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January 30, 2004 TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION DEPARTMENT....One of the great unreported stories of our time is how conservatives have made it almost impossible for liberals to make jokes anymore. Consider my previous post. After complaining about yet another attempt to remove evolution from state teaching guidelines I said:
I guess I missed it, but in comments Dave Morgen points out that Georgia has a new high school history curriculum proposal too:
Dammit, I was joking! Or trying to, anyway. But how can you make a joke when conservatives continually manage to make real life stranger than fiction? Anyway, it's probably just a coincidence that the period from 1800 to 1876 is the one that got dropped. We liberals tend to get awfully paranoid about these coincidences, don't we? Posted by Kevin Drum at January 30, 2004 11:05 AM | TrackBackComments
Everybody knows that liberals from Massachusetts ran the Triangle Trade. They'll do anything to avoid responsibility. Posted by: Roger Bigod at January 30, 2004 11:13 AM | PERMALINKMaybe we should just let them secede. All their new slaves can escape the state. Posted by: Norman at January 30, 2004 11:16 AM | PERMALINKWell, here in Seattle, there's a proposal to eliminate from history books all mention of any history outside of 1978 - the first and only year that the SuperSonics won the NBA championship. Many parents around here feel that the other history is just too controversial and subjective to discuss in a classroom full of impressionable children. Posted by: Cretin at Sparta at January 30, 2004 11:16 AM | PERMALINKWhat was Animal House: "Knowledge is Good"? Just to be contrarian, We with some education consider it important, but I am not sure why my understanding of Lew Wallace's argument with Grant over Shiloh helps me decide whether to vote for Bush or Kerry this year. Victor Davis Hansen is one of the most erudite men in the country, and utterly wrong on most issues. And this is why i support a universal franchise. The precentennial of the Cultural Revolution is a perfectly logical place to start history; are you insinuating that there's another cause? Posted by: Anarch at January 30, 2004 11:19 AM | PERMALINKI'd like to blame conservatives as much as you, but I think your ire is misdirected here. You should read "The Language Police" by Diane Ravitch. It's incredibly eye-opening. The dumbing-down and censorship of education comes from bipartisan stupidity, not a conservative agenda. In general, the religion-oriented censorship comes from conservative influences, but unfortunately there's just as much stupidity from the left - ridiculous things like not talking about owls in textbooks because the owl represents death to some American Indian tribes, disallowing a description of a blind mountain climber as "heroic" because that implies that not having sight is *GASP* a disability, or striking a story about dolphins because that would somehow put students who don't live near water at a disadvantage. You won't believe the depth to which this "bias and sensitivity review" process goes until you read the book. I strongly suggest it. -j Posted by: Jer at January 30, 2004 11:19 AM | PERMALINK(another excerpt from article Kevin referred to): There is also a sinister element to the changes. States are facing new federal mandates to improve test scores. Interestingly, states can devise many of the tests used to measure this improvement. While mandating that we teach less, Georgia will prepare assessments that test less. Interesting formula: teach less, test less, brag more. No Child Left Behind in action. Posted by: chris at January 30, 2004 11:22 AM | PERMALINKI'm inspired. I believe my own history will begin in 1992, to avoid those awkward teenage years. Posted by: Realish at January 30, 2004 11:24 AM | PERMALINKThis was probably the result of a misguided compromise, since folks couldn't agree on what to call it, "The Civil War" or "The War of Northern Aggression". It's a shame, because while I think that slavery was reprehensible, the South has also much to be proud about as well. Many brave, honorable (and highly skilled) men fought for the South. For the most part they didn't see themselves as fighting FOR slavery, but rather FOR states rights. In the end, they, and their Northern brethren, were betrayed by fire-eating politicians, who proved to make terrible generals. Frankly the argument to allow secession is a pretty strong one, that would find a lot of supporters these days. If a majority of a state wants to leave the Union, why shouldn't that be allowed? Don't we believe in popular sovereignty? Isn't this at the heart of the electoral problem of the South, that they don't want Yankees telling them how to think or what to do? By the way, I'm not a Southerner, though I lived in Virginia for 6 years. I'm from the West Coast.
Unproven hypotheses such as slavery are an attempt by the liberal elite to politicize the curriculum and indoctrinate our children, resulting in confusion and an abandonment of our heritage and ordained position atop the racial hierarchy. Posted by: whitey at January 30, 2004 11:30 AM | PERMALINKActually, a look at the AJC piece suggests that this isn't a "conservative" purge of the curriculum; most of US history, including the big chunk before the revolution, is gone. It looks to me as if two things are going on: (1) plain ol' dumbing down, and (2) avoiding controversy. The War is in fact a bit of a powder-keg topic in southern states, and a school administrator doesn't have to be a conservative to be a wimp. Similar wimpish behavior has cropped up in other school districts where the governing pressure groups, say, want to ban *Huckleberry Finn* for using offensive words. Neither the left nor the right necessarily has a monopoly on error; nor does either have a monopoly on the notion that political pressure can override professional judgment. Which one, after all, is "democratic," and which is "elitist"? Posted by: David at January 30, 2004 11:31 AM | PERMALINKYes, I agree, the whole textbook selection system is rotten to the core. We basically have the nuts in both California and Texas dumbing the whole country down. This case, however similar, isn't being driven by that particular force. The curriculum itself is being dumbed down (not just the textbooks) by the Georgia Department of Education. Posted by: Gryn at January 30, 2004 11:33 AM | PERMALINKWhat we need is a No History Left Behind program related activity. Posted by: karog at January 30, 2004 11:35 AM | PERMALINK"Frankly the argument to allow secession is a pretty strong one, that would find a lot of supporters these days. If a majority of a state wants to leave the Union, why shouldn't that be allowed? Don't we believe in popular sovereignty?" Covered by, and the point of, the post-war ammendments. Essentially, no state, not even by the majority will of that state, may deprive any of its residents US citizenship or the rights and privileges that accrue from US citizenship. Is that clear enough for you? The civil war was fought over whether the union was a contract between states or a contract between citizens. The North won. Posted by: bob mcmanus at January 30, 2004 11:35 AM | PERMALINKAt least its better than my Dad's Jim Crow Era Virginia history entitled "Defense of Homeland" Posted by: CalDem at January 30, 2004 11:37 AM | PERMALINKdare nefer was slafery in da usa. y due u libwuls constantly lie dare was? y due u libwuls hate america? gawd bwess da twupes and jorge w bushe. Posted by: al at January 30, 2004 11:38 AM | PERMALINKI don't see why this is a conservative issue. I think its unconcscionable to take a slice out of history like that. Its a Southern thing, just as any defeated country biases its history to favor its cause. The south's "cause" is indefensible so it deletes it. The evolution thing is more of a conservative issue, and equally wrongheaded, though I don't see a problem with including scientific criticisms of evolution and noting that many religions don't believe in evolution, so long as the theory is taught and stated that nearly all scientists believe evolution is the correct theory. Posted by: Reg at January 30, 2004 11:40 AM | PERMALINKJer & David: yeah, there's plenty of stupidity on both left and right. Ravitch's book gets a little tedious (even though it's under 200 pages!), but she's basically right. It's pretty tough to write a textbook these days. At the same time, getting rid of the Civil War? This is just not the same as scuffles over the presentation of women in traditional roles or even mentions of evolution. It is flatly impossible to pretend to teach American history without the Civil War, and it's pretty obviously a deliberate omission. Shameful. Posted by: Kevin Drum at January 30, 2004 11:42 AM | PERMALINKda south was wright in da civil war. da northerners was traitors and comiting treason. y due u libwuls support traitors and comiting treason? gawd bwess da twupes and jorge w bushe. Posted by: al at January 30, 2004 11:43 AM | PERMALINKWhat are you guys writing about? Gives new meaning to the book "Everything I know I learned in kindergarten". Posted by: carsick at January 30, 2004 11:47 AM | PERMALINK"Dammit, I was joking!" You are visiting this world. The editors of "The Onion" live there. I've seen more than 10 of their stories become truth after 6-8 months. Posted by: Matthew Saroff at January 30, 2004 11:48 AM | PERMALINKIn Georgia at least, the past is indeed another country. Posted by: David W. at January 30, 2004 11:50 AM | PERMALINK"so long as the theory is taught and stated that nearly all scientists believe evolution is the correct theory." I can never seem to get excited enough about this. "Evolution is the very heart of biology." And evolution seems to me to be most often expressed wrongly, I think deliberately so. "The ice age came, and the elephants got all furry." No. The ice age came, 90% of everything died, and furry elephants are a happy accident for the elephants. They should have died too. The way it is too often stated implies that as the greenhouse gases get hgh, we will adapt and start breathing CO2. No. We will die, as almost all species die. Very few adapt. Well, this, plus separate black and white proms, and several other weirdnesses I've heard lately has convinced me that inbred racist crackers who don't read anything but the King James Bible have taken over the state and are trying to turn the whole place into Dogpatch and an embarassment to the intelligent people of the other 49. We really are two countries, and it isn't hard to figure out which one of the two is better. Backward people trying to keep us in the past should not be making law. We need to do something about that, even if it means supporting moderate Republicans there, if such an animal exists. Of course, we can try supporting Democrats first. When Dems win the White House I wonder about cutting off all education funds to places that don't teach the Civil War and evolution. Whether that would just make things worse or force change I do not know. Posted by: Norman at January 30, 2004 11:51 AM | PERMALINKKevin - Yeah, to be honest, I put it down halfway through. But the first two chapters alone were worth buying the book. I was just pointing out that it's part of a larger trend - like restricting discussion about Mount Rushmore because it's on land the Lakota consider sacred, and therefore the monument is offensive to them. This is also a part of American history that shouldn't be ignored, albeit on a lesser scale than the Civil War. The civil war example shows the trend getting carried to the (even more) extreme now, but it still is something that should be addressed on a non-partisan basis - the problem was set into motion long ago, and both sides are equally to blame for the state it is currently in. -j Posted by: Jer at January 30, 2004 11:52 AM | PERMALINKAnyway, it's probably just a coincidence that the period from 1800 to 1876 is the one that got dropped. We liberals tend to get awfully paranoid about these coincidences, don't we? To quote Teresa Nielsen Hayden I really resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist. MKK Posted by: Mary Kay at January 30, 2004 11:52 AM | PERMALINK... though I don't see a problem with including scientific criticisms of evolution and noting that many religions don't believe in evolution, For what purpose? The theory of evolution is on par with the germ theory of illness. Should we mandate that every time someone visits the doctor because of cold-symptoms, that they be informed that some people don't believe it? Let the scientists teach the science. Just because a super-minority of people who have degrees think that evolution is false doesn't mean their ideas hold equal weight. Posted by: ChrisS at January 30, 2004 11:54 AM | PERMALINKda best americans are southerners. southerner r gawd feering patriotic americans. northerner r america hating libwuls. gawd bwess da twupes and jorge w bushe. Posted by: al at January 30, 2004 11:57 AM | PERMALINKI don't see a problem with including scientific criticisms of evolution and noting that many religions don't believe in evolution, so long as the theory is taught and stated that nearly all scientists believe evolution is the correct theory. It's a science class. Not a religion class. Evolution should be taught as the theory that it is and any history of scientific tweaking of the theory should be taught as well. The introduction of religion as arbiter of science has no place in the matter. Otherwise, we may as get Oral Roberts' thumbs up on every subject so we can have a point/counterpoint. If the students are religious enough to be offended by evolution, one presumes they are getting their fill of creationism at home and at their church. Which is exactly where the topic belongs. (Unless, of course, the school offers a comparative religion course.) Posted by: chris at January 30, 2004 11:57 AM | PERMALINKNeither the left nor the right necessarily has a monopoly on error; nor does either have a monopoly on the notion that political pressure can override professional judgment. We regularly sneer at Japanese politicians and educators who refuse to acknowledge Japan's role in WWII as part of their educational system. If they had replied saying that "WWII is simply too controversial for us to teach about it in schools," we'd point out that Germany has relatively little trouble teaching WWII in a self-critical fashion and we would consider the Japanese to be intellectually dishonest atrocity deniers. Let's not dress up GA's denial of history as some kind of bipartisan political shyness. They're intentionally omitting reference to the most morally shameful part of GA's (and the South's) history - the 19th century prior to the anti-slavery amendments to the Constitution (not that life after the amendments was a bowl of cherries). Sure, some educational admistrators may be bending to some "political pressure" to leave out reference to slavery and the Civil War, but that pressure stems from the same ugly motivations held by Japanese WWII-deniers [I am NOT implying that all Japanese people deny Japan's actions in WWII]. The administrators' response is an easy, wholesale omission that basically gave the deniers what they wanted. Posted by: Cretin at Sparta at January 30, 2004 12:01 PM | PERMALINKif u beleave evolution u r a america hating libwul. america is da gwatest cuntry in da wurld. gawd bwess da twupes and jorge w bushe. Posted by: al at January 30, 2004 12:02 PM | PERMALINKthe problem was set into motion long ago, and both sides are equally to blame for the state it is currently in. Actually, I'd be surprised if both sides are equally to blame. Seems as though left-wingnuts aren't the ones who burn books. I realize that the UberPC folks are a pain in the ass but it's my gut feeling (how's that for scientific?) that the heavy-duty censorship comes from the right. Furthermore, there is quite a difference between banning a scientific theory and banning a book because of the "N" word and racial insensitivity. Saying the right and the left are equal partners in censorship smacks of the argument Bushbots use when their fearless leader is caught in a scandal or lie: Yeah, well all politicians do it. Not necessarily and there is the matter of degree. Posted by: chris at January 30, 2004 12:10 PM | PERMALINKYeah, well, y'all made it impossible to sell cookies on campus at affirmative action prices, benefitting people who historically were discriminated against... so I don't see why banning the term "evolution" is worse. I would tend to agree that it's equally stupid and oppressive, but were definitely both sitting next to each other on the stove here, calling each other black. See e.g. FIRE.org and tell me how that's a right wing plot, or any of Eugene Volokh's work documenting how speech codes are being used to systematically repress free speech. It's worth noting that the folks at FIRE are 60's holdouts - not conservatives - who really believe in free speech. Posted by: Al Maviva at January 30, 2004 12:19 PM | PERMALINKWow, they really want their kids to be uneducated consumerist peons. That "no history before 1500" really burns me. They're leaving out the most interesting parts, for the escapist geek kids anyway. Posted by: Librul at January 30, 2004 12:24 PM | PERMALINKjer, your examples from Diane Ravtich's book is not on par at all with what they are proposing in Georgia. All her examples reflect a PC censorship in a proposal for a national test, not school books. So who gives a sh*&t if there are no test questions with the word "owl" in it. It's miles away from messing with the school curriculum. Don't even try to equate the PC-foolishness with the ludite anti-science crap conservatives are pushing. Posted by: ch2 at January 30, 2004 12:28 PM | PERMALINKKevin: I got your joke. But you have to realise that, judging from your comments section , your readers are the most humorless people on the planet, with the possible exception of the Atrios fundamentalists. Just read the comments to this particular posting. And, quite frankly, the only time I find myself chuckling on the Internet these days is when I'm reading Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Scrappleface, etc. Not Paul Krugman or Eric Alterman. The Left is deathly serious. Did you y'all read Krugman today? Good Lord but he crushed the ball out of the park. And yes there is a tie-in with Kevin's post. (You don't think I am completely wacky with my tangents do you?) Namely, that after reading Calpundit and then Krugman, Krugman's title should really read: FORGOTTEN TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN REMEMBERED FICTION.
[Double ASIDE: y'all can quote me on that one.] Posted by: -pea- at January 30, 2004 12:47 PM | PERMALINK"Anyway, it's probably just a coincidence that the period from 1800 to 1876 is the one that got dropped. We liberals tend to get awfully paranoid about these coincidences, don't we?" Perhaps you misinterpret. I grew up in the South and I remember History classes as a race through the explorers and the American Revolution, then months and months and months of reading and discussion of all aspects of the Civil War and the Reconstruction, then suddenly, school was out. I was in college, in California, before I ever studied anything that happened *after* 1876. It could be Georgia is just correcting a serious deficiency in its students' education. Posted by: shirley at January 30, 2004 12:51 PM | PERMALINKjer, I've helped write standardized tests. It is important to minimize the possibility of offending children or parents. Every kid in America has seen a dog or a mouse, but not dolphins. And if you've ever taught blind kids, or blind kids with mental disabilities, you probably understand why you may not want to read them a story about a blind Superman. These minor anecdotes are much different than striking evolution from textbooks. The theory of evolution is fundamental to all serious sciences, not just biology. If evolution isn't a valid theory, then we really have to re-examine our scientific method. Evolution clearly exists. Cartesian Science clearly works better than any other system in history. Posted by: Frugal Liberal at January 30, 2004 12:55 PM | PERMALINKAs to the PC stuff, well, some of it is overbearing and reactionary, but the vast majority of it is both well intentioned and a good idea. The sad fact is, our language and culture are dripping with sexism, racism, elitisms of various sorts. The principle theoretical merit of the liberation movements of the 20th century was to sensitize us to violence and degradation woven into the fabric of our culture. Those engagend in attempting to point out and avoid such nastiness are hardly on par with those who want to deny the basic scientific consensus for religious reasons. If a text says "He jewed me down to $10" or "There's a nigger in the woodpile here", then my grounds for objecting to it are qualitatively different than those raised by people who object to a science text because it's claims are inconsistent with biblical dogma. The former makes an appeal to basic human dignity and the desire not to gratuitously insult entire classes of people. The latter makes an appeal to the absolute rightness of a particular set of religious beliefs, and the desire to reflect that truth. When I took Canadian history, in the 8th grade, my teacher spent two class periods discussing in great detail a massacre of the French settlers by the Mohawks in what is now Montreal. He described several heinous tortures, and he dwelled on the duplicity and depravity of the attackers for hours. As a result, the picture of the Mohawk nation my class was left with was ridiculously distorted and out and out racist. Where were those PC police when I needed them? Perhaps instead of learning about scalping, I might have learned about the Iriquois confederacy. If only there had been left-wing busybodies in the 1970s, my history class might not have been a racist indoctrination into the genocidal mindset of my culture vis-a-vis the first nations. Al Maviva, "FIRE.org" produced a banal website for fire supression. Is it possible that it goes by some other name? PC campus speech battles are generally fought over awkward attempts at avoiding insult to some group or another. Sometimes those endeavors go too far to make sure that no one's feelings are hurt. That is not the same thing as denying historical atrocities in order to wash out a moral stain, which is what GA is doing. More often, though, conservatives simply cry "speech code" when their ideas are drummed out of the classroom by a chorus of folks who disagree with them on substantive grounds. Posted by: Cretin at Sparta at January 30, 2004 12:56 PM | PERMALINKPosted by Jer: ... there's just as much stupidity from the left - ridiculous things like not talking about owls in textbooks because the owl represents death to some American Indian tribes, disallowing a description of a blind mountain climber as "heroic" because that implies that not having sight is *GASP* a disability, or striking a story about dolphins because that would somehow put students who don't live near water at a disadvantage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Clark's ad-libbed belief that there would not be another 9/11 on his watch was equivalent to the mountain of scripted lies told to slaughter people and steal their oil. So too, "I did not have sex with that woman." This bend over backward fairness is why we keep landing on our backs being trampled by the party whose ultimate aim is to erase any mention of Democrats from our history books, along with any notion of democracy from our memories. "Just as much stupidity?" Tell me where there is a state or even a school district which has stricken the mention of owls, blind mountaineers, or dolphins from textbooks. And please tell me how those comparatively minor matters compare with the far broader impact of such major themes as evolution and slavery. The widespread movement to teach creationism over evolution in public schools and this state sanctioned effort to make slavery irrelevant to our history are both driven by the right-wing as dishonest means to foster their control over the minds of citizens. There is no equivalence from the left. Those on the left who believe there is have been duped just as surely as the brainwashed masses on the right. Posted by: jayarbee at January 30, 2004 12:58 PM | PERMALINKOK, in A World Where Jokes Come True, let's see what happens with this one: "The Georgia Department of Education today that all future curricula regarding human reproduction be based on 'Stork Theory,' the controversial and as yet unproven thesis that 'newborn' human infants are in fact delivered, literally, by large, awkward sea birds."
the only time I find myself chuckling on the Internet these days is when I'm reading Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Scrappleface, etc. Hey! I laugh at those guys, too! James Louis Petigru once described South Carolina as "to small to be a nation, but too big to be an insane asylum." Today, I'm passing that distinction on to Georgia! Posted by: Paul at January 30, 2004 01:20 PM | PERMALINKFake fake Al -- you might as well use the real fake Al's email too. It's fake: "nobody@nobody.com" I think. Definitely, we cannot let this be about what happened in Georgia! Really it has to be about liberal political correctness and the liberal lack of a sense of humor! And it has nothing to do with conservatives, even theough we can be sure that conservatives have had their hand in it. Let's not talk about the subject at all. (Look, Michael Jackson!) In Richmond Virginia there was very strong Republicna opposition to the idea of putting up a statue of Lincoln there. Not like he was the founder of the party or anything. (I have something up at my URL; it's a bit out of date, but I bet Mac Diva has more: www.silverrights.blogspot.com . It's funny that Southerners can talk about heritage and how they'd never ever vote for a northern liberal, but when those of us who have many generations of Yankee heritage say something similiar, that's bad. I feel about the Confederates as a whole about the same way the neo-Confederates feel about Sherman's March to the Sea. I think that we should let the heritage game drop, but if it's in play, both sides can play it. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. who are these unbalanced people and what's this talk of a "civil war?" Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and alway will be Posted by: preznit giv me turkee at January 30, 2004 01:22 PM | PERMALINKI was just talking yesterday to a friend who teaches American history at the high school level in Louisiana. She said that the teachers at her school have changed the curriculum to correspond with the LEAP test (don't know what it stands for but it must be the 11th grade standardized test in Louisiana). Apparently the history section of the test covers 1877-present, and if teachers start at the beginning of US history in the fall they never get past WWII before the test is scheduled and their students can't answer questions on the Vietnam War, so the school's history faculty has decided to start in 1877 at the beginning of the year, get to the present just before the test, then go back to the Revolution in the last several weeks of the year. So whoever determined the subject matter for the LEAP test decided not to include the Civil War, and since teachers will usually wind up having to teach to the test, it gets left out of the curriculum entirely. Sometimes I wish I could move back to Louisiana to be near family and friends, but things like this make me think that being away from home isn't so bad. Posted by: calicajun at January 30, 2004 01:28 PM | PERMALINKPosted by melk: "And, quite frankly, the only time I find myself chuckling on the Internet these days is when I'm reading Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Scrappleface, etc. Not Paul Krugman or Eric Alterman. The Left is deathly serious. You make a good point. It's a sad thing when leftists can't laugh at 500 dead soldiers. What is wrong with liberals who refuse to giggle about 10 million unemployed Americans? What does it say about their funny bones when they refuse to bust a gut over lost liberties? How can they possibly not see the humor in working harder for less, sacrificing for the rich, dying for the lies, and being the brunt of all the clever jokes played on them by their rulers. You're right: the clown in the White House is killing us with his act of juggling the truth. Posted by: jayarbee at January 30, 2004 01:40 PM | PERMALINKMight as well stop teaching it altogether rather than continue to teach the drek they call history. Maybe all American schools just teach mythology and call it history, but the South has been especially bad about it. My family served in the Civil War, sort of. My great-grandfather and his brother both deserted. Another great-grandfather avoided service altogether. You don't read about Southerners being seriously opposed to the war. You don't read about people with over 200 slaves being exempt from the Confederate draft. Somebody had to stay home and guard the help, might as well be the rich. You know, sort of like Dubya did during Vietnam. All of the irate people on this post might want to click on over to the Georgia Department of Education's website and read the ACTUAL curriculum standards that are being proposed. That's what I did, 'cause I was all pissed off and ready to write a furious e-mail to someone! Grrrrrr -- damn those conservatives!" What I noticed reading the standards is a problem much more akin to what Jer describes above (relating ONLY to history, I'm not talking about science here) than to all the fury on this thread about those DAMN SOUTHERNERS refusing to teach their chillun about the Civil War and slavery. There does actually seem to be quite a bit of talk in the standards about slavery and its aftermath. They even mention Abraham Lincoln! Go figure! So all the venom seems a bit over the top, or at least misdirected. The problem with what I was reading seemed more along the lines of over-caution, or overemphasis of weird, buzzwordy "concepts" over actual knowledge, or something -- it's a little hard to describe. Anyway, my suggestion is, go actually take a look at the thing before shooting off. And lay off Jer, she had a point, at least in the post I read carefully. Posted by: jackson at January 30, 2004 01:45 PM | PERMALINKJer, For that matter, I encountered several otherwise worldly adults stunned by the concept of eating 'dolphin,' unaware this is the dolphinfish, aka mahi-mahi. So much for common knowledge about dolphins. Posted by: J Edgar at January 30, 2004 01:59 PM | PERMALINK"Frankly the argument to allow secession is a pretty strong one, that would find a lot of supporters these days. If a majority of a state wants to leave the Union, why shouldn't that be allowed? Don't we believe in popular sovereignty?" I agree that the idea would (and does) have supporters, but I don't buy it. Lincoln's argument - with which I agree - was that the states had ratified the Constitution, and had thereby agreed to be a part of an unbroken Union. He insisted that the Union was a compact between the states and the federal government, and that, just as in contract law, no compact can be broken without the agreement of both parties. Posted by: Silence Dogood at January 30, 2004 01:59 PM | PERMALINKIt was all a big misunderstanding. The stars and bars is a religious symbol, not a political or social statement. Must be true, it says so here ... ... Sir William Wallace was Braveheart and his ensign was the Cross of the crucified Apostle St. Andrew, later called the Southern Cross also known as the Confederate Battle Flag.... Joke: How many Richmonders does it take to change a light bulb? Six. One to change it, three to lament its passing, two to raise funds for the statue.
There does actually seem to be quite a bit of talk in the standards about slavery and its aftermath. They even mention Abraham Lincoln! Go figure! I read it and agree somewhat. There is small mention in the curriculum of the aftermath of the Civil War, including the abolition of slavery, the Jim Crow laws, the KKK, Reconstruction, etc. But the curriculum then swiftly launches into a multi-segment treatment of the American expansion westward. Time should have been budgeted to discuss the Civil War itself and slavery as it existed. Hell, even one day would have been a nice, tho minimal, acknowledgement of those national ordeals. Posted by: Cretin at Sparta at January 30, 2004 02:35 PM | PERMALINK"Lincoln's argument - with which I agree - was that the states had ratified the Constitution, and had thereby agreed to be a part of an unbroken Union." This is what I call the Roach Motel model of the US, states check in, but they don't check out. It's also pretty much the same argument the Soviet Union tried to use against Lithuania. Majority rule is majority rule. If a clear majority of a state wants to bail, let them and allow people to vote with their feet. Posted by: Michael Farris at January 30, 2004 02:36 PM | PERMALINKPosted by -pea-: "They who control the memory hole control the future." They do indeed. Along with Krugman, truth-telling Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler speaks to that fact today, as he does nearly every day. As a former fifth grade teacher, perhaps he'll soon weigh in on the hole Georgia is digging for slavery. Posted by jackson: "All of the irate people on this post might want to click on over to the Georgia Department of Education's website and read the ACTUAL curriculum standards that are being proposed." Against my own advice, I bent over backward and visited the site, per your recommendation. Unfortunately, you provided no links. Ten minutes of frantic clicking and skim reading turned up no mention of slavery nor even Lincoln. Downloading a pdf document proved unhelpful. There was, along with an offer to order videos, considerable and lengthy attempts to calm fears and offer assurances, which basically amounted to obfuscating language concerning "bloated" curriculums. Maybe I'm just tired after a long week. Please tell us precisely where on the GADOE.org site one can find "quite a bit of talk in the standards about slavery and its aftermath." Posted by: jayarbee at January 30, 2004 02:38 PM | PERMALINKjayarbee, Go to the article link provided by Sir Drum. Then, click on the curriculum link... Posted by: Cretin at Sparta at January 30, 2004 02:48 PM | PERMALINKMichael Farris at what level of granularity? My city is oppressed because it pays out more than it takes in, can we as its citizens secede? I think the Federal Government is wasting too much of my money, can I secede? Or is it that you believe in the ?Roach Motel? model of individual states? Posted by: Lori Thantos at January 30, 2004 02:59 PM | PERMALINKIt isn't that other fields of science outside of biology depend on evolution. Rather, denial of the evidence supporting evolution requires you to also deny large chunks of other fields such as geology and physics. For instance, creationists don't like radioisotope dating. In order to deny it, they suggest that somehow the rate at which isotopes decay has changed--without offering anything like, oh, evidence for it. Ironically, the right has had some fairly accurate criticism of the left for its role in the dumbing down of textbooks. They just don't like to think about the creationists. Posted by: M. at January 30, 2004 02:59 PM | PERMALINK"What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?" -- P.K. Off topic, but this is the question that continuously runs through my head. In the comments posted for the AJC article, someone posted a link: http://www.edwatch.org/ The site seems to claim that political correctness in the public schools is getting the U.S. ready to join the socialist One World Order. "Government is implementing policies that will lead to poverty, not prosperity, by adopting the failed ideas of a state-planned and managed economy similar to that of the former Soviet Union. In economics, career, and education, government narrows individual choice. This system is based upon a utilitarian worldview that measures human value only in terms of productive capability for the "best interests of the state". Individual freedom is subservient to a collective society." Kinda funny, I thought the tinfoil hat idea was that the conservatives want to starve the school system into self-destruction so that the average American drops down to serf status. Serfs destined for capitalist labor, however. Posted by: Librul at January 30, 2004 03:28 PM | PERMALINKThanks to Cretin at Sparta I finally located the document containing "quite a bit of talk about slavery and its aftermath." (http://www.glc.k12.ga.us/passwd/trc/ttools/attach/curriculum/socstud/USHistory.pdf) Seems to be no real talk about slavery at all, actually. Its aftermath does seem to be explored. Kind of reminds me of Bush extolling the virtues of "liberating" the Iraqi people, while hiding the grisly reality of the war itself. In any case, my original post (http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003150.html#95192) which begs liberals not to cover for the right's gross offenses by confessing our own petty sins, stands on the merits of the argument that slavery had a much greater impact on this country's history and its current state of affairs than all the owls in the universe. Of course, many people don't give a hoot about either issue. Posted by: jayarbee at January 30, 2004 03:30 PM | PERMALINKVirginia, a few years ago, decided that the term "plantation" should be scrubbed from its historic properties in favor of "estate." There are technical differences between the words, because plantation describes a kind of especially British exploitative and colonial enterprise, but the Commonwealth's intent was to strip the link to chattel slavery. "Free at last! Free at last! God, almighty, free at last!" Georgia is the petri dish of the other forty-nine. It's Texas without Austin. This is despicable but all too predictable. As somebody studying the Civil War and Reconstruction era for a Ph.D. I can tell you that these issues are controversial EVERYWHERE, not just in Georgia. But whitewashing it is pathetic. Children should be exposed to the major themes of American history, from encounters between Indians and Europeans in VA and MA, through indentured servitude and Puritanism, to plantation slavery and the growth of the early industrial North, to the Revolution and writing of the Constitution, and so on. How the fuck can you teach a history course without dealing with the politics of the sectional crisis, and the different economic systems in the North and South. And if you think elementary school kids can't handle that you're fooling yourself. Unfortunately I think one of the reasons is that No Child Left Behind forces states to divert resources away from social studies toward science, English and math. In fact this is one of the many criticisms of NCLB from the Virginia legislature. BTW, Diane Ravitch is absolutely right about the absurd interference of lunatics on textbook writing. Posted by: Elrod at January 30, 2004 06:43 PM | PERMALINKIf a majority of a state wants to leave the Union, why shouldn't that be allowed? Don't we believe in popular sovereignty? Surely the reason for secession matters. For example, you wouldn't say that the Prussians had the right to secede from Germany if it was solely for the purpose of exterminating all the Jews that lived in their province. The "justification" for Southern secession differed only in degree from this hypothetical, not in kind. Posted by: son volt at January 30, 2004 08:09 PM | PERMALINKKevin, Fear not. Liberals will continue unabated to make jokes about conservatives. The straight lines are irresistable. The reverse is also true. As a defender of creeping socialism, I find this lamentable, but I can live with it. At a different level, there is a rich history of liberals skewering liberal politics and mores. But you rarely, if ever, find conservatives making jokes about conservatives. Frankly, I find this telling. Did you hear the one about why the librul crossed the road? Posted by: bobbyp at January 30, 2004 08:15 PM | PERMALINKMy first major history paper in colllege that I remember was "Reconstruction in the South", good times. Posted by: Warcraft at January 30, 2004 08:34 PM | PERMALINKV.D.Hansen isn't bad on Greek history; elsewhere, he's out of his depth. Posted by: P. Clodius at January 30, 2004 09:05 PM | PERMALINK(Apologies in advance for a long post. I'm a writer by trade; this is the thing I do.) This is awful late in the discussion to be posting -- this far down, I think, means few folks actually see it -- but as I read the comments above, I wanted to pipe in with some additional thoughts. (1) Elrod, you're studying the Civil War at a high academic level, and so I hoped you'd mention something about the argument (advanced by Jay above) that "many" Confederate soldiers were fighting not over slavery, but over "States Rights." You didn't, so I will, but I can't cite the specific books/articles I've seen from memory. Sorry about that. Anyhow, I've read some recent (excellent) work that has looked at the events leading to the War. What they've found is that there is hardly a single speech given by ANY leading (or even minor) successionists prior to 1861 that wasn't almost entirely focused on the preservation of slavery. And there were a LOT of speeches; successionists had fanned out across the south, and were furiously trying to rouse the masses to their cause. They gave hundreds if not thousands of stump speeches, and transcripts, news reports, and original texts confirm that slavery was always THE issue. "States Rights" was simply not a major rallying cry, except in the context of the preservation of slavery. So when did "States Rights" as a separate idea appear? Almost the day after the war ended. Southern Revisionism began quickly, and was flogged by most of the leading Southerners who'd previously led the Confederacy. But at least for the duration of the war, most Confederates were quite explicitly fighting for slavery, NOT for "States Rights." This is slightly OT, I suppose, but I just thought it ought to be mentioned given Jay's repetition of this old canard above. (2) Whatever is or isn't happening in Georgia, the fact is that the teaching of history has never been wonderful in this country, and has been horribly watered down in recent years. Yeah, yeah, various leftists have contributed to this, although I agree with the posters above who point out that virtually none of the "leftist PC" demands have come even remotely close to the kind of wholesale anti-scientism and anti-intellectualism dished out at us by conservative groups. But even at its best, history is poorly taught in this country. You can tell just by the fact that so many kids in our schools profess antipathy bordering on out-and-out hatred of history classes (leastways, they sure did when I was in high school). History, in fact, can be just about the most enjoyable academic subject of all, if done right. But for generations, we've cranked out kids who didn't know squat about it. (I once dated a woman who was a professional historian. She was forever regaling me with troubling stories about kids -- and even college students! -- who couldn't tell you which CENTURY the Civil War had occurred in. Kids who would frequently confuse it with -- for example -- WWII. It was scary!) My brother, now an attorney, at one time taught in the English Department at UCLA. He discovered that his Freshmen classes were horribly unprepared -- the high schools were largely doing a lousy job -- and finally he began throwing over the first two class sessions to a full review of Western history from about 1300 to present. He structured it by following a fictional "middle class family" -- a family of small merchants -- in Germany in 1300, up to when they came to America around 1700, and to the present day. What they believed, at each period of time, about politics, religion, geography, biology, physics, medicine, cultural issues, history, and so forth. What my brother discovered was that most of these kids simply had NO understanding of the totality of western history. They'd been taught it all in little clumps -- "The Discovery of the New World", "The Revolution", "The Progressive Era," and so on -- but had never had it tied together into an over-arching structure that showed the continuity of things. (And I think he might well consider this his most significant success as a college professor: he frequently had students tell him, after the second lecture, that he'd just taught them more in those three hours than they'd learned in ALL of their history courses in high school combined). (3) I agree that Jonah Goldberg and Dennis Miller (and Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh, and Tom DeLay, and and and) are hilarious. Every single thing those clowns spew out just puts me in stitches. Of course (to steal a line from Will Rogers), when Al Franken makes a joke, it's just a joke. But when all these rightwing clowns make a joke, it's national policy! -- Roger
Marsman, Where the issue gets interesting is not why the South seceded but why non-slaveholding southerners would fight for a slaveholders' Confederacy. The mobilization rate is staggering: 85% of white Southerners fought for the Confederacy. Why so many? Here the answers are decidedly mixed, as they are for soldiers in any war. Some fought to protect slavery, some to fight for white supremacy, some to protect their homes from invaders, some because it was faddish in the spring of '61, some because they were drafted, some to protect their slaveholding patrons who bailed them out of trouble when they needed it, some because of mistreatment (real or perceived) by Union army personnel, etc. None of this changes the fact that the underlying cause of the war was that the political leaders of the South feared the institution of slavery was not safe in the hands of a Republican Administration, the Deep South seceded, Lincoln wouldn't budge at Fort Sumter, they attacked Maj. Anderson at Fort Sumter, Lincoln vowed to fight a war to restore the Union and called up 75,000 men, four more states seceded (but four slave states did not), and the war was on. Posted by: Elrod at January 30, 2004 09:49 PM | PERMALINK On the history class spending three weeks on national foundations and the rest of the term on post 1876 in Georgia... R. A. Becker In response to a couple of questions: There is a school of thought (sorry can't give references) that the North wasn't concerned about concern for slaves or preservation of the union as such, they were afraid that were the south to secede, it would repudiate its considerable Northern debt. That is not to excuse the continuing corrupt and immoral social structure of the South, a structure white Southerners have yet to renounce in numbers. The confederacy was an immoral cause and I'm glad the white Southerners were roundly defeated. That doesn't address the question of future secession. Bottom line, if the residents of a state aren't free to secede then they're not free, period. The idea that once states join they can never leave (like Hotel California) is as hard and brittle as iron. If you don't believe me, look up English-language soviet magazines (any university library should have a stockpile) and look at all the articles extolling the 'unbreakable' and 'eternal' nature of the USSR. I'm just saying ... Posted by: Michael Farris at January 31, 2004 12:09 AM | PERMALINKThere is no mention of Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee or anything else associated with those years. It actually makes a change from a GA history curriculum that spends a year telling high school students how the secession was justified over states' rights; how the Union didn't fight fair; and how Reconstruction was a screw-over. It usually means that kids in the South have a pretty limited knowledge of history past the 1870s. But it shouldn't be a toss-up between indoctrination and evasion. Posted by: ahem at January 31, 2004 02:04 AM | PERMALINKV.D.Hansen isn't bad on Greek history; I take it you never read Peter Green in the NY Review of Books on Who Killed Homer? Posted by: ahem at January 31, 2004 02:09 AM | PERMALINKMarsman--who's your brother? I got my graduate degree in English at UCLA. Posted by: englishprofessor at January 31, 2004 04:49 AM | PERMALINKA friend of mine born and raised in Missouri once argued with me over whether Missouri had been a slave state or not. He said it hadn't, because Missouri doesn't have any crops that would benefit from slave labor. Either his history class skipped over the Missouri Compromise (and the Dred Scott case, I guess), or he wasn't there that day... Maybe this latest flap over curriculum alteration in Georgia is just another of those cloud-the-size-of-a-man's-hand things: but I can recall seeing of late (mostly in the blogosphere, since "mainstream" media are hopelessy cowed on this matter) a number of incidences of what can only be termed official revisionism by Southern States regarding the causes and effects of the Civil War: mostly involving their statewide educational systems, and very many choosing to deal with the subject by avoidance (a la Georgia) with the excuse of "testing requirements" advanced to cover up their main objective: removing any objective discussion of the Civil War and its aftermath from school-taught history so that Southern kids can get the "correct" (i.e. blatantly pro-Confederate) interpretation from outside the system. Posted by: Jay C. at January 31, 2004 07:00 AM | PERMALINK What if you are a highly educated professional contemplating settling in Georgia. You see that your children will be educated to pre-Enlightenment standards, and transformed into boobs. Do you go? Does Georgia see the self-inflicted damage? Posted by: BobNJ at January 31, 2004 07:22 AM | PERMALINKMichael Farris - the comment about Lithuania is inapposite as (a) there is no reason to believe that Lithuania joined the USSR voluntarily, and (b) there is every reason to believe that the states of the US joined voluntarily. Posted by: aphrael at January 31, 2004 08:23 AM | PERMALINKFrances FitzGerald's excellent book, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century, explores how history texts have always been written (fabricated, distorted, whatever) to cater to the political power of the day, and to present whatever version of truth or lies will keep that power in power. As in Georgia, i's not about educating the populace to be citizens, but keeping them shit-stupid little consumer drones. Posted by: R. Porrofatto at January 31, 2004 08:38 AM | PERMALINK
The first comment I'd like to make is that I think bobbyp is right on the mark when he says that the general inability of conservatives to make fun of themselves is a little disturbing. I also think that in the past few years the comedic genius of conservatives has been greatly exaggerated. I haven't laughed at anything Dennis Miller has said since he was on Saturday Night Live, and his grating voice is reminiscent of a marriage between John Stossel and a wounded hyena. Ann Coulter's pathetic attempts at "wit" are never half as funny as her "sexy" cover photos. And I don't think we need to mention conservative radio hosts, whose level of humour rarely rises above the level of the DJs on "Morning Zoo Crew" programs. Of course, there are some witty conservatives: PJ O'Rourke has written some funny stuff, although his Evelyn Waugh/Wodehouse shtick has worn quite thin if you ask me. Brooks has a certain pleasant wryness to him, but its limited to the kind of mild chuckle-inducing wit one might find in an especially well-done New Yorker cartoon. The funniest observations about liberals tend not to come from people you would label as "conservatives". For instance, I think Mike Judge's "King of the Hill" is the funniest show on television, and one which more often than not spends its time making fun of liberal hang-ups. Hank Hill is also one of the very few well-drawn, sympathetic conservative characters on television. But I wouldn't say that Mike Judge or his writers were in any normal sense "conservatives" in terms of their politics... There are humourless people on both sides of the political spectrum, but it seems like the unsmiling vegan left-wing activists have gotten a lot more attention than the far more numerous unsmiling hordes of shrill libertarians and abstinence advocates. One reason might be that the right has recently been able to disguise its own pretentiousness far better than the left has. They have the entire "anti-intellectual" card to play, and they play it quite well, so that they just appear to be "plain folks". Liberals feed into this by inappropriately targeting much of their humour at "plain folks", attacking the lifestyles of "rednecks" and other generally apolitical people, when they should be focusing more attention on their natural rivals, the intellectual right. Currently, its a case of assymetric warfare. Liberals can look mean-spirited because they attack the weakest point of the opposing coalition (uneducated "social" conservatives in rural areas, homophobes, etc.), people that really can't fight back themselves. Another point: even when liberals do attack conservative intellectuals in comedic ways, they tend to focus most of their attention on funny aspects of their *policies* rather than on funny aspects of the conservatives *as people*. This is not very effective. Here liberals should be a little more ruthless. Good satire should cut to the bone, should actually make its targets feel insecure about themselves--it shouldn't just make the satirists and their allies feel smug about themselves. Gogol was the best at this sort of thing. But liberals today tend to just assume that their intellectual opponents are *stupid*, instead of really getting to understand and attack the *ugliness* and *pretentiousness* of the conservative intellectual. That's a losing propostion. aphrael: "the comment about Lithuania is inapposite as (a) there is no reason to believe that Lithuania joined the USSR voluntarily, and (b) there is every reason to believe that the states of the US joined voluntarily." Well IIRC there was some sort of bogus post WWII election the USSR could point to (and did) but the more important point is that voluntarily joining has nothing to do with voluntarily leaving, especially if none of the voluntary joiners are still alive. For the record I don't think any states have significant majorities in favor of secession and if my own home state (Florida) were to have such an election I'm pretty sure I'd vote against it (I'm actually a little astonished we haven't just been unceremoniously kicked out yet, to tell the truth). But in theory the possibility has to remain open. Posted by: Michael Farris at January 31, 2004 09:51 AM | PERMALINKIt is a shame that one may be forced to choose between people who either refuse to teach the history of the Civil War, or those who refuse to teach the literature of Mark Twain. For those of you who often embrace central planning in the delivery of goods and services (other than perhaps computers, T.V.'s and automobiles), does the prospect of having central planners deign that the history of the Civil War will not be taught give you any reason to re-examine the wisdom of embracing such delivery systems? Or do you continue to simply assume that the right "experts" will be in power? Posted by: Will Allen at January 31, 2004 10:02 AM | PERMALINKMr. Farris raises one of the central conumdrums of self-government; to what degree are people today legitimately obligated to agreements made by people long since dead? The answer is far from obvious, and has implications in just about all areas of public debate. Posted by: Will Allen at January 31, 2004 10:06 AM | PERMALINKI just keep wondering what it would be like to be an African American kid in Georgia and be taught that curriculum... Posted by: pbg at January 31, 2004 10:39 AM | PERMALINK"Frankly the argument to allow secession is a pretty strong one, that would find a lot of supporters these days. If a majority of a state wants to leave the Union, why shouldn't that be allowed? Don't we believe in popular sovereignty?" So kick out the remaining US citizens after you secede. Lordy, I wish the (net federal donor) Democratic states could split off from the (net federal parasite) Republican states. The real problem is what to do with the nuclear weapons. I really don't want a nuclear armed CSA next to a nuclear armed USA. Jus' wouldn't feel safe.
There is a school of thought (sorry can't give references) that the North wasn't concerned about concern for slaves or preservation of the union as such, they were afraid that were the south to secede, it would repudiate its considerable Northern debt. This is not, in fact, an actual school of thought, but neo-Confederate blather. Posted by: John at January 31, 2004 12:10 PM | PERMALINKSo kick out the remaining US citizens after you secede. Lordy, I wish the (net federal donor) Democratic states could split off from the (net federal parasite) Republican states. I know you're just being snarky but no, you don't. See India and the Partition thereof. Posted by: Anarch at January 31, 2004 12:13 PM | PERMALINKWill Allen, Or do you continue to simply assume that the right "experts" will be in power? Almost by definition, anyone who determines that an American history curriculum should essentially omit the Civil War is not an "expert". Posted by: Anarch at January 31, 2004 12:25 PM | PERMALINKMichael Farris: "There is a school of thought (sorry can't give references) that the North wasn't concerned about concern for slaves or preservation of the union as such, they were afraid that were the south to secede, it would repudiate its considerable Northern debt. John: This is not, in fact, an actual school of thought, but neo-Confederate blather. Neo-confederates (my least favorite people in the world, just about) may also take this position, but I heard about it from definite non-neo-confederates. I sincerely doubt if neo-segregationists have the intellectual firepower to conceive of such an argument although they may latch onto it once others have done the heavy lifting. Did southern states owe northern states? (I honestly don't know) Posted by: Michael Farris at January 31, 2004 12:34 PM | PERMALINKWell, Anarch, you sort of have confirmed my point. I put the word expert in scare quotes to illustrate that, for practical purposes, what is considered expert is often merely a function of who holds power. The central conceit of those who embrace central planning, whether it be in health care, education, or steel production, is the assumption that the preferred "experts" will exercise power, and that the "experts" will have sufficient knowledge, thus allowing centrally planned regimes to provide optimum results. This assumption has been shown to be in error on so many different occasions that it is puzzling that so many continue to embrace it in an uncritical way. It leads one to suspect that either the assumption is Faith-based, or merely a strategy for obtaining power. Posted by: Will Allen at January 31, 2004 01:04 PM | PERMALINKThe central conceit of those who embrace central planning, whether it be in health care, education, or steel production, is the assumption that the preferred "experts" will exercise power, and that the "experts" will have sufficient knowledge, thus allowing centrally planned regimes to provide optimum results. And the central conceit of those who embrace local planning, in whatever regard, is that the preferred local "experts" will be similarly endowed. Which may or may not be true, but is hardly an a priori argument. Now one can argue, with much merit, that "central planning" in economic matters is a bad thing, although I would counter-argue that it depends on how one defines the term. However, economic matters are inherently local: what I want to buy is different from what you so desire. [Necessity is a slightly different criterion, but we'll let that pass for now.] When one considers the topic, one has to recognize that history qua history, and science qua science are not local matters, nor should their theories be opened up to the vicissitudes of local practitioners. What I choose to buy when I head out to the grocery store in a few minutes is a qualitatively different matter than whether a biology educator chooses to add creationism to the curriculum -- no matter whether the educator is working the classroom or determining national policy. All of which may summarized by saying that you indeed have a point, though not the one you think: being an expert on such matters is (or at least, should be) a non-trivial matter that needs some kind of independent verification process... and, to reiterate the crux, regardless of the expert's jurisdiction. Posted by: Anarch at January 31, 2004 01:41 PM | PERMALINKPosted by Will Allen: "what is considered expert is often merely a function of who holds power. The central conceit of those who embrace central planning, whether it be in health care, education, or steel production, is the assumption that the preferred "experts" will exercise power, and that the "experts" will have sufficient knowledge, thus allowing centrally planned regimes to provide optimum results. This assumption has been shown to be in error" Your desire to turn this discussion into a debate of the merits of capitalism vs socialism is evident, despite that I've seen no strong movement of socialistic advocacy in Calpundit columns or comments -- and despite that it's a bit of a stretch to relate your pet viewpoints to these matters concerning school curricula . But for the sake of argument, let's suppose all you say about central planning "experts" is smack-dab accurate. To do that, of course, we need to put aside the widely accepted notion that most expertise for the performance of particular duties in a position is gathered during the actual performance of those duties, rather than being acquired in prior training. But we'll strike any such supposition and assume total accuracy of your assertions. But even in doing that, why does it follow that we should not make an equal assumption that a "central conceit of those who embrace" free market "planning, whether it be in health care, education, or steel production, is the assumption that the preferred "experts" will exercise power, and that the "experts" will have sufficient knowledge, thus allowing" free market "regimes to provide optimum results" ... and that "this assumption has been shown to be in error?" Are those who hold and exercise the actual power in the free markets necessarily experts at health care, education, or steel production? Isn't it true that their greatest expertise generally amounts to preserving and increasing their own power, just as you might accuse is the chief ability of central planning power wielders? To be sure, they may develop the added ability of maximizing profits. But your assertions regarding central planning, even when accepted, in no way demonstrate that "optimum results" will be achieved via the free market. Optimum for whom? Certainly not for those who are not served because there is insufficient profit in doing so. Neither for those who are unable to pay inflated prices due to exorbitant salaries for non-expert power holders. And it's hardly an optimum result for someone whose job is outsourced in order to optimize corporate profits. The entire debate boils down to a definition of "optimum." In the free market model it is largely a matter of maximizing corporate profits, the methods of which vary in their beneficial affect on the general public. The theory of central planning is to minimize that variance and maximize benefit to all. I don't know about you, but I'm glad that when I get on the freeway that it doesn't change every couple of miles from six lanes to a dirt road and then wood planks and then two-lane blacktop and then gravel and then four lanes and then an overgrown path and then a toll booth when I pass your house. Posted by: jayarbee at January 31, 2004 02:56 PM | PERMALINKHowver, Anarch, you miss the point that the more decentralized a decision-making process is, the less opportunity there is for a wrongly informed "expert" to impose the "expert's" will on other entities, and you still miss the point that any "independent verification process" is entirely dependent on who wields power, and on how centralized that power is. The problem with Stalin's views on genetics was not that Stalin was a scientific imbecile, although he was, it was that Stalin had the power to impose his imbecility on everyone within the Soviet Union. Now, having, elected representatives is certainly an improvement over despotism, in terms of avoiding centrally imposed lunacy, but it is a conceit of the the advocates of central planning in the U.S. that republican government is wholly adequate to prevent the pitfalls of too much central control. It is not. Posted by: Will Allen at January 31, 2004 03:04 PM | PERMALINKJayarebee, I am out of time, but briefly, the difference between most centrally planned regimes and most market-based regimes is how diffuse the decision making is, and thus how powerful any one entity is. That markets can sometimes result in monopolies, with the subsequent lack of diffusion in decision making, or that diffuse decision making is sometimes entirely impractical, is not,per se, a good argument for central planning by political bodies. This would benefit from further exploration, but I gotta go... Posted by: Will Allen at January 31, 2004 03:12 PM | PERMALINKPosted by Will Allen: "That markets can sometimes result in monopolies, with the subsequent lack of diffusion in decision making, or that diffuse decision making is sometimes entirely impractical, is not,per se, a good argument for central planning by political bodies." Which is why, among other reasons, I did not argue for central planning nor assert its overall superiority, save the example I gave regarding highway construction. But my point is that -your- arguments against central planning do not, per se, constitute a good argument for free market planning, which was their clearly intended purpose. Posted by Will Allen: "the more decentralized a decision-making process is, the less opportunity there is for a wrongly informed "expert" to impose the "expert's" will on other entities..." Also, "Now, having, elected representatives is certainly an improvement over despotism, in terms of avoiding centrally imposed lunacy, but it is a conceit of the the advocates of central planning in the U.S. that republican government is wholly adequate to prevent the pitfalls of too much central control. It is not." Oooh, hanging curveball. I take it you're referring to Mssrs. Bush, Paige, and Thompson? V.D.Hansen isn't bad on Greek history; I take it you never read Peter Green in the NY Review of Books on Who Killed Homer? Who Killed Homer isn't a Greek history book but a screed on what Hanson considers excessive PC. When he talks about Spartan conquests on the history channel, e.g., he knows what he's talking about; when he talks about the influence of feminism in the contemporary academy he's just another angry white guy. Posted by: P. Clodius at January 31, 2004 04:15 PM | PERMALINKHowver, Anarch, you miss the point that the more decentralized a decision-making process is, the less opportunity there is for a wrongly informed "expert" to impose the "expert's" will on other entities... I'm perfectly aware of these arguments, which were addressed peripherally by myself and more explicitly by jayarbee. What you seem to be failing to acknowledge -- although I might perhaps have missed it -- is that the less centralized the decision-making process, the greater the individual variance of the decision-makers and thus the more chance that any individual instance will unacceptably deviate from the norm. Note here the implicit use of the key criterion: the fact that there is, up to some reasonable degree of acceptance, a norm. [Also of acceptability, which is less well-defined.] One could of course dispute the way in which the outcomes of the Civil War should be presented, for example, but one cannot argue that the Civil War is unimportant to an American History class and be considered an "expert". ...and you still miss the point that any "independent verification process" is entirely dependent on who wields power... And? This isn't exactly news, Will. And it doesn't address the implicit dichotomy you're drawing between local and global "experts". ...and on how centralized that power is. Huh. You seem to be asserting that this problem doesn't exist in decentralized systems. That somehow "experts" spring up locally, extrinsic to any global structure, and that it is only by centralized tampering that this natural expertise is somehow corrupted. If that is, in fact, what you're asserting then I'd say the onus is on you to demonstrate this. If not, I'd ask you to amplify your position somewhat so that I may properly address it. Posted by: Anarch at January 31, 2004 06:51 PM | PERMALINK"Did southern states owe northern states?" On Michael Farris' question about debt obligations the evidence doesn't bear this out. Slave-produced cotton was the Number One export of the United States in 1860. It was financed by "factors" in Southern cities who maintained close financial relationships to financiers in New York, Boston and in England and France. Southern debts would fluctuate but were never a significant sectional issue. Another oft-mentioned "alternative" explanation is the tariff, with the South opposing it and the North supporting it. The evidence for this usually the post-hoc Republican Party policy of raising the tariff once assuming power. But this ignores the fact that for much of the North the tariff was hated too, and for some fledgling Southern industrialists in cities like Richmond and Augusta the tariff was popular. Senator Jefferson Davis, in 1860, basically concluded that the existing tariff rates were not sufficiently egregious enough to drive the South into secession, nor were they odious enough to draw universal support among a South with a still-strong ex-Whig population (which famously supported Kentuckian Henry Clay's high tariff). As for states' rights, here lies one of the great ironies of antebellum politics. Many Southerners DID complain about the infringements on states' rights - and particularly on the "illegal" attempts of Northerners to trample upon the rights of slavery "protected by the Constitution." However the most pressing issue in the 1850s was NORTHERN states' refusal to enforce the Federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. States like Wisconsin and Massachusetts essentially annulled Federal laws - via Personal Liberty Laws or state court actions - to the dismay of Southerners intent on a more powerful Federal government with respect to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. States' rights cut both ways but with the election of a Republican Administration Southern political leaders feared the Republicans would a) no longer enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, b) never let a new slave state join the Union and c) establish a vigorous southern Republican party among yeomen to compete with planter control of the Southern Democratic Party. For these reasons South Carolina, and later the other Deep South states, decided they could protect their slave property more securely outside the Union than within it. Posted by: Elrod at January 31, 2004 11:16 PM | PERMALINKCanadians seem to be able to contemplate the secession of Quebec -- which came within a few percentage points of being approved in a referendum -- without supposing the sky would fall if it came about. I don't see why we would should root around for some deep principle of political philosophy in an attempt to rule out the secession of states from the Union. And I wonder how many today would be willing to fight another war on the scale of the Civil War -- which killed more Americans than all this country's other wars combined -- to prevent secession from happening? A new Confederacy certainly wouldn't be a pretty sight. At the very least, I think, there would be a strong attempt to re-institute legal segregation and to establish Christianity -- though probably not any particular sect of it -- as the official religion. But what's happening to America now isn't pretty either. Posted by: SqueakyRat at February 1, 2004 06:30 AM | PERMALINKAnother change occuring is that students will be informed that they actually live in a former province, now country spun off of the old USSR. Posted by: whether at February 1, 2004 07:13 AM | PERMALINKElrod hit the nail squarely on the head with his reminder about the infamous (well, in the North, anyway) Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 - This piece of legislation had been extorted out of Congress by Southern interests as part of a general package of acts resolving the issue of slavery in the terrritories acquired from Mexico after the War of 1846-48: it fundamentally required ALL States (even those where slavery was banned) to recognize the "property rights" of slaveholders, and moreover, REQUIRE the assistance of the Federal courts and government in maintaining and enforcing said "rights". IIRC, this even entailed having once to call out Regular Army troops in Boston to keep the "mob" from freeing a black runaway being forcibly repatriated to his former owner (1853). Southern hypocrisy regarding States' Rights v. Federalism was widely noted antebellum (i.e., all for Federal "intervention" when it suited their interests, opposed otherwise), in almost every case, the "right" being claimed was related to the preservation of slavery. Posted by: Jay C. at February 1, 2004 08:43 AM | PERMALINKSherman's March to the Sea "In 1864, a large portion of the buildings and farms in the state were destroyed by an unknown force. Some historians suspect an earthquake." Posted by: Thlayli at February 1, 2004 09:20 AM | PERMALINKThe person who noted the blather taught in Southern schools about the Civil War (when anything was taught at all) was correct. What was taught was as much Southern revisionism as true history, where the South's generals were wise and beloved by all, and our President, Jefferson Davis, was a true patriot. Then in college, I took a course on Louisiana history that was taught by the man who wrote "the" definitive book on the subject (at the time). I was shocked to learn that resistance to the draft was ferocious -- a large percentage of the young male population of Louisiana fled to the woods with guns, and held off the jayhawkers who wanted to impress them into the Army. I was shocked to learn that Jefferson Davis was widely thought at the time to be a rigid dictator whose policies and micromanagement of the South's Army and economy had led to disaster for the South. It was not until after the Civil War, when the North mistreated Jefferson Davis, that Southern revisionism turned him into a hero of the Confederacy. By the end of the Civil War most Southerners hated the man's guts for what his dictatorial exercise of power had done to them. It was not until this course that I learned about the KKK (the original one), about the Second Battle of New Orleans in 1874 and the Battle of Coushatta in 1873 where the former Confederates, with their vast advantage in firepower and experience in warfare, successfully defeated the police forces of the governments that had been elected by the majority of the people (the black majority) and installed their own governments into power at gunpoint, and the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1876 which tacitly acknowledged the new balance of power, thus restoring the Confederacy to power in Louisiana with the tacit understanding with a tired Northern populance (that for 10 years had paid high taxes to occupy the South with armed soldiers) that as long as Louisiana pretended to be part of the United States and pretended to not have slavery, the North would not interfere. When I later moved to North Carolina, I learned that similar things had happened there as Reconstruction failed utterly and totally due to widespread armed resistance by partisans fighting for the restoration of former Confederates to office (the last gasp of popular government in North Carolina was the so-called "Wilmington Riots", where the last popularly-elected city government in North Carolina was forced out of office at gunpoint and white businessmen installed in their place). Why were we taught pablum in K-12 schools? Well, the above section of U.S. history is just too controversial. The Daughters of the Confederacy would march upon the school board with pitchforks and torches if they allowed teaching anything but Southern revisionism. Mentioning the role of the White Leagues and KKK in the failure of Reconstruction and the denial of the vote to the black majority by armed partisans of the former Confederacy (who would stand outside the polling places with openly displayed guns and stop any black man who dared try to push past them to vote, even to the point of holding a necktie party if one got particularly uppity) similarly would not be allowed. The end result of this toxic environment of fiction and lies was that the South was turned into a wasteland of ignorance and poverty for a generation. It was not until the dislocations of WWII that the South started rejoining the United States economically -- before then, life in the South was much as it had been in 1876, i.e., an impoverished nation of sharecroppers working the cotton fields by hand in conditions of near-slavery. It was not until the late 1960's that the South started rejoining the United States culturally. The point is that lies and fictions are toxic to economic and cultural growth, and result in a nation becoming an impoverished backwater from which the best and brightest flee at the first opportunity. The former Confederates did this to the South with their lies and fictions. Now it appears that their successors are trying to do it again -- first in Georgia, then in the rest of the nation. Posted by: BadTux at February 1, 2004 12:05 PM | PERMALINKNew York was a slave state until the 1820's. And I'd be surprised if one in a thousand high school seniors here know it. Posted by: JM at February 1, 2004 01:18 PM | PERMALINKUm, I hate to be a party-pooper but GA is NOT eliminating the Civil War from the school curriculum. It's removing the Civil War from the high school curriculum and moving it into the primary grades--5th and 8th, to be exact. Posted by: maja at February 1, 2004 01:35 PM | PERMALINKSo when is White History month? Since it's "obviously" not racist to set priority for a given race, and not divisive in any way, I want my white history month... oh and chicano history month, and arabic history month __ No anarch, I am arguing that systems which allow "experts" to impose their will on people, people who do not have to be convinced to participate voluntarily, are dangerous, and that, whenever possible,it is preferable to have decentralized sytems in which participation is voluntary, and those who hold power in said systems must convince others to to participate. I think it is dangerous to have an education system in which a minority, a plurality, or even a majority, can decide that the history of the Civil War, or the literature of Mark Twain shall not be taught, and because education is dominated by the power of the state, that minority, plurality, or majority can largely succeed in forcing others to adopt their view of the world. Without central control, will people deviate from the "norm"? Yes, but that isn't necessarily considered to be a defect, once it is understood that those who choose forcibly imposed "norms" aren't to trusted any more than anyone else. There are situations in which state domination is unavoidable, of course. National defense is the most obvious, but it is far from obvious that the people of this modern , affluent, nation cannot achieve better educational results through far less state control and domination than currently exists. Jayarebee, if you wish to engage in quantitative historical analysis, in an effort to determine whether state dominated central planning, or decentralized market systems, most often satisfies the largest percentages of people, well, there is is alost of data out there. who he, since I'd be happy to completely defund the Federal Department of Education, your comments are not akin to a swing at a curve ball, but rather more akin to a blindfolded person swinging wildly at a pinata, not understanding that he isn't within 50 fett of his intended target. Posted by: Will Allen at February 2, 2004 08:57 AM | PERMALINKActually, I think that the AP History test is on that era so that the AP history courses are concentrating on it. In my kids high school, the 10th grade history course covers the period up to and including the civil war. The 11th grade is an AP course and covers the era after the civil war. Just a thought, maybe it is not a nefarious--but then again, maybe it is! :-) Posted by: Tom at February 6, 2004 04:37 AM | PERMALINK
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