Vandal With a Handle

The great American academic Poor Richard could have helped the University of Colorado when they were considering Ward Churchill for tenure. It may be that they shortcutted the the process in their hurry to make a place for him. Details are here and some interesting commentary here.

For those following the events around Harvard President Lawrence Summers, the full text of his address to the National Bureau of Economic Research is posted here and includes a transcript of the question and answer session. An informative article with a lot of quotes from attendees and others is here. Additional opinion from Janegalt.com includes some comments about the tenure process and the intellectual environment of the modern university in general.

Via Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor we find that a study at Florida State University has found some evidence that self-esteem for its own sake, that is, without reference to character or performance, may not be an unmixed blessing.

People with high self-esteem claim they are more likable, attractive and have better relationships than others, but these advantages exist mainly in their own minds, the researchers found. Objective data, such as ratings by their peers, generally fail to confirm their high opinions of themselves, and in some cases, they are actually disliked more than others.

Can you imagine--people actually may not like folks who think they are better than they are? Now, being liked is admittedly not the real goal of life. It is also not to be sneezed at. We all crave the esteem of those around us, but let's keep the present focus. The article is not about being esteemed by others but by ourselves. I think the idea is that we can't control what others think about us but we can hold to our own principles and thus have a firm assessment of our own value as a person.
As I understand it, the self-esteem movement arose when it was noticed that people who performed well and who did praiseworthy things consequently had good feelings about themselves. It was thought therefore that if good feelings about oneself increased for any reason then praiseworthy performance would increase. This study says the process does indeed work in the forward direction but not in reverse.

A better approach, the researchers say, would be to boost self-esteem as a reward for ethical behavior and worthy achievements.

"We think it will require a basic change in many self-esteem programs, which now seek to boost everyone's self-esteem without demanding appropriate behavior first," they wrote. "Using self-esteem as a reward rather than an entitlement seems most appropriate to us."

Via One Hand Clapping--an article on Islam by Khaled Abou El Fadl, UCLA School of Law. Looks like it would merit reading. Donald Sensing's own comments are here.

Charles Krauthammer has a good summary of the issue at JWR. The question arises when we want to know when the real problem will arise.

These pieces of paper might be useful for rolling cigars. They will not fund your retirement. Your Leisure World greens fees will be coming from the payroll taxes of young people during the years you grow old.

That is why 2042 is a fiction. The really important date is 2018. That is when this pay-as-you-go system starts paying out more (in Social Security benefits) than goes in (in payroll taxes). Right now, workers pay in more than old folks take out. But because the population is aging, in 13 years the system begins to go into the red. To cover retiree benefits, the government will have to exhaust all of its FICA tax revenue and come up with the rest — by borrowing on the world market, raising taxes or cutting other government programs.

Government has the same problem as all institutions. It loves to start things because the ones starting new programs get to look like visionaries and benefactors. It doesn't like to diminish or eliminate programs because that looks like bailing out or admitting failure. Maybe we could acknowledge that some water has gone over the dam since the New Deal and let the unspoken assumption of government be that it is best when it does the least.

To bring the silliness full circle, the president himself has since admitted that there really is no trust fund. But his 2042 date is based on the idea that there is. We will never be able to reform the system if the chief reformer does not clearly articulate what the impending crisis is, when it is coming and why.

Donald Sensing has some photographs and historical observations about the invasion of Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was invaded Feb. 18, 1945.

Joe Sobran has some comments on the Lawrence Summers flap at Harvard we posted about here. He brings up a point that I thought of too: How could the president of Harvard University be blindsided by a pc issue?

The first thought that strikes me is how remarkable it is that a man should become president of Harvard University without knowing the current taboos against free speech. Even the college janitors must know what’s what by now. As Shakespeare’s Enobarbus puts it, “That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.”

Think about it. He's the president of Harvard for Pete's sake, the pc capitol of the world. This did not happen at Podunk Community College. What do college administrators think about half the time or more? I think I know the fatal assumption. He was at an insiders' meeting and thought he could speak candidly to a select group who would honor his confidence. Big Mistake.
Apparently the standard response to a scholarly enquiry is not rigorous analysis and logical testing of propositions. Certainly what Summers said was provocative and intended to be.

We’ve all heard little girls say, “Girls are smarter than boys, ’cause they can have babies and boys can’t.” Well, it may not be a matter of being smart, exactly, but they have a point, even if they express it childishly. They have a potential far more important than merely being smart. I can understand a woman’s preferring being a Harvard professor to being a mother; what I can’t understand is her taking childish offense at the idea that men may be, in some narrow respects, smarter than women. Why doesn’t she just laugh?

The phrase is the title of a Kipling poem. You can read it here. It counts the cost of empire, the price of world dominion and calls Kipling's nation to the task of bettering the miseries of the world. Who can say that the British Empire was without its benefits? Our contemporary calls to export liberty and freedom also have a certain hopeful ring. Who could object to taking the things we value about American life to the rest of the world? Who indeed. Neither Joe Sobran nor Fred Reed is opposed headlong to all forceful opposition to attack but both point out that the current course is a significant departure from the past and urge us to count the cost. Fred was a Marine in Vietnam and worked for Soldier of Fortune, and the Army Times. He was a police columnist for the Washington Times. Many of us cannot speak to these issues with any authority because we have never had combat boots on. At least he is talking about something he has seen in detail. These details are just to demonstrate that he is not exactly moveon.org material. Fred's essay is here. Check it out yourself.
The second line of Kipling's poem is

Send forth the best ye breed --

The first price of empire is not material. It is flesh. Our best and most hopeful youth are the first price of world dominion. It is one thing to ask for their blood when an agressor threatens our borders, and quite another when war becomes Clausewitz's "politics continued by other means." It is a long path with many disappointments

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hope to nought.

The ones helped do not always respond well to their good intentions.

Take up the White man's burden --

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard --

As a Boy Scout, I enjoyed sitting around the campfire listening to the leaders talk about their wartime experiences. Battleships, helicopters, tanks and weapons were great entertainment around the fire. It was great entertainment but I was listening to the ones who came back and had all their limbs and faculties. Fred reminds us that many will be forgotten and neglected.

I once watched the first meeting between a young Marine from the South, blind, much of his face shot away, and his high school sweetheart who had come from Tennessee to Bethesda Naval Hospital to see him.

Hatred comes easily.

The country owes it to these willing souls to value their service and ask for sacrifice only when the enemy is at the door. It's not worth it for any lesser objective. Are we being cynical to think that a course is taken with the thought that only the less valuable are going?

The war in Iraq is fought by volunteers, which means people that no one in power cares about. No one in the mysteriously named “elite” gives a damn about some kid from a town in Tennessee that has one gas station and a beer hall with a
stuffed buck’s head. Such a kid is a redneck at best, pretty much from another planet, and certainly not someone you would let your daughter date. If conscription came back, and college students with rich parents learned to live in fear of The Envelope, riots would blossom as before. Now Yale can rest easy. Thank God for throwaway people.

No, not cynical at all.

Much as we would like to report some happy news, we are faced with this sobering report. 36 percent of about 112 thousand high school think that newpapers should have to get government approval before being permitted to print a story. A scant 51 percent stood for the First Amendment freedom of the press. Maybe the 36 percent just missed school that day.

It appears that the exemplary young man suspected of murdering the actress on the Lower East Side of Manhattan last Thursday has been apprehended. It also appears that the murder weapon has been found and some other corroborating evidence based on video surveillance film from the scene. So much of this picture is so predictable it is truly unsettling. He is 19, a parolee already with a history of violent behavior. Odd, the U.S. has more people in jail than any other country but these people keep getting out over and again. He was, however, in tears as he was driven away from the police station. Perhaps he was touched by the suffering of the bereaved, or, on second thought, the prospect of suffering himself for the crime. One thing is certain, neither his tears nor those of the grieving family can restore the life lost. There was no policeman to help Nicole DuFresne Thursday morning and the city of New York saw to it that she could not legally help herself. Now we will hear the calls for more crisis intervention services for troubled youth and more money for mentoring and scholarships. But nobody much wants to say anything about the one thing that might have helped Nicole DuFresne when she faced death Thursday morning--a gun of her own. There are some hopeful signs from Great Britain in accounts like this and this.