08.16.10
Posted in Behavior and motivation, Culture, Economics, Education, Human nature, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 1:48 pm by Administrator
Two pieces appear around the Net this morning that point to a common theme. Kathleen Parker cites a study examining the differences in tuition and academic requirements between Harvard and Lamar University to ask about the real value of elite higher education. Mort Zuckerman looks at the role the dearth of skills relevant to the demands of the hiring marketplace plays in our current demoralizing ecenomic situation.
These times have given me ample opportunity to take a fresh look at a number of considerations, both on the personal level as well as an overall cultural level. I’m an arty guy by nature. My day job is freelance writing, equally divided between arts journalism, business journalism and slice-of-life features – with an occasional opinion column thrown into the mix. I also make some money playing jazz in wine bars, at farmers’ markets and at corporate events, wedding receptions and deck parties. I teach jazz history at the local community college. My occupational profile would not lead to the conclusion that I’m a conservative.
Lately, though, my interest in the very areas in which I’ve immersed myself for the last forty years has lost some steam. I hear about improvisation workshops, or new record labels starting up, or consortiums of musicians, poets, painters and such, and it excites me about as much as the phillips-head screw aisle at Menards. Between the way political correctness, adolescent emotionality, nerdy postmodernism and the need for subsidization have introduced an advanced state of rot to that broad area of human endeavor known as the arts, and the near-total absence of common sense in our society’s discourse about public policy and economics, I have lost the ability to muster excitement for those events and developments which used to occupy the entirity of my attention.
It’s not as if I’m having a road-to-Damascus epiphany that is driving me to apply to engineering school. As I say, my basic orientation as a “creative person” was established about the time Eisenhower was showing Kennedy around the Oval Office.
What I think is happening is that, along with the phenomenon of eighteen-year-olds swelling the enrollment numbers of arts-and-social-change courses and not so much those for analytical geometry, or even American colonial history, art has been so debased, its value so distorted, that it has assumed the status of convenience-store soda pop. It really boils down to the same problem as the dwindling numbers of advanced-science students: no sense that rigor is requisite to a real understanding of the subject matter. Music is now all about learning some chords and “expressing yourself,” rather than learning the major, lydian, mixolydian, harmonic minor, dorian minor, pure minor, lydian dominant, whole-tone, half-diminished and diminished scales, as well as times signatures, clefs and pitch and tone.
As I say, this gets into the realm of the personal for me. What it boils down to is this: For the first time in my life, I’m wondering if I’m a sufficiently serious person. Do I make choices with a proper respect for what is at stake? Is there an opportunity cost to opting for comfort? What indeed makes for a real man? Is it important to move the world as far as possible in the directions of one’s highest notion of the good, or are we to be given an understanding nod for getting tired and letting diversion and small personal pleasures fill more of our hours as we get older?
Such questions have always been around. It just seems that, in light of this summer’s daily relentless stream of dismal economic news, they’ve taken on a fresh relevance. We don’t move off of dead center without something being done differently, without some change in our perspective.
“Reality check” is a hackneyed buzzword, but that’s unfortunate. It’s a fine term, actually. There is after all, such a things as reality, and it ain’t always about unicorns and rainbows.
What, then, is to be done?
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11.02.09
Posted in Barack Obama, Socialism, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 6:50 pm by Administrator
. . . at the sixtieth-anniversary gala for the socialist magazine Monthly Review: the minister to The Aquarian Totalitarian for twenty years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
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09.19.09
Posted in Banking, Culture, Economics, Financial markets, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 1:32 pm by Administrator
The small city I live in is unusual in that it is home to the world headquarters of a Fortune 500 company that is considered the world’s premier maker of its particular product line. It used to be even more unusual in that it also was home to yet another Fortune 500 company, one that specialized in aftermarket automotive subassemblies (suspension systems, exhaust systems) and in earlier decades had had a diverse array of products including stereos and kitchen apliances. That firm was merged with an out-of-state concern and eventually had no presence anymore here.
Such is the nature of Schumpeter-esque change. It has happened again here, quite suddenly, in fact.
The big manufacturing firm that is still here – was founded here, in 1919 – owes its existence to the fortune of one particular family, which had started one of the first banks in town, in 1871. The bank grew quickly, and its founder’s son provided the venture capital for this now-multinational manufacturing company. In the last few decades, the bank’s corporate structure changed, so that the loans-and-deposits operations were one part, along with securities, of an overall financial-services parent organization.
The founder’s great-great-great nephew (I think I have the number of “greats” correct) was board chairman of the manufacturing company and also a board membr of the financial services corporation. He was a remarkable gentleman (undeniably, even though his overall ideological orientation wasn’t my cup of tea), a Rockefeller Republican (as in friend of David Rockefeller), the first lay president of the National Council of Churches, a board member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an avid art collector (a Monet he’d had in his home was recently auctioned by Sotheby’s for a record figure), a visionary who made our city an architectural showcase, and, notably, a name on the list of Nixon’s enemies that John Dean read at the Watergate hearings. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him the most progressive businessman in America.
His youngest son came home from the east coast over twenty years ago to join the array of family interests. For the past several years, the son has been the chairman of the financial-services corporation.
The bank itself was taken for granted by long-time account holders such as myself as a pillar of stability. I’ve had a checking and / or savings account there all my life.
Yesterday, federal agents took it over, declaring that it was being run in a unsafe and unsound manner.
This wasn’t a bolt out of the blue. The local paper (for which I write, but not, so far anyway, about this matter) had been reporting on its woefully undercapitalized status for some time. It seems that this chairman – family scion had succumbed to the exotic-mortgage package fever of the last few years and put the company’s assets in a very shaky situation.
The federal government has handed management over to an Ohio firm for the time being. All branches and offices will be open for normal hours of operation, starting today.
In a few minutes, I’ll be going down there to make a deposit. It’s going to be weird. I’ve come to know the tellers at several branches, at least well enough to engage in some light banter. Will they be there today? Who will it be taking my money?
BN readers know I’m a free-market purist. That remains true. I hope that I have conveyed over the years, though, my understanding that all economic twists and turns have a human element, have implications for the lives of flesh-and-blood human beings. When something like this happens, people’s circumstances are thrown into upheaval.
I wonder what will become of this chairman. Will he stay in town? Is the heritage his dynasty imparted to the community going to quickly fade now? (All the family homes, including the founder’s 1865 Victorian mansion, are either for sale or already sold.)
This is clearly a cautionary tale, but let us proceed soberly in gleaning the lessons to be learned from it. It seems to me that at least one thing it tells us is that the realm of economic activity is an excellent arena of life in which to observe the law of karma at work. Decisions have consequences. We don’t get to make choices of one kind or another and then go merrily on our way with no expectation of either getting burned or blessed, depending on how closely we brought to bear our minds, hearts and souls. Sometimes we can bear much responsibility for affecting the circumstances of many other people. Behind the numbers there is always quite a story.
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09.07.09
Posted in Ideology, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 6:49 pm by Administrator
Michelle Malkin on what the opinion chief at Forbes omitted when he tried to dismiss her argument against the TCM speech to the schoolkids.
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09.02.09
Posted in Culture, Culture war heroes, Ideology, Spiritual implications of our life choices, War at 1:52 pm by Administrator
Every time I think my alarm and disgust at the regime that has been gripping America’s throat since mid-January can’t ratchet up any further, a few new developments come along, I consider them in the context of all that has transpired, and my alarm and disgust take a quantum leap once again.
The house is on fire. America is being destroyed by the minute.
The very latest development in this process is the upcoming TCM direct address to school children across the country. As with so many of these undertakings, it will be easy for his minions in the state-run MSM and hard-left side of the punditry world to throw up a smokescreen, for TCM will indeed encourage the kids to study hard and strive for academic excellence. This will be beside the point. The key element of this is in the set of questions the students will be asked to answer, and the key question among these is “How can I help the president?”
“How can I hep the president?” Help him do what?
The same question is being asked of the nations painters, writers, musicians and “cool people” by the National Endowment for the Arts. The conference call among them, organized by the NEA, Rock the Vote, United We Serve, and the White House Office of Civic Engagement (how’s that for a creepily-titled instument of totalitarianism?), was moderated by NEA’s Director of Communications Yosi Sergant. He led off by excitedly characterizing his project as a “brand new conversation” and that he and his associates were still ferreting out “what that looks like legally.”
“Help the president.”
Sergant wasn’t shy about spelling out the fact that this was what he wanted the nation’s creative types to band together to do. He enumerated the four big areas of TCM’s emphasis that he wanted the artists to “push”: energy, health care, education, and the environment.
There it is on full display: complete vindication of BN against any charges of hyperbole when warning that TCM and the Freedom-Hater party in control of the administration and Congress and the MSM have a totalitarian mission. This is about propaganda art. This is Stalinism.
I’ve done some posts in the past few days and weeks on some of the other recent developments that have made my hair stand on end. It’s time to see them all as of one piece and let that fully sink in:
Van Jones, the Marxist “green jobs” advisor
Mark Lloyd, the Marxist FCC “Chief Diversity Officer”
John Holdren, the “window-of-maximum-life-quality” science advisor
Harold Koh, the trans-nationalist top legal dog at the State Department
Cass “why-we-need-the-second-bill-of-rights” Sunstein, head of the White House Office on Information and Regulatory Affairs
Ezekiel Emmanuel
A few posts ago, I wrote of tweaking my main website and rebranding my professional work as a writer, musician and teacher. There’s much to consider. I have a lot of long-standing associations and friendships. I am keen to act on more opportunities. Will my forthrightness about what I see happening to our culture and country help me? It’s not likely. I can’t be silent, though. I will not sit idly by and watch what had been the United States of America become Cuba writ large.
One frequent BN commenter said back in the winter, just a few weeks into TCM’s term, “You’re going to hammer him from the get-go, aren’t you. Can’t you give the guy a chance?”
A chance to do what? I saw this coming. I saw it coming over a year ago.
I’m afraid, but I’m not cowed. That’s because I’m not alone. There are millions of Americans who love freedom, and we are finding each other. And fighting back. We have to. We want to sleep at night.
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08.18.09
Posted in Culture, Educational dhimmitude, Pakistan, Religion & Spirituality, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 12:18 pm by Administrator
Dennis Prager on the moral cowardice of Yale University – the University Press and the administration – for not printing the Danish Mohammed cartoons – in a book about the Danish Mohammed cartoons.
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03.09.09
Posted in Environment policy, Ideology, Law dhimmitude, Multiculturalism and diversity, Spiritual implications of our life choices, U.S. Constitution, iraq at 1:44 pm by Administrator
Also in today’s WSJ is a column by Laura Tyson, who was an economic advisor to Bill Clinton and is now teaching business at UC Berkeley (which speaks volumes about where she’s coming from).
Her piece is full of the kind of glossing-over, assumption of consenus and appeal to that sense of “fairness” of which I wrote a couple of posts ago.
I hope some talk show hosts get into this today. Some folks with big microphones need to call her on the sweeping assertion that “governors, business leaders and economists from both the left and right have aplauded the stimulus.” Oh, really? Perhaps you could name us some of these right-of-center governors, business leaders and economists. I sure could steer you to several who have written for National Review, the Weekly Standard, Townhall.com, Real Clear Politics and many other sites who are shouting at the top of their lungs that it’s a disaster.
She has the temerity to insult us with the term “significant investments in health care, energy, the environment and education,” as if we don’t understand that if you talk about government “investing” in anything, you are from the get-go speaking of socialism.
Then she gets into the tax increases. “These changes [nice, un-charged word, that: "changes," as if you just plug in some "different" numbers and go on your merry way] will only affect the top 3% of taxpayers, the group that has enjoyed the largest gains in income and wealth over the last decade.” Well, that’s the ticket! Discourage those not yet in that bracket from aspiring to success, by making it clear to them that they won’t get to keep their money if they make more! Also, it just reeks of that vulgar class envy that was behind Joe Biden’s “paying-more-is-patriotic” remark as well as TCM’s “spread-the-wealth” reply to Joe the Plumber. Also, it’s a damn lie, since other parts of TCM’s plan will drive up costs for al manner of things for all kinds of people. (See below in this post as well as previous post’s link to cap-and-trade editorial.)
Then she tries to justify the slash in deductions for charitable contributions by saying that that was the top rate under Reagan. I don’t have figures in front of me, but my first question would be, was that true for the entire eight years of the Dutch administration? Also, is there any record of what Dutch had to say on the subject? (I do think I’ll check the various Dutch bios I have on my shelves.) Then I’d like to point out to Professor Tyson that it doesn’t matter if that was the top rate under Jesus, it will discourage charitable giving. And, once again, she does the appeal-to-fairness bit, asking us to ignore the whole concept of proportionality. You want to talk fair? The deduction-for-charitable-giving rate ought to be the same percentage for all taxpayers, regardless of their income. (And, actually, you could make a case for a bigger deduction for rich people, as this would provide the incentive for even more giving, which puts more funds in the coffers of charitable organizations. Alas, this exposes the true reason FHers would not go with it. They want people in need coming to government, not churches or other private groups.)
Here comes another sweeping assertion: “Economists agree that establishing a price for carbon emissions” is a good thing. After reading her own piece in today’s WSJ, she might want to check out the main editorial, to which I’ve linked below.
Then she assumes that we’re all on board with “funding for early childhood education.” Well, my dear, “education” is a rather broad term, and I happen to know your bunch is none too keen on vouchers or home-schooling. If you’re talkng about the federal government getting its mitts on the two-and-three-year-olds of this nation and starting in with the political-correctness indoctrination that results in them growing up to swallow the kind of hooey you’re writing here, we the people say, “Back off, bitch.”
Of course, the whole thing hinges on that most elusive of good-luck fairies, Rosy Scenario, coming to visit. “If the economy recovers as projected [by whom, besides you and The Chicago Marxist?],” this all results in a robust, confident, inventive, happy society. She does sneak in a proviso, noting that we may not see a pace for recovery like – um, somebody, I guess – is projecting, and then the all-wise Anointed One will have to tweak his plans.
As I say, I hope a goodly number of other pundits take up the demolishing of this truly astounding puddle of Orwellian doublespeak. Marxist-Leninist happy talk should never go unchallenged.
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12.26.08
Posted in Culture, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 10:47 pm by Administrator
. . . can be distilled into one incident on one university campus, involving one fairly unassuming individual who came into contact with the ravenous powers of the FHer cancer and decided to resist. This is his story.
Full disclosure necessitates me stating that the university in question is one of my employers.
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10.26.08
Posted in Culture, Radicalism in high places, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 9:20 pm by Administrator
Last night at the annual gala fundraiser for the Columbus Area Arts Council, I received the Mayor’s Arts in Education award.
I’m awed, humbled and honored. You just never know who’s observing you as you make your way through life. And to have such an observer conclude that you’re making a contribution. Now, that’s the really good stuff.
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10.09.08
Posted in Education, Ideology, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 5:00 pm by Administrator
Remember, during the Chicago Annenberg Challenge days, Obama shoveled all kinds of grant money into Bill Ayers’s programs.
This is the educational model they were putting forth.
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08.21.08
Posted in Ideology, Politics, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 5:48 pm by Administrator
There are a lot of important aspects to the whole Annenberg Challenge story, and there are several places around the web covering them. The best one-stop place I’ve found to get a conscise overview, and follow relevant links to one’s satisfaction, is this Thomas Lifson post at The American Thinker. He can steer you to the latest developments in what Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online and Steve Diamond at the blog Global Labor and Politics are pursuing, among others.
A few observations:
1.) This is a classic case of a bunch of lefties tapping into a money stream, setting up a bureaucracy, holding endless meetings and pushing a lot of paper around rather than actually doing something productive in the world.
2.) To pull this off, you of course need some noble-sounding cause, like “school reform,” to serve as your smokescreen
3.) It’s kind of pathetic to see old Maoist federal-building-bombers like William Ayers reduced to this kind of doo-dah. It’s a little like aging rockers playing a perfunctory run-through of their hits.
4.) Remember that this is the height of Obama’s administrative experience so far in his life. Do we really want to give him the world’s top administrative job?
5.) The U of I Chicago library people had better reverse course and let Kurtz see those documents soon, or it’s going start smelling really bad.
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06.09.08
Posted in Culture, Ideology, Pakistan, Politics, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 1:12 pm by Administrator
Mary Grabar’s piece on Townhall today on why an Obama victory would mean the Left’s victory in the culture wars.
I think I’ll let her know that I, too, am one of those “few teachers in humanities departments who must hide their views and work on the fringes.”
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