Posts by Es99

41) Message boards : Politics : The US has elected its most dangerous leader. We all have plenty to fear. (Message 1845201)
Posted 29 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
...her exact words were, "you have to have a public position and a private position" or something like that...

What makes you think I didn't take notice?

What makes you think Hilary was my preferred candidate from the democratic party?


So you cut your nose off to spite your face?

Hilary only behaved like politicians have behaved since forever (actually she wasn't as bad). The only mistake she made was being female so that her normal politicians behaviour suddenly became unforgivable.

Being a sexual assaulting racist lying bully wasn't a deal breaker for you.


I'm confused? Bernie was a sexual assaulting racist?

...There were people that voted for Bernie in primaries who then voted for Clinton in the general election (Ex could be among this group), just as there were Clinton voters on 2008 who voted for Obama.

Ex is among this group yes. I'd never have voted for Trump.

Sorry, I got you mixed up with someone else. I hadn't had my morning tea. There are a couple of people here who wanted Bernie, but voted for Trump when they couldn't have him.
42) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1845190)
Posted 29 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
Remind me how many arrests there were on the Women's March again?
43) Message boards : Politics : (Always wrong) ... 46 ... (Message 1845189)
Posted 29 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
Cry babies crying about "cry babies".
You're a special little snowflake, aren't you?
Keep it up! Ha, ha, HA!

He may be, I certainly am.

Just as women appropriated the word "pussy" (among others); homosexuals the words "queer" and "gay" (among others); it may be time for those opposed to the normalization of "45" to appropriate the word "snowflake".

Except we're not the ones trying to pass laws that allow 'christians' to not have their feelings hurt by having to sell cakes to gay people.
44) Message boards : Politics : The US has elected its most dangerous leader. We all have plenty to fear. (Message 1845188)
Posted 29 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
...her exact words were, "you have to have a public position and a private position" or something like that...

What makes you think I didn't take notice?

What makes you think Hilary was my preferred candidate from the democratic party?


So you cut your nose off to spite your face?

Hilary only behaved like politicians have behaved since forever (actually she wasn't as bad). The only mistake she made was being female so that her normal politicians behaviour suddenly became unforgivable.

Being a sexual assaulting racist lying bully wasn't a deal breaker for you.
45) Message boards : Politics : The US has elected its most dangerous leader. We all have plenty to fear. (Message 1845054)
Posted 29 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
I am so horrified watching this and painfully aware how it will effect decent good people who deserve better.

Here's one :-(

Awful. The ban included people with green cards. How ill thought out and childish. Can you imagine this happening to you as you try to return to your legal home? People were pulled off flights and detained at airports. It really is like Nazi Germany.
46) Message boards : Politics : The US has elected its most dangerous leader. We all have plenty to fear. (Message 1845050)
Posted 29 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
Thankfully someone has stepped in to halt this nightmare:

Federal judge stays deportations under Trump Muslim country travel ban

There may be some here who don't have friends or colleagues from these countries who can't see how awful what Trump has done is. That's their shame.

I am so horrified watching this and painfully aware how it will effect decent good people who deserve better.
47) Message boards : Politics : The Way Ahead too... (Message 1839630)
Posted 2 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
It won't be long before the theatre doors are closed.

I wouldn't be so quick to bet against Trump, 17 Republicans, 3 Democrats, a Green and many shades of Socialists did so in the last two years, and lost their collective ass.

The big smile will come to my face with the appointment and confirmation of 2 to 4 conservative SCOTUS justices in the coming years. That should put the cork firmly in the 'Progressive' social engineering agenda for the next half century or so.

Eat that Bloomberg and Soros.

...and we end up living in the world envisioned in the Handmaids Tale.
48) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1839550)
Posted 2 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
....

I did miss you.

I know.
49) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1839474)
Posted 1 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
..
If you have a small amount of fraud, encourage a huge turnout. Then the small amount of fraud gets buried under an avalanche. Do the math.


This.
50) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1839456)
Posted 1 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:


If you don't want to be accused of saying racist, homophobic or sexist things, don't say racist, homophobic and sexist things. At the very least don't complain because you've been given enough rope to hang yourselves.


That IS the thought police/censorship around here, and elsewhere.

You, yourself, among many many others, label views that you personally disagree with as something *ist or *ic.... implying there is something 'wrong' with people that believe that way.

Just because you think something someone said is *ist, does not MAKE it *ist.

Case in point:

Voter ID laws.

The integrity of the voting process for various Government officials is VERY important to ensure the legitimacy of the Government.

We have multiple (a great many, in fact) VERIFIED cases of, for instance, dead people somehow voting...

It does not matter which party/faction/individuals are doing it, it NEEDS to be stopped.

Having an ID process in place is a necessary component of stopping it.

But, many seem to think that the motivation of people proposing it is... well... racist. It may very well be, in some cases... but NOT in everyone that suggests it, such as myself.

It is a good idea, to help ensure the integrity of the voting process. And there are, in for instance the Texas voter ID law, numerous safeguards built in to ensure that it does not unduly affect poor or minority people. In Texas, one form of voter IDs are issued FREE.

If voting is important enough to people, they can go get an acceptable ID for free. If it not important enough to the person to go get it, then perhaps voting is not important enough to that person. After all, we need ID for a great many other things, as well (such as getting a job, or getting some government benefits).

But nooo.... It seems that Democrats in the USA are more interested in gaining/keeping power than doing things to improve the process... And since it was Republicans that typically propose Voter ID requirements, the Democrats accuse it of being 'racist' as part of the Great Game of Politics, D vs. R edition that they are engaged in. The news media, for the most part, are in collusion with the Democrats, and the accusation the Democrats made has generally been accepted as fact by a great many.

All of this Democrat vs. Republican felgercarb is ruining the Nation, dividing us. It is keeping the People distracted from seeing what is really happening (the chains of Authortarian slavery slowly being buckled on us ALL).

Sigh...

Time for #Texit. At least here in Texas, we are not as far gone as much of the rest of the USA and the world... yet...

The long history of black voter suppression in American politics

"The through-line was obvious in North Carolina: cite voter fraud as a problem, link early voting to increased voter fraud, cut back on early voting, see lower black turnout — and therefore Democratic turnout. A federal judge tossed North Carolina’s law, saying it intended to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision,” but after the law was repealed, counties were able to implement early voting as they saw fit. In one county, the New York Times reports, the number of early voting locations dropped from 16 in 2012 to one this year."

Your discussion of voter fraud and ID seems so reasonable on face value, except when you take into account that there is very little actual voter fraud, so why such a severe cure for such a nonexistent problem?

Texas’s voter ID chicanery

"A federal court in Texas found that more than 600,000 residents lack the particular forms of ID now required of voters there. A federal court in the District in 2012 found clear evidence that many “working poor” residents would be unable to procure or afford an ID deemed valid, and that disproportionate numbers of them would be black and Hispanic. The evidence Texas produced to demonstrate the contrary was “unpersuasive, invalid, or both,” the court said, in an opinion by a panel that included two judges appointed by Democratic presidents and one appointed by a Republican."

Now, when you read this, try to remember that I am not a Democrat. The only horse I have in this race is one of my sense of justice and fairness.
The voter ID laws are clearly targeted at certain demographics. Coming from a demographic where people died to secure my right to vote, this is a sensitive issue for me. I am from one of those demographics that cannot afford to take my rights for granted. I am everyday aware that there are those that would take them from me. I am very aware that those very people were put in power in the US during the last election.

I cannot afford to be complacent when I see the rights of those like me being eroded as I know those rights are fragile and I know what it cost to get them.

If I call someone sexist, I know what I'm talking about, not only do I know what I'm talking about, I am painfully aware of the consequences on people like me of sexism. I am very aware of the attitudes that pervade our society and that there are many who refuse to see that they hold those attitudes. Unfortunately that doesn't mean I can un-see it.
51) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1839440)
Posted 1 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
No his own, he pontificates as if his absolutist views are THE ANSWER to societies ills.
Pontification seems to be a major component of this thread but is only vilified when coming from the Conservative viewpoint............


If.................you..............don't................like...........what.................I.....................post..................use...............Mr.................Filter......................Button.....................

" : >

JaundicedEye...

Unlike you, me, and a few other posters. 'They' must censor idea's they disagree with. 'They' cannot compete in a world of ethical, moral, nor intellectual exchange of views.

IE: Disgustingly accusing ALL who disagree with them of Xenophobia, Racism, Sexism, etc.

Please don't encourage, the must be stopped Right Wing Speech Police, and their Cousins in Hate, the Left Wing Speech Police.

Considering that I know exactly how little anyone here is censored, I call out your nonsense and take extreme offense to it. Or are you going to call be a liar just because I am left wing?

It's my left wing ideals that mean you and Eye get to spout the rubbish that you do. It also means that I have the right to call you out on it. That's what free speech means.

If you don't want to be accused of saying racist, homophobic or sexist things, don't say racist, homophobic and sexist things. At the very least don't complain because you've been given enough rope to hang yourselves.
52) Message boards : Cafe SETI : TLOTPW - 261, the first of 2017 (Message 1839433)
Posted 1 Jan 2017 by Profile Es99
Post:
Happy New Year one and all!
53) Message boards : Politics : Since Bob has locked the Trump thread I will post this. (Message 1839177)
Posted 31 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:
....

BTW: NAZI (National Socialist) should be considered, using the present inaccurate terms, Left Wing.

....

BTW 2: Churchill and other British Conservatives. Were shocked that 'Right Wing' (Pro-Capitalist) Mussolini would ally himself with 'Left Wing' (Anti-Capitalist) Hitler.

WTF are you saying? Neither was a capitalist, nor left wing. They were fascists.

No one that I have ever come across has tried to distort the terms left wing and right wing except you.

The recent trend in America to define things as either pro government control or anti-government control is something peculiar to American politics and I suspect it's roots. Who benefits from loosening democratically elected systems control? Despite what people (read American, because this is purely an American view as far as I can tell) it's not the man in the street. The average poor white worker actually benefits from more government intervention. It protects the social safety net, it provides infrastructure, it provides policing, security, schooling, Healthcare and environmental protection when done properly. None of these things can be provided successfully by neo-liberal capitalism. Yet the very people that need government the most have been sold snake oil in the form of Trump. Trump and his team of ogliarchs will now go about cutting the very support systems designed to protect the average worker. They will cut their own taxes and any regulations designed to stop them doing too much damage in their quest for profits. Trump's business model has been one of screwing over the small guy and there is absolutely no reason that will stop now.

I've watched the American talking heads on the news shows trying to guild this turd they've elected, and make the best of it.

All this talk of left wing and right wing in America is nonsense. Just like you trying to portray Hitler and Mussolini as left wing and right wing. There is no left wing in America, and hasn't been for a long time. Reagan was actually left of Obama. Bernie Sanders was a genuine left wing candidate. The powers that be freaked out and thought America wouldn't have voted for such a blatant socialist. Maybe they were right, especially when you see what they did vote for.

The problem is that you don't know what left wing is, which is why you are having trouble labelling it. To most Americans it's a mythical creature you can only speculate about, and mostly come up with pure flights of fancy.
54) Message boards : Politics : Since Bob has locked the Trump thread I will post this. (Message 1839172)
Posted 31 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:
I think if we weren't all so hung up on party associations, a lot of the angst would stop, and some actual good things for everybody would happen. I wish the political party system would go away, and we could vote based on the actual candidate.

And that all eligible voters shows up.
Unfortunately it's now a common trend not to vote.

A lot of effort was put in by Republicans to stop certain groups from voting at all. It was openly part of their campaign strategy.
55) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1839171)
Posted 31 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:
Mr. Eye, ES is not a Democrat.
Neither am I.
"A rose(or a cabbage), by any other name....."

Despite what you like to believe, your political system is not the centre of the world.

Your insistence that it does reminds me of the old joke about a man who walks into a bar in Northern Ireland and is asked if he is a Catholic or a Protestant. He replies that he is a Muslim, so the bartender says, " yes, but are you a Catholic Muslim or a Protestant Muslim?"

Thats how daft you sound when think anyone who is upset that Trump won must be a democrat. Perhaps as people outside looking in, we have a clearer perspective than you do?
56) Message boards : Politics : Since Bob has locked the Trump thread I will post this. (Message 1838936)
Posted 30 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:
Or perhaps a necessary correction to the Dangerous, Anti-Tolerant, and Incompetent Left.

The left is anti-tolerant? What?

You do realize Trump appointed Steve Bannon, right?
[Steve Bannon] has "pushed racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic material into the vein of the alternative right"


The anti-tolerant and anti-women's rights and anti gay and anti non-white rhetoric of the right are the main reasons I affiliate with the democratic party.. I don't know what about the liberal movement can be considered 'anti-tolerant'. That's pretty laughable.

Ex...

The Left attacks other Targets. Men, Whites, etc.

The Left is as Bigoted and Dangerous as those they attack.

Think of Stalin attacking Hitler.

What world do you live in where it's white men who are being attacked?

I don't see white men being threatened with being put on a registry.
I don't see white men panicking because they are about to have their health programs unfunded.
I don't see white men being forced to undergo abusive sexual orientation conversion therapy.
I don't see white men being targeted by police on a daily basis.

So please explain to me how your fundamental liberties are being stripped from you because you are a white man.
57) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1838933)
Posted 30 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:

http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
Or another view, that it was designed to protect the slave states.
And the Slavers were large land owners. Rentier capitalists. "Rentier capitalism is used to describe economic practices of monopolization of access to any (physical, financial, intellectual, etc.) kind of property, and gaining significant amounts of profit without contribution to society."

The slave trade has simply moved to the privatised prison system. Disproportionately incarcerate black people and use them for cheap labor.

Of course, 'inner city' is one of those code words for black people that Trump supporters and the alt-right like to use.
58) Message boards : Politics : US Elections 2016 (Message 1838932)
Posted 30 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:
Is this the right wing Christian College that promotes anti-gay sentiment? Seems a strange choice to be holding up as an exemplar.

STOP!

Don't read it. You may find something like this:

...begins by defining a word many of you in here always seem to incorrectly relate to "right wing."


Edit:
AVALANCHE!
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-unleashes-3853-regs-18-for-every-law-record-97110-pages-of-red-tape/article/2610592

So being homophobic isn't a deal breaker for you?
59) Message boards : Politics : US Elections 2016 (Message 1838913)
Posted 30 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:
Brilliant words by a brilliant man.

HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERTY SINCE 1844

Speech by Allan P. Kirby, Jr., Hillsdale College, 2 Dec 2016 (frivolous stuff removed from introduction)

(Note to most posters in here, this is NOT a one-line quip, and he begins by defining a word many of you in here always seem to incorrectly relate to "right wing")

----

Trump said he was seeking the nomination under the Republican Party, not the conservative party.

Yet there is a lot we can learn from him about conservatism.

Conservatism is a derivative term: it refers to something outside itself. We cannot conserve the present or the future, and the past being full of contradiction, we cannot conserve it entire. In the past one finds heroism and villainy; justice and injustice; freedom and slavery. Things in the past are like things in the present: they must be judged. Conservative people know this if they have any sense.

It is the additional knowledge that things that have had a good reputation for a long time are more trustworthy than new things. This is especially true of original things. The very term principle refers to something that comes first; to change the principle of a thing is to change it into something else. Without the principle, the thing is lost.

If American conservatism means anything, it means the things found at the beginning of America, when it became a nation. The classics teach us that forming political bonds is natural to people, written in their nature, stemming from the divine gift they have of speech and reason. This means in turn that the Declaration of Independence, where the final causes of our nation are stated, and the Constitution of the United States, where the form of government is established, are the original things. These documents were written by people who were friends and who understood the documents to pursue the same ends. Taken together they are the longest surviving things of their kind, and under their domain our country spread across a continent and became the strongest nation on earth, the bastion of freedom.

It follows then that if Donald Trump helps to conserve these things, he is a conservative in the sense that matters most to the republic of the Americans. Will he?

He will have a hard road. Today the authority of these two documents is in obvious decline for several reasons. In the academy they are rejected as obsolete or evil, and this opinion spreads through-out the talking classes, most everywhere in education, journalism, and entertainment. It has spread widely and deeply into the law. As a result our government has swollen beyond recognition, and it is centralized to a degree unimagined in the Constitution. Laws are made now cheifly by regulatory agencies that combine in themselves all three power of government. The popular or elected branches may overturn thee regulations only when they unite to do so, and this is increasingly rare. So every institution in society is in principle subject to comprehensive regulation. Every employer, every school, many clubs, and family life itself are now the subject of rules too complex for the lay person to grasp. These rules are not always enforced, nor can they be, but Americans sense that they better be looking over their shoulders, careful of what the say.

This has changed the way we live. Compliance increasingly replaces law-abidingness as the public goal. Laws, the Founders held, must be simple, few, and constant. Then we may all know what they are, live under them, and help to enforce them. This makes us equal, ruler and ruled. It means that we do not quail before the forces of the law. We are the forces of the law. Compliance, by contrast, means adapting constantly to changing and complex instructions from central authorities, and it means the employment of specialists to interpret the regulations and make sure others conform. In addition to this, whole populations, and not only in the inner city, live in long-term dependence on the government. It means that the government is separate from the people, and it means that the government grows.

These new features of American government present a danger implicit in the manner of our Constitution. Ours, wrote Madison, is the first nation to adopt purely representative forms. This means that all sovereignty or authority to rule is located in the governed or in the people. But at the same time, the people do not occupy the offices of government—as they did, for instance, in Athenian democracy. America's pure or simple "republicanism," as Madison called it, makes possible the separation of powers both between the governed and their government and also inside the parts of the government. The sovereign people delegate their authority to government, separately to separate places. This separation is both horizontal, among the branches of the federal government, and vertical, between the states and the federal government. The people themselves are outside the government, and they may intervene only at election time. Between elections, they watch, judge, and argue—in other words, they think before they act. Over time, but only over time, they may replace the whole lot. This system limits both their power and the power of those in government.

Today, however, the government has grown so large that it is a major factor in everything, including elections, and is in the position of taking on a will of its own. It is on the verge of being too big for private people to manage. This is the political crisis of our time. No policy question, with the exception of imminent major war, which we do not have right now, can matter so much.

***

Trump has addressed this problem more directly than anyone since Ronald Reagan—in some ways, more than anyone including Reagan. He would drain the swamp. He would abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education. He has rallied the people in direct opposition to their governing elite. He has appealed to the people directly in opposition to their government. And what has he achieved?—from nothing, a constitutional majority that controls all the popular branches at the federal level, soon to have a profound effect on the judiciary. In addition, his party advanced from a strong position in state legislatures and governorships. The party of Trump, if the Republican Party is that party, is in a position to make changes, as good or better a position as it has enjoyed since the Great Society.

Moreover, Trump ran in utter defiance of the political correctness that enforces this new system of government. He did not bend his knee to identity groups. He claimed to represent all "citizens," a favorite term, by which he means citizens who hold that status under the law. He said he would represent their interest and their country, which he will make great again, and not the interest of any others. He did not care that this intention was conflated with racism. He saw that conflation as another sign of corruption, which it certainly is. Unless he is insensate, which he does not seem, Trump is possessed of moral courage as much as assertiveness, and his assertiveness is a sight to behold.

But can he do anything? Many conservatives have been doubtful of Trump and many others opposed. There are reasons for this. He is the first man elected president as his first significant public service. He is sometimes vulgar. He is a celebrity, star of his own show, which is playing wherever he goes. His is not the understated sort of elitism. Consistent with this, he is a populist: he likes ordinary folk, and they like him. This has made some conservative and libertarian people fear mobs with pitchforks. I fear them myself because

I see them on so many college campuses, but not on my own, and not among the Trump supporters. I think these mobs are the product of modern liberalism and the bureaucratic state, not the product of Trump.

I prefer to be hopeful about the future, and I am hopeful about the Trump administration. His campaign and his appointments at this early stage give us some information upon which to speculate. Take one example about which I know something: education.

Trump has called for the abolition of the Department of Education, as did Reagan. By contrast, both Presidents Bush sought to strengthen that Department. Trump has nominated the splendid Betsy DeVos to be secretary of the Department, and she is a fighter for every kind of school choice. The federal government spends seven or eight percent of its money on education, and its method is typical of the federal intrusion into local matters: it gives money from the federal treasury to states and localities on condition. The conditions are myriad, confusing, and usually ugly when they can be understood. Title IV of the Higher Education Act governs federal student aid, and it numbers around 500 pages. A lawyer for our college told me once that I would be unable to read it, because he himself cannot read it, for which reason his firm keeps a specialist who is the only person he knows who understands what it says. For this reason alone, it would be a grand thing to get rid of the Department of Education.

There are also some excellent intermediate steps. If one changed the conditions of the federal education money that goes to states, localities, and schools, there could be an immediate influence. Education is one of those things that is easy enough to understand, but hard to do. The first thing to understand is that human beings are made to learn, and they desire to do it naturally. This means the job of teachers, like the job of parents, is to help children learn, not to make them or cause them to learn. Good schools are built around this fact. It also means that authority over the schools can best be exercised by those who are closest to the students. What if the federal government required states to pass charter laws that delegated wide latitude and real authority to schools, not to the Department of Education or to state departments of education or to school districts? What if it relied, not upon high-stakes centralized testing as in Common Core, but in the simple fact that parents and teachers are much more likely to care for students than strangers, even if those strangers are highly trained federal bureaucrats?

The chairman of our education program at Hillsdale College has written a series of standards that states might adopt for K-12 education. For each grade, they take up about half a page. But if a child can do the things on that half a page, the child has learned a lot. Here is a way for higher levels of government to be sure that any money they give to lower levels is well spent in education. It involves hardly any management of details. That is the constitutional model, the model that comes from our Founding.

To follow this practice would liberalize the system. It would mean that there would be plenty of bad charter schools, just as there are plenty of bad schools now. But it would also mean that there would be a proliferation of good ones. Hillsdale College has helped to found i6 charter schools, with more coming, and they are all doing well. Everybody wears a uniform and signs an honor code. Everybody—indeed everybody in kindergarten—learns to read. Everybody studies mathematics at least through pre-calculus. Everybody learns Latin, history, literature, philosophy, physics, biology, and chemistry. Everybody is admitted by a lottery system. For the inner-city schools, care is taken to advertise only in the immediate area, to make the opportunity available to the children who live in poor areas. The students in these schools make on the average excellent scores on the ubiquitous state standardized tests, and they do this without class time or curriculum set aside to prepare for those tests. They do very well even in relation to the legions of public schools that now take months to cram only for those tests, which means the students know little more than what is on those tests, and all the adults get raises and promotions if the students do well. That's why there have been spectacular instances of cheating—by teachers and school administrators!—on those tests.

The kind of education going on in Hillsdale's charter schools is not something that could be advanced nationally by a federal mandate. Key to the success of these schools is that the school leaders, the parents, and the teachers are all glad to be there and all help willingly to make it work. In other words, they are all volunteers. It is a partnership. Partnerships are cooperative, not imperative. If you force people who are unwilling to do something, they will not do it very well, which is the encapsulation of human freedom.

Nowhere is this freedom more evident than in the process of learning. At Hillsdale College the curriculum is rigorous and the standards of behavior are high. But they are not imperative. The ultimate penalty is simply this question: are you sure you want to be here, when there are so many other options, options generally not quite so difficult or strict? The student who responds yes to that question is self-governing, which is the aim. That is why we at Hillsdale would not support a national law that everyone had to do what we do. We know too much about human beings to think that would work.

Let us say that the Department of Education began to reform itself along these lines. It is in a real position to lead if it will do so, because it would be setting a profound example: it would be teaching the governments below not to give people orders all the time. It would be teaching them that parents do after all love their children in the great majority of cases, and that the strongest institutions are built on love. It would be teaching them that schools can do better without a national engineering project to take over their work, to set their tests, to prescribe their behavior. And this would lay the ground for the Department's abolition.

***

If this is possible in education, it might work in other places too. Since the Founding, twelve cabinet offices have been added to the federal establishment. In the original federal government there was a Secretary of State to handle the relations of the American people with other countries. There must be such relations. There was a Secretary of War (now Defense) to manage the defense of our nation from enemies. We have such enemies, and we must defend ourselves. There was a Secretary of the Treasury to manage the budget and the money of the federal government. To operate, the federal government must collect taxes and spend money. And there was an Attorney General (not originally overseeing a department) to enforce the laws of the federal government. One can see that these functions are necessary to the federal government in a way that the functions of other departments are not.

The Department of Education was founded in 1979, whereas Hillsdale College was founded in 1844. Education was a thing to behold in the United States long before there was a Department. Likewise people had houses before we had a Department of Housing and Urban Development; they traveled before we had a Department of Transportation; they traded before we had a Department of Commerce. You can see the line of thought. A federal government with four cabinet officers would be a federal government doing what it was built to do. That is why it is breathtaking that Trump would call for the elimination of departments, and breathtaking that he would appoint some and interview others who at least want to restrict the activities of those departments so people can be free.

We do not know what this election means. That is in the future. If it means that we will return to constitutional government, it means the most important thing that it can mean.

Some say it will mean the denigration of immigrants based on race or religion. Trump has not said that: he has said that our country belongs to its citizens. Think of consent of the governed, the principle of the relationship between the people and the government in America. That cannot mean just the will of the people, that they can do whatever they want. Otherwise they would be giving consent to governments that would immediately take away their right to consent. It must mean, if it means anything, that consent is rightly given only to governments that protect their right to consent.

Moreover it cannot mean that anyone has a right to be a citizen of the United States, even if it is truly said that the principles of the nation are universal. It means rather that the United States, alone among the nations of the earth, is a set of practices and beliefs, available in principle to every people to believe those beliefs and adopt those practices. It means also that citizens have the right to determine who becomes a citizen. In the Declaration of Independence, one of the complaints against the King is that he expanded the borders of Quebec down into the American colonies, having given that province a government by his fiat alone. The King was attempting to choose the people, whereas the people have the right to choose the government. Trump and the American people seem to favor the latter, and in that vital respect they are on the side of the Founders.

Some say that Trump will turn us toward "isolationism" and away from "internationalism." These are not principles to which one can assign any meaning. The purpose of the government of the United States is to protect the rights of the people of the United States. If we mean by internationalism the practices and institutions that Winston Churchill helped to build, including NATO, I revere them. Also I know that Churchill helped build those according to his best judgment how to protect the actual life of freedom, responsibility, and prosperity of the British people, first and foremost, because he worked for them.

Russia may be a problem today, but not the problem that the Soviet Union was. Western Europe may be an ally today, but is it so good an ally as it was before it built an unaccountable Europe-wide government, in defiance of the popular votes of several countries still subject to it? The United States can be the leader of the world only if it is strong, and it now for the first time is deeply in debt. Lincoln said, "As our case is new, so we must think anew." The case is new today. I for one would stay close to Britain and Israel, old friends who have the art of self-government. But everything including that must be thought through. We seem to have a chance to do that now.

The polls tell us that the American people today live in fear of the government. Now they have elected someone new, and we will soon know if he is good. It is a simple fact that he has never done anything like this before, and very great people have found such things difficult. But I would be hopeful for many reasons. One of the main ones is that he wrote this, on January 16 of this year:

The United States of America is a land of laws, and Americans value the rule of law above all. Why, then, has our Congress allowed the president and the executive branch to take on near-dictatorial power?... What is needed in Washington is a president who will rein in the executive branch and work with Congress to make sure the legislative branch does its job.

Trump has said that these are his purposes. Pray that he achieves them.

<sounds of clapping, cheering and whistling from the crowd!!>

Is this the right wing Christian College that promotes anti-gay sentiment? Seems a strange choice to be holding up as an exemplar.
60) Message boards : Politics : Immigrant Migrant Refugee SUPREMACY-Is RACIST DEPLORABLE & TREASONOUS KKKOMMIE KKKryBABY KKKLOWNS with Their Continuing TREASONOUS Behaviours, will LOSE All Elections if They Keep Spouting TREASONOUS Free Speech (Message 1838905)
Posted 30 Dec 2016 by Profile Es99
Post:

http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/

Or another view, that it was designed to protect the slave states.


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