A Psalm for Thanksgiving

On the day established in the United States for giving thanks - to God, for His marvelous providences, and by reasonable extension, to all those we depend on - here are a few of the things I have to be thankful for:

• A loving, peaceful family (even if we are scattered across the country): parents who raised me well, siblings who care, and an extended family that has stayed fairly close.
• A good job with useful work to do; good coworkers and (mostly) well-behaved and studious pupils.
• A place to live in comfort and security.
• Good friends: I may not be as demonstrative as some, but I do appreciate the companionship.
• A government still, despite its faults, dedicated to the ideas of peace and promoting prosperity.  I know I sound like the grinch here sometimes, but I am truly thankful that we live largely free from fear.
• A loving, welcoming church family: they even let me sing in the choir, and Pastor Holliday knows everybody's name.  I have no idea how he does it.

On that note, I also want to share one of my favorite psalms, the one hundred thirty-sixth:

O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks unto the God of gods: for His mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for His mercy endureth for ever.

To Him who alone doeth great wonders: for His mercy endureth for ever.
To Him that by wisdom made the heavens: for His mercy endureth for ever.
To Him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for His mercy endureth for ever.

To Him that made great lights: for His mercy endureth for ever:
The sun to rule by day: for His mercy endureth forever.
The moon and stars to rule by night: for His mercy endureth forever.

To Him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for His mercy endureth for ever:
And brought out Israel from among them: for His mercy endureth for ever:
With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for His mercy endureth for ever.

To Him which divided the Red Sea into parts: for His mercy endureth for ever:
And made Israel to pass through the midst of it: for His mercy endureth for ever:
But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea: for His mercy endureth for ever.

To Him which led His people through the wilderness: for His mercy endureth for ever.
 To Him which smote great kings: for His mercy endureth for ever:
And slew famous kings: for His mercy endureth for ever:
Sihon king of the Amorites: for His mercy endureth for ever:
And Og the king of Bashan: for His mercy endureth for ever:
And gave their land for an heritage: for His mercy endureth for ever:
Even an heritage unto Israel His servant: for His mercy endureth for ever.

Who remembered us in our low estate: for His mercy endureth for ever:
And hath redeemed us from our enemies: for His mercy endureth for ever.
Who giveth food to all flesh: for His mercy endureth forever.

O give thanks unto the God of heaven: for His mercy endureth for ever.

The Modern Pharisees?

I have been contemplating recently one of the odder passages in Christ's teachings.  In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, we find Him discoursing on the state of Israel's ecclesiastical leadership.  I excerpt the following:

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.  For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.  But all their works they do for to be seen of men...

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren... But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.  And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in."

Then follows a list of the Pharisees' misdeeds and errors: abusing the poor, misinterpreting the essence of the law, and coming up with creative legalisms which miss the point entirely.

As a Protestant, it has always been easy to look at this passage - and similar ones in the apostolic epistles - and find an analogy to the practices of the Roman Catholic church.  To take a few of the more obvious: what else is penance - especially once established as a sacrament - but a "heavy burden grievous to be borne"?  Now, the instructed Catholic will look on and defend it as a discipline leading to virtue, but the practice has no Biblical warrant, neither does salvation depend on it, but on Christ: where is the use to be found?

Or take again the Roman practice of forbidding priests to marry.  While justified with the pious-sounding "be more like Christ", it flies in the face of Christ's choices and the apostolic teaching.  Christ, it should be noted, for the head of his church on earth (if we accept the papal claim for the apostle Peter), chose a married man.  The apostle Paul, giving instructions to his under-ministers Timothy and Titus, told them to find men as elders and deacons who were married and - to give the lie to later ideas of "celibate marriage" - had children.  Well-behaved children, of course.  The position of Paul, himself unmarried, has to be seen as the anomaly: he recognizes it, and defends his own right to marry should he want to to the Corinthians: "Have we [Paul and Barnabas] not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas [Peter]?"  He goes on, true, to imply this is something he has given up for the profit of his ministry, but we must recognize Paul's place in the early church as the great traveling missionary, and one often in jail: Paul's private considerations should not affect church policy on the whole, and especially are much different from those of the pastor of an individual church.

These are the two most blatant problems: there are of course also the invented "days of obligation", the whole problem of images, and more.  But I point these out to make the point that the issues exist.  All of this criticism is relatively straightforward: Christ - Himself or through His inspired ministers - says to do this, and you don't.

In contrast, doctrinal problems are more difficult to chase down.  Paul says that we are justified by faith.  James says a man who trusts in faith but does not do good works is fooling himself.  If both were inspired - as all churches agree - how can this be reconciled?  The Protestant churches tend to teach Paul, with James as a footnote: this matches the content provided, in amounts if not in exactness.  The point here is that I have become less and less comfortable arguing specific doctrines, the more so as I have become aware of my own lack of knowledge.

None of this criticism, or refraining from criticism, though, addresses the way Christ begins this section - which is to instruct his disciples to obey the very Pharisees he then criticizes for the rest of the chapter.  Let me say that again: Christ instructed his disciples to obey the corrupt leaders of Israel, because they were the leaders of Israel, the ones who "sit in Moses' seat".  The apostles also instruct us to obey those in authority over us.

So the question is, how does this apply to us today?  Does - to take the possibility I find most disturbing - the Roman Catholic church really have Peter's seat", as they claim, regardless of corruption, scandal, and false teachings?  Or, to look at a more general view, if you go looking for authority how are you supposed to tell the "authentic church" from those with clear trails to the early church: the Orthodox, Roman, or Coptic?

I do not see any perfect church.  I do not even see any church with a perfect system of doctrine and practice which would be amazing if only fallen humans were not human.  I see a number of churches running around making various errors - the Reformed churches I attend, for instance, have concocted Presbyterianism somewhere, I am not sure how - with no clear best option.  I have reached the point where, if I had been raised Orthodox, say, or Anglican, I do not know how I would justify leaving that communion; but then the same argument applies to my own, which is part of the reason I stay.

But remaining wrong does not seem like a good option, either, if it is possible to be more correct.  An odd problem.

And Picking Up Speed

My favorite piece of political writing is a poem by Kipling, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings".  I do not know his motivation for writing it, but I can hardly imagine it was not intended as political, or at least societal, commentary.  I normally post the entire thing before elections, though I did not this year.  You can go read the whole thing, but I will excerpt the ending stanzas:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

 As President Obama has won re-election - I do not know if votes have been fully counted, but Governor Romney has conceded the election, and I assume he knows the writing on the wall better than I do - the immediate question is, "So what now?"

I had thought Romney would likely win the presidential race; I under-estimated - this is based on exit polling - how determinedly liberal the majority of young voters appear to be.  Some of this is probably the climate I mostly live in: the majority of my friends are conservative; the majority of my co-workers are not, but that is a much smaller group; DC is of course staunchly political and, believing in government, tends very liberal, but that makes predicting overall trends difficult.  All of this is without taking into account the habits of those who vote by party, with no regard to issues - a trend which historically seems to have favored the Democrats, for reasons beyond my knowledge.

Still, there were some indications that this would happen, even in my experience.  A sampling: several liberal friends thought - or just assumed - that the Democratic candidates won all the debates, even while most news sources thought they favored Republicans.  Political bases like to have their ears tickled, and the President's party apparently succeeded.  A casual acquaintance argued, with a straight face, that because a "great president" like FDR could not resolve a depression quickly, we should not expect President Obama to have done much either.  This is what bad history gets you.  (Is there a good biography of Calvin Coolidge?  It should be required reading for all high school students.)  And finally, the most emotional issue - that of sex and avoiding its real results - obviously was much more motivating to the liberal side.

It is this last that concerns me most.  By any reasonable standard, we are a libertine society and becoming more so; and the President's policies encourage this beyond reason.  Not only do the shapers of thought think we are supposed to accept abortion, and embrace the "diversity" of immoral lifestyles - notably homosexual and so-called "transgender", but the people in those categories are a tiny minority compared to those doing what used to be called "living in sin" - but now we are supposed to pay for the contraception and abortion which these people use to avoid the responsibilities their lifestyle ought to bring them.  And religious groups which object - remembering that this country was founded in a series of attempts to preserve religious liberty makes this more of a travesty - get the tiniest of protections from such governmentally-imposed thuggery, and private believers get none at all.  This has been said repeatedly and loudly, and the majority of the media - who ought to be hounding such abuse - have ignored it.

That is the most disturbing long-term trend.  But as a moral issue, some will argue it should be kept out of politics.  I defy anyone to manage to run a government with no moral ramifications, but for the sake of argument I will move on to the next biggest problem, the one that originally motivated my interest in politics: our national finances.  They are a mess.  We spend more than we have, borrow more than we can afford, and when it is suggested that we maybe stop with the money-wasting, we just re-elected a president whose party thinks the bright idea is to "tax the rich" more.  Never mind that "the rich" already pay most of the taxes, and by percentages more than their share; never mind that taking the money from the haves will only result in a society where - as the USSR found - there "are no rich no more" (except the political elite managing the extortions).  We like austerity and responsibility no more than the European states that are already foundering having followed the same path we pursue.  And for the future?  The government's bailout/buyout of GM has produced a stagnant (at best) company.  The investment in "clean energy" that the President's party pursued has resulted in a series of failed companies, while proved methods of energy production - and the prosperity they might bring - are rejected: and all this in a recession, where the short-term problems are the most pressing.

All this demonstrates is that we have rejected responsibility and freedom.  The trade-off, apparently, is supposed to be security.  A "security blanket" for the less fortunate.  The powers that be sell us on domestic libertinism by assuring us that at least our defense spending will be fine.  We have mostly forgotten what the wise men of old said - which one exactly said it first is not clear - that the nation which trades liberty for security will have neither.  What the conservatives have been shouting - not nearly loudly enough, apparently, nor from high enough rooftops - is that the whimsically-justified government may start by "helping" the unfortunate and sponsoring "noble" causes, but it depends on the views of the elite - and if those change, well, all the infrastructure is in place to produce fascism and tyranny.  A government equipped to play bodyguard is equally well equipped to play prison guard - let's call it house arrest

This is why, among other things, I - despite being conservative - was not particularly bothered by that stupid HHS pamphlet advertising right-wing groups as security threats.  They are "security threats" to a modern nanny-state.  They are armed - as allowed for in our very Constitution, among other reasons, to be a threat to would-be tin gods - and it is anybody's guess how long it will be until continued usurpations by the Federal government drive them to action.  I put it at 30 years, give or take.  The question is, though, are they truly threats, or patriots?  It will be impossible to tell until it happens, and maybe after.  Our Civil War, the one we already had, was a mess of arguments; I tend to think the Union was less wrong, but I am not comfortable in passing judgment categorically.  King George's government no doubt warned him - or the relevant ministers - that the hotheads in Massachusetts and Virginia were a threat to the peace of his dominion.  History by now has largely agreed that it is those hotheads who were - with qualifications - in the right.  But of course, it is easier to accept that a successful rebellion long since over was justified than it is to look forward to a (probably badly provoked) revolt and find the situation appealing.

That is a long-term prediction: that we are bound for another civil war, this one provoked by the impossibility of surviving in the real world as a "liberated" society, and the resentment that that will generate.  (And to be honest, my evaluation would be the same - though this piece might not have been provoked exactly - should Romney have won: he seems to me a manager, not a reformer.  I might up my projection to 40 years - or he might have been better than I imagine.)  In the short-term, the question is what to do about the next election.  After 2008, I was of the opinion that the Republican party is doomed.  They had reduced themselves to a series of candidates parroting Democratic and liberal lines, with just enough defense, America, and God panacea thrown in to placate the base.  After the last two elections, I am not so sure.  The Republican's energized base has become (or returned to) those holding right-wing, small-government, social conservative views - the (oddly villified) Tea Party.  On the other hand, the political future may well belong to the libertarian conservatives; in which case, the Republican party will continue to lose votes in upcoming years, until a shift takes place - suddenly.

I do not know if the two-party system can be truly broken.  It has been a feature of American politics since the beginning of the country.  I am not even sure it is a bad thing - like democracy, it might be one of those things that is worse than any system except all the others.  What I would like to see, though - two parties or twenty - would be a de-emphasis on party.  The most likely way to break the two-party stranglehold?  Take party names off ballots.  Get the state governments out of party politics.  If you want primary electiona, take all the candidates, put them on a ballot, and take the top five as the candidates for the general election.  (This is an off-the-cuff suggestion.)  As it is, the two major parties are invested and intertwined in the system in a way that prevents significant change, or at least makes it more difficult.

Regardless of the system, important things can be done, whether you agree with my evaluation or dislike it.  Pay attention to local politics.  Go to school board and city hall meetings.  I admit, to my embarrassment, that I did not do significant research on the city elections for Alexandria - something I can change and improve next time.  Run for office.  Ask candidates questions.  And, yes, pray.  Truth be told, the re-election of President Obama does not really worry me - I worry not that much anyway, but by faith I know God reigns, and if the Apostle Paul could tell his congregations to pray for the Emperor Nero, and Christ could tell his disciples to pay their Roman occupiers' taxes, I can survive and even rejoice under a less-than-ideal government.

Another One of My Periodic Discourses on Mathematics

I was linked today to this article by a Dr. Frank Quinn employed by Virginia Polytechnic University.  Dr. Quinn outlines a philosophical split among mathematicians about a century ago and discusses its outcomes.  He then writes briefly on how the advances made might be introduced into mathematics education with profit.

Dr. Quinn's major contention is that mathematics, understood in a modern sense, is entirely rule-based, with no demand that the rules match any physical results exactly.  When applied educationally - as it commonly is in Geometry - this results in a system which while difficult to learn leaves room for entirely logical conclusions and is therefore in a sense "easy to master" if unlikely to ever be anything remotely close to fully explored.

The primary drawback to such an understanding is of course easy to spot: if it does not actually describe anything, what is the use of mathematics anyway?  It becomes little more than a convoluted and peculiarly abstract art form, at least to the common understanding.  I happen to be attracted to logical puzzles and purity of logic, but in teaching I have been made aware - sometimes more forcefully than others - that many students have no real interest in such things, and more importantly little use for them.

Now Dr. Quinn makes the fair observation that elementary education is still dominated by an earlier view of mathematics, using the teaching of fractions as an example.  That being noted, though, I want to say that there remain at least two possibilities I can come up with:

First, he might be right.  Perhaps at least one part of the reason for, say, falling educational results is that early education goes blithely on with outdated methods while the higher mathematics - starting in, say, high school, where the teachers teaching algebra and calculus have probably at least studied mathematics - is relying on the new framework.  In which case, it would clearly be beneficial to unify the system and use the new and improved math throughout.

On the other hand, the older methods may persist (outside academia) because they are superior in a general sense.  Mathematical proof may frown on analogy, but experience does not.  In a related field, the fact is that elementary science remains mostly Newtonian even though it will yield errors of fact to varying degrees.  Why?  Accounting for relative or quantum effects is simply too difficult.  When we are attempting to train nuclear physicists, then by all means we try get the science correct.  But even an engineer rarely has to worry about such complications, far less a plumber or an accountant.  Similarly, professional (which is at least largely to say, academic) mathematics is certainly very useful as its own thing, but it is hardly a field which everyone needs to be prepared for.  If it turns out that Johnny and his friends can be taught to balance a checkbook more easily by considering half of an apple than by learning about the properties of the ratio of the integers 1 and 2, so much the worse for the integers.

In fact, I suspect - both because I am a cynical person, and from experience - that the old methods have been partly discarded while the new ones have not been fully adopted; or perhaps worse, both methods are attempted simultaneously and the result is confusion.  Let me take a concrete example.

Is a half, after all, a part of a thing, or an arithmetically constructed ratio of two integers whose idea is (almost) entirely man-made?  Even the latter definition is hardly rigorous and results, for instance, in mass confusion when fractional exponents - also known as roots - are introduced.  It now becomes apparent that for these "higher" relations, it would be best if we could have gone back and made sure that the part stressed in the introduction to fractions was their reciprocal relationships - which is not even ratio, per se, but an application of ratio and multiplication.  Meanwhile, three students divide two candy bars equally, and the complete abstraction is suddenly of limited value.  "Three parts of a candy bar" is a simple idea.  "A part of a candy bar which if you could have three candy bars each split into similar parts would make a whole candy bar" is a bit unwieldy, and attempting to ignore the actual candy in order to keep the definition manageable and the numbers pure is not helpful either.

Now, I confess I was not particularly aware there had been any radical changes in the understanding of what mathematics is and how it should be conducted before reading this article.  I would have said that there has been a gradually progressing tightening of definitions, standards, and proofs over the centuries, and certainly "modern" - twentieth century - mathematics is more enamored of these closed system, definitionally-based, completely logical approaches than most, while also yielding some impressive constructions, many of which have even proved useful.

So, maybe for that reason, I fail to see how this "crisis" is to be resolved, or even that it is much of a crisis.  I suspect the problem is not that Johnny and Susan cannot define fractions in a "mathematically correct" fashion, but that they are in ninth or tenth grade and cannot add them because a calculator does their thinking for them, or possibly for worse reasons.

In short I am hesitant about prescribing "modern mathematics" as a solution, for the very reason Dr. Quinn finds it so appealing: its lack of connection to the actual world.  If we are going to set up "science" and "core mathematics" as rivals, I am more inclined to the scientific approach in anything serious.  But even more importantly, Dr. Quinn's worries strike me as those of someone who would complain that each and every driver is not able to design an engine: of course it would be fantastic if it could be managed, but it is also a truly impossible request.

Bankers are All the Same

No one, to my knowledge, has remarked that the modern rhetoric about "capitalists" and "one-percenters" and "monopolists" and "big money" is remarkably similar to Medieval denunciations of the Jews - and for the same reason: people with the money inspire resentment, justified or unjustified.

Of course, I will not just leave that statement hanging there.  There are qualifications that must be made.  "Capitalists" are not widely regarded as guilty by association in the death of Christ.  (The death of Iraqi civilians, on the other hand...)  "Big money" is not disliked on racial grounds, mainly (though there are the wild ranters out there).

I suppose it is an improvement that we are lining up targets by class rather that race.  No one can change their genes, but class distinctions admit change and improvement with hard work.  On the other hand, many of the tomato-throwers would hastily mutter about "not fair" and "born to wealth", and propound theories about how the wealthy are lucky - so if they are right, there has actual not been any moral improvement in whom we choose to abuse.

It is certainly good that Wall Street bankers are not subject to exile by whim or having their gold teeth pulled, but the tax rates levied for daring to be wealthy are just as high now as then.  (Okay - probably not actually as high (though I do not have the knowledge to confirm this), but proportionally to the rest of the population, I'm sure they are comparable.)

You can draw from this comparison two possible morals.  On the first hand, you can say, "Huh", and possibly feel at least a little sympathy for the Medieval town's crowd of Jew-abusers.  Or if not sympathy, at least understand them better.  On the other hand, you can do your best to make sure the modern debate - and this is the far more important part - stays civil and lawful.  "Occupy Wall Street", however unsuccessful, made about as much sense as "Burn out the infidel bankers!" even if it was after all a bit less destructive (except, you know, in Oakland, where they managed to shut down the port briefly).

"Practical Math"

Unlike many members of the educational commentariat, Andrew Hacker, writing the the New York Times yesterday, is more concerned with finding a solution to mathematical under-performance than wringing his hands about the problem.  In my book, this automatically makes him about five times more worth listening to than your ordinary educrat.  Dr. Hacker suggests that the formal math standard in American schools is largely not useful either to most workers or to the man as citizen.  He proposes that math courses should instead of the discipline of formal mathematics focus on logical and quantitative reasoning and application.

While he has a point - "useful" mathematical knowledge is far from as common as it should be - I think he misunderstands the real problem.  He begins by citing the number of students failing and doing poorly across the United States in these traditional classes.  He observes that most teachers are dedicated and competent.  He concludes that the problem must therefore be the material.  "Algebra is a stumbling block..."

As a teacher myself, I believe Hacker has conflated two problems.  Many students, I think, find algebra difficult because they have not mastered arithmetic.  I inherit seventh graders, half of whom do not know how many feet in a yard, and the other half are too unsure to volunteer the answer.  Tenth grade students new to me have forgotten or never learned their perfect squares.  Students at all levels are incapable of or unwilling to do unit conversions.

Algebra I would define loosely as the art of manipulating and finding the values of unknown numbers.  Two critical ideas in carrying out algebraic operations (by which I mean mathematical manipulation performed on expressions - "clauses", if you will - with variables), can be taught simply and directly from basic arithmetic techniques.

The first is the concept of the variable itself.  A student familiar with measurements and conversions can be introduced to the idea easily: he is used to answering questions like, "How many meters are in 2400 millimeters?"  Arithmetically, we set the problem up in stages: find the starting amount, and then from the final units set up the conversion factors - which should be memorized by 4th or 5th grade but in any case are easy to look up.  Algebraically, we introduce the idea of equivalence, and mathematical symbols as a language.  The student already knows that, for instance, meters in "math" are m.  Now he learns that "question words" are represented by a symbol: a box, a question mark, or an x.  He learns that "are" and "equals" are (in basic algebra) equivalent.  So we reach the algebraic statement "x m = 2400 mm".  The conversion factor still needs to be reintroduced in its algebraic place, of course, and enough practice done to learn the methods.

The second technique which is an easy extrapolation from basic arithmetic is that of variable operations.  Polynomials, which are (simple version) expressions with multiple variable powers, can be added, subtracted, and multiplied (and therefore exponentiated) almost exactly like ordinary numbers, but with the different powers indicating "place value".  (Division, while also analogous, is slightly different and therefore harder.)  So a student who knows why his arithmetic works the way it does, who has been taught the decimal system, will recognize "place value" and make the connection in most cases without significant difficulty.

In short, I believe the root cause of high school failure is far more likely to be inadequate elementary education than difficulty with the material.

While I think Hacker's reasoning as to cause is flawed, his main concern - is this worth teaching anyway? - is a question worth asking.  I think the answer is still "yes", but with caveats.  I have blogged before about the state of mathematics textbooks in the modern United States: torn between traditional American mathematics and the "unified" approach of much of the rest of the world, having to teach or re-teach concepts not taught successfully before high school, fascinated with fiddly properties at the expense of overview, and so forth.

Algebra or Geometry as disciplines, though, are branches of a formal mathematics which exists - as people realized thousands of years ago - not only for practical purposes but as a training tool for the mind and as an art.  Algebra is valuable for much the same reason that a foreign language is useful, or music, or memory: to cultivate the human spirit in all its facilities.  Certainly most people will not use hyperbolic equations or non-Euclidean axioms in their day-to-day life, any more than most people will use French or German.  Certainly you can enjoy the original Hugo novels - you can also dabble in Newton.

The practical mathematics which Dr. Hacker champions is of course still valuable.  It is found in applied form in physics, chemistry, economics - all things which we say should be normally studied as useful.  But its basic tools can and should be provided before high school.

Identity and the State

President Obama made headlines recently for a speech in which he emphasized the societal foundation of any person's success.  Unfortunately for him, though I believe revealingly, he fell victim to the soundbite era: "If you’ve got a business - you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen."

"And Mr. President, if you become the president, who made that happen?"  This would be a weak question: I believe that Mr. Obama's strongly stated beliefs originate in his own experience, that of accepting and working in the machine.  I suspect his irritation - at "guns and religion", at those challenging ACORN and other interest groups, at the steadfast unwillingness of the American people to give in to his vision - is honest, that it is the bafflement of one who has accepted a view of the world and found it not held as widely as he expected.

On a superficial level, the President's viewpoint is attractive and reasonable.  It contains some idea of a community, working together, holding to a common good; it presents some echo of the polis which, idealized by Plato and Aristotle and Cicero (if in different ways), resounds through the centuries of Western history and still informs the world today.

But Mr. Obama's view has a weak point: a crisis of mis-identification, or at the very least a crucial identification which he has failed to convince the United States' people is either crucial or a true identity - and perhaps more damningly, he has failed to understand that the point is still under debate.

For Mr. Obama, as for much of the academic, legal, and political elite he has grown to belong to,  the people, and specifically the will of the people, is identified with the government instituted by the people.  He does not follow the earlier understanding, where the government was the representative of the people; or even the older idea that the government stands above the people (by breeding or divine will - or both) and is therefore responsible for them.  A representative who represents poorly can be changed.  A father, judge, or a commander, held up as such by the thinnest string of theory or tradition, can be called to account and shamed - or deposed.

Instead in this modern conception, the government cannot be held in check by theories.  A government defined as "the people's will" simply by the fact of its existing as the government has nothing that can be called up against it except natural or divine law, and those having been busily undermined in the name of "reason" and "tolerance" and "relative morality" because everything originates with the people's will - which is, as we already found, simply the government.

I believe President Obama is confused by backlash against his policies.  As the chief executive, he appears is the supreme embodiment of the popular will which is to be enshrined, and he has been busily enacting all the policies he knows are best.  The fact that law and tradition stand in his way is not to be considered an obstacle, in his view: laws change.  In the President's view, I suspect reality changes.  He does not understand, does not know what to do with, a people who believe in lasting truths, in an actual rule of law because it is the law, in not a good or good policy or today's best option but in the Good.

Yet this philosophical confusion is not really the most damning indictment of his speech and his policies.  After all, if he is right - that is to say, if my speculations about Mr. Obama's worldview are correct, and that worldview is itself factual - then he is doing the right thing, and is merely a poor politician, or at least a tactless one.

The worst problem with his attempted solutions is that even on his own terms, it ends up either backwards or tyrannical.  If we take the more positive view, we stop to ask him who these people were that helped.  Certainly, a state of peace is maintained by the government, the servants of the people: the soldiers, police, road crews, and so forth.  But these are for maintenance only.  The next question leads us to the practical problem faced by these bureaucratic-faced dreamers: who takes us beyond subsistence, and who pays the ones who help us to subsist.  The awkward fact that President Obama has yet to acknowledge is that it is the successful men - the Mr. Romneys and Mr. Gateses and, yes, Mr. Obamas of the world - who help the rest of us: by paying outsize shares of taxes, by hiring and training workers, by providing necessities and comforts and then even luxuries.

This puts us in their debt: it is not right to go demanding that "the rich" pay "their fair share" when they already pay, relatively speaking, that and more; when they not only provide those moneys to the government but in the private sectors hire and pay us who are not so wealthy - and to return to the public arena they largely, for good or ill, provide our government from their number.  It may happen, in this day or in a time of war or or stress, that we need not only a normal contribution from these men but an unusual one: but justice demands that, even if we ask it, we ask it - however formally and with whatever force of law behind it - recognizing that we take from them for a common good or need, and not as if demanding a debt owed to us personally.

This is the charitable view: that President Obama, used to seeing so much given out regularly, has forgotten it is given, and sees it only as taken and that by right.

The uncharitable view - which I hesitate to ascribe to him, but you will see argued by others, I have no doubt - is one that reduces to serfdom any private person who is not himself an agent of the government.  More than mere forgetfulness, or blowing on some wind of the age, this would assert that the government has the right and duty to demand whatever is "necessary" - and has forgotten the older theories of reciprocal duties, so that now all is owed to the government, and the government's dole is charity.  And here we find the sinister descendant of what I mentioned above as Mr. Obama's probable political philosophy: we observe that the government has become the State, and the Will of the People, and the actual people reduced to so many resources to be commanded to produce.  No doubt Mr. Obama considers his a benevolent guidance, but he gives no indication that he sees any right of anyone to disagree with that guidance.

Statue Stupidity

Evidence presented during the trial and conviction for child abuse of Jerry Sandusky, former defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team, all-but proved - as had been suspected already from new reports - that there was substantial cover-up of Sandusky's crimes by university officials and staff, probably implicating the late coach Paterno among others.

Some hooligans are suggesting that Paterno's statue be taken down.

Absurd as it is for Paterno to have had a statue on campus while still alive, not to mention still coach, it was and is a measure of what he has meant to the image and idea of the institution.  The image is tarnished, perhaps forever, but taking down the statue is not going to help things.

Should the United States remove Thomas Jefferson's memorial from its capital because the man kept slaves, and perhaps abused them?

Should Nelson's statue come down from Trafalgar square because he was an adulterer?

Should you have to put on your resume that you've "borrowed" supplies from your office, exaggerated your hours, gossiped about your boss, encouraged and laughed at stories that weren't true, yelled at your children because you had a bad day?

Paterno's legacy before this scandal was that of a great coach and an upright man; if it turns out he was more human than we realized, then Diogenes is right once again.  While we cannot trivialize the evils committed, it would be willfully ignorant and vindictive to pretend not to see the case from Paterno's side; what should you do when a good friend and subordinate is charged with something this abominable?  If you prefer to believe Paterno's motives were more venal, it is still not difficult to understand the desire to sweep under the rug something which would threaten his prestige - and maybe even his job: coaches have been fired for less cause than crimes committed by a subordinate.

If Penn State takes down the statue, what they say is that they refuse to acknowledge the good he did that earned him his place; that they want to disassociate themselves from something like the last sixty years of their sporting history.  If the crime was Paterno's, then such a heinous act might deserve the erasure.  But when the misdeed is not even his, and in fact evidence suggests that what allegations he knew he dealt with as required legally - even if he failed morally by not ensuring justice was timely - then we are looking at overreaction.

No, But Thanks

About a year ago, a passed a high school student I had never seen before on the sidewalk while meandering around my neighborhood of Del Ray.  He stopped and asked me how I was doing, which I thought was a little odd, before he continued, "Didn't you used to teach science at T.C. Williams?"  To which I had to answer that I had not.

Last week, I was picking up students from the airport for our second session, and one particular plane I was waiting for also contained a contingent of young Marines, in what the sci-fi books call "civvies" but which the Corps no doubt has an idiosyncratic term for, clearly looking for a handler, I mean superior.  Of the dozen or so, nearly every single one took a couple steps towards me before correctly identifying me as Not A Marine.  (I realized later this might have had something to do with the khakis and blue t-shirt I was wearing -  equally it might have had something to do with my parents teaching me to stand up straight.)

At contra on Friday, an older woman I was talking me remarked that she could tell I was "obviously a dancer" from the way I moved, which I found amusing considering the students I teach and the fact that all my family I have almost certainly done the least dancing.  (Once again, perhaps all those admonitions to stand up straight and not scuff my feet had some effect?)

I seem to be a person who looks like people.  Perhaps I should have been an actor - or at least a stunt double?

Notes on Giselle

On Thursday evening I went to see the Paris Opera Ballet's performance of Giselle.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of everything I know about ballet I have learned some time in the last ten months by osmosis, so this is more a ramble than an actual review.  I have now reached the point where I can usually spot the big mistakes, of which there was one: the male lead stumbled badly during a variation in the second act.  The third male dancer with a solo (if you have a solo, but your character does not have a name, where does that put you in the hierarchy? I have no idea) also was somewhat unsteady during his pas de deux.

I still find it mildly confusing that ballets are often, if not usually, referred to as [choreographer]'s [ballet].  I realize that the dance is the main thing, but I am much more familiar in most cases with the music.  For instance, the Mariinsky will be in town in October with what I would have naively called Prokofiev's Cinderella, but the playbill calls it Ratmansky's Cinderella.

At any rate, Giselle's music was composed by one Adolphe Adam, a French composer who I happen to know now was almost exactly a contemporary of Berlioz, though musically less ambitious (and perhaps therefore less famous).  For the most part the score is good but not superb - fairly unremarkable, in fact.  However, at one point a climax of the dance of spirits in the second act is marked in the choreography by a repeated figure of what I will call a traveling arabesque.  Physically it is incredibly impressive; and the music here abandons its quiet eeriness for a dramatic build.   Unfortunately, Adam's score is here, if not actually in a major key (and I think it might be), still somewhat martial rather than ominous, making the effect somewhat comical, which breaks the mood rather thoroughly.  It was, true, not helped by the stage of the Kennedy's opera house, which registers every footstep, and thus had the effect of emphasizing the beat and therefore the marche of the music.  (I imagine that is a common problem though - I can not think there are too many stages anywhere in the world specifically designed to deaden the sound of pointe shoes.)

On the whole, though, the show was excellent.  The company struck me as a very technically focused one (where the Bolshoi, which did Coppelia a while ago, seemed more dramatic - though the ballets themselves are also very different).  The set was superb - I am still accustomed to college and community theater sets, so I find these fancy professional ones especially striking by comparison.  I particularly noticed the acting: while ballet acting is by necessity somewhat stylized, the "style" here was not overwhelming the story.  I imagine that there has to be some tendency similar to the actor who keeps trying to "do Shakespeare" instead of focusing on his part, but it was not evident here.