Too Many People Want to Travel

Through the early 19th century, travel for personal fulfillment was the provenance of “wealthy nobles and educated professionals” only, people for whom it was a “demonstrative expression of their social class, which communicated power, status, money and leisure,” as one history of tourism notes.

The whole point of this Atlantic article is that travel needs to be kept only for ‘wealthy’ and ‘educated’ people like the authoress Annie Lowrey. Too many of us commoners crowding them out.

Source: Too Many People Want to Travel

Justifying “Islamophobia”

My assessment of Islam, conclusively supported by indisputable facts, is that it is a dangerous, destructive and death-bearing belief system of a long-ago savage people that has inflicted and continues to inflict misery and death to people.  According to Christopher Hitchens, Islamophobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.

Islam is a degenerate, hate-filled political ideology that should be banned in any civilized society. Its adherents should be expelled or executed. Its ‘mosques’ and other properties should be confiscated by the state.

Those who believe Islam is a ‘peaceful religion’ are deluded Islam-deniers who should be expelled also.

Source: Justifying “Islamophobia”

History and the High Price of Forgetting

The reason we study history is because certain patterns repeat themselves. And this is where our education system has been failing us so terribly for decades, in part because of “multiculturalism.” Circa 1990, it became fashionable to condemn the teaching of history in our society as too “Eurocentric” and this academic trend, along with a general contempt for “dead white males,” had the effect of demoting the study of the history of our own culture in favor of “inclusive” history about African, Asian and Latin American societies. But this involves a misunderstanding of why we study history at all. The peasant living under a hereditary monarchy, or a goat-herder in a nomadic tribal society, would have no use for the study of history. In a non-democratic polity, it is only the leadership caste which has need to study history, as a guide to statecraft. However, in a republic, where every citizen is eligible to participate in the decision-making process — at the very least, as a voter — the study of history as part of a general education becomes much more important. How are we to participate intelligently in politics if we don’t know history? And the reason we study ancient Greece and Rome, rather than the Mayans or the Chinese or some other culture, isn’t because of racism or “Eurocentrism.” It’s because Greco-Roman civilization produced the earliest models for representative government, and because these civilizations left behind a written record, including such valuable resources as Thucydides.

At the beginning he asks “Have you ever read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War?” Yes, I have. I also recommend it.

Source: History and the High Price of Forgetting

Are Homeschoolers Overqualified?

Dear Mike

My son, Spencer, decided to apply for the High Voltage Lineman program at Arkansas State University Newport. He went through the interviews just fine, applied and was accepted. We also applied for the full tuition scholarship that was offered through our local electric cooperative. (There are 17 said scholarships available annually, one for each co-op in the state of Arkansas.)

My son filled out his application and eagerly awaited his interview with the selection committee. A little background: Spencer was homeschooled most of his life. That gave him the opportunity to do some pretty neat things. At 18, his skill set includes: light electrical, sheetrock, tiling, concrete work, and graphic design. He currently works full time for a cement contractor, awaiting school to start in the Fall.

So Wednesday, he had his interview. This is what he was told. ‘Spencer, I’m gonna tell you something you don’t want to hear. Your grades and test scores are too high and you are too articulate. We ran into this with another kid today. You need to enroll at the University and go into engineering. We need someone who won’t get bored and drop out.’

No many how many assurances Spencer gave them, they wouldn’t listen. He got the official rejection call the following day.

Jennifer Hutchinson

Homeschooling is superior to the government union product. You’re making everybody else look bad.

Source: Are Homeschoolers Overqualified?

Near Death, Seeing Dead People May Be Neither Rare Nor Eerie

“I said ‘Dad, what are you laughing at?’ He said, ‘Oh, we’re all together.’ “

The bewildered Roncevich and her mother wondered who and what he was seeing. He was even giggling.

“He said, ‘Everybody’s together and we’re all just having a wonderful time. We’re having so much fun’ … and those were the last words he spoke,” she recounted last week between her visits to patients of UPMC Family Hospice and Palliative Care. “I said to my mom, ‘What more could we ask for than that?’ Wherever he was going, he was in a good place and happy.”

Source: Near Death, Seeing Dead People May Be Neither Rare Nor Eerie

The left’s descent into the abyss of odium

We are in fact a divided nation, the mature and immature, the civil and uncivil, the decent and the indecent.  We are divided between those who love this country and those who hate it.  Our leftists are Marxist globalists who want to see America destroyed or at least transformed from the inside, as Khrushchev predicted fifty years ago that it would be.  The Marxists have won in academe.  They have won over the Democratic Party completely.  Pelosi, Schumer, et al. are on board with flooding the U.S. with illiterate migrants, numbers of them criminals, to satisfy their anti-American ideology.  They and their agenda should be shunned by all Americans with a modicum of common sense.

This has held up well!

Source: The left’s descent into the abyss of odium

Many studies’ results cannot be reproduced, scholars warn | The College Fix

“Not all irreproducible research is progressive advocacy; not all progressive advocacy is irreproducible; but the intersection between the two is very large. The intersection between the two is a map of much that is wrong with modern science,” the report states.

More crap from the ‘educated’ amongst us.

Source: Many studies’ results cannot be reproduced, scholars warn | The College Fix

Don’t Go To College

Today, academia’s product is largely garbage – gender studies, twisted history, and pointless sociology spin-offs like communications and political science. Yeah, we need more students studying politics when they don’t even know that the Constitution says they can’t shut people up because their feelz has got the hurtz.

Sure, the STEM fields produce a few grads who are going to be more than mere cogs in the corporate machine like their marketing major pals, and some STEM research is useful, but don’t think STEM is immune from academia’s endemic idiocy. Why, the latest thing is how science is racist because…well, probably because these hacks say everything is racist and the weak-willed gutless wonders of America’s faculty are too scared to stand up and say, “Uh no, that’s stupid and it’s not a thing and stop it.”

I submit that STEM is not ‘education’. It doesn’t teach you the history of your country, the philosophy behind our founding documents, etc. It doesn’t teach you good citizenship. I wonder how many STEM graduates could pass a citizenship naturalization test? STEM by itself is just job training.

Source: Don’t Go To College

What a new U.S. civil war might look like

On the left side of the spectrum, nearly three-quarters of the Solid Liberals (who account for half of the Democratic Party’s most politically engaged supporters and sympathizers) believe that “hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people,” compared with just 22 percent of Pew’s less educated, less affluent Opportunity Democrats.

Educated. They keep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means.

Source: What a new U.S. civil war might look like

What Are the Children Learning?

One college is proud to advertise that they have done away with “unrelated curriculum.”  So nursing students are not required to study U.S. history and a student majoring in Information Technology does not need to take Philosophy 101.  This is countered by Jack Kerwick, who describes a liberal arts education as supplying students “with ‘the habit of attention;’ ‘the art of expression;’ ‘the art of assuming at a moment’s notice, a new intellectual position;’ ‘the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts;’ ‘the habit of submitting to censure and refutation;’ ‘the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms;’ ‘the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy;’ and ‘the art of working out what is possible in a given time [.]'”

This is why I laugh when people with degrees tell me they know better than me because of their ‘degree.’ It’s worthless outside of their area of study… and sometimes not even then. Alexandria Occasional Cortex’s pronouncements on economics are comical, yet she claims to have a degree in economics. (which is why she was bartending…)

College isn’t an education anymore. It’s glorified job training.

What is job training? It’s education for slaves. No need to read, write, or think. Just spew out the leftist extremist talking points you were force fed and do your job.

Source: What Are the Children Learning?