Sailorless Ships Are Coming to the Freight Industry

From FEE.org (July 10):

Tech companies from Google to Apple may be ploughing resources into driverless cars, but on our oceans, automated ships could be making bigger waves by the end of the decade.

Norwegian company Yara will launch the world’s first electric cargo ship next year. Initially manned, the vessel will move to remote control in 2019 before becoming totally autonomous in 2020.

Named Yara Birkeland, the vessel will sail between Yara’s main factory facility in Norway to some of the country’s bigger ports, carrying cargo which is currently transported by road. It’s estimated that the battery-powered ship will remove the need for 40,000 truck journeys a year.

Making "Drone" Ships a Reality

Although advances in driverless cars are getting more media attention, major advances have already been made in bringing artificial intelligence to the shipping and freight industries.

Rolls-Royce is also working on making autonomous ships a reality by the end of the decade, in conjunction with ship builders and researchers in Finland. Meanwhile, research body MUNIN — or Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks — has been partly funded by the European Commission to develop the technology needed to make robotic ships. [read more]

Make sense to me. I mean if society is going to have self-driving cars why not sailorless ships? What will be next self-flying planes? That’s kind of scary. (I don’t mean drones—I mean autonomous flying planes.)

Edmund Burke’s Constitutional Arguments

Burke’s first constitutional principle is that a good constitution grows out of the common experience of a people over a considerable elapse of time. It is not possible to create an improved constitution out of whole cloth.

A truth that Burke emphasizes almost equally with the preceding “organic” concept of constitutions is the necessity of religious faith to a constitutional order. “We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all comfort,” he writes in Reflections on the Revolution in France. “We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long.”

A third point in Burke’s constitutional principles which needs to be noted here is his emphasis upon the function of a natural aristocracy, in which mingle both “men of actual virtue” (the “new” men of enterprising talents) and “men of presumptive virtue” (gentlemen of old families and adequate means).

Fourth, Burke contends that the good constitution maintains a balance or tension between the claims of freedom and the claims of order. Natural law is a reality, and from natural law flow certain natural rights. But government does not exist merely to defend claims of personal liberty. The Rights of Man claimed by the French revolutionaries are impossible to realize, unlimited, in any civil social order. “By having a right to everything they want everything,” Burke writes in his Reflections:

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. . . . In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.

Source: “Edmund Burke: A Revolution of Theoretic Dogma.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) edited by George A. Panichas.

Utopianism, Ancient and Modern

Excerpts from a speech by Irving Kristol (Apr. 1973) at Hillsdale College:

Men are dreaming animals, and the incapacity to dream makes a man less than human. Indeed, we have no knowledge of any human community where men do fail to dream. Which is to say, we know of no human community whose members do not have a vision of perfection—a vision in which the frustrations inherent in our human condition are annulled and transcended. The existence of such dreaming visions is not, in itself, a problem. They are, on the contrary, a testament to the creativity of man which flows from the fact that he is a creature uniquely endowed with imaginative powers as an essential aspect of his self-consciousness. Only a madman would wish to abolish men’s dreams, i.e., to return humanity to a purely animal condition, and we are fortunate in having had—until recently, at any rate—little historical experience of such madness. It is true that, of late, certain writers—notably Norman O. Brown—hold out the promise of such regression as a kind of ultimate redemption. But even their most admiring readers understand that this is largely literary license, rather than a serious political agenda.

On the other hand, and far more common, there are also madmen who find it impossible to disentangle dreams from reality—and of this kind of madness we have had, alas, far too much experience. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that a good part of modern history takes place under the sign of this second kind of madness, which we familiarly call utopianism.

I am using the term madness advisedly and not merely to be provocative. The intellectual history of the past four centuries consists of islands of sanity floating in an ocean of dottiness, as the British call it. We don’t see this history in this way, and certainly don’t study it in this way, because—I would suggest—we have ourselves been infected by this pervasive dottiness. Just look at the cautious and respectful way our textbooks treat the French utopian theorists of the 19th century: Saint-Simon, Comte, Fourier, and their many loyal disciples. It is no exaggeration to say that all of these men were quite literally touched in the head and that their writings can fairly be described as the feverish scribblings of disordered minds. Fourier, for instance, divided humanity into no less than eight hundred ten distinct character types and then devised a social order that brought each character type his own special brand of happiness. He also believed that, in the ideal world of the future, the salty oceans would benevolently turn themselves into seas of lemonade, and that men would grow tails with eyes at the tip. Saint-Simon and Comte were somewhat less extreme in their lunacies—but not all that much. To read them, which so few actually do today, is to enter a world of phantasmagoria. Oh, yes, one can cull insights, as we say, from their many thousands of pages. But the inmates of any asylum, given pen and paper, will also produce their share of such insights—only it doesn’t ordinarily occur to us that this is a good way of going about the collecting of insights. It is only when people write about politics in a large way that we are so indulgent to their madness, so eager to discover inspired prophecy in their fulminations.

It is not too much to say that we are all utopians now, in ways we no longer realize, we are so habituated to them. Further than that: we are even utopian when we think we are being very practical and rational. My own favorite instance of such subterranean utopianism is in an area where one is least likely to look for it. I refer to the area of city planning.

William H. Whyte, Jr., in his excellent book, The Last Landscape, has pointed out that, if you examine the thousands of plans which now exist for shiny, new, wonderful cities, there is always one thing that is certain to be missing. That one thing is—a cemetery. In a properly planned city, the fact that people die is taken to be such an unwarranted intrusion into an otherwise marvelous equilibrium that city planners simply cannot face up to it. After all, if people die and are replaced by new and different people, then the carefully prescribed mix of jobs, of housing, of leisure-time activities—all this is going to be upset. Modern city planning, whether in the form of constructive New Towns or Cities Beautiful, is inherently and radically utopian in that it aims to bring history to a stop at a particular moment of perfection. The two traditions of urban planning I have just mentioned disagree in their attitude toward modern technology and modern industrial society—the one wishing to minimize their influence, the other wanting to exploit their potentialities to the utmost. But both are, as a matter of historical fact, descended from various 19th-century utopian-socialist movements, and neither of them can bear to contemplate the fact that men are permanently subject to time and changing circumstances.  [read more]

Interesting speech. The utopia builders don’t consider cemeteries is because they think in their utopia people won’t die—which is impossible. No matter who close the utopia builders get to recreating heaven (which if they don’t admit to is what they are really trying to do) people will die. And their vision of utopia will never be a heaven. More like a man-made hell because people are imperfect including them and corruption will show its ugly face and whatever plans they make will crash and burn.

The Future of Healthcare Is Already Here

From FEE.org (July 10):

Let’s imagine a scenario where you no longer need to use insurance for health care. No more calling on pre-approval for services or fighting over the phone with monotone customer service reps over denied claims. No more lack of transparency on the price of services or procedures. No more worrying whether your insurance covers a service or procedure. No more paranoia over losing your subsidized insurance if you get laid off. Imagine being able to sit with a doctor for more than ten minutes and feeling like they have the time and patience to really understand your needs and are not compelled to shuffle you out the door to meet their patient quota. Imagine an affordable, transparent, monthly rate to pay for health care.

This all sounds rather hypothetical, huh? Would you be surprised to find out that this sort of health care model not only already exists but that it is growing? It is called the Direct Primary Care model and it is the free market healthcare solution the country needs more of.

Doctors Are Burned Out

A survey of over 17,000 doctors indicates that physician career satisfaction is on the decline. There is an increasing trend of physicians cutting back hours, switching to part-time work and switching to non-clinical employment. With a medical system expecting a 90,000 doctor shortage by 2025, this could spell disaster for the current healthcare model. But is anyone surprised by this?

………………………….

There’s a Different Way

Enter the Direct Primary Care (DPC) model. For physicians who are willing to take a risk on finding a more fulfilling way to practice, the DPC model has shown promise. What is the DPC model, exactly? The DPC model usually foregoes or accepts insurance on a limited basis in favor of using a subscription-based model. For instance, a DPC model may charge $70 a month for an adult to belong to a practice and receive access to a physician. The practice typically offers all or most primary care services and grants same day or next day appointments for urgent situations; some even offer 24/7 access via phone call, text or email.

The subscription method eliminates the necessity for co-pays and provides a relatively stable operating income that isn’t subject to the uncertainty of insurance reimbursement. Because of that stable operating income, physicians can balance the number of patients needed to be profitable with the amount of time spent face-to-face with patients. This balance has increased the duration of patient visits from 13-16 minutes in standard doctor visits, to 30-60 minutes in DPC models.

Along with increased visit lengths, physicians have the time and inclination to use telemedicine technology with DPC patients. Telemedicine can offer instant face-to-face access to a physician via FaceTime, Skype, or other similar video software. This grants a great deal of flexibility to patients and physicians which can reduce otherwise unnecessary expenses.  [read more]

Sounds good to me. There are physicians in Wichita, KS that uses this system. One of the doctors have been on the Hannity show. I hope the bills in Congress will allow physicians to use this system.

Training Minds and Hearts: Principle-Centered Education Reform

A lecture by Steve Forbes at Hillsdale College (Feb. 1999):

At the heart of the American experiment is the belief that no matter how ordinary we human beings may be, we are able to accomplish extraordinary deeds when we take responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our communities.

How do we learn to take responsibility? One vital way is through the education we receive as children and young adults. Education enables us not only to gain knowledge but also to develop sound character, to discover our God-given talents, to lead honorable lives, to become truly good parents, neighbors, and citizens.

For several years I attended a boy’s school—a politically incorrect form of education if there ever was one. The headmaster, Frank Ashburn, was fond of quoting the Bible verse, “The bond are free, and the free are bond.” He told us that “bond” meant “bound” and that the message of the verse was this: When you develop discipline, you become a free person. If you don’t develop it, you will suffer a blighted, narrow, and constricted life. He explained further,

You might say that a boy was free who never had to do any learning at all. But he would be free as an animal tied to a stake is free. He would be free in the sense that he would have more time on his hands, but he would be limited by his own experience and culture.

You cannot read or write without the bondage of having learned to read and write. You cannot play football without giving time and energy to practice.

Mr. Ashburn went on to tell us,

What is training? Training is preparing oneself to be able to do what one can’t count on having to do. In a football game, training is the thing that keeps one’s muscle from giving when the unexpected strain is applied, which means that little extra bit of wind when everyone’s wind is gone. Training of the mind is that which enables one to handle not the problem that we have been over—most of us can do that—but the problem we have never met before. Training of the heart is that kind of conditioning that makes one steady when he is sick in fear, or bewildered by strangeness, or hurt and bruised in the mind.

He noted that there were four main fields of study that ought to comprise the core of any school curriculum. The first is communication, or literature; the second is the physical world, or science; the third is the social world, or history; and the fourth is the spiritual world, or religion and philosophy. In the end, these fields must merge into one unified body of knowledge. He concluded, “When this happens, we may say with confidence that a boy has experienced the essence of a liberal arts education. He is a free intellectual and spiritual being, free as only the bound are free—the bound who have benefited from knowledge, training, and discipline.”

……………………

The New Classroom

The old classroom is an invention of the Prussians. After the battering they took in the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they decided to create a classroom that would be specifically designed to instill discipline and obedience in students. They did not do this for any noble reason but because they wanted to turn out more bureaucrats and soldiers. The word “kindergarten” may mean “garden for the children,” but in Prussia, kindergarten was more like boot camp. It removed children, especially young boys, from the “weak” influence of their mothers and taught them that they owed their primary allegiance to the state.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, liberal American educators and politicians were successfully leading the drive for public education based on the Prussian model. The model suited them perfectly because it put government and the “experts” in charge. It was the beginning of a slow, steady decline in the quality of education and of an assault from within the gates on the traditional values and curriculum that my old headmaster Frank Ashburn described.

But in the new era the Prussian model has been widely discredited. It has not produced well-trained or well-educated students, and it has not been consistent with the principles of the free society. Thanks to technology, students are learning more outside the old classroom than they are inside. And parents, fed up with the public school system’s failure to adapt, are at last demanding genuine educational choice.

That is why it is time to open the doors to a new era for our schools, because educational freedom is the next great civil rights battleground, and it is a battle we must win. How do we move forward? One immediate way is to take all the funds the Department of Education awards and turn them into block grants that cannot be released to states and local communities unless they are accompanied by this directive: Let parents choose schools that work-schools that are safe, clean, drug-free, disciplined, and academically challenging and that reinforce rather than undermine the moral and spiritual values that are being instilled at home.

Real school choice means public and private schools, charter schools and home schools and parochial schools, tuition tax credits and educational savings accounts and vouchers. A parent should not be forced to send a child to a lousy school. Just imagine if parents and teachers—not politicians and bureaucrats—ran our schools. With this new freedom, together with real accountability and competition, we could send a message to all schools: perform or perish. That would raise the standards and quality of all schools.

Another vital step is to encourage pastors, priests, and rabbis to open a new frontier of faith-based schools, especially in our inner cities. Already many religious leaders are turning Sunday School rooms into classrooms during the week. They are helping children to find faith in God and their place in the world. We should do everything we can to help in this effort because education is about more than just developing our intellects. It is about building the architecture of our souls.  [read more]

An interesting and informative speech. I’ve read four of his books including the Flat Tax Revolution (2013) which I own and blogged about in a past posting.

The Control Factor and Islamic Terrorism

While watching the horror film, the audience understands that the suspense will be over within a few hours. Knowing there is a time limit to the tension and an eventual end to the film allows the audience to succumb more easily to it and become absorbed in the terrifying experiences.

Not so with a real threat to our security. In fact, it is extremely difficult for the American mind to remain in such a state of insecurity, danger, and terror that our Islamic Enemy poses. Instead, our minds are geared to eliminate as efficiently as possible any horrifying experience and re-establish the sense (or illusion) that control exists or is attainable. That part of the mind tasked with eradicating the experience of losing control is labeled here “the Control Factor.” …. When challenged, the Control Factor will seek to combat any obstacle and keep its perceptions and beliefs alive.

………………..

Our minds are programmed to protect the perceptions and beliefs with which we navigate the world. We weave narratives, storylines, and “histories” to solidify these understandings and establish a sense of security. When these protective or defensive ideas are seriously threatened, the result is fear, alerting the system there is a challenge. And the human mind is capable of tolerating only a limited amount of fear.

Source: The Control Factor: Our Struggle to See the True Threat (2012) by Bill Siegel.

The Control Factor (CF) according to the author is always active and creating and independent of intelligence. An example of the CF is the narrative that the Islamists are committing acts of terrorism because America wronged them somehow, or because they don’t have jobs, etc. In other words, they are victims. All of which is wrong. People who think this think they can control the terrorism by appeasing the terrorists or changing their environments and the terrorists will stop being terrorists. Life doesn’t work this way. If you want to make the Islamists happy you and the whole world has to become fundamentalist Muslims. Period. Maybe, people who can’t realistically deal with the Islamists should ponder The Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

One other note, Mr. Siegel’s CF theory is similar to the cognitive dissonance theory and other “balance” theories.

H/T: Glenn Beck’s book It Is About Islam.

Government's $15 Minimum Wage Advocates Aren't Paying Their Interns

From FEE.org (July 10):

Almost all of the lawmakers who co-sponsored a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour also hired unpaid interns to supplement their staffs, a survey shows.

A report from the Employment Policies Institute reveals that 174 of the bill’s 184 co-sponsors, or 95 percent, hire interns who are paid nothing.

“It’s hypocritical to rally for a $15 minimum wage when these lawmakers don’t pay their own entry-level employees a cent,” said Michael Saltsman, managing director of the Employment Policies Institute.

…………………………

The study counted members of Congress who advertised a limited number of stipend positions as having paid interns, even if they also use unpaid interns. So the 95 percent figure is conservative.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, a leading voice in the calls for a $15 minimum wage, is the only senator to offer an hourly wage to interns, the study found. However, Sanders’ office offers $12 an hour while he proposes $15 in the private sector.

Progressive lawmakers will argue that paying interns more will limit the number of available opportunities, the Employment Policies Institute notes, yet don’t recognize this same concern in the private sector. [read more]

I looked at the pdf of the list of Congressmen who don’t pay or pay very little to their interns and not one is a Republican. I repeat not one is a Republican. A bunch of hypocrites. So much for the little guy. Then again the Dems in Congress think they are elites and elites don’t have to abide by the rules they make for the common people or as they call everyone else--the masses. Why don’t they have to abide by the rules they make you might ask? Because they believe they are special.

Study Finds Fracking Doesn’t Harm Drinking Water in Texas

From The Daily Signal.com (June 19):

Hydraulic fracturing hasn’t contaminated groundwater in Texas, isn’t an earthquake hazard, and has been a boon for the state’s economy, according to a study released Monday.

The new study’s conclusions on drinking water are in line with multiple other studies of hydraulic fracturing, popularly known as fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing is the process of drilling into rock and injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to obtain shale gas and oil, which is produced from fractured rock. Some environmentalists argue that it can harm water supplies.

The report initiated by the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, based in Austin, asserted that “direct migration of contaminants from targeted injection zones is highly unlikely to lead to contamination of potential drinking water aquifers.”

To conduct the three-year study, the academy assembled a panel called the Task Force on the Environmental and Community Impact of Shale.

“In Texas and pretty much everywhere, hydraulic fracturing has not been proven to have an adverse impact on drinking water,” Christine Ehlig-Economides, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston who is chairwoman of the task force, told The Daily Signal.

The study examined the impact of fracking on drinking water.

“The average annual water use for hydraulic fracturing activities in 2011 and 2012 in Texas was about 20 billion gallons of water,” the report said, citing an Environmental Protection Agency study from last year. “Because this volume represents on 0.2 percent of total water use in the state, and 0.7 percent of total state consumptive use, it might be considered small.”

The study also explored the impact of fracking in five other areas: geology and earthquake activity; land resources; air quality; the economy; and society. It found generally positive results for each.  [read more]

Even with the study’s results, the environmental extremists will still insist that fracking is bad. 

Al-Qaeda’s 20-Year Plan: From 9/11 to Final Victory

From English.Al-Akhbar.com (Jan. 29, 2014):

In certain Salafi-jihadi circles, a so-called strategic plan of al-Qaeda is being circulated. Al-Qaeda has ostensibly been working to implement this plan according to a two-decade timetable, beginning in 2000, with preparations for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and concluding in 2020.

The widespread belief that al-Qaeda’s bloody activities are random and not governed by any clear strategy is a misconception. To be sure, counterterrorism agencies possess dozens of documents on al-Qaeda’s projects and long-term strategic plans, which have well-defined goals.

For example, one security agency, nearly a year after the beginning of the conflict in Syria, was able to intercept correspondence between the leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, and a prominent al-Qaeda figure in Lebanon, outlining the jihadi group’s plans after the fall of the Syrian regime, which included recruiting experts in medicine, chemistry, IT, and telecommunications, and spreading out across Lebanon in preparation for operations.

Documents obtained by this security agency reveal that al-Qaeda’s strategy in Lebanon and the region includes specific objectives, both on the ground and at the level of recruitment and mobilization.

Some of the features of the plan were mentioned in a book published in 2005 by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein, titled Zarqawi – Al-Qaeda’s Second Generation. Hussein interviewed Sheikh Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi, a prominent al-Qaeda ideologue, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Swaqa prison in Jordan.

…………………….

The first phase from 2000 to 2003 is dubbed the awakening stage. This phase focused on “reawakening the nation” by “dealing a powerful blow to the head of the snake in New York. The aim: to push the United States to react in a way that would “crown al-Qaeda as the leader of the nation.” This is in reference to what al-Qaeda calls the US “crusade” against Islam with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, which – according to al-Qaeda – made the Americans easy prey and al-Qaeda the viral brand it is today. This phase ended with the US occupation of Iraq in 2003.

The second phase from 2003 to 2006 is dubbed the “eye-opening stage.” In this phase, al-Qaeda’s plan was to perpetually engage the enemy in combat, while developing so-called “electronic jihad” capabilities, in preparation for the third phase.

In parallel, al-Qaeda would expand quietly in strategic parts of the Arab and Islamic world, while using Iraq as a base to build an army to be deployed in neighboring countries, also with the start of the third phase. In addition, efforts would be stepped up to raise funds from Muslims though charities and alms, to be diverted to al-Qaeda.

The third phase from 2007 to 2010 is dubbed “rising up and standing on the feet,” a phase of proactive al-Qaeda activities. During this stage, important changes would be introduced in the region surrounding Iraq.

First, the focus would be on al-Sham (Greater Syria), with sayings of the Prophet Mohammad interpreted to suggest that this region would be next after Iraq in the conflict, “not to mention the clear plans to partition Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan into sectarian statelets to reshape the region.”

…………………………………

The fourth phase, from 2010 to 2013, dubbed “recovery,” coincided in reality with the Arab Spring wave of uprisings and the crisis in Syria. In this phase, al-Qaeda would focus on toppling regimes by directly participating in insurgencies against them.

Al-Qaeda’s plan, according to the documents, would seek to “discredit the regime in the eyes of the people by helping expose their collaboration with US policy.” This, according to al-Qaeda’s plan, would be coupled with the growth of al-Qaeda and the exhaustion of US power through direct combat, but also “electronic attacks targeting the US economy, and attacks against Arab oil installations, to hurt regimes and their Western backers.”

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda seems to favor gold as an international reserve currency and wants to peg other currencies to gold. In its belief, this would lead to the US dollar’s collapse, since it is not pegged to gold.

In this phase, too, according to al-Qaeda’s plan, Israel would be in a weak state as a result of internal conflict, declining international support, and the collapse of Arab regimes that protect Israel.

The fifth phase from 2013 to 2016 would see the “declaration of the caliphate or the Islamic state,” al-Qaeda’s ultimate goal. This phase would see many international transformations, beginning with the demise of the Anglo-Saxon axis and the emergence of new world powers that Muslims have no strong antagonisms with, such as India and China, in tandem with the exponential rise of al-Qaeda.

The sixth phase from 2016 to 2020 is the phase of “total war.” Al-Qaeda’s ideologues estimate that the beginning of 2016 would be the “beginning of the confrontation between faith and disbelief, which would begin in earnest after the establishment of the Islamic caliphate,” echoing Osama bin Laden’s discourse in many of his speeches. This would be followed by the final phase, the phase of “final victory,” sometime in 2020. By then, according to al-Qaeda’s plans, “the Islamic state’s capabilities will be great beyond measure when Muslims would number more than 1.5 billion.”  [read more]

It looks like parts of the plan are being implemented. Scary.  America really needs to start talking these Islamofascists seriously. It looks like President Trump is.

H/T: It Is About Islam. Exposing The Truth About ISIS, Al Qaeda, Iran, and the Caliphate (2015) by Glenn Beck. Beck mentions Fouad Hussein’s book.

Do We Need the Department of Education? Lecture

Lecture by Charles Murray at Hillsdale College (October 28, 2011):

The case for the Department of Education could rest on one or more of three legs: its constitutional appropriateness, the existence of serious problems in education that could be solved only at the federal level, and/or its track record since it came into being. Let us consider these in order.

(1) Is the Department of Education constitutional?

At the time the Constitution was written, education was not even considered a function of local government, let alone the federal government. But the shakiness of the Department of Education’s constitutionality goes beyond that. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution enumerates the things over which Congress has the power to legislate. Not only does the list not include education, there is no plausible rationale for squeezing education in under the commerce clause. I’m sure the Supreme Court found a rationale, but it cannot have been plausible.

On a more philosophical level, the framers of America’s limited government had a broad allegiance to what Catholics call the principle of subsidiarity. In the secular world, the principle of subsidiarity means that local government should do only those things that individuals cannot do for themselves, state government should do only those things that local governments cannot do, and the federal government should do only those things that the individual states cannot do. Education is something that individuals acting alone and cooperatively can do, let alone something local or state governments can do.

I should be explicit about my own animus in this regard. I don’t think the Department of Education is constitutionally legitimate, let alone appropriate. I would favor abolishing it even if, on a pragmatic level, it had improved American education. But I am in a small minority on that point, so let’s move on to the pragmatic questions.

(2) Are there serious problems in education that can be solved only at the federal level?

The first major federal spending on education was triggered by the launch of the first space satellite, Sputnik, in the fall of 1957, which created a perception that the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union in science and technology. The legislation was specifically designed to encourage more students to go into math and science, and its motivation is indicated by its title: The National Defense Education Act of 1958. But what really ensnared the federal government in education in the 1960s had its origins elsewhere—in civil rights. The Supreme Court declared segregation of the schools unconstitutional in 1954, but—notwithstanding a few highly publicized episodes such as the integration of Central High School in Little Rock and James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi—the pace of change in the next decade was glacial.

Was it necessary for the federal government to act? There is a strong argument for “yes,” especially in the case of K-12 education. Southern resistance to desegregation proved to be both stubborn and effective in the years following Brown v. Board of Education. Segregation of the schools had been declared unconstitutional, and constitutional rights were being violated on a massive scale. But the question at hand is whether we need a Department of Education now, and we have seen a typical evolution of policy. What could have been justified as a one-time, forceful effort to end violations of constitutional rights, lasting until the constitutional wrongs had been righted, was transmuted into a permanent government establishment. Subsequently, this establishment became more and more deeply involved in American education for purposes that have nothing to do with constitutional rights, but instead with a broader goal of improving education.

The reason this came about is also intimately related to the civil rights movement. Over the same years that school segregation became a national issue, the disparities between black and white educational attainment and test scores came to public attention. When the push for President Johnson’s Great Society programs began in the mid-1960s, it was inevitable that the federal government would attempt to reduce black-white disparities, and it did so in 1965 with the passage of two landmark bills—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act. The Department of Education didn’t come into being until 1980, but large-scale involvement of the federal government in education dates from 1965.

………………….

As far as I can determine, the Department of Education has no track record of positive accomplishment—nothing in the national numbers on educational achievement, nothing in the improvement of educational outcomes for the disadvantaged, nothing in the advancement of educational practice. It just spends a lot of money. This brings us to the practical question: If the Department of Education disappeared from next year’s budget, would anyone notice? The only reason that anyone would notice is the money. The nation’s public schools have developed a dependence on the federal infusion of funds. As a practical matter, actually doing away with the Department of Education would involve creating block grants so that school district budgets throughout the nation wouldn’t crater.

Sadly, even that isn’t practical. The education lobby will prevent any serious inroads on the Department of Education for the foreseeable future. But the answer to the question posed in the title of this talk—“Do we need the Department of Education?”—is to me unambiguous: No. [read more]

Interesting and informative speech. I’ve read two of Mr. Murray’s books.

We Could Have Had Cell Phones 40 Years Earlier

From FEE.org:

The basic idea of the cellphone was introduced to the public in 1945 – not in Popular Mechanics or Science, but in the down-home Saturday Evening Post. Millions of citizens would soon be using "handie-talkies," declared J.K. Jett, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Licenses would have to be issued, but that process "won't be difficult." The revolutionary technology, Jett promised in the story, would be formulated within months.

But permission to deploy it would not. The government would not allocate spectrum to realize the engineers' vision of "cellular radio" until 1982, and licenses authorizing the service would not be fully distributed for another seven years. That's one heck of a bureaucratic delay.

The Cell in Cellular

Before there were cellphones, there was the mobile telephone service, or MTS. Launched in 1946, this technology required unwieldy and expensive equipment – the transceiver could fill the trunk of a sedan – and its networks faced tight capacity constraints. In the beginning, the largest MTS markets had no more than 44 channels. As late as 1976, Bell System's mobile network in New York could host just 545 subscribers. Even at sky-high prices, there were long waiting lists for subscriptions.

Cellular networks were an ingenious way to expand service dramatically. A given market would be split into cells with a base station in each. These stations, often located on towers to improve line-of-sight with mobile phone users, were able both to receive wireless signals and to transmit them. The base stations were themselves linked together, generally by wires, and connected to networks delivering plain old telephone service.

The advantages of this architecture were profound. Mobile radios could use less power, because they needed only to reach the nearest base station, not a mobile phone across town. Not only did this save battery life, but transmissions stayed local, leaving other cells quiet. A connection in one cell would be passed to an adjacent cell and then the next as the mobile user moved through space.

……………………….

Blocking Mobile Wireless

When AT&T wanted to start developing cellular in 1947, the FCC rejected the idea, believing that spectrum could be best used by other services that were not "in the nature of convenience or luxury." This view – that this would be a niche service for a tiny user base – persisted well into the 1980s.

"Land mobile," the generic category that covered cellular, was far down on the FCC's list of priorities. In 1949, it was assigned just 4.7 percent of the spectrum in the relevant range. Broadcast TV was allotted 59.2 percent, and government uses got one-quarter.

Television broadcasting had become the FCC's mission, and land mobile was a lark. Yet Americans could have enjoyed all the broadcasts they would watch in, say, 1960 and had cellular phone service too. Instead, TV was allocated far more bandwidth than it ever used, with enormous deserts of vacant television assignments – a vast wasteland, if you will – blocking mobile wireless for more than a generation.

How empty was this spectrum? Across America's 210 television markets, the 81 channels originally allocated to TV created some 17,010 slots for stations. From this, the FCC planned in 1952 to authorize 2,002 TV stations. By 1962, just 603 were broadcasting in the United States. Yet broadcasters vigorously defended the idle bandwidth.

When mobile telephone advocates tried to gain access to the lightly used ultra-high frequency (UHF) band, the broadcasters deluged the commission, arguing ferociously and relentlessly that mobile telephone service was an inefficient use of spectrum.  [read more]

This is exactly how unaccountable gov’t agencies disrupt the natural flow of innovation in a free-market system. Why? Because they think they are smarter than the free-market system.

Happy Birthday, America!

Here’s an article about Frederick Douglass and “The Star Spangled Banner” by The Daily Signal.com:

Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who played a critical role in the abolitionist movement in the mid-19th century, had been a frequent critic of American policy and the existence of the “peculiar institution.” However, he believed that the dearly held principles of the Declaration of Independence, and its unequivocal statement that all men are “created equal,” would eventually lead to slavery’s dissolution.

Douglass pulled no punches in criticizing slavery as a massive contradiction in American life, but he understood the evils of the system would be corrected by embracing the country’s origins rather than rejecting them. He encouraged black Americans to sign up and fight for the Union under the American flag during the Civil War, played a crucial role in recruitment efforts, and convinced many former slaves to serve in the military and embrace the United States as the vessel—not the thwarter—of freedom.

Douglass was known to frequently play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his violin for his grandchildren in the years after the war. He said in an 1871 speech at Arlington National Cemetery that “if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army.” [read more]

Here is conservative thinker Russell Kirk’s ideas on the Founders:

[The] American revolution and the American restoration of order had been accomplished earlier by experienced public men who had known themselves entitled to the “chartered rights” of Englishmen; who were steeped in knowledge of British constitutionalism, law, and history; whose interest lay in maintaining a political and social continuity. That is one reason why the Constitutional Convention may be called a gathering of friends.
Another reason why it was possible for the delegates to work out a political consensus was their sharing of an inherited literary culture.

Most of the Framers, twenty or thirty years earlier, had been required to study certain enduring books that were intended to develop a sense of order in the person and in the commonwealth. Among the ancients, they studied Cicero, Plutarch, and Vergil especially. They had memorized Cicero’s praise of Roman mores, the high old Roman virtue; their imagination had been roused by the lives of Plutarch’s heroes; they had come to understand Vergil’s labor, pietas, fatum.

The Framers had read attentively Montesquieu (The Spirit of Laws being first published in English translation in 1750), David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke (whose Annual Register had been for them a principal reliable source of knowledge of events during their own years).

A third influence that made the Constitutional Convention a gathering of friends, rather than an assembly of political fanatics, was the concept of a gentleman. The first article of the Constitution would provide that the United States might grant no title of nobility, and that no office-holder should accept a foreign title without the consent of the Congress; but the delegates at Philadelphia, quite unlike the French constitution makers a few years later, had no intention of putting down gentlemen.

Source: “The Framers: Not Philosophes but Gentlemen.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. -- Harry S. Truman

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults. -- Alexis de Tocqueville

I have been with Donald for 18 years, and I have been aware of his love for this country since we first met. He never had a hidden agenda when it comes to his patriotism because, like me, he loves this country so much. -- Melania Trump

Where liberty dwells, there is my country. — Benjamin Franklin

May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country! — Daniel Webster

Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. — James Madison

America means opportunity, freedom, power. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Public and Private Education
America.. it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time. – Thomas Wolfe

Here are some transcripts of Hillsdale College lectures:

• “All Honor to Jefferson”
• A Man Worth Knowing (John Adams)
• The Character of George Washington
• According to Their Genius: American Politics and the Example of Patrick Henry
• Four Points of the Compass: Restoring America’s Sense of Direction

Finally, here are some links from Hillsdale College’s free Introduction to the Constitution course:

• The Declaration of Independence—Universals and Particulars
• The Declaration of Independence—The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
• The Declaration of Independence—All Men Are Created 

The Guide for the Perplexed on Trump-Russia

From News Max.com (June 23):

When it comes to the Russian-Trump collusion "smoke" we keep hearing about, one thing has become crystal clear: there isn't any smoke, there isn't any fire, and this nothingburger isn't even worth lighting a match for.

This "scandal" has been the major topic of press attention since Election Day last year.
Yet, no one has provided one scintilla of evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in hacking or otherwise interfering in the U.S. election.
No evidence. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Consider that we've had Obama's own Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tell "Meet the Press" there is "no evidence" of collusion.
………………….
With so many false reports and innuendo being placed in the public sphere, let's review key points the fair-minded person should consider:

1. To repeat, no one has provided any evidence the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton.

The closest they come is that the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak showed up at the Republican convention last year in Cleveland and rubbed shoulders with party big-wigs.

The media reports conveniently forget to mention the Obama State Dept. organized the effort to have diplomats like Kislyak attend the convention.

2. There is no question the Russians tried to interfere in the U.S. election. 

3. This interference took place during Obama's watch.

Obama did little to stop it. Putin took these actions with impunity because he viewed the Obama administration as weak. Putin saw this weakness first hand when he invaded Crimea and Obama slapped him on the wrist.

It was only after Trump was elected did the Obama administration raise the temperature against the Russians over the interference.

4. The Obama administration took the unusual step of "unmasking" the identities of Americans, including people close to Trump, discovered in classified NSA and intelligence intercepts.

Still, this highly questionable action found no evidence of collusion.

5. There is no evidence the Russian interference changed the election outcome or helped Trump.

In fact, Russia's involvement may have actually hurt Trump.

Any review of the election results shows Hillary not only won the popular vote, she actually outperformed Obama's 2012 result in many states, including Blue States like California (she won by over 4 million votes, Obama beat Romney by just 2 million) and Red States like Texas (Hillary cut Obama's loss of 16 points almost in half to 9).

……………

The president is right to be worried about an investigation that was created with no evidence of a crime. Apparently finding no evidence, it is careening into other areas as it seeks to justify its own existence. [read more]

I agree with President Trump that this whole investigation is a witch hunt and is hurting the country. What I want to know is where is the exit strategy? When does the investigation come to an end? A citizen who is arrested for a felony at least gets a speedy and fair trial. The president doesn't get both. The fake news has him already convicted. Three weeks should be enough time for an investigation of this sort. After that it is time to move on and let this great country get back to business.