Self-Confidence Vs Self-Esteem
The Chronicle of Higher Education argues that a diploma does not always equal an education. The author, Thomas H. Benton, says what everybody knows but that no one will official admit. Education has in part been devalued by the notion that everyone should have a diploma even if he’s never learned anything. The result, the authors argue, are a whole cohort of people with diplomas who expect to progress through real life the way they had all their lives: by guarantee.
Lack of student preparation. Increasingly, undergraduates are not prepared adequately in any academic area but often arrive with strong convictions about their abilities. So college professors routinely encounter students who have never written anything more than short answers on exams, who do not read much at all, who lack foundational skills in math and science, yet are completely convinced of their abilities and resist any criticism of their work, to the point of tears and tantrums: “But I earned nothing but A’s in high school,” and “Your demands are unreasonable.” Such a combination makes some students nearly unteachable.
Grade inflation. It has become difficult to give students honest feedback. The slightest criticisms have to be cushioned by a warm blanket of praise and encouragement to avoid provoking oppositional defiance or complete breakdowns. As a result, student progress is slowed, sharply. Rubric-driven approaches give the appearance of objectivity but make grading seem like a matter of checklists, which, if completed, must ensure an A. Increasingly, time-pressured college teachers ask themselves, “What grade will ensure no complaint from the student, or worse, a quasi-legal battle over whether the instructions for an assignment were clear enough?” So, the number of A-range grades keeps going up, and the motivation for students to excel keeps going down.
The whole mess is the result of a politicized educational system that believes it is necessary for child to get a diploma as a social objective, because if you have one, you’re middle class. The idea that the diploma might be the outcome, rather than the cause of achievement, has never occurred to them.
Although the article focuses on the dysfunction of the students, it touches only lightly on a more serious possibility: what if the system leaders themselves can’t tell a credential and an education apart because they themselves are only credentialed? Then the blind would be leading the blind.
In that case, the highest reaches of society might be manned by mediocrities who’ve been selected to prestigious journals without ever writing an article; who’ve been elected lawmakers without ever compiling a legislative record; who reach the highest office only to go directly to vacation; who’ve presided over a depression and yet compare themselves to the greatest of past leaders — to Lincoln and to Roosevelt. Thank God things haven’t reached that point.
Because if it did then those at the top of the system would be busy cloning people exactly like themselves; students with unassailable self-esteem eager to hold a teaching moment to share their ignorance. Eager to remake the world in their image because nothing can be better than themselves.
The result of the current educational system, Benton argues, is that we are in danger of getting exactly what we pay for: an expensive lot of nothing, where the highest honors are given to the most incompetent, not because they’ve gamed the system but because that’s the way the system actually works.
it means that our “failing” system of higher education actually is working the way it is supposed to … the patterns of selection and resource allocation—and the rising costs of college education—are not driven by educational needs so much as they are the result of competition for the most enjoyable and least difficult four-year experience, culminating in a credential that is mostly a signifier of existing class positions.
Allowed to proceed unchecked such a system will give students a mis-education instead of an education. It will represent not an increase in human capital but its wanton destruction. Surely Benton is overreacting. Things could never be so bad.
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Miss Direction:
http://www.hondomagic.com/html/a_little_magic.htm
In my career, I have given a grade of “F” in third year Medicine twice.
On both occasions, the Dean insisted on a change to “C”, because my grade was “subjective” (I know bad when I see it).
When I wouldn’t change it, I was told I would be responsible for the school’s, and my own personal, legal expenses.
The grading system has become hopelessly compromised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGXeXm0uMDo
and all the children are insane…
Grade inflation is socialism in action. Give everyone a “A” and everyone is “happy” and equal. Unfortunately grades then mean exactly NOTHING.
Who benefits if grades mean nothing? Answer: The poor performers and the lazy.
Who loses if grades mean nothing? Answer: The people with talent and/or people who want to improve themselves.
If you want a system to collapse, what’s the best way to do it? Answer: Convince the performers and people with talent that the system is rigged against them. Convince them to give up hope and to get in line with the idiots and non-performers.
If there’s a hell, Antonio Gramsci is in it and smiling.
With all due respect, is any of this really new?
I noticed years ago that even PhDs were subject to Sturgeon’s Law.
Of course, that was before they started giving out the Nobel Prize on spec.
76. rickl
Good news: I saw comments from Buddy at Maggie’s Farm that were dated 12/24 and 12/25.
So I don’t know where that rumor came from.
December 26, 2011 – 8:49 am
Thank you so much for posting the good news!
Best,
allen
Does it matter anymore? has not the ocean water spilled over the deck rail, do you not see the stern lifting from the water, it will be but a short time before the back is broke and the bow slips into forgotten history and the rats all scurry to the flagstaff for their ever shrinking piece of dry space until suddenly all is gone and onl the sharks are happy.
Is that Thomas H. Benton of the same line of the other T.H. Bentons?
If your educational systems were whole one could still ask if it is enough to fill the ranks of the captains of industry. The US has doubled its military and industrial strength by sharing opportunity with women. But if Bill Gates, Lee Iacocca and other captains of industry that “went pro” before taking their credentials tells us anything, there are at least some whose cerebral wiring does poorly in collective educational experiences. For example those with ADD might be capable of uncommon attention to studied subjects due to their particular compulsions however may do very poorly in social learning environments. So the teaching cavalcade marching young minds of mush to the stock yards of work a day mediocrity may serve a purpose, any educational system of value must be able to allow students to compete and to let those who are able to rise to their own levels of success. An ideal system would recognize the merit of such individuals and would guide them to high levels of achievement. I am afraid that our current system spends too much on the merit of its staff and administration and too little on the merit of their pupils, ultimately lowering the bar of scholastic achievement to ensure equality of outcome. Fannie and Freddie could have been set up for college degrees. And finally, we must realize that the era of static knowledge has come and gone and the successful individual continues to learn on the job or returns many times to the universities to retool as a lifelong learner. Brick and mortar educational edifices are already obsolete as teaching institutions. They function now as a place where the Wizard of Oz gives the Tin Man a heart, the Cowardly Lion and accommodation, and the Scare Crow a diploma. Learning should evolve into a continuous process using online teaching methods. The only thing that has become moribund is how we recognize the Scare Crows acquired knowledge, for he had intelligence all along.
Does it matter anymore?
Oh ye of little faith. Knowest thou that the nations have messed themselves surpassingly? That the Middle East is afflicted by turmoil? That Europe hath spent its last substance on foolishness? That the China bubble bursteth?
All ye need do is walk across the finish line and keep enough sense to not exceed the folly of the rest. For lo! Only if the King is determined to come in last is peril near to thee.
You want your kids to have a good education?
Find a school where 30 percent od students don’t come back after the first semester, another 20 percent don’t come back for the second year and the graduation rate is on the order of 20 percent or less of orginal enrollees.
Find a school where the instructors aren’t afraid to tell a student “What don’t you understand about coming to class prepared. Get out and don’t come back until you are”.
If you can’t find such a school you aren’t looking hard enough.
Yes it matters. I used to have a coffee cup that pictured a frog being swallowed by a Crane. The Frog had his hands around the Crane’s neck so the Crane couldn’t swallow.
The caption read “never quit”.
Like yogi said, “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings”. Michelle may be a little broad in the beam as we sailors say, but she ain’t fat.
Winners NEVER quit. If you quit, you can’t win. Miracles do happen. Sometimes you beat the odds. After the ship breaks in half the anchor falls and pulls the chain out of the chain locker. Several hundred tons of iron being gone and the buoyancy changes enough to allow the bow section to resurface. Sharks can be eaten raw.
You gotta wanna.
“Because if it did then those at the top of the system would be busy cloning people exactly like themselves; students with unassailable self-esteem eager to hold a teaching moment to share their ignorance”
Distribute freely.
This is nothing new.
The 8th grade was the final grade for most young people before World War Two, and only those who wanted to attend high school did attend high school. Overall high school performance started going down when attendance became mandatory and kids who did not already want to learn were forced to remain in school where they basically disrupted things for everyone else, until it pretty much collapsed in many (if not most) public high schools about thirty years later.
And the same thing happened in college thirty years after that.
There’s an old saying from systems analysis – “Standing in a garage doesn’t make me into a car.” Roughly translated it means that you actually have to know something about whatever it is you are planning to analyse, manage or do. This concept eluded every business school and their confounded MBA’s. Changing from cars to food; that is why most MBA’s are chocolate teapots. Sweet ‘n all but sure to melt when exposed to hot water.
Is it true that every Educational outfit now believes if you stand in a garage you turn into a car? Johnny go stand in that Medical School for a while and you’ll be a doctor. Sally go sit under a bridge for a couple of hours and you’ll be a Civil Engineer. I can’t believe that’s true for the honest Professions (ie the un-Law-full ones) but I can see it happening for majors preceded by “political”, “social” or “liberal”. Maybe the denizens of these subject areas believe in magic. Certainly graduates to whom the world is a total mystery probably all believe in magic. The significance of Bonzo’s link @ 1. to hondomagic now becomes clear.
I’m just sayin’, in 1800 the proportion of the population with both 4-year diploma and education was probably 1%. If that is also true today … surprise?
Do we have a lot more bad diplomas now? You betcha. But maybe the outcome is just the outcome. Maybe when we start handing out “illegal alien” ID cards, we can also hand out honorary “illegal baccalaureate” cards as well, put a lot of perfessors out of business, but they can go on welfare with their students.
The problem, if you ask me (and maybe if you don’t) is that our society has already devalued diploma, education, and even performance – judging from what we do to STEM graduates now. And the establishment moans that they want more diplomas, more education, and more performance – they just won’t pay for the performance, apparently for some obscure (not) reason they *are* willing to pay for more education.
Actually I saw an interesting point on a job board forum today, the note that if you use H-1B labor, when you’re done with it it goes away and you are not hit up with unemployment insurance. On top of other reasons why the H-1B business is a con job on the economy and society, there’s another reason why businesses might prefer legal alien labor instead of citizens.
So, once we devalue the process, shall we be shocked that the process itself degenerates? You might ask which came first, and unfortunately the answer is not the one you would like to hear – it is the microeconomics that forces the issue, no matter what detriment to the macroeconomics, which I propose is significant.
–
wc @ 15: There’s an old saying from systems analysis…
Finagle’s Law: In order to effectively study a subject, you should understand it thoroughly before you start.
b @ 1: that thing is giving me the willies, please make it go away!
I graduated from college with a B.S. degree in Mech Engr, a complete disinterest in further formal education – and a very strong interest in actually learning, both things that were useful and those that were simply interesting.
I finally went on to get a masters’ degree over 10 years later, not because I really wanted it but because it was a square filler. But in fact I enjoyed the experience in many ways and some of what I learned was useful.
But in that more than a decade between one diploma and another I learned to fly an airplane, got my ham license, and learned a whole lot about real engineering and program management and launching rockets and many other things.
And I have written some articles that said some of the stuff I learned 40 years ago was practically nonsense – and I learned that from supposed “experts.”
When they hand you a pilot’s license they tell you, “It’s a license to learn.” A formal diploma is a nothing but a license to learn.
W: “Education has in part been devalued by the notion that everyone should have a diploma even if he’s never learned anything… Allowed to proceed unchecked such a system will give students a mis-education instead of an education. It will represent not an increase in human capital but its wanton destruction.”
“The spirit of I’m as good [equal] as you has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system… The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time… But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career… In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education…” C. S. Lewis – Screwtape Proposes a Toast
http://screwtapeblogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/screwtape-proposes-a-toast/
Many years ago @ Stanford studies showed that the best predictor of a kids performance in school as a teenage+
was their capacity for DELAYING GRATIFICATION when they were 3 yrs old.
The same studies showed that self efficacy, resilience and persistence are much powerful than self esteem in terms of long term achievement
Both these studies have been replicated and validated many times since then
My high school chemistry teacher mentioned on occasion that the exam scores of his students had been declining during his career. This was in the 1980s and he had been teaching since at least the 1960s. So the trend of declining accomplishments by American students goes back a long way. Yeah, just call me captain obvious.
Plus, I work with a 20ish guy who did not know who the US fought in World War II. At least he was embarrassed by that when everyone else laughed at him.
But he was a high school graduate who had spent a good portion of his life sitting in a classroom. I sometimes wonder just what students are actually doing at school nowadays since they don’t seem to be learning anything.
But then I recall another coworker who was outraged to discover his son had a mandatory class in Hollywood history- yes, movies and such- and I conclude I already know what students are doing at most American schools.
They’re wasting their time.
Every system responds to stress. Steel and humans can be tempered by stress or broken. What is the optimum level of stress, that is failure and corrective feedback, is something that should be determined objectively. The liberal theory is that almost any pressure applied to a child, or young adult, or disadvantaged minority, or historically oppressed gender, can cause trauma. That does not mean that there is some equal conservative gold standard that guarantees success, such as the education that John Stuart Mill was subjected to or for that matter the methods employed by the Spartans or at Gordonstoun. Can people at different age groups be grouped into large categories by aptitude, such as quintets, with each facing an optimal degree of failure based on their age and aptitude?
When I was at University they taught Humility. Later I met a professor of Education, who was about to retire and therefor felt free to speak their mind, who told me, “One day you may be wheeled into surgery and when you look up at the man putting the anesthesia mask on your face you will want to know that they took the real physics class, the one where a third of the students failed.”
Now that money is getting tight, the feces is starting to roll back down hill.
Articles and posts about the Higher and lower education “bubble” are starting to appear with greater frequency.
A somewhat light weight look at the possible future at the American Thinker but still significant.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/a_world_without_schoolteachers.html
The ground the government controlled educators stand on is turning into quick sand.
This was going on at least as long ago as the 1970s, when I matriculated at college (a very expensive private university). A girl in our dorm, from St. Louis IIRC (and white), was in high dudgeon because the Shakespeare professor, a brilliant man, had had the temerity to give her a D on an essay. She was outraged because she’d ALWAYS gotten A’s. As I was in the same class, she asked me to read her paper.
Folks, it was regurgitated, undigested slop. She had clearly gone to every class and taken notes (hence the D rather than an F, I suppose), but she equally clearly had comprehended and assimilated Nothing of what she’d heard: the paper was a spew of unconnected thoughts and thumping non sequiturs.
She waited with expectant, indignant eyes for my agreement, but I couldn’t give it to her. I just mumbled, “Gee, that’s a shame,” or something inane like that. There was no way in hell the prof could’ve given her even one quality point (for a C). I also realized that her incomprehension was so profound that you would have to go back to the source of this Nile of error to address it.
Mind you, this was a result of rotten pedagogy from Grade One. I would say she had a B-minus intellect, solid but not flashy, but certainly educable. She was from an upper middle class white family, intact home; all the rest of the sociological variables were favorable. None of the usual excuses would apply. But she’d been petted and praised for attendance and being a human blotter, and had been taught nothing about how to construct an armature for a body of knowledge. It was all just clay on the table to her, and she was madder than spit that she didn’t get credit for having ALL the CLAY.
I knew a nursing student three years later who had the same problem. She had no idea of how to Organize information in her head, and tried to memorize every discrete fact. She was drowning.
Someone wrote a short story about this: how the bright students in the future would be forced to wear blindfolds, mitts on their hands, plugs in their ears: all handicapped brutally and deliberately by a cruel and envious State that crippled the smart children lest the louts realize their loutishness.
Ah…
Balph Eubanks and his friends are ascendant.
Morons.
My brother’s two stepsons respectively graduated with degrees in Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies. I told the older one before he accepted his admission that he was going to be brain washed and his mother didn’t appreciate it. Since graduation he works for the county and is avidly working to get plastic shopping bags banned.
This dumbing down of our children is not a cooincidence, there is definitely a political agenda. I personally beleive that the Gramiscian march through the institutions was planned and was a success, and that FDR started all of this.
At the very successful company I worked for (a Project Delivery company), one of the non-employment criteria was that ‘anyone with more than three degrees is unemployable’.
ADE
You often hear people say “Education isn’t what it was when I was at school,” or “Kids today aren’t as well educated as they were twenty years ago.” I was doing the idle wondering thing and what I wondered was “Does anyone really know if kids are as well educated as they were twenty or forty years ago?
You would think that was an easy question to answer, wouldn’t you? After all ‘experts’ are always doing studies, and then we have exam results and graduation results and government statistics and . . . and . . . and . . . , don’t we?
Well, of course, it is not quite that easy. Let’s just start with what our students learn. Today they learn about things that hadn’t even been invented twenty years ago, let alone forty, and some subjects have changed radically just by changing the focus. For instance in History we used to learn all about kings and armies and battles. Now students learn more about everyday lives and social change. How do you measure performance when things are so different?
There has always been a difference in style between countries, for instance, in the UK it was fine to get 75% but in France mastery (90% plus) was required, both in school and in sports etc. I remember Amber being held back in ski school, our complaints were met with “Yes, she did the exercise, but to advance she must do it “Just so.”” This for a six year old! Now in the UK academics are complaining that too many students get an A or A plus in their GCSEs so somehow the standard must have been lowered. Are they sure? Maybe the teaching is more effective or the kids are brighter. How would we know?
I eas half decent at Math. My daughter sent me a trial exam, and this is fifteen years ago. I couldn’t do the math. Actually I didn’t understand any but one of the questions. This was Grade 12. Any one of you over fifty who does not have a Masaters in Mathematics try doing your kids Grade 12 Principles of Math Exam. OK? Now quit your whining.
I am not saying everything is hunky dory. It isn’t. We’re teaching too many kids the wrong subjects, the easy and relatively useless options. There’s not enough rigour, and as a lay school trustee I feel the need to bust every one’s chops about twice a month. (Education is far too important to be left to the educators.)
Thinking back I can’t remember anyone at secondary school who had a problem with writing or spelling so, leaving aside my own illiterate middle child, what am I to make of kids in grade 11 and 12 whose grammar and spelling are simply atrocious? Is that a product of the “Let them be creative, express themselves, ” style of teaching or a symptom of something more worrying?
I suspect a similar process is at work as we see in sports. The good get better, the rest get lost. There are literally hundreds of four minute milers out there today (the record is under 3 min 45 secs.) and thousands take part in marathons but Joe average is less fit than forty years ago, a victim of the TV remote and the labour saving world. Our brightest offspring are sharp, knowledgeable and know far more about the world than we did at their age (to whom do you go to sort out your home network?) but the majority are slipping behind.
If you are worried about education get off your fat ***** and do something about it. Otherwise the blame is yours as well.
The handwriting is on the wall! The education bubble has started to lose it’s air. Will be the best thing to happen to higher education and our country.
http://tinyurl.com/6oedr5f
The irony of a university professor bemoaning the quality of students educated by the graduates of his/her own College of Education in the universities just never stops amusing me. These institutes of ‘higher learning’ need to change their motto to “We have met the enemy and it is us”.
In case anyone is wondering about the Hondo magic trick, it’s simple. NONE of the cards they show you at the end are the same as those at the start, so it doesn’t matter which you pick. The idea is to get you to focus on your card so you ignore all the other cards. Much like a politician tries to get you to focus on a specific narrow concern so you don’t see how you’re being fleeced.
ADE #27
I agree, in private consulting world (engineering and technology), you do not need the advanced degree once you get some years of practice in. About the only place where advanced university credentials (MA, PhD) are required to move up in category is the Government.
wrechard #10
I think you mean:
Knowest thou NOT that the nations have messed themselves surpassingly?
Since the American zeitgeist has been unknowingly overcome by Paulo Freire’s Marxist Critical Pedagogy, where social standing counts more towards success than actual talent, I’m not surprised America wants everyone to have a diploma.
This started a long time ago with the report cards with no grades. I guess the idea is that if one is somehow shielded from conspicuous knowledge of one’s own lack of talent, one will blunder their way to success, unhindered by low self esteem.
Unfortunately it doesn’t really work as umbrellas powered by faith, confidence and ego get people wet.
The Dunning-Kruger effect combined with a society more concerned with credentialling than education is what caused this.
The Gramscian termite certainly greased the wheels, as well.
How can it be reversed? Doing so will certainly delegitimize a great many people’s careers and claims to being “educated” or a “professional” so there will be massive resistance.
beverly, the short story you are thinking of is Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron.” Vonnegut was a leftist, but he valued talent and achievement.
“Someone wrote a short story about this…”
Kurt Vonnegut: Harrison Bergeron.
Here’s a link to the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
Here’s a link to the movie “2081: Everyone Will Finally Be Equal” which is based on Harrison Bergeron.
http://www.finallyequal.com/
5. Josh
With all due respect, is any of this really new?
I noticed years ago that even PhDs were subject to Sturgeon’s Law.
No, it’s not new, but then, that is part of the point. More than 3 decades of this has produced an entire class of elite mediocrity. The current president and and many American and western leaders and luminaries would have been the first beneficiaries of a bastardized education, because, by the late 70′s, these educational corruptions had laready taken root, as had “affirmative action.”
And it gets worse. As we all know, the underlying premises and attitudes that have ruined American education in particular permeate almost all aspects of contemporary society. For instance, who the f***k are the Kardashians? Why is a grotesque little dwarf like “Snooki” a celebrity? Why are so many politicians such boobs on history and the Constitution? Why did we elect a malignant mediocrity? Why do so many people believe that this mediocrity is so much more than he actually is?
Augetter/11
It reminds me how I got my BS in computer sci degree.
There was a severe lack of coders in CZ at the beginning of 80′s. One firm made a deal with a Technology Uni to create a mobile team of coders that would be supplied whenever and wherever needed. They put an ad in the newspaper and I saw it and since I couldn’t get into higher edu from political reasons, saw my chance.
They tested 350 people that replied. IQ and IBM aptitude tests. 80 passed. The program compressed 2 years into 3 months. Classes were from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM, saturday included, with a 30 min break for lunch. The second day 20 dropped out. After a week about 30 dropped out. Second month only 19 were still at it. 6 graduated.
There is one thing I have to say. If one subtracts the pervasive nature of marxist ideology, the educational system in my old country was solid. Though I was in humanities branch of a middle school (eq of high school), we did have math, physics and chemistry classes, just not as many hours as the math/physics branch. We had more history, philosophy, languages incl. Latin and Greek and arts and music classes in addition. The teachers for math/physics/chemistry were the same, and they couldn’t care less if you were in the humanities branch, you failed, an F you got. Period. No self-esteem issues, that was unheard of.
All these things that are these days associated with progressivism–like self-esteem, even feminism and multiculturalism, were considered a sign of decay of western societies. Or rather, for these in know, they were a clear indication of the success of active measures and Frankfurt School (which BTW was on a black list for consumption behind Iron Curtain because its target was western societies and it was considered highly corrosive).
An open note to Spengler, who unlike our esteemed host Wretchard, has a pretty darn good idea as to who I am:
18. Mr. X
David,
Unfortunately as much as I admire your work this anti-Ron Paul screed was about as predictable as the Sun rising. While I greatly admire your insights into demographics and your fundamental insight that lack of faith is leading to economic collapse worldwide, I can’t say I’m surprised you hopped on the PJM bandwagon of ceaseless Ron Paul hate expressed over the past two weeks when it became obvious that he could actually win in Iowa. Peer pressure is a very strong force, as is the massive amount of misinformation that has been spread about Paul’s views on Israel. If Paul really hated Israel the way he’s been accused of, why in the hell would he have not joined the chorus that condemned Israel’s bombing of the Osirik reactor back in the 1980s? Instead he spoke up for Israel at a time that the Reagan Administration felt it had to condemn it.
The desperation on PJM’s part and of the neocons you’ve so eloquently criticized to discredit Paul is palpable. I’m reminded of what one of the leaders of the Sanhedrin told his fellows when the Apostles were being persecuted in the Book of Acts. He said if this Nazarene movement is of men, then it will be flash in the pan and fail, but if it is of G-d, you will find yourselves fighting against G-d. Similarly, even if Ron Paul the man is defeated as I expect he will be, his movement will carry on, with Rand Paul, and your peers at PJM will not have such an easy time finding dirt or ‘kooky’ quotes on him when he comes forth with a simple refrain of ‘we…can’t…afford…it.’ in response to all the weeping and gnashing of teeth over the late great American military base empire cerca 2016…
“You’re not listening: the Iranians hate us because the creative destruction we have unleashed on the world is destroying the remnants of their society. The world America has created has no place for them. They are finished.” Then if the mullahs are finished why do have to wreck what’s left of the Western economies with air strikes that will close the Strait of Hormuz and result in $7 a gallon gasoline?
Why can’t containment work with a society that you’ve pointed out repeatedly is already dying with its Islamist regime? You’ve even admitted that perversely all the turmoil in the Middle East you say the U.S. should exploit like Richelieu has increased oil prices and has been one of the last pillars propping up the rotting Islamic Republic. Why confirm Pakistan’s paranoia and give the mullahs the chance to buy a bomb from Pakistan after we bomb their reactors, thereby clinching Iran as a nuclear power?
Why pretend that Ron Paul’s view that Israel can take care of itself vis a vis Iran and no U.S. air strikes are necessary is almost the same view as the recently retired Mossad chief? Why do that Mossad chief’s views expressed in Haaretz never get repeated in the NYT, or the WaPost?
And last of all, what is futuristic about a group of bureaucrats and mediocre academics such as Mr. Bernanke sitting around a room, decreeing how much is an adequate money supply not only for the U.S., but for an entire global economy which as you’ve correctly pointed out, still looks to the dollar despite its debasement? Isn’t that as Paul has pointed out a form of monetary central planning akin to the old Soviet Gosplan also trying to set prices?
I look forward to your honest, intellectual attempt to grapple with these questions, rather than the kind of crude, visceral hatred expressed by smug people who consider themselves to be part of the fiat money-fueled Establishment. Example here:
http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=5901#comment-86006
Your friend,
Senor Equis
20. Mr. X
“paranoid rage against the creative destruction that is uprooting your lives.” And lastly David, it’s not paranoid to rage against a Federal Reserve raising prices for everyone as. It’s not paranoid to quote Italian bankers on the BBC who ought to know that Goldman Sachs really does run the world or at least think it does. It’s not paranoid to notice which TBTF banks got bailed out and which did not, and draw conclusions about who really tells Mr. Bernanke what to do. It’s not paranoia to point out that Mr. Corzine still walks a free man after presiding over one of the biggest account heists in the history of American finance.
Like I said, disagreeing with RP is fine. But David, I sincerely believe you’re under a lot of pressure from the PJM brass and others I won’t name to denounce Paul in all kinds of hysterical terms. And that’s very sad, but also a sign of Establishment GOP panic. It’s akin to Soviet Politburo members getting shrill and desperate cerca 1985. The only thing we seem to agree about at this point besides demographics and their economic impact is that the status quo in the U.S. is irreparably broken. If you and PJM think some mild mannered 76-year-old is a grave threat to the Republic, I’m afraid you haven’t seen anything yet.
End of thread for me.