Don’t know how I missed this one from a week ago (must have been “preoccupied” with something else, haha), and I probably owe someone a hat tip but can’t remember who. Anyway, Barone is his usual brilliant self in analyzing why it’s so difficult for the administration to get its message out (not that it shouldn’t be trying harder):

Why we fight with one arm tied behind our backs

….. “The underlying reason why America is doing so poorly in the field of ‘information warfare’ against the jihad is that its traditional organs of articulation–the academy, media, Hollywood–are largely hostile to the war on terror itself. It’s conceivable that an Iranian might flee persecution only to be taught at a U.S. university that he ought to embrace it by the many academic departments whose point of view is exactly that. In a fundamental sense, the war on terror is twinned to the greatest single issue dividing the left and the right, which is whether the United States, as a nation, is legitimate or whether, as some would maintain, it is Amerika: an abomination whose demise must be hastened by any means necessary.”

I’d amend this in one way. When Fernandez says “the greatest single issue dividing the left and right,” I’d like to specify that the left does not include by any means all of the Democratic Party, the academy, media, Hollywood—just an uncomfortably large part of it. And in the case of academia, or at least the humanities and soft social sciences part of academia, most of it. They are not with us in the struggle against Islamist jihad. They may not want us to lose, indeed like children they don’t take seriously the idea that there is any great struggle in which the adults they depend on could lose, but they sure don’t want us to win.

And then when the administration tries to do a professional job of getting its message out and actually spends money doing it, it’s “covert propaganda.” Horse manure.

The estimable Dr. Williams is getting a great deal of visibility on BizzyBlog today, and is certainly deserving of it.

Recall that it was Dr. Williams’ February 22 column that exposed Jay Bennish’s geography class political tirade. The groundswell grew into a national outrage after Sean Allen, the student who recorded Mr. Bennish, went on Mike Allen’s talk-radio program in Denver and played the tape.

Last Wednesday, Williams informed readers, as if there was any real doubt, that there are plenty of Jay Bennishes out there indoctrinating kids. He also compares his teaching approach to Bennish’s, and makes it clear that wasting precious time on non-subject material (indoctrination or not) is not an innocent pasttime:

The issue is neither academic freedom and free speech nor public exposure of the teacher’s comments.

It’s academic and intellectual dishonesty when a teacher, who is supposed to be teaching geography, uses his classroom to indoctrinate relatively uninformed teenagers. Recording the teacher’s comments broke neither school policy nor Colorado law. But more importantly, I believe that what teachers say in class should be subject to parental and public scrutiny.

I’ve taught economics for 37 years. I encourage students to record my lectures. Moreover, I tell them that the class deals with positive economics and if they hear me make a statement appearing to be an opinion, without saying so, they are to raise their hands and say, “Professor Williams, we didn’t take this class to be indoctrinated with your personal opinions passed off as economic theory; that’s academic dishonesty.” I also tell them that if I ever preface a comment with, “In my opinion,” they can stop taking notes because my opinion is irrelevant to economic theory.

I’ve received numerous letters from all over our country saying that indoctrination at Overland High School is by no means unique. It’s widespread, and much of it is anti-American. Where the indoctrination is not anti-American, it’s an attack on family values and traditional standards of decency. The unique aspect of the Overland High School affair is the hard, undeniable recorded evidence. Without it, teachers and administrators might have lied, denied or misrepresented what was said. After all, it would be the word of a teenager against an adult professional. Today’s microtechnology, might be just what the doctor ordered to put a stop to teachers using their position to indoctrinate our youth.

Preaching instead of teaching might go a long way toward explaining why in civics, math, reading, writing and geography, nearly a quarter of all students leave high school with academic skills that are “Below Basic,” the category the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) uses for students unable to display even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level. In science, 47 percent leave high school with skills Below Basic, and in American history, it’s 57 percent. I’d like for Jay Bennish’s supporters to explain how his indoctrination will help that.

Me too, but I’m not expecting a coherent answer, or even any.
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Previous Posts:

• March 11 — School District to Taxpayers and Parents: Up Yours (Jay Bennish Reinstated without Visible Penalty)
• March 7 — The Breakout of the Jay Bennish Indoctrination Story — And How the AP Avoided Reporting It

The community of unapologetic capitalists has to be pleased that George Mason University, home of Townhall.com columnist extraordinaire and distinguished Economics Professor Walter E. Williams, at least a couple of Nobel laureates, and a slew of other distinguished economists, legal scholars, and business thinkers, had their Men’s Basketball get to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 by upsetting perennial Big 10 power Michigan State on Friday and last year’s champ North Carolina on Sunday.

And, as you might expect, the Patriots (an appropriate name, as Revolutionary War-Era patriot George Mason has been called “The Father of the Bill of Rights”) have a record of student-athlete graduation that not only is miles ahead of the average NCAA Division I school, but is also almost exactly the same as the general GMU student population.

To get to the Final Four, the Patriots will have to beat another cinderella team, Wichita State, and then either Washington or national Number 1 UConn. Very tough, but after what they did in their two games this weekend, you don’t want to bet against them.

Free Links:

• On Friday, Michelle Malkin noted that The New York Times Company might be in a for a downgrading of its bonds from Moody’s. NYT Stock fell to a 7-1/2 year low.
• Frist Wants to Go After Bosses on Immigration. They’ll have to verify the validity of an applicant’s Social Security number instead of accepting it on faith if the person’s card looks authentic and it has nine numbers. This is dreadfully obvious, incredibly easy, and long overdue. Sorry, Wall Street Journal.
• French Demonstrations Get Violent — Keep in mind that all of this is over pretty minor but necessary tweaks in the employment system designed to reduce unemployment and increase employer flexibility in an otherwise virtually jobs-for-life environment. It shows just how difficult it is to move to common sense once a socialist entitlement mindset gets so ingrained into a country’s throught process.
• The Pork Outrage of the Day Is The Rock n Roll Sell Out — Mark Steyn casually mentioned this near the end of a Hugh Hewitt interview last week that the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland gets federal government money. And indeed it does (about 1/3 of the way through the linked article).
• Google Is Being Sued over search engine placement — This would seem to be a tough argument to make unless you wanted the world to consider Google to be some kind of public utility. I haven’t a had a lot of nice things to say about BizzyBlog Internet Wall of Shame member Google recently, but the path of the lawsuit’s logic seems pretty dangerous.
• An Indication That You Need to Get Out of Politics — Losing an election to a dead guy, by a margin of 3-1 (HT S.O.B. Alliance member Large Bill).

This is most of a long-but-worth-it article about a man whose cancer has been put into remission by an experimental treatment using stem cells from his own blood, and the spouse who has been by his side the whole way:

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