The myth of conservative strength: Several not-so-conservative conservative ideals proven wrong when given the chance

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There are many examples of the failed philosophy of neo (new) conservatism, such as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute , the Project for New American Century, and last but not least, financial ‘innovation’ in the economy.  You can argue until you are blue in the face about philosophy and theory, but some evidence is empirical.  It just can’t be argued.  The outcome, or the results, of particular programs and policies in action speak for themselves, similar to how if you mix water, milk, eggs, and Bisquick just right you get pancakes.

The WPRI was a group that had advocated for school choice vouchers in Milwaukee.  After the program was instituted and studied, they issued this report which said, among other things:

“The report you are reading did not yield the results we had hoped to find,” George Lightbourn, a senior fellow at the institute, wrote in the paper’s first sentence. 

On the same topic of vouchers but not from the same report, I spent a day in Jefferson City speaking with a local Republican State Representative at the time named Jim Lembke.  It was a very cordial conversation on education policy in the Missouri.  However, the conversation ended quite abruptly after I said to him:

My grandfather was a conservative.  (I like to call him an Eisenhower conservative.) And as I understand it, in his day, they believed that public tax dollars should not be used for private purposes.  In relation to vouchers, what ever happened to that conservative ideal?

Then there is The Project for a New American Century, a conservative think tank formed during the Clinton Administration and whose membership included the likes of Steve Forbes, Bill Kristol, William J. Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Richard L. Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, “Scooter” Libby, Dan Quayle, and more. They penned a letter that said some of the following (keep in mind, this was before 9/11 and a few years before W. was ever elected POTUS):

“That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.”

“Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction”

“Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.”

“a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard…”

“…removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.”

“…If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Of course, we know how all of that worked out.  $150 a barrel for oil, $10 billion a month in Iraq Afghanistan, oh, and no Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Notice how almost all of the people mentioned in the letter to President Clinton seen here ended up in the Bush Administration.

The phrase that freaks me out the most from the Project for a New American Century is an excerpt from the following paper:

Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and
industrial policy will shape the pace and
content of transformation as much as the
requirements of current missions.

And last but not least, the financial market.  So far, we have talked about two of the items that the conservatives are traditionally given credit for as their strength.  Taxes, Defense, and now Finance.  It is clear that their strength in these areas is nothing more than a myth, and a very damaging myth at that.  Here is the latest from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke:

“One would be forgiven for concluding that the assumed benefits of financial innovation are not all they were cracked up to be,” the Fed chairman said today in a speech at the central bank’s community affairs conference in Washington. “The damage from this turn in the credit cycle — in terms of lost wealth, lost homes, and blemished credit histories — is likely to be long-lasting.”

Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

“Burn the Books!” – Tea Party Video

Apparently it is video day on Daddy Hogwash…

I haven’t paid much attention to these Tea Parties; however, I was so embarrassed for these people, I had to post this.  There once was a time when we actually wanted intelligent people running this country…I wonder what the Constitution Party guy has to say about African Americans being counted as 3/5’s of a person…

Seventh grader outsmarts standardized testers in Missouri – Who says public education isn’t working?

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 This kid has a future in quality control at NASA. 

Thirteen-year-old Adam Diehl will be the first to tell you he wasn’t always such a good student.

"It stated in second grade, that’s when I started getting good at the academic stuff," said Diehl. "In first grade I couldn’t even spell orange."

But those days are behind him, and this year Diehl began his seventh grade Missouri Assessment Program or "MAP" test with a streak of several years of advanced scores.

"It was multiple choice, so it wasn’t that hard," he said. "All the other answers matched up anyway."

All the answers but one, in the math section, near the end of the test.

"I got my answer and it didn’t match any of the choices on there, so I double-checked it," and triple-checked it, he said, and still, no match. He finished the test convinced there was a mistake.

"It was like, come on, where’s the right answer," said Diehl.

Seventh grader finds MAP test mistake | ksdk.com | St. Louis, MO

Seven Reasons Why Evangelical Christianity is Coming to an End | Christian Science Monitor

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After the results of the latest American Religious Identification Survey, Christian Science Monitor appears to blame evangelical Christianity on the reduction of believers nation-wide.

One interesting tidbit here is that strong proponents of the Separation of Church and State are strong proponents for two reasons.  1.  They want the church to stay out of the government business, and 2.  They want the government to stay out of church business.

What happens when you cross that line?  Well, perhaps the Christian Science Monitor is on to something…

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

This just in, Brush Your Teeth! — Especially if you are female and pregnant

I wonder how many diseases and other medical problems are caused by weakened immune systems due to mouth infections related to poor oral hygiene.  Anybody?

Discovery Channel - Jan. 13, 2009 — Previously undiscovered bacteria usually found in the mouth could be responsible for up to 80 percent of early preterm labors, estimate doctors from Case Western and Yale Universities in a new study published recently in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

The research could help doctors prevent preterm births by encouraging oral hygiene or stop early labor from developing by prescribing targeted antibiotics.

“The earlier the woman goes into preterm labor, the higher the chance that she will be infected,” said Yiping Han, a doctor at Case Western University and the first author on the study.

Happy Birthday, Sir Isaac Newton - Shouldn’t we celebrate?

I can think of at least three birthdays that should be celebrated in schools (K-12) across the country on an annual basis. Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. I am sure there are more, but it would blunt the effect to have too many.

To qualify for school birthday celebrations, there should be at least four criteria:

1. The person verifiably existed beyond all reasonable doubt.

2. They made at least one contribution to humanity that has withstood the test of time.

3. They must portray the value of “obtainable intelligence.” That knowledge is an essential part of any value system.

4. Textbooks should already thoroughly cover their acheivements.

The purpose of the birthday celebrations should be more than just eating cupcakes. Age appropriate curriculum should be built around the events to humanize the men or women behind their accomplishments, accentuating that they achieved what they did through hard work and persistence, not just brute intelligence.

Perhaps the over-riding goal should be to show that everyone, barring some type of disability, has the ability to be knowledgable, and even with most disabilities, children and adults alike can almost always learn more than they already know. (It would be a great way to introduce Carol Dweck’s work at Stanford into school curriculum.)

For instance, I always tell my sons, “Smart is not what you know, it is what you learn and how hard you try.”

Regardless, Happy Birthday, Sir Isaac Newton.

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids - Don’t tell them they are smart - Scientific American

I had originally posted this on another blog of mine back in January, but since it is one of my favorite education/parenting articles, I thought I would share it with Daddy Hogwash readers as well.

Scientific American: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids - Don’t tell them they are « The Karl Frank Jr. Communicator

Scientific American: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
Hint: Dont tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life

By Carol S. Dweck

A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Jonathan puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Jonathan who is a composite drawn from several children. Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

Click here to read the rest of this article by Carol Dweck…

Being poor heavily influences brain function - as severly as an adult stroke victim

Another case for universal early childhood education, especially in impoverished areas of the country.  Another study I read recently from the University of Michigan states that children of lower socioeconomic status hear 1 million less words and have 1000 less hours of “lap time” than those in the middle socio-economic status range.

Poor Children’s Brain Activity Resembles That Of Stroke Victims, EEG Shows

“Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult,” said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. “We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response.”

Previous studies have shown a possible link between frontal lobe function and behavioral differences in children from low and high socioeconomic levels, but according to cognitive psychologist Mark Kishiyama, first author of the new paper, “those studies were only indirect measures of brain function and could not disentangle the effects of intelligence, language proficiency and other factors that tend to be associated with low socioeconomic status. Our study is the first with direct measure of brain activity where there is no issue of task complexity.”