Reinventing The Bushman

Friday, April 18th, 2008

Fred Reed notes that we’re reinventing the bushman:

I imagine taking a bushman from some hitherto undiscovered Pacific isle and setting him down in front of a television in, say, Washington. The fellow would be astounded. He might say, “Whoa, boss! Heap magic! Spirits inside, talk talk. Bad juju.” He would have no idea how the babbling box worked, or of the civilization that produced it — where it came from, why it was as it was, what its literature might be, what its thoughts had been.

What would distinguish him from the graduate of today’s high schools or, latterly, the universities? Only that the bushman would have sense enough to be astonished. I do not see why being complacently ignorant is preferable to being honestly amazed.

How did we get here?

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

How did we get here?, Fred Reed asks — meaning surrounded by mindless entertainment:

Probably Henry Ford bears responsibility. He paid workers on his assembly lines a good wage. This was as culturally deplorable as it was economically admirable. Before, the unwashed had lacked the money to impose their tastes, or lack of them, on the society. The moneyed classes of the time may have been reprehensible or contemptible in various ways, but they minded their manners — if only because it set them apart from the lower orders, perhaps, yet it worked. The middle class likewise eschewed bathroom humor except in such venues as locker rooms, probably for the same reasons. Still, they knew what “distasteful” meant.

But as the peasantry and proletariat gained economic power, inevitably they also asserted dominance over the arts, or entertainment as the arts came to be under their sway, as well as schooling and the nature of acceptable discourse. If millions of people who can afford SUVs want scatological humor, television will accommodate them. Since all watch the same television, no class of people will escape the sex-and-sewage format. This happened. Today the cultivated can no longer insulate themselves from the rabble.

Weighing the National Character

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

In Weighing the National Character, Fred Reed concludes that it’s what the technology makes it:

One hears much admiration from politicians of the American “national character,” by which seems to be meant the aggregate of prevailing values of the majority of the population. I gather that Americans tend to regard their national character as comprising such things as freedom, independence, individualism, and self-reliance. One thinks of Daniel Boone or Marlboro Man.

In fact we no longer have these qualities and probably never will again. Generally we now embody their opposites. Modern society has become a hive of largely conformist, closely regulated and generally helpless employees who depend on others for nearly everything. The cause is less anything particularly American than the technology that governs our lives. The United States just moves faster in the direction in which the civilized world moves.

Character springs from conditions. Consider a farmer in, say, North Carolina in 1850. He was free because there was little government, self-reliant because what he couldn’t do for himself didn’t get done, independent because, apart from a few tools, he made or grew all he needed, and an individualist because, there being little outside authority, he could do as he pleased.

All of that is gone, and will not return. Freedom has given way to an infinite array of laws, rules, regulations, licenses, forms, requirements. Many make sense, may even be desirable in a complex world, don’t necessarily make for a bad life, but they cannot be called freedom. Various governments determine what our children learn, whether we can paint the shutters, who we must sell our houses to, who we can hire, what we can say if we want to keep our jobs, where we can park, and whether and how we can build an outbuilding.

People who live infinitely controlled lives become accustomed to such control. Obedience becomes natural. And so it has.

Although we speak of democracy, in fact we have little influence over the circumstances of our lives. All matters of importance — what values our children are taught, for example — are determined by remote bodies over which we have no power. When jurisdictions are large, the effort needed to change things that powerful lobbies do not want changed is prohibitive. And of course we vote for candidates, not for policies. Once elected, they do as they please.

Individualism has withered under the pressure of the mass media and a distaste for eccentricity. Self-reliance died long ago. We depend on others to repair our cars, grow our food, fix the refrigerator, and write our operating systems. The habit of reliance on others has reached the point that even the right of self-defense has come to be regarded as wrong-minded.

The gain is that these things are usually done better than we could do them ourselves. The loss is that we are utterly dependent on others. As things become more technologically complex, the reliance on specialists grows. Almost anyone could learn to repair a flathead Ford, but today’s Corolla is vulnerable only to a trained technician. Of course it’s a better car.

Most poignantly, we are become a nation of employees, fearful of losing our jobs. Prisoners of the retirement system, afraid of transgressing against the various governing bodies before whom we are helpless, unable to feed ourselves, we are at least comfortable. We are not masters of our lives.

Half-Assed in Haggledom

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Fred Reed explains that third-world countries are poor because they’re Half-Assed in Haggledom, and he lists a number of suspected economic laws:

  • The easier it is to bribe a working-stiff cop, the poorer the country.
  • Prosperity varies inversely with the time between beginning negotiations to open a factory and getting first product.
  • National income is inversely proportional to the amount of trash in the streets.
  • Per capita income [negatively] correlates with the average number of minutes by which people miss appointments.
  • Countries that bargain have less money than those that don’t.

His last suspected economic law is not the kind of thing one says in polite company.

Plumbing the Depths

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

In Plumbing the Depths, Fred Reed explains our system of government:

Common delusions notwithstanding, the United States, I submit, is not a democracy — by which is meant a system in which the will of the people prevails. Rather it is a curious mechanism artfully designed to circumvent the will of the people while appearing to be democratic. Several mechanisms accomplish this.

First, we have two identical parties which, when elected, do very much the same things. Thus the election determines not policy but only the division of spoils. Nothing really changes. The Democrats will never seriously reduce military spending, nor the Republicans, entitlements.

Second, the two parties determine on which questions we are allowed to vote. They simply refuse to engage the questions that matter most to many people. If you are against affirmative action, for whom do you vote? If you regard the schools as abominations? If you want to end the president’s hobbyist wars?

Third, there is the effect of large jurisdictions. Suppose that you lived in a very small (and independent) school district and didn’t like the curriculum. You could buttonhole the head of the school board, whom you would probably know, and say, “Look, Jack, I really think….” He would listen.

But suppose that you live in a suburban jurisdiction of 300,000. You as an individual mean nothing. To affect policy, you would have to form an organization, canvass for votes, solicit contributions, and place ads in newspapers. This is a fulltime job, prohibitively burdensome.

The larger the jurisdiction, the harder it is to exert influence. Much policy today is set at the state level. Now you need a statewide campaign to change the curriculum. Practically speaking, it isn’t practical.

Fourth are impenetrable bureaucracies. A lot of policy is set by making regulations at some department or other, often federal. How do you call the Department of Education to protest a rule which is in fact a policy? The Department has thousands of telephones, few of them listed, all of which will brush you off. There is nothing the public can do to influence these goiterous, armored, unaccountable centers of power.

Yes, you can write your senator, and get a letter written by computer, “I thank you for your valuable insights, and assure you that I am doing all….”

Fifth is the invisible bureaucracy (which is also impenetrable). A few federal departments get at least a bit of attention from the press, chiefly State and Defense (sic). Most of the government gets no attention at all — HUD, for example. Nobody knows who the Secretary of HUD is, or what the department is doing. Similarly, the textbook publishers have some committee whose name I don’t remember (See? It works) that decides what words can be used in texts, how women and Indians must be portrayed, what can be said about them, and so on. Such a group amounts to an unelected ministry of propaganda and, almost certainly, you have never heard of it.

Sixth, there is the illusion of journalism. The newspapers and networks encourage us to think of them as a vast web of hard-hitting, no-holds-barred, chips-where-they-may inquisitors of government: You can run, but you can’t hide. In fact federal malefactors don’t have to run or hide. The press isn’t really looking.

Most of press coverage is only apparent. Television isn’t journalism, but a service that translates into video stories found in the Washington Post and New York Times (really). Few newspapers have bureaus in Washington; the rest follow the lead of a small number of major outlets. These don’t really cover things either.

When I was reporting on the military, there were (if memory serves) many hundreds of reporters accredited to the Pentagon, or at least writing about the armed services. It sounds impressive: All those gimlet eyes.

What invariably happened though was that some story would break—a toilet seat alleged to cost too much, or the failure of this or that. All the reporters would chase the toilet seat, fearful that their competitors might get some detail they didn’t. Thus you had one story covered six hundred times. In any event the stories were often dishonest and almost always ignorant because reporters, apparently bound by some natural law, are obligate technical illiterates. This includes the reporters for the Post and the Times.

Communing with Fidel

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

In Communing with Fidel, Fred Reed shares some insights on Communism:

Why communists imagine themselves to be revolutionary is a mystery. Whenever they gain power in a country, it comes to a dead stop and sits there as other countries pass it by. I do not think that communism generates poverty; rather it finds it and preserves it. It has certainly done so here. Cuba seems firmly mired in 1959. How much of this comes from the embargo — “el bloqueo” as the Cubans call it — and how much from communism, I don’t know. Nobody does. This is convenient for Castro, as he can blame everything on the United States. And does.

One-Room Schoolhouse

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

Fred Reed wants to see the return of the One-Room Schoolhouse:

Why the one-room school house? Because it rewards initiative and brains and individualism and other things America no longer stands for and in fact can’t stand.

Think about it. In a school of one room, students can advance as they will. If a child of eight can read as well as the fifteen-year-olds, he can read with them. If he is able to do algebra when he is ten, why, he can do so. If he can’t, he can stay with kids at his own level.
[...]
Next I am going to devastate the schools by giving the students hope. I will set up a comprehensive test, lasting perhaps a week, of everything that a graduate of a high school should learn. And I will tell the students that when they can pass that test, they can pick up their diplomas at the door. Gone, outa there.
[...]
Better yet would be separate tests of different subjects. When a kid demonstrates that he can read at the twelfth grade level, no teacher should ever again be allowed to so much as mention reading to him, unless it be to ask him to coach her. If the kid passes what is now the tenth-grade Algebra II, or chemistry or physics, that should be it. He should then have a choice of taking advanced courses, taught by a vertebrate, or going behind the school to smoke and drink beer.

The purpose of school is to get kids to learn, right?

Of course not. Schools exist to keep children off the streets and off the job market, to serve as day care, to provide submissive drones for the office market, and to instill appropriate values, meaning those that make for political passivity and high consumption. Americans exist to buy things.

One-Room Schoolhouse

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Fred Reed wants to see the return of the One-Room Schoolhouse:

Why the one-room school house? Because it rewards initiative and brains and individualism and other things America no longer stands for and in fact can’t stand.

Think about it. In a school of one room, students can advance as they will. If a child of eight can read as well as the fifteen-year-olds, he can read with them. If he is able to do algebra when he is ten, why, he can do so. If he can’t, he can stay with kids at his own level.
[...]
Next I am going to devastate the schools by giving the students hope. I will set up a comprehensive test, lasting perhaps a week, of everything that a graduate of a high school should learn. And I will tell the students that when they can pass that test, they can pick up their diplomas at the door. Gone, outa there.
[...]
Better yet would be separate tests of different subjects. When a kid demonstrates that he can read at the twelfth grade level, no teacher should ever again be allowed to so much as mention reading to him, unless it be to ask him to coach her. If the kid passes what is now the tenth-grade Algebra II, or chemistry or physics, that should be it. He should then have a choice of taking advanced courses, taught by a vertebrate, or going behind the school to smoke and drink beer.

The purpose of school is to get kids to learn, right?

Of course not. Schools exist to keep children off the streets and off the job market, to serve as day care, to provide submissive drones for the office market, and to instill appropriate values, meaning those that make for political passivity and high consumption. Americans exist to buy things.

Fred Reed on Socialized Medicine

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Fred Reed on Socialized Medicine — and how to honestly argue against it:

But let’s at least have the dignity to say what we mean. The truth is that large numbers of people cannot take care of themselves beyond showing up at work every day and spinning lug nuts on the assembly line. They aren’t going to invest wisely from youth because they aren’t smart enough. Employers aren’t going to provide retirements unless forced to. Hospitals won’t take them if they can avoid it. Do we say, “Screw’em, let’em croak”? Apparently. Then let’s say so plainly.

The Art of Unpolicy

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Fred Reed, who presents himself as a bit of a paleoconservative curmudgeon, discusses immigration and The Art of Unpolicy:

To grasp American immigration policy, to the extent that it can be grasped, one need only remember that the United States forbids smoking while subsidizing tobacco growers.

We say to impoverished Mexicans, “See this river? Don’t cross it. If you do, we’ll give you good jobs, a drivers license, citizenship for your kids born here and eventually for you, school for said kids, public assistance, governmental documents in Spanish for your convenience, and a much better future. There is no penalty for getting caught. Now, don’t cross this river, hear?”

How smart is that? We’re baiting them. It’s like putting out a salt lick and then complaining when deer come. As parents, the immigrants would be irresponsible not to cross.

The problem of immigration, note, is entirely self-inflicted. The US chose to let them in. It didn’t have to. They came to work. If Americans hadn’t hired them, they would have gone back.

We have immigration because we want immigration. Liberals favor immigration because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy and international and all, and from a genuine streak of decency. Conservative Republican businessman favor immigration, frequently sotto voce, because they want cheap labor that actually shows up and works.

It’s a story I’ve heard many times — from a landscaper, a construction firm, a junkyard owner, a group of plant nurserymen, and so on. “We need Mexicans.” You could yell “Migra!” in a lot of restaurants in Washington, and the entire staff would disappear out the back door. Do we expect businessmen to vote themselves out of business? That’s why we don’t take the obvious steps to control immigration (a thousand-dollar-a-day fine for hiring illegals, half to go anonymously to whoever informed on the employer).

In Jalisco, Mexico, where I live, crossing illegally is regarded as casually as pirating music or smoking a joint, and the coyotes who smuggle people across as a public utility, like light rail. The smuggling is frequently done by bribing the American border guards, who are notoriously corrupt.

Why corrupt? Money. In the book De Los Maras a Los Zetas, by a Mexican journalist, I find an account of a transborder tunnel he knew of that could put 150 illegals a day across the border. (I can’t confirm this.) The price is about $2000 a person. That’s $300,000 a day, tax-free. What does a border guard make? (And where can I find a shovel?) The author estimated that perhaps forty tunnels were active at any give time. Certainly some are. A woman I know says she came up in a restaurant and just walked out the door. Let’s hear it for Homeland Security: All together now….

The amusing thing is the extent to which American policy is not to have a policy. The open floodgates to the south are changing — have changed, will continue to change — the nature of the country forever. You may think this a good thing or a bad thing. It is certainly an important thing — the most important for us in at least a century. Surely (one might think) it deserves careful thought, national debate, prudence, things like that.

But no. In the clownishness that we regard as presidential campaigning, none of the contenders has much to say on the matter. In a dance of evasion that has become customary, the candidates carefully ignore those matters of most import for the nation, since considering hard questions might be divisive. War, peace, race, immigration, affirmative action, the militarization of the economy, the desirability of empire — these play no part in the electoral discussion. We seem to regard large issues as we might the weather: interesting, but beyond control. It’s linger, loiter, dawdle and fumble and see what happens.