How big is that minority again?

Thomas Friedman, a man I usually respect even when I disagree, has an article in the times 1/23/05 Divided We Stand.

He quotes Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Doctors Without Borders, saying "This is not a war with the Muslim religion, he stressed, but with a violent "fascist" Muslim minority."

I agree with that. But the real question is "how big a minority?" Is this 1% or 49%? At some point it doesn't matter that less than 50% of the people are our fascist enemies.

At the end of the article we find two French born muslim girls who don't trust French TV, admire Osama before all other world figures, support suicide terrorism, consider themselves Muslims first and French last. They report that all their friends agree.

Mr. Friedman interviewed these women, one of which was in a full burkha, in front of their French public high school which is a short subway ride from the Eiffel tower.

That minority seems to look fairly large, Mr. Friedman. In fact, how exactly do we know that it IS a minority?

Social Security Ideas.

Attempts at SS reform are a potential disaster for the Republicans. Our system simply isn't set up to deal with a problem like this, and perhaps no republic is. (The Bread and Circuses Disease).

Phillip Longman believes we should Give More Credit to Prolific Parents and I agree.

I think, however, there is much merit in combining the proposals a bit. My own is: Freeze guaranteed benefits at there current levels for people who do not contribute high school educated children to the system. Give full wage indexing (as an example) to parents who contribute 3 college educated children to the system. The details would be shaped by complex actuarial calculations as well as various social policy ideas. We could reward foreign adoption. We could make the credit for well educated children dependent upon legitimate birth.

I'd love to see actuarial analysis of things like this, but I lack the information to even start.