The Culture of Choice

[4est_4est_Gump]

Decline or Decadence?
By Victor Davis Hanson, NRO
April 26, 2012 12:00 A.M.

Almost daily we read of America’s “waning power” and “inevitable decline,” as observers argue over the consequences of defense cuts and budget crises.

Yet much of the new American “leading from behind” strategy is more a matter of choice than of necessity. Apparently, both left-wing critics of U.S. foreign policy and right-wing Jacksonians are tiring of spending blood and treasure on seemingly ungrateful Middle Easterners — after two Gulf wars, the decade in Afghanistan, and various interventions in Lebanon and Libya.

We certainly have plenty of planes and bombs with which to pound Syria’s Bashir al-Assad. Never in the last 70 years has the U.S. military been so lethal.

But chaos in Libya followed the death of Moammar Qaddafi, and the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood seems poised to replace Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Most Americans assume that if we were to remove the murderous Assad dynasty in Syria, the rebels would either show us no gratitude or install a replacement regime not much better.

So much of our sagging profile abroad is simply a growing realization that the Middle East is, well, the Middle East: You can change the faces, but the regimes end up mostly the same — as innate reflections of the volatile mix of tribalism, vast infusions of oil money, radical Islam, and generations of dependency.

Can decline be better measured by our vast debt of $16 trillion, growing yearly with $1 trillion deficits? Perhaps. But Americans know that with a new tax code, simple reforms to entitlements, and reasonable trimming of bloated public salaries and pensions, we could balance federal budgets. The budget crux is not due to an absence of material resources, but a preference for not acting until we are forced to in the eleventh hour.

Do high gas prices and huge imported-oil fees reflect an energy-short America? Not really. There are 25 billion barrels of oil sitting right off California’s central coast, and much more in Alaska, the Midwest, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern shore. At some point, when gas hits $5 or $6 a gallon, a new generation of Americans will be cured of its smugness and decide to tap trillions of dollars in natural riches.

In other words, the manifest symptoms of decline — frustration with the Middle East, military retrenchment, exorbitant energy costs, and financial insolvency — are choices we now make, but need not make in the future.

If our students are burdened with oppressive loans, why do so many university rec centers look like five-star spas? Student cell phones and cars are indistinguishable from those of the faculty.

The underclass suffers more from obesity than malnutrition; our national epidemic is not unaffordable protein, but rather a surfeit of even cheaper sweets.

Flash mobbers target electronics stores for more junk, not bulk food warehouses in order to eat. America’s children do not suffer from lack of access to the Internet, but from wasting hours on video games and less-than-instructional websites. We have too many, not too few, television channels.

The problem is not that government workers are underpaid or scarce, but that so many of them seem to think mind readers, clowns, and prostitutes come with the job.

An average American with an average cell phone has more information at his fingertips than did a Goldman Sachs grandee 20 years ago. Over the last half-century, bizarre new words have entered the American vocabulary — triple-dipping, Botox, liposuction, jet set, COLA (cost of living adjustment), three-day weekend, Medi-something compounds (Medicare, Medicaid, Medi-Cal) — that do not reflect a deprived citizenry. In 1980, a knee or hip replacement was experimental surgery for the 1 percent; now it is a Medicare entitlement.

American poverty is not measured by absolute global standards of available food, shelter, and medical care, or by comparisons with prior generations, but by one American now having less stuff than another.

As America re-examines its military, entitlements, energy sources, and popular culture, it will learn that our “decline” is not due to material shortages, but rather arises from moral confusion over how to master, rather than being mastered by, the vast riches we have created. If decline is fighting just two wars at a time rather than three, budgeting as we did in 2008, tapping a bit more oil offshore, or having our colleges offer more grammar courses and fewer rock-climbing walls, then by all means, bring it on.

This could have fit into anyone of three current threads...

Our problem is a couple of generations of Feral Humans.
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=773814

 

[Saint Peter]

There you have it.

Want to fix education? Start with parenting.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

There you have it.

Want to fix education? Start with parenting.

No, that is what a Socialist would think.

A scientist, a real educated man, might start by examining the code of his model...

A model straight out of 1880s Germany...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Decline or Decadence?
By Victor Davis Hanson, NRO
April 26, 2012 12:00 A.M.
This could have fit into anyone of three current threads...

Which usually implies you're going to spam-post it in all of 'em. "Terms of Service" are merely "guidelines", not "rules", right Chief?

I especially liked Hanson's throwaway line...

But Americans know that with a new tax code, simple reforms to entitlements, and reasonable trimming of bloated public salaries and pensions, we could balance federal budgets.

How very glib and facile. I'd love to hear Hanson define his "new" tax code and "simple" reforms and "reasonable" trimming. I suspect, however, he's a glibertarian "big thinker" like you: big on slogans and demagoging, short on details.

 

[Saint Peter]

No, that is what a Socialist would think.

A scientist, a real educated man, might start by examining the code of his model...

A model straight out of 1880s Germany...

This decline did not start with Obama. You can politically spin everything you see, but that does not make it true. The rooster does not bring up the Sun.

Parents have to step up. Who dictates when the video games get put away and the reading begins? Who asks the kids what they did in school or who lets them fuck around on the phone during dinner?

Now those kids are having kids. It will get worse before it gets better.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

This decline did not start with Obama. You can politically spin everything you see, but that does not make it true. The rooster does not bring up the Sun.

Parents have to step up. Who dictates when the video games get put away and the reading begins? Who asks the kids what they did in school or who lets them fuck around on the phone during dinner?

Now those kids are having kids. It will get worse before it gets better.

Did I say that it did?

Parents are going to be a bell curve of humanity. There is no way to force them to step up.

You need to reexamine your philosophy, that is, if you even have one. From what you say, to bring up a name, it does seem to be similar to that of the President's, but the philosophy predates him by nearly a century.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ishmael]

There are two models of the current educational system. The first is the Socialist model that is found in primary and secondary education. A model that is failing just as all models based on that particular philosophy are doomed to.

The second model is that of higher education which is essentially based on a capitalist model. But that model is being perverted by the use of public funds to subsidize the students that attend the colleges and universities. The government, in the form of student loans, are making virtually unlimited funds available to the institutions and like the excellent capitalists the comptrollers of the institutions are, they raise the tuition's to insure that no money is left on the table. In other words the government is just creating another subsidized market perversion.

All of which begs the question, "At what point will the government decide that because students attending the institution are attending with government subsidized loans that the government can dictate the courses of study and the content of said courses?"

Ishmael

 

[unregistered]

 

[Johnny_Ray_Wilson]

My interpretation of the link in the OP: It is not so much the pay or the education that hurts us, it is all the unnecessary 'perks' we think should come with it. The 'perks' are what is destroying us.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

It is time for a good old fashioned period of American Isolationism. And some high border tariffs as well.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

There are two models of the current educational system. The first is the Socialist model that is found in primary and secondary education. A model that is failing just as all models based on that particular philosophy are doomed to.

The second model is that of higher education which is essentially based on a capitalist model. But that model is being perverted by the use of public funds to subsidize the students that attend the colleges and universities. The government, in the form of student loans, are making virtually unlimited funds available to the institutions and like the excellent capitalists the comptrollers of the institutions are, they raise the tuition's to insure that no money is left on the table. In other words the government is just creating another subsidized market perversion.

All of which begs the question, "At what point will the government decide that because students attending the institution are attending with government subsidized loans that the government can dictate the courses of study and the content of said courses?"

Ishmael

Education is a public good, like national defense, and is necessary to a stable capitalism. You could not be more wrong in what you are asserting here. Public universities, Pell Grants (not loans), trade schools and career training/re-training all need to be invented in.

The market is not always the answer. There are cases in which the market results in inefficient allocation. Healthcare and education are two examples.

 

[Johnny_Ray_Wilson]

And when will people start investigating institutions of higher learning like they do the oil companies when the price goes up?

We will probably start having meetings at colleges/universities with million dollar offices, grand and lavish pools or stadiums for sports, etc. while driving gas guzzling limos or sports cars and looking at the posh school buses wondering what all the fuss is about.

In the mean time, some little kid is sitting in a one room school with a hand full of books who knows more about budgeting and economics than all of congress or school systems combined.

 

[fair_warning]

No, that is what a Socialist would think.

A scientist, a real educated man, might start by examining the code of his model...

A model straight out of 1880s Germany...

Where did you come by this nonsense?
You still self-administering your education?

 

[bluntforcemama]

I like the idea of feral humans. It could save the planet.

 

[fair_warning]

And when will people start investigating institutions of higher learning like they do the oil companies when the price goes up?

When what goes up - oil or education?
You statement is ambiguous.
Obviously you don't have an English degree.

 

[mercury14]

There are two models of the current educational system. The first is the Socialist model that is found in primary and secondary education. A model that is failing just as all models based on that particular philosophy are doomed to.

The second model is that of higher education which is essentially based on a capitalist model. But that model is being perverted by the use of public funds to subsidize the students that attend the colleges and universities. The government, in the form of student loans, are making virtually unlimited funds available to the institutions and like the excellent capitalists the comptrollers of the institutions are, they raise the tuition's to insure that no money is left on the table. In other words the government is just creating another subsidized market perversion.

All of which begs the question, "At what point will the government decide that because students attending the institution are attending with government subsidized loans that the government can dictate the courses of study and the content of said courses?"

Ishmael

It's not possible to be more angry and paranoid than Ish.

Ishmael is anti-capitalism. He favors a system where only those that come from significant wealth can afford to go to college. But one of the most basic and necessary concepts in capitalism is that each member of society is free to rise to meet their full potential. That can't happen if higher education isn't accessible to everyone.

Ish is standing here ranting and raving about the free market, however he doesn't have a capitalistic position here at all.

He's a plutocrat.

 

[mercury14]

No, that is what a Socialist would think.

A scientist, a real educated man, might start by examining the code of his model...

A model straight out of 1880s Germany...

Prove that a socialist wouldn't want to address parenting as a problem.

This ought to be good. (But it won't be because you will not respond)

 

[Ishmael]

Education is a public good, like national defense, and is necessary to a stable capitalism. You could not be more wrong in what you are asserting here. Public universities, Pell Grants (not loans), trade schools and career training/re-training all need to be invented in.

The market is not always the answer. There are cases in which the market results in inefficient allocation. Healthcare and education are two examples.

OK, you're a noob so you get a chance.

Your post addressed NOTHING that I posted. So Sparky, how can your explanation prove me wrong?

Ishmael

 

[mercury14]

There are two models of the current educational system. The first is the Socialist model that is found in primary and secondary education. A model that is failing just as all models based on that particular philosophy are doomed to.

Let's hear your plan for a free market primary and secondary education system.

 

[Ishmael]

Let's hear your plan for a free market primary and secondary education system.

Vouchers moron.

Ishmael

 

[mercury14]

Vouchers moron.

Ishmael

Hey moron.

There are heaps of voucher program ideas. Which one are you referring to and how does it remove socialism from school?

 

[CHNOPS]

socialist =! socialism
democratic =! democracy
catholic =! Catholicism

Plus a small reminder that a free market is one that by definition allows a local socialist (or totalitarian, or communist, or other) solution into the mix.

Our resident champions of individual liberty tend not to like the results of that liberty very often, I've noticed.

 

[mercury14]

Ish is sitting at his computer realizing that the voucher idea is just more socialized education. Society is still taxed and that money is set aside to pay for society's education. The fact that some of it goes to public and some to private schools doesn't change the basic, undeniable fact that it's still socialized education.

Ish doesn't know what he's talking about again.

 

[unregistered]