Re: OT: Politics [Was:Social Contract]

Mumia W wrote:
The purpose of the public programs is to ensure that *something* is
there for the middle class and poor. It doesn't have to be gold-plated.

IMHO it isn't that they outperform. It is that they are outright harmful
on matter how they perform.

The purpose of public education is to prevent the formation of a sharp,
two-class system, where an elite class understands how the society is
run, and everyone else knows so little that they have to accept the
decisions of the elite.

... And this doesn't describe what's going on right now? I mean
honestly, ask high school grads what rights were granted by the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution grants and I'd bet cold hard cash on every
answer that they would get it wrong[1]. At the end of the day, no matter how
many get it right I'll know I'd have made tons of money.

Right now we have an elite class that knows how government is supposed to
work and everyone else that knows so little they accept anything that they're
told.

When this happens, it is absolutely guaranteed that the elite will
structure society so that they will forever be the elite, and no one
else will ever be given the opportunity to understand how the society is
run or why it's run the way it is.

Which, to me, describes exactly what we have now.

The purpose of public education was to ensure that this could never
happen again.

A purpose for which it is failing.

The purpose of public education is not to compete directly against
private education. It is to teach the masses how to see it when their
rulers are about to give them the big shaft. It worked. In 2004, at
least 55 million Americans saw the big shaft coming and tried to stop it.

Really? I see it completely differently. I see it as maybe a million saw
it coming and voted outside the monoparty system we have now.



[1] To explain for any non-Americans, it's a trick question. The Declaration
of Independence states that rights are inalienable and self-evident. The Bill
of Rights, part of the Constitution, enumerate these rights. It lists them.
It does not grant them. This is an important distinction in granted versus
enumerated. In the absence of the Bill of Rights, if they were granted said
rights would not continue to exist. Since it only lists them the implication
is if the Bill of Rights disappeared tomorrow, never to exist, we would still
have every right listed within it. That is a subtle but powerful difference
to understand. Most people don't. Thus the division of the elites and proles.

--
Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | And dream I do...
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