To Know Politics Study "Yes Prime Minister"

Does this sound like Libya today?

The standard Foreign Office response to any crisis:
Stage One
We say that nothing is going to happen.
Stage Two
We say that sometning may be going to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage Three
We say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage Four
We say that maybe there was something we could have done but it's too late now.

Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay. The Complete Yes Prime Minister. A Victory for Democracy (177)

There's a Sketch in This

I walked in to my neighborhood 7-11 this evening and the clerk on duty knows me so well, he has what I want before I get to the counter. I wonder what would happen if I just wanted to buy a lottery ticket. Anyway, he asked me to explain the meaning of collective bargaining which I did. All I can envision is me riding into the night, and someone saying "Who was that man?", and someone else replying, "That was the Lone History Teacher!" It would be something in the vein of Monty Python.

A Liberal Arts Education: Why Bother?

Liberal education is the kind that deals not so much with means as with ends, not so much with the how of things as the why. In one sense this is irrelevant to the everyday pressures of life and especially the hard job of making a living. The doctor must know the body and its workings: does he need to know its purposes? The accountant must know the ways of financial transactions and how to keep track of them; does he need to know the purpose of business, or the best uses of the profits that it generates? The general needs to know how to assemble supply, transport, and deploy his troops so as to defeat the enemy; does he need to know if the cause of his country is superior to the cause of the enemy? Are these people in fact experts in the ultimate questions that are inherent in their activities, and would they be better at these activities if they were?
The answer to this question...is yes. Every self-governing person-every mother and father, every manager of a task or of other people-will find himself involved during his life with important decisions that reach up to the ultimate. Each must account to his Maker. Each must raise his children and answer these questions. Each must choose his field of labor and decide how honestly, diligently, and fairly he will pursue it. Each will face occasions when his own immediate interest conflicts with that of another, and each must decide then how to pursue it or when to surrender that interest. The ability to do so is the product of a liberal, as opposed to simply technical education.
-Larry P. Arnn. Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education. (22-23)

Irony, Definition of

People who hover for a close in parking spot at the gym.

I Wish I Had Written That!

Credit means credibility or believability, as measured by that most accurate of gauges, people's willingness to entrust their money to the hands of others. In the early days of the Revolution, when patriotic enthusiasm was sufficient to sustain the cause, Congress had had credit in abundance. But the supply of public credit based on goodwill was soon exhausted: ordinary Americans and their duly elected representatives, it turned out, loved liberty so dearly that they were willing to pay for it with anybody's dollars but their own.--Forrest McDonald. Alexander Hamilton. (p. 143)

Texas Independence Day

Today is Texas Independence Day. Surprised? It has gone by with hardly a mention. This is the 175th anniversary of that event. Twenty-five years ago, the sesquicentennial was so pervasive, Texaco gave away glasses commemorating the event. And, of course, at the centennial seventy-five years ago, it was a major party with national and international recognition. Will it be any different twenty-five years from now? Not if one judges by recent anniversaries. The bicentennial of Lincoln's birth saw hardly a mention. Same for the Reagan centennial last month. I believe the turning point came some time between 1987 and 1992, when the country went from the schmaltzy Constitution bicentennial to the semi millennium day of mourning over Columbus. Fear not!, O anniversary deprived, I am sure Charleston, South Carolina has something cooked up for April 12th.

Liberal Arts

In educational matters, as any old hand at curricular debate can attest, the best is frequently made an enemy of the good. And, all too often, it is an ideal and theoretical "best" held up to expose the shabbiness and shortcomings of a known and practical "good." Today as we struggle with the gritty and intractable realities of our own era, we are once again bludgeoned by fashionable memories of an idealized and romanticized past. Let us be sure it is not a past that never truly was. Let us be sure, too, that what is being measured against it is a present that really is.
-Francis Oakley. Community of Learning: The American College and the Liberal Arts Tradition. (72)