Thoughts Aloud

Archive for January, 2009

There was an open thread discussing Ayn Rand on the Secular Right Blog this weekend, which attracted a remarkable number of erudite comments in a spirited discussion, which is already over 70 comments. If you are an Ayn Rand fan, you might enjoy perusing them. One of my early contributions was to offer a nexus between Ayn Rand and Maria Montessori, which is worth repeating here:

I particularly agree with the assessment that Rand’s epistemology is as or more relevant to the ills of our society, than her ethics at this point. I have been a devotee of Ayn Rand for over thirty years and an admirer, proponent, and practitioner of Maria Montessori’s Method of education for the past twelve.

Only recently, I discovered that there was a nexus between them. I was aware that many years ago, my partner was the Montessori teacher for the children of Leonard Peikoff and others at the Ayn Rand Institute; but I assumed that was just an accident. Then I stumbled across an article by Michael S. Berliner, Ph.D. entitled “Ayn Rand and Education,” which is remarkable for being 27 years old:

The revolution that Ayn Rand brought to philosophy has profound implications for education.

Since the purpose of education is to develop a certain kind of individual and society, education involves the practical implementation of philosophic ideals. Thus education has a specially close relationship to philosophy. Everything that goes on in a classroom rests on philosophic premises: education derives its goals from ethics, its methodology from epistemology and its administrative policies and political status from social philosophy.

Given the dependency of education on philosophy, it should be no shock that our schools are in chaos; they have derived their guiding principles from various forms of irrationalism, altruism, and collectivism. Only when educators turn to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, will sanity return to our schools. How would her philosophy rescue education?

He then offers eleven points for consideration. Among them:

6. Ayn Rand’s philosophic system can provide a theoretical foundation for the most promising educational method now available: the Montessori method. Despite the success of Montessori schools, there is amazingly little understanding of the reasons for that success. As a consequence, the method is either dismissed as nothing more than a series of clever techniques for teaching specific skills, or attempts are made to ground the method in Maria Montessori’s personal philosophy, a mixture of Catholicism and Indian mysticism.

At present, the supporters of the Montessori method are unable to defend it against either the educational establishment or compromisers from within Montessori ranks. Teachers and parents need to understand the real philosophic meaning of the Montessori method. Ayn Rand’s philosophy makes that understanding possible.

He is right about the confusion in the Montessori ranks, and regrettably I must report that the Montessori Method is being severely corrupted in America, by modern Montessorians’ ill-conceived quest for recognition by mainstream academia, and the attempts to shoehorn the Method into rigid public school curricula. Authentic Montessori programs are still available in the private sector; but the name is in the public domain and anyone can call their school a Montessori school, whether or not it provides an authentic Montessori curriculum. Caveat emptor.

At the end of the article, are some interesting quotes. I liked Peikoff’s:

Assault from the Ivory Tower: The Professors’ War Against America
by Leonard Peikoff

I wish I could tell you that your college years will be a glorious crusade. Actually, they will probably be a miserable experience. If you are a philosophically pro-American student, you have to expect every kind of smear from many of your professors. If you uphold the power of reason, you will be called a fanatic or a dogmatist. If you uphold the right to happiness, you will be called anti-social or even a fascist. If you admire Ayn Rand, you will be called a cultist. You will experience every kind of injustice, and even hatred, and you will be unbelievably bored most of the time, and often you will be alone and lonely. But if you have the courage to venture out into this kind of nightmare, you will not only be acquiring the diploma necessary for your professional future, you will also be helping to save the world, and we are all in your debt.

The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought by Ayn Rand, 206-207

Then, by Ayn Rand herself:

Ayn Rand on Education

The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life — by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past — and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.

“The Comprachicos,” The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 231.

The academia-jet set coalition is attempting to tame the American character by the deliberate breeding of helplessness and resignation-in those incubators of lethargy known as “Progressive” schools, which are dedicated to the task of crippling a child’s mind by arresting his cognitive development. (See “The Comprachicos” in my book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.) It appears, however, that the “progressive” rich will be the first victims of their own special theories: it is the children of the well-to-do who emerge from expensive nursery schools and colleges as hippies, and destroy the remnants of their paralyzed brains by means of drugs.

The middle class has created an antidote which is perhaps the most helpful movement of recent years: the spontaneous, unorganized, grass — roots revival of the Montessori system of education — a system aimed at the development of a child’s cognitive, i.e., rational, faculty.

“Don’t Let It Go,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 261; pb 214.

Finally, if you are unfamiliar with Montessori philosophy and at all interested in exploring it, I recently published an essay entitled, “Spontaneous Minds,” which covers the way in which the Montessori Method nurtures the spontaneous process children use to create their own minds, by interaction with their environment, during the crucial preschool years. ◄Dave►

You know the world is upside down when Pravda will publish a scientific perspective that it is difficult to find anywhere in the American MSM. I followed a Drudge link to a Pravda article entitled, “Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age,” expecting to find new Russian data. There was nothing new in it that I had not read before, but it is a very well written and remarkably succinct refutation of the whole AGW political scam. The copyright notice implies that the whole article can be republished as long as linked to their site. I think it is worth saving a copy on this side of the pond, so here is the whole thing:

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years.

Most of the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth’s ‘wobble’, which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years. According to the Milankovich theory of Ice Age causation, these three astronomical cycles, each of which effects the amount of solar radiation which reaches the earth, act together to produce the cycle of cold Ice Age maximums and warm interglacials.

Elements of the astronomical theory of Ice Age causation were first presented by the French mathematician Joseph Adhemar in 1842, it was developed further by the English prodigy Joseph Croll in 1875, and the theory was established in its present form by the Czech mathematician Milutin Milankovich in the 1920s and 30s. In 1976 the prestigious journal “Science” published a landmark paper by John Imbrie, James Hays, and Nicholas Shackleton entitled “Variations in the Earth’s orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” which described the correlation which the trio of scientist/authors had found between the climate data obtained from ocean sediment cores and the patterns of the astronomical Milankovich cycles. Since the late 1970s, the Milankovich theory has remained the predominant theory to account for Ice Age causation among climate scientists, and hence the Milankovich theory is always described in textbooks of climatology and in encyclopaedia articles about the Ice Ages.

In their 1976 paper Imbrie, Hays, and Shackleton wrote that their own climate forecasts, which were based on sea-sediment cores and the Milankovich cycles, “… must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends – and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted… the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate.”

During the 1970s the famous American astronomer Carl Sagan and other scientists began promoting the theory that ‘greenhouse gasses’ such as carbon dioxide, or CO2, produced by human industries could lead to catastrophic global warming. Since the 1970s the theory of ‘anthropogenic global warming’ (AGW) has gradually become accepted as fact by most of the academic establishment, and their acceptance of AGW has inspired a global movement to encourage governments to make pivotal changes to prevent the worsening of AGW.

The central piece of evidence that is cited in support of the AGW theory is the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph which was presented by Al Gore in his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The ‘hockey stick’ graph shows an acute upward spike in global temperatures which began during the 1970s and continued through the winter of 2006/07. However, this warming trend was interrupted when the winter of 2007/8 delivered the deepest snow cover to the Northern Hemisphere since 1966 and the coldest temperatures since 2001. It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth and cold temperatures.

The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years — evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age maximums and interglacials.

In 1999 the British journal “Nature” published the results of data derived from glacial ice cores collected at the Russia ’s Vostok station in Antarctica during the 1990s. The Vostok ice core data includes a record of global atmospheric temperatures, atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and airborne particulates starting from 420,000 years ago and continuing through history up to our present time.

The graph of the Vostok ice core data shows that the Ice Age maximums and the warm interglacials occur within a regular cyclic pattern, the graph-line of which is similar to the rhythm of a heartbeat on an electrocardiogram tracing. The Vostok data graph also shows that changes in global CO2 levels lag behind global temperature changes by about eight hundred years. What that indicates is that global temperatures precede or cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse. In other words, increasing atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperature to rise; instead the natural cyclic increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise.

The reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm water. That is why carbonated beverages loose their carbonation, or CO2, when stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft drinks, wine, and beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their ‘fizz’, which is a feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Because the release of CO2 by the warming oceans lags behind the changes in the earth’s temperature, we should expect to see global CO2 levels continue to rise for another eight hundred years after the end of the earth’s current Interglacial warm period. We should already be eight hundred years into the coming Ice Age before global CO2 levels begin to drop in response to the increased chilling of the world’s oceans.

The Vostok ice core data graph reveals that global CO2 levels regularly rose and fell in a direct response to the natural cycle of Ice Age minimums and maximums during the past four hundred and twenty thousand years. Within that natural cycle, about every 110,000 years global temperatures, followed by global CO2 levels, have peaked at approximately the same levels which they are at today.

About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW.

The AGW theory is based on data that is drawn from a ridiculously narrow span of time and it demonstrates a wanton disregard for the ‘big picture’ of long-term climate change. The data from paleoclimatology, including ice cores, sea sediments, geology, paleobotany and zoology, indicate that we are on the verge of entering another Ice Age, and the data also shows that severe and lasting climate change can occur within only a few years. While concern over the dubious threat of Anthropogenic Global Warming continues to distract the attention of people throughout the world, the very real threat of the approaching and inevitable Ice Age, which will render large parts of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable, is being foolishly ignored.

Gregory F. Fegel

© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru’s editors.

Now, if the NY Times would just do the same thing… ◄Dave►

One of the first things a Montessorian must acquire is the humility necessary to fully comprehend that she is not a teacher. Montessorians are carefully trained not to interfere, any more than absolutely necessary, in the spontaneous process of a child developing a mind, which they are diligently doing – with or without the presence of an adult – every conscious moment of their young lives. We must take care to act only as observers and gentle guides in that autonomous process. Our job is to observe children independently working at this task at their own pace, in the learning environment we have so carefully prepared, and notice when it is time to give them that next little nudge along their individual path of self-discovery. Then, we give them a short presentation in how properly to use a new didactic tool found there, and then get out of their way to allow them to learn by exploring with it.

We must never forget that we are adults and role models, and the children expect us to act like it. A well-trained Montessorian is completely non-judgmental and must never allow her own prejudices to be passed on to her students in any way. She regards her classroom as a temple for developing minds, which she must never desecrate with an unenthusiastic mood. She learns to appreciate the benefit of leaving her personal problems outside, before ever entering that temple. They will undoubtedly be waiting for her attention later; but in the meantime, she can smile with delight as she puts them out of her mind, for the children’s sake, if not her own.

A Montessorian will never raise her voice over anything short of a fire in the building. Children react positively to adults who are calm, yet firm. While they can ignore a yell, they will strain to hear a whisper, and revel in the attention if they think they are the only one who did. Spilled water, or a broken vase, is merely an unexpected opportunity to show a child how to clean up the mess themselves. Rather than experience her frustration (or worse yet – anger), which could bruise the ego of a hapless three-year-old, the Montessori student receives an empowering new presentation in Practical Life from a loving mentor.

Try to put yourself in the mind of a child who just turned three. You are actively creating the mind that will serve as your tool for dealing with reality for the rest of your life, by absorbing data from your environment like a sponge, classifying it, and methodically organizing it in as coherent a fashion, as your woefully incomplete thee-year-old mind can accomplish. Simultaneously, you are diligently working on improving your motor skills and hand-eye coordination. You were blessed with parents who were wise enough, or just plain lucky enough, to have enrolled you in a Montessori school. You find yourself ensconced for a few hours every day in an amazing environment.

All the furniture and appurtenances are scaled down to your size. Even the sink with real running water is down at your level. There are about one thousand different intriguing didactic “activities” arrayed on the low shelves, just begging to be explored by your mind; yet there is not a single toy in the room. The child sized brooms, dustpans, buckets, and mops are meant and expected to be used for the same purpose adults use theirs.

You are surrounded by children from 2 ½ thru 6-years-old, at various stages of development; all industriously and cooperatively using the various activities for the same purpose you are, creating their minds. Seeing the older children’s confidence and competence makes them convenient role models, whom you are anxious to emulate. Gratefully, most of them enjoy helping a tyke when the adult “guide” (she wouldn’t presume to call herself a teacher) in the room is busy elsewhere. It is a safe, nurturing, environment, and you have been in it long enough to be considered “normalized,” and trusted to choose your own activities for the day.

Normalized? Oh, that is one of those unfortunate Montessori buzzwords that have survived the past hundred years. Its primary utility seems to be to horrify parents, who recoil at the thought that their precious little creations might be anything subnormal when they applied for enrollment. It reflects Maria Montessori’s discovery that the true nature of the child is expressed in a love of order, a love of work, a love of silence and working alone, remarkable concentration, spontaneous self-discipline, independence and initiative, attachment to reality, and profound joy. The behaviors adults are pleased to call “naughty,” are generally a result of these needs not being met for the child, and they simply melt away in an environment where they are. Once they do, a Montessorian considers them normalized.

You are irresistibly drawn to the Practical Life area of the classroom today, and being a perfectly normal child, water fascinates you. You have pretty well mastered the bean sorting activities, and thus learned to be careful carrying an activity tray, with real china dishes on it, to a table without breaking anything. You don’t know why the “teacher” (your mom insists on using that word) chose beautiful precious breakable bowls and jugs for the activities, rather than plastic fantastic ones you could be careless with (although she certainly does); but you understand and appreciate that you are being trusted with their care, and you are thus very careful with them. Your increasing competence is a real boost to your self-confidence.

You got your first “lesson” (your “teacher” would call it a presentation) in a water pouring activity yesterday. You learned how to use the sink to fill a china jug with water; carry it carefully to a table, and pour equal amounts into two small glasses. Then you learned that you could empty the glasses back into the jug, and do it again; over and over for as long as you liked. When satisfied, you would pour the water back into the sink, dry the jug and glasses with a cloth, and carefully put them back on the tray. Then you would return it to the shelf, in exactly the same condition you found it, so it would be ready for the next child to use. Amazingly, all it took was one ten minute “lesson” for you to earn your solo wings. Today, you can’t wait to try them out. That little jug is so cute, and the sink has real running water in it!

Bummer. By the time you got up from the morning “circle,” another child already had that pouring activity out and was doing the exercise. It wouldn’t have even occurred to you to get upset or make a fuss over having to wait your turn. One of the cardinal rules of a Montessori classroom is that nobody is ever allowed to disturb another child’s work. He could leave it to go to the bathroom, in full confidence that it would be exactly as he left it when he returned. Oh well, he will be finished soon, so you choose to sort some more beans while you wait. Ah, now it is back on the shelf; but first you have to complete your present activity and put it away as you found it, before you are free to change activities.

That done, you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to take the tray with that precious jug to a table (any empty table will do, none is assigned). You do so with the utmost of care, and take the jug and glasses off the tray and set it aside. After putting on the obligatory apron (water activities can get messy), you go to the sink and get your water. You carry the jug carefully back to the table, one hand on the handle, one supporting it from underneath, just as the “teacher” had carefully shown you how to do. For the moment, you actually love that precious jug even more than the Montessorian who bought it, and she treasures it a lot. To break it would be unthinkable.

You do the exercise repeatedly, in rapt concentration, for half an hour. Your mind is focused exclusively on what you are doing, and is almost oblivious to what is going on around you. With each reiteration, you become a little more confident and competent at pouring just the right amount without spilling hardly a drop. Yes, you are developing self-confidence and a measure of self-esteem regarding your competence, and it feels great. You don’t need any kudos or encouragement from others; you can see for yourself that you are getting better at it. Then, the unthinkable happens. Your wet little hand slips on the jug and you drop it on the floor. You are shocked and virtually petrified in horror, as you watch the water spread among the broken shards of that treasured pitcher.

What happens in the next moment makes all the difference in the world. You are not an idiot; you know for yourself that you just failed, and the last thing you need is a mad cow swooping in, or jeering peers, to point it out to you. You were not being careless, quite the opposite; it was an unfortunate accident, and if other’s didn’t notice that fact, it is their failing, not yours. You just fell off a horse, and the immediate consequences will determine how soon you are going to risk getting back on it. More importantly, it may leave an indelible impression in your developing mind, regarding whether the risk of failure is worth the consequences of trying a daunting task. Unfair censure is just that debilitating to self-esteem and a budding ego, in the mind of a three-year-old.

In far too many adult-centered classrooms, this experience would have turned out negatively. Even a generally loving and caring teacher might not have suppressed her dismay at the loss of her favorite jug (you probably can’t imagine how much Montessorians love their “PL” baubles, the one area of the classroom where their own individual tastes are on display). The other children probably would have sniggered at the victim’s dismay or laughed aloud. The flustered teacher would have shooed everyone away while she cleaned up the mess, to keep others from spreading it or knocking something else over.

The whole classroom would have thus been affected, all concentration broken, and all attention focused on the drama. The poor little culprit/victim would be crushed, and probably break into tears, which everyone would assume she deserved, as punishment for her clumsiness and attempting to pour water before she was “big enough” to do it properly. The teacher, for her convenience, would then probably replace the pretty little jug with an ugly plastic one, which couldn’t be broken. Then, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if some child used it for a hammer, or threw it across the room in a fit of frustration; activities unheard of in a normalized Montessori classroom.

In the child-centered environment of an authentic Montessori school, the child would have received a very different experience. The Montessorian wouldn’t have dreamed of allowing her personal pique to have shown through in the slightest. She would have been there in a flash, with a smile on her face and a consoling, yet ever encouraging voice, barely above a whisper. Children on the other side of the room might not have even noticed the commotion, and would continue concentrating on their own work. Nor would there have been any peer censure. A five-year-old boy would have immediately gone for a mop and bucket for the water, without being asked. A four-year-old girl would get a broom and dustpan for the shards.

Everyone involved would have been intent on helping the hapless child with an accident, and the teacher’s highest goal (beyond the “teachable moment” for the cleanup lesson), would be to make sure the child would remount the proverbial horse ASAP. With ego fully intact, this child would be ready to resume the mission of creating a competent adult out of a child, on her own, with only minor assistance and minimal direction. The most valuable lesson of the day was that it is OK to fail, as long as you never give up trying. ◄Dave►

I am getting sick of all the handwringing over Israel defending themselves against the incessant rocket attacks from Hamas. Those who know me, know that my libertarian principles completely fall apart when the subject of the welfare of children is addressed. Please view this 3 ½ minute video:

Go for it Israel; and don’t stop until you kill every member of Hamas. All of them. As difficult as it is for me to acknowledge the necessity, while you are at it, stop worrying about collateral damage. These kids are already lost to civilization. Every one you inadvertently kill now, will just be one fewer you will have to kill twenty years from now. I wish I were young enough to come help you do it.

Color me thoroughly disgusted with all the really foolish people in the world, who try to assign a moral equivalence between these barbarians and the Jews of Israel, because of their response to this existential threat. Nothing… no amount of twisted logic, no perceived wrong, no grudge, nothing… could ever justify grabbing a kid off the street in the middle of a firefight to use as a shield. Nothing! Wake up you fools; for the love of Zeus, wake up. ◄Dave►

I have been saying for some time that if one has not reread Atlas Shrugged as an adult in the past few years, it is worth doing just to notice how prophetic she was. This morning in the WSJ, Stephen Moore has a column entitled, ” ‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years“:

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion — in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That’s the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies — while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to “calm the markets,” another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”

Indeed. Life continues to imitate art; and the clueless altruists continue to snidely denigrate those of us who subscribe to Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Too bad there is no John Galt they can turn to in the end… they wouldn’t listen to him anyway. ◄Dave►

Bill Whittle, the best contemporary essayist in America, happens to work in Hollywood; and Andrew Breitbart has recruited him to contribute at the new Big Hollywood blog. His first piece there, “The Workshops Of Identity” takes Hollywood to task:

One thing in common these patterns bear: the rise slow, the fall seemingly precipitous, and in every case we find the loss of nerve and strength and will comes not from the bottom, not from the common people at all, but from the rulers, the philosophers, the most affluent and educated who, in their comfort and Narcissism, abandon duty for self-absorption and self-gratification and who in boredom or self-loathing decide to fling open the gates of the city to the barbarians beyond, while the common man still stands at the walls prepared to die for the people in his charge.

And now here stands America, inheritor of that great tradition, astride that same cycle in its most dangerous and dire moment. And by any measure America is by far the most brilliant light the world has ever seen. And I can prove it, too.

Sean Penn recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in which he described America as a country much like any other, without any special claim to glory and indeed with an overabundance of sin to repent. Having visited Cuba and Venezuela, and having been enlightened by deep-thinking humanitarians such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, he implores his countrymen to give socialism a try and take its rightful place as simply one of the 200 or so other members of the great family of nations. “Viva USA!” writes Penn. Ironically, he says this unironically.

Reading his remarkable and lengthy article I was, at the close of it, reminded instantly of Lincoln, who once wrote, “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.” But Sean Penn is not only perhaps the most gifted actor of my generation… he also has the courage to come out and openly say what so many in Hollywood really and truly do believe.

And there’s the problem. Because like Sean Penn, almost all of this industry is composed of people whose intellectual, reasoning and analytical skills are fifty miles wide and a quarter-inch deep. Hollywood’s Chattering Classes despise their Uncle Sam, but they are deeply, deeply in love with Auntie America.

But Hollywood’s Chattering Classes are thoroughly, completely and spectacularly wrong. And therein lies the source of a looming tragedy so great it would take a thousand movies to simply sketch it out… were it not for the fact that if Hollywood as it now exists continues to do what it is doing unopposed, there will be no more movies because there will be no more electricity.

Like anything Bill writes, you owe it to yourself the treat of reading the whole thing. ◄Dave►

Do check out the video on Steel Phoenix’s latest post at “What is the Ideal Value of the Dollar in Today’s world?” It would be a shame to miss it. ◄Dave►

While America’s news organizations are salivating over Obama’s big speech promising that we will “spend” our way out of this, who is paying attention to what the Europeans are busy doing today? Take a peek at “Sarkozy, Merkel, Blair call for new capitalism“:

PARIS – The head of Europe’s biggest economy said Thursday that world leaders should be looking at the massive U.S. deficit and other economic imbalances, not just problems caused by financial markets, as they debate a new global order…

Merkel said the International Monetary Fund has not managed to regulate global capitalism, and she called for the creation of an economy body at the United Nations, similar to the Security Council, to judge government policy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, …called financial capitalism based on speculation “an immoral system” that has “perverted the logic of capitalism.”

“It’s a system where wealth goes to the wealthy, where work is devalued, where production is devalued, where entrepreneurial spirit is devalued,” he said.

But no more: “In capitalism of the 21st century, there is room for the state,” he said…

Measures will be taken by global leaders meeting in London on April 2, Sarkozy promised, urging the U.S. to join the international consensus.

Blair called for a new financial order based on “values other than the maximum short-term profit.”

(bold emphasis mine)

Be afraid. Be very very afraid. The Obamessiah will be all for this globaloney. The timing of his speech today may have very well been to keep our press busy and this global agenda out of the news. ◄Dave►

Orrin found a new blog called “Big Hollywood” that is a keeper. Gary Graham, an unabashed conservative actor, wrote a powerful opening salvo entitled, “One Pissed-Off Dude“:

I’m an American. This has always been my favorite label, but of late even that has seemed to mean less and less. Being called an American used to carry with it a certain pride and esprit de corps that now apparently is dated and passe. How else can one explain the rash of America-haters in our midst who only claim pride in America if a Leftist resides in the White House, and can only back a war effort if the decision to go to war was that of a Democrat.

I’m a Conservative. And I am also an actor who lives and works in Hollywood. Many of my friends advise me to keep that on the down-low, advise me to not speak up lest I scuttle any future employment prospects, so predominantly liberal is the entertainment biz. And yet I persist.

You see, I’m one pissed-off dude.

I’m told I’ll hurt my career if I continually spout off about Liberalism — which I see as a growing cancer in our society. Worldwide, I’ve seen Liberalism metastasize into virulent incarnations of Socialism, and, left unchecked, even into its malignant cousin, Communism. Only the arrogant or the somnambulist would think such a thing could never happen here. It’s a matter of increment. Once a group organizes into a coalition, it’s a short step to claiming the right to the property of another group. All that is necessary is for an individual’s right to personal property to become a secondary concern. The ‘needs’ of the group must supercede, dontcha know. It’s a vicious cycle – wants become needs become rights. The fact that the thievery is done at the behest of a ‘civilized’ government does not sanitize the crime.

“At least the highwayman has the decency to wear a mask.” – Author unknown.

So I’m told I should shut up. I make my living in the Hollywood community, and Hollywood is by and large run by Liberals. I’m told I need to stay quiet when the Left has their way over issues that affect my daily life. I’m told I need to learn how to get along with the Left, learn how to compromise. I need to be more open-minded. I need to be more tolerant.

I say F T S. Ask your 9-yr-old if you have trouble deciphering that. (No, wait, don’t.)

I don’t want to get along with the Left. I want to take them down. I want to expose their idiocy for what it is and reveal it as a harmful, dangerous succession of lies and deceptions. My friends say that that effort, aside from being fruitless, will cost me work. It will cost me my career. And I say Wait-a-minute, Bucko. Those folks who founded this country were willing to risk not only their careers, but their property, their families, their very lives…the least I can do in standing up for our precious freedoms is risk a silly television career. Not to compare myself with the brilliant thinkers who declared themselves independent of England and framed our Constitution…but those were some pretty pissed off dudes too. Compared to that, loss of a little TV or movie work seems pretty inconsequential. So in honor of Pissed Off Americans past and present, I rant.

…and then he does… with a vengeance! Don’t miss it. ◄Dave►

As if I didn’t have enough to read already, here is a free e-book entitled,”Facets of Ayn Rand” Memoirs by Mary Ann and Charles Sures:

The Ayn Rand Archives Oral History Program was established in 1996 by the Ayn Rand In­sti­tute (ARI) to gather and preserve knowledge of Ayn Rand’s business, creative, and personal life. To date, Scott McConnell, oral historian, has conducted 169 interviews (about 300 hours) with Miss Rand’s family, friends, and associates. The interviews reveal considerable new informa­tion about Ayn Rand’s life, from her ear­ly years in Russia, to Hollywood, to her many years in New York City. Selected interview transcripts are current­ly be­ing pre­pared for publica­tion.

Facets of Ayn Rand is based on 48 hours of interviews with Mary Ann and Charles Sures, pre­pared and conducted by Mr. McConnell from September 1998 to January 1999. It is the first publish­ing project of the Oral History Program.

I got the pointer to it from a lair of objectivists at The New Clarion blog, which looks promising as well. I intend to explore it further. ◄Dave►

In a thread entitled, “Who is pro-science, the Left or the Right?” on the Secular Right blog, I have encountered a 71 year-old sage, who has made several profound comments that are well worth reading. “Gene Berman” does not have his own blog; but he should, for his perspective deserves a wider audience. He prefers to comment at places where he finds people actually thinking. It is a long thread, so skip the other comments if you like, but treat yourself to the thought that will be provoked by reading his. ◄Dave►

In the slowest chat on the internet, I have been having intermittently with my dear friend Tom, the retired English Professor (dear, because I shall always be eternally grateful for the time he told me he did not find my essays verbose ), I recently explained how I came to regard selfishness as a virtue:

I received my grounding in this unconventional wisdom from a few books I read as a young man. As I recall, the first were “Winning Through Intimidation” and “Looking Out For Number One,” both by Robert Ringer. His bibliography led me to “The Art of Selfishness,” by David Seabury and “The Virtue of Selfishness” by Nathaniel Branden. Then, I got around to reading “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” and eventually every book Ayn Rand wrote. I have been an Objectivist ever since; although I usually refer to myself as a libertarian, since so few people have ever heard of objectivism.

It occurred to me that I had not heard of Robert Ringer for years, and I wondered what happened to him. I was delighted when Google found him for me, and I have been perusing his active website. Under the heading of “Core Beliefs,” I found an excellent essay entitled, “Survival of Western Civilization,” which is well worth the read – especially for libertarian purists who denounce the slightest whiff of pragmatism in their ranks. For instance:

Reality is synonymous with truth, and truth is unyielding. One can choose to ignore it, scorn it, or even curse it, but all to no avail; in the end, truth impassively stands its ground in the face of the most overpowering emotional, verbal, and intellectual onslaughts.

Further, truth can be especially brutal to those who insist on worshipping at the Altar of Theory. This is because truth has a way of frustrating theory and, much like a mongoose circling a snake, ultimately wearing it down and devouring it.

…and:

Sadly, libertarians have a reputation for fighting their battles in an intellectual arena, which has proven to be ineffectual in the real world. By real world, I am referring to a world where enemies of freedom and Western culture have no qualms about lying, cheating, deceiving, and even using force, if necessary, to achieve their ends.

A worse problem, however, is that theoretical libertarians do not even oppose most of these threats. After all, the keystone of theoretical libertarianism is that everyone should be allowed to live his life as he so chooses so long as he does not forcibly interfere in the lives of others. One is left to conclude that if such tolerance results in the extinction of our culture, so be it.

…and:

Where I believe theoretical libertarianism fails the real-world test is in coming to grips with the dangers posed by uncivilized people in every country of the world, and, in particular, uncivilized people who are in positions of absolute power. Because libertarians believe that there is only one true law-the natural law against aggression-a purist libertarian would wait until a crazed fanatic detonated a nuclear weapon in midtown Manhattan before taking action.

Worse, the same libertarian would ignore the enemies from within and sit idly by as Western culture disintegrated before his very eyes. The implied motto is: No harm, no foul. And since no one has the moral right, let alone the power, to define either harm or foul, Mohammed Atta’s observation about our stupidity looks ever more accurate.

…and:

Theoretical libertarianism relies on the voluntary goodwill of everyone. As a result, purist libertarianism is impractical in a world gone mad. Clearly, it needs a strong partner to help it enforce freedom.

Enter practical conservatism. My definition of practical conservatism is an ideology that believes in adherence to the tenets of pure libertarianism to the fullest practical extent, but also believes in the use of force, when and where it is absolutely necessary, to protect not only the lives and property of citizens, but to maintain society’s generally accepted code of conduct.

Exactly! Read the whole thing. I feel like I have come full circle. Reading Ringer’s books over 30 years ago led me to Rand, yet my attempts to identify with most libertarians has been less than satisfactory; because of their purist wrangling over theory and some outright settling for anything less than anarchism. Ringer gets it. I look forward to participating on his blog. ◄Dave►

After avoiding it for days, I finally joined a discussion at the Secular Right blog in a thread entitled, “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.” It took a lot of turns and had gotten around to a disagreement over whether African natives were as intelligent as other races. Typically, the Leftists thereabouts bristled at any suggestion that all the “Bell Curve” studies and data might suggest that their dreams of creating an egalitarian world might not work out so well in practice. After one challenged another’s actual “on the ground in Africa” experience, I offered the following:

It happens that I have lived in Africa and worked closely with natives of both the well-educated and relatively uneducated varieties. I also have earned my living for the past dozen years assisting children from the age of 2.5 thru 6 years-old to create their minds, so perhaps I have some unique perspective to offer. Education cannot begin until a child acquires the faculty of language, and learns to name things.

Yet, we do not teach our children basic language and syntax, they absorb it out of the environment by listening to adults speak. This is the primary “work” of a two-year-old, and observing the rapidity with which they go from their first attempts to speak, to putting together whole sentences with surprisingly accurate syntax is breathtaking when one contemplates the difficulty of the achievement.

It was incredibly easy to learn “kitchen kaffir,” which is what the pigeon language used for communicating with the African natives was called. Since their language only had about 700 words and very rudimentary syntax, all one had to do was memorize those words and plug them into English syntax. Objects that had no native name were simply called by their English name. E.g. “Faga” was their word for “put,” and “lapa” meant “over there.” It didn’t much matter where one inserted “ashtray” in the phrase “faga lapa” to be clearly understood.

Without language, there could be no rational thought or even human consciousness. Words are symbolic representations of concepts, whether simple or extremely complex, and are the scaffold on which we construct our ideas. The quality and efficiency of our thinking is dependent on our vocabulary. Whole lifetimes of research and contemplation, which can and does fill volumes, can be expressed in the shorthand of a single word, e.g. Marxism or capitalism.

I don’t think it requires getting into the debates over genetics, or nature vs. nurture, to recognize that if a child grows up in an environment surrounded by adults that know and use only 700 words or less in their presence, while they are teaching themselves their native tongue and creating the scaffolding for thinking, they are not going to end up with much to work with.

This is true whether it is in the African bush, or our own blighted ghettos, where using proper English gets one accused of “acting White.” Unfortunately, the sensitive period for language acquisition in the stages of mind development for a child is long past by the time they start attending school, and learning a new language at that point, or even refining the one they supposedly know, is infinitely more difficult.

If then thrust into the typical teacher-centered environment, where they are expected to sit still and pay attention, while the all-knowing teacher fills their empty little heads with “age appropriate” knowledge according to a fixed curriculum schedule, the prognosis is not good. Children learn best by doing and exploring whatever interests them at any particular time, and Socrates was right when he said that true education is more like the kindling of a flame than the filling of a vessel.

All that said, I too reject the tabla raza hypothesis, and think not enough interest has been given the subject of temperament, which all evidence seems to indicate is somehow innate. We all know of siblings with personalities that could not be more contrasting, born of the same parents and raised in the same environment; perhaps intimately. A Meyers-Briggs test will tell one more about the efficacy and structure of a particular mind than any IQ test.

Finally, any suggestion that African natives would be anywhere close to the achievements of Western civilization, without our influence during the colonial period, is laughable. Even today, were all Westerners (and Easterners) to pull out of Africa completely, it would devolve in short order, into the superstitious netherworld, of disorganized tribal conflicts that the White Man delivered them from.

When I was managing that farm where I studied African culture back in ’74, Rhodesia was the bread basket of Africa, and Salisbury was one of the cleanest, safest, and most modern cities in the world. Today, after the hand-wringers and do-gooders of Europe and America used UN Sanctions to force the Whites to turn it over to the Marxist terrorists they were pleased to call “freedom fighters,” it is called Zimbabwe. Ask the now starving natives there if we did them any favors… I rest my case. ◄Dave►

Here is another take on how nebulous the word “conservative” is:

I know what the Democratic Party stands for, what does the Republican Party stand for?

I know what the modern meanings of the terms “liberal” and “progressive” mean, but I have no idea what the modern meaning of the term “conservative” means. I have recently seen polls which ask the following question:

The Republicans lost the election because
a. The Republican Party is too conservative
b. The Republican Party is not conservative enough

I find this question to be impossible to answer!

If by “conservative” one means a party which appeals almost exclusively to white Christian male culture warriors whose primary agenda is using the police power of government to accomplish desired political goals, then my answer would be “a.”

If by “conservative” one means promoting the rights of life, liberty, and property then clearly, my answer would be “b.”

I do not believe the ambiguity of the term “conservative” is by accident. “Conservative” is every bit the nebulous term as we have heard ad nauseam from the Obama campaign (i.e. “hope” and “change”). Because these terms are so under defined, each person who hears these buzzwords assigns his or her own meaning to them. I seem to recall every candidate in the Republican primary refer to himself as a “conservative” or even a “Reagan conservative” at one time or another. How is it possible that candidates with philosophical differences as stark as that of Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani both claim to be conservative?

I had not considered that the ambiguity was deliberate; but thinking about it I suppose it is. It is sure convenient to the Republican Party that Reagan libertarians and the Piously Correct moralists both call themselves conservative, even though they mean very different things when they do. I loved the Reagan quote Stephen cited:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism [...] The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. -Ronald Reagan (1975)

Now, if I can just convince Orrin… ◄Dave►

I have mentioned his research before, but in response to the recent flap over one of Oprah’s memoir endorsements, Jack Cashill has updated his bill of particulars that rather convincingly point to Bill Ayers as Barack Obama’s ghost writer, in a piece entitled, “Bigger frauds to fry than Rosenblat“:

These same media, however, have turned a blind eye to much more significant literary hoaxes. These include Alex Haley’s counterfeit “Roots,” Rigoberta Menchu’s Nobel Prize-winning fraud, “I Rigoberta,” Margaret Mead’s fanciful “Coming of Age in Samoa,” and leftist superstar Edward Said’s repeated claims of being a Palestinian refugee.

I could cite a score more, but let me focus on one Oprah-endorsed memoir that neither the New Republic nor the Times has shown the least interest in investigating, Barack Obama’s 1995 best-seller, “Dreams From My Father.”

“Dreams” may prove to be the most consequential literary hoax of our time, but unlike Roseblat’s or Frey’s, Obama’s memoir has enormous political value.

To make it easy on the hard-working reporters of these and other publications, should they choose to honor their profession, let me summarize what this amateur sleuth has learned to date.

What follows are 24 individual points that make a very compelling case. Assuming the data to be accurate, it is almost impossible to read them all without coming to the same conclusion he does. It stretches credulity that no reporter has ever bothered to ask Obama who helped him write it, and the public is allowed to think it was his own work, and a literary masterpiece that illustrates his possession of a brilliant mind.

Are they that desperate to avoid catching him in an obvious lie? They sure were quick to label Bush a liar just for repeating faulty intelligence data. This is just one more example of why we cannot trust anything to be what it appears anymore, and why the MSM has become utterly useless. ◄Dave►