My Favorite Democrat Got It Right Again

My favorite Democrat has always been former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. He understood human nature and how government policies would actually hurt the people they claimed to help. He understood that the War on Poverty would destroy the African-American family structure (and eventually the white family structure) and he also understood the long-term impact of the Higher Education Act passed in 1965.

Today The Federalist posted an article about higher education in America that deals with some of the issues behind the indoctrination that is currently happening on our college campuses.

The article reports:

Far too many pundits believe culture is upstream from politics. That might be true, but bad policy is often upstream of culture. And it is shocking how often Republicans use the “culture” trope as an excuse for long-running inaction and lack of serious thought on needed policy changes.

One such example is higher education. Speakers such as Heather Mac Donald have done an excellent job of highlighting examples of the far-left bias that is prevalent at America’s higher ed institutions. Conservative YouTube channels are great at highlighting the perils of conservative speakers attempting to speak on various campuses.

But few address the elephant in the room. Taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the entrenched and blatant anti-American and anti-Christian bent in our colleges and universities.The huge budgets of these colleges — and their ability to pay professors well over six figures to teach for only several hours a week, only during the school year — is entirely the result of choices our elected officials have made.

…It started in 1965, when as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s fateful Great Society, Congress passed the Higher Education Act. Among other things, the legislation introduced subsidized student loans to increase the number of Americans attending college, and it has been reauthorized multiple times since. Ever since, the terms of those loans have become more generous (the subsidization has increased).

The effects have been predictable, and many did predict them. For example, Democrat Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, early in his career as a policy wonk, warned the system would lead to higher college costs.

Generally speaking, more money chasing after something raises its price. But the money chasing after higher ed is uniquely dulled of its price sensitivity. Borrowers are young and have little perspective about how much they are borrowing. These young, subsidized borrowers are also robbed of price signals, as everyone gets the same rate no matter what major he or she chooses.

The article points out that college costs have increased dramatically since 1965–the costs have increased much more quickly that the rate of inflation (four times faster than inflation since 1978).

The article continues:

Nevertheless, Congress certainly succeeded in its goal of more Americans attending college: Almost 70 percent of high school graduates now enroll in college, and the percentage of Americans aged 25 to 34 years old who have a secondary degree has moved from about 25 percent in 1990 to almost 50 percent today. But although college on average still provides a positive return on investment, that return has dropped significantly. Here’s The Economist, again:

By the universities’ own measures, this [binge of money and increase of administrators] has produced splendid results. Students are more than twice as likely to receive ‘A’ grades now than in 1960. When outsiders do the grading, however, they are less impressed: One study found that 36% of students ‘did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning’ over four years of college.

For many Americans, the return on college is negative. Part of this is because many Americans going to college are ill-suited for it. For example, 40 percent of American students fail to get a four-year degree within six years of enrolling.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is fascinating. In the meantime, encourage you child to attend trade school instead of college. In the very near future, electricians, plumbers, and mechanics will have more job opportunities than engineers.

Some Clarity On The Ferguson Grand Jury

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article in the National Review Online about the Grand Jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson.

Mr. McCarthy sums up the story as follows:

All very reasonable, but let’s not pretend reason has anything to do with what happened in Ferguson this week. In Liberal Fascism’s focus on myth, Jonah recalls Mussolini’s assertion, “It is faith that moves mountains, not reason. Reason is a tool, but it can never be the motive force of the crowd.” The crowd in Ferguson was moved to riot on the article of a false faith that condemns America and its police forces as incorrigibly racist. It is from this condemnation that all purported “reasoning” proceeds.

Such reasoning dictates that our constitutional right not to be indicted in the absence of just cause should be subordinated to the mob’s demand for a public trial. Succeeding in that legerdemain, it next dictates that our constitutional right not to be convicted in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt be subordinated to the mob’s demand for a guilty verdict.

Such a verdict that would have had only the most tangential connection to the tragedy of an 18-year-old’s death or a police officer’s well-founded fear for his life. But it would have fed the myth.

The article reminds us that the American Left has fostered the myth that white policemen kill black teenagers. There is no reference to the amount of crime committed by black teenagers, we are simply supposed to buy the myth at face value–it is useful for manipulating crowds.

The article points out that the discussion of Grand Jury rules and procedures was irrelevant:

As it turns out, there was no need to thumb the legal treatises of Blackstone or Joseph Story. If you were going to hit the books, Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism would have served you better. Brilliantly illustrating modern liberalism’s roots in 20th-century progressivism — a movement as comfortable marching lockstep with Stalin as it was borrowing copiously from Mussolini — Jonah homes in on the centrality of myth. It is irrelevant whether an idea around which the Left’s avant-garde rouse the rabble is true; the point is the idea’s power to mold consciousness and rally the troops.

It is unfortunate that a young man is dead. It is also unfortunate that the young man chose to rob a store and attack a policeman. (The forensic evidence confirms the fact that Michael Brown did attack Darren Wilson.) However, it is also unfortunate that a good policeman has resigned the force and had his life negatively impacted by simply defending his own life.

The mob mentality here is right in line with Saul Alinsky‘s Rules for Radicals. The article explains:

Darren Wilson was a white cop and Michael Brown was a black teenager killed in a violent confrontation with Wilson. Therefore, Brown was the victim of a cold-blooded, racially motivated murder, Q.E.D. That is the myth, and it will be served — don’t bother us with the facts.

Once you’ve got that, none of the rest matters. In fact, at the hands of the left-leaning punditocracy, the rest was pure Alinsky: a coopting of language — in this instance, the argot of grand-jury procedure — to reason back to the ordained conclusion that “justice” demanded Wilson’s indictment for murder. And, of course, his ultimate conviction.

What the ‘protestors’ (thugs and criminals) gained from destroying their own city I don’t know. I wonder if the Nike sneakers were worth the fact that there will no longer be a place to buy sneakers in the town. Very few of the violent protestors were actually from the town, which tells us that this whole scenario was a planned show to manipulate the low-information voter by using the low-information media. The really sad part of this story was that innocent people had their businesses destroyed and their lives ruined by the actions of people driven by rage caused by misinformation they were given. They were played.