Massachusetts Fail January 19, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: Massachusetts election
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The Democrats are in utter disarray about how to respond to the Republican win in Massachusetts. It is late and I’m not sure what to say about this.
But I think the following observation by Kevin Drum is true:
On a broader note, though, it underscores how resistant the American public is to change. Aside from tax cuts, George Bush spent eight years in the White House and really wasn’t able to advance the conservative agenda in any major way at all. Now it looks like Obama and congressional Dems aren’t going to have much luck advancing a progressive agenda in any major way either. We complain a lot, but when all’s said and done, apparently the status quo is still pretty popular. That’s good news for Wall Street bankers and health insurers, not so good for the rest of us.
If the concept of “democracy” has any meaning, at some level the public has to take responsibility for its decisions. Sometimes you deserve what you get.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Why American Education Is Failing January 19, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Education.Tags: creationism, science education
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Philosopher of science Michael Ruse recalls a science teacher who, as a witness in the Arkansas court case challenging the teaching of evolution in 1981, made the following comment:
“Mr. Williams, I’m not a scientist. I’m a science educator. I love science, I really do. And I love my students. My job is to take the science and teach it to my students. I am not a leading researcher. I am an educator, and I have my pride and professional responsibilities. And I just can’t teach that stuff [meaning creationism] to my kids.”
As Ruse points out:
The relevance of the Arkansas teacher struck home when I looked at some of the figures. Get this. In 2007 (the last year for which there are available figures) within the State of Florida 1,295 people were hired to teach mathematics. Of those, only 394 had qualifications in teaching mathematics. Within the state, 1,154 people were hired to teach science. Of these, 282 had science qualifications. In other words, and I can attest anecdotally to this at my kids’ high school, most of the people being hired in Florida to teach mathematics and science aren’t qualified. And note that these are the numbers of people being hired, not necessarily the numbers needed.
In other words, we are simply not getting into our classrooms people like the Arkansas teacher who just loved science (including mathematics) for its own sake. Or if we are, it is purely by chance. We are not getting people who were themselves so thrilled by astronomy or biology or algebra (and there are such people) that they wanted to do it at university — and then who wanted to go back into the classroom and teach it to others. We are getting people who for various reasons are taking the job of teaching mathematics and/or science, but who have no background training. And of course, not necessarily any passion or deep commitment to science.
The point is germane to any discipline. Successful teachers must care about their subject for its own sake—only then can their enthusiasm get students hooked on science, math, English, history or whatever.
In our culture, education is about getting a job and education policy is about putting a body in a classroom and pushing students out the door with good test scores. The intrinsic value of studying a discipline is not part of the equation.
Until we change that, American education will continue to fail.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
MLK: Will His Legacy Be Honored? January 18, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: liberalism, Martin Luther King
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The occasions on which we honor our fallen heroes are an opportunity to assess our own willingness to sacrifice for a larger purpose.
Today we should be wondering whether we deserve Dr. King’s legacy.
We honor a man from a different age, when Americans seemed to care about social injustice enough to come out into the streets and risk police dogs, tear gas, and imprisonment. When depression came from being unable to ensure that no American child went to bed hungry, not from being unable to stay in Avatar-world. Those in King’s tradition stand on the verge of being routed, on health care, the environment, bank regulation, abolition of the ‘PATRIOT’ acts assaults on the constitution, and the rendering of warfare a permanent institution in American life, like interstate highways and social security. If we are routed, will we effectively protest? Will there be consequences for the insurance companies, the arms dealers, the warmongering ‘think tanks,’ the advertisers, the lobbyists who mobilized to preserve the unjust old order? Or in today’s world is it enough to put up a facebook page and text a dollar to our favorite causes? Is that the kind of thing that would have satisfied Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?
As is evident in comment sections throughout the blogosphere, too many liberals are ready to abandon the fight because reactionaries won’t play nice.
Reactionaries never play nice. That is why they are in power.
This is a lesson Obama needs to learn. But his critics on the left also need to be reminded that fighting injustice is a perpetual task that requires great sacrifice and endurance.
Human beings have not yet discovered a way to prevent the accumulation of power; and that means we are always outgunned and always will be.
It is fashionable to sneer at Obama’s appeal to “hope” during his campaign. But that is all liberals have because it supports the will to persist. Conservatives have the power and money. All we have is hope that through extraordinary effort some injustice can be removed.
That is Dr. King’s legacy.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Wealth, Inequality, and Europe January 15, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Political Philosophy, politics.Tags: Europe, inequality, social democracy
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American political writers constantly claim that Europe, although a nice place to visit, doesn’t really produce enough wealth to make it livable. This column by Ross Douthat is the most recent of the genre. This belief is part of the narrative that social democracies, because they devote lots of resources to public goods and a social safety net, are less efficient than full-blown capitalist economies.
Matt Yglesias has the right response to this argument.
There are three main differences in living standards between the United States and Europe. One is that the US has long been somewhat wealthier than the biggest European countries, dating back to the 19th century. Two is that the US is much less egalitarian than Europe—a bigger share of European output is in the hands of the poor and the middle class, and a smaller share in the hands of the rich. The third is that Americans work more than most western Europeans…
These last two show us what I think is the real meaning of social democracy for a developed country—you get more equality and more vacation, with no real impact on the rate of growth. There’s a case to be made that less vacation and better televisions are a better deal than more vacation and worse televisions (the two things I like to do on vacation are go to Europe and watch TV, so I have mixed feelings about this) and there’s a tradition of philosophical argument which holds that the failure of modern mixed economies to be sufficiently solicitous of the interests of the wealthy is a major source of injustice. But though some level of income inequality would seem to be necessary to achieve economic growth, within the range that actual developed countries exist at there’s no evidence that inegalitarian policies boost growth.
This article by Lane Kenworthy contains a primer on the correlation between inequality and growth—it turns out there isn’t any. Here is one of his charts:
Aside from the outlier, Ireland, it is hard to see a correlation between growth rate and inequality.
This is another right-wing talking point that needs to be scrapped.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Steroids in Baseball January 13, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Culture, Dwight Furrow's Posts.Tags: baseball, Mark MacGwire
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Mark MacGwire has finally admitted that he used performance enhancing drugs during his historic home run streak in 1998.
It is now clear that many players, both hitters and pitchers, used these drugs, which not only help players recover from injuries more quickly but also increase muscle mass. Because these drugs were illegal, many reports of baseball statistics during the steroid era include an asterisk indicating that the result was tainted by the use of illegal drugs.
Matt Yglesias thinks there is no reason to question the records broken during this era:
The players being marked out on this list played during a time when there was no real effort to curb the use of currently-banned substances and the use of such substances was widespread. In particular, they were used by pitchers as well as hitters, and any position players whose physical attributes were enhanced by PED was also playing defense. There’s just no clear reason to believe that widespread use of steroids and HGH represented some structural advantage for hitters.
But I don’t follow his reasoning. If performance enhancing drugs increase muscle mass, they certainly increase a batter’s chance of hitting a home run. Although it may be the case that pitchers used them as well, I doubt that a pitcher on steroids improves his ability to prevent home runs to the same degree.
Hitting home runs in contrast to doubles or long singles is primarily a matter of strength. Although pitchers may gain a bit of velocity through the use of steroids, velocity by itself is not much of an advantage.
Hitters comparatively gain a greater advantage than pitchers do through the use of steroids. Thus, the competitive balance of MLB was disrupted by the use of steroids—the records are indeed tainted.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Dangerous For Democracy January 12, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics, Science.Tags: climate change, media distortions of science, media ethics
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The British Daily Mail ran a report yesterday with the headline, “Could we be in for 30 years of global COOLING?” The piece told readers, “According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, the warming of the Earth since 1900 is due to natural oceanic cycles, and not man-made greenhouse gases.”
It led Fox News to report, “30 Years of Global Cooling Are Coming, Leading Scientist Says.”
There are, of course, two small problems. First, the National Snow and Ice Data Center said no such thing. The director of the NSIDC said, “This is completely false. NSIDC has never made such a statement and we were never contacted by anyone from the Daily Mail.”
Second, the Fox News report cites the research of IPCC scientist Mojib Latif, one of the world’s leading climate modelers. The story completely mischaracterizes his work, and gets the story largely backwards.
“I don’t know what to do. They just make these things up.”
Yes, they do. And as long as there are news consumers who prefer the alternative universe these outlets provide, they’ll keep making these things up.
Scientific literacy is not exactly widespread in the U.S. And that means the corporate media, especially Fox News, can say what they like if it will attract eyeballs. The average person has no way of assessing this information. That is not good for our democracy.
So I don’t think we can expect news consumers to solve this by themselves. It is really incumbent on the news profession to police their ranks. People who work for outlets like Fox News or The Daily Mail should be drummed out of the profession. Journalism professors should make it clear that working for either organization is a violation of journalistic ethics.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Track Record January 11, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: Republican economic policy, stimulus package
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Most Republicans were opposed to the stimulus package signed by Obama last year and, according to some polls, the public also has its doubts. But the people who measure such things agree that it prevented a deeper recession and has contributed to growth.
The American Enterprise Institute is a conservative outfit but even they grant that the stimulus package was effective. Via Jon Chait:
The real economy … responded to the massive stimulus but remained heavily dependent on it. In the United States, growth during the second half of 2009 probably averaged about 3 percent. Absent temporary fiscal stimulus and inventory rebuilding, which taken together added about 4 percentage points to U.S. growth, the economy would have contracted at about a 1 percent annual rate during the second half of 2009.
As Steve Benen noted last week:
The GOP said the stimulus package would fail to create jobs. We now know the Republicans were wrong.
The GOP said the recovery efforts would fail to generate economic growth. We now know the Republicans were wrong.
The GOP said the stimulus “failed.” We now know the Republicans were wrong.
The GOP said the government should cancel unspent recovery funds. We now know the Republicans were wrong.
The GOP said tax cuts are more effective at stimulating the economy than government spending. We now know the Republicans were wrong.
Had Republicans been in the majority a year ago, the results for the United States and the global economy likely would have been devastating. That GOP officials and their allies continue to pretend otherwise serves as a reminder of just how little role reality can play in our discourse.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
A History of the Present January 10, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: anti-terrorism, national security
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Journalist Georgie Anne Geyer thinks we will live to regret our approach to terrorism:
This is what I think history, written a half-century or even a quarter-century from now, will say of all this:
“The United States began the 21st century as the pre-eminent and undisputedly greatest power in the world. It was the center of science, learning and innovation. Its democratic system was the envy of much of the world, which engaged in different experiments in governance but basically always used the American experience as its systemic and structural basis.
“Then, after one attack on New York City in which several thousand Americans tragically died, the United States embarked upon a series of ill-thought-out military adventures across the world that took it into small country after small country, never understanding that its very presence turned people against it. It lost the modesty of its founding fathers, who vowed not to meddle abroad, and began to dream of ‘nation-building.’ But in the end, it only de-energized and impoverished its own country, as Asia and particularly China moved in on all levels with economic and diplomatic tools to grasp world leadership.”
There were many other ways we could have responded to 9/11 besides all-out wars, such as police and intelligence actions against particular al-Qaida actors, but those paths were not chosen.
I think she is right.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Good Work If You Can Get It January 7, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Philosophy Profession.2 comments
Brian Leiter, links to a list of the 200 Best Occupations. Actuary ranks #1. Look where philosophy is:
I don’t know how they get these rankings. They must be assuming that a philosopher is a tenured professor. There are lots of good adjunct philosophers with PhD’s who have to scrounge about for work every semester and make little more than a beginning clerical worker.
And if you’re on the market this year, your chances of getting a job are about as good as your average auto worker.
And why are the historians ranked above us?
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Child Abuse Goes National January 6, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Culture, Dwight Furrow's Posts, Education.Tags: conservatism and education
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If you are the parent of a young child, you should be very worried about this story.
The Texas Board of Education has been working on a social studies curriculum that promotes radical right-wing ideology. This is the same group that in previous years adopted science standards that cast doubt on evolutionary theory and English standards that downplay critical thinking.
In social science they wish to suppress every dimension of U.S. history that is not dominated by white Christians.
This story would interest only Texans but for the fact that textbook publishers develop their product according to standards set by the largest states who represent more customers. Usually textbooks achieve balance because of the influence of the more liberal California. But California’s budget mess will prohibit their purchasing textbooks for the next few years. Thus, it is likely that, as Texas, goes so goes the nation.
And our children will be the worse for it.
Original drafts of the proposed social science standards mandated de-emphasizing civil rights leaders.
Civil rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall — whose names appear on schools, libraries, streets and parks across the U.S. — are given too much attention in Texas social studies classes, conservatives advising the state on curriculum standards say.
“To have Cesar Chavez listed next to Ben Franklin” — as in the current standards — “is ludicrous,” wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chavez, a Hispanic labor leader, “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others.”
Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is “not a strong enough example” of such a figure.
One “expert” advising the board, David Barton, also advocates ignoring Anne Hutchinson, the early proponent of women’s rights and religious freedom and claims that Texas social studies books should discuss “republican” values, not “democratic” ones.
According to this recent story in the Washington Monthly, they also propose textbook standards that minimize the “emphasis on multiculturalism,” try to “exonerate” Joe McCarthy and teach the Texan student to “identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority.”
The Washington Monthly has a lengthy article featuring a blow-by-blow account of the activities of these right wing ideologues.
As our country becomes more multi-cultural and our society more deeply integrated into the global community, a few ignorant yahoos want to make sure our children are ill-equipped to get along in such a world.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
