Roger Scruton on "oikophobia"

You know, I'm not always in agreement with this blog's views, but let me say in no uncertain terms:

Great article.

Great commentary, too. I especially like

The immigrant is seen, consciously or not, as an opportunity for the media figure to demonstrate his or her own broad-mindedness and cosmopolitanism... It's funny, though: the media elites usually aren't the ones who are being asked to stand by while their neighborhoods and institutions...

Amen. In addition, the liberal elite loves the poor immigrant for the natural "crunchiness" of his culture yet despises him for his traditional bent and simplistic worldview. It's a strange world.>

Good point, Anon.

Exactly who are these "liberal elites?"

Are they related to the "moneyed elites" that own the Right?

It's like the "homosexual agenda" in that no one can point to any bylaws or organizational structure, but they sure do like to point the finger at it, as if every homosexual had the same agenda.

Seems even "crunchy" cons can't get through the day without making up an enemy to demonize.>

This is one of Rod's favorite rants. It's as empty now as it usually is. If only he were this concerned about poor people when it was convenient to make a point about immigration.

I'm middle class and live in an immigrant neighborhood. When I get on the bus every morning, I often never hear anyone else speaking English. Yet, my world is not alered by this experience.

Yes, poor people's lives probably intersect more with immigrants. But scapegoating immigrants because of the failures of a social services systems and educational system starved by conservative economic policies doesn't really help much.>

Of course I'm not saying that, Brent. I expect people of other places to love where they're from, and their customs. I would also hope that they would be tolerant and welcoming to outsiders. But being tolerant and welcoming is not the same thing as despising your own culture. Did you read the Scruton essay? You should.>

Sorry, should read 'between native-born Americans and Hispanic immigrants' at the end there.>

Funny how it wasn't until people started talking about how horrible Western Civ was for the non-white, non-male, non-English-speaking, non-straight, non-fully-abled, non-landowner (am I missing any?) that things started to get better for those "nons".

Sounds to me like you conserviatve folks would rather us all go back to "knowing our place" - bowing before you or walking deferentially three steps behind.

Well screw that, and screw Western Civ if it's damned and determined to not improve.>

Just posted it as a postscript to the original post, Anthony. Sorry about that -- I thought I had linked it already.>

This self-critical, self-correcting nature you're talking about doesn't just happen without a fight, though.

It's like conservatives want to talk about how great Western Civ is, but it's that way because progressive people have fought the status-quo set tooth and nail to make it that way.

How many thousands died in the Civil War? How many years did women fight to get the vote? How many black men got lynched?

Yay western civ. Progressives have dragged you kicking and screaming slowly out of oppression.

How about giving some credit where credit is due?>

Re: Oikophobia (the word, not the concept):

We already have words using oiko- as a word element, in its latinized guise (o)eco-. Economy, economics, ecology, etc. Since eco- has come to be used, as a prefix, to refer to the environmental movement (e.g., ecoterrorism, ecotourism), I think that oikophobia -- or ecophobia -- would be taken by most people to mean "hostility to the environmental movement".

I'll work on it and see if I can up with an alternate suggestion.>

It's like conservatives want to talk about how great Western Civ is, but it's that way because progressive people have fought the status-quo set tooth and nail to make it that way.

To which status quo are you referring?


How many thousands died in the Civil War?

About 620,000. Are you claiming credit for that?


How many years did women fight to get the vote?

It was a live political issue for about seventy years. Only a small minority are politically active at any given time, so use of the generic 'women' is misleading.


How many black men got lynched?

About 4,000 in the century after emancipation.


Yay western civ. Progressives have dragged you kicking and screaming slowly out of oppression. How about giving some credit where credit is due?

Many of us do not see a correllation between concern for the welfare of slaves and an insoucient indifference to the quality of social relations in the world in which their descendants (among others) live. An exaltation of expressive individualism is careless in just that way. You can take credit for it, if it pleases you.>

Mr. TV:

Your kind looks at all the evils in the world and calls *them* progressive...

Which ones, exactly?

Please, expound.>

that should have read:

what gets more press - how young people turn to sex in their despair over the state of the world and their lives *or* Brittney and Madonna having a snog on MTV?
>

And all this time I thought that young people turned to sex because it feels good. ;-) And because neither the schools, nor the society at large, nor their parents, have persuaded them that there are better, more rewarding ways to spend their time and energy.

I agree with you about the effects of diversity and inclusiveness. I would add the deleterious effects of the cult of self-esteem. I was brought up to believe that self-esteem should be *earned*, that it was a result of doing a job well. However, our schools now seem to believe that high self-esteem should be the default factory setting, as it were, and that it needs to be protected from any hard knocks. I think we are raising a whole nation of kids with eggshell egos.

It almost seems as if the educational establishment believes that the purpose of education is to make kids feel good about themselves. Strange, I was brought up to think that the purpose of education was, in a sense, to make you feel bad about yourself -- to get you to question your assumptions, to make you realize that you didn't have all the answers, to make you aware that not everyone else in the world lives the same way or has the same values.

Then there is the horrible practice of banning true competition in school sports and other activities. No winners, because with winners there must be losers, and we can't hurt the poor dear's egos by making them lose. No keeping score. Everybody gets a gold star just for showing up.

I wonder what is going to happen to these kids when they get out into the real world, and discover that life *does* keep score. What will happen when they realize that they won't always get the job or the promotion; that the person they like won't always return the affection; that life doesn't give you a gold star just for showing up; that sometimes you can work your hardest and do your best, but someone else will win. But that that's no excuse for not trying your best the next time.>

Per-pupil expenditure in our public school systems continue to rise- performance doesn't. E.G., one of the highest funded (and lowest performing) schools is D.C.


per-pupil expenditures are meaningless.

how about is we do a geographic breakdown - or one based on property taxes paid in an area.

Your per-pupil expenditure smokescreen is designed to obfuscate. You know the well-to-do skew the numbers.

Screw the poor, right?

Shame on you.>

You brought up the "lack of funding" in your post. And no, the per-pupil funding is not designed to obfuscate, but rather to elucidate the ridiculousness of your argument.

And yet with all of the holes I just poked in that argument, you still expect it to hold water.

Cute :)>

Your statement that "per- pupil expenditures are meaningless" is not exactly a logical counterpoint to the fact that they demonstrate the average dollars spent per pupil in a given educational system.

It is *exactly* a logical counterpoint to your per-pupil expenditure. Here's how you're using your statistic to obfuscate:

Per pupil expenditure as a metric only retains meaning if it can be shown that every pupil gets the same amount of expenditure. Since property taxes in rich areas pay only into the rich schools, the per pupil expenditure in those minute areas skews the average statistic across the board.

State funding and federal funding for schools covers only the bare minimum to educate kids (and in many cases, not even that - see cases in parts of the rural Southwest where as of the year 2000, the history books were so old they didn't even mention President Bush... the *first* President Bush.) Local schools are funded past the bare minimum by property taxes.

In suburban areas where median income is proportionally higher, as is incidence of home ownership, their schools get a lot more money to spread around for fewer students than in highly populated Urban areas or poverty-stricken rural areas.

Let's say federal and state funding is $1000 per student in a state where 10% of property taxes are earmarked for education. In an urban center of say 500,000 residents, only about 20% of them will own their homes. Plus, though median income statewide is 60,000, real income is vastly different if we look at regional demographics. Say in the swankest school district, the median income is $200,000 and in the crappiest is only $35,000. Are you going to tell me that those schools will be offering equal educational opportunities based on expenditures? Average expenditure per student may be $2000 (with $1000 coming form state and federal) but in the swank district, where expenditure per student is $10,000 or more - and those types of schools are decidedly low population compared with urban schools - the urban schools' expenditure has to be proportionally lower in order to make the average $2000.

That average, therefore, is not an accurate assessment of the state of education for all kids.

Since you're an educated guy, you must understand that when income disparity is as vast as it is in the US, average expenditure can't mean the same thing for all students, then you must be feigning ignorance, in which case, yeah - I think you're obfuscating.

Now, if an equal amount was spent on every student and the system still put out as many uneducated peopel as it does, then sure - I'd say the system is broken and there's no point in throwing more money at it.

I love the pretzels of rationalization conservatives will tie themselves in to avoid paying for things...>