November 26, 1995
The V-chip doesn't even exist. Why invent a new technology to take care of a problem that can be fixed by making use of current technology? I have as much admiration for the new microwave and cable technology as anyone: it is very impressive. The trouble is that all you can get with it is TV.
It is time we stopped looking to government to fulfill our responsibilities. Do yourself and your children a favor and throw the television in the garbage where it belongs. Or, just TURN IT OFF and keep it off.
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
... Oliver Wendell Holmes
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
(a) TITLES I, II, III, and X.--As used in titles I, II, III, and X of this Act--
1) the terms "all students" and "all children" mean students or children from a broad range of backgrounds and circumstances, including disadvantaged students and children, students or children with diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, students or children with disabilities, students or children with limited-English proficiency, school-aged students or children who have dropped out of school, migratory students or children, and academically talented students and children;
... excerpt from GOALS 2000: EDUCATE AMERICA ACT
Naively, I thought already I knew what "all students" and "all children" meant! --Ed.
It does not require a 4000-page document to have free trade. All that is required is for the parties to remove their tariffs. NAFTA is not about free trade; NAFTA is about supporting the political power structure on both sides of the border. Of course, it is succeeding; that was the whole point.
If you do not believe there is a bias in the press towards the views of the left, try to find any mention of the health care crisis in a recent newspaper or magazine. I think it went the way of the so-called energy crisis: it evaporated.
The FBI was reformed in the '30's by J. Edgar Hoover into a tough, lean, and remarkably incorruptible, law-enforcement agency. Since Hoover died, the agency has had incidents of corruption, misdirection, and egregiously excessive force.
NASA was a tiny agency that grew into an immense organization. As a result of its vitality and strength, it claims one of this country's proudest accomplishments: the successful moon program of the '60's. The follow-on programs supervised by a hugely bloated NASA administration have been rife with corruption and failure. Whatever the original vision was has been lost.
No doubt the Agriculture Department once had a legitimate role to play in correcting problems in this country's agriculture industry. Today, they are simply part of the problem, a vast farming welfare program that costs a lot and produces nothing.
The Education Department was charged at its inception with as serious a responsibility as can be imagined: to clean up the problems with the education of the children of this country. Does anyone believe that it has done so? Spending has increased dramatically; during the same period, SAT scores have declined steadily, and even if you don't trust that measure, it is clear that schools are doing far less educating than they once were. Cause and effect? What is to keep us from thinking so? More concerned with counting heads than filling them, the agency has abandoned its charge, and filled the system with bureaucrats and administrators. The only part of the department that concerns itself with curriculum has been completely co-opted by extreme leftist revisionists, whose aim is to indoctrinate rather than educate.
Now comes the CIA, which would rather misinform its customers with tainted intelligence than expose agents it suspected were doubles. The "company" serves its internal needs over those of the only legitimate authority, the policy-making entities of the government. One can only say that this amounted a kind of institutional treason.
The natural law governing this behavior of bureaucracies can be stated thus, "Internal goals replace external goals." The first generation of bureau employees are mostly highly qualified, well-focused, honest, and dedicated people, fired with a common vision and hungry for success. Since there is no path to advancement in a government bureaucracy save over the bodies of one's colleagues, the next generation, hired by the first, is chosen so as not to compete with the first. And so on with the next. Naturally, bright, ambitious, capable people want to blaze their own trails, not merely follow in the footsteps of others. And so, the personnel pool of the agency is systematically diluted with people who have no ability and no vision, capable only of maintaining the agency's budgets and interests. Because the mediocrities in the agency soon cause the eclipse of the agency's original aims by internal considerations, the agency becomes part of the problem it is supposed to be solving.
This phenomenon is so pervasive, so integral to the structure of government service and administration, that one can measure the half-life of the cost-benefit of a government agency. It is typically about the average length of service of its first generation of employees, or about twenty years. It can be lengthened by the leadership of a dynamic personality; it can be shortened by poor initial focus. But the inescapable conclusion is that eventually the bureaucracy must be dismantled because it is no longer serving any purpose besides its own. This is certainly true of the operations directorate of the CIA, has long been true of the Education Department, the Agriculture Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and portions of NASA, the IRS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the FBI.
We must destroy these corrupt entities, burn them to the (metaphorical) bricks if necessary, fire everyone in them, revoke their charter, and dismiss their Secretaries from the Cabinet. Until we do, we will never get anything better.
The diversity pimps persist in trying to persuade us that diversity is a strength. Perhaps diversity would be a strength if the object of life were the investigation of some obscure or elusive subject that could benefit from the application of many points of view. However, in most parts of the world and throughout most of history, diversity (cultural, racial, religious, etc.) is manifestly a weakness (e.g., the Middle East, Bosnia, Canada). What is remarkable is that the United States has done so well DESPITE its diversity. What few strengths diversity affords, the United States has exploited well. The weaknesses that diversity imparts have been ameliorated primarily through the maintenance of free institutions. That is why, with all our diversity, the United States is the envy of the world.
Last week's trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City had more highlights than I can describe compactly here, but here are a few of them: A remarkable 1895 photograph of Auguste Renoir and Stephane Mallarme snapped by none other than Edgar Degas; The ineffable Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, a priceless document of the human race; The statue of Balzac by Auguste Rodin, towering over visitors, seeing farther and more clearly than all who gaze at him; Another work of Rodin, a tiny figurine of Nijinsky, balanced on one toe, coiled into a position of great potential energy, as though from the "Firebird", about to leap off its platform; An absolutely spectacular exhibit of Alfred Stieglitz photographs from his Grant Lake years, many of them featuring the face or hands of Georgia O'Keeffe; Dali's Persistence of Memory is still puzzling; Magritte's Empire of Light II still hangs there, a perfectly satisfying enigma.
About 1903, Edward Steichen was commissioned to do a series of photographs of works of Rodin. These were executed under the stage direction of Rodin himself, who created dramatic and sometimes spectacular lighting effects. The Three Burghers of Calais, the Thinker, and numerous others of his works were photographed in this way. Last week, the photograph Steichen shot of Rodin's tribute to Balzac hung beside the statue, shedding new light on that wonderful old work.
All contents © Copyright 1995, 1996 by Redmon Barbry ¶ 8:25 PM
