Conservatism - The future of America
This is a work in progress. I am going to spend some time putting together
information on past, present and the future of American Ideology.
My discovery of Conservatism:
Growing up as a child, living with my mother who was quite liberal (we
will get back to “was”), I had a very liberal attitude towards all aspects of
society. I moved to my father’s
house when I was about 15 years old. Actually, I did not have a choice, my
mother had my father come get me because I was a bit unruly. As time passed and my father and I
talked about things in general, he pointed out to me a basic philosophy of the
difference between Democrats and Republicans. The way I recall what he said, the
Democrats believe in taking money from working people and give it to those who
don’t work or won’t work. Bureaucrats will make the decision of where the money
will go, wasting most of it in the meantime. Republicans believe in letting the
people who work hard keep their money and give what they want to charities that
they feel are good causes to help people if they desire to do so. This gives a much more direct route
for the money with less waste. My first vote was for Ronald Regan in 1984. I am
proud to say that my past liberal mother is voting for Conservatives now and
the first time in her life.
Progressivism – The Enemy within
Definition:
progressivism
1. Also called progressionism,
progressism. the principles and practices of those advocating progress,
change, or reform, especially in political matters.
2. (cap.) the doctrines and beliefs of the Progressive party in
America. — progressivist, n.
The Free Dictionary:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/progressivism
Progressivism is a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform through
governmental action. Progressivism is often viewed in opposition to
conservative or
reactionary ideologies. The
Progressive Movement began in cities with settlement workers and reformers
who were interested in helping those facing harsh conditions at home and at
work. The reformers spoke out about the need for laws regulating tenement
housing and child labor. They also called for better working conditions for
women.
In the
United States, the term progressivism emerged in the late 19th century
into the 20th century in reference to a more general response to the vast
changes brought by industrialization: an alternative to both the traditional
conservative response to social and economic issues and to the various more
radical streams of
socialism and
anarchism which opposed them.
Political parties, such as the
Progressive Party, organized at the start of the
20th century, and progressivism made great strides under American presidents
Theodore Roosevelt ,
William Howard Taft,
Woodrow Wilson,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Lyndon Baines Johnson
[1]
Jimmy Carter,
Bill Clinton and
Barack Obama
.
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
Progressivism in Education:
Today progressivism means
pedagogical progressivism. It means basing instruction on the needs, interests
and developmental stage of the child; it means teaching students the skills they
need in order to learn any subject, instead of focusing on transmitting a
particular subject; it means promoting discovery and self-directed learning by
the student through active engagement; it means having students work on projects
that express student purposes and that integrate the disciplines around socially
relevant themes; and it means promoting values of community, cooperation,
tolerance, justice and democratic equality. In the shorthand of educational
jargon, this adds up to ‘child-centered instruction’, discovery learning’ and
‘learning how to learn’. And in the current language of American education
schools there is a single label that captures this entire approach to education:
constructivism.
As Lawrence Cremin has pointed out,
by the 1950s this particular progressive approach to education had
become the dominant language of American
education. Within the community of professional educators—by which I mean
classroom teachers and the education professors who train them—pedagogical
progressivism provides the words we use to talk about teaching and learning in
schools. And within education schools, progressivism is the ruling ideology. It
is hard to find anyone in an American education school who does not talk the
talk and espouse the principles of the progressive creed.
This situation worries a number of
educational reformers. After all, progressivism runs directly counter to the
main thrust of educational reform efforts in the US in the early twenty-first
century. Reform is moving in the direction of establishing rigorous academic
frameworks for the school curriculum, setting performance standards for
students, and using high stakes testing to motivate students to learn the
curriculum and teachers to teach it. Education schools and their pedagogically
progressive ideals stand in strong opposition to all of these reform efforts. To
today’s reformers, therefore, education schools look less like the solution than
the problem.
Progressivism, Schools and Schools of
Education: An American Romance
David F. Labaree
Colleges:
When was the last time you studied for an ACT or SAT? Here is a study guide that
shows that the Progressives are running our colleges.
http://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/the-progressive-presidents/.
If you read through this, you will see the pro-progressive nature of this
writing.
Here is an except I found most interesting:
The era of the Progressive presidents
produced a number of notable achievements. Trust-busting forced industrialists
and monopolistic corporations to consider public opinion when making business
decisions. This benefited the consumer and helped grow the economy. The
Progressive presidents also increased consumers’ rights by limiting corporate
abuses and trying to ensure the safe labeling of food and drugs. The creation of
a federal income tax system lowered tariffs and increased America’s presence as
a global trading partner. It also raised additional revenues, some of which were
used for beneficial programs such as conservation. The Progressive presidents
served to strengthen the office of the president and the public began to expect
more from the executive branch. Progressivism as a concept helped challenge
traditional thinking about government’s relationship to the people and sparked
new ideas that stimulated thought for decades to come.
Along with these significant
accomplishments, the Progressive movement also had a number of notable
shortcomings. Due to several contrary schools of thought within the movement,
goals were often confusing and contradictory. Although most Progressives had
good intentions, their conflicting goals helped detract from the overall
objectives of the movement. Despite the numerous successes and lofty goals and
ideals of the Progressive movement, the federal government was still too greatly
influenced by industry and big business.
The Progressive movement was not a complete success, but it did serve to spark
new ideas and new ways of thinking about business and government. It created a
new school of thought that challenged traditional ideas and allowed several new
politicians to break the mold and lead the country in a new direction. This new
way of thinking proved vital for the United States as the First World War loomed
on the horizon.
Why
is Social Security a Ponzi scheme?
What is a Ponzi scheme?
A Ponzi
scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to
existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme
organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in
opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many
Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised
payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of
engaging in any legitimate investment activity.
Why do Ponzi schemes collapse?
With little
or no legitimate earnings, the schemes require a consistent flow of money from
new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes
difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to
cash out.
U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission: http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm
Let’s break this down:
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud
that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds
contributed by new investors. The existing investors are our Senior
Citizens. The new investors are the people still working.
Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new
investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high
returns with little or no risk. Our
government is soliciting new investors with immigrants (amnesty).
In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters
focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage
investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any
legitimate investment activity. Hmmm, Do
I really need to comment more?
With little
or no legitimate earnings, the schemes require a consistent flow of money from
new investors to continue. Once again,
amnesty.
Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it
becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors
ask to cash out. Baby Boomers.
Bureaucracy
Everyone says that you can't fight city hall. What they really mean is: Fighting
the harmful side of bureaucracy is futile. And yet often, overly bureaucratic
procedures can lead to tremendous waste, inertia, and inefficiency. So why do we
allow these practices to flourish in our own organizations? Mostly, out of
benign neglect.
The pain of a loss is much more severe than the joy associated with a similarly
sized gain.
Bureaucracies form gradually, quietly, and often for reasons that seem sensible
at the time. But a close examination of bureaucracies shows that they're often a
response to fear of loss resulting in attempts to regain local control,
regardless of overall strategies or needs. These barriers are usually created
with the best of intentions, which is what makes them so difficult to spot and
combat.
But that's not to say bureaucracies are eternal and indestructible. Every
harmful bureaucracy can be dismantled, but you must start by examining how it
formed in the first place. What's more, addressing these barriers is critical to
organizational success, because the inefficiencies bureaucracies create right
under your roof might be costing you more than you can imagine.
Anatomy of bureaucracy
For the purposes of our analysis, bureaucracies are defined as
practices and endowments that create harm for the many while benefitting the
few. And the first step is to determine why these bureaucracies form.
The research behind our exploration of bureaucracies covered diverse
organizations in the public and private sectors, including different industries,
countries, job types, and functions. What we learned was that these types of
practices generally were created based on a local need, but they became harmful
through a series of missteps all based in fear. The evolution of these missteps
into silos and bureaucracies followed three consecutive steps: parochialism,
territorialism, and empire building.
Parochialism
As activities become more complex, organizations need to divide up functions.
Operating a complex organization requires excellence from many functional areas:
human resources, production, sales, marketing, accounting, finance, inventory
management, compliance, risk management, and more. Organizations also need
people to lead and manage those functions. As responsibilities grow for each
department, so does the pressure and accountability to meet local goals.
At some point, out of necessity and in response to daily pressures and demands,
the leaders of those departments may start to focus much more on their
functional goals than on the organization's overall goals. When this happens,
making sure that their part of the process is done correctly may become all that
really matters, even at the expense of mission success. The group may not only
lose sight of the connection between its work and organizational outcomes; it
may even stop caring about what happens outside its silo. It defines its world
by the piece, not the puzzle.
Gallup calls this condition parochialism. Parochialism develops when a group
views the world strictly through the lens of its functional goals, and it judges
the relative importance of other activities by the way they affect the group's
objectives. Parochialism limits the group to a narrow reference point --
ultimately, everything is viewed from that filtered local perspective.
As Nobel Prize winner and noted behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D., and
his research partner, Amos Tversky, Ph.D., found in their landmark work,
"Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," a person's reference
point will determine whether a particular level of performance will create
positive or negative value. Different people may have different reference points
and therefore different definitions of success for a given outcome. In other
words, an outcome may be reasonable for one group but be unacceptable for
someone else.
Kahneman and Tversky also found that the pain of a loss is much more severe than
the joy associated with a similarly sized gain. Therefore, avoiding loss is a
more powerful motivator than an achievement of equal magnitude. When that
tendency is combined with a highly personal reference point, people will be
tempted to assiduously protect their silos to avoid the possibility of failure
or loss. They'll perceive that their own department's risk of failure is due to
the "interfering" demands of others, even if those requests would result in
greater success for the organization as a whole.
To protect their department from loss -- of time, respect, resources, or power
over practices and preferences -- parochial managers may create rules, policies,
and procedures that prevent others from infringing on them and impeding their
processes and goals. These rules may protect the silo, but they also make
interdepartmental work inflexible and unnecessarily difficult.
Territorialism
Another result of growth and increased complexity is scarcity of resources. No
company has unlimited money, people, time, or space. Leaders must make decisions
regarding who will and who won't get what they say they must have to succeed.
And as complexity increases and the number of employees rises, it becomes more
and more complicated for leaders to determine how to allocate resources to
achieve organizational goals.
If an organization is already suffering from parochialism, then competition over
resources can become intense. When this occurs, leaders may start to lose sight
of what's best for the company and focus just on what's best for their small
part of the organization. Loss aversion kicks in, creating a natural tendency to
protect and maintain excessive control over headcount and resources. If allowed
to continue, the result may be territorialism, or the exertion of control over
one's turf to an extent that harms others in the same organization.
Gallup:http://gmj.gallup.com/content/145085/Fight-Bureaucracy.aspx
More Coming Soon