Thoughts Aloud

Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

It should be quite clear to anyone paying any attention that the massive protests over everything Trump related get ever closer to outright violence. I lived through the Vietnam War protests and clearly remember students being shot by folks in uniform before the then president shirked his duty and surrendered.

Even though the shots are not ringing out (yet), this seems to me a far more polarized situation than we have experienced since our first Civil War.

One factor that the protesting progressives seem to have overlooked (despite the growing evidence) is that we clod-heads in “flyover country” are heavily armed and, usually, well skilled in the use of said arms. Do these coastal fools really think they can unseat a duly elected president and complete the destruction of our Republic without serious resistance?

Not going to happen. Will there be a “winner” in the coming conflict? I can’t see how there could be. As soon as serious blood begins to flow, our enemies will be picking over our dead and wounded bodies worse than the Arabs during the WWII campaigns in North Africa.

Then there is the matter of what our military will do once it hits the fan. My suspicion is that divisions of opinion within the military will mirror those of the nation in general. No idea how that will play out.

Point is, I truly think we are heading into a situation that will produce only losses – losses that could be easily avoided by talking rather than screaming at each other. That said, the intentional destruction of our national education system is surely about to pay the predictable dividends.

The fact that this is taking a bit longer to materialize than I predicted in earlier articles does not change the reality I think I see all around me. The other thing that I see is that the “good people” for the most part are silently hunkering down hoping the whole thing will simply go away. As it such problems ever do.

Think about it.

Troy L Robinson

It is bad enough that the functionally illiterate lame-stream-media folk are helping to destroy our culture. Now, they seem to be leading the charge to destroy our language as well.

Every time I turn on the idiot box, I hear that NFL players are “taking a knee” during the playing of our anthem. What knee are they taking and where is it being taken to? Oh yes, it turns out that said players are actually “kneeling”, perhaps even “genuflecting”. Why not just say that?

Then, a few weeks ago I heard repeated reports that people close to Trump had “taken meetings” with various Russians. Where did they take these meeting to? Well, it turn out that they were actually “attending” meetings. Again, why not just say that?

Could it be that, during these “taken” meetings they were also having dialogue with other participants? No, they were simply “talking” to each other and/or “having discussions”.

I have often heard that English is a complicated language… no doubt this is somewhat true since the language has picked up so many words and phrases from other languages over the years as it has emerged as the world’s preeminent language. So, why further complicate it by misusing words, using nouns for verbs and other such nonsense? Do the L-S-M folk think they are being cute or are they trying deliberately to make their crap harder to comprehend? Can you even imagine how much harder this is on people for whom English is not their first language?

To paraphrase a late master of the language, Winston Churchill, “with this, I am finding it hard to put up”.

Of all people, should not those who charge themselves with informing the rest of us not work hard to be correct and precise? Or is this just another bit of evidence that everything that was once great about us is headed to hell in a hand-basket.

Put another way, would we be impressed if surgeons, engineers and scientists deliberately pursued their respective crafts with such sloppiness?

Think about it because it actually does matter.

Troy L Robinson

Profound: “My education was not free – I paid for it with my mind!” -Candace Owens

Start here:

…to watch the last 15 minutes of this remarkable interview. If you find her as inspirational as I do, then when you have the time you’ll want to go back and watch the whole hour from the beginning.

BTW: Here is her hot YouTube channel.  Her clips are all short and powerful. Enjoy… â—„Daveâ–º

What would happen if all the useful idiot SJW sheeple, rioting across America under the banner of “Antifa,” watched this while actually sober?

These college indoctrinated fools couldn’t have read Jonah Goldberg’s ten-year-old book “Liberal Fascism,” which explained this subject well. Better yet was John Taylor Gatto’s earlier book “The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling,” which not only covered extensively the subject of the collectivist nature of fascism; but explained how we have all been deliberately dumbed down by the Progressives (link points to free PDF of this remarkable tome – probably the most important book I have ever read!).

Alas, red pills are generally unappetizing for anyone under 30 or even 40, so they are unlikely to read  Dinesh D’Souza’s “The Big Lie” either. I suppose I should; but I already know the subject all too well, and am of the ineluctable opinion that it is far too late to do anything about it. â—„Daveâ–º

The progressives learned long ago that any lie, no matter how egregious, can take on a patina of truth if – it is repeated long enough and often enough.

How many times have you heard, since the election, that Hillary “won the popular vote”?

What popular vote? There simply is no such thing. Yet, the progressive media continue to chant about it election after election. Why? Because they want to get rid of the Constitutional rule that the States elect the president and set up some form of national election.

Let me digress for a moment. What did Hillary actually win? Simple. She won the excess vote in several very large liberal states such as New York and California. What do I mean by “excess vote”. Simple again. The excess vote in any state is the number of votes in excess of the number required to win that states electoral vote.

What the crooked pundits fail to report to WTS is that, when the States established the federal government, by virtue of ratifying the Constitution, they delegated several of their inherent powers to said federal government in the name of a common defense and free trade between the States (among other things). One of the powers the States did not delegate to the federal government is the power to conduct elections. Ergo, there is no federal (or national) vote in these United States. That being the case, there can therefore be no national “popular vote”. End of statement. It is simply not possible without amending our Constitution.

Woe is us say the crooked pundits. This means we are not really a true democracy. How about that?? The Founders shunned the idea of a true democracy opting for a constitutional republic instead. Indeed, several of the founders compared true democracy to mob rule.

So, the fact that Hillary lost the election despite of winning the excess vote in a few ultra-liberal states proves only that our Constitution is working as intended by its creators. Read the rest of this entry »

Five Years Ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nTd2ZAX_tc

Color me impressed. This is the Left’s “racist monster?” Who could watch this and believe that? One thing he damn sure isn’t is a sexist! He is the guy who made Sarah Palin’s film, praises the women leading the T-Party, and his daughter is a West Point graduate. Read the rest of this entry »

We are back in Texas, having survived FreedomFest 2016 in Las Vegas. The overall experience was good and the best of it was wonderful. The best of the best was a speech by Andrew Napolitano. His presentation alone was worth the price of admission. Next best was a speech by Yaron Brook. No surprise there as we have heard Dr. Brook before and he is always right on.

Senator Rand Paul made a good speech of the sort that would have made his presidential candidacy much more viable than the teenage-like attempts at smart-mouth behavior he exhibited in the GOP debates. Ex Governors and Libertarian candidates Johnson and Weld made several appearances. While I support and will vote for Gov. Johnson, he comes off as way too laid back to attract the kind of attention needed to get his ball really rolling. And, were there ever a year and a circumstance for getting said ball rolling, this is the time and the situation.

As for Las Vegas itself, it is the most unnecessary creation of mankind that one could imagine. It is hotter than the gates of Hell, everything is grossly overpriced and the main attraction is the opportunity to give your hard earned money away playing “games” that are not even interesting. On the positive side, there is a lot of booby watching available (which I thoroughly enjoy despite being too old to remember why).

Troy L Robinson

I have frequently shared my favorable opinion of Camille Paglia, as my favorite feminist. I have just discovered a worthy competitor for that covetable title. She may not be quite as irreverently feisty; but Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, is every bit as intelligent, outspoken, and critical of modern feminism and stultifying campus culture. She has the further advantages of being heterosexual and way easier on the eyes. 😉

If you appreciate strong intelligent women, take a break from politics and enjoy this conversation:

One need not agree with all they said, to enjoy the repartee; yet I am in substantial agreement with most of it. I was inspired to look Sommers up in the wiki. She has quite a CV. As an unapologetic male chauvinist, I can’t help but find this sixty-five-year-old lady rather charming, and imagining what she must have looked like as a California girl / ’60s flower child. 😉 â—„Daveâ–º

Today, I venture to opine on a subject this has been over opined about by people far more qualified to offer opinions than yours truly.

Still, I will offer my own opinions with the hope that my use of simplification and common language might be more palatable than that typically used by the over educated.

In theory, a Free Market, operated in an environment of laissez-faire, is the best, most reliable and most equitable economic model available. So, how could such a system possibly fail? IMHO, partly due to its own accumulated success.

What could I possibly mean by such a silly statement? How can accumulated success lead to systematic failure? Simple, it does so when the economic model (the Free Market) attempts to operate in a vacuum. Said differently, when the economic model operates as if it alone is responsible for long term societal prosperity.

Secondly, this socioeconomic model fails when it is overburdened from without.

Thirdly, a state of “general prosperity” is anathema to those among us who, seemingly unable to control themselves, seek to control everyone else instead.

Still sounds a bit silly, does it not? Not to me.

In the case of the United States of America, a mostly free market economy (what I see as a “free enough” market economy) took a fledgling nation from a condition of national non-entity to super-power status so quickly that it gave us all a mild form of collective whiplash. It also gave us a level of general prosperity never before seen in the world and, by many, thought to be impossible to attain.

Then, almost suddenly, it all seems to be unraveling at the seams.

I have suggested 3 basic reasons for this:

→ Accumulated success
→ Overburdening from without
→ The desire to control acerbated by unbounded greed

Let us now discuss these individually, in simple terms and using common sense language:

Read the rest of this entry »

These college graduates walk among us…

A report that claims that there is a crisis in civic education in the United States says that nearly 10% of all college graduates think that TV’s ‘Judge Judy’ is on the Supreme Court.

It was one of several alarming statistics from the report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

It commissioned a survey this past summer of recent college graduates.  High school civics curricula was used to form the questions.

Among the findings:

• Only 28% of college graduates could identify James Madison as the Father of the Constitution.

• More than half of college graduates didn’t know how the Constitution is amended.

• Almost 40% of college graduates didn’t know that Congress has the power to declare war.

• Almost half could not recognize that senators are elected to six year terms and representatives are elected to two-year terms.

• Less than half of college graduates knew that presidential impeachments are tried before the U.S. Senate.

The group says it found that less than 20% of liberal arts colleges and universities require students to take an American history or government course to graduate.

This isn’t the first time the group has conducted a survey that shows a lack of knowledge of American history.  A 2014 survey found that one-third of college graduates were unaware that FDR spearheaded the New Deal, and nearly half did not know that Teddy Roosevelt played a major role in constructing the Panama Canal.

The non-profit group is advocating required civics classes at U.S. colleges.

Full report: http://www.goacta.org/images/download/A_Crisis_in_Civic_Education.pdf

…and they not only are permitted to vote, <shudder> they are encouraged to do so!  :(  â—„Daveâ–º

In the comment section of Robert Ringer’s Post on Trump a couple days ago, one Charles Garret remarked:

You are right. This is going to be a wipe out with Trump. I am 85 and we understand Trump. We are fed up with what’s been going on in our government for the last 50 to 60 years.

This elicited a curious reply from an anonymous ‘Guest’:

Based on your name and age I think you will enjoy (or know) Garet Garrett, The People’s Pottage, available online to read for free.

Mildly intrigued, I did a search and found the book available as a free PDF download from one of my favorite sites, the Mises Institute. It was originally published back in 1953, and their blurb stated:

A time came when the only people who had ever been free began to ask: “What is freedom?”

Who wrote its articles — the strong or the weak? Was it an absolute good? Could there be such a thing as unconditional freedom, short of anarchy?

Given the answer to be “no,” then was freedom an eternal truth or a political formula?

The three essays brought together in this book, entitled respectively, The Revolution Was, Ex America, and Rise of Empire, were first published as separate monographs by The Caxton Printers. They were written in that order, but at different times, as the eventful film unrolled itself. They are mainly descriptive. They purport to tell what it was happened and how it happened, from a point of view in which there is no sickly pretense of neutralism. Why it happened is a further study and belongs to the philosophy of history, if there is such a thing; else to some meaning of experience, dire or saving, that has not yet been revealed.

“What is Freedom? … Could there be such a thing as unconditional freedom, short of anarchy?” Is this in my current mental wheelhouse, or what? 🙂

Read the rest of this entry »

I started to title this post “Polls on Trump”; but decided that meme needed a rest. 🙂

Besides, my interest in the fascinating LA Times piece entitled, “Polls may actually underestimate Trump’s support, study finds” is to comment on the often mentioned polling difference, between those with and without a college degree. Researchers ran an interesting experiment, to study why Trump’s poll numbers were always higher in online polling, than in traditional telephone surveys:

The most telling part of the experiment, however, was that not all types of people responded the same way. Among blue-collar Republicans, who have formed the core of Trump’s support, the polls were about the same regardless of method. But among college-educated Republicans, a bigger difference appeared, with Trump scoring 9 points better in the online poll.

Social-desirability bias — the well-known tendency of people to hesitate to confess certain unpopular views to a pollster — provides the most likely explanation for that education gap, Dropp and his colleagues believe.

Blue-collar voters don’t feel embarrassed about supporting Trump, who is very popular in their communities. But many college-educated Republicans hesitate to admit their attraction to the blustery New York billionaire, the experiment indicates.

That finding suggests that the online surveys, which show Trump with a larger lead, provide the more accurate measure of what people would do in the anonymity of a voting booth, Dropp said. That might not be as true, however, in a public setting such as the Iowa caucus, where people identify their candidate preference in front of friends and neighbors.

“It’s our sense that a lot of polls are under-reporting Trump’s overall support,” he said.

In other words, college educated folks lie to protect their self-image as sophisticates, while truthful working class folks are not at all embarrassed by their judgements.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you harbored even a slight hope for the future of our country, forget about it:

Yale? Really? …tell me again, why should we care about saving America for future generations? â—„Daveâ–º

If you have not encountered the Canadian philosopher Stefan Molyneux, it is time to get acquainted. This resonates with my current worldview on so many levels:

…let me know how his timely message strikes you. â—„Daveâ–º

Pat is spot on again:

41% and growing… time will tell. â—„Daveâ–º

I can’t think of anything that needs to be added to this indictment:

…but I sure wish college students could be required to watch and absorb it. â—„Daveâ–º

In political discussions, I generally identify myself as a small (el) libertarian, since it is too time consuming to explain what I mean, when I say I am an objectivist. There are, however, profound differences between some of the various schools of libertarianism, and the specific philosophy of Ayn Rand, which she named objectivism. This will serve as a succinct introduction to the subject, to which I can link in future discussions here and elsewhere.

The Ayn Rand Institute has some superb interactive online courses. They just added a short 15 minute introductory course on objectivism, narrated by Ayn Rand herself. It is very well done, and I highly recommend it. However, although it is free of charge, one must enroll in their online university to watch it. While safe and painless, few would probably bother to do so. Thus, the following is the transcript of Ayn Rand’s voice-over, without the visuals:

At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did, as follows:

1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2. Epistemology: Reason
3. Ethics: Self-interest
4. Politics: Capitalism

If you want this translated into simple language, it would read:
Read the rest of this entry »

I find myself weary of trying to awaken sheeple, to the perils facing our nation. Most don't want to hear it. I am bored with reading about and commenting on the latest outrageous corruption and scandals emanating from Sodom by the Potomac. They are now coming so 'fast and furious' that it is impossible to keep up with them in any depth anyway.

Yet, I find it impossible to just give up and let the Pro Retrogressives win a total and final victory, which would bind our posterity in the ancient chains of serfdom, in the land our forefathers fought and died to keep free. I think we need a positive project to focus our energy on, which would at least attempt to save our country for our grandchildren.

It is they, the children, who are the future of America. Yet, presently they are ever increasingly and deliberately being dumbed down. They are indoctrinated in our public schools, to be ashamed of America's past, and view a Marxist utopia as its inevitable future. If we really want to save America, first and foremost this trend must be reversed. Read the rest of this entry »

An Israeli School Teacher Minding Her Class

…such as responsibility, prudence, duty, courage, honor, and Liberty come to mind. How I envy her ability to live in a land of the free, and home of the brave…

Read the rest of this entry »