Ashley Thorne, the coordinator of the National Association of Scholars blog, to which I have been contributing, just sent this message:
>Hi Professor Langbert,
>Hope your semester is off to a good start. I just wanted to let you know that your blog entry on “The Price of Academic Integrity” was the 200th post of the NAS blog. Thanks for all your good blogging!
- Ashley
Ashley adds that:
>Since creating the blog in late September, we have posted over 200 entries and received nearly 10,000 views. We’ve been linked by Joanne Jacobs, the History News Network, Campus Reform, and Minding the Campus.
>We have touched on many different themes, from student learning outcomes to online education to Climategate. Our most frequently used categories are Diversity, Political Correctness, Sustainability, and Academic Standards. There are now 27 of us signed up as authors, with 8 or 9 contributing regularly.
If you haven't seen the NAS blog yet, please take a look. They've got a great list of contributors, including Candace de Russy. NAS is a wonderful organization.
I've reproduced my blog on "The Price of Academic Integrity".
The Price of Academic Integrity
>News Busters, the blog of the Media Research Center, reports that the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) has stated that Michael Mann, a Penn State climatological researcher involved in the recent e-mail scandal, received “$541,184 in economic stimulus funds last June to conduct climate change research.”
NCPPR has issued a press release criticizing the Obama administration “for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State professor Michael Mann, a key figure in the Climategate controversy.” The release states that Professor Mann is currently under investigation by Penn State Univesity “because of activities related to a closed circle of climate scientists who appear to have been engaged in agenda-driven science.”
Friday, January 15, 2010
Republican Excitement Grows
My in-box is overflowing with messages from friends about a number of developments, bad and good. My neighbor, a life long Democrat, just sent me this message about the Democrats' and Obama's yucky health care reform courtesy of Newsmax:
>Dear Reader:
>Time is critical. Americans all over the country are fed up with the Obama administration. They don't want his radical healthcare program.
Citizens from states like Massachusetts, Nebraska, Florida and others are rising up as never before.
Even in liberal states such as Massachusetts citizens are showing their outrage over the Obama-Pelosi-Reid alliance and it's dismal record at creating jobs and inability to protect us against terrorism...
...You can help this effort by Going Here Now.
The site to which you are directed shows this video:
The famously dynamic and lovely Raquel Okyay, congressional candidate and leader of southern Ulster County, reminds us that:
>A win on Tuesday for Scott Brown, needless to say, will be a big win for the Republican party and a win for those of us fighting against healthcare "reform".
I urge you to do whatever you can to help Scott Brown win.
>Read my commentary here.
In her blog Raquel notes:
>One does not have to be a political mastermind to see what is happening in America today. Glenn Beck’s claim that the Obama administration’s goal is to transform the Nation in a way that mirrors Hugo Chavez’ take- over of Venezuela, indeed, has validity. The amount of government control and over the top spending that the Obama White house and the Democrat controlled Congress have assumed in one year is unprecedented and will take many years to salvage...
>State Senator Scott Brown is running his campaign against “wasteful government spending and higher taxes.”
>...The American people are angry that the President promised that these negotiations would be aired on C-span at least eight times on the campaign trail, and so far, nothing. No one really knows what the final bill will entail, but everyone knows it will raise health insurance costs, and it will ration care.
Phil Orenstein, up and coming party leader of Queens County, New York forwarded a link to the Go West Blog, which "proudly supports Lt. Col. Allen West's candidacy for Congress." West is running in Florida and is a wonderful candidate.
Glenda McGee attended the Kingston, NY Tea Party meeting on Monday night and George Phillips's announcement of his congressional candidacy yesterday. McGee is fighting cap and trade and keeps getting her photo on newspaper covers. One article was about the Tea Party from Oklahoma and they put her picture on the cover even though she lives in the Town of Olive!
Even President Barbara Bowen of the left wing faculty union of the City University of New York, the Professional Staff Congress, and her lieutenant Mariah Berger, have sent around e-mails urging the union's left-to-liberal college faculty membership to make calls in opposition to the bogus health care bill's tax on union benefit plans:
>Dear Professor Langbert,
>Thank you for your response. In her email yesterday President Bowen urged PSC members to take action in support of fair health care reform and in opposition to the proposal to tax “Cadillac” health plans. This position on health care reform is that of the union as a collective, after debate, discussion and a democratic vote. We understand that not all individual members share these sentiments, however, and we appreciate your comments. We respect and value your views and Barbara Bowen thanks you for taking the time to share them.
>Sincerely,
>Moriah Berger
That e-mail really tickled me. I doubt that there are more than ten unions more left wing than the Professional Staff Congress. I also doubt that there was a higher Obama-to-McCain voting ratio in any union in the country than in the Professional Staff Congress. But even the Grasmcian Marxists are complaining about Obama now.
Here is the union president's, Barbara Bowen's, e-mail:
>Dear Colleague,
Today is the labor movement’s National Call-In Blitz to demand fairness to working people in health care legislation. I am asking you to take a minute or two to call your US Representative and Senator today. The AFL-CIO’s call-in line will connect you immediately: 1-877-323-5246. Tell your representative that you support fair health care reform but that you oppose the plan for a 40 percent excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” health plans.
Taxing benefits is bad policy and bad politics. Benefit cuts and increased consumer costs are NOT health care reform.
The Senate bill would impose an excise tax paid by employers on benefit plans exceeding $23,000 for family coverage and $8,500 for individuals. CUNY faculty and staff would not be immediately affected by the proposed excise tax, as our current healthcare benefits fall below the threshold in the Senate bill. But the benefits tax is designed to apply to more plans, and more people, every year. The cap on benefits grows much more slowly than the rate of medical inflation. A plan under the cap today could easily be over the cap tomorrow and subject to a 40 percent excise tax. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 20% of employee health plans would be affected within 3 years.
The theory underlying this provision is that employers will reduce benefits to avoid paying the excise tax and presumably pay their employees the balance that would have gone to insurance. These increased wages, taxed as regular income, would be used to finance health reform. Assuming employers would voluntarily pass on savings to their workers—a long shot at best—the most likely result will be a reduction in the quality of employee health benefits.
This is a critical week for influencing the final shape of the legislation. PSC members, like millions of other Americans, hoped and fought for single-payer health reform. But this is our chance to make the current bill as fair as we can make it. Please call or email today: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/healthcare010810.
We are now closer to reform than we’ve been in generations. We can’t stop now.
In solidarity,
Barbara Bowen
President
>Dear Reader:
>Time is critical. Americans all over the country are fed up with the Obama administration. They don't want his radical healthcare program.
Citizens from states like Massachusetts, Nebraska, Florida and others are rising up as never before.
Even in liberal states such as Massachusetts citizens are showing their outrage over the Obama-Pelosi-Reid alliance and it's dismal record at creating jobs and inability to protect us against terrorism...
...You can help this effort by Going Here Now.
The site to which you are directed shows this video:
The famously dynamic and lovely Raquel Okyay, congressional candidate and leader of southern Ulster County, reminds us that:
>A win on Tuesday for Scott Brown, needless to say, will be a big win for the Republican party and a win for those of us fighting against healthcare "reform".
I urge you to do whatever you can to help Scott Brown win.
>Read my commentary here.
In her blog Raquel notes:
>One does not have to be a political mastermind to see what is happening in America today. Glenn Beck’s claim that the Obama administration’s goal is to transform the Nation in a way that mirrors Hugo Chavez’ take- over of Venezuela, indeed, has validity. The amount of government control and over the top spending that the Obama White house and the Democrat controlled Congress have assumed in one year is unprecedented and will take many years to salvage...
>State Senator Scott Brown is running his campaign against “wasteful government spending and higher taxes.”
>...The American people are angry that the President promised that these negotiations would be aired on C-span at least eight times on the campaign trail, and so far, nothing. No one really knows what the final bill will entail, but everyone knows it will raise health insurance costs, and it will ration care.
Phil Orenstein, up and coming party leader of Queens County, New York forwarded a link to the Go West Blog, which "proudly supports Lt. Col. Allen West's candidacy for Congress." West is running in Florida and is a wonderful candidate.
Glenda McGee attended the Kingston, NY Tea Party meeting on Monday night and George Phillips's announcement of his congressional candidacy yesterday. McGee is fighting cap and trade and keeps getting her photo on newspaper covers. One article was about the Tea Party from Oklahoma and they put her picture on the cover even though she lives in the Town of Olive!
Even President Barbara Bowen of the left wing faculty union of the City University of New York, the Professional Staff Congress, and her lieutenant Mariah Berger, have sent around e-mails urging the union's left-to-liberal college faculty membership to make calls in opposition to the bogus health care bill's tax on union benefit plans:
>Dear Professor Langbert,
>Thank you for your response. In her email yesterday President Bowen urged PSC members to take action in support of fair health care reform and in opposition to the proposal to tax “Cadillac” health plans. This position on health care reform is that of the union as a collective, after debate, discussion and a democratic vote. We understand that not all individual members share these sentiments, however, and we appreciate your comments. We respect and value your views and Barbara Bowen thanks you for taking the time to share them.
>Sincerely,
>Moriah Berger
That e-mail really tickled me. I doubt that there are more than ten unions more left wing than the Professional Staff Congress. I also doubt that there was a higher Obama-to-McCain voting ratio in any union in the country than in the Professional Staff Congress. But even the Grasmcian Marxists are complaining about Obama now.
Here is the union president's, Barbara Bowen's, e-mail:
>Dear Colleague,
Today is the labor movement’s National Call-In Blitz to demand fairness to working people in health care legislation. I am asking you to take a minute or two to call your US Representative and Senator today. The AFL-CIO’s call-in line will connect you immediately: 1-877-323-5246. Tell your representative that you support fair health care reform but that you oppose the plan for a 40 percent excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” health plans.
Taxing benefits is bad policy and bad politics. Benefit cuts and increased consumer costs are NOT health care reform.
The Senate bill would impose an excise tax paid by employers on benefit plans exceeding $23,000 for family coverage and $8,500 for individuals. CUNY faculty and staff would not be immediately affected by the proposed excise tax, as our current healthcare benefits fall below the threshold in the Senate bill. But the benefits tax is designed to apply to more plans, and more people, every year. The cap on benefits grows much more slowly than the rate of medical inflation. A plan under the cap today could easily be over the cap tomorrow and subject to a 40 percent excise tax. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 20% of employee health plans would be affected within 3 years.
The theory underlying this provision is that employers will reduce benefits to avoid paying the excise tax and presumably pay their employees the balance that would have gone to insurance. These increased wages, taxed as regular income, would be used to finance health reform. Assuming employers would voluntarily pass on savings to their workers—a long shot at best—the most likely result will be a reduction in the quality of employee health benefits.
This is a critical week for influencing the final shape of the legislation. PSC members, like millions of other Americans, hoped and fought for single-payer health reform. But this is our chance to make the current bill as fair as we can make it. Please call or email today: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/healthcare010810.
We are now closer to reform than we’ve been in generations. We can’t stop now.
In solidarity,
Barbara Bowen
President
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
John Stuart Mill and the Origin of Secular Humanism and Social Justice Education
I am reading John Stuart Mill's short book Utilitarianism. He is not the philosopher that Henry Sidgwick was, but I believe Mill's book had a great impact on the history of ideas, both on progressive education (and the notion of social justice education) and on Progressivism aka "state activist liberalism" aka social democracy. Mill refers to Comte and I will have to read his work too. Note this quote from pages 49-50 of Utilitarianism:
"In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and the whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion directed as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person grow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and by the practice of it. I think that no one, who can realize this conception, will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality.* To any ethical student who finds the realization difficult, I recommend as a means of facilitating it, the second of M. Comte's two principal works, the Systeme de Politique Positive. I entertain the strongest objections to the system of politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it has superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the physical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it take hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling and action in a manner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised by any religion may be but a type and foretaste; and of which the danger is not that it should be insufficient, but that it should be so excessive as to interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality."
*By the "happiness morality" Mill means utilitarianism.
"In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and the whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion directed as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person grow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and by the practice of it. I think that no one, who can realize this conception, will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality.* To any ethical student who finds the realization difficult, I recommend as a means of facilitating it, the second of M. Comte's two principal works, the Systeme de Politique Positive. I entertain the strongest objections to the system of politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it has superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the physical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it take hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling and action in a manner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised by any religion may be but a type and foretaste; and of which the danger is not that it should be insufficient, but that it should be so excessive as to interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality."
*By the "happiness morality" Mill means utilitarianism.
The Ineluctable Violence of New York Times Democrats
The Other McCain blog (h/t larwyn) features the above Boston Herald photograph of Democratic staffer Michael Meehan assaulting Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack. Also see the discussion on Greg Sargent's blog, Plum Line and the photo as it originally appeared in the Boston Herald.
Weekly Standard, a corporatist, neo-conservative publication, is one of a small handful of Republican news sources. There is mostly overlap between the Democrats' progressivism and Weekly Standard's version of Republicanism. But Democrats become violent at the slightest ideological divergence. Republicans are to be hated, even when they aren't that different. Why?
Socialism, to include social democracy, is inherently violent. One cannot re-distribute wealth without violence. If anyone disputes the Times's socialist ideas when turned into law by zealous Democrats, they must comply anyway or be thrown in jail for tax evasion. The essence of socialism is that those who disagree cannot be permitted to live on their own terms. They must comply, pay and obey, or be incarcerated. It is a small step from the violent, socialist ideology of the New York Times to Michael Meehan's violence pictured above.
American conservatism in its present, non-European form (in the 18th and 19th century the term conservatism referred to supporters of monarchy, state establishment of religion and the like) began in 1908, with the election of Progressive William Howard Taft. Democratic Party style social democracy began earlier, with the Populists and with William Jennings Bryan, who first ran for president in 1896. The conservative version of Progressivism claims that because of their superior intelligence, government bureaucrats and bankers (they seem to seriously believe this, although I've never been certain) must decide for everyone else.
In contrast, social democrats believe that democracy should rule, and that the meaning of democracy is that bureaucrats and bankers should make decisions for everyone else. The difference between "conservatives" and social democrats was always small. Both ideologies grew out of Progressivism and both are opposed to libertarianism, the view of Sam (but not John) Adams, Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland.
Main Street Republicans have scratched their heads for 100 years as to why people like Bush call themselves "conservatives" and then act like corporatist Democrats. The reason is that they were the original corporatist Democrats. The Democrats copied them and upped the rhetoric a bit by untying the hands of the Fed to give unlimited subsidies to the money center banks and Wall Street. The Democrats both out-corporatized and out-rhetorically-democratized the Republican Progressives. No wonder they hate each other. In rational language, the two are a twin headed hydra.
Michael Meehan is a good Democrat. He is violent. He is politically correct. He has a short time horizon. Let us hope that Scott Brown wins. But let us not deceive ourselves about for whom we vote. I know nothing about Scott Brown. But if we continue to allow Progressives to dominate the conservative movement, we will continue to see the same Rockefeller-Bush version of New York Times socialism.
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