FerFAL, the author of The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse is very pleased that his self-published book is up to #2 in Survival Skills and Disaster Relief on Amazon. Many of you bought a copy last week when I did this post on the topic. Thanks very much for supporting this author. It's nice to know that authors who are not "mainstream" can now bypass the gatekeepers and do well anyway.

"Human nature does not reform itself via such milquetoast and good intentions."

Binky over at the Free Canuckistan! blog has an insightful post on schools and "pointy dangerous owwies" (scroll down). Here is what he tells his kids about the real world:

I tell them to defend themselves and others as needed, and to hit back, ask questions later. The bizarro world of the 2009 politically correct school-yard means you get anti-bullying lectures and pledges and coloured rubber bracelets.. but look out in the schoolyard, because you’ll still get you’re ass kicked when the teachers are out of view. Human nature does not reform itself via such milquetoast and good intentions. It’s 'The Dangerous Book for Boys,' real world.

PC types often forget that the real world is different from the utopia that they envision. We can wish that the world was full of ponies and pretty flowers (actually, I don't, that sounds really boring), but the reality is, someone who wants to do harm others will not be stopped by all the PC nonsense. In fact, it will be seen by those who are potentially dangerous as hypocrisy and stupidity. Maybe teaching kids how to be responsible for their actions by demonstrating that adults are responsible for theirs would be a start.

Update: Thanks to the commenters who pointed out that I incorrectly attributed the above post to Mark Steyn rather than the blogger who writes the Free Canuckistan!blog. It's now corrected.

When I read cases like the one in the New York Times about six year old Zachary being suspended and now facing 45 days in the district’s reform school, I no longer blink an eye. It's not that I don't care. It's just that the truth is that no one really gives a damn about school violence and focuses instead on innocent kids like Zachary who did nothing wrong. The authorities will use the Zacharys of the world to show that they are doing something about violence when in reality, they are doing anything but.

I learned a long time ago in working with hundreds of troubled kids and their schools that school authorities do not want to be responsible for the real trouble-makers and do not want to take the time to teach kids about consequences. Instead, they trot out "zero tolerance" so they don't have to think. Teaching kids how to be decent human beings is hard and requires long periods of time and dedication. Zero tolerance is easy and mostly, ineffective. In a bureaucracy where no one wants to take responsibility and make decisions they may be held accountable for, guess which path they take?

Update: As one of the commenters pointed out, Zachary is back in school.

Neo-neocon: The strategy behind Obama's war on Fox.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh just now and he said he does not like giving speeches. He is not scared, he says, he just thinks so quickly that it is hard to put all of his thoughts on paper and he simply does not feel that he can do as good a job as the audience might expect. I have seen Rush Limbaugh give a speech and he has nothing to worry about.

However, for those out there who may, like me, feel nervous about giving speeches, it's kind of comforting to know we are not alone and that even those being paid for speaking, have a bit of trouble. The other interesting tidbit Limbaugh also threw out was that he does not take a dime for giving talks to groups. Have you noticed that those accused of being the most heartless, are usually the most generous?

Working class men, freedom and Tea Parties

CNBC had an article (by Reuters) I read yesterday on working class men who (gasp!) may blame Democrats for the recession:

Working-class males have been among the biggest U.S. losers in this recession.

Does that mean that President Barack Obama's Democratic Party will be the big loser in the 2010 congressional elections? Some analysts say yes, even though blue-collar white males have been leaning Republican for decades and have been a shrinking percentage of the U.S. electorate....

The male unemployment rate rose to 11 percent in September from 6.8 percent in the same month last year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The overall rate has gone to 9.8 percent from 6.2 percent over the same 12 months.

For white men over the age of 20 unemployment has almost doubled over that period to 9.6 percent from 5.5 percent....

White working-class males have been turning their backs on the Democratic Party for decades—a perplexing situation in the eyes of some as a vote for the pro-business Republican Party is seen as a vote against their economic interests.

A perplexing situation? Not really--it's just that many working class men understand better than the government that when the government "bites the hand that feeds them," they are not better off. If the government puts a stranglehold on business, the businesses in turn can't hire them. Unlike the "perplexed" Democrats who have no concept, (or choose not to) of how business works, the working class men themselves understand simple economics.

And finally, I love this misinterpretation by a political scientist of why working-class men go to Tea parties:

"Many have lost jobs and working-class white men have difficulty doing things they saw their fathers do which they cannot do and so it is easy to go swing sign at a Tea Party," said Jillson.

Sure, that's why the Tea Parties are often held on the weekend, because everyone is out of a job and is desperate. Most of the parties I have seen or attended are filled with many freedom-loving men (and women) who have jobs and can't get the day off during the week. And many of those without a job are retired.

When it comes to the Tea Parties, the MSM wants to make the participants out to be a bunch of white jobless men ready to proclaim allegiance to the KKK with just a bit of coaxing. What they don't understand or pretend not to, is that the Tea Parties are a symbol of hard-working Americans who still believe (perhaps naively) that they have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without excessive government interference. Michael Patrick Leahy, in his book Rules for Conservative Radicals, captures the reason of many who go to the Tea Parties: "As a nation, we've lost our way, not because we can't see the path, but because we've allowed a small group in the political class to usurp the natural rights assigned for us in the Constitution."

When this administration and its useful idiots realize that the right to run their own lives is more important to working-class men than government hand-outs, then maybe they will have something to talk to these men about. In the meantime, let the Tea Partying continue.