Gratitude for the blessings we have in America comes from recognizing the contribution of other people, past and present. We have plenty to be thankful for.
Here's a familiar celebrity bringing American stories to life, stories of ordinary yet inspiring people who helped build something. The movie came out yesterday, we hope to see it before it leaves theaters.
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
A London school headmistress is the first speaker to make a case against reparations, and her arguments are as follows.
First of all, the West agrees today that slavery was evil, in agreement with her opponent. But the fact that slavery was practiced in the West does not mean that they should pay reparations.
Second, "the West" was far from being alone in slave traffic. She notes that Brazil, for example, took in 5,000,000 slaves. Arabs enslaved over a million white European Christians. Africans enslaved Africans for thousands of years. Native Americans (20,000) sided with the South in America's civil war for the right to preserve slavery. About 4,000 free blacks owned slaves in America's South. Clearly, slavery was not all about race.
Third, it's difficult to define who should get the money. She, for example, is the descendant of both slaves and slave owners. And sometimes those who should get the money are defined simply as "black." What about people of mixed race?
Finally, "it's bizarre to suggest that human beings should inherit the outrage of the deeds of their parents. Should the child of a mass murderer be sent to prison for his father's crime? No. We do not inherit the sins of our fathers."
Here is a debate held in the United Kingdom on whether reparations should be paid. A professor of black studies (and descendant of slaves) explains why he thinks that the governments of the West should pay money to today's descendants of slaves. Today we're looking at his arguments; tomorrow we'll look at his opponent's arguments.
Back in the 1830's when the slave trade was abolished in the UK, he says, the government gave a large sum to slave owners to compensate them for the price they had paid for those slaves. He thinks that this justifies the whole idea of paying reparations, and it's his main argument.
He also claims that Western countries are wealthy today because of that payment to slave owners and because of the wealth those slaves helped create. Clearly his Marxist opinion is questionable as it ignores 190 years of monumental economic history since then, and I don't share it.
(cont'd tomorrow)
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
About 90% of U.S. criminal cases are handled by elected district attorneys: "Once elected, rogue prosecutors refuse to prosecute entire categories of crimes that are on the books in their states, justifying their refusal by claiming prosecutorial discretion.”
Yes, these D.A.'s use their own preference about which criminal cases to prosecute.
So if (for example) the legislature makes it a crime to resist the police making an arrest, a rogue prosecutor (D.A.) might decide not to prosecute breaking that law--it's up to him or her. The practical effect of it is, he repeals a law legally created--when it's his responsibility to to enforce it.
In 2022, Manhattan's newly elected D.A. announced that his office would not prosecute the following: "marijuana misdemeanors; not paying public transportation fare; trespassing . . resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration in certain cases, and prostitution."
The police are "concerned about the messages these types of policies send to police officers and criminals on the street. . . there are already too many people who believe that they can commit crimes, resist arrest, interfere with police officers, and face zero consequences.”
from CNN
Keeping us safe in America is the job of local law enforcement. A movement was started years ago to upend that security. Two foundational beliefs motivate them: that our criminal justice system is completely racist, and that law-and-order district attorneys have to go because they control what charges will be pressed.
Racial activists with Marxist ties persuaded a billionaire (G. Soros) to donate a million dollars in 2015 to replace D.A.'s in Louisiana and Mississippi. It grew into the "progressive prosecutors" movement, or the "rogue prosecutors" movement in the words of this author.
Cities dominated by leftwing politicians elected these new ones who see defendants as victims. A law professor who supports this rogue movement says its goal is to "reverse-engineer and dismantle the criminal justice infrastructure."
The one pictured above claims that he is concerned with protecting the "truly vulnerable." But that doesn't turn out to be the result of the progressive (rogue) prosecutors movement: "In the areas where it has prevailed, the most harm has been done to racial minorities whose interests it purports to represent."
from Imprimis
(cont'd tomorrow)
Freedom to trade as you choose is one of those principles that helps our society flourish. When you freely engage with others, you and your neighbors will wind up more satisfied. Even a child can understand it.
Are the concepts of our own economic system in the U.S. (and generally in the West) still taught in our schools? That's a good question.
Years ago, I realized that I had never been taught the foundations of economic freedom and didn't even know what "free enterprise" means. Going back to 2016, there are some posts that can fill in the gaps in our understanding. I'm going to re-post a few of them.
* * * * *
Elon Musk is one of the richest people on earth, having been wealthy since he was young. So when it looked like Tesla was going to pay him up to $56 billion, some people were outraged.
Yes, it's a huge sum, and it would go to someone who's already rich. A judge struck down that payout agreement between Musk and Tesla shareholders, agreeing with the critics.
But there's more to the story.
His personal wealth helped make Tesla possible in this way: Elon took no compensation from Tesla until 2019, apparently living on his own resources until he could somehow make Tesla a success. He worked extraordinarily hard, to the point of sleeping on a mattress in the factory at times.
Shareholders voluntarily chose to make this agreement to pay him that sum if he could multiply the company's value by ten times, from $60 billion to $650 billion--and he did that. After the judge's ruling, in fact, they reinstated the plan.
Before judging a story, it's good to get all the relevant information. You might have heard only the "bias framing" version of the story.
Debate that welcomes verbal expression and clarifies the issues in a respectful manner is good.
In the next story, debate is missing. The chance to clarify each side of the argument is missing. In place of discussion, there is a sort of cancellation, a one-sided shutdown by the school's powerholder.
A California middle-school student by the name of Jimmy was running for the office of "Commissioner of School Spirit & Patriotism." He submitted his candidacy speech to the principal, who forbad him from reading it to the student body unless he removed every single reference to "patriotism," even though the position he was running for had the very word in its title. He sat silently on stage with the other candidates while they spoke.
Jimmy's dad objected in a respectful manner to the denial of Jimmy's freedom of speech. At this time, both Jimmy and his two sisters have been kicked out of St. Bonaventure Catholic school.
If more of this odd story comes out, I'll follow up.
from a post on X
Ex-candidate for President Vivek Ramaswamy learned something about the value of the right kind of debate as a 12-year-old.
His dad brought him along to law classes, and then they would talk about it. Vivek reveals what he learned on those occasions in an interview on X.
"My dad would engage me in debate on those long drives home. He would lean a little left of center and then he would criticize what [certain judges] say, and then I would take the other side. It actually brought us closer together."
It's the friendliest way to learn to think things through without hostility.
"It teaches kids who know they have the love of their parents that you can disagree with someone even while having a high regard for them." Disagreement does not equal hate, an important thing to remember in today's climate.
from this post on X
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
That whistle-blower at NPR was punished with five days of suspension, and then he resigned his long-time position as editor and writer. Of course he did. It would be difficult to remain in the organization after calling it out publicly like that, and it cost him his job.
His accusation was that NPR is now partisan (though he shares its point-of-view), that its reporting is one-sided, that it does not tolerate dissent from its politics.
Its CEO fully participates with the "Disinformation" movement described in yesterday's post, acknowledging that it can be "tricky"null to censor dissent due to that pesky First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
Public money is also a problem if the news organization is partisan as the whistle-blower reported, because taxpayers support it: "NPR may receive little direct federal funding, but a good deal of its budget comprises federal funds that flow to it indirectly by federal law."null
from Christopher Rufo and here
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Reporter Nellie Bowles, in her dream job at the New York Times, was surprised when her editors rejected a story that she wrote in 2019 about Prager U. They said the story should have stressed that Prager U's videos are "disinformation."
"Disinformation" became a movement in newsrooms around the country, she says, at about that time. The movement "pretends to be editorial, but it's extremely political. It's their tangible goal. . . They pretended that Antifa was fake news!" She calls Antifa "an armed group of left-wing protesters." Editors labeled her a fascist for wanting to report on Antifa taking over a neighborhood in Seattle.
Nellie sees journalism as a vehicle for true information, not political activism. So, she's no longer employed by "prestige media."
i(cont'd from yesterday's post)
A senior business editor with 25 years of experience at National Public Radio says something similar has happened at NPR. Instead of even trying to represent the views of the whole country, it became partisan.
"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
"Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find . . the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
He makes the good point that there would be nothing wrong with reporting only their own left-leaning point of view-- if they were honest about it. But they purport to "consider all things" -- and don't. In three examples, he shows how storylines follow talking points of politicians just from the left-leaning party to the exclusion of the other one.
from How NPR Lost America's Trust null
(cont'd tomorrow)
Journalism doesn't mean today what it used to mean, and icons of news reporting don't do what they used to do. That has led to our situation today: Americans don't trust media like they used to.
The Washington Post (founded in 1877), for example, earned a good reputation in the past but hasn't been doing well. From the end of 2020 until now, the newspaper lost 500,000 subscribers, hundreds of employees, and lots of revenue.
WaPo's publisher and CEO delivered a truth bomb to his staff recently. He said, "People are not reading your stuff!"null
Why is that? They've lost subscribers because they represent only one political side: they're no longer bipartisan. Many, many people have lost interest in their coverage of the issues.
They are certainly not the only media group doing this.
from "What's Happening to Journalism?" null
(cont'd tomorrow)
SpaceX staff were thrilled last week with the results of another test flight: Starship, consisting of the space craft itself ("Ship") and its booster ("Super Heavy"), flew into space and returned separately to a soft splashdown. No RUD, rapid unplanned disassembly, this time.
Super Heavy was powered by 32 of its 33 Raptor engines, which you can see as lighted circles in the video below. When it makes its soft landing at about 7 1/2 minutes after liftoff, you can hear the SpaceX crowd explode with joy and relief.
They like to say that "the data is the payload" for this flight. Live, visual data is recorded by cameras and transmitted by Starlink, the network of internet-service satellites owned by SpaceX.
Ship flew further and faster into space (up to ~26,000 KM/H) powered by its own engines after Super Heavy separated. Surviving re-entry, it executed its "flip" and landing burn, and achieved its own soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Nazi-dominated Europe ended after another year of intense war. Allies went on to re-claim Europe for its citizens, to empty out the concentration camps and defeat the Nazis.
In addition to the tens of thousands of dead Allied troops, French civilians also paid a price for the fighting in their own towns. A hungry 6-year-old watched the Americans pass him on the way inland. They gave him his first oranges. “The Americans, for us, were gods,” Marchais, now 86, recalled. “Whatever they do in the world, they will always be gods to me.”
Said to be historically accurate, the movie "The Longest Day" tells the story of D-Day. Troops, commanders and civil leaders are played by some of 1962 Hollywood's biggest stars.
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
France is today the site of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion. If this hard-fought victory had never happened, potentially we could have seen the horrifying vision of a whole Nazi Europe.
British paratroopers reenacted a drop over Normandy yesterday. Today the president of France awarded their highest distinction, the Legion of Honor, to some American veterans, as well as to a 104-year-old British woman who created the landing maps.
About 200 veterans, all near the age of 100 years old now, are there. Some of them, in few words, tell us what it was like to be part of the Battle of Normandy and how they feel about it. A current soldier whose Jewish grandparents fled Germany in time to escape the fate of millions is moved by meeting the veterans:
Nazi troops invaded and conquered France in 1940, stealing it from its own citizens. Imagine watching foreign soldiers run your country.
About half the population of Europe came under Nazi occupation, including all or most of Hungary, Norway, Italy, Netherlands, Greece, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Finland, Poland, and more.
A mammoth invasion, the biggest in world history, was the chosen strategy of the Allies. On June 6, 1944, about 160,000 soldiers landed on the beaches of northern France to begin a fierce battle to reverse Nazi domination and liberate Europe.
Over half of the Allied troops were killed, as well as 20,000 French citizens, in the Battle of Normandy. Eventually Germany and its Axis allies were defeated, though at great human cost.
from National WW2 Museum
(cont'd tomorrow)
All the disappointment of Americans in their corrupted "Ivy League" universities is showing up in the job market. Forbes reports that "Managers Have Lost Faith in Ivy League Grads."
"[I]n a new Forbes survey 33% of employers say they are less likely to hire Ivy League grads than five years ago, while only 7% say they are more likely to hire them. By contrast, 42% say they are more likely to hire public university grads than five years ago and only 5% say they are less likely to do so."
A manager writing in Wall Street Journal says, "I’m not inclined to hire a graduate from one of America’s elite universities. That marks a change. A decade ago, I relished the opportunity to employ talented graduates of Princeton, Yale, Harvard and the rest. Today? Not so much."
Why? Speaking of Ivy League grad job candidates, he says:
Non-believers in the Christian faith sometimes have inaccurate, negative, condescending notions about believers. Wall Street Journal had to issue an apology back in 1993 when one of its writers described evangelical Christians as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” I've known many Christians, and this doesn't describe any of them in my experience.
A quick Google search didn't show me much to support that generalization. Here's an "X" (Twitter) post that says the opposite:
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Security is always an issue at the Olympics. Grievance groups and terrorists would love to create drama at an event that will make headlines all over the world.
France has already experienced multiple attacks in the name of Islam, including "the Charlie Hebdo killings of 2015, the Bataclan attack of the same year, the Bastille Day murders in Nice in 2016, and a series of brutal murders of teachers." European sporting events have recently received threats from Islamic State.
France's Interior Minister says these threats are nothing new, and they're prepared. Twenty-thousand soldiers will patrol and defend the games, along with 40,000 police and gendarmes. They are training in the south to defend, for example, against knife attacks and hostage taking.
Two soccer fans expressed tough resistance against fear of terrorists:
"If they are doing this communication campaign, it is above all to scare us and terrorise us, so that the French no longer go out. So we must continue to live and show them we are stronger than that."
"You have to be vigilant but there is no reason to be more afraid than usual."
from BBC
Cleaning the Seine River has been a huge job for France. The Paris Olympics 2024 will begin late in July this summer, and some of the events will take place in the river--which has been very polluted for many years.
Even this close to the events, tests of the water still show pollution levels may be too high for swimmers. The problem is E-coli, bacteria coming from sewage. Potentially, it can result in various problems ranging from skin irritation to serious illness.
Sewage treatment has been updated and improved, but untreated water can overflow into the Seine after a rain. So an immense container to hold the potential overflow was built during the past three years. It's the size of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
About $1.4 billion has been spent on the effort to make the beloved Seine River clean. If all goes well, the public could be permitted to swim in it again by 2025.
from Forbes
From two years ago:
This teacher wanted to help kids get on a good path. She taught traditional values that have worked for hundreds of years. But she didn't fit in anymore at her public school because they wanted her to teach students the same things that are alarming parents all over the country.
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Video technology that fakes a human person exists now and will only improve its ability to deceive, as per yesterday's post. Today's post was going to be about the ways that oppressive government could employ it. But it's a darker level than I wish to place on this blog. If you want to know how it could and probably will be used for propaganda, fear, and tyranny, you can find out here.
Check out this re-post from 2019:
Follow up to this post
It's already hard to know whether reported news gives us an accurate picture of reality. Certain media are reliable, we think, but we wonder if we're right about that.
We know media does follow government direction to censor dissent (example: release of the Twitter files) and does feed us propaganda mixed with factual information. So, what is accurate and what is not?
"When state propaganda is easily generated, millions will fully embrace their own hopeless inability to know the truth." It's easy to be cynical and give up trying to know. At least one millennial in my family did give up.
Unfortunately, advancing video generation technology is almost certain to amplify the power of fake news to deceive us and control us. "AI human impersonation video technology" will get scary.
from Mind Matters
(cont'd tomorrow)
(cont'd from this post)
My yard is a happy place for me, definitely. Especially now, the "merry month of May."
There may even be a science-based element in it, per the article referenced here.
A re-post from 2018:
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
As a boy in school, Ben was called "Dummy," and he agreed with them, says he was a horrible student. Poverty and racial discrimination pervaded his neighborhood. He expected he would die before his mid-20's.
But his mother believed in him. She stood in the way of disaster, when no one would have predicted his spectacular destiny.
His story should inspire everyone, so I'm putting up one more post, this time in his own words:
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
From his life experience--events of his own life--Dr. Carson draws some inevitable conclusions about the value of education. His mother got things started when she enforced a habit in her home of reading books. He learned from those books and got excited about how it could empower and enable him.
Homework - Some deny the value of homework, even claiming that it should be abolished for the sake of black children. But lowering the bar does not benefit them. Don't abolish it.
Discipline - Unlimited "self-expression" disrupts learning. Retain classroom discipline. See Dr. Carson's experience with chaos in the classroom in yesterday's post.
Books - Train kids to focus their attention on books. They can do it if you help them turn their attention from video games to books.
Respect - Reward and celebrate students who achieve at high levels, like schools do for athletic achievement. Dr. Carson and his wife founded the Carson Scholars Fund to do just that.
Other elements are listed in the interview. As a last comment to students, Dr. Carson says this:
"[T]he person who has the most to do with what happens to you in life is you. You get to make the decisions. You get to decide how much energy to put into it. You don’t ever need to look for anybody else to blame."
from Bill Dembski's Substack
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Did this mom have economic or political power? No. But she was the mom of the house. She had the power to make good choices in her own home, and what she could do, she did do. Those decisions probably seemed small then, but this woman changed her family's lives--and many others--with her choices. She was not powerless to change things.
Her son, Dr. Ben Carson, earned his place in history. After graduating from Yale University, he became a famous neurosurgeon and eventually the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He influenced and blessed a whole lot of lives.
His mom was no doubt tempted to take it easy watching television in the evenings after a hard day's work. But she had the quiet courage to make a better choice, even though it was not convenient and good results were not guaranteed.
(cont'd tomorrow . . because Dr. Carson has ideas for the reform of education)
Can just one person change the world? Yes, history shows that an extraordinary person can. But how about one poor, single, black mom with a third-grade education, living in Detroit about 60 years ago?
One of them says he actually started to enjoy those books, then the new habit changed his life. High school teachers spent more time disciplining than teaching, so he created his own learning opportunity:
"I would go back after school, talk to my teachers, and say, “What were you planning on teaching?” They would always look forward to seeing me and knowing that they could share their lesson plan with somebody. I got a lot of extra tutoring. So, even though I was in an inner-city high school that wasn’t known for academics, I was able to get the kind of preparation that allowed me to get through Yale University."
(cont'd tomorrow)
