StephenKMackSD's Blog

David Brooks begins his latest essay of April 19,2012 Testing The Teachers by sounding a pathetically melodramatic note, that deserves full quotation, awash in purple as it is:

“There’s an atmosphere of grand fragility hanging over America’s colleges. The grandeur comes from the surging application rates, the international renown, the fancy new dining and athletic facilities. The fragility comes from the fact that colleges are charging more money, but it’s not clear how much actual benefit they are providing.”

This opening paragraph would seem to compel a reader to think that American colleges are in a state of crisis by reason of the facts, as argued by Mr. Brooks, that they are not educating students. The next paragraphs provides confirmation of the his argument, sans the melodrama, but seemingly the ‘facts’.

“Colleges are supposed to produce learning. But, in their landmark study, “Academically Adrift,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa found that, on average, students experienced a pathetic seven percentile point gain in skills during their first two years in college and a marginal gain in the two years after that. The exact numbers are disputed, but the study suggests that nearly half the students showed no significant gain in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills during their first two years in college.”

Here from the Chronicle of Higher Education is an essay by Kevin Corey titled Academically Adrift : The News Gets Worse and Worse to shed some light on the contested territory of their test instrument and sample population, etc.

“In part, it says that the public harbored a latent distrust of higher education that was activated by empirical evidence that supported their suspicions. After all, a lot of people have been to college and have experienced the academic indifference and lack of rigor that Arum and Roksa documented firsthand.

It also shows what happens when there’s a mismatch between the importance and complexity of a question and the amount of research designed to answer it. In many ways, the most shocking thing about Academically Adrift was not what it revealed about what college students learn. It was that nobody had ever attempted to measure learning in that way before.

As responsible scholars, the authors were careful to interpret their findings in ways that emphasized the limitations of their instruments and sample population. But they couldn’t control what happened after their research entered the zeitgeist. And the lack of other credible studies providing alternate perspectives on college learning meant that, in the national higher-education conversation, Academically Adrift became the only game in town.”

The Conservative attack on the Academy has been consistent since such polemics as The Closing of The American Mind and Tenured Radicals, the suspicion raised by that and other forms of attack on higher education are manifested in Mr. Brooks’ polemic. In his ranting he imitates the voice of the parent who demands to know why his child hasn’t performed, as expected, given his generosity of money. Mr. Brooks carefully exploits that not so latent suspicion of academic malfeasance, disguised as a concern for the faltering of an essential institution. For confirmation of the conservative war on higher education see Christopher Newfield’s Unmaking The Public University: The Forty Year Assault on the Middle Class. Here is another telling paragraph from the Kevin Corey essay:

“Last month the authors released new results that should only add to our national worries about higher education. While press coverage of Academically Adrift focused mostly on learning among typical students, the data actually show two distinct populations of undergraduates. Some students, disproportionately from privileged backgrounds, matriculate well prepared for college. They are given challenging work to do and respond by learning a substantial amount in four years.”

Please read Mr. Corey’s complete essay as a necessary corrective to Mr. Brooks’ carefully massaged propaganda. Mr. Corey simply argues that Academically Adrift is the unsteady starting point in what should be the beginning of a process of an honest, forthright self-evaluation, that is the duty of republican actors in pursuit of a necessary public virtue, the shaping via education of the next generation. Also see this Wikipedia entry on the Spellings Commission report for another more nuanced perspective, although it is dated. I’ve chosen to respond to portions of Mr. Brooks’ essay that concern Academically Adrift and the Spellings Commission Report, because information on both are readily available for anyone who has an internet connection and even a modicum of intellectual curiosity and an active dissatisfaction with Mr. Brooks’ carefully garnished conservative opinionating. But also because these are the two pillars of his argument, and the rest mere confirmation of the notion of crisis, that he so cheerfully exploits in his essay.

Political Observer

David Brooks is adept at mimicking the rhetorical style of rational argument,but only in self-defense. Mr. Brooks only argues in ideological terms that have the ability to move the political discourse in a favorable partisan direction. We can see quite clearly that the end of the Free Market,in collapse in 2008,and the measures taken by two Presidents to ameliorate a looming economic disaster, precipitated a momentous change in Mr. Brooks economic allegiance. From the free market ideology to a stance of Austerity, as a rational defense of fiscal responsibility, within the self made crisis of Capitalism. The efforts made by government were Keynesian in nature and antithetical to the economic worldview of a Conservatism that watched as their brainchild died a grisly death at the hands of its custodians and practitioners. An arresting and sobering moment for a class of thinkers that spent the better part of a generation in explication and defense of the political and ethical viability of their master idea. That it failed with such speed and devastating consequences seems to have passed by its advocates, its apologists, who have now moved on to their next big idea of Austerity. The Austerity to be practiced will not be practiced by the 1%, but by the middle and lower economic classes. All that being said, the opening paragraph of Mr. Brooks essay of April 16,2012 titled The White House Argument is instructive:

“I’ve been critical of President Obama’s budgets. I’ve argued that while I like the way Obama preserves spending on things like scientific research and programs for the vulnerable, he doesn’t do enough to avoid a debt crisis.”

Mr. Brooks speaks of a ‘Debt Crisis’ as if it were real, or at least a looming reality, while avoiding the issue of our present economic quandary. Is the present policy of Austerity working? The evidence, world wide, seems to point in a modified Keynesian direction. Paul Krugman would be the very literate,articulate champion of that position; who regularly makes Mr. Brooks’ low grade propaganda seem like exactly what it is.

What follows this is a long complex explanation and defense of the Ryan Budget, with all the appropriate intellectual garnish, as fiscally sound and politically/ethically the only answer, argued in his usual hectoring tone. In sum he makes his case for a disingenuous President Obama, by circuitous means.

“I’m not going to pass my own comprehensive judgment on this here. I’ll just say that my conversations reaffirm my conviction that Obama is a pragmatic liberal who cares about fiscal sustainability, who has been willing to compromise for its sake, but who has not offered anything close to a sufficient program to avoid a debt crisis.”

After his encomium to the Ryan Budget which acts rhetorically as an indictment of the demonstrable mendacity of the President, he couches his argument in terms of his ‘comprehensive judgment’ deferred as exemplary of his a priori notion of superior ethical/political judgment. The assertion that the President is a ‘pragmatic liberal’ is ludicrous on it’s face: he is a conservative New Democrat in every way. Mr. Brooks is wide of the mark, but only in service to ideological ends.

“If he doesn’t have a passion for fiscal stability, he’ll campaign on side issues and try to win by scaring everybody about the other side.”

Mr. Brooks then accuses the President of possible, attempted fear mongering. The cumulative evidence of the political irrationalism of the present day Republican Party is well established in the public mind . One need only watch ‘Fox News’ for an arresting confirmation of that perilous political reality.

Political Observer

Register for the webinar:

http://www.aku.edu/collegesschoolsandinstitutes/ismc/newsandevents/Pages/Rese…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/12/war-on-terror-corrupting?…

He has hemmed me in so that I cannot escape;

he has weighed me down with fetters.

Even when I cry out and plead for help

he rejects my prayer.

He has barred my road with blocks of stone and

entangled my way.

The Oxford Study Bible

It seems perfectly appropriate to quote Lamentations in my comment on Ross Douthat's essay of April 7, 2012 titled Divided by God. Here are some of the ideas, catch phrases that hold together this essay taken from the first paragraphs:

many of America’s established churches 

affluent and sexually permissive America

religiously fluid,

We’re neither traditionally Christian nor straightforwardly secular

a nation of heretics

old Christian establishment

the existence of a Christian center also helped bind a vast and teeming nation together

It was the hierarchy, discipline and institutional continuity

the inescapability of religious polarization

a sign of what happens to a deeply religious country when its theological center cannot hold

Mr. Douthat freely borrows and adapts from Schlesinger, Yeats and extemporizes within the moralizing rhetoric of Modern Conservatism, post Reagan. Although I have quoted piecemeal from his essay, I believe that what follows these assertions is simply a defense of this set of ideas elaborated historically and politically, given the frame of a defense of the Conservative Worldview: a rationalization, an apologia for patriarchal power. Christianity is invested in male power, male authority and the free exercise of that power over others. Conservatism shares those imperatives. Also, I will say that I treat Mr Douthat's essay as propaganda: a set of arguments made for purely political ends. In this case to establish the primacy of institutional authority and also of the waning power of institutional Christian moralists over the lives of Americans, as leading to crisis both moral and political. Mr. Douthat looks backward to a past he has rhetorically created, that sketches, in very proscribed form, a description of an American actuality, in service to a backhanded Christian apologetics. America in the age of the internet and other social media is a time of fracture of the old patriarchal systems of social control and moral censure, and the rise of an unprecedented personal freedom, that renders the old system of moral/political sanctions against nonconformist thought and behavior moot. The erosion of that ability to sanction effectively the behavior of others, has led to the notion of crisis that Mr. Douthat argues as the crisis of Christian institutional authority and a concomitant American decline. American decadence is the perennial theme of American Conservatism.

Queer Atheist

I wonder at how Leslie Gelb manages to maintain his breezy casual tone when discussing such potentially destructive concurrences as an Israeli attack upon Iran, support for Syrian rebels and a escalation of conflict with North Korea. He argues in his latest essay at The Daily Beast, War Looms for Obama in Iran, Syria, and North Korea, that these are the three crises waiting to confront President Obama. Yet Mr. Gelb manages to maintain a tone of un-seriousness, as if it were written from within the confines of his book lined study, to be shared with a few of his intimates as table talk, or even as a diary entry rather than an essay for publication. In fact, this essay reminds me so much of the casual and self-congratulatory style of the late Arthur Schlesinger’s published diaries.

Political Cynic

Here are the two opening paragraphs of the David Brooks essay of April 5,2012:

"President Obama is an intelligent, judicious man who can see all sides of an issue. But every once in a while he tries to get politically cute, and he puts on his Keith Olbermann mask. I suppose it’s to his credit that he’s most inept when he tries to take the low road. He resorts to hoary, brain-dead clichés. He wanders so far from his true nature that he makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Authenticity."

Keith Olberman mask, low road, hoary,brain dead cliches and Mitt Romney as Mr. Authenticity, a list that is pregnant with possibilities. Keith Olberman as the 'left wing' Glenn Beck (i.e. destructive political nihilist)? Hoary and brain dead cliche, descriptive of himself as collector and chief launderer of the Conservative lexicon and the auxiliary jargon of the Tea Party? Mr. Brooks is careless, even cavalier, in his treatment of Mitt Romney/Mr. Authenticity who apparently will be the Republican nominee. Just a momentary strategic feint, as an in order to, in service to the pointed critique of the veracity of President Obama? The questions ramify.

That President Obama had the temerity to criticism Mr. Paul Ryan and his budget and to dignify the contemporary Republican reactionary political nostalgia as Social Darwinism, too much for Mr. Brooks. His conscience was pricked. It was the spur that drove him to his rhetorical strategy of first and last resort, his usual hortatory, nearly intemperate tone, in defense of Mr. Ryan as Republican Economic Guru and Social Darwinism as a one dimensional racialist ideology. One needn’t be an historian of ideas to know that Social Darwinism was a multifaceted ideological expression wedded to very real and active practices of social stratification,hierarchy and active prejudices against the 'lower orders': hardly new concepts in American political and social life. And at its most virulent in the Modern Republican Party since Ronald Reagan.

Again Mr. Brooks:

"As I say, I have my own problems with Ryan’s plan, which Obama identified. But Ryan has at least taken a big step toward an eventual fiscal solution. He’s proposed necessary structural entitlement reforms, which the Democrats are unwilling to do. He’s proposed real tax reform, which the Democrats are also unwilling to do."

Necessary structural entitlement reform and real tax reform enter as the next stock players to enter the dramatic menage. 

"The first truth is that we will have to do these big things to avoid a fiscal calamity. The second truth is there is no one party solution; there has to be a merger of respectable ideas. The third truth is that gimmicky speeches obscure the president’s best character and make it seem as if he doesn’t understand the scope of the calamity looming in front of us.

Obama shouldn’t be sniping at Ryan. He should be topping him with something bigger and better."

Fiscal calamity is Mr. Brooks final dramatis personae to enter; but it has been present since the economic crisis of 2008. Most of us dwell in the fiscal calamity of the collapse of the Free Market Delusion, while Mr. Brooks contemplates the failure of it's successor Austerity, as the only real solution. And what if Austerity fails to deliver as the Free Market failed?

The Liberal Interventionist is no more! I assert that without apology. The contest of ideas is between the death cult of Neo-Conservatism and their first cousins the New Democrats. The spirochete of the Imperial Disease has infected both contestants. Even the self-exculpatory intellectual chatter of Mr. David Bosco, in his essay in Foreign Policy titled What divides neocons and liberal interventionists, can’t erase the fact that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton believe and practice, not an institutional multilateralism, but a destructive even murderous unilateralism. Both these political actors assert their right to practice the ability to declare anyone, or any country, an enemy of this state, and execute them without redress, or invade at will. The descriptive phrases abound in this exercise in deep analysis by Mr. Bosco: liberal interventionist, global architecture,mainstream liberal interventionists, the stuff of bourgeois respectable political opinionating, well garnished with a reader in mind that just might not exist, except as a figment of the cliché ridden imagination of Mr. Bosco. His intellectual surety and poise reflect the practiced rhetorician who realizes the a priori limits of legitimist political discourse.

Almost Marx

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/08/soul-needs-free-physical-…