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FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
1930 Blower Bentley
Posted on 03/30/2002 9:34:54 AM PST by forest
Any complex system has plenty of potential for doing as the Commies have done.
Certainly segregation was evil.
And, somtimes some demonic forces can appear to deliver one of lesser demonic forces. Does being controlled and plagued with a worse and stronger demon mean it was nice that the lesser demon was dealt with? I think not.
Segregation was wrong on its foundation. True Christians at heart behaved that way all along.
Doing a good thing as a smoke screen along the way of a worse segregation from the few ruling elite who wish all the rest of the serfs to be under their black boots does not really strike me as honorable--and certainly not honest. Mindlessly cheering such is not very wise either.
To coerce responsibility is to assume it. A person coerced has no accountability at all. Your preference trains people into expressing no ownership for any of their deeds. So you see, you can't get there from here your way.
But the Commies et al have always had in mind the denial and removal of freedom to choose--except, of course--for the elite.
Research has shown that the indiscriminantly anti-religious are the MOST BIGOTTED, MOST VIOLENT, MOST DANGEROUS TO OTHER'S FREEDOMS ETC.
Being compulsory, has nothing to do with determining whether public schooling will or will not fail.
It also demonstrates that a system that denies that first freedom to families, to raise their children as their own, is to socialize all citizens as public property.
I didn't say that kids have to go to public schooling. I said I was in favor of the majority (99%) of the population having some sort of education.
There aren't enough toilet-cleaning jobs to go around and still generate a powerful economy and technological base.
If you're raising an illiterate brat in your house, I don't want my taxes going to house him in some jail, 15 years from now, or pay for his lawyer, just because he didn't have the skills to make a legal, liveable income and had to break into my house to make a buck.
I apologize if you misunderstood me.
I was not mocking you, I was agreeing with what you were saying.
I agree with you on that.
Your preference trains people into expressing no ownership for any of their deeds. So you see, you can't get there from here your way.
On the other hand, coaxing people in a certain direction is sometimes necesssary/inescapable.
For example, you break the law, you go to jail.
That is a form of "coersion" to discourage bad behavior.
As Quix pointed out, every action/behavior has its consequences.
I think that type of behavior is not limited to commies, and occurs whenever one group believes it knows what's best for another.
Yes, I'm aware of the irony, however, I don't claim to know what's best but I do claim to know what is obviously not best, namely segregation.
Research has shown that the indiscriminantly anti-religious are the MOST BIGOTTED, MOST VIOLENT, MOST DANGEROUS TO OTHER'S FREEDOMS ETC.
Err, the muslim governments and clerics in Saudi Arabia (and the rest of the middle-east), are not anti-religious.
Godless commies never poured battery acid on women suspected of cheating, so your statement about 'MOST VIOLENT' can be argued with.
I think that type of behavior is not limited to commies, and occurs whenever one group believes it knows what's best for another.
Yes, I'm aware of the irony, however, I don't claim to know what's best but I do claim to know what is obviously not best, namely segregation.
Research has shown that the indiscriminantly anti-religious are the MOST BIGOTTED, MOST VIOLENT, MOST DANGEROUS TO OTHER'S FREEDOMS ETC.
Err, the muslim governments and clerics in Saudi Arabia (and the rest of the middle-east), are not anti-religious.
Godless commies never poured battery acid on women suspected of cheating, so your statement about 'MOST VIOLENT' can be argued with.
On the contrary, it has everything to do with it. Any political means of applying police power to control the use of property has the inherent propensity to use failure in the delivery of that service to justify expanded powers. Consider welfare, public education, or regulatory law.
I didn't say that kids have to go to public schooling. I said I was in favor of the majority (99%) of the population having some sort of education.
Well that's fascinating, although your language was nowhere near so conciliatory or altruistic. You do know that this country was 95% literate before there was compulsory education. How are we doing now?
There aren't enough toilet-cleaning jobs to go around and still generate a powerful economy and technological base.
Our technological base is now acquired by importing hordes of immigrants under H1-B visas. Without that program, ours would indeed be a nation of burger flippers.
If you're raising an illiterate brat in your house, I don't want my taxes going to house him in some jail, 15 years from now, or pay for his lawyer, just because he didn't have the skills to make a legal, liveable income and had to break into my house to make a buck.
Now that was a piece of gratuitous provocation to sate your peevish little ego. You could have said, "If someone is raising an illiterate brat in their house," but you chose to personalize it to get me to think poorly through anger. Now don't deny that it was intentional or you will be admitting yourself to be either a moron or incapable of civil discourse. You see, I don't stand for anybody impugning my children that way, and here is why:
I am home-schooling MY two kids while I write and market a book. One is old enough to have taken standardized tests, FReeper NattieShea, age 8. Her Stanford Achievement test scores last year indicated that she is a perfectly normal 10th grader. She scored Post High School in mathematics and algebra :-). She is completing a self-taught course in high school geometry now and will begin trigonometry, analytic geometry, and calculus this summer! THIS is an example of her literary work at that time. Her current term paper analyzes five works by Dickens for how his perspective of the Industrial Revolution was biased by his childhood experience.
Her sister is now barely 8. She is completing her work in fractions and can multiply binomials in her head. I am now introducing matrix algebra as a means to do subtraction. Her term paper is on five books by Jules Verne. She is the athlete, NattieShea is the dancer.
That’s right, we taught times tables and fractions before doing large subtraction problems. That is because we are free to integrate the curriculum into new and exciting forms that save huge amounts of time. It has its downside in that all experiments don’t work, but the benefit is that we can change it if it’s a flop. Our process of rapid iteration creates a customized curriculum and pedagogical style for each child.
Here is the really damning piece of information insofar as public schools are concerned:
I spend less time teaching these kids than it would take me to drive them to school and back plus help them with their homework. I have no doubt that, if they were in pubelick schools I would spend MORE time dealing with the behavioral problems arising therefrom than I do now while achieving excellent results and producing kids that are a pleasure to have. Parents beg us to loan them out hoping that they might be a positive influence on their kids. Home schooling is the best thing ever to happen in our family. It has brought us together like nothing else ever could have done.
When a market of home schools reaches, say five million kids, that there will be dedicated broadband services and cable channels, private laboratory facilities in mini-malls, in short, that the MARKET will provide the ancillary capabilities that one would rationally assume constitutes a limiting factor for the continued rapid growth of home-schooled teenagers. As parents find ways to integrate their professional development with their educational responsibilities, using the power to bring their professions into the home (as I do) the children will also see and experience that professional life all during their educational development. What do I mean?
I write and consult for a living. Everywhere I go, so do my kids. They see the world of work while they study. They walk the halls of the State Legislature, they visit the farms, factories, and small businesses, they meet forest landowners, they witness discussions with academics and agency administrators. They can sit quietly and study anywhere. Why? They get to see the interactions of adults on issues that matter. So far, wherever we go, I have yet to meet a person who is not delighted to have the kids around. They see me get frustrated with my own inabilities. They see me study and learn the skills I need to overcome the difficulty. They witness the need for quick thinking in debate. They therefore understand the importance of what they are doing. They understand that as soon as they are able, that they can help. Tell me that this is not an incredible learning environment.
For those who have doubts about home-schooling perhaps you might read Charlotte Iserbyt's book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America or John Taylor Gatto's book, An Underground History of American Education to understand where the public system is really going. It is so bad that any idiotic argument about socialization should be shown for what it is: the covetous desire to control how MY KIDS think. It is socialism. Nothing more. One final benefit. Every time a parent confronts what ehy don't know that they need to teach their kids, they get to go fix the damage done by THEIR public education. Home-schooling re-educates TWO generations of voters simultaneously. That is why the fascist system so greatly fears it.
When you are adult enough to understand how destructive are your pathetic compulsions, I will bother with you again.
Carry_Okie: Now that was a piece of gratuitous provocation to sate your peevish little ego. You could have said, "If someone is raising an illiterate brat in their house," but you chose to personalize it to get me to think poorly through anger. Now don't deny that it was intentional or you will be admitting yourself to be either a moron or incapable of civil discourse.
Actually it wasn't intentional.
I was addressing you, so I used "You".
I think you're a bit too sensitive, but here goes:
If someone's raising an illiterate brat in their house, I don't want my taxes going to house him/her (the brat) in some jail, 15 years from now, or pay for his/her lawyer, just because he/she didn't have the skills to make a legal, liveable income and had to break into my house to make a buck.
Notice I even typed out a gender-neutral version, in case that's the next thing you wish to nitpick.
Maybe that was when 95% of the population held education in high regard.
Now 'everyone' wants to be an NBA player or a rock (or rap) star.
Hey! You're preaching to the converted here.
But do you really believe that you're in the middle of the curve, here?
Out of say 100 families, how many do you think would do a good job?
I'm not saying public or home schooling is successful/unsuccessful.
I said some level of education is a must.
"Sob" ... I ... I ... I'm hurt. (LOL)
When you are calm enough to read my posts and understand that my argument was centered on education and desegregation in the 50's, I will bother with you again.
Maybe goods that are priced as if they are free and marketed and financed at gupoint (literally) inherently produce that result? You see, because the deliverer of the product possesses police power, there is no accountability. Why then should you expect the customers to behave any other way? While you are considering that, read that ranting post again. THE FAILURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION WAS INTENTIONAL. "The change in values" were not the cause, they were a consequence.
But do you really believe that you're in the middle of the curve, here?
Of course not. We have no intention of such a goal.
Out of say 100 families, how many do you think would do a good job?
In my experience of home-education I think 95% efficacy would be fair, especially considering the circumstances of the parents; efficacy in that regard being a scale calibrated in rate of improvement. What you apparently don't understand is that home education has a disproportionate number of kids that developed severe learning and behavioral disabilities in public schools. If a statistical analysis of was conducted on that population of homeschoolers who started and maintained as such, my belief is that the disparity between public schools, or private schools for that matter, and home-schooling would be significantly greater.
I said some level of education is a must.
You still don't get it.
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That the public schools are corrupt and leftist infiltrated can not be denied. On the other hand, no school system in the world could deal with an influx of completely unsocialized children from neighborhoods where there may be 80% or more out of wedock birth rates. That must changes before any school system can be expected to work. School systems can not be expected to counteract complete irresponsibility and social madness.
The violence in the studies was family type violence. . . battering, various kinds of violent physical abuse of family members.
I would suspect the example you gave would also have been demonstrated by such folk but don't know of specific cases. Certainly horrendous things of such a serious ilk were carried out by such folk much more so than other groups. The indiscrimminantly pro-religious were 2nd in line but a significant distance less in terms of the standard deviation statistics.
I didn't feel mocked. I thought you were mocking the other source. No doubt I was hastey in my wording. VERY SORRY.
Watch me...
Free education, was the quickest and practical way to obtain a largely literate, and educated population.
Point #1: there's no such thing as a free education. Econ 101. Remember those taxes we all pay?
It has nothing to do with communism or any particular ideology.
Let's assume for a moment that state-run education may be the most 'efficient' way to achieve those goals (it isn't, and I'll get to that in a future post). Once you've accepted the idea of government having the power, ability, and responsibility to order people to give up one-third of their waking hours for over a decade, you've already accepted the ideological tenet that the state rules the subjects. It is my conjecture that America ought to return to being a free society, one where citizens have the right to determine how, when, where, and why their children ought to be educated... or not... and that government ought not to have the power, the ability, and the responsibility for demanding a certain level of education, ability, or knowledge for its subjects.
You think we live in heaven, where everybody holds hands and loves one another?
No, I think we ought to live as free people, with the liberty to associate (or refuse to associate) with anyone we choose, and where even unpopular opinions, irrational stereotypes, and crackpot theories are not legislated out of existence (this, in case you hadn't noticed, is know as thought control... that's a bad thing).
If the "free citizens" (as you like to call them) could barely read or write, then they wouldn't be free for long, cuz the Russians or Chinese (who by the way do and did have mandatory education) would have developed better technology and would have beaten everybody else over the head.
Wrong again. The government of this nation did not mandate education for many years, and yet we were on the fast-track to becoming the most powerful, the best-educated, and the most secure nation on earth simply because of the inidividual initiative of free citizens choosing to get themselves (or their children) as much education as they wished. Many (if not most) opted out around the 8th grade, as we were an agricultural and agrarian society for our first century of existence. We STILL were the primary power behind the world's industrial revolution, and it's friuts were a major factor in our rise militarily, monetarily, and in quality-of-life factors. Those who did not make education a primary choice were free to do so, and they lived thier own lives, and obviously did not sink this nation in its meteoric rise to pre-eminence.
What's the matter? Can't you tell the moral difference (for example) between a murderer and an emergency-room doctor?
Many are one and the same. Are you telling me that you CAN spot the difference, and that the two groups are mutually exclusive? Your bull-whip will be very busy, I can tell.
You have a problem with having an educated population?
No, I don't have a problem with an educated society. You might want to read my name, and take a wild stab at my choice of profession. I want as many people as possible to choose education for themselves and their children, but I also do not want to live in a "free" society where they are forced to make those choices.
I bet you want hispanic immigrants to be able to read and write in English, even if they can in Spanish.
If they wish to assimilate into our society, then they would be wise to choose (there's that bothersome word again) to do so, but I will never say that it should be a requirement for gaining citizenship. It is intriguing that you project a desire for more 'requirements' onto me, when I've been promoting a lowering of the depth and breadth of governmental controls.
Not explicitly, no. But how're you gonna make sense of your yearly tax forms, apply for credit cards or loans, or vote if you can't make out what the ballot says?
Hence the reasons it would be WISE to freely choose to learn English, otherwise you will either run the risk of filling them out incorrectly, paying others to fill them in for you, or removing yourself from the voting process.
Unsuprisingly, you seem to be more familiar with totalitarian ideology than I am, so I'll take your word for it.
It doesn't surprise me that you are unfamiliar with totalinarianism's history. You seem bent on repeating their mistakes. ("Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.")
I said nothing about 'free citizens'. I was talking about stupid rednecks, with backward ideas (see my Murderer/ER Doctor analogy above).
Such derogatory remarks about your fellow citizens?!? How horrible! Let's use your logic here, and ask the state to force you to send your children to red-neck schools, and to have your employer ensure that your closest co-workers have murder convictions, so that we as a society may be fully integrated. After all, you wouldn't want any "backward ideas" like 'Freedom of Thought' or 'Freedom to Associate' to be allowed to prosper, would you?
I believe home-schooling is allowed.
Fascinating... once again, your every word strengthens the idea that the government has total power, and may 'allow' or disallow whatever it chooses. My copy of the Constitution reads differently that that. That Communist Manifesto that you know so little about, however, agrees with that sentiment, as well.
You're saying that because they're being forced into desegregated schools, they are (as a side-effect) being forced to associate with people they don't want to associate with. I can't argue with that.
Thank you for seeing that much. This is the core of my argument. If I don't want to buy my albums from a Saudi Arabian person with the last name binLaden, I should not be forced to. While it is a short-sighted prejudice of mine, and it may even cost me time, money, and gasoline (and maybe even friends) to drive to the other side of town to buy my records, I should be allowed to. If someone wants to make a similiar distinction regarding their child's education, that is their right as well. For example, some black students' parents might choose to send their children somewhere other than that school on their side of town that has been having racial wars, Confederate flag court battles, and has a KKK member on the school board... why would you refuse them this option, all for some magical illusion called 'integration'?
Do you seriously believe that you are espousing Freedom by supporting legally-enforced segregation?
I'd love to know when and where I wrote that. YET AGAIN, you seem to be putting your love of state-control into my opinions. It simply isn't true. I'd rather every parent chose their own child's education level and school. If it happens that some schools are mostly one color or another, so be it. If some dirt-bags want to illegally ensure that those schools that are a majority of their favorite ethnicity get preferential treatment over others, then those politicians should be flogged with that big bull-whip of yours. I'll bring the tar and feathers.
My sympathies. The last 40 or so years must have been a real b!+c# for you.
ROFL, yes, they have been. Read Balint Vazsonyi's "America's Thirty Years War" for the foundations of both Liberty-based and Socialist schools of thought (they started at the same time, and even in the same places... fascinating read!), and how we have been racing away from Liberty and towards Totalitarianism for most of those 40 years that have me worried. (YET ANOTHER historical note: Every single society that included voter-participation in the ruling of that nation was inevitably replaced by an aggressive dictatorship. FYI)
It CERTAINLY does! The moment eduaction becomes compulsory, you mandate the attendance of those who do not want to be there. They will be uncooperative, recalcitrant, interruptive, and distracting. Check out any classroom in public schools today, and you'll spot them just as quickly as we teachers do. You also remove the ability of school to remove those who interfere with the education of those who WANT to be there. Finally, since those who do not want to attend are forced to, upon punishment by truancy court, you have just created a prison sentence for someone who has done nothing worse than to have an opinon... the opinion that they don't need education. They are required to do work they do not wish to do, they are required to be in a state facility for a set period of time, and they are required to follow the rules of the authorities there or face further sanctions. Denying them (or their parents) the Freedom to choose their own life's path DOES guarantee that the school will become a failure for every one of those students. Denying the schools the power to remove irresponsibile, dangerous, and/or disruptive students guarantees that the schools will fail to provide a safe, clean, and focused education for those who are choosing to participate.
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