The U.S. president has given himself a B+ for his performance so far. This reminds me of school teachers grading themselves. As modern education teaches us, “It’s the process, not the outcome, that counts.” Translated into more useful language, “Form is more important than function.” OR “How it looks is more important than how it works.” and that is not the tragedy of our times, it’s the tragedy of all times.
The Copenhagen Conference is producing the usual silliness. Political posturing is bad enough locally, but internationally, it’s really good theater and if certain people make a little money by lying, what’s the hurt?
The money you get rarely is as good as the money you earn because getting free money doesn’t mean you know how to earn it. Giving people money as a way out of poverty must be done permanently and is merely a way of keeping them helpless and entitled.
Continuing with effect rehabilitation methods for criminals, I present another excerpt from: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
Rehabilitation of Criminal Behavior
The assumptions about criminals and criminal behavior held by those who work with criminals are as wrong as most other assumptions about the other kinds of clients discussed in this book. Criminals are thought of as "troubled" individuals who have "mental health" problems, but criminals are more troubling than troubled.
One of the problems with correctional rehabilitation is that most correctional specialists are trained under the influence of sociology which, in North America, as a primarily academic concern, has long been dominated by Marxists and other left-leaners who are more concerned with their notion of social justice and other leftist beliefs than with rehabilitation. They share these suppositions with the great majority of university professors in the arts and social sciences who filter everything through socialist assumptions. These axioms lead them to require that poverty causes crime which implies that abolition of poverty will result in the elimination of the production of criminals, a position which postpones any solution until Nirvana has been reached. Crime will cease with the creation of the New Soviet Man which will occur, in turn, once the socialists have finished finessing Human Nature. Naturally, these assumptions should go south to join Central Planning, Collective Farming and Five Year Plans on that famous “ash heap of history” where Individual Striving has been sent thousands of times by Those Who Know How to Arrange Things Properly. Never seems to stay there. Crime rates do not go down in times of prosperity, nor up in times of recession. In addition, the sociological tradition is interested in class, rather than individual behavior, and this makes rehabilitation unwieldy, the rehabilitation of an entire class being difficult, although believers in “social justice” are always on about rehabilitating entire classes by giving each member plenty of money. Correctional rehabilitation has the same characteristics of bizarre usage as other areas. The techniques least used are the most effective and the ones most used are the least effective. The livelihood of practitioners does not depend on productivity, so fads are prevalent.The main problem of the practice of correctional rehabilitation, of course, is that outcomes have no economic consequences for practitioners. The professional working for government fills a position. He is not expected, as in free enterprise, to produce results. Therefore, he can operate on the basis of any theory, no matter how unproductive or bizarre, that strikes his fancy so long as his position is filled. In other words, the practitioner must deal with the difficult problems of, a) getting the job, and, b) showing up. Glib talkers can exchange what passes for witticisms with other glib talkers and reap the benefits by being promoted, especially if they are politically adroit.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
