Why Are Universities Hotbeds of Progressivism

It may have begun before the war in Indo China but that was certainly when it became most notable. Suddenly it was fashionable to be anti government specifically, and then anti American in general. Even in places as out of the way as Manhattan, Kansas, home to the Kansas State University of Agriculture and Applied Science, students, or someone, became agitated enough that a fire was set against the front doors of the building that housed the ROTC offices resulting in a blaze that gutted the historic old field house in 1968.

Then the war was over, but the animas remained. But it was the 70s. It was, perhaps, not easy to be angry while wearing those collars and platform shoes. Double knit. Ban-Lon. But the people who believed in the evil nature of the United States… those who longed for the success and primacy of communal philosophy… like those carrying out butchery and barbarous acts in China, Cuba, Cambodia, and the Soviet Union, took a long view. Realizing they were up against a well developed legal system that would capture and prosecute them, a young population tired of sticking it to the man, and that was more interested in shaking its groove thing than in “social justice’ they simply went back to school and did the work required to put them in a position to take over the nation. They became educatiors. It was a great gig. They got to exercise their arrogant paternalism for a living, and they only had to work nine months a year. And work they did.

The sixties and seventies were times when the founders of the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan and the perpetrators of the horrific racial violence we had seen and read about for years, the very architects of the system of racial segregation that permeated American culture (the democrat party) began to change. The founders and the practitioners of abolition (the republicans) were suddenly portrayed as the villains of the story and the true villains, the ones with blood on their hands became soft a cuddly.

It was also in this time frame when a new age dawned. Not the age of Aquarius, which was simply a pop culture phenomenon, but the age of victimhood. The first order of business was to convince the voting public that the government needed to do more to help the poor. There seemed to be plenty of tax revenue to go around. Why not? And then minorities were convinced that they were owed the assistance because they had been victims of centuries of abuse, and that due to circumstances beyond their control they couldn’t make it without help. And then the story was changed yet again. Majority (white) voters were told that not only should they assist minority populations, but that they were responsible for their condition in the first place. And this is how it’s been, for forty years, or more.

Fast forward to the 2010s. Students…. the children of privilege are transitioning into the oppressed. Never having to have worked for anything and always the oppressors they are eager for relief. They no longer feel the religious guilt for the death of Christ that sustained their parents and grand parents and they yearn for the absolution that follows confession. Today’s educators are more than willing, in fact it was their purpose, to instill that guilt and to provide the relief. If you could listen in on the exchange in a university confessional, it might sound like this.

“Do you accept the sins of America, and take them as your own?”
“I do”
“And do you vow to accept and hold sacrosanct the teachings that have been imparted to you here, never questioning?”
“I do”
“Then go my child and sin no more”.

Or something like that.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

Okay, so here goes.

It’s all over the news. Income disparity. Bad and getting worse. So I’m thinking “really?”. We all have so much. We have multiple cell phones per family costing hundreds of dollars per month. We have flat screen TVs, and home theatres with sub woofers. Not just woofers mind you, we have subwoofers. We have cable and high speed internet and WiFi for our computers. Our cars last longer than they ever did before, our school districts spend twice as much money (in constant dollars) per student than they did just 40 years ago. Now you can take this or leave it, but from my point of view: not ever having anything that I didn’t really have to have just to get by, not having anything now, and not really figuring on having anything in the future, I don’t see that things are really much different than they ever were. Sure, sure, times are tough right now and I have proof, but that was the making of 50 years of “do good” government spending money it didn’t have, wasn’t going to have and making economic decisions that couldn’t be safely implemented by the private sector economy that is our heart and soul.

And the line is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. If the phrase didn’t appear in popular song lyrics decades old one might be tempted to think it was a new concept, and it actually traces it’s origins to a speech made by William Henry Harrison in 1840. You’d think the tread would have worn off that old tire some time ago.

In any event, the case is being made again, and there are “NEW” “SOBERING” statistics to back it up. After 170 years. Finally. Something new. But while I’m not an economist I CAN read and I’ve noticed a few things that might make it seem to some degree as if wealth were concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer hands. Referring of course to the evil 1%.

Let’s begin.

First we have to agree on some things as a basis for discussion. We must agree that younger workers have fewer skills, and less experience in the job market and that because of this they will have less wealth than their parents and grandparents. So. If you break the population into two age groups: 18-44 and 45-74 what you see is that from 1980 to 2010 the younger part of the work force declined from 41% to 36% while the older fraction increased from 27% to 33%. Now. How significant are those percentages? I don’t know. I’m not an economist. However, it’s pretty plain that the shift in age breakdown alone is going to make it appear that wealth is moving away from younger less skilled workers.

Next. In 1980 (according to Census data) 20% of all households were of the single parent persuasion. Three decades later in 2008 the number was 30%. Now, you might say “so what”, “there’s less money in the house”, and that would be true, but this is something that people decide to do. They choose to get divorced, or they don’t get married in the first place. No one cares anymore about stuff like that. It only means that your kids grow up poorer, but you’ll be eligible for food stamps and free lunches so what’s the diff? AND, this simple thing makes it look as if families are becoming poorer when at least a significant fraction choose this for themselves. They don’t actually choose to have less, but they make the decisions that lead to it.

This next sort of goes hand in hand with the last: In 1980 60% of all households were occupied by a married couple. In 2010 the figure was 48%. What this means is that because people are choosing not to form traditional families household income and thus accrued wealth will be lower. Doesn’t necessarily mean that it is, but it will look like it. The statistics will show it, but another saying that traces it’s roots to the mid 1800s is that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. People know this, but frequently forget that two analysts can look at the same statistic and draw completely opposite conclusions. So the next time you hear someone saying how bad things are indicated by such and such a number take a few minutes and have some fun trying to think up what else that number could mean.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

The Career Civil Servant.

What does it mean when someone involved in a political scandal is described as being a “career civil servant”? Have these people undergone some sort of cranial procedure? Are they politically the equivalent of eunuchs?, having had their political organs removed thus making them incapable of political operation? I hardly think so.

Civil service at the Post Office Department, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Agency (FDA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) is not a higher calling. It’s a job working for the largest employer in the United States, an employer that’s always hiring. One that offers compensation packages equal to or better than you find in the private sector with the added benefit of almost armor plated job security. In an era when the disappearance of the 40 year plus career with a single employer is mourned, the possibility is alive and well in the civil service. To be sure, there are non-military civil assignments with danger attached, but to be equally as sure, the IRS isn’t one of them.

Career “civil servants” have played the game correctly. They’ve filled out the multi-page questionnaires and applications and waited months for the response. Having been successful, the climbers have correctly judged the environment in which they existed and behaved accordingly. They wrote their reports in language that couldn’t be read as offensive to anyone’s sensibilities, they have been scrupulously politically correct, and have been duly promoted. Those who chaffed at the requirement of total surrender to diversity, inclusiveness, and correctness have been winnowed out and moved to the private sector.

So, to say that someone is a career public servant is, in general, just about the farthest thing in the world from saying that they are apolitical with no axe to grind.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Comprehensive Legislation

Comprehensive legislation of ANY kind is the enemy of the American people.

To fully realize this you must first understand that the federal government of the United States is incapable of effectively administering even the most simple program imaginable. The reason for this is quite simple: Thanks to the 17th amendment (close kin to the 18th) members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate are selected by popular election. This means that both bodies of congress are subject to the intense lobbying efforts of the same special interest groups, and those aren’t just corporate fat cats. They run the gamut from the Boy Scouts of America to the AARP. From the SEIU to the NRA, and every alphabet soup trade organization with a dues paying membership you can think of. They are ALL trying to look out for the best interests of their members….. people like you and me, and the devil take the hindmost.

And so when they put “Comprehensive” legislation together it must necessarily contain something for everyone, or at least not seem to favor one group over another. These bills are often very large and VERY complex with inner workings that no one (especially not the voting members of the bodies themselves) understands or has even read. It’s only a matter of what did they have to agree to in order to get their little bit inserted back there in the back, somewhere after page one thousand where there’s no chance at all that anyone will see it.

Today’s “Comprehensive” legislation concerns immigration. One side wants a complete amnesty for those who have come here illegally and open boarders so no one will ever have to come here illegally again. The other wants to control and monitor who comes in and for those already here illegally to face some consequence for violation of the law before they can avail themselves of the naturalization process. This is a vast oversimplification to be sure, because the existing machinery of legal immigration is woefully out of date and for practical purposes worthless. Foreign “students” come and go as they please, some occasionally taking time out to plot the nation’s downfall and kill as many of us as they can. Living on government payments and student loans they travel around the country and back home as freely as someone with an assured and generous income, seemingly not having to worry about things as simple as going to work every day, or abiding by the terms of their visas.

But we are told yet again not to worry. All of this will be taken care of in the “Comprehensive” legislation. We are asked to believe yet again that the federal government, which is arguably run by diverse special interest groups, is capable of designing, implementing, and then administering what it takes over a thousand pages of written text to even describe. The reality is a cruel joke. The economist Milton Friedman has rightly said that “if you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand”. Everyone knows that it’s a joke, but everyone also knows that it’s true. And yet we are asked again, even in the wake of the administration’s now confirmed lies about the Affordable Care Act, the IRS computer crashes, NSA spying and the disastrous healthcare.gov roll out to believe that they can build it. “Trust us” we’re told. “We’re from the government”. “It’s the right thing to do”.

The reality is that once the complex “Comprehensive” Frankenstein monster is agreed to and passed the administration in power will simply enforce whichever parts are in the interests of THEIR particular special interest sponsors and leave the rest. Bits and pieces will be quietly amended out of existence once the stage lights have turned to focus on some other issue. “Yes”. “We believe in border security, but we can’t let that stand in the way of progress”. You can see how it will happen already because it’s already being said.

“Comprehensive” legislation is your enemy. “Ala carte”, single function legislation that you can read and understand is your friend, and a friend to your nation.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.