(This is the second of a series of articles focusing on topics presented at the Cato Policy Perspectives 2011 conference held at New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel on Friday, April 8, 2011)

Kicking off the conference, Ed Crane, president of the Cato Institute, talked about American exceptionalism and how President Obama doesn’t believe in that. To illustrate, he gave the example where while in Europe the president was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, and he hedged by saying he supposed so, just at the Germans believe in German exceptionalism, the British believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. President Obama doesn’t think that America is exceptional and to the extent that he might, he is doing everything in his power to root it out.

The other key point that Mr. Crane made concerned people talking about national goals and aspirations. Nations shouldn’t have goals. People should have goals and nations should protect their right to pursue them. Who wants Washington to set some goals and then have individuals reorder their lives to fit into the grand plan? To me that is the essence of the battle between libertarianism and statism. This is also a nice segue into the Cato presentation on education provided by Charles Murray.

Education

One of the key contributors to American exceptionalism is a well educated work force, and we may be losing that edge. However, Mr. Murray found reasons for optimism. Another point of view I wish to consider was in an article in the Wall Street Journal today by Vint Cerf, one of the real forces behind the Internet.

At a time when we see the tragedy of K-12 education played out in the documentary Waiting for Superman and the pitched battle over public sector unions and teacher tenure in Wisconsin, Mr. Murray’s talk titled. “The Coming Good News About Market Forces and Education,” might seem a bit out of place. He didn’t delve too deeply into K-12 education, other than to say there are a lot more options today than there were in the past, among them: home schooling, charter schools, and vouchers. Mr. Murray’s focus was on post secondary education.

First the bad news:

• The BA degree is no longer a classic liberal education. There are precious few institutions (Murray could name four) that actually provide one.
• He called it a saccharin education with almost anything qualifying as a course. Some of my favorites are: The Stupidity Course at Occidental College (one of Obama’s Alma maters); The science of Harry Potter at Frostburg State University; The Simpsons and Philosophy at UC Berkeley; and Tree Climbing at Cornell University
• It used to be you spent four years getting a BA to mature and grow. In the old days you had a more distant relationship with your professor, more like a supervisor at work. He didn’t care how many other courses you had, he gave you an assignment and he expected you to finish it on time, if you didn’t you failed. Which brought to mind a professor I had at Manhattan College who taught math. His famous saying was, “Engineer build bridge, bridge fall down, no partial credit.” Today that’s not the case. If you miss an exam, you take the makeup test. If you don’t like your grade, you whine to the professor.
• There is now a residence staff at most colleges to do the things parents used to do, so that now four years living at school is just a way of prolonging adolescence.
• He called it a con game
  • You need a degree to get an interview
  • A degree will get you a wage premium over those who don’t have one
  • There is no relationship between a degree and what you actually learned
  • An employer sees a degree and knows two things: one, you have some level of intelligence; two, you have some level of perseverance.
  • A Yale graduate is important not because of what they learned at Yale, but the fact that they got into Yale when they were eighteen speaks to some amount of raw material to work with.

Now the good news.

• Universities were built to support a large library, bring together great minds for scholarship, and enable a large number of students to listen to lectures. Things have changed
• We no longer need a physical library — with the Internet and resources such as Google books you can access a tremendous amount of research material from home.
• Scholarship is now done through collaboration across the world, not across a campus.
• Distance learning works. Why listen to some adjunct give a lecture when you can sit in one room while a Nobel laureate a thousand miles away conducts the lecture?

With the expense of college seeming to be without end the status quo cannot continue. Employers know they are not being served. But there is an enthusiastic group of suppliers ready to provide solutions.

The real course work to learn a skill in college could probably be completed in one and a half to two year, Murray estimates. If a set of certifications could be developed, and Murray cites the CPA exam as an example, that would demonstrate to employers that the applicant before him has actually acquired a set of skills, what more would they need? If similar certifications for marketing, teaching, social work, etc. could be developed a new form of post secondary education might be born. Then the goal of a good education could be about learning how to find what you love and how to pursue it.

Innovation

Vint Cerf has a slightly different take;

Despite our well-developed college and post-college system, America simply is not producing enough of our own innovators, and the cause is twofold—a deteriorating K-12 education system and a national culture that does not emphasize the importance of education and the value of engineering and science.

Perhaps there is a solution in the melding of the two. Our K-12 system produces 1 million dropouts a year and 70% of eighth graders cannot read proficiently. It is broken. We need to put students ahead of job security for teachers and allow talented teachers to receive the economic rewards worthy of their talent. Unions are for just the opposite, protect the inadequate teacher and don’t reward the good teacher as they make the “rest of us” look bad.

But we do need more engineers and scientists. How do we encourage that? First we need to get education out of the hands of Washington. Washington will make sure the solution is bland and ineffective. One of the biggest backers of the creation of the Department of Education was the National Education Association the big education union, so that should tell you something. Let the fifty states come up with competing ideas on how to accomplish this.

Perhaps state schools could offer loans to engineering and science students that would cover whatever financial aid didn’t, in other words a free education. The trade off would be that they had to work in that field in that state. If they did 1/10 of the loan would be forgiven in the first year, 1/9 of the remaining principle and interest would be forgiven in the second year, 1/8 in the third year, such that after ten years, the loan would be fully forgiven. Employers would be attracted to locate near the schools to pick up the talent that graduated. The additional revenue generated from high tech businesses in the state, the income tax revenue from highly paid engineers and scientists coupled with the lower cost of dropouts who end up in prison should make this a cost effective program. All of the capabilities that Charles Murray talked about could be used to form a K-12 to post secondary bond to interest younger students to go into the engineering and science disciplines.

Charles Murray thought this would happen over the next ten to fifteen years. It should a priority to set up sooner. If we fail to act, the replacement for the iPhone won’t just be made in China, it will come from a Chinese company.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Ah, the romance of rail travel.  From Murder on the Orient Express to From Russia with Love to White Christmas to Some Like It Hot there is something alluring about a train.  But for all those warm feelings it’s time to recognize that we are in the 21^st century and to leave trains to the movies. 

There have been calls for the great idea of high speed rail that is, in effect, a solution in search of a problem.  It may work well in Europe and Japan, but the United States is not Europe or Japan.  Two things needed to make high speed rail viable are population density and distances between such population densities that are not too close and not too far. We have a whole lot of neither.

Building a high speed rail system is capital intensive.  Between the track bed, carefully engineered to keep high speed trains on the tracks and the passengers comfortable, the rolling stock, and the signaling and safety equipment, it takes a lot of money to build it.  If that investment is to be recovered you need many passengers paying ticket prices high enough to make a profit and low enough to attract those passengers.  Those population centers have to be far enough apart so that the inconvenience of public transportation offsets driving by car and close enough so that the travel time is not too much longer than air travel.  How many of these routes are there in this country that satisfy those criteria?  Precious few.

Consider that part of the country where the population is densest, the Northeast Corridor, extending from Boston to Washington, D.C.  This happens to be one place in the country where rail service works.  Amtrak runs a fast train service along this corner that in 2008 actually made a profit of $41 per passenger on this service, called Acela. 

Let’s compare that to what is being planned for California.  The concept is a high speed rail link running from San Francisco in the north to San Diego in the south, a run of about 800 miles.  The initial segment of the project is estimated to cost $5.5 billion, take five years to build, and will connect Bakersfield to Madera mainly through agricultural regions.  From a construction perspective that should be an easy build with long stretches of open spaces.  Anyone care to wager what how much the estimate will grow?  The total cost is estimated at $40 billion.  If you could achieve the same profit as the Acela ($41 per passenger) and carry as many passengers as the Northeast Corridor in a year (10.8 million), it would take over 90 years just to recover the capital costs, not including any interest charges.  Is that remotely feasible?

Here’s where the problems mount, you could travel the 800 miles by air in about an hour and a forty minutes, whereas a high speed train would probably take around four hours.  One of the towns mentioned in a recent article in the New York Times as being along the route is Corcoran, population 26,000 including 12,000 “guests of the state” at nearby prisons.  Don’t count on them using the rails much.  The distance is too great and the population density is lacking.  But once again, the federal government is in the middle of something where it doesn’t belong providing funding.  Why should the overtaxed citizens of New York and New Jersey pay for a high speed rail system entirely within the state of California?  This about sums it up:

On Dec. 9, California’s rail authority received a windfall of additional federal stimulus money — some $600 million — when Republican governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on money intended for their states. California voters approved high-speed rail in 2008, and deadlines are already passing, including a Dec. 31 cutoff for the state to finalize a plan to spend federal money in the Central Valley. Initial spending will span a raft of projects, including designing stations, redirecting nearby roads and acquiring land.

So responsible governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on federal stimulus money; rather than return the money to the Treasury, damn it, it was going to be spent by someone!  Send it to California.  In case you hadn’t noticed lately, California is broke.  So tell me again, why hasn’t this project been cancelled?

If the people of California want to build this themselves, fine.  If a private company sees the opportunity to make a profit and wants to build this, go ahead.  But to take tax dollars from one state and give it to another to build another white elephant, is insane.  It is time to get our heads screwed on straight and live within our means.  Between cars and air travel, there are few places you cannot reach in this country.  There is no value in spending billions of dollars to hit a very small niche between the two.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

In Greece today riots are breaking out with three reported dead thus far.  Millions of Greek workers are striking, led by Greece’s two major umbrella unions, one each from the private sector and the public sector.  Stock markets around the world have tanked, the Euro is sinking and other European countries are facing a similar fate.

 Is There a Silver Lining?

As President Obama continues to march our country toward cloning the European model, there is a warning to be gleaned from the Greek Tragedy unfolding in the news.  They are giving us a gift of their experience.  The European model doesn’t work.  The Welfare state doesn’t work.  There is not enough money that can be taxed from the citizenry to continue to expand the nanny state.  At some point the bill comes due.  That is happening now in Europe. 

So here is an opportunity for President Obama to see into the future.  If he doesn’t walk back from the brink of financial ruin he is leading us, what is being plastered on the TV screens in our living room will be his legacy.  If he does not turn away, we must re-take control of Congress this fall and retire President Obama in 2012.  He likes to talk of eight years of failed Bush policies, but he wants to replace them with thirteen years of failed Roosevelt policies.  The difference is that some of the poor decisions that Bush made have a minor lasting impact compared with the enormous unpaid bill coming due from FDR’s policies.

It’s time to turn about, while we still have room to maneuver.  The Greeks are relying on the Germans, the French and others in the EU.  Who will we call to bail us out if we don’t stop this madness?

There was a time when people came to our shores to find a better life.  To escape persecution and poverty and to build a better life for their children was their goal.  They found Lady Liberty lifting her lamp beside the golden door.

What happened next was that people assimilated.  Their children went to school with other children and learned to read and speak English.  Their names may have sounded different but before long their voices didn’t.  Sure, New Englanders sounded different than those from Mississippi, but they sounded very much like their neighbors.  They became Americans.

I just finished reading Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen’s historical novel, To Try Men’s Souls, which is the story of the George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, and attacking Trenton.  Trenton was guarded by Hessian mercenaries, who were some of the most elite soldiers in Europe.  It was a mismatch beyond belief, but in a last ditch effort, their password that night was “Victory or Death,” and with the element of surprise, they prevailed.  In one passage it mentioned American soldiers of Dutch and German extraction shouting to the Hessians to surrender, in German.  They were probably closer to the Hessians in culture and blood than to their fellow Americans from Boston, but they considered themselves Americans and were willing to die for their country.

The Balkanization of America

Today, we are mired in multiculturalism.  I remember the story of an Hispanic man loudly protesting to his local school board regarding bilingual education to which he was opposed.  “You’re teaching my son to be a janitor!” he said, “I want him to learn in English, so that he can get a job with a future!” 

We should not lose track of our roots.  It is right to celebrate where we came from.  One of the great things about New York is the different neighborhoods and parades that teach and celebrate about where we came from, which is good.  But if carried to the point where we no longer assimilate; where we remain pockets of groups with their own identity and politics, we are in grave danger of ceasing to be America.

During World War II, what if people of German heritage refused to fight against Hitler or for that matter felt a greater allegiance to him than to America?  Some did.  They were tried for treason. What if they were protected instead?  What if their differences were looked at with admiration rather than suspicion?

Fort Hood

Commentators in the news are twisting themselves in knots trying to disassociate Major Nidal Hasan’s slaughter of 13 Americans from his jihadist proclivities, despite evidence of outright hostility toward America and contact with a radical imam.  It is politically incorrect, to speak of his religion.  The Army Chief of Staff raises concern about negatively impacting the military’s record of diversity, if we focus on anything but a lone gunman who snapped.

But what if there is a larger plot?  What if there is an effort on the behalf of some Muslims to purposely not assimilate, to infiltrate the military and become a fifth column within?  Multiculturalism makes it far easier for this to occur because if everyone looks different, no one stands out.  On the other hand, if everyone assimilates, those who speak, act, or plot against America become more obvious.  Again, imagine multiculturalism in the United States in 1943.  You might have whole communities that were German to the core, did not like non-Germans among them and quickly spread the alarm when a stranger approached.  How much easier would it have been for Hitler to build a network of saboteurs?

Kill Multiculturalism Before it Kills Us

We must reinvigorate the idea of assimilation.  Speak any language you want at home; dress any way you want; practice your faith as you please, but where government is involved, we should be treated equally. We should speak one common language for all official business.  If not, where do we draw the line?

In Minnesota in 2007 a public university coffee cart was banned from playing Christmas Carols, but public money was being used to install foot baths to accommodate Muslims before prayer.  After the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and now another terrorist attack at Fort Hood, we have to be able to tell the good Muslims from those out to kill us.  We must have true peace loving Muslims, become true Americans.  We have to engender that we are Americans first, like those early Americans of Dutch and German decent, and not have divided loyalties particularly where the “other loyalty” insists on killing us infidels.

Democrats Lining Up to Vote for Cap and Trade

The tide is turning against the case for man-made global warming.  An article in today’s Wall Street Journal has the following:

“Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.” — The Climate Change Climate Change, WSJ, June 26, 2009

So if the case for controlling CO2 emissions is gaining skeptics, what would a reasonable person do?  They would probably pause and listen to see if they should alter their position based on this new information.  What do the statists do?  Double their efforts to jam this gargantuan tax bill through Congress, again without reading it because it’s too big, before the American people find out just how monumentally stupid it is.

Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and Ed Markey are the lead lemmings jumping into the sea and expecting all of us to follow.  You see, if they can slam this thing in they will have enormously increased their power and make it very difficult to unwind this monstrosity.  Their disdain for what is right for this country and what is best for the American people is truly astounding.  Their arrogance and sense of empowerment knows no limits.

Scientists Speak Out

Far from Al Gore’s pejorative and dismissive label of “deniers”, some real scientists weigh in:

“The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)”  — The Climate Change Climate Change, WSJ, June 26, 2009

Can you feel your liberties slipping away as those in power do what they want rather than representing us.  Sounds like it’s about time for a tea party.

How much time do we have left before Joe Biden’s prophesy comes true that within six months of taking office Obama, and by extension we, will face an international crisis?  Well, unless you haven’t been paying attention, I think he will hit his mark before his 100 days are up.

Obama and Biden and the rest of their supporters have confused the difference between being liked and being respected.  Daniel Patrick Moynihan, while ambassador to the UN called the world, “A Dangerous Place.”  When trying to be a leader in a world that is dangerous, it is far better to be respected than liked.

The Obama Feel Good Tour

As President Obama tours the world and grovels at the feet of the Europeans, the Saudis, and Latin American dictators, trying to “repair the damage,” done by President Bush, our enemies are licking their chops.  The Europeans flocked to see him, touch him, kiss him, but when he asked for a commitment of more troops for Afghanistan, how did they respond?  Awkward silence and an offer of 5,000 troops to train police while at the same time an insistence that the “world” should have some say in the regulation of the U.S. economy.

While President Obama achieved his goal of improving the U.S.’s likability quotient, pirates were taking ships on the high seas, North Korea sent an ICBM over Japan, Iran celebrated Nuclear Technology Day, and the Taliban made inroads in Pakistan.  How did the popular leader respond?  To North Korea, he scolded that actions have consequences and words have meaning and proposed more words from the UN to be piled on top of the words the North Koreans are already ignoring.

Disarmament

To continue with the feel good groove, we have stopped calling terrorists terrorists.  Their acts are now to be called Man Caused Disasters and I guess the terrorists themselves are to be called Man Caused Disaster Causing Men (or Women).  After all, we don’t want them to be offended by being called terrorists.  Isn’t that was caused 9/11?  It was merely a response to our bad behavior, no?  Our lack of likability?

There is no longer a War on Terror.  It’s an Overseas Contingency Operation.  We don’t want to raise Osama bin Laden’s sensibilities thinking we might be at war with him, but we do need contingency planning in case something happens.  As a further show of good faith, let’s start re-writing the Al Qaeda training manual for them by telling them exactly what kind of interrogation techniques we use so that they can best prepare the training of their members to resist them.  Of course, we already swore we would never use them again anyway, but we have to make sure they are prepared for the infidel’s trickery.  Repeat after me: “I am not going to drown.  I am not going to drown.  I am not going to drown.”  There, it’s simple, now they can resist even our most diabolical torture.  But we shouldn’t forget to tell them that if an interrogator so much as raises his voice they should do the following:

1. Ask for a lawyer
2. Insist on having their Miranda rights given to them in both English (so their lawyers can verify it) and in their native tongue
3. A clean, untouched by infidels hands, copy of the Koran
4. Immediate transport to the United States
5. A green card
6. A path to citizenship
7. A tenured professorship at the college of their choice

If that doesn’t get them to lay down their arms, what will?

Respect Not Likability

The only time the United States is both respected and liked is when the bullets are flying and the United States is saving the hides of our new friends.  When the shooting stops or it is confined to a theater far away from the talkers, the United States will be disliked but, however begrudgingly, respected.

Ronald W. Reagan may have been liked personally in private but when the klieg lights were on, he was “an amiable dunce,” and  “a cowboy.”  But Reagan stood firm and put Pershing II missiles in Europe against all protests.  Such steadfastness led to the eventual arms negotiations and winning the cold war.  At the moment President Reagan took the oath of office, the Ayatollahs in Iran released the American hostages they held for 444 days.  They respected that Reagan would act, not just talk.

George W. Bush was not liked.  He was another cowboy, one who was inarticulate to boot.  But he was respected.  After 9/11 the world respected that he would hunt down and kill America’s enemies.  After the Iraq invasion, Libya publicly shut down their nuclear program.  Quadaffi didn’t want to be next.  President Bush kept America safe for seven years after 9/11.  Now, this Congress and this President want set aside over 200 years of precedent and to put them on trial for doing that.

Preparing for Our Enemies

President Obama plans to keep America secure by cutting our defense budget by 25%.  He plans on a staggering increase in our national debt and selling it to the Chinese.  Picture the Chinese doing to the USA what Obama did to General Motors.  Can you just see the head of the Chinese Communist Party saying to Obama, “Well, we own you now.  You’re fired.”

Can this Juggernaut be Stopped?

On April 15th over 1 million people gathered at Tea Parties around the country to protest the growth of government, the taking of our liberty and out of control taxes.  The Obama main stream media largely ignored the event, or willfully disparaged it.

A recent Rasmussen poll, “85% of mainstream Americans say the government has too much money and power, just 2% of the political class agree.”  If they have no bread, let them eat cake! The poll went on to say, “51% of Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Parties but the political class strongly disagrees.” {emphasis added}  How more out of touch with the people can they be?  How more arrogant in their shameless grab for power can they be?

I will end this post, my friends, with a quotation from the Declaration of Independence.

“WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

July 4, 1776

I hope to see you at the Tea Party on July 4, 2009

We have been led to believe that America needs Barack Obama to “repair” our reputation in Europe and the rest of the world.  In France, of all places, it doesn’t look like he’s off to a great start.  Although French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has tried to talk about it only in private, he has characterized Obama’s stance on Iran, “Utterly Immature.”  Joe Biden, call your office, I think you can add another crisis to your radar screen.