Recently, I sat listening to a speaker talk about how both Massachusetts and New Hampshire are among the best states in terms of student achievement as measured by the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) test. The thing is, although it’s difficult to attach any particular meaning to a NAEP score, it’s clear that every …
Senator Lindsey Graham — nominally a Republican — is trying to put together federal legislation to give grants to states that pass Red Flag laws. The National Rifle Association — nominally a gun rights organization — has gone on record in support of these laws. These have to be belated April Fool’s jokes, right? Unfortunately, …
Recently, I sat listening to a speaker talk about the need for ‘better standards’ in schools. He talked a lot about what students need to know when they graduate from high school, with a lot of emphasis on literacy, mathematics, and what he called ‘general knowledge’. Hard to argue with that, but as I listened, …
The electoral college is in the news again. Some presidential candidates are calling for the Constitution to be amended to get rid of it. A growing number of states are taking steps to require the distribution of their electoral votes be determined by the national popular vote, which would amount to the same thing. I …
In a previous post, I considered the question: How can people who prefer safety to freedom coexist with people who prefer freedom to safety? I discussed a way in which a political party could directly provide single-payer services to the people who want them, instead of focusing on gaining control of government in order to …
In a previous post, I considered the question: How can people who prefer safety to freedom coexist with people who prefer freedom to safety? The former are always going to be tempted to accomplish their goals by gaining control of the levers of government, in order to force the latter to go along with their …
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a couple of things that John F. Kennedy said. The first is: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. I’m reminded of this whenever people (increasingly) talk about the possibility of, and even the ‘need for’, some kind of civil war in the United …
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and now that the Democrats are casting (some might say flailing) around for ways to make society ‘more fair’, it might be the perfect time for someone to try to introduce the appropriate legislation.
If you’re looking for a single image that sums up what a constitution is for, and why it’s important to follow one, a good candidate is Ulysses passing the Island of Sirens.
Confucius said that the first step towards wisdom is to call things by their right names. It’s a good rule to live by. If you misname something, you won’t really be able to think about it correctly, because you’ll be thinking about what it’s called, rather than about what it is. On the other hand, …
From ESAs to EARP — An exercise in accurate naming Read More »
