Thursday, February 27, 2020
Thinking of Quitting Information Technology
Why do so few people major in computer science?
In 2005, about 54,000 people in the US earned bachelor’s degrees in computer science. That figure was lower every year afterwards until 2014, when 55,000 people majored in CS. I’m surprised not only that the figure is low; the greater shock is that was flat for a decade. Given high wages for developers and the cultural centrality of Silicon Valley, shouldn’t we expect far more people to have majored in computer science?
This is even more surprising when we consider that 1.90 million people graduated with bachelor’s degrees in 2015, which is 31% higher than the 1.44 million graduates in 2005. (Data is via the National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics) That means that the share of people majoring in computer science has decreased, from 3.76% of the all majors in 2005 to 3.14% of all majors in 2015. Meanwhile, other STEM majors have grown over the same period: “engineering” plus “engineering technologies” went from 79,544 to 115,096, a gain of 45%; “mathematics and statistics” from 14,351 to 21,853, a gain of 52%; “physical sciences and science technologies” from 19,104 to 30,038, a gain of 57%; “biological and biomedical sciences” from 65,915 to 109,896, a gain of 67%. “Computer sciences and information technologies?” From 54,111 in 2005 to 59,581 in 2015, a paltry 10.1%.
If you’d like a handy chart, I graphed the growth here, with number of graduates normalized to 2005.
(Addendum: Several people have pointed out that 2005 was an idiosyncratic year, and that I should not rebase figures from that date. I graphed it from this point because in the NCES dataset I’ve been using breaks out the data by one-year intervals only since 2005. Scroll to the end of the post to see data on graduates from 1975, which shows clearly that 2005 was a peak for graduates. A more full discussion would involve the impact of the dotcom bubble; see below.)
I consider this a puzzle because I think that people who go to college decide on what to major in significantly based on two factors: earning potential and whether a field is seen as high-status. Now let’s establish whether majoring in CS delivers either.
Are wages high? The answer is yes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has data on software developers. The latest data we have is from May 2016, in which the median annual pay for software developers is $106,000; pretty good, considering that the median annual pay for all occupations is $37,000. But what about for the lowest decile, which we might consider a proxy for the pay of entry level jobs that fresh grads can expect to claim? That figure is $64,650, twice the median annual pay for all occupations. We can examine data from a few years back as well. In 2010, median pay for software developers was $87,000; pay at the lowest decile was $54,000. Neither were low, now both have grown.
Now we can consider whether someone majoring in computer science can expect to join a high-status industry. That’s more difficult to prove rigorously, but I submit the answer is yes. I went to high school during the late-aughts, when the financial crisis crushed some of Wall Street’s allure, and Silicon Valley seemed glamorous even then. Google IPO’d in 2004, people my age all wanted to buy iPhones and work for Steve Jobs, and we were all signing up for Facebook. People talked about how cool it would be to intern at these places. One may not expect to end up at Google after college, but that was a great goal to aspire to. Industries like plastics or poultry or trucking don’t all have such glittering companies that attract.
I tweeted out this puzzle and received a variety of responses. Most of them failed to satisfy. Now I want to run through some common solutions offered to this puzzle along with some rough and dirty argument on what I find lacking about them.
Note: All data comes from the Digest of Education Statistics, Department of Education.
***
1. Computer science is hard.
This is a valid observation, but it doesn’t explain behaviors on the
margin. CS is a difficult subject, but it’s not the only hard major.
People who proclaim that CS is so tough have to explain why so many more
people have been majoring in math, physics, and engineering; remember,
all three majors have seen growth of over 40% between 2005 and 2015, and
they’re no cakewalks either. It’s also not obvious that their
employment prospects are necessarily more rosy than the one for CS
majors (at least for the median student who doesn’t go to a hedge fund).
Isn’t it reasonable to expect that people with an aptitude for math,
physics, and engineering will also have an aptitude for CS? If so, why
is it the only field with low growth?On the margin, we should expect high wages to attract more people to a discipline, even if it’s hard. Do all the people who are okay with toiling for med school, law school, or PhD programs find the CS bachelor’s degree to be unthinkably daunting?
2. You don’t need a CS degree to be a developer. This is another valid statement that I don’t think explains behaviors on the margin. Yes, I know plenty of developers who didn’t graduate from college or major in CS. Many who didn’t go to school were able to learn on their own, helped along by the varieties of MOOCs and boot camps designed to get them into industry.
It might be true that being a software developer is the field that least requires a bachelor’s degree with its associated major. Still: Shouldn’t we expect some correlation between study and employment here? That is, shouldn’t having a CS major be considered a helpful path into the industry? It seems to me that most tech recruiters look on CS majors with favor.
Although there are many ways to become a developer, I’d find it surprising if majoring in CS is a perfectly useless way to enter the profession, and so people shun it in favor of other majors.
3. People aren’t so market-driven when they’re considering majors. I was a philosophy major, and no I didn’t select on the basis of its dazzling career prospects. Aren’t most people like me when it comes to selecting majors?
Maybe. It’s hard to tell. Evidence for includes a study published in the Journal of Human Capital, which suggests that people would reconsider their majors if they actually knew what they could earn in their associated industries. That is, they didn’t think hard enough about earning potentials when they were committing to their majors.
We see some evidence against this idea if we look at the tables I’ve been referencing. Two of the majors with the highest rates of growth have been healthcare and law enforcement. The number of people graduating with bachelor’s degrees in “health professions and related programs” more than doubled, from 80,865 in 2005 to 216,228 in 2015. We can find another doubling in “homeland security, law enforcement, and firefighting,” from 30,723 in 2005 to 62,723 in 2015. Haven’t these rents-heavy and government-driven sectors been pretty big growth sectors in the last few years? If so, we can see that people have been responsive to market-driven demand for jobs.
(Sidenote: if we consider the pipeline of talent to be reflective of expectations of the economy, and if we consider changes in the number of bachelor’s degrees to be a good measure of this pipeline, then we see more evidence for Alex Tabarrok’s view that we’re becoming a healthcare-warfare state rather than an innovation nation.)
In the meantime, I’m happy to point out that the number of people majoring in philosophy has slightly declined between 2005 to 2015, from 11,584 to 11,072. It’s another sign that people are somewhat responsive to labor market demands. My view is that all the people who are smart enough to excel as a philosophy major are also smart enough not to actually pursue that major. (I can’t claim to be so original here—Wittgenstein said he saw more philosophy in aerospace engineering than he did in philosophy.)
4. Immigrants are taking all the jobs. I submit there are two ways to see that immigrants aren’t meeting all the marginal demand. First, most immigrants who come to the US to work are on the H1B visa; and that number has been capped at 65,000 every year since 2004. (There are other visa programs available, but the H1B is the main one, and it doesn’t all go to software engineers.) Second, rising wages should be prima facie evidence that there’s a shortage of labor. If immigrants have flooded the market, then we should see that wages have declined; that hasn’t been the case.
To say that immigrants are discouraging people from majoring in CS requires arguing that students are acutely aware of the level of the H1B cap, expect that it will be lifted at some point in the near future, and therefore find it too risky to enter this field because they think they’ll be competing with foreign workers on home soil. Maybe. But I don’t think that students are so acutely sensitive to this issue.
5. Anti-women culture. Tech companies and CS departments have the reputation of being unfriendly to women. The NCES tables I’m looking at don’t give a breakdown of majors by gender, so we can’t tell if the shares of men and women majoring in CS has differed significantly from previous decades. One thing to note is that the growth of people earning CS majors has been far below the growth of either gender earning bachelor’s degrees.
More women graduate from college than men. (Data referenced in this paragraph comes from this table.) In 1980, each gender saw about 465,000 new grads. Since then, many more women have earned degrees than men; in 2015, 812,669 men earned bachelor’s degrees, while 1,082,265 women did. But since 2005, the growth rate for women earning bachelor’s has not significantly outpaced that of men. 32.5% more men earned bachelor’s degrees in the previous decade, a slightly higher rate than 31.5% for women. It remains significant that women are keeping that growth rate for over a higher base, but it may be that it’s no longer the case that their growth can be much higher than that of men in the future.
What’s important is that the growth rate of 30% for both genders is below that of 10% for CS majors over this time period. We can’t pick out the breakdown of genders from this dataset, but I’d welcome suggestions on how to find those figures in the comments below.
6. Reactionary faculty. The market for developers isn’t constrained by some guild like the American Medical Association, which caps the number of people who graduate from med schools in the name of quality control.
CS doesn’t have the same kind of guild masters, unless we want to count faculty to be serving this function on their own. It could be that people serving on computer science faculties are contemptuous of people who want high pay and the tech life; instead they’re looking for the theory-obsessed undergraduate who are as interested in say Turing and von Neumann as much as they are. So in response to a huge new demand for CS majors, they significantly raise standards, allowing no more than say 500 people to graduate if a decade ago only 450 did. Rather than cater to the demands of the market, they raise standards so that they’re failing an even higher proportion of students to push them out of their lovely, pure, scholarly field.
I have no firsthand experience. To determine this as a causal explanation, we would have to look into how many more students have been graduating from individual departments relative to the number of people who were weeded out. The latter is difficult to determine, but it may be possible to track if particular departments have raised standards over the last few decades.
7. Anti-nerd culture. Nerds blow, right? Yeah, no doubt. But aren’t the departments of math, physics, and engineering also filled with nerds, who can expect just as much social derision on the basis of their choice? That these fields have seen high growth when CS has not is evidence that people aren’t avoiding all the uncool majors, only the CS one.
8. Skill mismatch and lack of training from startups. This is related but slightly different to my accusation that CS faculty are reactionaries. Perhaps all the professors are too theoretical and would never make it as coders at tech companies. Based on anecdotal evidence, I’ve seen that most startups are hesitant to hire fresh grads, instead they want people to have had some training outside of a college. One also hears that the 10X coders aren’t that eager to train new talent; there isn’t enough incentive for them to.
This is likely a factor, but I don’t think it goes a great length in explaining why so few people commit to majoring in the field. Students see peers getting internships at big tech companies, and they don’t necessarily know that their training is too theoretical. I submit that this realization should not deter; even if students do realize this, they might also know they can patch up their skills by attending a boot camp.
9. Quality gradient. Perhaps students who graduate from one of the top 50 CS departments have an easy time finding a job, but those who graduate from outside that club have a harder time. But this is another one of those explanations that attributes a greater degree of sophistication than the average freshman can be observed to possess. Do students have an acute sense of the quality gradient between the best and the rest? Why is the marginal student not drawn to study CS at a top school, and why would a top student not want to study CS at a non-top school, especially if he or she can find boot camps and MOOCs to bolster learning? I would not glance at what students do and immediately derive that they’re hyperrational creatures.
10. Psychological burn from the dotcom bubble. Have people been deeply scarred by the big tech bubble? It bursted in 2001; if CS majors who went through it experienced a long period of difficulty, then it could be the case that they successfully warned off younger people from majoring in it. To prove this, we’d have to see if people who graduated after the bubble did have a hard time, and if college students are generally aware of the difficulties experienced by graduates from previous years.
11. No pipeline issues anymore. In 2014, the number of people majoring in CS surpassed the figure in 2005, the previous peak. In 2015, that figure was higher still. And based on anecdotal evidence, it seems like there are many more people taking CS intro classes than ever before. 2014 corresponds to four years after The Social Network movie came out; that did seem to make people more excited for startups, so perhaps tech wasn’t as central then as it seems now.
I like to think of The Social Network as the Liar’s Poker of the tech world: An intended cautionary tale of an industry that instead hugely glamorized it to the wrong people. The Straussian reading of these two works, of course, is that Liar’s Poker and The Social Network had every intention to glamorize their respective industries; the piously-voiced regrets by their creators are absolutely not to be believed.
Even if the pipeline is bursting today, the puzzle is why high wages and the cultural centrality of Silicon Valley have not drawn in more people in the previous decade. Anyone who offers an argument also has to explain why things are different today than in 2005. Perhaps I’ve overstated how cool tech was before 2010
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Democrats will finally get a dose of what everyone else has been warning Antifa has been doing to them.
For a guy who hates capitalism, Bernie Sanders is exceedingly good at it. It’s not just the millions of dollars he’s made (and kept to himself)
from his books, but his campaign offers anything the young communist could want to show they are a true believer, short of a billy club or keys to a Gulag.
At his website, the unshowered parental disappointments in your life can buy $27 t-shirts with his name on it or “College for All” across the front, as if to advertise how your priorities are screwed up. If you’re angry about borrowing $25k per year for a worthless women’s studies degree, what business do you have dropping $27 on cotton rag demanding someone else picks up the cost?
For the adventurous granola cruncher, there is the $5 “Medicare for All” bumper sticker. After all, why not lay down what is likely a 10,000 percent mark-up for something to cover the rust on your VW Beetle or to replace the Grateful Dead sticker you bought just after Gerry died? It’s been a while. Time to move on.
Bernie also offers $7 car magnets, for those trust fund babies and yuppies who never grew up, but feel guilty about their wealth. Giving to charity is for suckers, but so is putting something that will be hard to peel off and could damage the paint on that new BMW.
There’s also the $5 “Not me, us” sticker which features a silhouette of Bernie superimposed over a faceless crowd, thereby defeating the message of the sticker by showing that it is, in fact, about Bernie.
Then there are the hats ($18-$27), a $27 rally poster (guaranteed to ensure virginity through middle age for anyone who hangs it on their bedroom wall), buttons ($5), a mug ($18), and more tote bags than PBS during a pledge drive.
For a mere $18 you can buy a canvas tote that will not only allow you to virtue signal everyone at the Whole Foods about how “woke” you are, but you can do so with a pretentious message emblazoned across it. Imagine tossing $4 avocados into a bag reading, “Bernie for the planet." What up-and-coming failure wouldn’t want a “Keep calm and vote Bernie?" Or, if none of those make you tingle in the right places, there’s always the one with what could be a poorly drawn planet Earth in a human hand (it kind of looks like a bar of soap, but that’s highly unlikely given the audience) with the words, “Vote Bernie, save this.”
Bernie Sanders' online store offers everything you need to empower supporters to show the world that the education system has failed them and disappoint parents from coast to coast.
The worst part isn’t that Bernie is selling these and many, many other worthless things to raise money for his campaign, it’s that he’s running to essentially destroy anyone else’s ability to do the same. Not the “to raise campaign funds part,” the to make a living part.
People who make a living through their own initiative are the enemy of Bernie Sanders and his army, and all businesses must be destroyed. He’s not campaigning on that, obviously, but it’s the subtext of everything the man says and advocates.
American citizens are property of the state, not the other way around. Illegal aliens? They get a pass. More than that, they get the same “benefits” as Americans without any of that pesky “having to pay taxes to contribute to the cost” mess that ruins people’s April 15th.
How a campaign blatantly promising to screw over Americans while benefitting people in the country illegally gained traction in a major political party in the United States (or any country, for that matter) is a testament to the power of the fringe, the most extreme elements of the left. Why the Democratic Party can’t rally behind anyone who likes the country, is proud of it, is shocking.
Bernie Sanders is what happens when a party is devoid of leaders. Bernie is popular with a select group of naïve young people who’ve yet to earn anything worth having, so the idea of government-sanctioned theft is appealing to them. But the worst part is no one has stood up to him or his ideas; no one has stood up for the country or what made it great. Instead, they pander to the same people, mistaking enthusiasm for the man as enthusiasm up for grabs.
It’s Bernie or bust for his supporters. They’re already dominated by demographic considered the least likely to vote in the general election. Even if they are enough to win the nomination in a widely split field, they’re not likely to carry anyone over the finish line because there aren’t more of them. And the demographic most likely to vote in the general election are the least likely to embrace Bernie’s vision. They remember the horrors of socialism and communism, they fought them for this country and aren’t likely to embrace them now.
That’s where the other Democrats dropped the ball. Aping the radical left is never going to appeal to people who want it when the real deal is also on the ballot. You can’t out-Bernie Bernie.
Now, with no one willing to leave the race and allow opposition to coalesce around one alternative, it’s close to too late to stop him from at least getting a plurality of the delegates needed to win the nomination. If Bernie goes into the convention with the most delegates and doesn’t win the nomination, well, hell hath no fury like a Bernie-bro scorned.
The t-shirts will be donned, the tote bags will fly, and Democrats will finally get a dose of what everyone else has been warning Antifa has been doing to them.
Comrade Bernie came to win. And just like those historical monsters he admires, he’s not about to let anything stand in his way. If only the other candidates weren’t too busy sucking up to him and his army to notice
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Time For a US-Brazil Free Trade Agreement
The election in 2018 of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has shown that South Americans are pivoting away from socialism and towards free
market economics. This is a unique time in Central and South American politics with many nations rotating away from China and Russia towards the United States and other free market nations. Nations that show a healthy respect for property rights, low taxes, low regulatory policies and respect for intellectual property rights should be rewarded with free trade agreements that benefit both economies.
Right now, the United States is in a trade war with China with ongoing negotiations to resolve disputes over tariffs, intellectual property theft and corporate subsidies. There are large gulfs between the way the United States governs with a light touch regulatory scheme and the heavy-handed Chinese involvement in the economy. It makes geopolitical and economic sense for the two biggest economic superpowers to engage in commerce, yet these are nations trying to peacefully co-exist with vastly differing economic models.
According to the Office of U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. has free trade agreements with the South American nations of Chile, Columbia and Peru, yet none with Brazil. According to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook Database, the United States has the largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world. The next highest in North, Central or South America is not Canada (#10), nor Mexico (#15); the next highest nation ranked in GDP in that region of the world is Brazil (#9). It is ironic that the two biggest economies in the Americas are currently on the same page with economic policies, yet with no free trade agreement
With the recent shift under President Bolsonaro towards free market capitalism, and away from socialism, it is time for President Donald J. Trump to reward Brazil’s turn toward freedom with a free trade agreement.
The election in Brazil shifted influence away from China and Russia and toward the West. I wrote in Townhall on October 9, 2018, just before the Workers’ Party was tossed out of office, the election in Brazil “may help determine if Central and South America will move away from the corrupt socialist policies we see being promoted in Venezuela and Cuba toward free market-oriented policies promoted by the likes of a candidate who is likely to be the next President of Brazil.” With “The Trump of the Tropics” Bolsonaro winning that election in Brazil, it is time for Brazil and the United States to work closer together on military readiness and economic trade issues.
Years of rule by the corrupt Workers’ Party put Brazil in with a very low ranking in economic freedom in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Brazil has a low growth rate and high unemployment thanks to 13 years of rule by the corrupt Marxist Workers' Party. Policies being implemented by the new government are showing progress towards more economic freedom.
Brazilian leaders are saying all the right things. On September 11, 2019, Brazil’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ernesto Araujo identified the big challenge for civilization as "not climate change,” but “ideology. Araujo said that the new challenge is “globalism” with “cultural Marxism infiltrated in the institutions.” Coming from a nation with an economy poisoned by years of Marxist ideology stagnating the economy and allying with communist nations, Aruajo understands more clearly than most Americans the need for freedom, free markets and moral leadership. In November of 2019, Brazil’s Minister of Economy Paulo Guedes came to the United States to make the case that Brazil’s dismantling of the socialist state constructed by the Workers' Party is well under way. Guedes holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
There is one big obstruction to a free trade agreement with Brazil – protectionism by some in the Trump administration. Oliver Stuenkel wrote in Foreign Policy on December 6, 2019 that recently imposed steel and aluminum tariffs have moved the relationship in the wrong direction. Stuenkel argued “as the most pro-American president in modern Brazilian history, Bolsonaro has put establishing a strong alliance with the United States at the center of his foreign policy from the start.” Early in the administration, Bolsonaro took a hard line against China and Araujo lamented the influence of “Maoist China” in South America. Guedes met with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross a few months ago in the hopes of better relations. Unfortunately, the Trump faction supporting hard line trade policies and protectionism beat out the pro-freedom factions in the government who would support free trade agreements with strong U.S. allies like Brazil.
It is time to abandon protectionist tariffs and reward President Bolsonaro with a free trade agreement. That will help Bolsonaro secure his position as a pro-American president in the largest nation in South America while benefitting the United States by having a large, strong military and economic ally in South America
What Christian Conservatives Need to Know About Mike Bloomberg
It is ironic that former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is presenting himself as the balanced alternative to extreme socialists like
Senator Bernie Sanders. In reality, when it comes to areas of great concern to Christian conservatives, Bloomberg has been anything but moderate.
As noted by Catholic activist Bill Donohue with references to his tenure as mayor, “on two key social issues — abortion and religious liberty — the presidential candidate was a total bomb.”
Donohue actually claims that “Bloomberg is one of the most radical pro-abortion politicians in American history.”
Among the former mayor’s accomplishments was this: “Bloomberg's passion for abortion allowed him to appropriate $15 million from a civic facility revenue bond transaction that benefited Planned Parenthood.”
Would you want someone like this in the White House?
Lest you think these policies were a thing of the past, on February 12 Bloomberg announced, “As president, I will fiercely protect a woman’s right to choose, and I will appoint judges who will defend that right.”
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He also declared, “On my first day in office, I will reverse the damage President Trump has done to women’s rights and ensure that every woman has access to reproductive health care.”
Never Trumpers who are pro-life might want to reconsider their stance should Bloomberg become the Democratic nominee. (For that matter, given the current crop of candidates, they should reconsider their stance regardless of which candidate emerges as the Democratic nominee.)
Donohue also states that, “On religious liberty issues, Bloomberg's record was similarly awful.”
To cite just one example, “The courts have long ruled that religious groups have a right to use public facilities, yet Bloomberg denied the right of an inner-city Christian church to hold religious services in a public school on Sundays, setting up a court challenge. He lost in federal district court in 2005, but his censorial effort was not lost on supporters of the Bronx Household of Faith.”
I ask once again: if you are a Christian conservative (or, simply a person who cherishes our fundamental freedoms), is this the kind of man you want in the White House?
My Stream colleague John Zmirak claimed that Bloomberg is an “amoral monster.”
Another Stream colleague, Rachel Alexander, has sampled some of Bloomberg’s derogatory comments about women and others, as opponents of Donald Trump have often done.
The difference, of course, is that Trump has proven himself a friend of the unborn and a friend of religious liberties. Bloomberg has proven himself to be the exact opposite.
Timothy P. Carney drew attention to several of Bloomberg’s more severe statements that confirm this. For example, he writes that, “Mike Bloomberg once pointed to the in utero child of an employee and said ‘kill it, kill it,’ according to two witnesses.”
And this, according to Carney, is part of a larger, dangerous mindset: “Telling an expectant mother to kill her baby, mocking a new mother’s desire for quality child care, cursing whenever a female employee gets pregnant, and publicly denigrating marriage among professional women all reflect a clear and consistent mindset: The women who worked for him were worker bees. Their humanity, their fertility, their love, and their human attachments were all impediments to productivity. He saw these women as means to his ends of profit.”
Let the reader look at Bloomberg’s more recent, pro-abortion comments and decide whether this assessment is accurate.
Personally, I’m sure about what his policies have been and what he promises his policies will be. That is not the person I want leading our country.
What raises even more concerns is that Bloomberg presented himself as a champion of religious liberty as mayor. As David French noted in 2012, “at the same time that the mayor declared that ‘no neighborhood’ in New York was ‘off-limits to God’s love and mercy,’ he was enforcing a unique-in-the-nation policy that in fact declared New York City schools ‘off-limits’ to private religious use that includes worship.”
Yes, this was unique to New York.
As ADF attorney Jordan Lawrence explained, “By state law, the city opens its 1,200 schools on weeknights and weekends to community groups for any use ‘pertaining to the welfare of the community.’ The public schools allow thousands of organizations — scout troops, labor unions, arts groups, etc. — to hold meetings, concerts and recitals. They’ve even allowed ‘Law and Order’ to film in the schools.
“Why single out religious groups and churches, by prohibiting them from conducting worship services in vacant schools when students are gone?”
So, under Mayor Bloomberg, everyone else had the right to rent and use the city’s 1,200 school buildings with the sole exception of religious groups and churches. Why?
The New York Daily News was not hyping things when its February 14, 2012 headline announced: “The Bloomberg administration says churches must leave school buildings now.”
Is this the administration you want running America?
Let the voter beware
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Boy scouts of America bankrupt via Critical Theory.
What’s left of the Boy Scouts of America (now operating as Scouts BSA) is on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, according to recent news reports. With estimated assets of more than $1 billion, Scouting’s problems go beyond the financial, deep into the problems with America’s civil culture today.
The U.S. Boy Scout movement reached its numerical height in 1969 with 6 million members, in a year with President Richard M. Nixon as honorary head of the Scouts and Eagle Scout astronaut Neil Armstrong stepping out on the moon.
I was a Cub Scout that year, once a week proudly wearing my uniform to Armstrong Elementary School in our Chicago neighborhood, heading to our well-attended den meeting right after school. My liberal Democratic parents signed me up, my dad a World War II veteran supportive of Scouting’s patriotism.
Fast-forward ahead nearly 50 years: Scout membership has dropped toward 2 million. The impending departure of the Latter Day Saints troops this year will drop that total by one-fifth. Our local school district in conservative central Pennsylvania won’t allow promoting Scouting at school. In our college town, many in the woke local elite now despise Scouting as neo-Nazi and white nationalist, despite efforts to change the national movement to please progressives. My son’s local troop closed recently for lack of members, and so did others in the area.
The national organization faces large lawsuits due to alleged cases of sexual abuse as state legislatures change the statute of limitations on such cases. It also faces a lawsuit from the Girl Scouts for poaching on their membership by changing its name recently to Scouts BSA and recruiting girls.
It’s Not Just Financial Bankruptcy
The old American Boy Scouts might as well be filing for moral bankruptcy, having lost both its base and elite cultural capital. What used to be an organization designed to help boys become men has now been re-fashioned in line with the new gnosticism of American culture, accepting LGTBQIA ideology, while abandoning its traditional ascetic position about sex and its opposition to atheism.
Next year’s World Scouting Jamboree in West Virginia reportedly will be the first hosted by the former Boy Scouts of America to make condoms available to participants. A 2016 agreement with the Unitarian-Universalists overrode the group’s membership requirement of belief in God by allowing belief in humanism, contrary to the Scout Oath.
The “bowling alone” syndrome of declining civic groups in the United States, over-scheduling of young people, and the weakening of American family models all played a role. In fact, political scientist Paul Kengor of Grove City College has detailed the history of American communists and cultural Marxists’s efforts to target and subvert Scouting in particular, to help undermine American family life.
Yet it was corporate executives and members of the U.S. political establishment (including Scouting leaders such as Rex Tillerson and Robert Gates) on the national board who with progressive staff members agreed to surrender to pressure to sexualize the organization in recent years, despite an earlier hard-fought U.S. Supreme Court victory by the organization to preserve membership rules. In admitting openly gay members and leaders, accepting transgenderism, then admitting girls, Scouting turned its back on a cultural background of Christian teaching on sexuality going back millennia.
The central issue was not admitting openly LGBTQIA-identifying members and leaders, but redefining the group’s value of freedom as self-expression, rather than self-restraint. The latter was the traditional ethos of Scouting, not shaping boys into open heterosexuals or any other type of -sexuals, in the “Mad Men”/Hugh Hefner mold or anything else.
Turning On Historic Christian Morality
In Scouting in recent decades, physical edginess and “tough” training requirements also were loosened or removed. The values of a culture dedicated to the human person as totally malleable, based on self-will, took hold. Safety and comfort became increasingly the ultimate values.
Such values, which affected Scouting ultimately more because of changes in in its anchoring mainline Protestant and business cultures than leftist subversion, reject an age-old cultural inheritance of the American republic that regarded virtue and self-restraint as the goals of education of young men, to be leaders of a free society and the families that would continue it.
In the wake of the Neo-Chalcedonianism established by the Fifth Ecumenical Church Council in 553, St. Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century articulated the basis for traditional Christian ascetic approaches to identity as a cosmology, not merely morality. It was a synthesis in part of biblical and Greek philosophical traditions. He wrote of how God created man male and female, but also that there was neither male nor female in Christ.
Maximus’ Christian Byzantine Empire had a performative sense of biological and embodied sexual identity of men and women, with also a third gender or sex, that of both eunuchs and ascetics. Virtuous and holy women could aspire to manliness; men could venerate the Mother of God as the best of saints. Self-restrained and grace-filled chastity, engaged in marriage to the oppose sex or to Christ in monastic community, was seen as leading to the fulfillment of human life in oneness with God’s grace—not essentializing sexual passions by objectifying others.
The complementarity of marriage was a living symbol of the relation of humanity in the universal church to God. Biological sexes of male and female were an embodied sacred iconography to be honored and followed, nurturing trans-generational families in which men could learn to be guardians of peace, husbands who would lay down their lives for their families and country.
That is the deep and complex centuries-old basis for a moral initiation into manhood that dimly still underlay the Boy Scout Oath and Law, a distant cultural inheritance.
Setting Boys Adrift In a Mooring-less Culture
Scouts were never a perfect organization. Major problems with sexual abuse and coverups of it show that. They had quasi-Masonic aspects in Order of the Arrow ceremonies and “great Scoutmaster in the sky” language at camp chapel, emerging from an odd crucible of Teddy Roosevelt-style nationalist progressivism and British Empire civics of the early 20th century. Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” also inspired Cub Scout ranks.
It is that much of a harder path today for many American boys without strong male role models to find their way.
But in the lost world of 1969 working-class Chicago neighborhoods, in the heyday of the Boy Scouts of America, I with many other boys before and since learned valuable lessons from Scouting, and however imperfectly kept respect for the virtues of the Scout Oath and Law tucked away with my old copy of the Scout handbook and Scout pocket knife in later years.
Our eldest son found a home in a small rural troop run by dedicated military and law enforcement veterans. I often went along on camping trips as an adult volunteer leader. It was a great experience and a sad day when the troop closed recently due to dwindling membership.
Our family’s relationship with regular Scouting ended around the time our younger son in fifth grade ran to get his copy of Boys Life magazine in the mail only to throw it aside because it was featuring girls, as if photoshopped into Norman Rockwell Scouting art. He lost his enthusiasm, our eldest lost his home troop, and dad didn’t want to send money to a national organization adrift.
Not just the old Boy Scouts but America may need receivership for moral bankruptcy. Either way, the real shame is that it is that much of a harder path today for many American boys without strong male role models to find their way to the freedom of self-restraint in manhood envisioned in that millennia-old tradition
Sunday, February 16, 2020
former staffers would rather see corruption and FISA abuse continue than to have Barr drain the swamp.
More than 1,100 former Department of Justice alumni signed a petition calling on Attorney General William Barr to resign. They take issue with the fact that he instructed the U.S. Attorney’s Office to reverse their recommendation for Roger Stone to serve between seven and nine years in prison. According to the petition, Barr did not uphold the department's principle of "apply[ing] the law equally to all Americans."
We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice.
"This obligation flows directly from the Constitution, and it is embedded in countless rules and laws governing the conduct of DOJ lawyers. The Justice Manual — the DOJ’s rulebook for its lawyers — states that 'the rule of law depends on the evenhanded administration of justice'; that the Department’s legal decisions 'must be impartial and insulated from political influence'; and that the Department’s prosecutorial powers, in particular, must be 'exercised free from partisan consideration,'" the petition stated.
"Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case," the petition said. "It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court."
Those who signed the petition feel that President Trump has interfered with department policies and "gravely damaged the Department's credibility."
Although the group of former employees wants Barr to resign, they "have little expectation he will do so, it falls to the Department’s career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend nonpartisan, apolitical justice."
The DOJ alumni applauded the prosecutors who withdrew from the Stone case and/or resigned from the Department and said they want the agency's other employees to do the same.
"We call on every DOJ employee to follow their heroic example and be prepared to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office; to withdraw from cases that involve such directives or other misconduct; and, if necessary, to resign and report publicly — in a manner consistent with professional ethics — to the American people the reasons for their resignation. We likewise call on the other branches of government to protect from retaliation those employees who uphold their oaths in the face of unlawful directives. The rule of law and the survival of our Republic demand nothing less."
Notable signatories include CNN analysts and former federal prosecutors Elie Honig and Renato Mariotti and MSNBC analysts Paul Butler, Frank Figliuzzi, Matthew Miller and Jill Wine-Banks, the Daily Caller reported.
These calls for Barr’s firing raise some serious questions.
How many of those 1,100 former prosecutors and officials called for action when the IG reported that the FBI lied to the FISA Court 17 times? https://t.co/8FbKwz0fnz
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 16, 2020
Really. And how many of these same officials claiming to be principled said a word about James Comey, Andy McCabe, and others who got caught red handed by the IG report? https://t.co/yqiamGKqqr
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) February 16, 2020
Bet it’s safe to say these former staffers would rather see corruption and FISA abuse continue than to have someone like Barr drain the swamp
We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice.
"This obligation flows directly from the Constitution, and it is embedded in countless rules and laws governing the conduct of DOJ lawyers. The Justice Manual — the DOJ’s rulebook for its lawyers — states that 'the rule of law depends on the evenhanded administration of justice'; that the Department’s legal decisions 'must be impartial and insulated from political influence'; and that the Department’s prosecutorial powers, in particular, must be 'exercised free from partisan consideration,'" the petition stated.
"Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case," the petition said. "It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court."
Those who signed the petition feel that President Trump has interfered with department policies and "gravely damaged the Department's credibility."
Although the group of former employees wants Barr to resign, they "have little expectation he will do so, it falls to the Department’s career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend nonpartisan, apolitical justice."
The DOJ alumni applauded the prosecutors who withdrew from the Stone case and/or resigned from the Department and said they want the agency's other employees to do the same.
"We call on every DOJ employee to follow their heroic example and be prepared to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office; to withdraw from cases that involve such directives or other misconduct; and, if necessary, to resign and report publicly — in a manner consistent with professional ethics — to the American people the reasons for their resignation. We likewise call on the other branches of government to protect from retaliation those employees who uphold their oaths in the face of unlawful directives. The rule of law and the survival of our Republic demand nothing less."
Notable signatories include CNN analysts and former federal prosecutors Elie Honig and Renato Mariotti and MSNBC analysts Paul Butler, Frank Figliuzzi, Matthew Miller and Jill Wine-Banks, the Daily Caller reported.
These calls for Barr’s firing raise some serious questions.
How many of those 1,100 former prosecutors and officials called for action when the IG reported that the FBI lied to the FISA Court 17 times? https://t.co/8FbKwz0fnz
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 16, 2020
Really. And how many of these same officials claiming to be principled said a word about James Comey, Andy McCabe, and others who got caught red handed by the IG report? https://t.co/yqiamGKqqr
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) February 16, 2020
Bet it’s safe to say these former staffers would rather see corruption and FISA abuse continue than to have someone like Barr drain the swamp
Employers are wrong
They want somebody in Management information Systems to code perl. Only thing is I didn't go into computer science so I don't have to. I went into Management Information Systems. They gave me a C# Visual Basic class. I don't do coding. I am not smart enough, I didn't get trained for it, its not my degree. And of course they all want me to do this. And there is age discrimination at 35.
Then retail alienates me, because they don't code. Seeing my degree isn't in computer science, they just pass me up.
WHAT PART OF NOT IN MY DEGREE DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? And I rather go into warehousing or retail then code perl
Then retail alienates me, because they don't code. Seeing my degree isn't in computer science, they just pass me up.
WHAT PART OF NOT IN MY DEGREE DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? And I rather go into warehousing or retail then code perl
Friday, February 14, 2020
Top 100 1970s songs
1. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin2. Hotel California - The Eagles
3. Imagine - John Lennon
4. What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
5. Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
6. Superstition - Stevie Wonder
7. Layla - Derek and the Dominos
8. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
9. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
10. Let's Stay Together - Al Green
11. Let It Be - The Beatles
12. Maggie May - Rod Stewart
13. American Pie - Don McLean
14. Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
15. Stayin' Alive - The Bee Gees
16. Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd
17. Brown Sugar - The Rolling Stones
18. Let's Get It On - Marvin Gaye
19. Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
20. Papa Was a Rollin' Stone - The Temptations
21. Your Song - Elton John
22. Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight and the Pips
23. More Than a Feeling - Boston
24. Just My Imagination - The Temptations
25. I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
26. Roxanne - The Police
27. Dream On - Aerosmith
28. Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2 - Pink Floyd
29. No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley and the Wailers
30. London Calling - The Clash
31. Family Affair - Sly and the Family Stone
32. Anarchy in the UK - The Sex Pistols
33. Dancing Queen - ABBA
34. We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions - Queen
35. Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine - James Brown
36. Living for the City - Stevie Wonder
37. Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd
38. Lola - The Kinks
39. Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple
40. Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
41. Walk This Way - Aerosmith
42. Lean on Me - Bill Withers
43. Who'll Stop the Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival
44. Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
45. Rapper's Delight - The Sugarhill Gang
46. Heart of Glass - Blondie
47. Theme from "Shaft" - Isaac Hayes
48. Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
49. Fire and Rain - James Taylor
50. Baba O'Riley - The Who
51. Paranoid - Black Sabbath
52. Heart of Gold - Neil Young
53. Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed
54. It's Too Late - Carole King
55. You Are the Sunshine of My Life - Stevie Wonder
56. All Right Now - Free
57. Good Times - Chic
58. (Don't Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
59. If You Don't Know Me by Now - Harold Melvin & Blue Notes
60. Riders On the Storm - The Doors
61. My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
62. Bang a Gong (Get It On) - T. Rex
63. Black Magic Woman - Santana
64. Tangled Up in Blue - Bob Dylan
65. One Nation Under a Groove - Funkadelic
66. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
67. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson
68. We Are Family - Sister Sledge
69. Rock and Roll - Led Zeppelin
70. I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
71. Money - Pink Floyd
72. Miss You - The Rolling Stones
73. Piano Man - Billy Joel
74. Tired of Being Alone - Al Green
75. Killing Me Softly with His Song - Roberta Flack
76. Changes - David Bowie
77. Le Freak - Chic
78. Band of Gold - Freda Payne
79. Maybe I'm Amazed (studio version) - Paul McCartney
80. Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
81. Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
82. Heroes - David Bowie
83. Hot Stuff - Donna Summer
84. War - Edwin Starr
85. Night Moves - Bob Seger
86. Black Dog - Led Zeppelin
87. Brass in Pocket - The Pretenders
88. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
89. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet - Bachman-Turner Overdrive
90. I'll Take You There - The Staple Singers
91. Tumbling Dice - The Rolling Stones
92. Love Train - The O'Jays
93. You're So Vain - Carly Simon
94. Best of My Love - The Emotions
95. God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols
96. Old Time Rock 'n' Roll - Bob Seger & Silver Bullet Band
97. Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramones
98. Message in a Bottle - The Police
99. Mercy Mercy Me - Marvin Gaye
100. One of These Nights - The Eagles
101. Oh Girl - The Chi-Lites
102. Train in Vain - The Clash
103. Take It Easy - The Eagles
104. I'll Be Around - The Spinners
105. American Woman - The Guess Who
106. Roundabout - Yes
107. That Lady - The Isley Brothers
108. Angie - The Rolling Stones
109. Rock Lobster - The B-52's
110. Have You Seen Her - The Chi-Lites
111. Reeling in the Years - Steely Dan
112. Bennie and the Jets - Elton John
113. Aqualung - Jethro Tull
114. Low Rider - War
115. I'm Not in Love - 10cc
116. Brick House - Commodores
117. Y.M.C.A. - Village People
118. The Boys Are Back in Town - Thin Lizzy
119. Play That Funky Music - Wild Cherry
120. Rocket Man - Elton John
121. The Joker - The Steve Miller Band
122. Dreams - Fleetwood Mac
123. Have You Ever Seen the Rain - CCR
124. Paradise by the Dashboard Light - Meat Loaf
125. School's Out - Alice Cooper
126. Joy to the World - Three Dog Night
127. Highway to Hell - AC/DC
128. Tear the Roof off the Sucker - Parliament
129. Radar Love - Golden Earring
130. The Long and Winding Road - The Beatles
131. I Feel Love - Donna Summer
132. I'll Be There - The Jackson 5
133. Oye Como Va - Santana
134. Jamming - Bob Marley and the Wailers
135. All the Young Dudes - Mott the Hoople
136. Ohio - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
137. Moondance - Van Morrison
138. Drift Away - Dobie Gray
139. Higher Ground - Stevie Wonder
140. Knockin' on Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan
141. Rock Your Baby - George McCrae
142. Instant Karma - John Lennon
143. Child in Time - Deep Purple
144. Get Up, Stand Up - The Wailers
145. Lady Marmalade - LaBelle
146. Flash Light - Parliament
147. Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac
148. Long Cool Woman - The Hollies
149. Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
150. Respect Yourself - The Staple Singers
151. Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith
152. Cars - Gary Numan
153. Takin' Care of Business - Bachman-Turner Overdrive
154. Just What I Needed - The Cars
155. Funkytown - Lipps, Inc.
156. My Sharona - The Knack
157. Rock with You - Michael Jackson
158. The Harder They Come - Jimmy Cliff
159. Back Stabbers - The O-Jays
160. I Can See Clearly Now - Johnny Nash
161. Without You - Nilsson
162. Tiny Dancer - Elton John
163. Because the Night - Patti Smith
164. Ramblin' Man - The Allman Brothers
165. Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton
166. Just the Way You Are - Billy Joel
167. Rock and Roll All Nite - KISS
168. That's the Way (I Like It) - KC & the Sunshine Band
169. Autobahn - Kraftwerk
170. Help Me - Joni Mitchell
171. Fame - David Bowie
172. Love to Love You Baby - Donna Summer
173. Kiss and Say Goodbye - The Manhattans
174. Time - Pink Floyd
175. Burning Love - Elvis Presley
176. I'm Still in Love with You - Al Green
177. Lust for Life - Iggy Pop
178. Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon
179. Disco Inferno - The Trammps
180. Cruisin' - Smokey Robinson
181. Refugee - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
182. Tonight's the Night - Rod Stewart
183. Smiling Faces Sometimes - The Undisputed Truth
184. Behind Blue Eyes - The Who
185. Always and Forever - Heatwave
186. We're an American Band - Grand Funk
187. Band on the Run - Paul McCartney and Wings
188. Listen to the Music - The Doobie Brothers
189. September - Earth, Wind and Fire
190. Runnin' with the Devil - Van Halen
191. Who Are You - The Who
192. Waterloo - ABBA
193. Got to Give It Up - Marvin Gaye
194. Fly Like an Eagle - The Steve Miller Band
195. I Wish - Stevie Wonder
196. Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe - Barry White
197. Carry On Wayward Son - Kansas
198. Surrender - Cheap Trick
199. Ball of Confusion - The Temptations
200. Cocaine - Eric Clapton
201. Alone Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O'Sullivan
202. Crocodile Rock - Elton John
203. Love Is the Drug - Roxy Music
204. LA Woman - The Doors
205. Stuck in the Middle with You - Stealers Wheel
206. Mr. Big Stuff - Jean Knight
207. The Logical Song - Supertramp
208. Tell Me Something Good - Rufus
209. Oliver's Army - Elvis Costello
210. 25 or 6 to 4 - Chicago
211. What I Like About You - The Romantics
212. Shame - Evelyn "Champagne" King
213. Inner City Blues - Marvin Gaye
214. Life in the Fast Lane - The Eagles
215. A Horse with No Name - America
216. Hey Hey My My (Into the Black) - Neil Young
217. Natural High - Bloodstone
218. One Way or Another - Blondie
219. O-o-h Child - The Five Stairsteps
220. I Saw the Light - Todd Rundgren
221. Night Fever - The Bee Gees
222. Truckin' - The Grateful Dead
223. Rock and Roll, Part 2 - Gary Glitter
224. Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
225. Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
226. What a Fool Believes - The Doobie Brothers
227. Margaritaville - Jimmy Buffet
228. Dust in the Wind - Kansas
229. When Will I See You Again - The Three Degrees
230. Black Water - The Doobie Brothers
231. Me and Mrs. Jones - Billy Paul
232. Running on Empty - Jackson Browne
233. Turn the Page - Bob Seger
234. Roadhouse Blues - The Doors
235. The Payback - James Brown
236. Rebel Rebel - David Bowie
237. Killer Queen - Queen
238. Pick Up the Pieces - Average White Band
239. Can't Get Enough - Bad Company
240. Fantasy - Earth, Wind and Fire
241. Long Time - Boston
242. Until You Come Back to Me - Aretha Franklin
243. Long Train Running - The Doobie Brothers
244. Over the Hills and Far Away - Led Zeppelin
245. Locomotive Breath - Jethro Tull
246. That's the Way of the World - Earth, Wind and Fire
247. December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night) - The Four Seasons
248. Question - The Moody Blues
249. Go All the Way - The Raspberries
250. You Make Me Feel Brand New - The Stylistics
Top 100 2000s songs
1. Hey Ya - OutKast
2. Lose Yourself - Eminem
3. Crazy in Love - Beyoncé feat. Jay Z
4. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
5. Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
6. Clocks - Coldplay
7. Paper Planes - M.I.A.
8. Last Nite - The Strokes
9. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
10. Jesus Walks - Kanye West
11. Get Ur Freak On - Missy Elliot
12. Umbrella - Rihanna feat. Jay Z
13. Yeah! - Usher feat. Lil' Jon and Ludacris
14. Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) - Beyoncé
15. Idioteque - Radiohead
16. In Da Club - 50 Cent
17. Fallin' - Alicia Keys
18. Rehab - Amy Winehouse
19. Feel Good Inc. - Gorillaz
20. Yellow - Coldplay
21. Gold Digger - Kanye West
22. Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
23. Beautiful Day - U2
24. All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
25. Viva la Vida - Coldplay
26. SexyBack - Justin Timberlake
27. Toxic - Britney Spears
28. Ms. Jackson - OutKast
29. 99 Problems - Jay Z
30. What You Know - T.I.
31. Low - Flo Rida
32. One More Time - Daft Punk
33. Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson
34. Stan - Eminem
35. Losing My Edge - LCD Soundsystem
36. Fell in Love with a Girl - The White Stripes
37. I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys
38. No One - Alicia Keys
39. Try Again - Aaliyah
40. B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad) - OutKast
41. Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
42. Irreplaceable - Beyoncé
43. Mr. Brightside - The Killers
44. Just Dance - Lady Gaga
45. Poker Face - Lady Gaga
46. Family Affair - Mary J. Blige
47. I Gotta Feeling - Black Eyed Peas
48. Boom Boom Pow - Black Eyed Peas
49. I Kissed a Girl - Katy Perry
50. I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
51. How You Remind Me - Nickelback
52. In the End - Linkin Park
53. Stronger - Kanye West
54. Harder Better Faster Stronger - Daft Punk
55. Hot N' Cold - Katy Perry
56. Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
57. House of Jealous Lovers - The Rapture
58. Survivor - Destiny's Child
59. Sex On Fire - Kings of Leon
60. Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
61. The Seed (2.0) - The Roots
62. Work It - Missy Elliot
63. My Love - Justin Timberlake
64. 1 Thing - Amerie
65. Disturbia - Rihanna
66. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Arcade Fire
67. Live Your Life - T.I. feat. Rihanna
68. Without Me - Eminem
69. Hips Don't Lie - Shakira
70. Ignition - R. Kelly
71. Music - Madonna
72. No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age
73. Starlight - Muse
74. D.A.N.C.E. - Justice
75. Float On - Modest Mouse
76. Made You Look - Nas
77. Izzo (H.O.V.A.) - Jay Z
78. Empire State of Mind - Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys
79. My Girls - Animal Collective
80. We Belong Together - Mariah Carey
81. Dilemma - Nelly feat. Kelly Rowland
82. Love in this Club - Usher feat. Young Jeezy
83. Young Folks - Peter Bjorn & John
84. Drop It Like It's Hot - Snoop Dogg feat. Pharrell
85. A Milli - Lil Wayne
86. Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers
87. Hard to Explain - The Strokes
88. Heartbeat - Annie
89. The Scientist - Coldplay
90. Like a Stone - Audioslave
91. Chop Suey! - System of a Down
92. Pyramid Song - Radiohead
93. Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake
94. Where is the Love - Black Eyed Peas
95. The Rising - Bruce Springsteen
96. Kids - MGMT
97. Slow Hands - Interpol
98. Good Life - Kanye West feat. T. Pain
99. The Way You Move - OutKast
100. Kryptonite - 3 Doors Down
101. Galang - M.I.A.
102. Independent Woman Part I - Destiny's Child
103. Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz
104. Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire
105. Hate It or Love It - The Game feat 50 Cent
106. Do You Realize?? - The Flaming Lips
107. Everything in it's Right Place - Radiohead
108. Banquet - Bloc Party
109. Vertigo - U2
110. Can't Stand Me Now - The Libertines
111. Mosh - Eminem
112. Roses - OutKast
113. If I Were a Boy - Beyoncé
114. The Way We Get By - Spoon
115. Time to Pretend - MGMT
116. When You Were Young - The Killers
117. Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
118. This Love - Maroon 5
119. Speed of Sound - Coldplay
120. Say It Right - Nelly Furtado
121. Crank That - Soulja Boy Tell 'Em
122. American Idiot - Green Day
123. Smile - Lily Allen
124. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
125. Steady as She Goes - The Raconteurs
126. The Rat - The Walkmen
127. Heartbeats - The Knife
128. Slow Jamz - Twista
129. While You Wait for the Others - Grizzly Bear
130. Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
131. 12:51 - The Strokes
132. Someday - The Strokes
133. Hollaback Girl - Gewn Stefani
134. Promiscous - Nelly Furtado feat. Timbaland
135. Get this Party Started - Pink
136. Stay Fly - Three 6 Mafia
137. Do You Want To - Franz Ferdinand
138. Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day
139. Milkshake - Kelis
140. Digital Love - Daft Punk
141. Grindin' - Clipse
142. Poor Places - Wilco
143. What Goes Around... Comes Around - Justin Timberlake
144. Hate to Say I Told You So - The Hives
145. Obstacle 1 - Interpol
146. New Slang - The Shins
147. Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
148. Foolish - Ashanti
149. Wolf Like Me - TV On the Radio
150. The Real Slim Shady - Eminem
151. Somebody Told Me - The Killers
152. White & Nerdy - "Weird Al" Yankovic
153. Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Radiohead
154. Bring Me to Life - Evanescence
155. Check On It - Beyoncé feat. Slim Thug
156. My Doorbell - The White Stripes
157. Hot in Herre - Nelly
158. 1234 - Feist
159. The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
160. Brainstorm - Arctic Monkeys
161. Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches
162. Island in the Sun - Weezer
163. I Luv U - Dizzee Rascal
164. HoppÃpolla - Sigur Rós
165. View from the Afternoon - Arctic Monkeys
166. Blind - Hercules and Love Affair
167. Where's Your Head At - Basement Jaxx
168. 2 + 2 = 5 - Radiohead
169. Heartless - Kanye West
170. Snow ((Hey Oh)) - Red Hot Chili Peppers
171. La Rock 01 - Vitalic
172. Schism - Tool
173. Pork and Beans - Weezer
174. Jesus, etc. - Wilco
175. Sexy Bitch - David Guetta feat. Akon
176. Over and Over - Hot Chip
177. By the Way - Red Hot Chili Peppers
178. Beautiful Girls - Sean Kingston
179. Diamonds from Serra Leone - Kanye West
180. Fireworks - Animal Collective
181. Peacebone - Animal Collective
182. Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
183. Whatever You Like - T.I.
184. Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs
185. S.O.S. - Rihanna
186. Mississippi - Bob Dylan
187. Dry Your Eyes - The Streets
188. Out of Time - Blur
189. First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey
190. Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard (A True Story) - !!!
191. Lost Cause - Beck
192. Int'l Player's Anthem - UGK feat. OutKast
193. White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
194. 1901 - Phoenix
195. Machine Gun - Portishead
196. Atlas - Battles
197. Your Ex-Lover is Dead - Stars
198. Chicago - Sufjan Stevens
199. Oxford Comma- Vampire Weekend
200. Technologic - Daft
2. Lose Yourself - Eminem
3. Crazy in Love - Beyoncé feat. Jay Z
4. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
5. Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
6. Clocks - Coldplay
7. Paper Planes - M.I.A.
8. Last Nite - The Strokes
9. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
10. Jesus Walks - Kanye West
11. Get Ur Freak On - Missy Elliot
12. Umbrella - Rihanna feat. Jay Z
13. Yeah! - Usher feat. Lil' Jon and Ludacris
14. Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) - Beyoncé
15. Idioteque - Radiohead
16. In Da Club - 50 Cent
17. Fallin' - Alicia Keys
18. Rehab - Amy Winehouse
19. Feel Good Inc. - Gorillaz
20. Yellow - Coldplay
21. Gold Digger - Kanye West
22. Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
23. Beautiful Day - U2
24. All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
25. Viva la Vida - Coldplay
26. SexyBack - Justin Timberlake
27. Toxic - Britney Spears
28. Ms. Jackson - OutKast
29. 99 Problems - Jay Z
30. What You Know - T.I.
31. Low - Flo Rida
32. One More Time - Daft Punk
33. Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson
34. Stan - Eminem
35. Losing My Edge - LCD Soundsystem
36. Fell in Love with a Girl - The White Stripes
37. I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys
38. No One - Alicia Keys
39. Try Again - Aaliyah
40. B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad) - OutKast
41. Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
42. Irreplaceable - Beyoncé
43. Mr. Brightside - The Killers
44. Just Dance - Lady Gaga
45. Poker Face - Lady Gaga
46. Family Affair - Mary J. Blige
47. I Gotta Feeling - Black Eyed Peas
48. Boom Boom Pow - Black Eyed Peas
49. I Kissed a Girl - Katy Perry
50. I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
51. How You Remind Me - Nickelback
52. In the End - Linkin Park
53. Stronger - Kanye West
54. Harder Better Faster Stronger - Daft Punk
55. Hot N' Cold - Katy Perry
56. Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
57. House of Jealous Lovers - The Rapture
58. Survivor - Destiny's Child
59. Sex On Fire - Kings of Leon
60. Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
61. The Seed (2.0) - The Roots
62. Work It - Missy Elliot
63. My Love - Justin Timberlake
64. 1 Thing - Amerie
65. Disturbia - Rihanna
66. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Arcade Fire
67. Live Your Life - T.I. feat. Rihanna
68. Without Me - Eminem
69. Hips Don't Lie - Shakira
70. Ignition - R. Kelly
71. Music - Madonna
72. No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age
73. Starlight - Muse
74. D.A.N.C.E. - Justice
75. Float On - Modest Mouse
76. Made You Look - Nas
77. Izzo (H.O.V.A.) - Jay Z
78. Empire State of Mind - Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys
79. My Girls - Animal Collective
80. We Belong Together - Mariah Carey
81. Dilemma - Nelly feat. Kelly Rowland
82. Love in this Club - Usher feat. Young Jeezy
83. Young Folks - Peter Bjorn & John
84. Drop It Like It's Hot - Snoop Dogg feat. Pharrell
85. A Milli - Lil Wayne
86. Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers
87. Hard to Explain - The Strokes
88. Heartbeat - Annie
89. The Scientist - Coldplay
90. Like a Stone - Audioslave
91. Chop Suey! - System of a Down
92. Pyramid Song - Radiohead
93. Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake
94. Where is the Love - Black Eyed Peas
95. The Rising - Bruce Springsteen
96. Kids - MGMT
97. Slow Hands - Interpol
98. Good Life - Kanye West feat. T. Pain
99. The Way You Move - OutKast
100. Kryptonite - 3 Doors Down
101. Galang - M.I.A.
102. Independent Woman Part I - Destiny's Child
103. Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz
104. Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire
105. Hate It or Love It - The Game feat 50 Cent
106. Do You Realize?? - The Flaming Lips
107. Everything in it's Right Place - Radiohead
108. Banquet - Bloc Party
109. Vertigo - U2
110. Can't Stand Me Now - The Libertines
111. Mosh - Eminem
112. Roses - OutKast
113. If I Were a Boy - Beyoncé
114. The Way We Get By - Spoon
115. Time to Pretend - MGMT
116. When You Were Young - The Killers
117. Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
118. This Love - Maroon 5
119. Speed of Sound - Coldplay
120. Say It Right - Nelly Furtado
121. Crank That - Soulja Boy Tell 'Em
122. American Idiot - Green Day
123. Smile - Lily Allen
124. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
125. Steady as She Goes - The Raconteurs
126. The Rat - The Walkmen
127. Heartbeats - The Knife
128. Slow Jamz - Twista
129. While You Wait for the Others - Grizzly Bear
130. Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
131. 12:51 - The Strokes
132. Someday - The Strokes
133. Hollaback Girl - Gewn Stefani
134. Promiscous - Nelly Furtado feat. Timbaland
135. Get this Party Started - Pink
136. Stay Fly - Three 6 Mafia
137. Do You Want To - Franz Ferdinand
138. Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day
139. Milkshake - Kelis
140. Digital Love - Daft Punk
141. Grindin' - Clipse
142. Poor Places - Wilco
143. What Goes Around... Comes Around - Justin Timberlake
144. Hate to Say I Told You So - The Hives
145. Obstacle 1 - Interpol
146. New Slang - The Shins
147. Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
148. Foolish - Ashanti
149. Wolf Like Me - TV On the Radio
150. The Real Slim Shady - Eminem
151. Somebody Told Me - The Killers
152. White & Nerdy - "Weird Al" Yankovic
153. Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Radiohead
154. Bring Me to Life - Evanescence
155. Check On It - Beyoncé feat. Slim Thug
156. My Doorbell - The White Stripes
157. Hot in Herre - Nelly
158. 1234 - Feist
159. The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
160. Brainstorm - Arctic Monkeys
161. Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches
162. Island in the Sun - Weezer
163. I Luv U - Dizzee Rascal
164. HoppÃpolla - Sigur Rós
165. View from the Afternoon - Arctic Monkeys
166. Blind - Hercules and Love Affair
167. Where's Your Head At - Basement Jaxx
168. 2 + 2 = 5 - Radiohead
169. Heartless - Kanye West
170. Snow ((Hey Oh)) - Red Hot Chili Peppers
171. La Rock 01 - Vitalic
172. Schism - Tool
173. Pork and Beans - Weezer
174. Jesus, etc. - Wilco
175. Sexy Bitch - David Guetta feat. Akon
176. Over and Over - Hot Chip
177. By the Way - Red Hot Chili Peppers
178. Beautiful Girls - Sean Kingston
179. Diamonds from Serra Leone - Kanye West
180. Fireworks - Animal Collective
181. Peacebone - Animal Collective
182. Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
183. Whatever You Like - T.I.
184. Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs
185. S.O.S. - Rihanna
186. Mississippi - Bob Dylan
187. Dry Your Eyes - The Streets
188. Out of Time - Blur
189. First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey
190. Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard (A True Story) - !!!
191. Lost Cause - Beck
192. Int'l Player's Anthem - UGK feat. OutKast
193. White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
194. 1901 - Phoenix
195. Machine Gun - Portishead
196. Atlas - Battles
197. Your Ex-Lover is Dead - Stars
198. Chicago - Sufjan Stevens
199. Oxford Comma- Vampire Weekend
200. Technologic - Daft
Top 100 best 1980s songs
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Top 100 Greatest 1990s songs
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