A conservative's view of compassion

There are successful Americans and those that are not. What separates the successful from the unsuccessful? For the most part, motivated parents and the amount of education they have acquired.

Black Americans are reported to be largely in favor of school vouchers. Why? Because it is their children they see going down the drain in the current government schools.

If Republicans want to break the stranglehold that Democrats have on minority voting, they had better have something to offer other than handouts. If Dems are able to paint Republicans as cold hearted scrooges that only want to balance the budget on the backs of minorities, the Democrats will be wildly successful. They will continue to paint Republicans as racists.

One could argue that there is nothing in the constitution about providing education to any citizen. We should have thought of that before we went along with LBJ's great society. Which is the major cause of where we are today.

Republicans helped create the mess. Passing legislation allowing school vouchers or a full tax write off for educating our children will move us in the right direction, weaken Dems lock on minority voting, make our public schools either sink or swim.

Private education could allow minorities see that one path leads to $600 a month and medical care and the other path leads to whatever they can imagine.

I get the impression that many conservatives think that it will all just go away.

Maybe I have chased a rabbit down the wrong path. It wouldn't be the first time. I hate attempts by the government to "socially engineer" anything. Whatever it touches it seems to make things worse.

>>amount of education they have acquired.

Unquestionably true. For certain.

But the education they acquire, they acquire because they have adequate IQ and sufficient diligence to make use of it.

There is no evidence-none-that an educational "program", or schooling of a certain type, or requiring schooling, can remediate low IQ or repair insufficient diligence.

Let those who can acquire education, do so (they will, anyway). Leave the others alone.

I seem to remember reports of low income students taken out of failing traditional government schools and placed in privatly run schools. The students thrived.

All too often the students achieve only what is expected of them.

I'll have to look around more to find the success stories that I know are out there.

Of course there are success stories, as I well know-don't bother to look.

In every school where the average IQ is 85 there are a few trapped normals, and a rare genius. They would unquestionably benefit from being rescued and placed in an environment where they could learn .

But anecdotal reports of rare phenomena are no basis for public policy. What concerns me is the widespread faith that "education" is a commodity like "milk" or "vitamins", that all you have to do is feed it to those deficient in it and presto-the problems associated with low IQ in a technological society go away.

For this, there is no evidence. None whatsoever.

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