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The left seems to think the right is going to be shocked by – what – music videos?

Beck unhinges pretty easily (and yes, for those of us whose family owe their lives to Indian doctors, some rants are offensive). But he’s a hell of a lot more shocked at Bill Ayers. His “unhingement” still retains more balance than the left’s. What’s creepier – posing nude at 22 or acting as Edwards has at. . . , starring in a video (admittedly a bit irritating in that boring 80’s way) in your youth or being Teddy Kennedy in your old age.

Whatever may or may not be true of the Palins and Browns, they appear to have engaged life with zest; one of the balancing acts of their youths – and probably of their lives – have been economic. Perhaps their fiscal care was learned balancing ambition and tuition. The left’s desire to make loans seductive & college a “right”, to featherbed administration and tenured jobs while increasing the load on grad students and adjuncts has had detrimental effects on cost as well substance. Many an academic is critical of Benjamin Franklin, perhaps because he understood debt undercuts integrity, that “it’s hard for an empty bag to stand upright.”

Perhaps such choices came because it’s a kick to pose nude, to see different colleges when a world tour is not easily financed. I like that – some risk taking reflects energy and engagement, they live with it and learn from it. But, most of all, I’d rather people made choices that resulted in videos than a mountain of debt. The left, of course, would rather put those students who don’t buy the books – or read them – at the back of my class, whining they can’t drop because they might lose their student loans. These are students often neither stupid nor consciously dishonest; they are, however, passive and misdirected. They do not value learning but rather the “college experience,” have no imagination to see another path, and, well, have no clue about themselves, education, debt, the world. As they wander through life, they may never get that clue. And this won’t help. Plus, don’t get me started on the theory that “at risk” kids in high school should start taking college-level classes in high school – subsidized by the government of course.