House of Eratosthenes

Quite honestly, the only people I ever hear from who are dopier than liberals are those who identify themselves as conservatives and insist that Republicans and Democrats are identical.

Anyone who would suggest that there is no difference between Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner or Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, is one very dumb bunny. No difference between the likes of Henry Waxman, Al Franken and Charles Rangel and Darrel Issa, Peter King and Paul Ryan? No difference between Joe Biden and Dick Cheney? No difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? You have to wonder what madcap pharmacist is supplying these alleged conservatives with their stupidity pills.

How can anyone who takes the Second Amendment seriously insist there’s no difference between the two parties when gun sales are booming, all thanks to such flame-throwing racists as Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and the Black Panthers? The good news is that income taxes on the gun industry have jumped 66% since Obama’s election, and it’s mainly due to increased sales, not Obama’s counterproductive tax policies. It’s ironic that the man who is most opposed to law-abiding citizens owning weapons not only selected Eric (“Operation Fast & Furious”) Holder to be his attorney general, but has personally done more to hype American gun sales than any prior president.
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For those of you who continue to insist that it makes absolutely no difference if the president is a Democrat or a member of the GOP, please keep in mind that if John Kerry had won the 2004 election, he would not have named John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Instead, he would have seated a couple left-wingers in the mold of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Now, by a show of hands, is there anyone out there who doubts that with six left-wingers on the Court, there would be the slightest chance they’d decide that ObamaCare is unconstitutional?

I would imagine Mr. Prelutsky has been provoked into this latest by the many reactions to Mitt Romney coming closer to securing the Republican nomination. The not-a-dimes-worth-of-difference people do have their reasons for so opining, it should be noted. Romney does have problems with his conservative credentials, and one has cause for concern when one notes the contest has come down to this. The system does have more than a whiff of riggishness about it.

I’m often fond of summarizing these situations with complex and emotionally charged outlooks on the world and life, in terms of very simple math problems. See, Barack Obama and people like Him, are celebrated as special people and have been celebrated as that for so long, that they can’t deal with losing the identity. Oh, you thought I meant black people? No…there are tons and tons of privileged, pampered whites in this crowd I’m describing. They say jump, the crowd says how high…it’s worked this way since third grade, or earlier, and nobody envisions it ever going any other way, because they don’t, and they don’t because nobody else does. So they go through life frustrated because they know there’s something different about them — but that something is never really defined. Something to do with speaking well, being confident, but they’re actually apprehensive deep down inside. They can’t shake the feeling that maybe, whatever is special about them, might be something external to them. And this fills them with fear. Because that would mean everything inside, is just humdrum and ordinary.

So the question comes up: What is one plus one? Barack Obama will immediately rule out “two” as a possible answer because, hey, that’s what an ordinary person would say. Thus we see, with this simple math exercise, someone like President Obama “enjoys” a greater likelihood of getting it wrong, than an answer-producing method that relies purely on random chance. You’re better off rolling the dice to answer the one-plus-one problem than asking President Obama. And, because it works that way with the simple problems, it works that way with the more complicated ones as well. People like Obama have this natural phobia, a natural revulsion, against the common-sense answer. They’re more likely to get it wrong than a decision-making method that works by chance.

The trouble with Mitt Romney is — he will say “two,” but if someone else says “one,” “three” or “five” he’ll reply with “yes, that’s just fine” or “yeah, that’s perfectly alright.” This is why he’s having trouble appealing to conservatives, who understand that we live in a mathematical world…therefore, there is little value in choosing the right answer, if you don’t recognize that all the other answers must therefore be wrong.

So I understand both sides of this.

What I do not understand, are the people who somehow insist that now, these last two or three weeks, as April morphs into May in twenty-twelve — this is the time when Mitt Romney has to be taken down by any means necessary. The opposite is the truth. To the extent that the Romney ascension represents a problem…and I believe that it does…the time to attack that problem is all the other times. For now, if the one-plus-one-is-three guy is to be sent back to Illinois next January, there is going to have to be a coming-together of all the people who recognize that this is what has to happen. There’s going to have to be some emulsification. Can’t build a castle with bone-dry sand.

I’m probably way biased here (I have lots of extended family in the trade), but I think a lot of this stems from the “self-esteem” rot that has infected our public education system since at least the late 1980s.

Under this regime, children are constantly told that, pace Tyler Durden, they are precious and unique snowflakes. Even when their coursework requires a single correct answer, as with math, they get a lot of pats on the head and points for effort when they’re wrong. Worse, when their coursework doesn’t demand a single correct answer, teachers are required — either by incentives or by actual written policies — to say something nice about even the most harebrained response.

So students who are adept at gaming the system — who are good at making it easier on teacher, telling her what she wants to hear, always with the threat of a full-on breakdown if they don’t get their way — soon begin to think that a certain verbal dexterity and a tendency toward the histrionic is all one needs to succeed.

And they’re right. If any and all answers are just expressions of a student’s unique, vibrant, diverse perspective, then naturally — logically— the very idea of a single correct answer is (take your pick) racist, sexist, imperialist, etc. You’re not imparting knowledge or improving a young mind when you point out flaws in their thinking; you’re only picking on them because you’re some kind of fascist or (worse!) conservative.

It’s all of a piece. Pretty soon, these students begin to realize that it’s only dullards (conservatives, fascists, etc.) who insist on a single right answer. Teacher seems to reward flamboyantly counter-intuitive answers (at least they’re entertaining to grade), and so why not? It’s an A no matter what, and it distinguishes us from the smallminded herd…..

The best and brightest of these kids then go on to politics, the law, academia. The worst of them go on to become public school teachers.
- Severian | 05/09/2012 @ 07:34
[curmudgeon]Well back when I was a boy, they made us show our work. And even if we got the right answer, it was still wrong if the “work” was wrong. That’s right. If we landed on the right answer accidentally, we were still wrong. AND WE LIKED IT!!!!!! [/curmudgeon] 😉
- philmon | 05/09/2012 @ 09:02
(you always have to end a curmudgeon rant with “AND WE LIKED IT!!!!!”“
- philmon | 05/09/2012 @ 09:02
To the extent that the Romney ascension represents a problem…and I believe that it does

I’m a firm believer that the previous ascension of McCain was more representative of the problem.

Well back when I was a boy, they made us show our work. And even if we got the right answer, it was still wrong if the “work” was wrong. That’s right. If we landed on the right answer accidentally, we were still wrong.

I remember working out a physics problem where I had list my assumptions before working out the problem. My answer was correct, but I incorrectly stated “conservation of energy” instead of “conservation of angular momentum”. My grade on the problem? A zero. Kind of the reason I’m a hard ass to students that I teach today.
- Physics Geek | 05/09/2012 @ 10:11
(you always have to end a curmudgeon rant with “AND WE LIKED IT!!!!!”“

Bzzzt. Wrong! You always end curmudgeon rants with “GET OFF MY LAWN!” 🙂
- bpenni | 05/09/2012 @ 10:28
@Physics Geek

Nice!!!

I have to assume you teach college, though. A relative of mine who teaches high school once tried to correct students’ grammar in their lab reports…. at which point, several students collectively protested. They actually said, to her face, “this is a biology class, not English class; spelling and grammar don’t count.”

What can you do? Even if she’d won the inevitable battle with the administration if she’d stood her ground, how do you begin to go about correcting that attitude?

No wonder kids vote Democrat.
- Severian | 05/09/2012 @ 10:30
[…] This is prime facepalm material, for sure: A relative of mine who teaches high school once tried to correct students’ grammar in their lab reports … at which point, several students collectively protested. They actually said, to her face, “this is a biology class, not English class; spelling and grammar don’t count.” […]
- dustbury.com » Outside the purview | 05/10/2012 @ 04:42
I have to assume you teach college, though. A relative of mine who teaches high school once tried to correct students’ grammar in their lab reports…. at which point, several students collectively protested. They actually said, to her face, “this is a biology class, not English class; spelling and grammar don’t count.”

Adjunct professor at a local college, for the record. As to your second point, well, typing skills notwithstanding, I’ve got a pretty good grasp of both spelling and grammar. When I grade student papers, I mark up everything. Of course, I warn them that I’m going to do so, which means that they don’t get to complain to the dean. And if they do, he pretty tells them to suck it up.

I studied physics and nuclear engineering and I’m a firm believer that all STEM majors need to take lots and lots of writing and literature classes because most of their writing makes my head hurt.
- Physics Geek | 05/10/2012 @ 09:53
I’ve got a pretty good grasp of both spelling and grammar

I never meant to imply you didn’t…. sorry if it read that way.

It just pains me that it takes a college professor to transmit this stuff (and to have the institutional support with which to do it; my relative would end up shanked in the back by every level of the administration if she tried to stand her ground on this, trust me). I’m not saying that all student papers should be perfect by the time they get to college — everyone makes a typo or messes up a subjunctive now and again — but you’d think that after 12 years of compulsory schooling they’d have a grasp on the basic mechanics of the Queen’s English. In college (at any level), one should be able to say “this is physics class; we’re not going to spend any time on writing mechanics, because you high school diplomas indicate you’ve already mastered those skills.”

That’s my idea of self-esteem — giving students something real to esteem themselves for (writing, even the basic mechanics, is tough). Instead, though, we seem to be inculcating the idea that just showing up to class is sufficient, and that “intelligence” is merely a matter of coming up with an interpretation that is different from the herd.
- Severian | 05/10/2012 @ 10:02
They actually said, to her face, “this is a biology class, not English class; spelling and grammar don’t count.”

That right there simply blows my mind.

I don’t work in education, but I was a student for an embarrassingly long period of time. I can tell you that I took pride in proper grammar and punctuation ALL the time, not just in English class. I wonder – would these students tell their English teacher that it doesn’t matter that force = mass times acceleration, just because they’re not in physics class at the moment? The entire point of high school (and for that matter, all junior colleges that aren’t vocational trade schools of some kind) is to give the student a well-rounded education that allows them to be well-versed in ALL subjects. They need to be able to use these skills all at the same time – have a grasp on concepts of science, mathematics, art, history, etc AND write correctly. I guess it is easy for me to harp on this because reading and writing always came naturally to me (I was weaker in other academic areas), but still.

Society and the professional world expects college grads to be able to communicate professionally, no matter what their major was. Prospective employers most of all. That’s the point that needs to be driven home to these students.

If any of them decide to pursue science professionally, their fellow scientists are going to expect research papers and reports that are free of common grammatical errors. You’ll notice that the Zacharel were full of bad science and phony assumptions, but I at least didn’t find any surface mistakes in their writing. It’s interesting that even they appear to understand this.
- cylarz | 05/12/2012 @ 01:22

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