Energy Secretary Steven Chu: The American Public Is Like Teenagers Who Need To Be Taught How To Act

For Advertising Info, Write.
rwnews@blogads.com

Premium Left blogad

Left Blog Ad

Permalinks

Energy Secretary Steven Chu: The American Public Is Like Teenagers Who Need To Be Taught How To Act

Written By : John Hawkins

One of the most irritating traits of liberals is their paternalistic, we’re smarter than everyone else because we’re Lefties shtick. I don’t care if you’re talking about cousin Cletus the hog farmer, who quit school in third grade and has an IQ that’s barely in the high double digits, if he’s a liberal he thinks that means he’s smarter than everyone else.

That’s why the government has to tell you what to do — because you’re too stupid to understand liberalism. That’s why liberals are indifferent towards freedom — because it gives people the freedom to disagree with liberals and obviously that’s crazy. That’s why liberals are so desperate to indoctrinate your children with their Heather has two Mommies, God is dead, we’ve got to live like the Flintstones to save the planet propaganda.

There’s no respect for tradition. There’s no respect for the markets. There’s no respect for the wisdom of crowds. There’s no respect for God. There’s no respect for their fellow Americans. They’re smart and their ideas work better than anything else, no matter how much contrary evidence piles up, because they’re liberals.

The latest example of that attitude? Energy Secretary Steven Chu. From the Wall Street Journal:

When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons.

Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, Dr. Chu said he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” (In that case, the Energy Department has a few renegade teens of its own.)

The administration aims to teach them—literally. The Environmental Protection Agency is focusing on real children. Partnering with the Parent Teacher Organization, the agency earlier this month launched a cross-country tour of 6,000 schools to teach students about climate change and energy efficiency.

Now many of you probably thought the government is supposed to work FOR YOU and for the country. But, that’s the wrong way to look at it. Actually, we’re all teenagers and Daddy government is going to set us all down and explain how we should act. Thank you Daddy government, thank you! Without your explaining to all of us how to live our lives, how would we ever get by?

http://guardian.blogdrive.com/ CavalierX

The thing that makes Liberals so arrogant is that they know their ideas often work on paper, where you can leave out the human factor. The idea that every member of a society produces to their best capacity while only using what they really need is a fine one, as long as you leave it to insects or robots and not try to force humans to live by such a system. The idea that you can simply tax the wealthy and corporations to get money works fine… as long as those entities don't find a way to hide their money or pass the tax along to consumers. But it works on paper so obviously it's a perfect idea. The problem is in education. That's the way college students are taught to examine a problem: by taking it out of context and disconnecting it from outside influences and consequences. But in the real world, every action has consequences and repercussions, and human nature cannot be left out of the equation.
Mike_M

Yet one more example of the sneering, towering arrogance of the Obama Administration. Why not just send people to Climate Camp? Camps are what liberal "reeducation" programs always end up as anyways.
http://Kingfisher Kingfisher

The thing that makes Liberals so arrogant is that they know their ideas often work on paper, where you can leave out the human factor.

Cav, I wouldn't even go that far. For example:

CO2 + Heat + SUV's + "Some-miracle-because-we're-always-correct" = AGW
SabianKinslow

One of the biggest lessons I learned in a class I had more than a few years ago (Aircraft Stability and Control) is that what works on paper rarely work the same in real life. We had to build a model airplane and fly it. The further and straighter it flew, the better your grade. According to our calculations on paper that thing should have flown around the campus and picked up the morning paper on the way back instead of the 6 feet it actually did fly. Not all schools teach stupidity. Just most of them.
http://Kingfisher Kingfisher

One of the biggest lessons I learned in a class I had more than a few years ago (Aircraft Stability and Control) is that what works on paper rarely work the same in real life.

Software works the same way. If the code worked exactly as designed then software vulnerabilities wouldn't exist.
smelvertising

their ideas often work on paper, where you can leave out the human factor.

I have to protest this choice of words, Cav. Your post shows that the liberal ideas do not work on paper, either – because you can still speculate regarding human interactions and behaviors. You'd have to go out of your way to ignore human nature for a system that punishes results and rewards laziness to work on paper, which only means that what's on paper is wrong in the first place.

(Plus, liberals take the shorter road: they just claim their system doesn't punish results and reward laziness, discounting reality altogether. 2+2=5. Again, that doesn't fly even on paper.)
http://conservativebootcamp.com martinhale

Posted by CavalierX 2009-09-22 11:42:05

Posted by SabianKinslow 2009-09-22 12:33:26

Posted by Kingfisher 2009-09-22 12:45:15

You three are all referring to the inability of most human-produced models of complex systems to capture all of the "moving parts" of that system correctly. By "moving parts" I mean variables, groups of variables, and forces both at the macro and at the subatomic levels.

Models can rarely accommodate all of the variables at play in a system and so modelers usually opt for the most significant variables to work with. Models also don't generally do a good job of capturing all of the interactions between variables and groups of variables. That's because in real life, interactions between variables often don't happen in a linear manner, they may occur in a continuously changing geometric manner in responce to the presence or absence of several other variables or groups of variables. Nor do interactions between variables happen in complete isolation from other variables and forces meaning the system is essentially dynamic, continuously changing and therefore not easily predictable.

All of which is why climate models, in spite of being designed and coded by an army of scientists and coders, in spite of being run on some of the largest, fastest computers in the world, just plain don't work – they fail to reliably predict climate into the future.

I have great respect for models – I create complex financial models all the time in my professional life. But I know their limitations and am careful to share those limitations with my customers as I share the model with them. Models can provide great insights into how things might turn out, but they also can't be taken as gospel and require the moderating influence of human observation, reason and intuition.
NorthernCanuck

The Obama administration is awfully brazen about getting to the young folks, and not in a good way IMO.

Energy efficiency is a good idea on its own merit, pushing it with climate hysteria just really hinders the cause.
http://guardian.blogdrive.com/ CavalierX

You'd have to go out of your way to ignore human nature for a system that punishes results and rewards laziness to work on paper, which only means that what's on paper is wrong in the first place.

But that's exactly how most colleges teach students to work on a problem: isolate it from all "outside" influences, simplify it, treat it as separate from everything else. Thus, the "problem" of varying income levels is easily solved by a progressive taxes on the wealthy ones. Just plug in the numbers and voila! Equality! Come on, tell me that's not precisely how Liberals seem to think.
Bill_Dalasio

Posted by martinhale

2009-09-22 13:33:59

As someone else engaged in financial modeling, I can't help but notice that your description of liberal social policy presumptions could equally be applied to the vulnerabilities of the models that underlied the subprime structured credit market. We all know how well that turned out.
NoloContendere

Tar. Feathers. Rail ride back to whence he came for Mr. Chu.
wylie_e_coyote

He is simply displaying the typical leftist/liberal/statists attitude toward their fellow citizens.

See, they fundamentally dont trust their fellow man and think that they must be compelled to "do the right thing" by force if necessary "for their own good".

And of course, since the leftist/liberal/statists are more "enlighted" they are the ones who should run the world and tell everyone how to live.

Of course this is pure arrogance – and very wrong headed of course.

But this is why they always push/favor big government and centralized intervention as "solutions" to problems.

The idea that a few people, no matter how smart they are, can run the affairs for 300 million is absurb.

In fact, the more complex the issue or problem, the MORE minds and people who need to be involved – decentralization is the answer not centralization.

What is more amazaing is the political trick that the left has pulled off with this type of arrogant thinking – they have managed to convince somewhere above 50% of the people into thinking that they are part of the "enlighted" and that they will be the ones imposing their "solutions" on the "other people" who arent as smart as they are!

In reality, if you look at Cuba, NK, or any other socialist country you can see that their are very very few elites who get to dictate to everyone else – yet somehow the demogouges of the left have convinced millions that they are in fact part of the "new elite"! They appeal to the arrogance and vanity of these useful idiots and every chance they get

This was the brillance of the Obama campaign and rhetoric – his bland platitudes said absoulutely nothing of substance and thus allowed all those millions of "world leader pretends" out there to think that he was AGREEING with him in every particular detail of their PERSONAL AUTHORITARIAN UTOPIA!

The sad part, as many who supported past authoritarian demogouges, is they will find out that the ACTUAL implementation of statist management of their lives WILL BE VASTLY DIFFERENT then they imagined – but by then it will be far far to late to undo the damage.

The History of Ernesto Che Guevara – A Short Story

Premium Right Ads

Blogads Right

Previous Features

The Best Quotes From “Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To”

Hey Lady Gaga, Kids Have a Time-Tested Answer for Bullies: Punch Them in the Mouth

Seven Differences Between Winners And Losers

The Problem With The Occupy Wall Street Generation

The 20 Most Influential Black Republicans

Talking With Chuck D. From Public Enemy About Farrakhan, Air America’s Failure, And Open Borders

User Info

Features

Archives Best of RWN Humor John Hawkins Interviews Quotes Special to RWN