Hurray for Kansas. A victory for liberals!

[microbet]

Maybe he's English. They still think liberal has something to do with liberty.

[natedogg]

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It is gratifying to witness neo-cons regress to paroxysms of indignation and advocate a return to Neanderthal values. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

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If you actually think I am a "neocon" then your reading comprehension is far more dismal than I suspected.

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I would not want a monarch or some higher authority (i.e. Buddah, Allah) deciding what we tea<ch our children.

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Yep, as I suspected.

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Your stance betrays a disdain for democracy.

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Even more confirmation.

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Better we decide what we teach out children -- and sometimes, yes, we will get it spectacularly wrong.

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How about we just let people decide for themselves? Yes, I know that's a novel concept for authoritarian leftists but it IS an alternative.

natedogg

[natedogg]

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I don't think he does anymore. I think that was just a phase.

In this case I think he's just advocating, at least school choice, at most removing education from the governments control.

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If you're talking about me, yes, that's what I"m advocating. Govt should fund the educations of children without actually being involved in any way. Just cut the parents a check or voucher and let them decide what THEY think is best for their child.

But authoritarian leftists would prefer to have more control over that child, they can't abide the notion that someone's kid might get educated in a way they find objectionable. The irony of this is of course astounding.

natedogg

It is this type of hubris that will cause the Republicans to lose Congress in 2006 and the White House in '08. Thank you President Bush for catering to the most extreme elements of your party!

[ACPlayer]

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And once again you reveal your complete ignorance for how markets work. Unless you want to argue against federal subsidies of student loans, which are used at any school all over the country, (religious, private and public), you have no leg to stand on.

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But of course I argue against federal (or state - though preferable to federal) subsidies of higher education. It is possibly the single biggest reason that the cost of higher education is outstrips inflation. The schools simply pass along their operational inefficiencies and expect the subsidies to pick up the slack.

The same thing will happen with schools.

The only way to fix schools is to take the federal government completely out of the schools. There should be simply no department of education at the federal level.

IMO, if the local government, of a school district believes that they cannot meet the needs of the school and need to hand out vouchers, they should instead simply dissolve the public schools and return the tax money to the payers. Private schools will fill that void.

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In one sense, yes, vouchers would distort the education market, but only in relation to a purely free-market ideal (which does not exist). To use this as an argument against vouchers requires Orwellian doublethink. "We shouldn't distort the market, because we've utterly distorted it and to distort it would distort it. Slavery is freedom." Don't pay attention to the fact that we already do far, far, more to distort the market now. Vouchers would be a step BACK from the level of distortion we are experiencing now.

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Actually I think you have it backwards. Putting vouchers in the hands of parents will distort the market for the private schools. No body on this forum has argued that the private school system is broken, vouchers would threaten to break it, and cause a price spiral much as happened with higher education.

Of course the overall market is distorted by public school systems. This does not mean that the private school market is also distorted -- why do you want to break that system too?

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To claim that a voucher system where schools compete for parents' choice would somehow diminish education quality requires willful ignorance and outright rejection of the most basic understanding of how competition works.


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Making statements like willful ignorance etc, does not enhance your arguments -- it weakens them. But then you have a penchant for dismissing any disagreement with words like "liberalism" or "ignorance".

Let me argue with points rather then negative adjectives.

Putting government money in the hands of consumers to spend on a product or service will never and has never enhanced competition. Rather putting government money in the hands of consumers to spend ona product or services distorts markets -- severely. If the government cannot spend the money on programs it should return the money via tax cuts -- and not via income distribution in the guise of social programs.

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Especially coming from a modern american liberal, I'd really like to know.

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This demonstrates your cluelessness. Vouchers are an example of liberalism and demonstrate complete ignorance of how competition works.

[Cyrus]

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Your reading comprehension is far more dismal than I suspected.

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This is rich when you continue with this gem :

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I know that's a novel concept for authoritarian leftists.

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How can you label me an "authoritarian" anything when I explicitly found nothing wrong with the democratic process which resulted in the Kansas Education Board's decision ??

I already said, and I'll say it again, that the process is fine (despite your protestations to the contrary and your ridiculing the concept). Democracy is the best option we have from a bunch of imperfect possibilities.

I do not want to "change the [democratic] system". I would rather that the people change their ideas! Until that time, the people in Kansas have decided (through their representatives). The Kansas decision stands.

And we CAN critique that decision! Despite that decision having been taken democratically (or, so it seems), we CAN, you know, say anything we want about it.

I say, bring in the clowns...

[Cyrus]

Who decides what is wrong and what is right, in each and every choice?

If you respond "only the individual making that choice", then you establish total moral relativism -- and anything goes!

If you respond (any kind of) "consensus", you will have to draw up some rules whereby the unlimited (by your reckoning) liberty of the individual is unavoidably ...limited.

(Which is where, incidentally, you are completely missing the point about the benefits that the individual gets by participating in a society of individuals : by "limiting" his own theoretically unlimited options in order to accomodate a consensus, the individual is not necessarily -or always- a net loser as a citizen, as extreme anarchists stubbornly proclaim.)

I presume that your "utopia" does not call for each and every kid getting its education at home, from its parents, but, instead, in a class from a teacher. If this is correct, then I sumbit that it is (virtually) a probabilistic impossibility to have a bunch of twenty parents agreeing on everything about the curriculum. (Hell, I don't think even husband and wife would agree!) Then what rules would the school have?

[tylerdurden]

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Who decides what is wrong and what is right, in each and every choice?

If you respond "only the individual making that choice", then you establish total moral relativism -- and anything goes!

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Anything goes - as long as you don't aggress against another person. When someone picks chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, has he made the "right" choice? Should I worry about it? Should I work hard to make sure he picks the right one?

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I presume that your "utopia" does not call for each and every kid getting its education at home, from its parents, but, instead, in a class from a teacher.

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It's not a utopia. And it doesn't call for either. There may be some of one and some of the other. I don't really know, and I have no interest in planning it out.

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If this is correct, then I sumbit that it is (virtually) a probabilistic impossibility to have a bunch of twenty parents agreeing on everything about the curriculum. (Hell, I don't think even husband and wife would agree!) Then what rules would the school have?

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Each school can lay out its own curriculum and parents can choose schools based on the options. Perhaps some school actually will allow parents to micromanage every aspect of the curriculum. Hey, if they can make it work, who am I to stop them?

[etgryphon]

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A vote for Democrats is never a vote for smaller government.

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Unfortunately, niether is a vote for Republicans any more.

You can vote for big government with idiotic, unnecessary wars and bible thumping morons running things, or big government with affirmative action, welfare programs, possibly socailized medicine and gun control.

Voting in a general election these days is sort of like being offered a choice between being shot and being stabbed.

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Agreed. The Repub leadership right now are acting like democrat spendfreaks.

That is why I said that a vote for Dem is a never a vote for small government. Now, one may argue that Clinton's Welfare reform made for smaller governments. I think on a whole they have negative yardage when it comes to small govt.

I in no way endorse the current fiscal irresponsibility of the Repub leadership. I just know there are Sen. Corbins in the Repub party and none like him in the Dems.

-Gryph

[TomCollins]

We need a Republican congress and Democratic president... That way nothing gets done, the Republicans try to cut out the spending programs to make the president look bad, and so forth.

Gridlock, how great it is.