"Why do people choose the substitute over God himself? Probably the most important reason is that it obviates accountability to God. We can meet idols on our own terms because they are our own creations. They are safe, predictable, and controllable; they are, in Jeremiah's colorful language, the 'scarecrows in a cornfield' (10:5). They are portable and completely under the user's control. They offer nothing like the threat of a God who thunders from Sinai and whose providence in this world so often appears to us to be incomprehensible and dangerous . . . [People] need face only themselves. That is the appeal of idolatry."
- David F. Wells
Thursday, October 6, 2011
As most of you know, Steve Jobs died yesterday. I think almost everyone can agree, whether you like Apple products or not, that Mr. Jobs was a genius and his company produced devices and computers that have changed the way we interact with technology and even with each other.
I'm not a Mac-bigot. I don't own an iPhone or an iPad, though we do have a Mac desktop computer. But I have often observed that Apple products all have a common trait. They just work, melding aesthetic beauty with breathtaking technological competence. We're all used to iPhones now. Twenty years ago we would have fallen over if someone had shown us a working model of one.
Kevin Williamson makes an observation here that I think is worth considering.
I was down at the Occupy Wall Street protest today, and never has the divide between the iPhone world and the politics world been so clear: I saw a bunch of people very well-served by their computers and telephones (very often Apple products) but undeniably shortchanged by our government-run cartel education system. And the tragedy for them — and for us — is that they will spend their energy trying to expand the sphere of the ineffective, hidebound, rent-seeking, unproductive political world, giving the Barney Franks and Tom DeLays an even stronger whip hand over the Steve Jobses and Henry Fords. And they — and we — will be poorer for it.
And to the kids camped out down on Wall Street: Look at the phone in your hand. Look at the rat-infested subway. Visit the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, then visit a housing project in the South Bronx. Which world do you want to live in?
[H/T Instapundit]
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Comments on "What Works":
4. Bill
- 10/07/2011 11:29 am CDT
Yeah, it is. I don't agree with all the wording in this article - I've been real happy with the schools my kids have gone to.
5. Evan
- 10/07/2011 2:06 pm CDT
Man, I must be getting old and insensitive.
What exactly is "strong" about 'government run cartel education system'?
'Government run' is objectively true about the vast majority of all the education in the country. Surely, that isn't the issue.
So I expect it is the word 'cartel'. But the fact is 'cartel' is also objectively true as the vast majority of public education is a public cartel, with no private competition allowed on the spending of taxpayer education dollars.
Once again, I think it is the death of words that Lewis described. Many people equate 'cartel' with OPEC or other business groups which they happen to dislike. So apparently now, 'cartel' is no longer a technical term, it is a term that predominantly means something akin to "bad", and therefore is too strong a word to use, even if it is an appropriate and truthful description.
6. Andrew
- 10/09/2011 4:41 pm CDT
What exactly is "strong" about 'government run cartel education system'?
I called it strong because of what surrounds it. Even if the phrase "government run cartel education system" is "objectively" correct, what its usage implies is absolutely ridiculous. He places that phrase right in front of a list of examples of wildly successful and government enterprises in shambles. On one side you have iPhones, iPads, and Macbooks, and on the other you have rat infested subways, housing projects in the South Bronx and a government run public education system. Public education has a lot of problems, but it is clearly not the same thing as a housing project in the Bronx. I'm convinced that anybody who holds that view has very little actual experience in public schools.
The word "cartel" may be technically correct, but rhetorically it is sensational. Williamson is plenty smart enough to know what image he conjures up when he uses a word like that. I assure you that I know what cartel means. Again, a phrase can be technically appropriate and still manage to be rhetorically ridiculous. Language evolves naturally, and we shouldn't be shocked when, because words often take on connotations they didn't used to have, that some will object to their usage. I get it. The free-market rules and the government sucks. Comparing public education to rat-infested subways and summoning subconscious images of Pablo Escobar to prove that point is a dirty and completely unnecessary trick.
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Wow. That was certainly well to the point.