For months Mike Huckabee was ignored by the pundits. Then suddenly, Huckabee began to look like a viable candidate and the long knives came out. There has been much speculation about why this might be. Huckabee’s camp speculates that many had already picked their candidate and when Huckabee began to surge he was perceived as a threat. I lean toward that interpretation myself.
I’ve been a Huckabee supporter for some time now. I’ve heard most all the criticisms and I’ve heard Huckabee’s defense of those criticisms. Take ethics charges in Arkansas. Like attacks against Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay on the national level, Democrats always resort to spurious ethics charges when when they can’t defeat a Republican on the merits. I have no problem believing this is the case in Arkansas. In the case of the wedding registry issue, Huckabee’s explanation is completely credible and sensible. Opponents who stick to that charge look stupid, just like Giuliani’s constant charge that Romney hired illegals when he did no such thing. Giuliani looked stupid then and Huckabee opponents look stupid sticking with spurious and silly charges.
On the immigration question I take issue with Huckabee. I think he is wrong about the children of illegal immigrants but I respect his position because I have anguished over the question of what to do with kids who’ve been here nearly all their lives. They don’t know any other country and they are not responsible for the situation they are in, their parents are. I disagree with Huckabee’s approach because it rewards and encourages illegal immigration but I understand where he’s coming from and this one issue is not a deal breaker for me.
There is one charge, leveled by Ann Coulter and others, that Huckabee wants to use the government to implement Jesus’ plans for the poor, that gives me serious pause. If true that would be a real deal breaker for me. I have no patience for social gospel advocates and I won’t have patience for Huckabee if I find he’s a social gospel adherent. But so far I’ve seen no evidence that it is true. Indeed, Huckabee has said that he’s running for President, not pastor in chief. Yes, he will make decisions based on his worldview. That seems to scare the pants off some people. But the fact is, everyone running will make decisions based on their worldview, Christian or not.
I’ve been reading the criticism and looking for evidence but so far I’m not seeing it. I’ve been quiet for a while now because, honestly, I was afraid some of this stuff might be true. But so far all I see is accusations. In every case Huckabee has responded and responded well. The one time he seemed somewhat flummoxed was in a interview with Laura Ingraham. But the reality is Ingraham was extremely combative from the start and Huckabee has little chance to finish an answer. It was clear to anyone listening that Ingraham was gunning for Huckabee.
Coulter also got some mileage from Huckabee’s plan to bring music and the arts back to education. She carries on like that’s just the silliest idea ever introduced. But it seems to me that Huckabee is simply talking about a liberal arts education, something most of our founding fathers strongly supported. There is something of a resurgence of the idea among private schools today and it’s an idea I support. The idea is that you cannot have a well rounded education without covering arts, literature, music, foreign language, history, science and math. Modern thinkers want to focus solely on science and math and maybe a little language thrown in for good measure. I believe the liberal arts approach is superior and it was unbecoming of Coulter to treat it like it was silly. I’m not sure where she got her undergrad but I suspect it might have been a liberal arts school.
Now let me be clear. I’m a fan of Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter and many others who are taking pot shots at Huckabee. In virtually every case it seems clear to me that they have already made up their minds for someone else. Ingraham is a case in point. I’ve heard her interview Mitt Romney. She threw softball questions one after the other. Not once did she go after him on anything. Clearly Romney is her guy. Now that’s fine but she isn’t being real honest about that fact. She’s acted as if she’s unbiased regarding Republican candidates when she clearly is not. It’s human nature to see anyone who threatens your chosen candidate as the enemy but that alone doesn’t make the criticism valid. It requires evidence and there seems to be precious little of that.
So far the only one I’ve seen who truly seems unbiased is Rush Limbaugh. If he’s picked a candidate I am hard pressed to tell who it might be. The Huckabee campaign takes on El Rushbo at their peril.
I will continue to watch the situation carefully. If there is something that might change my mind about Huckabee I want to know about it. Yes, he’s my guy. But I am willing to switch if he turns out not to be the real deal. To date I’ve seen nothing to sway me. And lest you think I’m not as willing to change as I say I am, recall that I started out supporting Fred Thompson so I’ve already switched once. I’ll switch again if new information comes along that convinces me a I should.
For now I’m just disgusted with the constant “conservative” attacks on Huckabee. I think it’s a mistake and it’s damaging to the party.
If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted lately, there are several reasons. First, my son and daughter in law were here visiting for the Memorial Day weekend. It was great seeing them. But I’ve also been working on a new project. Some conservatives on the internet, lead by Jenn Sierra, have started a new project aimed at involving more people in the conservative cause and using Web 2.0 to do it.
The project is called Ft. Hard Knox and you can find it at www.FortHardKnox.com. Of course you’ll find excellent conservative commentary and opinion there but that is not its primary purpose. It is designed to combine blogging, wikkis and message boards in one platform to involve people who are not necessarily web savvy.
My involvement has been in setting up the new blog. I’ve managed to build some decent experience in installing, setting up and moving WordPress blogs. I’m proud to be involved with this outstanding group of conservatives. If you are interested in joining up, surf on over to Ft. Hard Knox.
I’ve written from time to time on the problems of public education. But I’ve not been able to express the problems nearly as well as Bear at The Absurd Report. In a great post today with the appropriate title Public-School Indoctrination Camps-How The Democrats Love Them, Bear lays out the beginning and goals of said education. You need to read his post!
The midterm election is less than a week away and, while I still think Republicans will pull it out, it really is too close to call. With that in mind, the following commercial is especially important.
Most everyone not living in a cave is aware of the brouhaha at Columbia University last week when College Republicans had speakers from The Minute Man Project. Liberal student groups orchestrated a protest inside the event and prevented the speakers from speaking. Columbia University officials promised an investigation.
On Wednesday evening Columbia University College Republicans had another event, this time with a former Islamic terrorist and a former member of Hitler’s Nazi Youth. Columbia promised to keep the event in order and somewhere around one thousand students registered to attend. This time Columbia decided that, in order to maintain order, they had to limit the number of people allowed into the event. So, while the event was peaceful and without interruptions, it also had only a handful of people in attendance.
The bottom line is this. Liberal student groups continue to effectively censor conservative speakers on the campus of Columbia University. The administration of Columbia University is either complicit in the censorship or they are horribly incompetent. That the administration of any university cannot control the actions of their student body is disgraceful.
Columbia is a very high profile university. Tuition at Columbia is not inexpensive. On top of that, Columbia’s School of Journalism is purported to be one of the best in the country. So, students at Columbia University, particularly in the School of Journalism, are absolutely prevented from hearing any view on campus that is in opposition to the liberal position. I imagine that is very good for diversity and and balance in education.
I can tell you this. Were I the parent of a student at Columbia University, I would be up in arms over these events. Columbia would either punish these thugs and errant student organizations and prevent further abuses or my child would be out of that school and I’d go to court if necessary to get every cent of tuition refunded. Parents of college students, particularly parents who are footing the bill, absolutely must stand up to these outrages. While many universities today have an extreme liberal bias that is evident everywhere on campus, they all still depend on the almighty dollar. Student tuition is the name of the game and parents have more power than they imagine. If students simply stop going to the worst offending institutions, those institutions would have no choice but to shape up or close their doors.
That won’t happen, of course. Most parents are sadly unaware of and uninformed about what is going on in many colleges and universities today. Just like most people who go to the polls next month and vote will not know who many of the candidates are, what the issues are or where each candidate stands on those issues. To many of us don’t take the time to become informed. Until that changes we can expect our colleges and universities along with our elected officials to get worse and worse.
I received an email today from the campaign of Jim Rex, candidate for South Carolina Superintendent of Education. Mr. Rex’s email focused almost entirely on the subject of vouchers and he staunchly opposes them. It was interesting indeed to read his reasons for such opposition.
My view is simple: not only is it the wrong approach, we can’t afford the half a billion dollar price tag. We don’t have to break our public schools before we fix them. I believe public funding should be used to make public schools more effective, not make private schools more affordable. And I know we can’t afford – in money or in wasted time – to become a national education gamble that fails.
There are a number of things wrong with the above paragraph. First, to say we can’t afford to break our public schools in order to fix them is pure hyperbole. South Carolina public schools are about as broken as they can possibly get. The state ranks approximately 49th out of 50 states in education.
Second, Rex says public funding should go to make public schools more effective, not private schools more affordable. That statement betrays both a profound misunderstanding of the problem and little appreciation for the solution. In fact, the solution offered in vouchers has nothing whatsoever to do with making private schools more affordable and it is either disingenuous or laughably ignorant to suggest otherwise. Vouchers are about taking the money that currently goes to public schools and attaching it to the students. As Milton Friedman has noted, there are two ways you can subsidize something. You can give money to producers or you can give it to consumers. Giving it to producers (public schools) encourages mediocrity. It is no different from subsidizing agriculture by giving money to farmers. Giving money to consumers (students), on the other hand, promotes competition, something sorely lacking in public education. It is this lack of competition that drives failing schools. Jim Rex talks about accountability but the ultimate accountability is competition. Failing schools will either shape up or close. Failure would no longer be rewarded with more money.
Mr. Rex revels in platitudes, as in this statement:
Make no mistake: no child in South Carolina should be trapped in a failing school. Moreover, South Carolina’s schools need reform – comprehensive reform – to move from incremental to dramatic progress, in order to compete in America and around the globe. We can’t afford to do nothing while countries like India and China improve their educational systems and become more competitive with us for jobs.
That sounds wonderful. Unfortunately it is devoid of actual content. Of course everyone wants to save kids trapped in failing schools. Of course everyone wants comprehensive reform. Of course we can’t afford to do nothing. In fact, do nothing is precisely what Mr. Rex is proposing. He wants to keep doing what we’ve been doing, only do more of it. That means spend more on failing schools, i.e., reward failing schools. I fail to understand how that is going to help. It hasn’t helped for decades and there is no reason to assume that it will suddenly start working now. It has been observed that a working definition of insanity is doing what you’ve always done but expecting a different result. That is what Mr. Rex proposes.
Mr. Rex says he supports full and open public school choice, expansion of charter schools and greater implementation of technology to improve public schools. Sounds great except for the problems. For one, technology is not the answer. While greater use of technology is laudable, it will not fix failing schools. The problem is not a lack of technology. The problem is a top down bureaucracy that focuses on schools, teachers and building programs instead of focusing on the education of our kids. All Mr. Rex is really proposing is a little juggling between existing bad schools. There may indeed be some incremental improvements in some schools. It is just as likely that other schools will experience declines. The reason is obvious, there is still no real accountability, in spite of Mr. Rex’s claim that he supports accountability.
Rex goes on to say,
But extending those choices to private schools with public dollars is a bad idea. Diverting taxpayer dollars to private schools would reduce the resources available to reform our schools, many of which are struggling to meet our students’ basic needs now. It would mean giving up on our public schools when we should be doing everything we can to fix them.
Again, Mr. Rex doesn’t understand vouchers. He continues to look at the problem from a top down position. He sees it as a school’s problem rather than an education problem. He sees the answers in the bureaucracy rather then in empowering parents to take control of their children’s education. Fundamentally, Rex sees the problem as one of resources. He wants to continue subsidizing the producers rather than the consumers of education. He does get one thing right though. Vouchers do encourage giving up on public schools and that is a good thing.
Milton Friedman also observed that prior to the advent of public education almost every citizen in this country could read, write and do math. That’s because the consumers of education made all the decisions about their own education instead of having those decisions made for them by people who didn’t know them and didn’t understand their needs. The more the bureaucracy grows the larger the problem grows. There is a one to one relationship between the two.
At its root, the education problem is an economic problem. I’m sure Mr. Rex would agree with that statement but he would mean something entirely different from what I mean. He believes that the answer lies in more tax money to more failing schools. If only they can get enough money they can succeed. History has demonstrated the folly of that approach. We’ve seen time and again that throwing money at problems tends to make them worse, not better.
What I mean when I say this is an economic problem is that the economics of education have been turned around. Consumers of education, parents and their children, are not involved in the process. Just as with the health care system today, the consumers are not the payers. Providers do not work for consumers. Instead, providers work for the government bureaucracy and consumers have little to no say in the process. The answer is to return natural economics to the process. If tax money is to be used, it should go directly to the parents of students. They can then make their own choices about educational options. Eliminate the bureaucracy altogether and you will have taken the first large step in fixing the problem.
Mr. Rex sees all kinds of problems with this approach, not least that the bureaucracy can’t hold private schools accountable. Does he really think that he and the bureaucracy are better qualified to hold teachers and schools accountably than are parents? If he does, he is delusional.
Mr. Rex’s basic problem is what he considers his greatest asset. He has spent his entire adult life in education. He’s been a teacher, a coach, a college dean and a college president. In all these experiences Mr. Rex has missed out on basic economics. He has also been so buried in the problems that he can’t see the answers. He has been so indoctrinated in modern educational thinking, demonstrably failed thinking, that he is fundamentally incapable of seeing what the problems are, much less the solutions. He can’t see the forest for the trees. And he, like most in the education establishment, believes that he is better qualified than parents to make educational decisions.
While this particular campaign is specific to South Carolina, its implications are national in scope. States all across this country are grappling with the problem of poor education. The United States lags farther and farther behind the rest of the western world. While many readers of this blog will not have the opportunity to vote in this election in South Carolina, all can work to improve the situation in their individual states. Until we get serious about the education of our children the problem will only grow worse. Until we focus on students instead of teachers, we will make no positive progress. Until parents, not the education establishment or the National Education Association, are in control of the education of their children, we will fall farther behind. The choice is ours to make.
: Education Vouchers Schools NEA
: Education Vouchers Schools NEA
: Education Vouchers Schools NEA
: Education Vouchers Schools NEA
: Education Vouchers Schools NEA
: Education Vouchers Schools NEA
The whole time I went to college I complained about this. Now my daughter is in college and it’s even worse. What am I talking about? The price of college textbooks.
Go to Barnes & Noble or any good book store and buy a high quality coffee table book and the most you’ll pay for it is maybe $50.00. Buy a used college math book and and you’ll pay $100 or more. They have a captive audience who must buy the books so they can charge whatever they want! And they do. That’s the result of a monopoly.
On top of that, they’ll publish a new edition of a math book every couple of years. We’re talking college algebra here, not upper lever theoretical stuff. There are no new advances to be added to a new edition of the book. But the publishers don’t want students buying used books, they’d lose sales! So they publish new editions, making the older books obsolete. The colleges, apparently in cahoots with the publishers, adopt the new edition immediately and students who had the old edition can’t sell it and current students lose the option to at least buy used.
How can the free market be introduced into this system? Used books are a small attempt, particularly on sites like Amazon.com as opposed to the campus book store but the publishing cycle circumvents that and stops it from ever being real competition.
Until colleges and universities actually take an interest in their students the problem will remain. But since these institutions aren’t concerned about the tens of thousands of dollars of debt they’re saddling today’s students with, why would they worry about the cost of books?
I watched the FOX News special on the price of higher education the other night and I find myself agreeing with its conclusions. Education is a racket all around. Kids need it but they are being royally ripped off getting it. There appears to be no answer in sight.
