Once in a while, a public figure makes a bold statement that tears away the veil of gentility and exposes what one might call “deep (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
How history class dumbs us down
10/21/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentLies My Teacher Told Me is filled with eye-opening vignettes of how textbooks for high school students distort the history of our country. Faced with (Continue Reading)
The Grand Theory
10/05/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentFrancis Fukuyama was on C-SPAN the other day talking about his book on identity politics and I started reading an article by him on the (Continue Reading)
How Our Government Works
09/11/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis title sounds like the title of a high school civics textbook. It should because a basic civics lesson is missing in the minds of (Continue Reading)
Here’s what I wanted to write……
08/09/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy friend who is knowledgeable about international politics gave me his copy of May/June Foreign Affairs. It’s Board of Advisors has one of my favorite (Continue Reading)
I’m struggling with something
08/06/2018 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsI’ve started reading Lies My Teacher Told Me. I’ve experienced a perspective shift. Others, according to the preface to the book, experienced the same sort (Continue Reading)
Limited thinking
08/02/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere’s an example of limited thinking on the part of educated people. Supposedly “uncivilized” people were barbaric and given to violent warfare. The evidence is (Continue Reading)
What are we dealing with? Why counselors for kids?
07/23/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe local newspaper has an article on services for students as they return to school. Some are new and some are extensions of existing programs (Continue Reading)
Is there even a trace of Russian left in you?
07/07/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentAn ancient human conceit is that we inherit our behaviors from our forebearers, including language. There is a belief that if someone has Greek heritage, (Continue Reading)
Difference = disorder
07/04/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Chris Hayes’ book, A Colony in a Nation, my attention was drawn to his formulation of the disturbance generated by disorder. For some people, (Continue Reading)
Magnum Opus Secundum
06/16/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentSo many themes, they get scattered and lose impact. It seems time to pull some threads together and knit a rope, or rather a hawser. (Continue Reading)
Why Didn’t the American colonists pay the f**** tariff?
05/12/2018 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsChris Hayes writes about how the common slogan regarding police violence against Blacks is, “Why don’t they just do what the cop says?” The tariff (Continue Reading)
Who learns what how?
04/15/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’ve written about my wife’s cousin’s experiences learning Italian and Japanese. Tonight he revealed that in English he never could comprehend what he reads. He (Continue Reading)
To post in every courthouse and school room in the country
04/10/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentFrom Steve Schmidt, the McCain-Palin campaign chairman, on what it means to be a fidelitist (new word for me). [on the MSNBC show The Eleventh (Continue Reading)
What looms ahead?
02/28/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe entry Hate and Special Status discusses a little of Pankaj Mishra’s talk at A.S.U. The rise of anger (his talk and book are Global (Continue Reading)
Markings
10/07/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy son told me how students had set a school bus on fire, one he had been using as a traveling aquaponics exhibit and lab. (Continue Reading)
Great quotes re punishment and the law
06/24/2017 Pat Barrett Add Comment“Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.” – John Ruskin “For if (Continue Reading)
My drive for synthesis reaches new heights
04/11/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentFriends say I am good at synthesizing disparate elements. I am better at that than at analyzing, but before synthesizing must come analysis. At times, (Continue Reading)
Jane Jacobs – the basics of society
03/17/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentDark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs, written in 2004 p. 148 In March 2003, a former Federal Reserve governor, Lyle Gramley, was quoted by The (Continue Reading)
Dynamics around religion in a community
01/27/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere’s how a dominant religion in an area can sidestep the Constitution. My wife came to work in the East Valley of the Phoenix Metropolitan (Continue Reading)
Why language is important
01/24/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn going over my essay of teaching Standard English, I said the following and my friend, Brian, thought it worth writing out. So here it (Continue Reading)
Acuity
01/20/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere’s a good example of the almost inconceivable acuity of attention to detail some people have: there are 76 uprights, wrought iron with floral designs (Continue Reading)
Tracing the arc of growth to fulfilment or to a dead end
12/27/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentAs I was reading a bit about the Hanseatic League in one of my old history books, the NYT came with a long article on (Continue Reading)