We at Anchor Rising have been posting about the education problems in Rhode Island since the site’s inception. (Here is a comprehensive rundown of every post we’ve ever made.) One topic we continually revisit has been in the liberal bias in Higher Education (see Justin’s recent post, for example). However, our primary focus continues to be the broad debate, which covers many issues, that can be generally classified as Teacher Unions vs. School Committees. (One of my personal goals is to supply a “voice of the parent.”) To continue the coverage, below is a rough recap of the conversation this morning on the Steve Laffey Show on WPRO (AM 630) held with members of the East Greenwich School Committee (Sue Cienki, Marilyn J. Friedemann and Steve Gregson in studio while William Day called in briefly). Also see Don’s related post below.
[Open full post]Jesse Capece offers readers of the Providence Journal the service of clarifying something about which the average citizen might have misconceptions:
My name is Jesse Capece and I, like Mr. Felkner, am pursuing a master’s degree at RIC’s School of Social Work. I have heard Mr. Felkner run off at the mouth about how the school is left-leaning. The absurdity of this argument borders on insanity.
Of course, the School of Social Work is left-leaning in its beliefs. Social work is about change. Everything that social work does is geared toward destroying the social norms that oppress so many. In short, social work is in the business of change; we are not trying to conserve anything.
Social work is in the business of change — as opposed to the business of helping people. Change first. Destruction of social norms first. Well-being somewhere after that, and defined as freedom from “oppressive” social norms. Take Capece at his word: “we are not trying to conserve anything,” which as a simple matter of definition would include somethings evolved through millennia of human society to secure well-being and happiness.
Such an approach is fine, for its true believers, but social work thus defined strikes me as a matter of religious dogma not to be imposed with public dollars. I, for one, am not keen on funding the destruction of social norms. Helping people to secure material needs, yes; leading them toward spiritual deliverance from our shared culture and heritage, no. With the veil of euphemism removed from “social work,” surely others will agree.
Although not likely the intention with which his letter was written, Jesse Capece has certainly offered a public service.
Do you remember how the nation was lectured during the 1990’s on how there was no connection between private ethics and public life? How Bill Clinton could do what whatever he wanted in his private life but, rest assured, it had no connection to his behavior as President?
[Open full post]Over at Dust In the Light, Justin has motivated a thread about the increasingly important question of what has happened to liberalism (see Justin’s original post & comments). Here’s my capsule sketch of how liberalism got to the place where it is now…
1. Once upon a time, some enlightened philosophers came up with an idea called “liberalism”. The individual was special. And humans should care about other humans. An early formulation was “love thy neighbor as thyself”.
2. Liberalism was not an easy sell. Humans are programmed for self-preservation. Liberalism might be fine for philosophical types with lots of time on their hands, but regular folks didn’t have the time to bother with it.
3. Despite the practical difficulties, liberalism spread. The basic principle — love thy neighbor — was hard to argue with. And there was a force in the world ready to challenge the idea that the impracticality of liberalism was a dealbreaker. Religion succeeded in taking liberal principles from beyond the realm of philosophical speculation, and challenged people to live a basic respect for others in their daily lives.
4. However, some liberals grew frustrated. They felt the ideal was not propagating fast enough. So they loaned the liberal name out — and the respect and authority derived from its moral underpinnings — to other, less liberal groups. These other groups, assorted forms of leftists, argued (and convinced a fair number of liberals) that government control and strong state bureaucracies and rules and regulations were the only ways of advancing the liberal ideal.
5. In the US, this took a unique form. The judicial branch of government was most receptive to advancing what was still a recognizably liberal revolution in the 60s and 70s. Having bought into the idea that a strong state was necessary to protect rights, and seeing the courts advancing their agenda, liberals began demanding absolute obedience to judges. Not only was it wrong to question a judge’s ruling, but it was wrong to question the idea that judges had a final, absolute say on the scope of individual rights.
6. Then, a hostility towards religion permeated the liberal/leftist alliance. Liberals largely cut their ties to religion, but continued believing that they alone owned the unique moral authority that came with the liberal name.
7. Separated from their religious roots, or any call to a higher power than the state, but still relying on a moral authority as a source of strength, liberals began arguing that morality and the rules of the state were one and the same. In America, in particular, the formulation was more narrow. Morality and the opinions of judges were one and the same.
Thus, if a judge orders an innocent woman to die, liberals now argue — with a moral fervor — that there is no room for any argument against the judge’s order.
In the pre–Anchor Rising days of August 2004, I put together a few graphs to add to Marc Comtois’s investigation into RI teacher salaries. The symbolically salient finding of one of my pie charts was that the average Rhode Island teacher could afford to pay another family’s housing costs, including mortgage, and still have the average Rhode Island worker’s remaining income after taxes and housing. Keep that in mind while reading a recent Providence Journal editorial:
Rhode Island devotes a greater share of its per-pupil expenditures to teacher compensation than do any of the 49 other states and the District of Columbia.
That’s right: Rhode Island ranks first — or last, depending on one’s point of view. The Ocean State apportioned 64.2 percent on teacher compensation, compared with New York’s 64 percent, Maine’s 60.4 percent, Utah’s 59.5 percent, and Georgia’s 59.4 percent. The average was about 55 percent.
Such an imbalance in teacher compensation might make sense if Rhode Island had all the money in the world, or if its public schools were among America’s top-performing. But neither is true.
At some point, the balance of self-interest will shift. After all, the state can only afford to drive out so many young families before the lack of clients (e.g., students) and taxpayers begins to affect its elite classes. (And won’t it be a gory mess when they begin to eat each other…)
[Open full post]You know, perusing the latest newsletter (PDF) from Operation Clean Government, it occurred to me that, if somebody were to piece together all of the discrete (and too discreet) bits of advocacy writing from around the state of Rhode Island, it might amount to a full-sized publication. The audience might be limited, of course; unleavened advocacy can wear on a reader. (Although the larger problem might be that everybody knows what the problems are, just not how to convince everybody else that it’s worth their time to understand and work to fix them.)
But the point is that there are various groups working for change in the same general direction. Perhaps what’s needed at this juncture is an advocacy group to tie together the advocacy groups.
I’d already added the Patients First Coalition to the list of links at left, but looking at their “Fast Facts on Why Rhode Island Needs Medical Liability Reform,” I thought the following particularly noteworthy:
- 48% of physicians planning to leave Rhode Island within the next
three years to practice elsewhere cite Rhode Island’s high malpractice insurance costs. - 71% of doctors have found it hard to recruit new doctors to Rhode Island.
- Rhode Island ranks last in the length of time it takes for malpractice cases to be resolved — 6 years. The national average is less than 5 years and some states deliver justice in less than 3 years.
- Rhode Island has the 4th highest average malpractice award payment ($406,411) in the country.
- Rhode Island surgeons have experienced premium increases of 175% since 2002; general practitioners have experienced increases of 200% since 2002; and hospitals have experienced premium increases of 286% since 2002.
It’s amazing how pervasive a state’s problems can become after years of corruption and apathy.
[Open full post]Hugh Hewitt writes:
The Terri Schiavo tragedy has been seized on by long-time critics of the “religious right” to launch attack after attack on the legitimacy of political action on the basis of religious belief. This attack has ignored the inconvenient participation in the debate–on the side of resuming water and nutrition for Terri Schiavo–of the spectacularly not-the-religious-rightness of Tom Harkin, Nat Hentoff, Jesse Jackson, and a coalition of disability advocacy groups.
The attack has also been hysterical…
All of these charges–from the most incoherent to the most measured–arrive without definition as to what “the religious right” is, and without argument as to why the agenda of this ill-defined group is less legitimate than the pro-gay marriage, pro-cloning, pro-partial-birth abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda of other political actors…Every political conflict is a choice between competing moral codes…
…But a strain of thought is developing that the political objectives of people of faith have second-class status when compared to those of, say, religiously secular elites. Of course, not only would such a position have surprised all of the Founding Fathers, it would have shocked Lincoln and Reagan, too.
The speed with which issues that excite the passions of people of faith have arrived at the center of American politics is not surprising given the forced march that the courts have put those issues on. It was not the “religious right” that pushed gay marriage…ordered Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube removed… forced the United States Supreme Court to repeatedly issue rulings on areas of law that would have been better left to legislatures.
These and other developments have indeed mobilized new activists across the country, many of who see a vast disparity between what they believe ought to be public policy and what is becoming that policy by judicial fiat. They have every right to participate in politics, and they can be expected to refuse to support elected officials who ignore their concerns.
Attempts to silence them, marginalize them, or to encourage others to do so are not arguments against their positions, but admissions that those positions represent majorities that cannot be refused a place at the law-making table.
Five important issues arise out of Hewitt’s editorial and are the focus of this posting: (i) the under-discussed but domineering presence of liberal fundamentalism, a competing moral code in American society; (ii) how judicial activism destroys the fabric of our politics; (iii) the connection between religious values and the American Founding; (iv) the long-term consequences for America of a radically secular religion; and, (v) how we discover civility and purpose in America’s public discourse.
[Open full post]When Mac Owens first signed on as a contributor to Anchor Rising, he sent me a speech that he had given on February 23, 2002, at the North Kingston Town Committee’s Annual Lincoln Dinner. The current collection of issues, both nationally and in Rhode Island, makes it particularly appropriate for posting now. (I’m told, by the way, that Lincoln Chafee, in attendance, blushed when Owens suggested that Republicans should aspire to be more than merely pale imitations of the Democrats.)
Tonight, your main speaker will talk to you about the upcoming elections of 2002. These off year elections are certainly important and worthy of discussion. But at the same time, it is occasionally useful to return to our origins, “to recur to first principles.” That is what I wish to do with the time allotted me. What are the principles of the Republican Party? What do Republicans believe in? What differentiates Republicans from Democrats?
Although some here tonight may disagree, let me offer a suggestion as to what these differences are. The modern Democratic Party was founded by FDR. Its central idea is that government’s job is to adjudicate the distribution of resources among competing claimants. Democrats increasingly view the United States, not as a community of individuals, but as an array of groups whose demands must be met. But since government produces nothing on its own, certain favored groups prosper at the expense of others. The modern Democratic Party invokes the language of rights, but what Democrats really mean by the term are privileges or claims to resources that are granted by government. They certainly don’t mean by rights what the Founders meant when they used the term.
On the other hand, the Republican Party was founded on the basis of principles invoked by Abraham Lincoln. He himself recurred to the principles of the American Founding, specifically the Declaration of Independence, so we can say that the principles of the Republican Party are the principles of the nation. In essence these principles hold that the only purpose of government is to protect the equal natural rights of individual citizens. These rights inhere in individuals, not groups, and are antecedent to the creation of government. They are the rights invoked by the Declaration of Independence — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not happiness, but the pursuit of happiness.
An article published today states:
New documents found in the files of the former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian agents…
The Corriere della Sera said that the documents found by the German government indicated that the KGB ordered Bulgarian colleagues to carry out the killing, leaving the East German service known as the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards.
Bulgaria then handed the execution of the plot to Turkish extremists, including Mehmet Ali Agca, who pulled the trigger…
Ronald Reagan was right: The Soviet Union was indeed an evil empire.
[Open full post]