Back At Ya, Red Lady ;-)

OK, so I guess you think I'm apethetic and don't care about what happens to society, and don't follow any Current Events, but my friend, I do. I'm an avid newspaper reader, the local news where ever that may be. I watch the news every evening, sometimes twice a night. I even watch Fox News. (!?) I even used to listen to afternoon talk radio when I worked and enjoyed it, sometimes.

There's nothing I can really do about much in this world, except watch. When something really bothers me, I'll join a local group dedicated to that cause and work with them. I've been a member of NOW, fundraising groups for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the South Florida Philharmonic, worked with cultural groups in every city I've resided in, been a member of Hands On Atlanta, and yes, at one time, I was even a member of the College Republicans.
The things I hold dear are education, the freedom to participate in whatever your interests are and the freedom to make certain decisions about yourself.

I've known many people who have come here from other countries to find the 'American Dream', a job, a house, an education. I've talked with many of these people, tried to learn something about their countries, their food, their music. But one factor that has been a constant when they tell me how things were better 'back home', I say to them 'I've never had to leave my country.' We, in the US, don't know what it's like to have to carry a machine gun in school, like they did in the 70's in Cambodia. We don't know what it's like when the government is toppled, again, by the local military as in Haiti, Columbia, Nigeria, Cuba, and countless other countries. We most certainly don't know famon and hunger, our grocery store shelves overflow with abundance. On September 11, 2001, we shut down the entire flight industry into and out of this country, isolated ourselves for a few hours, and NOT A SHOT WAS FIRED. In 1974, we deposed a president with no loss of life. Amazing.

This comes from living in a Democracy, freedom to make our own choices, live our own lives. But there are people who want to change this, want to limit our freedoms, limit what we learn, what we hear, and what we see. At this point in time, most of these people are the conservative Christians and, by default, Republicans, who want to limit what we learn in school, what we watch on TV and what we read. The GOP wants to spy on all citizens, track what they read in the library, listen in on their phone calls, all in the name of National Security. Oh, you say, not all citizens, just those that are dealing with the Middle East or Al-Queda, but they can't limit their surveillence to just one group, because of Political Correctness. But what happens, if we get a Nut Case in office (hey, it could happen!) and he/she decides that Canada presents a threat. The precedent has already been set to spy on all the citizens, so they just switch it to anything to do with Canada. Then they decide that Jews pose a threat, so lets monitor all activities in the Jewish community. The point is, once that line has been crossed, it's easy to keep moving the line.

Yes, I will admit most college campuses are extremely liberal, and the 'intellectual elite' have a very liberal stance. Colleges are meant to teach people to think, question and form their own decisions. If you don't learn about a different way, how can you be sure you're way is right? Socrates, a great philosopher said 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' One must question all things in one's life to come to your own conculsion. When you're a college student, socialistic ideas may sound good, but they also all want to be rich. When they get out into the Real World and see how things work, their attitudes change. If all college students are liberals, why do conservatives even exist? People change, and ideas change as they mature. But how can you know different ideas unless you're exposed to them? The proverbial RedNeck on the Farm who doesn't finish high school will probably stay on the farm, marry the girl next door and have kids because that's all he knows (unless he builds a meth lab, which is another story). By the same token, the inner city kid who drops out of school, never leaves the city and gets killed in gang warfare because he hasn't been exposed to any other ideas.

Way back when, I had a teacher you'd consider 'intellectual elite'. He taught a class geared toward college-bound seniors where we read the classics and he drilled us on our ideas. He was trying to get us to think. One topic that we discussed was religion. A lot of parents have the idea not to bring religion into the lives of their kids, but to let them choose which religion or any religion at all. His argument was to send your kids to sunday school, bring them up in the church so when they start making their own decisions, they will know and understand religion and can choose which path to take.

College has a bit more freedom than public schools because most kids who go to college want to go. Public schools are a different story. Kids can't really choose to go to school, they are 'forced' until they are 16 years old. Schools today, in my opinion, don't challenge the kids enough, they babysit. Who's fault is that? I can't say, the parents have a lot to do with it and the school board. But when discipline is not taught at an early age, and these unprincipled kids are socialized with other outta control kids, the teachers can only take cover. I don't pretend to know about all this, but part of the Bush Administrations plan 'No Child Left Behind' covers setting standards for different grade levels. I hear a lot of complaining about 'teaching to the test' vs just teaching and I don't get it. You want your kids to go to good schools, so some standard has to be set. But now you're complaining about teaching the kids to meet these goals. The inner city schools have a different set of issues than the suburban schools, due to lack of money, parenting, etc, etc. I don't know how to solve this question, but I don't think you can legislate the answer.
So you send your kids to private school. And, as you said, they still pay educational taxes. So what is this voucher thing all about? I thought it was to give a tax break to parents who choose not to send their kids to public school. So I should get a voucher for the amount of taxes I pay for education because I don't use public schools, right? So who does that leave in public schools? The poor people. And how are poor people supposed to learn how to get rich if all they ever know is poverty and poverty-like behavior? How are we supposed to improve our Nation if only the wealthy get a decent education? What are we supposed to do with poor people? They can't be written off like a bad debt.

I guess what I've been trying to say is we live in a messed up country, but historically everyone has thought the country was messed up. The election of 1800 was one of the nastiest ever, according to many papers of the time. We've heard that every year since. But we have to adhere to the ideas of a democracy and freedom. So to say the ACLU has a socialist agenda could be true, but they have a right in a democratic society to question what they want. George Soros, George Lakoff and even George Bush have a right to have their say in the media. And, we, as Americans have a right to question their say. Just because George Bush is president doesn't give him uncontrolled or unquestioned power. And just because you disagree with Bush and company doesn't mean you're not an American, it's exercising your freedom AS an American.
Thank you. (Fade out to the strains of 'The Star Spangled Banner'...)


*** Addendum ***
Somewhere in this diatribe, I lost my point of thinking. But what I'd written sounded so good to me, I just couldn't stop. So if it makes any sense to you, great! Let me know I'm not the only one out on my soapbox. If you don't get it, sorry, I'll try to do better next time, but keep your comments to yourself.
Kidding! ;-)