Are North Korea’s leader, Jack Straw, Neil Kinnock and Fidel Castro by some chance related?

Of course.

Why?

Because they are all part of socalist political family hierarchies, featuring a successful father whose fame and power and influence help propel their relatives to new glory.

We all know about Kim Jong-il whose son Kim Jong-un is now shooting upwards, such is his evident merit and popular appeal. And when one decrepit Castro can no longer rule, bring in another.

Then there’s Oxford-educated Will Straw, and sundry Kinnocks. Rachel Kinnock previously was employed by her MEP mother as a research assistant, thereby helping her get her new job with Ed Miliband.

Is there anything wrong with all this? Plenty of political dynasties on the Right too right?

What is interesting about such stories is the light they cast on wider process.

Jonah Goldberg is in fine form here laying in to the hypocrisy and folly of those who insist that More Money is the answer to failing state schools while sending their own children to private education:

We’re constantly told about all of  these countries allegedly beating us in the classroom. Does anyone really think they’re doing better than us because they spend more? Really?

… Do we really think China and India are spending 20-30K per pupil on their new crop of math whizzes?

In 2008-2009, the  District of Columbia spent $1.3 billion dollars on 45,858 students. That is slightly less than the entire GDP of Belize. In 2007, 8 percent of DC eighth graders were able to do math at the eighth grade level. Clearly what’s needed is more money!  

Part of the problem in the USA is the dead weight represented by the huge Teachers Unions lobby:

These unions are, by a long shot, the largest contributors to members of Congress. The two major education unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), make 95 percent of their political contributions to Democrats.

And with a budget of more than $355 million, the NEA spends more on campaign contributions than ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Walmart, and the AFL-CIO combined.

President Obama sucks in all that support for Democrat causes, but then sends his own children to private school and opposes schemes intended to help other Washington families do the same.

Isn’t there something creepy going on here with all these socialist families looking after themselves, first and foremost? Not the fact that they do so — we conservatives applaud close family ties and reasonable family solidarity.

It’s rather the way they simply refuse to draw from their own conservative lives intelligent and consistent policy conclusions for everyone else.