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<\/p> <\/p>\n Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 22, 2016 <\/p>\n
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war. <\/p>\n
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983 <\/p>\n
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The day was devoured by the business of living. The plumbing stopped yesterday, and Mike Diamond\u2019s efficient $99 drain clearers couldn\u2019t come until today. They came early enough, but that was the first household problem. I couldn\u2019t shower yesterday when I had someone to help, so it was today, alone. Not fun, and I couldn\u2019t start until the drains were free. Meanwhile, the people who are going to get rid of my fallen wall and replace it usually work for an insurance company and all their standard forms are drawn up with the insurance company as the payer; we were referred to them by USAA, whom we have good reason to trust, but that wall falling after trying to fall for fifty years is a good example of normal wear and tear. Why it couldn\u2019t have fallen in one or another earthquake I don\u2019t know; but it didn\u2019t, and there it is. So we\u2019ll pay, which means the contracts need to reflect that, and it took three iterations and Roberta\u2019s skills to get it rewritten, after which we had to wait for the next draft. I needed stuff from the grocer, but there was always some reason I couldn\u2019t go. I had to wait where I could hear the doorbell, which meant I could not get upstairs to the Monk\u2019s Cell to work on the novel; I did some pretty good work on it this week, but I can only work on fiction where I am not interrupted and distracted. For that matter I can\u2019t do decent essays when distractible. I used to write the Chaos Manor column in the Press Room at major shows, but that was before brain cancer and a stroke \u2013 now I can only two finger type while staring at the keyboard. <\/p>\n
On that score, there\u2019s good news. I\u2019ve found the 15\u201d ASUS ZenBook just what I needed, this after trying all kinds of keyboards. I have the ASUS upstairs in the Monk\u2019s Cell, on a good stand with a 25\u201d LED very high resolution monitor at eye level when I sit back and relax. I type looking at the keyboard, but I can see the laptop\u2019s screen, sort of, as I do. I don\u2019t hit two keys at once so often. I still manage to hit c of v along with the spacebar too often, but I am training myself not to do that; and I can type fast, fast enough to keep up with scenes as I imagine them. I can then sit back and edit on the big screen with mouse and keyboard as I did before the stroke. It\u2019s wonderful. You can recover from a stroke. It\u2019s a bit like learning skills all over again, but that\u2019s fine \u2013 you can do it. What you can\u2019t do is give up. Anyway, what with my ADSUS ZenBook and other equipment I\u2019m back in business \u2013 when I can get upstairs to use it. Today I couldn\u2019t. <\/p>\n
And then about 4 PM my oldest son sent an email, cryptic, saying that our number three son Phillip, the career Navy officer, just landed at Burbank Airport and would be at the house anon. He has a Navy conference in San Diego next week and will spend the weekend here. Of course he was expected but with all the other distractions I had forgotten. <\/p>\n
After which things began to get back to normal. The restoration guy showed up and the papers were all in order, and they start next week, and there are no more decisions to make. The plumbers finished their work and the toilets work again. So do the showers. I took one, alone and unassisted, and even treated myself to a real shave with a real razor, no incidents to report. Alex, Phillip, Roberta, and I all went to dinner at a local Italian restaurant that serves gluten free, and it was great. Phillip and I then went to the grocery store and got things urgently needed \u2013 I don\u2019t drive at dusk or later \u2013 and that pressure is off. It\u2019s quiet, everyone is in bed, and I\u2019m working in my back bedroom, not as good as the Monk\u2019s Cell, but Phillip is sleeping there \u2013 it is, after, the bedroom of the oldest boy living with us, which means it was his room at one time. But it\u2019s quiet here, no distractions, and here we are. <\/p>\n
So it turned out to be a pretty good day after all. <\/p>\n
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On Free Trade <\/p>\n
One reason Conservatives are advised by Conservative leaders to disagree with Trump is his position on Free Trade. The problem for me is that I do not see Free Trade, particularly laissez faire Free Trade, as necessarily Conservative at all, <\/p>\n
The advantages of Free Trade are lower prices for stuff. That means they are more cheaply produced. As the economist David Ricardo wrote, there is a principle of comparative advantage that coupled with free trade guarantees maximum profits for when there are no trade restrictions, and impediments to free trade are supposed to be mutually disadvantageous. <\/p>\n
But do understand, what is conserved is lower prices. Nor social stability. Not communities. Not family life. Indeed those are often disrupted; it\u2019s part of the economic model. Under free trade theory, it\u2019s better to have free trade than community preservation, better to have ghost towns of people displaced because their jobs have been shipped overseas; better to have Detroit as a wasteland than a thriving dynamic industrial society turning out tail finned Cadillacs and insolent chariots and supporting workers represented by rapacious unions in conflict with pitiless corporate executives. <\/p>\n
The theory of free trade includes liquidity: liquidity in capital flow, and liquidity in labor relocation. <\/p>\n
What was conserved by turning Detroit into a wasteland? How was that conservative? Wouldn\u2019t it be more conservative to argue that if everyone pays a little more for stuff made here, by people who work here, we are better off than having it made south of the border and inviting our people to go work there at their prevailing wages? <\/p>\n
Go further. You don\u2019t have to move. We\u2019ll pay you for not working and you don\u2019t have to move. Of course we\u2019ll have to raise taxes on those who do work to pay those people no longer working, but that\u2019s life. But after unemployment benefits work out \u2013 in my days the government would pay you $26 a week for 26 weeks \u2013 you\u2019re in trouble. So much so that welfare benefits kept being raised. Food stamps, which became larger and bought more items. Negative income tax. And if you dropped out of the labor force \u2013 no longer looking for a job \u2013 you are no longer unemployed. The unemployment rate just went down. You stopped looking for a job. Of course you don\u2019t have a job \u2013 you are certainly not employed \u2013 but you aren\u2019t unemployed and don\u2019t count toward the unemployment rate. I wouldn\u2019t have thought that sort of lying to the people by government officials was a very Conservative thing to do at all. <\/p>\n
Would a 15% tariff on cars have saved Detroit? It would mean that I would have had to pay about $5000 more for my 1988 Ford Eddie Bauer V8 Explorer I bought in 1999. I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I\u2019ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that. Is paying people not to work more Conservative than trying to keep their jobs \u2013 and manufacturing capabilities and potential here, bot dismantling it and leaving its former site to rust away \u2013 Conservative? <\/p>\n
And is encouraging people not to work \u2013 at least making it easier and more possible \u2013 building a Conservative nation? <\/p>\n
What, precisely, is being conserved here? <\/p>\n
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Some addresses I saved; I intended to comment on them, but things got out of hand, and I have to reduce the number of tabs I have open or Firefox glitches. <\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/trump-has-officially-inaugurated-post-movement-conservatism\/<\/a> <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/dreher\/trump-speech-is-good\/<\/a> <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.familysecuritymatters.org\/<\/a> <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/8442\/sharia-in-denmark-part-ii<\/a> <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.unz.com\/freed\/ready-new-rossiters-universal-robots-toward-a-most-minimal-wage\/<\/a> <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.unz.com\/freed\/walter-williams-catholics-the-projects-and-schooling-for-blacks-something-is-wrong-somewhere\/<\/a> <\/p>\n While this was written recently in Fred\u2019s current style, most of the column is a reprint of a 1981 article he wrote for Harper\u2019s (and is in a more journalistic style). He could have written it last week, only more so: it\u2019s about DC schools. They\u2019re bad. They were bad in 1981. They were bad in 1983. They are worse in 2016. Interestingly, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to deal with the DC school system: you\u2019d think that if the Federal Government could tell you how to run your local schools. It could show you how to do it in a place where the Congress \u2013 i.e. the Federal Government \u2013 has all the Constitutional authority it needs. Yet from 1981 to now, under Democratic majorities with Democratic Presidents, Democratic majorities with Republican Presidents, Republican majorities with Democratic Presidents, Republican majorities with Republican President, and in the past few years Republican majorities with Democratic President \u2013 under all these combinations the DC schools have got worse and worse, the federal government always had the Constitutional authority to fix it, and did nothing: yet the Department of Education still pretends it knows how you should run your schools. <\/p>\n This is robbing the poor. This is building a caste system. This is seeing to it that the ruling class has an out \u2013 a few good public schools in neighborhoods dominated by the governing class can send their kids to public schools, but for those who are governed, the public schools are all they have. <\/p>\n I sent my children to Catholic schools because they learned more there; more than they would have even in the best Los Angeles public schools. But I could \u2013 just barely \u2013 afford to do so. I don\u2019t live big, and I\u2019m not addicted to conspicuous consumption. I tend to be Conservative even if the formal Conservative Movement had the egregious Frum throw me out . <\/p>\n Oooo! <\/p>\n https:\/\/news.brown.edu\/articles\/2016\/07\/imbrium<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/p> \n <\/p> \n\n
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