Total Pageviews

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Waiting For Superman (aka what Stossel did years ago)

Subsidizing private schools is A-OK with the free-market.



Waiting For Superman
is basically the sanitized and more mainstream version of what right-wingers have been making movies about for years.

Films and TV programs like Free to Choose, 20/20 Stupid in America and The Cartel have been making the exact same educational conclusions since before there was even an "education crisis" and sadly with the impetus of the failure of NCLB this film might inspire (or rather legitimize) a movement to completely destroy the educational system.

The "Reforms"

Literally in lockstep with previous works, the movie follows charming kids as they wait in anticipation to be accepted into a wonderful charter school which will guarantee their success in life, while "exposing" the corruption of the public school system (read: evil teachers unions).

What's interesting is that the film never mentions how Charters on-average perform worse then public schools (and how the kids most disadvantaged perform better in public schools then in charters) or even acknowledge any non-right-wing solutions

Actual Reforms The Film Ignores

The film likes to point out how low-ranked the US is among other countries in education but doesn't look at the top-performers and ask why.

In Finland for instance (which the film acknowledged as the highest ranked country by PISA) there is almost no testing, teachers unions and tenure, strict teaching requirements, a national curriculum and almost no ability grouping.
In fact, the closest system in the US is Massachusetts which is also considered the best state to get an education in.

For some reason, the film doesn't put two and two together and suggest a national standard with limited testing and better teacher pay and requirements (as well as more teacher tenure, something more extensive in Finland then in the US).

The Media and the Film

The film has a predictable symbiotic relationship with what the media thinks is the problem. It gets rave reviews and at the same time, gives the people in the media exactly what they want to hear: it's the teachers unions we need to stop and put in more charters (even when the evidence is completely against them).

Even liberal reviewers like Roger Ebert agree with the message saying "[Charter school] lotteries are truly random...Yet most of the winners will succeed, and half the losers (from the same human pool) will fail. This is an indictment: Our schools do not work."
except that the opposite is true: going to a public school is better then going to a charter.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Authoritarian versus Libertarian morality (my stupid pet theory)

While almost everyone talks about whether people are left or right economically, it's important to note how someone is morally when it comes to authority.

As the title implies, this is an unproven pet theory which I made after watching George Lakoff videos on youtube at 2 AM in the morning.

The problem is that Lakoff tries to split morality into the different camps of "conservative" and "liberal" because he assumes that politics works like a straight line, it doesn't. Politics works like this:

and morality is the up and down line.

How did Hitler Think?

Yes we seriously have to answer this question. What makes authoritarians (Hitler and otherwise) think they should have so much authority, and why do libertarians (no not like the Libertarian Party, just libertarian in relation to authority in general) hate it so much?

The reason lies in how we think of other people, whether or not we think other people are moral or intelligent enough to run the world determine our outlooks on life. So going back to the original question, How did Hitler view the world?

Well I never read Mein Keimpf so I can't tell for sure, but chances are he thought people are corrupt, immoral, stupid, and of course, evil, so they can't run their affairs in the way they wish and need to succumb to the absolute role of a dictatorship.

Authoritarians and Libertarians

Based on this idea, we have two different outlooks on life, and since I'm assuming most people aren't very authoritarian, I'll start with that one:

Authoritarian Morality

The tenets go something like this:
  • Children are born "evil" in the sense that they don't know right from wrong
  • Children need to be disciplined to be taught to what's good and moral
  • Someone who's disciplined enough, can survive in the world, someone whose not, can't
  • Those "moral" should rule over the "non-moral" (since the "non-moral" can't rule themselves)
  • The "moral" should be given lots of authority to discipline the "non-moral"
Crazy stuff right? But the logic makes sense, if most people are evil and stupid, why should they be able to make decisions? That's the reason why authoritarians hate democracy, it allows for the "non-moral" to make policy and wreck the country. Just as a final note, "non-moral" is just a catch-all term to mean people who are evil, stupid, corrupt etc.

Libertarian Morality

The tenets are almost the exact opposite:
  • Children are born inherently "good" and know right from wrong
  • External pressures or circumstances turn people "evil" or immoral
  • Since people know right from wrong, they should be given freedom to rule themselves
  • Interfering with people's freedom is only going to make them worse off since people are inherently good
That's libertarianism in a nutshell, the idea that people should rule over themselves because most people are good.

One or the Other?

Now obviously libertarian morality sounds great, I mean who would want to go against freedom? But the truth is, people have both authoritarian and libertarian morality, and for good reason.

Imagine a situation where society has become so libertarian that crimes like rape and murder simply go unpunished. That every crime is completely the fault of an external force. It would be chaos, and the rule of law was designed to prevent that from happening. Likewise, we can imagine a situation where martial law is implemented and completely represses society.

Taken in extremes, both are can be bad which is why people typically have a little of both. What defines people, is how much more of one they have then another.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Christopher Hitchens's "Four Reasons" For Invading Iraq (also Cancer)

Anyone who's even the slightest bit political knows by now that Christopher Hitchens has cancer and would be lucky to even live five more years.
But this isn't about that, this is the belated debunking of Christopher Hitchens's justifications for going to Iraq, which, despite being fairly well articulated break down when someone looks at them at even the most basic level.

The "Four Reasons"


Hitchens lays out the four reasons for why the US had to invade very simply in a bloggingheads debate with Eric Alternman, and since Alterman's view of the world is limited to talking points from the Center of American Progress, he can't simply refute them and loses the argument.


They are as follows:

1. Saddam committed Genocide by gassing the Kurds

2. Saddam invaded his Neighbors
3. Saddam "fooled around" with nuclear weapons
4. Saddam gave aid to terrorists

As ridiculous as some of these reasons are, Hitchens seems to fail to understand how almost all of these can be traced to US support and authorization and how, by his logic, there would need to be Nuremburg-style trials for Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush Sr. as well as Saddam.


Reason 1. Where did Saddam get his chemical weapons?


The United States. Shocker, I know. Actually Saddam’s genocide of the Kurds needs to be put in context to US support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. After the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, the US scrambled to support Saddam and green-lit a full-out attack on Iran. This was guaranteed through loans, "Bear Spare" military aid and of course chemical weapons.


Chemical weapons and the Al-Anafl Campaign


Saddam launched a massive campaign to ethnically cleanse the Kurdish population from 1986 to 1989 using things such as concentration camps. In 1988, Saddam gassed thousands of Kurds using mustard gas, killing about 5,000 and injuring about 11,000 heightening the campaign.


There are three things which allowed this to happen:


1. Iraq was removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, allowing US companies to export technology and mustard gas

2. The US Congress supplied 70 shipments of 8 different kinds of Anthrax to Saddam directly (although Anthrax wasn't used against the Kurds).
3. The US lobbied the UN not to punish Saddam

Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust Canada with 70 shipments of Anthrax let alone a dictator who beheads women. The blame for this is so patently spread out to the US it's ridiculous, you don't supply a genocidal country chemical weapons then lobby the UN not to take action and absolve yourself of responsibility.

Reason 2. Iraq Invading Iran? Good. Invading Kuwait? Bad.

Hitchens seems to find no problem with the US supplying Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war but apparently it's bad when Saddam invades Kuwait (oh right, oil). The invasion of Kuwait itself can be attributed to poor communication on the part of April Glaspie who suggested to Saddam that he can invade Kuwait without repercussion and Iraq's desperate economy after the US armed it to invade Iran.

He also seems to be citing the UN charter's definition of aggression as the justification for invading. Apparently US aggression against Iraq (which has been called by the likes of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz and even Richard Perle as an "illegal war") doesn't count as aggression that needs to be prosecuted.


So, If China invades the US for an illegal war against Iraq (aggression), Chris would have a problem, but not when the US is illegally invading Iraq for illegally invading Iran.


Reason 3. "Fooling around" with a French-bought Nuclear reactor


Saddam's regime bought the Osirak reactor from France and had in part violated the NPT by "[violating] its safeguards agreement with the IAEA" but which was later in 2002 remedied as Iraq "removed all known weapon usable materials".

In Hitchen's mind, this justifies an attack and of course, the thought of holding France accountable for selling a nuclear reactor to a genocidal dictator never even crossed his mind.

Reason 4. Saddam and his Terrorist friends


By this point, Hitchens is grasping at half-existent straws. First off, no ware in international does it say that a country supporting terrorism needs to be invaded, at best, it can be persecuted by the World Court and be forced to pay reparations like how the US was forced to pay reparations to Nicaragua for supporting the contras (spoiler: the US declined to pay).

That aside, his examples are tenuous at best, he gives examples as to how Iraq funded groups like the PLO and various Palestinian groups, as if supporting terrorist resistance movements warrants an invasion.

“Zarqawi in Iraq = we should invade Iraq”


His “best” example is the case of Zarqawi, who after being injured in Afghanistan, snuck into Iraq and did small time operations without Saddam’s support. The CIA has conclusively found in 2004 that “The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything.” Hitchens also misleading states how after the overthrow of Saddam, the remnants of the Baath party allied with Zarqwi and al-Qaeda as proof we should invade Iraq.

That’s like saying we should invade Iran because future Iranian insurgence will attack the US.

Does the UN matter in all this?


Not to Chris. Apparently countries can claim violations of international law and illegally invade other countries without formal UN approval. Of course Hitchens is probably not against UN approval, but the fact that he tolerates illegal invasions sets a very bad precedent.


The Conclusion of all this?


Christopher Hitchens misinterprets international law to further his dumb beliefs. Also he has Cancer.