The Flag of the World

There’s a new Past Cast up–this one containing interviews with former slaves from the Library of Congress “Voices from the Days of Slavery” collection.  It’s pretty remarkable to hear actual words from the mouths of people who are so often just blurry figures in a black-and-white photograph, so go check it out.

Hillary Clinton’s assertion that Karl Rove “spends a lot of time” thinking about her is a broadside aimed more at her potential ‘08 opponents than at the Evil Genius of 1600.  If Karl Rove is thinking about Clinton much, it’s almost certainly with some evil laughter.  Clinton’s biggest advantage going into the ‘08 fight is that she’s the presumptive nominee.  That’s a pretty big advantage, and she’s wise to milk it like this–but like so many of her moves, it’s so blindingly obvious what she’s doing that I have a hard time imagining many people actually being taken in by it.

Speaking of the purpose of education, in a report to the Commissioners of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson aired his views on the question in 1818.

To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;

To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing;

To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;

To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;

To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment;

And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.

To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens, being then the objects of education in the primary schools, whether private or public, in them should be taught reading, writing and numerical arithmetic, the elements of mensuration, (useful in so many callings,) and the outlines of geography and history.

I’m using part of this quote to end a paper for one of my UW classes, since it beautifully refutes nearly everything said by the educational establishment about the purposes of education today. Education, useful?! Moral?! Dutiful?! Impossible!

The other day, Jim Miller wrote in praise of algebra, something you are significantly less likely to find me doing. In support of an algebra requirement for high school graduates, he notes that

[P]rospective British midshipmen were required to know some algebra, for reasons that I hope are obvious, before they turned thirteen, that is, before they were even old enough to enter an American high school… this was not an onerous requirement.

This is true–and once they got into the service, they were required to learn the even more onerous task of trigonometry, something I can’t even imagine doing in an age without calculators.

There’s a small problem, though, with Miller’s analogy. While all officers were required to know algebra and other higher maths, they made up a minute percentage of the British Navy. The vast majority of the people on any given ship were simply seamen, with little or no mathematical knowledge at all, and this was just one manifestation of the huge gulf between the educated upper classes and the uneducated lower classes that existed then.

In Europe, they still draw these sort of distinctions, and partition up their students very early on, the common hands going to technical schools, with the “officers” going on to more rigorous study. Here in America, our public school system has never done that sort of thing, and likely never will. You can debate which system is better, but the fact remains that America simply won’t accept that kind of class division. Everyone is expected to get a high school diploma, and thus everyone–at least in districts like those described by Miller–is expected to know algebra.

This presents a uniquely American problem, and while I am generally on Miller’s side in the argument for algebra (though more grudgingly than he, for personal reasons), it’s a problem that must not be ignored when we are discussing graduation requirements, and the purpose of American public education in general.

They used to say that you should “never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” Today, with the Internet, everyone has all the ink we’ll ever need. Ben Livingston is a living example of that, responding to a bizarre, quasi-legal ticketing on the State Capitol grounds with a slick-looking website that gives you every detail of the situation.

There was a time when you had to treat certain people carefully, because of the megaphones they had access to. We’re reaching the day when we’ll have to treat everyone carefully for that same reason–and that can only be a good thing.

Wal-Mart made two different announcements today, both with very different implications. The media, unsurprisingly, is treating them as if they were essentially two sides of the same coin, but they’re not. In fact, they are two very different approaches to the same problem–one looking back, one looking forward.

The most play is being given to the backwards looking announcement. Wal-Mart announced that they would be paying for health care for more employees. This is apt to make things at Wal-Mart a bit more expensive, and it will be nice for those few thousand employees who are added to the rolls, but overall, this is unlikely to have a lasting impact on anything.

The important announcement is being largely ignored in the media, though: Wal-Mart is opening 50 more health clinics in their stores, adding to the nine started in a pilot program mainly in the Southeast. This could be the start of something remarkable–if Wal-Mart can begin applying the same downward price pressures to medical prices that it has applied to goods in general, then it could be the beginning of a trend that finally halts the long upward march of medical prices.

State-based health care, about a century old, is proving a very expensive disaster everywhere it’s been tried. Employer-based health care, which has been with us for about 65 years, is likely on its way out, taking GM and other venerable US companies with it. But consumer-based health care, with doctors and clinics competing for our business and dollars, that may just have a future.

(Here’s another problem with a particular paper’s coverage of the announcement.)

I hope you’re having a marvelous time celebrating George Washington’s Birthday (obverved). What’s that? You’re not celebrating it at all, aside from sleeping in this morning? For shame. The father of our country certainly deserves a few moments of your time today–how about 22 minutes and 56 seconds? Because that’s how long our latest Past Cast episode is, and it’s all about George Washington. Enjoy!

I’m not against polls–polls are often at least somewhat useful in predicting the outcome of an election. But when we’re talking about major statewide races here in Washington State, they should be looked at in context.Take, for example, the 2006 Senate race between Maria Cantwell and Mike McGavick. Strategic Vision, a Republican polling firm, has McGavick at eight points down, 48-40, and most polls have him farther back than that. Sounds pretty bad–it’s time to give up, move on, and spend our money and time elsewhere, right? Wrong.

Look back at the last two major statewide elections in which someone from Western Washington with little name recognition (like McGavick) took on someone who (like Cantwell) had already won statewide office. That is to say, the Senate race in 2000 and the Gubernatorial race in 2004. Both of those races ended in a virtual tie–but they certainly didn’t start out that way.

In August of 2000, Maria Cantwell, who had been a one-term congresswoman, was eight points down on incumbent Slade Gorton. Through September and even October of 2004, State Senator Dino Rossi was at times 10 and 11 points down on thrice-elected Attorney General Christine Gregoire.

How did Rossi & Cantwell turn their large deficits into 50-50 splits? First, they had very, very good statewide campaigns, both with a positive message of change that was spread all across the state. Second, they both protrayed themselves as moderate–particularly in tone–and as successful, intelligent people with good business sense and experience*. That’s the same play McGavick is running so far, and there’s no particularly good reason to think it won’t play out similiarly.

That might be unfortunate–you’ll note that each of those “virtual ties” were (eventually) awarded to the Democrat and I would certainly hope for a margin of victory strong enough to overcome the various last-minute dem shenanigans–but at the same time, it’s far more than most senate challengers can expect. McGavick has a surprisingly good chance at victory, regardless of where the polls stand right now, and if he runs his campaign well, then we can all expect a very long night come November 7. Start preparing now.

Friend Steve McMullen has a post regarding the ‘Fair Trade’ craze–that is, purchasing Third World agricultural products that cost more, but that are grown by farmers who are paid a fair wage. On one hand, it sounds like a great idea for people who can afford it to do a litle good. But there are some huge problems with it, as Steve points out:

What this does is create a whole network of people who depend on the guilt of rich Americans to live. They will spend time and money investing in growing coffee, they will train their children to grow coffee, and they will tell their friends to grow coffee, as long as Americans are willing to pay $6.00 a pound. The result is a huge over-supply of coffee, and coffee prices fall. Does this sound like a vicious cycle to anyone else?

And coffee is only the start. Do we really want to tell farmers who are barely getting by that the way to be successful is to invest in growing crops in an inefficient manner, and then convince rich people to buy their goods for a higher price than the market so that you can feed your children?

I’ve blogged about this before, slightly less benevolently than Steve, in regards to what I consider a particularly egregious style of this sort of thing, in which:

White American liberals enable African women to live at a subsistence level, learning and honing a craft that is completely useless without the assistance of those same white American liberals. Should the white American liberals ever decide to leave, the women will be left with no way to earn money whatsoever, having learned a craft that pays less than a penny an hour. They claim to believe in “building African self-empowerment the moral way,” but I cannot see what is either self-empowering or moral about any of this.

Another problem with Fair Trade products is that they are–I imagine–particularly suceptible to American & European economic problems. When times get hard, chances are good that the first things that are cut back on are the over-priced coffee and shea butter. It’s pretty clear to me that ‘fair trade’ is likely to be damaging in the long run, and were I a liberal, I might think that there should be some kind of restriction on it. That’s not the right way to go about it, of course.

Instead, what needs to happen is that different products must fill the feel good/fair trade niche, and those in the third world need to be provided with more sustainable ways to support themselves–and maybe even get rich. If those coincide, that’s great, but it’s unnecessary.

What will that look like? Maybe like this, maybe like this, maybe like something no one’s imagined yet. But even with that uncertainty, innovation is a surer–and even fairer–bet than ‘fair trade.’

In my interview with him for Operation: Red Washington today, Washington State Senate candidate Mike McGavick gave his thumbs up to the Porkbusters project, spearheaded by Instapundit and NZ Bear. I asked if, should he win in November, he would join Senators McCain and Coburn in the fight against pork–he appeared familiar with Porkbusters, and said “Absolutely.” But McGavick went farther–instead of condemning pork qua pork, he actually explained why he’s against it:

The bacon from Washington DC is a pretty paltry scrap… In the end, you’ve disgraced your government, you’ve wasted the taxpayers’ money, you’ve lowered the credibility of your government, all for want of some project that, in the end, isn’t going to convince the voter to decide whether you are in their interests or not.

I must admit, pork is not high on my list of priorities, but it’s very refreshing–and downright convincing–to hear someone explain reasons for opposition to it, instead of simply assuming that pork is clearly and objectively a horrible thing.

Listen to the interview here. The discussion of pork and Porkbusters starts at about the 14:11 mark and lasts about four minutes.

And if pork-podcasts aren’t your cup of tea–and even if they are–then please do check out Past Cast.

Another subject that I don’t read blogs about, but do listen to podcasts about, is my faith. There are lots of very good Christian blogs that, for whatever reason, don’t capture my interest. But one of the key uses of my mp3 player has been listening to sermons. Perhaps years of church has just conditioned me to take in that sort of thing aurally. It doesn’t hurt that the preachers I listen to are darn good at what they do.

There are two main ones–John Piper and Greg Boyd. Anyone who is familiar with both men should find that either very bizarre or simply amusing. Both men are from Minnesota, both pastor Baptist General Conference churches, and both have previously taught at my alma mater, Bethel University–but Piper is what some have called a “hypercalvinist” and Boyd is armenian to the point of heresy (no, seriously). Boyd’s espousal of the simply incorrect theology of “open theism” led to major clashes with Piper a few years ago, and the “Piper-Boyd” controversy is probably still a topic of conversation at Bethel and elsewhere.

In the end, though, the men have more similarities than differences–both love Christ passionately, both are gifted immensely in preaching and other pastoral skills, and both have seen their ministries blessed remarkably. And they both make their sermons available via podcast–Boyd here, weekly, and Piper here, daily. If you’re curious about listening to sermons–or about this “Christianity” thing in general–I highly suggest you give them each a listen. Where they disagree, they balance each other very nicely, and where they agree, you can be very confident. As long as you ignore Boyd whenever he starts getting heretical, you should be just fine.

It seems like everyone’s podcasting these days, and I’m certainly not to be outdone.

Actually, my first podcast was a few weeks ago over at Operation: Red Washington, but I hadn’t actually listened to many podcasts until my recent purchase of an MP3 player, which has opened up a whole new world to me–kinda. I was surprised to discover that the subjects which interest me in blogs don’t hold the same interest for me in podcasts. Thus, I haven’t listened to many of the political podcasts that you might expect (as I noted a while ago, though, interviews such as, say, this one, do hold my interest quite well.)

Instead, the podcasts that interest me are the ones that have to do with subjects that interest me, but not in blog form. History, for example, is something I am certainly interested in, but few history blogs have held my interest. Podcasts, on the other hand, are a different matter.

And so, I’m very pleased to announce PastCast.net, a joint venture between myself and my lovely history-teaching wife. Every week, we’ll be examining historical figures and events via songs, speeches and other audio. Today’s podcast is on Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was yesterday. And I assure you, any resemblance to any other husband-wife team podcast relating to Lincoln is purely coincidental.

At any rate, you can subscribe to the Past Cast feed with this link, which I highly encourage. The Operation: Red Washington interview podcast is more sporadic, but there should be another installment later this week. That feed is here.