Here's a Label: "Stupid" (Stossel on WA State Dem who wants to change legal language on poor kids)

Labels change over time to ensure no delicate sensitivities are bruised. That's what happened with the word "poor," as in "poor children." Poor children became "disadvantaged." They didn’t get any extra money for that, unfortunately. Now, they're "at-risk." That's not enough, say some members of the language police.

People like Washington State Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin, who says "We really put too many negatives on our kids... We need to come up with positive terms." Her solution? Call the kids "at hope."

Since Franklin is a politician, she wants to impose her whims on everyone else. Franklin wants the 54 places in Washington State law where words like "at risk" and "disadvantaged" are used to be rewritten.

At least one representative is putting up some resistance:

Republican Rep. Glenn Anderson disagrees, saying the potential cost of getting the bill from idea to printing — an average of $3,500 — is too much. And besides, he says, he is insulted more by the idea of the bill than what he called the political correctness it represents.

"It's not the label, it's the people who show up to help (children) that make the difference," he says. "What helps is a smart, well structured program."

Nice try, but apparently not good enough. Politically correct language with no substance scratches liberals where they itch:

The bill has gotten a warm welcome among fellow lawmakers, state officials and advocacy groups...

"At least we'll hear the voices of the young people," said Democratic Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, who promised the bill would get a hearing.

Wally Endicott, the northwest director of the Phoenix-based Children of Hope, says he was excited to talk to Franklin about the bill.

But he is not thrilled with the idea of using "children at hope" to refer just to the disadvantaged. His group uses the concept to talk about all kids, not just those in poverty, because all children have obstacles to their success.

Renaming all kids “children at hope” rates a label of its own: "Stupid."

I accept your disagreement. : ) S’ok. I appreciate the optimism.
I would hope the best for them with what few smarts I and my D.H. have passed on to them, but there is no denying that their lives will be more difficult and more controlled and more costly than ours if these morons aren’t stopped.

I have one that will be able to vote in 2012 for the first time and they are p*ssed at what they are seeing. They will not be slaves to the govt. Yes, they may “escape” the devastation...but their road WILL be much, much tougher and frustrating than ours. And that angers me. True, hardship is good for character, but it’s like I’m seeing any hope for a half way good life for them just evaporating each day for their future void of a controlling overbearing nanny state and nosy busy bodies.

Oh, yeah and I am a ‘glass is half empty’ kinda person, now. Didn’t used to be.

It is actually pretty easy to figure out what poor children need. They need what they are *not* getting at home, experiences that are *complementary* to what they know, not just more of the same.

And, in all fairness, this is what other children need as well, complimentary experiences that they are sent to school to learn. But those experiences differ considerably between poor children and those with greater family wealth. Pretending their needs are the same does both an injustice.

While all children need this list of things, poor children are less likely to get them at home, and *need* these things to achieve in life.

Discipline, a sense of order and rationality. This includes many things, from school uniforms, to “reality based curriculum”, objective evaluation, a strong sense of competitiveness, strict classroom discipline, frequent hygiene and safety instruction, drug and alcohol avoidance, trade craft instruction and apprenticeship, home economics, and finance.

Of course there is considerable overlap with children from middle class and wealthier families. But the poor children’s big emphasis is that they can become economically self-sufficient in their lives, as this will give them and their family the greatest number of other opportunities. Giving them the tools for economic success.

Children from wealthier families also need these things at first, in that they likely have some gaps in their instruction, but the majority of these students have already learned it, and better, at home, so for them it is a waste of their learning time.

Having a firmer foundation in discipline, a sense of order and rationality, they need to have these tested, not by disputing the basic value of these things, but by showing how reality can upset order and reason. Because they will likely face challenges in the undisciplined, disorderly, and irrational that they will have to overcome in the future.

Without such complementary learning, they are often hypnotized by theories and deceived by abstracts, which can be very, very bad.

For example, on paper, communism seems to be orderly. This is how it intellectually traps those who have not learned how it utterly fails in reality. And how such failure can be horrific.

And people like Al Gore are befuddled by abstracts, interpolating and extrapolating them far beyond reason. In his case, “CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The level of CO2 is increasing. Therefore we are all going to die!” Very bad reasoning, based on an oversimplified abstract applied to an extraordinarily complex and not well understood planetary system.

As part of their instruction, middle and upper class children need to be confronted by subjective and judgmental situations, paradoxes, irrationality, disorder, insufficiency, and the true unknown, which can be quite unsettling.

Likewise, some degree of this will happen as well in the instruction of the poor children, and they too will have to adapt and overcome any number of obstacles. But their priority will be “first, do the work and get paid, and then do the crossword puzzle.”

Read Genesis 3:4-5, and you’ll see the basis of liberalism.

No consequences. You’ll be smart enough to be your own god, accountable to none, and you may decide right and wrong for yourself.

Genesis 34 (King James Version) Forerunner Commentary Bible Tools

3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Going to the above site and clicking on the Scripture links brings up a commentary that many may find interesting and I believe that it supports your contention.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.