Friday’s quick picks
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.
