Quote of the Day

"I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Before you complain about government waste, overpaid teachers and the overburdened middle class, think about this quote, and realize that everything worthwhile has it's price. If you want a quality car, you need to spend a substantial amount of money. Likewise, if you value your child's education, don't be cheap.

If you want better system, you need to get involved. The system is both BROKE and BROKEN. If you don't want to get involved politically, then shut up and pay the price for decent education. If you give a damn about wasted money, get involve and fix contracts that grant tenure to teachers regardless of performance.

If you think that teachers are overpaid, consider this: inner city magnate schools that manage to do well do so because they reward good teachers with salaries over $100,000. Is that overpaid? Not when you consider the cost of education and the rare calibre of individual that makes a good teachers.

So by all means, blame teachers' unions. Blame bloated bureacracies for the broken education system. But remember at the end of the day, you still need to pay the price if you believe education is a valuable commodity.

New Bike

I just got a new bike. A Surly "Long Haul Trucker" frame. And so before I start to wax poetic about the mystical melding of mind, muscle and machine that occurs when one bikes, I would like to announce the second of two purposes for me writing this blog (the first being as a purely creative outlet for myself).

The purpose I have in mind is to create a sort of inventory of peoples and opinions during these times; to create something along the lines of de Tocqueville's "America" (a book which I admittedly never read cover to cover). I am less interested in creating a statistical masterpiece and more interested in creating a genuinely interesting series of articles about this country and her people.

By the way, please feel free to comment on the blog if you have any feedback (that is directed at you, four followers of mine). I started this in order to spark some discussions among people I know (and those that I don't for that matter). I will shut this down however if it becomes too obvious of a vanity project for me.

I Have One Follower on this Blog

And she probably hit "Follow" on accident.

Why Conservatives (and NeoConservatives) should support increased spending in education

 
To begin with, there exists a large divide over who is responsible for a child's education. Many on the left, to a varying degree, would say that society is responsible. Those on the right might counter that there is no such thing as social responsibility, only individual responsibility. Others on the right would assert that religion should play a large role in a child's life. 
 Let's lay aside these questions and deal with the issue of how/how much to pay for that child's education. 
Those on the Left, believing that the majority of a child's education should be in a school, would say that good education costs good money (ideally they'd that, many blame Unions as the root of all Evil), those on the right, perhaps a little mistrustful of governmental institutions, would seek to pay less into such a system. (by taking their kids to private school or by  homeschooling them). Thus, they would rather the government spend less on education (or minimize the expense). 

But let's ask, what good IS school to the Right? Doesn't school have a tendency to be too PC and indoctrinate kids into believing in Global Warming/Evolution? Or perhaps is there a reason to increase spending at schools that will appeal to Conservative hearts?

It's this: a nation's greatness rests onn the shoulder's of an educated middle class. A middle class that serves as the officer corps, a middle class that serves as midlevel bureacrats, such as CIA analysts. 

But what then should we spend this money on, they might ask. What about on languages such as Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese (like it or not, the U.S. has business interests that will act to defend). 
What if we could have had intel about bin Laden's whereabouts the minute we knew he was responsible. Such a thing is only possible if you educate from a very early age. 
We also need a Civil Service Corps that could serve as a deployable administration in the countries we invade. What if, 2 years into the Iraq war (2005), we had been able to deploy 2500 civilian administrators and engineers, fluent in Arabic, and set up a temporary, "shadow" government (the Iraqi parliament would argue about the constitution, the "shadow" government would put the Tabouli on the table.) In fact, we already had one such force, the U.S. Military, specifically, the Officer Corps. However, they were educated largely in technical fields, which are necessary to run the war machines, but not administer an empire. 
You also need inovative bureacrats if you want to avoid government bloating. Well-educated bureaucrats could save the government money simply by being more productive. (Rush Limbaugh might dispute this, having dropped out of Junior College.)
Finally, what about a the benefits of a well-, or over-, educated work force? Eventually, companies could reduce their expenses for hiring more educated workers. Productivity will go up, and more importantly, so will innovation.

How do we do such a thing? Educate children to be effective communicators, fund increase standards for math and science. Fund more merit-based scholarships at the state level. Fund language programs, but also engineering. The more educated a people, the greater the future of the economy.

"The American:" the Nail in the Coffin of the James Bond Franchise

Ok, so let's disregard for a minute that MGM studios is broke. Let's instead focus on James Bond in it's own terms.
The books, as written by Ian Fleming, never took the eponymous hero at face value. Littered throughout the James Bond series is a snide commentary on the kind of man straight (Fleming was gay), post-war (and consequently Cold War) middle class Americans and Britons took to be a role model: a flamboyent womanizer and a daredevil, someone whose Departmental budget was obviously unlimited (and when you're try to beat those pesky Soviets, it had better be).
What we got with the movies was a franchise that at times took itself far too seriously. We, the viewing public do not care why James Bond acts the way he does (looking at you, "Quantum of Solace"). We do not care whether or not Bond is actually driving (and wrecking) cars that cost hundreds of thousands to make. For the most part, you can also lay reducing the number of models that James Bond seemingly burns through. Thus, the James Bond franchise has been failing at it's intended purpose: it has failed to entertain, let alone amuse.
At the heart of every good spy movie should be some kind of commentary on the nature of the profession of those who risk their lives believing that they are serving their country. One such story is "The Spy who came in from the Cold," by the celebrated novelist John Le Carre. Without givin away too much of the plot, the story centers on a middle age spy and the moral ambiguity solutrounding the choices in his life. The bureaceacy of the narrative is not of the silly sort imagined by the James Bond series: there are no indulgent, matronly bosses like 007's M, merely cold, calculating bureacrats. The idealist in the book are all executed by those who have no moral qualms about what they are doing.
"The American," which stars George Clooney as another mid-age spy/assassin is another story in the realistic vein. George Clooney plays an entirely believable secret agent type (we're never told exactly what he does) who always gets the girl. The difference between Clooney's character, named Jack, and James Bond is that the characters the Jack interacts with aren't merely objects waiting for him to act upon (as most of the women seem to be in any James Bond movies). For example, there is hurt in the eyes of a priest after Jack snidely alludes to a son the Catholic priest had fathered. There is also the sense that the eponymous American realizes that he has no life outside of Uncle Sam's service: a resignation that he will have to kill his way out of his situation if he wants to ever live his own life.
Besides the bleak yet very realistic screenwriting, I would have to say that the acting, directing, and cinematography were simply superb. The way the camera would find Clooney and the way the shots were set up to minimize their value (there is one conversation in particular, in which Clooney is talking on the phone, and the camera zooms out to outside the phone booth, focusing instead on the main character's car, reiterating the essential worthlessness of the main character to the souless bureaceacy that he works for).

Oh, and if you're one of the people who does care what cars the characters drive, Jack drives a Mercury, not an Aston Martin.

Welcome

Alright, so this is the first time that I've decided to seriously blog. To be honest, I am mainly writing this out of boredom. So my ideas for this blog are kind of scattered: I want to do movie reviews, restaraunt reviews, and basically offer my opinion on everything ranging from U.S. involvement overseas to world finance to culture to America's public school system.

I hope you enjoy reading. Leave a comment in the comment box as long as your observe basic Internet ettiquette.