Has Bob Ellis Become A Relativist? Or Bad Things Happen If You Trust Brainy Quote But Didn't Listen To Your English Teacher

Stopping by Bob's RSS feed blog yesterday, I noticed a post leading off with this quotation:

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”—James A. Baldwin

Grad school was a long time ago, but I didn't remember Baldwin as the ideal Ellis conservative. I also remember this quotation as being part of his identity as a person of color in the United States. The entire quotation bears me out:

I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.

I had forgotten about the bolded sentence, however. Does Bob really believe that situations, "the demands of life," can justify pulverizing one's "finest principles" like, oh I don't know, maybe the Republican Party platform? That certainly would be a news flash to get the South Dakota blogosphere in a whirl.

Let's be clear, I'm not attributing Baldwin's world view and atheism to Ellis, but this incorrect application of a quotation serves as an example. Writers should know who expressed the sentiments they quote and the entire context of the quotation before they use it to prove a point that the original writer never intended.

A Minor Musing About Getting Older

I sat in the car this afternoon and, protected from the wind, watched geese circle before forming a V against a gray sky. I saw both graceful flight and hard work fighting against the wind. It has been a long time since I have taken a few minutes just to sit and watch birds fly, and I have spent part of the evening wondering why.

Patrick Kurp quotes John Updike who seems to indicate that this afternoon's experience is part of getting older:

“Aging calls us outdoors, after the adult indoors of work and love-life and keeping stylish, into the lovely simplicities that we thought we had outgrown as children. We come again to love the plain world, its stone and wood, its air and water….The act of seeing itself is glorious, and of hearing, and feeling and tasting.”

Why Didn't We Listen To Thomas Jefferson?

In 1816 Jefferson wrote a letter to George Logan that contained the following warning:

"I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country."

It's cold comfort that people in Jefferson's time also seemed to ignore his warnings.  In 1825 he wrote to William Branch Giles and expressed some concerns about "the federal party:"

"But this opens with a vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who, having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76, now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and monied incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry."

There's enough blame to spread to both parties, but something about that last statement brings to mind this picture of Eric Cantor:

Quotation Of The Day: Reading Edition

From Jennifer Eagan,

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

Quotation Of The Day: What's Wrong With Republicanism Edition

From this David Frum post:

The thing most wrong with present-day Republicanism is its passivity in the face of the economic crisis, its indifference to the economic troubles of the huge majority of the American population, and its blithe insistence that everything was fine for the typical American worker up until Inauguration Day 2009 or (at the outer bound of the thinkable) the financial crisis of the fall 2008.

It is the lack of concern to the travails of middle-class America that “reform Republicans” should most centrally be concerned with.

Quotation Of The Day: Newt's Epiphany Edition

From this National Review post: Newt Gingrich evaluates Herman Cain and concludes,

 And I think one of the Republican weaknesses has been that we rely too much on consultants and too much on talking points. And we don’t rely enough on actually knowing things. If you’re going to lead the country and change history, you had better know a heck of a lot before you start, because there’s not much time for learning on the job.

I'm pretty sure this statement means means Newt won't get Sarah Palin's endorsement.

Sunday Afternoon Lesson Planning And Musing

Andrew Taggart wants to return education to the Renaissance.  I agree with him.  Taggart writes,

This is one place where public philosophy as a form of public education can and should stake its claim. The Latin word educare retains the agrarian sense of “rearing,” “bringing up,” and “leading forth.” One task of public philosophy, I submit, could be to lead us in a certain direction without pandering, bullying, or nannying. “Leading forth” is neither hand-holding nor forcing your hand. It’s not florid rhetoric or hard-nosed criticism, both of which are concerned with getting us to admit the flaws in our arguments, to make up our minds regarding our deepest commitments, or to change our positions about public affairs. Instead, public philosophy as educare urges us to follow a certain line of thought, to strike out on a path and see where it takes us. From there and throughout, we would ask, “Does this bring us greater clarity about ourselves and our world?”

Assuming that this is a worthwhile endeavor (and I think it is), I’m not entirely sure how to go about it. One essay in educare could be to reinvigorate the commonplace book tradition—to reintroduce it with a twist. Commonplace books, popular from the Renaissance up through the seventeenth century, were scrapbooks of maxims, drawings, lists, inspirational quotations, and marginal notes. By design, they were meant to be hodgepodge: a recipe here, a line from Horace there. In this serendipity there was exquisite beauty. However, insofar as they were unsorted collections of curiosities and wonderments, they didn’t seek to develop the collector’s mind in any one direction. And, my God, how many collages, mélanges, bric-a-bracs, shards, and fragments are lying about us today?

I wonder whether we could retain something of the magic and surprise of the commonplace book but also order the bits and pieces so that they appear as if they were making an argument, giving us a better, more holistic way of seeing things, or leading us down a path toward higher understanding? I wonder whether the parts can be gathered together into a synthetic whole

First, I love the idea that education's goal should be "leading forth" without "pandering," " bullying," "nannying," "hand-holding," or forcing others' hands.


I also like the idea of a directed common place book.  I've used a quotation book as an assignment in the past; Taggart's post may lead me to resurrect and modify it.  I had students write down quotations from the reading and react to them. The quality of those reactions varied greatly.

Using Taggart's principle of gather parts into a "synthetic whole," I'm considering having them pull quotations from the literature we're reading and try to find connections from the "real world"news stores.  I'll also have them add items from other academic disciplines.


All of us live in an increasingly disconnected world, and learning to make connections may be one of the most important things schools lead students forth to do.

Quotation Of The Decade: Democracy And Oligarchy Edition

From Jeffery Winters' conclusion to his article "Oligarchy and Democracy",

Universal suffrage and liberal freedoms empower all citizens in a radically equal manner. But the one-person/one-vote principle does little to prevent oligarchs from exercising the power of money in a manner that is profoundly unequal. Formal juridical equality is essential to human freedom. But full political equality, even in the most liberal democracy, is impossible as long as concentrated wealth places grossly unequal political influence in the hands of a few citizens. Democracy fused with oligarchy is certainly better than no democracy at all. But there should be no illusions that it is anything other than a partial step toward full political equality and representation.

Some Musings About Teaching, A-Lists, & Golgotha

Charles Pierce begins this post about efforts to make it more difficult for people to vote with the following paragraph.

Back in 2000, when the Supreme Court stepped in and foozled a presidential election to achieve the outcome that some of its members desired — oh, don't bother to deny it — the dismissal du jour was to tell grumpy liberals to "Get over it!" This was so successful that not a single Democratic senator was willing to stand up with John Lewis and contest the election, and if you won't stand up with John Lewis on an issue of voting rights, then you'd have rolled dice for the robe on Golgotha.

I had no idea that "foozled" was a word.  That line "you'd have rolled dice for the robe on Golgotha" is a sheer genius as a put down.

Meanwhile, I stumbled across this Auren Hoffman post.  Hoffman points out, and I tend to agree totally,

We’re quickly moving to a new world where the wealth gap is compounding and increasing.  We’re moving to a world that is going to look a lot like Hollywood: a few people enjoying insane success ... and everyone else spends their days waiting tables.

The delta between A-players and B-players in companies has always been high.  A-players get promoted faster and they earn more.  My guess is that an A-player earns about 30% more than a B-player in that same position for most professions.  An A-player administrative assistant usually can earn about 30% more than a B-player in the same position.   That’s a significant difference and even more when you compound that difference in savings and lifestyle over the course of one’s career.

After spending most of the post using computer programmers to illustrate his contention, Hoffman writes,

I want to point out that I’m not advocating that this divergence in compensation happen.  I’m not.  It has the potential to fracture society.   And it seems like it will massively reward people that have lucky breaks.  But I’m worried that regardless of how we feel about this growing division between the A-players and B-players, it will happen anyway.

In short, no matter what we do, we won't have as many tables to wait on. Hoffman, therefore, offers the following advice:

So what do you do about it?

You must be the Jedi Master of your profession. 

Unless you are awesome, you will be commoditized. 

Here are some things that will be less valued in the future and some things that will be more valued:

Less-valued	More-valued	Why?
General knowledge	Judgment	Search engines will be attached to our brain
Knowing more than one major spoken language	Sales in any language	We’ll have universal translators
Coding	Art	Building things will be much easier.  Designing aesthetics will always be hard.
SAT scores	Combining left-brained and right-brained thinking	Systems-thinking will be easier to outsource
Majoring in business	Majoring in philosophy	Learning to “think” will be more valued that just learning

I'm not sure the movies allowed Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi master, so there are no easy answers to this one.

Hoffman's chart brings me back to Pierce's put down.   I can safely say that schools do far less to emphasize art, the combining of various thinking skills, and philosophy than they did 15 years ago.  In short, schools seem to be preparing students to be B-players or worse.  Given that NCLB and RTTT basically want teachers to prepare students for lives as salespeople who sell tables for others to wait on, has current education policy turned teachers into people who roll "dice for the robe on Golgotha"?

I know I'm not going to like the answer to that little rhetorical question.

Quotation Of The Day: Jobs And Regulations Edition

From this Bruce Bartlett blog post.,

In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.

Before detractors run off and scream about some liberal elitist not understanding the real world, they should remember that "Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul."  Somehow, that resume doesn't scream leftist.









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Quotation Of The Day: Debit Card Edition

I haven't written a check in the past 10 years.  I use my debit card and pay bills on line.  I appreciate this David Frum blast at Bank of America's decision to start charging people to own debit cards.

Bank of America attributes the new monthly charge to genuine cost issues. Maybe. But it’s always worth remembering that banks detest debit cards on principle, and for exactly the reason that consumers like them. Debit cards prevent consumers from accumulating excess debt. They compete with credit cards, which encourage debt. And despite today’s ultra-low-interest rate environment, credit card interest rates have reached an all-time peak of an average almost 15% APR.

So yes it’s theoretically possible that banks are on-forwarding genuine cost increases. But it’s also possible that banks do their accounting in such a way as to make the strongest possible case against the debit cards they hate, so as to drive consumers back toward the dangerous device that makes them so much money: credit.

Happily, there are other banks in the world than Bank of America. (I’m a customer, but I’ll be rethinking.)

Whatever your personal financial decisions, one lesson should be taken by all from the financial crisis of 2008-2009: more skepticism is due about everything the big US banks say about what they do and why they do it.

I suppose my full throated support of the last paragraph means I'm some sort of anti-capitalist conspiracy theorist.  If my bank starts charging for the debit card, I too will begin looking for a bank that doesn't.

Quotation Of The Day: South Dakota Blog Post About Education Edition

From this Kevin Woster post at Mount Blogmore

I understand the money crunch. I’ve been writing about it for years. It stings me, too, when I pay my property taxes. And what reasonable person could argue that every school year should include an astute search for efficiencies and savings?

But it should also include a search for new ways to expand students’ horizons, enlarge their minds, multiply their options and inspire them to achieve more and believe more fully in their own education, as well as in their own future and in the future of their society.

Quotation Of The Week: Economic Policy Edition

From this David Frum post:

Even if consumers wanted to borrow, credit is just not very available to the typical person right now. Some credit, for example on credit cards, is not cheap. In fact, the average APR on credit cards is scraping a record peak: 14.96%.

As anxious as investors are about US personal debt however, they are blithe to nonchalance about the US public debt. Interest on that debt has sunk to record lows: under 2%.

The markets see deflation and depression, not inflation. Yet ironically this non-existent and much dreaded inflation is exactly the remedy we need to lighten the load of consumer debt.

As is, we’re looking at a continued economic slump, more unemployment, and more deleveraging via continuing catastrophic consumer default on mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and student aid. And now the GOP leadership is urging that the Federal Reserve make the catastrophe worse? To what end?

I know what the detractors will say: to the end of defeating President Obama and replacing him with a Republican president. And if you’ve convinced yourself that Obama is the Second Coming of Malcolm X, Trotsky, and the all-conquering Caliph Omar all in one, then perhaps capsizing the US economy and plunging your fellow-citizens deeper into misery will seem a price worth paying to rid the country of him.

But on any realistic assessment of the problems faced by Americans – and not just would-be Republican office-holders – it’s the recession, not the presidency, that is National Problem #1 and demands the most urgent action. It won’t be enough to save Obama if he does not deserve saving – but it may be enough to save your neighbor’s house, job, and family. Or even … your own. Republicans after all have been victims of this crisis too. It’s an hour of national emergency even more urgent and overwhelming than the aftermath of 9/11. And things may soon get worse, if the Eurozone begins to crack up, as it seems it may. This is the hour for united action against the economic crisis, not partisan maneuvering.

Plains Pops: Still More Stuff I Wish I Had Written

This entire Conor Friedersdorf post is worth reading.  The highlights include the following paragraphs.

Given all that, it is remarkable that so many conservatives regard Obamacare as the biggest threat to liberty, that they fret about deficits while staunchly opposing any cuts to defense spending, and that their paranoia about big government and the endemic corruption, inefficiency, and power hungriness that characterizes it somehow never extends to the military or national security state. Equally remarkable are the liberals who are outraged when gays are denied the right to marry (a position I also share), but who are silent as the standard-bearer for the Democratic Party imprisons people indefinitely without due process, spies on an unknowable number of innocent Americans, and normalizes the worst excesses of the Bush years, sometimes by amassing a record that's even worse. . . .

Excepting slavery and Jim Crow, all the most oppressive laws and extra-legal measures in American history have been passed in the name of war or national security: the Alien and Sedition Acts, Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus, the Espionage Act and Woodrow Wilson's other radical World War I era excesses. You'd think that the advent of another war would cause left and right alike to be on guard against excesses. Throughout American history, during just, necessary wars and wars of choice alike, civil liberties have suffered in the most extreme ways. . . .

Ten years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, this blindness is the most notable feature of American life, and the one that represents the gravest danger to our future. After past periods of overzealous attacks on civil liberties, there has always been a backlash. Alas, the tea party is insufficiently enamored with liberty to do the job.

I don't agree with the conclusions of this David Frum post, but the analysis is interesting, especially given its source.

One political party has decided that the only thing that matters – or anyway, that can be achieved – is to enhance America’s long-term growth path by reducing regulations, rationalizing taxes, and restraining government spending in future years. As for today’s economic crisis? We’ll just have to tough it out. And when it says “we,” it means: the unemployed, those without health insurance, etc.

The other political party, by contrast has lots of ideas for remedying the crisis: monetary ease, fiscal stimulus, middle-income tax relief, tax credits to hire the unemployed, etc. And their ideas for the longer term future of the country? More of the same, forever, leading to a permanently enlarged state, financed by permanently higher taxes – and taxes of the most peculiarly destructive kind.

Finally, this David Sirota summary of the corporate educational reformers is worth reading.  The key introductory paragraphs:

As Brill and most other education correspondents tell it, those most aggressively trying to privatize public schools and focus education around standardized tests just "happen to be" Wall Streeters -- as if that's merely a random, inconsequential coincidence. Somehow, we are to assume that these same Wall Streeters who make millions off of "parasitic" investment schemes to leech public institutions for private profit couldn't have ulterior motives when it comes to public schools.

No, in the standard fairy tale sold as education journalism, these "reformers" are presented as having had an honest, entirely altruistic "epiphany" that led them to discover that "the reforms that are necessary" (ie., only the policies Wall Street deems acceptable) comprise "the civil rights issue of this era."

In this framing, millionaires and billionaires trying to eviscerate traditional public education from their Manhattan office suites are the new Martin Luther Kings -- even though the  empirical data tell us that their schemes to charter-ize and privatize schools have been a systemic failure, often further disadvantaging the most economically challenged students of all (one example: see Stanford's landmark study showing more than a third of kids whom reformers ushered into charter schools were educationally harmed by the move).

The truth, of course, is that for all the denialist agitprop to the contrary, corporate education "reformers" are motivated by self-interest, too. In a sense, these "reformers" are akin to the Bush administration neoconservatives when it came to Iraq. Some of them wanted to invade for oil, some wanted to invade to create a new sphere of influence, some wanted to invade to further isolate Iran, and still others wanted to invade to "spread democracy." But as  Paul Wolfowitz famously said, they "settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction" as the public rationale for war.

Same thing for those who fund corporate education "reform": they have a lot of different self-interests, but they've settled on schools as a political target that unifies them all.

Quotation Of The Day: Philosophy Edition

From a Peter Millican article in the The Philosophers' Magazine

To sum up, active engagement in the history of philosophy keeps a rich variety of frameworks alive and under development, often seeking out imaginative ways of combining the old with the new. It can also provide a more balanced perspective on current orthodoxies, for those who might otherwise be carried along by the hubris of the crowd to dismiss alternative approaches, conveniently forgetting the long history of discarded enthusiasms. Secure building for the future requires learning from the past, and the history of philosophical fashion demonstrates very clearly the folly of putting all one’s eggs into the currently popular baskets. Indeed, in the long-term, it is very much in the interest of those now at the vanguard, that future generations of philosophers should take their history seriously!

If ever a historical period  demanded "a more balanced perspective on current orthodoxies, for those who might otherwise be carried along by the hubris of the crowd to dismiss alternative approaches, conveniently forgetting the long history of discarded enthusiasms," it's now.

Political Blogger Quotation Of The Day

From Andrew Sullivan's discussion of the reactions to Rick Perry's death penalty pronouncements and practices:

If your ultimate goal is power, not truth, you can live with a lot.

Political Question Of The Day

From the New York Times Caucus Blog:

For the next several months, the Republican contest may shape up as a fundamental question for Republican voters as they seek a candidate to challenge Mr. Obama for the right to occupy the Oval Office:

Do they want a Texas Republican or a Massachusetts one?

At least this question will get answered.  Mine never do.

Sunday Morning Quotation: Politics, Money, Religion,

From Joe Bageant essay "AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?

But politics and money are never going to fill what is essentially a public vacuum that is moral, philosophical and spiritual. (The latter was instantly recognized by fundamentalist Christians, disfigured by cultural ignorance, as they may be.) Not many ordinary Americans talk about this vacuum. The required spiritual and philosophical language has been successfully purged by newspeak, popular culture, a human regimentation process masquerading as a national educational system, and the ruthlessness of everyday competition, which leaves no time to contemplate anything. 

Still, the void, the meaninglessness of ordinary work and the emptiness of daily life scares thinking citizens shitless, with its many unspeakables, spy cams, security state pronouncements, citizens being economically disappeared, and general back-of-the-mind unease. Capitalism's faceless machinery has colonized our very souls. If the political was not personal to begin with, it's personal now. 

Some Americans believe we can collectively triumph over the monolith we presently fear and worship. Others believe the best we can do is to find the personal strength to endure and go forward on lonely inner plains of the self. 

Doing either will take inner moral, spiritual and intellectual liberation. It all depends on where you choose to fight your battle. Or if you even choose to fight it. But one thing is certain. The only way out is in.

Quotation Of The Day: Saturday Poet Edition

Stolen from this Jason Peters post at Front Porch Republic.

We are being made aware that the organisation of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly. I need only mention, as an instance now very much before the public eye, the results of ‘soil-erosion’—the exploitation of the earth, on a vast scale for two generations, for commercial profit: immediate benefits leading to dearth and desert. . . . [A] wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God, and . . . the consequence is an inevitable doom. For a long enough time we have believed in nothing but the values arising in a mechanised, commercialised, urbanised way of life: it would be as well for us to face the permanent conditions upon which God allows us to live upon this planet

T.S. Eliot, “The Idea of a Christian Society”

Sunday Morning Quotation Of The Day

From this post by Brook Wilensky-Lanford, author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden and blogger about the fine line between fact and fiction at www.modernmythographer.com.

Eden isn’t quite the same as utopia: it doesn’t bother with social systems; it is exclusive, a party of two. Eden is also not the same thing as paradise. Paradise is an end: permanent, perfection. Eden is always capitalized, as if it were the name of an actual geographical place, but Eden is actually temporal.

It’s a cycle: in the beginning, things were perfect, yes, but then something went wrong, and we had to leave, and then we began to yearn to return. Yes, Eden was a place of plenty, with all the conditions most fruitful for life, but more in the way an incubator is a place of plenty—nutritious, but not designed to be permanent. So the Garden of Eden always includes the Fall. It wouldn’t be paradise if it weren’t already lost. Stay too long in Eden and it becomes a cryogenic Shangri-La whose perfection turns meaningless, even menacing. Perfection leads to destruction. Even—especially—in the Bible. Adam and Eve picked themselves up after the expulsion from Eden, learned to till the earth, begat several generations. But then God decides to destroy the whole earth with Noah’s Flood. The flood is sort of a continuation of the Eden story: creation, destruction, then recreation again.