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We’re back! After a hiatus for a week while Steve was overseas, we return to the bar with some new whiskies and a sequel to our last episode that talked about the hysterical attacks on our friends at the Claremont Institute. Little did we know the liberal hysteria was just getting started!
Damon Linker, the columnist at The Week and a previous guest on this podcast, thinks our Claremont friends are going all-in for dictatorship. This seems a bit overwrought, but it provides a good occasion for a genuine example of “Caesarism” in the form of Franklin Roosevelt and especially his imperious and authoritarian First Inaugural Address. Most people recall only one famous line from the speech—”We have nothing to fear but fear itself” (did FDR’s speechwriters actually get this from a newspaper ad? We review the evidence). Much less recalled are FDR’s multiple references to how the American people needed and wanted “discipline,” and that he was more than ready to be the disciplinarian, especially if Congress didn’t step up and grant him the extraordinary powers he wanted.
Just imagine what the left would say if Trump had said anything like this. Also, is it really correct to call Edmund Burke “the Jane Fonda of the American Revolution”? Curtis Yarvin thinks so, and it briefly throws Lucretia off her game. But not to worry; she recovers quickly and puts Burke back in stir.
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I can only surmise that when the hosts “don’t want to mention” names it is because of a fear of honest engagement with arguments? It sometimes seems that the bravery shown shown by one unnamed in disparaging Edmund Burke is that he is unable to defend himself.
It’s so refreshing to listen to people who have common sense. I wish you had a talk show on CNN so the other side could get a reasonable point of view.
On U.S. Military officers, and their education.
When they become captain (O-3) or Major, they are expected to spend two years in graduate school. They could be one of the military staff colleges or a civilian school.
In today’s competitive environment, it’s required for promotion to Lt Colonel.
So the exposure to political correctness continues.
By the way, it’s a pretty good deal financially. They can go to a civilian school for two years and the military pays for everything, not just tuition and books, but residency. And that includes your family. Civilians have to shell out a lot of money for graduate school, which are considered profit centers for universities. Undergraduate degrees are loss leaders subsidized by state and federal governments.
It’s unheard of for an officer in paygrade O-6 (full Colonel or Navy Captain) not to have a graduate degree.
By the way, while there is a path for young junior members to make officer (bachelor degree required), there is no longer any such thing as a battlefield commission which were awarded in World War II and before (not sure about Korea). I no of no such promotions during Vietnam and none during our more recent conflicts.
When Pete Wilhelm received an award named after my father, someone mentioned that they were the only two people in the meeting who did not have a PhD. They didn’t do too badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_L._Easton
https://servicetoamericamedals.org/honorees/peter-wilhelm/
The insistence on advanced degrees when they’re not needed for the job wastes a tremendous amount of resources.
I could not agree more about your point regarding advanced degrees. At the risk of taking this off on a tangent you never intended, I would mention that such insistence has also led to the proliferation of shoddy, academically inferior graduate programs–both online and at more traditional universities–that provide the necessary “credentials” without any concomitant increase in knowledge, critical thinking, or intelligence. As an example, public school teachers (who score among the lowest as a profession on the SAT) are rewarded with massive incentives to earn Master’s or even Ed.D. degrees. The curriculum in these graduate programs in education, which at best focuses on “pedagogy” and “teaching methodologies” and at worst is leftist propaganda and indoctrination, produces graduates who are for the most part stolid, unintelligent, and vapid. And this is just one example of the dumbing down of graduate studies–there are dozens of others.
I was an original USAF Race Relations Officer almost exactly 50 years ago. Never could I imagine—especially as one of the few White RR Officers—that a Gen.Milley attitude could earn you 1, much less 4 stars.
Obviously, the Left overtook that function and what was NEVER WOKE is now WOKE and broke.
If they blab the names of people who spoke to them off the record, people won’t speak to them off the record.
P.S.: Edmund Burke didn’t use arguments based on “natural law” because he had to convince people who didn’t believe in natural law.
The public education establishment doesn’t want to measure outcomes (i.e. actual benefits, if any), so it measures inputs instead, like how much is being spent, and what kinds of fancy degrees teachers and administrators have.
Credentialism is also driven by the fact that employers are not allowed to use IQ tests, due to “disparate impact”.