Letters to the Editor
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Hear, hear, Karen
Excellent points about education and the connection to civil rights across all lines. Very well said, and a point of note about increasing moves to teaching to tests, as opposed to teaching to think.
If general public education is aligned to teaching to tests (and therefore boosting arbitrarily established "standards" of education), then current education is merely teaching children only to follow patterns (patterns, for the record, are important to learn and understand, but teaching rote regurgitation doesn't teach how to learn, I don't think), instead of teaching children (or anyone, really) how to recognize data, information, and perspective, and process it in a way that requires intellectual movement from point A to point B, resulting in growth of processes that can later be brought into play even in circumstances where one is "uneducated" (not with expertise, necessarily, but as a starting point, at least).
Your post points, artfully and serendipitously, I think, at a quote:
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" GW Bush, January 2000, Florence, South Carolina.
Is our children learning, indeed.
And I join you in the chorus of sadness at Vonnegut's passing. Kurt, thanks for all your work and words. Pace.
No kings,
Robert
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A matter of opinion
It's pretty clear what powers the office of the Presidency was granted by the founding fathers; whether or not someone wants to describe those powers as "near dictatorial" is really just a matter of opinion, isn't it?
Maybe tomorrow the Christian Science Monitor will proclaim that Bush has "near omnipotent power", and we can all watch Glenn freak out and write a 10,000 word essay that could just as easily have been written as a one word response:
"Bullshit."
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Don't Jump on the Rome Analogy
Authoritarian Neocons may think Rome is a model. (I cannot figure out what other model they might have.) But:
1. The guys who brought down the Roman Republic and established the Roman Empire, Julius and Augustus, were successful generals, unlike our failed chickenhawks.
2. Julius was on the side of the Roman people, and against the Roman equivalent of Neocons.
3. After Julius and Augustus, the Romans got horrid leaders such as Caligula and Nero et al. And only a few Roman Emperors rose above mediocrity.
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Who knew...
...that two centuries later the US would be taken over by Tories? Or was it Stalinists? There is certainly nothing resembling actual American constitutional practices in the way this current crop of reactionaries operate.
That TIME would give Kristol a column just demonstrates how worthless and irrelevant they are as a journalistic publication. Damn, I wish I could be so wrong about everything, and be rewarded so handsomely. Is that the actual Bush legacy? The "Peter Principle" (de)meritocracy uber alles?
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Kurt Vonnegut
According to washpost, Kurt once proposed carving this on the wall of the Grand Canyon:
"We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard . . . and too damn cheap
How appropriate.
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Jack = Jerk + crack?
By the way, love those boots they named after you. I'm sure you look adorable in them, marching around your mother's basement to the strains of "Deutschland uber Alles."
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Perhaps he alreaday does...
I guess all Bush needs now is a Praetorian guard.
Got Blackwater?
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Absurdity...
The notion that our Constitution vests anything like "near dictatorial power" in the President in any area -- let alone areas as broadly defined as "foreign policy and war" and "national security" -- is so utterly absurd that no response ought to be required.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
--Voltaire
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Why Am I Not Surprised?
of the 50 schools surveyed, including Brown, Georgetown, and Yale, 16 showed negative learning—in other words, at 16 schools seniors scored lower than freshmen, suggesting that they will graduate with even less civic knowledge than what little they had as freshmen.
I used to be an adjunct history instructor at Georgetown, so none of this comes as earth-shattering news.
If you consider yourself majorly privileged and entitled--a fair description of the majority of Georgetown students--then why bother with "civic knowledge"? Civic knowledge is for whiners and losers whose parents havn't got the $150,000 to keep you at Georgetown for four years.
A community college in Largo Maryland is un autre chose entirely. The students there generally have a horribly low level of academic preparation coming in, but they also tend to have very sensitive Bullshit Detectors, particularly when it comes to socalled Authority Figures.
That means that as a teacher I have to step lightly. But it also means that the students have the antennae to pick up on issues which Georgetown students often miss. Recently--when lecturing about Octavian/Augustus--I described his imperial powers as those of a "unitary executive" (without mentioning any contemporary figures, of course).
I got a laugh, too. So hey, civic wisdom--if not civic expertise--is out there. It just needs to be furnished.
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The Integrity of the Whole.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
Edward Gibbon, who saw human history as "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of man/lady-kind, declared in Chap lll of 'The Decline of the Roman Empire (1776), that "if a man were called to fix the period of history of the world, during while the conditions of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the ascension of Commodus (not American Standard plumbing commode-thrones-era's)."
Then: From 96 AD, there were four other reigns, and along came Marcus Aurrelius (161-80). No doubt, many crimes and follies, misfortunes too, are cloaked by such judgement. Given the cruelties and depravities of predecessors such as Caraculla, and Elagabalus, and the calamities that ensued, idealization of this era, when the Roman Empire reached its maximum expansion and still maintained a precarious bulwark against the invaders who continually menaced the 'we peoples' peace, is easily understandable, Crash.
It was a time of original thought and great literature, but of a ancient pagan civilization THAT was maintained (pagan is good-earthen people term) and sustained, and in decline at this time too, was a respect for high-level wisdom's from other cultures and even, of scientific achievement, while the neo-Christian ("Christian") culture had a influence, despite sporadic persecutions, the movement grew and prospered. Wow.
I know this is the 21st century, but we can look back and glean to learn how to go forward. M.A. (121-80) really stressed the importance of an excellent education under Hellenization emperor Hadrian. Marcus Aurelius was a commander of armies and was with the soldiers in the fields during military campaigns. "There is nothing new," he wrote.
The Hebrew preacher, in words reminiscent, "all things are both familiar and short-lived." He believed all things were determined by fate. "A thread has been spun that includes a personal plan which began before our birth." The implication of cause/effect includes every incident to it--and THIS has a interrelationship that involves us and our relations with the natural world. His views were un-dogmatic and tolerant of opposing views to a certain extent...Life is in a constant flux.
What can we know with certainty? Nothing. We are "implicated with one another." To harmonize is essential and to transcend our personal (hubris-a irony) smallness. A individual is part of a universal soul, and as we, each person, "we" participate in a greater nature, greater than us, and nothing is actually able to be injurious to a member of the greater Whole part. We are part/parcel of something beyond human comprehension. I agree. I can't explain it. "A contemplative life is essential," believed Marcus Aurelius.
I'm just trying to process with you-all too. "The Meditations" of emperor Marcus Aurelius has a lot to chew upon. I'm always soaking in 'stuff' after a day old left-over re-read, most of the time, it takes three days to digest the class.
I was a daydreamer and am just trying to catch up on my homework assignments? It's a continuous 'juggle' act. Seeking fame is NOT where it's at, but a Marcus A - is just walking into his role. I am not disputing, just thinking out loud that. Integrity.