NotCrazyDan

I talked to a psychiatrist about this once. He mentioned that there are certain drugs that have been formulated that only benefit individuals with extremely rare conditions, and that it would never profit a pharmaceutical company to produce them. These drugs are produced, however, at a loss by the companies themselves, and the burden of the expense is divvied up between them voluntarily. I'm not saying that such a thing as a 'market failure' doesn't exist anywhere, but people do right by other people without anyone holding a gun to their heads a lot more than people realize, or would hear about.

Good deal that's definitely worth trying, thanks.

Yes I've been in the US Army for 12 years now so I know what you mean. Like most 14 year olds, she's not interested in anything that causes her to do more work, and since she's 14, I'm not really interested in her not being interested. I don't want to crush her, I'll let her take baby steps, but many of the skills we've accumulated have been the result of someone looming over us with the proverbial .44 and a shovel. I consider critical reasoning skills to be critical, and thus they're not optional to any minor that I'm responsible for. Poor her.

Recently my sister in law's daughter in law (yeah i know complicated) moved in with us from an abusive drug an alcohol infested craphole in kickass trailerpark Mississippi. She didn't have time to enroll in the local school, so I felt it appropriate to supplement her online learning with my own course of study on how to think. One of the most crucial tools that people lack going into college and even after they graduate college, is being able to think logically, avoiding the pitfalls of, and being able to spot, logical fallacies, and being aware of when their own emotions and preconceived notions are clouding their ability to make judgments. Going through school without being able to spot BS is like going into combat with no body armor. It's dangerous. I quickly realized that many of the background skills that you and I take for granted are absolutely essential to teaching any method of critical thinking. My question to people on this board, is how to take a person of substandard education and ingrain proper methods of thought into them without burning them out. I guess what I'm asking for is a course of study that's geared towards a teenager of humble origins. EDIT: This may not be the right board for this question. If I put this thread in the wrong place, please move it to where it belongs.

Yes I agree I've unintentionally derailed this thread a bit from its original intent for trying to show the unconstitutionality of federal involvement in education and I apologize for that. I'll make one response to your statement and then I'll drop the matter so people can get back on topic. "With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." – James Madison in letter to James Robertson James Madison is one of the primary authors of the Constitution. For the list of 'powers connected with them', here's Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/co...n.articlei.html To borrow money on the credit of the United States; To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States; To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures; To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States; To establish post offices and post roads; To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court; To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

I'm not implicitly claiming anything. I'm not advocating raising taxes. I'm not advocating public education. I'm not saying that people received good educations before the federal government got involved (although its certainly deteriorated) These claims are your inventions. I'm saying that the Constitution should be followed, and that the Constitution prohibits the federal government getting involved in Education. That if any governmental entity has any power under the constitution to get involved in education, it's the individual States, and that even the States don't have a responsibility under the constitution to provide for education. This is not an opinion. This is the way it is. If I have my way neither of my sons nor my daughter will ever see the inside of a public school even if I have to make significant financial sacrifices. I AM NOT A FAN OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN ANY VARIETY. The most important thing to me, the ONLY thing that's important until it gets fixed, is that we currently have no rule of law in this country, and thus no guarantee of freedoms and liberties, because people refuse to uphold the Constitution of the United States, or demand that it be upheld.

Why give states that power? They already have that power under the constitution. We're not giving them anything. The problem isn't due to 'state meddling'. It's about the federal government confiscating enormous wealth that the states would have otherwise used to fund their own services, and then giving it back with strings attached. Quite the opposite of state meddling, it's federal government meddling, and it's unconstitutional for the reasons I've already described.

I agree that government shouldn't have a hand in education. However if it did, I'd much rather it be in the hands of the individual states where voters at least have a chance to maintain the quality and cost of the educational system (or lack of one). At least then people could vote with their feet by moving to a state with public schools, or no public schools, depending on preference. Almost sounds like freedom of choice.

Under the constitution, that would be the choice of the individual and sovereign States, their powers being 'many and unlimited', and the local voters being able to have a more immediate impact on their local educational systems, and able to choose whether they wanted public education or not.

Yes I have compassion, and my automatic impulse to someone in need is to go through as much trouble as necessary to help him out. I'm not pointing this out because I want to beat my chest, but to illustrate the difference between personal compassion and forced collective compassion (Slavery). A person who helps another person of his own volition and honestly without expecting reward (In what an Objectivist would call a 'selfish' manner), is worthy of some respect for extending his sense of self to another person and taking that person under his wing. The same person who's forced to do the same thing is robbed of all dignity and freedom and is literally a slave. Ask your friend why he's so bereft of compassion that he would make slaves out of people, forcing to do what he personally believes that they should, and robbing them of any dignity that they might have by doing those things of their own volition. Remind him that the United States is the givingest nation on earth to charities, whereas the European nations that have a much more robust nanny state don't give nearly as much per capita to charities as our country does. Being 'forced' to give to charity denies the choice that God gave us all, and is therefore unchristian. You can use that line if the guy calls himself a christian. Disclaimer: I'm a Roman Catholic. Don't take anything I say seriously. You have been warned.

I used to think that indoctrination of students in public schools was a conspiracy, but now I find myself thinking that it's simply an indication or byproduct of the low caliber of teachers in public schools. An incompetent teacher can't teach students how to think properly, logically, reasonably, avoiding emotional responses and not falling prey to distractions from charlatans (logical fallacies). Instead they teach students what to think instead of how to think. They pass on all the acceptable opinions on every issue that got beaten into their heads while they were in college listening to lectures from tenured communists in tweed suits who would have never survived in the private sector. The answer to the destructive influence of the public school system is to do what nobody's willing to do: Follow the Constitution. It says in the 10th amendment that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. In other words, the federal government's involvement in Education is unconstitutional. It's the whole rule of law thing, or something.

I just found this board. I'm not an Objectivist but a practicing Roman Catholic, so my perspective is probably different from most people on this board, though we seem to arrive at the same conclusions more often that not, surprisingly. When dealing with a person like this who's been spoon-fed a mountain of BS, I feel it's best to take him to fundamentals, which you have and he doesn't. A philosophy that espouses totalitarianism-lite can't have a foundation based on anything but emotion without admitting contempt for people as human beings. Therefore force him to approach the argument from the perspective of the kinds of choices that you'd give any other child. Ask him which is better, for people to be wealthy or for people to be poor? Then ask him if it's better for people to be free or people to be enslaved. Tell him that it's simple fact that a person who has more responsibility over his own life has more freedom, and that when you take that responsibility away from him, you also take away his freedom. By government taking full responsibility for the lives of its citizens, it must by necessity enslave them. Explain basic economics to him. A government that cuts taxes in an overtaxed system will get more revenue than the same government raising taxes. This has been proved under both Kennedy and Reagan. When you force him to acknowledge that socialists aren't really out to help people, but instead to make things more 'fair', remind him that 'fairness' was the rallying cry by which both the Nazis and the communists enslaved and brutally murdered millions of people during the last century. They thought that they were doing the right and moral thing in committing the evil acts that they did, in order to make wealth more evenly distributed. They were elitists and socialists at heart and in fact. Or you could just ignore him, or enroll him in a critical reasoning class and get back to him in a year. Edit: I apologize for bumping this thread. I just realized how old it was.