What wasn't debatable: the absence of Frederick Douglass & the Columbian Orator

So I watched the Trump/Biden 'debate' tonight. What came to mind was this, from one of America's greatest essayists, writers and orators, Fredrick Douglass's "My Bondage and My Freedom", who educated himself via a collection of classic forensic & oratorical speeches in the Columbian Orator - not because something said tonight reminded me of these speeches - please - but because absolutely nothing said tonight, reminded me of any of these speeches, or of those minds capable of and interested in grappling with them, or of a people interested in listening to that effort. The direction and theme of modern education (first floated in the 1830's, BTW), was that reading and learning the speeches of people like Cicero - the type of learning that our Founder's generation and America was formed from - was 'elitist'. Well, beyond who you or I believe 'won' or 'lost' this debate tonight - whether the debaters, the moderator, or a good chunk of the audience - what they most definitely did not bring to mind, was the image of important ideas, delivered in an eloquent and forceful manner, that once marked an educated American mind. What was on display tonight, was the fruit of the deadened heart and soul of modern education (get your kids out).

IOW, neither the debaters, moderator, commentators, showed an understanding of the importance of an educated - not schooled - mind, guiding or moderating their words and manners. There was no sign of the following, in this 'debate':

"... When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning to read, every increase of knowledge, especially respecting the FREE STATES, added something to the almost intolerable burden of the thought—I AM A SLAVE FOR LIFE. To my bondage I saw no end. It was a terrible reality, and I shall never be able to tell how sadly that thought chafed my young spirit. Fortunately, or unfortunately, about this time in my life, I had made enough money to buy what was then a very popular school book, viz: the Columbian Orator. I bought this addition to my library, of Mr. Knight, on Thames street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and paid him fifty cents for it. I was first led to buy this book, by hearing some little boys say they were going to learn some little pieces out of it for the Exhibition. This volume was, indeed, a rich treasure, and every opportunity afforded me, for a time, was spent in diligently perusing it. Among much other interesting matter, that which I had perused and reperused with unflagging satisfaction, was a short dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave is represented as having been recaptured, in a second attempt to run away; and the master opens the dialogue with an upbraiding speech, charging the slave with ingratitude, and demanding to know what he has to say in his own defense. Thus upbraided, and thus called upon to reply, the slave rejoins, that he knows how little anything that he can say will avail, seeing that he is completely in the hands of his owner; and with noble resolution, calmly says, “I submit to my fate.” Touched by the slave’s answer, the master insists upon his further speaking, and recapitulates the many acts of kindness which he has performed toward the slave, and tells him he is permitted to speak for himself. Thus invited to the debate, the quondam slave made a spirited defense of himself, and thereafter the whole argument, for and against slavery, was brought out. The master was vanquished at every turn in the argument; and seeing himself to be thus vanquished, he generously and meekly emancipates the slave, with his best wishes for his prosperity. It is scarcely neccessary(sic) to say, that a dialogue, with such an origin, and such an ending—read when the fact of my being a slave was a constant burden of grief—powerfully affected me; and I could not help feeling that the day might come, when the well-directed answers made by the slave to the master, in this instance, would find their counterpart in myself.

This, however, was not all the fanaticism which I found in this Columbian Orator. I met there one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches, on the subject of Catholic Emancipation, Lord Chatham’s speech on the American war, and speeches by the great William Pitt and by Fox. These were all choice documents to me, and I read them, over and over again, with an interest that was ever increasing, because it was ever gaining in intelligence; for the more I read them, the better I understood them. The reading of[124] these speeches added much to my limited stock of language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, which had frequently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of utterance. The mighty power and heart-searching directness of truth, penetrating even the heart of a slaveholder, compelling him to yield up his earthly interests to the claims of eternal justice, were finely illustrated in the dialogue, just referred to; and from the speeches of Sheridan, I got a bold and powerful denunciation of oppression, and a most brilliant vindication of the rights of man. Here was, indeed, a noble acquisition...."

No matter who you or I might've favored in the 'debate' tonight, none of the parties involved showed any notion that words and how you use them is important to living your life, none displayed anything worth aspiring to. It's safe to say that nothing from this debate will ever be positively used by anyone in the future - there will be no future 'Columbian Orator' containing any of the text of this evening. Does that matter? Well, do you really think that We The People will long survive having the power that America has, without having minds that even aspire to a familiarity with, let alone mastery of, the sound reasoning and eloquent expression of those ideas that alone can direct and restrain that brute power?

C'mon man.

That's a problem.

The Supreme Court and We The People's lost opportunity costs

There's not much that I think I need to add to what I said on the last election year SCOTUS nomination four years ago, other than perhaps to re-emphasize a couple key points:

• The President of the United States of America is elected to a term of four years, and during any day, hour, or minute of his term, he has the power to nominate a new Justice to the Supreme Court, with zero restrictions on that nomination as relates to the age, gender, race, political leanings or dying wishes, in who he chooses to nominate.
• The nomination of a justice to the Supreme Court of the United States of America, by the President, obligates the Senate to give 'advice & consent' to that nomination.

Was it - technically speaking - giving 'advice & consent' to President Obama's nomination of Garland, for Senator Majority Leader McConnell to say that the senate would decline to approve any nominations made during that year? Sure. But it was a cowardly evasion of responsibility for the Senate to consent in doing so.

As Sen. McConnell obviously had the votes to decline to take up the nomination, he also had - if either he or his fellow senators took their responsibilities seriously - the votes necessary to properly examine the nomination of Merrick Garland, and if they had done so, they would easily and rapidly have found abundant evidence (some of which I pointed out in this post) that Merrick Garland, due to egregious and deliberate misinterpretations of our constitution, and an appalling lack of respect for the individual rights of the citizens of the United States of America, was manifestly unfit to sit upon the Supreme Court. Not only did they have the votes to do that, they also had the rare opportunity to demonstrate and teach the American people, and the anti-American contingent amongst us, exactly why nominees such as Garland were unfit for office on the SCOTUS, or in any branch or agency of our nation's government.

But the GOP led Senate punted instead. Opting for the juvenile (and soon to be empowering) 'no nomination will be considered', option.

The fruit of that pathetic 'easy out' have been on abundant display in the media, such as when former Clinton campaign chairman and chief of staff George Stephanopoulos, now charting unbiased news (*cough*cough* B.S fake news*cough*cough*) on Sunday mornings for ABC, to ask Sen. Cruz:

"Do you have the votes ... to confirm before the election?"

, as well as with Sen. Graham's confident assertion that

“We’ve got the votes to confirm Justice Ginsburg’s replacement before the election,”

to push through Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before the election, based upon counting political noses alone, without any regard for the qualifications of the Justice being nominated to the court, which is unavoidable, as that potential justice HAS NOT EVEN BEEN NAMED YET.

Additionally, past performance being a definite influencer of future action, it also helped shape the appalling spectacle of the President of the United States of America, being heckled while paying his respects to the deceased Justice Ginsberg at the Supreme Court's building, to the despicably barbaric caterwauling of those who've been been burning up our cities, tearing down our statues, and spitting upon the United States of America in general and directly and indirectly heaping vitriol upon the Constitution by which We The People formed our nation through.

There is, and necessarily always has been, a political component to nominating and voting upon justices for the Supreme Court - and there should be, that represents our, you know, We The People's, voice. But where it should be an aspect of the process, it has now, through a long, long, string of events across decades, it has now become the primary step in all such nominations, and Justice, and We The People, can only be the poorer for it.

President Trump has the absolute constitutional power to name a new justice to the Supreme Court of the United States of America, yesterday, today, and every day until the end of his term. I just wish that through the costs of all of the lost opportunities, I could see equally clear evidence that We The People are deserving and worthy of it.

Shouldn't you be concerned that your calling ''Whataboutism!', makes it all about about you?

The word 'about' can be interesting in the way it often directs our attention. It can send us on towards where it's wise to go, but more often than not, it sends us on to where it's easier & more pleasing to go, while dragging you and all of your baggage along with it. If you've seen such matters playing out with your otherwise reasonable friends, probably especially over the last few weeks, you know how disturbing it can be. But what about if it's you?

Of course the most obvious example of this today, is where our attention tends to go to at the mere mention of a certain person's name (perhaps one comes to mind for you?), and as the pitch and intensity of the voice audibly rises - an inflection so pronounced that it's even detectable through text - how aware are we that others might be aware of that inflection point in us as well?

It's something worth being concerned about, because it's concerning to see - words matter, and your use of them matters, and because ideas - or the lack of them - have consequences, even for yourself.

Don't be this person

You should be concerned about what happens to you through your words, as when, following that inflection point, you allow your words to describe the person in question in cartoonishly one-dimensional terms - pro or con - it's disturbing for others to listen to. Are you are aware that since what your words describe (in outrageous charges or praises & inappropriate terms) are not describing someone who's recognizably human, they're unlikely to influence the other person's thoughts about the inflected person in question? So not only are they wasted words, but more to the point, as such feverish descriptions are unworthy of serious consideration, do you really think that your words are going to let you escape from serious reconsideration, for having said them?

And then there's the point where 'About' can lead us eagerly unawares into false assumptions about what we're even being asked to think about.

For instance, for most people, when someone has brought up an unexpected over reaction to a scenario, it's a typical reaction, and a very reasonable response, for them to bring up a similar situation, so as to ask what led you to be inflamed about the one, and yet dismissive of the other. That is not an attempt to ignore whatever problem it is that you're inflamed about, but an effort to discover how you distinguish one from the other, in order to either see what they themselves might have missed, or to point out something significant in what you might have missed.

But, the year 2020 being what it is, today such questions as honestly asking 'but... what about...' can come freighted with so many false assumptions, blind spots, and baffling misdirections, as to get you accused of fallacious reasoning for daring to try to understand the other person's outrageous position. For myself, I confess I can't help myself from, not infrequently, dropping an 'about' like a banana peel in their verbal path, just to see if the inflected person I'm talking to will watch their step and consider the nature of the question asked, or... will they instead blindly skip on down the path of the easy out, escaping into charges of 'Whataboutism!', making the issue less about the question involved, than their own inability to reasonably consider any questioning of their inflection point at all.

If you've been lucky enough to not be familiar with the newly re-popularized charge of 'Whataboutism!', it's a tactic that was last popular with defenders of the USSR, as a means of escaping attention and judgement for something that was clearly wrong, by citing what might narrowly and ambiguously be called a similar situation, with the implication being that by means of that thin similarity, you are no better than they, and so have no moral authority to denounce their actions. For instance, Americans might once upon a time have brought up the USSR's political persecution of Solzhenitsyn's freedom of speech, or the killings of the unexpectedly politically incorrect such as Leon Trotsky, at the hands of KGB assassins, to which the defender of communism might've responded with "What about America's persecution of Al Capone for breaking the IRS's rules, or the FBI's killing of John Dillinger?!", essentially 'arguing' that 'Two wrongs make... it all, alright'.

That is what 'Whataboutism!' is all about, using false comparisons and ambiguities to deflect and escape from the task of making, or facing up to making, an honest evaluation.

It is not 'Whataboutism!', however, to ask about a reasonably similar situation in order to try to identify and clarify what you think makes the two things different, but it is a form of 'Whataboutism!', when you attempt to evade making those clarifications by calling their effort 'Whataboutism!'!

And so, yes, with that very much in mind, I'll often ask a person about a similar scenario, with particular attention to my use of the word 'about', in asking something along the lines of:

"I see that you're upset about this, but what about when [Trump, Obama, Bush 43, Hillary, Clinton, Bush 41, Perot, Reagan, Carter, etc., etc., etc.,] did something similar with '__[yada, yada, yada]__'?"

, for myself at least, my 'about' actually is an effort to get the person I'm talking with, to give their judgment of the differences between the issues; but the point of my comment is not only what [etc., etc., etc.] did when doing '[yada, yada, yada]', but what their own reaction to the comparison in question, was. Not the '[yada, yada, yada]' itself, or the [etc., etc., etc.] who did it, and NOT whether they themselves approved or disapproved of it, but what their response to that situation was then, and what their response is to making a reasonable comparison to it, now.

IOW, the About in question is NOT 'about' either situation in question, but their own ability, or inability, to reasonably consider and respond to their own inflection point. And if they were able to respond reasonably to that instance of '[yada, yada, yada]' by [etc., etc., etc.] then, what do you suppose it is about the person in question, that causes their voice and intensity to rise so high, and their own reasonability to fall so low?

Hmm? What about me? I'll admit... though I don't think there are any people who inflame me like that, there are some topics that can quickly get a rise out of me, but I'm aware of and on the lookout for those situations, and being aware of your own weaknesses, means that they're unlikely to escape your attention for more than a moment, and will rarely drive you through an entire argument. 

For some such inflection point to routinely drive you into instant and lengthy rants, or to in any way direct or drive you through your days, implies not only a lack of awareness about yourself, but about what's important in your life, and doesn't wasting your time on words without meaning, mean that you're missing out on what it should all be about?

Are you aware of your own inflection points?

You should be aware that when your words have no visible basis in reality, not only are they are unlikely to cause another person to think differently about the person in question, but they likely will cause many of us to have 2nd thoughts (and often 3rd & 4th ones) about you, and about your ability to think about [etc., etc., etc.] & '[yada, yada, yada]', today.

Don't get me wrong, there may be an argument to be made for the 'side' you see yourself as promoting, but you aren't making it! And you're damn sure not helping to spread it.

In this case at least, in jumping to the easy out of 'about', you only succeed in making the issue all about you.

I think you might want to think about that.

Happy Constitution Day - The 233rd Birthday of considering the greatest of all reflections on the perils of human nature

Today, a day that hasn't warranted a 'Google Doodle', is the 233rd birthday of the United States Constitution. Peruse it or lose it... and the liberty it was written to preserve. What was signed as completed upon this day, two hundred and thirty-three years ago, September 17th, 1787, by thirty-nine of the fifty-five Framers, was the Constitution of the United States of America, and whether you stand in respect for, or disrespectfully turn away from, the Flag, the National Anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance, you do so in reference to that document which is the oldest existing instrument of its kind, still in operation.

Why?

Is it simply a list of rules for governing by? Is it nothing more than a favorite fossil of 'white people'? A document of oppression? Frederick Douglass once thought so, but because he was a thinker in order to understand what was true, he didn't stop with answers that were given him by others, but continued on thinking upon the matter, and discovered the Truth which such vile falsehoods seek to smother and erase.

But today I'm really not much concerned with your answers to those 'points', but am only interested in whether or not you are familiar with the ideas, principles and purposes which animated the writing of it - are you? And if not... what worth can your opinion - pro or con - have for me, or for anyone else?

Whether you mouth its praises, or make showy protests against it, without understanding what it is you are referencing - your praises and protestations fail to even rise to the level of being wrong, they are but verbal dust to be brushed away, meaningless and of no consequence. But if you are one of that thoughtless many, you may take comfort in the knowledge that you are in the happy company of millions of such Pavlovian 'Conservatives', Pro-Regressive Leftists and Libertarians, for whom the United States Constitution is little more than a paper bell which they bark at.

But for those of you who do see it, not as a mere object of ink upon paper, for those of you who don't insult the memory of they who strove to produce it as having been anything other than men of flesh and blood, for you who understand that it was written so as to give physical form to, and to best enable, the implementation of some of the greatest political ideas of Western Civilization -

• that Individual Rights result from the nature of being human("...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."),
• that men who understand that are capable of self governance,
• that well ordered argument can lead to a self-correcting means of governance,
• that such a system, established by such a people, can enable lives lived in liberty while in society with others, so long as the beast of Power is bound down and limited by laws whose purpose is to uphold and defend the Individual Rights of every person

, and that for such a people, intellectually armed through a document such as this, Liberty is possible.

But it is only possible for those who understand that.

For those intemperate folk who simply wish to sing the praises of, or rain curses down upon, that

Remember, Remember the 11th of September

Remember, Remember the 11th of September
And now it is September 11th once again, and once again it is time to remember. We remember September 11th because of what happened upon September 11th, 2001. September 11th is not 'Patriot's Day', and it's damn sure not 'a day of service' (other than military service). September 11th, 2001 is a day to remember that the full brutality and destruction that man is capable of was deliberately visited upon America in New York City, Washington D.C. and Shanksville Pennsylvania. We should remember. We should reflect. Those responsible should have been and should be destroyed, and those whose negligence had enabled it, and those who excuse it, and those who minimize it, should be despised and reviled by all who remember. We must remember so that the horror of September 11th, 2001 is confined to the past and is not allowed to slip past us and out into another clear blue sky in the future.

Screw healing.

We should pick at the wound, keep it burning. Remember the parents on the plane heading in to strike the Towers, their child sitting next to them... remember the people in the Tower on the phone to 911, crying, scared, burning from the heat, and then screaming as the impossible happened, the tower collapsed beneath them into nothingness. Remember the wives, husbands, children, of those who just went to work that day, and had their lives and world stolen from them by islambie thugs.

Remember that no matter what idiot politician or educationista prattles... we are a people who have known, and still know freedom and liberty and law, a people who believe it is good to live a moral life and pursue our happiness where we see fit to choose to. Remember that there are alleged human beings who wish nothing more than to destroy that possibility.

Remember Sept. 11, 2001. Be angry, feel hatred, seek the destruction of those who seek yours. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do so, and remember that those who lost their lives, and those who have since given their lives in this cause, have hallowed this day far beyond and above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say today, but History - in reflection and action - will remember what happened, and it will take note of whether or not we remember. It will take note of whether or not we take note of those who had taken, and those who have given, the last full measure of devotion -- and it will judge whether or not we here are highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain; whether or not this nation, shall continue to give birth to, and stand up for and defend freedom, and it shall judge from that, whether or not government of the people by the people for the people, shall, or shall not perish from the earth.

And it will judge and act accordingly.

Remember September 11, 2001.

In remembering what happened on September 11th, 17 years ago, I've patched this post together from a number of memories and posts and comments I've made from then to now. Where they began, of course, was on the morning of September 11th, 2001, when my wife, who was a flight attendant with TWA, called me as I was driving into work on I-70, just passing through Earth City, to tell me a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.

I was thinking a Cessna, but she said it sounded like it was larger, the impact too large. I knew a plane had once hit the Empire State building on a stormy night, but she said the weather looked clear, how could that be possible? As we were talking, another jet hit the other tower.

That made it clear what was going on, we decided that she'd pick the boys up from school and bring them home.

I continued on into work, and news came that another plane had hit the Pentagon.

A blue streak of horror and animal fury blasted back at my radio as the news came that one of the towers was collapsing. As I walked into work, 7th floor of A.G. Edwards, people were crowded around the T.V. in the lobby and the second tower came down.

I went to to my desk, one of the guys there was trying to get a hold of his son who worked in one of the World Trade Center towers. I to our project coordinator and told him I wouldn't be working that day, and headed for home.

I told the boys the obvious as we watched the news, that the world had just changed, we were at war, and nothing would be the same.

To those who want to think of this day as a time for healing or a day of service, Fuck You. We are not going back to the reflexive evasion of reality which is what made this day possible.

Political Correctness began its well deserved death that day ten years ago today, it may be a long, agonizingly slow death, fitting perhaps for the cancer that it is, but it was the beginning of the end of the view that it is in any way good or proper to pretend a lie can pretty up the truth.

The lie is nothing but darkest evil, and the light of Truth chases, confines and obliterates it... as we have, and will do, to those who did this evil – you are nothing, and to nothingness you will be returned.

And yet there are those who will shake their head and ask "How do you kill an idea?"

How do you kill an idea? If it is an idea that people are not open to discussing, an idea that will not tolerate reasonable alternatives, an idea that requires your death or your submission, then the answer to that question is a very simple one:

You cannot defeat an idea.

All you can do is make physically certain that those of the enemy who might survive a war with you, would live in constant fear and dread at the thought of that idea ever again being in their head, let alone upon their lips. You cannot defeat an idea, you can only make people determined to no longer entertain them, because of the memory of the war they fought with you over it, and the fear of the possibility of such a conflict ever happening again, is too painful to think about

How do you kill an idea? By killing its hosts, and causing everyone else to fear and dread the thought of thinking it.

Screw healing.

We should pick at the wound, keep it burning. Remember the parents on the plane heading in to strike the Towers, their child sitting next to them... remember the people in the Tower on the phone to 911, crying, scared, burning from the heat, and then screaming as the impossible happened, the tower collapsed beneath them into nothingness. Remember the wives, husbands, children, of those who just went to work that day, and had their lives and world stolen from them by islambie thugs.

Remember that no matter what idiot politician or educationista prattles... we are a people who have known, and still know freedom and liberty and law, a people who believe it is good to live a moral life and pursue our happiness where we see fit to choose to. Remember that there are alleged human beings who wish noting more than to destroy that possibility.

Remember Sept. 11, 2001. Be angry, feel hatred, seek the destruction of those who seek yours. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do so, and remember that those who lost their lives, and those who have since given their lives in this cause, have hallowed this day far beyond and above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say today, but it will remember what happened, and it will take note of whether or not we remember.

A proper foreign policy is "Mind your own business & we'll mind ours. Mess with us or ours, and we'll destroy you. Period."

Anything less, reasoning with those who are unreasonable, giving measured responses in reply to savagery, etc., are concessions and only serve to enable those who wish us harm.

Perhaps more than anything else, remember that forgetting how and why the attacks of 9-11 were made possible, guarantees that its horrors will be revisited upon us, courtesy of our willful inability to recognize their approach, and the cost of that will be history rhyming itself once again, as the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Please, try to remember 9/11 as the lesson we won't have to learn once more.

Reality will not be denied, and Evil will not be turned aside because you choose to turn away from it. Deny that, and the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return. Please. Just face the facts and learn the lesson so we don't have to learn it once more.

Prior to 'Never Forget', how about 'Try to remember...'

We know that tomorrow is the 19th year since 9/11/2001, but something that struck me this morning, was that 19 years ago today, 9/10/2011, was the last day of the world as it was before... the next day. A few things come to mind... do you remember what that felt like?

Try to remember what it felt like, to stroll into the airport, maybe with little kids in tow, and dashing down the concourses, all the way out to the gate so they could watch the plane pull up to the jetway? Craning their necks, maybe hoisting the littlest onto the shoulders to be able to catch first sight of their Mom or Grandparents coming off the plane? 

Try to remember what it felt like when people still were conscious that they should behave as if they had manners - even if they failed, even if we thought it was bad even then, try to remember how much better the worst then, was to what is routinely thrown at us through the media today?

Try to remember what it felt like before your privacy was routinely 'snooped' on and monitored?

Try to remember what it felt like, before Google, Twitter, Facebook and all the other Social Media platforms made it possible for someone, anyone, to 'search' your past comments and pictures and embarrass you, make thousands of strangers infuriated at you, and possibly lose your job or place in society? Try to remember what it felt like to make a comment, or a joke, without that at the back of your mind?

Try to remember what it felt like when everyone assumed your gender based upon your being male or female, and most were repulsed by openly Marxist organizations?

Try to remember what it felt like before having people routinely rioting in our streets?

Try to remember what it was like before athletes took a knee for the National Anthem.

Try to remember what it was like before you began to realize that the leaders in our school systems were opposed to America (they were then too, but most of us didn't realize it).

Try to remember what it felt like when schools didn't openly try to keep parents from 'listening in on' their children's lessons, or attempt to help their kids 'come out' as transgender?

Try to remember what it felt like to be sure that no matter our bitterest political disagreements, there was no doubt that we'd come together after any disaster, natural or otherwise.

Try to remember what it felt like to not feel concerned that you might be targeted for identifying as an American in the company of other Americans?

Try to remember what it felt like,

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow...
Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.

Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow...
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Altho' you know that snow will follow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember
The fire of September that made us mellow.

Deep in December our hearts should remember,
And follow...

Sit down Karen, management can't solve our school systems' problems - Education or School Systems pt 5

We've gone through the nature of our school reforms, their 'progressive' ideas and purposes, deceptive lessons being taught, and the systemic nature of our school systems failings which puts them and the education they deliver into fundamental opposition to not only America, but to the idea and purpose of education itself. Those reasons, and more, are what had prompted my too unpopular opinion, that

"The schools being closed is the best thing to happen in 2020 - why would you want to reverse that?!"

, and to ask why would you send students or teachers back into our school systems, especially today, when other options are appearing everyday for both students and teachers?

In this post I'll touch on those new options and link to more information on them, but first I want to point out the recklessness of assuming that some of the other options available - namely Charter & Private schools - are in any meaningful way, inherently different from the Public schools, as if there's something in their names which makes them fundamentally different or immune from what has ruined the rest of our school systems - there is not. To be sure, there are good Charter schools, and there are good Private schools, but they are good because of their own defining goals and methods, not simply by dint of being a private or charter school - there is more to the matter than what is in a name.

If you ask me why I say that, I'll turn the question around and ask: Why would you think that they would be meaningfully different? Are you going to judge a school by its cover? What is the educational 'change' you are truly looking for... school management?! Sit down Karen, that's not going to get you anywhere. Nothing will actually change if you aren't actually changing the part that drove you to call for change in the first place!

What changes can you expect the 'charter' & 'private' names to somehow bring you, when their administrators, councilors, curriculum writers, textbook buyers, and yes, even teachers, are all sporting the same degrees, PhD's, and years of training in 'progressive' educational theories, attitudes and the purposes for it, from the same colleges and teaching schools which have little to no interest in providing an education that'll help your child to become an independent, capable and virtuous person? What change can come of delivering much of the same publicly approved curriculum, in the same manner, with the same purpose, and targeted to the same all important state standards? True, changing brands may get you a more skilled and efficient (and expensive) delivery system in management and staff, encouraging better behaved students, and enabling teachers to be more effective, which sounds great, until you stop to consider that what that amounts to is getting a better grade of the same materials - the 'cream of the crap', as it were - with a more efficient means of administering the state approved daily dosage of educational poison.

I'm disinclined to choose that as an option.

To think that switching from public schools, to Charter or Private Schools, based on nothing more than the 'quality' of their delivery system, is to forget, or worse, to ignore, that our schools are not simply accidentally neglecting to do what they should do and once did, but are fundamentally opposed to what they once did, and to why it was done. It's worth noting that the assistant principal rioting for BLM in this video from Rochester, NY, is a graduate of those same standards, is considered by those standards to be educated, and he is, he has been, and he will continue to be, guiding teachers in the education of their students (though, he will be spoken about his bad words). What possibility of 'Change' do you see there? Unless what needs to be changed and expunged is clearly identified, there will be no change brought by changing the names of the schools management from public, to charter or private.

Steve Lysenko is an assistant principal at Spencerport High School in Rochester, PA. He’s seen in the video making multiple anti police comments and finishes by saying “F*CK THE POLICE”. THESE are the people in charge of education.
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— Uncle Sam's Children (@UncleSamsNation) September 6, 2020

When a problem becomes intolerable, it is in our nature to want to try and fix it, or failing that, to want to change to something new, but have you also have noticed that it seems to be in people's nature that when they've become dissatisfied with a familiar product, that they rarely choose to change to something that is really and truly new? Instead they tend to look for a difference that they're familiar with, and such moves tend to deliver all of the 'difference' of switching from a Chevy Camaro to a Pontiac Firebird, either unaware or unconcerned that both are GM products, built from the same design, and parts, and with little but cosmetic differences between them. There are also those who, having 'done their own research' into sportscars, might choose a Ford Mustang instead (or maybe even a Porsche), without ever considering how fundamentally different any of those options are from what they should have been seeking to begin with. Of course picking and choosing between appearances and effects is fine if what you are needing really is a sportscar, but what if unbeknownst to you, what you should be seeking isn't a sportscar, or even a car at all?

What if in this analogy, you, your father & grandfather, who have all been fine with picking between sedans & sportscars, did so because all were unaware that your great grandfather was made to settle for a token car because - for his own good - he had lost the opportunity to choose from the well furnished homes that his father & grandfathers had had the luxury of choosing from? And if you discovered that that was the case, wouldn't you, shouldn't you, be angrily questioning why your grandfather, your father and yourself weren't given the option of choosing and furnishing a home, but were by omission made to settle for a flashy way of fleeing one?

You might think my analogy is an odd one, but it seems less odd as you consider just how different our modern school systems - public, private, charter - are, from the structure, materials and purposes of the traditional education that America began with, and was formed from. Today's school systems presents us with the 'sportscar' option of education as the means of equipping you with the skills useful in 'getting a good job' to take you from here to there, and in that scenario getting an education that takes you farther and faster in terms of delivering more economic bang for your buck, seems very sensible indeed.

OTOH, a traditional education was directed towards enabling a student to live well, here and now and into the future, being fully capable of living well in any 'there' that the course of your life might take your 'here and now' to. To that end, education didn't concentrate on imparting the skills useful for the jobs of the moment (a usefulness which can change in the blink of an eye from needing those who can operate a lathe, to those who can 'write computer code', leaving a person who's learned little more than 'useful skills' with skills that've become useless), but with transmitting the timeless knowledge and principles of what was once called a 'well furnished mind', a mind, as Cicero put it,

"... so constituted as to be furnished with senses, and to have excellence of intellect which the whole nature of man obeys, in which there is a certain admirable force of reason, and knowledge, and science, and all kinds of virtues; for the things which are parts of the body have no authority to be compared with that possessed by the parts of the mind..."

, to George Turnbull’s "Observations upon Liberal Education.in All Its Branches" (1742)

"...The way therefore to judge whether education be upon a right footing or not, is to compare it with this end; or to consider what it does in order to accomplish youth for choosing and behaving well in the various conditions, relations, and incidents of life. If education be calculated and adapted to furnish young minds betimes with proper knowledge for their guidance and direction in the chief affairs of the world, and in the principal vicissitudes to which human concerns are subject, then is it indeed proper or right education. But if such instruction be not the principal scope to which all other lessons are rendered subservient in what is called the institution of youth, either the art of living and acting well is not man’s most important business, or what ought to be the chief end of education is neglected, and sacrificed to something of far inferior moment...."

, so that the educated person, whether schooled at home, in grammar school, or college, became an informed, independent, capable and virtuous person, capable of acquiring any skills that the moment might require.

Such systems of schooling as varied as traditional and modern education are, are as varied and at odds as the students they 'produce', as are their reactions to the world they did or didn't expect to find. The person with a well furnished mind is at home in their life no matter the circumstances of the moment, and sees those circumstances as being temporary and open to improvement, and when improvements are identified as being dire, will pledge their lives and sacred honor to improving them. The person trained only in getting from here to there, will never feel at home anywhere, and they will stop at nothing in their efforts to get away from here and to the mythical land of 'there' while spewing F'bombs and pledging to F'up any and all of those in their way.

What a century of school reforms have brought us, are numerous changes in making distinctions that make no difference, and have saddled us with modern educators who consider the Assistant Principal in the video above, to be in good standing with the standards of modern education. Such standards have also given us college professors who argue that it should be legal for grown men to have sex with children, as well as educators in Fayette Co. Schools who word quizzes for 5th graders that 'targeting law enforcement' to appear to be the bad guys, as well as a college professor & author declaring that: ‘They Have Deputized All White People To Murder Us’. It should come as no surprise at all that these same standards of education are being fully represented in the course offerings for first year students at the College of Washington and Lee, with a class in "How to Overthrow the State", which gives a fine demonstration of the logical ends that scholastic weasel wording such as this:

"...exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis..."

, inevitably leads to, because it is inherent in the nature of our school systems. Why do I say that? Because 'Writing as a process' is concerned only with the process of quickly getting 'from here to there', and not in considering how right and true that either here or there might be, 'active reading' is typically a means of conditioning readers to scan for keywords and virtue signals, and 'various methods of critical analysis' is wacademese for the pragmatic pursuit of power for ends which justify any and all means. That knowledge and those virtues that would have given some meaning to the 'education' that our systems lie about delivering, is, as it must be, nowhere to be found. I'm not going to say more here on that, lest another ten pages of HTML should spring up on the spot, but you can find it in my blog, or a more brief clue to it here.

It is what it is
If what you think of as being the purpose of education, is no different from those who changed and reduced our school systems into what they are today, what 'change!' do you expect to get by changing from Public to Charter or Private School? And why do you expect any? If you do not know what you are changing from, or for what purpose change might be needed, then you may very well make choices whose actual changes amount to distinctions without a difference, and the opportunities that will be unknowingly lost to the lives of those so 'educated', will be tragically unlimited.

But hey, 'Good job', on getting a 'good' education so you can go out and get a 'good' job, right? I'd warn against dwelling too long on what might be meant by 'good' in any part of that, but... given such an education, there's probably no need to.

What can you do? Look closer at the assumptions you're making in what you are changing from, as well as what you are changing to, and why. Don't make a change based upon what are popularly assumed to

Being an old complaint, doesn't make it less valid, or less dangerous - Education or School Systems pt 4

If you complain about our school systems' failures, one common response that you're likely to get, is:

"Oh, that's such an old complaint, people have always been saying the schools are failing, every generation repeats it."

, which has some truth to it, but like the crack that 'It's not paranoia if people really are out to get you', if you look at the history of the school systems since we instituted them, they actually have been getting measurably worse and worse (by their own criteria) at delivering the Education they promised from the very start, and while progressively delivering less and less of the quality they promised, they've been doing more and more of what they weren't supposed to be doing unto us at all. That those failures have been occurring consistently, nationwide, over successive decades, is an indication that the problems with our school systems have far less to do with the incompetence or bad intentions (though, some of that surely exists, see previous post) of particular localities, administrators, teachers, students, or parents, than it has to do with the fundamental changes to why, what with, and how, we've expected our school systems to 'educate' our students.

Because the problem is systemic in nature, it can't be solved by trying to treat the endless series of bad effects it spawns as if they were isolated bugs to be fixed & forgotten. A consequence of not seeing that our school systems problems are inherent in its very design - in both theory and structure - is that we enable those fundamental flaws to hide safely behind the far more visibly distracting effects of 'we've gotta improve our reading and math scores!', and each such 'fix' leads to still worse problems, each inviting still further fixes, and all serving to make the system which actually caused them, to grow ever more stronger and entrenched. We've taken up that invitation and we've travelled so far down that path, that the actual problems have become more hidden, harder to identify, and easier to mistake as being problems of policy only - hence the ever growing number of gilded Band-Aids we've applied to the arterial bleeds in the quality of We The People's education.

To be fair, it wouldn't be easy to compare our traditional system of education, to the 'progressive' school systems that replaced it, even if we tried - and oh, we have tried. On this one issue, the problem doesn't come from the 'Progressive Education' side of the comparison, as they've always favored having as much of a uniform, centralized, common set of 'standards' as they could possibly get away with - that's their selling point, there's little to no difficulty finding schools that are representative of 'progressive' practices, to compare to the practices of traditional education. The problem comes from trying to find even a single representative example from the side of traditional education, that you'd compare it to. Even in those aspects you'd expect to be fairly easy to compare, in their books and so forth, what would you compare a Common Core 'Social Studies' textbook to....Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War"? de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"? Even the textbook histories of the 1904 (I've got my Grandpa's school textbooks - here's a link to a later edition of the American History, and English History, which are already showing the 'progressive' factoid'izing of history, but are still vastly superior to what we have today ), were vastly different in form and quality and are not very comparable. And if we skipped over comparing the actual materials used, and tried comparing a measure of their respective results, such as with this often meme'd quiz from Salina, Kansas, in 1895 , that comparison would also leave you with a false impression (more on that in a moment).

Is it just about the questions?

One of the problems is that even if you could find the graded quizzes used in that particular school, or even a list of the materials and lessons used in getting them, it was very likely not what was used in the next school down the road, let alone in the next town or state. And before you decide to score that as a point for the 'Progressive Education' side, it is extremely important to point out that that was not a bug, but a feature of the traditional system of education, and one of its most important and valuable features, at that. In each location, the individual parents and trusted advisers, in conjunction with the teachers they hired, decided upon what materials would be used, to what extent, and what results were expected of them, and that varied as much from location to location as the people in them did.

If that traditional feature still seems buggy to you, consider the cases of (picking a few names out of a very stuffed hat)... George Wythe, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Frederic Douglass... hugely well educated Americans such as these, came from wildly differing educations, which were drawn from widely varying materials and means, which were selected by their parents, or advisers (living or authored), as it seemed would be best suited to help them to achieve a common goal of becoming educated. Do you recall from a few years back when Finland was all the rage in 'how to do school!' circles (I touched on what usually went unsaid on that in this post, pay especial attention to the comments)? Funny thing about that, if you bothered to look past the meaningless distractions of giving teachers a 'professional salary', insurance, etc., and looked at what the teachers themselves said they actually did which made a difference in educating their students, they attributed it to teachers having full control over their classrooms, beginning with the material they chose to teach from (they had general cultural targets they had to prepare their students for, but weren't told what materials to use or how to get there), the only classroom tests they used were those they themselves devised, if and when they saw a need for it, and they had close one-on-one relationships with the student's parents, and the teacher had final say on who was disciplined, why and how, and who remained in their classes.

IOW, with at least some participation and consent from parents, their teachers were given the power to Teach by those with the proper power to give it to them, and their students, if they were willing, were able to learn. Predictably, shortly after the international spotlight fell upon them, and the proponents of centralization began to realize that a feature such as that was most definitely a bug in their systems, those conditions in Finland began to degrade. Similarly, go ask a teacher in your nearest school (public and even private) how free they are to select the materials, methods, tests & policies they'd prefer to teach to their students with (Hint: Not very).

While the material that was used by traditional educational methods could include classical texts, and/or various 'Primer's, and/or the Bible, and/or Shakespeare and/or a myriad of other options, the students who could and would learn to read and think through them, would learn through them to recognize what was admirable and what was tragic or despicable, as well as how to recognize what scenarios were more easily resolved with mathematical solutions and how to reach them and how to recognize the difference. By various non-standard means and materials, traditional schools gave students a familiarity with, and an interest in pursuing on their own, what Thomas Jefferson referred to as,

"...the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c..."

, which informed their understanding of their nation's history, culture, and government. They were able to do that because they weren't told through a rigid chain of command - of legislators, regulators, administrators - that micro-managed teachers & students on what to 'think' with, and how. Simply having the important goal to become educated, and not confusing that goal with meaningless distractions such as getting high test scores (a very recent, and poor, innovation of progressive school systems) or developing workforce or social 'skills', they - parents, teachers, students - were able to decide on the most effective means of reaching it. And as acquiring the basic elements of the Three R's ('reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic') were necessary, they were quickly gotten out of the way with simple, proven methods, so that the primary goal could be reached. The fact that our school systems fail so miserably at even imparting the basic abilities of the Three R's today - despite a century of their 'Top Men' devoting ludicrous amounts of time and resources to over-thinking how to remake the wheel into glitteringly dysfunctional blocks (see 'See & Say') - and even after making that secondary skill into a primary objective, our colleges routinely have to provide remedial classes in those basic skills to incoming students before they can begin any of their other classes.

That an endless series of 'school reform!'s have consistently failed to ensure that even college bound students have rudimentary abilities in basic skills (let alone the level of education those skills should have led them into), is telling you a lot about our school systems today - how closely are you listening?

And here we begin to see what is comparable between these two systems of education, and that is their approach to education. But before getting into those comparisons, first there's another matter we need to flesh out, which is what I hope you're wondering right now: "what do you mean by 'educated'?" I can't

The Educational Sleight of Hand Inflaming America - Education or School Systems pt 3

So I've given my unpopular opinion over the last two posts, that our situation with the schools being closed has been the best thing that's happened in 2020, and that if we know what's best for us, we should see to it that they stay closed. Why? So we can begin correcting the century old educational error that has led to the chaotic society we are living in today, and start getting back to providing students with educations that are good in more meaningful ways than just a GPA.

Three reasons I've gone into (so far) for how our schools have loosed the chaos:

1. America and its school systems are incompatible. America was founded upon the discovery of timeless and self-evident truths, and abstract principles of individual rights, property and the Rule of Law, to secure Liberty for all; while the 'Progressive' experiment in reforming our school systems was driven by Pragmatic tenets (one of Pragmatism's key founders was 'Progressive' education reformer, John Dewey) which dismiss 'Truth' in favor of what seems to work, and rejects abstract principles for guiding right action, in favor of trying whatever seems will have the power to 'work' for the 'greater good' (at the moment). In their founding ideals, America and its school systems are fundamentally opposed to each other.
2. The Pro-Regressive repurposing of education as a means to 'getting a good job', has always carried with it the belief that 'the masses' are unfit to receive the same education as 'their leaders', and should instead forego that in favor of being trained to perform ''specific difficult manual tasks'' - at the opening of the 20th century that meant helping to support the economy by preparing 'the masses' to operate machinery in factories, and here in the 21st Century it means preparing 'the masses' to support the economy by developing their STEM and computer skills.
3. Our school systems were designed to assure that govt experts (themselves) would have more power to control what students learn, than their parents. Seeing their surprising success as early as 1909, one designer delighted that "... Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent...", and in 2020, amidst the virtual classes & Covid-19 lockdowns, they're still very much concerned to maintain their power to 'teach' "...the messy work of destabilizing a kids racism or homophobia or transphobia..." in their classes, free from parents overhearing or interfering with them even in their homes.

It is with that in mind, and a great deal more, that I listen to the reactions of those who, shocked at my unpopular opinion, typically reply to me that:

"Surely what they're missing out on, outweighs whatever harm they might be exposed to?!"

I try not to show how shocked I am to hear what seems like such a willful exercise in denial, which otherwise responsible people seem to think expresses a 'reasonable' concern. My guess is that, like an audience caught up in the spectacle of a magic show, they fall for the magician's misdirection and fail to see the hand that's making their valuables disappear from sight. Answering that question, requires focusing upon at least two of those points that we're meant to miss.

To take the least obvious point first, to the extent that some good material might make it into what is taught within our school systems, I remind you that all those 'good lessons' will be conveyed and refracted through the pragmatic lens (at best) of a long line of textbook developers, superintendents, curriculum writers, testing algorithms, administrators, and finally at the end of that line, teachers, to present what is by that time a distorted - at best - picture of reality as the background for those 'good lessons' to be conveyed to the students. Also worth noting, those who will be most affected by the distorted views in these lessons, will be those students who're conscientiously making a serious effort to earn good grades. What good can that do?

What distortions? Examples abound for those interested in looking, but there happens to be an

'Democratic education' for the humane enslavement of the people - Education or School Systems pt 2

In the previous post, I gave my unpopular opinion that Schools are closed: Why undo the only bright spot in 2020?, and pointed out that the nature of the 'Progressive' redesign of our school systems over a century ago, was systemically in conflict with the nature of the principles which had made America an exceptional nation. With the nature of that experimental system they put in place, it shouldn't be surprising that many graduates of our school systems have lacked a reverence for this nation, or that many of them can be found in many American cities tonight, rioting in the the streets. What should be a little more surprising though, is that 'Progressives', then and now, have enjoyed a degree of popularity with those they termed 'the masses'.

The Progressives in general though, and John Dewey in particular, were adept at making their ideas sound appealing to the 'democratic' public, yet while fans and foes of their ideas still debate the merits and dangers of what was actually meant by some of those theories, Dewey's fellow leaders in 'Progressive' education mostly agreed about how best to put those ideas into practice, and they consistently revealed a shared disdain for 'the masses' of the public they supposedly thought and cared so much about.

For instance, Woodrow Wilson, when still president of Princeton University in 1909, advised the Federation of High School Teachers as being an critical purpose to their teaching:

"...We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks..."

, a view which was also echoed by James E. Russell, head of Columbia University Teachers College, who gave a speech there in 1905 called "The Trend in American Education", where he expressed his equally 'pragmatic' concern that:

"...How can a nation endure that deliberately seeks to rouse ambitions and aspirations in the oncoming generations which in the nature of events cannot possibly be fulfilled ? If the chief object of government be to promote civil order and social stability , how can we justify our practice in schooling the masses in precisely the same manner as we do those who are to be our leaders?..."

Such sentiments, recently hinted at with 'the soft bigotry of lower expectations', were commonplace amongst the 'Progressives' writings and speeches of the time (and which is still alive and well in our time), and in case you missed the relevance of their intentions to you today, the information age equivalent of fitting 'the masses' to perform 'specific difficult manual tasks', is exactly what is behind the current rage to train 'the masses' in STEM skills, and not in that understanding which our Founder's generation formed themselves, and our nation, through - how could 'the masses' possibly understand Aristotle and Cicero, etc... (as those of the Founder's raised and taught them by their Mother's in the backwoods did - see George Wythe), for the Pro-Regressive's, such a thing was inconceivable.

Where such contradictory ideas as those would be a problem for a traditional American's principled thinking - civil war not being out of the question for how to resolve them - it's not at all problematic for the pragmatist (see previous post). For the pragmatist who upholds no principles, and values only doing what empirically 'works' for their own 'expert' purposes, promoting 'Democracy!' to the masses, while using political power to see to it that those masses are trained so as to be easier to be controlled by 'their leaders', was (and is) not a problem for them at all - after all, as they'd tell you: it works.

What I'm hoping is becoming unavoidably clear to you, is that this 'Progressive' understanding was exceedingly common to those who designed the components of our 'modern' school system's, and their theories shaped its districts, buildings, schedules, curriculum, textbooks, tests and standardized tests... which we still 'enjoy' today. That understanding drove our school districts so far from Jefferson's hopes

Schools are closed: Why undo the only bright spot in 2020? - Education or School Systems pt 1

Back to school time? Really?! Don't get me wrong, there are few things more important to our lives and society than getting a good education, and conversely, few things that are more harmful to our lives and society than having a bad education. Yes... there's a 'but' coming, but it has nothing to do with the Coronavirus/Covid19, lockdowns or masks, and everything to do with an abundance of evidence that our school systems, even by their own criteria, have been producing progressively more students who are badly educated, in both rich & poor schools across the nation, and are doing so despite ever expanding systems and rising funding for them. What this indicates is that this issue is not solely a fault of particular parties, administrators, programs, teachers or parents, but is something that is systemic to our school systems as a whole - and that's traceable back to an error we made over a century ago. Mindful that people 'are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable' and will ignore such facts and their consequences for as long as they are able to, I hereby declare my unpopular opinion:

Schools being closed has been the best & brightest spot of 2020 - why on earth would you want to reverse that?

If my opinion shocks you more than the facts that gave rise to it, it seems to me that should shock you about yourself even more, for given the importance of an education, isn't it foolish to expect good education to come from an inherently bad educational system, and even worse to persist in ignoring and promoting it? Whatever feelings you may have on the matter, I strongly suggest that you take this time to give careful consideration to the nature of our nation's school systems, and to whether or not they are fit to send either students or teachers back into, and why.

Assuming that what you mean by Education, is something more than getting a 'skilz certificate' for the job market, what's more important to a good education than test grades, is that it conveys an essential body of knowledge and general understanding which aims that student towards living a life worth living, and equips them with the intellectual means for living it well (does your school do that? These closures have seen alternatives to private and home school springing up across the nation and perhaps involving teachers you already know and trust in the form of Micro-Schools, and more, which can do that). A bad education, OTOH, requires only that students be led to misidentify a handful of good ideas as being inconsequential or even bad, or that bad ideas be misidentified as being good, to aim them towards preferences which conflict with or contradict important general truths. Do only that, and no matter how many good grades, test scores and degrees they get, the arrow of those student's lives will, over time, veer further and further from their proper target (does your school (hello '1619 Project', Common Core, etc...) do that?).

Of course I recognize that the unexpected closure of our school systems is without doubt posing a great disturbance and inconvenience to most, yet it's nevertheless a rare and great opportunity to correct the mistaken experiment that We The People instituted into our school systems over a century ago, and as the opportunities to correct errors such as that are so very rare, we should take advantage of it now, while the current crop of experimenter's ambitions are surprisingly (and temporarily) aligned with our own best interests - keep our students and teachers out of the schools!

The mistake I'm referring to here, was a spectacularly costly one we made in altering the nature of our school systems at the opening of the 20th Century. The fact that we chose to do so - with the very best of intentions - doesn't alter the fact that what we chose, has subjected generations of our students to an unwise experiment; one which the Pied Piper of Progressivism, John Dewey, termed an experiment in a more 'progressive education',

"...The school is often called an experimental school, and in one sense that is the proper name. I do not like to use it too much, for fear parents will think we are experimenting upon the children, and that they naturally object to. But it is an experimental school—at least I hope so—with reference to education and educational problems...."

, and the high school and college graduates and in many cases even teachers, who are currently burning up our cities and tearing down our statues, should be evidence enough that the experiment has gone horribly wrong, and so we should take this opportunity to end it and, repeat after me: keep the schools closed!

Though those particular effects may have been unintended, what Dewey and his fellow 'Progressives' (and he was only the most recognizable face of a large movement) intended their experiment to accomplish, was - flowery language and aspirations aside - to de-emphasize (read: progressively phase out) the methods, memories, habits and ideals that Western Civilization in general, and America in particular had developed from, from the minds of those currently living in that same civilization and under its finest system of government. Well, in case you're curious, what a person is like once they've

'Free Trade!'s Begging the Question of Economic Causes - Economic Politics vs Political Economy pt7

If you wonder why I'm skeptical of 'Libertarians' as defenders of Individual Rights and Liberty, it might help to keep in mind that these are many of the same folks who, 1), equate Individual Rights with 'Economic Rights!', and 2), have been eager to - even now - engage in 'Free Trade!' with the captive peoples of Communist China, while knowing that Communism permits no manner of private property, freedom, or liberty, to the very people that they foolishly expect to be engaging in a meaningful form of 'Free Trade!' with. The nature of 'liberty' which such 'libertarians' speak of, is and can extend no deeper into their convictions than a pragmatic interest in 'what works' to their momentary gain, and as the very 'principles!' which they utilize to promote & justify 'Free Trade!' with Communist China, involve 'Economic Rights!' that could just as easily be used to justify both the mobster fencing stolen goods and the customer bargaining for goods they know to be stolen, IMHO their conception of 'rights!' and 'principles!' are visibly divorced from any substantive understanding of, or regard for, either individual rights or for the rule of law, which are necessary pre-requisites for Liberty. Hence my skepticism.

If you think that your own individual rights and liberty to exercise them, would be any more secure with such Libertarian's than would the rights of those people in China and Hong Kong which they so casually disregard and discard in pursuit of a 'free trade!' buck with Communist China (who is a silent 'partner' in every such transaction) - you really should ask yourself why.

Why do I say such a thing as that? Because they exemplify an approach to life that begins with economic thinking, as does Communist China, who finds it useful to permit some possessions & privileges to some of its people, at the moment, and likewise they too see 'property' as a matter of possessions, and 'markets' as but a means of getting what they want because they want it. Sure, 'Free Trade!'rs may differ with Communist China on how to apply their 'economic principles!', but their 'principles!' have the same roots in that strawman which Marx used to sideline the system of natural liberty & judiciary underlying the Free Market which Adam Smith spoke of, and then rebranded that entire system with the materialistic and near meaningless term for a financial strategy: 'Capitalism'. That same economic thinking was also employed in much the same way by the (socialist) J.S. Mill, as he redefined our Founder's vision of Liberty out of existence in the popular mind, in favor of that thoughtless adolescent urge to 'do what you want without restraint!', by means of a steady assault of works best known today from his popular (and contemptible) essay, 'On Liberty'.

One imagines that they tell themselves that their generous willingness to make a buck at the expense of other people's liberty, will bring those people a more prosperous slavery, which will somehow lead their slaveholders to loosen their chains upon them. They do so by ignoring the fact that nowhere in history, has economic prosperity alone succeeded in transforming political systems and tyrannies, into systems which respected the individual rights (or any semblance of the concept) of their own people, or of any other's, and no amount of begging of questions or forgiveness will produce what it lacks.

The bottom line is that people who lack an understanding of what America resulted from, should not be entrusted to care about your individual rights, any further than they can be counted upon to consider the rights of those who're utterly deprived of all individual rights, for that percentage of profits which qualifies in their mind as being 'a good deal'.

Fundamental to the form of 'Free Trade!' espoused by most libertarians, and especially those of the Murray Rothbard ilk (more on that below), is that 'Free Trade!' trades upon the false notion that business & prosperity are what America was founded upon, implicitly trading away the real causes of those effects, essentially arguing in a classic case of 'Begging the Question', that:

"'Free Trade!' has made America prosperous, because America was founded upon 'Free Trade!'"

, a claim which tells you nothing, as it "assumes the initial point", offering it's conclusion, as proof of that conclusion, while actively ignoring the broader cultural causes - a widespread respect for truth, virtue and knowledge within which individual rights could be served & preserved under a rule of law (which is liberty) - which is what preceded and enabled that America, and its prosperity, to result from. One danger of this approach, is that it leads us to presume that we can expect to continue enjoying those effects, without seriously attending to the essential causes of them.

What most Libertarians, and a great many Conservatives, fail to understand, is that an Economy is what follows from the policies that a nation has, and from why it has them. In the end, political thinking that begins with economic thinking, leads a people to forego what is prudent (the best possible application of principle to reality), for what will work pragmatically, at the moment, for the moment. In seeing our economy as something that can somehow exist apart from the Rule of Law - which is what all of our liberty depends upon for being upheld and defended - we've deluded ourselves into seeing 'economic rights' as being equivalent to, and even somehow separate from, those essential individual rights such as are protected under our Bill of Rights, and that one-eyed thinking has been influencing our elections since long before it oozed out into the open with Bill Clinton's 'It's the economy stupid!'.

Our Founder's familiarity with the long track of recorded history in the development of Western Civilization, led them to the revolutionary idea of putting government in service to the liberty of its citizenry, and from that system for upholding and defending the Individual Rights of all of their citizens, prosperity and economic abundance followed in the first imperfect stirrings of a Free Market. Attempting to support or defend that full system based upon economic analysis - whether Left, Right or Libertarian matters little - is doomed to result in... what we are facing right now.

My position, again, is not one of supporting tariffs as economic measures, and in no way do I dispute the merits of Laissez Faire or the Free Market, nor do I in anyway seek to legitimize either economic protectionism or the equally bogus twin concepts of 'Trade Surpluses' & 'Trade Deficits' (I've gone into the details of Individual Rights, the Rule of Law, Free Market & Economics too often before, to rehash again here, see my post on the differences between 'Free Trade!' & Free Market, from last year), I'm simply pointing out that it's only after the proper context of ethical, political, and legal frameworks are firmly in place, that the preconditions of liberty can be met, so that markets can and will be able to experience and enjoy economic prosperity. Once that context is met, there can be no legitimate and informed doubt as to whether a Free Market - whether within a nation, or between nations - will be the most productive and beneficial conditions that can exist. None - not since being informed by the inquiries and theories of Adam Smith, Jean Baptiste Say, and Frédéric Bastiat, followed by the real world results stretching across the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries, soundly demonstrated the truth of their theories in fact (This article thumbnails the issues well). There is not, and cannot be, any beneficial economic justification for tariffs (which, BTW, is not why Trump's threatened to deploy them). None.

My position instead, is that 'Free Trade!' and the Utilitarian philosophy used to justify it, bargains away the ideas which our Founding Father's formed this nation's ideals & government from, in pursuit of the thin appearances of prosperity that are unsustainable without them. In preceding posts I've illustrated how the dropping of important contexts from your consideration through an abbreviated area of focus, transforms once solid principles, into ideological bullet-points, a distortion which leads otherwise intelligent people to argue that the differences between trading with a Westernized ally, and Communist China, is a difference in name only. If the outrageousness of that doesn't hit you, I'll repeat once again that Marx himself asserted that the entirety of his ideology of Communism could be reduced to a single sentence: 'The elimination of Private Property' - how do you 'trade freely' with those who are permitted no private property? Why would you seek to profit by engaging with a nation that is dedicated to eliminating everyone's property and their ability to earn any profit from it at all? How is that not recognized as the complete betrayal of Liberty that it is? That they dare clothe themselves in the name of 'Libertarian', is either a confession of abysmal ignorance, or duplicitousness. Again, hence my skepticism of their ability to defend (let alone identify) liberty.

Such self delusion is only possible to intelligent people by their doing the business of thinking with flawed, if not broken, or even corrupt 'Principles!', thanks to the bad philosophy, or (supposedly) no philosophy at all, which form the seductive ideologies they utilize in place of a philosophy. The active use of such thinking as that, has butchered the remains of what had been the field of Political Economy, into the questionable sausage now known as modern Economics, with the presumption being that we needn't think about matters of philosophy at all, when it comes to 'ordering society' (and there are few things which the Economically minded love to do more than ordering your society), is surprisingly dangerous. According to their calculations, all we need to do is start with the actions and transactions that men act upon in daily life. For the proponents of oppressive govt power, positions such as these are understandable, but for those who think that their aims will enhance and further the cause of liberty, it is just sad. It was bad enough when one of the best of Libertarian economists, Ludwig von Mises, took 'Human Action' as his starting point, but he at least, for the most part confined his thoughts to the realm of economic transactions. Not so with one of his early followers, Murray Rothbard, who took that already abbreviated thought as being sufficient to replace the entirety of ethics and political philosophy with, a statement that he adorably refers to as being a 'principle' or 'axiom', usually referred to as the Non-Aggression Principle,

"THE LIBERTARIAN CREED rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.”"

I'll leave it to a future post to go into detail on the enormity of what is ignored in that statement, but it's worth making a mental note that he begins his thinking on how man should live - which is a statement of ethics which he makes without having first established or identified any system of Ethics at all (!), and without benefit of any of those more fundamental systems of metaphysics, epistemology, etc, which a system of ethics is necessarily derived from, and which would tell you (warn you!) what their proponents will feel very virtuous in doing to you. This takes Begging the Question to a whole new level, one that must drop the jaws of the carboard sign beggars at freeway exits. Rothbard quickly moves downhill from there, denying that Intellectual Property is a defensible right (a position which is incompatible with our Founder's understanding of Property) - a right which IMHO, is the necessary and indispensable root for the recognition and defense of all of our Individual Rights & Property - which freed him to sketch out the ideal of Anarcho-Capitalism, the notion that we don't need laws or government at all, only ever more elaborate business models. Even von Mises called that idiocy out, as being:

"...A shallow-minded school of social philosophers, the anarchists, chose to ignore the matter by suggesting a stateless organization of mankind. They simply passed over the fact that men are not angels. They were too dull to realize that in the short run an individual or a group of individuals can certainly further their own interests at the expense of their own and all other peoples' long-run interests. A society that is not prepared to thwart the attacks of such asocial and short-sighted aggressors is helpless and at the mercy of its least intelligent and most brutal members… They failed to conceive that no system of social cooperation can remove the dilemma between a man's or a group's interests in the short run and those in the long run.."

All of which is to say, that those who speak and behave as if 'Economic Realities' should be the starting point for all political thought and action, are spouting nonsense. One of Rothbard's popular quotations, is

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

Which, as usual, is true... as far as it goes... but in not going far enough while presuming that it does, it's application distorts the larger truth into falsehood. Hopefully I'm not the first to reply to that, in that:

"It's no crime to be ignorant of philosophy, it is, after all, concerned with everything which most people think of as being 'boring'. But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion upon philosophical issues such as Ethics, Law, Individual Rights and the like while remaining ignorant to the fact that economic theories sprang from the depths of philosophy, and not the other way around."

All of that is important to keep in mind when considering the 'Free Trade!''rs positions on international trade, where a large number of their 'thought leaders' believe that there should be no governments at all (though many do bizarrely desire an international body of a WTO), and so, with economic transactions being the starting point for their thinking - that mythical idea of a stateless world is the Utopia they seek.

In a similarly rootless fashion, most of the Truisms that are thrown out by defenders of 'Free Trade!' as if they were 'Principles!' (Liberty, Trade, Say's Law of Markets, Money), are but an uprooted string of words that they arbitrarily designate as 'principles' (rather than generalized truths derived from and validated by contextual experience, they assert in the spirit of Kantian Imperatives, that what they can't imagine as not being so, must be so). They pluck terms from the pioneering figures of Smith, Say, Bastiat, and more, who were formative in developing the understanding of what Political Economy (note the inclusion of both words) was, and use them without regard for the context that they were derived from, effectively castrating them of their actual meaning - a factor which is essential for their being mouthed and applied in the modern enthusiasms of 'Economics' (usefully reduced to only one word).

The real world consequences of this, is that they behave as if the pre-conditions for a Free Market have been met simply by acting on the desire to trade, which they see as justification and permission enough for trading with a nation that is devoted to the elimination of Private Property, along with all of the Individual Rights which are secured by that property, and which can only serve to undermine Liberty, and the Free Market, and Free Trade, and it will do so for all concerned ( and if you're considering casting a vote for the 'Libertarian Party' this November, please, give more consideration to that first).

Liberty In Name Only
Further illustrating (IMHO) the contexts that are being dropped in these issues, my Libertarian friend Duane, replied to my comments on the shortcomings of 'Free Trade!', with a link to a post in which an editor had taken an old Milton Friedman post from the 1980's, on trade issues between America & Japan, and concluded that in order to equalize the difference between that issue with an ally, and our current situation with a cold enemy today, requires only replacing a few random words:

"...I’ve taken the liberty of modifying and updating Friedman’s op-ed slightly by substituting China for Japan in order to reflect the “favorite whipping boy” of today’s protectionists. And I’ve also updated the last paragraph to reflect today’s favored domestic industries being artificially protected from competition with Trump’s tariffs..."

Demonstrating an astounding naivete, this author felt that the most essential and relevant differences to be found between the rival allies of America & Japan interacting within a shared (semi) Free Market, and our dealings with the lethal enemy to any form of a Free Market that Communism by definition is, and always has been, amount to nothing more than differences in name only.

That left me speechless, and I let the thread go cold. But it's been on my mind ever since... and led to this series of posts.

For someone to imagine that the relations between 20th Century Japan & America, or even those of the19th Century France & England in which Bastiat & Cobden first exposed the fallacies of economic protectionism (which were, military rivalries aside, still being conducted between broadly culturally and ethically likeminded nations), to imagine that either of those conflicts could bear any truly meaningful resemblance to the truly insurmountable differences - culturally, ethically, politically, legally, economically - which most definitely do exist and define the current conflicts between Communist China & America, is at best an example of philosophical & political Dunning–Kruger'ism

That doesn't describe Milton Friedman, as although he gave much economic advice to communists and dictators - including Communist China - he did so mostly on what the failings of their systems were, and why, and how, they should aim towards liberalizing (in the good sense of expanding the liberty of their peoples) their society's economies. And as I noted in the previous post, Friedman, page 57 (pg. 49 in the original paperback) of his book "Free to choose"', thought that the notion that market forces could triumph over the forces of a Communist government, were foolishly optimistic, and on top of that, even between trading partners, the root requirement of a Free Market economy requires that, as he wrote in reference to his book "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962), for a New York Times Magazine article in 1970, was:

"...There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."[emphasis mine]

One thing that most definitely cannot be said about Communist China, is that they engage 'in open and free competition without deception or fraud', and those lesser figures who've followed after him have largely lacked that sensibility. Given that and all else that it takes no notice of, this 'updated' post cannot directly answer questions about the 'economic realities' we currently face - too much of reality has been filtered out from the very start - but... by way of noting what it doesn't say, it may still manage to convey something of the dangerously naïve evaluations which Libertarian 'Free Trade!'rs view our 'relationship' with Communist China as being today. Just try to remember to keep in mind what they are not considering in statements such as (Milton, avert your eyes) this:

"...The proponents of protectionism say,

“Free trade is fine in theory but it must be reciprocal. We cannot open our markets to foreign products if foreigners close their markets to us.” China, they argue, to use their favorite whipping boy, “keeps her vast internal market for the private domain of Chinese industry but then pushes her products into the U.S. market and complains when we try to prevent this unfair tactic.”

The argument sounds reasonable. It is, in fact, utter nonsense. Exports are the cost of trade, imports the return from trade, not the other way around...."

The sort of protectionism which Friedman himself was actually rightfully criticizing Japan and America about at the time, were for the most part the foolish policies of both parties, and without merit. But to Trump's credit, as noted previously, that isn't what he's been practicing, and (making allowances for his mercenary use & abuse of soundbite language), what he's been doing has been to use the political threat of tariffs and the like, not as Economic Measures meant to produce economic benefits - which is what actual Protectionism aims at - but as a Political Means of inducing other nations to reduce or drop their tariffs, with Trump's promise to follow in like fashion so long as they 'make a deal' with him, for the purpose of creating at least a somewhat freer market for all, from which economic benefits will follow from - but as effects, not causes.

That is not making an argument that protectionism is a valid economic policy, but only that tariffs can be selectively deployed as an effective political means of bringing about freer economic conditions, and while we'll need to wait for the future to know how successfully they turn out, for the present that's not the point.

Again, Free Trade, conducted within the structures of a Free Market is the best economic policy, but actual Free Trade requires the legal infrastructure of a Free Market to operate within, and a Free Market is the result of a government's political policies which form a strong Rule of Law oriented around the defense of the individual rights and property of that nation's citizens (which is what 'Free Trade!'rs ignore). If you say that economic concerns should take priority over those political and ethical philosophies which are what an economy results from, you do so by undermining both the Free Market and Liberty, in an insane pursuit of a nebulous 'Free Trade!', and to that begging of the question, I say again... no sale.

If, however, in response to the unjustified injection of power into the market, you propose to respond with tariffs as a political means of persuading the other nation to curb their unjustifiably abusive policies, knowing that it will likely incur some damage and risk to your own people (as any confrontation or war necessarily entails), for the wider purpose of ending, or reducing, those unjustified measures, then that is a policy that a justifiable political argument can be made for.

Protectionist policies of the 1980's were the particular point of friction in the original matter that Milton Friedman himself was actually writing about, but to think that those are the defining points of contention between America and China today, is... embarrassingly ignorant, and is an oversight of the magnitude that I'd like to think (perhaps mistakenly) that Milton Friedman himself wouldn't have committed.

When Japan in the 1980's sought to keep 'her vast internal market for the private domain', it harmed only its own people. Japan was unwisely subsidizing its markets at the time (steel for instance), thinking that that was the path to economic success. The proper response then, as now, in similar contexts, should be to engage with them where they may, and let them freely choose the loss of wealth their convictions seem to them to warrant. And as Japan eventually discovered, those policies were unwise, unproductive, and they ultimately economically cost them to such a degree that they have still yet to fully recover from.

But those economic conflicts were conducted between nations that were allied within a shared political context of Western (or at least Westernized) systems.

That is in no way the case in our current situation with Communist China today, and as such we are not pursuing the same 'bankrupt protectionist arguments' that were being pursued between Western allies in the 1980's. To apply Friedman's points which were made with those contexts in mind, to our situation in dealing with a hostile communist nation which is actively committed to our collapse and elimination from the world stage today, reveals the fantasy world of Libertarianism, and their own procrustean commitment to forcing economic thinking into the safe space of their own ideological box.

Taking those arguments out of the context of the 1980's, as this re-writer does, evades and hides what Communist China is doing today with the wealth which the rest of the world has so foolishly allowed them to 'compete' for, and which it has further criminally extracted from their own people. To those ends Communist China is and has been actively pursuing the theft of intellectual property, it blatantly engages in corporate and governmental espionage, their profits from 'free trade!' have enabled the abuse of their own people's lives and rights, have empowered its military encroachment and economic sabotage of those it engages in 'trade' with, and has directed their plunder into markets in competition with American industry, not in a misguided attempt to improve processes and quality so to achieve economic supremacy through actual competition, but for the purposes of achieving military and political supremacy over America and the West. Aims which, if successful, will have dire consequences not only for America, but for the existence of any Free Markets anywhere in the world. To treat that as being nothing more than an 'economic issue', is insanity on the level of lobbying to sell the proverbial hangmen the rope to hang you with.

In the quote above from the faux 'Friedman' post, the author casually repositions the comment that (Communist) 'China' "...pushes her products into the U.S. market...", what do you suppose is meant here by 'pushes'? It's finally a good choice of words, in that it at least implies using force. In Milton's original formulation, it referred to something more like someone pushing you in line outside of a store, to offer you a product for less "Psst! Hey bud, wanna sweet deal on this authentic Rolex watch?", whereas in this reformulation it seeks to avoid acknowledging that it means something more like the action of a thug pushing their way into your store to undersell your clients, at your own counter, with products made from designs stolen from you, and made with money stolen from your own cash register, with the intention of physically pushing your store out of the market and out of business altogether.

Is that latter description of being 'pushed', in any way compatible with trading freely in any market? Ask yourself,

• Would you view such actions as economic actions?
• Would you think such actions were being taken only for monetary gain?
• If you were subjected to such treatment, would you be more likely to attempt resolving that by calling an economics professor, or the police?

To assume that the actions of a state, especially one as lawless as Communist China, whose policies of societal injustice denies and abuses the individual rights of its own people as a matter of course in its pursuit of geo-political dominance, to assume that they are being driven by economic motives alone, rather than by malicious political and geo-political ones, is an assumption which, being that it is naïve beyond belief, should cause us to have more than a few doubts and cautions about those who give them the benefit of the doubt.

The Protectionist Nature of 'Free Trade!'
Should a nation such as ours, ignore the actions of such a nation as Communist China, as it targets some of our citizens, or the industries which some of our citizens are employed in? Should our nation's first concern be with the secondary economic results of it being what it is, or should we instead be concerned with its primary purpose of upholding and defending the Individual Rights and Property of its citizens (which is what shapes and makes its economy possible)?

Oddly enough for 'Free Trade!' libertarians who fancy themselves as being uber-individualists, there's more than a tinge of collectivism in the thinking behind their preferred response of '...unilateral, unrestricted, free trade...'. Take note that in response to the direct criminal actions taken by a foreign power against individual Americans and their businesses, the 'Free Trade!'.rs impulse isn't to defend the property in their rights of those being wronged, but is instead to ignore those wrongs in order to protect the collective national output (GDP).

Note: These supposedly 'liberty' minded folk are not defending the productive rights of another nation's people, but are instead defending actions that have been orchestrated by an abusive foreign power that is targeting productive individuals in another nation, so as to cause real harm to the entire nation (and indeed to the world), by a power that is dedicated to the eradication of the individual rights and property of all peoples.

The call to do nothing in response to such deliberately provocative actions, in the name of 'free trade!', is not a means of promoting the right of individuals to trade in a Free Market, it is itself an exceedingly craven form of protectionism, protecting the flow of money into the collective economy (GDP), at the expense of the rights and property of those individuals who make up that economy. That, my dear Libertarian friends, is collectivism and protectionism, all wrapped up in garish bows of gilded 'Principles!' and 'Free Trade!'. Though no doubt they do so, for the 'greater good'.

In Friedman's "Free to Choose", he had a proposed amendment in it:

"Amendment on Free Trade – The right of individuals to acquire and sell legitimate goods and services on mutually acceptable terms shall not be infringed by Congress or any of the states."

Whatever it was that Milton Friedman originally had in mind as 'legitimate', do you consider such actions by a Communist government, to be offering 'Legitimate goods and services' for trade? IMHO, just as the police take measures to limit and shutdown the 'free trade' in stolen goods in their own cities, so too should our government act in regards to 'deals' proposed by a government such as that of Communist China.

A just Govt must first look to upholding and defending the individual rights and property of its own people, as individuals, and not sacrifice them, or pretend not to notice their being abused by external powers. We do not have a shared judicial system between nation states, there cannot be one at the level of such state actors, but we do have the power to penalize identifiable transgressions against us, and we should at the very least do so by political means such as targeted tariffs (though I'd prefer severing any and all engagement with any and all communist nations), and by very publicly submitting such causes 'to a candid world'.

For any group, let alone one which claims to care about Liberty, to oppose the prudent use of power by a legitimate nation (one that upholds and defends individuals rights and property in their rights) to defend its citizens from the deliberate and criminal targeting of them, or some portion of them by any political power, foreign or domestic, is unconscionable. To advocate for doing nothing in the face of such actions, in order to enjoy a statistical increase of economic wealth for 'all' (excepting of course those who are being targeted by that foreign power(s)), is a false, foolish, and fragrantly corrupt motive, which betrays a tendency towards fiscal collectivism, economic protectionism, and craven acquiescence to appeasement on a massive scale. Such notions can be called 'principled' only by those who've never learned what Principles are.

So long as economic competition is conducted within the range of a just regard to individual rights, then all is well. But when force is inserted into the market on a national scale, it cannot be ignored without making matters worse, economically, and politically. A legitimate nation exists to serve its primary purpose - upholding and defending its people's individual rights & property - and a nation that is great, does not sacrifice its primary purpose, to the pleasures and conveniences of some secondary financial benefits of the passing moment, benefits which can only result in the first place, from that nation effectively carrying out its primary purpose. To advocate doing so is nothing but disgraceful... hence my skepticism towards advocates of 'Free Trade!'.