. As the approach's web site boasts even today, with DI, anyone can teach successfully. It hands the teacher a script, and all he or she has to do is follow it.
Good-bye to the teaching profession, at least at this level. They apparently have nothing of value to sell, to justify their pay or status. In fact, they are probably standing in the way of a good education.
This of course explains why the teaching establishment so hates school choice. A school using Direct Instruction could produce better results for less money, simply by avoiding “qualified” teachers.
The bottom line: the fastest way to improve education would probably be to close all the Faculties of Education, and to stop recognizing their degrees. Qualifications for teaching should be qualifications in the subject being taught.
Part of Lyndon Johnson's “War on Poverty,” the idea for Follow Through was to test all of the popular theories of education at that time—the mid-sixties—to discover which would best boost the scores of disadvantaged children in the early school years. Saving them, ultimately, from a life of poverty.
A wide range of test schools were assigned nine different teaching approaches. Each also had a “control” school with similar demographics and in which no trial was being held. Eleven different measures of outcome were used, grouped into three categories: improvements in basic skills (the three Rs), improvements in cognitive skills (i.e., ability to reason), and improvements in affective skills (e.g., good old “self-esteem” and ability to cooperate with others). This was by mutual agreement of the advocates of the various systems: of the approaches, three broadly stressed basic skills, three stressed cognitive skills, and three took an affective approach.
The results were, surprisingly, quite clear. All three approaches stressing affective skills scored poorly—worse than the controls. They scored worse even on affective skills. Stressing self-esteem simply doesn't work—least of all to build self-esteem. Two of the three approaches stressing cognitive skills also scored worse than the controls—including on developing cognitive skills. One just about broke even—still no better than letting the average classroom teacher do his or her own thing. Two of the three approaches stressing basic skills similarly about broke even—they did well on affective measures, badly on cognitive, and were a wash on basic skills.
This is already rather alarming—the best that all the educational theorists in America seem able to do is no worse than the average classroom teacher. And that's the exception.
But that is not the end of the story. One basic skills approach was clearly superior—superior on all measures. It did better than any other approach, and the control, for teaching basic skills. It did better for developing cognitive skills. It did better for developing affective skills.
It was called “direct instruction.”
We must be careful here—all data from the social sciences is shaky. We know from the study only that this approach works best with most disadvantaged children in the early grades. It does not follow that it would work best with students in the later grades, or with advanced students, or even that it would work best with all disadvantaged students. In fact, one striking result of this study was that the success of all methods varied widely by school.
However, it is still remarkable that this study has resulted in no change in public policy, no change in educational theory, no change in teacher education, and no general move to adopt the winning technique.
There are, I believe, two reasons for this. First, Direct Instruction was the only model tested that did not come from a Faculty of Education. It did not even come from a trained teacher. It was developed by an ad executive who originally created it to teach his own children.
This was pretty embarassing for all the education experts. It also threatened their livelihoods.
But more importantly, with Direct Instruction, trained teachers were not necessary. As the approach's web site boasts even today, with DI, anyone can teach successfully. It hands the teacher a script, and all he or she has to do is follow it.
Good-bye to the teaching profession, at least at this level. They apparently have nothing of value to sell, to justify their pay or status. In fact, they are probably standing in the way of a good education.
This of course explains why the teaching establishment so hates school choice. A school using Direct Instruction could produce better results for less money, simply by avoiding “qualified” teachers.
The bottom line: the fastest way to improve education would probably be to close all the Faculties of Education, and to stop recognizing their degrees. Qualifications for teaching should be qualifications in the subject being taught.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Hard Truths on Soft Skills
“Soft skills” are all the rage now in education. It’s now become conventional wisdom. Everybody knows they are important—and more important to education than whatever technical expertise we convey, even in a technical college. We know this, ultimately, as educators, because employers tell us so. They say “soft skills” are more important to the success of their business, and to an employee getting ahead, than any specific knowledge or skills we can give them.
Just one problem—with this new emphasis on “soft skills,” we are reinventing the wheel. And, this time, getting it wrong.
You’d think we, as educators, could learn.
What, exactly, are “soft skills,” you may ask? It’s admittedly a bit difficult to get a fix on it. A seminar I just attended cited “the human dimension,” “caring,” and “learning how to learn.” Wikipedia gives a different list: “participates as a member of the team; teaches others; serves client/customers; exercises leadership; negotiates; works with cultural diversity; motivates others.” The next Google hit is an article that lists the top five “soft skills” desired by business as “math, safety, courtesy, honesty, grammar.”
Nothing “soft” here, really. In sum, what we are apparently talking about is neither more nor less than what is commonly referred to as a “classical education” –and as that term is understood, not just in North America, but in all cultures. Grammar and math? That’s obvious: the good old “three Rs” of what used to be called “grammar school.” But teaching virtue was also always at the core of any education system, up to the modern era. The churches, or the temples or the mosques, ran the schools. If they weren’t considered schools themselves, as they are in Judaism.
As for “the human dimension” or “caring”—we cannot, of course, teach people to have specific emotions, and to do so if we could would be a violation of human dignity; though to the extent we can, religion is the way. But what really can be taught, in this regard, and all that really needs be taught, is good manners. That used to be a vital part of the educational experience, too. A good private education was meant to teach one to be a “gentleman.” To give you a proper “finish.” Confucian education spent about one fifth of the curriculum on the matter of right ritual.
Surprise—it matters. If you don’t think so, you have never dealt with a store clerk.
“Learning to learn”? Check. That was the point of courses in philosophy, algebra, geometry, and formal logic—originally the main focus of “middle school.”
Working together, and leadership? That’s what high school used to be about. That’s why we all used to study rhetoric—learning how to motivate people, learning how to dispute honourably and fairly, and learning the proper rules of parliamentary procedure, which are simply the time-tested rules for getting along in groups.
We used to study all this, until we dumped it at some point for more “relevance,” and more “science.”
Unfortunately, the new push for “soft skills” seems to be totally unaware still of the past ten thousand years of human thinking and experience. Its gurus seem to have no fix on what is actually required. They think, for example, it all has something to do with “EQ” or “Emotional Intelligence”—a self-contradictory concept, which, if pursued energetically, seems to have as its goal the production of a perfect psychopath, skilled in manipulating the emotions of others without compunction for their own gain. When they seek to tackle “values,” they seem to think this involves simply getting along in groups. Unfortunately, this premise would necessarily condemn both Jesus Christ and the Jews of Nazi Germany as immoral.
Nor is such an ethic likely to produce anything like an ability to think for oneself, let alone leadership.
An additional, serious problem is that our teachers themselves have no special training in any real “soft skills.” How can they teach what they do not themselves know? How are they any more likely to get it right than their average student?
It’s all a nightmare. And a nightmare of the “education profession’s” own making.
Of course, as a Canadian, I am familiar with a standard response to any lament about our schools. The Canadian education system ranks, on objective testing, as one of the best in the world. How can we complain? We’re doing better than everyone else…
Not quite everyone, of course. Overall, we come third, after Finland and Hong Kong. We are doing better than the US and the UK—that’s what we Canadians tend to notice.
The whole world has been moving away from the classical model for generations; there is no straight comparison available in these figures. However, it is worth noting that _most_ of the countries that cluster near the top of the scale are East Asian, where the classical tradition is still strongest. And we _can_ do a straight comparison, if we want: between North American public schools and North American private schools following a classical curriculum. On standard tests the latter’s students win almost every time.
What is to be done? The obvious first step is to change our teacher training. We need to educate teachers, first, in the classical skills and the classical readings; or employ as teachers those who already have this grounding. They will then be able to help the next generation. This is just what we should cover in teachers’ colleges.
Just one problem—with this new emphasis on “soft skills,” we are reinventing the wheel. And, this time, getting it wrong.
You’d think we, as educators, could learn.
What, exactly, are “soft skills,” you may ask? It’s admittedly a bit difficult to get a fix on it. A seminar I just attended cited “the human dimension,” “caring,” and “learning how to learn.” Wikipedia gives a different list: “participates as a member of the team; teaches others; serves client/customers; exercises leadership; negotiates; works with cultural diversity; motivates others.” The next Google hit is an article that lists the top five “soft skills” desired by business as “math, safety, courtesy, honesty, grammar.”
Nothing “soft” here, really. In sum, what we are apparently talking about is neither more nor less than what is commonly referred to as a “classical education” –and as that term is understood, not just in North America, but in all cultures. Grammar and math? That’s obvious: the good old “three Rs” of what used to be called “grammar school.” But teaching virtue was also always at the core of any education system, up to the modern era. The churches, or the temples or the mosques, ran the schools. If they weren’t considered schools themselves, as they are in Judaism.
As for “the human dimension” or “caring”—we cannot, of course, teach people to have specific emotions, and to do so if we could would be a violation of human dignity; though to the extent we can, religion is the way. But what really can be taught, in this regard, and all that really needs be taught, is good manners. That used to be a vital part of the educational experience, too. A good private education was meant to teach one to be a “gentleman.” To give you a proper “finish.” Confucian education spent about one fifth of the curriculum on the matter of right ritual.
Surprise—it matters. If you don’t think so, you have never dealt with a store clerk.
“Learning to learn”? Check. That was the point of courses in philosophy, algebra, geometry, and formal logic—originally the main focus of “middle school.”
Working together, and leadership? That’s what high school used to be about. That’s why we all used to study rhetoric—learning how to motivate people, learning how to dispute honourably and fairly, and learning the proper rules of parliamentary procedure, which are simply the time-tested rules for getting along in groups.
We used to study all this, until we dumped it at some point for more “relevance,” and more “science.”
Unfortunately, the new push for “soft skills” seems to be totally unaware still of the past ten thousand years of human thinking and experience. Its gurus seem to have no fix on what is actually required. They think, for example, it all has something to do with “EQ” or “Emotional Intelligence”—a self-contradictory concept, which, if pursued energetically, seems to have as its goal the production of a perfect psychopath, skilled in manipulating the emotions of others without compunction for their own gain. When they seek to tackle “values,” they seem to think this involves simply getting along in groups. Unfortunately, this premise would necessarily condemn both Jesus Christ and the Jews of Nazi Germany as immoral.
Nor is such an ethic likely to produce anything like an ability to think for oneself, let alone leadership.
An additional, serious problem is that our teachers themselves have no special training in any real “soft skills.” How can they teach what they do not themselves know? How are they any more likely to get it right than their average student?
It’s all a nightmare. And a nightmare of the “education profession’s” own making.
Of course, as a Canadian, I am familiar with a standard response to any lament about our schools. The Canadian education system ranks, on objective testing, as one of the best in the world. How can we complain? We’re doing better than everyone else…
Not quite everyone, of course. Overall, we come third, after Finland and Hong Kong. We are doing better than the US and the UK—that’s what we Canadians tend to notice.
The whole world has been moving away from the classical model for generations; there is no straight comparison available in these figures. However, it is worth noting that _most_ of the countries that cluster near the top of the scale are East Asian, where the classical tradition is still strongest. And we _can_ do a straight comparison, if we want: between North American public schools and North American private schools following a classical curriculum. On standard tests the latter’s students win almost every time.
What is to be done? The obvious first step is to change our teacher training. We need to educate teachers, first, in the classical skills and the classical readings; or employ as teachers those who already have this grounding. They will then be able to help the next generation. This is just what we should cover in teachers’ colleges.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Man's Fate: The View from India
In India, they are not (yet) inhibited by political correctness. I received this lament (edited for clarity) over the transom from an Indian email group:
When a girl cries -- the world consoles her. But when a boy cries -- they say, “Come on, be a man.”
If a girl slaps a boy -- the boy must have "done something." If a boy slaps a girl -- the rascal doesn't know how to properly respect a woman.
If a girl talks to boys -- she is "very friendly." If a boy talks to girls -- he is "flirting."
If a girl meets with an accident – it must be the mistake of another. If a boy meets with the same accident – he doesn’t know how to drive.
When a girl cries -- the world consoles her. But when a boy cries -- they say, “Come on, be a man.”
If a girl slaps a boy -- the boy must have "done something." If a boy slaps a girl -- the rascal doesn't know how to properly respect a woman.
If a girl talks to boys -- she is "very friendly." If a boy talks to girls -- he is "flirting."
If a girl meets with an accident – it must be the mistake of another. If a boy meets with the same accident – he doesn’t know how to drive.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Burning Times
Cinders are falling everywhere. We are at a time of massive change, in North American society.
What if Obama is implicated in the current Illinois scandals?
True, there is no evidence of this yet; but the flames are lapping closer now than they were a day or two ago. It looks like Rahm Emanuel has some involvement. And, frankly, I personally became suspicious when Obama went on record saying he had had no contact at all with Blagojevich about the appointment of his successor to the Senate. Surely he had; and why wouldn't he? Why lie? It is as Shakespeare had it: “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
It's going to be messy for the US if this is so. No honeymoon, and already the handicap of inexperience. Will he be able to govern effectively? With a Democratic majority in Congress, will there be any hope of removing him by impeachment? Not for two years, at least. While the US economy is already in a tailspin; and, as Joe Biden himself pointed out, America's enemies will be waiting to test the new, unknown leader.
Things are scarcely less lively back in Canada. Stephane Dion went in one week from prime-minister-in-waiting to private member. He is an honourable man, has served Canada well with his Clarity Act, and deserves a better legacy. I hope one day he is appointed to the Senate, where we could benefit from his constitutional insights.
I doubt Michael Ignatieff will do any better for the Liberals. Polls already show that the coalition plan hurt the Liberal brand terribly. It made them look like an elite out only for themselves, feeling entitled to power in disregard of the popular vote or even the interests of the country. This is a view of the Liberal Party many have already been nursing for years; so it strikes home. Dumping Dion and appointing Ignatieff without a full leadership vote now only underlines that perception. It will be even worse if Ignatieff, as a leader unelected even by his own party, goes on to assume prime ministership under the coalition agreement. And, with or without the coalition, as an academic, a Harvard prof, an expatriate, and a genuine blue-blooded noble, he is highly vulnerable personally to the charge of being elitist and out of touch.
In any case, the whole ad hoc nature of the past two weeks has made the Liberals look pretty amaterish. It hasn't helped the Conservatives or the NDP either, but the Liberals look worst, and stand to suffer worst, as the traditional party of the Canadian establishment.
These are bad times to be part of either the Canadian or the American establishment.
What if Obama is implicated in the current Illinois scandals?
True, there is no evidence of this yet; but the flames are lapping closer now than they were a day or two ago. It looks like Rahm Emanuel has some involvement. And, frankly, I personally became suspicious when Obama went on record saying he had had no contact at all with Blagojevich about the appointment of his successor to the Senate. Surely he had; and why wouldn't he? Why lie? It is as Shakespeare had it: “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
It's going to be messy for the US if this is so. No honeymoon, and already the handicap of inexperience. Will he be able to govern effectively? With a Democratic majority in Congress, will there be any hope of removing him by impeachment? Not for two years, at least. While the US economy is already in a tailspin; and, as Joe Biden himself pointed out, America's enemies will be waiting to test the new, unknown leader.
Things are scarcely less lively back in Canada. Stephane Dion went in one week from prime-minister-in-waiting to private member. He is an honourable man, has served Canada well with his Clarity Act, and deserves a better legacy. I hope one day he is appointed to the Senate, where we could benefit from his constitutional insights.
I doubt Michael Ignatieff will do any better for the Liberals. Polls already show that the coalition plan hurt the Liberal brand terribly. It made them look like an elite out only for themselves, feeling entitled to power in disregard of the popular vote or even the interests of the country. This is a view of the Liberal Party many have already been nursing for years; so it strikes home. Dumping Dion and appointing Ignatieff without a full leadership vote now only underlines that perception. It will be even worse if Ignatieff, as a leader unelected even by his own party, goes on to assume prime ministership under the coalition agreement. And, with or without the coalition, as an academic, a Harvard prof, an expatriate, and a genuine blue-blooded noble, he is highly vulnerable personally to the charge of being elitist and out of touch.
In any case, the whole ad hoc nature of the past two weeks has made the Liberals look pretty amaterish. It hasn't helped the Conservatives or the NDP either, but the Liberals look worst, and stand to suffer worst, as the traditional party of the Canadian establishment.
These are bad times to be part of either the Canadian or the American establishment.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Great Books
The idea of a solid classical education is staging a comeback recently, as it periodically does. Most such programs are based on the Encyclopedia Britannica “Great Books” series, originally published in the 1950s and revised in the 1990s.
The notion is an excellent one: a foundation in the greatest thoughts of past times. That is exactly what an education ought to be, isn't it? You don't throw over two thousand years of human thought casually. Or at least you surely shouldn't.
But the Encyclopedia Britannica's list is of course not the first. The Harvard Classics were widly popular at the beginning of thr 20th century, compiled by a Harvard president on the premise that reading them all would be the equivalent of a Harvard liberal education.
Some of the Harvard selections, though, now seem quirky. John Woolman's Journal? Lord Byron's play Manfred? Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi?
So do those of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It, unfortunately, confines itself to “Western Civilization.” It also seems to scrupulously avoid anything of religious significance. Which leaves a vast hole in human experience. Both sets also include a wide selection of scientific materials, which I do not see as very useful. Science is of its essence not based on appeal to past authority. It is against the scientific spirit to still read Boyle's laboratory journals—you should be doing your own experiments.
What we think of as the canon of great books, then, changes with time.
For my part, while I find the Harvard selection often odd, I have a bigger problem with giving a student a foundation only in Western civilization, and indeed largely only in the Graeco-Roman tradition. This severely, and cruelly, limits the education it produces, and the world view it fosters, to something old and out of touch with the modern world. Most of human thought has not occurred in Western Europe. In order to actually come into contact with the Asian classics, something I very much wanted to do to complete my own education, I had to take a major in Religious Studies. No other faculty seemed to recognize Asia's existence. They still don't beyond the most superficial and modern political considerations. This is a huge problem, to my mind.
Here is a list of further volumes any truly educated person should have read, which are missing from the Encyclopedia Britannica's set. They could probably be included without expanding the set, by removing some of the scientific writing.
The Bible—although I can see limiting it to the selections one can fit into 450 pages or so. Priority to the New Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Job, Canticles, Proverbs, Isaiah.
Selections from the Talmud—the great compendium of Jewish knowledge. Cull what you can put in 450 pages, in any case.
The Code of Hammurabi
The five great Confucian classics, the core of a Chinese classical education:
The Book of Changes (I Ching)
The Book of History
The Book of Songs
The Book of Rites
Annals of Spring and Autumn
Other essential bits of Chinese culture:
Analects of Confucius
The Great Learning
The Doctrine of the Mean
Mencius
Tao-Te-Ching
The Art of War
poetry of Li Bai
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
From India:
Selections from the Vedas
The Krishna Gopala cycle, as culled from the Brahmanas
The Ramayana
The Bhagavad Gita
A Life of the Buddha
From Muslim civilization:
1001 Arabian Nights—already included in the Harvard set
poetry of Rumi
The Hanged Poems
Ibn Khaldun's History
(Note that I do not include the Qur'an, on the grounds that Muslims feel it cannot be read properly in translation)
Readers probably have their own opinions. What have I missed?
The notion is an excellent one: a foundation in the greatest thoughts of past times. That is exactly what an education ought to be, isn't it? You don't throw over two thousand years of human thought casually. Or at least you surely shouldn't.
But the Encyclopedia Britannica's list is of course not the first. The Harvard Classics were widly popular at the beginning of thr 20th century, compiled by a Harvard president on the premise that reading them all would be the equivalent of a Harvard liberal education.
Some of the Harvard selections, though, now seem quirky. John Woolman's Journal? Lord Byron's play Manfred? Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi?
So do those of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It, unfortunately, confines itself to “Western Civilization.” It also seems to scrupulously avoid anything of religious significance. Which leaves a vast hole in human experience. Both sets also include a wide selection of scientific materials, which I do not see as very useful. Science is of its essence not based on appeal to past authority. It is against the scientific spirit to still read Boyle's laboratory journals—you should be doing your own experiments.
What we think of as the canon of great books, then, changes with time.
For my part, while I find the Harvard selection often odd, I have a bigger problem with giving a student a foundation only in Western civilization, and indeed largely only in the Graeco-Roman tradition. This severely, and cruelly, limits the education it produces, and the world view it fosters, to something old and out of touch with the modern world. Most of human thought has not occurred in Western Europe. In order to actually come into contact with the Asian classics, something I very much wanted to do to complete my own education, I had to take a major in Religious Studies. No other faculty seemed to recognize Asia's existence. They still don't beyond the most superficial and modern political considerations. This is a huge problem, to my mind.
Here is a list of further volumes any truly educated person should have read, which are missing from the Encyclopedia Britannica's set. They could probably be included without expanding the set, by removing some of the scientific writing.
The Bible—although I can see limiting it to the selections one can fit into 450 pages or so. Priority to the New Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Job, Canticles, Proverbs, Isaiah.
Selections from the Talmud—the great compendium of Jewish knowledge. Cull what you can put in 450 pages, in any case.
The Code of Hammurabi
The five great Confucian classics, the core of a Chinese classical education:
The Book of Changes (I Ching)
The Book of History
The Book of Songs
The Book of Rites
Annals of Spring and Autumn
Other essential bits of Chinese culture:
Analects of Confucius
The Great Learning
The Doctrine of the Mean
Mencius
Tao-Te-Ching
The Art of War
poetry of Li Bai
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
From India:
Selections from the Vedas
The Krishna Gopala cycle, as culled from the Brahmanas
The Ramayana
The Bhagavad Gita
A Life of the Buddha
From Muslim civilization:
1001 Arabian Nights—already included in the Harvard set
poetry of Rumi
The Hanged Poems
Ibn Khaldun's History
(Note that I do not include the Qur'an, on the grounds that Muslims feel it cannot be read properly in translation)
Readers probably have their own opinions. What have I missed?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The Brick that Was Rejected ...
Here's a great resource for anyone who has children: the Bible illustrated in Lego.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
The Rally for Canada
I have been asked, as a conservative blogger, to publicize this initiative.
Unfortunately, I cannot endorse it. Their claim is that the proposed Liberal-Bloc-NDP coalition would “overturn the results of the last election,” and that it is somehow illegitimate. It would not. It is not. The opposition plans are perfectly legal and constitutional and perfectly democratic, and I have no quarrel with them. I do not want to see the Liberals-NDP-Bloc take power, but that is a different question. I am not prepared to mess around with the Canadian constitution for partisan advantage.
Unfortunately, I cannot endorse it. Their claim is that the proposed Liberal-Bloc-NDP coalition would “overturn the results of the last election,” and that it is somehow illegitimate. It would not. It is not. The opposition plans are perfectly legal and constitutional and perfectly democratic, and I have no quarrel with them. I do not want to see the Liberals-NDP-Bloc take power, but that is a different question. I am not prepared to mess around with the Canadian constitution for partisan advantage.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Pius and the Jews
The Jewish Ledger blows the lid off what has been a real-life--and very successful--Communist plot to discredit the Catholic Church.
Some choice quotations from the story:
"This is the greatest character assassination in the 20th century." --Gary Krupp
“what we learned was truly world-shaking. There is nobody who did more to rescue Jews than Pius." --Rabbi Eric Silver
Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ... allegedly claimed at the Nuremberg Trials that he had "a whole desk full of protests" from the pope, and from no other European leader
Most historians mark 1963 as the year that soured public opinion, with the production of a play, "The Deputy, A Christian Tragedy." ...It was later revealed that "The Deputy" was part of "Operation Seat 12," a KGB effort to discredit the anti-Communist Pius.
The full story is here.
Some choice quotations from the story:
"This is the greatest character assassination in the 20th century." --Gary Krupp
“what we learned was truly world-shaking. There is nobody who did more to rescue Jews than Pius." --Rabbi Eric Silver
Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ... allegedly claimed at the Nuremberg Trials that he had "a whole desk full of protests" from the pope, and from no other European leader
Most historians mark 1963 as the year that soured public opinion, with the production of a play, "The Deputy, A Christian Tragedy." ...It was later revealed that "The Deputy" was part of "Operation Seat 12," a KGB effort to discredit the anti-Communist Pius.
The full story is here.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Hot Times on the Hill
Suddenly these are exciting times in Canadian politics.
It looks to me as though the Conservative government really is going to fall, and a coalition government of the Liberals and NDP will take power.
The legalities are perfectly clear. Accept no guff about this. If a government falls so soon after an election, the Governor-General's first choice should never be to dissolve the House; it is to appoint anyone who looks as though they might have the confidence of the House. The leader of the opposition would be an obvious choice, although it could also be another member of the government party. If, however, the leader of the official opposition can present a written coalition agreement, signed by an absolute majority of members, the GG really has no other choice but to appoint him prime minister, and see if he can survive a confidence vote. To do otherwise would be downright illegal. All hell would break loose.
There is also no reason why the parties forming the coalition agreement should feel obliged to put forward the current leader of the official opposition as PM. If they don't like Dion, they are perfectly free, among themselves, to choose any other individual, inside or outside the Commons. It could be Jack Layton, or Michael Ignatieff, or John McCallum, or Jean Chretien, or Rick Mercer, if they like.
Is it going to happen? Negotiating such an agreement is tricky. There is a reason why it has not been attempted since the First World War. But I suspect the opposition parties are so tired of being forced to back Harper against their will to avoid an election, that they really want to do this.
Will they pay for it at the next election? Probably. It looks grasping, and the Conservatives are sure to argue that they subverted the democratic process. In fact, they will have done nothing of the kind—together, the NDP, Liberals, and Bloc represent many more voters than the Conservatives do. But that's the way this sort of thing has tended to play in the past—as in the King-Byng affair of the 1920s.
But perhaps another bit of history must be served. Dion, without this, would be the first Liberal leader since Edward Blake never to have been PM.
It looks to me as though the Conservative government really is going to fall, and a coalition government of the Liberals and NDP will take power.
The legalities are perfectly clear. Accept no guff about this. If a government falls so soon after an election, the Governor-General's first choice should never be to dissolve the House; it is to appoint anyone who looks as though they might have the confidence of the House. The leader of the opposition would be an obvious choice, although it could also be another member of the government party. If, however, the leader of the official opposition can present a written coalition agreement, signed by an absolute majority of members, the GG really has no other choice but to appoint him prime minister, and see if he can survive a confidence vote. To do otherwise would be downright illegal. All hell would break loose.
There is also no reason why the parties forming the coalition agreement should feel obliged to put forward the current leader of the official opposition as PM. If they don't like Dion, they are perfectly free, among themselves, to choose any other individual, inside or outside the Commons. It could be Jack Layton, or Michael Ignatieff, or John McCallum, or Jean Chretien, or Rick Mercer, if they like.
Is it going to happen? Negotiating such an agreement is tricky. There is a reason why it has not been attempted since the First World War. But I suspect the opposition parties are so tired of being forced to back Harper against their will to avoid an election, that they really want to do this.
Will they pay for it at the next election? Probably. It looks grasping, and the Conservatives are sure to argue that they subverted the democratic process. In fact, they will have done nothing of the kind—together, the NDP, Liberals, and Bloc represent many more voters than the Conservatives do. But that's the way this sort of thing has tended to play in the past—as in the King-Byng affair of the 1920s.
But perhaps another bit of history must be served. Dion, without this, would be the first Liberal leader since Edward Blake never to have been PM.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Affirmative Action: The Graph
Small Dead Animals features this graph and asks why the NDP has never gotten anywhere electorially, when Reform climbed to official opposition within ten years of its founding.
But note the years between 1989 and 2003. Fairly dramatic plunge, no? What happened then is simple: two markedly under-qualified leaders, chosen only because they were female.
This shows more broadly, I would suggest, the overall effects of affirmative action anywhere. If you choose under-qualified candidates, your actual results are going to nosedive. The under-qualified will underperform. Everyone suffers as a result.
I also think it is remarkable that nobody ever, so far as I know, has pointed out this interesting fact about the history of the NDP: that Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonaugh truly sucked as federal leaders. They have been immune from criticism despite an obviously awful performance, I submit, because they are women. (Albeit this immunity from criticism extends only to women of the left--ask Sarah Palin or Margaret Thatcher about that). At worst, they were merely "ill-served by their advisors."
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Going to Church is Good for Your Health
It's not the best reason to go, but here's yet another study that shows being actively religious lengthens your life.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
SOME SIMPLE TRUTHS OF LIFE BY GEORGE CARLIN...
…With some simple answers by Steve Roney
4. If man evolved from monkeys and apes why do we still have monkeys and apes?
While this sounds like a stupid question and a stupid error, it is in fact the foundation of both Marx and Nietzsche.
7. Could it be that all those trick-or-treaters wearing sheets aren't going as ghosts but as mattresses?
Or maybe as sailors in a high gale?
9. If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him...is he still wrong?
Wrong question, male chauvinist pig!
10. If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself is it considered a hostage situation?
I think we have to leave that up to the innocent bystander personality to decide.
11. Is there another word for synonym?
Yes, but it amounts to the same thing.
12. Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice?"
Not so long as it makes us perfect.
13. Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all?"
Above the tree line.
14. What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
Threaten him with extinction.
15. If a parsley farmer is sued can they garnish his wages?
That, or lien on his crop.
16. Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
Only by someone cruel and insensitive. He's merely survivability-challenged.
17. Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?
They fear someone will hide in there until his car has pulled away to avoid paying.
18. If a turtle doesn't have a shell is he homeless or naked?
Same as an egg: he's fried.
19. Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
They're pre-shrunk llamas.
20. Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?
Only if they hold a poetic license.
21. If the police arrest a mime do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
No; goes without saying.
22. Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?
Affirmative action.
23. How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?
The power of advertising.
24. Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?
No; they hate the honking noise when they bite into the noses.
25. What was the best thing before sliced bread?
Peanut butter and jelly injection machines.
35. Do pediatricians play miniature golf on Wednesdays?
Until the wee hours…
36. Before they invented drawing boards what did they go back to?
Reinventing the wheel.
37. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
Not necessarily. Do bugs enjoy buggery, bats battery, or cuttlefish cutlery? I think not.
38. If all the world is a stage where is the audience sitting?
They're on the platform, waving goodbye.
39. If God dropped acid would he see people?
Far out! So this creation thing was all a bad trip?
40. If one synchronized swimmer drowns do the rest have to drown too?
No; all must drown simultaneously, or lose big points.
41. If the #2 pencil is the most popular why is it still #2?
The number one has been reserved for military use.
42. If work is so terrific how come they have to pay you to do it?
For the tax base.
43. If you ate pasta and antipasto would you still be hungry?
Not especially. If, however, you eat them both simultaneously, you will create a black hole that will suck you in like spaghetti.
44. If you try to fail and succeed which have you done?
Founded another dot com.
45. Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
You're supposed to use traps.
Source: George Carlin & Steve Roney
All rights reserved.
4. If man evolved from monkeys and apes why do we still have monkeys and apes?
While this sounds like a stupid question and a stupid error, it is in fact the foundation of both Marx and Nietzsche.
7. Could it be that all those trick-or-treaters wearing sheets aren't going as ghosts but as mattresses?
Or maybe as sailors in a high gale?
9. If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him...is he still wrong?
Wrong question, male chauvinist pig!
10. If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself is it considered a hostage situation?
I think we have to leave that up to the innocent bystander personality to decide.
11. Is there another word for synonym?
Yes, but it amounts to the same thing.
12. Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice?"
Not so long as it makes us perfect.
13. Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all?"
Above the tree line.
14. What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
Threaten him with extinction.
15. If a parsley farmer is sued can they garnish his wages?
That, or lien on his crop.
16. Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
Only by someone cruel and insensitive. He's merely survivability-challenged.
17. Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?
They fear someone will hide in there until his car has pulled away to avoid paying.
18. If a turtle doesn't have a shell is he homeless or naked?
Same as an egg: he's fried.
19. Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
They're pre-shrunk llamas.
20. Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?
Only if they hold a poetic license.
21. If the police arrest a mime do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
No; goes without saying.
22. Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?
Affirmative action.
23. How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?
The power of advertising.
24. Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?
No; they hate the honking noise when they bite into the noses.
25. What was the best thing before sliced bread?
Peanut butter and jelly injection machines.
35. Do pediatricians play miniature golf on Wednesdays?
Until the wee hours…
36. Before they invented drawing boards what did they go back to?
Reinventing the wheel.
37. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
Not necessarily. Do bugs enjoy buggery, bats battery, or cuttlefish cutlery? I think not.
38. If all the world is a stage where is the audience sitting?
They're on the platform, waving goodbye.
39. If God dropped acid would he see people?
Far out! So this creation thing was all a bad trip?
40. If one synchronized swimmer drowns do the rest have to drown too?
No; all must drown simultaneously, or lose big points.
41. If the #2 pencil is the most popular why is it still #2?
The number one has been reserved for military use.
42. If work is so terrific how come they have to pay you to do it?
For the tax base.
43. If you ate pasta and antipasto would you still be hungry?
Not especially. If, however, you eat them both simultaneously, you will create a black hole that will suck you in like spaghetti.
44. If you try to fail and succeed which have you done?
Founded another dot com.
45. Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
You're supposed to use traps.
Source: George Carlin & Steve Roney
All rights reserved.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Good Neighbour Hitler
There is a new tendency towards revisionism over the Second World War—arguing that it was not, in fact, the “Good War” we have for so long understood it to be.
Sucg revisionism is, at the same time, both necessary and appalling. We must forever challenge received wisdom, certainly. Our freedom depends on it. On the other hand, though, failing to see WWII as a definitive battle of good against evil seems to me to be the worst sort of moral relativism. If we cannot see even this as a plain case of right and wrong, we have smashed our moral compass and put out every star in ths sky that might show us our way in the dark.
Eric Margolis treads the recent footprints of Pat Buchanan (Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War) in a recent Ottawa Sun column.
Let's examine this argument point by point.
Margolis argues first, far less controversially, that World War I was wrong—for Britain and America. That they should both have stayed out.
“Britain,” he says, “could have halted the war, or let the continental powers fight until they came to a truce. But Churchill and his fellow imperialists determined to destroy Germany, a new rival to Britain's wealth and power.”
Right. And how might Britain have halted the war—other than by treatening to come in one one side or the other? That's what they did—and their participation in the war was the result. They had a treaty obligation, and a moral obligation, to defend neutral Belgium. While it is possible to argue that other nations entered the war foolishly or for ignoble motives, it is hard to single out Britain, as Margoilis does, for special criticism.
As to sitting out the war, what grounds does Margolis have to imagine the result without Britain would have been a stalemate? Even with Britain, France was very nearly lost in 1914, as it had been in 1871, and Russia really was lost in 1917. Without Britain’s involvement, it is far more likely that the result would have been a continent united against Britain under German leadership, as it was under Nepoleon a century before. This is an insane risk to expect the leaders of Britain to take.
“The war should have ended in 1917 when both sides were exhausted and stalemated. America's entry into the war resulted in Germany's defeat and ensuing post-war suffering.”
Both sides were not exhausted and stalemated in 1917. Russia was in full collapse. The armistice with Germany was signed in December, freeing a vast new contingent of German arms for a new offensive in the West. At best, without America's involvement at the crucial time, and the promise of much larger American armies arriving soon, the war might have dragged on much longer.
“The German, Habsburg and Ottoman Empires were torn apart by the lupine victors and reduced to ruin, creating today's unstable Balkans and Mideast.”
To suggest that the Balkans were stable until the fall of the Habsburgs and Ottomans is bizarre. It was the chronic instability of the “Balkan tinderbox” that led to the Great War in the first place.
It is also odd to lament that the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires were dismantled. Are empires such a good thing? Both were dismantled while paying close attention to, and very much in accord with, the wishes of their inhabitants, following the Wilsonian principle of the self-determination of peoples. The Arabs were actually not perticularly overjoyed to be ruled by Turks, nor the Czechs to be ordered around by Austrian Germans.
“...had a Carthaginian peace not been imposed upon them at Versailles and Trianon, there might never have been a Hitler, Communist Russia or Second World War.”
Communist Russia could hardly have been avoided but for Versailles and Trianon. Versailles was signed in summer, 1919, Trianon in 1920. Communist Russia was already in existence, since 1917.
As to the Peace of Versailles being particularly harsh on Germany, it is worth pointing out that is was much less harsh than the peace imposed on Germany after World War II—which has oddly not produced the rise of another Hitler-like figure. It was also less harsh than the peace Germany herself had just imposed on Russia at Brest-Litovsk, in 1917.
Perhaps Hitler could have been prevented had it been harsher?
“Churchill made the fatal error in the Second World War of backing Poland's hold on Danzig even though Britain could do nothing to defend Poland...”
If this was a mistake, it was not Churchill's. Chamberlain was still Prime Minister.
It is true that England could do nothing directly to defend Poland. It could equally have done nothing at Munich to directly defend Czechoslovakia, or later, to defend the Soviet Union. But it is quite novel to see this as a legitimate excuse to do nothing in the face of aggression. Indeed, it would have automatically ceded Hitler the right to fight on only one front at a time, and removed from the table Germany's greatest strategic fear, the two-front war.
Margolis comments almost offhandedly—as if he hopes by this to avoid close inspection of the claim-- that Hitler was interested only in “attempts to reunite millions of Germans stranded in these new nations by the dreadful Versailles Treaty.” That was Hitler's own claim, but it might not be wise to syetematically believe his propaganda. By the time of the Polish crisis, this claim had already been disproved: he had already invaded and annexed non-German Bohemia and Moravia, the present Czech Republic. He would later, of course, annex much of Poland and enslave its populace.
Sacrifice Poland, and Chamberlain would almost of a certainty only have had to face Hitler later, with Hitler stronger, and Britain weaker.
“[T]he western democracies should have let Hitler expand his Reich eastward until it inevitably went to war with the even more dangerous Soviet Union. Once these despotisms had exhausted themselves, the western democracies would have been left dominating Europe.”
When Britain declared war on Germany, Germany and the Soviet Union were allies. There was no reason to assume Germany and Russia would turn on each other out in the near future. They were more likely to continue, together, arms locked at the elbows, to trample down all the Western democracies.
Even had Britain had the luxury of staying out while the two went at each other, what would have been gained? Instead of being able to take them down one after another, the West would have had to face the victor, with the combined assets of the two, in some future Armageddon.
“In the end, Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt were so obsessed with crushing Germany, and so seduced by 'Uncle Joe' Stalin, they handed half of Europe to the Soviet Union...”
Not exactly. Nothing was handed to the Soviet Union. The final lines, the runners for the Iron Curtain, were more or less where the armies met. The Soviet Union had taken half of Europe by force of arms, not been handed it, and Churchill and Roosevelt would surely have had to fight them for it if they had any objections. It is understandable if they did not want to put their peoples through that.
“...the Soviet Union, a far more murderous and dangerous tyranny than Hitler's Germany.”
I don't think that claim is justifiable either. Granted, Stalin killed more people than Hitler—he had more time in power to do it. But there is still something very special about deliberately launching a world war and deliberately trying to annihilate a race. The difference between Hitler and Stalin was the difference between a slow cancer and a cocked gun against your ear. You deal with the gun first.
“[Western leaders are] idolizing the arch imperialist, Churchill.”
Wait a minute. I thought imperialism was now a good thing. Or is it good only when not done by Anglo-Saxons?
All I can think is that it is a damned good thing for human civilization that Pat Buchanan was not advising the British government in the months after Munich.
Sucg revisionism is, at the same time, both necessary and appalling. We must forever challenge received wisdom, certainly. Our freedom depends on it. On the other hand, though, failing to see WWII as a definitive battle of good against evil seems to me to be the worst sort of moral relativism. If we cannot see even this as a plain case of right and wrong, we have smashed our moral compass and put out every star in ths sky that might show us our way in the dark.
Eric Margolis treads the recent footprints of Pat Buchanan (Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War) in a recent Ottawa Sun column.
Let's examine this argument point by point.
Margolis argues first, far less controversially, that World War I was wrong—for Britain and America. That they should both have stayed out.
“Britain,” he says, “could have halted the war, or let the continental powers fight until they came to a truce. But Churchill and his fellow imperialists determined to destroy Germany, a new rival to Britain's wealth and power.”
Right. And how might Britain have halted the war—other than by treatening to come in one one side or the other? That's what they did—and their participation in the war was the result. They had a treaty obligation, and a moral obligation, to defend neutral Belgium. While it is possible to argue that other nations entered the war foolishly or for ignoble motives, it is hard to single out Britain, as Margoilis does, for special criticism.
As to sitting out the war, what grounds does Margolis have to imagine the result without Britain would have been a stalemate? Even with Britain, France was very nearly lost in 1914, as it had been in 1871, and Russia really was lost in 1917. Without Britain’s involvement, it is far more likely that the result would have been a continent united against Britain under German leadership, as it was under Nepoleon a century before. This is an insane risk to expect the leaders of Britain to take.
“The war should have ended in 1917 when both sides were exhausted and stalemated. America's entry into the war resulted in Germany's defeat and ensuing post-war suffering.”
Both sides were not exhausted and stalemated in 1917. Russia was in full collapse. The armistice with Germany was signed in December, freeing a vast new contingent of German arms for a new offensive in the West. At best, without America's involvement at the crucial time, and the promise of much larger American armies arriving soon, the war might have dragged on much longer.
“The German, Habsburg and Ottoman Empires were torn apart by the lupine victors and reduced to ruin, creating today's unstable Balkans and Mideast.”
To suggest that the Balkans were stable until the fall of the Habsburgs and Ottomans is bizarre. It was the chronic instability of the “Balkan tinderbox” that led to the Great War in the first place.
It is also odd to lament that the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires were dismantled. Are empires such a good thing? Both were dismantled while paying close attention to, and very much in accord with, the wishes of their inhabitants, following the Wilsonian principle of the self-determination of peoples. The Arabs were actually not perticularly overjoyed to be ruled by Turks, nor the Czechs to be ordered around by Austrian Germans.
“...had a Carthaginian peace not been imposed upon them at Versailles and Trianon, there might never have been a Hitler, Communist Russia or Second World War.”
Communist Russia could hardly have been avoided but for Versailles and Trianon. Versailles was signed in summer, 1919, Trianon in 1920. Communist Russia was already in existence, since 1917.
As to the Peace of Versailles being particularly harsh on Germany, it is worth pointing out that is was much less harsh than the peace imposed on Germany after World War II—which has oddly not produced the rise of another Hitler-like figure. It was also less harsh than the peace Germany herself had just imposed on Russia at Brest-Litovsk, in 1917.
Perhaps Hitler could have been prevented had it been harsher?
“Churchill made the fatal error in the Second World War of backing Poland's hold on Danzig even though Britain could do nothing to defend Poland...”
If this was a mistake, it was not Churchill's. Chamberlain was still Prime Minister.
It is true that England could do nothing directly to defend Poland. It could equally have done nothing at Munich to directly defend Czechoslovakia, or later, to defend the Soviet Union. But it is quite novel to see this as a legitimate excuse to do nothing in the face of aggression. Indeed, it would have automatically ceded Hitler the right to fight on only one front at a time, and removed from the table Germany's greatest strategic fear, the two-front war.
Margolis comments almost offhandedly—as if he hopes by this to avoid close inspection of the claim-- that Hitler was interested only in “attempts to reunite millions of Germans stranded in these new nations by the dreadful Versailles Treaty.” That was Hitler's own claim, but it might not be wise to syetematically believe his propaganda. By the time of the Polish crisis, this claim had already been disproved: he had already invaded and annexed non-German Bohemia and Moravia, the present Czech Republic. He would later, of course, annex much of Poland and enslave its populace.
Sacrifice Poland, and Chamberlain would almost of a certainty only have had to face Hitler later, with Hitler stronger, and Britain weaker.
“[T]he western democracies should have let Hitler expand his Reich eastward until it inevitably went to war with the even more dangerous Soviet Union. Once these despotisms had exhausted themselves, the western democracies would have been left dominating Europe.”
When Britain declared war on Germany, Germany and the Soviet Union were allies. There was no reason to assume Germany and Russia would turn on each other out in the near future. They were more likely to continue, together, arms locked at the elbows, to trample down all the Western democracies.
Even had Britain had the luxury of staying out while the two went at each other, what would have been gained? Instead of being able to take them down one after another, the West would have had to face the victor, with the combined assets of the two, in some future Armageddon.
“In the end, Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt were so obsessed with crushing Germany, and so seduced by 'Uncle Joe' Stalin, they handed half of Europe to the Soviet Union...”
Not exactly. Nothing was handed to the Soviet Union. The final lines, the runners for the Iron Curtain, were more or less where the armies met. The Soviet Union had taken half of Europe by force of arms, not been handed it, and Churchill and Roosevelt would surely have had to fight them for it if they had any objections. It is understandable if they did not want to put their peoples through that.
“...the Soviet Union, a far more murderous and dangerous tyranny than Hitler's Germany.”
I don't think that claim is justifiable either. Granted, Stalin killed more people than Hitler—he had more time in power to do it. But there is still something very special about deliberately launching a world war and deliberately trying to annihilate a race. The difference between Hitler and Stalin was the difference between a slow cancer and a cocked gun against your ear. You deal with the gun first.
“[Western leaders are] idolizing the arch imperialist, Churchill.”
Wait a minute. I thought imperialism was now a good thing. Or is it good only when not done by Anglo-Saxons?
All I can think is that it is a damned good thing for human civilization that Pat Buchanan was not advising the British government in the months after Munich.
The Campbellvitches are Coming
This music warms and astounds my Celtic soul. But it's from Bulgaria!
Taking next plane out. Will send postcard.
Taking next plane out. Will send postcard.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Case for Canadian Conservatism
The turnout in the last Canadian election was the lowest ever, under 60%.
I did not bother to vote myself—although I could have, by absentee ballot. Who cares? It seems to matter so little who wins, in Canada—the policies are the same regardless.
This suggests that Stephen Harper's main strategy, as leader of the Conservatives, is wrong.
Harper, following conventional Canadian wisdom, has been tacking to the centre, serene in the knowledge that there is nobody to his right to split the small-c conservative vote.
Mistake. As Karl Rove showed in George Bush's two election victories, and John McCain demonstrated by losing this year, when turnout is a major factor, covering the centre ground is not the best strategy. Often, the better idea is to fire up your own base. If you can get your supporters more motivated to come to the polls that the other side, you win.
This, surely, would have been the case this election year. With such low turnout, and Stephane Dion failing to light fires among his Liberal colleagues, had Harper been significantly better at inspiring small-c conservatives, he probably could have snagged his majority.
It is conventional wisdom that Canada is not a conservative country, that it is instinctively centre-left. If so, by being clear and conservative, Harper might have inspired two liberal voters to come out and vote against him for every one conservative he drew to the polls. But is that really true?
The West, we know, is perfectly amenable to “conservative” doctrines; Reform showed that, even if Diefenbaker didn't. But Ontario, supposedly the Liberal heartland, can also respond to a clear, consistent conservative message. Mike Harris proved that. Ernie Eves and John Tory, trying triangulation instead, have in fact done less well. This is “Tory Blue” Ontario we're talking about: home of the thirty-year provincial Conservative hegemony, not so long ago.
The Maritimes may have become addicted to Liberal equalization payments; but they are at heart deeply socially conservative. They are Canada's “Bible belt.” They ought to be reliably conservative in just the same way as the US South. Like the Atlantic provinces, the South bought the dole for a while, under the New Deal. But they have grown out of it. So could Halifax and St. John's.
This leaves Quebec. In Quebec, in recent history, ideology simply has not mattered—it has been overshadowed by the question of sovereignty. But, once a tipping point is reached, the Conservatives can represent that option just as well as the Liberals. The relative success of the ADQ in the last provincial election suggests there is some real appetite for a straight conservative option. On a full-blooded conservative platform, ADQ took 31% of the vote. Last federal election, in Quebec, the CPC took 21.7%. They are running well behind the conservative ideology per se.
Who does that leave? Nunavut?
All that is required, I suspect, is a leader who is a leader: who does not follow the present opinion polls, but seeks to change them. That's what Margaret Thatcher did, in Britain, that's what Churchill did, and that's what Ronald Reagan did in the US. That's what Mike Harris and Ralph Klein did in Ontario and Alberta. A similar leader really could do the same in Canada as a whole.
I did not bother to vote myself—although I could have, by absentee ballot. Who cares? It seems to matter so little who wins, in Canada—the policies are the same regardless.
This suggests that Stephen Harper's main strategy, as leader of the Conservatives, is wrong.
Harper, following conventional Canadian wisdom, has been tacking to the centre, serene in the knowledge that there is nobody to his right to split the small-c conservative vote.
Mistake. As Karl Rove showed in George Bush's two election victories, and John McCain demonstrated by losing this year, when turnout is a major factor, covering the centre ground is not the best strategy. Often, the better idea is to fire up your own base. If you can get your supporters more motivated to come to the polls that the other side, you win.
This, surely, would have been the case this election year. With such low turnout, and Stephane Dion failing to light fires among his Liberal colleagues, had Harper been significantly better at inspiring small-c conservatives, he probably could have snagged his majority.
It is conventional wisdom that Canada is not a conservative country, that it is instinctively centre-left. If so, by being clear and conservative, Harper might have inspired two liberal voters to come out and vote against him for every one conservative he drew to the polls. But is that really true?
The West, we know, is perfectly amenable to “conservative” doctrines; Reform showed that, even if Diefenbaker didn't. But Ontario, supposedly the Liberal heartland, can also respond to a clear, consistent conservative message. Mike Harris proved that. Ernie Eves and John Tory, trying triangulation instead, have in fact done less well. This is “Tory Blue” Ontario we're talking about: home of the thirty-year provincial Conservative hegemony, not so long ago.
The Maritimes may have become addicted to Liberal equalization payments; but they are at heart deeply socially conservative. They are Canada's “Bible belt.” They ought to be reliably conservative in just the same way as the US South. Like the Atlantic provinces, the South bought the dole for a while, under the New Deal. But they have grown out of it. So could Halifax and St. John's.
This leaves Quebec. In Quebec, in recent history, ideology simply has not mattered—it has been overshadowed by the question of sovereignty. But, once a tipping point is reached, the Conservatives can represent that option just as well as the Liberals. The relative success of the ADQ in the last provincial election suggests there is some real appetite for a straight conservative option. On a full-blooded conservative platform, ADQ took 31% of the vote. Last federal election, in Quebec, the CPC took 21.7%. They are running well behind the conservative ideology per se.
Who does that leave? Nunavut?
All that is required, I suspect, is a leader who is a leader: who does not follow the present opinion polls, but seeks to change them. That's what Margaret Thatcher did, in Britain, that's what Churchill did, and that's what Ronald Reagan did in the US. That's what Mike Harris and Ralph Klein did in Ontario and Alberta. A similar leader really could do the same in Canada as a whole.
Friday, November 07, 2008
The Right Stuff
Events are against him: the economic trouble, his own inexperience. He may have come to power too soon. But to be honest, Barack Obama has in him what makes a great president.
He is a great communicator. A great speaker, and, if he indeed wrote his own books, a great writer.
Many different types of people become president, but surely the most successful presidents have been those who shared this talent. Without it, being president hardly matters. Only with it can one really make a difference.
Reagan, of course, with his experience as an actor and, before and after it, as a journalist, was known as “The Great Communicator.” This also made him “the Teflon President.” FDR, with his fireside chats, was another. So was Lincoln—witness the Gettysburg Address.
In Canada, Ralph Klein is a classic example. He was virtually invicible politically, thanks to his journalistic talents. So was Rene Levesque, another former journalist. In Britain, both Disraeli and Churchill were also trained communicators, distinguished authors apart from politics.
That is what it takes.
McCain was a fine candidate, but he arguably lost to Obama in the end because he did less well at communicating a vision, a theme, to Americans. Obama had “Real Change.” McCain had “end pork barrel spending”; or, more charitably, “Country First.” It sounds worthy, but it doesn't have the same ring, invoke the same images of a better future, as, say, “The Square Deal,” “The New Frontier,” or “Compassionate Conservatism.” McCain was a great communicator in town hall meetings or at the back of the bus, but not directly to the general public: not on TV or in set speeches. He inspired by his deeds, but not his words.
So who on the right has the right stuff for 2012?
Fred Thompson is talented. When he's on his game, he rolls like thunder. But he apparently, to his credit, lacks the desire. And he will be a bit old to be a candidate by 2012—though not as old as McCain today. He spends too much time clearing his throat.
And there's Mike Huckabee. Preaching also teaches one to communicate, and certainly to inspire. Obama's own rhetoric owes a lot to a pracher's cadences. William Jennings Bryan, Tommy Douglas, Martin Luther King, Bible Bill Aberhart, and many more rose to political prominence from this training. Now Huckabee is also learning the ropes as a TV journalist. He should be in devastating form by the time 2012 rolls around. There is one concern, however: the preacherly tone seems to lead more often to prominence in opposition than to power. We honour prophets; but the role of prophet is very different from, and generally runs in counterpoint, to that of king.
Who's left? Surprise—Sarah Palin. It seems to have escaped general notice that her academic training is in journalism. She was a TV reporter before she went into politics. That's why she knows how to project through that screen. Give her a few more years of executive experience, and she may be not just political dynamite, as she is now, but a political hydrogen bomb.
He is a great communicator. A great speaker, and, if he indeed wrote his own books, a great writer.
Many different types of people become president, but surely the most successful presidents have been those who shared this talent. Without it, being president hardly matters. Only with it can one really make a difference.
Reagan, of course, with his experience as an actor and, before and after it, as a journalist, was known as “The Great Communicator.” This also made him “the Teflon President.” FDR, with his fireside chats, was another. So was Lincoln—witness the Gettysburg Address.
In Canada, Ralph Klein is a classic example. He was virtually invicible politically, thanks to his journalistic talents. So was Rene Levesque, another former journalist. In Britain, both Disraeli and Churchill were also trained communicators, distinguished authors apart from politics.
That is what it takes.
McCain was a fine candidate, but he arguably lost to Obama in the end because he did less well at communicating a vision, a theme, to Americans. Obama had “Real Change.” McCain had “end pork barrel spending”; or, more charitably, “Country First.” It sounds worthy, but it doesn't have the same ring, invoke the same images of a better future, as, say, “The Square Deal,” “The New Frontier,” or “Compassionate Conservatism.” McCain was a great communicator in town hall meetings or at the back of the bus, but not directly to the general public: not on TV or in set speeches. He inspired by his deeds, but not his words.
So who on the right has the right stuff for 2012?
Fred Thompson is talented. When he's on his game, he rolls like thunder. But he apparently, to his credit, lacks the desire. And he will be a bit old to be a candidate by 2012—though not as old as McCain today. He spends too much time clearing his throat.
And there's Mike Huckabee. Preaching also teaches one to communicate, and certainly to inspire. Obama's own rhetoric owes a lot to a pracher's cadences. William Jennings Bryan, Tommy Douglas, Martin Luther King, Bible Bill Aberhart, and many more rose to political prominence from this training. Now Huckabee is also learning the ropes as a TV journalist. He should be in devastating form by the time 2012 rolls around. There is one concern, however: the preacherly tone seems to lead more often to prominence in opposition than to power. We honour prophets; but the role of prophet is very different from, and generally runs in counterpoint, to that of king.
Who's left? Surprise—Sarah Palin. It seems to have escaped general notice that her academic training is in journalism. She was a TV reporter before she went into politics. That's why she knows how to project through that screen. Give her a few more years of executive experience, and she may be not just political dynamite, as she is now, but a political hydrogen bomb.
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