Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.
Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.
Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes! There is no high moral principle that prevents it. What prevents it are tenure rules that have saddled so many colleges with so many self-indulgent prima donnas who seem to think that they are philosopher kings, when in fact they are often grossly ignorant or misinformed outside the narrow confines of their particular specialty.
Today, there are more people of Irish ancestry in the United States than in Ireland, more Jews than in Israel, more blacks than in most African countries. There are more people of Polish ancestry in Detroit than in most of the leading cities in Poland, and more than twice as many people of Italian ancestry in New York as in Venice.
People who want special taxes or subsidies for particular things seem not to understand that what they are really asking for is for the prices to misstate the relative scarcities of things and the relative values that the users of these things put on them. One.
As in the general society, fertility tends to be greatest where people are poorest: “The rich get richer, and the poor have children.” In.
When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.
There have always been ignorant people, but they haven’t always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes.
Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.
The initial wealth of a group and its time of arrival are obviously important, as many wealthy “old families ” show, but the Jews arrived late and penniless in the nineteenth century and are now more affluent than any other ethnic group.
We should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
To be sensitive, as ideologically defined, requires that one not merely accept but “affirm” other people’s way of life or even “celebrate” diversity in general. Like other demands for “sensitivity,” this demand offers no reason – unless fear of being disapproved, denounced, or harassed is a reason.
If you have no right to disapprove, then your approval means nothing. It may indeed be distressing to someone to have you express your opinion that his lifestyle is disgusting and his art, music or writing is crude, shallow, or repugnant, but unless you are free to reach such conclusions, any praise you bestow is hollow and suspect.
Top colleges turn out extraordinary graduates because they take in extraordinary freshmen. That tells very little about what happened in the intervening four years, except that it did not ruin these individuals completely. It tells even less about what would have happened if these same extraordinary people had been educated elsewhere. Whether a given individual will do better, either educationally or financially, by going to a bigname college is very doubtful. Hard.
The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence.
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.288.
Abstract moral decisions are much easier to make on paper or in a classroom in later centuries than in the midst of the dilemmas actually faced by those living in very different circumstances, including serious dangers.
If you are serious about education, then you need to start a lot earlier than fifteen years old to give each child a decent shot at life in the real world, as distinguished from make-believe equality while in school. Ability grouping or “tracking” – so hated by the ideological egalitarians – is one of the best ways of doing that.
Guns are completely inappropriate for the kind of sheep-like people the anointed envision or the orderly, prepackaged world in which they are to live. When you are in mortal danger, you are supposed to dial 911, so that the police can arrive on the scene some time later, identify your body, and file reports in triplicate.