Tag Archives: education

The University War On Men And What To Do About It

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

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This is a story from the Dark World, as described so well by Ivan Throne in The Nine Laws. It will sicken you. Or, it should sicken you. It should make you want to act. I have suggestions at the end.

I didn’t have time to get into the subject on the air with Matt Patrick yesterday morning but part of the problem with higher education in America (and Canada, the UK, etc.) is that the schools forego academic rigor in favor of triviality. Year by year, legions of poorly equipped young mush-heads arrive at institutions dedicated to frivolity. Math, history, art and literature take a back seat to social justice and lessons better suited for Sesame Street.

My point with Matt was that all of this is a horrible waste of time and money. There is no reason to go $200,000 in fake debt to bankster charlatans for such “education”.

There’s a pecking order to the foolishness. Womyn’s studies, black empowerment theater, and the LGBBQ buffet take priority. If it has to do with anything male, white, and Christian, in other words with Western civilization, it is shunned. And ridiculed. Stamped out or at least tampered with.

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YouTube.

The latest pathetic trend is the attempted emasculation of men in college. Young men are taught that, among other idiotic ideas, being a man is toxic. A manly man, a straight man, a proud man of the West is frowned upon by the bunched panties crowd of modern, lightweight academia.

For example, a class at Dartmouth College this semester, “The Orlando Syllabus,” identifies so-called toxic masculinity as playing a role in the mass murder spree at a Florida club during the summer. This despite the fact that the gunman, Omar Mateen, told police on the phone as he committed the massacre he did it on behalf of ISIS.

Other instances of combating toxic masculinity on campus can be found at both the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Duke University, which launched programs specifically designed for male students to delve into “violent masculinity” and “healthier masculinity” and discuss issues like gender fluidity.

“How has the concept of masculinity contributed to the perpetration of violence in our society?” asks the UNC Men’s Project website.

Duke University started a similar program this semester for male students to reflect on topics such as patriarchy, male privilege, rape culture, pornography, machismo and “the language of dominance,” Fox News reported.

At a mandatory freshmen orientation training at Gettysburg College in August, male students had to watch a documentary which stated in part that the “three most destructive words” a boy can hear growing up is “be a man.” The freshmen also went through breakout sessions in which they were told mass shooting sprees are rooted in toxic masculinity.

The “Thrive” club, part of the Claremont colleges consortium which meets as a “safe space” to talk about mental health, advertises that “masculinity can be extremely toxic to our mental health, both to the people who are pressured to preform it and the people who are inevitably influenced by it.”

The group refuses to disclose the contents of its discussions due to “confidentiality concerns,” but students who attended one of the sessions reported that there was “a common consensus that masculinity is harmful both to those who express it and those affected by it,” the Claremont Independent reported.

Various promotional videos promoting health masculinity advocate challenging “the traditional norms of what we envision masculinity to be” by recognizing “male privilege.” Goals touted through the education include undoing a legacy of “harm, oppression and dominance.”

This trend did not emerge over night. Last year, Vanderbilt University hosted “Healthy Masculinities Week,” led in part by Jackson Katz, the first man to minor in women studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Every group identity under the sun goddess is represented on campus except for men. Until now. Let’s use UNC as an example. The once proud Tarheels now have a Men’s Project. Not a center or a studies course or separate college mind you. Those are for the favored groups. A project is something to work on. And they’re hard at work, working on deconstructing masculinity.

This Men’s “Project” is an offshoot of the Student Wellness Office (because manliness is a sickness to treat) and the Carolina Womyn’s Center (because womyn). Womyn get a center, men are a project. And men need to be made well. That should tell you everything you need to know.

What is the UNC Men’s Project?

The UNC Men’s Project is an initiative started in 2013 that seeks to create opportunities for male-identified students to learn, listen, reflect, and work together to increase men’s involvement in gender equity and violence prevention efforts. This program works to promote healthier masculinities on campus and to shift the culture of masculinity toward more non-violent norms. The UNC Men’s Project is a designated High Impact Practice in Student Affairs, and is co-sponsored and supported by Student Wellness and the Carolina Women’s Center.

The 2016-2017 Cohort will be hold weekly cohort sessions in Fall on Wednesdays from 6-8 pm, from September 21 through November 30 (no meetings during week of Fall Break or Thanksgiving). The application for this year has closed.

What does it mean to be a man?

How does masculinity serve as a beneficial and/or harmful influence in our lives? How does it affect our relationships with other men, with women and with people of all gender expressions?

How has the concept of masculinity contributed to the perpetration of violence in our society? Men commit the vast majority of violence, yet the vast majority of men neither commit nor condone violence. And many men and boys are subjected to some form of violence at the hands of other men. How do we confront this issue?

In short, how do we create spaces for men to talk honestly with other men and to practice healthier, more positive masculinities?

These are the questions the UNC Men’s Project seeks to answer.

How can you get involved?

Educational Programming

The UNC Men’s Project starts with a 10-week program in the fall semester that (1) explores a spectrum of masculinities, (2) examines how our own stories are shaped by masculinity, and (3) gives participants the tools and knowledge to become peer allies, leaders, and educators in violence prevention and gender equity efforts at UNC.

Student Community

The UNC Men’s Project works year-round with a variety of campus and community partners to support ongoing efforts focused on violence prevention and gender equity at UNC Chapel Hill. The groups hosts meetings, workshops, events, and discussion groups to provide a space for students, both from our training program and the general student body, to continue their process of learning, listening, reflecting, and working together to make UNC a safer and more equitable community.

Safety and equity for all – all except men. Men used to have plenty of spaces to talk honestly. One of the foremost was the university. Now they get bigoted pyscho-babble in place of honest discussion. And I imagine it’s more of a talking to than a discussion. A talking down to. “You’re all rapists. You’re all violent. You’re too strong. Try some makeup. Cry with us in the safe space.”

The Project’s advisory board includes nuts from: the womyn’s center, the black power movement, the multi-culti affairs office, the local rape crisis center, and the LGBBQ bathhouse. I’m surprised ISIS isn’t represented.

 

From this description the idea is clear: men are a bunch of stupid and violent savages (geometry, the moon landing, nuclear power, symphonies, the polio vaccine, the concept of the university, civilization, and all that irrelevant stuff aside); the women must teach the men to be a bit more effeminate. To be docile. To be wimpy. To be slaves. Happy little sheep.

Here’s what we need to do with this garbage. First, if you are a man (or a real woman) at one of these “schools”, leave. Don’t pay another cent for this communist BS.

Well, actually, don’t quit immediately. Turn the tables before you go. A young man should attend one of these workshops or gulag camps or whatever. Take a large spider with you. Once the chief b*tch or masculine feminist is babbling away, release the spider where it will be noticed. I predict that as soon as the safety and equity nitwits see it they will panic. They will ask you or any other man present to kill it (probably while screaming and standing on chairs). Please have someone video record all of this. Send me a copy.

When they freak out and demand you act, you that start crying (use a small squirt bottle). Scream out that you’re the victim of a micro-aggression! Tell them squashing spiders is for real men and that the thought of it is toxic to you, more deadly than the spider’s venom. Through your hysteria, manage a call to 911 and report the Project for conspiracy to commit animal cruelty. Insist officers be dispatched. Make a scene of these fools. Notify the media. Then leave. Don’t ever go back. Don’t even think about it. Laugh and be grateful to escape the fate of a eunuch.

**Please make sure the spider gets out unharmed. He might be your only friend on campus. Give him a fly as a reward.**

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“I can haz safe spaze?” Git ’em lil’ buddy! The Verge.

Now, all of you who are thinking about college or who have children looking at colleges, let this serve as a warning. Nonsense like this Project is a barometer of how bad a school really is. Have nothing whatsoever to do with any such institution of stupidity.

If you’re an alumnus, contact the school alumni begging office, the president, and the regents or whoever controls education in the jurisdiction. Tell them you will not donate another penny to the school. Tell them why. Tell them to take their project and shove it.

The rest of you need to abandon these wicked places. Don’t support them. Don’t visit them. Don’t watch their felon ball teams. Don’t do business with them. Pretend they do not exist unless you pause to decry their degeneracy.

If you are a legislator or a board member or someone with power over a school, move to defund and/or abolish it. Taxes and endowment monies would be better utilized elsewhere – anywhere else and for anything else. Take a stand.

We have to stand. They declared war. They started it. We must finish it. That’s what violent, savage, atom-smashing, arachnid phylum conjuring, sound-barrier breaking, transatlantic crossing, other world exploring, college founding, taxpaying, terrorism fighting, carrying everyone else on strong backs cavemen do. It’s the manly thing.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does. Or Doesn’t. Or Just Can’t.

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

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The other day I was mildly concerned about college students trying to find those elusive safe spaces. Turns out, that may be all they’re capable of. Either schools are not teaching or humans are becoming mentally retarded as the default setting. The esteemed Dr. Walter Williams explains:

Do you wonder why Sen. Bernie Sanders and his ideas are so popular among American college students? The answer is that they, like so many other young people who think they know it all, are really uninformed and ignorant. You say, “Williams, how dare you say that?! We’ve mortgaged our home to send our children to college.” Let’s start with the 2006 geographic literacy survey of youngsters between 18 and 24 years of age by National Geographic and Roper Public Affairs.

Less than half could identify New York and Ohio on a U.S. map. Sixty percent could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, and three-quarters could not find Iran or Israel. In fact, 44 percent could not locate even one of those four countries. Youngsters who had taken a geography class didn’t fare much better. By the way, when I attended elementary school, during the 1940s, we were given blank U.S. maps, and our assignment was to write in the states. Today such an assignment might be deemed oppressive, if not racist.

According to a Philadelphia magazine article, the percentage of college grads who can read and interpret a food label has fallen from 40 to 30. They are six times likelier to know who won “American Idol” than they are to know the name of the speaker of the House. A high-school teacher in California handed out an assignment that required students to use a ruler. Not a single student knew how.

An article on News Forum for Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent” cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75 percent of two-year college students and 50 percent of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20 percent of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30 percent of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually on training employees in “basic English.”

If this generation can’t use rulers, how long before some future cohort won’t even be able to speak? How, then, will we hear and understand their feeble cries for safe spaces and social justice?

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The College Fix.

Given these observations, one sincerely hopes it’s the system and not the brains that have failed. Either way things are looking a little less than hopeful.

Higher Problems, Lower Education

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

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The following story came across my LinkedIn feed: The Biggest Crisis in Higher Ed Isn’t Student Debt, It’s Students Who Don’t Graduate. It’s an op-ed by Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University.

There is a lot of talk these days about student debt and the challenges that families face managing this burden. Rightfully so, particularly at a time when too many families are struggling with flat wages and rising costs. But the discussion of a debt crisis often fails to address what I would argue is the greater crisis: the fact that more than half of those who start college fail to finish.

Think about it: Tens of millions of people in the US are saddled with student debt and have no degree to help pay it off. They won’t get the substantial return on their investment—graduates with a bachelor’s degree earn about $1 million more in additional income over their lifetime than those with only a high school diploma—and they typically have not developed the adaptive learning skills that will help them prosper in a rapidly changing economy.

In too many cases, they may never recover, leaving them feeling frustrated and bitter, disenfranchised and unable to find a way to better jobs and greater opportunity. Too many, saddled with debt and lacking a degree, feel trapped.

According to US Department of Education data, the ability to repay college loans depends more on whether a student graduated than on how much debt they are carrying. The research also found that students who don’t graduate are three times more likely to default on their loans than those who do.

Adding to this sobering picture is the reality that only 15 percent of the bottom half of the US population (based on family income) have earned a college degree and only 9 percent among the bottom quarter. At a time when the majority of new jobs require post-secondary education, this is a national shame. Not only does it limit individual socioeconomic advancement, it minimizes the country’s capacity to make the most of talent that exists at every level and in every neighborhood.

This completion crisis is alarming, but it is fixable.

First, the $1 Million more in salary is a myth. James Altucher, among others, blew that to pieces. If you have kids looking at college, don’t let them be deluded. The myth was partly true a long time ago. It no longer makes any sense.

Even less sense is made from the unGodly debts students pile up in pursuit of an education that really isn’t. There’s a profound reason why the debt is such a concern. It isn’t worth it. College isn’t worth the money.

And those who drop out without finishing their degrees testify to the lack of value. Why stay for something with a low or non-existent return on investment? Why go so deeply in debt for it.

So, these problems are inter-connected and they are all worth considering; they are important. But I disagree with Crow on the graduation rate itself being the main problem.

His solution at ASU is a program that partners corporate employers with schools to cover costs and facilitate continued enrollment. I see that as a scheme to keep more students paying. Yes, more will graduate. But what do they get for their efforts?

By and large, college education in America is a hoax. Colleges long ago threw academic standards and actual learning under the school bus. Now the schools wage a war on men. Students are told that “to me a man” is terrible. They’re told manly fitness is toxic. There’s a war on European-Americans too. Students are told that just to be white is to be racist.

This isn’t education. This is bullsh!t. It’s indoctrination into a failed and useless culture of wimps and communists. Who needs it? Who needs four years of it? Who needs $200,000 in debt for it?

Outside of a few technical and professional fields, there is simply no valid reason to waste time pursuing the college experience. It’s an empty experience where most learning is self-induced and incidental. Real, liberal, classical education is easily obtained via independent study.

And college, the industry’s money-based lies aside, is not for everyone. Maybe 10% should be in higher education. Those who seek honest academic progress should only go if they can go for free or next to free. Even the best education isn’t worth a penny of debt.

Colleges and universities sell a product that most cannot afford and do not need. And the prospective customers are far better off without the debased social justice warrior lunacy. like this:

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WTH?? Worse than worthless. ImageFlip.

From an institutional perspective I suppose declining graduation rates would be second in concern only to decreasing overall enrollment. Both mean less money for the schools. The problem for the rest of us is that those schools now peddle expensive dribble that hurts the culture and crushes the individual soul. They are the drug dealers of the Ivory Tower.

Oh, Man! PC at Princeton

18 Thursday Aug 2016

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American colleges have failed outside of math and the hard sciences. Princeton and the Ivy League lead the charge downhill. In a time when these “schools”really should shut down, Princeton is stilling charging downward.

The HR Department at the former university is calling for the elimination of the word “man”. It’s not clear if this is in response to a belligerent feminist or daffy trans-vegetable, upset about the existence of men, or purely because the administrators are insane. The truth matters little.

“Consistent with style guidelines issued by Princeton’s Office of Human Resources and Office of Communications, and as endorsed by the Institutional Equity Planning Group as a preferred University practice, HR has developed these gender inclusive style guidelines, to be utilized by all HR staff members in HR communications, policies, job descriptions, and job postings,” the memo states.

They’ve produced a chart of Newspeak for the inclusively delusional:

Princeton Office of Lunacy.

These are the same people who want “him”, “her” and “his” replaced with “ze”, “zir”, “zed” or something. I suppose one can just make up their own language these days. You can’t call it manufactured language… How about “zip”, as in “zip up the straightjacket”. Is that too manly?

AibKaRpET

Photo: cliparts.co.

These schools used to pride themselves for provided quality education. Now, they provide nothing at all; the pride turned to vanity and then to mental illness. There is the comedy factor but it isn’t worth the Ivy League tuition. For the betterment of mankind they should man up and call it quits.

Do not send your children to these factories of academic failure.

A Big Red “F”: The Nation’s Report Card

27 Wednesday Apr 2016

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The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a.k.a. The Nation’s Report Card, is out for 2015. The new results are as bad as any of recent years and many a little worse. American government school 12th graders made no improvements in reading and dropped two points in math since 2013. The Assessment also shows the 12th graders are down two points in college readiness – only 37% possess the proficiency necessary for college, down from 39%. Read more here.

Google.

This comes after decades and decades of government “reforms” in education. The people at the NAEP, the U.S. Department of Education, and others are dying to know why the reforms aren’t working.

The answer is simple: they are. They are doing exactly what they were designed to do. They are engines providing countless jobs for people with no interest or ability to educate the young and they are wasting money as through after-burners. They have also succeeded in dumbing down our children or a large part of them.

If one is interested in helping children learn one needs to dispense with the ideas of school reform and with compulsory education. Bright students will learn regardless. Others, not so bright, will not learn beyond a base level no matter how much money and how many educrats are thrown at them. The majority in the middle need a little push to help them go as far as they will. Our schools cannot provide anything to help any of these groups. The schools should be abolished.

Freedom from a doomed system is why home schoolers and independent learners consistently score off the charts in all categories. The proof of the doomed part is exhibited every time a national report card comes out. Watch; in another two years these trends will continue unabated, regardless of current or future reforms. It will continue until the system is abolished or disintegrates under its own weighty mediocrity. If your child is one of the bright learners, he will succeed no matter what. The other groups will continue to lose ground. All would benefit from real education and real freedom.

 

No Child Left To Succeed

17 Sunday Apr 2016

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For a very long time I pondered how America would fall, pondering what cataclysmic event would bring her down. It was a series of disappointments (or reliefs). The Atlanta Olympics? No. Bill Clinton? No. Y2K? Ha, no. 9/11? Nope. The Great Recession? Uh-uh. While I was looking for a zombie apocalypse the end quietly snuck up on us. As Jack Perry points out, the end is not near, it is here. Turns out it was all the little things, ever creeping along, that got us. It was like in the War of the Worlds – itty-bitty microbes slowly did what bombs and guns could not in brief but intense battle.

Every facet changed degree by degree – justice, economics, culture, education – creep, creep, creep. As the decades passed the education system (public at least) declined day by day. It was dismal when I was in school (in another century). Now, it is gone, living on in name only. Year by year the names of the great end-all, be-all education programs changed too. Head Start. It never started. Horizons Something. Never got anywhere near the horizon. Common Core. The only commonality was that the core was rotten. No Child Left Behind. This one actually lived up to the name. No one child was left behind – they all stayed behind together. Now, as of December, 2015, we have Every Student Succeeds. Pub. L. 114-95 (2015). Another lie, they don’t all succeed. In fact, under the government’s system most do not and those that do, do so in spite of the programs not because of them.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ZINwnEPhiFM?flag=1&enablejsapi=1&origin=www.ed.gov

Another Lie Becomes Law. http://www.ed.gov.

Like the collapse, Every Student came along quietly. I just heard of it this morning. I read a blurb in a story about the new non-white majority in the school age population. That story isn’t reassuring at all. Sixty years ago, racial discrimination aside, non white children (and all children) in America got more or less a decent, real education. It happened with smaller budgets, fewer standardized tests, no Department of Education, and no stupidly named, do nothing but waste money programs.

Every Student, like its predecessors, is based on lies and misconstrued findings. The government boasts: “For example, today, high school graduation rates are at all-time highs. Dropout rates are at historic lows. And more students are going to college than ever before.” Dropouts are down and graduations are up because standards have been dumbed down and everyone passes regardless of ability. They all get to college now but only half of them can read. This is not a success. This is delusional failure. Measured internally and ignoring illiteracy, things are fine. Measured against the rest of the world or our own history – against stark reality – things have fallen completely apart.

“We are a place that believes every child, no matter where they come from, can grow up to be anything they want… And I’m confident that if we fix No Child Left Behind, if we continue to reform American education, continue to invest in our children’s future, that’s the America we will always be.” – Hussein Obama lying to someone somewhere. Rest assured in a few years some other dipshit will be promising to “fix” Every Student. The children still won’t be reading.

More official lies: “…the bipartisan bill upholds critical protections for America’s disadvantaged students. It ensures that states and school districts will hold schools to account for the progress of all students and prescribes meaningful reforms to remedy underperformance in those schools failing to serve all students.” That was the purpose of the other failed programs. Programs and learning seem to be antonyms. Maybe we need a program banning programs.

Animal House, Universal Pictures.

Never let education get in the way of learning. Get your students, if you care for them, out of this failed and useless system. American education has become child abuse writ large. Leave the government behind and the child will go ahead and succeed.

Trump and Circumstances

03 Sunday Apr 2016

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The Donald sat down for an in depth interview with Bob Woodward. I have a great deal of respect for these two men. Trump is Trump and, increasingly, the only mainstream, one party system candidate who makes any sense. He almost makes the idea of voting plausible. Woodward is a legend in his own time. He turned aside from a possible CIA career because the application process was too long. He certainly has the knack for sleuthing.

Here’s what the two hashed out on Trump’s plans:

The headliner is Trump fears a massive recession is about to hit and hard. I think it has begun. We’re overdue and the circumstances are right. In fact, this could be something we haven’t seen since the 1930s. Taking into account world conditions and where we are in Plato’s cycle it could be more of a 490s situation.

Trump says he will cut taxes immediately (never a bad idea) and eliminate the entire (on books) federal debt within two terms.

He wants to renegotiate treaties and trade deals to end America’s dual roll of World policeman and whipping boy. We can’t afford either anymore.

He wants high level staff to refrain from writing memiors while his administration is ongoing. By the way, I smell another Woodward bestseller.

He talked about potential judiciary appointments. He says he’s listening to the Federalist Society on that front. There are many decent FS people. I would know as a past two term chapter president myself. But, in that role, I witnessed the inner operations of the Society and Washington. I concluded this network is beyond repair – terminally evil.

After discussing family and useless political nonsense Trump returned to the massive financial bubble, under the economy like a supervolcano. Trump says he can fix the problem through shrewd negotiation and restructuring. The man is an expert there.

On the international front Trump oddly taks about disengagement (good) while simultaneously decrying the depleted American military (a tired, tired Republican topic). He thinks he will work well with Putin, China and other foreign powers. I can see that.

Trump’s potential problems are three: Congress (all that renegotiation and cutting must pass through them); the Federal Reserve (they exist to promote a new dark age) and; the American people (see below). Washington runs on debt, death and destruction. It will suffer no man, not even Trump, interfering with the party. I think at best Trump will delay or mitigate the consequences a bit while giving part of the country reason to chant and cheer. In plain terms he may be able to make the ending somewhat enjoyable.

The end of the America we knew has come. This is not the country I grew up in (I’m not THAT old either). One sees the signs everywhere, everyday. For example, I am a huge Masters fan. This year’s tournament looks to be awesome. As with anything I see the good and the bad. Yesterday, Saturday, I saw a custom BMW I8, a Ferrari, and a Lamborghini all on Washington Road. That’s a good sign. It means there is prosperity and high socity still left. However, this morning while sipping coffee and researching this article, I saw a squadron of Apache gunships patrolling over west Augusta. 

The helicopters are not in training. Like the sports cars they are here for a reason, an unpleasant reason. The military has been guarding (silently) the tournament for a few years now. I’m glad they’re here but it’s a shame they have to be. It’s a telltale sign of how bad things are.

If you join us this week you will notice a thousand or so police officers. For the most part they direct traffic, keep things moving and guard celebrities. The military is here in case ISIS shows up.

How the hell did we come to this? There is a web of dozens of reasons. I’ll cut straight to the primary one – us. The people, maybe a majority of them, have descended into a pitiful state of savagery, obesity, sloth and stupidity. It’s 496 not 1929. Those four traits run together but the (willful) stupidity is the driving force.

20121125-american-idiot

Google.

Last week Michael Snyder took a no holds barred look at how incredibly dumbed down our nation is.

He reports: “After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.” Those are college students, the supposedly educated. 

Americans spend on average ten hours per day starring at some sort of screen – at least half of that is television. Some people literally spend all their waking hours with their minds abdicated to programed garbage. These people are alive but they do not live.

“It is not because of a lack of input that we have become so stupid as a society. The big problem is what we are putting into our minds.

If we continue to put garbage in, we are going to continue to get garbage out, and that is the cold, hard reality of the matter.”

Sad but true. If we really want America to be great again, we must ourselves become great again. That starts with living life in the real world. It can be difficult but it why we are here. We must rise to the challenge before time runs out. Tick, tick, tick.

Vote if you care – for Trump or anyone else. The circumstances are up to you.

April Fools and Fun

02 Saturday Apr 2016

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I hope you didn’t fall for too many corny jokes yesterday. I stayed in bed to avoid any confusion. Now, April 2nd, provides a great opportunity to examine several examples of the modern fooling of the masses.

Watch or click CNBC and you’d think America was in the throws of a bull market. Things are better than good, right? Numbers may be isolated and manipulated in order to create illusions. Taken in pari materia they forcast the return of stagflation. What’s next? Disco?

The Republicans and Democrats are moving heaven and earth to convince you your vote counts. It doesn’t. Elections are and always have been rigged. In the past the irregularities were ametuer, brutish. Remember, if you will, the spectacle of Bush v. Gore, which definitively showed American elections to be flim flam writ large. Today the manipulation is a science.

Before he went to prison Andrés Sepúlveda made a living Rigging South American elections. He’s an expert. He says there’s a 100% chance the U.S. presidential election is fixed. He’s just talking about information. Who knows what the Diebold ballot computers can do. Vote if you like. 

As I mentioned a few days ago most Western media outlets are propaganda agents of the CIA and other government entities. The “news” is a tool to drive public opinion in favor of various state schemes. It also rewrites and obscures history. Remember the Liberty? Probably not.

Reality television has spawned reality reality, a strange world of scripted and idiotic conformity. Anyone out of sync with the blind herd is a threat to be eliminated. Nowhere is this clearer than at our universities. Once bastions of learning and markets for the exchange of ideas, the schools are now mere temples of indoctrination. Professors promoting or defending academic honesty are ridiculed and disciplined. Welcome to wonderland.

The good news is, starting tomorrow, for one week the forces of decent civilization congregate in one place – Augusta.

tickets

They appeared earlier this week. Augusta Chronicle.

Prepare yourselves for a short suspension of modern madness. Relax, catch your breath, have a pimento cheese sandwich.

 

Death at the Academy

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

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I used to want to teach law or political theory at the university level. Now I do not. Well, honestly part of me still does. However, I have come to the conclusion it isn’t going to happen anytime soon. For years – a decade or so – I had a search running at Higheredjobs.com. I recently turned it off.

After maybe 100 failed inquiry letters and several first (and last) interviews I realized there is a disconnect between me and the academic system. It’s a good thing. I would not fit in. I imagine being the only non-communist on the faculty might be uncomfortable. Less comfortable would be my students. As I have chronicled here modern university students are large toddlers, less concerned with learning than feeling safe.

There’s a new and better educational model anyway. It uses independence and technology for a new take on the classical school experience. Socrates and Aquinas would approve if they were still around. In their respective ancient days only those who desired to learn furthered their education beyond a rudimentary level.

Times had changed by the 1970s when my father was teaching at Mississippi State. The emphasis was primarily on learning but the post hippy culture was creeping in. Serious students mingled on campus with party animals. In the corners social revolutionaries plotted the future of safe spaces, inclusion, and sustainability (still not sure what they sustain – certainly not education). I remember the pretty girls and the copious amounts of coffee and cigarettes consumed by the faculty.

Times kept changing. By the advent of my tenure at the University of Georgia the counterculture was taking control. Still, those that wanted to learn could but it was frowned upon. I fell somewhere between the studious and the partyers. The pretty girls still got my attention. Things were worse in law school. There I joined, fully, the ranks of the studious. As a rebel of demented mental ability I sought out the fundamental theories and origins behind the law. I largely did so in secret and on my own.

Today the inmates run the asylum. Beyond math, science and engineering real learning is frowned upon. There’s a lot of frowning. Tell a pretty girl she’s pretty and you may be brought up on charges. Coffee still seems safe but nicotine is verboten. Say things like “I like guns” or “taxes are too high” or “people should work for a living” and the student crybabies will melt and the faculty will launch into hysterical tyrades.

To be a white man on campus results in treatment once reserved for the likes of Hester Prynne. Pride in Western tradition, morality and common sense are treated like leprosy.

The schools (as they are still called) waste resources on sports, safe spaces, counseling, women’s studies, black studies, gay black women’s studies and a host of other nonsense.

These are the universities mind you. From Harvard to Notre Dame to my beloved UGA the failure of education has spread like a cancer. The lower, primary schools (especially those run by government – most) are in even worse shape.

Notre Dame professor Dr. Patrick Deneen says even the best colleges, like his, are “committing civilizational suicide.”

“What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like ‘critical thinking,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘ways of knowing,’ ‘social justice,’ and ‘cultural competence.’

Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes ‘flexibility’ (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).”

Frightening but accurate. What happened? What are the sane and the responsible to do?

Gary North did a fantastic job laying out the history and demise of American education. His conclusion is simple and right – “close the schools.” They have failed. They do the opposite of what was once intended. They are beyond the point of redemption. Close them all.

The public schools are in group two. They are likely to die, no matter what. The only economically relevant question today is this: “How long will voters authorize the tax money required to keep them on life support?”

 – North, March 19, 2016.

He mentions the modern, better alternative, guaranteed to deliver real learning – the online education. The Kahn Academy is the largest school in the world with 25 million students. It’s free to anyone. There are others like it. They are beginning to take a bite out of traditional, failed schooling.

MIT boldly put nearly all of its courses online for free, for anyone. Some books will need to be acquired. There will be a small expense associated though many, many books are completely free on Kindle. Any ambitious young person with a laptop and a very basic comprehension of English and fundamental math can literally educate themselves at little to no cost and at their own pace.

There are a host of other opportunities online like Udemy. It’s an outfit or concept like this I may end up going with. Or I might just publish books and/or create my own e-classes in topics that interest me. The sky is the limit.

Educrats and silly professors are panicked because of this increasing competition. No time wasted waiting on the lowest common denominator to catch up. No boredom. No anti-western indoctrination. No crushing student loans of money illegally printed out of thin air.

No need to wallow amid a bunch of weak socialists in a dangerous environment. I recently noted the progress of Georgia’s H.B.859, a bill that would allow free people to legally carry firearms at state colleges. At present these schools are gun free zones – the type of places where the majority of violence occurs. It happens because criminals have a monopoly on force in such places.  The bill would tilt the tables in favor of ordinary people.

As such, it is opposed by criminals and school faculty and staff lacking common sense. UGA law professor Sonja West wrote a hysterical piece for Slate decrying self-defense. Using backwards antidotal evidence and shaky psuedo legal reasoning she conveys her central thought: she does not like guns. At least not guns in private hands. It’s just terrible people might have a legal fighting chance to repel attacks; the Second Amendment be damned.

The hoplophobia and mania runs deeper at the Red and Black, UGA’s leftist student newspaper: “Donald Trump may be the 21st-century equivalent of Mussolini, but the real threat to democracy is right here in Georgia.”

That’s all I really need to quote. Having worn out the Hitler label the lefties are turning to Mussolini. The poor argument is that guns threaten democracy. Democracy is about as big a threat as one might contrive. Free people with guns are a check on violence and tyranny, democratic or otherwise. Pitiful.

There was a death at the academy. Learning died. Now the schools themselves are headed to the graveyard. I hope you will share this information with a young person and said person’s parents. Help save them from wasting time and money and from exposure to whimps, communists, and freedom haters. Help them learn and explore their world freely.