The biggest problem with Americans? They trust in stodgy, old-people ideas.
Clingers, they are. Who really need to get off their lazy asses and embrace the exciting new normal of democratic socialism. Like you young kids do!
Nanny government controlling your every move and involved in every aspect of your lives? Why, what could be more hip and liberating than that?
HEY HEY, HO HO, INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY THAT PROMOTES THE KIND OF CIVIC SELFISHNESS AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE THAT REFUSES BY ITS VERY NATURE TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE GOALS OF THE COLLECTIVE, GOALS DETERMINED BY TEMPORARY POLITICIANS WHO USE HANDOUTS AND PROMISES TO SOLIDIFY THEIR OWN POWER AND WEALTH, HAS GOT TO GO!
I’m pretty sure Das Kapital is over thirty…
The last time the real Weinberg was under 30 was 41 years ago.
Jeff,
I can’t see where Obama is wrong here in at least a narrowly cast sense. Our math and science capabilities are well north of embarrassing and there is no where near enough support for improving it.
What he DIDN’T say, and could not have, for reasons of electoral viability is that there are several impediments to this: The massive and ongoing cultural failure whereby poor children, particularly Blacks, have no cultural impetus to improve themselves via education. This has many roots, of course, but the largest is probably the collapse of a standardly defined nuclear family in many poor areas. How exactly he could or would call out a culture that views him as a living hero yet which totally accepts Baby Mama’s and Daddies is anyone’s guess. He is going to need that 98% turnout and support in 51 weeks, big time.
There is also the issues related to heavily left-wing education unions and their blocking of reforms. These guys vote for him 98-2 and shovel millions of cash to all levels of the DNC, so no go on the fixing the-spanner-in-the-works. Same goes for the dumbass administrators and professors on college campuses, who fight bitterly for cash to fund their Gay Studies and Chicano Studies programs, while launching tens of thousands of 22 year olds into a world where they have no appreciable skills but appreciating debt.
But mostly this one is on the rank-and-file citizenry. People just don’t seem to care overmuch about what their kids learn. My wife and I did and we have well-educated children because we disputed reading curriculum’s and the like. But we were the minority.
I give the guy credit for saying anything about how profoundly stupid the USA is becoming. That his vision of smart includes voting for him is besides the point.
No, it IS the point.
And Obama’s misidentification as to why we’re failing — it isn’t stodgy old ideas, but rather a cynical educational industry that receives funding for ever new experiments in introducing gadgetry into the classroom, as well as follows the most PC-centric and dangerous ideas to come out of the liberal academies — is intentionally misleading.
As with terrorists and terrorism, if you refuse to identify the real problem, you aren’t combating it.
People like Obama and his political cronies block every effort at real solutions. So he has no business speaking up. He is part of the problem. And to suggest the problem with education is a lack of exciting youthful vision is just pandering — while simultaneously moving to demonize tried and true methods that trouble Obama’s cozy relationship with teacher’s unions.
The purpose of education is to teach people to say culture, or values, to revere psychology, psychiatry, sociology, political science, cultural anthropology, and so on down the positivist line, the better to eradicate politics as understood by the classical liberals who framed our one-time political order. Mathematics is all well and good as a model upon which to build this towering edifice of modern learning, but best we don’t look too closely at the wondrous effects of these thus framed magnificent sciences. Belzec? Too gruesome. Sobibor? Too empty. The hundreds of camps of the Gulag? Too vast.
Leave it.
I take your point.
why is he in fucking Australia anyway
Australians have fucking jobs out the ying-yang compared to stagnant failshit America
Of course his kids go to the exclusive, $30K a year private school…
And they’re certain to graduate mushheaded. Education today lacks swift kicks in the ass.
This conversation with Paul Rahe is a fairly decent antidote to the stupidity Obama peddles. Listen for fun, listen to learn, pass it on to friends and family.
Obama can’t even do simple math, who is he to talk down about our kids scholastic acheivments or lack thereof? BTW, where are his college transcripts? I was reassured by MSNBC this morning that Obama is a brainiac! He went to Columbia! And Harvard! On scholarship! on account of he’s so stinkin’ smart. Never mind that there aren’t scholarships for grad school, but there are assistantships. Did he get one of those? And, he was raised poor! On food stamps by his strugglin’ single mom! So there, haters!
All those exclaimation points made me tired. I agree that more than likely his kids will graduate as mushheads. I don’t recall having heard the elder one ever say a word and the little one looks angry all of the time.
Link
If Holder is one of the six, I’m cool with it.