So what? That doesn't mean society gets to tell them how to raise their kids. Maybe the rest of your local community should come over to your house and start dictating to you how you should be raising your kids.

Ah, yes, the favorite line of you damned government-loving nanny-staters and your tyrant ancestors: what is best for society. You can keep your damned hands off my life and out of my country!

You call what goes on in these damned government indoctrination centers education????? How many of the people subjected to these places are allowed to graduate not knowing how to read or not being able to read at more than a sixth grade level or not being able to find major cities in their own country on a map?

Keep your damned hands off my child! I don't give a rat's behind whether you benefit. If you want to benefit from some child's education then go have your own children and let the government get their hands on them.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

If someone doesn't properly raise their child, it becomes society's problem (they go to jail and the tax payers have to pay for them), if the child is raised properly, than they benefit society, therefore society has a stake in it for the kids to be properly raised and that includes getting a proper education.

Ah, yes, the meaningless rant of "I'm going to attack you now, rather than the issue."

Very few. Those right out of school almost all can read beyond a 6th grade level, and most can find any major city on a map (within 50 miles or so). Now how many 40 year olds have forgotten much of that stuff because they haven't used it in 20+ years is a different story.

I'm not talking about stealing your child out of his room in the middle of the night, calm down. If you want to leave completely individually, then go live in the wilderness where your actions effect you and no one else, and where no one else can do anything to you. But so long as you are a member of society, you are a part of society and society has a duty to protect and look out for your well being, and your child's well being.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Nor have I ever heard any legitimate proposals to do so. Let's keep the anti-government fearmongering to a minimum.

True. My insinct is to see what can be done about that in the public system, rather than dismantle it. Higher standards, better review....things that our fearless leadership think is too difficult to tackle.

Not bad at all! I am certainly for radically raising the bar, rather than lowering it so that every kid feels special. I hate that New Age touchy-feely garbage.

Ah, the legendary slippery slope argument. The answer: nothing. It's has ALWAYS been the parents responsibility to get the kids to school, NOT to teach them, as well. That's what trained, qualified teachers are for.

What I am going for is a situation where EVERY kid has radically improved education. The voucher and other ideas I have heard simply do not address the fact that we can't tolerate ANY school underperforming, and having parents endlessly "shopping" for K-12 education seems like it's missing the whole point, and leaves schools to try to figure out how to do it on whatever budgets they got. I'd rather they had anything they needed, MORE than, so we could get arts and music and PE back into the curriculum.

Now, my ideas involve really big changes like busting the unions, yearly performance reviews of teachers, more standardization, and major investments in infrastructures and facilities. I want American schoolkids to whip up on any international comparison (and I bet I would really piss a lot of comfortable people off to acheive that.)

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

Of course many private schools do better than public ones. The former often tend to have higher standards for entrance, are more selective, can deny certain populations, and tend to have smaller populations they service. NO kidding.

Still, many public schools function well, are better that competitive private schools. Moreover, there are successful models of public school abroad, so the concept certainly works.

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Right-o.

Like with the healthcare situation, we need to be open to new ideas, see what works and doesn't work in other countries. There's still a few smart people here, so I suspect we could come up with a way better system. We're Americans, we don't need to simply copy, but we ought to be intelligent enough to learn.

The costs of doddering along with a crumbling, directionless system are too high. Unfortunately, our "leaders" are too terrified to make the bold changes needed.

I'm not necessarily for bigger government. The size isn't the issue. I'm for exponentially smarter government: streamlined, effective, bold, pro-American, and with the highest ethical standards in the world. My government shouldn't be holding press conferences to parse the word "is" or give 45 reasons for a war. It shouldn't need a focus group to know what the right thing to do is.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

You better do it quick. They just announced competitive bidding for "specialty" services (i.e. anything other than general practice). We will soon have a situation where no Doctor can be self employed and all will work for corporations. Health care by the lowest bidder. Guess who gets to make the medical decisions then?

Beating your child is quite different than choosing how to raise them and treat them. Don't be ridiculous. If they die because of it then that is a pity and that is that. Any other children should be left in the care of their parents. The state should stay the hell out of it. They are the children of the parents not you or the state. If they feel alternative medicine is the best choice that is there choice to make until the child can make that choice for hisself/herself


Completely relevant. It is there child. It is not murder either, not even close. It is just a parent making choices about raising their child. You can raise your own kid, don't try and tell others how to raise theirs. To bad for society, society is not as important as the individual. It is their freedom to do so. Next. (See I can use silly phrases too.)



What you consider sound may not be what the child's parents consider sound. It is just them making a choice on how to raise their child. It is their right and freedom to choose how to treat and raise their child. I know I am sick for wanting parents to have freedom over their own child, I am such a bastard. Back off the insults buddy. You are the one with no grasp of ethics, you want everyone to follow yours.




Damn freedom. That is just such an evil concept. Not enforcing views on everyone else. I guess I should really switch over to totalitarian. I am sorry your insults are sooo much better than anything I could every type. Parents should not be forced to raise/take care of THEIR child the way YOU want them to. If they feel alternative medicine is the way to go you should stay the hell out of it. If they think praying will do it then that is fine by me as well. Tell them that the are wrong if you want, but it is their choice and their freedom. Go have your own kid and raise it. I think the same about your views don't worry.

Fantastic. Cut-rate, discount health care and education.

The government's evil and terrible, but I trust my spinal surgery to Wal-Doc. Got me a 2 for 1 coupon on CT scans!

And Big Jim's Discount House of Learnin' just put in a drive-thru. Now, I can get my checks cashed, a payday loan AND that diploma, all at the Mall!

I'm sure it's perfectly fine letting Halliburton and Exxon/Mobil teach social studies. They won't let me see Johnny's homework, but I'm sure it's okay. I just got done sewing the Wheaties, STP and Clorox patches on my daughter's uniform.

This P.E. recess period brought to you by Hostess and Phillip Morris....

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

You're argument boils down to this:

1. The children are not society's.
2. The children are not mine.
3. The children are the parents'
4. Given they are the parents', they have the responsibility and right to care for them.
5. This right includes however they see fit.
5. If it kills them, injures them, maims them, oh well. Too bad.
6. "wanks furiously to freedom."


Your ethical argument recognizes no restrictions on parental authority of care. You assume that, because parents are the primary caregivers, and because the children are theirs, not society's, they have ultimate authority over them sans any accountability. This is demonstrated by your statement that parents can deliberately fail to treat their children's health problems, thus killing them, and that's perfectly okay because "they can choose to treat them as they see fit." If because of stupidity, malice, or ignorance, they choose not to treat, say, the measles, because it's against their religious views, they can freely kill or horribly disfigure their kids via parental right. This is ludicrous and ethically bankrupt.

Moreover, the logic of your argument leads to further absurd conclusions. If we accept the premise that parents can deny simple medical care to their children "because they feel like it," there's nothing to stop them from applying the same reasoning to feeding their kids and other types of care. For example, we should also allow parents the unrestricted right to choose how to nourish their children, even if it means starving them on "special religious diets." If they can kill them due to lack of medical care recommended by doctors, I don't see why they can't also starve their kids to death against the recommendations of nutritionists! After all, they aren't MY kids, so what do I care, right?! Maybe they believe prayer will feed their kids, so we should just sit by and watch as they starve to death. Great idea. But yea. My views are so atrocious. How DARE I limit parents' right to exercise life and death over their kids like they are disposable property.

The only difference is the in type of activity, not in the nature of the results OR the logic used to defend them. If you are prepared to argue that parents have the freedom to kill their children by neglectful medical care, they also have the right to kill their children through neglectful feeding, bathing, or hygiene. You clearly fail to understand the purpose and nature of ethics, instead choosing the Libertarian "me me me mine mine mine freedomwank" Libertarian ideology, where killing kids through incompetent, neglectful parenting is okay behaviour. Absolutely heinous. It's all the worse that you couch your ethical deviancy with horsepockey philosobabble about "freedom" so it sounds better.


Just be honest. You favour allowing parents to kill their children through incompetent, neglectful behaviour.

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T.U. that was awesome. You nailed it.

Freedom is great, certainly, but I'm constantly shocked by the refusals to acknowledge any limitations to it, or any attendant responsibilities to society at large. Freedom without any constraint or social responsibility quickly devolves into anarchic chaos and primitive "every man for himself" brutality, which I don't think is very productive, in 2008.

The self-absorbed, narcissistic, callous, selfish and downright sociopathic philosophy expressed by many on this forum is truly nauseating. "What's in it for me?" is a poor national motto.

Anyway, regarding education, the government has the mandate, as far as I am concerned. I do not trust private corporations to be consistent in educating our children. The public school system is there already, why reinvent the wheel? It just needs severe re-imagining and a lot of support.

The more I read these forums, the more I understand why nothing bold and visionary gets done anymore, and it makes me sad. It may sound corny, but I think this country's lost its edge, its drive for self-improvement, no longer able to dream big. We'd rather ignore the problems and hope they go away, or rationalize that they don't exist. Shame.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....