Once again we prepare to entrust our children to professional educators, kissing the upturned, trusting faces and waving goodbye with a certain relief and a certain anxiety. The anxiety is well-placed, for this year once again our children will be learning material that is completely baseless, that is grounded entirely on the new age, politically-correct consensus of well-meaning fools.

I refer, of course, to mathematics.

Mathematics is a sort of necromancy or pagan religion. It has no basis in fact or in theory. It is concerned entirely with entities of which it has no clear conception.

I was scrounging around in my dictionary the other day, looking up "sforzando," when I came across the following definition of "seven": "the cardinal number between 6 and 8." Now it is not hard to see that this will not help you understand the meaning of "seven" unless you already understand the meaning of "six" and "eight," which will themselves only be comprehensible in terms of three further numbers, including seven itself.

Being curious about this apparent emptiness of the simplest notions of mathematics, I posted a contest on my website, soliciting defensible definitions of "seven." What I got was a lecture in the philosophy of mathematics from Princeton professor and Slate columnist Jordan Ellenberg, and a facetious rant from a grad student named Jesse Gutierrez, which began "Dude. It's a number. What do you want?" Everyone else seemed suddenly to realize that they had no idea how to say what "seven" means.

Ellenberg's lecture was fascinating, and it detailed a number of approaches that one might take to solving the problem, each of them extremely difficult, obscure, and elaborate, and each of them absolutely incompatible with all the others. It was clear, first, that people have been working on the problem for about 2,500 years, and, second, that they haven't gotten any nearer to a solution than they were when Pythagoras asserted that things like rocks and stars were actually made of numbers, whatever that might mean.

Perhaps you are thinking that you know quite clearly what "seven" means, and you are even now in a rather irritated way counting out fingers or something. However, it is easy to see that "seven" does not actually refer to anything in the world. Add one raindrop to another to another to another to another to another to another and you get one raindrop. Do the same with rabbits and you get 4,601.

You could show me the representation of a triangle, but of course no one has ever seen a triangle as defined by "geometry," which is bounded by "lines" which have no width.

Of course, everyone thinks they know what seven is. But there was a time when everyone knew what a demon was, or that the world was composed of four elements.

Famously, the theologians of the middle ages debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. But they had no idea what the phrase "how many" meant, much less what sort of thing an angel was.

Unless and until mathematics can give a better account of itself, we must regard it as so much gobbledygook, and we must protect our children from such superstitious nonsense. Mathematics represents just the kind of loose, empty thinking that characterizes so many of the ephemeral fashions in education these days.

To expose kids to mathematics is the height of irresponsibility.

In the hallowed words of the great role model Whitney Houston, I believe that children are our future. You and I must join together with millions of other concerned parents in a movement to remove mathematics from all schools, public and private, secular and parochial. We owe it to the children.

Here's what I believe about John Kerry. On the Patriot Act, on No Child Left Behind, on war, on gay marriage, on whatever: in every case he voted and spoke with one goal: getting elected president. For Kerry and the Democratic leadership, getting elected was more important that a thousand American lives, more important than tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, more important than the Constitution. Now of course this is more or less just the reality of American politics. But, um, it is morally monstrous. I actually admire a straight-up enthusiastic murderer [i.e. Bad Commie] more than someone who with eyes fully open endorses murder in order to further a certain set of personal ambitions. I do not believe that our sad little species offers up any more despicable choice. Kill because you believe it's the right thing to do and you may be terribly, terribly wrong. Kill because killing polls well and you're not even worth frying.

Date of Execution:

July 9, 1985

Offender:

Henry Porter #551

Last Statement:

I want to thank Father Walsh for his spiritual help. I want to thank Bob Ray (Sanders) and Steve Blow for their friendship. What I want people to know is that they call me a cold-blooded killer when I shot a man that shot me first. The only thing that convicted me was that I am a Mexican and that he was a police officer. People hollered for my life, and they are to have my life tonight. The people never hollered for the life of the policeman that killed a thirteen-year-old boy who was handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. The people never hollered for the life of a Houston police officer who beat up and drowned Jose Campo Torres and threw his body in the river. You call that equal justice. This is your equal justice. This is America’s equal justice. A Mexican’s life is worth nothing. When a policeman kills someone he gets a suspended sentence or probation. When a Mexican kills a police officer this is what you get. From there you call me a cold-blooded murderer. I didn’t tie anyone to a stretcher. I didn’t pump any poison into anybody’s veins from behind a locked door. You call this justice. I call this and your society a bunch of cold-blooded murderers. I don’t say this with any bitterness or anger. I just say this with truthfulness. I hope God forgives me for all my sins. I hope that God will be as merciful to society as he has been to me. I’m ready, Warden.