"Myth of the Robber Barons" and Selective Instruction

I'm just finishing the book Myth of the Robber Barons by Burton Fulsom. He describes a business lives of Vanderbilt, James J. Hill, the Scrantons, Charles Schwab, Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon. He describes these men as "market entrepreneurs" who each took initiatives to lower costs of production and passed those savings on to the customer, in an attempt to increase profit through volume with much less emphasis on profit margin. He contrasts these men with what he calls "political entrepreneurs," who clamored for subsidies (and abused their stipulations), pools, restrictive tariffs, price-fixing, and shoddy workmanship to increase their profit. At the end of the book Dr. Fulsom analyzes how historians have described both the market entrepreneurs and political ones. In general, historians lump all these guys in together and emphasizes the need for big government to regulate business to "level the playing field" but deemphasizes government's role in corrupting the playing field in the first place.

It is with these ideas in mind that's something crystallized for me. I began thinking about the present state of human knowledge, especially the accelerating rate at which the pool of human knowledge grows. There was a time only a few centuries ago in which a person with above average intelligence and above average curiosity could essentially know a large percentage of everything that anybody knew at that time in the entire world. But now with estimates of the body of human knowledge doubling about every five years, it is pretty much impossible for anyone to know everything that humankind knows today.

This is where the insidious nature of progressive education comes into play. Like most things, education time for both children and adults is a scarce commodity with many alternative uses, and therefore must be used economically. With the veritable certainty that we can't possibly teach kids (or even doctoral candidates) everything, teachers become not only the delivery system of knowledge but also the arbiters of what knowledge is delivered and what is ignored. When done carefully and deliberately "educators" can go a long way towards shaping the whole world-view of their students. In short, since the basket of human knowledge is so full and so big it is easy to cherry pick lessons to mold the "young skulls full of mush" (in Rush Limbaugh's words) in the educators' own Progressive image. As a matter of fact, there are universities and even whole cities where the Progressive world-view goes unchallenged. And since the students have been conditioned to identify "smart, educated and cosmopolitan" with Progressive, then anything that conflicts with the Progressive world-view must then be "dumb, uneducated and unsophisticated." That's how Progressives replicate themselves, not by winning the argument, but by smothering dissent.

And that's the revelation that I had this morning, sitting on a coil of stainless steel band at the window factory. It's not so much a solution as an act of clarifying of the problem. And it doesn't answer the "why" as much as some of the mechanics of "how" this indoctrination is done. I do think that keeping this clarification in mind will help me going forward, especially at the school board meeting at New Oxford in a few weeks.

paradoxes

Yesterday my local newspaper had an article in it about our Adams County 912 patriots group. Here's the link: http://www.eveningsun.com/localnews/ci_15167720 I understand that we want to be noticed and we want to get our name out to the public, but I've already gotten enough not-so-positive attention from the article that I'm a little concerned. This brings up a few paradoxes that have been forming in my mind for a few months now.

The first: we are trying to "rally" a "group" of "individuals;" each of us are thinking beings with our own reasons for coming to similar conclusions. And we have already come across a few instances where there are deep-seated disagreements on even core issues. While I find no problem with that (one of my reasons for being a part of this project is to celebrate individuality and freedom of thought), it does point now the inherent difficulty in trying to organize a group of people who inherently don't think as a group. It illustrates the point that dealing with libertarian-types has been likened to "trying to herd cats." Sometimes I think it would be easier if we were a liberal rent-a-mob. but that would defeat the point, right?

The second is this: what have you gained by championing the causes of those who want to just be left alone if it costs you your anonymity and your ability to just be left alone personally? I repeat from above: I do not like even the trickle of attention I've gotten already from the article. I don't want to be this guy. Even within the Adams 912 Patriots group I simply want to be the guy who reads a lot of history, economics, and current events and can contribute some valuable thoughts to the discussion. In general, I just want to live my life on my terms: being productive and trading value for value. And as long as I don't infringe upon anybody else's rights, I think I should be able to expect to just be left alone (especially in these United States of America). But I fear that we live in a world and a country today where if individuals simply try to live their lives responsibly and individually, they will be steamrolled by organized movements towards "charitable" collectivism and the "tyranny of the busybody." So the need and the urgency exist for individuals to stand up together and reclaim their individual rights. Which brings us back to the first paradox: individualists are difficult to organize into a group.

Perhaps my unease is only a product of the novelty of the attention. Maybe this is the peak of the attention that will come from this and that I am worrying needlessly. And maybe I just have to suck it up, thicken my skin and become more comfortable with being uncomfortable. We'll see.

Just checking in after all these months. The healthcare monstrosity has finally passed, but the legislative sleight of hand that allowed this to happen may be a bigger threat to the republic. If this withstands the coming challenges in the Supreme Court, Congressional leaders can essentially "deem and pass" anything it wants without even voting on it, and if that happens... we.. are... screwed.

I knew we'd live to see the day

I've said many times in the last several years that people of my generation (I'm 35) would live to see the day when "anthropogenic global warming" (AGW) would be exposed as a scam. But I really didn't think it would be so soon. The new "Climategate" development shows that there is little pure science involved in thinks such as the IPCC reports and other global warming models. Especially when grant money and the mere existence of climate studies departments (and your job) hinge upon the persuasiveness of the data, there is a great deal of pressure to get the anticipated results. But that simply exemplifies the problems inherent in the blurring of science, politics, and religious fervor (on the part of AGW's "True Believers")

Let me explain one thing: I have zero intellectual respect for most climatologists, meteorologists, ecologists and environmental scientists. My undergraduate degree is a BS in physics, and I have known, taken classes with and spent leisure time with (read: drank with) these students of the "soft sciences." And I must say that few of these people are what you could call mental heavyweights. If you could buy them for how smart they are and sell them for how smart they think they are, you'd make double and triple digit profits almost every time. so it comes as no surprise that they have cooked the books and fudged the numbers.

Now, there will be long cycles of damage control that may have some effect to blunt the blow to the AGW movement, but I have more confidence than ever that the debate isn't over after all, and perhaps true science may yet be performed on climate issues. All I ask for is that we ask honest questions (not leading or "gotcha" ones), that we acknowledge the limitations of out measurements and modeling methods, and that we go where they evidence leads us, not the other way 'round.