Anyway, this issue of the school year came up at that time — we were going to have to study longer to keep up with the Japanese. And Jack Germond said, “I think kids ought to have some fun. I think they ought to go out and play. I think they ought to have a summer.”

I don’t hate education, believe me — but I agree. Totally. And, with the rise of the over-organized kid, the fine art of just hanging around and doing nothing — kicking a stone or whatever — seems to have been lost. Too bad.

I’m sure it’s the bias of my upbringing, but I think school ought to be from about September 6 to about June 6 — and that anything else is perverse. - Jay Nordlinger

I don't know why this struck me but it did. Today on my drive into work I was contemplating the oddity of the last 200 + years in the west. All kinds of things have been bouncing around in my head for the past few days: the empire state building honoring a murderous regime that can only think of humanity in blocks of 100,000 and considers the individual a dangerous aberration, a book called We Are Doomed: Recovering Conservative Pessimism, a bumper sticker proclaiming it is the U.S.’s fault that Cuba is poverty-stricken, the idiocy that is the UN and our participation with it, the history of the Bill of Rights and its expansion beyond all rationality, etc.

All of this gives me a wonderful pessimistic hope. Here we are at the tail end of one of the best moments in human history. Freedom has conquered the west and held it for close to a century, interrupted here and there sure but we have pushed back tyranny and held it from our shores. Allowing for all kinds of advance that never could have happened in any other circumstance. But I can see this all ending, we have given up the fight, and so soon we will lose. Of course it is possible that there might be a Renaissance, Reformation and Great Awakening again and preserve it a bit long but in the end Oppression will win.

Now I am not in some Glenn Beck hyper-panic, and I hope I never am. I can see it ending but there is no reason to believe that humanity is finished and when America perishes, so does all joy and happiness. That is the silliest of all conceits (the one that the west is the most guilty of), believing that anyone that doesn’t live in my circumstances must be miserable. Humans will still have fun, families will still be the source of joy, works of art will still be made (better ones, I believe, on account of the cost that it will take to make them), laughter will still be heard and the world will still offer great beauty that all can enjoy for free.

But there is a price to be paid for the blessing that we have enjoyed. We will be turned into the worst of me, Hallow Men, for a time. Well, not we that are reading this, but our children. They will be the over scheduled, hyper organized, super pampered generation. This is the generational toll.

The great friend of Oppression and enemy of Freedom has always been security. Strong offer it to weak, governments to citizens, companies to consumers in exchange for a bit of freedom. Throughout history this is the great assistant to the tyrants.

Now here is the greatest of all ironies: we don’t have any real security risks in our nation, nothing foreign, economic or military, can touch us, so we invent our risks. Pedophiles are everywhere! Five kids died last year because they weren’t in child seats until age 21! The Germans are better at Math! There are thieves! Etc.

As a result of all these invented fears we kill our children’s freedoms and ours. The kids have to play only in the backyard unless we are there to closely supervise them. Gone are the days of eight years olds riding their bikes to the park and playing with whoever may be there. (A lot of people I know are actually shuddering at the suggestion that is even a possibility in my mind). We sap huge amounts of money and effort to tie the kids in. Gone is the freedom to even change seats during a drive. (I remember playing tag around and over the seats of a suburban my parents owned, I don’t even know if it had seatbelts for us kids). And yearly we hear calls for year-round schooling so our kids can “keep up”. (I will one day write a blog on America’s education). We have given up all of our kids’ freedom for fake security (playing in the backyard protects the kids from alien attacks!) and so they won’t expect any freedoms when they grow up. This is how we lost.

But there is still happiness, kids still sneak out and meet friends from the neighborhood, they still sneak out of their restraints and they still have fun. In the end if we loose America, that will be sad, but fun will still exist perhaps it will exist in greater abundance.

Managment By Walking Around

When I was in undergrad, I used to hang around with a diverse group of people in the union. One of the things that I remember from our discussions is the management style of MBWA (Management By Walking Around). I (not being a business major) have no idea if it is a real strategy, but my business major friend said it was so I will assume it exists. The most famous practitioner of this style is Bill Lumberg from Office Space (the "Yeah..I'm going to need you to work this Saturday (sip form the coffee) if that's ok", guy). Walking around trying to keep people from goofing off and inspire them to work harder.

Now there may be something to say for this but there is an obvious flaw here. If the boss is running around all day, the drones look at him and conclude that he is doing no work. He soon gets the reputation of a lazy man that only got his job because he kissed the right bum and now is surviving by stealing other peoples ides. This reputation only gets worse if, when asked about the work his division is doing the boss seems uninformed and equivocates until he can pass the ball to a subordinate. In the end the boss loses the confidence of those he manages and becomes a joke.


What is happening to President Obama and his presidency is that he uses MBWA. In the last few months during the healthcare debate, before that for the stimulus debate, and for everything else that he wants to manage, he loves to walk around. As far as I can tell in the first eight months of his presidency Obama has spent 5 whole days in D.C. and the Whitehouse. the rest of the time he is running around in Europe, Latin America, or some backwater in the U.S. Every day he gives a speech in these places and tries to inspire new confidence in every one that listens.

When he lands back in D.C. at the end of his trip he goes out to meet his bosses (he got to where he is by kissing the media's bum after all) and answer their questions. But he is wretched in this aspect. He stumbles around, equivocates, tells horrible jokes and then passes the ball to an "expert" from congress. Even when something gets done, like the stimulus bill, he seems to have no idea what it is made up of and at a loss as to how it works.

All of this gives our new President an aura of incompetence. But it is the worst type of incompetence: lazy incompetence. I don't know anyone that would argue that he isn't able to understand these things, or that he couldn't write a bill if he wanted. No, he can, we all know he can. But he seems to prefer his coffee and the freedom to fly around the world when ever he wants to doing real work. This, I think, explains his amazing drop in popularity and the fear the citizens have of his speechifying. Tonight we will hear his speech and a large number are afraid of hearing, "Um...yeah...i'm going to need you (sip of coffee) to give up everything that you think of as medicine...if that's ok...and ummmm...we're going to need you to work a few saturdays to pay for it."