The Ponderosa: Lack of Chips Ahoy caused 9/11?

Death before Dhimmitude

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Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Friday, September 10, 2004

Lack of Chips Ahoy caused 9/11?

Group honors curricula that explore 9/11's 'root causes'

Call it the Chips Ahoy! School of International Studies: Fifth-graders at Fratney Street School in Milwaukee learn about causes of terrorism with a small bag of cookies and a large map of the world.

Bob Peterson teaches students that overpopulation and poverty help make it easier to recruit terrorists for attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Schools have been teaching about Sept. 11 since that morning nearly three years ago, but this year, Families of September 11, founded by victims' relatives, is honoring Peterson and three others for curricula on terrorism's root causes. At a Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites) conference today, the group will issue guidelines for educators.

In one of Peterson's lessons, students stand, arranged by population, on a huge world map. Peterson hands out cookies according to gross national products: The 16 students in Asia each get one cookie, and the three in Africa split half a cookie among them. In North America, one student enjoys eight cookies.

...

Er ... weren't the Beasts of 9/11 wealthy Saudis?

Perhaps these countries would have as many cookies as us if they stopped hating us and tried to emulate us.

Capitalism produces a lot of Oreos.

The Ponderosa

Friday, September 10, 2004

Lack of Chips Ahoy caused 9/11?

Available from The Virginia City Trading Post . . .

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