U.S. Kids Don't Understand First Amendment 2124
l4m3z0r writes "This rather alarming article discusses a study of high-school students in which they were asked about censorship, protected speech, and other aspects of the first amendment. The results are extremely worrisome: "Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories." and this "Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.".."
Of course they don't know, we don't allow them to! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now this is NOT an insignificant study. 100k students and only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories? Excuse me? This misinformation must be coming from somewhere... Are these kids skipping American History/Civics and moving into Psychology and Sociology courses instead?
About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.
Well, unfortunately it HAS been restricting indecent material. Forcing various institutions to enable filters on content. Yeah, it can't stop ALL the content out there but it is getting closer and closer to that. With the scare tactics and every parent believing that every sensationalist news "story" on the TV is GOING TO AFFECT THEIR CHILDREN they are pushing this crap through without thinking about the consequences.
The study suggests that students embrace First Amendment freedoms if they are taught about them and given a chance to practice them, but schools don't make the matter a priority.
Of course they don't. Going through high-school English classes I was told repeatedly how I was to respond when it came time for essay exams. If you did not give the teacher what they wanted you were given a poor grade. It wasn't until college (and I remember our second semester English professor being appalled) that I was able to write how I felt about a topic and back it up with real information. The professor would grade you on your research and your proof and not how he/she particularly felt the topic should be supported.
How can we expect high-school aged kids to think that they should be given a chance to practice their First Amendment rights when they are under the constant force feeding of information?
More than one in five schools offer no student media opportunities; of the high schools that do not offer student newspapers, 40 percent have eliminated them in the last five years.
That's because the government and consolidated media doesn't want free thinkers. They want people who follow the status quo. Why stir the pot when you can just report the silly rumors, scare tactics and sensationalism, and car chases above California?
Is it getting better, or worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Inside me is a kneejerk activist who wants to point to this as evidence that growing up, as children have since 9/11/01, surrounded by authority figures who casually restrict freedom of speech in the name of guarding against terrorism, encourages children to pattern their thoughts and behavior along similar unfortunate lines.
But actually, I'd like to know what similar studies have been conducted in years past. If this is the way young adults have always thought, then things probably won't get any worse. What would be disturbing is a trend showing young adults finding restrictions on free speech increasingly acceptable.
This just in: American teens ignorant, apathetic (Score:3, Insightful)
No right to privacy. (Score:1, Insightful)
Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like the kids are not the only ones in need of education about the First Amendment?
Re:Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
The government wants people to give up their rights, either voluntarily or through attrition. "Terrorism" is today what "Communism" was in the 50's. Smarten up, kids. You'll be living in a corporate controlled country when you grow up.
Yes, but.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
This is most certainly due to living in the post-Napster, post-9/11, political & legal environment.
If you're not taught this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, just as obviously, the teacher and school shouldn't be the sole place to impart this knowledge. Start at home.
And on a related note...this is why teenagers shouldn't vote. There are the very few extremely intelligent ones that do understand the ramifications, but most need a little bit of maturity first.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:2, Insightful)
They are just watching too much American "news", and in particular Fox "news". Heck, the majority of the US population believe that Iraq was behind 9/11. Go figure.
Even more scary.. (Score:5, Insightful)
People die to defend these rights, and some of our students don't even know what these rights are?
Hey conservatives! Maybe if instead of worrying about absitence only education and attacking Darwinism you spent your efforts in communicating why and how we are a free society, and why that is of tantamount importance, we could all get along here, hm? Cuz I'll be honest with you, I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with James "Spongebob Is Gay" Dobson if it means we get the message out loud and clear about the Bill of RIghts.
Regarding flag burning (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I myself care about what happens to a flag in the slightest, of course - if you're a soldier and in a fight, you probably have better things to do than worry about than a piece of cloth that probably was produced in a sweatshop in communist China, anyway.
It's funny how these neocons aren't actually conservative in the actual sense of the word, though.
Who can blame them? (Score:5, Insightful)
The first amendment, after all, doesn't say that "Congress shall make no law except for laws barring child pornography, the exposure of military secrets, and naughty words on the radio."
Not that I don't favor barring child porn, but you know, if you want to do that, you need to change the amendment...
Yeah, yeah, I know all about our English Common Law system and all that. I'm just saying, you can't blame people for not understanding the law...and frankly, the law is always a mushy, malleable pile of goo if the Supreme Court can change the meaning of pretty plain words.
I'm not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Insightful)
If a policeman, acting as an agent of the government, had come in and insisted you not publish an article on sex, that would be a free press issue.
Sounds like you had a learning opportunity and you failed the lesson.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Insightful)
American History is still taught, but it's basically as a timeline of events. Civics used to cover everything from your responsibilities as a US citizen to the goals and purpose of the amendments, Bill of Rights, etc.
Basically, everything being taught now comes from a point of view of no judgement calls. If there is something open to interpretation, either it's not taught, or it's taught from a historical context as opposed to the 'meaning' or 'message' of said lesson.
It's how you can teach a religious studies class in a HS. You can learn the history, you just can't preach the subject matter. The same rules now apply to 'preaching US citizenship'.
Just FYI.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Insightful)
the thing that everyone is forgetting is this: high school is not now nor has it ever been anything like "real life".
witness: in school, teachers routinely punish the entire class until the party guilty of a particular offense comes forward. in real life, we would call this sort of activity by authorities "terrorism". in school, the mantra of maintaining order is "i don't care who started it." in the real world, we spend billions of dollars on a justice system to figure out "who started it."
since the dawn of the formal state educational system we have been creatinga purly artificial environment for our children with values, mores and codes of conduct that bear no resemblence to the real world whatsoever.
so... why should these results be a surprise?
Are there really in school students that care? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I'm betting if this test were conducted on college students, the results would be a lot different. It's at about that age people start to get interested in such things and investigate into them. Which is probably why there are so many political protests at colleges or being done by college (or college-age) people. Most often when a high school student protests, it's in emulation of someone else.
Studies show ... repeatability is key (Score:3, Insightful)
If this study were repeated independently I'll believe it. Otherwise, I'll presume it's as fair and balanced as cable news.
Kind of like multiple choice tests, mostly they test your ability to take tests.
Wake up, everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Some newspapers exercise "self censorship" as well. This is just so fucking wrong! And flag burning should in fact be illegal, I think.
Also, do you seriously think that the government doesn't have the means to prevent certain information to get published on the Internet? Do you _seriously_ think so, poor naive lads? I mean, come on, one day you publish something and next day you wake up at Guantanamo bay handcuffed to a railing with a bag over your head.
Funny thing is, Americans sincerely believe that they enjoy the most freedoms of any country in the world. For the time being, I think, the freedom has moved to Europe and Canada. US of A aren't as shiny an ideal of freedom as they once were.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
You wonder why Americans are so fat, when most of them think carbs are something are bad for you, when hardly any of them can explain what "callories from fat" means.
Meanwhile, insurance rates in this countly are through the roof for buisness getting sued into the ground becasue someone stupid hurt themselves with their product, because the warning label did not state something that should have been common sense.[/rant]
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Accuracy (Score:1, Insightful)
Communisim was a real threat in the cold war period. "We will bury you." was not a joke.
Some people say that communism fell when the soviet economy was unable to keep pace with the Reagan military buildup. Others say that communism fell because no one wanted to wear Bulgarian shoes
So IOW... (Score:5, Insightful)
just curious... (Score:4, Insightful)
asking:
can the government restrict internet contents for obscene material?
will get a vastly different answer than:
should the government restrict internet contents for obscene material?
but both question can be reported as "X% of students feel government can strict obscene material on the internet."
Funny about the FIrst Amendment (Score:1, Insightful)
what do you expect (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom of the press, isn't that what leads to disagreements ? Can't we all just adopt the sanctioned viewpoint of our leaders, put this in the past, and look forward to all the great shopping opportunities we have available in this fine country ?
Probably clueless about the draft, too (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bet they're clueless about Selective Service too, which is what the conscription system is called in the USA.
Somebody needs to point out to them that they are the slack in the system between US troop delpoyments [pbs.org] and the robot soldiers [slashdot.org].
Government Raised Children (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks to me that we need to start making drastic changes for better now, cause we won't be getting much help from the next batch of super-sheeple.
Slightly off topic, but... (free assembly) (Score:3, Insightful)
Try the same study with college kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Far more interesting would be to ask people in college the same question, and see how much an open environment led them to expand expectations of freedoms.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. Propaganda works wonders. After all, how else do you explain that half of Americans believe Iraq was involved in 9/11 [commondreams.org]. It certainly doesn't suprise me that students don't understand what the government can and can't do when they don't learn it in schools and the media doesn't cover it because it isn't sex, violence, or an entertaining show.
Lack of money for WHAT?? (Score:5, Insightful)
About nine in 10 principals said it is important for all students to learn some journalism skills, but most administrators say a lack of money limits their media offerings.
More than one in five schools offer no student media opportunities; of the high schools that do not offer student newspapers, 40 percent have eliminated them in the last five years.
Lack of money limits their media offerings, but they'd rather plunge a red-hot porcupine up their asses than cut a football or basketball program, even if their program is losing money.
I don't doubt that schools and students benefit from sporting programs. But what life skills are actually learned in sporting programs? Instead of cutting sports, they cut the arts, funding for computer labs, and so-called "media offerings."
Mr. Holland was right. If they quit teaching anything other than reading and writing, pretty soon the students won't have anything left to read or write about.
The word "should"... (Score:2, Insightful)
To me, this shows that people (as indicated through their children) are tired of the media's dishonesty and sensationalism and feel that newspapers should be censored.
It's all about the parenting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parenting is a full time job for both parents, and reinforcing things taught in school is one faucet of that job. Many parents, my friends included, think their kids education and well-roundedness will be the result of attending classes in school. They couldn't be more wrong. A U.S. History or U.S. Government teacher has one hour a day in which to cram a 3 hour course-required schedule to 30 students in a crammed classroom. At least that's the way it is in Arizona, one of the worst states for public schooling.
As far as the kids are concerned going to school is something that takes place when they aren't living their lives. I mean, learning is something they do in bits and spurts during a 1 hour course, and it can be thrown out the window during the after school trip to the mall with their friends.
It's really up to the parents to get involved and reinforce the ideas and priciples taught by the public school system. Only by making the student think and ponder the concept of Freedom of Speech will that concept become meaningful to the student, and they can then develop their own opinions about it. Making the student truly ponder it can be a simple dinner table discussion between the student and his or her parents and family.
Unfortunately I know too many parents who send their kids off to school so the parents can do their own thing, then send the kids off to play when the kids get home so the parents can continue to do their own thing. I wish more parents would take the education of their children farther than punishing or rewarding the kids based on the merits of their report cards.
Re:Wake up, everyone (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Blame where blame is due (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, I think that your attitude is exactly why Kerry isn't in the White House today. Honestly, who is going to vote for a candidate who comes off as very elitst when all of his supporters act incredibly elitist, saying things like you are, that Republicans are bible thumping rednecks, and other assorted insults. It simply alienates a lot of people who wouldotherwise vote for you, even if they disagreed with your moral viewpoints a little bit.
Lastly, grouping people like that makes you look less intelligent.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Insightful)
>
>witness: in school, teachers routinely punish the entire class until the party guilty of a particular offense comes forward. in real life, we would call this sort of activity by authorities "terrorism". in school, the mantra of maintaining order is "i don't care who started it." in the real world, we spend billions of dollars on a justice system to figure out "who started it."
Actually, in real life, governments routinely apply laws to the entire population (banning firearms, banning marijuana) due to the irresponsibility of the few. And just as in school -- when it comes down to a sense of fairness or maintaining order, our leaders also don't care who started it.
Rather than trying to make high school more like real life, we discovered it was more efficient to make real life more like high school.
My kids see the irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, some don't and swallow the poison whole.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Boys and girls, today we're going to learn the words "prior restraint". Prior restraint is when the story has to be approved by the government before it's published, rather than holding the author accountable after it's published.
Some naughty trolls will pretend there's no difference between the two, and make up questions that would seem to justify prior restraint, but we're smarter than that, aren't we?
Class?
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Pity.
Moll.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
A person with such lack of culture might not know why touching the stove burned them. An idiot would touch it again.
Of course, being non-intelligent usually goes hand in hand with lack of basic knowledge.
Very slanted interpetation there. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the key. Congress can make no law, nothing in the Constitution prevents states or their legislatures from doing it. What does it the over extension of the Federal Courts into the business of the States.
Allowing children to read a prayer at their graduation is not a violation of the First Amendment. In fact it probably is more of a violation of the intent of the First to prevent the students from doing just that.
First take away their ability to practice religion. Second make them rely more on their govenment and state appointed officials. Third thing is to ban certain types of speech by law or itimidation (hate speech).
Do not read into the First what is clearly not there. The Congress already recognizes major religious holidays which would clearly be against the First but I don't see anyone crying over that.
The First was meant to protect religions from dominance by one over another, not to put them all out of the public eye.
Think that's bad??? (Score:4, Insightful)
How many US citizens, let alone students, know about the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights? A document which seems to be acknowledged and recognised in almost every member country BUT the USA?
I've had a long time interest in civil rights and constitutional law but never heard of this document until I became an exile and moved from the US to New Zealand. If you read the document [hrweb.org] you can see it's actually BETTER for the citizens than the US Bill of Rights. No wonder they don't teach about it in schools!
So, teach some law in high school. (Score:4, Insightful)
This really isn't all that surprising or even alarming to me. The Constitution isn't most holy writ, it's just a law. If you want people to know the law, you have to teach it to them. I firmly believe that basic con law and contracts should be taught in grade school, or at least in college (when people have attained majority and it starts to matter more). Yes the law is difficult and esoteric, but there's some amount of it we all need.
If someone refused to learn CPR because they weren't studying to be a doctor, we'd consider them to be lazy and a little hazardous to their peers. I think the law falls into the same camp. Certainly you're way more likely to sign a contract in a given day than you are to have a heart attack.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorism is a real threat now. I think the poster was likening the two, because they're both exaggerated for political purposes. The neo-conservative philosophy revolves around the idea of a nation striving against some sort of 'evil' entity. This can be real or fake, but it works best when it's a little of both. Once people have seen a terrorist attack, it doesn't take much to convince them that there's some worldwide organization that was behind it.
Re:flag burning? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, while I will defend another's rights be exercised in that manner, I also consider it about the most offensive thing one can do, considering how many died fighting for the ideals it represents -- surely there must be a better way to protest a present government: hanging an straw charicature of the president in efegy, perhaps. (Though, threats against the life of the U.S. president are serious crimes, and not taken lightly by the Secret Service.)
While not an American citizen, I presently reside (legally, I am a resident for tax purposes, and a non-resident for immigration purposes present with a valid non-immigrant visa) in the U.S. and have a great deal of respect for the ideals behind the flag, if not always agreeing with the present policies of the government. I was royally pissed off, for example, when my daughter's elementary school flew the flag at full staff, after sunset, with no illumination.
Bottom line: while it may be legal to burn the U.S. flag in protest, I would not want to be the company who wrote the life insurance policy on anyone doing so. It really ranks up there as things not to do.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite. Communism was this vaguely threatening bogeyman who could lob nuclear missles at your country and burn down your churches if given the chance but never came to pass. Terrorism is at least tangible in the form of 9/11, embassy bombings, etc where the effects are very real.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
While I am a sports fan myself, there is a danger to putting so much emphasis on something give you 1% employment chance. Few people actually play professional sports for a living. That's like pumping in millions into a class that gets you no where. Japanese teachers are paid 2-3x more than American counterparts.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Hello! That is because they are educated BY the government in government schools!
Send your children to Catholic school and they will learn that the church is the answer to all life's problems and that when in need you can always turn to the church. Send you children to government school and they learn that the government is always right and can do no wrong even when doing wrong [prisonplanet.com].
The government has an agenda [infowars.com] and why we give our children over to them to be "taught" is beyond me. They don't need the media for their propaganda, they have the schools.. and this is further proof. They are trying to ban even the constitution and delceration of independance in some school systems because it might "offend" some one. Most students these days can't even tell you what the difference between state government and federal government is and most people in this country can't even name their congressman or tell you who they represent (you) and who the senators represent(the state)
Get rid of government schools and the teacher's union and we might see an educated America!
Re:Wake up, everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
[/irony]
And if i may quote the words of the late Bill Hicks:
"Hey buddy, my dad died for that flag"
"Really?...I bought mine...They sell 'em in K-Mart and ****..."
"yeah..He died in Korea for that flag"
"Wow, what a coincidence. Mine was made in Korea..the world is THAT big man..."
No-one, and I repeat NO-ONE has ever died for a flag. A flag is a piece of cloth, they might have died for freedom, which, by the way, is the freedom to....Burn the.. ****ing flag you see??..Burning the flag doesn't make freedom go away, it's kinda like Free-dom ok?..ok.
And they've had 4 cases in this country's 200 year history, so it's not that big an issue. One of the hotter smokescreens they've put down the pipe. I don't wanna burn a flag, but what business is it of mine if you do?
Is it my business if someone wants to..Is it?...NO
Is it my business what other people read or watch on TV? NO IT'S NOT...THANK YOU
You see, when we talk these things through, it becomes a little clearer doesn't it? That's called logic and it'll help us all evolve and get on the ****ing spaceships and get outta here.
Probably another bogus survey (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know that I would take this survey to be the definitive measure of the average students views on anything. In general, polls are something to be viewed skeptically, though noone ever does. There are many ways to screw up a poll and many ways to interpret the results, so I don't tend to take them as seriously as everyone else seems to. You can make a survey say anything you want.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, at my high school we were censored as well and our paper was 100% advertising supported. I think you fail to understand that the principal IS the government. He can't censor the news unless it falls into that category that would disrupt the school environment. Of course, conveniently, the principal is the one who decides this which means it is at his whim.
The fact is that if the government were supporting a regular newspaper in such a tangental way there is NO way they could censor the content. The only reason they can in this case is that the SCOTUS seems to think that all bets are off when it comes to constitutional rights in schools. And it is then no surprise the the kids don't really care about or want to protect their rights, since they didn't have them for the first 18 fucking years!!!
2nd Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
How many NRA members realize that "well-regulated" is part of the 2nd Amendment?
Re:Regarding flag burning (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're correct about that - or at least that's how the schools see their role these days. They're really more of a venue for people to push whatever political agenda they personally have than for any real education to take place.
This is the problem with public education in the first place. The government will seek to interfere if given control and the ability to do so. IMHO, the only reason we avoided that kind of crap for a long time in this country was because public education was largely decentralized - funded, run, and controlled by local and state government. But notice that these days the federal government is seeking to interfere more and more all the time? As soon as a central government (or at least ours) takes over total control of education, then it's over for our country. They will produce generations of students who don't know how to question authority in its many forms or be creative, and everything (economy, civil society, etc) will eventually implode. This is why the $50 billion+ budget for the Department of Education really scares me. The reason that money has been appropriated has little to do with improving education and a lot to do with gaining federal leverage over school funding - and by extension, school curriculum.
Alternatively, you could view this as a business opportunity, since you're one of the "smart ones" who realizes what's happening. Just find some sort of useless shit to sell that all the idiots being turned out by public education will just snap up, and you could become rich! Personally, I'm leaning towards trying to figure out a way to exploit the overly religious (since so many people will just buy anything if they think it comes from a "Christian company", etc).
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know that much about the first amendment. Or any of 'em, for that matter. Sure, I can say "freedom of the press" for one, and "you can't touch my guns" for the other - but that hardly qualifies.
Moreover, the older I get (I'm about to hit 36) the more I realize the less that I know.
My point - I'm being honest. I'd spectulate that a significant percentage of people who read
What's to be done? The US doesn't have much structure for "continuing education." About the best that people do, is parot back what their preacher or some other illuminary said during the coffee hour. Our attitude is once you've graduated, you're done. Game won, time to score up some $$$! But, if anything, we need to stay refreshed now more than ever.
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
What does the flag represent? (Score:3, Insightful)
considering how many died fighting for the ideals it represents
That's not really a reason for anything. Lots of people have died in large numbers for really stupid things. The fact that so many people died fighting for it doesn't make it any more or less valid. It's irrelevant.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
How are a few isolated incidents like September 11th more real than the Soviet Union swallowing up Eastern Europe at the end of WWII?
Communism certainly became a bogeyman, just like terrorism has, but Russia *did* do some pretty nasty things during and after WWII.
Re:So don't go through the school. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:4, Insightful)
I, personally, view this as the principle problem in public edutainment. Schools are viewed by the general population as having the first priority of "meeting the needs of the students", or something along those lines. They're always talking about building "high self-esteem" or providing a ground for enlightenment. Though I don't think this is "bad", it's the wrong focus and the wrong approach.
First things first. Public schools first priority should be to teach children how to be "good citizens"-- and no, I don't mean in any fascist sense of "good citizen". Upon completion of twelfth grade, kids should know, at least, the laws they're expected to follow, and the ideals behind these laws. They should be taught about the system of self-government into which they'll be entering, and how to navigate it. The other subjects, such as math, reading, writing, and science, students should know well enough to take care of their own finances, read street signs, write a letter, and not do stupid things like cut into a car battery with a chain-saw.
I'm certainly not saying education should *stop* there, but the priority of public schools should be to make sure that everyone graduating is a functional citizen capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of the citizenry. Meet that level of education first. Otherwise, we're doing children a disservice, by expecting them to be good citizens without providing them the means.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents are responsible for their child's education, not the government, not their church, not anyone else in the world, them. We've been screwing things up for years by letting the government run education, and at some point, it's going to have to stop.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Politically incoherent (Score:5, Insightful)
That in itself is arrogant but tolerable. But when schools and other institutions started forcing this political belief upon the general population, principally through the threat of denial of education and other opportunities, that it became "fascism through other means".
You may not like Fox News, but people at least have the choice to follow them or not. That hasn't always been the case with PC.
Re:Wake up, everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
And consider the implications of making flag burning illegal: no doubt protesters of such a law would burn more flags, resulting in legal costs, court time, and possibly imprisonment, which will all land on my desk the next time I have to pay taxes. And if we made flag burning illegal . . . what about pictures of flags? What about tearing up pictures of flags (ala Sinead - "Fight the real enemy!")?
Making flag burning illegal won't stop protesters from doing something to piss you off.
Still, I do agree that some countries have more freedoms in narrower areas. But when it comes to across-the-board freedoms, a US citizen in the US has a hell of a lot.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:2, Insightful)
Now go suffer in the corner, covering your whack-job head and moaning at how difficult your desk job is. And get a fucking sense of perspective, yuppie bitch. You could be getting a forklift dropping a 1800LB crate on your leg. I don't see too many pieces of heavy and dangerous machinery in the average office.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are Republicans so willing to sacrifice everything that is great about this country for the illusion of security? The war on terror is a joke, and so is Mr. Bush.
Re:The Constitution (Score:1, Insightful)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
Make = verb; law = noun/object; respecting = participle, modifying law. Respect (v) according to the OED: "To treat or regard with deference, esteem, or honour; to feel or show respect for". Establishment: "the act of establishing"
Putting it all together: "Congress shall make no law esteeming, honouring, or showing respect for an act of establishing of religion." Sounds like state religion to me.
Some quick Googling:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projec
"At an absolute minimum, the Establishment Clause was intended to prohibit the federal government from declaring and financially supporting a national religion, such as existed in many other countries at the time of the nation's founding. "
Then again, I'm not the Supreme Court, so it doesn't really matter what I say.
Of course, the issue hasn't really come up, since Congress hasn't tried to establish a state religion.
Re:And Why Would They Be Expected To? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of those schools and their curricula are controled controlled by authoritarian leftist/socialist teachers. Sure, the religious right harp about gays and abortions, but the authoritarian leftist/socialist teachers are the ones enforcing school bans on Confederate flags, pictures of guns, and speech codes. And they control our children's education. Ironically, these authoritarian leftist/socialist teachers are being used by the authoritarian conservatives (religious or not) to keep our children fat, stupid, and anti-freedom.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Dusty: Jesus, it's coming. Jo, Bill, it's coming! It's headed right for us!
Bill: It's already here!
--Twister (1996)
Re:Very slanted interpetation there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Section 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.
Therefore, the citizens of each state are entitled to the protections that the Congress of the United States provides (by legislation), or the Courts provide (by judicial review), for ALL citizens of the United States. If one state (New Hampshire, for example) wants to provide MORE privileges or immunities, it's quite welcome to, but it CAN NOT remove privileges or immunities provided for by the Constitution or the federal govt.
Re:Politically incoherent (Score:3, Insightful)
The very term "political correctness" is an abomination. It explicitly assumes that there is a type of politics that is correct
No, it doesn't. Your sentiment is correct but not the definition (I especially liked the fascism analogy btw). It means something that may not be accurate but it is politically acceptable. Acceptable to all regardless of their believe systems or points of view, which is utopia. Some one above made a good analogy with Draino and Koolaid.
The system is tilted on both extremes. The real deficit (and main problem) is the lack of something in between, otherwise known as "common sense".
You're wrong...read your own article. (Score:5, Insightful)
From your own article:, "The Saudi-born fundamentalist's response is unknown. He is thought to have rejected earlier Iraqi advances, disapproving of the Saddam Hussein's secular Baathist regime."
Bin Laden doesn't like Saddam because it directly opposes what he wants: a new Middle East governed by an Islamic fundamentalists theocracy. Saddam represented a direct contradiction to that - Saddam hated Islamic fundamentalistm because he was afraid it undermined his authority with the people. Look, if you were in total control of a country, would you WANT your subjects to believe that there is a HIGHER power, with moral laws above YOUR laws? Think about it.
Sorry for this off topic post, but anyone who thinks Saddam had ANY part in 9/11 or that Osama and Saddam were allies has been watching too much Fox News or is too gullible to filter out the neo-con propoganda.
Re:Blame where blame is due (Score:3, Insightful)
Lastly, grouping people like that makes you look less intelligent.
Indeed it does!
Of course... (Score:2, Insightful)
No one wants to have an honest debate about any of these topics.
How can we have any type of debate - much less an honest one - about foreign policy when these liberal pseudo-intellectual blog-readers think, quite literally, that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, or anyone remotely conservative/Republican, or, God forbid, *neoconservative*, are the worst kind of evil incarnate, whose only wish is to continue lining their pockets at the expense of US troops, and especially the "brownskins"? That there are no other considerations at all, that Panislamic radicalism isn't real (and if it is, it's exclusively the fault of the US and no one else), that "conservative" automatically equals "ultra right wing fundamentalist Bible thumper", and only liberal/progressive people know what's best, and everyone else, ESPECIALLY people who voted for Bush, are either complete and utterly moronic victims of neocon propaganda, OR the greedy fat cats who want more riches at the expense of the rest of the world?
Fuck, these people talk about *Bush* having a "black and white" view? Damn. I've said it before: these are the most closed-minded "open-minded" people on earth.
And it's precisely because of this fucking rampant nonsensical yammering on the internet that people don't know left from right or up from down and read everything that reinforces this idea they've internalized for whatever reason that anything having to do with corporations, business, or conservative policy is EVIL, and only liberal/progressive/quasi-socialist ideas are good; that military action is never proper (unless instantiated by a liberal), and ESPECIALLY any preemptive action; that there is only one side to the story: theirs, and they can throw to the wind the concept that 25 million people are FREE, and that this freedom is not "imposed", and indeed cannot be, because freedom is the default state; that it is acceptable for the United States to fight for its own interests and those of its allies, and that there are very real threats that have been growing in this region for the last two decades that Europe chooses to ignore (or, possibly let the US handle so they can simultaneously have their problems solved while also not looking like the bad guy, and having a responsible party like the US to blame for any problems, to boot); and I could go on.
If people have any question WHY we are in Iraq, they should read this recent post [slashdot.org], as I believe it is my least long-winded writing on the topic.
These leftist bloggers that have so captivated this loony left want all the rights and privileges of "journalism" - indeed, many paint themselves as the only TRUE journalists, while all the "corporate" media is simply the collective mouthpiece of the Bush administration - but want none of the responsibility. To this argument, they may hide in the refuge of "Oh, but we never said we were journalists! It's just our opinion! We have no obligation to do or say anything!" but they know damned well they're influencing people with their incendiary, extremely one-sided rhetoric, that ignores the fortunes of millions of people, including our own.
We would never have the collective national will for a World War II-scale military campaign again. If today's technology existed then, there would have been hundreds of "Abu Ghraibs", and I shudder to think of what kind of despotic totalitarian world we live in had we not the will to fight for what is right, not only for ourselves, but for all people: and that is freedom. Liberals, especially slashdot readers, will no doubt laugh endlessly at this, thinking about their last lame list of failed US military actions, or travesties they believe were prosecuted by the US in the name of profits, or some other liberal vomit du jour. Or perhaps they'll choke on the hypocrisy of things like simultaneously blasting the Bush administration for sending troops to Iraq - then saying we don't have ENOUGH tr
Re:2nd Amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
A well-regulated Militia shall not be infringed.
The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
You can't justify infringing on the latter because the People haven't yet organized the former. How effective would a well-regulated Militia be if their rights to bear arms had been revoked ten years earlier?
I'm guessin that most of the members of NRA are aware of the full text of this rather succinct Amendment.
Re:Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
The US Supreme Court has determined that the freedom to read is strongly associated with freedom of speech; the patriot act has a chilling effect on the freedom to read by state enquiry into reading, for such an enquiry immediately suggests that some topics are off limits.
As a ISP, there is one aspect that is of particular concern, the enforcement of silence about investigations, which is a dangerous loss of executive accountability and itself an infringement on free speech; granted, a gag order could be issued by a judge in the past with much the same results, but a gag order was hard to get by law enforcement in the past because it was a clear violation of the 1st amendment.
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Terrorism is significant. These radicals want to see the forced death or conversion of all non-muslims. They have gained a foothold in governments and schools in the middle east and elsewhere. They are projecting this philosophy over a fairly large population. I personally don't want to become a muslim, so I am glad we are fighting these radicals. The only way to beat them is kill them. We cannot reason with them. If you think you can, go ask for a meeting and get your throat cut.
I do agree with you that I would rather die in a terrorist attack than lose my freedoms. But I do think we need to fight these guys on their turf and not ours. The war on terror is real and necessary, but I agree that we shouldn't give up our freedoms while fighting it.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
Fox guarding the henhouse... (Score:3, Insightful)
John Dewey, founder of the modern education system, often wrote that the purpose of education was not to teach children to think as independent rational beings, but to teach them their place in the social order. He viewed education as a tool of the rulers, to be used to ensure his vision of a utopian, egalitarian society. In other words, he was trying to create good little drones to work in the factories. These were his stated intentions.
Now we have a country where Dewey's system of education has been implemented to the last detail. The nature of the cirriculum is controled by the State. Now, the State seeks to expand its power. In order to do that, it must first subvert the constitutional limitations placed on its power. In order to do that, you need to ensure that the public is blissfully unaware of what rights it is losing, and why those rights were explicitly protected in the first place. If you control the only substantial source of education for the vast majority of the populace, you can do just that.
I am currently 22, having left high school five years ago. Even at the time, as a teenager in a civics class, I was appaled by the total lack of depth and context in the presentation of the material. We did at least study the constitution, in that we read the text and were quizzed on the Bill of Rights, but we were given no context, no attempt to justify the necessity of these rights. I got the distinct impression that those of my classmates who did not investigate political theory on their own would be woefully lacking in terms of civic knowledge.
That was, as I said, five years ago. I have a couple of friends slightly younger than myself, who just recently graduated, and they naturally have friends slightly younger than them who are still in high school, and I am sad to say I can confirm this report's claims. While my friends are rather better versed than most in political matters (try hanging out with me and not being...), their friends are horrible. The predominant attitude towards freedom is that the constitution is antiquated and useless, "everything changed after 9/11", and that we have to sacrifice our freedom for security. When asked the obvious questions such as "why?" and "how so?", the response is usually along the lines of "that's how it is, that's how it has to be."
While it is widely accepted as necessary and beneficial, compulsory "public" education is one of the most basic tools of the total state. It is too easily abused as a tool to warp the minds of innocent children, and force them into a state of complacency and acceptance of a destructive political orthodoxy. It must be abolished if we are to retain what is left of our freedom and restore what has been lost (if you're wondering what I would replace it with, see some of my previous comments. I don't want to type that book again). Children grow up thinking that the State that now exists is the legitimate governing body of the US, when in fact it has broken every stipulation of its founding charter, the constitution. They are brought up never knowing of the abuses, the atrocities, the corruption that has characterized their government for generations. If a generation is raised with no concept of freedom, with no inkling of what is being lost, then we are truly doomed. The parents of that generation will be the last to know freedom.
Re:what do you expect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Accuracy (Score:1, Insightful)
According to Mussolini (start with him, then Hitler) fascism isn't much more than the marriage of business and government.
That's why people who understand the world a little better than you two complain about overreaching corporate power. We've been there before and it sucked.
Re:And Why Would They Be Expected To? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It's bad when they present non-scientific hypothesis (such as creationism/intelligent design) as "scientific theories" when in fact they are anything but scientific.
It's one thing to say "There are two prevailing views on how we came to be here. One is religious, and you'll learn about it on Sundays in Church, and the other is the scientific theory of evolution, which you'll learn about in this science class." (an appropriate disclaimer prior to teaching students about the theory of evolution) and presenting creationist psuedo-science that fails the basic test of falsifiability and the most basic definitions of science on an even footing with the theory of evolution, when one is a philosophical hypothesis that is not scientific, and the other is science.
If you want religious education in school, go to a religious school (the country's lousy with them), but keep your religious dogma and pseudo-science out of our public, secular schools.
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
The results of this survey don't surprise me one bit, but until we as a collective society start taking education seriously again and start demanding more of the parents as well as the students, it won't change either.
The system (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything is being taught in order to pass a test...in the end the whole class ends up learning absolutely nothing.
Teacher's dont tech kids to think more open mindedly, and the students who are free thinkers are usually put down.
example:
1.My friend wrote a brilliant paper on socialism - analyzing different positive effects on society, economy... Another kid in the class wrote a complete bullshit paper on democracy - just kissing ass on how America is so great and how democracy works for all. My friend ended up getting a lower grade, just because the teacher did not agree witht the paper. Because teachers are so biased, many students are reluctant to actually write what they think and usually just end up just kissing ass for a good grade.
2.In class my friend and I usually end up fighting against the rest of the class on topics of discussions, such as weather or not people of different cultural backgrounds (i.e Muslims) should be "watched by Big Brother". The scary thing is that most of my classmates think that its ok for the government to control the media and limit the rights of citizens (and especially those of specific cultural backgrounds). [I'm not 'Middle Eastern', in case you think that I'm defending muslims for personal reasons. I believe in freedom - especially to express yourself. Excuse the horryfic grammar, I'm also an immigrant
Side note: I'm really tired of the bullshit saying: "If you dont like America get out of the country". Many older people have said that to me, and I think that it is a very ignorant thing to say - it's a bullshit counter to the flaws I usually bring up. There are many flaws in the American system, just like any other system, and it is those who rebel - fight for our rights - that, I believe, will reform this country to a better place.
Re:Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
I more or less agree with you, but do you really think that inaction will lead to our destruction? These radicals you speak of could never rival the military or economic might of the Western world. Furthermore, "their turf" isn't their turf alone. There are plenty of innocents in the Middle East who do not deserve to live in a war zone.
I could see how this all might be justified if the radicals could be wiped out in this manner. The problem is that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that our aggressive actions do more to fuel extremism than to destroy it. What is our end goal? The end of Islam?
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, I don't follow the logic. You're telling me that a homosexual senator in the 50s was respresenting corporate policy when he attacked Hollywood liberals and suspected members of the Communist party?
Because IMHO, this last sentence is the only one that seems off. Government != Corporations. I agree, there's a problem with corporate policy working its way into our government, but that is a result of government regulations and restrictions.
Corporations used to not give a crap about who was a senator or representative. At least, not till around the rise of the network broadcasters and anchormen of the 1970s. John Stossel, one of the best scandal uncoverers, now sees what the fruits of all their labor are: people get scared of getting ripped off and then the government steps in, regulates something that shouldn't be regulated, and the companies in that industry use the government to squash each other.
Who makes more profit on a pack of smokes?
1) Federal Government
2) State Government
3) Local Government
4) Big Tobacco
And you wonder why people like myself aren't dumbfounded that there is a "marriage" of corporation and state?
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
even moral support all count as "involvement"
Yeah. Communism is the same way. If you support welfare or subsidized housing for the elderly then you are supporting the communist regime. The Reds are trying to kill every one of us, because they are jealous of, and hate our freedom. If your parents or spouse or friends support communism, then you are guilty of supporting the evil empire by not informing the house un-American activities committee. If you aren't one of us, then you are part of the cancer that is infecting our nation. Those damn, evil, godless commies are trying to kill us all. The Russians would love to stomp on the heads of every free American baby and squish their brains....what? Oh we're against the Muslims now? Sorry, I have not been keeping up. I'll start over.
If you support anti-globalism or free speech and rights for "suspected" terrorists then you are supporting the terrorist regime. The Muslim fanatics are trying to kill every one of us, because they are jealous of, and hate our freedom. If your parents or spouse or friends support Islam, then you are guilty of supporting the evil empire by not informing the republican party and department of Homeland Defense. If you aren't one of us, then you are part of the cancer that is infecting our nation. Those damn, evil, godless terrorists are trying to kill us all....
Re:Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Currently, the US government has been masterful in dividing words from the deeds they describe, and according to this study, it's paying off. When the government talks of spreading freedom and liberty and then begins censoring speech within its country, a very dangerous form of propaganda is created. It's sad that this conditioning seems to be infiltrating the US school system.
Re:Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I know. We (in the U.S. especially) have made sure of that. The message we've effectively sent is: vote in the communists, and we'll send in the death squads. Try reading up about Nicaragua, for one.
Re:Regarding flag burning (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:put yourself in thier shoes (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no necessary connection. Let me show you by example:
How am I going to understand how high explosives work when you won't let me play with them?
Re:Very slanted interpetation there. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they look at the 14th Amendment and use that to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, as it was intended.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
The other day I was telling my mother that in England [66.102.7.104] children are taught Algebra begining at age 11 which would be 6th grade. Here in California we don't start Pre-Algebra until age 12, or 13. That puts American students two years behind on instructions. My mother thought that I had made it up, that it was impossible to teach children Algebra while still in Elementry school. I assured here that the higher standards of European schools seems to have only helped maintain the quality of their education.
I'm so tired of listening to teachers whine about their cushy tenured jobs that lower the bar on performance, while paying them well, and giving them months off in the summers. Teachers should be required to work during the summers just like the rest of us. (Not teaching, doing other productive things for the districts they work in.)
Linux Torvalds did it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right-wing Americans claim that Reagan did it.
Conservative Brits contend that Thatcher did it.
Liberal Americans name Jimmy Carter and his focus on human rights issues as the reason for the fall.
Catholics believe the Pope made it happen.
Islamists attribute the collapse to Osama Bin Laden and militant muslims and call Americans arrogant for not acknowledging this
Most Slashdotters see nobody else but Cowboy Neal behind all of this
But I ask you. Can it be a coincidence that the dissolution of the USSR took place in the very year Linus Torvalds posted version 0.0.1 of the Linux kernel on Usenet? I think not. Isn't it obvious? Soviet communism was supposed to be just an immediate form until a new and truly communist society would start to exist. With true communism in the form of Linux out(*), there was no need for the USSR anymore.
(*) MS' Ballmer: Linux is communism [theregister.co.uk]
and don't forget (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the real truth: I trust a government run by a mix of liberals and conservatives with a heavier lean towards liberals more than I trust any conservative corporation. I don't trust a government overrun with "middle-of-the-road" politicians where the real balance leans towards the conservatives. Right now the government can't be trusted at all. It wasn't so bad during Clinton, but it could have been better. Probably the best president this country ever had was F.D.R. and he was shaped by the time he lived in. Sadly, the history books of this once decent nation will be twisted to paint G Dumbya with the same brush that F.D.R. EARNED by his great works. Personally, I've given up and I hope to make a plan to be out of this hell and in the E.U. within the next decade.
Re:This shouldn't be surprising... (Score:2, Insightful)
The First Amendment says that the federal government cannot restrict your right to free speech, religion, assembly, petition, and cannot stifle the free press. It doesn't say anything about the government granting said rights as long as they don't violate someone else's rights.
The First Amendment states what the federal government cannot do, not what it allows.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
The extremity of their threats is not related to the probability of their success. If a mad old tramp declares that he'll kill everyone who wears brown shoes on a Thursday, how many billions should we spend on monitoring and fighting him? How many freedoms should we give up to make sure he can't possibly kill a single innocent person?
The threat from extremists must be weighed against the threat from reactionaries, and the numbers are pretty clear: terrorists have killed thousands of people, but repressive governments have killed millions.
in Sweden (IIRC), where in some cities, police have admitted that they no longer have control due to hordes of Islamic immigrants causing chaos.
Thank you for making the real (racial) motivation for your argument completely clear. Please name a single Swedish city where the police "no longer have control". I would have thought that widespread anarchy, riots and looting in Scandinavia would have made the news. Or perhaps you're just talking about ordinary inner-city crime, which you'd never mention in the same breath as terrorism if the criminals weren't Muslims?
Re:Politically incoherent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait he wasn't.
Please note that people pointing out your mistake and demanding you correct it is not censorship. When you do a protest by doing something illegal. It is not censorship when you are arrested for that activity, or shouted down for outright lies and inaccuracies.
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No one said Iraq was involved in 9/11 (off-topi (Score:4, Insightful)
Ohh, there was almost certainly the usual Arab-Isreali nonsense going on, but where did you get the idea that Saddam was trying to do anything against the US? If you had actually been following the story, not only did Saddam destroy his WMD's in the hopes of getting the sanctions lifted (yeah yeah, stupid petty politics made him resist the inspectors and look like he was hiding stuff), but the final US intelligence conclsion was that Saddam actually had hopes of eventually restoring good relations with the US! Remember, the US had formerly been Saddam's benefactor. And why had the US been Saddam's benefactor? Because of the dangerous fundamentalist Iran next door. And that dangerous fundamentalist Iran was still next door, still a threat to Iraq, and still at the top of the US's list of undesired governments. Iran still provided a very same motivation for Iraq and the US to play buddy-buddy. And Saddam really did hope to get the sanctions lifted and get back his cozy position as one of the US's allies-of-convenience.
Saddam was a bastard, but the US has a long track record of being quite generous to politically convient bastards.
-
Re:No one said Iraq was involved in 9/11 (off-topi (Score:3, Insightful)
The US has also refused UN weapons inspections.
as you agreed to when we let you keep your country earlier?
Taking and holding Baghdad was judged impossible in 1991, and it's probably impossible now. The difference is that Bush Sr. had the sense to listen to his military advisers.
Perhaps you should heed one of the last 200 warnings of "No, really, you need to let us in, like you agreed to do."
Warning someone 200 times that you're going to kill them doesn't make it legal to do so. The same principle applies to nations.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
What I've seen of recent trends in some public schools, there is some cause for concern regarding altering history to conform to what our current notion of fairness is. I had heard stories from people I knew, who have children in public schools, about prominent figures in U.S. history being largely ignored because they were being judged, and therefore shunned, by today's standards. I came across this article [sfgate.com] last year that I think illustrates this concern effectively.
While the intentions of excluding, or downplaying some history, or historical figures, because we, in today's society, may disagree with some of their actions is certainly debatable, I think the article that is the topic of this whole discussion today shows how dangerous it can be if we spend too much time thinking about what we want to be, and not enough time looking at what we once were.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
The real source of the problem is multidimensional. First, the fact is that teachers are totally unsupervised through their entire workday. Nobody watches the teacher do their daily thing. Even if you have class testing to check for results, that's only one performance review per year. Find me other jobs like that. Besides that, pop-culture of today has moved away from that brief burst in the tech-boom when technical knowledge was considered worthwhile. We've gone back to the '80s - the breakdown seems to be as follows:
- left-wing hippy kids who go into liberal arts to do nothing
- amoral right-wing assholes whose highest aspirations are to be coke-snorting business aristocrats
- mentally fucked-up kids who might be geniuses, but will drop out anyways due to nihilism
- girls who think a blowjob is the highest gesture of love, and anorexia is cool, and therefore have better things to do than school
- keeners who care about nothing but good grades, which are increasingly disconnected from actual learning and intelligence.
- jocks, rappers, and every other subcategory where they only have their eye on one goal, one they've a 1-in-10000 chance of acheiving.
None of those kids will succeed (except the asshole - and he'll only be successful on a personal level, but destructive to everyone around him).
Besides, standardised testing doesnt work - numerous studies have shown this. It dumbs down the kids, it gives kids with particular skills an unfair advantage, has bad biases in poor neighborhoods where kids weren't reared as well as in wealthy neighborhoods, and is generally unhealthy for a school system. There is no clear solution.
I find it funny how people always talk about hiring "coaches" in the States. You'll never hear those words together here in Canada. Coaches are volunteers, or teachers.
The fact is that the only subjects that are really quantifiable are math and science classes, and those aren't the ones that I see the biggest problems in. The only time that I see bad math/science teachers is cases where the Principal doesn't give a hoot about math and science and has simply retasked unqualified teachers into those departments - and in that case, they don't really seem to care about poor performance.
The problem seems to lie in ambiguous arts classes, which are really too unquantifiable for standardised testing. I see many people who breezed through school, through teachers college, and now through work teaching those classes. Nobody notices.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue, though, that the "communism" 50s paranoid politicians thought they were fighting against was similarly non-existing bogeyman: the supposedly powerful american communist organization(s), bent on getting revolution in the US, and forming an imminent internal threat. That is; although Soviet Union was a (real) powerful adversary, it was NOT the enemy, supposedly, but these pesky "american traitors". And that was the strawman.
I agree in that terrorists are in the same sense strawmen; created by the hyper-active imagination of people who are lacking enough real-world threats (would a good old famine caused by cricket swarms fix this?). Just like it's suspected that human immunosystem manages to create itself new problems (allergies, other auto-immune diseases) if it gets bored with the lack of external threats, politicians seem prone to similar mental diseases. It feels unnatural NOT to be scared shitless by "someone somewhere"; and there's alway s the need to paint the face of your enemy, real or imaginary.
In the end, "communist" and "terrorist" threats (from US perspective) are very similar: in the first case it's the problem that the military machine lots its enemies after WWII (Germany and Japan), in the second case it was once again the military machine losing good ol' Soviet Union.
Re:Khruschev (Score:3, Insightful)
> the anxiety I felt about the Soviets. THAT was a
> scary time.
Yes, I agree. The Soviets were, even as they dwindled in the 1980s, a far greater threat to the Western world. Perhaps our perspective has been altered by over well over a decade without the Cold War that we think a few religious nutjobs are somehow equatable in any way to the Soviet Union with its vast military complex, lock on power in Eastern Europe and infiltration of Africa and parts of Latin America.
Simply put, Al Qaeda is not much of a threat to Western democracy, unless of course we allow ourselves to have our pants so scared off our asses that we lose all perspective. It's happened before. Japanese Americans and Canadians were horribly mistreated during WWII, and at least in Canada, this sentiment was fostered by people who basically stole these citizens' property without compensation. That's how public perceptions, particularly with underlying hysteria in the mix, can be guided in such directions.
As to the resources of Al Qaeda, well I'm afraid short of forcing everyone to stay in their homes, any individual sufficently motivated by insanity (whatever the justification) is going to be able to do spectacularly awful things; whether its fly airplanes into buildings, park Ryder trucks filled with diesel and fertilizer in front of government building or go whacky in a McDonalds or a subway.
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:put yourself in thier shoes (Score:3, Insightful)
One a related note, It's my dog's fault that he doesn't enjoy the works of Vonnegut the way I do. Every time I sit him down in front of a book or synopsize one in a long and boring manner, he reverts to this annoying play behavior, which is his default mode for learning. Who is the idiot in this story? =)
Re:Wake up, everyone (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Freedom of expression is a right
2. Flag burning is a form of expression
3. Flag burning is protected by that right, which is why it is legal.
If you agree with #1 and #2 - You have to agree with #3. If you don't, then well, you're just stupid and wrong
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
uhhhh, where are we fighting them, pray tell?
Oh, I see the plan -- we cleverly let them escape from Afghanistan into Pakistan, so that we could attack
Which is the home state of the TERR-WRISTS!!! AND, they have MUCHO DUBYA-EM-DEEs and yellow banana cake Uranuses!!! Plus, their previous leader, that we righteously ousted, was a devout Muslim, who mandated that EVERYONE in his country be RELIJUSS extremisses, required women to wear veils at all times, denied them edjumakation, and was one of the IRANIAN mullets, like that SHAWL guy!!!!!
Yeah, we kick A**!!
AMERICA, FSCK YAYUH!!!!!
Oh
====================
Please
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
We in britain have had the "spectre of terrorism" for longer than you whiny yanks care to mention.
Hell it was you fuckers that were financing it.
Terrorism is only an issue if you let it be one.
Carry on with your life and you are still more likely to be killed by a lightening strike than an act of terrorism
paranoid little fuck
Actually, yes . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
That is the intent, yes. Remember the Founders had just finished an armed revolt against their government. Read the writing of the various people involved in the revolution and subsequent establishment of a Constitutional government (". . . it squints toward monarchy . .
These people read their history carefully, and recognized that EVERY FSCKING GOVERNMENT in history ended up oppressing and abusing its citizens.
So, yes, we do have the Constitional right to any weaponry we can get and learn to use, up to and especially including current military weapons. The Founders understood that the leaders of a nation tend to stay upright and responsible to the people when they have nooses around their necks . . . or automatic rifles aimed their way.
New Hampshire has the right motto: "Live Free or Die." Deal with it.
Happy Monday,
Mal the Elder
PS Yeah, I'm too damn lazy to log in, and I could care less about karma points.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Peace may require the end of Islam, because it is based on the Qur'an and the Hadiths. These works are based on an Arabic flavor of theocratic fascism and there is no room for competing ideologies.
Hey, as long as we're throwing out religions with sacred texts that promote hatred and intolerantly condemn those of all other religions, why stop at Islam? Might as well get rid of Judaism and Christianity too.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem isn't the religion, but the blind, hatemongering of fundamentalism from which terrorism (both foreign and US-sponsored) stems.
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he was just fired, his staff canned, the entire news organization replaced with more Bush-friendly types. His rep was smeared with an unproven charge of forged evidence that his provider was unable to refute for fear of ruining his source's life.
The story of Bush's golden slide from the Guard was permanently stamped as "false", even though Palast broke - and proved true - that story four years ago. NO ONE will take on on Bush's people, else they get the Wilson/Rather treatment. Hell, Rove was willing to nuke an entire CIA front company to get the WIFE of Wilson! That's showing anyone who's thinking og growing a pair that their life is worth exactly one tub of used kitty litter. Who needs government censorship when corporate censorship works so much better?
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Crippling of social development. It is an understatement to say that the regular social activities of homsechooling just don't cut it. Like it or not, a socially crippled person is just as screwed in society as an educationally crippled one, if not moreso. Being social creatures, this stuff also screws with happiness and feelings of self-worth.
2. Nutcases. Many, if not most homeschoolers are homeschooled because by brainwashing religious nutcase parents. This means that most homeschool-support programs and activities in your area will make a mockery of your worries that your kids might be among sheeple at school.
3. Networking. Lifelong friends are made during school years. Homeschoolers I know have a vastly smaller pool of friends and acquaintances than schoolkids, and those friends are often of a lesser quality - selected by necessity simply for being of similar age, rather than for good character or complementary personality. Schoolkids get to select their friends from a pool of hundreds or thousands they can spend time with with nearly every day. With big enough social circles, friends beget friends and are gateways to yet more social circles. Having too few on the other hand can result in dwindling circles, as people leave/move faster than the rate of crossover into new circles. Obviously, this will depend on how social and outgoing a person is.
4. Inevitablity. Assuming you want the kids to go to university, they're going to have to sit highschool exams (or whatever the institution requires), so they have the learn the public school curriculam anyway.
5. Life. To do a serious job of educating your kids, you will have to sacrifice years that you could be working, or developing yourself as a person, or doing all those things that you're still young enough to be able to do. That's a very real, and very high price, for a gamble - there is no guarentee that your efforts will result in better adjusted kids, but you will absolutely lose a huge chunk of your life. (You're presumably not so naive as to think spending most of each day with your kids is going to be nothing but bonding moments
I don't know what the solution is, but the results of homeschooling that I see make the flaws of average public schools seem the lesser evil by far. My personal (and inexperienced) thoughts would be some kind of dual-education - putting kids in a good mixed-gender school, and teaching them you own curriculum for an hour a day (perhaps at expense of route-work non-educational homework rather than cutting into their own time). It's a difficult problem. The only real solution seems to be to move to another country and put the kids in school there, but then you can't move back without inflicting #3...
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem with Communism in pure form is incentives for hard work get diluted on the masses, so it generally deteriorates into a welfare state when used on a large populace. In small groups it works great - Mennonites, for example, are basically a Communist group - though that could be argued because they aren't forced to share, they just do for the good of the community.
A free market has nothing to do with Communism, technically, but is generally associated with Democracy because of the Dictatorship imposing on what you can or cannot have. A true Communism does not block freedom of choice for what you can or cannot have.
In a nutshell, Communism and Democracies are great ideals, but tend towards Anarchy. Dictatorships and Republics are more stable due to their central leadership (and therefore quicker control of laws, armies, and resource allocation). Communism and Democracy are not mutually exclusive - you could have a Communist Democracy where everyone gets to vote (for laws and military actions) but all resources are divvied equally.
This is a REAL problem (Score:3, Insightful)
* Government interventions: the govt intervenes in situations that were formerly handled by teachers and principals. 10 years ago a kid would not get locked up by the police for drawing a picture of someone getting stabbed. Cops would not show up in uniform for in school detention.
* Students don't loose their rights, they never have them. Back in the day, no one inspected your locker, processed your for saying something, asked you to pee in a bottle, metal detectored you or profiled you for deviant behavior unless you gave them a real reason. And then rights were lost until you earned them back.
* School rules are often litanies of "no student may" and "is not permitted on school properties".
* Zero Tollerance policies have eliminated discression in enforcing rules. The result: student rights are trampled by an almost boolean intrepetation of rules. This happened to my neice: she had genuine flat tire within 1/4 mile of the school on the way in. No one could stop to help her because they would automatically loose a letter grade under the zero tollerence for tardiness policy - so she had to wait by the side of the highway for help. When the tire was fixed, and she got to school, she recieved after school detention and lost a letter grade and worse yet, a further tardy would result in an F for the entire semester.
It would be very cool and useful if there was a voluntary "student's bill of rights" type of program that would help students learn what constitutional freedoms are, but also gave the school a framework for dealing with the irresponsible use or infringing on another student's rights that didn't require court involvement.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay your points in order.
Dan Rather was given retirement. Most of the problems he had were because he would not publish a retraction even when faced with evidence of the problem until public opinion forced him to. Even after he published the retraction he continued to state that even though the memos were false that the story was true despite having no proof of this.
Four people do not constitute an entire news organization.
Haven't heard of Palast, but a Google web search shows him accusing Bush of lots of things, but doesn't show any "evidence" other than one difficult to read memo with a censor block on it. I can't say for sure that he is wrong, but I'm sure if he could back up his claim that CNN, the NYT, and everything else with the possible exception of Fox News would still be airing it every minute on the minute.
No one will take on Bush's people... except, you know, pretty much every Democrat in the public eye. Just look at Boxer and Kennedy's attacks on Rice. The only thing they had to suffer from was the public's reaction to their hysterical accusations.
As for the CIA front being nuked, I'm pretty sure that it was already compromised by the leak.
Your last sentence is completely out of the blue. Where the heck in all you mentioned above do corporate effects come into play? The only corporation you mentioned is CBS.
Re: stupid mods (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, mentioning the sordid affair in Nicaragua isn't flamebait; even if you happen to disagree with the BorgCopyeditor's POV, it's a real expression of a valid point whose merits one can argue, not some totally ungrounded attack on America. Modding that as "Flamebait" is uncalled-for.
The kids are mostly alright (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a high school junior myself, and was prompted to investigate the actual research behind these findings because I was pretty sure they were bullshit. For the most part, they are.
An unsurprisingly brief examination of the methodology and response percentages of the survey itself (readily available in PDF format online at http://firstamendment.jideas.org/downloads/future_ final.pdf [jideas.org]) reveal a truth jarringly absent from both the CNN article and the survey's own final conclusion: students are actually considerably more defensive of First Amendment rights than their own teachers, principals, and American adults in general (statistics on responses of American adults were taken from an independently run annual survey conducted by the organization Freedom Forum.) While teachers, principals and adults rather seriously outstrip students in their supposed approval of the right of a free press and the right to express unpopular opinions, they prove themselves dramatically less capable than their students and children in understanding what those rights mean.
For reference, turn to page six of the complete survey. Observe that 99% of all high school principals agree that "people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions," compared to only 83% of high school students. Yet only 43% of these exact same high school principals believe that "musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics others may find offensive," compared to 70% of all high school students. The urge to use bold font or italics here is almost overwhelming. Despite their near unanimous patriotic exhortations of First Amendment rights, the interviewed principals apparently feel this right does not extend to those damned rappers. 58% of teachers and 59% of adults agree with this same statement; both percentages are dramatically lower than that of student respondents.
A good, solid eighty percent of high school principals believe that newspapers should be allowed to publish articles without government review; except in cases where that government is themselves. In that case, just 25% of high school principals agree that student newspapers should operate without the "approval of school authorities." The same pattern is found among adult and teacher respondents -- overwhelming majorities approve a free press, except when that free press consists of students whose opinions might run contrary to their own. The vested interest of schools in maintaining a degree of control over student publications has already been established by other posters, but the hypocrisy is nevertheless remarkable.
The most telling part of the survey is that only 51% of students agree that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories, it is that 58% of those same students believe that high school newspapers should be permitted to discuss controversial issues without the approval of the school's administration. This statistic is central to the discussion at hand. Students may not be so well trained as their parents and school faculty to recognize statements they are supposed to agree with, but they are strongly defensive of First Amendment rights when they are confronted with the practical application of them -- much moreso than grown adults. There is still a need for greater discussion and understanding of the Bill of Rights in public schools, and perhaps a need to widely revive American Civics courses -- my own public school does not offer any. 58% is still an uncomfortably small majority in favor of the free press. The hysteria of the CNN article and much of this discussion, however, is unwarranted. The need for more widespread education and appreciation of the American civil liberties is not limited to teenagers. In fact, they apparently already have a better grasp on their meaning than most adults.
Re:Khruschev (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when the big difference between Us and Them (the reds) was that we had the freedom to travel, without having to "show your papers?"
There's also the asymmetric threat of al-qaeda. They spent $500,000 on 9/11. Our response is to spend somewhere around $200,000,000,000. Oh and then there's the fact that so long as we keep using oil, we'll keep funding Al Qaeda.
The threat is very different, but I don't think it's any lesser. To be honest I never felt that threatened by the USSR but we'll skip that for now. I'm worried that there won't be a "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" in twenty years because some guy in a cave who got one lucky shot tricked us into oustpending him at a ratio of four-hundred-thousand to one.
Simply put, Al Qaeda is not much of a threat to Western democracy, unless of course we allow ourselves to have our pants so scared off our asses that we lose all perspective. It's happened before.
Exactly my point. We have met the enemy, and he is us. What would FDR say to a color-coded Fear level?
Freedom replaced with Fear (Score:4, Insightful)
They want us to be afraid of everything these days. Things like "homeland security" and there idiotic "terrorist threat level" are examples of this. What is your average joe suppose to do? Board themselves up in there house and hide in the basement everytime the stupid color scale hits red? This is America, we are suppose to laugh in the face of terrorist and there attempts to make us fear, not run and hide.
The worst part about it is that it seams to be working. Lots of people do seam to be afraid of things... and not just terrorism.
News flash... Seeing a bare ass on TV isn't going to make your child a sex offender. Hearing an expletive won't turn a kid into a degenerate loser.
Education is, and always has been, the best method for making sure kids keep on the right track. I think it is a parents responsibility to make sure there children aren't scared to ask them questions about anything and everything. If your kid sees a word written somewhere (like the inside of a bathroom stall or the back of the seat on a bus) he/she should know they can always ask there parents and get a straight, correct, answer without any chance of getting in trouble. We should teach our kids about sex. We should tell them about "alternative" lifestyles they might be exposed to.
Anyway... I know when I was 13 my friends and I had already gotten our hands on numerous dirty magazines and other things of that nature and all of us managed to grow up, go to college, and live a decent life.
If you want censorship then get the hell out of this country, there are plenty of places you can go live if you want others making all your decisions for you. You don't deserve to live here if you believe in limiting others freedoms.
Re:And Why Would They Be Expected To? (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly how is the evolution theory falsifiable? It claims that things have happened over millions of years, a statement we have no way of testing. We have no way of testing whether the world existed anytime before the oldest person currently living on the Earth. We don't even have any way of proving that other people are conscious. We assume things like that because of the inductive reasoning and clues spread all over but we have no proof for any of that. In that light, the evolution theory is just as philosophical as anything else. And most science for that matter.
There is tons of science around us that says that something is this or something is that. Most of that is just philosophical speculation and gruesome simplification of mathematical models behind that science. In fact those mathematical models even are a philosophical speculation that happens to best match the observations. But how it really is, we can't prove or see in anyway. Example: has anyone ever seen an electron? We have some mathematical theories on its existence, and we refine them about every twenty years because the old ones happen to fail.
So, now, tell me, what you think about the evolution theory, again...
That doesn't mean that so-called "junk science" is just as good as "regular science" - all I'm saying there that we need some distance to the "regular science" as well, because recently for many people it replaced religion.
Terrorism today = Terrorism against whites (Score:1, Insightful)
What creates terrorism? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the extreme opposite of the military-religious "war on/of terror" approach, but it is almost as far from solving the issues that cause all that hatred that leads to terrorism.
Bunch of Irish guys didn't just wake up deranged one morning and decide to create the IRA. They had their reasons for fighting the British establishment.
Bunch of Basque guys didn't just wake up deranged one morning and decide to create the ETA. They had their reasons for fighting the Spanish establishment.
Bunch of Arab guys didn't just wake up deranged one morning and decide to create the Al-Qaeda. They had their reasons for fighting the American establishment.
Bunch of Chechen guys didn't just wake up deranged one morning and decide to create their liberation army. They had their reasons for fighting the Russian establishment.
Bunch of Tibetan guys didn't just wake up deranged one morning and decide to... oh wait, they're freaking non-violent freedom-fighters so they can be conveniently ignored in favour of doing business with their occupiers...
Anyway, there is a certain pattern that would suggest that nations (often large and with imperialist tendencies) which insist on controlling people and territories outside their natural domain tend to be more affected by terrorism ("one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter") than smaller, democratic states which do not project their power outside their natural borders.
Perhaps recognizing and supporting all peoples' right of self-determination would help remove one of the major root causes of "terrorism"? If you lived under foreign occupation, what would you do?
I blaim political correctness. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Why Would They Be Expected To? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's also an ongoing battle over whether the "under God" part should be in there at all. The whole battle over religion in school goes way to far nowadays. What needs to be prohibited on First Amendment grounds is any sort of teacher- or authority figure-led religious events (moment of silence with overt religious meaning, prayers over the intercom, religious classes). What the same people need to understand is that student groups organizing after-school Bible study or praying in class or whatever isn't the same thing.
And yeah, I know the Left has as many problems with people's rights as the Right. Hey, the Pledge was originally written by a Socialist back in the nineteenth century--they're much bigger on the whole State worship thing than the Right (except maybe all-out Fascists) ever is or was.
Re:And Why Would They Be Expected To? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And Why Would They Be Expected To? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly how is the evolution theory falsifiable?
A few examples here [talkorigins.org] and many more if you do a little googling.
Evolution is trivially falsifiable. It not only requires specific facts to fall out in a particular way to hold true (so fact contradicting said expectations would in fact "falsify" or disprove the theory), but makes predictions that can be observed (or not). Evolution has been supported rather than falsified by the mountains of evidence, observation, and even experimentation (with microbes), so it is a very solid theory, but any of those observations, collections of evidence, or experiments could concievably have had a different outcome, and if that had been so, evolution would have been disproven. That makes the theory falsifiable, by definition.
Do not fall for the religious right's ploy of redefining religious assumptions as science, so they can claim that science backs religion. It is deception of the lowest kind, and something any rational, critically thinking person should see through right away. It would be amusing to watch creationists and other "junk"-science sharlatans redefinte the paramters of scientific theory to not include falsifiabilty and other fundamentals of science to be more vague, in order to sneak their patently unscientific nonsense under the radar and lend it the credibility of science, were it not proving so effective at befuddling the gullible masses.
The Christians brought us a thousand years of darkness once before, a period that only ended with the renaissance, secular enlightenment, and the birth of modern science. If we allow the kind of doublethink described above to prevail, we can probably look forward to another thousand years of darkness to follow