Education Dilemma

Thursday, February 24, 2011 – 3:39 PM

When did education become the whipping boy for excessive government spending?

When, at any point, has a state increased their budget line for education? Education seems right in there with police & fire as those services that only trim budgets. I cannot recall the reverse happening, ever. Am I crazy, deaf, blind, correct, or all of the above?

Surely, surely, surely, we can find non-critical government agencies, or silly grant programs, or silly aid, or (shocker) trimming social benefit programs, or (&^&**SHOCKER&**(0&*) raising taxes?

I can't say what goes into these decisions - I'm not in the room. Thanks to blogs, I have the luxury of firing my artillery shells from my couch with a viewership of 20. I'm barely accountable for my under-informed opinions.

All said, I think targeting education is a lame excuse. Like many lame excuses, the comedy is how universally true this excuse has suddenly become. Earlier today, Providence, RI, put all of their teachers on layoff notice. All. Of. Them. I will venture this guess: Without the precession of excuse-laden state governments saying the same thing, Rhode Island's actions would count as some sort of social treason. We might even read about it in our history books someday, right up there with South Carolina firing on Fort Sumpter, thinking 'this should work out well'.

Let's assume that the first state to target education (for confidentiality reasons, we'll call this state 'Aggies') had legitimate reason for doing so. What makes their 'legitimate' problem equally legitimate in every other fiscally gluttonous and unrelated state in the union? Where is the correlation, other than 'well, that excuse seems to work for them, so maybe we should use it, too?'

I think teachers and kids are getting royally screwed. Again, I am beyond uninformed in this arena. But, I also think I'm right.

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TV Antagonists...

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 – 4:44 PM

At this point, I guess I have around 20 steady readers, to which I say...

Little Red Riding Hood: "But grandmother, what great patience you have!"
Wolf: "Yes yes. Now, hurry it up with the 'teeth' line!"


That said, I'm going to do something different this time. I want you to comment in your favorite TV antagonists. Once I have the responses, I will randomly pair them, and we will vote them forward, tournament style.

I'll start with my favorite:

Newman - Seinfeld

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Quote of the Day...

Friday, February 04, 2011 – 2:14 PM

I got Cara playing the Wii today. We got her very own pink controller last night.

The game du jour is Wii Sports Resort, which has, among other things, airplane-based games. We selected that menu, and the quote ensued...

"Dogfighting?? That's terrible!!"


I love my wife.

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Liberty...

Friday, January 28, 2011 – 12:33 AM

I've been reading a lot lately. Among my current books are 'Heretics' by G.K. Chesterton, and 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy. I am about 2/3 through the latter - it is the finest book I've ever read.

Tolstoy really gets human nature. He wrings the very last drop of humanity out of his characters, and conveys with a direct and honest hand the fickle nature of men, and the mystery that, in the midst of all the bad we make for ourselves, God still interjects himself into our midst, and there we find love. I've realized lately how many people hate God for interjecting himself into our lives. They wish he'd go away and let them do what they think is best for themselves. They call such an aspiration 'liberty'. G.K. Chesterton describes this misguided philosophy in his book 'Heretics'. (aside: he wrote that book circa 1900, establishing that all important truth that, in the realm of failed and failing philosophy, there are no new ideas, just new people who don't read old books.)

In short, Chesterton's charge is that liberty was intended to loose the chains of the inquisitioned - the heretic and orthodox alike; that an equal dialogue should be established to uncover truth and goodness. The contrasting effect of philisophical liberation is, in an age where the most radical have a voice and a freedom to use it, governing philosophies are forbidden from discussion. A man can have opinions on the weather, the athlete, beer, the President, and traffic. A man can opinion any thing, so long as he dares not opinion all things. The general philosophy is outlawed, and those who seek such are mocked as 'fundamentalist' or 'idealogue'. The joke of the matter is, until a very short time ago, the great aspiration was to be those things - to be orthodox. Now, the aspiration is to be the heretic - the provacateur who will stand for comfort, so long as he must not stand for an ideal that transcends comfort. 

Enlightenment unlocked the doors of liberty - the freedom of all voices in the common pursuit of good. What was a noble idea has since become a terrible perversion. Good is no longer the aim of liberty. Rather, liberty has become the aim of liberty. We cannot say what good is, but we seek greater freedoms to pursue what we cannot and shall not define. We are in effect widening the net to catch the great fish, and never daring to cast it into the water. We have mistaken netbuilding as our occupation, and we are thence utterly useless as fisherman. If we would only remove our attention from that ever-liberating, ever-unproductive task of widening nets, and but lift our eyes, we would see a stranger on the shore, daring to interject; daring to impress upon us what is good - that we drop our nets and follow him.


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Elections...

Wednesday, November 03, 2010 – 12:11 AM

Yay for Election Day 2010. Is this the first time in circa 15 years we've had split control of Congress? Either way, maybe now they'll learn to work together. Maybe, maybe not, but at least now no single power-intoxicated party can ram legislation down my throat. Instead, two power-intoxicated parties will barter with each other to ram legislation down my throat.

In all seriousness, I am a big fan of a split congress. Single-party congress is like giving power to a socially inept nerd (otherwise known as PolySci majors). Most all of us can't handle unchecked authority, and both parties have proven themselves overly eager to stab each other in the back if given the room to stretch their arms wide enough to strike. I hope good things come out of the next Congress. At least now we can say most everyone's interests are capable of being represented at the negotiation table.

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