We’re Number One!

We’re number one … at failing schools.

The U.S. Department of Education issued a report yesterday that identified “failing” schools. Of 8,600 schools across the country that it labeled as failing, 1,500 of them are in Michigan. That’s one-third of all Michigan public schools.

My wife and I lucked out as far as finding a decent school for my daughter to go to Kindergarten next year.

The school that she would normally go to is abysmal. By fourth grade, only 54 percent of children meet or exceed state standards on math, and only 39 percent meet or exceed state reading standards. In both cases, that is 20 percent below the state average.

Which is my wife and I transferred my daughter to a school a little farther away where the number of students achieving state math and reading standards exceeds the state average.

Great Britain’s Birth Statistics and Overpopulation Nonsense

Great Britain’s Office for National Statistics recently released a report about the continuing decline in birth rates in that country which highlighted some interesting statistics.

One in five women 40 or older, for example, have never had a child. That is twice as it was just 20 years ago. The average age for new mothers is now 29 years.

The average birth rate in Great Britain has fallen to 1.64 children — the lowest since the UK began tracking that statistic in 1924. That is, of course, far below the population replacement level. Like other European nations, Great Britain will have to rely on immigration to maintain its population or else see it eventually shrink.

Notice that this directly contradicts a common but fallacious argument about human populations that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Numerous commentators argue that since in non-human species increased food led to ever increasing population sizes until an inevitable crash that this too must happen to human beings.

And yet Great Britain is one of the richest human societies in the history of the world and its peacetime birth rate is below replacement level. In fact, throughout much of the world wealth and availability of food is inversely related to births — the wealthier a society is, the lower its birth rate tends to be.

Source:

More women staying childless. The BBC, June 28, 2002.

Bardot Wants France to Guarantee Animal Rights

A small item in British newspaper The Independent reported that,

Brigitte Bardot has written to the French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, requesting the incorporation of animal rights legislation to the French constitution. In the letter, the actress say that just as France voted in 1789 for the declaration of human rights, it should add a similar declaration in 2002 for animals. The actress’s animal rights foundation has offered to help draw up a law.

Of course the immediate outcome of the French revolution was tyranny, as would be the outcome of a Declaration of Animal Rights.

Source:

People: Bardot steps up animal campaign. The Independent (London), June 26, 2002.

PETA's Sensitivity to Terrorism Accusations

The Virginian-Pilot ran an article in June about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ apparent growing concern about accusation that it funds and/or supports animal rights terrorism.

Reporter Bill Burke notes that for once Ingrid Newkirk has been keeping a low profile on this topic and letting PETA’s general counsel, Jeffrey S. Kerr, field all press inquiries about the allegations. Kerr tells Burke,

The whole notion that PETA supports terrorism is false and defamatory. When you use the word ‘terror,’ look at the terror inflicted on billions of animals in this country every year. That’s real terror.

. . .

They’re [PETA’s opponents] trying to smear us any way they can.

In a letter to a House subcommittee investigating ecoterror, Kerr wrote that it “is an insult to the victims of Sept. 11th” to suggest that PETA fosters terrorism. “It is reprehensible for PETA’s opponents to equate peaceful and lawful animal protection with al-Quaida or any other type of terrorism, and to exploit that tragedy for expedient political gain.”

In other words, when PETA’s point man on fur, Dan Matthews, said he admired serial killer Andrew Cunanan “because he got Versace to stop doing fur” — that must have been some other Dan Matthews working for some other animal rights group.

And when Bruce Friedrich told an audience at Animal Rights 2001 that while he doesn’t personally advocate animal rights terrorism, “I do advocate it, and I think it’s a great way to bring about animal liberation” — well, he was probably a victim of some mind control scheme by those evil folks over at The Center for Consumer Freedom.

At the very least, when Ingrid Newkirk was quoted in 1997 as saying, “I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down,” that was probably a case of mistaken identity. That was really Ingrid Bergman back from the dead saying such vicious things, because everyone knows Ingrid Newkirk would never even think such a thing.

PETA’s press blackout on the terrorism allegations included refusing an interview request with Gary Yourofsky. Yourofsky has an Animal Liberation Front tattoo on his arm and said just over a year ago that animal activists should “not be afraid to condone arsons at places of animal torture” and said that if an animal researcher were killed in such a raid “I would unequivocally support that too.”

That sort of resume makes him perfect material for PETA which hired Yourofsky on as a “humane education presenter” after Yourofsky sent out an e-mail whining that he was broke and leaving the animal rights movement temporarily.

The bottom line is that the widespread support for terrorism within the animal rights movement harms groups and individuals associated with it far more than it poses any credible threat to bringing medical research or animal agriculture to a halt. Fortunately it is not that difficult to make the link since so many prominent animal rights activists apparently see the need to endorse or condone criminal acts in order to appease the extremists who seem to set the agenda within the animal rights movement.

For this reason, The Center for Consumer Freedom’s print ad featuring a Bruce Friedrich quote is easily the most powerful anti-animal rights ad I’ve seen. Hopefully there will be a follow-up with some choice quotes from Yourofsky.

The animal rights movement is intellectually bankrupt on a number of issues, but its willingness to endorse violence and criminal acts makes discrediting the movement to all but the true believers relatively simple. Personally, I’m glad that PETA hired Yourofksy and that Newkirk and Friedrich decided to wax on about their support of terrorism. It certainly makes it much easier to illustrate just how extreme even the most nominally mainstream animal rights organizations are.

Source:

Terrorism accusations raise hackles at PETA. Bill Burke, The Virginian-Pilot, June 22, 2002.

Cathy Young on Disparities in Punishing Male and Female Killers

As usual, Cathy Young weighs in the July issue of Reason with an excellent examination of disparities in how male and female killers are treated by the American justice system.

Of particular interest is the fact that feminists almost never speak out about such disparities — in fact feminists have actively promoted the falsehood that a man who kills his partner receives only 2-6 years in jail on average compared to a woman who kills her partner who supposedly gets 15 to 20 years. In fact, as Young points out, studies find that men who kill their partners spend about 10 years longer in jail than do women who kill their partners.

As Young writes,

As a result, if a man commits a violent crime against a woman and gets off lightly, an outcry from women?s groups often follows. If it?s the other way round, the only vocal protests are likely to come from the victim?s family and from prosecutors.

The Working case [where a woman received a one day sentence for luring her estranged husband into an ambush and tried to murder him], like the Wagshall case, received minimal publicity. Imagine the reaction if a judge had said publicly that a man who had ambushed and shot his estranged wife should have been spared prison because he was depressed over the divorce.

Of course that would require a real commitment to sexual equality which, so far, many women’s groups are opposed to.

Source:

License to Kill
Men and women, crime and punishment. Cathy Young, Reason, July 2002.

Peter Singer Reaffirms His Views at AR 2002

CNSNews.Com wrote an interesting summary of Peter Singer’s speech to the AR 2002 conference over the weekend. For his part Singer did not back down from any of the ridiculous positions that he’s developed over the years.

Does he still believe that it is morally permissible to kill newborns within the first 28 days of birth? CNSNews.Com quotes Singer as saying,

If you have a being that is not sentient, that is not even aware, then the killing of that being is not something that is wrong in and of itself.

. . .

I think that a chimpanzee certainly has greater self-awareness than a newborn baby.

. . .

. . . there are some circumstances, for example, where the newborn baby is severely disabled and where the parents think that it’s better that the child should not live, when killing the newborn is not at al wrong … not like killing the chimpanzee would be.

According to CNSNews.Com, Singer did back away slightly from the 28 day window outlined in his book, Practical Ethics saying,

So in that book, we suggested that 28 days is not a bad period of time to use because on the one hand, it gives you time to examine the infant to [see] what the nature of the disability is; gives time for the couple to recover from the shock of the birth to get well advised and informed from all sorts of groups, medical opinion and disability and reach a decision.

And also I think that it is clearly before the point at which the infant has those sorts of forward-looking preferences, that kind of self-awareness, that I talked about. But I now think, after a lot more discussion, that you can’t really propose any particular cut-off date.

Singer now apparently believes that such decisions should be made “as soon as possible after birth” without setting any specific time period.

Singer also again repeated his view — controversial even among animal rights activists — that human-animal sexual contact could be consensual and therefore, to Singer’s mind, morally permissible. CNSNews.Com reports that,

When asked by CNSNews.com how an animal can consent to sexual contact with a human, he replied, “Your dog can show you when he or she wants to go for a walk and equally for nonviolent sexual contact, your dog or whatever else it is can show you whether he or she wants to engage in a certain kind of contact.

Singer also cited “mainstream” and “conservative mainstream fundamentalist” Christianity as a major obstacle to the animal rights movement since adherents of those views “want to make a huge gulf between humans and animals.”

Unfortunately, CNSNews.com chose to interview Barry Clausen as a counterpoint to animal rights extremism. Clausen has written several books about environmental extremism and is occasionally cited in the media as an expert on animal rights and environmental terrorism.

Clausen generally has the same problem with the truth that animal rights activists have. He vastly overstates his evidence and has on a number of occasions been responsible for spreading fictions disguised as fact. Clausen tells CNSNews.com for example that,

I have not come across one of these people [animal rights activists] who I did not consider to be mentally ill.

That statement is absurd beyond belief, especially coming from Clausen who in turn praises Lyndon LaRouche-associate Rogelio Maduro. Clausen and Maduro edit a newsletter, Ecoterrorism Watch.

The last thing we need is anti-animal rights activists who are every bit as prone to bizarre accusations and shoddy research as the animal rights groups they are criticizing.

Source:

Christianity harmful to animals, says animal rights godfather. Marc Morano, CNSNews.Com, July 1, 2002.