Life’s a journey
..and Lissa’s is a road I’ve been on myself, and suspect many of you have as well:
Once you decide that most soldiers are upstanding, decent, intelligent people, and every soldier you’ve met nicely supports that assumption, how do you go back to thinking they are children who can’t think for themselves and are being exploited by the neocons?
Once you decide that the bigger government is, the more inefficient and greedy it becomes, how do you go back to thinking that all social problems would be fixed if we properly funded them?
Once you decide that the problem with education isn’t lack of funding — see the schools in DC — but a screwed-up union and an ossified system which disregards merit, how do you go back to “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber”?
Once you decide that affirmative action is generally not a good idea because race preferences are generally not a good idea, no matter what the context, how do you go back to supporting ethnic preference in government contracts? (Clarence Thomas is the uber-perfect example here; I railed at him for decrying affirmative action when the only reason he had gotten on the Supreme Court was to be The Black Justice. It NEVER crossed my mind that perhaps he was QUALIFIED for the job. Witness my soft bigotry.)
Once you decide that some people — NOT ALL PEOPLE, NOT MOST PEOPLE, but some very small percentage of people — are poor because they won’t work hard enough to get un-poor, how do you go back to believing that, because there are poor and hungry in our country, our nation has failed?
A: you don’t. But if your positions are supported by hard facts and a lifetime of observing them in action in the real world, I don’t see any real reason to want to. At least, not any valid ones that amount to anything more than social acceptability and the comfort of the long-familiar, reinforced by all the support the MSM and Hollywood can bring to bear.
Courage, Lissa girl. Being of independent mind gets easier as time goes by, trust me.
- Entries
It's largely where your bread is buttered that dictates your philosophy. You want the government to do what will most benefit you and the people you care about. As a youth, that's recent college grads like you, who need more state assistance so they can go out more. In middle age, it's more likely to be your fellow managers, who need less state interference so they can make more money.
There's nothing really wrong with either position, but they're both a product of bias, and it's important to keep in mind that someone whose opinions differ from yours isn't necessarily stupid - just different.
And yes, other people's opinions are stupid when they base their opinion on emotion and stupidity. Socialism in any form has never worked. It is currently not working for England and Canada as their health care systems collapse. It is not working for the Chinese who continually have to expand their free-trade zones to keep their economy going and please to populace to keep their glorious leader in power. It did not work in the former soviet union as they found that workers stopped being productive when given no incentive and everyone was paid equally. And yet, our Democrat brethren want to try socialism again. It their same answer to every problem they create, "it's not working? Well, that just means we have to commit to it even more. Now where's your wallet?"
Yes there is something wrong with the position that no one is responsible for their own actions. That if someone experiences adverse conditions, it must be because of white folks, the lack of government handouts, the time they spent on prison on a burglary rap, the xenophobes who want to actually police our borders, et cetera is a stupid position. It only breeds more poverty, more crime, more moral decay, more government and destroys freedom. It is not a position that is equal or equally as valid as wanting to restrict government, teach self-reliance, have people get some limited private charity while temporarily poor instead of a lifetime of government funding, defend our country from all enemies foreign and domestic, and enforce our laws vigorously.
When a teacher has to spend a good portion of his or her time trying to keep the classroom under control then very little useful education will happen. My parents were teachers; I was a substitute teacher. After a certain amount (whatever that actually is - see the accountants) money doesn't help, not if the building gets vandalized, if the classrooms are continously disrupted, if the students do not do their work. The constant disruptions and the constant concern for the rights of the disrupters over the rights of those who do not disrupt, who do not vandalize, who want to learn, is the greatest problem in education.
Unfortunately, General Russel "Don't Get Stuck On Stupid" Honore isn't available for everywhere.