The Political Attack Ad Of All Attack Ads

I heard about the 4-year old mayor of Dorset, Minnesota late last year. Apparently the young man is mayor of a small town that boasts the highest number of restaurants per capita in the world. But that isn't why I'm writing about the small town of Dorset.

Mayor Robert “Bobby” Tufts is up for reelection. As in any election season there is more often than not a challenger, and it's no different in Dorset. In fact Tuft's opponent has already started running an attack ad:

And so it starts....

The State Of Our Schools

This post started out as part of this past Sunday's Thoughts On A Sunday, but I realized it deserved a spot all its own. It was related to a post I linked from David Starr and the problems with STEM education in our schools. While I did add my own two cents to David's observations, this kind of wrote itself as I was venting about what I saw as a problem with the school system here in my home town, a problem that exists all across America.

One of the things we hear constantly from the education lobby is that we need more teachers and lower student-to-teacher ratios. Both claims are wrong.

What we need are better teachers. If we have better teachers we don't need minuscule student-to-teacher ratios. At the moment our education system is set up to foster mediocrity, specifically in the quality of our teachers. What do we expect? We get mediocre schools with mediocre results and kids with mediocre educations. For the most part our schools are union shops and unions tend to suppress exceptionalism and force mediocrity. (Take it from one who used to belong to a union. It was something that always galled me – the institutional mediocrity.) I have seen this mediocrity in the school system in my home town. That's scary.

A lot of people claim our town has a great school system, and it is compared to a lot of the surrounding towns. That isn't saying much because it is still nowhere near what it should be considering how much money we spend on our school system every year – just under $17,000, about $4,000 more than the state average and between $2,000 and $7,000 more than the top 10 school systems in the state. It is towards the upper end of the mediocrity scale, meaning it isn't nearly as mediocre as other schools, but it's nothing to which we should aspire. For the money we spend we should have one of the best school systems in the state, but we don't. When our schools cut back on or drop some of the staples – courses that were at one time important, like Shop and Home Economics to name two – and replace them with subjects that have little to do with preparing students for real life, then the schools are in trouble. When I was in school these classes started in middle school...excuse me, junior high school, and it was mandatory. Of course I grew up before sexual equality became the norm and all the boys took Shop and all the girls took Home Ec.

Today all kids should take both because they teach them skills they will use throughout their entire lives regardless of what they end up doing for a living. I cannot count how many times I've come across young adults who couldn't swing a hammer, use a screwdriver, replace a light socket on a lamp, change a flat tire, or prepare a meal that didn't come from out of the freezer and into the microwave. They have no idea how the simplest things we use every day work and they have to call someone else to fix things for them. Those in our society may have access to knowledge our ancestors would find amazing, but as a whole our citizens don't know how to do things our grandparents and even our parents took for granted, and I'm not talking about arcane skills like shoeing horses or blacksmithing. But I digress...

Not all that long ago there was an effort made to move our school system towards what is called the International Baccalaureate program, an education program first proposed to UNESCO in 1948. While its goal was to offer an interesting perspective to education and an internationally approved curriculum, it has devolved into more of a feelgood program that seems bent more on fostering an educational environment that promotes socialist ideals rather than courses of study that are supposed to prepare our kids to fend for themselves in the real world. The more I learned the less I liked the idea and a lot of parents felt the same way. For the time being the IB is dead in our town. But that doesn't mean there aren't those within the school system that will keep trying to push it upon our kids.

I could go on and on about the problems with the school system in my town and schools across America, but I think you get the idea. It's time to take our schools back from the unions and the education lobby, to tell the Department of Education to go take a hike, and to start teaching our children what they need to know in order to make their way in the real world.

Historical Ignorance And The Second Amendment

I had planned a post about a self-proclaimed Progressive feminist getting her comeuppance when her college-age son ended up on the wrong end of a college PC tribunal. But something more interesting and closer to home came to my attention while perusing our local newspaper's Letter's to the Editor, so that post will wait until tomorrow.

One of our local liberals had his diatribe against the Second Amendment in April 17th edition of the Laconia Daily Sun. I can only describe as being long on 'feelings' and ignorance and short on fact. Here's part of what the fellow had to say:

The 2nd Amendment is a racist piece of legislation that should have been removed with the abolition of slavery. Only the most irresponsible gun owners believe that the 2nd Amendment actually “protects” our freedoms.

The fellow goes on to disparage the NRA, equates Glocks to drones and tanks, and believes private ownership of guns is a “hindrance to human progress.” He also labels the Second Amendment as “a piece of legislation”. It is not. If it were, then merely passing a law in Congress would suffice to repeal it. He is showing his ignorance of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

What a putz.

Here is what I e-mailed to the newspaper in response to this fellow's ignorance-laced rant:

I am writing in response to George [M's] letter about the Second Amendment being racist. It was apparent to me that Mr. [M] has little understanding of the Second Amendment, the 1860's, or the history of gun control laws.

First, when the 13th Amendment that ended slavery was ratified, there was no possibility that the 2nd Amendment could or would be repealed. Most of the populace of the United States was armed, it being just after the Civil War. Many were veterans of that war, both Union and Confederate. The frontier was still open, territories will still being settled, and law enforcement was spotty at best. There was no way the states would have ratified a repeal of the 2nd Amendment under those conditions, Mr. M's contentions to the contrary.

Second, gun control laws were first prevalent in the South after the Civil War. These laws were aimed at keeping the former slaves from being able to arm themselves. This was done in order to head off possible retaliation by blacks against whites, or at least that's how the idea was sold. A less openly known reason was that it prevented blacks from being able to protect themselves against the predations of whites trying to "keep them in their place."

Mr. [M], the 2nd Amendment isn't racist and never has been. It is the gun control laws you seem to love that are racist at their roots. Perhaps you should do a little more historical research before making such ill informed accusations.

I find that the folks who make claims about the racism of others are often the only racists in the room. But their racism is more subtle and backhanded, and therefore a more dishonest form of racism. What's worse is that they often don't realize that they are indeed racist.

Stirring The First (And Second) Amendment Pot

A Merrimack, New Hampshire gun shop owner decided he would exercise both his First and Second Amendment rights by naming President Barack Obama “Firearms Salesman of the Year” and posting the acclamation in one of the windows fronting his shop.

Store owner Keith Cox said it's all about freedom of speech, noting he's been getting words of support from customers ever since he put up the sign.

Beside the image of Obama are the images of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, above the statement, "All experts agree gun control works."

While some people have found the sign offensive and want Cox to take it down, we must remind them that there is no right to not be offended in either the US or New Hampshire constitutions. If they're so offended, then they do not need to buy anything from his shop, do they? (It's likely the same folks offended by the sign also believe that disarming law abiding citizens is the path to safety from gun wielding criminals, and therefore wouldn't be patronizing Cox's gun shop anyways.)