The only true liberal?

Economics is not a science and cannot be completely thought through rationally because it's a human system, with all the inherent contradictions and weakness that such an agent implies. Those who would talk about the "wisdom of the market" are misguided. The market system does not contain it's own inherent logic, and it is not a fair system, because humans are not fair. A gulf between rich and poor, such as it now is in the US, is antithetical to a democracy.

We've lacked, for a long time, a viable Democratic candidate who can offer a reasonable set of limits on unbridled capitalism. Clinton didn't do it. Perhaps Carter tried to do it. I'd like to see some wealth redistribution and as dubious as Edwards is in some respects, he's the only candidate who really seems to take on the taboo of the very real class war that is played out every day in America. Class is the unmentionable word. In America, it's all the more insidious because it remains unmentionable. It's unacceptable in a country with so much wealth, to have so much deprivation.

The only "true liberal" candidate that I can see is John Edwards. Here's his stance on the issues. He seems to be the only candidate that is in solidarity with the working class. I may have to end up voting for him.

Though some of my friends and many of my acquaintances may be aghast to find that I support the US war in Iraq and other acts of intervention in the Middle East, I note that Edwards is against it. I may have overlook this fact in view of his purported domestic policies.

Where did the Democrats Go?

I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.
-RFK



With the exception of (maybe) Edwards, are there any liberal candidates for U.S President left? Do any of them dare espouse such a platform? Could any of them advocate for the poor, the weak, the sick, the powerless?

Edu-Babble, Part III

How does one "holistically" learn simple arithmetic and multiplication tables? What about the important dates surrounding historical events along a two-thousand-year-long continuum? What of the key dates of the literature and philosophy of that period? There's no way to do besides memorizing. The skeleton or framework of such an understanding is essential before a deeper, analytical understanding can bear fruit. But you'd never know it with the silly, lazy, prejudicial attack by the progressivist on "rote learning."

Rote learning. Rote learning used to mean asking an entire class to recite in unison answers to set questions, whether or not they understood the meaning of the question or the answer. Today, educators define rote learning variously as 'spouting words,' 'memorization without understanding,' and isolated facts. The teachers feel that these things prevent students from becoming independent thinkers. Hirsch admits that all of these concerns are valid. However, "it is better to encourage the integrated understanding of knowledge over the merely verbal repetition of separate facts. It is better for students to think for themselves than merely to repeat what they have been told. For all of these reasons, rote learning is inferior to learning that is internalized and can be expressed in the student's own words. These valid objections to purely verbal, fragmented, and passive education have, however, been used as a blunt instrument to attack all emphasis on factual knowledge and vocabulary ... In the progressive tradition, the attack on rote learning (timely in 1918) has been used to attack factual knowledge and memorization, to the great disadvantage of our children's academic competencies." - E. D. Hirsch

It's complete nonsense that inculcating the habit of memorization in the young leads to the eclipse of their imagination. (I've yet to read, by the way, a modern progressivist text that contains an adequate understanding of the imagination, but more on that later). If anything, memory is foundational to all learning and to the exercise of the imagination. The imagination cannot exercise itself without content. For what is the imagination but the likening of ideas thought previously to be dissimilar? Young children memorize baseball scores, the stats for various race cars, and the types and kinds of plants, trees, and animals in their pictures books. If stimulated, they can learn simple math and historical dates. If encouraged, they can learn large swaths of great poetry. The last is particularly important because it inculcates a respect for the precise use of language, the benefits of which are intellectual, and psychological among others (perhaps) more beneficient to the American marketplace.

Quotation for that Day

A generation ago when you sent your kids to private school [it] was because you didn’t like black people. And now when you send your kids to private school it’s cause you don’t like poor people. It’s all about class, it’s all about, “I want my kid to go to school with the right kinds of people so that he can get in to Harvard, or, God forbid, if he’s not that smart, which is usually the case, he’ll get into one of those schools with one of those names like Sarah something or William something or one of those schools. We’ll get you in, we’ll get him in, give us some money we’ll get him in. But, um, it’s all about class.
-Joe Queenan

Anti-Social Behavior c/o Spiked

Among my favorite on-line publications is a magazine out of England called Spiked. It reminds me, in spirit, of The Baffler, a journal started a little over a decade ago in Chicago. The Baffler, which bills itself as the 'Journal that Blunts the Cutting Edge' has dedicated itself to critiquing the "culture" of business and marketing which has arguably infected almost every realm that was previously unsullied by it, or at least that traditionally put up a wall of separation between it and commodification, including Medicine, the Academy, artistic expression, and so forth. Though of course the boundaries of the last, especially, have always been blurry, as Warhol showed and the rise of the art auction has made all too real.

At any rate, Spiked has sections devoted to articles on parents and children and anti-social behavior questioning priggish, bourgeois, politically-correct and otherwise uptight and wrong-headed assumptions on what constitutes appropriate behavior. Check it out.

TLS Review of Arthur Allen's Vaccine

The debate on vaccinations for children continues in the drawing rooms, at the birth-day parties, cocktail-parties, yoga classes, farmers' market, and cafes of the west-side of Los Angeles. Though of course, no one has a drawing room anymore, nor do they drink cocktails, at least not in company. But the conversation continues. Often shrill enough. And I wonder if either party is educated with a background in science or medicine. Or rather if they haven't just fortified themselves with the accumulated wisdom of the popular press.

John Dwyer recently reviewed Robert Bud's Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy (2007) and Arthur Allen's Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver (2007) for the June 29, 2007 issue of the Times Literary Supplement, probably the most highly regarded review of books in the English-speaking world. Below, you can find a brief excerpt from Dwyer's review of Allen's work. More to follow in these pages soon.

Vaccine by Arthur Allen, a former foreign correspondent for Associated Press, provided a successful blend of scientific fact, history, controversy, and entertainment….

This brings us to Allen’s third theme, which he explores in some detail: the development of a misguided but powerful and influential anti-vaccination lobby, particularly in the United States. Many of the anti-vaccination zealots whose concepts would have been well accommodated in the seventeenth century, had their convictions shaped by personal pain secondary to a child of their own developing a severe medical problem which they became convinced was a complication following a vaccination. That such scaremongering can have tragic results is all too obvious when, in 1978 in the United Kingdom, rumours that pertussis vaccine could cause permanent brain damage to infants saw immunization rates fall drastically to 31 per cent. As a result, infectious rates, and many children suffered unnecessarily or even died. Similar scenarios were played out in Japan and Sweden. However, exhaustive investigations in a number of countries resulted in epidemiologists concluding that if pertussis vaccine ever caused permanent brain damage the incidence was so low that it was impossible to prove this to be the case. Allen, while sympathetic to the pain of such parents, does eventually expose the flaws in the arguments of opponents to vaccination; he also points out the urgent need for new communication strategies if public health authorities are to restore confidence in safety and efficacy of vaccines.

A long chapter on autism covers similar ground; the author explores the way in which a suspicion of trace amounts of mercury used as a preservative in a number of vaccines, could cause autism became a certainty in the minds of many affected families. Mercury (in large does over a long period of time) has been known since the eighteenth century to cause neurological damage. It was used in the manufacture of hats and resulted in the development of “Mad Hatter’s” disease. Courts in the US actually awarded damages based on this claim, as legal avarice outpaced science. Scientific studies ended up showing that, if anything, children who had received vaccines containing mercury had a lower incidence of autism. Allen’s interview with a mother of a child with autism as she force-feeds him (potentially dangerous) megadoses of vitamins, convinced that this must benefit her son, is profoundly saddening.