So while Mr. Obama takes his teleprompter overseas to explain how this “change” will positively affect the lives of everyone, everywhere, we here in American still face rising gas prices, healthcare costs and a busted real estate market. But all of those pale in comparison to the greatest deficit we’ve got to pay back — one that hardly anyone wishes to talk about: The education deficit.

Hardly anyone’s talking about it because this is the kind of debt you can’t measure in mere dollars. But you CAN measure it in sense…and right now, the U.S. Government isn’t making much of it at all. The education deficit we’re rolling up right now is leaving one heck of a mess for our children, and their children and the next several generations ahead of them. Education is one of those backburner issues for most politicians — the kind they only speak of at election time, and even then they talk about how they’re going to make it better, without talking specifics.

But anyone who has or knows children in our country’s public education system knows darn well about its shortcomings. We take little Johnny American Jr. and set him in a kindergarten classroom at age five and expect him to learn his alphabet. Then we push him on through grades 1-12 giving him scores of written tests on all the basics of math, science and history — after forcing him to robotically memorize fact after fact after fact, rarely ever giving him a chance to ask the big question: “Why?” I could take it a step further: Why are these facts the way they are? How do they connect to me personally?

Our kids aren’t given the answer as to why. Rarely are they even given a chance to put different historical events together and figure out how they connect to each other, and to the present. Math and science are taught straight up, factually and logically, from their textbooks. The great scientists of the past often engaged each other in rugged, hard-fought debate over the laws of nature and their affects on this world… But our high school curricula don’t give Junior the opportunity to do the same. And the greatest tragedy would be, if he grows up to be the next Isaac Newton and doesn’t even get to realize his potential, much less use it.

Just think, the middle schooler living next door could be a future Albert Einstein, Benjamin Carson, Warren Buffett or even a future president. (I’m talking about the type our Founding Fathers envisioned, not someone who follows in the footsteps of every White House occupant over the last half century.) But we don’t let these future leaders explore how what they’re learning in the classroom relates to world events. Nor do we — because we’re too busy force-feeding them with bland “facts” — let them explore their inner creativity to the point where they can appreciate what it takes to be the next Einstein, et al. We’re put the next several generations of Americans in a huge deficit…and not the kind Washington seems interested in bailing out.

Coping with the Intangible Deficit

As I said earlier, Congress is busy spending more and more money everyday, without any care to the monetary deficit we everyday Americans have to pay for. And part of this spending involves throwing more money at all kinds of park-barrel projects…everything from fighting crime to improving infrastructure to ensuring Johnny American Jr. gets a decent education. If throwing money at the problem were all there was to it, we’d have nicked this education deficit decades ago. Ah, but our congressional delegates don’t realize (or don’t care) that more greenbacks don’t equate to better education children (and more productive working adults).

So what are we left with, then? American kids who are dumbstruck in the face of their generational counterparts from places like Finland and Japan. Depending on where you get your news from, we’re falling behind “emerging market” countries like China and India — and even some other Third World countries — in terms of getting our high schoolers to graduate on time. And the thing to note is, these kids aren’t going to get more competitive just from Congress throwing more money at the problem. No, we need a total reform of the education system altogether.

What I’m talking about here, is a renaissance… The American Renaissance. Yes, a rebirth of thinking and appreciation of learning. And this is one area where we can actually take a good lesson from our so-called allies in Europe. Just read the history books and see what happened over there during the 15th and 16th centuries…a greater appreciation of the fine arts and new scientific achievements.

I think it’s no coincidence the most talented artists of the European Renaissance were also some of the era’s most adept scientists, engineers and architects. One can only imagine what this world would be like without Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific endeavors. Not only did he paint for us The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, he also made bold attempts to understand human anatomy and physiology. Plus, da Vinci designed the ornithopter (a precursor for the helicopter), the machine gun and even an armored car. As for other forward-thinking minds, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; but what a lot of people don’t appreciate about him was how he and his assistants designed a brilliant scheme in architecture to hold him in place, far above the ground, while he labored for four years to make his masterpiece.

So what do all of these Renaissance artists and thinkers have to do with Obama’s agenda? Absolutely nothing! And thank goodness, that’s the best part. They DO, however, have something to do with what we Americans need to do to get out of the education deficit. For too long, our education system has focused on solely reading and writing and ‘rithmetic, just spitting them out to our children and hoping they get it without question, and expecting to just grow up and do something with their lives. All the while, states have cut back on requirements for the visual and performing arts, to the point where high schoolers are required to take only one art or music class in order to graduate.

Coming from a high school program where the visual and performing arts were emphasized and admired, I got very blessed with my education. I’m one of the lucky ones. I might not have been valedictorian of my graduating class, but I got to explore a creative side of me that, I dare say, has been an asset to me throughout my young career thus far.

And Uncle Sam wonders why our high school graduates lag so far behind our rivals in Europe, Asia and elsewhere…

We’ve Had Our Revolution; Let’s Have Our Renaissance

So how do we implement this American Renaissance? Well, believe it or not, folks, it doesn’t require any extra money spent at all. Not by Uncle Sam, not by the state and local governments. Not by lobbyists and event not by concerned parents and teachers.

What we need is to stop holding our teachers back and let them spend more time helping little Johnny and Janey relate various academic subjects to their individual experiences and interests. Government regulations have our teachers’ hands tied behind their backs, as they’re forced to teach the curriculum to fit any given test. But does teaching to the test — and even passing said test — make the student a brighter, more competitive component of the American economic engine? I don’t think so.

That’s where the arts come into play. We need more classes in the visual and performing arts. Johnny American Jr. needs to grow and nurture his sense of creativity — through painting a still life and/or singing in the spring concert — as much as he needs to learn his ABCs and how to multiply two times two. Several studies show students who take an interest in the arts do much better in other academic areas of study than those students who don’t. It’ll also get him away from the books long enough to see that he can think and do for himself, and show other people just how he interprets the world and expresses himself.

With that said, art and music teachers can work in concert with instructors of other academic subjects to show our youngsters how the arts relate to other areas of learning. Basically, we need to nurture that sense of self-growth and creative development. And the best way to do that is to let our students show they can be creative in the way they come to conclusions about various debatable topics. Now, I’m no scientist, but who’s to say that Newtonian Physics is the end-all, be-all for all scientific study? What if there’s some other kind of force out there, that we don’t know about or understand, and we need to figure out how best to use it? Wouldn’t be nice if the next generation of Americans were out on the front lines, developing ways to improve our quality of life to fit this new force of nature? And there are some mathematical problems out there we just can’t solve at this time with trigonometry or calculus… Ought we not to instill some sort of appreciation of the arts in our kids now, so they can have the creative minds to figure out new formulas for solving these problems?

But the biggest question I ask you is this: Do you want America to be competitive again? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of seeing us lag behind China and India in the number of students we graduate from high school each year…and the number of students who are actually ready to become productive members of their nation’s workforce. I’m tired of seeing our teachers distraught by having Uncle Sam and various state regulators holding them back, thus holding little Johnny and Janey American back. I’m tired of seeing them have to teach to the test…and seeing the government dumb down standards for learning, which only hurts our youngsters in the long run.

I want to see the next generation of Americans be creative and original in their thinking. I want them to appreciate the connection between the past and present…and between art and math and music and science. In order for that to happen, the Fed needs to get out of the way and let teachers and administrators do what they do best…educate our children! Certainly our students can learn much more from their instructors in a growth-inspired, artistic-driven environment than from a set of cold, distant government standards…many of which have no practical application to what’s happening in little Johnny’s community, by the way.

So as President Obama makes the people of Europe all giddy (at least those other than the London protestors), he ought to think about bringing forth the American Renaissance here at home. Now that would truly be change we could all believe in.

Sincerely,
Adam Hopkins

April 2, 2009

Bring Forth the American Renaissance! was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

“I have a cold. I don’t feel very well.”

“But about the election? About Obama?”

“Well, it’s great that a black man can be elected President in America. But it doesn’t exactly expiate the great national sin of slavery does it? Martin Luther King said he dreamt about an America where a man could be judged for the content of his character and not the color of his skin. But it looks like most black people voted for Obama because he’s black, not because of what he believes. Not that it bothers me much. It’s probably a great thing that 12% of the American population woke up today and felt like they belonged to an America where anything really is possible. It may be the first time many of them felt that way. It’s great.”

“That doesn’t sound so optimistic.”

“It’s realistic. It is what it is. If people were proud of America for seeing past race, well then I reckon American could justifiably be proud for surprising the world again. But from what I saw, people were more proud of Obama than they were for America.”

“So what?”

“So that’s the takeaway from this election. This election wasn’t about the deficit, global warming, or the neo-cons. It was about a vote people could make to feel better about themselves. Obama offered people that chance. The Republicans got exactly what they deserved for betraying small-government, fiscally-conservative, sound-money and non-interventionist foreign policy principles. But they also underestimated how badly people want to believe in something today. This election was all about pathos, not logos.”

“You make it sound like it was a Greek tragedy.”

“More like a comedy. It wasn’t a campaign at all. It was one long personal narrative, a two-year reality TV show with some world-class editing and producing. Barrack Obama convinced people that his story was America’s story. Once he was able to sell them that story, there was only one way it could end. Americans love a winner.”

“But isn’t he like a black Kennedy?”

“I have no idea what that even means. Race still matters in America just like religion still matters. The things that make us different aren’t always bad. Besides, that just sounds like a bunch of romance and nostalgia from people who have always wanted believe that a dynamic leader could take us toward better, more enlightened government. Don’t these people have romance and drama in their own lives? Why are they living vicariously through Obama’s life? I understand wanting to be a part of something greater than yourself. That’s why I work on the Daily Reckoning. But anytime people feel like that, they usually end up doing something stupid like burning books or drinking Kool-Aid.”

“Not always. The Civil Rights movement was about being part of something greater than yourself. That turned out okay.”

“Of course. But look, all I’m saying is that this wasn’t a transcendent election. It was a synthetic election. The power of America’s mass media and entertainment image-making machine was harnessed to a candidate for national office. Obama became a feel-good brand that would magically repair America’s damaged reputation in the world and her economy at home. But the Obama brand has all the depth and staying power of a catchy pop tune. It’s like Mountain Dew, all sugar rush, no nutritional value. You feel better but you’re not getting any healthier.”

“You sound bitter. Or drunk.”

“Not at all. Just a little alarmed. Modern politics is about the manipulation of people’s emotions (fear, hope, anger, envy, and sloth) through words and images and really compelling but hugely false promises. The Obama campaign was a masterpiece in manipulation, a triumph of style over content. McCain just couldn’t find a big enough lie to latch on to. The campaign also represents the triumph of the cult of personality in American politics. And anytime people have faith in a man over faith in ideas, it’s dangerous. We’re supposed to be a nation of laws, where our ideas — equality before the law, opportunity, freedom of speech — command our loyalty.”

“You’re just a sore loser.”

“Hardly. I lose all the time. I’m used to it. And you know I don’t even believe in voting. In fact, that’s what’s sad about voting. The high voter turnout was a disaster for people who love liberty.”

“How can you possibly say that? Isn’t voting an obligation in a democracy? I think it’s great so many Americans finally cared about who leads them.”

“I said I love liberty, not democracy. Do you think high voter turnout ensures that you get a better result or better government? Harrumph! When people turn out in such large numbers, it’s a triumph for State power. It means that people who believe the government should have a great role in your life have succeeded in politicising ever greater aspects of private life. Every problem becomes political. And every solution requires a new law. Yesterday we learned that most Americans believe in big government power, they just disagree about whom it should be directed against.”

“That’s awfully cynical.”

“Ask yourself why people have so much secular faith in politics and in ‘transcendent’ men like Obama. Why? It’s because for the last one-hundred years, people have lost their faith in the institutions which used to give their life meaning and purpose…things like family, community, the local school, or the local church. All those relationships have become lost because they’ve become Federalised, with Big Government as the mediator. I say lost, but I think that those kinds of voluntary associations have been deliberately undermined by people who believe in the pursuit of government power to enforce their moral outlook on the world. The entire world.”

“Now you sound like a freak.”

“What’s new? But hear me out. You could argue that it’s a biological imperative for us to believe our lives mean something. For some people, having children — the ultimate vote of confidence in the future — is one of way giving life purpose and meaning. But take someone like Viktor Frankl. He survived the Holocaust. He says that men can find meaning in their lives in three ways. First, through work that matters. Second, through relationships with other people. Third, through the attitude which we choose to have when we encounter the suffering life inevitably throws our way.”

“So?”

“Well, today people are largely alienated from their work. Not to sound like Marx too much. But we see work as something we must do to pay off the mortgage. We don’t see work as…the work we want to do with our lives. So most of us don’t find meaning in our work. It’s labour with sweat but no fruit.”

“What about family?”

“We all live alone in little cubes and sit in front of our fake campfires (televisions) while e-mailing and texting each other constantly. We’re completely free to pursue our individual goals and desires and selfish pursuits. And we have more ways than ever to communicate. Yet we find ourselves more alone and more medicated than ever.”

“You’re depressing me, man. Do you want another beer?”

“Let me just finish this bit about suffering, then we’ll have some whiskey. We don’t suffer anymore, at least not most of us in the Western world. We were born into a world of plenty. Plenty of energy. Plenty of credit. Plenty of food. Plenty of surplus. Suffering, in the modern world, has no redeeming value. No value at all. To the extent we do it at all, we do it voluntarily in the gym, on the tread mill, or perhaps in the commute we are forced to endure to get to work. But those are just superficial kinds of suffering. They aren’t in the service of any worthwhile purpose which makes us feel like our lives have meaning.”

“What does any of this have to do with Obama?”

“He made people feel like their lives had meaning by voting for him. I don’t know how he pulled it off. But people used to find meaning in day-to-day relationships. Family, friends, neighbors. The cult of individual materialism and Nanny State paternalism has made the relationship between a man and his government the most important relationship in the modern world. I find that utterly depressing. I’m thinking about getting a dog to protest.”

“So what is your point?”

“People are going to be disappointed. Some of them will be devastated. Exalted political rhetoric can make you feel good for a while, the way you might feel when your sports team wins a championship. But the sun comes up the next day and your life is still your life, with all its challenges, fears, and opportunities. Obama can’t live it for you. He can’t pay your mortgage, fuel up your car, make you feel better about your job, your love life, or your relationship with your parents and kids. Your life is still your own. Like my mom used to day, wherever you go, there you are.”

“I disagree with you on the mortgage part. But I see what you’re saying. You should stop drinking beer. Look what it does to your gut. Why don’t we go to the gym tomorrow forget this conversation ever happened?”

Regards,
Dan Denning
November 13, 2008

What the First Black President Means for the U.S. was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

In the United States, the main problem of finance for politicians comes from the cost of elections. The 2008 presidential election will end up costing $1 trillion, perhaps more. Much of the money goes for political advertising, of which the more effective half is spent on attacking the competence or integrity of the other candidates. The American lobbying system involves the lobbyists — who have their hands out for political favors — raising money from their clients to pay to politicians to spend on these negative campaigns.

In Europe, the personal expenses of candidates or sitting members of European parliaments seem to be more of a problem. In Britain, a member of Parliament has been suspended for two weeks for paying his son out of parliamentary funds for research work he did not actually carry out. About a third of members of Parliament use parliamentary funds, intended for their political staff, to pay members of their families. This applies to all major parties, Labor, Conservative, or Liberal Democrat.

Even the speaker of the House of Commons has been accused of bad judgment, though not of breaking the law, for using air miles from official visits to pay for family travel and claiming his wife’s taxi journeys on official expenses.

There is another and graver scandal in the European Parliament, which has produced, but not published, a report on the claims for expenses of the European Parliament itself. This includes claims for first class flights when the cheapest airlines had, in fact, been used, but it also includes more serious matters in which downright fraud is alleged and the sums involved go up to five or six figures.

Naturally, politicians are reluctant to investigate their own, or their colleagues’, minor expenses fiddles. The judgment of a legitimate expense is usually left to the individual parliamentarian. No man should be a judge in his own case. Many politicians have given up well-paid jobs, or even highly rewarding partnerships in law firms or fund management. They know that they are out of pocket as a consequence of pursuing a public career. They may think that a somewhat inflated expenses claim is a way to redress part of their loss of income.

It is also true that young politicians often find it hard to finance their careers. Very often, the earnings of a husband or wife assist the first stages of a political career. A young married couple, perhaps with children, can afford to live on two incomes after one of them has won a seat in Parliament or Congress, but may find it difficult to live on a single income while the political partner is still a candidate.

In most countries, there are pressures to keep down the pay of politicians. In Britain, median pay of all workers is about £20,000 per year, and members of Parliament are paid about £60,000 per year, but enjoy additional staff and other expenses of over £100,000. If one compares members of Parliament with doctors in the National Health Service, the MPs seem underpaid. General practitioners are the professional basis of health care; they are paid £100,000 per year, sometimes more, sometimes less. That is £40,000 more than MPs.

There are measures that could remove some of the temptations that face even honest politicians. All election expenditure could be limited. If the nominees in the United States accept public funding, they will, apparently, be limited to $85 million each, a reasonable sum to spend on an election. Unfortunately, Barack Obama has raised more money than anyone else, more than Hillary Clinton, more than John McCain. He will be tempted to make use of his advantage, though that would make his statements on campaign expenditure seem hypocritical.

In Europe, the members of parliaments may need to be paid more, related to some acceptable standard of professional pay. Democracy is undermined when voters think that the politicians are on the take, and the present reliance on expenses to supplement income is a temptation for too many politicians who are, in Shakespeare’s phrase, “indifferent honest.”

Regards,
Lord William Rees-Mogg
March 3, 2008

Campaign Financing was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

There has been an extraordinary shift in the age group that dominates political life, in Europe as well as in the United States. Those of us who are older than the baby boomers saw them take over from our generation, and we now see our children’s generation taking over from them. Technically, I think that Barack Obama is himself a baby boom child, if one extends the birth dates of the baby boom generation from 1947-1965, but he relates to the generation born from 1965-1990. To it, Hillary Clinton, aged 60, seems to be on the cusp between the middle-aged and the elderly. Every time she refers to her greater experience, she reminds the generation now in its 30s that she belongs to an earlier generation.

My generation, now in our 70s, is the one to which Sen. John McCain belongs. We find it easy to empathize with him. We were at school during World War II, lived our adult lives under the threat of the Cold War, and were contemporary with the Vietnam War, whether we were involved in it or not. It affected the lives and the political attitudes of most American students. It had less of an impact on European students, but still enough to cause the events of 1968 in Paris. To us, the student experience of Bill Clinton himself is still a contemporary event. For the post-baby boomers, it is quite distant in history.

The trouble with the baby boomers is that they have become too familiar. They have been around too long, and there are too many of them. They are boring to the next generation, who became students in the ‘80s, but they are also boring to the pre-baby boom generation, who were students in the ‘50s.

I was never sure what “triangulation” meant. It sounded like poor geometry, as well as poor politics. But Hillary Clinton is exposed to the double difficulty of having lost the younger generation without creating enthusiasm among the older — she makes good speeches, but her speeches do not relate to the hopes of either generation. She does, however, retain her identification with the women of her own age group.

In Britain, the young are having quite a tough time. They now have to pay high tuition fees if they go to college; the average debt at graduation is £20,000. They have to incur an even bigger debt to get into the housing market. The cost of rearing children is phenomenal. The norm, by the age of 30, is a debt of £100,000-200,000. There are far fewer lifetime jobs outside the civil service. The companies, such as ICI, GEC, or British Leyland, that offered training and lifetime jobs in the 1960s and 1970s no longer exist.

I do not know what the ideals of this generation will prove to be, but I do know that it is responding to Barack Obama’s rhetoric of hope, just as my father’s generation in England responded to Franklin Roosevelt’s message of hope in 1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Hope may be an illusion, but it has powerful political appeal. If there were primaries in the European Union, I think Barack Obama would win them comfortably. I might vote for Sen. John McCain, who is my contemporary, but the 30-year-olds would vote for Sen. Obama.

Regards,
Lord William Rees-Mogg
February 25, 2008

The Democratic Age Gap was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.