My attempts to embed the one minute clip (31-32 minutes of the embedded video at the bottom) would not take. I suggest clicking the link below this paragraph so you don’t need to search for it. https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx3oS9rls82aUBD1IUBQefxSsGeFoKtYpm?si=X8_ustIrlmzxYE4S What Eric Kaufmann, a rare conservative social scientist, concludes at the end of that minute provides readers who …
Category: education
Jun 24 2024
Expectations
There’s already been plenty of comment about this Atlantic article, originally included in its September 2022 issue. Most of the commentary – this David Thompson piece is a good example — focuses on the attitude the author, Xochitl Gonzalez, had toward her tenure at her Ivy League college. She, the article makes plain, is …
Jun 14 2024
Subtlety Is Often Wasted
Especially on the Left. They often need to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four to get their attention. But then, the Left is so monomaniacal, and so blind to unintended consequences, that they often willfully ignore even blatant evidence that their maneuvers are rebounding against them. Consider this “little” story from the …
May 01 2024
The Return Of The “Outside Agitator”
They were big back in the Sixties. At least, the reports of them seemed to be everywhere. But there followed a period of relative calm. University-based radicalism retreated from the public eye to a large degree. It found the classroom a homier venue. I needn’t provide you any links, Gentle Reader. You can …
Apr 28 2024
Educational Rent-Seeking
Normally, the term rent-seeking applies to an attempt to profit without producing anything or offering a valued service. While the use of the term can be tendentious, when a nominally private enterprise rides the coat-tail of some governmental entity, thus compelling others to use its services willy-nilly, the evil is plainly recognizable. To make …
Mar 02 2024
This Happened In A “Public” High School
First, a brief excursion into stupidity from a nominally intelligent person: Don’t get me wrong: vigilantism in any form is wrong… Show me the difference – moral or practical – between vigilantism and the State’s version of “justice.” What palm of morality goes with a badge or an office in a “public” …
Feb 23 2024
Public Schooling: The Grand Delusion
“The child is not the mere creature of the state.” — Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1922 One of the more persistent debates in pro-freedom circles is whether children have the same rights as adults. In practice, they don’t: their parents can compel and restrain them against their wills, at least before they …
Feb 17 2024
If You’re Still In Any Doubt
All reason for doubt has been erased: they want your children to be ignorant and bigoted: A parent has shared a distrubing worksheet provided to students in a Seattle Public School high school English class as part of Black Lives Matter at School Week with KTTH radio host Jason Rantz. Rantz reports …
Feb 09 2024
Burn it to the ground
At this point, putting your kids in public school will only have negative consequences. In short, there are 53 schools in Illinois where none of the kids, ZERO PERCENT, can do math at grade level. Those of you who remember me from my previous blog might recall my hatred of the publik skool sistim. At …
Jan 22 2024
The University Cesspool
Via Maura Dowling comes this set of horrors being perpetrated upon first-year students at the University of Wisconsin Law School: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) is alerting the public to a mandatory “Re-Orientation” session happening tomorrow, Friday, January 19th, for all first-year law students at the University of Wisconsin Law …
Dec 21 2023
The Neglected Front (UPDATED)
Leftists play a “long game.” To them, no setback is permanent. They keep the pressure up until they get what they want. After that, they defend their gains with unbridled viciousness and pseudo-conservative sentiments such as “it’s here to stay.” Thomas Sowell has delineated their practices in several of his books. The longest …
Dec 14 2023
The death of Academia
The fate of “higher” education in this country has been written about for decades now, although the kerfluffle regarding the Ivy-league sociopaths have drug it back into the spotlight recently. There’s nothing like defending genocidal calls on campus to make people wonder just why they should send their children to your institution. And now the …
Dec 14 2023
Dead Or Just Resting?
(Yes, that’s a reference to Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch. For those unfamiliar with it, you can view it here, or read the script here.) Way back in my tenderer years, a few people were concerned about the direction in which I appeared to be headed. Sometimes I took them seriously…but as it …
Nov 29 2023
Unions And Their Objectives
The following fragments of conversations with union members are taken from Robert C. Townsend’s classic Further Up The Organization: Production Worker: “In a big union shop, management is the enemy – is something to overcome, or somehow get around. That’s the game everybody plays.” Machinist: “The minute you put on a blue …
Nov 08 2023
A Brilliant Insight
No, not one of mine. Courtesy of Mike Miles: Let that sink in for just a moment.
Sep 29 2023
Beware “The Procedure”
It looks like a harmless word. At one time it was. It merely denoted a way of doing something, like the equally dreaded word process. And to be fair, there are times when it doesn’t stiffen my neck hair or move my hand to my sidearm. But that’s not what I have in mind …
Sep 28 2023
Hard On The Brakes Won’t Do It
Before I begin this screed, I’d like to express a thought that has often risen to mind but has seldom made its way through my fingers and into the sacred pixels of Liberty’s Torch: Thank You, Gentle Readers. Whoever and wherever you are, including those of you who read my crap to laugh …
Sep 15 2023
Bastiat Redux
In his last and best-known book The Law, Frederic Bastiat provides us with a striking description of the essence of State lawlessness: But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom …
Aug 31 2023
Actualizing Their Fear
In the usual case, making them fear us takes a show of defiance and a demonstration that you mean to stand your ground. Bureaucrats hate that; it means they’ll be forced to deal with you…and they cannot know in advance what kind of forces you command. The power of stubborn defiance has recently been …
Aug 19 2023
Right, Wrong, Or Socially Unjust?
In analyzing the phrase “social justice,” we see how prefixing the word justice with any modifier inverts its meaning. It turns something easily understood – inherently unambiguous, in fact – into something for noisy groups to argue and negotiate. But then, attempts to redefine “justice” to accommodate some trendy Cause are as old as …
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