An article in Friday's NYTimes on the failures of the French university system struck me as something that might actually be very helpful.

Higher Learning in France Clings to Its Old Ways by Elaine Sciolino, May 12, 2006

Whether "spot-on" or lacking nuance or totally inaccurate as to reality of the situation in France, it struck American me as chock full of virtually all the classic reasons I have heard over decades from those who have prejudice against what are labeled "big government" solutions. The litanies there are almost like a laundry list of the problems that make people in the U.S. anti-central-government programs and pro-local control if not whole hog pro-privatization. I would think it would be very instructive for people trying to argue "common good" to study the plaints and problems presented in the article and develop counter-arguments as to why government control of certain things doesn't necessarily have to turn out this way. I kind of got a kick out of the quote at the end, it's almost as if it could have been written by an old time GOP operative about the dangers of socialism, but at the same time, it's too eloquent:

...." We are caught in a world of limits where there's no such thing as the self-made man," said Claire de la Vigne, a graduate of Nanterre who is now doing graduate work at the much more prestigious Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. "We are never taught the idea of the American dream, where everything is possible. Our guide is fear."....

Taken from the accompanying bar chart in the print edition, which is online as a graphic here. Main article by Nagourney and Thee here.

Q: Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Republican party or Democratic party is more likely to...

come closer to sharing your moral values?

A.: Republican party 37%

Democratic party 50%

Both 1%

Neither 5%

No opinion 7%

make the right decisions about the war in Iraq?

A. Republican party 30%

Democratic party 48%

Both 3%

Neither 5%

No opinion 15%

make the right decisions when it comes to dealing with immigration issues?

A. Republican party 29%

Democratic party 45%

Both 4%

Neither 5%

No opinion 16%

make sure the tax system is fair?

A. Republican party 27%

Democratic party 55%

Both 2%

Neither 8%

No opinion 8%

have more new ideas?

A. Republican party 21%

Democratic party 45%

Both 4%

Neither 13%

No opinion 17%

Note the relatively large numbers feeling unable to answer on Iraq and immigration.

And before Dems get too excited about the "who has new ideas" answer, they should probably take a look at the combined total of "neither" and "no opinion." It's 30%.

On some of these answers, all I can say is: if only a lot of these people would get out and vote in mid-terms. This was a poll of adults in the U.S., not even skewed to those who say they are "likely voters." Reminder: the general public has an abysmal rate of voting in mid-terms. Also interesting is that they skewed it by saying "regardless of how you usually vote."

....Almost Hefneresque. Or maybe Austin Powers?

See Jim Rutenberg's piece in the May 8 New York Times: Rove Is Using Threat of Loss to Stir Republicans.

Note that Rutenberg also implies a significant use of fear of the possibility of Dems in charge of Congress spending all of Congress' time persecuting the Bush administration with inquiries about the past, meant to suggest that that would be in lieu of doing "the people's work," and stirring up more divisive rhetoric, I imagine?

That conjures up Spiro's "nattering nabobs" for me, as well as Clinton's impeachment persecutors and how disliked they were by 2/3 of the public (not to mention how much of the rest of the world seemed to scratch their heads at the latter---I must admit that I took that holier-than-thou attitude with a grain of salt, though, as the least you can say for our Congress is that they haven't had any serious fistfights on the floor for over a century, while that can not be said for many parliaments... :-))

Also interesting: the implication in the piece that Rove will again be using micro-attention and micro-polling to concentrate on crucial districts.

....As much as we may like to believe that mother animals are designed to nurture and protect their young, to fight to the death, if need be, to keep their offspring alive, in fact, nature abounds with mothers that defy the standard maternal script in a raft of macabre ways. There are mothers that zestily eat their young and mothers that drink their young's blood. Mothers that pit one young against the other in a fight to the death and mothers that raise one set of their babies on the flesh of their siblings.

Among several mammals, including lions, mice and monkeys, females will either spontaneously abort their fetuses or abandon their newborns when times prove rocky or a new male swaggers into town. Other mothers, like pandas, practice a postnatal form of family planning....

See "One Thing They Aren't: Maternal" By NATALIE ANGIER in the May 9 New York Times' Science Times for more on what many farmers already instinctively know.