THE JOYS OF HAVING A MAJORITY COALITION.

Lawrence Wittner, retired from Albany, hasn't grasped the distinction between the business conservatives and the libertarian conservatives within the Republican coalition.

Sadly, the rhetoric of modern conservatism―focused on small government, free enterprise, and individual liberty―seems ever more divorced from its behavior. Indeed, conservatism’s rhetoric and its behavior are often quite contradictory.

Is this allegation fair? There certainly seem to be plenty of discrepancies between words and deeds, and conservatives should be asked to explain them.

Contradictions can't exist. Check your premises.

Oh, it's more fun to pose a bunch of sarcastic questions so that fellow true believers can enjoy a chortle on a chilly weekend with the Jets and Giants out of the playoffs.

1. As opponents of “big government,” why do you fervently support an unending stream of government-sponsored wars, vast government military spending, the power of local police to shoot and kill unarmed citizens, government interference with abortion rights and family planning, government restrictions on marriage, and the linkage of church and state?

Summarize in one sentence the distinctions between "national greatness conservatism" and "libertarian conservatism."  Extra credit: is no longer spending government money on abortions or family planning, or changing the tax status of marriage or of churches, government restriction or not?

2. As advocates of “consumer sovereignty,” why do you oppose requiring corporations to label their products with information (for example, “contains GMOs”) that would enable consumers to make an intelligent choice of products?

Is a mandatory content label in the prescribed form an aid to intelligent choice, or a source of confusion? Extra credit: is there any food that has not been genetically modified?

 3. As advocates of personal advancement through individual effort, why do you oppose inheritance taxes that would place the children of rich and poor on a more equal footing in their struggle for personal success?

Is it better that the estate be dissipated by one wastrel, or by 538?  Support your reasoning.

4. As advocates of capitalist competition in the marketplace, why do you so consistently support the interests of giant corporations over those of small businesses?

How well did that work out for Eric Cantor? Compare and contrast pro-market and pro-business public policies. Extra credit: what is the symbiosis between activist government and rent-seeking?

5. As advocates of the “private enterprise system,” why do you so often favor government subsidies to failing big businesses and tax breaks to thriving big businesses that you desire to lure into your state or region?

In what way is question 5 any different from question 4?

6. As advocates of freedom to choose to work for an employer (“freedom of contract”), why do you oppose employees’ right to stop working for that employer―that is, to strike―and particularly to strike against the government?

Complex proposition alert! Public employees engaging in rent-seeking with the connivance of Democrat politicians cannot turn out well. It gets really interesting when New York police object to the attitudes of their mayor.

7. As advocates of voluntary (rather than government) action to redress grievances, why do you so fervently oppose labor unions?

Here we go again, with the pro-business as opposed to pro-market policies, although here the role of labor unions as rent-seekers matters.

8. As advocates of the free movement of labor and capital, why do you support government immigration restrictions, including the construction of enormous walls, the massive policing of borders, and the building of mass incarceration centers?

More frictions within the coalition. Here the pro-business and pro-market policy might be precisely for more free movement of goods and people, and for legal status of intoxicants and narcotics. Extra credit: look for the rent seekers.

9. As critics of statism, why don’t you oppose government loyalty oaths, flag drills, and pledges of allegiance?

Another fracture between the national greatness and libertarian schools of thought.

10. As advocates of “freedom,” why are you not at the forefront of the fight against government torture, political surveillance, and censorship?

See above.

None of which prevents the good professor from putting on a spectacular demonstration of the Fallacy of Insufficient Alternatives.

If these contradictions can’t be explained satisfactorily, then we have good reason to conclude that the professed principles of conservatives are no more than a respectable mask behind which lurk less admirable motives ...

That sort of grandstanding might have impressed self-selected young skulls full of mush in a peace studies seminar. Your students deserved better.

THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE: HOLD INDIVIDUALS ACCOUNTABLE.

Vox:  Don't allow extremists to set the terms of the conversation.

Allowing extremists to set the limits of conversation validates and entrenches the extremists' premises. That was true in the criticism of Charlie Hebdo's covers, and it's even truer in today's crimes.

These murders can't be explained by a close read of an editorial product, and they needn't be condemned on free speech grounds. They can only be explained by the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn't need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.

Thus, the responsibility rests with the individuals. Not with their belief system. Not with their environment. That quickly puts us in contested territory.  George Packer in The New Yorker elaborates.

A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique. Charlie Hebdo had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too—but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism. For some believers, the violence serves a will to absolute power in the name of God, which is a form of totalitarianism called Islamism—politics as religion, religion as politics. “Allahu Akbar!” the killers shouted in the street outside Charlie Hebdo. They, at any rate, know what they’re about.

These thoughts don’t offer a guide to mitigating the astonishing surge in Islamist killing around the world. Rage and condemnation don’t do the job, nor is it helpful to alienate the millions of Muslims who dislike what’s being done in the name of their religion. Many of them immediately condemned the attack on Charlie Hebdo, in tones of anguish particular to those whose deepest beliefs have been tainted. The answer always has to be careful, thoughtful, and tailored to particular circumstances.

I believe the same principle applies to any other attempt to call out entire populations for the sins of a few.  Consider #notallmen, and compare and contrast.  Here's an Uncle Tim, reacting to a massacre perpetrated by a frustrated trustafarian late last spring.  I do a little word substitution.

The murderer was active on men’s rights, jihadi fora, where women infidels are highly objectified otherized, to say the very least. They are seen as nonhuman by many such groups, and at the very least lesser than men Moslems — sometimes nothing more than targets or things to acquire. What these men jihadi write puts them, to me, in the same category as White Power movements, or any other horribly bigoted group that “others” anyone else. While it may not be possible to blame the men’s rights jihadi groups for what happened, from the reports we’ve seen they certainly provided an atmosphere of support.

Hard choice: treat jihadi discussion boards as subversive per se, or pickup artist discussion boards as threatening per se, or work to identify the individuals most prone to act on the nastiest impulses encouraged thereon.  Back to the Uncle Tim.

Why is it not helpful to say “not all men Moslems are like that”? For lots of reasons. For one, women Everybody know this. They already know not every man Moslem is a rapist, or a murderer, or violent. They don’t need you to tell them.

Second, it’s defensive. When people are defensive, they aren’t listening to the other person; they’re busy thinking of ways to defend themselves. I watched this happen on Twitter, over and again.

OK, so what's the more productive strategy, whether the objective is to encourage boorish men to behave like gentlemen, or jihadis to respect the pacific traditions of their faith?

Earlier, I mentioned that the conversation is about the men Moslems who are the problem, not the ones who aren’t. Well, at this point, a conversation needs to be had about them, too. Even though we may not be the direct problem, we still participate in the cultural problem. If we’re quiet, we’re part of the problem. If we don’t listen, if we don’t help, if we let things slide for whatever reason, then we’re part of the problem, too.

We men Moslems need to do better.

Perhaps, although it's ultimately about what individuals do. Perhaps in the rabbit culture, it's the saner guys not egging on the predatory guys. What is the generalization?

Or let's do the same word substitution on a rant by a self-described guerrilla feminist.

You are acting like because you never raped or beat a woman engaged in a terrorist act that you are not participating in rape culture or misogyny jihad [I could have let the original words stand]. The fact that you are exempting yourself from a conversation about how men Moslems treat women nonbelievers and how patriarchy jihad operates means that you ARE part of the problem.

When you say ‘not all men Moslems!’ you are completely shirking responsibility for how you benefit from patriarchy jihad. You are evading accountability for your participation in a culture world-view that systematically privileges your gender belief system. When you silence women critics and derail feminist responsive conversations with your ‘but not all men Moslems!’ bullshit, you are exposing yourself as one of “those men Moslems” that you purportedly abhor so much that you feel the need to distance yourself from them in the first place. Hate to break it to you, turkey, but if you’re silencing women critics and derailing feminist pointed conversations to make them all about you and your feelings than you ARE one of THOSE MEN JIHADIS. You are revealing yourself as the true antifeminist faux-ally useful idiot you really are.

So, you never raped a woman committed an act of terrorism. What do you want? A cookie? A medal? A goddamn Nobel Peace Prize? You want feminists everywhere thinking people to stop doing the critical work they’re doing to pat you on the back for never raping anyone engaging in terrorist acts? Do have any idea how unbelievably fucked [c.q.] up that is? Also, as I’ve stated before, here’s a pro-tip: if you don’t want women other people to think of you as a potential rapist terrorist, then maybe you should start by working to end rape terrorism by educating men not to rape women engage in terrorism, rather than attacking women critics for implicating all men Moslems in rape culture jihad. Men Moslems are the people doing the majority of the raping in this country global terrorism. Acknowledging this reality is not anti-male Islamophobia, its simply stating a fact [No, I'm not going to do the same word substitution at the link. That's left as an exercise.].

When I first responded to the Elliot Rodger story, I gave the final word to Cathy Young.  With word substitution, it still works.  "But the worst possible answer is a toxic version of feminism counterterrorism that encourages women the civilized world to see themselves as victims while imposing collective guilt on men Moslems."  The collective guilt approach simply turns sympathetic people, whether they are gentlemen or practice Islam or both, from being helpful.

SEEKING THE ADULTS?

Islamoloons shoot up the office of Charlie Hebdo, a French magazine known for its over-the top covers.  Mark Davis (a radio talker in Dallas who has occasionally pinch-hit on Rush Limbaugh) suggests there's a connection.

Let us properly condemn the primitive evils that compel people to respond to affronts with murder.

But perhaps there is an additional lesson to be gleaned from this tragedy: that while we should never obligate restraint to appease terrorists, we do well to nudge discourse away from the basest urges of today’s shock-addicted commentariat.

The best restraint comes from a desire to aim higher, to engage more constructively— namely, to grow up.

Some will heed that instinct. Many will not. So for those choosing to enjoy the fleeting marketplace rewards of the gutter, we will stand ready with pens to hoist in solidarity should they pay with their lives for their insolence.

Or, we might ask, how do you say "consider the source" in rag-head?  David Brooks is thinking along those lines.

Most of us don’t actually engage in the sort of deliberately offensive humor that that newspaper specializes in.

We might have started out that way. When you are 13, it seems daring and provocative to “épater la bourgeoisie,” to stick a finger in the eye of authority, to ridicule other people’s religious beliefs.

But after a while that seems puerile. Most of us move toward more complicated views of reality and more forgiving views of others. (Ridicule becomes less fun as you become more aware of your own frequent ridiculousness.) Most of us do try to show a modicum of respect for people of different creeds and faiths. We do try to open conversations with listening rather than insult.

Yet, at the same time, most of us know that provocateurs and other outlandish figures serve useful public roles. Satirists and ridiculers expose our weakness and vanity when we are feeling proud. They puncture the self-puffery of the successful. They level social inequality by bringing the mighty low. When they are effective they help us address our foibles communally, since laughter is one of the ultimate bonding experiences.

Moreover, provocateurs and ridiculers expose the stupidity of the fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are people who take everything literally. They are incapable of multiple viewpoints. They are incapable of seeing that while their religion may be worthy of the deepest reverence, it is also true that most religions are kind of weird. Satirists expose those who are incapable of laughing at themselves and teach the rest of us that we probably should.

Thus, even in areas of High Politics and Fraught Controversy, there is division of labor.

Most societies have successfully maintained standards of civility and respect while keeping open avenues for those who are funny, uncivil and offensive.

In most societies, there’s the adults’ table and there’s the kids’ table. The people who read Le Monde or the establishment organs are at the adults’ table. The jesters, the holy fools and people like Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are at the kids’ table. They’re not granted complete respectability, but they are heard because in their unguided missile manner, they sometimes say necessary things that no one else is saying.

Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semirespect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct.

The reason Mr Brooks notes healthy societies do not suppress speech is to emphasize a point he raises earlier in the column.

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions.

Put another way, there might be a few of the Perpetually Aggrieved on campus and their enablers among the diversity hustlers in the administration that ought to first consider the source.

Or be thought of as excessively fragile, just as the Saudi belief system is revealing itself.

Raif Badawi was found guilty of insulting Islam on Free Saudi Liberals, a website he created, and also ordered to pay about $266,000 in fines. A court originally sentenced him to 600 lashes and seven years in prison, but a judge increased the sentence after an appeal. Amnesty International said he will receive 50 lashes each week for 20 weeks.

Belief system must not be a strong enough opiate for the primitives.

THAT CHILLY ILLINOIS BUSINESS CLIMATE?

With the new year, a number of DeKalb area businesses close.

JCPenney is the latest addition to a list of companies leaving the DeKalb market. Barnes & Noble closed Dec. 31; meanwhile the General Electric plant will close Jan. 30 and Big Lots plans a Jan. 31 closure.

General Electric have been winding down efforts in the former glider and cruise missile factory for years.  Penney, along with a number of the other former middlebrow mass-marketers, have been squeezed for years; the Popular Perspective is that retailing either caters to the high end or to the low end clientele as there no longer is a middle.  Thus the departure of Big Lots is intriguing.  Is there such a thing as saturation among the dollar stores?  At least I was able to replace a pair of carpet slippers and some inner pillow covers at the Penney post-Christmas clearance.

The departure of Barnes and Noble means DeKalb-Sycamore are home to a large university, but to no large bookstores.  Yes, there are are a few general interest books in the Village Commons and Holmes Student Center bookstores, but Amazon's drone fleet is likely to have more missions to fly.

JE SUIS CHARLIE.

A roundup of tribute cartoons at Common Dreams includes the following.

(Without attribution.)

Vox posted an arcade of Charlie Hebdo covers that makes clear nothing, and nobody, was sacred.  The one I reproduce below makes an important point: no prophet's message is unambiguous and received identically by everybody.

"I am the Prophet, a**hole!" "Shut up, infidel!"

(Author unattributed.  May be murdered editor Stéphane Charbonnier.)

I'm looking for some general principles to frame the responses today.  First, let's apply the Enlightenment principle of not generalizing.  Khalid Albaih, a working cartoonist in the Middle East (that job description itself is noteworthy) struggles with that principle.

Khalid Albaih cartoon.

I'm going to have to return to the message again, as there's a generalization to more specifically North American phenomena I wish to explore.  For today, let's take Mr Albaih's intellectual struggle at face value.

It's no easy feat to come up with a cartoon that can pass all levels of censorship - starting with self-censorship then government-imposed "coronership", which in many countries in this region, is actually somebody's job - to pick apart and find potentially offensive meanings.

That's why I understand why the west is fighting so hard to keep that freedom of speech as free as it should be. In the wake of the deplorable attack on the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, I wholeheartedly join the rest of the world in condemning the actions of those three young men.

I condemn the attacks on the cartoonists even though I don't agree with the publication’s editorial slant, which I have often found to be hurtful and racist. Nevertheless, I would continue to stand for their freedom of speech.

I believe that the assailants' religion or ideology is irrelevant; I believe they were simply looking to wage an attack; they would have attacked something else if they didn't attack Charlie Hebdo.

Muslims seem to lose either way. They are constantly asked to apologise for crimes they neither committed, nor support. They, too, are victims of the violence of extremists. Still, they are asked to apologise and somehow atone for these crimes that were committed in the name of their religion. Then they must face the wrath of extremists who attack them for refusing to approve of the methods they view as the only way to defend Islam.

It's the bicentennial of the Congress of Vienna; Napoleon plotting his return from Elba, and Metternich's spies are everywhere.  Two hundred years ago in Austria it was a crime to deviate from the published libretto of the opera.  So yes, freedom of artistic expression is hard-won, and it's incumbent on Moslems of good faith to try it sometime.

WHY ECONOMICS IS ABOUT TRADEOFFS.

I give you Chris Versace's "The Negative Effects of Low Oil Prices."

I hate to be Debbie Downer, but while you and other Americans will continue to reap the benefits of lower oil and gas prices, the effect has been different for oil companies such as Halliburton (HAL) and BP (BP). What’s been described by oil industry executives as a “Darwinian adjustment” has companies like those cutting jobs. Models from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicate that if crude oil remains around $55 per barrel, Texas could lose 128,000 direct and indirect energy jobs by mid-2015. Big independent producers including Marathon Oil (MRO), ConocoPhillips (COP) and Apache Corp. (APA) have said they’ll cut their 2015 capital budgets as they tighten their respective belts for oil price pain. Cuts like those can only result in a disaster for companies like Civeo (CVEO), a provider of housing for oil workers in the Canadian oil sands industry.

Gaming this fallout even further means negative pressure on oil industry revenues and earnings. We’ve started to see Wall Street start to catch up and slash oil and energy company expectations, but it’s the commentary on the upcoming earnings conference calls that will tell the tale of how bad things could get in the coming weeks.

Yes, companies expand capacity in anticipation of future returns, and yes, the Saudis are willing to bring in less money to fund the Sillies in order to defund the Persians, correctly treating their investment in existing wells as sunk.  But the point of markets is to allocate resources among competing uses, and if there are cheaper feedstocks for 3-D printer-assisted manufacturing in the United States, where the historic comparative advantage in advanced technology, knowledge-intensive goods manifests itself, so be it.

Candidly, I’m not all that optimistic we’ll see a big reversal in oil prices in the near term, because all of the data I have been looking at paints a picture of a slowing global economy. If you’re looking to double check my thinking, all you have to do is check in with Dr. Copper – whose second opinion confirms global growth is slowing.

Yes, those Chinese sweatshops that carry out routine production using archaic methods are going to have a tough time.  But cheaper oil does more to end developed-country reliance on sweatshop production and convict labor than all the lamentations of the Perpetually Aggrieved ever did.

AN ANN COULTER ZINGER.

New York's police might be balking at functioning as revenue collectors for the city's radical chic mayor.  That might be the best way to ensure the continued support of law abiding citizens.

The only time normal people get annoyed at cops is precisely for these revenue-collection laws -- parking tickets, moving violations, driving without a seatbelt, selling untaxed cigarettes, jaywalking and so on. So it was quite brilliant of the cops to zero in on the laws that exist just because Democrats want the money.

At least among people who generally like cops, the NYPD has made itself spectacularly popular.

She's reacting to MSNBC, which suggests she's reacting to a non-event event in any event.

THE ROAD OF SERVICE.

A passenger on the 1930 Euston to Glasgow finds himself in a sticky situation.  Props to Virgin Trains for having a customer service representative attentive to social media. "At Virgin Trains we work really hard to respond to our customers quickly, to make sure they get the information or help they need – whatever the request!"  That's in the best tradition of The North Shore Line, to make each passenger feel as if he or she is their only passenger.

YOUR FINANCIAL FITNESS.

Money $mart Week doesn't come until April, but perhaps as part of getting your records together for tax season, you might do four simple things.  Keep track of spending.  With freeware and shareware spreadsheets, this is simpler than having to enter numbers in a ledger with a quill pen.  Create a budget.  This can be as simpler as reviewing last year's spreadsheet, and thinking about areas to cut back on, as you prepare a preliminary spreadsheet for this year.  Pay down credit card debt.  It's simple, really.  Parking cash in a savings account at around 1% and making only the minimum payment on a revolving account at around 20% is the slow road to destitution.  Focus on retirement.  Not everyone can walk away from it before his sixtieth birthday, but establishing a reserve against the day it ceases to be fun to go to work, or the day you can't resist saying "take this job and shove it" makes the bad days more bearable.

GETTING READY FOR FASCHING.

I was in Bonn a week early for the Beethoven Festival, and in Köln a couple of months early for Karneval, which gets going on 11 November (surely a more festive use of the eleventh day of the eleventh month than an armistice) although the heavy celebrating gets going in February, by which time Mobile has been celebrating for a month.  But while in Köln I picked up the Kölsche Grundgesetz, which are eleven sensible maxims to live by, Fasching or not.  Perhaps I'll count those down as Fasching Dienstag approaches.

TRAVEL READING.

The last time I published an entry in the Fifty Book Challenge, it was October, and I was about to go on yet another road trip.  Thus last year ended with only ten books reviewed, and a large stack of books awaiting review in the study.  Thus an impromptu New Year's Resolution to work off the backlog of books awaiting review, whilst taking advantage of the sunny cold days when there's no reason to go outside, to read some more books, and, with proper self-discipline, post the reviews this year.

And thus, let us start the New Year, Orthodox style, with Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia.  The shorter version of what Mr Frazier relates to us is summarized in a brief P. J. O'Rourke passage from a Daily Beast essay on all the ways Vladimir Putin might go wrong.

“Exiled to Siberia” says everything about Russian economic and social development in that land of mountains, lakes, and forests with a climate, in its lower latitudes, no worse than the rest of Russia’s. I’ve been across it on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. If this were America, the route from Irkutsk to Vladivostok would be lined with vacation homes and trendy shops, and “exiled to Siberia” would be translated as “exiled to Aspen.”

That was my impression of the Ulan Ude to Irkutsk section.  On the shores of Lake Baikal are some excellent resort grounds suitable for ski resorts in winter and 500 slip marinas for summer.  And the Buryats might preserve their wigwams and teepees and at the same time set up casinos in the best Ho-Chunk tradition.

Mr Frazier's travels, however, sometimes unauthorized excursions from Alaska, sometimes in winter, give the reader a sense of what Siberians are up against, and that even if the Decembrists had used their exile to Irkutsk as an opportunity to develop lumbering and mining businesses rather than investing in simple palaces and salons, making a go of it on the permafrost might not have been easy.

Thus, the first review.  Let us see if we reach the fifty.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

SEEKING PROFESSOR VINCE LOMBARDI?

Wisconsin's W. Lee Hansen (via Phi Beta Cons) continues to sound the alarm about egalitarian grading in Madison.

In fall 2009, the College of Letters and Science pushed further with a study of grading practices in five introductory courses. Its title was revealing: “Grade Gap/Future Gap: Addressing Racial Disparities in L&S [Letters & Science] Introductory Courses.” Departments were instructed to implement strategic action plans to “eliminate racial grade gaps by 2014.”

This targeted five introductory courses: Chemistry 103, Communication Arts 100, English 100, Mathematics 112, and Psychology 202.

Putting an even sharper point on the administration’s desires, the report explained, ". . . these courses have something in common, sharp disparities in grade outcomes by race. In all courses targeted minority students achieve lower grades than non-targeted students at similar preparation levels. In each course, targeted minority students receive more of the low grades and fewer of the high grades."

No, that doesn’t explicitly demand grade quotas, but the unsubtle point can’t be missed.

Perhaps not. But I refer to Vince Lombardi as in teaching chemistry, physics, and Latin at St. Cecilia High School, introducing the essential elements in such a way that even the dullest or least-engaged student can grasp them.  Likewise, there are essential elements to communication and to figuring, and probably to psychology.  But you have to let the professors have the presence in the classroom that Mr Lombardi had at St. Cecilia.  Missing from Madison: the crusty senior non-coms, graying chief check pilots, and grumpy old Road Foreman of Engines.

The people who teach those introductory courses, mostly teaching assistants and instructional academic staff, are quite vulnerable to administrative pressure because they are on limited-term contracts. They are apt to decide that giving each individual the grade he or she earned is less important than assigning grades so that there is little or no gap between groups.

Rather than adjusting grades, however, the university suggests that faculty members who teach those courses should “discover pedagogical strategies that reach targeted and non-targeted students with equal effectiveness" to reduce the achievement gap.

Resorting to faddish education-speak, the university suggests that the faculty use “proactive multicultural competence” to make their teaching more effective for the targeted students.

That's probably the wrong approach, but to hire Professors of the Practice and allow them to develop the presence of Mr Lombardi at St. Cecilia is so hopelessly old school.

Those ideas about “pedagogical strategies” may sound nice, but they’re utopian. Professors teaching those introductory courses (or any others) can’t wave a magic wand to come up with a teaching method that enables the “targeted” students in, say, chemistry, to learn the subject just as well as the non-targeted students. There simply isn’t some different, more effective way of teaching chemistry to minority students than teaching it to white and Asian students.

Faculty members might attempt or at least say they’ve attempted to discover and use  methods that make all student groups learn the material equally well. In the end, however, they will do the safe thing and adjust grades so that the gap disappears. That, after all, is the one thing the university can measure.

Perhaps so, and if the university's personnel decisions are going to be based on semesterly evaluations of contingent faculty and graduate assistants, that is the most likely outcome.  There is no magic wand necessary: only the disciplined development of the fundamental concepts, and building upon them methodically.  But that's work, and it's going to be harder work when the admissions office is filling your classroom with Distressed Material.

Students need accurate feedback on how they’re doing, not inflated grades that boost their egos.

I would also argue that the university’s reputation will be diminished by these efforts at equalizing grades between groups. Pressures to eliminate grading gaps will lead to the “dumbing down” of courses and, even more likely, grade inflation for targeted minority students. This pretend solution won’t make the university better for anyone.

UW-Madison is going through all these contortions because the administration can’t or won’t acknowledge a simple fact: some groups of admitted students are significantly less well prepared for college work.

That last sentence might be an indictment of preferential policies, or it might scan as well simply as "some admitted students are less well prepared."  And, I'd suggest, there are differences in motivation.

Econ Log's David Henderson suggests that readers take Professor Hansen's warning seriously.

This is not a criticism by just anyone. W. Lee Hansen is one of the most accomplished economists who has taught at the the University of Wisconsin in the last half century. One of his critics on the site that published his article casually referred to him as a "conservative." I'm guessing that Professor Hansen got a good laugh out of that one.

Indeed so. Professor Hansen is also the author of a set of proficiencies in economics that are, yes, desirable in graduating seniors, or in aspiring professors now waiting for their job meeting callbacks.  But in order to assess or interpret or apply existing economic knowledge, the practitioner must first be a master of exchange, arbitrage, opportunity cost, and indifference at the margin.

Thus, we're full circle: the retention and completion problems beginning students encounter, circumstances of their admission notwithstanding, might be aggravated by introductory classes offered by inexperienced presenters without the confidence or the presence to develop the fundamentals.

CREATING INFRASTRUCTURE.

Plenty of grain and oil coming out of the Dakotas along the old Great Northern High Line (so called for its placement on the map: Great Northern has the easiest northern crossing of the Rockies.)  The heirs to James J. Hill are building trackage to move the traffic.

The main work this year was west of Minot where BNSF has been building a second track to Williston on what had historically been a single track railroad most of the way.  They have been bulldozing hills, filling in valleys and pushing dirt out into small lakes to build a second track. There are many stretches of the 120-mile route where track is in and operational for 6-7 mile sections. We found a significant portion has been fully graded, shaped and tamped into a roadbed awaiting ties, ballast and rail. It appears that BNSF crews have been trying to grade and shape as many miles as possible before freeze-up and are planning to lay rail, ties and ballast in the winter months when it is impossible to grade dirt. If this winter is severe, this work may have to wait for next spring. As of late September crews were filling in a large valley east of Epping and only a mile or so from the existing double track into Williston, ND. They expect to have 55 miles of double track completed by the end of the year on this segment.

The focus of the post is on getting Amtrak's Empire Builder running reliably again, but that's a trickle-down benefit to getting the freight through.

We came away with the clear picture that BNSF is doing everything physically possible to get the congested railroad in North Dakota unclogged as quickly as possible. The problem the Empire Builder is facing, is the same one all shippers of grain and oil are facing. There is simply too much traffic and too many trains for the railroad to handle. The line is handling almost twice as much traffic as it handled ten years ago and probably 8 times as much as in the Great Northern days of the 1960’s when more passenger trains operated over the route. The fact is that the “pipe” is only so big and only so much can be pushed through it. No amount screaming, investigations or pressure from government entities is going to change that physical fact. Only adding another pipe (track) can fix the problem, which is exactly what BNSF is doing as fast as possible. We are as frustrated as anyone at the terrible on time performance of the Empire Builder, but we do not see any way this can be changed until these improvements are implemented.

Let alone, if any of the more optimistic subscribers to All Aboard Minnesota would like to see a return of the Western Star and Red River and Dakotan and Winnipeg Limited to an area that has lots of potential for a corridor.

AS THE SCHOOLS REOPEN.

Don Boudreaux alerts his readers to a classroom activity that illustrates one of the fundamental ideas in economics, trading for mutual gain.  His protocol includes an opportunity for deeper analysis -- shall we say, political economy?

A really sophisticated twist at this point would be to have all the students, both before and after trading, publicly display their bundles.  If after trading the ‘poor’ students lower their subjective evaluations of their unchanged bundles of goods, then one conclusion might be that trading that makes some, but not everyone, materially better off might make the poorest worse off ‘emotionally’ by inciting in them a sense of envy of the better, or improving, fortunes of others.

That observation might be germane to Mark Twain's portrayal of the reaction of Tom Sawyer's buddies after Tom sells the right to paint the fence on Saturday in order to amass enough tickets to impress the elders and claim a Bible on Sunday.

There's a variant of the Trading Game that uses hypothetical endowments to get the activity going at Econ Ed Link.  The versions with actual endowments involve some cash outlay on the part of the teacher, but are likely to provoke more thinking by the students.

A DISCERNING OBSERVER.

Da Tech Guy posts an anticipation of the professional football playoffs.  "My team, the Green Bay Packers, will be waiting for either the Cowboys or Panthers next weekend."  Good on him.  It's the early Sunday game, which puts Cold Spring Shops in radio range for the home broadcast.

WORKING ON THE RAILROAD.

Cold Spring Shops stood down from posting during the New Year holidays, to savor some college football games (embrace the suck, SEC) and the wild-card round of the National Football League (used to be, that was done by the end of December, with the famous Ice Bowl on December 31, and the college bowl games done by 10 pm on January 1.)

There was also time to work on the railroad.

The push-pins are holding track in position while the glue sets up.

Several more turnouts in place, and a test engine run up to check for irregularities.  None noted, although we all know that at the first public showing, they will turn up!

And a test run, headed toward the section recently glued in place.  Wiring first, then a serious freight train to come.

WHY IT MATTERS.

Jay Mathews, Washington Post education columnist.

We tend to downgrade the academic merits of state universities such as the ones competing for the football championship this year: Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State. Their acceptance rates are too high to merit top ranking in U.S. News. Alabama’s acceptance rate is 57 percent, and its rank among national universities is 88. Oregon’s rate is 74 percent and its rank 106. Florida State’s numbers are 57 percent and 95. Ohio State’s are 56 percent and 54. They don’t compare to the top three U.S. News schools: Princeton with a 7 percent acceptance rate, Harvard with 6 percent and Yale with 7 percent.

Yet the four football powers share characteristics that lead to valuable college experiences for bright and energetic students. They have talented faculties, good facilities, critical masses of academically ambitious students and successful alumni. Public universities are among the country’s most successful institutions, with foreign students pouring in and even many of my ex-newspaper friends finding jobs there.

That "we", I suspect, refers to the Acela set and the trustafarians.  Mr Mathews's conclusion, however, is on point.

High school students smart enough to see how much there is to learn in public universities should be happy they have so many chances, with less admissions stress and less expense, to assemble the makings of great lives.

Provided the students push themselves, and the faculty see their duty as to push their students. George Leef of the Pope Center revises and extends.

Americans used to understand that education is what the individual makes of it. A couple of generations back, before the college credential mania set in, few judged an individual based on his or her college pedigree or lack thereof. Now, sadly, we have gotten into the bad habit of doing that.

An equally bad habit is that we see in many students, who think that college education is merely a matter of passing enough courses to get enough credits to earn the degree. They regard education as a passive endeavor in which they enroll and then accept whatever education might come their way.

University of Virginia English professor Mark Edmundson is correct in arguing that students need to fight for their education by seeking out courses they want to learn about and the professors who really want to teach students, rather than treating them as annoying impediments to the research that advances their careers.

In my experience, the greater impediment to research is the proliferation of adminstrative burdens, including those in which professors must somehow balance special education initiatives or productivity fetishes against the challenges of persuading students not to be passive vessels.

ADDITIONAL CAPACITY FOR CORRIDOR TRAINS?

If I understand a guest essay by Fritz Plous in Destination: Freedom correctly, a business called Corridor Capital owns fifty of the High Level coaches and dining cars built by Budd for The Route of the Holy Faith and rendered surplus to Amtrak's requirements by the Superliner cars.  (The High Level lounges that provided the Sightseer Lounge concept remain in Amtrak service as the Pacific Parlour Cars on the Coast Starlight.)  Corridor Capital would like to sell these coaches, upgraded in some fashion, for faster service on diesel trains (in Michigan? --  or under catenary at Milwaukee Road heights, in some alternative world?)

Mr Plous contrasts the current procurement practices of Passenger Rail operators with the way things used to be.

The 2009 Stimulus Act was supposed to solve the problem. It contained grants sufficient to fund 130 new bi-level Next Generation coaches, business-class/café cars and coach/cab cars to run in state-supported passenger-train programs in California, Illinois, Michigan and Missouri.

But, here we are more than five years later and the first car in the order has yet to be delivered. Designer Nippon Sharyo built a new plant to produce the cars at Rochelle, Illinois, but so far Car 1 has not emerged, and when it does it will have to go to the Facility for Accelerated Testing (FAST) at Pueblo, Colorado, to be inspected and field-tested. And one example of each car type must be tested and passed before copies can go into serial production, further extending what seems to be turning into an open-ended delivery timetable.

So when will the Next Gen cars actually arrive in numbers sufficient to form a complete train set people can ride?

Depends on who you talk to. Last April, the Illinois Department of Transportation Director of Public and Intermodal Transportation said his state expected its first “pilot cars” would arrive in the spring of 2016 with “production cars” arriving in the fall of that year. That would mean more than five years will have elapsed between the manufacturer’s receipt of a Notice to Proceed with construction and delivery of the first coaches.

On the other hand, Corridor Capital is apparently ready to re-fit the Santa Fe cars and roll them out.  As built, the cars were configured for 117 mph operation, to match the gearing on passenger diesels of the day.  And their profile matches well with the height of contemporary passenger diesels.

A FISKING.

There's still a year until the Iowa Caucuses, but the presidential sideshow is well under way.  First up, Vermont's Senator Sanders offers his twelve step Economic Agenda for America. "We need federal legislation to put the unemployed back to work, to raise wages and make certain that all Americans have the health care and education they need for healthy and productive lives. "  Newsmachete's Pedro Gonzales suggests we've heard this pitch before. "Senator Sanders will be 75 years old in 2016. His campaign ideas are only slightly older."

NO GLORY AT MARQUETTE.

The non-suspension suspension of John "Marquette Warrior" McAdams continues, and with spring semester late registration -- at some universities, spring semester itself -- underway, so does the commentary.  Greg Piper of The College Fix has his summary of the university administration beclowning itself with "word games."  The post visits ground recited in our earlier coverage.  The previous day, he linked to a First Things post that may be the most sensible statement about the case.  A student secretly recording a teaching assistant: mistake.  The teaching assistant using "homophobic" to rule a line of inquiry out of order: mistake.  A professor going public with the dispute: mistake. "The point is to make poor teachers better ones, not to throw others on the defensive about matters they feel strongly about."  A common-room of department heads publicly calling out the professor to the administration: mistake.

Shrill denunciations of this kind, with some faculty screaming “J’accuse!” at others, are rarely a good idea. They are never a good idea for the department chairmen who supervise parties already in conflict. Is the ethics instructor getting some quiet remedial advice from her chairman on how to deal ethically with students who espouse conservative, Catholic ethical views? Possible, but doubtful, and after this letter why should she bother to heed it? Is McAdams getting a quiet scolding from his chairman, who might urge him to make amends for “outing” a vulnerable young grad assistant? Also possible, but still more doubtful, and why should McAdams listen? Signing this letter? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Further up the chain of command, the non-suspension suspension, not in the proper form, and contrary to the university's rules: mistake.

And the higher we go in the university hierarchy—you can count on this—the more crashingly stupid the mistake will always be. McAdams laughs off the suspension because it is Christmas break already, and meanwhile has retained legal counsel. It’s lawsuit time!

Good grief. It should be time for someone at Marquette to remember that the university is not Hobbes’s state of nature, the war of all against all where grasping for power over others is all that matters. Time for someone to remember what a Catholic university (yes, even a Jesuit one) actually stands for. Time for someone—a provost, a president? (I know, now we’re in the stratosphere of stupidity)—to break the cycle, to say “stand down” to everyone involved, to un-suspend McAdams, to recommend remedial pedagogical advising for teaching assistants, and to reassert the freedom of Catholic opinions at a Catholic university, even on the part of lowly undergraduates. That would be a start.

Taken together, that's a measured response, and more likely to open minds, or change them, than Peter Wood at Minding the Campus.

We live in a time when borders of academic and intellectual freedom are shrinking rapidly.  Words and ideas get tagged as “insensitive” and failure to self-censor such words is castigated as harmful and unjust.  Identity politics has escalated to the point where merely calling for open debate on campus on issues that are, in fact, widely and openly debated off-campus sets off paroxysms of rage among the keepers of campus decorum.

A university that slips into this kind of censoriousness forfeits any legitimate claim it has to upholding the liberal arts.  Its claim to teach “critical thinking” is likewise compromised.  Critical thinking requires at a minimum serious consideration of contrary views.

That last sentence is surely true, and it is a call to the faculty as custodians of the curriculum to require that critical thinking not be unthinkingly equated with criticizing things as they are.