Friday’s quick picks
Bookworm on Mar 07 2008 at 6:29 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I don’t have anything lengthy to say about any of the followings, but I think they’re all worth reading or viewing:
1. A California Appellate Court has issued a ruling that essentially ends homeschooling in California. You already know. What got me about this article on the subject was this:
The ruling was applauded by a director for the state’s largest teachers union.
“We’re happy,” said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. “We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting.”
DQ, when I spoke with him about this, said that everyone/every industry likes rulings that operate in their favor. He also noted that lawyers would probably cheer a ruling that made it illegal for people to represent themselves in court. As is usually the case with DQ, he’s right, but I find something particularly nefarious about the teachers’ union. While it ostensibly exists to ensure that individual teachers get living wages and decent benefits, its real purpose is to ensure a perpetual, stagnant, ineffective government monopoly over education. This is not just a marketplace benefit they’re celebrating, it’s the further destruction of the marketplace in favor of the government.
2. Burt Prelutsky isn’t always my cup of tea, since I find some of his columns too concerned with things I consider, well, less than interesting — to the point at which even his charming writing style can’t transcend the topic. That’s not the case with his column today, which is a scathing attack on a baker’s dozen of liberal tropes in the form of a twelve step program for giving up liberalism. Here, for example, is step 12:
Step #12: Stop bashing the U.S. military and the Boy Scouts. The only reason you have the ability to shoot your mouth off is because men and women braver and better than you sacrificed life and limb for your right to do so. As for the Boy Scouts, they are absolutely right to keep homosexuals from taking youngsters on camping trips. While it’s true that many gays are perfectly fine people and that very few homosexuals are pedophiles, there’s no reason on earth to take unnecessary risks just so we can all prove how broadminded we are. For what it’s worth, as decent as most Catholic priests are, I wouldn’t let them take youngsters into the woods, either. It’s fine to be compassionate and understanding, but let the gays among us be understanding for a change and acknowledge that, every so often, commonsense should trump political correctness.
3. Mike Adams is right: Ann Coulter has gone from the boundaries to moving beyond the pale. I was slow to accept it, but I have to agree that she’s just trying to get press now, without any regard for honor, decency or intelligence.
4. Jonah Goldberg brings a bit of logic to the tortured arguments emanating from the Left in its ongoing effort to emasculate and then destroy Israel:
“Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care,” Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director, told The Telegraph. “Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible.”
There are a few problems here. First, food, clean water, electricity and medical care may be all kinds of things, but they aren’t human rights. They may indeed be the minimum obligations a modern state must meet in terms of its citizens’ needs, but there is no inalienable right to material stuff.
More important, we are constantly told that the Palestinians aren’t Israel’s people. Whatever obligations Israel might have to provide food, water, electricity and health care to its own citizens, it’s not clear why it has those obligations to the Gazans, particularly when those Gazans are committed to the destruction of Israel.
Human-rights groups say Israel must provide these things because Israel is the “occupying power.” But Israel no longer occupies Gaza, which Amnesty knows. That’s why they say Israel’s “blockade” of Gaza is indistinguishable from occupation.
But whether or not “blockade” is the right word for Israel’s actions, it’s not the same thing as an occupation. America had a blockade of sorts against Iraq for a decade. Then we occupied it. If there’s no difference between the blockade and the occupation, what has everyone been arguing about?
5. And lastly, DQ emailed me an oldie but goodie, which is a link to a video exposing absolutely the travesty that is the “Bush lied, people died” mantra. With elections coming up soon, it’s worth watching again.
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If you haven’t seen it, you migh want to check out Drew Carey’s video at Instapundit about a mini-revolt about education in LA.
http://instapundit.com/archives2/015996.php
It deals fairly extensively with the Teachers Union and the picture it paints is not a pretty one.
Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care,”
Excuse me, but it is the other way around. Israel has a DUTY to protect its citizens, and a right, meaning a free decision, to ensure that Gazans have access to continued survival.
The fact that people have it upside down is precisely why Israel gets the blame and the self-blame as well. Nobody can make the right choices when their philosophy is screwed up, Book.
Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director
That kind of explains a lot. Reactive conservative organizations like AMnesty International is still stuck on Israel occupies Gaza as a propaganda line.
But Israel no longer occupies Gaza, which Amnesty knows.
When you live in lala land, you don’t really know the things that you should know. You know.
5. And lastly, DQ emailed me an oldie but goodie, which is a link to a video exposing absolutely the travesty that is the “Bush lied, people died” mantra.
Nothing prevents Democrats from lying and getting people killed, so long as it is the right people, Book.
BW,
I spotted the homeschool issue on another site and found, not surprisingly, that the reporting was off by a significant measure. The situation was not a simple “homeschool vs. traditional” one; it was a finding that a family could not enroll their children in a charter school and then claim to be homeschooling during excessive absences. If the update (I think it was over at Ace of Spades) is correct, the parents were trying to get diplomas for their kids based on mom’s say-so that she home schooled them about 1/3 of the time and that should count for attendence in the regular school, too.
I don’t like the teachers’ unions at all, but if a child is enrolled in school, especially a publicly funded charter school, then the child should go there. The ruling does not, as I understand, prevent the parent (even one without an education degree) from homeschooling their child. The analogy I was given by a friend during a discussion is that of sending Tommy to school A during football season because they have a great team and then pulling him out to homeschool the rest of the year to make sure he can stay eligible for next fall - based on his parent(s) stating that he made good enough grades.
Anyhow, I’ll leave the rest of my rant off; I just wanted to share.
SGT Dave - “Education is more than words on paper and the lecture hall; education is what you receive watching your parents’ love, your mother’s tireless efforts, and your father’s devotion to duty.”
Hmm, well:
#1 - DQ is precisely correct, but I suspect the ruling will not stand. The ocuntry, oddly enough, is not in business to keep the teacher’s unions in business, and the probability is that the supreme court, if no one else, knows it.
#2 - I never heard of Bert Prelutsky, so can’t say if he’s my cup of tea or not, but the cited article was pretty good.
#3 - Mike Adams impresses me not at all. (In fact, both NR and Townhall have been less and less impressive in recent years.) Coulter is at least funny, whereas Adams specializes in being tendentious. A laugh every now and again is a good thing, and if you aren’t bright enough to figure out what Coulter’s doing, well, then… you aren’t very bright.
#4 - Good for Goldberg. If Israel were indeed occupying Gaza then Amnesty might have a point: there is a presumptive obligation to care for prisoners (though most of the rest of the world cheerfully ignores it in practice), and I suppose the argument could be made that those under occupation would presumptively be analogous to being prisoners - but Israel does not occupy Gaza. When you assert that a blockade is no different than an occupation, then you’re just an idiot. Germany blockaded England during the Second World War, but I would posit that most English people would have been damned surprised to find they were in any sense occupied. Amnesty has become like the ACLU: beneath consideration. These are not serious people, and Goldberg is correct not to take them seriously.
#5 - The only people who don’t know at this point are those with a vested interest in not knowing - such as the empty suit who couldn’t find the senatorial men’s room for a year and half. Real people know, and have known.
These are not serious people, and Goldberg is correct not to take them seriously.
These are very serious people. One should never disregard one’s mortal enemies. The same applies to the ACLU and Amnesty.
They are quite serious about bringing humanity to its knees.