I attended a public panel discussion not too long ago on the subject of curriculum reform sponsored by the Society for the College, an organization for which I happen to serve on the board. A particular point of contention among faculty was whether or not there should be some sort of writing composition requirement, something that both the Society and panelist Michael Poliakoff of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni support.

Poliakoff's criticism was not welcomed by the faculty who were at this meeting. The faculty, as well as Teresa Longo, our Dean of Educational Policy, insisted that writing was taught by "embedding" it in the instruction of other courses. Instead of completing a Writing 101 type class as students used to some decades ago, today's students complete a Lower Division Writing Requirement- typically in the form of a freshman seminar- and an Upper Division Writing Requirement in the form of a senior colloquium. Students are apparently supposed to absorb this writing ability throughout their coursework without taking a specific writing class.

There is, of course, a tiny snag with this whole setup. It doesn't work. I have had maybe one professor actually take serious instruction time to teach us about quality writing, and his advice boiled down to "read Strunk & White." Sure, the quality of my writing has improved over the last three years, but only because I have figured out what works and what doesn't. If professors are teaching us how to write, they are so brilliantly subtle that no one has noticed. To be honest, I don't want history professors to teach me how to write; I would much rather that they teach history.

No matter how tedious it may be, a lot of students would probably benefit from some kind of composition requirement. If we assume that writing skill is important, it is far better for it to be taught on its own than for professors to awkwardly cram it in next to their research interests. Both my freshman seminar and my upper level seminar were quite writing intensive, and were taught by good professors, but apart from consulting on the content of our papers, we were never given advice on good writing. I suspect a large part of the problem is getting people to spend two and half hours per week teaching composition.

I love my Thin Mints as much as the next guy, but I never considered that "the next guy" might actually be the one selling them to me.

After initially making the decision that he couldn't join the Girl Scouts of Colorado, the group has since decided that it will allow 7-year-old Bobby Montoya to join because he is "living life like a girl."

In one fell swoop, in both a seemingly politically correct and incorrect line of reasoning, the Girl Scouts of Colorado has both said that there is and isn't a difference between boys and girls. They've essentially looked the other way on gender to admit Bobby into the group, but then used a standard for determining between a boy and a girl to deliberate the difference.  

Here's the important snippets of the official statement:

"Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization and we accept all girls in Kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout... In this case, an associate delivering our program was not aware of our approach... We are accelerating our support systems and training so that we're better able to serve all girls, families and volunteers."

This, of course, chooses to ignore how they will "better [be] able to serve all girls, families and volunteers" who are involved because it is "the world's preeminent organization dedicated solely to girls." That last quotation is how the Girl Scouts of the USA describes itself. It's compromised not just a core value, but its entire definition.

It's fitting that Dennis Prager touched on this sort of issue when he said that liberalism is compromising principle for feeling. The organization felt for Bobby and his mother (who, in the video, asks "What's the big deal" if he's a boy and wants to join) and has therefore abandoned what it was that made the Girl Scouts an important institution for young girls everywhere.

The Girl Scouts will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year and, coincidently, the state of Colorado is seeking to create a special license plate to honor the occasion. What's the point? The message doesn't reflect the reality of commemorating a century of empowering girls, particularly in the state now. But, as we saw, it's no longer about actually "being" what you are, but just "living like" it.  

I was listening to the Dennis Prager show today, and in the last hour he had Thomas Sowell on (both of whom have been guests on Ricochet's podcast these last few weeks). One caller asked if Dr. Sowell thought Herman Cain's claim that he could get 30% of the black vote was reasonable- Sowell said he didn't think it could happen.

He then said something that really hit home- "the Jewish vote is almost as pro-Democratic as the black vote, and with even less reason." Dennis chuckled after hearing that- and so did I.

I used the word "brainwash" in the title  because it's a fun way to align what Herman Cain said about blacks to what we see with the Jewish vote. But more substantively, I'd like to start a discussion here on the following question- why is the Jewish vote so consistently "pro-Democrat" (or, if you will, why are Jews so often liberals?)

To be a conservative it often seems that you have to have some degree of pessimism, standing athwart history yelling "stop," all the while bemoaning whatever it is the kids are doing these days. I was in one of those moods last night as I read Lea Halim's commentary at NRO on the recent article in The Atlantic by Kate Bolick. I haven't had the chance to read Bolick's article in full yet, but the declining state of marriage and the family, as well as lessening cultural appreciation of men, permeated what I did read, putting me in one of my ghastly Steynian "everything is going to hell in a hand basket" moods.

Those who pay attention to the mainstream media as well as the conservative blogosphere are well aware that traditional marriage and the family have been facing great challenges over the past few decades. At least every other week I read or hear something to the effect that men are useless slackers with no purpose, women are taking over all of the professions, kids are failing in our schools, and in ten years our male-deprived, undereducated, decadent society will have imploded into a godless, cannibalistic feeding frenzy. In describing these challenges, it is easy to drift into overstatement, which derives from what I call the Broken Refrigerator Problem. Unless you are an appliance salesman, presumably you do not spend much time thinking or talking about refrigerators, unless of course, it is broken. When your Frigidair is humming along swimmingly, all is as it should be, but when it breaks, it becomes cause for complaint.I will not deny that there appear to be serious problems with the state of marriage and families nowadays, but whenever we read about The Next Thing That Will Destroy the Family, it may be another broken refrigerator- an exception to what is otherwise relatively well functioning.

I brought this up with a pastoral couple today, and they seemed sympathetic to my concerns about the health of family values in today's society, particularly among people my age. They did, however, point to what is known as Tuchman's Law coined by historian Barbara Tuchman:

The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five to tenfold (or any figure the reader would care to supply).

This isn't to say that we shouldn't care about where marriage is headed as an institution, or what's the matter with kids these days. The point is that things aren't always bad. It makes for bad TV, but it's true. I hope my negligible optimism might be pardoned, but I would like to think that in the long term, things will be better.

Here is a fairly absurd lawsuit that gives rise to a much more legitimate question.

PETA is bringing SeaWorld to court for purported violations of the 13th Amendment--the constitutional ban on slavery. From the AP:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is accusing the SeaWorld parks of keeping five star-performer whales in conditions that violate the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. SeaWorld depicted the suit as baseless.

The chances of the suit succeeding are slim, according to legal experts not involved in the case; any judge who hews to the original intent of the authors of the amendment is unlikely to find that they wanted to protect animals. But PETA relishes engaging in the court of public opinion, as evidenced by its provocative anti-fur and pro-vegan campaigns.

The suit, which PETA says it will file Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Diego, hinges on the fact that the 13th Amendment, while prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, does not specify that only humans can be victims.

Jeff Kerr, PETA's general counsel, says his five-member legal team — which spent 18 months preparing the case — believes it's the first federal court suit seeking constitutional rights for members of an animal species.

The notable debate here is not whether SeaWorld treats its animals like slaves. After all, the marine park is already regulated by the Marine Mammals Protection Act. In fact, the interesting question is whether animals should be treated as more than legal property. The article continues:

However, the field of animal law has evolved steadily, with courses taught at scores of law schools. Many prominent lawyers and academics have joined in serious discussion about expanding animal rights.

Rutgers University law professor Gary Francione, for example, contends that animals deserve the fundamental right to not be treated as property. Law professor David Favre of Michigan State University has proposed a new legal category called "living property" as a step toward providing rights for some animals.

It seems to me that categorizing the whales at SeaWorld as slaves is ridiculous. However, I think the notion of animals as more than simple property does bear consideration.

It's finally happened. An #Occupy protest has started right outside my dorm. I was walking this Saturday to go to get a sandwich when I noticed about ten people holding signs and wearing masks. It only took a few moments for me to realize that this was no ordinary small crowd- this was one of those Occupy Wall Street knock-offs.

On the way back, the tiny gathering of liberals wasn't even there. However, it turns out an actually kind-of-big crowd should up a week earlier. My school's paper reported on it last week. 

According to the Occupy Peoria/ Bradley Action Committee Facebook page, the protesters wanted to “spread the Occupy Wall Street movement in a peaceful grassroots method,” and is based on the movement in New York City. The original protesters in New York are fighting against corporations in America, claiming they are running our government, using unmerited practices and placing money over individuals.  They called for students across the nation to come together, despite political standpoints, to demand change.

The Bradley students participating in Occupy Peoria focused on similar issues, as well as injustice at Bradley. The Facebook page argues, “Bradley students must overcome the stereotypical apathy that Bradley [University] is known for.”

But perhaps the most egregious misinterpretation of American history displayed by these protesters can be seen the photo above. This is the rabble standing outside of Peoria's courthouse, taking pictures with an Abraham Lincoln statue. I recall Peter Robinson and Larry Arnn talking about how Lincoln actually had a couple of famous speeches in Peoria. Now, call me crazy, but I imagine President Lincoln wouldn't be so quick to smile for the camera if he were alive today.

Although commentators often (correctly) note that liberals reject the principles of our heroes, like the founders and later Lincoln, and instead have an agenda of their own. However, I feel this idea is not expressed enough in today's political arena.

I recently stumbled upon the American Communist Party's website. After reporting them to HUAC, I decided to take a look at what an American Communist party would look like... and towards the beginning of their site's timeline, I found this lovely piece of literature: "The Declaration of Independence from Capitalism."

While using the same formula as the American founders, masquerading as their ideological brothers,  they simultaneously reject everything the founders stood for. This line is my favorite:

"We are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... a job, to health care, to education, to privacy, to control our own bodies, to organize and assemble, to be free of racial, national and gender oppression."

Not to compare Nancy Pelosi to Chairman Mao, but is this much different from the Democratic Party's current platform? How hard is it for a Republican politician to get on a stage and say something along the lines of, "the Democrats, including the President, reject the principles that made our nation the most prosperous state in human history?"

I'm as big of a fan of candidates bumping each others plans as the next guy. But even in my youth, I'm  willing to bet that a majority of Americans have a deep respect for our Washingtons, Madisons, and Lincolns. And when a voter can see how messed up it is for these OWS statists to align themselves with these figures, said voter will be much more likely to select a conservative candidate as opposed to a technocrat.

Perhaps this approach is naive- judging by the fact that Mike Murphy has a job, I'm assuming this is indeed an unconventional way of looking at things (unless you're one of those, you know, Tea Party hobbit types.)

In his slobbering praise of the Obama White House, actor Steven Weber calls for a Nuremberg Tribunal to try the right (h/t Newsbusters).

The scale of Right Wing sociopolitical sabotage necessitates a Nuremberg-scale trial for all the corporate agents and treasonous capitalisto-fascist architects of our democracy's current and most pressing misery.

This is apparently what passes for hard-hitting commentary over at Huffpo. The sad part is, I'm not entirely convinced this is completely out of character with where the left is right now. My late grandfather used to say that some of the most illiberal people in the world are liberals. This appears to be true; I haven't heard anybody on the right call for a mass trial of all of the Constitution's offenders on the left. It is scary to think that I can imagine some fairly reasonable people on the left arguing for public action against their political opponents justified under some notion of public interest. I'm not holding my breath for the Nuremberg-style trials for the damage caused by some of the Great Society programs either.

Woke up this morning to find this little puppy in my inbox.  Quite a pleasant surprise, and it brings to ink (or pixels, I suppose) my thoughts exactly!

“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas. 
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are. 
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that. 
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much. 
So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours. 
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom. 
We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?” 

Several outlets reported this weekend that Fox News has hired former Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford as a contributor to its 2012 election coverage.

I know this is only a position as a commentator on a network that already has strong opinions both in support and opposition of it, but this type of hire does more harm to the brand than good. After denouncing CNN for giving Eliot "Client-9" Spitzer a position, why follow that trend by offering one to another former governor involved in a sex scandal?

The question here is an old one: does personal baggage really matter when we're evaluating anyone from presidential candidates to pundits? If we're deciding whether or not someone has a integrity, then their personal character is definitely worth taking into consideration. My fear is that Fox News will suffer by association. I can already see Stewart, Colbert, and Saturday Night Live continuing with their demagoguery of Fox News by showing clips of Sanford saying something somewhat judgmental, reminding their viewers of his affair, and furthering the audience's misguided perception of Fox News as illegitimate.

I know Sanford has apologized, and I'm willing to forgive people for their shortcomings and past mistakes. I ultimately hope he does well and provides great insights. I guess my issue with all this rests in Fox News' decision - especially with the Murdoch's and the phone-hacking still on people's minds - and adding fodder to the fire.

Those that like Fox News will probably be able to move on and take him for what he is now: a talking head on a news-channel. Those that swear against it now have more reason to do, and I guess we just have to ask if that matters.  

This semester, construction has taken over much of the University of Minnesota campus. Formerly shrubs are now mounds of dirt and broken-up concrete, the all too familiar but irritating beeping that large trucks make infiltrate a once-enjoyable walk, and, most notably, chain-linked fences have created mini-mazes and reroutes. I'll be the first to admit it can be somewhat inconvenient at times.

With that said though, I came across this sign this morning, making light at how obstructive these fences have become:

Slightly altered from Peter's original line, it's hard to not smirk at reference. In less than 25 years, those words have already found themselves transcending their original usage, seeping into the cultural mainstream, where they're no longer defined by just their iconic moment, but by jokingly comparable moments where the original sentiment is still understood. It speaks volumes to the significance of its historical stage as well as the accessibility and notoriety of the line itself. It's a message that is both simple to grasp, but deep and wide-reaching in its meaning.

So, Ricochet community, what are other famous lines that have come to be so recognizable in such a short amount of time - let's say the last 25 years - that they can be used in a different context? Whether it's used humorously like the sign above or hearkening to the influence of its genesis, I'd be interested to see what quotations we already consider ageless.

I'm no huge fan of the Occupy Wall Street folks. To me, they come across as just a bunch of privileged whiners moaning about things they know nothing about. Nonetheless, the whole thing makes me proud of this country.

It is not the protesters themselves that inspire me, but how their others have behaved. The beauty of the First Amendment is that it allows even the foolish and the unhinged to say their bit. I wonder what would happen if there were mass protests in, for example, the People's Republic of Tom Friedman. If New York City were run by the Chinese Communist Party- which may not actually be too far from reality- they would have had tanks rolling in by now. The worst that the Evil Fascist Capitalist Imperialist Racist Tea Party Nazi Wall Street stooges can muster? One NYPD cop pepper spraying a protester

In capitalist America, we let you speak regardless of how foolish or ignorant you are, and we might throw you in a police van if you start acting out. In Soviet Russia, we engineer famines in Ukraine. Oh, how I love my country.

Are you ready for some race-baiting?

Sports and politics, much to the dismay of ESPN, mixed together when Hank Williams used an analogy involving Obama, Hitler, Netanyahu, and Boehner. Now his music has been taken out of the intro to Monday Night Football. Because of this, my mute button is feeling lonely.

Recently, when ranting about talks between the players and owners of the NBA, Bryant Gumbel of HBO's "Real Sports" (not to be confused with Showtime's "Imaginary Games") said that commissioner David Stern  "always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer treating NBA men as if they were his boys."

Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson Jr. must be very upset that someone would steal his favorite rhetorical tool.

When ESPN- owned by Disney- covers this story, they are probably not realizing how close this is to mixing politics and sports (as our buddy Hank knows, this isn't kosher). After all, racial politics are essentially the platform of the Democratic Party.

Not that it's ESPN's job to cover it, but when the CBC goes around saying things about the Tea Party, calling the 10th Amendment the "slave amendment," and other similarly ridiculous comments, the MSM won't say a thing. But when the one on the receiving end of the comment is the David Stern instead of the Tea Party, sports commentators are tripping over themselves trying to be the first one to condemn Gumbel for his comments.

Perhaps the biggest mistake Bryant Gumbel made when saying this was that he forgot to join the Congressional Black Caucus beforehand.

Inspired by Ethan's post on OWS & Judaism, here's an interesting article I came across.

The American Nazi Party is now supporting Occupy Wall Street. Have a look at their Twitter account and this article.

And, perhaps, this official statement.

I suppose that a movement such as OWS, that is one without explicit goals, is bound to draw in some unwanted support. It really is disturbing how easily a group like the ANP can take vague, angry discontent and run with it.

WaPo has a piece commenting on the unorthodox nature of Herman Cain's campaign. A comment from Phill Musser in the article struck me:

“If Facebook could be used to topple the Egyptian government, then perhaps Herman Cain can use it to win Iowa,” said Phil Musser, a Republican strategist who most recently worked for the short-lived presidential bid of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

Did Facebook really serve as the tool to topple the government in Egypt, and can social networking sites become the means of democratic election? The organizers of the uprisings across the middle east this past spring certainly give Facebook credit. I was reminded of a comment by Wael Ghonim, an organizer in Egypt, when he commented:

"We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I've always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet."

Does technology liberate society? Certainly it seems to increase the power of the individual voice. It makes free speech free, or at least lowers marginal costs for communicating to thousands. But the argument that increasing the options available to an individual increases liberty assumes a very unconstrained definition of freedom. It can be increased through material wealth -- even Facebook and the "cloud" require massive humming rows of very material servers in some datacenter basement.

This is why President Obama's push to make high speed internet a federally developed public utility makes sense to a progressive mind: It increases options; it increases freedom; it liberates the lower-classes.

In accordance with the podcast's guest this week, here's a great interview with Dr. Sowell regarding the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and the economy as a whole. I could try to summarize his points, but I wouldn't do it justice; better to hear it straight from him.

By the way, for 81, he looks great.

Someone posted this video on my school's Facebook group page thing. 

Power to the people! Hope and change! This is what democracy looks like! Make love not-

Although we've seen videos of anti-Semites parading in Obamavilles across the country, Jordana Horn of the Jerusalem Post has explored another side of the protest:

“There are a lot of Jews who have been really affected by the economy,” Rabbi Alana Suskin, a participant in Occupy DC, said. “There may be one synagogue in the country where no one has lost their jobs. Jews also have their poor. It’s the unspoken elephant in the room. Not everybody’s well off. Probably most Jews are part of the 99%.”

While Wall Street is the villain of the #OWS movement, #Occupy Judaism is just a clever name for Jews involved in the aforementioned group.

The whole article itself is worth reading, so I won't waste your time too much with my talking. However, if you don't feel like reading it, just let this quote sink in:

Sieradski called the Occupy movements “one of the most exciting things to happen in American Judaism."

Any mob (and if this isn't a mob, what is?) is predisposed to getting its share of nuts. But when the mob is fighting against financial institutions and "capitalism," I would have liked to have seen Jews in New York be a little more prudent in joining the Flea Party. 

By the way, I found the graphic in this post on the Occupy Judaism Facebook page. It's actually really funny. The term "Obamaville" isn't mine, nor is the "Flea Party."

This is one of the most depressing things I have seen in a while. My friend Paul Wilson from Media Research Center reports on this is as a growing trend in news coverage on this issue. CBS had a panel earlier tell their audience that marriage is basically obsolete. My favorite part is when Matt Titus says this:

''Think about it. Men are supposed to run around the forest and propagate the species and do it multiple times a day. Do you think that we're supposed to be with one person for the rest of our lives? It's unnatural, and if it was the case we probably would not be sitting here right now.''

Somebody please pull the irony alarm and evacuate the building before you laugh yourself to death. Whenever someone suggests that homosexuality is "unnatural"- a view which I don't necessarily endorse- the left cries foul at the intolerance of the right. Lots of other things are probably appropriate to the term "unnatural," a term these esteemed scholars don't seem to need to define. We could include television news in the unnatural category, but somehow I don't think the folks at CBS would care that much.

More disturbing is the use of the word "supposed" I've highlighted above. Don't you see? We don't need marriage because it's supposed to restrain us from doing something we're "supposed" to be doing. Obviously since we feel very strongly motivated to do something, presumably by our genetics, then that is what we're "supposed" to be doing. This would then mean that other "natural" behaviors- they must be natural because people are apparently strongly motivated to do them- should be condoned. This would include such niceties as child abuse, rape, and murder. All they have to do is read the Wikipedia article titled "appeal to nature" to see why this doesn't make sense.

As someone who hopes one day to be lucky enough to perpetuate this ancient institution, socially constructed or not, this whole segment makes me angry in ways I can't describe fully. This is one of those things that leads me to think my invitation to western civilization's funeral got lost in the mail.

I don't have much time, I have an Environmental Science midterm, but I will do well if I admit that being a global warming skeptic is "equivalent to thinking the earth is flat".

I had a chance to meet the candidates and their families, most of whom were very nice, polite, and seemed genuinely interested in what I as a student was up to. 

Mittens acted very presidential, spoke with clarity, and didn't do anything to make people think he wasn't the frontrunner.  During commercial breaks he was talking with the crowd and the moderators and seemed very confident.

Herman Cain I thought did a good job.  All 16 students in the focus group came out with favorable views and are riding the Cain Train.  The economy is his specialty and he had a good showing.  I was able to talk with him for a while on The Green after his appearance on Greta.

Perry needed to have a huge night, and as much I was pulling for him to be the second coming of Reagan, he let me down again.  He was really into energy independence, even when he was asked about health care.  He said him not having a jobs plan is excusable because he hasn't been running for as long as Mitt??  When he entered this race he was a force to be reckoned with, and he has quite a few bruises now because the fall from the top is a long way down.  I would love to see him make a comeback and articulate conservatism with passion and in an intelligent manner, but that isn't looking likely.

Gingrich is brilliant, he had a smile on his face the entire night.  He loves politics and debating and seemed excited to be a part of the process.  He has about as good of chance as winning as Joe Biden at this point though.

Michelle Bachmann spoke with clarity and intelligently, but will do little to help her cause.

Funny Observations:

1. Chris Christie's wife fell asleep.
2. The insane heckler was being escorted out and yelled "Don't f****** tase me b****!"
3. Michelle Bachmann was wearing high heels, had a lift on her chair, and a booster for her feet to look the same size as the other candidates.
4. Anytime Newt is off camera and moderators are talking he shakes his head and says "That's not true, that's just not true."

It was a great day for the Big Green community and I was honored and humbled to be a part of the process.

I am fortunate enough to be a part of the focus group and will be able to have some minor participation in the upcoming debate tonight.  I will have the chance to interact with the candidates and chat it up for a little bit. 

Anybody have any questions they are dying to ask a candidate?  I want to have some good questions in the vault. 

I will be sitting on stage next to the discussion table, so if you are watching keep an eye out for yours truly.  Tune in tonight at 8:00pm Eastern. 

This is the Bachmann bus pulling up today at 'The Hop'.

                After months of running in place, Herman Cain’s presidential run has finally gained traction.  Less than a month after Cain’s huge victory in the Florida straw poll, CBS News’ latest poll shows Cain ahead of Rick Perry and tied with Mitt Romney for the lead.  Up until now, coverage of the presidential race has focused on Romney and Perry.  However, there are plenty of reasons to believe Cain’s rise is more than a momentary surge.  Cain is far from a perfect candidate and there are challenges to his candidacy that I will discuss in my next post, but there are very good reasons to believe Cain could be the GOP nominee in 2012.

                One huge advantage Cain has over Romney and Perry is his lack of experience.  Because Cain has never cast a vote as an elected official, there is no official record of Cain’s positions aside from statements he’s made on the campaign trail.  The lack of any official record makes it hard to nail Cain’s feet to the floor and expose him as a less than perfect conservative.  This will allow Cain to expose Romney and Perry’s less than stellar records while running as a perfect Reaganite.  Cain can also use his lack of experience to paint himself as an outsider the same way Rick Scott did en route to the Governor’s Mansion in Florida.  Now is the perfect time for an outsider such as Cain to run for president as an alternative to those pesky career politicians.

                Cain can also use his rhetorical skill to secure the GOP nomination.  Cain has an ability to electrify an audience unmatched by anyone in the Republican field.  At the Florida straw poll, Cain drew multiple standing ovations and had to pause his speech roughly once a minute due to the uproarious applause coming from the crowd.  Keep in mind, this wasn’t a rally full of die-hard supporters.  Most of the people at this speech didn’t vote for Cain in the straw poll and even fewer would consider themselves die-hard Cain supporters.  Nonetheless, Cain had the crowd hanging on his every word and chanting along with his 9-9-9 tax plan. 

                Lastly, Cain is likely to be seen as the last resort for many conservatives.  With Rick Perry’s rapid decline in the polls, poor debate performances and inability to deal with his immigration and HPV demons and Sarah Palin and Chris Christie opting to stay out of the race, Cain will likely end up in a one-on-one matchup with Mitt Romney.  Romney’s positions on healthcare and TARP will prevent him from appealing to staunch conservatives in the GOP.  The narrative practically writes itself: Romney the moderate establishment candidate vs. Cain the conservative outsider in a battle to determine the future of the Republican Party.  Once this narrative is set, the conservative wing of the party will rally around Cain to prevent Romney from winning the nomination.  Put briefly, Cain is able.  He very well could be the dynamic conservative that Rick Perry was supposed to be.  Of course, Cain isn’t perfect, he faces many obstacles that I plan to discuss in my next post.  Nonetheless, the road to the GOP nomination could run through Atlanta. 

I don't know how  widespread this is, but it seems that the military aspects of history are departing from the historiography shown to students. The history department here offers one class on US military history from the Civil War to Vietnam, but battles and generals don't seem to be terribly important to many  people I've encountered who teach classes on history.

One class I took on the history of South Africa, for example, at least mentioned the Zulu War, but gave it little more than a mention, and the Boer Wars, to the best of my memory, were not much discussed beyond their role in creating the Union of South Africa. The professor who taught Britain from 1789 to present spent one sentence on the Napoleonic Wars, a sentence that began with Trafalgar, ended with Waterloo, and skipped over the British army's little package holiday in Iberia. I also remember that the only reading she assigned on the Second World War was about social upheaval in wartime Britain, and the role of women and West Indian immigrants.

The situation in American history appears to be marginally better. My class on the American Revolution assigned the war diary of Joseph Plumb Martin, and my seminar on the Revolution in the south assigned the Nathanael Greene papers from between October 1781 and January 1783. Particularly in the latter case, social histories still predominated. The former of these two professors actually did explain why there isn't as much emphasis on military history. I'm paraphrasing, but he more or less said that today's historians prefer not to think that the course of history is determined by the actions of a particular battalion on a particular day on a particular hill. Vast social forces appear to the preferred determinant in the affairs of men.

I'm no Great Man theorist, and I'm not in favor of the primacy of war in teaching history, although I will say it is one of the most interesting aspects of it. I just find it disturbing that there appears to be a deliberate attempt to sideline it. As California mandates the teaching of gay history in its schools, maybe it's time to make sure students know about the contributions of our nation's servicemen, and the stories of how great men have changed history by making decisive choices at critical times. Next to every other aspect of history students have to learn, this omission is embarrassing.

If you, fellow Ricochet reader, do not support same sex marriage, or as the Huffington Post calls it, "anti- gay" or against "gay rights," you're about to face the deepest argument yet.

Hat tip Huffington Post (skip to 20 seconds): 

Wow! What a great debate. I'm sure the guy arguing with Rove really worked hard planning out what he was going to say. And wait- there's more.

OK, now in all seriousness, I don't care what you think about DADT or SSM (yay initialisms), this is just a little sad. Sure it's harmless to throw glitter at someone, but if you're so confident in your position, how hard is it to argue?

It has come to my attention that our financial institutions are not performing at the level expected for the profits they receive. People are losing their jobs. Obama's approval rating isn't high enough. And worst of all, some people actually still have to work.

If these grievances are not corrected by the next election, revolution is the only acceptable compromise.

Demand 1: Free health for everyone. Forget about insurance companies or doctors- let's get rid of the middle-man. We have public schools, public parks, and public broadcasting. It's time we have perfect public health. If Wall Street allows one person to become unhealthy, we will continue the revolution.

Demand 2: Palestine must become a state. A United State. Israeli influence is preventing the annexation of Palestine as the 51st American state.

Demand 3: One trillion dollars worth of Mike & Ike stimulus. The delicious candies must be dropped (packaged or not-packaged) from the loving hands of Peace Corpseman every day at 3PM.

Demand 4: We demand the upheaval of all jails, prisons, and other types of correctional facilities. These will each be replaced with a kibbutz, which was invented by the Palestinians (despite alternate historical interpretations).

Demand 5a: Free college tuition.

Demand 5b: Free graduate school tuition.

Demand 5c: Free pens, pencils, textbooks, and all other additional costs originally placed on us by Wall Street.

Demand 5d: Free pizza delivery. No tips are necessary in a world with free health.

Demand 6: Free medical marijuana. This doesn't conflict with the first demand, it strengthens it. NOTE: If you like your drug dealer, you can keep him. This is simply a public option.

Demand 7: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants. (h/t Anonymous. Or should I say, Guy Fawkes mask tip.)

Demand 8: No negative consequences for any actions whatsoever.

The title explains it all. Obama has recruited pop star Shakira to serve on his Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

I, for one, would be eager to see some credentials.

                Yesterday, two men in Yuba City, California broke into the upscale home of two retired doctors, tied the couple up, and proceeded to go through the couple’s home stealing valuables before making off with their Lexus.  We can all agree that these two men are extremely greedy.  Stealing someone’s property requires enough greed to believe you have a right to use force in order to take what is not yours.  In fact, we can all agree that stealing is the greediest thing an individual can do. 

                Let’s go back to the scenario in Yuba City.  Suppose these two gentlemen demanded that the retired couple forfeit 20% of their possessions and threatened the couple they would be taken prisoner if they refused.  Are they still greedy?  Most of us would still agree that the two men are greedy.  You have to be very greedy to forcibly demand someone else give you something that doesn’t belong to you. 

                Moving away from Yuba City, let’s take a look at the Occupy Wall Street protests.  For now, I’ll ignore the negative impact these protests are having on small businesses in New York City.  I’ll also ignore the fact that the Occupy Wall Street shirts on CafePress cost at least $24 (Something tells me the middle and lower class doesn’t have $24 to spend on a t-shirt that probably smells like weed mixed with hippie body odor.)  I’ll even assume that all the protestor’s allegations are true and everyone in the free market is a greedy, capitalist pig.  Even if businessmen are selfish materialists, they at least don’t try to take the property of others by force.  You can say what you want about Wal-Mart, but no one from the Walton family has deducted money from my paycheck by force.  No Wall Street investor has ever threatened to imprison anyone and seize their property unless they hand over 30% of their annual income.   The Occupy Wall Streeters, on the other hand, are demanding that the government give them property it took from other people by force.  If the thieves in Yuba City are greedy for taking money from others by force, how are the Occupy Wall Street protestors any different?  I’ll actually give the two crooks from Yuba City credit.  At least they had the initiative to carry out the theft themselves, the protestors are too lazy to commit their own theft.  Even if everyone in the private sector is greedy, they’re still not as greedy as all the Occupy Wall Street protestors who are demanding they reap the benefits of government-sanctioned theft. 

It arrived in my house when I was still a toddler. It had 5 MB of disk space. And I learned to play Treasure MathStorm and Treasure Galaxy on it. Soon, it was out-of-date, slow, and could not cope up with the memory requirements of the roaring 1990's. Apple seemed like it was going to die, and my family joined the Windows revolution. And through all of it, no matter what anyone said about Apple, my first memories of playing with a computer always brought a sort of fuzzy, nostalgic feeling when I heard the name. I was so, so happy when they roared back to life in the 2000's.

Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur, an inventor, it is true. He, perhaps more than any other individual, made the Computer Age, which gave birth to the Internet Age, the story of my generation. Our generation grew up with his genius woven into the fabric of everything we did, even if we never bought a Mac. But, however abrasive he may have been as a person, he was also the rarest breed of being: a hero. Great entrepreneurs see what people want and give it to them. Heros see what people haven't even realized they want, and they make it happen. Heros add beauty to the world, and Steve Jobs was the consummate artist of the Computer Age: he believed that nerdiness could dare to look beauty in the face. He made the cliches come true. He was the ugly duckling, raised by adoptive parents, who dropped out of college and became a swan: the toast of Silicon Valley. He literally "built his company out of a garage." He was the American Dream. RIP Steve Jobs.

Or at least something like it. I am just as disdainful of the postmodern babble that comes out of a lot of Women's Studies programs as the next guy, but I think it is worth making some disciplinary distinctions. I actually do think it is perfectly legitimate to have an academic interest in women's roles in societies. I would only quibble with how the academy defines such a study.

It is perfectly legitimate, for example, for a historian to want to study the role of women in a particular place and time. I don't see how this should be any more or less legitimate than someone wanting to study the role of German or Irish immigrants. Although I myself am not particularly interested in the field of women's history, I have read some interesting material on, for example, the contributions of women to transatlantic trade networks in the 18th century.

Women's Studies is now an interdisciplinary field reaching into history, English, and other areas of study. Even this I don't find terribly objectionable. The real problem is not that this field exists at all, but what it actually stands for. Women's Studies is really just one more outlet, in addition to so many of the social sciences, for Social Constructivist and Relativist Theories of Everything.

In fairness, I have never been masochistic enough to subject myself to a Women's Studies class, but I have enough exposure to it through the news media and social science literature to have some general ideas about it. When I make snide and sarcastic generalizations about Women's Studies and other social sciences, I am complaining not about their existence, but what appears to be their role as little more than left wing social theory wrapped up in academic language. I would actually be able to take Women's Studies more seriously if their work were more closely modeled after that of historians in their field rather than that of social scientists, who will never abandon their penchant for making verbs out of nouns, and stating ideas in ways that people with brains can't understand.

I would like to share Reverend Dr. Lucias Waterman's (1851-1923) prayer for Dartmouth College.

 "O Lord God Almighty, well-spring of wisdom, master of power, guide of all growth, giver of all gain. We make our prayer to thee, this day, for Dartmouth College. Earnestly entreating thy favour for its people. For its work, and for all its life. Let thy hand be upon its officers of administration to make them strong and wise, and let thy word make known to them the hiding-place of power. Give to its teachers the gift of teaching, and make them to be men right-minded and high-hearted. Give to its students the spirit of vision, and fill them with a just ambition to be strong and well-furnished, and to have understanding of the times in which they live. Save the men of Dartmouth from the allurements of self-indulgence, from the assaults of evil foes, from pride of success, from false ambitions, from hardness, from shallowness, from laziness, from heedlessness, from carelessness of opportunity, and from ingratitude for sacrifices out of which their opportunity has grown. Make, we beseech thee, this society of scholars to be a fountain of true knowledge, a temple of sacred service, a fortress for the defense of things just and right, and fill the Dartmouth spirit with thy spirit, to make it a name and a praise that shall not fail, but stand before thee forever. We ask in the name in which alone is salvation, even through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen."

These are the principles Dartmouth was founded on.  Imagine if colleges still stood for these ideals?  Now we are too busy with things like Sexperts, Atheists Forums, and countless other examples of this generations moral decay.

Perhaps we can take this prayer to heart and use it as a light to others on our campuses.